The hum of the anti-espionage field settled into a low, omnipresent vibration beneath their conversation. Not loud, just enough to remind both men that nothing here would be recorded, remembered, or retrieved by anything but memory.
Governor Krell let the silence linger for a beat longer. Then he began.
"You've seen part of the truth already, Mr. Walker. But not the shape of the whole thing. Not how deep the fractures run."
He didn't look to the holotable this time. He kept his eyes on Ethan. Direct. Unwavering.
"The Orion Federation appears unified. Its charter is democratic. Its rhetoric speaks of balance, justice, and progress. And to many of its citizens, that illusion holds. But internally… we are fractured."
Ethan didn't interrupt. He just listened.
Krell raised a hand and slowly extended three fingers, as if weighing invisible scales in the air.
"There are three main factions within the Federation's political and military leadership. Not formal parties, mind you. There are no declarations, no seats in parliament marked with allegiance. But they're real, and they're shaping our future with or without consensus."
He lowered his ring finger.
"First… the Extremists. A growing force in the shadows of our command structure. Paranoid. Power-hungry. Obsessed with the idea that the Empire, despite its internal collapse and current treaties, will return one day to reclaim the sectors we won in the War of Separation."
"They use fear as fuel, fear of invasion, fear of subversion, fear of stagnation and they've built entire black operations programs off of it. Secret weapons development. Unregulated psychic research. Planetary-scale mining operations that decimate local ecosystems. All in the name of preparing for the war they think is inevitable."
Ethan's expression didn't shift, but a cold knot began to form in his gut. The Black Sun Syndicate's experiments… the psychic ore on Kynara… it all fit.
Krell lowered his middle finger.
"Second… the Moderates. My faction. Those of us who still believe in Orion's original vision. That the Federation can be better, not by brute force, but by diplomacy. By forging trust. By empowering sectors rather than exploiting them."
"We are the smallest of the three. Politically active, but militarily limited. We have allies, governors, civic planners, and a few key figures in defense command. But we lack the muscle to keep the others in check alone. So we rely on timing. On information. And… on people."
His tone lingered on the last word. Ethan understood. He didn't react.
Krell lowered his last finger.
"Lastly, there are the Centrists. The so-called 'guardians of balance.' They dominate the upper echelons of military command and hold the majority in the High Council. But they've grown passive. Content with maintaining order, not creating progress."
"They fear war, yes. But they also fear disruption. To them, civil war is worse than tyranny. They tolerate the Extremists to avoid confrontation. And they tolerate us, the Moderates, to keep the illusion of ideological inclusivity alive."
He leaned back slightly in his chair.
"It is they who maintain the stalemate."
Ethan let the weight of it settle in.
Three factions. One Federation. Balanced on a knife's edge.
"And you?" Ethan asked. "Where did you stand when Kynara was burning?"
Krell's jaw tightened.
"Under Governor Renn Valcor," he said, voice colder now, "I had no choice but to wait."
The name dropped into the room like a stone in water.
"Valcor was the worst kind of Extremist. Not just paranoid, but ambitious. He wasn't content to prepare for a war, he wanted to start one. His alliance with Drakor Krenna and the Black Sun Syndicate wasn't an accident. It was part of a program. A testing ground. Kynara was his laboratory."
Krell's eyes narrowed slightly.
"And I was his Vice-Governor."
Ethan's gaze sharpened, but he didn't speak.
"I saw the signs," Krell continued. "The silent redirections of military funds. The transport convoys with no manifests. The off-grid research bases with strange shielding. And most of all… the refusal to report any of it to Ashen Prime's civilian oversight committees."
He exhaled slowly, pressing a palm to the tabletop.
"But I couldn't act, not yet. Not without a lot of clear, undeniable proof. And not without leverage. The Centrists wouldn't back a political coup without undeniable justification. And the Extremists would have crushed me the moment I raised my voice."
He looked up.
"Then the Syndicate made its move. The violence escalated. The resistance rose. And… you arrived."
Ethan's eyes flicked downward for half a second, remembering the flames, the ruins, the bodies.
"Your presence," Krell said, quieter now, "was the variable they hadn't accounted for. You didn't belong to any faction. You answered to no Federation chain. And yet… you made the difference."
He tapped the table again, pulling up a holo-image of Valcor's arrest warrant.
A second projection displayed military logs bearing the insignia of the 6th Fleet.
"With your help, indirect though it was, we gathered what we needed. The 6th Fleet Admiral, Doran Kane, a rare moderate with enough clout, quickly used the evidence we sent to Federation Intelligence Bureau and then the Council. Valcor was arrested. Interrogated. Imprisoned."
"The extremists lost a piece. A big one. But not the game."
The holograms blinked off. Krell's expression darkened.
"They're still out there. With allies in covert research. Black operations. Illegal weapons testing. They've gone deeper underground. More cautious. But also more dangerous."
Ethan's mind was already racing, connecting dots. Krenna's mutation. The psychic resonance spike during the final battle. The Astral Slayer's activation. None of that had been random.
"And now," he said slowly, "you're warning me."
"Not just warning you," Krell replied. "I'm giving you context. So that if you cross paths with them again, and you will, you'll understand what you're walking into."
He paused, then added with deliberate precision:
"And so you'll understand why I'm offering my support to you, Ethan Walker. Not as a politician. But as a man who wants to change the direction of this Federation before it becomes a mirror of the Empire we once fled."
The anti-espionage field hummed softly in the background, like a pressure system waiting to explode.
Ethan leaned back slightly, arms still folded.
This wasn't just a debrief. This was a chessboard being laid bare, and he'd just been told he was a piece.
Not pawn. Not king. Something stranger.
Something the factions couldn't quite categorize.
Yet.
"So," he said at last, "what do you want from me exactly?"
Krell's answer came quietly, but without hesitation.
"Nothing. Yet. But when you travel this Federation and you find suffering, injustice, or manipulation. I want you to remember who's really responsible. And who's trying to stop it."