They held the tribunal four days after the battle.
Not because justice should wait — because the ship needed to stop bleeding first. Four days of emergency repairs. Four days of medical triage, structural reinforcement, and the thousand small acts of maintenance that kept a damaged vessel alive in the void. Four days for two million people to process the fact that they'd survived a military assault and were still flying and a twelve-year-old boy was the reason why.
On the fifth day, Horen called the session.
The governance council chamber was standing-room only. Every seat filled. Every aisle packed. People watching on screens throughout the ship — not because they were required to, but because word had spread through the Lower Decks like lightning through Lyra's fists: they caught the traitor.
Kael watched from the gallery. Not the public gallery — Horen had given him a private observation point behind a one-way partition, because the boy who'd eaten a planet-killer beam couldn't currently walk through a corridor without being mobbed by people who wanted to touch him, thank him, or stare at him like he was a myth that had wandered into reality and forgotten to be fictional.
Being famous is exhausting. Being famous for eating suns is worse.
Moren was brought in.
Not in chains — Horen had insisted on that. "We're civilized people," the old master had said. "We demonstrate it especially when dealing with those who aren't." So Moren walked into the chamber under escort, wearing his uniform, every hair in place, his expression carrying the particular calm of a man who had anticipated this moment and had contingencies for his contingencies.
He scanned the room. Found the council. Found Horen at the prosecution table. Found Sera — Lieutenant Commander Sera Maren, standing in full intelligence officer bearing, her maintenance technician persona discarded like the shell it had always been.
And somewhere behind the one-way glass, his eyes swept past Kael's observation point. The boy could have sworn that Moren's gaze paused there — a fraction of a second, a micro-hesitation — before moving on.
He knows I'm here.
Of course he does. He always knows.
Sera presented the case.
She stood at the podium in a uniform she hadn't worn in twelve years — the insignia of the Terran Confederation's Office of Naval Intelligence glinting under the chamber lights. Her voice was level. Her evidence was devastating.
She laid the chain out link by link, each piece of evidence connecting seamlessly to the next, building a structure of proof so complete that even the most sympathetic defense couldn't find a handhold.
Link one: Lieutenant Dren. The mole. His confession. His communication logs. The encrypted data package he'd transmitted to the Vrakthar fleet containing Meridian's Hope's shield frequency data.
Link two: the routing protocol. The data package traced through seven internal relays back to a terminal inside the Research Division's network. Network architecture signatures confirmed.
Link three: the encryption key. Extracted from the Research Division's air-gapped server. Mathematical proof that the package had been generated on Director Moren's personal terminal, accessed with his biometric credentials, during a window when ship logs confirmed his presence in his office.
Link four: the financial trail. Dren's payment routed through a shell entity created eighteen months ago — the same timeframe as Moren's encrypted communications with Vrakthar Fleet Commander Thar'vek.
Link five: the communications themselves. Eighteen months of decoded transcripts between Moren and Vrakthar military intelligence. References to "the asset." Extraction protocols. The agreement to install Moren as puppet governor of a captured Meridian's Hope under Vrakthar authority.
And the final piece — the clause that made the chamber go silent:
"The subject designated ANOMALY is to be extracted alive and delivered to the Warlord's research division. The asset's cooperation is not required."
Sera let the words sit. Let twenty thousand people and two million screens absorb what they meant.
"Director Caius Moren entered into a formal agreement with a hostile foreign military power," she said. "He transmitted classified defense data that directly enabled an attack on this ship. That attack killed 847 people. He then used the crisis he created to consolidate political power through the Unified Defense Reconstruction Program — positioning himself to repeat the betrayal during the second attack."
She paused. Looked at Moren.
"And he negotiated the extraction of a minor child — a twelve-year-old boy — for delivery to a Vrakthar Warlord's research division. Not as a diplomatic exchange. As cargo."
The chamber erupted.
Moren's defense attorney — a sharp, experienced advocate from the Upper Deck legal establishment — fought hard. Chain of custody challenges. Authentication disputes. Questions about the legality of intelligence-gathered evidence.
Sera dismantled every argument with the surgical precision of a woman who had spent twelve years building this case in her head and was now executing it from memory.
"The routing protocol analysis—" the attorney began.
"Was performed using standard Naval Intelligence methodology, verified by three independent analysts, and is consistent with accepted evidentiary standards in both civilian and military tribunals." Sera didn't blink. "Next."
"The encryption key was obtained through unauthorized access to a secured facility—"
"The encryption key was obtained through a security-authorized operation conducted under Master Horen's direct oversight in his capacity as head of shipboard security during an active threat investigation. The authorization documentation is in evidence packet seven, pages twelve through nineteen."
Mom is terrifying, Kael thought from behind the glass. In the best possible way.
Moren himself said nothing during the proceedings. He sat in his chair with perfect posture, perfect composure, the mask of civilized authority maintained even as the evidence buried him layer by layer.
Only once did his control slip.
When Sera played the audio of the decoded transmission — Moren's own voice, captured through the encryption, speaking to Fleet Commander Thar'vek — something crossed his face. Not fear. Not guilt. Frustration. The expression of a man who had been careful enough, smart enough, thorough enough to evade detection for eighteen months, and who had been undone by a maintenance technician with a soldering iron and a grudge.
"The voice authentication matches Director Moren with 99.7% confidence," Sera said. "The analysis was performed by three independent systems using different methodological approaches. The result is unambiguous."
Moren's attorney requested a recess. It was denied.
The tribunal voted.
9-3. Guilty on all counts. Treason. Conspiracy with a hostile foreign power. Accessory to the deaths of 847 crew members in the first attack and 112 in the second.
Moren stood when the verdict was read. His face was blank — not the practiced blankness of a performance but the genuine blankness of a machine shutting down, the human behind the mask finally accepting that the mask was no longer sufficient.
He was led from the chamber in restraints.
As he passed the observation partition, he stopped. Turned his head toward the glass. Spoke — not loudly, not dramatically, just a statement delivered to the one-way surface behind which a boy with silver eyes was watching.
"You'll understand eventually," he said. "What I was trying to do. Why it was necessary."
Kael said nothing. Moren couldn't hear him through the glass anyway.
But he thought: No. I won't. Because what you did was never necessary. It was convenient. And you confused the two because you're the kind of person who can't tell the difference.
Moren was taken to the brig. Maximum security. The door sealed.
The chamber was still buzzing — shouts and arguments and the particular chaos of a political body processing a shock that reordered everything they thought they knew. But underneath the noise, something else was emerging.
Relief.
The cancer had been named. Cut out. Held up to the light.
The ship wasn't healed. But it was cleaner.