It didn't take long for the three of us to get back, the eyes of our squadmates fixing on us as we took our seats.
"Cat, show them." Ty wasted no time, giving the order to our ace.
"Roger that." With a few taps on her console, Cat projected a new image onto the center console.
"What am I looking at?" Auri asks.
"The map inside your Trigger highlighted twenty-two stars in total," Cat replies. "I've plotted those systems onto the known segments of the galaxy."
"Took her a while," Finian says. "She couldn't tell just by looking at them."
"There's around two hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, Skinnyboy. I don't have all of 'em memorized."
He sniffs. "I thought you were supposed to be good at this."
"Shut up, Finian." Cat retorts before tapping a few more commands on her console, and twenty-two tiny points of red flare out among those billions of suns. "Most of the systems highlighted on the map are unexplored. And a lot are a deep trek from here, even Folding. But it turns out every one of them sits on a known weak spot in the Fold."
"They all have naturally occurring gates?" Kal asks.
"Looks like, yeah." She taps another series of commands. "And you're never going to guess the closest system to our current coordinates."
My eyes widen as I lean forward in my seat to get a better look. The system looks vaguely familiar, but I can't place why. Had this been something else my uncle had slipped into my studies when I was younger?
"Octavia," Aurora whispers.
It was all too coincidental. Nothing had made sense about the supposed Octavia colonies, but now there was too much evidence to deny that this was our next move.
I made eye contact with Ty, raising an eyebrow. He nodded, as if knowing we were thinking the same thing.
"So riddle me this, legionnaires," Tyler says. "Say you're the GIA and there's a system you don't want people visiting. And say you can't just lock its gate down because it's at a naturally occurring Fold spot. How do you keep folks from poking their nose in?"
"Maybe you make up a story about some deadly atmospheric virus," Scarlett murmurs.
"Maybe it's no story," I added. "Zila said those colonists in the GIA uniforms were dead before Kal got to them. Maybe they were infected with the virus this Interdiction is warning us about."
"So why change the records to point toward Lei Gong?"Auri asks. "Why delete any record of the Octavia colony existing? Why chase down the last person with any remaining link to the place?"
Tyler folds his arms across his broad chest. "I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting the feeling there's something on Octavia that the GIA doesn't want us to see. Or more importantly, something they don't want Auri to see."
"Ra'haam," Zila murmurs.
Kal nods. "Beware."
"Bellerophon is within comms distance," Scar reports. "They're hailing us."
"Main display," Tyler orders.
I find myself holding my breath as the new image replaces the visual of the Octavia system, not sarong at the pristine white mirror mask and suit that we know as Princeps. Seeing the TDF logo behind him makes my stomach sour. How much of our lives has been rigged by these GIA goons and the Ra'haam controlling them?
"Good morning, Princeps," Tyler says.
"LEGIONNAIRE JONES," the figure replies. "YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MURDER OF GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY PERSONNEL, AIDING AND ABETTING A WANTED FUGITIVE AND VIOLATION OF COUNTLESS AURORA LEGION REGULATIONS."
