"Drew Ramsey. Show me the numbers."
Selmak's voice came up through Jacob's throat at 1147 at the half-octave-older register Selmak used in council, and Jacob's posture did not shift inside the chair. He held the silent-host the way Selmak had asked him to hold it. The asking was the message. The Tok'ra council was on the call. Selmak was not Jacob's friendship. Selmak was the Tok'ra and Selmak was telling me, in five words, that the negotiation was the council's procedure and not a favor.
I laughed.
The laugh came out before I had decided whether to let it. It was one beat, soft, and the laugh was the sound a man made when he caught himself recognizing the technique a colleague was using on him because the colleague had picked the technique up from him in the first place. Show me the numbers was the line I had said in eleven different SRD meetings since day twenty-seven. Selmak had been on the secure-comm for two of them. Selmak had been listening to me longer than I had thought.
Walter, at the console outside the office, lifted his head and looked toward the door.
AURORA-7 catalogued the heart-rate signature at the back of my skull at a register I had not heard from her since the Hathor brief on day seventy-five.
Non-stress positive affect. First instance since day eighty-two.
"Acknowledged. Selmak. I will show you the numbers."
I brought the six-line strategic display up on the side screen. The lines were clean — operational reserves, projected burn rate across the three-day window, the price Earth could credibly pay at fourteen percent over standard market with a six-week settlement window, the collateral I was prepared to put up against late settlement, the broader fleet-cost-sharing renegotiation I was not asking for in this window.
Selmak read the lines in nine seconds. Jacob's hands did not move.
"Fourteen percent is a fair number for a war-window. We are prepared to ratify at fourteen with a five-week settlement. The collateral on late settlement is unnecessary. The broader fleet-cost-sharing renegotiation: deferred."
"Acknowledged."
"There is a council member who will require an additional half-percent. He is not pleased that Earth's emergency exists. The half-percent is not the cost of the emergency, it is the cost of his face in council. Are you willing to give him the face."
"Fourteen point five."
"Done. The council will ratify at sixteen-thirty council-time. The supply leaves the depot at twenty-three-hundred council-time. Your gate will dial at oh-one-thirty council-time."
"Thank you."
"Drew Ramsey."
"Yes."
"You are welcome."
The call cut.
Jacob shifted. Selmak retreated. Jacob's hand came up and rubbed the back of his own neck the way Jacob did when Selmak had been at the surface for longer than Jacob's posture-tolerance allowed.
"That was easy," Jacob said.
"That was Selmak's gift."
"It was. She likes you."
"She likes the numbers."
"Drew." Jacob smiled. "She likes you. The numbers are how she shows it."
He stood. He left.
I closed the strategic display. I sat with the negotiation closed and the resource reserve secured and the smaller second negotiation — the one I had been carrying since the first laugh — still to come.
Walter brought me coffee at 1207. He set it on the desk. He did not say anything about the laugh. He turned to leave and at the door he said, without turning:
"Sir. It was good to hear that."
He left.
Kaleb's back-channel opened at 1530.
The channel was not a Serrakin commercial channel. It was the secure-comm Reka had set up on day sixty-two for her own private signaling out of the Hebridan internal political registry — the channel I had been using since to route low-grade Serrakin-side intelligence past Kaleb's commercial-council observation layer. Reka had given me the channel-key after Tarn approved her sabotage protocol. She had given it to me a second time three weeks ago, by writing the rotation update on the back of a coffee napkin and sliding it across the table at the joint engineering review without saying anything aloud.
Kaleb opening the channel meant Kaleb knew about it. Kaleb knew because Reka had told him. Reka had told him because Tarn was dead and Reka was now on the Hebridan list and the Hebridan list ran through Kaleb's commercial council and Reka had spent her channel-key as collateral for whatever Kaleb had given her in the eleven hours since the P6Y-112 evacuation.
I did not blame Reka.
I picked up.
"Director Ramsey."
"Kaleb."
"I will not waste the channel. The naquadah supply is yours. I will release the Serrakin commercial freeze at sixteen-hundred your time, and the delivery that has been suspended will arrive at your gate at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow. There is, however, a thing I would consider, as a gesture of partnership in a difficult window."
"Tell me."
"The ATHENA-3 propulsion-architecture schematics. As compensation for the freeze, and as a foundation for the next phase of the alliance. The full archive. We will sign a non-redistribution clause. Your terms."
I counted four seconds.
"No, Kaleb. The schematics are not for sale and they are not for trade. The naquadah comes through the Tok'ra. We will renegotiate the broader trade agreement after the war. Release the Serrakin freeze or do not release it. The choice is yours."
A half-second of silence.
"We will speak again, Director."
"We will."
The channel closed.
I sat with the closed channel and the silence and AURORA-7's cool register at the back of my skull.
Drew.
"Yes."
The Serrakin freeze will not be released. Kaleb has just paid for the channel-key with intelligence Reka could not afford to lose. The cost-curve to Reka was non-trivial. The cost-curve to Kaleb was the same channel-key. He cannot use it again without making the loss public to his council. We have approximately three weeks before the channel is dead.
"Log it."
Logged.
"Tell Walter to add a parallel comm channel to Reka through her existing field-engineer network. She will need a clean one in three weeks and she should not have to ask us for it."
Acknowledged.
I drank the coffee Walter had brought me at 1207. It had gone cold at 1422. I drank it cold.
The L4.7 transition came at 2014.
I had been at the desk for the entire afternoon. The Prometheus refit schedule — the eleven-day off-line window for the ATHENA-3 propulsion-efficiency upgrade — had been signed at 1716. Tarn-ko's casualty card had been formally entered into the SGC personnel database at 1758. Reka had pinged me a single character through the Reka-channel at 1840 — a Hebridan glyph that translated as thank you, with grief — and I had returned the glyph at 1841. The exchange had cost no tokens because Reka's channel was on a substrate AURORA-7 was not running encryption for, the way the channel had been built by Reka to be invisible to her own council and now also to mine.
At 2014 AURORA-7 came up at a register that was not the cool register and was not the strategic-display register.
Drew. Your sync has stabilized at fifty-four percent. Level marker L4.7. The L5 transition window is now seven to nine chapters out.
I held still at the desk.
"Acknowledged."
Do you wish to log a milestone observation.
"No."
Acknowledged.
I did not feel the level-up. I had felt L3 to L4 at the cold console rail on day seventy-one — the warm pressure at the base of my skull, the half-second of expanded perception, the sense of stepping into a room that was the same room with one more window in it. I did not feel L4 to L4.7. The room was the same room. The window count had not increased that I could see. The strategic display held its carmine on P6Y-112. The Replicator block-count at the bottom of the display read forty-seven. The Tok'ra naquadah was at the gate in eleven hours. Tarn-ko was on the wall. Reka was on her field-engineer network. Kaleb was three weeks from a dead channel and we both knew it.
I returned to work.
I drafted the next-phase disruption-protocol authorization for Sam-Rothman. I drafted the casualty notification letter for Tarn-ko's wife and daughter on Hebridan that Walter would route through Selmak's discreet courier on the morning. I drafted the operational update for Hammond's 0700 brief. The drafts were clean. The drafts came faster than they had two weeks ago. The room was the same room.
The absence of the felt level-up was the chapter's quietest beat. I noticed it at 2117 when I was uncapping the Raytheon to sign a routine paper and my hand moved without the pre-stroke pause I had been making for the last forty days. The pre-stroke pause had been the body's small who is about to sign this check. The check had cleared without my noticing because the answer was already filed at the level I was operating at now.
I capped the Raytheon at 2147.
I went home.
I went to Janet's, not the apartment.
She was awake. She had been waiting. She did not ask about the day. She had heard about Tarn from Jacob at 1830 — Jacob had called the infirmary directly, the way Jacob did when the death was someone Drew had named to him as personally weighted — and she had been holding what she had been holding since 1830.
She held me in the front hall for forty seconds without speaking.
Cassandra came down the stairs at 2241. She paused on the second-from-bottom step. She looked at me. She looked at Janet. She did not say anything. She turned and went back upstairs. The pause had been three seconds. AURORA-7 catalogued the pause at the back of my skull without raising it.
Janet led me to the kitchen.
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
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