Tur suggests the Tempest learned from the first battle and may regenerate missiles, then refuses Drummer's demand for certainty while mourning from an evacuation ship.
Cameron Tur has connected the blackout over Sol with the Tempest's field projector and argued that the nonlocal effect probably strikes its own crew. Evacuated from People's Home before Leuctra, he watches the flagship survive nuclear fire and release more missiles than any conventional magazine could contain. He proposes that Laconia learned from the first battle, recalibrating the ship's regrowth or its ammunition production.
Drummer demands to know why science did not predict a vessel that behaves like a supernova in the shape of a ship. With tears already on his face, Tur answers that Pallas's destruction, system-wide loss of consciousness, violated locality, and altered vacuum should have made the scale of ignorance clear. He cannot manufacture the structural language she wants. Drummer orders him to find a way to win anyway and cuts the connection, leaving his honest uncertainty behind the needs of command.
An impressively tall, gangly older man with a prominent Adam's apple, faded knuckle tattoos, a long face, shining frightened eyes, and tears on his cheeks.
Tur is the scientific witness forced to describe a threat beyond human theory while political command demands an immediate tactical answer that knowledge cannot supply.