Treaty at Perihelion

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Lockdown.

That’s on the surface.

Collector Twelve—offline! We’re venting superheated coolant!

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

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.

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

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

IRENA is already pulling the stream, fingers flying over a console, carving out the moment of impact.

Give me ten seconds before the explosion. I need the collector telemetry.

You don’t have access—

He does now.

She nods at a TECH. A key flashes green.

The HOLO zooms: Collector Twelve’s status—pressure, flux, coolant flow. A spike. A second spike—too clean.

That’s not a rupture. That’s a command.

A remote override?

A timed harmonic injection—right before the coolant line fails. Someone *wanted* it to look like heat stress.

Who has override authority?

The Mercurian delegate hesitates—too long.

Mercury. Only Mercury.

And anyone you’ve bribed into “maintenance.”

KORR’s gaze sweeps the room. She clocks every micro-flinch.

All delegation credentials—on the table. Now.

A beat. Reluctant, angry movement. Credentials clink onto metal.

IRENA leans closer to the holo, eyes narrowing.

Wait—there’s an uplink ping. Right before the injection.

From where?

It’s… masked. But the handshake signature—

She looks up, and for the first time she’s unsure.

IRENA (CONT’D)

It’s Accord-grade encryption.

Silence drops like a guillotine.

That encryption was issued today. In this room.

The delegates start talking over each other—accusations, denials—voices rising toward chaos.

JAX steps forward, calm but cutting.

If you walk out, you give the saboteur exactly what they paid for: no shared data, no shared truth.

He turns to Korr.

JAX (CONT’D)

You want a culprit in an hour? Fine. But you don’t get it by squeezing the room until it breaks.

Then tell me how.

JAX looks at Irena—an unspoken pact.

We pick two suspects. Not twelve. We narrow. Publicly. Together.

And we keep the raw streams live. If the saboteur strikes again, they’ll leave a fingerprint in the pulses.

KORR studies them—calculating the risk.

Two suspects. One hour. Live streams stay.

She faces the room, voice like steel.

KORR (CONT’D)

The Accord stands—unless you choose to burn it.

Outside, Mercury’s collector smoke curls into space like a dark question mark, while the Sun’s pulse on the holo continues—steady, coded, indifferent.