The chamber lights dimmed to a bruised-steel hue as the officers assembled around the table inside the diplomatic operations room. Faint projections of Dependency banners and their two headed golden eagles hovered around the edges, flickering in ghostly silence.

  John stood at the head, hands braced on the table. He stared at the looping freeze-frame of Thariel’s Elysian armor amid the carnage of the cavern colony on Eurynome, Caldera Reach.

  “That’s our target,” he said grimly. “Thariel is on Eurynome. And he’s controlling Braccari units. I don’t know why and I don’t care. We get one shot at him. We have to take it.”

  The room rippled with uncomfortable tension. Commander Rhea Morgan broke first. She leaned forward slowly. Her steel-gray eyes locked on John. “With respect, sir. This feels like a trap. There’s no strategic reason for Thariel to even be there. The Braccari have never been this deep. Why now?”

  Ambassador Samantha Crowe gave a slow and bitter nod. “Morgan’s right. Although animalistic, the Dependency houses Braccari citizens. If you insert ground forces, we might be responsible for fracturing our fragile ceasefire.”

  John held his gaze. He clenched his jaw. “We can’t play diplomat with the bug people while the Braccari are clearly slaughtering humans. We don’t have the luxury of time. Besides all of that, Thariel is behind this. If we lose Thariel now, how many more colonies will he hit? We have to stop him before he destroys any more colonies—before he returns to Earth to finish the job.”

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  At the far end of the table, Dr. Theo Marche shifted nervously. His fingers drummed an irregular rhythm on the basalt surface. “I, uh…I hate to say it, but the footage was clear. If the Braccari are mutating or evolving alliances with Hyperions…that’s something none of our models accounted for. I seriously doubt that the peaceful Braccari citizens of the Dependency have any involvement with this rogue batch of terrorists.”

  Lt. Jasmine Reyes sat back with a grunt. Her cybernetic implant pulsed faintly under the strands of hair on her forehead. “I say we go in. We’ll be quiet and surgical. If Thariel’s there, we take the monster down before he knows what’s coming.”

  Samantha shook her head sharply. “Reyes, you’re gambling with another interspecies war.”

  “Did we not watch the same video, XO?” Reyes responded.

  John pushed off the table, voice sharp but even. “This entire war is a gamble. It’s our turn to throw some dice and fire live rounds. Time to get our hands bloody.”

  Silence lingered in the room.

  Commander Rhea Morgan slowly nodded, though her frown remained. “You’ll need a full recon package. I know that you were once a big movie star and have big ideas, but we can’t afford hero plays, Arbiter. Do you want my approval? Promise me that you won’t do anything stupid.”

  John exhaled. “I’m not going to play with your lives. We’re operators. We go in eyes first. I’ll only blow the horn for the marines if we absolutely need them. But if we find him…we finish this.”

  The projection flickered off. Chairs scraped back into unison. The meeting was over.

  John stared at the bulkhead window for a long moment after the others filed out. He watched his faint reflection stare back, and for the first time in a long while, it didn’t smile back at him.