Commander Valerius processed the post-action reports, his objective to impose a clean, logical order on the messy aftermath of the battle. The air on the command deck of the Axiom’s Edge still smelled of ozone and scorched earth, a chaotic scent that offended his preference for sterile, recycled air. Through the main viewport, the Doppler Carillon stood silent in its crater, a monument now ringed by the smoking husks of both Union and Gatherer ships. His crews were restoring the siege line, their efficiency a small comfort in the face of the strategic mess. He took a sip of the bitter, recycled coffee that was his one concession to habit.
A priority message chime, sharp and insistent, cut through the low hum of the bridge. It was a direct directive from Hanno Valberg. The icon pulsed with an authority that superseded all other data streams. Valerius straightened, his focus narrowing to the cool blue light of the incoming text. The words were few, precise, and utterly illogical.
— Deploy the mobile Disruptors, — the order read. — Vectors to follow.
Valerius felt a cold knot tighten in his gut. The Disruptor Arrays, the functional prototypes of Valberg’s terror weapon, were not siege equipment. They were instruments of erasure. He watched as three heavy-lift platforms moved into position around the crater’s edge, each carrying one of the white ceramic arrays. The pylons of each device gleamed, their surfaces traced with geometric proofs that pulsed with a cold, internal light.
The targeting vectors arrived a moment later. Valerius’s hands moved across his console, inputting the coordinates as ordered. He expected the target to be the Carillon itself, or perhaps the remaining Gatherer forces. The targeting solution resolved on his holographic display, a red bracket locking onto a location miles away, far out over the neutral sea channels. It was the last known position of the refugee flotilla. The one Jian Li had nearly destroyed the system to save.
This was not a tactical move. It was a threat. A message written in the language of atrocity.
— Run the casualty forecasts, — Valerius ordered his sensor technician, his voice flat. He needed the data. He always needed the data.
The technician, a young man named Orrin whose face was pale under the console’s glow, complied without a word. The numbers appeared on Valerius’s private display a second later. A single, stark metric: Casualty Projection: 100%. The data did not waver. It was an absolute. An equation that ended in the murder of over five thousand civilians.
Valerius opened a secure channel to Valberg. The director’s face appeared on his screen, impassive as ever. The connection crackled with a faint hiss, a sound like distant, tearing fabric. Like a whisper of schism static.
— Sir, — Valerius began, keeping his voice level. — I have the targeting solution locked. The casualty forecasts for the flotilla… they are absolute.
He let the word hang in the air between them. It was the most potent objection he could voice: a statement of pure, undeniable data. He was offering Valberg a chance to reconsider, to pull back from an action that had no logical place in a strategy for survival. It was an appeal to the very principles the Union was built on.
Valberg’s expression did not change. His voice, when it came, was as cold and smooth as polished steel.
— We can’t afford correct probabilities, Commander.
The words struck Valerius with the force of a physical blow. It was a rejection of everything he believed in. Logic, data, probability—these were the tools that separated the Union from the Gatherers’ mysticism. They were the foundation of their claim to a superior path. In a single sentence, Valberg had dismissed it all in favor of raw, unquantifiable will.
— Deploy the weapons, — Valberg commanded, his voice leaving no room for further debate. The line went dead.
For a long moment, Valerius stared at the blank screen. Something inside him, a structure of belief as rigid and carefully constructed as the city of Aethelburg itself, fractured. He had followed illogical orders before, but they had always been in the service of a higher logic. This was different. This was fanaticism. This was the abandonment of the very system they claimed to be saving. The price of his continued obedience was his own integrity, the core of his identity as a man of reason.
He turned to his crew, his face a neutral mask he had perfected over twenty years of service.
— Power up the Disruptor arrays, — he said, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. — Slave their activation to my command.
The order was given. The choice was made.
A new sound filled the air, a low, dissonant hum that vibrated through the deck plates. It was the sound of the three Disruptor Arrays coming online. It was a clean, precise sound, yet it felt fundamentally wrong, like a perfectly composed schism static. It was the sound of order being weaponized into pure chaos. The hum was a promise of annihilation, a mathematical proof that ended in a scream.
Through his long-range optical scope, Valerius focused on the center of the Carillon. He saw the composer, Jian Li, a tiny figure dwarfed by the ancient pillars. He saw the man’s head snap up as the hum of the arrays reached him. He watched as Jian’s data slate lit up, no doubt displaying the new targeting vectors.
He saw the moment Jian Li understood. The composer looked out not at the siege line, but towards the distant sea. The hope, the defiance, the fragile resolve that had been on his face moments before—it all collapsed. Valerius watched the man’s shoulders slump, the fight draining out of him as he was caught in a trap with no logical escape. Surrender, or watch thousands die for his defiance.
It was a perfect checkmate. A victory for Hanno Valberg.
Then, a new object appeared in the hazy sky. A sleek, black Union shuttle, descending with arrogant calm through the smoke of the battlefield. It was Valberg’s personal transport. He was not content to issue the orders. He was not content to watch on a screen.
Valberg was coming to accept the composer’s surrender.
