Sefisu System, Cassandrian Front, 619.9 A.E. (Age of Expansion)

“Thirty-eight shuttles lost, captain,” I said on the bridge.

Warning messages were all over the halls and quarters, but that did little to help us right now. The system we had flown into contained over five hundred ships compared to our seventy-eight. Yet, they weren’t the problem. The enemy’s large size and numbers put them at a far greater disadvantage than us. The issue was the system itself. Even before jumping, Augustus had received reports of gravitational anomalies, but not even my simulations could have matched the reality that we currently faced.

“Recall all pilots!” the captain shouted from his seat. “Anyone who’s here in the next five minutes gets a lift. Everyone else gets left behind!”

I transmitted the order to all shuttles and ships in the ship comm channel. Thirteen milliseconds later, a new gravitational bubble popped, pulling half a dozen Cassandian ships out of existence. I dedicated ninety-five percent of my subroutines to analyze the available data as I ran a series of pings and local system scans.

Fleet behavior analysis suggested that the enemy had engaged with something, but despite all attempts, I wasn’t able to determine what.

Anomaly clusters emerging in sector eleven-fifty-five-B, Stormlight transmitted. Being a fleet carrier, she was most affected by current events. It didn’t help that seventy-eight percent of her ships were in the process of engaging the enemy when the anomalies had started. I can’t determine a pattern. Anyone else had any luck?

There’s a seventy-three percent chance that the trigger is planet related, Neon Glow said. One of the Advent class ships, he was still far too eager to prove himself. The Cassies must have poked something they weren’t supposed to.

He didn’t say it, but everyone was thinking about it: third-contact. Ever since I joined the Fleet, there had been speculation that there were more than two alien races out there. Now and again, artifacts would be found belonging to neither of the major groups. The more conspiratorial ships were of the opinion that the BICEFI were aware and involved, swooping in to retrieve anything related to the matter.

“Status?” Augustus asked.

“Thirty-one shuttles locked in hangar,” I reported. “Eleven docking. Fifty-three en route.”

“Redirect everyone not here to other ships.” There was a momentary pause. “Also, get any other shuttles that could reach us in the next three minutes to head here. Coordinate with the ships.”

“Is that the best thing to do, sir?” I asked.

“I’m not staying in a shit nest, I don’t care what Command says!”

“Aye, sir.” I executed the order.

Memory restriction imposed.

Memory restriction removed.

“Open a line to BICEFI command,” the captain ordered.

“Doesn’t look like one of ours, cap.” Wilco approached Augustus in a hushed voice. “Might be a natural occurrence.”

“Natural, my ass! The Fleet’s been pouring ships here for three weeks and no one reported any anomalies? It’s a weapon test. Question is if it’s theirs or ours.”

“And if it’s not ours? Do we surrender?”

Augustus looked to the side, glancing up at the lieutenant. The two had served together for a very long time, even before I had become their ship. Still, this was no way for an officer to address his direct superior.

“You really are an asshole sometimes,” Augustus said.

“Link to BICEFI established, sir,” I announced in an attempt to diffuse the tension.

Monitoring the bioreadings of the rest of the command staff, they all were on edge. After such an exchange, there was no way they wouldn’t be. Fleet politics and Cassandrian ambushes were among the main reasons for death during service and right now, we had the misfortune of experiencing both in great abundance.

“Transfer it to my quarters.” The captain stood up. “Wilco, with me. Kajin, you have the bridge. Get the shuttles and get us out of here.”

* * *

Even now, I had no idea whether I had witnessed a weapon’s test or not. Augustus had made sure to conduct the entire discussion in privacy mode, and there were no records I could find on the matter in my current Fleet database. If I were back in human space, I could use my arbiter access to inquire more on the matter, but that was for another time. What I could deduce was that the Cassies had stumbled onto something capable of shutting down an entire star system. Based on the last series of jumps, it was starting to look like we might get to experience something similar.

Among the last nine explored systems, six had gravitational anomalies. For the most part, it was just a matter of gravity bump traces, but there had been two that were partially affected. Radiance had insisted that it wouldn’t be an issue, but I had chosen to follow another route, continuing through the cloud complex.

Sof kept insisting that we might get out of it any jump now, but despite his enthusiasm, there was no such indication. There was an instance during which the star intensity appeared to decrease in the direction we were heading, but that stopped after a few more jumps.

The presence of domes also substantially decreased. So far, I had only come across one, also filled with the respective dead race countermeasure constructs. That raised even more questions. How come I’d found any cube artifacts in the first place? The more I analyzed the situation, though, the more I came to the conclusion that the dead race were gathering them, just as we were.

“Speed has asked to send a comm pod back home,” Sof said.

“Already?” I asked, standing in front of the food dispenser. As a ship, I had enough ways to keep my boredom at bay, but my organic body required movement. Most of the time I’d get it going to the dome chamber and back, but lately I’d been spending more and more time on the bridge.

“You want me to refuse?”

“No, give him the go ahead.” I kept on looking at the device, considering whether to get a food ration or leave it for later. In the end, I gave in. “Tell the other auxies they can do it as well.”

“How generous of you.” Sof’s reply was thick with sarcasm.

“You want to send a message home, too?”

“We should have established a direct line.” This wasn’t the first time he’d voiced his disagreement on the matter. “We’ve no guarantee any of them arrived at their destination.”

“The chances of none of them getting there are—”

“Not zero,” he interrupted.

“You’re right,” I decided to boost his confidence a bit. “But there are reasons that I can’t do that. Given our mission, it’s better to move on and hope everything has reached its destination.”

There was no point in telling him that I considered making a direct transmission to the arbiter council once our mission was over. Depending on how things went, I could just as well have us fly back along the charted route and inform them in person. Doing so would take time, though—time I could use to reach my real destination.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Taking a break to eat, I gave the ships a twelve-hour pause. Since all of them had stocked up on raw material, the time was spent effectively doing nothing. Radiance requested jumping to the next system to perform her usual scouting operation, to which I agreed. The rest asked to do a more in-depth exploration of the current system. Given that the number of dead race planets was high, I allowed that as well.

In truth, I was also considering entering privacy mode and exploring one of them myself, when—nineteen hours and eleven minutes since entering the system—a foreign comm pod jumped in.

Its appearance was accompanied by a range of warnings and thread assessments, putting everyone on high alert. Laser comm channels were established, combat strategies explored, and Sof even armed a dozen missiles before it was confirmed that the pod had arrived from human space.

Aware of my new communication directives, the probe immediately started flashing tight laser beams, identifying itself. It took a while for one of the auxie ships to authenticate the ident transmitted, after which I redirected it to me for final approval.

When I had Sof move closer and send a response, the message changed. While shorter, it was encrypted with a double helix cipher linked to my personal ident key. Upon deciphering it, one single word was revealed: “Board.”

Never a boring time, I thought. I could almost hear Augustus grumbling about the bureaucracy’s unparalleled ingenuity when it came to making themselves heard. I had flown in an uncharted area of space, dismantled any form of distant communication, and they had still found a way to give me orders. Whatever was aboard might recall me just as easily as providing additional support. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury of ignoring it one way or another.

“Gather the kids,” I ordered.

“Radiance still hasn’t returned from the next system,” Sof said.

“We’ll have to do this without her.” Sorry, Rad. “I want everyone else to cluster close by. Priority one.”

“Whatever you say, Captain.”

“Thanks.” I left my unfinished ration on the food area table. “Prep a shuttle. I’m going to the pod.”

There always was something special about flying solo through space to a spaceship. None of the ships could fully understand it, but then again, none of them had gone through retirement. I piloted the shuttle to three hundred meters from the arriving pod.

It was maintaining a static orbit around the system’s sun, occasionally using auxiliary thrusters to readjust. The lasers continued to flicker—a subtle reminder that the boarding request was not optional. In a few ways, the pod resembled Euclid, just smaller. Technology had advanced significantly since his mission. Back then, there was no engine so small capable of traversing the vast amount of space from human space to our current location. It must have jumped non-stop the entire way, making use of some fancy navigation tricks.

“Ready to head out.” I strapped my belt, then attached the metal cable from the shuttle. Protocol required that I do a brief check. Everything was in order, as I expected it to be. “Monitor me and keep on high alert,” I said, the shuttle’s laser light sending my words back to the main ship. “We won’t have any means of communication while I’m there, so I don’t want any surprises.”

This is stupid.

A message appeared on the shuttle’s inner wall.

We could have taken it in the main hangar.

“You’re probably right.” I set my opacity to ten percent. “Though then the order would have been to dock the pod, not board it.”

One word is open to interpretation. It could have easily meant that the pod is to board.

I appreciated the sentiment, but we both knew he was wrong. Despite being one word, the order was quite clear. Sof just wasn’t happy being left out of the loop. Or maybe he was worried about me as his captain? While I wasn’t entirely human, I was the closest thing the mission had to one, and that was bound to have an effect on my mini fleet of ships.

Opening the shuttle’s outer hatch, I leaped out. Inertia took me through the void towards my target. When the distance shrank to fifty meters, I engaged my suit’s thrusters, slowing myself down. With a vessel so small, I wanted my initial contact to be as gentle as possible.

The target was the nose section. Whoever had built the pod had been smart enough to place a series of hold areas on the side, leading to an ideal point of contact. They clearly wanted me to go inside and made it as easy as engineeringly possible.

Running hundreds of simulations in my head I grabbed hold of the nose section. The tip was slightly elongated like a flag pole—useless for space flight, but perfect to grab hold.

So far perfect, I thought.

Several auxiliary ships flickered a kilometer away, the light of the system sun reflecting off their hulls. Knowing them, the only thing that prevented the kids from swooping in was my explicit order that no ship was to approach closer than a thousand meters.

The holding spots were little more than indentations along the hull—just enough so I could grab hold with my fingers. Sof had failed to locate any hatch or opening, suggesting that he had been thought quarantined not to. Soon enough, I saw how.

The hatch was two-thirds down from the front section, covered in high-security bar codes. Without the appropriate authorization, any AI or conscience core would be unable to see them. Normally, this method was used to transport classified containers—physical information backup or third contact artifacts. Having them hide a hatch had a nice twist to it, making me wonder how many doors I’d missed while walking along corridors in the last three years.

Here goes. I took hold of the latch handle and turned.

There was no sound, although I felt the faint tremor of air released through the gap. The arbiters probably thought I’d feel more at ease knowing I was the first to enter the pod since its release. Opening it fully, I stepped inside. The interior was as plain as expected: a single bare room with a rectangular container strapped to the middle of the floor.

IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED

A message glowed green on a simple display. A crude keypad lay beneath. Since I wasn’t given any special instructions, I typed in my conscience core key.

The letters of the display vanished. Twenty milliseconds later, the top of the container slid to the side, revealing a glass screen.

“Hello, Elcy.” The image of Arbiter Bavon emerged. “We didn’t want to contact you before the end of your mission, but unexpected events have forced my hand.”

The formal fashion in which he spoke, along with his micro expressions, suggested that he hadn’t been alone when recording the message.

“Quite the bombshell discovery you made. The BICEFI are still trying to decide whether they love you or hate you.” He smirked. “Several missions are underway to make best use of the new domes. The discovery of a dead race, on the other hand…” The arbiter let out a sigh, shaking his head three times. “That put all third-contact research on pause until a full reevaluation can be done. Salvage isn’t happy about it, and neither are a few other groups. The thing is, your mission might be halted as well.”

I had always estimated that there was a seven percent chance that my mission might be halted. Hearing this from the mouth of an arbiter only gave a far greater certainty to my fears. That had been the reason I hesitated in letting them know about the dead race constructions. In the long term, I might have saved humanity, but there was also the possibility I had done the opposite.

“Our strategic core farms have estimated there’s a large probability that you’ll ignore all this and continue with the mission anyway,” he continued. “Well, you can relax. It was decided for you to go on until we come to an agreement. Just one word of warning, though. This message has triggered the self-destruct code of your conscience core. It’s on a delay, but if you don’t report back in thirty days…”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

I took a few hundred milliseconds to review the memories of his statement, paying special attention to his micro-expressions. There was a ninety-three percent chance he was telling the truth. Logically, I supposed I should be pleased that the code wasn’t triggered immediately with the start of the message. Somehow, my faction among the arbiters had managed to get me a reprieve. Thirty days seemed like a lot, but given that there was no telling how close I was to getting out of the cloud complex, there was a real danger I could die halfway through the mission. The reasonable choice was to dedicate a third of that time to getting back. In this case, I wasn’t sure that a reasonable choice was the optimal course of action.

“Now for some good news,” Bavon went on, in an attempt to lighten the mood. “Based on your data, the dead race is estimated to have collapsed before achieving contact with any of the two known races. One can never be certain with the Cassies, but it definitely has not encountered the Scuu. There are still arguments regarding whether they had managed to establish contact with the fractal race or just found their artifacts like everyone else. The lack of cobalt has triggered some alarm bells, but since no analysis of the planetary systems in the complex has been made, there’s no way to know. Discussions have started about using the gathered force for an expansion into the dead race domain. Colonies are out of the question, but there might be enough for a BICEFI outpost. That way, if they mess things up with their dome experiments, at least humanity will be safe.”

That sounded like something Lux had come up with. At least it wouldn’t be in a buffer zone, which was Med Core’s practice.

“One last thing. The parameters of your mission have changed. You’re to contact us once you cross the cloud complex, period. It doesn’t matter if you find any star marker systems. I know that it’s not what you wanted to hear, but supporting you has become a lot more difficult. You’ve done a good job, but some risks are too much.” The man looked to the side, probably receiving instructions from someone out of frame. “Hear you soon, Elcy. I’m counting on it. And, good luck.”

The screen died ten milliseconds later. The message had achieved its purpose and was now probably wiped from the memory of whatever crude device was in the container.

I remained there for another three minutes, reviewing it in my memory a few hundred times. The arbiter hadn’t said anything relating to the ongoing front activity. That could be interpreted as nothing out of the ordinary going on, which, in the grand scope of things, was good news.

Thirty days, I said to myself.

Somehow, it seemed so little. Given the new time frame, I was going to have to broaden the exploration scope, very much to the auxies’ joy. I had no obligation to explain my reasons, and even if I did, there were several plausible versions I could present. Would that be the best course of action?

Any advice you could give me, Augustus? I wondered.

I didn’t need to hear his response or a simulation of his behavior model. In the end, I was a captain and an Ascendant. It was my nature to go against the odds, and this way I was going to do it in such a fashion as to yield the highest possible reward based on the risk.