My knees buckle before I can stop them. I catch the edge of the console hard enough that my knuckles go white.
“They didn’t even wait,” I whisper.
Varek lets out a low, controlled breath from behind us. “They were prepared.”
Kael steps closer but does not touch me. “Elara.”
I tear my eyes away from the screen and look at him instead. “Don’t,” I say sharply. “Don’t try to rationalize this.”
“I am not detaining you,” he says calmly.
The words don’t register at first.
“What?” I ask.
“You are free to disembark at the next safe port,” he continues, his pale eyes steady on mine. “I will not hold you.”
A hysterical laugh pushes out of me before I can stop it. “You think I can just stroll into a neutral harbor and say, ‘Sorry about that whole traitor thing’?”
“You can testify,” he says.
“Testify?” I take a step toward him. “On what authority? I fled with you.”
“You acted under League jurisdiction.”
“I falsified a transfer order,” I fire back. “Under my credentials. On camera.”
He studies my face carefully, as if assessing something deeper than the words.
“Do you regret intervening?” he asks.
The question slices through the panic.
I open my mouth to answer quickly—and stop.
Because the answer isn’t immediate.
“I regret the consequences,” I say finally, my voice lower now. “I don’t regret stopping an execution disguised as procedure.”
His jaw shifts slightly. Approval flickers across his expression and vanishes just as fast.
“You assumed the attack framed Reapers broadly,” he says.
“Yes,” I reply. “Alliance hardware. Reaper harmonic signature. It fit.”
“It fit the surface,” he corrects quietly.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He gestures toward the auxiliary console. “Display the detailed harmonic trace.”
The cruiser responds instantly, projecting the waveform into the air between us. Blue spikes flare to life, precise and cold.
“I saw this,” I say. “Clan registry alignment.”
“You saw registry markers,” he replies. “You did not compare baseline scans.”
Varek steps forward and adds a second waveform beside the first. “This is Kael’s docking scan from Virex,” Varek says, his tone flat but deliberate.
