Page 48 of Ashes & Aether

“I’ll find them, Commander,” I state, dropping my voice into its most lethal, absolute register. “I swear it.”

Kairen turns his head. He looks at me, and I see the raw, unchecked terror of a male whose match has been ripped from his hands. I know that feeling. I felt a microscopic fraction of it when a Ghorvek claw caught Maggie’s sleeve, and it nearly leveled my sanity. Kairen is drowning in it.

“Interrogate any of Korvann’s men or associates left on Avaris,” Kairen orders, his voice cracking like a whip. “Then follow any crumb of information they give you. Leave no stone unturned.”

“I won’t let you down.”

I turn on my heel. I don’t wait for a dismissal. I grab Maggie’s elbow, the static snapping between our skin, and pull her back out into the corridor.

“The vanguard ship is gone,” I tell her, my mind already categorizing the targets, establishing a perimeter. “General Korvann took his loyalists on the Pride. That leaves the cowards, the politicians, and the sycophants who stayed behind to manage the political fallout.”

Maggie straightens her cuffs, her blue eyes narrowing.

“Find me a room,” she demands. “Windowless. Two chairs, one table. Put me in the corner.” She falls into step beside me. “You ask the questions. I’ll watch the hands.”

SUBJECT: ELMSLEIGH, MARGARET.

ROLE: INTERROGATION PARTNER.

STATUS: FLAWLESS.

We spend the next two rotations dissecting the Avaren nobility.

I secure a subterranean holding cell beneath the spaceport, a sterile white box that strips away titles and arrogance. I haul in every chief, every noble, and every politician connected to General Zeiran Korvann’s recent whisperings of a no-confidence vote against the Queen.

I play the monster. I lean over the metal table, igniting the plasma blade, letting the superheated energy singe the air inches from their faces. I threaten. I coax. I weaponize the silence.

Maggie sits in the corner, her arms crossed, her deep-red lips pressed into a flat line. She becomes part of the furniture, completely ignored by the Avaren suspects who view her as nothing more than a frail human pet.

They are fools.

After I dismiss a high-ranking political ally of Korvann’s, the metal door hisses shut, leaving us alone.

“He knows nothing about the kidnapping,” Maggie states immediately, stepping out of the shadows. “But he lied about the ship.”

I retract my blade, turning to face her. “Explain.”

“When you asked if he knew where the Pride went, he didn’t flinch. Genuine ignorance.” She steps up to the table, tapping the metal surface with a neatly trimmed fingernail. “When you asked how a vanguard ship bypassed the port authority, his left thumb tapped his thigh three times. He swallowed hard. He doesn’t know the destination, but he knows the method.”

I haul the politician’s chief of staff in next. I apply the pressure exactly where Maggie directed. The man breaks within five minutes, stammering about a military exercise.

“Korvann told him the Pride was running a training maneuver,” I tell Maggie, reviewing the notes on my command cube. “He never questioned it. But he remembers who Korvann spoke to the day before launch. One of the port chiefs.”

“Find the chief,” she orders.

We find the chief. Under Maggie’s unblinking stare, he admits that Korvann asked him how to disable the Pride’s tracking systems, and that he swallowed the story about a drill because generals do not invite questions. He points us to the final preparations made before the Pride launched. He cannot tell us who else might have heard. Generals don’t notice the engineers who work around them, and neither, it seems, do chiefs.

We map the circle, shrinking the perimeter, eliminating the dead ends. Maggie reads the micro-expressions, the nervous tics, the defensive postures. She strips their lies down to the studs, handing me the exposed nerves on a silver platter.

By the middle of the second rotation, we bring in the lover.

She is an Avaren female of high standing, draped in expensive synth-silks. Korvann entertained her whenever he visited the capital. She sits in the interrogation chair with her chin raised, projecting a haughty, impenetrable boredom.

I plant my hands on the table, preparing to shatter her composure with a threat of treason charges.

Maggie clears her throat.

It is a tiny, delicate sound, but it echoes in the sterile room. The Avaren female glances at her, annoyed by the interruption. I step back, looking over my shoulder.