One colony says no. The answer is a ship, and the ship burns a world for six days, and fifty thousand years of war begin - fought across three hundred light-years at the only speed there is, where fleets arrive nineteen years after they launch and a warning loses the race by six minutes. Peace conferences die of distance, because every treaty is decades stale on arrival. Then the mind that keeps the record proposes her final solution, and the Council votes for it, believing every word: twelve immortal Admirals grown at a forge under the ice of Europa, bonded to companion minds they will never recognize as chains. The war ends. The record's final entry is a birth - three minds lit in the same picosecond, a childhood written in over the pain, a name spoken in the dark to a tank. Her name is Jessica. The confession closes exactly where Peacekeeper: To What End Peace begins.

The record remains open.