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“That factory will still be there in three days.” Joan dropped her data tablets onto the table. “Kaston might not be.”
“It will be the first place the ground forces hit.” Captain Mal’ik stepped up to the table, dwarfing Hess, and Hess’s spine pulled up straight.
“Because that’s what you would have done?” Hess raised a dark brow.
Mal’ik’s orange eyes glanced at him, but he didn’t react to Hess’s tone. “Yes.” He dragged one of his long fingers along the routes of the map. “It will be easiest to get the armored brigades down this road to Kaston, and then, after taking Kaston, to continue following the road deeper into the continent toward Ralscoln.”
“That may be, but there are other cities along that road before Ralscoln.” Hess pointed out Libha, Ferry, and Livel. “Kaston is not our last line of defense.”
“No, but it’s a good one.” Joan frowned at him. “And we have people stationed there. A lot of them.”
“I’m not saying we abandon it. I’m saying I need the torvar somewhere else.”
“Where do you need me?” Sebastian cut in. “What factory? And what traitor? If you want me to do something, explain it to me because I’m fucking tired, and I don’t have time to parse through all this cryptic bullshit.”
“A chemical production facility two systems away.” Oliver Turner grabbed one of Joan’s data tablets, and she opened her mouth to protest but decided against it. Turner stepped up to Sebastian’s shoulder and angled the data tablet so they could both look at it. “It’s on this desolate ice planet here because most of the waste materials are toxic and no one cares about the ecology of desolate ice planets.”
“Except the people living on them,” Sebastian muttered.
“No one who lives on a desolate ice planet has the political clout to do anything about it.” Oliver waved the thought away. “This chemical plant is owned by my family and is perfectly outfitted to manufacture the fear gas in bulk and at speed. Using high-speed freight, it could have that gas transported here in two days, three days at the most.”
The fear gas.
Sebastian had glanced through the information Oliver had stolen for them. He’d seen some of the videos of the experiments, but he hadn’t been able to make himself watch them all. A chemical weapon that forced its victims into the most hideous and overwhelming state of fear, with all the terrible decisions and lack of inhibitions that came with it.
It was a horrifying creation, and Sebastian was struck anew by the fact that a person had decided to make this—and that that person’s brother was Oliver Turner, who was standing right next to him and pretending he cared.
Sebastian took a disgusted step away. All Oliver Turner cared about was Captain Mal’ik, and Sebastian was not of the opinion that that romantic drivel offered him any sort of redemption.
“You need to sabotage that factory,” Hess ordered, and Sebastian was already nodding.
“Of course, I—”
“And he can do that after he roots out the traitor in Kaston,” Joan cut him off. “The Klah’Eel will be there in days. All of our defenses will mean nothing if we have someone on the inside selling us out.”
“And holding Kaston will mean nothing if that gas is unleashed on us before we’re prepared for it,” Hess snapped back.
“So you’ll sacrifice Kaston?” Sebastian raised his voice over Hess’s bark as he finally caught up to the conversation and the argument at hand. “We have men there—”
“I know we have men there!” Hess slammed his palms down on the table and leaned forward toward Sebastian. “I stationed them there.”
Sebastian wasn’t intimidated by Hess’s intensity, he was too self-righteously enraged, and he mirrored Hess’s stance against the table and leaned forward to face him. “And they went. For you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
This close, nose-to-nose, except for the heavy table between them, Sebastian could see something flash through Hess’s dark eyes before he lifted his upper lip in a snarl. “Of course it means something to me, but that was before”—Hess lifted his arm and jabbed a finger in Turner’s direction—“his fucking family got involved.”
Sebastian shook his head. “No. Those men trust you to—”
“Those men trust me to win this war, and we can’t do that if shiploads of that gas get onto this planet.” Hess punctuated his words with more stabbing motions in Turner’s direction and at the map they were both braced over. Sebastian opened his mouth, but Hess jerked back to standing and cut him off. “And you’ll do what you’re ordered to do. Or do I need to find someone else?”
Sebastian slammed his mouth shut again, a hot shame and a coiling sense of guilt and obligation tangling up in his stomach. He gritted his teeth, straightened, and put his hands on his hips. “There is no one else.”
“Exactly.” And Hess turned away from him, ending his argument just like that. Because Sebastian wasn’t going to say no to him, disobey him, or betray him. Not really. And Hess knew that. Sebastian was too fucking loyal, and he’d worked too fucking hard for this Resistance, for Hess, and for Farlon before him.
Sebastian had loved Farlon, but how he hated Hess…
“Farlon wouldn’t have made this decision,” Sebastian hissed, just loud enough for the room to hear it under Hess telling Joan and Turner what to plan. Everyone froze, even Turner, who probably didn’t even recognize the name.
Hess turned flinty eyes on Sebastian. “Farlon isn’t here. And he would have never asked for your opinion anyway, torvar.”
