"We need someone on the Dreadnaught," Crow was saying. "The Hunters are spread thin, but maybe…"

Ikora finished tucking her feelings away in the place where she put all such feelings: a little ball inside her chest, to deal with at some promised later time. "Not Hunters," she decided aloud.

The spot where Zavala should stand around their war table was conspicuously empty.

"Who are you thinking, then?" Crow dropped his datapad onto the table. He regarded her levelly, with none of the deference that would once have been there. "The Hidden?"

Ikora weighed possibilities, not answering immediately. Chalco would drop everything and go—Eris was a Hunter, as they all so frequently forgot, and Chalco had considered her one of theirs still—but it would mean recalling her from her current assignment. Others of the Hidden, perhaps… but this was the Dreadnaught, not Savathûn's throne world. Where Savathûn laid out cunning traps, Oryx would have laid out simple might.

Dead though the Taken King was, to approach his throne world confidently would require a specific sort of will. A Titan.

They hadn't told Zavala about Eris yet. Ikora told herself she was waiting for the right moment.

"Not the Hidden," she said at last. "And not the Drifter alone. He may have become more reputable in recent years, but regardless, I would not lay this on his shoulders. I would send Deputy Commander Sloane."

"Ah." Crow sounded surprised, but understanding flickered across his face in a moment. "Well, she has more than enough resolve to spare."

"And her connection to Ahsa ought to mitigate any risks caused by the lingering Taken effects." Ikora was speaking half to herself; as she laid it out, it began to seem the obvious course. "Sloane will punch a hole directly through the Dreadnaught, if she must, to get to the bottom of what's going on there."

"We can't let the Dread run amok," Crow agreed. He rubbed a hand across his face and sighed. "Is Zavala…"

He didn't finish the question. Ikora could and did fill it in well enough herself. Zavala was by no means inured to loss, and after the Pale Heart, he still ached. Some wounds, after all, would take a lifetime to heal.

"I'll let him know," Ikora said. "I have no doubt he'll agree with me."

More than willing to leave that conversation to Ikora, Crow nodded simple agreement. "Then we send Sloane."