Citadel Winston dispatched queries repeatedly, hoping someone within the fragmented network could provide answers. In the aftermath of the Dragon, truly secure communication was impossible until quantum entangled comsec units were exchanged, but given their critical lack of information he was willing to rely on encrypted broadcasts. No one knew what had happened.

  One moment, they were kissing their collective asses goodbye. The next, the Dragon that had shrugged off every weapon the Coalition could bring to bear was gone. What marked the transition was an explosion of cosmic energy that would take hundreds of level ten Xian emptying their entire soul reserves to achieve. Concentrations had gone back to normal already, the cosmic energy disappearing as it always did when its density passed a certain point. An ancient mystery best left for philosophers, scientists, and cultivators to ponder.

  His efforts to get answers were further complicated by the celebrations that broke out as soon as it became clear that their world was spared. The dancing on the streets he didn’t mind. It was the soldiers on duty who were hugging and chatting that earned his ire. He needed to know what weapon had been used, who controlled it, and if it was still armed. Mercom may have benefited from its first use, but the next could be less than friendly.

  Responses were as unhelpful as they were late. No one saw anything. Miasma had been thick in the air, preventing sensors at a distance from detecting more than darkness. Vessels in closer proximity either did not survive to tell their tale or suffered extensive damage to their sensors. No one could provide an informed report.

  Citadel Winston dedicated part of his attention to reviewing suspicious activity from the past hour. He needed something that might shed light on the situation and at the moment that did not include direct observation. The list of curiosities was large. Seven different portals had been opened by cowardly groups of Arahants seeking to escape. A war barge from the nation of Shinjo fired a beam weapon of unknown manufacture. The Sage of Poison dumped a vat of something onto the Dragon from on high. A Mercom cruiser formed a singularity to escape shortly after the attack. Two rituals had been noted that weren’t part of the official battle plan.

  None of those things seemed like a valid lead, but they were the only threads Winston had to pull on at the moment. The one that most intrigued him was the beam weapon. It hadn’t been laser or plasma based, which meant Shinjo was doing something exotic. He made a request to have the scientists look into the phenomenon and turned his attention elsewhere.

  Just what were those unplanned rituals? It seemed unlikely Arahants would do something that resulted in a release of cosmic energy, but no one had any information on the whereabouts of the Xian contingents. The Lord Annihilator fled with his retinue when it became clear the Dragon had the edge in their battle. The Lord Windblade retreated early and was watching from atop War Barge Maria when things ended in dramatic fashion. By all reports, Lord Theodore died not long after the opening salvo.

  Before he could pursue his list any further, a message arrived from Citadel Alice. “I believe I discovered something. Consider the timestamp while you watch the attached video.”

  The clip was of the Coalition generals stationed on Citadel Alice, who acted as the forward command post for the operation. The timestamp indicated this was several minutes prior to the event in question. Just after the Arahants loyal to President Bluff departed. The occupants of the room, all important personages with significant experience, looked about as enthusiastic as they would marching towards their executions.

  There wasn’t much chatter in the room, but Winston could register every sigh and halting breath along with the telemetry data to indicate the location of the microphone that picked up the sound. The video had been stitched together from dozens of cameras and microphones to create a multi-perspective record that only an uploaded mind could properly interpret.

  By the windows, something drew the attention of the Sage of Perception. Several of the generals studied the holograph with renewed interest. The video didn’t do the holograph justice due to the limitations of camera technology, but Winston knew exactly what would be shown there. This was when the Dragon spun about in a rage.

  That reaction was something worth investigating. Had later events not so dominated his thoughts, Winston would have dedicated himself to uncovering what drew its attention. The beast’s hate had seemed much less specific prior to that point. It attacked whatever was closest or presented the greatest obstacle. Then all of a sudden, the Dragon appeared to take something personal. What that could be was unknown because they had no reliable records from the final stage of the fight.

  At the exact timestamp that corresponded to the next erratic movement of the Dragon, the Sage of Foresight sat forward. Winston knew the beast had turned sharply to move in a new direction. A quick check proved it wasn’t traveling closer to the Sage’s location on Citadel Alice. Why, then, was she so invested in that development?

  Her posture changed again. She slumped in relaxation. The timestamp indicated this was during the Dragon’s lunge. No camera caught what the Dragon bit. Which… why did it do such a thing? Its miasmic presence was sufficient to decay matter. What had been sturdy enough to merit devouring? That question was forgotten a moment later.

  The Sage’s aide asked a question and she responded.

  Everyone who matters is now exactly where they are supposed to be.

  Realization swept through Winston. The Sage of Foresight predicted this exact series of events. He issued a new series of directives to focus every intelligence asset in the area on the Arahant contingent. Meanwhile, he watched hundreds of hours of footage starring Foresight on rapid playback. Every moment of her time on planet had been surreptitiously recorded. Even with his quad cluster of cognition units, it took time to review all of that.

  When examined under a microscope, everything the woman did since arriving on Terra gave the impression of a cheap charlatan. Everything but that one moment when she gave up the entire game by revealing her hand to her aide. She must have arranged everything before arriving, then maintained strict isolation from her co-conspirators. If she’d gone to such lengths to keep her plans secret, why the obvious admission?

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  Citadel Winston could only arrive at one conclusion. They were still playing Foresight’s game.

  He paused his efforts to assemble a comprehensive diagram of interactions the Sage could have influenced. She spoke to a lot of people, who in turn spoke to even more. The collaborative nature of the meetings ensured his exercise would take weeks to complete.

  The real question: who had immediate control of the weapon?

  Cosmic energy suggested it was a Xian. Other than the presumed deceased Theodore, all of the Lords were accounted for. He issued a new directive, instructing his top analysts to compile information of every Xian on world for the operation.

  His ongoing surveillance of Foresight let him witness an unexpected development in near real-time. A contingent of Arahants arrived from Maya and escorted the Sage back home under guard. Upon seeing them, she presented her hands without needing to be told. They placed cuffs enchanted with restrictive runes upon her wrists and informed her that she was being arrested for treason.

  Foresight nodded and spoke – to her Jinn observers rather than her captors. “Preventing my extraction would start a war you do not want. All I can reveal at this time is that what you’re looking for is not a weapon. It’s a man. You already have everything you need to discover his identity.”

  She could not speak any further. Having a control collar locked around her neck meant the other Arahants could mute her voice. The Sage obediently followed as they walked her through a portal. Then she was gone, removing one path to answers.

  “Knowing the Xian, the weapon is a technique. We can only hope its knowledge is limited to a single person. They do not lightly share their advantages, so it may still be a secret.” Before Winston could get much further in his own speculations, he received an alert from one of his analysts.

  “I have a lead. War Barge Maria made a recruitment trip to a scattering of worlds with Mercom resources deployed to them. She stopped at Aes to draft soldiers. The Reconquest wasn’t very accommodating, but she managed to draft a single elite unit. The leader of that unit is a Xian with an insight described as ‘transforming miasma into cosmic energy’.”

  Winston requisitioned the small personnel file from a server and looked it over. Hector Thoreaux. Newly level eight. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly noteworthy about him other than what was written about his insight. And perhaps his posting. The aerostat that Hector’s group was assigned to protect made his suspicions become certainties. Hector’s location matched where the Dragon had been when Foresight leaned forward and subsequently relaxed.

  This man had drawn the Dragon to him. Then, after some sort of battle, slain it.

  His reflexive query of the central intelligence records returned a much larger file on Hector Thoreaux. He was a long time associate of the Sage of Foresight. At one point he’d served alongside the Sage of Conflagration. He had some form of connection with the Lord General, serving at one point as a leader of the Lord’s retinue while on tour with the Coalition Army. The rough dates of his service with the Reconquest were noted. He’d also volunteered for a mission to Eden. It painted the picture of a restless man with a strong protective drive, but there was nothing to indicate his power set other than the notes from War Barge Maria.

  “Alice, you were close to the front. Did you sense anything through resonance?”

  “The only thing I felt through my realm was the pervasive suppressive effect.”

  Winston couldn’t be satisfied with such a non-answer even if her resonant senses would be unlikely to detect anything other than attack pressure. All Citadels had realms built around force fields. The technology was a distant cousin of gravitonics and could stop anything short of a schism beam. “What about when the explosion happened?”

  “The suppressive effect stopped immediately. Actually, I’d like to amend that. The effect stopped when the Dragon coiled upon itself, a few seconds before the explosion.”

  That was the proof of a resonant conflict he wanted. Hard evidence would have been preferable, but machines couldn’t detect resonance. That ability was exclusive to souls. He trusted Alice enough to accept her testimony.

  A new set of directives went out. He needed to know where the aerostat had fallen and if there were any survivors. Winston doubted this would lead him to Hector Thoreaux. He was certain the Xian left the aerostat to confront the Dragon. But it was a thread to follow.

  Half an hour later, that thread unraveled. The aerostat fell from the sky as a toxic sludge. There was nothing left of it to investigate. Surveillance video did not exist of any arrivals or departures. Once again, the miasma veiled all relevant details from him.

  The next lead arrived without any effort from him. War Barge Maria revealed to one of his agents that her orders to visit Aes while she was recruiting had come from General Cassius. And General Cassius, upon interrogation, explained that the Sage of Foresight suggested including that stop while they met on a neutral world in the run-up to the operation.

  With a magnifying glass held up to the official acts of Cassius, it didn’t take long before something else was discovered. A Cruiser Erin was placed into the second ring of defenders. Why would a cruiser be so near the front? By definition, Cruisers lacked a schism beam. Instead, they had their gravitonics built to support singularity travel. The general admitted he’d been told by Foresight that Cruiser Erin would be essential to evacuating key personnel. Cassius sheepishly admitted he interpreted that advice to mean he might need evacuated.

  Already knowing what he would find, Citadel Winston looked up the identity of the vessel that fled Terra in the aftermath of the battle. Cruiser Erin. Satellites in orbit determined her destination universe when she departed – alpha seven.

  It had been seventeen hours since Cruiser Erin fled. Though there would be a lot of work to substantiate his intuitions, Winston felt confident he knew enough of the truth to reach a preliminary conclusion. Through indirect means, the Sage of Foresight arranged for a Xian dreamer with an appropriate insight to be brought to Terra. She’d also ensured that he would be smuggled off world as soon as his deed was accomplished.

  That let him make a number of assumptions with a decent degree of likelihood. First, Foresight was at odds with the government of President Bluff. Her arrest could have been staged, but Bluff’s people were not competent enough to pull off a sophisticated deception. His second assumption was that Hector was not under the control of any Lord. He would have arrived as part of someone’s retinue if that were the case. Xian were certainly not above playing games, but they made bold moves, none of this subtle misdirection. A third assumption, then… the man who saved Terra was an asset developed by the Reconquest for their own purposes.

  He advanced recommendations for action to central command. Unfortunately, being an intelligence chief did not grant him the authority to mobilize war barges. He wanted two sent out immediately. One to visit alpha seven to see if Cruiser Erin was still present – that seemed improbable given how much time had passed, but it would be foolish not to check. The second war barge would go to Aes and drop off several hundred cyborg special operators with instructions to infiltrate the Reconquest and locate the asset.

  There might be a lot of open questions, but there was at least one thing certain: Mercom needed control of Hector Thoreaux.