As soon as they exited the wormhole, Kalan turned to Tessan. The man stood on the bridge and looked outwardly calm. Kalan felt an irrational urge to do something to break that calm, but he pushed it down. It wasn’t the time or place for that kind of personal foolishness.

“Tessan, double-check the landing coordinates with Em. This is raider territory. I don’t want to spend a second longer here than necessary.”

Tessan nodded and walked over to Em. He spoke quietly to the robot and moved his finger across projected displays that Em had provided for Tessan’s convenience. Tessan turned his head and spoke.

“It all looks right.”

“I didn’t think to ask before,” said Kalan. “Does this place have a name?”

Tessan waggled a hand in a noncommittal way. “I assume so. I only ever heard it called Job Site 6.”

“Inspiring,” muttered Kalan. “Fine. Em, take us in.”

“Captain, I think we have a problem,” said Em.

“Raiders?” Kalan asked, his mind jumping to what seemed like the most likely threat.

“No, sir. You should look at these readings.”

Kalan walked over to Em’s station. The robot cleared the projected displays of their navigational data and replaced them with a mass of graphs that Kalan didn’t immediately understand. He’d only just started to sort through the information when Tessan took a sharp breath.

“Damn it,” said the older man.

“What am I looking at here, Tessan? Em?”

Tessan reached out a finger and started pointing at spots along one of the graphs. “These are the problem.”

Kalan focused. The readings showed elevated activity, but well within normal tolerance. He shook his head. “Those just look like ambient variations in the background radiation to me.”

“Yes. That’s what it’s supposed to look like,” said Tessan. “Em, can you strip out everything but those spikes?”

Almost immediately, the graph reshaped itself. Kalan took another look. It looked a lot less natural with everything else stripped away.

“Shit,” whispered Kalan under his breath.

“Exactly,” replied Tessan. “Look at the interval between the spikes. Look at their amplitude. Identical. Nothing in nature is that predictable. That’s a Zeren tracking beacon.”

“How the hell did a Zeren tracking beacon get on my ship?” Kalan growled as he stared at Tessan.

“This isn’t me, Kalan. I have more incentive than you to avoid Zeren agents and the Zeren military. You, they’d just kill. They’ll take Estra and me back and torture us to death.”

Kalan nodded in grudging acknowledgment and turned back to Em. “Any idea where it’s coming from on the ship?”

Kalan reasoned that someone might have planted the tracker on the outside of his ship. It would have been the least difficult option, by his estimation. The robot worked the problem without bothering to put anything new on the projected display. Em turned away from the console.

“Sir,” said the robot, then fell silent.

“Tessan,” said Kalan. “You should head back to your quarters. Get yourself and Estra secured. I don’t want anyone getting injured on entry.”

Tessan gave the robot a speculative look, nodded to Kalan, and left the bridge. Kalan gave it thirty seconds before he looked at the robot again.

“Sir,” the robot repeated, “the source of the signal is coming from Fresia’s quarters.”

“What? That can’t be right.”

“I checked three times, sir.”

For a moment, Kalan was fixed in place. His mind couldn’t come to grips with the idea of Fresia as some kind of traitor. He tried to calculate when or how it could have happened. She’d barely been out of his sight since she came aboard. He shook his head. No, even if she had the opportunity, she’d never intentionally put the ship at risk. There had to be some other explanation. First, though, he’d need to find the source.

“Em, do we have something on board that can scan for the source more precisely?”

“I believe Engineer Petronan can modify something that will provide the necessary scans.”

“Good. Get him on comms. Tell him what I need and that I’m on my way down. Then, get us on course for that planet. We’re on a clock.”

At that, Kalan spun on his heel and left the bridge. He hated being rushed, but he had to assume that Zeren forces were already on their way. That might mean a day or two before they arrived. Unfortunately, it might also mean a lot less time than that. He wanted to be long gone before those Zerens showed up. By the time he walked into engineering, Petronan had some kind of device Kalan didn’t recognize cracked open on a collapsible worktable. As much as he loathed waiting, he didn’t ask the man for an update. He’d tell Kalan when he was done. Questions would just slow down the process. It took another ten minutes of hasty connections and swapping out some parts before the engineer closed the case on the device. He turned and held it out to Kalan.

“Thank you, Chief,” said Kalan, lifting the device from the man’s hand.

“That’s a rush job,” warned Petronan. “It may only get you within a foot or two.”

“Should be close enough for my needs. I don’t suppose we have anything on board that could shield that radiation?”

Petronan got a look of intense concentration. “I suppose we could put it in the engine compartment.”

“Anything else?” Kalan asked. “I might have a use for it later.”

“If the source isn’t too big, I can probably figure something out.”

Kalan frowned. “Figure it out fast. I don’t want to be broadcasting our location on the surface if we can avoid it.”

“Broadcasting, sir?”

“Zeren tracking device, apparently.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Like we don’t have enough problems?”

Kalan nodded in agreement. “Do it quick.”

“Aye, sir,” said Petronan.

Despite all his admonitions to everyone else to hurry, Kalan could feel himself dragging his feet on his way to Fresia’s quarters. Deep down, he had to accept the possibility that she’d betrayed them all. She’d made a deal with Monsell to help her mother. It wasn’t impossible to imagine that she’d made a deal with the Zerens. If they offered Fresia enough money to set her mother up in comfort somewhere, would she have taken it? He might think it was unlikely, but it was possible. How much allegiance could he really expect from her? She had changed since she’d come on board, but had she changed that much? He didn’t know. In his heart, he just didn’t want it to be true. If she had betrayed them, Kalan wasn’t sure what he would do. He knew what he should do, but he wasn’t sure he had the strength to kill her. So, he dragged his feet and prayed that she hadn’t doomed the ship.

Even with his slow pace, he arrived outside her quarters all too soon. The ship just wasn’t big enough that he could really drag out the trip. He was surprised to see that the hatch to her quarters was open. He could hear quiet words drifting out of the room and cocked his head to listen.

“The goal of all warfare, whether it be the warfare of single combat or the warfare of great powers, should remain singular. Warfare with multiple aims is doomed to failure, for each additional aim dilutes purpose and serves as a distraction. Fix the singular goal in your mind, and the necessary strategy and tactics will become readily apparent.”

Kalan recognized the passage as one from Xerance’s lesser-known work, The Warrior’s Alchemy. Frowning, he stepped into Fresia’s quarters. She had the ship’s computer reading the text aloud to her while she drilled the newest form that he’d been teaching her. He could feel her focus from across the room and everything inside him rebelled at the very thought of her betraying them. He steeled his heart and knocked on the open hatch. Fresia spun toward him. That utter focus never wavered in her for a second. She stood up straight in surprise when she realized who had knocked.

“Computer, pause reading,” she said, her face going a little red. “Captain?”

Is that shame? He wasn’t sure. He glanced around her quarters to give himself a moment. He’d never visited them before, for several reasons. He’d always thought that crew quarters should provide a sanctuary from the rest of the ship. With so much time spent in close proximity to others, people ought to have somewhere they could go and shut everyone else out. Assuming there was no compelling reason to inspect the quarters, a ship’s officers should leave them be. Fresia had never given him a reason to think he ought to inspect her quarters. She was also a very young woman, and Kalan believed that his mere presence there violated some immutable moral precept. Although, he doubted he could formulate that precept into a sentence. Her quarters were very tidy, with only one or two personal touches out on display. They were the kinds of things that could be secured at a moment’s notice. Apparently, Fresia read his silence as some kind of judgment.

She blurted out, “You never said I actually had to read every word with my eyes.”

A terrible tension in Kalan’s chest simply evaporated. If she thought she was going to get in trouble for simply listening to her assigned reading, he sincerely doubted that she had the nerve to blatantly betray them all with no outward signs of it. He waved it away with a gesture.

“It’s the information that matters,” he said. “If hearing the words helps you process it, I don’t have any objection.”

Fresia released a breath she’d been holding and then gave him a quizzical look. “Did you need me for something?”

Kalan held back a little. “There’s some radiation coming from here that shouldn’t be. I need to track it down.”

“Radiation? Am I going to die?”

Kalan noted the edge of genuine panic in her voice. He shook his head.

“No. It’s nothing dangerous. Just abnormal. You don’t ignore things like that on a ship,” he said.

He turned on the scanner that Petronan had given him and started scanning around the room. It didn’t take the scanner long to zero in on a little statue that Fresia had on a small, retractable table. He picked it up and held it in one palm. It looked innocuous enough. It was the kind of thing that you could get almost anywhere. He brought the statue up to eye level. Kalan thought it was a carving of Shamet. If he remembered correctly, Shamet was a semi-historical hero on the planet Cobalt 7 orbited. He glanced over at Fresia, who was looking at the statue with a dubious expression.

“Where did you get this?” he asked, trying to keep the question casual.

“Some man on the station gave it to me,” said Fresia.

“What man?”

Fresia shrugged. “I don’t know. He was just some man on the ring. He asked me about restaurants. I told him he should go to that place you took me. He gave me that to say thanks. I wasn’t going to take it, but he insisted. Just seemed easier to take it.”

“What did he look like?”

“Does it matter?” Fresia asked.

“It might.”

Fresia took a second to think back and then described the man. As the description became clearer, Kalan’s hand closed into a shaking fist around the statue. Fresia saw his hand and her voice trailed off.

“I did something wrong, didn’t I?” She asked. “Who was he?”

Kalan did everything he could to keep his voice gentle. “He’s an agent for the Zeren Authority. At least, I think he is.”

“Why are you so angry with him?”

Kalan didn’t want to tell her why because he knew Fresia would feel guilty about it. She’d find out eventually no matter what he did, though.

“Because this is a tracking device. He used you to get it on board.”

“I brought a tracking device onto the ship?” She said, stunned at the news.

Kalan shook his head immediately. “Stop. You couldn’t have known. This one is on me.”

“How is this on you? I brought that stupid thing on board!”

“I made this mistake,” said Kalan as he rubbed his forehead. “I made a bad assumption. I didn’t think he’d catch up with us that fast, so I never warned you. I never told you what he looked like. I should have the second I found that woman back on the station. I should have known that he’d be right behind her.”

Fresia looked like she didn’t really believe him, but she didn’t make any more objections. Instead, she asked, “What do we do now?”

“Petronan is cobbling something together that should block this thing. Then, we go down to the planet and do what we came here to do.”

Kalan turned and walked out of her quarters, signaling Fresia to follow with his hand. She jogged a little to catch up with him. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, and Kalan could practically see the question hovering in her mind.

“Spit it out, Fresia.”

“I’ve been thinking about that crystal. Well, I mean, I’ve been thinking about what might be on it. What if it is some kind of terrible weapon or plan? We can’t give it back, but what will we do with it? What can we do with it?”

“I’ve been thinking about that problem myself,” Kalan admitted. “I don’t have any good answers for you. If it is something like that, we may need to cut some kind of deal.”

“With the Zerens?” Fresia asked, giving him a dubious look.

“Gods no. They’ve got everything to lose in this situation. The Ikarens, I expect. There’s a lot of longstanding tension between the Ikaren throne and the Zeren Authority, so they’ll likely be happy to make a deal if it hurts the Zerens. That’s why I brought that Temera woman aboard in the first place.”

“She’s Ikaren?”

Kalan waggled a hand in the air. “She works for them. I doubt she’s actually an Ikaren. That throne controls a lot of territory. She’s probably from one of the protectorates.”

“What kind of deal?”

“Money, maybe, but mostly we’ll need protection. Somewhere safe that we can hide for a while. If we stay in Ikaren territory, they can’t come at us directly. Even the Zerens won’t start a shooting war just to get revenge on us.”

Fresia frowned, “What about my mom?”

Kalan grimaced. “I don’t think they’d go after her, but I’ll negotiate for her as well if it comes to it.”

Kalan turned into the engineering compartment with Fresia on his heels. Petronan was standing at the same collapsible table, putting spot welds onto the corner of a metal box. Kalan turned his face away and hastily covered Fresia’s eyes with his hand.

“Hey!” She shouted. “I want to see.”

“Kisham!” Kalan barked.

Fresia stopped and looked at him. “What?”

It took Kalan a moment to realize what he’d said. For all the instruction he’d given her, he hadn’t bothered teaching her the old words. There was nothing inherently special about those archaic terms. Damn that Zeren agent, he thought. Hearing that spy shout that word at him had dredged up more than he’d expected. Kalan shook his head.

“It’s just a word from where I come from. Don’t look directly at what Petronan is doing. It can damage your eyes permanently.”

“Oh,” said Fresia, her eyes going wide.

After a few more minutes of work, Petronan turned his attention to the Kalan and Fresia.

“This should do the trick,” he said. “Although, we’ll have to test it.”

Kalan dug the little statue out of a pocket and tossed it to Petronan, who caught it out of the air. He dropped the statue into the small box and closed the lid. He gave Kalan an expectant look. Kalan held out the modified scanner. Petronan took the device and scanned the box.

“Okay. It’s shielded. You sure you don’t want me to just jettison the thing out an airlock?”

“I’m sure,” said Kalan. “Get secured. We’ll be hitting atmosphere soon, and Em says it’ll be rough sailing.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Fresia, let’s go get our prisoner.”