Personal Log, Noemi Laporte

Kostadin Cell paid the price for its collusion with Steele. When Sergei Gwilym's fighters attacked the Shepseskaf under a false Federation flag - and drove the Vasudans into supporting the Terrans - Kostadin sealed its own fate. You reap what you sow. We have to believe that, don't we? Actions have consequences. Do right, you grow and prosper. Do wrong, and you die, utterly and finally. Isn't that justice?

Look what tangled webs they weave: Steele orders the Gefs to attack a Vasudan logistics ship, and then frames our rescue effort as a covert capture attempt. Steele orders the Gefs to attack the Shepseskaf, and to act as if they're in Federation employ. The Vasudans buy it. Why shouldn't they? They wanted to believe him. They are a people of protocol and propriety, couched in a social system so intricate that only a man like Steele could game it.

Steele.

You don't kill that kind of man with grit and determination. I'm going to have to outthink him. Been doing my reading. He fought the Shivans, and he came back changed. He is brilliant, almost presciently so, and he builds plans intricate in their making and utterly precise in their execution.

That is his weakness. His traps are perfect, made to exquisite tolerances. They rely on the flawless action of all their components - whether the jump drives of the Atreus or the trust of his subordinates. Machines he can master, but people...his people must have doubts. Even as they stand in awe of his successes, they must balk at his gambles, his inexplicable decisions, his inhuman cold and calculation. If I - if we - can force him into a position where his approach is so outlandish, so shocking, that his underlings hesitate...the machinery of his design will stick.

And who among them is the weakest, the most human? The Fedayeen will know. CASSANDRA will know. I'll talk to Vidaura first; see what she sees.

Our weapons answer us without question. Our ships weather thermonuclear firestorms and still fly true. In this war the weakest weapons system is the human mind.

Who among his people is ready to break? Who doubts him?

It's almost hilarious, this struggle. Steele's soulless machinery, fighting a war triggered by mathematical projection and the need for control. Our Fedayeen, psychopaths harnessed to the common good, trained to go to any ends to secure the Federation's survival. No place for humanity in that equation. No reason to listen to morality when the stakes are so high. All means are justified.

Is this how the Shivans came to be? Remorseless, unpredictable, working towards a goal so distant and obscure that its victims never glimpse a hint of it?