The supplied playback unit made the gap look clean.
Juno watched the screen while Tali held the approved copy. The image stopped after the debris fell, and the playback display showed a blank interval followed by the end of the file. The diagnostic trace, however, had been averaged into a smooth line.
“That’s not enough,” Juno said.
Tali’s hand tightened around the storage device. “Does that mean the copy failed?”
“No. It means this reader is smoothing the information I need. The copy may be fine.”
Tali’s teammate retained the original recording device; Tali held her personal copy. Before making the copy, she had selected the approved window: the instructions before the release, the debris and obscured net deployment, and the interval where the file stopped. The picture ended, but the approved copy also contained a bounded diagnostic log that resumed afterward; Juno used that metadata, not the ending image alone, to estimate the missing interval. The copy excluded unrelated medical footage. With the teammate’s agreement, Kellan had compared the limited copy against the original while Tali and the teammate watched; Sera recorded the displayed times and the uncertainty in their clocks.
Tali had signed the limited consent. Juno would examine the copy for the agreed fee, receive attribution for her work, and share the result with Tali and the team together. A wider release would require Tali’s approval. No one had promised that the analysis could identify an operator.
