“True,” William conceded after a moment. He had no doubt that a clerk could have had the missiles shipped to a designated location, then screwed around with the paperwork to make it appear that the missiles had been destroyed instead. And yet, making contact with the Theocrats would have been damn near impossible. There had to be more than one person involved. “What else did they get?”
“The conversion plan came out of an emergency engineering study,” Janice said after a moment. “The components involved are all off-the-shelf, dual-use civilian stuff, but . . . putting them together would require a lot of trained engineers. I don’t think the Theocrats did it themselves.”
“They had help,” Kat said. “Who? And why?”
“I don’t know,” Janice said. “Razwhana Depot was shut down shortly after the war. The records state that the vast majority of captured supplies were either destroyed or reprocessed for scrap. We couldn’t give the captured spare parts away. The crew were reassigned and . . . well, I don’t know what happened to them. They’ll have to be tracked down.”
“There must be records,” William protested.
“I’m sure there are,” Janice agreed. “But I don’t have access to them. We’ll have to submit a formal request to Tyre, then get the CBI involved. Whoever did this is an outright traitor.”
“It will get political,” General Winters rumbled.
Kat looked around the table. “Who benefits from killing millions of people?”
“You can justify anything if you try hard enough,” Janice said cynically. “A million lives? It’s so unimaginably huge that it’s just a statistic. No one can grasp the sheer size of a million lives. They’re just . . . numbers.”
“They have lives.” William’s voice was icy. “They were born, they grew up, they had lovers and children and ups and downs . . . and then they died. They’re not just numbers.”
“Yes,” Janice said. “But how can we grasp a million individual lives?”
William felt sick. He knew, from growing up on a harsh world, that sometimes one did have to make hard decisions when a community’s survival hung in the balance. Yes, there were times when someone had to be left to die because keeping them alive would cost the community dearly. The cold equations demanded it. But cold calculation didn’t make such decisions any easier to bear. A plan that required the cool sacrifice of millions of lives was truly horrific. Whoever was behind it was a monster.
“We can’t,” Kat said quietly. “Janice . . . what other evidence have you found?”
“Very little, so far,” Janice said. “But there’s a piece of circumstantial evidence that may, in its own way, be more alarming. The enemy CIC was destroyed, utterly. My experts say the blast was roughly comparable to an implant’s self-destruct.”
William frowned. “What . . . ?”
“A handful of Special Forces troopers are heavily enhanced to allow them to perform otherwise impossible missions,” General Winters said. “Their implants are designed to self-destruct if the trooper is captured. The blast is powerful enough to literally vaporize the trooper’s entire body, to the point where even DNA samples cannot be recovered. Anyone standing within ten meters would almost certainly be killed by the blast.”
“I didn’t know that,” William said.
“It is not commonly advertised,” Janice said. “But the experts believe that such a device, or something comparable, detonated inside that superdreadnought.”
“So the Theocrats had help,” Kat said. “Someone from the Commonwealth.” She took a long breath. “Continue to gather information,” she ordered. “Interrogate the prisoners, find out if any of them know anything useful; search the asteroids and the remaining ships from top to bottom, looking for clues. And do not, and I mean do not, share this any further. I’m going to have to take it to the king personally.”
William frowned. “Just the king?”
“And the Grand Admiral,” Kat said. “And”—she ran her hand through her hair—“I don’t know, William. My father believed that someone very high up betrayed us, back when the war began. Right now, I don’t know who we can trust. Any investigation into this affair is going to have to be conducted very quietly.”
And quiet is one word that cannot be applied to the king, William thought grimly. What happens if he starts shouting the news from the rooftops?
“I believe this is something I have a duty to report to my superiors,” Janice said carefully. “Admiral, I . . .”
“You will not discuss it with anyone until I’ve spoken directly to the king,” Kat said. “That is an order, Captain, which you may have in writing if you wish.”
She might need it in writing, William thought, concealing his wince. Janice will wind up in real trouble if her superiors accuse her of withholding vital information.
“Yes, Admiral,” Janice said.
Kat stood. “I’ll make contact now,” she said. “Until we have clear orders, continue the investigation. If there are any more clues here, waiting to be found, I want them found.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Winters said. He cleared his throat. “Ah . . . what about Commodore McElney?”
William met his eyes, evenly. “I do know how to keep secrets, General.”
“He does,” Kat said. She smiled, just for a second. It made her look young again. “But William, you’ll have to stay here for the moment. We could probably send Dandelion home now, if you wish.”
“I probably should,” William said. Neither Tanya nor her father were going to be happy, particularly if William couldn’t return to Asher Dales. “And if the king wants me to stay here, that is what I will do.”
Kat felt her insides churning uncomfortably as she made the walk from the conference room to her cabin, the sensation reminding her of the times when she’d been summoned to her father’s study as a young girl to explain the sort of misbehavior that couldn’t be handled by her nannies or the governess. She’d never been quite sure what to expect when she knocked on Duke Falcone’s door: a kind and caring father who’d understood his youngest daughter more than she’d realized at the time, or a stern patriarch who was irritated at having to take time away from
