The journey through a Pesenniy Shag was a state of non-being, a suspension of normal causality. For the senior officers of Task Force ‘Peresvet’, gathered on the command dais of the Stoikiy, it was an opportunity for Admiral Valeriy Sineus to impose his will upon the mission before reality resumed. He stood before a holographic plinth, his voice a calm, authoritative instrument carving order into the minds of his commanders. Outside the viewscreen, the silent vortex of the Song-Path flowed, a river of impossible, interwoven colors.
His briefing was precise, a recitation of fleet dispositions and rules of engagement for their arrival in the Zarya System. He moved from orbital mechanics to sensor priorities, his logic an unbreachable fortress. The officers—captains of cruisers and squadron leaders—listened with the focused stillness of men who understood the gravity of their task. They were the scalpel Sineus would wield against the decay, and he was sharpening the blade. To justify the strict mnemonic protocols he was enacting, he grounded his strategy in the bedrock of official history.
— The annals of the Fenris sector suppression show that swift severance is the only cure for a mnemonic contagion of this nature, — Sineus stated, his gaze sweeping across his officers. He was quoting from a text known to every graduate of the Continuum’s war college, a foundational doctrine of his own philosophy. Forgetting was a tool. Erasure was a weapon. It was the principle upon which he had built his entire career.
A quiet voice, clear and steady, cut through the sterile air of the bridge.
— Respectfully, Admiral, you are citing the redacted version of that text.
The words came from the new station near the tactical displays. Ksenia Voronova, the Narrative Compliance Officer, stood with her hands clasped behind her back, her expression one of academic neutrality. The challenge was so unexpected, so contrary to the rigid hierarchy of a flagship’s bridge, that a profound silence fell. The low hum of the reality anchors suddenly seemed immense. The officers did not turn their heads, but the tension in their shoulders was a palpable thing.
Sineus did not move. He simply shifted his gaze to her.
Ksenia met his stare without flinching, her own objective clear: to defend the integrity of the record.
— The original text, before the Censorate’s amendments, speaks of integration, not severance. It posits that a dissonant memory, if woven back into the whole, strengthens the fabric of reality.
She had done more than correct him. She had publicly declared her allegiance to the opposing philosophy, the very idealism that had seen her censured and assigned to his command. She was not just a warden sent by his rivals; she was a missionary for the creed of absolute remembrance. The air on the bridge grew colder. The intricate Gzhel Weave of the tactical display beside her flickered, a single cobalt thread desaturating to grey for a half-second before the system corrected the flaw.
The Admiral’s face was a mask of carved stone, his eyes chips of black ice. He stared at Ksenia for a full five seconds, a silence more profound and damning than any rebuke. In that gaze was the cold fury of a monarch whose divine right had been questioned by a commoner in open court. He saw not an archivist, but a political weapon deployed by Kurov, a living embodiment of the doctrinal rot he had spent his life fighting. He had accepted a leash, and it was already tightening.
Then, with an act of pure will, he broke the connection. He turned his back to her, his attention returning to the assembled officers as if the interruption had never occurred, as if Ksenia Voronova did not exist. The dismissal was absolute.
— As I was saying, — Sineus continued, his voice unchanged, the cadence of his briefing resuming its flawless rhythm. — All units will adhere to severance protocols upon contact. There will be no negotiation with the anomaly.
The line was drawn. His authority, reasserted by sheer force of will, was the only truth that mattered on this bridge. The officers, released from the tension, refocused their attention, their loyalty snapping back to their commander. The ideological battle was over before it had truly begun, decided by a refusal to engage.
Ksenia remained at her station, her face pale but her posture unbroken. She had made her choice, and the price was the cold, focused enmity of the most powerful man in the task force. She had planted the seed of a different truth, but it had fallen on frozen ground.
Sineus concluded the briefing, issuing final orders with crisp finality. He knew this was only the first test. The archivist was disciplined, her conviction a tangible force. She was a problem to be managed, a variable to be contained. He had fought ghosts of memory his entire life; a ghost of principle was simply a new kind of enemy.
The vortex of the Song-Path churned on, indifferent. The ship and its crew, a sliver of order in a river of un-reality, hurtled toward a system where the past was eating the present.
