Chapter 8
KYLDAK
Istep out onto the marble dais with a weight hanging behind every syllable.
The Earth plaza is alive—waves of protestors, banners raised, voices like thunder.
I taste dust and sweat and the bitter tang of tobacco smoke drifting from the crowd.
Sea breeze tangles with exhaust, with hot metal edges in the air.
The crowd hushes in that expectant lull between storms. Cameras hover, drones drift in arcs overhead. My prosthetic leg’s servo whines faintly beneath my clothing. My heart grazes my throat.
I grip the microphone rig. The hum crackles.
My voice starts low. “Veterans… survivors… people of conscience.” I pause, let the hush carry me.
“I was at the front lines. I watched men fall. I watched the Alliance promise safety, promise repair. And where were we when the bullets stopped?” A ripple of murmurs answers me.
I step forward. Cane taps. “We came home not as heroes, but as wounded debts. Debts they hoped to erase.” The words land. I taste iron—not from blood, not yet—but from the weight of memory.
I scan faces. A mother holds a child. A veteran shifts his injured arm. Their eyes burn. I press on. “They built statues to war—monuments to sacrifice. But they forgot the bodies that carried it. We returned as broken vessels. They turned away.”
Jaela’s face appears in my sight’s edge—live feed overlay—eyes sharp, anxious. Her brow furrows. I falter there’s a numb flicker inside me. Good. She’s here. She’s watching. She matters.
Then the rally fractures.
A veteran, wild in eyes, charges forward—crutch held high. A ragged scream splits the air. Somewhere a banner rips. Chaos blooms.
I leap. Crowd ripples. I charge the man. He swings. Bars. Screams.
“Down!” I bark, grabbing his arm. He jerks. I twist. He lunges—but I restrain. His crutch snaps out of his hand. He stumbles. He fights. Delirium in his veins.
Security surges. We struggle. The veteran thrashes.
Suddenly he gives way. Falls backwards. Slams hard. The neck—snap. His body goes limp. The plaza convulses into horror.
I freeze. The echo of bone breaks. Silence.
Then the uproar. People scream. Cameras foam with images. The world splits.
A voice behind me: “Stand down!” Security men grip me.
I don’t resist. I can’t. I’ve rehearsed this moment since the blast. I step into their hold, arms pinned, legs forced. My breathing is thunder. My rage is coiled.
One security officer drags me. “Hands behind your back!” he says. His voice is clinical, defeated.
I spit, loud in the mic. “I did what your generals would never dare!”
Two guards snap cuffs onto my wrists. Metal bites. The camera lens rotates to me. I stare into the cold eye of it. My scale skin glints with sweat, gold shifting to bronze in early light. My lips dry. My voice echoes, “If truth was safe, none of you would need me here.”
They push me forward. The man I restrained lies motionless. Medics swarm. Protesters cry, shout, point. The hum of drones intensifies.
I stumble slightly under their grip. The world tilts. Someone yells, close: “Murderer!” Another: “Hero or villain?” The crowd fractures.
One of the officers leans close. “No statements,” he hisses. But I lean toward the camera anyway. “I am the story. I will be your reckoning.”
They drag me into the van. The doors clang. My chest roars. My vision floods. The van’s interior smells of antiseptic and heat. I slump in the seat. The cuffs dig.
They close the doors. The van jolts. I see Jaela’s face flash across my mind. She’ll see this. She’ll hear this. She’ll know.
I taste ash. Grit. The promise in my chest tightens like a fist. I’m no longer a broken machine. I am the signal.
The tribunal chamber is ice and echo. Walls of polished steel, overhead lights cold as laser blades.
No warmth. No compassion. The air smells faintly of disinfectant and old fear.
My wrists are clamped to extension restraints; every motion I make rubs metal against skin—but I remain upright, rigid, defiant.
I hear the rustle of papers, the steps of guards, the distant hum of video feeds behind mirrored glass. They don’t let Jaela in. They say “conflict of interest.” I hear murmurs: “The Stonmer therapist suspended.” “Favoritism suspicion.” The words sting sharper than any physical wound.
At the front, a panel of Alliance judges sits in black robes. Their faces are blank masks, eyes cold. A prosecutor, human, thin and sharp, paces before me. They project goodwill. They spin narrative.
“Commander Kyldak,” the prosecutor says, voice oily, “you claim you intervened to protect civilians at the rally. The evidence shows instead that you acted violently, killed a fellow veteran, and turned public events into tragedy. We will show you edited footage. We will show you sanitized records. The victim’s own manifest shows aggression.
The injured veteran’s file was unrecoverable due to field damage.
Citizens saw you kill him in cold blood. ”
I stare at him. My voice is dry. “You edited your press, you sanitized the record, you buried what really happened. You butchered his injury as collateral because you couldn’t handle my truth.”
He smirks, gestures. The holo-screens around the chamber flicker: edited clips, selective angles, crowds screaming. My voice echoes in memory; a victim falls in slow motion. The images frame me as a monster, not a defender.
One judge says, “You claim defiance, not treachery. But we find your speech seditious. You incited riots, endangered civilians. You are not a martyr. You are a danger.”
I lean forward in the restraints, and the metal rails bite into my arms. “I spoke the truth because no one else does. If soldiers vanish, if veterans are ignored, if their screams are white noise—you call truth seditious?”
They don’t answer. Instead, they turn to the verdict.
“Commander Kyldak, for crimes of incitement, manslaughter, and public subversion—your sentence is exile to Jurtik, the penal wasteland planet. Effective at once.”
A roar inside me. Exile. Jurtik. Death by desert. The words echo off steel walls. A sentence colder than any blade.
I laugh. Bitter, hollow. It rings. It echoes.
“You want to bury me?” I say to the empty air. My voice bounces. “Then I’ll rise as a king of corpses.”
They stand. Guards wheel me out. The room coldly recedes. No prize for eloquence. No mercy in steel courts.
I walk past the gallery. I don’t see Jaela. She’s banned, exiled from sight. I envision her watching, heart pounding. But I don’t feel betrayal. Only focus.
They cuff me again—hard restraints. My arms chafe. My heart is a furnace. I board the transport shuttle, silent. The corridor echoes with footsteps. My pulse roars.
I look back toward the tribunal chamber’s sealed doors. A whisper of regret flickers in me. But I clamp it down. I am the one walking forward.
They lock me in the cell. The walls clang. The floor tiles are metal. The air smells of recycled oxygen and metallic dread. I slump into the seat, legs heavy. Outside the viewport, the planet recedes. The stars blur.
I whisper to myself, quiet as a vow: If they bury me in exile, let me bloom in ruin.
And as the ship lurches toward the jump, I tighten my jaw. I carry nothing but fire, scars, and the weight of every promise I have yet to keep.