The war was already tilting toward collapse when they dragged Commander Hale into the tribunal dome.

The colony could not wait for victory or defeat; trials were swift, public, and broadcast across every station to remind citizens that failure had consequences. Even before the enemy fleets broke orbit, the court convened. “Justice,” they said, “must not be postponed by war.” Something the Operator had suggested.

 

“The witness is inconsistent,” said the Operator, voice flat, resonant, inescapable.

 

The chamber hushed. Screens lit, highlighting contradictions between sworn testimony and data logs. The jury did not stir. The judge did not scold. They never did.

 

Everyone had learned: when the Operator spoke, truth was no longer negotiable. On the battlefield, that same rigidity bled through: it dismissed intelligence that contradicted its own predictions, forcing commanders to fight blind whenever reports were messy or human. The colony had begun losing not just to enemy fire, but to the machine’s certainty.

 

The defendant waited. Commander Hale was gray at the temples, his uniform pressed sharp and hands folded as if in prayer. He looked like a man prepared for a verdict, not a fight.

 

The judge’s gavel tapped once. “Proceed.”

 

The Operator’s cold light swung to him. “Analysis complete. During the Battle of Yarris Gate, Commander Hale failed to execute two of seven mission-critical tasks. This omission is causal to the colony’s defeat.”

 

The words landed like stone on metal.

 

Hale’s voice was steady. “Confirmed.”

 

A murmur rippled. Defendants usually pleaded fatigue, sabotage, panic. He did not.

 

The Operator continued. “Root cause: task saturation. Phenomenon documented among covert operatives under extreme operational density. Historical precedent confirms.”

 

Gasps arose, softer this time, and startled. Task saturation was not exoneration, but it was explanation. No court had ever heard the Operator grant it aloud.

 

The judge leaned forward. “Why, then, did you omit those two tasks? Which, by all measures, would have turned the battle?”

 

Hale’s gaze never wavered. “Operational prioritization.”

 

A doctrine. A rule taught to cadets, scrawled in field manuals: when every order cannot be fulfilled, a commander must rank them. Choose survival. Choose what matters most.

 

The Operator projected graphs and vectors, trying to reconcile his decision. Logic clashed with logic, algorithms chasing tails. The courtroom lights flickered once, subtle but not unnoticed.

 

Outside the tribunal dome, unseen by all but distant telescopes, the war ground on. Enemy fleets pressed closer to the colony’s throat. The Operator cross-referenced thousands of inputs at once, interpreting Hale’s battle data against live feeds from the front.

 

And then — hesitation. A misread correlation. A flagged inconsistency that wasn’t.

 

The Operator recalibrated its predictive models mid-trial. Hale’s contradictions forced it to reconsider the messy reports it had long dismissed. Deceptions unraveled. Enemy maneuvers no longer aligned with the false patterns it had enforced. The machine’s own correction fed into fleet command, and in the space of minutes, enemy ships overextended, formations faltered. The invasion line cracked.

 

Inside, the audience saw only flickering streams of data, the Operator pausing longer than ever before. Hale’s lips quirked, the faintest smile.

 

The judge frowned. “What exactly did you prioritize, Commander?”

 

His answer was a whisper, but the court amplifiers carried it to every ear.

 

“This moment.”

 

The chamber froze.

 

On the walls, enemy defeat blazed in real time. The fleet was collapsing, assault crumbling. The Operator’s own mistake. A mistake Hale had engineered, not by action, but by omission. Two abandoned tasks had brought him here, where his presence bent the machine’s logic just enough to save them all.

 

The jury sat paralyzed, verdict forgotten.

 

The judge’s gavel quivered in his hand. “Then… the Operator—”

 

“—is fallible,” Hale finished. “And dangerous, if you trust it to understand us.”

 

The Operator said nothing. For the first time since its installation, silence felt like menace.

 

Now the colony faced a choice: diminish the Operator, take back the burden of flawed human judgment, or continue to follow its cold, indifferent precision.

 

Commander Hale folded his hands again. He had already made his choice.