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“Sorry for not responding sooner. Very busy. Not sure I’ll make the meeting. Too many deadlines. But here’s the location.”
My heart leapt in my chest upon receiving at long last the message we’d been desperately waiting for. As the hours had ticked by, the fear that it wouldn’t happen after all had taken root.
I raced outside where Keran was conferring with his guards and more of his crewmates who had come inside an impressive chaser. As per our plan, they would follow me in stealth mode to the venue.
As soon as the men saw me approaching, the same inquisitive look laced with hope settled on their faces.
I grinned and nodded. “Jaek just sent me the coordinates of the meeting. I’m transferring them to you now.”
As soon as his com beeped, Keran greedily read the message on its interface. He immediately turned to his captain, a ferocious expression on his face.
“We have exactly one hour and twelve minutes before the meeting. Send scouts ahead. I want thorough long-range scans of the entire sector,” Keran ordered. “I want a few stealth drones to keep track of everyone coming and going.Do notget detected.”
“Yes, Jakar,” Captain Baldur replied.
Although this left us with little time to prepare, we went back into my office to strategize further. As it was located at a mere twenty-minute flight from here, we would make the most of the minutes we had to spare.
I brought up satellite images of the region. It showed a massive building, at least three stories high sitting in the middle of a clearing. Its design didn’t match anything I’d ever seen on Haven before.
“What is this?” Tagar hissed. “We scouted that area but a few days ago. There was nothing there!”
“Could an advanced stealth shield have fooled your scanners?” I asked.
“It’s possible, but unlikely, unless their system is advanced enough to rival—if not surpass—Veredian technology,” Keran replied with a frown.
“Then it must be a deployable structure, like most of the buildings here on Haven,” I mused aloud. “Something this big would have taken many hours to unfold. This could explain why the meeting is so late in the day. They spent all morning deploying and furnishing it.”
Keran nodded. “My thoughts exactly. However, such a huge building would have required an even bigger transport ship to bring it to that location. How did we not detect it? How did space control not notice them entering their airspace?”
“Either they indeed have a far more advanced stealth system than ours, or they were already on Haven, just moving around camouflaged so we couldn’t detect them,” Nowik said pensively.
“Or hiding in plain sight,” I countered. “Haven has a lot of communities living isolated from each other. No one would blink at seeing a compound by itself in the middle of nowhere. Then again, the design of this one would draw a lot of attention.”
“Except if it changed its appearance with a hologram. We didn’t scan for that,” Tagar said, looking dejected.
“There’s no point dwelling on it now,” Keran said, still looking troubled. “If nothing else, it confirms that we’re dealing with someone highly organized and paranoid. And I’m now more than ever convinced that we’re not contending with a Braxian.”
He turned to me with a very serious expression. I braced for him to tell me that he didn’t want me attending the meeting after all. In truth, I didn’t know how I would respond. We’d taken sufficient precautions for me to believe I’d be safe whatever awaited us. But I wasn’t so reckless as to not realize we weren’t dealing with an amateur. Maybe what intel I could gather at that meeting wasn’t worth the risk I was planning on taking.
“As much as I hate knowing you are putting yourself in potential danger, we will proceed as planned,” Keran said with obvious reluctance. “But remember that if anything looks even remotely problematic, you abort.”
“I won’t forget,” I said firmly, unsure if I felt relieved or disappointed that he didn’t try one last time to change my mind.
Moments later, Captain Baldur sent in a preliminary scouting report indicating nothing fishy on the long-range scanners. However, they definitely had scramblers and disruptors inside the building, making it impossible for them to perform a deep scan of the building itself. They could only perceive a massive power generator and hints of heavy machinery. But they couldn’t get a clearer image without getting detected.
The only reason Keran didn’t demand I back out was that the scanners only picked up the presence of eight people, although it couldn’t specify their gender or race.
With barely thirty-five minutes left before the meeting, we made our way to our vessels. Keran accompanied me to my personal shuttle, his back stiff with the tension also reflected on his face.
I turned to face him while the shuttle’s door opened. “Here goes,” I said with a nervous laugh.
He didn’t smile. His stormy eyes flicked between mine as he looked at me with that intensity that used to make me want to squirm. This time, concern for me rather than suspicion fueled it. I melted from the inside out.
“At the first sign of trouble—” Keran said in a tense voice.
“I turn around and leave,” I said, interrupting him. “Everything will be fine.”
“They better be. I care about you, Dawn. Deeply…”
