"Tell them to choke on it," Santos said.
She was still on the shuttle's roof, machine gun tracking the treeline, her body aimed south with the focused hostility of someone who'd been shot at, chased, and besieged by an enemy now asking if she needed a band-aid.
"Hold." Yuki raised a hand. Garrett's voice looped through its third cycle on the overhead speaker — medical facilities, communications equipment, assistance. Same words. Same cadence. The recording of a man who had prepared this script and rehearsed it and was now broadcasting it with the professional calm of someone who sold things for a living. "Nobody responds until we talk."
"What's to talk about?" Santos rotated on the hull to face Yuki, one hand still on the machine gun's grip. "They tried to kill us. They EMPed our equipment. They sent stalkers at the camp. Now they're offering help? Porra, mano — that's not generosity. That's clean-up."
"It's positioning," Ghost said from his rock formation on the eastern rise. He'd been listening without moving, his rifle balanced on the stone, iron sights aimed at nothing and everything. "They know the distress beacon reached orbital. Command will investigate. When they do, Meridian wants to be on record as the helpful civilian installation that offered assistance to a military unit in trouble."
"So we let them build their cover story?"
"We don't let them do anything. We listen. We engage. We see what they give us." Ghost's eyes moved from the treeline to Yuki. "Every conversation is intelligence. Even a lie tells you what the liar thinks you'll believe."
Viktor was on the shuttle's ramp, the sample case at his feet, his rifle across his knees. He'd positioned himself where the ramp's overhang created shade — a tactical choice, but also, Yuki noticed, the choice of a man who was sweating in air that was barely twenty degrees.
"It is a trap," Viktor said. His voice was formal, each word weighed. "The question is what kind. A trap to silence us is different from a trap to control us. The first requires our death. The second requires our cooperation." He paused. Let the distinction settle. "They are offering cooperation. This means they believe they can control what happens next without killing us."
"Or they want to get us close enough that killing us looks like an accident," Santos said.
"Da. Also possible."
Chen climbed down from the shuttle's engineering panel, the beacon's passive receiver in his hands — a mess of wire and salvaged components that looked like a science project and functioned like an intelligence tool. "I can do something with this," he said. "If we respond, if we keep them talking, I can analyze their transmission signal. Commercial frequencies, civilian encryption, the hardware profile of their comm equipment — all of that is embedded in the carrier wave. Fifteen minutes of conversation gives me enough data to characterize their entire communications infrastructure."
"You can figure out what kind of equipment they have from a radio conversation?"
"Okay, so — every transmitter has a signature. Frequency drift, modulation artifacts, sideband leakage. Commercial-grade comm equipment has different characteristics than military-grade. Civilian encryption protocols use different key lengths than government protocols. I don't need to crack the encryption — I just need to see it to know what classification level they're operating at." Chen held up the receiver. "A civilian research installation uses civilian encryption. If these people are running government-level security on their comms, that's another data point."
Another data point. Another brick in the case. Another piece of evidence that the squad was building one fragment at a time while people with unlimited resources tried to make the fragments disappear.
"Everyone — inside the shuttle. We discuss this out of sight."
They moved. The shuttle's cargo bay was cramped with seven people and their equipment, but it was enclosed, shielded, the closest thing to a secure space they had on this planet. Santos came down from the roof last, reluctantly, her eyes fixed on the treeline until the shuttle's hull blocked her view.
Garrett's voice continued on the speaker. Medical facilities. Communications. Assistance.
"Options," Yuki said. "One: we ignore them. Stay here. Hold the LZ until the wormhole window opens. Fight through another night if we have to."
"We don't have the ammunition for another night," Ghost said. Not an argument. A statement.
"Two: we respond. Accept their offer. Walk into their facility, use their communications equipment, play the role of grateful soldiers who stumbled onto a helpful neighbor."
"And get disappeared," Santos said. "The way those five squads got disappeared."
"Three: we respond but don't accept. We stall. Keep them talking. Buy time while Chen analyzes their signal and Osei works through the photo evidence." Yuki looked at each face. "We're nine hours from the wormhole window. If we can make Garrett believe we're considering his offer without actually committing, we keep them uncertain. Uncertain enemies hesitate."
"And if they don't hesitate?" Doc asked from the corner. He'd been treating Osei's arm — new bandage, new sutures, the patient work of maintaining a body that kept getting damaged. "If they decide that our lack of commitment means we're a threat?"
"Then they send the stalkers again. And we're back to option one."
Garrett's voice looped. The same words. The same offer. Patient. The patience of an organization that could afford to wait because it controlled the board.
"I want to respond," Yuki said. "I want to talk to him. Not to accept — to see what he says, how he says it, what he doesn't say. Ghost is right — a conversation is intelligence."
"Then talk." Viktor shifted on the shuttle's bench. The movement was careful — the deliberate economy of a man managing pain he wouldn't acknowledge. "But understand what you are doing. You are telling them that we are listening. That their offer has weight. In negotiation, this is the first concession."
"I know."
"Good. Then make the concession worth what it costs." Viktor's bloodshot eyes held hers. "Get something from him that he does not intend to give."
---
Yuki keyed the transmitter.
"Meridian station, this is Sergeant Tanaka, Reaper Squad Specter. We copy your transmission."
She released the key. The shuttle's speaker crackled with static. Three seconds. Five. Then Garrett's recorded loop cut off and a live voice replaced it — the same male voice, but with the subtle shift in quality that distinguished a human speaking in real-time from a human speaking on a recording. Micro-delays in response. The slight catch of breathing between words.
"Sergeant Tanaka, this is Station Manager Garrett. Thank you for responding. We detected your distress beacon at 0847 hours and have been monitoring your frequency since. What is the nature of your emergency?"
Professional. Warm but not familiar. The voice of a man trained in corporate hospitality applied to crisis situations — the kind of training that cost tens of thousands of credits and was given to people who managed high-value assets in difficult environments.
"Equipment failure," Yuki said. "Electromagnetic event damaged our communications and sensor equipment during our extraction operation. We also encountered hostile fauna in significant numbers. We have minor casualties and are holding position at our landing zone."
"I'm sorry to hear that. Haven's fauna can be unpredictable — we've had our share of encounters at our installation as well." A pause — practiced, sympathetic, the pause of a salesman who wanted you to know he understood your problems. "Sergeant, we have medical facilities here that can treat your casualties, and our communications equipment can put you in direct contact with your command on Orbital Station Prime. We're approximately twenty kilometers south of your position. I can have a vehicle to you in ninety minutes."
Chen was bent over the passive receiver, earpiece in, a stylus scratch-marking on a piece of card stock he'd torn from a ration box. He was writing numbers — frequency measurements, signal characteristics, the technical fingerprints of Garrett's transmission. His lips moved as he worked, muttering calculations that nobody else in the shuttle could follow.
"Appreciate the offer," Yuki said. She kept her voice flat, military, the tone of a noncommissioned officer in a difficult situation — not suspicious, not grateful, just operational. "Can you confirm the nature of your installation? Our mission briefing didn't list any civilian operations in this sector."
A longer pause. The kind that happened when a prepared script encountered a question it hadn't anticipated. Not long — maybe two seconds — but enough.
"Of course. Meridian Resource Solutions operates a geological research station under a civilian exploration permit issued by the Colonial Resource Authority. We've been operational for approximately fourteen months. Our focus is long-term geological survey work — mapping Haven's mineral formations for potential future development. Standard commercial science operation."
Geological research station. Fourteen months. Civilian exploration permit. Each claim smooth, delivered with the certainty of a man reading from a fact sheet that had been vetted by lawyers.
The Colonial Resource Authority. Yuki filed the name. She'd never heard it. Neither had her mission briefings. Haven was a military-designated extraction world — civilian permits required Reaper Program authorization, and no such authorization existed in any file she'd ever seen.
"Copy that, Garrett. Standby while I consult with my team."
She killed the transmitter. Chen looked up from his card stock.
"Okay, so — two things." He held up the receiver. "First: the encryption. Garrett's signal is using AES-512 encryption on a spread-spectrum carrier with frequency-hopping protocols. That's not civilian. Civilian comms use AES-256 at most. AES-512 is restricted to military and government-level communications. The Colonial Resource Authority — whoever they are — didn't issue a civilian comm suite. This is government hardware running on a classified frequency band."
"And the second thing?"
"The signal's clean. Too clean. No atmospheric interference, no multi-path distortion, no ionospheric bounce. Garrett's transmission is coming to us on a line-of-sight beam — a directed transmission, not a broadcast. He's talking to us and only us. A normal emergency response would broadcast on the open band. This is a private conversation on a directional frequency that nobody monitoring from orbit can intercept."
A private conversation. Off the orbital record. Whatever Garrett said to them and whatever they said back — none of it would be captured by Orbital Station Prime's monitoring systems. No record. No transcript. No evidence.
"He's covering his ass," Santos said. "The broadcast offer — medical facilities, communications — that's on the record. The emergency band caught it. But the actual negotiation is off the books."
"Da," Viktor said. "The performance is for the audience. The real play is in private."
Osei raised her good hand from the back of the shuttle. She'd been working through Ghost's photographs, holding each film negative up to the emergency panel's light, squinting at the fine details with the focused attention of a specialist applying expertise. Her face was pale — blood loss and pain — but her eyes were sharp.
"I've got something," she said.
Yuki crossed to her. Osei held up a negative — the one Ghost had shot of the lubricant tank at close range. The image, reversed and tiny, showed the corporate labeling in crisp detail.
"The lot number. Twenty-two dash four-four-one-nine." Osei pointed at the negative with a finger that trembled slightly. "Twenty-two is the project code. Four-four-one-nine is the destination code. I know Meridian's logistics system — I spent four years filling out requisition forms with these exact codes."
"What does four-four-one-nine mean?"
"It's a logistics hub code. Meridian assigns four-digit codes to all receiving locations — warehouses, staging areas, project sites. Four-four is a regional prefix — Pacific Rim, which covers the old Japanese coastal corridor and the Southeast Asian industrial zones." Osei's finger moved to the middle digits. "One-nine is a sub-code for a specific facility within that region."
"Which facility?"
"That's what's interesting. I checked it against my memory — four years of forms, thousands of lot numbers — and four-four-one-nine is the code for the Yokosuka Deep Storage Complex. A logistics hub on the Japanese coast." Osei looked at Yuki. "It was decommissioned in 2079. Officially shut down after the Pacific seaboard flooding. The building is underwater."
"Underwater."
"Three meters under, last I heard. The flooding took out the entire Yokosuka industrial corridor. Everything there is listed as destroyed or decommissioned in the post-flood audits." Osei set the negative down. "But this lubricant was manufactured in 2084. Five years after the facility was supposedly underwater. The destination code points to a building that doesn't exist, shipping supplies to a wormhole that doesn't exist, for a facility on a planet that nobody knows about."
Ghost paperwork. Ghost facilities. Ghost wormholes. The Collective operated behind a curtain of decommissioned records and underwater logistics hubs, shipping materials through channels that existed on no active manifest, to destinations that appeared on no survey map.
"The whole supply chain is dark," Chen said. He'd stopped his signal analysis, his attention caught by Osei's discovery. "Decommissioned origin, unauthorized wormhole, hidden facility. They built an entire logistics pipeline that runs parallel to the legitimate one — same technology, same infrastructure, but invisible to anyone who only looks at current records."
"Someone had to authorize the pipeline," Yuki said. "Someone with access to decommissioned facility codes and the authority to reassign them."
"Someone in the Colonial Resource Authority," Chen said. "Which is an organization I have never encountered in any Reaper Program database. I've been through every file that connects to mission planning, logistics, and command authorization. The CRA doesn't exist in our system."
"Because it's not in our system. It's in theirs."
Yuki looked at the shuttle's speaker. Silent now — Garrett's recorded loop had stopped when the live conversation ended, and the directed frequency sat quiet, waiting for her to come back.
Twenty kilometers south, a facility full of answers. A station manager offering help. A directed-beam conversation that nobody in orbit could hear.
"Ghost."
Ghost was at the shuttle's cargo door, watching the treeline. He turned his head.
"The stalkers," Yuki said. "Are they moving?"
Ghost looked south. His eyes narrowed — the expression he wore when his scope would have told him everything and his naked vision told him almost enough.
"They're pulling back. South side is opening. The surveillance line on the southern approach is... gone." He paused. "The east and west are unchanged. They're creating a corridor."
A corridor. South. Toward the facility. An open path through a perimeter that had been sealed for two days, suddenly available, invitingly clear.
An invitation.
"They want us to come," Santos said. "That's not subtle."
"It's not supposed to be subtle," Viktor said. "It is supposed to be convenient. They offer help on the radio and a clear path on the ground. A reasonable person, in distress, with wounded and broken equipment — a reasonable person would accept."
"We're not reasonable people."
"We are soldiers. Soldiers are occasionally required to accept unreasonable invitations." Viktor shifted again on the bench. His hand moved to his ribs and moved away, the motion so fast it was almost invisible. Almost. "The question is not whether the invitation is sincere. The question is whether accepting it serves our purpose."
They couldn't survive another night at the LZ. Ghost had said it. The ammunition math said it. The stalkers' adaptive tactics said it. Another eight hours of daylight, then darkness, and then whatever the facility sent to make them disappear.
The wormhole window was nine hours away. If they could reach Orbital Station Prime's comm system through the facility — actually reach command, actually file a report — the photographs and Osei's logistics data would be in the system before Vance could suppress them. A distress beacon got attention. A formal mission report with photographic evidence got investigations.
"We accept," Yuki said. "Partially. I'll tell Garrett we want to use their communications equipment to contact command. That's all. No medical team coming to us — we go to them. Small team."
"Splitting the squad." Ghost's voice was even. Neutral. The tone he used when he disagreed and was choosing his words.
"Small team visits the facility. Gets access to comms. Files a report. Gathers whatever additional intelligence we can while we're inside. Everyone else holds the LZ and the shuttle."
"Splitting the squad is what they want. Last night they split us — recon team at the facility, camp team under assault. It worked. We lost the scanner data, we burned ammunition, we barely survived." Ghost looked at her. "Now you want to do it again. Voluntarily."
He wasn't wrong. The last time they split, the facility had used the separation to hit both groups simultaneously. The EMP at the depression, the stalker assault at the camp — a two-front attack that exploited the division perfectly.
"Last time we didn't know they were there. Now we do." Yuki held his gaze. "I'm not walking in blind. I'm walking in with eyes open, photographed evidence in my pocket, and a squad at the LZ with a machine gun covering my exit."
"Who goes?"
"Me. Osei — she knows Meridian's equipment, she can read the codes, and she needs medical attention for her arm that Doc can't provide here." Yuki paused. "And Chen. He can analyze their comm infrastructure from the inside and get the report filed."
"Three people in the facility. Four at the LZ." Ghost's jaw worked. "You're taking the civilians and the tech specialist into the enemy's base while leaving the combat assets two hours away."
"I'm taking the people who can do the most good inside and leaving the people who can do the most good outside." She turned to the group. "Viktor commands the LZ. Ghost, Santos, Doc — you hold the shuttle and the extraction point. Park stays here. If we're not back in four hours, or if the stalkers move on the LZ, you do not wait for us. You get on the shuttle when the wormhole opens and you go."
"I will not leave you on this planet," Viktor said. His voice was stone.
"That's an order, Sergeant."
"Orders require living officers to enforce them."
"Viktor."
He met her eyes. The cough was building — she could see it in his chest, the expansion that preceded the spasm, the controlled breathing that was holding it at bay. He fought it. Won. For now.
"Four hours," he said. "Then I come get you. Regardless."
Yuki turned to the speaker. Keyed the transmitter.
"Garrett, this is Sergeant Tanaka. We'd like to accept your offer of communications access. Three of my team will travel to your installation. We'd appreciate a guide to meet us at the forest margin south of our position."
The directed beam hummed. Three seconds of silence.
"Of course, Sergeant. I'll have someone at the tree line in thirty minutes. We look forward to helping."
Santos looked at Yuki from across the shuttle bay. Her hand was on her machine gun's barrel, fingers tight, knuckles pale.
"Mano," she said quietly. "You're walking into the mouth."
"Copy that," Yuki said. "Bring a flashlight. It'll be dark in there."
Nobody laughed. Yuki hadn't expected them to.
