Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 712: Friend of my Enemy

They walked.

Not toward anywhere specific. Just moving, the corridor quiet, and Calder kept pace beside Noah with the energy of someone who had been carrying something for a long time and had finally decided to put it down.

He spoke quietly. Not whispering. Just small.

"My men," he said first. "Three of them are still on that planet. Still alive as far as I know." He looked straight ahead. "That’s why I couldn’t say anything in there."

"Okay," Noah said. "Talk."

Calder exhaled. "We were maybe three weeks in. Everything was normal. Aid delivery went smooth, assessment was going well, her people were cooperative." He paused. "Then the communication came from EDF central command."

"What communication."

"Withdrawal order," Calder said. "Said an independent faction called Eclipse along with one of the original families was heading toward our region. Suspected engagement with a four horn Harbinger, designation Kruel. All EDF personnel to withdraw immediately from the potential conflict zone. EDF was not intervening." He glanced at Noah. "First time I heard your name."

Noah said nothing.

"So we started packing up," Calder said. "Standard withdrawal. Get the equipment, say the goodbyes, get back to the ship." He stopped walking. "That’s when it happened."

He looked at the floor.

"They weren’t slow about it," he said. "Le’anna’s people. The moment we were moving toward the ship, they just switched. Four of my men died before any of us understood what was happening. Two more were taken. Three got to me and we managed to get out but the ones they took are still there."

"And before that," Noah said. "Before the withdrawal order. Did you see anything that suggested—"

"Yes," Calder said. "That’s the thing." He started walking again, slower. "About a week in I was doing a perimeter survey on the western edge of their settlement. I was drunk that night, my boys smuggled some drinks on the mission and we kind of got wasted that night. I want alone, which I know, but it was supposed to be safe." He stopped again. "I saw them."

"Saw who."

"Harbingers," Calder said. "Two of them. Just standing at the edge of the tree line. And Le’anna’s people were there too. Standing with them. Not hiding. Not running. Just." He opened his hands. "Standing there. Talking. Or whatever passes for talking between them." He looked at Noah. "I didn’t report it. I told myself I’d misread the situation. That maybe they were trying to negotiate, trying to survive." He shook his head. "I didn’t want it to be what it was and I wasn’t too confident that I saw what I thought I saw,"

"And the ship," Noah said. "The damage on it."

"Her people did that," Calder said. "Before they sent us out. Enough damage to make the story work. Harbinger attack, survivors drifting, the whole thing." He looked at the floor. "I didn’t have a choice about getting on that ship. She put me on it and told me what to say and I have three men on that planet."

Noah looked at him. "And her. Le’anna herself. You two seem to have built something or am I reading wrong and it’s just a cover too?"

Calder was quiet for a moment. Something moved across his face that wasn’t simple.

"While we were drifting," he said carefully, "it wasn’t. It wasn’t all performance. I don’t think." He looked uncomfortable with his own words. "She got attached. Genuinely, I think. Or as genuine as I can tell. The marriage wasn’t part of any plan I could see. That just." He stopped. "Happened. While we were drifting." He looked at Noah. "I don’t know what she is to me. I genuinely don’t. But I know what I saw on that planet and I know what her people did to mine and I know she put me on that ship for a reason and I’ve been living inside that contradiction for months."

Noah looked at him steadily.

"You did right telling me," Noah said. "Stay normal around her. Don’t change anything. Can you do that?"

Calder looked at him for a second. "I’ve been doing it since we came aboard."

Noah put his hand briefly on Calder’s shoulder. Then he turned and walked back down the corridor alone.

---

The message went out within the hour.

Priority. OGs only. Secondary briefing room.

They filed in with the various energies of people pulled from different parts of their morning. Lucas came in already reading Noah’s face from the doorway. Sophie sat down and put the King’s Gaze on the table in front of her. Kelvin arrived with all four hands free which meant he had dropped everything the moment the message came through. Diana came in beside Shade who had followed her from the training room and sat in the corner of the briefing room like a very large very dark shadow that nobody commented on. Lila came in last, looked at the room, looked at Noah, and sat down without asking anything.

Seraleth ducked through the doorway and found her seat and folded her hands on the table and waited.

Angel came in from the corridor still pulling her hair back, looked at the assembled faces, and said "what happened" before she had fully sat down.

Aurelius came through the door behind her. Nobody had told him to come. He had simply arrived, the way Aurelius arrived at things, with the timing of someone who paid attention to the temperature of his fleet and had felt the temperature change.

Noah looked at all of them.

Then he told them.

He kept it short. Calder’s account. The withdrawal order. The attack that wasn’t an attack. The mutual understanding between Le’anna’s people and the Harbingers. The men still on the planet. The device on the ship that Le’anna almost certainly knew about. All of it on the table in ninety seconds.

The room received it.

Then Diana said "are you kidding me" and it wasn’t a question.

"She’s been on this ship for weeks," Lila said. Flat. Cold. "Walking around. Eating with us. Training with us."

"She learned VPT," Seraleth said.

Everyone looked at her.

Seraleth’s expression was doing something specific. Not anger exactly. Something more precise than anger. "I taught her," she said. "I stood next to her and corrected her form and told her how to use her tail." She looked at the table. "I showed her ice cream."

"Sera," Sophie said.

"I know," Seraleth said. "I know what matters. I’m just." She stopped. "I showed her ice cream."

"Okay so what do we do," Diana said, and she was already leaning forward, already past the processing stage and into the action stage. "She’s on the ship right now. We know she’s a plant. We know the device has been broadcasting our position. We go get her, we shut down the device, and we—"

"And we what," Lucas said.

"Deal with it," Diana said.

"Deal with it," Lucas said. "On a ship full of Aurelius’s people. With thousands of civilians aboard. We just go grab her and deal with it."

"What’s the alternative, Lucas? We let her keep doing what she’s doing?"

"The alternative is we think before we move," Lucas said. "Because the moment she knows we know, whatever failsafe she has in place activates. And we don’t know what that looks like."

"So we sit on it," Diana said. "We just keep pretending."

"For now, yes," Lucas said.

"That’s insane," Diana said.

"That’s strategy," Lucas said.

"Oh great, strategy, fantastic, while she’s sitting somewhere on this ship right now probably—"

"Diana." Noah’s voice wasn’t loud. Just present. She stopped.

"I hear you," he said. "I do." He looked at the table. "But Lucas is right about the failsafe. We don’t know what she has access to on this ship. We don’t know what she can do if she feels cornered. And we have thousands of people aboard who didn’t sign up for whatever that looks like."

"So we do nothing," Diana said.

"I didn’t say that," Noah said.

Angel had been quiet through all of it, sitting back in her chair with her arms crossed, listening. "The device," she said. "If we shut it down, whoever’s receiving the signal knows immediately that something changed. But if we leave it running, we can potentially feed it bad information."

"That’s what I’ve been thinking," Kelvin said. "Since we found it." He put both main hands on the table. "Sirius system. Anyone remember Sirius system?"

Lucas exhaled slowly. "Kelvin."

"No, hear me out," Kelvin said. "Because this is feeling very familiar to me and I think everyone should be uncomfortable about how familiar it’s feeling." He looked around the table. "Kruel captured Bruce Hilton. S ranked telepath. Modified dish antennas across three planets. Used Bruce to control every worker in the mining operations, made them go dark, made EDF send teams to investigate, lost those teams, sent more." He spread his hands. "Each time EDF responded, Kruel already knew they were coming because Bruce was the one telling them something was wrong. They were walking into prepared positions every single time."

"And we uncovered it," Lucas said. "We got Bruce out."

"We almost had Kruel," Kelvin said. "Almost. Until the Purge showed up and pulled him through a portal." He looked at Noah. "And now here we are again. Enemy asset aboard the ship, broadcasting our position, and we’re heading straight toward the person who put her here." He paused. "Déjà vu. Genuinely."

"The difference," Angel said, "is that this time we know about the asset before we get there."

"Which is the only advantage we have," Sophie said. Everyone looked at her. She had been quiet since Noah finished speaking, her hands flat on the table on either side of the King’s Gaze. "If we move on Le’anna now we lose that advantage immediately. If we leave the device running and feed it the wrong information we control what Kruel thinks he knows about us."

"She could have other ways of communicating," Lila said. "We don’t know the device is her only channel."

"We don’t," Sophie said. "Which is why Kelvin needs to scan for anything else before we decide anything."

"Already running," Kelvin said, auxiliary arms moving independently, teal light in the palms pulsing. "I’ve had passive scans going since we found the first device. If there’s anything else on this ship I’ll find it."

"And Le’anna herself," Lila said. "What do we do about her specifically. Because I’m sorry, I understand strategy, I understand not tipping our hand, but she is physically on this ship and she has been walking around with full access and I want someone to explain to me how that’s acceptable for one more day."

"We contain her without her knowing she’s being contained," Aurelius said.

The room went quiet.

Aurelius had not spoken since he sat down. He had listened to all of it with the type of patience only a man who had been running a civilization for decades had in him and had learned that the first five minutes of a crisis was mostly people saying the same three things in different orders.

"My people have been managing guests on this fleet for fifty years," he said. "We know how to make someone feel completely at home while ensuring they can only go where we want them to go and see what we want them to see." He looked at Noah. "She will not know. She will feel welcome. She will feel trusted. And she will be entirely contained."

Lila looked at him. Then nodded once.

"The men on the planet," Diana said. Her voice had changed. Lost the heat from earlier, gone somewhere quieter. "Calder’s men. Still alive, he thinks."

"We don’t leave them," Noah said.

"Obviously we don’t leave them," Diana said. "I’m asking how. Because if Le’anna’s people are working with Kruel and Kruel is on the planet we’re headed to, those men are inside whatever Kruel has built there."

"They become part of the plan," Noah said.

"What plan," Lila said. "You said you have one. Earlier. What is it."

Everyone looked at Noah.

He looked at the table for a moment. At the faces around it. At Seraleth still sitting with whatever she was sitting with about the ice cream and the VPT. At Diana with her jaw set. At Lucas who had been the steadiest person in the room through all of it and was now watching Noah with the direct look that meant he was ready to hear whatever came next and would run with it.

Noah looked at the table.

’Sirius Prime,’ he thought. ’We went in thinking we were rescuing miners. People we were there to save. And they came at us. All of them. Moving wrong, eyes wrong, doing exactly what Kruel needed through Bruce and three dishes on three planets.’

’Lucas went in alone against Xallon. Whatever that cost him he’s never fully put down.’

’Diana was beside me we found the Widow. First female Harbinger humanity had ever encountered and the two of us walked right into her.’

’Kelvin lost both arms taking out a dish. Decided that was the trade worth making and made it without asking anyone.’

’Every person in this room paid something on that planet.’

’Miss Brooks used to say it before any of us understood what we were being trained for.’

’You cannot win a battle you refused to see coming. The enemy’s greatest weapon is your willingness to look away.’

’I brought her aboard. I looked away.’

’Not again.’

He looked up.

"I have a plan," he said.