CITE STATUTORY AUTHORITY TO PROCEED.
My jaw tightens. I select the statute: Evidence Reconstruction Authority — Transparency Reform Addendum, Subsection 4.3. The system accepts with a chime that sounds way too pleased with itself, and the layer loads like a curtain being yanked aside.
A protected convoy vector appears in faint gold, curved through Kirell’s upper atmosphere, its path bracketed by a shield perimeter buffer that glows a deeper amber at the edges. It is a gorgeous thing in the way weapons are gorgeous—precise, confident, indifferent to who gets crushed beneath the math.
When I overlay the twelve-minute reroute window, the evacuation corridor shifts inward and—almost lovingly—aligns itself to clear that shield buffer.
The pattern is so neat, so intentional, that for a moment my mind refuses it, like a tongue refusing a bitter medicine.
I zoom in.
The corridor deviation at 14:01 bends just enough to keep civilian traffic outside the convoy’s shield perimeter, creating a clean lane, a safe halo around the convoy’s movement.
Safe for the convoy.
Not for the civilians.
My fingers go cold against the console.
“Jesus,” I breathe, and the word comes out thin.
The projection doesn’t care. It keeps rotating, serene, as though it is displaying weather patterns rather than a decision that rearranged tens of thousands of lives like debris.
I pull up the convoy manifest header, not the contents—those are still locked behind deeper clearance—but the classification tags that identify type and priority.
LEAGUE WEAPONS CONVOY — STRATEGIC PRIORITY.
SHIELD PERIMETER PROTECTION: MAXIMUM.
CIVILIAN TRAFFIC CLEARANCE: ENFORCED.
Weapons convoy.
My stomach rolls again, sharper this time, and I grip the edge of the table until the alloy bites into my palm.
“Okay,” I say aloud, forcing my voice to stay steady. “We’re not spiraling. We’re proving.”
I open my modeling suite, the one I built my career on, the one the Senate cited when they assigned me here as if my published analysis was a trophy. The interface is familiar, comforting in its brutality: inputs, variables, outputs. It doesn’t ask how you feel. It only asks whether your assumptions are defensible.
I load two scenarios.
Scenario One: original evacuation vector A-Prime holds, no override.
Scenario Two: altered route to C-23 alignment, convoy buffer clearance enforced.
I input known artillery arcs, defense satellite degradation rates, civilian shuttle density, and the comm blackout onset. Then I pull in municipal telemetry confirmation for actual shuttle responsiveness to corridor guidance updates, because I refuse to let anyone dismiss this as “theoretical.”
The system processes, the storage columns humming in accompaniment like a distant choir.
Numbers populate.
Projected civilian exposure increase:43%.
Forty-three.
Not a rounding error. Not a “wartime adjustment.” Not a “dynamic environment.”
A deliberate increase in civilian exposure to clear a shield perimeter around a League weapons convoy.
