"Done."
I pushed another wave of calm through the tether before any of the Knights could react.
"What else?" Voss asked.
"Cessation of new colony development. No pursuit of individuals liberated through Starbreaker operations."
"We will discontinue colony expansion outside corporate boundaries, and we will not pursue freed individuals unless they enter corporate jurisdiction or execute corporate contracts." He smiled. "Reasonable containment parameters."
"Agreed."
"Anything else?"
"No."
Voss leaned forward, his expression shifting into something almost collegial. "I knew this day would come, Doctor. I think you did too, didn't you? You're too intelligent to have believed this could continue indefinitely."
"It was always a calculated variable." I paused, tilting my head slightly. "I'll admit, I was impressed by how efficiently you aligned the independent stations. Their compliance was faster than my models predicted."
He waved dismissively. "The stations? Please. They're remarkably simple to manage. All we had to do was flag their insurance bonds for review. Thirty-six hours of uncertainty, and they were begging to cooperate." He shook his head, almost fondly. "The amusing part is that if they ever coordinated, truly coordinated, they could make us obsolete within a month. But they won't."
"What makes you think that?"
"Because they're not like us, Doctor." He said it the way someone might explain something simple to a child. "They lack the capacity for systemic thinking. They optimize for immediate survival, not long-term positioning. They live day-to-day, hoping to scrape together enough to meet their next obligation."
I nodded slowly, as if considering his point. "So the independent stations are a managed variable. What about the colonies themselves? How do you model their lifecycle?"
Through the tether, I felt Kaedren go very still.
Voss smiled. The smile of a professor pleased by an astute question. "Now that you're returning to the fold, you should understand how the system actually functions. The public narrative is... simplified."
"Simplified?”
"The colonies are not designed for permanence," he said, settling into his chair like he was enjoying a fine brandy. "They're designed for optimal resource extraction over a defined lifecycle. Population generation, labor utilization, and eventual depreciation. If they were permanent, we'd never need to establish new ones. We'd lose the benefits of the churn. New contracts, new revenue streams, new ways to make money."
I kept my voice neutral. "And the labor redistribution networks? The population optimization programs?"
Behind me, I felt Lyrin's hands curl into fists. I pressed calm through the tether:not yet, not yet.
Voss rolled his eyes. "You mean the trafficking and the breeding programs. Doctor, I thought you'd learned to speak precisely by now. But yes. Those systems exist because demand requires supply. The criminal networks facilitate distribution. The programs ensure adequate population replacement in high-attrition sectors."
"And the corporations' relationship with those criminal networks?"
"Symbiotic." He said it as if he were describing a supply chain diagram. "Crime generates fear. Fear generates demand for security services, insurance products, and military contracts. We provide safety. We provide distraction. The population stays focused on immediate consumption rather than thinking about how bad things really are for them." He shrugged. "It's an elegant equilibrium, really. Self-reinforcing."
"The colonies that fail," I said. "The ones that collapse into debt spirals or get raided by the syndicates you enable. Those are acceptable losses?"
"Those aredesignedlosses." He reached off-screen and brought a cup of coffee into view, taking a leisurely sip. "Every system requires pressure release valves. The colonies that fail provide cautionary narratives. They remind the survivors why compliance is preferable to independence. And of course, the failure events themselves generate salvage opportunities, insurance payouts, reconstruction contracts..." He smiled. "Nothing is wasted, Doctor. That's the beauty of it."
I felt the horror radiating through the tether now: Kaedren's cold fury, Torvyn's disgust, Lyrin's quiet devastation, Vaelix's grim recognition. I held them steady with everything I had.
"I see," I said. "So the system is self-correcting."
"The system isoptimal." Voss set down his coffee. "And honestly, Doctor? Nobody cares. Not really. Everyone outside our circles is too busy surviving to worry about philosophical abstractions like human trafficking. They care about their entertainment feeds. They care about their next meal. They care about whatever small pleasure gets them through another cycle." He smiled. "We designed it that way. It's what they want."
"You're confident the system will survive exposure."
"The system has survived exposure before. Scandals fade. Attention spans are short. And at the end of the day, we control the infrastructure that keeps civilization functional. What are they going to do, boycott oxygen recycling?"
