The hum of the anti-espionage field remained steady, like a quiet heartbeat beneath the chamber's silence.
Governor Krell did not move. He didn't summon new projections or shift into policy speak. Instead, he simply looked across the table at Ethan. Calm, focused, and unmistakably personal in his next words.
"You know the name," he said. "Silvan Elos Orion. Every Federation citizen does. His statues stand in every Core plaza. His face is engraved on our treaties. His name, of course, was taken as the title of our nation. But what most people don't know, what they're never taught, is what he lost."
Ethan said nothing. He kept his eyes on Krell, letting the man speak without interruption.
"Silvan wasn't just a reformer. He was a Count. He held dominion over five thriving systems, sixty-three planets, two hundred orbital colonies, and a civilian population of over thirty billion."
"And he gave all of it up. Or rather… it was taken."
Krell's voice didn't rise. If anything, it grew quieter. But the intensity in his eyes sharpened like a blade's edge.
"Silvan believed the Empire could be changed from within. He believed that nobles didn't have to be tyrants. That governance could evolve. That the non-humanoid species, relegated to servitude and surveillance by Imperial law, could be granted citizenship. That voice could matter more than blood."
"He brought these ideas to the Imperial Council. Spoke them aloud. Wrote them down. Shared them. And for that…"
Krell exhaled, slow and heavy.
"They branded him a traitor. Declared his lineage corrupted. They executed his family publicly, one by one. His wife. His children. His siblings. His entire lineage. Then they turned their fleets on his people."
Ethan stiffened. It wasn't shock, it was the cold churn of comprehension. Of imagining the scale.
"The death fleets came without warning. Planetary crust destabilizers. Viral payloads. Pulse disruptors. They erased entire worlds. Over ninety percent of his territory was turned to ash in less than a standard week. It wasn't conquest. It was erasure."
Krell's fingers had gone still atop the holotable. He wasn't looking for sympathy. He was reciting history like someone who had studied it down to the names of the ships that fired first.
"Silvan survived. Hidden by loyalists. And when he emerged again, he didn't come back with rage. He came back with a plan. A declaration of secession. Not just from the Empire, but from the entire concept of hereditary rule."
"He gathered allies, the outcast admirals, the fractured colonies, the subjugated races. And with help from three external galactic nations, he sparked the War of Severance."
"It took sixteen years. Entire generations fought and died. But the revolution succeeded. And from its ashes, the Orion Federation was born."
Krell paused again. Not for effect. Just long enough to let the weight of history settle over the room.
"We were meant to be different."
Ethan studied him, quietly. The reverence in Krell's tone wasn't manufactured. It was belief, genuine belief, the kind born not from blind patriotism but from long years of watching something sacred slip through calloused hands.
"And now," Krell continued, "we're watching that dream rot from the inside. Not from civil unrest. Not from economic collapse. But from ideological betrayal."
His gaze sharpened.
"The extremists believe we must become the thing we once defied. That only through militarization, fear, and absolute control can we survive what they see as an inevitable return of the Empire."
"But if we adopt their tactics...the mining of forbidden resources, the experiments, the planetary oppression, we've already lost. Because we will have become the next Empire."
That struck something in Ethan.
Not because it was dramatic. But because it was simple. True.
He remembered the Syndicate's manipulation of psychic ore, the way entire settlements on Kynara were turned into husks for experimentation. He remembered the screams, the wild, fractured minds, the horrors buried beneath the desert where no child should ever walk.
And it hadn't been a rogue faction. Not entirely. It had been approved, indirectly. Funded, protected. Enabled.
"So what you're saying," Ethan said slowly, "is that history's trying to repeat itself."
"No," Krell said. "I'm saying it's already repeating. And if men like us don't help break the cycle, we will end up right where Silvan started, watching billions die while we wait for courage to catch up."
He let the silence sit with them.
Ethan didn't answer right away. He didn't know if he could.
He had no love for politics. No ambition for power. But he understood causes. He understood sacrifice. And he'd seen enough to know that inaction, when injustice was staring you in the face, was just another kind of complicity.
Krell leaned back slightly, expression cooling just enough to let the moment breathe.
"I didn't bring you here to recruit you, Ethan. That's not how this works. You're not a soldier. You're not one of my operatives. But you're already in this. You were in it the moment you set foot on Kynara."
Ethan took a long breath, the taste of the Camellia tea still lingering faintly on his tongue. For a drink meant to bring calm, it had become the herald of a storm.
"And you think the Moderates… your faction… are the only ones who still carry the original flame?"
"I do," Krell said without flinching. "Because we're the only ones trying to build instead of consume. The only ones who think leadership isn't about obedience, but about service."
The chamber hummed. Not louder. Just… clearer, somehow.
Ethan looked down at his hand, resting beside his datapad.
A mercenary's hand.
Calloused, steady, trained through repetition and forged in violence. But it was more than that now. It was a hand that had once clutched a molecular dagger pulsating with impossible energy, the Astral Slayer. A relic not just of ancient war, but of something beyond comprehension. A weapon that had chosen him, or maybe answered him.
That same hand had grasped the wrists of dying allies, pulled children from collapsed caves, leveled a weapon at men who begged for mercy, and offered that same mercy when none was required. It had held a trigger one second and offered shelter the next.
It was a killer's hand.
And a healer's.
It had been clenched in fury, open in diplomacy, and trembling in silence after too many hours without sleep or answers.
Maybe that was the burden now.
Not the enemies ahead. Not the expectations of factions or figureheads.
But the growing knowledge that, in this new life, he wasn't just a survivor anymore.
To survive was instinct. It was reflex.
But to decide what kind of man he wanted to become…
That required something more.
Conviction. Direction. Purpose.
Because surviving had stopped being his sole goal a long time ago, maybe as far back as that night in the desert, when he'd faced an onslaught of bandits at Ridgefall Outpost alongside his allies, and glimpsed the edge of something larger than just himself.
Now… he had choices.
A dangerous freedom. A power that others were beginning to notice.
His name was circulating. His clearance expanding. His steps carried weight, whether he liked it or not.
He could disappear again. Fade into the outer sectors. Take the contracts that paid the most and leave ideology to the idealists.
But…
He wasn't sure that was who he was anymore.
"I'll think about it," Ethan said at last, his voice steady but quiet. "All of it."
There was no bravado in his tone. No attempt to sound noble or mysterious. Just a calm acceptance that the question had been received—and that it mattered.
Governor Krell nodded slowly, not with triumph or satisfaction, but with a subtle exhale of understanding.
"That's all I ask," he said.
The silence that followed wasn't tense. It was contemplative. Two men, neither trusting fully, neither naïve, sharing the space between conviction and uncertainty.