Page 76 of Warrior’s Mate

Kaiven touched his forehead to hers. "I will."

He turned toward command. At the doorway, he looked back once. Maelis was already seated at a terminal with three volunteers around her, explaining the difference between missing and probable capture and insisting again that uncertainty be recorded honestly. Home, Kaiven thought, was not waiting for him anymore. Home was working. He went to do the same.

The provisional command session lasted longer than Kaiven expected and less long than the scale of disaster deserved. It occupied a converted planning room crowded with surviving regional officers, district defense leaders, medical coordinators, communications technicians, and civilian-transport staff. The main dreadnought command was still off-world and trying to return through compromised communications. No one in this room could pretend otherwise.

No one spoke of retaliation first. They spoke of air corridors, shelter capacity, missing transports, food stores, damaged relays, and where surviving medical craft could land without drawing another strike. Anger was everywhere, compressed beneath the more immediate obligation to keep living people alive.

The acting operations commander looked toward Kaiven. "Wasaytu registry. You were on the northern withdrawal."

"Yes, sir."

"How reliable are the civilian counts?"

Kaiven considered the question. A day earlier he might have answered with a percentage. "Reliable where civilian registrars controlled the data. Less reliable where military intake collapsed categories for speed."

An intelligence officer frowned. "Explain."

"Missing, transferred, and probable capture were being merged in some shelters. Registrar Torren stopped it at Central Relief. She also identified transfer errors that would have left living children listed as missing."

The acting commander looked toward the civilian-records coordinator. "Keep her system. Every district gets a civilian registry lead. Military records support them; they do not replace them. If someone is missing, we say missing until we know otherwise."

Kaiven thought of Maelis saying almost the same words while smoke still rolled over the Exchange.

A signals officer enlarged a communications trace. "We also have evidence that civilian distress traffic was being rerouted before the main assault. Twelve hours, possibly longer."

The air in the room changed.

"Equipment failure?" someone asked.

"Pattern does not support it."

"Enemy intrusion?"

"Possible. But some of the reroutes used Consortium priority architecture."

No one moved. They did not yet know whether the Consortium systems had been compromised, misused, or deliberately turned against Farseek. They knew only that the raw evidence had to survive until the officers commanding the returning dreadnoughts could see it for themselves.

"Preserve everything," the acting commander ordered. "Original timestamps. Routing headers. Failed handshakes. Nothing gets summarized over the raw record."

"And the captives?" an officer asked.

The commander looked at the red markers spreading across the projection. "Every known transport. Every last position. Every name. We hold the trail until main command gets home. Missing does not become dead because that is administratively easier."

It was not rescue yet. It was the preparation that made rescue possible. Kaiven looked at the map and understood that whatever Farseek became after this day, its future had already shifted. The Brigade had been trained to defend systems, execute missions, and obey allied command structures. What stood before them now was different: people stolen into a market that treated lives as cargo, and institutions that might have helped make it possible.

Kaiven's comm vibrated with a status update from Central Relief. Maelis Torren: still at registry. Knee treated. Refusing rest.

He almost smiled.

The acting commander noticed. "Something useful, Captain?"

"Yes, sir. Twenty-eight survivors from the collapsed irrigation sector have been fully reconciled to the registry."

"Good."

Kaiven hesitated, then added, "Registrar Torren led them out."

The commander gave him a dry look. "Then perhaps stop looking pleased with yourself, Captain. It appears she did the difficult part."