Chapter 6 #2
“You don’t,” she snaps back, and then she stops, presses her lips together, breathes once, and her voice returns to controlled cadence like a door slammed shut. “Sorry. That’s not— That’s not helpful.”
“It is helpful,” I reply, because I want her anger. I want it sharp and honest. “Anger is clarity. Let it sharpen your questions.”
She looks at me, startled by that, then shakes her head faintly. “You Vakutans are insane.”
A faint, grim humor rises in me despite everything, and I let it show only in the smallest softening of my mouth. “That is not news.”
She huffs once, almost a laugh, though it dies quickly. Then she gestures toward the timeline again, businesslike. “Okay. After the corridor collapses, after the ceasefire—what happens to your logs?”
I feel something hard settle in my chest.
“After the ceasefire,” I say, “the League requested a joint reconciliation process. They framed it as transparency, as healing. Coalition command agreed, because everyone was exhausted and desperate to believe in peace.”
Selene’s eyes narrow. “And?”
“And they confiscated my internal fleet logs,” I continue, keeping my voice steady despite the pressure behind my ribs.
“They said it was for auditing, for shared historical accuracy. They took my bridge recordings, tactical feeds, command authorization strings, everything. They promised a return after review.”
“And they never returned them,” she says, not a question.
“No.”
The word tastes like rust.
Selene’s fingers curl briefly against the edge of the console. “So the only logs left are the ones the League decided to give back.”
“Yes.”
“That’s convenient as hell,” she mutters, and the colloquial bluntness feels like a small act of sanity in this antiseptic room.
“It was not convenience,” I reply softly. “It was strategy.”
Selene’s gaze locks on mine. “You’re saying they scrubbed you.”
“I am saying,” I correct, “that my logs vanished into a process designed to produce a palatable history.”
She exhales slowly, then shakes her head. “And you just… accepted it.”
I hold her gaze. “I was under Coalition house arrest. The ceasefire was fragile. Every faction was armed and waiting for justification. I could either accept the narrative or ignite another war with a suspicion.”
Selene’s expression hardens. “So you chose martyrdom.”
“I chose containment.”
“Call it what it is,” she says, voice low. “You chose to die with a lie in your mouth because you thought it would keep the peace.”
The words are brutal, and they deserve to be.
“Yes,” I admit.
The recording node hums softly, capturing my confession with indifferent precision.
Selene looks away first, not because she is defeated, but because she is thinking too hard, and thought has weight.
When she looks back, her eyes are bright in the projection light. “What do you want from me, Varos?”
Her use of my name without title is deliberate, stripping the myth down to a person.
“I want you to reconstruct the timestamp chain from civilian relay backups,” I answer, and the request is simple because it has to be.
“Civilian telemetry archives are distributed. They are redundant. They are not all under League control. If the override originated externally, if it passed through League relays, the chain will show it. If it was Coalition-issued, the chain will show that too.”
Selene’s mouth tightens. “And you want me to do that because you think I’m not owned.”
“Yes.”
“And because I’m angry,” she adds, blunt.
“Yes.”
She studies me for a long moment, her expression shifting through skepticism, calculation, and something quieter that I cannot name. Then she nods once, sharply.
“I’ll do it,” she says. “But listen to me.”
I wait.
Her voice turns hard as stone. “I’m not manipulating findings for your benefit. I’m not smoothing data because you look sad in binders. I’m not your damn redemption project.”
A faint pressure eases in my chest, not because her words are kind, but because they are honest.
“I expect nothing less,” I reply.
She narrows her eyes. “That’s not a compliment.”
“It is not meant to be,” I answer, and my voice softens slightly despite myself. “It is relief.”
Selene’s jaw tightens again, but there is a flicker in her eyes—something like reluctant recognition—that she quickly buries beneath procedure.
She gestures toward the projection. “I’m going to pull civilian relay backups from municipal emergency archives and private shuttle telemetry caches.
It’ll take time, and the tribunal’s going to try to rush sentencing. ”
“I know.”
“And if I find the chain points to League command,” she says, voice quieter now, “they’ll come for me. Hard.”
“Yes.”
“And if it points back to you,” she adds, “you don’t get to act surprised. You don’t get to twist it. You don’t get to blame someone else to save your skin.”
I meet her gaze steadily. “If it points to me, I will accept it.”
Selene’s shoulders lift slightly on an inhale, then settle. “Okay.”
The officer near the door shifts, checking his compad, reminding us of time limits. Selene notices, then looks back at me with that same steel-edged composure.
“One more thing,” she says, and her voice drops into something more personal despite the surveillance. “When you say the corridor aligned with safe-zone projections, you’re not… you’re not just saying that because it sounds good, right?”
The question is quieter than the rest, and that quietness makes it more dangerous, because it contains the possibility that she wants to believe him and hates herself for it.
I answer without hesitation. “It aligned. I watched the safe arc render on my bridge display. I watched the satellites confirm coverage. I issued the order because it was the best path I had. If I had seen the corridor shift, I would have tried to correct it. If I could have corrected it, I would have.”
Selene’s throat moves as she swallows. She nods once, almost imperceptibly.
“Alright,” she murmurs. “I’ll verify it.”
She straightens, returns to official tone. “Session complete, then. I have what I need.”
The tribunal officer steps forward. “Commander Varos will be returned to custody.”
The binders hum louder as I rise, and the sterile air feels thinner as the door opens, letting in the faint echo of the tribunal complex beyond.
Before I step through, I look back at Selene, not because I expect comfort, but because I want her to understand something that no formal petition can convey.
“You do not owe me anything,” I say quietly.
She lifts her chin. “Good. Because I’m not paying.”
A faint, unexpected warmth flickers in my chest at the stubbornness in her tone, and it is not hope—hope is too fragile for this room—but something close to respect.
As the escort guides me out, the corridor lights smear into pale bands in my peripheral vision, and the hum of the binders returns to its steady rhythm, reminding me with every step that the tribunal has me contained.
Yet behind me, in that cold bright lab, the twelve-minute seam still glows on the projection table, and now it is not only my private wound; it is a question lodged in Selene’s disciplined mind, sharpened by grief, and that question has teeth.