“I want the math,” I answer.
She glances at me sideways. “Math doesn’t give closure.”
“No,” I agree. “But it does give blame somewhere to land.”
Her mouth tightens. “Careful with that.”
I don’t respond, because she’s right, and because I don’t need advice about caution from someone who doesn’t have senators calling her compromised on live broadcast.
The telemetry dataset loads slowly, the system spooling up like an old engine in winter. Finally, the projection field blooms with shuttle icons—hundreds of tiny markers—each one representing a civilian vessel that once held breath and fear and prayers.
My throat tightens without permission.
“Pull Kirell orbit, evacuation day,” I say, voice steady only because I force it. “Timeframe 13:50 to 14:15 local orbital.”
The archivist keys it in, then leans back, arms crossed. “Here you go. Try not to cry on my console.”
I huff once, not quite a laugh. “No promises.”
The map resolves: Kirell’s orbital grid in municipal resolution, less glamorous than military displays, but more raw in its honesty. Instead of polished overlays, it shows flight paths like scratches on glass, shuttle trajectories marked by real-time corrections and jittering deviations.
I overlay the tribunal’s corridor map on top of it, pulling the twelve-minute window into bright focus.
13:57 — initial evacuation order.
14:01 — corridor recalibration.
My fingers hover, then I drag the timeline forward.
At 13:57, shuttle icons begin moving along the expected safe arc, their paths smooth enough to almost lull you into believing the universe can behave.
At 14:01, the entire swarm shifts.
Not because artillery forces them.
Not because pilots panic.
Because their nav guidance updates.
The whole pattern bends inward toward a vector that cuts dangerously close to a protected movement lane.
The archivist leans forward. “What the hell is that?”
I swallow. “That’s the corridor shift.”
“That’s not a drift,” she says sharply. “That’s a reroute.”
“Yes.”
I overlay convoy vector classification layers, not from tribunal logs—those are too controlled—but from municipal emergency traffic monitoring that flagged unusual “priority shield corridors” during wartime. The layer loads, and a faint gold line appears: a protected convoy lane, shielded by emergency priority protocols that civilians were never supposed to see.
And the corridor shift aligns with it.
My skin prickles.
“It redirected them toward a protected convoy vector,” I whisper, the words tasting like bile.
The archivist’s eyes widened. “You’re saying someone shoved civilians into danger to protect… what? Cargo?”
