Selene’s voice softens, just enough to become more human. “You’re saying you didn’t have the luxury of waiting for perfect data.”
“I never had perfect data,” I reply, and the bitterness in that sentence is not aimed at her, but at the premise of the charge that implies commanders can simply choose safety like a menu item. “I had probabilities. I had projections. I had the corridor plotted wide of hazard arcs based on the last stable telemetry. It was the best available option.”
She slides the timeline forward to 13:57. “This is when you issue the order.”
“Yes.”
“What do you say?” she asks, and the question is blunt enough to be almost rude, but I understand what she is doing; she wants to hear my words so she can picture the moment as it was, not as the prosecution painted it.
I exhale slowly. “I authorized immediate evacuation through Vector A-Prime. I ordered civilian traffic prioritized over fleet repositioning. I remember telling my tactical officer—” My voice catches slightly on the word, because I can see him again, his scales split along one cheek, his eyes bright with fear as the bridge shook. “—I remember saying, ‘If we lose the bay, we lose them all. Move them now.’”
Selene’s jaw tightens, and she looks down at the projection as if the grid might hide her reaction.
“What happens after 13:57?” she asks.
I let my eyes trace the corridor line in pale light. “At 13:59, our outer relay begins to degrade. The comms crackle becomes… inconsistent. We receive partial telemetry, then gaps. Tactical updates arrive, but they are delayed by seconds, then by minutes.”
She glances up. “And then blackout.”
“At 14:00,” I confirm. “The relay drops. Not slowly. It just—” I snap my fingers once, the sound sharp in the sterile room. “—stops. The grid goes quiet. We still have local sensor returns, but anything beyond the immediate defensive perimeter becomes a haze.”
Selene’s eyes flick to the ghosted interval on the timeline. “So by the time the corridor recalibrates at 14:01, you’re blind.”
“Yes.”
One of the tribunal officers clears his throat softly, as if reminding us that words like blind might carry weight on record, but he says nothing, and the silence returns like a lid.
Selene leans closer to the projection. “Explain something to me,” she says, voice lower, more intimate despite the recording node. “In the prosecution summary, they keep acting like you watched the corridor drift into artillery and just shrugged. Did you even know it drifted?”
A pulse of anger moves through me, sharp and hot, and for a moment I taste smoke in my mouth as if the bridge is burning again.
“No,” I say, and the word is heavy. “I did not know. I did not receive the recalibration. I did not authorize it. In those minutes, my screens showed the corridor as plotted. My last verified vector remained the safe arc.”
Selene’s expression tightens. “Then how the hell?—”
She stops herself, glancing toward the officers, then continues in a more controlled tone. “Then how does the corridor line shift without your knowledge?”
I hold her gaze now, because the question deserves honesty. “It shifts because someone with access to the corridor mapping system issued an override after my order, while my communications were down.”
She exhales slowly through her nose, the sound sharp. “And you suspected that back then.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you raise it?” she demands, and the question lands with the weight of personal loss behind it even if she tries to keep her voice professional. “If you suspected it, why didn’t you scream it across every channel you had?”
The binders hum as my hands tighten. I do not like that question, not because it is unfair, but because it is correct.
“Because I had no proof,” I answer, and my voice comes out rougher than intended. “Because when the ceasefire negotiations began, the Coalition was ready to tear the League apart for any sign of betrayal. If I accused League command interference without evidence, our envoys would have been pulled from the table, fleets would have mobilized, and the war would have ignited again.”
Selene’s eyes flash. “So you traded the truth for stability.”
“I traded immediate retaliation for time,” I reply, and I can hear the faint tremor beneath my control. “I told myself that if the war ended, if the guns went quiet, then there would eventually be room to investigate. I told myself that my execution would be a cleaner price than another century of blood.”
Her mouth twists. “You told yourself a lot of things.”
“Yes.”
“And meanwhile,” she says, voice sharpening, “my parents stayed dead, and everyone got to point at you and say, ‘There. Problem solved.’”
