The best traps did not rely on prophecy.
They relied on appetite.
Tobias sat with Kvasir in the data annex just before dawn, the palace quiet except for the distant murmur of guards changing rotation. The FMC fleet still hung above No'aar, pretending patience while quietly testing every seam of authority it could find. Tobias felt the strain of being watched by corporate warships, judged by an absent Clansmoot, and measured by SCORPIO's remaining shadow, yet he kept his expression calm. Leadership, he had learned, was often the art of refusing to look as tired as you felt.
"I want a leak," Tobias said quietly.
Kvasir's pleasant expression did not change, but interest brightened behind it like a sharpened coin. "A real leak or a controlled narrative event?" Kvasir asked. Tobias met his eyes. "Controlled," Tobias replied. "Believable enough that a hungry enemy bites, but clean enough that it cannot become real damage if it's mishandled." Kvasir nodded once, already understanding the shape of the plan.
They built the bait together with the precision of two people who understood how lies moved through systems.
Kvasir produced genuine formats pulled from old Dominion-era logistics templates, the kind still used on No'aar because older tech endured where newer tech failed. He embedded accurate refinery codes, correct timestamps, and a plausible routing line that would appear legitimate to anyone who skimmed rather than verified. Tobias provided the human angle, the detail that made lies persuasive: a "quiet transfer" of ultra-pure Dust samples for "medical stabilization research" to be moved offworld under emergency protocols. The lie had just enough truth to feel inevitable.
Trace objected when he was brought in, which Tobias respected.
"This is dangerous," Trace said, voice low, eyes hard. "If they treat it as real, they'll move on it hard." Tobias nodded, because he agreed. "That's why we'll control who can see it," Tobias replied. "And we'll set tripwires that tell us exactly when it's touched." Cassian stood behind them, listening, and when Tobias looked to him, Cassian's reply was simple and steady. "If they bite," Cassian said, "we make their bite cost them."
Kvasir seeded the data packet into a single channel.
Not a broadcast, not a wide leak, but a narrow thread woven into a system that the enemy would expect to be weak: a maintenance authorization hub that had been compromised once by Mordred infiltrators during Chapter Thirteen's erosion campaign. Tobias knew the enemy would keep watching those old cracks, believing they would open again. The packet was tagged with invisible watermarking, nested authentication traps, and a timing signature that would identify not just access, but access speed.
They waited.
Two hours passed without movement, which made Tobias's stomach tighten. Four hours passed, and the FMC fleet maintained its polite orbit, as if bored. Kvasir remained calm, fingers lightly touching his slate like a musician waiting for a cue. Tobias felt prescience itch at him, urging him to search for futures that would not clarify under SCORPIO haze, and he refused. This was not a moment for vision. This was a moment for proof.
At the sixth hour, the trap snapped shut with a soft chime.
Kvasir's slate lit with confirmation, and his pleasant smile sharpened. "Access," he said quietly. "And not from our seeded maintenance watchers." Tobias leaned in, eyes narrowing. "Who?" he asked. Kvasir expanded the trace, and a pattern emerged that made Trace swear under his breath.
The packet had been accessed from an FMC relay node.
It had been accessed quickly enough to suggest the operator was already waiting for something like it to appear. It had been pulled, copied, and routed through a classification channel that did not belong to corporate systems at all. The destination signature was masked, but the masking itself had a style, a discipline, and a scarcity of error that made Kvasir's eyes brighten with grim satisfaction. "This is not a contractor's hand," Kvasir murmured. "This is someone who knows how to make a trail look natural."
Tobias felt cold certainty settle into him.
"Show me the watermark," Tobias said.
Kvasir did, and the watermark revealed the most damning detail. The access signature matched an anomaly pattern identical to the one Kvasir had identified in the diverted Dust shipment records, the old web of false reassignments and dead relay transmissions that should not have existed. Tobias stared at the screen, feeling the offworld corridor from his vision sharpen in memory like a knife. The same hidden hand that had seeded illicit Dust routes years ago was now watching No'aar through FMC eyes.
Trace's jaw tightened. "So the blockade isn't just political," he said. "It's cover." Tobias nodded once, slow. "And the 'protection' story is a mask," Tobias replied, voice calm but heavy. "They're not here to keep people out. They're here to control what leaves."
Cassian stepped forward, voice steady. "If they're biting this fast, they're ready to act on it," he said. Tobias met his gaze. "Then we control the next move," Tobias replied. He turned to Kvasir. "Feed a second packet," he ordered. "Not as obvious. Make it look like the first leak was accidental and this is the cleanup." Kvasir nodded, delighted by the craft of it despite the stakes.
The second packet was a whisper rather than a lure.
It implied a private transfer window at a specific orbital lane, timed to coincide with a Merwyn reef-cargo rotation, the kind of overlap that would tempt someone to hide activity beneath legitimate movement. Tobias layered the packet with additional tripwires, including a signature that would reveal whether SCORPIO's remaining squad had been bypassed or whether someone inside Imperial networks was involved. He did not tell SCORPIO about the trap, because SCORPIO had its own loyalties, and Tobias needed clean proof before he invited their shadow into his plan.
The bite came again.
This time, the access did not route solely through FMC infrastructure. It touched a node that Kvasir identified as Imperial-adjacent, a dead relay that should not have transmitted and yet did. Tobias felt his blood go cold, because it meant the hidden hand could reach into both corporate and Imperial systems with equal ease. The anomaly signature flared again, and Tobias remembered the voice from his dream.
You are late.
He did not speak of the dream aloud.
Instead, Tobias issued silent orders to Cassian. "Second Squadron remains dark," he said. "But task group three shifts closer. If they attempt a physical move, I want a blade already in position." Cassian nodded and transmitted the orders through tightbeam bursts, ensuring the FMC fleet would see nothing until it was too late to pretend innocence.
By the time the sun began to dip toward the ocean, Tobias had what he needed.
Not a confession, not a captured spy, but proof that the blockade's polite posture was a façade concealing deeper intent. The FMC fleet was acting as a mask for someone else's objectives, and that someone else had fingerprints that matched the old diverted Dust web. Tobias stared at the hololith, watching the corporate ships hang above No'aar like silent teeth, and he understood the shape of the coming conflict more clearly than prescience had ever shown him.
If the enemy could hide behind contracts, then law alone would not save No'aar.
Tobias would need to make their hunger visible.
And he would need to do it before the Clansmoot decided what story the Imperium would believe.