Treaty at Perihelion

Script

INT. MERCURY ORBITAL ACCORD CHAMBER - “DAY”

A ring-shaped conference room bolted to a tumbling station. Beyond slitted shutters: MERCURY’S WHITE GLARE, the Sun a hard coin. Delegates hover in mag-boots around a central HOLO—pulses spiking like a heartbeat.

MARSHAL TAMSIN KORR, armored and precise, paces a half-step behind the table line. DR. IRENA SOLVIK studies the holo with manic focus. JAX RENN watches faces more than data.

KORR
Security protocol stands. No private channels. No personal uplinks. We share raw heliometric packets—here—now.

A MERCURIAN DELEGATE, skin sun-scorched, jaw clenched.

MERCURIAN DELEGATE
You want us to open our collector feeds to Belt pirates and monastery cults?

JAX
You want the Belt to stop assuming you’re turning the Sun into a gun? Then you show the math.

IRENA
Raw data means no “curation.” No missing bands. No… convenient smoothing.

Murmurs. A few delegates look at Irena like she’s the problem that won’t go away.

KORR
Dr. Solvik is here to verify integrity. Mr. Renn is here to keep you from killing each other. Sign.

A pen-stylus floats. One by one, hands press biometric seals. The HOLO updates—streams syncing, aligning—

IRENA (CONT’D)
There. Cross-calibration… finally—

The station SHUDDERS. A low, violent THUMP ripples through the chamber.

All heads snap to the shutters. In the distance: Mercury’s COLLECTOR FIELDS—vast mirrored petals—one section BLOOMS BLACK SMOKE.

Alarms flare red.

KORR
Lockdown.

JAX
That’s on the surface.

MERCURIAN DELEGATE
(on comm)
Collector Twelve—offline! We’re venting superheated coolant!

IRENA
If a collector field collapses, it’ll change the input profile. It contaminates every dataset.

KORR
Or it’s a message.

She looks to the delegates—already rising, already fracturing.

KORR (CONT’D)
Nobody leaves. Not until we know if this was accident or act.

JAX
Marshal, if you trap them now, they’ll call it a coup.

KORR
If I let them run, they’ll call it war.

IRENA is already pulling the stream, f