"Someone managed to infect them with your paranoia. They now think the Tsavitee have infiltrated the Consortium and want to expel all humans from this planet. There is also talking about dissolving the alliance." Jace said, acid dripping from his voice.
"Ah, that," Kira said lamely.
Damn, she wished she'd kept her mouth shut. The Tuann suspecting the Tsavitee had adapted enough to hide among humans would spell the end of the alliance.
"Luckily, they need the emperor's approval for that, so we have some time to warn our people to prepare," Raider said.
"Why would you tell them that?" Jace snapped. It was hard to separate the emotions in that question. They were all tangled together. Anger primarily, with a side of hurt and fury. "Especially when you know it's not true."
Except it was true. The humans didn't want to accept it, but their determined blindness didn't change the facts.
Kira had no words to explain so she kept silent, as she always did.
"I know you hate us, but do you really want us dead?" Jace asked.
She flinched inside.
"She's not lying," Jin said, drifting down from his spot near the ceiling.
"Jin, enough," Kira said tiredly.
"The cat's out of the bag now. Might as well paint them the full picture," Jin said stubbornly.
"Stop trying to dredge up ancient history," Kira said. "Just leave it alone."
"Not this time," he told her. He turned to the other two. "We've known for a long time there were Tsavitee sleeper agents among the Consortium. It's partially why we left."
"Bullshit," Jace said, his denial instantaneous and complete.
It didn't surprise Kira. She knew how hard it was to accept a betrayal of that magnitude. She'd done her own battle with denial when the truth had been shoved in her face.
Jin didn't respond in words. He knew as well as she did that without tangible proof there was little chance of Jace believing them. He'd live in the land of denial, just as he always had.
Jin projected a small stream of light onto Kira's bed. Over her legs, a small hologram took shape. A tiny Kira stood on the real Kira's knee, the faded outline of a space station taking shape around her. Her face was covered in blood from a cut on her forehead, and her eyes glittered with rage.
Crouched in front of her was a Tsavitee drudge, class one. Small and agile, it was the perfect agent when it came to fitting into small spaces—making them the ideal candidate for infiltrating space stations.
They spawned at an alarming rate. A single class one could create enough offspring to overrun a station in a window of ten days or less.
The recorded scene had taken place not long ago on New Neptune, a space station in the no man's land between systems. It wasn't quite under Consortium control, but it was operated primarily by humans.
Until this encounter, the station had been her preferred offloading point for the junk she salvaged. After the attack, she made sure to avoid it and any other stations in that quadrant.
The Kira on the hologram turned into a whirling, dancing dervish, her edge blade flashing as she carved up the Tsavitee as they attacked in mass.
The hologram ended with her standing over the bodies, panting with exhaustion before she jerked in response to something off camera.
"That happened three months ago on a human-controlled station," Jin said.
The two men had grown quiet as they watched Kira battle for her life.
Jace looked sick as he scrubbed a hand over his face. "All this proves is the Tsavitee are up to their old tricks."
"They were waiting for us," Kira said, finally speaking. "A human contact of mine told them where we'd be and when. That person was the only one who knew I frequented the station."
"We've known they had a line into the Consortium for a while," Jin said. "We first suspected after Idra. Too many things went wrong on that planet. We launched an investigation, kept things quiet."
Jace shook his head, not wanting to believe it.
"Think, Knight. You're too smart to have not suspected something was wrong. Battles where they knew where we would be long before we did," Jin pressed. "Ambushes, where we lost so many. The only way they would have had that information is if someone fed it to them."
Raider nodded. "I agree. What he says makes sense."
"If you knew this, why didn't you tell anyone," Jace burst out. "Why didn't you warn us?"
Kira withdrew. She should have expected the question and the underlying blame, the betrayal that throbbed in his voice. She deserved it for not having seen the writing on the wall sooner. It hurt, nonetheless.
"We did," Jin said simply.
Both men looked at him, surprise and disbelief in their eyes. Kira held herself stiff and expressionless.
"We told Himoto. By then you already had the alliance with the Tuann. He said if it got out there were traitors among the humans, it would end any hope of keeping that alliance," Jin said.
"Why didn't you say something to us?" Jace asked.
Kira stirred. "By the time I put everything together and had proof, it was too late. The war was long over."
"You couldn't have said something before?" Jace asked.
"Kira was hurt during the Falling," Jin said, referencing one of the biggest battles of the war, the one that had turned the tide. "She was in a coma for the last three years of the war. She only woke up about seven years ago. That’s when all this came out."
Both men stared at her in shock. This, more than anything else had surprised them.
Kira fidgeted in the bed, trying to avoid their eyes. Their pity cut deeper than any wound, to a place she'd done her best to spackle over and call healed.
"A coma?" Jace's voice was soft.
She jerked her shoulders up in assent.
"Why didn't any of us know?" he asked.
"Himoto didn't want the Tsavitee learning the ignition weapon and the Phoenix were the same thing," Kira said softly. "When I woke up, the worlds had moved on."
Her friends had also moved on. Each one happy or at least thriving, since her disappearance.
By then, Kira's legacy as a hero had faded, tarnished by the misinformation and her disappearance.
Her friends were convinced she was a coward for abandoning them on the cusp of victory. Many of her former peers noted her absence in the past three years of the war and blamed her for not being there.
"It's fine. Being a salvager suits me. No politics to dance around." Her smile was strained.
Himoto had been the one who made that possible. He'd gotten her a bonus for her contributions to the war effort. It'd been enough to buy her home and business.
Jace didn't look particularly comforted by her words. He looked shocked, his expression blank as he stared into the distance.
Raider's expression was more reserved, his thoughts harder to guess.
To be honest, she hadn't thought either of them felt enough anymore to care. It was all water under the bridge at this point. They'd all survived. It was enough.
"He let us think you'd betrayed us," Jace said, emotion throbbing in his voice. His eyes were glassy as he shook his head, walking out of the room without another word, his expression lost and confused.