Page 69 of Tracked and Taken

“You used to be the best of us.” Tael’s expression does not change. “I am going to tell you what you want to know, because I remember what you were, and I remember what SRS did to you, and I have been carrying it for four years. I am going to do it once. And when I am done, you will walk out of this galley and we will not speak again.”

“Copy, Rethlor.”

“Don’t copy me, Vosk. Ask me your questions.”

“V-6. Two nights ago. The chamber was due a wipe. Who took the run?”

“Not me. I was on the V-6 run and I got pulled, rerouted here on layover. Someone else took it. I assumed it went to a senior, because dispatch does not pull me unless the job has climbed past my rating.”

“Who gave you the reroute?”

He reaches, slow, hands visible, for his datapad, sets it in the middle of the table, and taps it. A dispatch stamp comes up.

“Velenti Transit. Cargo logistics shell. They put the original request through SRS dispatch weeks out; the reroute came from the same shell. Velenti contracts for us, Vosk. They have been the dispatch front for every recovery clean I have run on the Velarkis corridor for eighteen months.”

Tael’s eyes narrow a quarter-millimeter. “Velenti. I know who it fronts for. Keep going.”

“Next run is tomorrow. Station called Iris-Nine, lower Ixara sector. Decommissioned research outpost, struck from the public registry eight years ago. The registry says it was scrapped. It wasn’t. It is there and it is active. Dispatch says wipe-and-go, six-hour window, no questions.”

“Who is at Iris-Nine?”

“I don’t get told. Tier 3 dispatch is paper-thin.” A pause. “I have one note in the margin.”

“Give it to me.”

“Dispatch margin says do not engage; operator is not operational.”

My stomach moves, but I do not. Tael’s jaw is tight; he knows what the note means, and he is holding it in his face without moving his face.

“Coordinates?”

“In the packet. Take the packet.”

He slides the datapad across. The packet copies to Tael’s overlay in a small green flash. Rethlor leans back, and the weight that comes off him is the visible weight of a man who has been carrying something and has put it down.

“I am going to file sick at 1000 local. Food poisoning. I lose six hours and drop a reliability mark. I will take the hit. Whatever happens at Iris-Nine tomorrow happens without me.”

“Copy.”

“If anyone from dispatch comes asking?”

“You never saw us.”

“I never saw you.”

Tael stands and puts his hand on Rethlor’s shoulder, the way a male puts a hand on the shoulder of another male he has lived through some quantity of shared work with. Not threat. Not comfort. Acknowledgment.

“Take care of yourself, Rethlor.”

“You too, Vosk.”

In the lift, Tael waits until the doors close.

“Velenti Transit. I have seen the encryption signature on that dispatch before. It’s theatrical. There is one broker who uses theatrical encryption the way other males use cologne. Drask. Voice-only on every comm; nobody who has done business with him has seen his face. Drask Acquisitions, independent brokerage, the space between legal and criminal. He is not ideology, Torres. He would launder recovery cleanups through SRS for whoever is paying, because the paperwork is profitable and the questions are above his pay grade.”

“So he’s the client?”

“More likely the hinge the client pays to move paperwork through channels he has built. The difference matters, but not in the next twenty-four hours. What matters is that the Velenti dispatch carries a Drask signature, which means whoever is at Iris-Nine is paying for the kind of professional-grade silence Drask sells.”