He rubbed his eyes, forced himself to focus—1200 ship time. It had officially been three days since Ash had been sedated and thrown back in a cell. He hated not seeing her, not knowing if she was hurting, if she was trapped in nightmares. Not knowing if she blamed him for all this. He blamed himself. If he’d trusted his gut instinct before she escaped and had dug harder into the evidence, he might have discovered something significant. He might have been able to avoid the crash on Ephron, the assassination of Chancellor Hagan, and the fall down the DFC. He might have been able to avoid marching them into an ambush. He fisted his hands on his desk. He should have known the trek to the outpost was too easy, but they’d been overconfident and desperate, and they’d relied on fabricated transmissions sent to them by, ironically, one of the cryptology officers assigned to Operation Star Dive. At least they’d been beaten by an anomaly, not by a rank-and-file crypty. Rykus’s chair squeaked when he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees.
