Chapter 12
RHYX
The preparation room the tribunal assigns me is not a room so much as a controlled contradiction, an attempt to mimic the privacy of strategy while ensuring no strategy can truly breathe.
The walls are a dull composite gray, the lights softened just enough to suggest humanity without granting comfort, and the air is scrubbed so clean it tastes like metal left too long in rain.
A terminal is embedded in one wall with a restricted interface that pretends to offer agency while carefully fencing the edges of what I can touch, and a projection table sits in the center like an altar for evidence that has already been blessed—or cursed—by institutional hands.
Selene stands across from me at the console, sleeves rolled just enough to make movement easier, braid tight, posture hard, her eyes fixed on the corridor overlays with a concentration that would be admirable if it did not look like a form of self-harm.
The pale holographic line of the evacuation vector floats between us, and the convoy buffer layer—faint gold, predatory in its elegance—flickers at the edge of the display before she minimizes it again, as though even allowing it to exist in the air is a violation.
Two tribunal officers linger by the door, their presence framed as security but functioning as pressure, and the recording node in the ceiling hums a low, constant note, reminding us that every syllable is being stored for future weaponization.
Selene drags the timeline marker toward 14:01, then stops with her fingers hovering a fraction above the interface.
The pause is small, almost nothing, but I have spent enough years watching bridge crews die without screaming to recognize the subtle moments when focus fractures.
Her breath catches slightly, her shoulders stiffen, and for a heartbeat the corridor line seems to shimmer as if the air itself is uncertain.
“Ardent,” I say quietly.
Her jaw tightens. “Commander.”
“We are not in session,” I reply, keeping my voice low enough that it feels like a private thread in a room designed to deny privacy. “And you just blinked like the floor moved.”
Her gaze snaps to mine, sharp and defensive. “I’m fine.”
I do not allow myself the impulse to press too gently; gentleness is a lie here, and lies are what we are trying to kill. “You’re not fine. You lost focus on the overlay, and you don’t lose focus. That’s your whole thing.”
Her eyes narrow. “My whole thing is procedure.”
“Your whole thing,” I counter, “is control, and control is starting to slip.”
One of the officers by the door shifts slightly, attention sharpening, but Selene’s posture doesn’t change. She turns back to the projection and slides the timeline marker forward, as if movement will erase my question.
“If you’re physically compromised,” I say, “it matters. They will use it. They already did.”
Selene’s voice turns brittle. “What do you want me to say? ‘Oh yeah, sorry, I’m having a weak little human moment’?”
“I want you to tell me if you’re about to fall over,” I answer, and the edge in my tone is not anger so much as fear translated into something usable. “Because I’m done watching people collapse while institutions clap.”
She freezes, then turns to me with a look that could cut alloy.
“I’m not your responsibility,” she says.
“I didn’t say you were,” I reply, though the truth is more complicated than my words allow. “I said I can see when you’re not well.”
Her mouth tightens. “I’m tired. That’s all.”
“Tired doesn’t look like that,” I say.
“It does when you’re being hunted,” she snaps, and then she inhales sharply, as if realizing she let too much emotion leak out. Her voice drops back into professional cadence. “Proceed with testimony prep. I’ll manage my own body.”
There are a hundred responses I could offer, ranging from sympathy to fury, but none of them would help her keep her fortress intact, and I suspect she needs the fortress more than she needs my concern.
“Alright,” I say softly. “Manage it. Just don’t do it alone.”
Her gaze flickers, something unreadable passing behind it, and then she turns back to the projection as though I have spoken in a language she doesn’t understand.
We spend the next hour rehearsing the tribunal’s preferred rhythm: exhibit, question, answer, controlled emotion, controlled silence.
She calls up the corridor map; I confirm the issuance vector; she highlights the blackout onset; I describe the loss of tactical updates.
All of it is clean until we approach the seam again, that twelve-minute wound that keeps being stitched shut by procedural hands.
At 14:01, Selene’s fingers tighten around the stylus, and her shoulders lift slightly on an inhale that looks too deliberate.
“You want me to testify to what I experienced,” I say, watching her carefully. “Or to what the record shows.”
Her voice is clipped. “Both, if the tribunal allows it.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
She does not look up. “Then we make the record louder than their denial.”
I feel the faintest grim satisfaction at that, a dark warmth in the chest that is not hope but recognition of shared stubbornness.
A tribunal aide appears at the door and announces the end of our allotted prep window with the tone of someone reading a weather bulletin. Selene dismisses the projection with a tight gesture, and the corridor line collapses into nothing as if it never existed.
As the officers guide me back toward custody, I glance at Selene one last time.
She stands in the dim light of the room with her hands braced against the console as if it’s the only stable surface in the world, her face composed into tribunal neutrality, yet the strain around her mouth betrays the effort it takes.
She doesn’t look at me, but I can feel her attention anyway, a kind of silent proximity that feels more dangerous than words.
In custody, the walls close in again, and the air returns to its sterile bite, and I sit at the restricted terminal with the same restless fury that has become my companion.
The tribunal wants to accelerate sentencing.
Thane wants to narrow scope. Drax wants to preserve legitimacy.
The Senate wants to use the dead as theater.
I want proof.
The Coalition has not yet responded about releasing comm fragments, and time is a blade against my throat, so I reach for the other thread—the one I have not pulled in years because it leads straight back into the war’s raw nerve.
Encrypted contact protocols still exist, buried in old comm routines like seeds in ash. I access the diplomatic channel interface and request a secure bridge to a name I have not spoken aloud since Kirell.
Draev Korr.
Former Vakutan communications officer. My comms chief during the siege. The man who watched the relays die and kept his hands steady anyway.
The interface warns me three times about monitoring. I ignore it and initiate the encryption handshake using a Vakutan cipher pattern the League never bothered to fully map, because arrogance is the habit of empires.
The holo flickers, then stabilizes into Draev’s face—older now, the scales around his eyes duller, his gaze still razor-sharp. The image is grainy, compressed through layers of diplomatic interference, but the voice is unmistakable, resonant and tired.
“Commander,” he says, and the title in his mouth carries reverence and grief in equal measure. “You’re alive.”
“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.”