"No," Kael admitted. "We don't. Which is precisely why we have stopped."
Veth's eyes flickered. "The fleet expected to descend within forty local hours. You called the hold."
"Yes."
"There are Commanders in the second arm who are displeased."
"They will adjust," Kael said.
He kept irritation out of his voice.
The second arm worried about fuel curves and orbital windows.
Important considerations, but not his.
He drew up the fleet's positional diagram.
A halo of ships clustered behind the moon's shadow.
Hundreds of vessels, each with its own designation, its own mission-tree.
All of them still.
"To proceed with a flawed model is wasteful," Kael said. "To proceed with a model that might trigger Oversight intervention is suicidal."
Veth shifted his weight, membranes shifting in faint patterns of stress.
"You believe we are at risk of Oversight attention?"
"I believe," Kael said, "that if we commit the full landing under our current assumptions, we could face an engagement ugly enough for our losses to cross the Accord's review threshold."
"And you think those… young ones… are what tip the scale?"
"Not by themselves," Kael said. "They are a sample. A troubling one. They suggest we have underestimated the species' learning gradient. If that underestimation holds at scale, our projections are wrong by a degree that matters."
He watched Veth consider that.
Their species did not fear battle.
They feared inefficiency.
They feared audits.
They feared being noticed by those regulated the terms of expansion ancient civilizations who had survived long enough to write rules and enforce them.
The Galactic Rule was not moral.
It was procedural.
Do not extinguish promising branches lightly.
Do not burn worlds from orbit.
Do not ignore variables in the growth curves of young minds.
Not because those young minds had inherent rights, but because unstable systems, left unmeasured, had a way of becoming problems later.
"Humans were rated low-variance," Veth said slowly. "A noise-heavy but generally predictable primate line. That is what the Catalog states."
"The Catalog is old," Kael replied. "Local developments matter. Catalysts matter. They have unified under pressure faster than expected. Their communication network—"
"—is primitive," Veth said.
"—is dense," Kael countered. "And reactive. They propagate adaptation as quickly as trauma."
He nodded toward the darkened projection.
"How many of those juveniles do you think will be placed back into non-military roles after this?" he asked.
Veth said nothing.
"They will not be demobilized," Kael continued. "They will be accelerated. Promoted. Studied. Copied. Every training base on that world will be adjusting curricula this moment in response to Carson."
"Just as we are," Veth said.
"Yes," Kael said. "Which is precisely why we cannot rely on the model built before this event. We are no longer the only ones adapting in real time."
There it was. The core of it.
Not fear.
Not respect.
Just acknowledgement: the board had shifted, and they were not the only players moving pieces.
"Request," the Analysis Core whispered into their minds. "Authorization to expand ground-observation operations beyond initial parameters."
"What scope?" Kael asked.
"Increased focus on juvenile cohorts in militarized infrastructure," the Core said. "Prioritize monitoring of training sites, emergency camps, mobilization nodes. Develop longitudinal psycho-adaptive curves."
"In plain speech," Veth said dryly.
"They want to watch the new soldiers," Kael translated. "From the moment they are forged."
"Protocol?" Veth asked.
"The Conquest Accord allows it," Kael said. "Direct fire on training facilities without strategic necessity does not."
"Because of Oversight."
"Because of Oversight," Kael agreed.
Veth clicked his mandibles together in distaste.
"So we cannot simply eliminate the variable."
"No," Kael said. "We must understand it. And use that understanding to neutralize them in ways that satisfy both expansion needs and Accord compliance."
Veth glanced again at the orbital diagram.
"How long can we remain stalled before the orbital window degrades?"
"Seventeen local cycles before we begin to incur noticeable inefficiency," Kael said. "Less before the second arm starts sending petitions to override my halt."
"They will not succeed," Veth said.
"They might," Kael replied. "The Directorate respects efficiency arguments."
He turned slightly.
"Which is why our task is to prove that waiting a few extra cycles improves efficiency more than it degrades it."
"In what way?" Veth asked.
"By turning uncertainty into predictability," Kael said. "By knowing exactly how this species responds on day ten, day twenty, day forty of continuous war. By building a model of their fear… and the point at which it exhausts itself."
"And if it does not?" Veth asked quietly.
Kael did not answer for a moment.
"If it does not," he said at last, "then the Catalog's rating must be revised. And the question of protection versus eradication will no longer be decided by us."
Oversight would look at the numbers.
Oversight would see an emergent threat.
Oversight would enforce its old, cold rules.
Veth stared at the blank space in the hologram where Earth hung, hidden under layers of processing filters.
"This world has no fleets," he said. "No stellar interdiction. No coherent long-range weaponry."
"No," Kael agreed.
"And yet you treat it like a volatile system."
Kael's bioluminescent lines dimmed, then brightened again the equivalent of a long blink.
"Volatility is not measured by current toolsets," he said. "It is measured by rate of change. We do not fear what they are. We are wary of what they could be if certain curves continue."
He gestured once more, and the Carson feed returned, just for a moment.
He focused again on the one dragging another behind cover.
On the way the others rallied around him without clear rank being established.
On the way the dead had not yet cooled and yet the living kept moving.
"You see children," he said quietly. "I see derivatives."
"Derivatives?"
"Of behavioral growth. The slope of adaptation in the presence of lethal force."
He closed the projection.
"Update the fleet," he said to the air. "Maintain current position. No descent until we have at least three full global sample sets."
"When?" Veth asked.
"Once the next training waves enter the field," Kael said. "Once the planet has had time to respond, rashly, to what we've done. Their panic will tell us one story. Their organized response will tell us another."
"And in the meantime?" Veth said.
"In the meantime," Kael replied, "we watch. We listen. We quantify. And we make certain that when we finally descend… there will be no surprises large enough to draw the gaze of those above us."
Veth bowed his head slightly, accepting the directive.