[LEGACY VERSION] The Enemy of Time (Book 2 - The Kaireyeh Chronicles)

Chapter 27 - Jonas

Jonas stood by the bulkhead behind Admiral Kosef, stiff in his white and silver Armada dress uniform. Like a good admiral's aide, he didn't focus on any of the participants around the table in Kalec's conference room, but he took in everything. Across the room from him, the aides to Vice Admiral Carmen Miyute and Rear Admiral Sirian Onayama did the same.

He couldn't encrypt again, so Kalec's doctor had dyed his hair and skin darker and gave him dark lenses to block out the distinctive blue of his eyes. The dye gave his skin a constant, low-grade itch, but the crew of the The Robber Prince no longer shot him looks of outright hostility as he passed. He didn't look like Landon Kynaston anymore. Jonas wouldn't trade the itch for anything.

"Why would Zivali move her fleets away from Aijas System?" Admiral Miyute asked, her husky voice rising. "There's only a skeleton fleet patrolling the home system now. It's an idiot maneuver, and Zivali's not an idiot, so this is either a very compelling trap or her business elsewhere is something we should be concerned about." She leaned back, shoulders loose, dark eyes sharp in her hawkish features.

"I am inclined to think the latter," Kosef said. "Zivali is chasing something elsewhere." He sat composed--above the table. Beneath the table, one hand beat a silent rhythm on his leg.

"What are your reasons for this assumption?" Admiral Onayama asked. Her hands were folded in front of her, her face icily calm. She wasn't as outwardly brazen as Miyute, but Jonas knew better than to think she was sedate--he had served on her flagship his first tour. Everyone, including the flag captain, had lived in fear of her towering tirades. "Zivali leaves Aijas open, so of course we will move in. Then she will descend upon us and break out backs. The last I've heard, she has at least five fleets under her command. Of course this is a trap."

"It's a trap because if we act on it, we might succeed," Kosef said. "She wants us to take the chance, or be preoccupied with trying to find the loophole. Meanwhile, she's bringing another factor into play, and I can guarantee we won't like it. You know Edora. She thinks on twenty different levels." He grimaced, but no one said anything about how Zivali had outmaneuvered him. She'd outmaneuvered all of them.

"Why Avren?" Miyute asked. "If your projections of her course are right--Avren suffered too hard in the Fall to be of much strategic or economic use. The shipyards are gone from Kilkenny and Yangtze. Nothing she finds out there will be worth giving up the home system."

"Unless she captures Landon Kynaston," Onayama said, her eyes on Kosef.

Miyute scoffed. "Kosef, I don't believe any of that Void shit. I don't believe the propaganda, I don't believe you had anything to do with it, and I certainly don't think she got Wycliffe to confess to being Caelian."

Jonas shifted--a tell, he knew, and one the other aides would mark, but he couldn't help it. Kalec had told him who Grand Ciren Wycliffe was, and now he saw red every time he heard the name. His father was not only alive, but Jonas had met him, both with his adoptive parents when he was younger and later as an officer. He hadn't known. Had Wycliffe known who he was? Wycliffe had been sharp and charismatic, all smiles in his rough peasant Sayri face. Jonas hadn't liked him.

"And what of your current allies?" Miyute asked, squinting at the room around her. Kalec wasn't there--that would have been imprudent--but there were no illusions that this wasn't Kalec's famous flagship. "Should I trust they're not controlling you? Blackmailing you? Promising you a new Imperial Navy?"

Kosef snorted. "With Kalec, it would be the Sayri Royal Navy, not Imperial," he said, "and no, strangely, that offer has not been made."

Miyute's brows went up.