Page 39 of Big Bad Red Protector

Calyra is waiting near the observation corridor outside the sanctuary, which is still sealed for structural assessment after the attack. She looks exactly as she always looks—pale gold skin, ceremonial robes, a composed serenity sharpened by decades of learning that gentleness is a more precise weapon than force.

"The truth is out," she says, when I reach her. "That is not the same as the truth being safe."

"I know."

"Some factions will deny it. The denial will be organized, well-funded, and politically necessary for governments whose authority depends on specific histories remaining intact." Her hands fold in the way they do when she is measuring words. "Some will worship it in ways that create new hierarchies instead of dissolving old ones. Some will use it as justification for exactly the kind of conflict Drekar was trying to start." She meets my eyes with the particular directness she reserves for things she needs me to actually hear. "You did not end the fight. You changed what the fight is about."

"That's either better or worse than ending it," I say.

"Both," she says. "Simultaneously. As most things are."

Kheltor is in the corridor outside my temporary quarters when I return, standing with his arms crossed in a stance that says he has chosen this position and will not entertain alternatives. He is no longer in full armor. The stabilizer brace is visible. He looks recently battered and held together by continued forward motion.

His attention shifts to me when I stop beside him.

"Vos asked me to help run the Bridge inquiry," I say.

"I know. He told me."

"Calyra says some factions will keep fighting over the truth regardless of what the transmission proved."

"She is correct."

"So we stopped one disaster and created the conditions for several smaller ones that will probably last years."

"Yes." He is quiet for a moment. "We will deal with them."

The wordwesits in the corridor between us with the specific weight of a commitment made without formality or ceremony, which is exactly how Kheltor makes the commitments that matter most.

"Okay," I say.

I turn toward the outer viewport at the corridor's end. The Bridge is visible from here—steady, ancient, still transmitting through nearby systems with everything it was built to carry. The station around it is damaged and uncertain and more honest than it has ever been, and somewhere in the political noise spreading across the galaxy, people are standing in public squares trying to understand what shared origin means when the evidence is sitting in their comm feeds.

The woman who arrived here afraid of being invisible is gone now.

Orpheus Station has cured me of that particular fear.

The Bridge glows, and the galaxy turns, and I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

CHAPTER 28

KHELTOR

The temporary quarters are too quiet for me to inhabit properly.

Not silence—the station is never silent. Repair drones run above us in a steady mechanical rhythm, and the ventilation system carries the distant sound of crews working through the night on structural damage three corridors over. But there is no security feed running on my personal comm. No patrol rotation to review. No incoming command alerts, no strategic assessments, no authority waiting for my response.

There is nothing waiting for my response.

I stand at the viewport and watch the Bridge, which has not stopped glowing since Nina redirected its activation into something the extremists never intended, and my hands have no assignment.

This is the problem with peace. War tells you exactly what your hands are for.

"You've been standing there for twenty minutes," Nina says from behind me.

"I am aware."

"Kheltor." Her voice carries the particular tone that means she has already identified the thing I am not saying and isdeciding whether to wait me out or simply name it. She does not wait long. "What is it?"