Page 75 of Starfighter’s Salvation

Now he sounded like Corvan — dry, stubborn, refusing to be left behind.

Wroxxon finished making assignments. “If Mia is as good as I think she is⁠—”

"She is," Priya answered.

"If she is, you'll have about thirty minutes to get in, find Corvan, and get out or you'll be swarmed by enemy fighters." He raised a brow and glared at me. "Do not let that happen. You'll all be dead and I'll be in the brig."

Fifteen minutes later there was a totally unplanned, spontaneous meeting of everyone in Starfighters' section of the battleship's landing bay. We were all suited up and ready to go. The pilots were running final checks on their ships and the rest of us were loading weapons and supplies.

Wroxxon was back in command, pretending he knew nothing about what we were about to do. The Titans were loading onto the drop ship when General Aryk entered the bay and walked right up to the group, as if he were going with us. He waited for the shocked silence to settle thick around us before a spoke. “This is not an authorized Starfighter operation.”

I was ready to put a bag over his head and lock him in a closet if that's what it took to get off this ship, but he took one look at me and shook his head in a warning that he wasn't done talking. “However, as of five minutes ago, Lieutenant Maro was temporarily assigned to the Resolution's maintenance crew. The four Titans here have been assigned to run a ground patrol on Xenon. Dekker was sent back Arturri for ship repairs and Starfighter Reyes is expected to be in medical for the next three days.” He looked at me. “No one ever knows where the Scouts disappear to. So, Gina, I have no idea how all these independent assets happened to be reassigned right now. What a strange coincidence.”

“Thank you, General.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

"Of course not, sir." I understood. If the Citadel traitor read command traffic, hell, if anyone came looking for any of us, there would be nothing they could use to track us or our rescue mission. There would be no official record of the mission at all.

“Bring him home,” General Aryk ordered.

The command deck doors opened before anyone could respond and a medic’s blaring alarm spilled through a few seconds ahead of the man setting it off.

He should not have been on his feet. Half his chest lay sealed under a sterile surgical field, one arm strapped to his ribs, an IV line had torn loose and was still trailing from the back of his hand. He crossed the deck on legs that did not want to hold him, a Resolution medic walking one step behind with both arms out to catch him when he dropped.

“The medic,” he rasped. “I need the medic. Reyes.”

Then I saw his face, and the whole room rearranged itself around one impossible fact. Him. The communications tech from the Ferros Trench. The guy with the worst luck in the galaxy, standing in front of me, bleeding through a surgical seal because, apparently, he’d walked out of surgery to find me.

“Halix.” I remembered him. Of course I did. I crossed to him and got a shoulder under his good arm before he fell over. “You are supposed to be in surgery.”

“Later.” He pressed something into my hand and closed my fingers over it with the last of his strength. A data crystal, small and dark, still warm from his grip. “I know what they want. I should've known since the trench, but I didn't figure it out.”

“Easy,” I said, the nurse voice sliding into place because it was the only thing holding my own hands steady. “Slow down. Breathe.”

“I run signals for the delegation convoys. A few days before Ferros, I pulled a data cluster off the enemy network. When I tried to crack it, I discovered it was encrypted with Citadel codes. Our codes. Not theirs.” His eyes darted to General Aryk who had stepped close to listen but didn't interrupt. “Whoever they’re talking to on our side is in the Citadel. I didn’t understand what I was holding. I filed my log and moved on, and they’ve been hunting me every moment since to make sure no one else ever sees the data on that crystal.”

His hand tightened on mine. “They didn’t attack Erys for the dome. There was nothing on that rock worth a battle. They came for me. For that.” He stumbled and General Aryk helped me steady him.

"If they're after you, why are they still engaging our forces at Dome Erys? You're gone."

Halix looked half amused, half apologetic. "I left my comm unit when we evacuated. After Ferros Trench, my injuries were so severe, they had to remove my tracking module, said I needed to wait a few more weeks before getting it replaced. So, they probably believe I'm still there."

"And they're going to tear the place apart trying to find you," I said.

"Yes."

I looked down at the crystal in my palm. Small. Ordinary. The reason for so much death and destruction. So much blood. The reason Corvan was in danger.

“Can it be read here? Now?” Aryk asked.

Halix shook his head. “Not by me. Not by anyone on this ship. The encryption is quantum, Citadel-grade. You'll need the key.” Halix sagged, and the medic finally got a proper hold on him from behind. A second medic appeared with a wheeled chair.

They were pushing Halix into the chair, but he wasn't done yet. “You need counterintelligence to crack that. Someone already on the inside, someone who can get their hands on the keys they use, or it’s just a stupid rock that's going to get a lot of people killed.”

Vesh and Priya traded a look I was learning meant they knew something the rest of us didn't.

“Torek,” Vesh said. “Counterintelligence. He’s been hunting traitors inside the Citadel for fifteen years. If anyone can hack into the data on the crystal, it’s him.”