“And you say it’s not these Bane Sidhe bastards?” Mike asked with a snort.

“We were informed that they had nothing to do with it,” Tam said. “After the incident with the agent we became officially aware of the Bane Sidhe. And with official awareness we could open up the sort of back-channels that always exist between intelligence groups. They are insistent that they had nothing to do with General Stewart’s death. Then there’s the other kicker.”

“Don’t leave me waiting,” Mike said.

“From our perspective, prior to this incident, the Protocol is that we don’t investigate pre-war contact between the Darhel and humans and the Darhel stop killing off our investigation teams. It wasn’t until we established a back-channel to the Bane Sidhe that we found out about the other side, that if the Darhel kill military personnel the Bane Sidhe start killing Darhel again.”

“So are they on our side or what?” Mike asked.

“You begin to understand the complexity,” Tam said. “Thus on to the next level. A year ago there was a major shake-up among the Darhel. Among other things, the Epetar Group went out of business and the Clan Leader suffered lintatai.”

“Hooray,” Mike said with a grin.

“Yeah, great,” Tam said. “The problem being, it wasn’t just bad business practices. At least, not the normal sort. What, exactly, happened I’m not even too sure. But we know the following. There was an Epetar facility here on Earth conducting classified research having to do with ‘neurological interfacing.’ ”

“I thought the Darhel were dead set against that,” Mike said.

“Well, for one thing, their research wasn’t anything to do with neurological interfacing,” Tam said. “What, exactly, they were researching we’re not too sure. What we’re sure of is that SOCOM got a heads up that there might be a ‘terrorist’ attack on the facility. There was such an attack. DAG was sent in to secure the facility and arrest the terrorists. DAG, instead, switched sides.”