The Signet brothers arrived.
Xander stalked to his pack mate and clapped a hand on Mak’s shoulder. ‘We’ll find her.’
Mak jerked his chin, his face a stony visage, while inside his emotions churned.
Miral took the lead, data pads and screens came online, and the atmosphere shifted from business as usual to a tactical execution.
‘A stealth shield activated as soon as they leftthe Sombra,’ Miral said, his voice clipped. ‘We can’t trace them.’
‘Also means she’s with someone who has the tech to disable her ring locator,’ Kaal muttered. ‘We’ve likewise found no flight records or logs for the ship. It’s like she’s vanished into thin air.’
Mak’s frustration boiled over. ‘Does this read of Nightshade? Could this be a retaliation for Deimos?’
Kaal shrugged. ‘Not sure, brother, can’t make assumptions.’
Mak growled. ‘Fokk!’
His roar filled the room, a manifestation of the inner turmoil, sorrow, and rage he was fighting to contain.
He stalked to the viewport and glared at the void beyond it, heart aching for his woman as Miral brought up a jagged waveform of comms traffic.
‘There’s something else,’ she said, fingers flying across the interface as intel flickered to life. ‘Right before the abduction, Shiloh’s and Saba’s holo devices were lit up by a spike in data transmission, way over and above normal encrypted chatter.’
Kaal, who’d been pacing behind them, stopped cold. ‘Spyware?’ His voice dropped to a hoarse timbre. ‘Don’t tell me they breachedThe Sombra.’
‘Not quite,’ Miral answered. ‘But they used the virtual connection between Shiloh and Saba like a bridge. Whoever was on Shiloh’s end embedded a passive siphon into the call. It slipped through our defenses and mirrored internal Sauvage Corp protocols.’
Mak’s gaze sharpened. ‘A backdoor into my company systems?’
Her nod was grim. ‘Yes. They utilized it to extract technical specs on the hydrogen core project, troop movement logs tied to our logistics branch, and trace-level data on the Sedevan alloy program. All of it routed through Shiloh’s device.’
Xander’s vocalization cut in as he sat at the head of the table. ‘You’re sure it originated from her locale?’
‘Ninety-nine percent. The packet trail is dirty, but I ran a cross-layer traffic analysis. It spiked from her location during the call and died the moment the transmission ended.’
Kaal let out a growl. ‘Hell. They used Saba’s trust to punch a hole through our firewalls.’
Mak’s voice turned cold. ‘Then this wasn’t just an abduction. It was a coordinated strike. For intel.’
Miral nodded. ‘They almost got away with it.’
Mak’s jaw clenched. ‘Find out who else touched that stream. And Miral, lock down every comm node across our command fleet. No more blind spots. Not with my wife involved.’
‘Already on it,’ she said, her eyes hard.
Just as Mak was about to unleash an unholy war, a knock came at the door.
Mak stiffened, exchanging a glance with Kaal before barking, ‘Come in.’
A courier entered, his demeanor casual, with a lopsided smile on his face.
He wore a standard flotilla dispatch rider uniform, with a logo embroidered on his cap, holding out a small parcel.
‘ŠarSauvage?’
‘Who’s it from?’ Mak’s brother asked, his voice tight, reaching a hand for it.
The delivery person shrugged. ‘Just got the job to dispatch it. Into theŠar’shands, and no one else. No name, no sender.’
