The chamber was bathed in cold white light from the high windows and the flickering holoscreens. The whole room hummed with a tension that no one bothered to hide anymore. Sir Roland leaned against the polished railing with his arms crossed and disbelief written plainly across his face, while Lady Wistoria sat poised but alert at the long table, her hands folded so tightly that her knuckles had gone pale. At the head of the table, Minister Alan stood waiting for the room to settle, his voice calm when he finally spoke but heavy with everything he had not yet said.
On the central holo-display, a high-resolution recording played. The Tartarusios slid through the void with its black hull reflecting the distant stars, and an Orbiton burst from its bay like a perfect, living shadow. With a single antimatter shot, twelve Terrian ships vanished in a blinding flare. The debris did not even scatter; it simply evaporated, leaving nothing behind but empty space, and when the recording ended the room was so silent that the hum of the projector seemed loud.
Roland was the first to break it, and his voice cracked as he did. "What do you mean, Altopereh? We lost him at Orion. His core imploded. What are you saying?"
Alan gestured toward the screen without taking his eyes off the young man. "See for yourself. That was one of the most recent encounters with the Tartarusios' crew." He paused just long enough for the words to land. "Youri Kronos might still be alive."
A murmur rippled through the chamber, and Wistoria leaned forward in her seat as if she had not heard correctly.
"Those damn criminals," Roland hissed. "How have they not been caught yet?"
"Don't get ahead of yourself," Alan said, cutting him off with nothing more than a raised hand. "Let me explain." His tone sharpened, and every eye in the room went to him. "We all believed Altopereh perished at Orion. The core's final blast left no trace — no Orbiton, no pilot, nothing to recover. The case was closed and sealed as top secret. Until today." He let the recording replay in slow motion behind him, the antimatter blast blooming across the cluster of ships in a brilliant and horrifying flash. "Five years later, it appears again. The one even the Reaper fears. The Vanisher."
"With one shot," Wistoria said quietly, "twelve ships erased." She looked up at the minister, and for once the composure she was known for slipped a little. "But why fire on us? Are we to believe one of our own has gone rogue?"
Alan's gaze moved slowly around the table, meeting each member of the Consul in turn. "The only ones capable of piloting a God Orbiton are those who carry the artifact implant. Six survived the procedure. Five of them are known to us, active, and serving the Empire as we speak. The sixth was declared dead at Orion." He did not need to say the name, but he said it anyway. "Youri Kronos."
The chamber went utterly still. Somewhere along the table, someone drew a sharp breath, and it sounded like the whole room had done the same.
"So he's alive," Roland whispered. He did not sound angry anymore. He sounded like a man who had just watched a door he had nailed shut swing open on its own.
"Possibly," Alan admitted. "Based on current intelligence, Youri may have survived. And now he is making a move."
The holo shifted to a map of the galaxy, and the Blue Haze Nebula lit up in pale light, crossed by tiny, erratic lines that marked the Tartarusios' untraceable jumps. They doubled back on themselves and broke off into nothing, as if the ship had been drawn by a child who kept changing their mind.
"The crew of the Tartarusios is led by Oscar Meilton, an ex-rebel turned Renegador," Alan went on. "The ship itself leaves no logs. No Brion traces, no predictable patterns, nothing our trackers can hold onto. Our analysts have taken to calling it a ghost ship."
"Define 'ghost ship,' Minister Alan," Wistoria said, and though her voice was steady, it was tight at the edges.
Alan's gaze sharpened. "The artifacts that empowered this Empire came from another world. We rule this universe, but the Tartarusios originates from somewhere beyond our knowledge. Its technology is anomalous. We do not understand how it was built, and we do not understand what powers it."
The holo changed one last time to show a distant, haunting nebula with the Tartarusios hovering inside it, its black hull unnervingly perfect, so still that it almost seemed alive, like an animal that knew it was being watched and did not care. No one at the table said anything for a long time. The Consul had faced rebellions, plagues and wars on a dozen fronts, but none of those things had ever made the room feel this small.
The meeting broke up soon after, in the careful, quiet way that meetings in Fansilia always ended, with bows and polite words that covered a dozen private calculations. Roland did not stay for any of it. He walked out of the chamber with his jacket half-buttoned and his jaw clenched. He did not stop walking until he had reached the landing platform where his ship was waiting, its engines already warming in the evening air.
An officer met him at the ramp and saluted. "Sir, the ship is ready."
"Change course," Roland said, and the officer looked at him in confusion, because the route had been set for days. "Take me to Helix Base. I need to speak with my sister."
The officer hurried off to relay the order, and Roland stood alone at the top of the ramp, looking out over the shining spires of the capital without really seeing any of them. His sister was on the front lines at Helix, fighting a war that had swallowed her whole ever since Orion, and he did not know how he was going to tell her this, or whether he should tell her at all. He only knew that she would never forgive him if she heard it from anyone else. He thought of a face he had not let himself think about in years, a crooked grin, a voice that had once called him by a nickname no one else used. The thought hurt more than he expected it to.
"Youri," he murmured to no one, as the ship's doors closed behind him. "I never expected to see you again."