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A frigate surfaced up from the planet’s atmosphere, neared the fleet, and hailed it through comms.

It was met with a number of fighters, who after ensuring the frigate had the proper clearances, escorted it towards the flagship.

As it neared, a frigate bay on top of the flagship slid open and multiple guide holograms helped the frigate settle itself onto it.

Similar to a fighter bay typically found on the bottom of many frigate designs, the frigate bay on top of the flagship allowed one to nestle itself partially inside. Clamps held on to the frigate as vacuum seals inflated in the space between the two ships, and kept them locked in position.

Once the seals were atmospherically secure, the entire bay was repressurized and the frigate’s landing ramp was lowered down into the flagship bay floor.

Admiral Chase chatted lightly with her officers as they walked down the ramp, a handful of armed Drogar guards in tow. They were met with a number of other uniformed Drogar, one of which was much more sharply dressed.

“Welcome aboard, Admiral,” she said. “I’m First Feather Laveth, Retholis’ aide-de-camp.”

.....

“Ah, yes! I see your name on all the transfer paperwork,” said the Admiral. “Glad to finally meet you. I hope things are going as well as you planned.”

“Yes, same. And everything is proceeding smoothly. Our engineers have performed the majority of necessary repairs to your asteroid base, and all of your personal items have been transferred. It’s ready to be powered up so your people can be brought onboard.”

The Admiral nodded with absolute satisfaction etched on her face.

After the attack, Retholis had ordered the compound to be evacuated immediately. He used safety as an excuse to move his prisoners, though in truth, the Admiral was incredibly angry with him. In order to avert her fury, he was forced to capitulate.

In any case, he used the broken and inoperable gate as his excuse. With the compound’s defenses in need of repair, he argued that there was no way to ensure anyone’s safety.

He didn’t even wait for approval before having the prisoners transported to his flagship. They were transported by the hundreds via frigate, one by one by one.

Along with the coffins that contained their dead.

“Well since everything seems to be in order,” said the Admiral, “may as well start bringing my people over. Can start with this batch.”

She flung a thumb at the frigate behind her. Inside were a couple hundred Federation personnel and some of their effects.

“Half of my officers are in there,” she continued, “so they’ll know what to do once they get dropped off. I’ll send them updated orders as well.”

Laveth nodded at her as she tapped into a datapad and sent out a fresh set of instructions to Retholis’ Swarm.

“Aren’t you going with them?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be first on your own asteroid? Isn’t it your command?”

The Admiral chuckled lightly, then sighed.

“Of course I do,” she said. “But as their Admiral, I need to ensure everyone’s onboard before I join them. It’s my duty, honestly. Otherwise, yeah, I can’t wait to get back to my lab. Hell, if I didn’t have my stripes, I’d be first in line.”

She looked around a little as she spoke, and realized something as she scanned the bay. Her brow furrowed in puzzlement.

“Is Reth not here?” she asked.

“He has a few things to take care of on Taloren,” the Aide replied. “Apologies, I can’t talk about them in any detail.”

“No, that’s fine. Please send him my regards.”

The Admiral’s thoughts turned towards Retholis and towards Savoth. Although she barely knew Retholis, she understood what kind of person he was. He had proven himself to be relentless in his pursuits, no matter the costs.

Whatever fate Retholis had for the Senator, it wasn’t going to be kind in the slightest. She couldn’t help but pity Savoth, despite his actions.

~

Down below on Taloren Prime, Retholis and his teams combed the Federation prisoners’ compound. Although only a few cycles had passed since the attack, there was still much data to uncover.

Much to investigate.

Although the dead had long since been removed, much of their equipment had been stripped off and left on the grounds. All the signs of the chaos that was that battle was also left untouched, at least as much as possible.

Multiple drones hovered all over the compound and scanned every millimeter they came across. They pored over every blade of grass, every drop of dried blood, and every piece of equipment.

This data was transmitted securely to a local database in a nearby Red Zone, where it was packaged up, double-encrypted, then shot up into orbital relay stations in Taloren’s upper atmosphere.

At the speed of light, that same data was transferred across multiple relay stations until it reached the other side of the planet. At which point it was beamed down to another dome city below.

Although it was just as large as all of the other cities, it was far less populated. It was almost completely automated and had almost zero vegetation inside. This city lacked the vibrance and life common in other domes all over Taloren.

The only one who appeared to live here were those who maintained the entire thing. Kings in their own castle, empty as it was.

Unlike the beautiful coral style that other cities enjoyed, these buildings looked far more utilitarian and geometric.

At the very center of this dome was another large Red Zone, but instead of bright red spiral towers, it was a single dull and dark red tower. It was a plain cylindrical building that looked as though it eschewed all manner of style.

The building itself housed an unimaginable amount of high-powered dataservers. Floor after floor, room after room, rack after rack – all were filled with countless databanks and computational intelligences. Some looked positively ancient while others were clearly brand new and freshly printed.

They hummed with satisfying purrs that denoted how well they were cared for.

All of them were monitored by technicians in pressurized environmental suits, who ambled about with their carts filled with various tools. They used small handheld devices to check the health of any given dataserver they pointed it at.

One noticed a miniscule error on his readout, and immediately pulled out the tools necessary to correct it.

From high above, the data from the compound came screaming into one of the main nodes at the Greater Imperial DataVault. Its encrypted outer shell was unwrapped, and its juicy core of information was quickly scanned. After determining its purpose, the data was sent to another node where it was absorbed, then propagated all across the network.

High above that same tower, hundreds of analysts pored over the fresh new information provided by Swarmfather Retholis’ sweeping intelligence network. Then they added it to the pool they had been carefully curating for months of painstaking intelligence work.

One of the analysts looked at the group of names – of the Chosen who died in that compound, on that cycle – and went through them one by one by one. And for each one that she opened up, she reached out and produced lists of their family and friends.

More than that, everyone the Chosen had ever talked to ended up in a list. Even if those connections were meaningless, it was important for them to gather them all together.

Beside her, another analyst scanned the items that the Chosen had brought and died with. He looked at the deployment bags in particular, and noted that many held similar manufacturer origins.

And so he produced a list of those manufacturers, along with their trusted retailers and all of the members of their Operational Board.

Savoth appeared a number of times in that list.

The analyst beside him looked into the ledgers of everyone involved. Or at least, of all the Chosen who were involved in the attack.

A number of them held a great deal of krohn in their ledgers – far too much for their meagre incomes. When he looked closer, it was clear that these few were injected with Coin in large batches weeks prior.

They then spent them on acquiring massive amounts of gear.

One purchased the deployment bags, another paid for some of their ammunition. Yet another paid for large amounts of food. There were line items for all sorts of things – scrap metals, tools, used gondolas, and so on.

And it appeared a handful of companies were the ones responsible for injecting that Coin in their ledgers.

Again, Savoth’s name came up multiple times.

His name kept repeating everywhere they looked, over and over again.

~

As that data was being collated and linked together by hundreds of intelligence analysts, Retholis sat at his terminal and watched it all fly on by. By his side was Colviss, who had a blade hanging off her belt.

She watched in awe at the sheer amount of data he had collected. It was certainly plenty enough to nail Savoth’s coffin shut.

“Savoth is doomed,” said Colviss, “even without my personal testimony. His fingerprints are all over the place. How foolish is this Drogar?”

Retholis chuckled with minor delight.

“He was always careless about his own affairs,” he said. “I’ve been onto him for months now. Maybe years. Been scooping up everything he’s been carelessly leaving all over the place. This data is just from the attack – and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. But...”

Retholis himself noticed a very clear problem in all of his data. Any money that went into Savoth’s ledger was highly censored, encrypted, or outright missing. It seemed as though his wealth materialized out of thin air. Well, every single transaction was there – not a single one pointed to anyone in particular.

The names simply weren’t there.

Every unanswered question and every lingering shadow embedded in the data served to hide and obfuscate the people pulling Savoth’s strings.

He knew Savoth was little more than a thug. A smart, influential, and wealthy one, but a thug all the same. His modus operandi was to use force of will rather than the subtleties of influence.

“His co-conspirators aren’t as foolish,” Retholis continued. “They’ve left no trace of themselves. Anywhere. Clearly, they knew what he was capable of, how loud he could shout, and protected themselves.”

Colviss’ eyes sprang wide open in realization.

“Wait,” she said, “this attack wasn’t to get Savoth? You did this to get the others, too?”

“Of course,” he replied. “It would’ve been easy to nab him, long long ago. But I wanted to get more than just Savoth. He’s small fry in comparison to someone like Konleth.”

Colviss laughed oddly at Retholis’ confession.

“So you hoped their big attack would have exposed some of them, right?” she said.

“Exactly that,” he replied. “But instead of getting careless, they tightened their reins and put Savoth up as a sacrifice. All that death, for nothing. The bastards.”

He sighed deeply, then turned to face Colviss. His eyes were filled with intense determination.

“But that’s where you come in,” he said. “And not a single law is going to keep their necks hidden from either of us.”