Page 37 of Big Bad Red Protector

The evacuation alarm cycles down.

Orrik again, softer: "The station is holding. Emergency crews are moving to sublevel sectors. Structural integrity across all primary corridors." A pause that sounds like a breath held too long and finally released. "You did it."

I let the floor hold me.

Kheltor says nothing, which from Kheltor is the loudest possible form of relief. He is present and solid and warm against my side, and above us the Bridge continues its signal in light.

The truth is out.

Whatever the governments do with it, whatever fractures and what grows in the space those fractures open—the Bridge has sent it, and it cannot be recalled.

Orpheus Station breathes around us since my arrival without the specific tension of something catastrophic preparing to arrive.

I close my eyes.

The signal spreads.

CHAPTER 26

KHELTOR

The med bay on sublevel three is not designed for someone my size, and the chair I have occupied for four hours has made that clear in specific ways I am choosing not to address.

Nina has not woken yet.

The medical officer—human, experienced, efficient in the way crisis medicine requires—says the Bridge exposure caused sustained neural overload. The systems ran frequencies through Nina's nervous system longer than human biology was built to endure. She is stable. Her markers are returning to baseline. She will wake when her body finishes repairing the damage.

"You should be in the next bay," the officer adds, looking at my left side.

"I am aware," I say. I do not move.

He has the professional judgment not to argue with a Vakutan in that specific tone.

Outside the med bay, Orpheus Station is the sound of a disaster that stopped before the worst of it arrived. Emergency crews in the corridors. Repair drones on the outer hull, already working on the structural damage from the Precursor sector collapse. Civilians in the residential areas sitting in doorwaysand transit hubs with the particular stillness of people who survived something they are not yet processing. The Bridge still visible through every outer viewport—steady, no longer pulsing in warning, its signal extended across the systems in range and still transmitting.

Vos finds me at oh-six-hundred with a data chip, carrying more information than any single conversation should require.

"The fleets received the transmission," he says. "Both command carriers acknowledged the signal within four minutes of the broadcast. The evidence package was verified through three independent authentication layers by the time either government had finished deciding how to respond." He pauses. "They are not friends. But they are not firing." Another pause. "Drekar's surviving collaborators are in custody. The arrests include two Alliance attaches, one Coalition security coordinator, and four station personnel with command-level access." He sets the data chip on the arm of my chair. "The full accounting will take weeks."

"And the official position on my conduct?"

Vos is quiet for a moment that contains a complete answer before he speaks it. "Vakutan military leadership issued a formal condemnation at oh-four-hundred. You have been stripped of command, rank, and affiliation." He does not offer comfort around it. We have known each other long enough for him to understand I would not want it. "The condemnation is public."

I pick up the data chip.

The condemnation reads in the precise formal language of military censure—betrayal of Alliance authority, violation of chain of command, compromised judgment resulting in the exposure of classified Precursor research. My name, my service record, and twenty years reduced to a violation report.

I set it down.

In the corridor outside the med bay, two station security officers who have worked under my command for eighteen months are standing at a position that has no tactical justification in the current situation. They are simply there. When I notice them, the one on the left—a young Vakutan officer named Thrav who filed every incident report I assigned him without complaint—gives me a nod that is not regulation and does not need to be.

Across the medical ward, a human family from the residential sector watches me from their temporary cot assignment with an expression no tactical category covers.

The military took twenty years and returned a condemnation.

The station returned something I do not have a military designation for.

Nina wakes at oh-seven-fifteen.