Carl and Donut enter the parlay bubble, unable to use chat even with each other. Carl tells Donut to let Carl handle the talking, but King Rust appears emotionally shattered, crying and muttering as though gripped by rage, grief, and despair. Victory and Judge Deng withdraw from the bubble, leaving Carl, Donut, Rust, and their mounts to speak privately.

Rust asks Carl whether Carl has children, then says Rust envies Carl because Rust has three foolish children. Rust explains that Princess Formidable has seized one of Rust’s cruisers with Skull Empire marines and is about five hours from a monitor station orbiting Venus. Formidable has publicly announced her plan to take the station and manually activate a system failsafe that will trigger a reaction in the sun and kill everyone in the solar system.

Rust says Formidable believes she is preventing a worse catastrophe: the current system AI’s madness spreading to the center system and causing mass extinction. Rust dismisses the theory as baseless, but acknowledges that the failsafe’s security can be bypassed because the Skull Empire secretly builds backdoors into the satellites it manufactures. He also admits the resulting collapse would devastate the galaxy, disrupt the Dream, create famine and war, and leave Reavers positioned to exploit the chaos.

Rust asks Carl to send Formidable a message on behalf of Earth, hoping she might hesitate because of her sympathy for the human “seeds.” Carl presses Rust on what Earth gains, since if Formidable stops, Rust’s army will still try to destroy Carl’s forces. After negotiation, Rust agrees to withdraw his armies while Carl and Donut agree not to harass the retreat, ostensibly so leaders can prepare final messages.

Once the bubble drops, messages flood Carl and Donut’s feed. Zev confirms Formidable’s plan is real and that the system is in chaos, but Carl privately tells Donut the failsafe will not work because Carl already deactivated it. Carl plans to pretend ignorance long enough for Rust’s army to retreat, then coordinate with Florin to strike them from behind.

Before Rust’s withdrawal can matter, Rosetta emerges from underground using a tech-based invisibility cloak. She leaps onto Rust’s yak, loops a whip around Rust’s neck, and decapitates him. After several seconds of stunned silence, Rust’s enraged army charges.