The rig’s forward panel flickers to life again, this time showing a camera feed: my face, pale and bruised at the jawline, hair tangled. Behind me, a sterile wall panel with a corporate seal—Yatori’s parent company logo, faint and smug.
They’ve staged the backdrop.
They’ve framed me as the problem.
A voice booms through a speaker—an announcer tone, sanitized. “Attention. Live transmission initiating.”
I feel my stomach drop, but my hands stay steady around the compad.
The holo blooms again—Morazin, now standing at a podium in a crisp uniform, lighting perfect, expression composed. The background behind him is a flag wall—Alliance and Coalition symbols blended into a “unity” motif, which is so nauseatingly manipulative I almost choke.
He looks into the camera like he’s about to deliver salvation.
“Citizens,” he says, voice smooth and amplified. “We stand at the edge of instability. We have grown complacent in our desire for comfort. We have mistaken peace for prosperity.”
I swallow bile.
He continues, calm as a knife: “War is not a tragedy. War is an engine. It funds fleets. It moves resources. It disciplines societies that have forgotten scarcity. Necessary suffering is the price of continued stability.”
My skin crawls.
My compad trigger sits idle, listening, waiting for the broadcast frequency peak.
Morazin lifts his chin, eyes bright with conviction. “There will be those who attempt to weaponize truth—civilians who believe they can destabilize systems with anecdotes and leaked logs. They will call themselves heroes. They are not heroes. They are accelerants.”
He gestures, and my camera feed appears in a corner of his broadcast—me in restraints, framed as cautionary tale.
“Jordan James,” Morazin says, voice turning almost gentle, “is one such accelerant.”
My heart hammers. My palms sweat against the compad’s casing.
He’s nearing the peak—his cadence tightening, the rhetorical climb toward the moment he thinks will terrify the galaxy.
“Let this be a lesson,” he says, voice hardening. “Institutions exist to protect you from chaos. When you defy them, you defy stability itself. And stability will defend itself.”
The ship’s internal network pings—broadcast channel reaching maximum distribution, routing through corporate satellites.
My compad’s diagnostic layer registers the frequency pattern like a predator scenting blood.
Trigger conditions: met.
Not yet.
Wait for the clearest confession line.
Morazin spreads his hands in that practiced statesman gesture. “The Nine understand this. Baragon understands this. We understand that peace is a lie societies tell themselves until the bill comes due.”
There.
There’s the line—names spoken on record, in full, in his own voice.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper. Then I press my thumb against the dead glass in the exact spot that initiates the timed handshake.
The compad warms under my touch.
A silent pulse runs.
No outward signal. No obvious broadcast.
