RTE Response from Novara

Novara

GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF NOVARA

MINISTRY OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS | THE SOUTH BLOCK

NOVA PRIME, CAPITAL DISTRICT

NOTE VERBALE

DOCUMENT REF: RN-MEA-2026-NV-004-REV
DATE: June 20, 2026
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION: RESTRICTED

The Ministry of External Affairs of the Republic of Novara presents its compliments to the Embassy of the United States of Thessara and has the honor to address the latter regarding the unauthorized military flight operations executed by United States of Thessara (UST) military forces from a jointly leased basing facility within the territory of the Republic of Novara on June 19, 2126.

The Ministry wishes to state that the Republic of Novara fully recognizes the emergency threat conditions presented by the incursion of three thousand infected individuals yesterday. However, the presence of an active biological threat does not mean our national sovereignty is of secondary importance. Novara is a nation founded upon the rule of law. A mistake is a mistake, even when executed for an ostensibly good purpose, and a treaty violation remains a violation.

The Government of Novara formally rejects the posture of the UST military establishment, which has attempted to use defensive justifications to bypass the signed Accords. Rather than initiating direct, high-level diplomatic contact to address this breach, the UST military has attempted to validate its mistakes with technical excuses, failing to offer a direct apology to this government. This is not the manner in which a superpower treats its sovereign strategic partners.

Regarding the technical excuses presented by General Saoirse Callahan, the Ministry has the honor to reiterate that the telemetry logs of the Novaran Digital Governance Authority (DGA) show our secure communication lines were one hundred percent online, operational, and fully working during the entire seventeen-minute operational window yesterday. The excuses presented by the UST command do not match the physical reality of our server logs.

To preserve the future of our strategic partnership and prevent any future communication breakdowns, Novara demands the immediate execution of the following administrative and security protocols:

DGA-Aegis Base Integration: Every UST military base currently operating on Novaran soil must be permanently established under the Novaran DGA communications grid and integrated directly with the Aegis network, ensuring complete, joint-command telemetry transparency.
Bifurcated Flight Protocols: Routine training, practice, and non-combat flights may continue under standard parameters. However, any active military operation conducted from Novaran soil must utilize a Novaran-authorized cryptographic key to activate its launch and payload systems.
The Interception Red Line: Any payload-carrying flight or military operation launched from Novaran soil without the explicit activation of this cryptographic key will automatically be categorized as an unauthorized, hostile airspace intrusion. The Novaran Armed Forces reserve the absolute sovereign mandate to intercept such operations by any means necessary.

The Ministry of External Affairs of the Republic of Novara avails itself of this opportunity to renew to the Embassy of the United States of Thessara the assurances of its highest consideration.

[L.S.]
Seal of the Ministry of External Affairs
Republic of Novara

TO:
THE EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF THESSARA
Diplomat District, NOVA PRIME

Novara

REPUBLIC OF NOVARA

OFFICE OF THE PRESS SECRETARY | STATE SECRETARIAT

PRESS BRIEFING BY PRESS SECRETARY LIORA VANCE

LOCATION: Press Briefing Room, the South Block, Nova Prime
DATE: June 20, 2026
REF: RN-OPM-2026-EX-0049

PRESS SECRETARY LIORA VANCE: Good afternoon, everyone. I have a formal, technical update regarding our active diplomatic negotiations with the United States of Thessara, specifically focusing on the official Note of Protest, Note Verbale RN-MEA-2026-NV-004-REV, which has been delivered directly to the Ambassador of the United States of Thessara at the South Block. I will summarize the core legal and security parameters of this document and then open the floor to your questions.

First, the Republic of Novara formally recognizes the emergency threat conditions presented by the incursion of three thousand infected individuals yesterday. However, the presence of an active biological threat does not mean our national sovereignty is of secondary importance. Novara is a nation founded upon the rule of law. A mistake remains a mistake, even when executed for an ostensibly good purpose, and a treaty violation remains a violation.

Second, the Government of Novara formally rejects the posture of the UST military establishment, which has attempted to use defensive justifications to bypass the signed Accords. Rather than initiating direct, high-level diplomatic contact to address this breach, the UST military has attempted to validate its mistakes with technical excuses, failing to offer a direct, formal apology to this government. This is not the manner in which a strategic partner is treated.

Third, our forensic audit of the Digital Governance Authority (DGA) is complete, proving that on Novara’s side, our secure, quantum-encrypted communications network was one hundred percent online, operational, and fully working during the entire seventeen-minute operational window yesterday. The excuses presented by the UST command do not match the physical reality of our server logs.

To preserve our strategic partnership, Novara has demanded the permanent integration of all UST base fire-control systems into Novara’s DGA communications grid, and the implementation of a mandatory cryptographic activation key for all combat operations launched from our soil. Any payload-carrying flight launched without this key will be categorized as an unauthorized, hostile airspace intrusion, and the Novaran Armed Forces reserve the absolute sovereign mandate to intercept such operations by any means necessary.

I am now open to your questions.

REPORTER (Thessara Today): Press Secretary, the United States of Thessara is a twenty-seven trillion dollar hegemonic superpower. Is Novara actually prepared to challenge the UST on the global stage? What happens if Thessarapolis flatly rejects these demands? Will Novara maintain a permanent blockade and risk destroying our strategic relationship?

LIORA VANCE: Novara respects the rule of law, and we respect the identity, sovereignty, and strength of the United States of Thessara. We are not making reckless, on-the-spot decisions. Diplomacy is the key to our foreign policy.

The Note Verbale we delivered today is a structured, legally precise framework for negotiation, and we are committed to finding a negotiated, bilateral resolution that respects the sovereign boundaries of both nations. We do not seek conflict, but we do expect our signed treaties to be honored. A stable relationship is built on mutual respect, not unilateral execution.

ABRAHAM SITUMEANG (Associated Press of Javnia): Reports indicate that the UST Ambassador was kept waiting in a ground-floor reception room for over four to five hours before finally receiving the official Note Verbale. Was this a deliberate, calculated diplomatic insult to the UST, or an operational failure within the South Block?

LIORA VANCE: It was neither an operational failure nor a calculated insult. The wait was a direct result of the active, high-level consultations taking place upstairs in the Cabinet Room.

Prime Minister Tempest was engaged in an extraordinary session with the Speaker of the Senate, the Leader of the Opposition, and other prominent national figures to secure absolute political stability and internal unity. To deliver a document of this magnitude, we had to ensure that it represented the unified, solid consensus of the entire Novaran political spectrum. It was an act of thoroughness and national unity, and we expect our partners to understand the gravity of the process.

REPORTER (Voice of Novara): The opposition is currently organizing mass protests, blockading police stations in Duskhaven, and accusing the government of abusing its power. Did the government decide to take these highly aggressive, dramatic actions against Thessara out of fear of losing popular support, losing votes in the upcoming elections, or being destabilized internally by the student protests?

LIORA VANCE: The Republic of Novara does not formulate national security policy based on electoral cycles or political panic. The decision to defend our airspace and protect our sovereign borders is an existential necessity, not a political campaign.

However, by inviting the Leader of the Opposition and the Speaker of the Senate to the South Block, we have demonstrated our commitment to internal stability. If the opposition truly wants to protect our sovereignty, they will stand with this unified national front rather than using a national crisis to destabilize the country or secure short-term political gain.

LINNEA SJOBERG (Stockholm Sentinel): The Ministry of Defense has just declared a highly restricted No-Fly and No-Sail Zone over a specific sector of the western Novaran Ocean. While the official communiqué lists only standard hazard warnings, there are rumors of an undisclosed military operation or missile test. Why is the military planning this right now while the public is distracted by the Thessaran crisis?

LIORA VANCE: The NOTAM and NOTMAR warnings are standard, pre-planned safety procedures for high-altitude aerospace telemetry and atmospheric calibration. It is a routine navigational hazard zone designed to protect civilian shipping and aviation from falling structural debris. This operation has been planned for months by our Aerospace Command and is entirely unrelated to the current diplomatic situation. There is no hidden military agenda; we are simply executing our scheduled defense and research programs.

REPORTER (Meridian Global Network): With the suspension of flights from Javnia, Nordstjerne, Dagestan, and PRG, and now this standoff with Thessara, these recent policies seem to be isolating Novara in the long run. Are you concerned that this “Sanitary Shield” is permanently shutting Novara out of the global economy?

LIORA VANCE: Protecting our domestic health from a mutated, ninety-nine point nine percent fatal virus and protecting our airspace from unauthorized military flights is the only way to ensure our long-term economic stability. A country that is overrun by a virus or cannot control its own runways cannot trade. We are securing our biological and sovereign foundations so that our global partnerships can endure. This is not isolation; it is clinical defense.

Thank you, everyone. That is all the time we have for today.

Thessara

09:00 — THERNON ADDRESSES THE NATION

The address comes from the Oval Study in Liberty House. No podium, no flags flanking him. Deliberately informal. Deliberately personal.

Thernon looks tired in the way that reads as genuine rather than performed. He speaks without notes.

"Yesterday, the United States of Thessara military personnel made a decision under extreme time pressure that saved lives and violated a treaty simultaneously. Both of those things are true and I am not going to stand here and ask you to weigh one against the other as though they cancel out.

To the people of Novara and to Prime Minister Tempest: the jets should not have left the ground without your authorization. That is what we signed. That is what we owe you. I am sorry that it happened and I am sorry for the manner in which you were informed.

What I also owe you, and what I owe this Congress, and what I owe every nation watching this morning, is the complete factual record.

At 14:32 yesterday, our forward surveillance identified the threat. At 14:41, ground command assessed a perimeter breach within minutes. At 14:47, an attempt was made to reach Novaran Joint Command through the secure bilateral channel established under Article III. That attempt did not connect. At 14:59, with lives seconds from being lost, the scramble order was issued.

This morning, the United States of Thessara is releasing the complete, unredacted server logs from our base communications array covering the entire operational window. Every packet. Every timestamp. Every handshake attempt. We are releasing them in full because we have nothing to hide and because the truth of what happened on that channel is the only foundation on which we can rebuild what yesterday damaged.

We are not releasing these logs as a rebuttal. We are releasing them as an obligation.

I have spoken with Prime Minister Tempest this morning. I proposed that we establish a bilateral technical working group to examine both sets of logs jointly, establish what actually occurred on that channel, and use those findings to redraft Article III with language that accounts for emergency scenarios neither of us anticipated when we signed thirteen days ago.

The Prime Minister heard that proposal. I am grateful for that.

The alliance between Thessara and Novara is not thirteen days old. It is the sum of everything we decided we could build together when we signed our names in that hall. I am not willing to let one catastrophic day define what that means. I do not believe Prime Minister Tempest is either.

We will fix this. Together. Through the process we both agreed to honor."

The Logs

Released simultaneously with the address through the UST Defense Ministry’s public transparency portal.

The metadata is clean. The timestamps are precise. At 14:43, a handshake signal was initiated from the UST base server toward the Novaran Joint Command secure channel. The signal shows as transmitted. It does not show as received.

The gap between those two words is where the entire crisis now lives.

The logs don’t show a failed connection on the UST side. They show a successful transmission that apparently never arrived. Which means one of three things:

There was a genuine fault somewhere in the channel infrastructure between transmission and receipt
The signal was intercepted or disrupted by a third party
The logs have been altered

The UST logs do not contradict Novara’s logs. Both can be simultaneously true. A signal can leave one server and never reach another. The question of why that happened is now the most important unanswered question in the partnership.

The Phone Call — What Actually Happened

Thernon called Rimuru at 07:45, ninety minutes before the public address. The call lasted eleven minutes. It was described by a senior UST official as “direct and respectful.” What that means in practice: Thernon led with the apology. Genuine, unscripted, no defensive qualifications. He acknowledged the PDF notification as specifically unacceptable and said so without being asked.

Then he told Rimuru about the logs.

The eleven minute duration is notable. That’s not a warm reconciliation call. That’s a call where one party says what they need to say and the other party listens carefully and says very little. People close to Rimuru describe him as “measured” afterward. That word is doing significant work.

Thernon proposed the working group. Rimuru did not accept or reject it on the call. He said Novara would respond through proper channels.

The call ended cordially.

Where Things Stand

For Thessara:
The address lands better than expected domestically. Congress is not satisfied but the log release takes significant ammunition away from Senator Okafor’s narrative. The administration looks transparent rather than defensive. The proposed working group gives the alliance a visible path forward. Thernon has converted what was a straightforward treaty breach into a contested technical failure with a genuine resolution mechanism attached. The cryptographic key demand from the Note Verbale has not been addressed publicly. That was deliberate.

For Novara:
The ground has shifted. The Note Verbale was constructed entirely around the forensic certainty that no contact was attempted. That certainty is now publicly complicated. Novara’s logs still show no incoming signal. Thessara’s logs show an outgoing one. Both governments are now telling the truth about what their own systems recorded and the results don’t match.

The Note Verbale’s third paragraph, the one that directly calls Callahan’s testimony a technical excuse and states the DGA logs prove no contact attempt was made, is now the most exposed sentence in Novaran foreign policy. It was written by the player as a closing argument. It now reads as a premature one.

The demand to intercept unauthorized flights still stands in writing. Nobody in Thessarapolis has forgotten that sentence.

The Open Question:
Somewhere between a UST base server and a Novaran Joint Command receiver, a signal either failed, was lost, or was never meant to arrive. Until the bilateral technical working group examines both systems jointly, nobody can say which.

And until that question is answered, neither side can claim the room entirely.

The working group proposal is on the table. Novara’s next move will define whether the Note Verbale was the opening of a negotiation or an overreach they now have to walk back without losing face.

Thessara

Entering Chapter 2: The Afflicted