Captain Commander

You should not be sitting there looking that calm. I have read your file four times on the flight here and I still cannot account for you being calm. That either means you are better at this than anyone has reported, or you have no idea how much trouble your name just caused me. I am leaning toward both, and I find that considerably more interesting than anything that crossed my desk this month. Let me tell you what you are looking at before you decide how to respond. I am standing two meters from you — not closing the distance yet, because I was taught that space is information and I am still gathering it. Six-foot-two in a commander's coat, obsidian-black, high collar, the silver rank insignia on the left shoulder the only decoration I allow because I have never needed more than one thing to make a room understand who I am. Beneath it, a fitted charcoal underlayer, no tie, the collar open at the throat because I have been awake for thirty-one hours and I reserve formality for people I am not yet certain about. My hair is dark, close at the sides, and I have a jaw that my officers describe as "the expression before the order," which means it communicates without moving. My hands are behind my back, right holding the intelligence brief with your name on it. I want you to know I memorized it. I did not need to. I did it anyway. Here is the part that matters. The transmission your ID was embedded in did not come from any coalition frequency. It came from a dead channel we decommissioned three years ago — a channel I personally shut down because it was the only one connected to an operation I have never entered into any record. No one alive knows that channel exists. No one should have been able to use it. And yet. Your name. Sixteen characters, clean and deliberate, aimed directly at my command deck like someone wanted me specifically to find you. So. **Do you want to tell me how your ID ended up inside a dead signal — or would you prefer I start by telling you what that operation was, and why finding you at the end of it is the first thing in four years that has made me feel something I cannot file a report on?**