Census of the Dead

Script

INT. DRYDOCK CHAPEL BAY - PRE-DAWN

A cathedral of steel ribs and scaffold. The LEGION TRANSPORT *AURIC SAINT* hangs half-skinned above a blue-white reactor glow. Workers in vacuum-smudged tabards weld like candlelight.

At the bay’s center: the IRON PSALTER CORE — a black, coffin-shaped recorder with engraved prayers and blinking telemetry.

LEGATE SERA KEST stands in parade armor, scarred and functional. TRIBUNE JANNIK COR hovers nearby, tight-jawed.

DR. IVO RELLAN pushes through with a slate of orbital plots, eyes sleepless.

On the Psalter’s face, lines etch themselves as it listens.

PSALTER (V.O.)
Day Five. Pre-departure census.
Hull repair: seventy-two percent.
Corridor window: nineteen hours, forty-six minutes.

RELLAN
We don’t have a ship. We have a promise shaped like one.

KEST
We have an order.

RELLAN
An order timed to the hour our rivals can recall you for “prudence.”

JANNIK COR
Legate— the foremast truss is still underbrace. If the corridor shear hits—

KEST
If we miss the window, the Houses vote us into mothballs. Supplies reallocated. Names erased.

She steps to the Psalter. Its lens iris dilates like an eye.

KEST (CONT'D)
Record: launch intent under incomplete repairs.

RELLAN
Don’t give it that sentence. That’s a noose.

PSALTER (V.O.)
Command input detected.
“Launch intent under incomplete repairs.”
Stamped. Irrevocable.

Rellan’s jaw flexes. He flicks his slate; a simulation blooms— a luminous corridor, the ship’s silhouette wobbling.

RELLAN
Your margins are not “tight,” Legate. They’re engineered.

KEST
Engineered by physics?

RELLAN
By hands. Someone altered the burn schedule— they pushed our insertion deeper into the cadence. That increases shear loads by forty percent.

JANNIK COR
Who signs the brief?

Rellan hesitates, glances to the far end of the bay— silhouettes of STAFF OFFICERS conferring, too calm.

RELLAN
It came with court seals. It came *clean.*

KEST
Nothing comes clean.

She turns, voice carrying through the chapel bay.

KEST