I drag the detonation core file into the cruiser’s processor and let the decryption layers peel back one by one.
“You copied everything before we jumped,” Kael says from the pilot’s console. His voice carries easily across the narrow deck, steady and unhurried.
“I don’t walk into a summit without redundant backups,” I reply without looking at him. “Call it professional paranoia.”
“Useful trait,” Varek mutters from the auxiliary station.
The data unfolds in cascading layers of encoded timestamps, routing markers, and embedded harmonic signatures. I isolate the detonation record first. Public timestamp: 14:32:11 stationtime. That’s what Valen cited on broadcast. That’s what the feeds looped endlessly while my face was being stamped with traitor.
I zoom in deeper.
The internal clock doesn’t just show 14:32:11.
It shows 14:32:11.873.
A fractional offset.
That’s normal. System clocks log granular time.
I expand the harmonic trace metadata.
My breath catches.
There’s a second timestamp embedded within the energy signature file.
14:31:02.
Sixty-nine seconds earlier.
The deck seems to tilt under my feet.
“Kael,” I say quietly.
He’s beside me instantly, heat radiating from him, the faint metallic scent of plasma-burned armor still lingering around his shoulder. “What did you find?”
“The harmonic signature,” I say, forcing my voice steady. “It was logged before the detonation.”
He doesn’t speak.
Varek steps closer. “That is not possible.”
“Unless,” I murmur, fingers already flying across the console, “the signature existed in the system before the blast.”
I strip away the superficial timestamp layer and access raw metadata.
There it is.
The harmonic trace file was uploaded into Alliance Forensic Command forty-three seconds after the explosion.
But the signature itself was embedded with a pre-coded timestamp.
“Someone loaded it,” I say, my voice thinning slightly. “Before the device went off.”
Kael’s pale eyes harden.
I pull up his docking scan.
The baseline energy reading recorded when his cruiser arrived at Virex under truce protocol.
