“I know,” I say, and my voice goes lower, steadier, because this part cannot be dressed up. “They’ll threaten everyone near you. That’s how they keep peace tidy.”
Draev leans forward slightly, the holo image sharpening around his eyes. “And why now, Commander? You sat on this for years.”
The question is not accusation, not really; it’s a wound asking why it has been left untreated. I could answer with a thousand careful words, with diplomacy and history and ceasefire clauses, but in this room, with surveillance humming through the walls and Selene’s secret now sitting in the open between my ribs, the simplest truth is the only one worth offering.
“Because I am done paying for peace with other people’s lives,” I say quietly. “And because someone braver than I am started digging where the rot lives.”
Draev’s gaze sharpens as if he understands more than I’ve said. “Ardent.”
“Yes.”
He nods once, slow, the motion heavy with respect. “Alright. I’ll draft it. You want full technical detail or a version a senator can understand without drooling?”
“Both,” I answer, and a faint, grim edge enters my voice. “Give them the clean summary and the ugly appendix. Let them choke on the appendix if they try to pretend it’s vague.”
Draev’s mouth quirks. “That’s the Commander I remember.”
Then his expression hardens again. “How do you want it transmitted?”
“Through Coalition diplomatic counsel,” I reply. “Sworn under Vakutan military oath, notarized, time-stamped, and delivered to tribunal evidentiary intake with redundancy. If they ‘corrupt’ one file, there’s another copy sitting in three places.”
Draev’s eyes flash. “They corrupted evidence?”
“Yes.”
His jaw tightens, anger visible even through holo distortion. “Alright. Then we do redundancy. We do ugly redundancy.”
“Good,” I say.
Draev nods, then pauses, and his voice drops. “Commander… you sure you want to light this match?”
I think of Selene standing in the dim archive chamber with her hands braced on cold alloy, refusing to let me die neatly for the comfort of liars, and the answer settles in me with the cold certainty of a blade being seated in its sheath.
“I’m sure,” I reply.
The holo fades as Draev ends the channel, already moving, already doing what I should have demanded years ago, and I remain in the custody cell with the hum of filtered air and the quiet ache of inevitability.
I file the formal submission request immediately, attaching a procedural cover letter through Pellorin’s channel and citing direct relevance to blackout onset and corridor recalibrationverification, then I wait the way you wait for artillery: not with hope, but with readiness.
The response arrives before my pulse has fully settled.
TRIBUNAL LEADERSHIP NOTICE:Request for witness affidavit inclusion denied at this time. Evidence proposed exceeds current prosecutorial focus and falls outside negligence scope pending diplomatic review.
Denied at this time.
The phrase is a soft glove over a hard fist, and the anger that rises in me is not explosive; it is slow, thick, and steady, the kind that keeps you alive in a siege because it does not burn out quickly.
Pellorin calls through the monitored channel an hour later, his face sharp with stress and exhaustion, hair slightly disordered as though he has been running between offices that keep moving their doors.
“They denied it,” he says without preamble.
“I saw,” I reply.
“They’re framing it as scope creep,” he continues, voice tight. “They’re saying the affidavit is outside prosecutorial focus, and Drax is using ‘diplomatic review’ like a shield.”
“They want time,” I say.
“They want you quiet,” Pellorin counters. “And they want Ardent—” He stops, recalibrates, and finishes carefully. “—and they want tribunal staff contained.”
