The orbital station of the All-Galactic Veche was a perfect, rotating ring of white alloy and crystalline voids, a testament to an ideal of order. Within its main chamber, Boyar Anatoliy Orlov felt the familiar, subtle shift as the microgravity field engaged. His polished boots lifted a single centimeter from the obsidian disc that was his speaking platform. He was a delegate of the Slavic Continuum, a cousin to the great Ferapont Orlov, and the weight of that name was far heavier than any planet’s gravity. His duty today was simple: to be a rock, to uphold the official narrative of strength and stability against the political tides.
Around him, nearly 150 other delegates from every major power in Kingdom 39 floated in the vast, circular amphitheater. The Rite of Weightless Counsel had begun. This was not merely a debate; it was a contest of conviction. A civilization’s mnemonic weight—the sheer, unshakable belief in its own truth—determined its influence here. A strong, unified argument would cause a delegate’s disc to rise and move toward the chamber’s center. A weak or divided one would see it drift to the periphery, a visible measure of failure. Anatoliy’s objective was to hold the line, to project absolute confidence in the Continuum’s perfect order.
A soft chime announced the first speaker. The disc belonging to Admiral Valeriy Kurov, his own countryman and a bitter rival to Sineus, drifted forward. Kurov’s conviction was the rigid, unyielding iron of the doctrinal purist. He represented a powerful faction within the Continuum that saw Sineus’s secretive methods as a stain on their honor. His voice, amplified by the chamber’s acoustics, was sharp and accusatory.
— Esteemed members of the Veche, I bring a matter of frontier integrity to your attention, — Kurov began, his gaze sweeping the assembly. — We receive reports of perfect stability, of one hundred percent mnemonic integrity. Yet whispers persist. From the Zarya System, from the outer territories under Admiral Sineus’s watch, we hear of fraying realities and fading memories.
Anatoliy’s jaw tightened. This was a direct, if veiled, attack. Kurov was using the Veche as a stage to undermine Sineus’s authority, weaponizing rumor to challenge the official record. Several discs from rival powers drifted slightly in Kurov’s direction, their delegates enjoying the spectacle of internal Continuum strife. The cost of this session was already beginning to mount.
Before Anatoliy could formulate a response, another disc moved. It belonged to Chancellor Xian Tian, the High Chancellor of the Celestial Mandate. He was a tall, unnervingly thin man in robes of dark blue smart-silk, his long chrome fingers steepled before him. He did not speak. Instead, a vast holographic display materialized above him, a data-poem of flowing, luminous script.
Intricate hexagrams of jade-colored light formed and dissolved, illustrating probabilities. A single, perfect Gzhel Weave pattern, the symbol of Continuum stability, appeared at the center of the display. Then, a single thread within it flickered, a minor anomaly. The flicker caused a cascade failure, the pattern unraveling exponentially until the entire weave was a chaotic snarl of corrupted light. The visual was beautiful, precise, and terrifying. The data-poem ended, and the hologram vanished. Xian Tian had not said a word, but his warning was absolute: minor flaws, left unchecked, lead to systemic collapse.
The pressure now fell entirely on Anatoliy. He had to counter both a direct political attack and an abstract, prophetic warning. He had to spend the political capital of his family name to defend a truth he had no means of verifying. He pushed down the flicker of doubt. His duty was to the official record. He keyed his console, and his own disc drifted forward, meeting Kurov’s challenge.
— Admiral Kurov’s concern for our frontiers is noted, — Anatoliy’s voice was calm and measured, the product of years of diplomatic training. — And Chancellor Xian Tian’s models are, as always, elegant. However, the official reports from the Zarya System, cross-verified by the Logos Weave consciousness of Task Force ‘Peresvet’ itself, confirm one hundred percent mnemonic stability. The weave is not frayed. It is perfect.
He was quoting the very reports Sineus himself had filed. He was lying, or at least repeating a lie, for the sake of state security. It was the fundamental, soul-crushing work of a diplomat. His conviction, forced and brittle, was just enough to halt Kurov’s advance. Their discs hung in opposition, a perfect stalemate. The Gzhel Weave patterns on the chamber walls, which had wavered during Kurov’s speech, grew steady once more. Order, bought with a falsehood, was restored.
A series of chimes signaled the vote. The assembly, faced with Kurov’s ambition, Xian Tian’s opaque warning, and the Continuum’s wall of official denial, chose the path of least resistance. The motion to investigate the frontier systems was tabled. The delegates’ discs drifted back to their resting positions. The great council of Kingdom 39, the body charged with protecting reality, had chosen inaction. They had chosen to forget the warning.
The political battle was won, but the victory was hollow. Anatoliy had merely reinforced the comforting illusion that Sineus’s perfect map was real.
Then, he saw him. A young man in the simple grey uniform of the Veche’s administrative staff, moving with an urgency that was a stark violation of the chamber’s slow, ritualized pace. The aide, a junior functionary named Caelan, had a pale, nervous face. He clutched a sealed dispatch case to his chest as if it were a bomb. The case was dark grey, made of a dense polymer designed to shield its contents from any form of scan.
Caelan navigated the drifting discs, his eyes wide with fear. He stopped before Anatoliy’s platform, his gloved hands trembling as he held out the case.
— Boyar Orlov, — the aide’s voice was a strained whisper. — A priority-alpha dispatch. From the Zarya System.
Anatoliy looked down at the case. On its surface, a sigil glowed with a pulsing red light. It was the emergency beacon of a frontier fleet command, a signal used only in cases of catastrophic failure. The real world had just crashed through the floor of their political theater. The crisis the Veche had voted to ignore was now, quite literally, in his hands.
He took the dispatch case. It felt cold and heavy. With a sharp, deliberate motion that broke the chamber’s silent decorum, he cracked the seal. The truth was coming, whether the Veche was ready for it or not.
