Page 77 of Warrior’s Mate

A few exhausted officers laughed. Kaiven accepted the blow. "Yes, sir." For the first time since the attack, the room sounded briefly like people rather than command functions. Then they turned back to the map and the work resumed.

Chapter 15 — Names

By midnight, no one used the word victory.

The Sargan ground teams had withdrawn from Wasaytu's central district after scattered regional defense units and surviving local Brigade elements reached the area, but withdrawal meant little when transports had already lifted with captives. Fires still burned across three agricultural zones. Communications with outlying settlements remained incomplete. Every new connection brought another district's list of dead and missing.

Maelis sat at the registry station with her injured leg elevated on a crate and watched Farseek become columns. Confirmed alive. Transferred.

Wounded. Dead. Missing.

Probable capture.

The categories were crude, but they were better than silence. Better than families running from shelter to shelter because someone had heard that a cousin might have been seen. Better than the same child being counted as missing in four districts while another disappeared entirely because no one knew which list should hold her.

Names mattered. Maelis had always believed records mattered, though before today she had usually meant grain allotments, water rights, transport schedules, births, land transfers, seed inventories, and the thousand ordinary proofs that a community had existed long enough to need memory. Tonight the registry had become evidence that people existed at all.

A volunteer slid a tablet across the table. "Another transport manifest."

Maelis scanned it. "Source?"

"Western landing field."

"Verified?"

"Pilot signature and two shelter coordinators."

"Good. Import it, but don't overwrite duplicates. Flag conflicts for review."

The volunteer hesitated. "There are eighty-three people marked aboard who aren't at the destination shelter."

Maelis's stomach tightened. "Which transport?"

"Civilian carrier Nine."

She pulled up the movement record.

Carrier Nine had launched from Wasaytu under escort at 18:42. Destination: Central Relief. It had landed at 19:03. The pilot was accounted for. The ship was accounted for.

Eighty-three passengers were not.

"Medical diversion?"

"None logged."

"Secondary shelter?"

"Checking."

Maelis stared at the manifest. This was how people vanished after surviving the attack—not always into enemy ships, but into broken systems.

"Find the loading marshal," she said. "And the destination intake team. Nobody changes those eighty-three statuses until we know where they went."

"Registrar Torren?"

She looked up.

An older man stood on the other side of the table holding a child's coat. His face was gray with exhaustion.