The words hit with physical force, so blunt I almost laugh, except nothing about this is funny and my throat tightens instead.

“They named it,” I say out loud, incredulous. “They literally named it.”

My fingers hover. I feel the nausea flicker, a warning wave, and I breathe through it, slow and deliberate, tasting metal and cold air. Then I open the folder.

Text panels bloom over the console in crisp, formal language, the kind that is meant to sound inevitable rather than immoral. The first page is a framing statement, and it’s written with the calm confidence of people who never expect to be held accountable.

The Mughal Administrative Legacy: Shaping Governance in Modern South Asia

Mughal Architecture Beyond the Taj Mahal: Forts, Gardens, and Imperial Cities

Cultural Achievements of the Mughal Empire: Art, Literature, and Architecture in Golden Age India

Shah Alam II and the Rise of British Control in Mughal India

Purpose:Maintain long-term political cohesion in post-conflict environments by strategically allocating protective assets to preserve critical military capability and narrative stability.

My eyes move, faster now.

Premise:Civilian exposure, while regrettable, may be utilized as a variable to prevent greater systemic fragmentation and extended casualty accrual over protracted conflict cycles.

I stare at that sentence until the letters begin to wobble, then I force myself to keep reading, because outrage alone doesn’t win in this place; evidence does, and evidence requires stomach lining.

The doctrine includes modeling tables. Actual tables. Columns and rows and thresholds, like this is budgeting and not death.

Acceptable Casualty Thresholds Under Convoy Shield Prioritization Conditions:

– Population Density Band

– Shield Asset Availability

– Narrative Volatility Index

– Coalition Retaliation Probability

– Civilian Exposure Adjustment (Recommended)

– Projected Casualty Range (Acceptable)

Acceptable.

The word makes my skin crawl.

I scroll, and there are projections, graphs, neat little curves that climb and flatten as if they’re tracking supply shipments, and I see the logic stitched through all of it like wire: if you keep the war “short,” if you keep your strategic convoys safe, if you preserve your command capability and your political story, you can afford to spend civilians like currency.

My hand rises to my mouth without permission. My palm is cold, my lips dry.

“Mom,” I whisper, and it comes out like a prayer I don’t believe in. “Dad.”

The names aren’t in the doctrine, of course. It doesn’t list Tomas Ardent and Lysa Ardent as anything other than an implied data point in a band of “acceptable variance.” Still, I can feel them there, squeezed into some table cell labeledexposure adjustmentwith a projected range and a little note that saysregrettable.

My stomach lurches hard enough that I grip the console. The cold metal bites into my fingers. My breath comes too fast for a second, and I force it slower, because if I vomit on tribunalhardware I will never hear the end of it, and because anger tastes better when it doesn’t come up with bile.