“Barely,” I reply, and my voice carries a faint rough humor. “How’s retirement treating you?”
Draev snorts softly. “Retirement is just war without uniforms.”
His eyes narrow. “Why are you contacting me through tribunal custody channels? Do you want them to kill you faster?”
“I want the truth,” I say.
Draev’s expression hardens. “Then you’re in the right place to get murdered.”
“I need confirmation,” I continue, forcing myself into clarity rather than spiraling into emotion. “During the blackout window—after 14:00—did we detect external override activity?”
Draev goes very still, and the silence between us is heavy enough to feel physical even through encryption.
“You’re finally asking that,” he says quietly.
“Yes.”
He exhales slowly. “Yes. We detected a signal. Not a full packet—more like a ghost, a spike in relay permissions that didn’t belong to our authorization chain. It hit during the blackout window. We couldn’t trace it fully because our relays were collapsing, but it wasn’t ours.”
My chest tightens.
“What did you log?” I ask.
“I logged everything I could,” Draev replies, voice low. “Signal anomaly. Authorization mismatch. Relay handshake pattern consistent with League strategic clearance protocols.”
The room seems to tilt slightly, though I’m sitting.
“Did you tell anyone?” I ask.
“I told you,” he says, eyes sharp. “On the bridge. You told me to hold the data until we had proof enough not to ignite the fleets.”
He watches me for a long moment, and in that look I see the weight he has carried too, the way silence did not merely protect peace—it carved guilt into everyone involved.
“You’re going to force this now,” he says, not a question.
“Yes.”
Draev’s mouth tightens. “Then you’ll need testimony. Mine. And the fragment logs I kept out of the reconciliation confiscation.”
“You kept logs?” I ask, and the surprise in my voice is unguarded.
Draev’s eyes flash with something like vindication. “I’m not an idiot, Commander. I gave them copies. I didn’t give them everything.”
A pulse of fierce gratitude moves through me so fast it nearly hurts.
“I need you to testify,” I say.
Draev laughs once, harsh and humorless. “In a League tribunal? They’ll eat me alive.”
“Let them try,” I answer. “I will request your testimony through tribunal channels.”
His gaze sharpens. “And they’ll deny it.”
“Then we make them deny it on record,” I reply.
Draev nods slowly, the motion heavy. “Do it. I’m tired of swallowing this.”
The holo flickers, and before the channel collapses, Draev adds quietly, “Commander… you weren’t wrong to choose peace. But peace without truth is just quiet violence.”
