Page 184 of Commander’s Mate

Harper stood.

“Please sit,” I said quietly.

Her eyes snapped to mine.

I corrected myself before the mistake became an argument. “Or stand. But let him finish so we know exactly what they are threatening.”

Her shoulders eased by a fraction. “Better.”

The recording ended with demands for our manifests, recovered persons, copied intelligence, and immediate return to Consortium jurisdiction.

Tivid blanked the screen.

“They want the registry,” Harper said.

“Yes,” Degatu replied.

“No.”

Every eye turned toward her.

She set both hands on the table. “Give them numbers if politics requires numbers. Species counts. Homeworld requests. Medical totals with no identifiers. But not names. Not family connections. Not where people are being housed. Not anything that lets someone decide which rescued person is politically valuable enough to matter.”

Tivid tilted his head. “A shielded registry.”

“I don’t know your technology,” Harper said. “On Earth we had privacy rules for medical records and crime victims. Officials didn’t get every detail just because they asked on official letterhead.”

Degatu looked at me.

“She is right,” I said.

Harper’s gaze flicked toward me, surprised.

I continued. “Tivid, isolate the rescued-person registry from general ship records. Command access only. No external transmission of names without the person’s consent, except immediate medical necessity.”

“I can do that.”

“Send the Consortium totals,” Degatu said. “Nothing more.”

“And the ships?” Pyrr asked.

Degatu’s mouth hardened. “They may call them Consortium property. They can come retrieve them.”

That almost earned a smile from Pyrr.

Tivid brought up the second matter waiting for command. “The Ursaga files are still producing useful fragments. Breskaa is confirmed. Two hundred Farseek citizens in one transfer batch. Possibly more under incomplete identifiers.”

The room changed again.

Two hundred.

A small number compared with the hundreds of thousands missing. An enormous number if one of them was yours.

“Current status?” I asked.

“Unknown. But the transfer is recent. The facility is a mining colony in Sector Six. High worker mortality. Private Sargus ownership through shell companies.”

Harper’s face had gone pale.