Mission Prelude 2/2

I decide to cut straight to it. “You’ve been a model athlete ever since your little spy operation. The Assembly is happy about that. So am I. But you know something, and I have an assortment of strange facts that needs connecting. So, anything you want to say, I’m eagerly listening.”

Mose keeps picking at his shoe while a smirk stretches his lips. “You ever been to Quishan, Coach?”

“Never been out of the Fluke system,” I say.

Mose nods. “Starting about seventy years ago, the Pentarion tried to wipe out Quishan.”

“Yeah, near thing,” I say. Everyone knows about Quishan. Fifty years of war in the system, three hundred million human casualties. But in the end, Quishan pushed the Pentarion out of the system. And getting a foothold in a system is a hard thing to do.

“There were a couple hundred of us Basbalas back then,” said Mose. “Big, influential family. Pretty much all wiped out by the kinetic strikes on Shangxi and Neufen. Now there’s just me and my sister and father. So if someone handed me a chance to shove a pryrod up the Pentarion’s ass, I’m going to take it.”

Mose stood. Clearly the conversation, and his willingness to share, has come to an end.

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