"Believe you?" Hartman's face was an impassive wall of scar tissue, tired eyes skimming over the Order operative like a recon plane of yore, taking in the little details, the pauses, the hesitation. She had to, when she didn't understand the conversation. Deciphering their exchange wasn't so different from watching a fleet maneuver. There was no context, no immediate why as to how a warship set its course. Only a half-dozen flashing courses on a display and a rapidly declining time to make sense of its destination and act before it reached it. Patterns. That was all it was.
"No. Don't think I do, at that." An organisation that cared about the truth wouldn't whittle away its existence holed up in a back-end system at the tail end of nowhere, a place where even the stars grew dark and cold in their orbits. Wouldn't have blasted Donau to scrap and left it to burn its way across Manhattan's skies rather than talk. Wouldn't have let the Navy rip itself apart fighting an invisible enemy before they'd revealed the truth of the war. Picking at morality here was like handing out speeding tickets at the raceway. "And I don't for one minute think you believe half of what you're saying either."
She raised a hand to forestall the inevitable protest.
"If the Republic had come here to talk politics and belief, you'd be talking to a congressman, not a carrier group." Hartman nodded towards Pine Ridge, drifting alongside the station like a leviathan of old, escort fighters coasting along patrol routes like the last, lazy bees returning to the hive, sensors probing the deep black far beyond the limits of mere human sight. "The fact of the matter is that they didn't, and you're not. We came here to do a job, Valkyrie, and thankfully for the lot of us, belief don't much factor in to it." Hartman's tone was as flat as the desert.
"The reason we're both here is the operation at hand, which the Commander-" She spared Ellington a nod. "Has already covered. We'll do what we came here to do, and then we'll high-tail it out of your neck of the woods before anyone's trigger fingers start itching. If and only if it goes to hell, then your people are free to move in and do whatever you need to do. Until then, we play nice and keep our hands out of each other's pockets. That's about as fair as it's going to get." Hartman turned to Ellington, the special operations commander still sitting neatly in place.