“I’m done being careful,” I reply, then force myself to breathe, because rage without aim is just noise. “I will not withdraw the subpoena. I will escalate it through Coalition oversight authority if the tribunal refuses to act.”
Sohl stares at me for a long beat, then exhales slowly. “You’re going to break the peace.”
“The peace,” I answer, voice low, “is already broken. It’s just broken quietly in rooms like this, where people sign papers and call it stability.”
The channel cuts.
I sit back, feeling the custody room’s sterile air press against my lungs, and I realize with grim clarity that everyone in power is afraid of the same thing: not that the ceasefire will fracture, but that the fracture will reveal who built it out of lies.
When Pellorin returns later, his face pale with stress, he brings news that makes my chest tighten in a different way.
“The Coalition oversight authority received your authorization request,” he says quietly. “They’re debating release of comm fragments. There’s pushback. But it’s moving.”
“Good,” I reply.
“And Drax is furious,” Pellorin adds. “She says the breach investigation is closed, and she wants this to stay within negligence scope.”
“It won’t,” I say.
Pellorin’s eyes narrow. “What did Selene find? You know more than you’re saying.”
“I don’t know,” I answer carefully. “But I can see the outline now.”
I pull up the signature chain Selene referenced—what I can access of it—and the clearance marker that keeps surfacing like a shark fin breaking water.
Admiral Caedrin Vol.
The name sits in the data like a weapon on a table.
I trace the authorization pattern. It doesn’t read like panic. It doesn’t read like reactive adjustment under bombardment. It reads like strategic movement planning: convoy vector protection, shield perimeter clearance, civilian traffic rerouted cleanly away from the convoy lane.
A choice.
A cold, deliberate choice.
I stare at Vol’s marker until my vision tightens.
“It was strategic,” I murmur, more to myself than to Pellorin, though he hears it anyway. “Not reactive. Not chaotic. Strategic.”
Pellorin’s face tightens. “Say that out loud in the chamber, and you light the galaxy on fire.”
“Then maybe the galaxy needs fire,” I reply, and the words are not bravado so much as exhaustion sharpened into resolve. “Because if we don’t burn this rot out, it will keep happening, and they’ll keep calling it necessary.”
Pellorin studies me, then shakes his head slowly, half horror, half reluctant acceptance. “You’re going to drag Vol into this.”
“Yes,” I say, my voice steady. “And I’m going to make them answer why a League weapons convoy got a shield halo while civilians got forty-three percent more exposure.”
Pellorin’s eyes widen slightly. “Forty-three?”
I hold his gaze. “That’s what the modeling suggests.”
He exhales, long and slow, as if the number has punched air out of him. “Gods.”
“Not gods,” I correct. “Men. Admirals. Senators. The kind who call themselves guardians while moving civilians like chess pawns.”
The custody room hums around us, and for a moment I can almost hear the tribunal chamber again—the murmurs, the drone stabilizers, the polished voices trying to compress truth into something digestible.
I think of Selene in the prep room, hands braced against the console, eyes bright with strain, insisting she can manage her own body while the institution circles her like a pack.
