Chapter 69: Bait and Switch

Voss hated this.

She stood in the med bay corridor at 0900 with a scanner in her hand and the particular expression of a woman being asked to violate her professional ethics for tactical purposes, which was exactly what was happening, and the fact that she understood the reasons didn't make her hate it less.

"Louder," Cross said through the earpiece. The admiral was on the command deck, monitoring the corridor's ambient audio through Aria-7's surveillance network. "The corridor carries sound to the junction. If you want this to reach the processing area on Level Four, you need to project."

Voss gritted her teeth. Raised her voice to the register she used when lecturing inattentive students—clear, carrying, designed to reach the back row of a lecture hall.

"The neural pathway degradation is accelerating." She spoke to the open corridor, ostensibly addressing a medic who was standing at the med bay door with a clipboard and the awkward body language of someone recruited for a performance ten minutes ago. "The inflammation has breached the primary pathway wall. We are seeing necrotic markers in the tissue samples that were not present forty-eight hours ago."

The medic—a young man named Tannis who worked the overnight shift—nodded as if he understood what necrotic markers meant. He didn't. Voss had given him three sentences to memorize and told him to nod when she paused.

"Commander Vance's interface capability is—" Voss paused. Swallowed. The words tasted like ash. She was a doctor. She did not lie about medical data. She did not fabricate clinical findings. She did not stand in corridors and announce false diagnoses to bait intelligence operatives. "—permanently compromised. The Throne interface is no longer viable. She will not recover sufficient pathway integrity to connect with the warship's systems."

Tannis nodded.

Voss turned and walked into the med bay. Closed the door. Leaned against it.

"Stars above and below," she muttered. She found her flask in her coat pocket and took a drink. The synthetic whiskey burned. Good. She needed something real after that performance.

On the cot, Kira was watching her.

"For the record," Voss said, "I consider what I just did to be a violation of medical ethics, professional standards, and my personal dignity. I want that noted."

"Noted," Kira said. "How was the delivery?"

"Wooden. Artificial. The kind of performance that would earn a failing grade in any theatrical program worth its funding." Voss took another drink. "But convincing enough for a corridor, I suppose. If the listener is not looking for nuance."

"Cross?"

The earpiece crackled. "The audio was captured by three ambient monitors in the corridor and junction area. If anyone was within earshot on the Level Three approach or the Level Four stairwell, they heard it."

If. The word that made the whole performance a gamble. They didn't know where the spy was. They didn't know when the spy listened. They were casting a net and hoping the right fish swam through it.

"Now we wait," Kira said.

"Now we wait," Cross confirmed. "And Aria-7 monitors all outgoing transmissions for the next seventy-two hours. If the spy sends a report about your condition, we will detect the signal and trace the source."

Kira lay back on the cot. The headache was actually better today—the inflammation continuing to recede on its own schedule, her body's healing processes finally getting the time they needed. She could feel the Progenitor pathways loosening, the constriction easing by degrees. Two more days. Maybe three. She'd be able to reach the warship again.

But the spy didn't know that. The spy, if Cross's plan worked, believed Kira Vance was broken. Permanently. The woman who'd turned the warship into a weapon was no longer capable of doing it again.

The question was whether the spy would believe it enough to tell Kaine.

---

Arun brought the file to Cross at 1100.

"Harlan Cade." He set the datapad on Cross's desk. The converted storage room, the tactical display, the single chair. Cross's office was becoming familiar to too many people. "Communications technician. Part of the station's original skeleton crew. He's been here since before Commander Vance arrived."

Cross opened the file. Standard Imperial personnel record—the kind maintained for civilian contractors working on military-adjacent installations. Name. Age. Specialization. Assignment history.

The assignment history was thin. One previous posting—a communications relay station in the Varis sector, two years, then transfer to this station as part of the skeleton crew that maintained the facility during its dormant period. Before that, nothing. No academy record. No civilian employment history. No colony of origin.

"Clean," Cross said.

"Too clean." Arun stood across the desk, his posture the ready stance of an intelligence operative delivering a brief. "MI deep-cover assets are given constructed identities. The identities are designed to be unremarkable—competent enough to justify the posting, bland enough that nobody looks twice. No family connections. No home colony. No personal details that would invite questions or require elaborate backstory."

"A blank space shaped like a person."

"Exactly. And Cade fits the pattern. He's the only member of the original crew without a listed home colony. Every other skeleton crew member has a full background—family, education, prior employment. Cade has a name and a job title and nothing else."

Cross studied the file. The photo showed a man in his mid-thirties—average build, brown hair, unremarkable features. The kind of face that didn't stick in memory. Another MI selection criterion—agents who didn't stand out.

"What does he do on the station?"

"Communications maintenance. He keeps the QMesh relay operational, manages internal comms routing, runs diagnostic checks on the signal array." Arun paused. "He has access to every communications system on the station. Including the med bay's internal intercoms."

Cross set the datapad down. Her fingers were still. Her face showed the calculated neutrality of a woman who was running scenarios in her head—testing the hypothesis against the evidence, looking for the holes.

"The internal surveillance archive," she said. "Aria-7 maintains recordings of all common areas. Pull the corridor logs for the last forty-eight hours. I want Cade's movements mapped."

"Already requested. Aria-7 is compiling the data now. But Admiral—" Arun hesitated. The first time Cross had seen him hesitate since the conversation began. "If Cade is the agent, he knows the station's communications infrastructure better than anyone. He would know where the surveillance cameras are. He would know how to avoid them."

"Yes. But even careful people develop patterns. Routes they take. Corridors they favor. Times they appear in spaces they have no professional reason to be in." Cross stood. "Get me the footage. And Corporal—do not approach Cade. Do not speak to him. Do not change your behavior around him in any way. If he is MI, he will recognize surveillance interest, and we lose the advantage."

"Understood."

---

The station hummed with purpose.

Drayden had the *Talon's* crew running combat drills in the ship's simulator bay—the frigate's training systems still functional, still loaded with Imperial tactical scenarios that Drayden had reprogrammed to simulate convoy intercept operations. Through the *Talon's* hull, the sound of simulated weapons fire mixed with Drayden's voice on the intercom, crisp and clipped, the tone of a commander pushing her people to match the standard she'd set for herself when she'd made the decision to defect.

"Helm, your approach angle is three degrees high. The convoy escorts will see you before you reach weapons range. Again."

The simulator reset. The crew ran it again.

In the cargo bay on Level Two, Jax stood in front of eleven marines who were no longer prisoners.

They'd volunteered. Arun had identified them—the eleven who'd talked in the corridors during the boarding, the soldiers who'd questioned their orders and followed them anyway because the alternative was a firing squad. Now the firing squad was somewhere in void space heading for a repair yard, and the eleven marines were standing in a cargo bay while a former Imperial sergeant who'd deserted to save refugees told them what came next.

"The convoy escort will surrender or be disabled," Jax said. His voice was formal. Military. The cadence that these marines recognized because they'd grown up inside it. "Once the escorts are neutralized, boarding teams will take the transport ships. Six transports. Two teams of five, each team taking three ships in sequence. Speed is the priority. We do not have time for prolonged boarding actions."

The marines stood at attention. Old habits. Jax didn't correct them—the discipline was useful, and breaking formation would come later, when the immediate need for structure gave way to something more personal.

"Your weapons will be drawn from station stores. Imperial-standard kinetic sidearms. You will be operating under the command of officers you do not know well, on a mission that your former fleet would classify as piracy." Jax paused. Let that word sit. *Piracy.* The thing they were about to become. "If anyone has reservations, now is the time."

None of them moved.

"Very well. Report to the armory on Level Three at 0800 tomorrow. Weapons familiarization and boarding protocol review. Dismissed."

The marines filed out. Organized. Professional. The machinery of military training grinding on even when the machine had been reassigned.

One marine—a woman, young, with close-cropped hair and the thousand-meter stare of someone who'd been through combat recently—stopped at the door.

"Sir." Not quite at attention. Not quite casual. The middle ground of a soldier addressing an authority she hadn't yet calibrated. "For the record. It's not piracy if the Emperor's the criminal."

She left before Jax could respond. He stood in the empty cargo bay and watched the door close.

"That one," Malik said from the corner where he'd been sitting through the briefing, cleaning a kinetic pistol with the methodical care that he gave to every weapon, "has a point."

---

In the weapons prep bay on Level Three, Malik laid out the armory.

Twenty-two kinetic sidearms. Eight kinetic rifles—heavier, longer range, the kind used for shipboard combat where the corridors were straight and the distances short. Four sets of light body armor, salvaged from the surrendered marines' equipment. Ammunition. Spare magazines. Two breach charges for cutting through sealed hatches.

Not much. Not enough for a proper boarding operation. But enough for what they had—two teams of five, quick strikes on unarmed transport ships, crews that would likely surrender once the escorts were down.

Malik checked each weapon. Field-stripped, cleaned, reassembled. The routine that his hands knew better than his brain—the muscle memory of years as an enforcer, the skills that had been trained into him for violence and were now being redirected toward something that might, if things went right, keep people alive.

The footsteps behind him were deliberate. Not trying to be quiet. The stride of a man who had decided to walk into a room and wanted it known.

"Torres."

Malik's hands paused on the rifle he was cleaning. One second. Then they resumed. He didn't turn.

"Fen."

Naro stood in the doorway. The scar on his face caught the weapons bay's bright work lights. His hands—the broken knuckles, the crooked fingers—hung at his sides in the same open position Malik himself used.

"I want to work," Naro said.

Malik set the rifle on the prep table. Turned.

Naro's face was different from the corridor. Not the controlled fury. Not the rehearsed steadiness of a man delivering testimony. Something harder to read—the expression of a person who had spent two days on a station surrounded by people preparing for something and was tired of sitting still.

"I'm not a soldier," Naro said. "I've never held a weapon and I don't intend to start. But I ran a supply operation for six years on Kolaris before—" He stopped. Redirected. "I know logistics. Inventory. Distribution chains. The refugees need organizing. The supplies need managing. Someone needs to make sure the people who aren't fighting can still eat and drink and live while the people who are fighting go off and do what they need to do."

Malik stood at the weapons table with a half-cleaned rifle and the man whose shop he'd burned.

"You want to run supply logistics," Malik said. Sparse. Neutral.

"I want to be useful. This station gave me shelter. The least I can do is keep it running while the rest of you go get killed chasing convoy ships." Naro's jaw tightened. The scar pulled white. "I'm not doing this for you."

"I didn't think you were."

"Good. Because I'm not. I'm doing this because my daughter is on a ship somewhere and the best chance she has of surviving is these people winning whatever it is they're fighting. So I'm going to do what I can. And if that means working logistics on a station run by the man who—" He stopped. Breathed through his nose. "—then that's what it means."

Malik looked at him. The tall man with the scar and the broken hands who had carried a piece of burned door hinge across three star systems and left it outside the quarters of the man who'd made him carry it.

"Talk to Dara," Malik said. "Level Four distribution center. She runs the civilian supply operations. Tell her I sent you."

"I don't need your introduction."

"She doesn't know you. She knows me. The introduction is practical." Malik paused. The accent creeping in. The long vowels. "My grandmother said: 'Even the stars that hate each other share the same sky.'"

Naro stared at him. Three seconds. Five.

"Your grandmother talked too much," he said. Then he turned and walked out.

Malik watched him go. His hands were open at his sides. The ritual tattoos on his forearms pulsed with the warship's faint rhythm, the blue-white glow barely visible in the weapons bay's bright light.

He picked up the rifle. Finished cleaning it. Set it on the rack. Picked up the next one.

---

Kira and Aria-7 built the ambush in the med bay.

The datapad projected a three-dimensional model of the Tavris system—the waypoint station, the transit routes, the convoy's projected path. Kira manipulated the display with her right hand while her left sat in her lap, mostly cooperative, the twitching reduced to an occasional tremor that she'd learned to ignore.

"The convoy approaches the waypoint from the Sigma vector," Kira said. "Standard formation—transports in column, escorts flanking. The *Steadfast* will be on the starboard side. The garrison frigate on port."

"Confirmed," Aria-7 said. "Imperial convoy protocols specify a two-hundred-kilometer separation between escort vessels, with the transport column centered between them."

"Two hundred klicks. The *Requiem* drops out of void space here—" Kira placed a marker behind the convoy's projected position. "—inside the escorts' rear sensor shadow. The transports block the escorts' rear line of sight. Zeph comes in quiet, low power, and gets to five hundred meters before opening fire on the *Steadfast's* drive section."

"Simultaneously, the *Talon* exits void space here." She placed a second marker ahead of the convoy. "Drayden comes in hot on the lead escort. The garrison frigate faces an incoming attacker and has to choose between engaging and running."

"The escorts are caught between two contacts," Aria-7 observed. "Neither can support the other without abandoning their escort position."

"Exactly. The *Steadfast* takes drive damage from the *Requiem* and can't maneuver. The garrison frigate engages the *Talon* but Drayden only needs to hold its attention—keep it busy, keep it forward. Meanwhile, Zeph finishes the *Steadfast* and moves to the transports."

The model rotated. The convoy. The two attack vectors. The transports sitting in the middle like fish in a net.

"Boarding protocol: Jax takes the first three transports with Team One. Malik's team takes the remaining three. Standard prize protocols—disable the bridge, secure engineering, lock the crew in quarters. The transports don't have weapons. Their crews are civilian contractors. They should surrender."

"Should," Aria-7 said.

"Should." Kira acknowledged the qualifier. "If they don't, Jax and Malik have authorization to use force. Minimum necessary. We need the cargo, not the crews."

The plan was clean. Two-pronged ambush. Caught between attackers. Escorts disabled. Transports captured. In and out before anyone could respond.

"The nearest Imperial garrison that could respond to a distress signal is eleven hours away at best speed," Aria-7 added. "The convoy will be in the Tavris system for approximately six hours during their waypoint stop. That provides a window of at least five hours before any response force could arrive."

Five hours. More than enough.

"What am I missing?" Kira asked.

"Statistically, the plan has an eighty-one percent probability of tactical success against the described opposition."

"That's high."

"Yes. Unusually high for a military operation with this level of uncertainty." Aria-7 paused. The AI's processes running something that looked like caution. "The high probability may itself be a warning. The plan assumes the convoy is what it appears to be—a standard supply run with standard escorts. If the intelligence is wrong—"

"If the intelligence was fed to us."

"—then the probability changes dramatically."

The spy. The thought hit Kira like a hand on a bruise. If there was an agent on the station reporting to Kaine, then Kaine knew they were hurting for supplies. Kaine knew about the *Talon's* defection and the *Requiem's* damage. Kaine could predict that a supply convoy would be an irresistible target.

"The convoy could be bait," Kira said.

"That is one interpretation of the available data."

Kira stared at the tactical model. The clean lines. The clear vectors. The eighty-one percent probability that was either a sign of a good plan or a sign that they were walking into a trap.

"We proceed," she said. "But we add a contingency. If the escorts are heavier than expected—if there are more ships than the intelligence suggests—the *Requiem* and *Talon* break off immediately. No heroics. No staying to finish the job. They run."

"I will ensure that both commanders are briefed on the abort conditions."

"And Aria-7—don't share the abort conditions with anyone outside the command group. Not the boarding teams. Not the Talon's crew. Not the volunteers." Kira looked at the display. "If the spy is still active, I want them to think we're committed. If the convoy is a trap and Kaine thinks we're going all in, he won't expect us to pull out."

"Understood."

Kira turned off the display. The med bay returned to its ambient light—the warship's amber glow, the hum of medical equipment, the quiet sounds of a station that was preparing for war and didn't know whether the war was coming to meet it halfway.

---

At 2300, Arun delivered the surveillance analysis to Cross's office.

"Forty-eight hours of corridor footage," he said. "Every common area on the station. Aria-7 isolated Harlan Cade's movements using facial recognition and tracked his path through the station."

Cross took the datapad. The screen showed a map of the station with Cade's movements marked in red—a web of corridors, junctions, and destinations that mapped the daily routine of a communications technician going about his work.

"He visits the QMesh relay room six times per day," Arun narrated. "Consistent with his maintenance schedule. He eats in the common area at standard meal times. He sleeps in his assigned quarters on Level Two. Routine behavior."

"But."

"But." Arun touched the datapad. The map zoomed in on the med bay corridor. "He passes through this corridor four times in forty-eight hours. The med bay corridor is not between his quarters and his work station. It is not between his quarters and the common area. There is no routine reason for a communications technician to use this corridor four times in two days."

Cross studied the path markers. Four passes. Timestamped.

"First pass: 0743, day one. Second pass: 1402, day one. Third pass: 0915, day two. Fourth pass: 1630, day two."

"Cross-reference the timestamps with med bay activity," Cross said.

Aria-7 answered—the AI had been listening, as she always was. "Pass one at 0743: Doctor Voss was conducting a morning scan of Commander Vance. The med bay door was open. Voss's verbal report to the medic on duty included the phrase 'pathway inflammation persists at elevated levels.' Pass two at 1402: Voss was discussing Commander Vance's recovery timeline with Specialist Kai, who had asked about Vance's availability for mission planning. Pass three at 0915: Voss was updating the medical log verbally, as is her habit, noting 'the secondary pathway constriction remains severe.'"

Three passes. Three conversations about Kira's medical condition. Each one providing specific details about her neural pathway damage, her recovery timeline, her ability to interface with the warship.

"The fourth pass?" Cross asked.

"1630, day two. This coincides with our staged conversation. Doctor Voss's performance about the accelerated degradation and permanent loss of interface capability."

Cross set the datapad on the desk. Four passes. Three of them catching genuine medical updates. The fourth catching the disinformation.

If Cade was the spy, he'd just received the bait. He'd heard Voss announce that Kira's interface was permanently compromised. And if he transmitted that report to Kaine, the Vice Admiral would plan his next assault based on the assumption that the warship's most dangerous pilot was out of the fight.

"Do not approach him," Cross said. "Do not change his routine. Do not restrict his access to any area of the station. Let him walk his path. Let him listen. And let him send whatever report he's going to send."

"And when he sends it?"

"Then we have him. And we have Kaine's timetable." Cross looked at the map on the datapad—the red web of Cade's movements, the four marks in the med bay corridor, the pattern of a man walking past the same door at the right time to hear the right words.

"Good work, Corporal."

Arun nodded. He paused at the door—the same hesitation he'd shown once before, the intelligence operative deciding whether to voice something that crossed the line from professional to personal.

"Admiral. If Cade transmits the disinformation and Kaine believes it—Kaine will come sooner. He'll attack before Vance recovers. He'll bring everything."

"Yes."

"And we'll be ready for him?"

Cross looked at the tactical display on her desk. The station. The warship. The two damaged ships. The crew of outcasts and defectors and refugees and marine volunteers who were getting ready to raid a supply convoy because they were running out of time and options and everything else.

"We will be as ready as we can be," she said. "Which will have to be enough."