Atrophy by Jess Anastasi Page B

plate.
    “Do you have a commpad?” he asked instead of answering her question.
    She sat to the side, pulled her device out of her pocket, and handed it over. Tannin secured it to the crystal screen and transferred information.
    “I found some of your brother’s military records. In return for what was no doubt the hacking equivalent of playing chicken with a landing battle-cruiser, don’t tell him they came from me.”
    He’d gotten the military records for her? Surprise and elated anticipation shot through her as she sat straighter and reached over to grab Tannin’s hand.
    “Thank you so much. And I promise, if he finds out, I’ll just tell him I hired someone to find them for me or something. He’ll never know it was you.”
    “Don’t get too excited. There’s not much in them, only the basic stuff you could probably find out anywhere. There are other reports, but they’re buried deep. It would take time I probably don’t have to access them. Even then, I don’t know if I could get to them without tripping some insane security measures.”
    She squeezed his hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll take whatever you’ve got. It’s a start, and it’ll be more than I had before.”
    His lips lifted in a half-smile, his fingers shifting to grip hers in return. And even though she’d taken his hand in excitement without thinking about it, now the warmth and sensation of his fingers twined with her traveled up her arm at hyper-speed and spread through the rest of her body on a low, swelling wave.
    She tugged her hand free, dropping her gaze to the commpad as it beeped. A grin flashed over Tannin’s lips as he handed the commpad to her then picked up his fork and dug into the food she’d brought him.
    Opening the new files, she found them listed in date order, from when Rian had joined the military to all the postings he’d taken over the years. She’d heard bits and pieces about most of them, particularly the eight months he’d spent on Minnea, cut off from supplies and barely surviving. But the report that most interested her was the last one before he went missing.
    After Minnea, Rian had risen enough in rank to get off the ground and found a posting onboard a medium-sized battle-cruiser called the Lone Cadence . He’d been serving on it for about six months when the entire vessel went missing, the crew presumed KIA, though no wreckage had ever been found.
    That was the point in time where Rian’s stories started getting hazy. All she knew was that somehow he was the only survivor and had been captured by the Reidar. Her guess was they’d tortured him. He never admitted or denied it; she’d pieced that together from his nightmares and random things he said every now and then.
    The military records listed Rian as presumed KIA with the rest of the crew, and then there was a gap of three years before he was re-commissioned on one of the outer waystations. He had returned to his old rank of lieutenant captain, but then quickly moved up the ranks, many of the entries marked as special assignment with redacted information and a reference number to what was obviously another file.
    The only full report was one of the final ones, the solo mission Rian had taken that had literally changed the course of the war and guaranteed the IPC’s victory. Zahli guessed the reason for its inclusion was because it was common knowledge.
    She sighed and sat back again, a little deflated. She’d read through everything more thoroughly later on, to see if she could glean any clues, but it hadn’t been anywhere near what she’d hoped for.
    “Nothing useful?”
    At Tannin’s question, she glanced up to see he’d finished his meal and was regarding her with a steady gaze.
    “Nothing leaps out, but I only flicked through. I’ll have a closer look later.”
    He nodded, and started to say something else, but the sudden temporal-shift out of void-space cut him off. He grabbed the edge of the table, shaking his head a little. After so