“I’d heard they were going deep undercover or something,” Mike said. “They went rogue?”

“They went rogue,” General Wesley said. “Which should have been the end of it. But there was an additional… event, the nature of which we’re still trying to figure out and the building is now essentially slagged. What slagged it, why it was slagged, how many of DAG escaped, why they went rogue… All unanswered questions. Except one. The ‘terrorists’ were Bane Sidhe.”

“This ‘Clan’ that names themselves after my family,” Mike said.

“Yes,” Tam said. “And that apparently has SOCOM totally penetrated. Two of the members of DAG were long-service, back to before the war, veterans. Two members did not go rogue. They’re the only people we’ve been able to question. Everything else about the event has been put under a gigantic tarp that is way above our pay level. Everyone that is anyone in the Federation hierarchy wants to pretend nothing ever happened. So then we get to Epetar. Epetar came apart shortly thereafter. The clan head died of lintatai apparently when he realized the entire clan was going out of business. But as a result of some recent actions, especially by Clan O’Neal, the Darhel have opened up about the Bane Sidhe to the level of admitting their existence and admitting that they, the Darhel, are now taking ‘more aggressive’ actions against them.”

“And, again, I say ‘Hooray!’ ” Mike said.

“And I repeat, do we really want to deal with a full-up civil war?” General Wesley said. “The Darhel are the ugly little glue that hold this whole shebang together. This isn’t the Boston Tea Party. If there’s a full-up civil war, the first thing the Darhel will do is use the Fleet to do orbital interdiction and WMD strikes.