“I’d like to know what they knew and when they knew it.”

“Did they have a plan for bailing her out, or were they just going to let that poor girl rot in jail?”

“From where I’m standing it looks like they tried to frame an innocent woman while the real killer was still on the loose.”

Kamak stared directly into the central console and slammed his thumb down on the pause button. He kept staring for a few more seconds before he got a response from the voice on the other end of the call.

“Did you take the time to edit that together yourself?”

“I’ve had a lot of spare time,” Kamak said. After getting the Butcher’s message, they’d gotten Bevo out of prison and gotten the hell out. The ride back to Centerpoint was giving Kamak plenty of time to watch the media vultures pick the carcass of his reputation clean.

Kamak had tried to explain the situation back on Amauris, but the media had never given him a chance to get so much as a word in edgewise. They had decided his guilt before he’d even had a chance to open his mouth. It made for a better story, after all. The only thing that got more attention than a hero was a fallen hero.

“I told you,” Kamak said. “You rushed into this, and now we’re paying the price.”

“Excuse me if I didn’t expect a serial killer to spring into action to save an innocent life,” Angry Voice said. “We needed time, we needed to set up our own narrative, get our story out first. We had no way of knowing the Butcher would be able to react so quickly.”

Angry Voice sounded considerably less angry while covering his own ass. Corey had been surprised to hear a familiar voice on the other end of the line. Usually there were different people each time, or maybe just different voice modifiers.

“Hey, it’s not past fixing,” Bevo said. “You guys were already about to spring me, just let me tell everyone.”

“I’m afraid we are well past that point now,” Farsus said. “The Butcher’s statement preempted any we could make. Anything we say now, true or not, will be viewed as nothing but an attempt at image rehabilitation.”

“Beyond their odd message, we also had no way of predicting the Butcher would be able to act with such...precise timing,” the voice mumbled. The Butcher being able to track down and kill a new victim, and have it go unnoticed, until the exact moment the crew had been otherwise occupied, had been an unfortunate and unexpected turn of events.

“It’s not about what you did or didn’t expect, it’s about a plan with such a glaring flaw,” Kamak said.

“I don’t think you’re the one to lecture anyone about flawed plans, Kamak.”

“I’m a dipshit in a spaceship,” Kamak said. “Only person I’ve ever wanted to be responsible for is myself and maybe a few of these idiots. You’re the government shadow op that wants to run the whole universe. Shouldn’t you be better than some random asshole?”

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The other end of the call went silent. Kamak kept staring, waiting for an answer. Corey was the first to clear his throat and try to clear the air.

“Kamak, maybe we should-”

“No, no, I want an answer,” Kamak insisted. “I never asked to be responsible for the universe, you assholes are the ones working so hard at it. Shouldn’t you be better at it? How many decades of work have you put into this?”

After a much shorter delay, the synthesized voice sighed -and then fizzled. When they spoke again, it was in the entirely unmodified voice of the Ghost.

“A year and a half.”

“What?”

“A year and a half, Kamak,” Ghost said. “That’s how long we’ve been at this.”

“You’ve been talking like you’re some kind of universe-spanning secret police,” Tooley said. “And you’ve been around less time than I’ve owned this ship?”

“We have careers in black ops and behind the scenes work spanning decades, collectively,” Ghost said. “It was just...at a smaller scale. Planetary. Occasionally on a galactic level. Never anything like this. There hasn’t been a need for it since the last Severance War.”

“Nearly a century ago,” Farsus said. “But you felt a need to revive the program after the invasion.”

“A threat from beyond the known universe necessitated some kind of response,” Ghost said flatly. “We exploited mutual connections, informants, resources, put together as much as we could. If an organization like ours had existed sooner, Morrakesh’s plan might never have gotten that far.”

Kamak felt some small satisfaction at that. He’d always secretly seethed about Ghost and his friends not helping with Morrakesh. Now he knew why. They were useless in a different way than he’d suspected.

“So this is, what?” Tooley said. “The first real crisis your little cabal has ever actually had to deal with?”

“On this scale, yes,” Ghost admitted. “And before you decide to drop any more scathing insults, we’re already well aware of our failings. Several members have already resigned.”

Beyond the one major error, Ghost and his comrades had been failing to produce results for weeks. Bevo’s arrest backfiring was just the excuse several doubters had been waiting for to back out of what they felt to be a failed experiment.

“Good,” Kamak said.

“I don’t know why I’ve ever bothered with you people,” Ghost sighed.

“Wait, please don’t hang up yet,” Doprel pleaded.

“Only because it’s you asking,” Ghost said. Doprel took a second to look smug about that. Politeness did pay off.

“Look, this isn’t a complete loss,” Doprel said. “You said when this started you wanted to provoke a response. Well, we got a response. Maybe we can learn something from this. Farsus is in the middle of some research right now, maybe he’ll have something for us.”

“I sincerely hope he does,” Ghost said. “But I don’t know if it matters. To me, at least. We’ve lost significant resources and influence already. I can’t promise we’ll have anything left to help you even if you do make progress.”

“You still own a gun?”

“Yes, Kamak, I still own a gun,” Ghost sighed.

“Well then you have a way to help,” Kamak said. “We’ll be in touch.”

Kamak and Ghost got into an unspoken race over who could hang up first. Unfortunately for Kamak’s ego, the Ghost won.

“Well, they weren’t much help anyway,” Kamak said. “Back to business. Bevo, you got somewhere you want us to drop you off?”

“Well, actually...”

“You want to stick around,” Kamak said.

“I want to help!”

“We are a little responsible for her getting thrown in prison,” Corey said. “Unintentionally.”

Kamak remained skeptical.

“It’ll be good publicity,” Doprel said.

“Alright, fine,” Kamak said.

Bevo got so excited she did a little dance, which even Doprel felt might be a bit excessive. There was still a serial killer on the loose, it was hardly dancing time.