Tables of Mass and Blood

Script

INT. ORBITAL PALATINE HALL – DAY

A cathedral of vacuumglass and old stone. Banners of rival HOUSES hang beside star-maps. At the center: an OVAL TABLE of black iron inlaid with runes and circuit-traces — the IRON PSALTER, lid open like a reliquary. Its inner surface scrolls names, numbers, timecodes.

LADY CATRIN VALE stands at ease in court blacks. Her gloves are immaculate. A cluster of LORDS and CLERKS circle her like wolves.

Across the room, LEGATE SERA KEST watches, armored, unsmiling.

At the lectern, a SENESCHAL reads.

SENESCHAL
By petition of House Vale: charter of supply, patronage, and ledger-rights to the Starborn Legion.

Murmurs. A LORD OF HOUSE DURN leans forward.

LORD DURN
Ledger-rights? You’d put your seal between the Legion and its bread?

CATRIN VALE
Not between. Beneath. Like a keystone. You want discipline? Discipline is fed.

She gestures — a CLERK slides a thin slate to the Seneschal. The Iron Psalter CHIMES, auto-registering the exhibit.

CATRIN VALE (CONT’D)
Protocol Seven: Any expedition raised under Imperial oath must declare a single supply authority— or every House claims “shortage” when blood is owed.

A LADY OF HOUSE ARK sneers.

LADY ARK
Convenient that “single authority” is you.

CATRIN VALE
Convenient that my warehouses already orbit the shipyard. Convenient that my captains answer my writ without bribes. Inconvenient that your rivals will starve this Legion if you don’t bind them.

Kest’s gaze sharpens. Vale meets it — a quiet pact across politics.

CATRIN VALE (CONT’D)
Let the Psalter decide.

She steps to the Iron Psalter, touches the rim— not intimate, ceremonial. A pulse of light. The Psalter projects a COLUMN: CURRENT STORES / REQUIRED STORES. The required line glows red.

CATRIN VALE (CONT’D)
We are short. Not by accident. By design.

The lords shift. That word lands.

CATRIN VALE (CONT’D)
Grant me ledger-rights and I’ll make shortage impossible to pretend. Deny me, and you’ll argue over whose grain is holier while the cor