The screens across the chamber—and across Alliance media networks—fill with Valen’s own strategic simulations: phased encirclement, projected Reaper casualty arcs, stabilization through total resolution.
Projected outcome: ninety-four percent Reaper population loss.
Strategic benefit: long-term trade corridor stabilization.
Acceptable attrition: confirmed.
The words scroll in pristine Alliance formatting.
The media officer lunges toward the console. “Cut the feed!”
“It’s not responding,” the technician says, fingers flying.
“Override uplink!”
“It’s cascading!”
Across the peripheral monitors, I see Alliance leadership chambers coming online in split-screen fragments—Council representatives interrupting each other as verification pings cascade through their systems.
“That’s internal modeling,” one Councilor says sharply from a live inset feed. “Those projections were restricted.”
“They’re authentic,” another voice counters, already cross-referencing metadata in real time. “Authorization signature confirms Valen.”
I keep speaking.
“Admiral Serrik Valen authorized these projections,” I say clearly. “He predicted—and accepted—Reaper annihilation as a stabilizing outcome.”
Another file opens mid-sentence: blast analytics from the summit bombing, harmonic injection logs, seeded clan signatures.
Kael’s clan baseline, embedded prior to detonation.
The chamber erupts into controlled chaos.
“You cannot display classified—” the media officer begins, but her voice fractures under the weight of unfolding confirmation alerts.
From one of the Council inset feeds, a Vakutan representative leans forward, eyes wide. “Those harmonic logs were not part of the public inquiry.”
“They are now,” I reply.
Across Alliance civilian channels, reaction scrolls begin to spike. Media blocs replay Valen’s earlier speeches in split-screen—his calm articulation of managed hostility juxtaposed with casualty models predicting species-level eradication.
“Stability through controlled opposition,” one news anchor repeats in stunned disbelief as Valen’s words echo back at him. “Is this what he meant?”
In the chamber, the media officer slams her palm against the console. “Manual cutoff!”
“Conflicting overrides,” the technician says. “System mirrors activating?—”
Of course they are.
Every fragment I embedded begins replicating across the network. Civilian broadcast buffers, oversight archives, secondary media servers—each one reflecting partial truth until suppression becomes mathematically implausible.
A new inset feed bursts onto the central projection: Admiral Valen himself, live, jaw tight.
“Terminate this broadcast,” he orders sharply.
“Sir, Council counter-order just issued,” a subordinate’s voice replies off-screen. “Stand down directive pending review.”
“You will not—” Valen begins, but his feed flickers as network control splinters between competing authority nodes.
