Mak slipped into the long, narrow space--more a tunnel than a room--that ran inside the strange circular walls of the ruins. He'd hoped that Dr. Bartali was in here somewhere with her four charges, but it was empty. There were at least five other such places, and he'd sent a member of his team to check each one, although this would have been the closest to the exit she'd been aiming for.

It strengthened his fear that the reason for her current silence was she'd been captured. And now he had the added worry of not knowing, if or when she spoke to him again, whether she was doing it voluntarily or with a laz to her head.

“No one here, Captain.” Vasouvy's voice sparked in his ear and broke through his thoughts, and then the others reported in one by one.

“Right, move back to the new position. Erenn, set up the equipment and see if you can access the scanners. I'd like to see what's going on in the ruins.”

They murmured assent, and for a moment, left in the quiet, Mak wondered whether he should follow his own order, or sneak into the ruins. Take a look around.

If he was caught it would endanger his whole team, but he wanted to. He really wanted to.

He curbed what he realized with surprise was fury, and made his way silently back to the two large rocks leaning against each other that lay close to the ruins.

It was Vasouvy who'd discovered that the narrow gap between them led to an open space inside. Mak knew he'd never have tried to wriggle in there, 'just to see where it went', and it was, in fact, an effort for him, Yari, Goojie and Fren to get in.

It was worth it, though. Ever since Vasouvy had found it, they'd marked it as their fallback position.

“Captain Carep, what kind of shit storm are you standing in, and why am I having to call you about it, instead of you calling me?”

At the sound of the unfamiliar voice booming down his comm, Mak dropped behind the closest rock. His uniform was in high reflection mode, making him almost completely invisible, but he wasn't going to stand around having a chat in the open.

“Who is this?” He kept his voice low, but his brain was working again, and he realized the hostage-takers were unlikely to contact him for a chat before they took him out.

“Vice-admiral Sinjin, commander of the Cepi cordon.” Sinjin's voice was slightly rough and very curt, and while Mak had never met her personally, he knew she had a reputation for straight talk. “Now, what the fuck is going on?”

“Vice-admiral, are you sure this link is secure?” He was dead serious, although he understood she might interpret his question as insubordination. She was Kalastoni, and not part of his direct chain of command, but technically, while on Cepi, he did report to her.

That he and his team were here at all would be galling to her. It was the final muscle flexing of his planet, Arkhor. The Arkhorans had discovered Cepi, and they'd managed to keep a grip on it even as their claim became more and more tenuous.

The Arkhoran insistence on a secret team to keep watch before the Kalastoni made it all go boom was the last, petty power play in a game that had begun back when the Kalastoni were first Rediscovered by Arkhor and embraced into the bosom of the Verdant String, very much the backward hicks of the alliance.

But Sinjin's annoyance at Mak's current placement was the least of his worries.

The problem between them now was trust.

He stayed where he was, making himself as small a target as possible behind his rock. He wasn't going any closer to his team's new hidey-hole until the transmission was over.

“By secure you mean . . .?” Sinjin asked, and he didn't miss the edge to her tone.

“I mean can I be tracked through this signal, or can someone, either part of the cordon or elsewhere, listen in?”

“You think what's happening is an inside job?”

Mak let a beat pass in silence. “When the pick-up came in, I was given an assurance it was cleared. That was obviously a lie. So I have to wonder whose lie. I chose to report directly back to Arkhor, rather than take the risk of speaking to the wrong person amongst your staff.”

“You can be sure heads are already rolling over the all-clear that was given to that vessel.” The admiral's tone was icy. “So, you're telling me you've informed Arkhor?”

“We have, but with the relays, it'll take hours to reach them. They'll be coming, but it will be a day at least before they arrive.”

Sinjin made a sound of disgust, and Mak grinned, because he knew she'd be annoyed at the thought of having to deal with Arkhoran military warships in her own solar system, and he was Arkhoran enough to find that funny.

The fact that Arkhor, and to a lesser extent Halatia, had kept their claws in Cepi for so long, even though it was a minor moon of Kalastoni, was a festering blister on the Verdant String alliance, and had been for at least the last two hundred years.

Now that Halatia was no more, Kalastoni resentment had focused on Arkhor, and Mak wondered how much of the glee with which some Kalastoni were anticipating the destruction of Cepi wasn't in part a reaction to the fact that they'd never really been able to claim it, despite it being theirs.

“I can assure you, this is a very secure link, so let me get back to my original question. What's going on down there?”

“The pick-up scheduled to fetch Dr. Bartali and her four charges came in on time, but the crew is either dead or imprisoned onboard. My last contact with the main building was that the team who'd taken the vessel had shot at least one security guard and were rounding everyone up.”

“Who's your contact?” Sinjin's voice was sharp.

“With respect, given I think there's a breach in the cordon team, I'm not going to tell you.” If they didn't know about Catano, it needed to stay that way, and no one would look at the Halatian doctor unless he pointed her out to them.

“We've got contacts in the ruin, too, and none of them have gotten back to us,” Sinjin said. “I might have to compel your superiors into telling me who your contact is, so I can find out about my people.”

Now that was interesting. Catano had tried to work out if the Kalastoni had anyone on Cepi reporting to the cordon's senior command. She hadn't managed to find anyone, but there obviously were a few.

“If I get the order, then so be it.” Mak checked the time, knew his team would be starting to worry that he wasn't back yet. “I have to move. Do you have any information about the hostage-takers that I don't?”

“Will you be cooperating with me from now on?” Sinjin asked.

“I'll cooperate with you directly,” Mak agreed. He would need cordon help and he had to trust someone. Unless Sinjin was being offered a massive sum, he couldn't see her being bribed into putting her own planet in danger by delaying Cepi's destruction.

“Good enough,” Sinjin said. “Someone calling himself Veld got in touch. He's planning on sending over most of the hostages, more because it'll make life easier for him than because of any compassionate impulse is my guess. And he doesn't need them anyway, he has the perfect hostages in hand.”

“Perfect hostages?” Mak asked, wondering who that could be. He'd seen the file on every person at the ruin, and there were no truly high-profile figures here at the moment.

“Dr. Bartali and the four young women with her.” Sinjin let that settle for a moment. “If we try to capture any of his people when they hand over the archeological team and their staff, they've threatened to kill one of the girls.”

Oh.

Mak wondered how he could have been so blind. So stupid.

The doctor and her young charges were Halatian. He'd thought of them all as Halatian since this started, even though the girls at least had never known any planet but Arkhor, but he'd never fully grasped the implications . . . This was truly a shit storm, as Sinjin had said.

If there was one guilt button everyone in the whole Verdant String had, it was the Halatians.

The doc and her girls embodied the most vulnerable, the most tragic, and the most brave of survivors. Orphans of the greatest tragedy in Verdant String history, whose fate had shown both the worst and the best of the Verdant String citizens.

It was memories of the worst, though, that made all Halatians walking reminders of some of the darkest moral choices ever made.

They were, as Sinjin said, the perfect hostages.

Who'd thought it was a good idea to bring them here?

“I see you appreciate the scope of the disaster,” Sinjin said into the silence.

“It can't be coincidence, can it?” he asked her softly. “Them being here at just the right time?”

“No.” Sinjin's voice was grim. “Someone may think I'd spend my time focusing on more immediate issues, and saving my own backside from recriminations about how this could even have happened, but they would be wrong. I'm going to find out who was behind those girls being at the ruins, and when I do . . .” She drew a deep breath “. . . I'll find who's putting my whole planet at risk.”