“Jack?” A gentle voice awakened him. He felt a tinge of déjà vu as he opened his eyes to see Eve and Louise standing over him, with vaguely concerned looks in their eyes.

“You’ve been asleep for 16 hours,” Louise continued. “Are you alright?”

Jack nodded as he struggled to get up. Every part of his body creaked and groaned as he unzipped his sleeping bag and slowly lifted himself. He also started to remember that his left arm hurt, a truth momentarily suppressed by his sleep. Before he could stand, Eve threw a protein bar and a fruit cup into his lap.

“We got these from the cantina for you. Eat up, you haven’t had a solid meal in days.” Jack detected a hint of familial reproach in her voice, as if she were an older sister chastising her younger brother. He didn’t much care for this unexpected change in their dynamic, but he was hungry, another fact that sleep had obscured.

As Jack began chowing down on his protein bar, Eve continued to speak in the same tone: “The Bismarck leaves in a few hours, but you can request additional medical leave if you’re not up for it. Louise has already spoken to Doctor Wallis, but the decision is yours.” She paused, considering her words. “We’re going to war now, proper war. This isn’t patrol duty anymore. Everyone needs to be at 100%.”

Struggling to swallow the last bits of the dry, tasteless protein bar, Jack replied, “I’m not staying behind. Especially not now, after what happened. The Fleet needs as much help as it can get.”

“There’s no shame in it, you know.” Louise gently touched his left hand as she spoke, sending light shivers through his body. “Alfred’s staying here as well, for the time being. You’ve both done enough already.”

Already eyeing the fruit cup, Jack replied again, slightly annoyed, “I’m going on the Bismarck. I’m fine, I was just tired.”

Louise seemed prepared to contradict him, but Eve subtly shut her down with a barely perceptible gesture. “It’s settled then. The captain’s giving a speech in the central plaza in half an hour. You might want to get cleaned up before then.”

After making quick work of the fruit cup as well, Jack got out of his sleeping bag with considerable difficulty. He put on his boots, zipped up his uniform, rolled up his meager possessions in his sleeping bag, strapped it to his shoulder and slowly started making his way along the wall towards the bathroom down the hallway. He looked at the faces of the other recruits as he walked past them; they were all uncertain and terrified. He felt that way too, deep inside, but at least he had the decency to hide it.

The bathroom had seen better days. It was grimy, the floor was wet, and an unpleasant smell, whose origin Jack didn’t want to dwell on, filled the air. He made his way towards the hygiene products dispenser. The rows labeled ‘shaving kit,’ ‘disposable towels,’ and ‘deodorant’ were all empty. Tough luck. He grabbed one of the handful of oral hygiene kits remaining and resigned himself to rinsing his face with water and sprinkling a bit of dry shampoo in his hair, before fashionably unfashioning it once again.

With his morning routine satisfied to the best of his ability, Jack pulled up the station’s map on his wristpad and started walking towards the central plaza at the most leisurely pace he could muster. The station as it was now was a stark contrast to what he experienced upon his arrival. Order was disrupted by chaos and disarray, and the quiet, subdued depression he could barely detect in the atmosphere was now replaced by manic desperation. Everywhere he went, there were people frantically running around, tripping over others lying down in the middle of the corridors. The formerly pristine, glossy metallic walls were all damaged in some way, either burned, shredded, or stained with some mysterious spontaneous battlefield concoction that was as omnipresent as it was unrecognizable.

As he let himself be guided by the map, almost as if he were on autopilot, the formerly hopeful recruit didn’t even dare to look up at the carnage around him. It would have been understandable if this grim tableau had given him pause, but unexpectedly, it only strengthened his resolve. “If a few dozen Kharlath managed to do this to a military station, what would Magellan look like after they’re done with it? Or Earth?” he thought to himself as he shivered. No, he was not going to let it happen. Then and there, he decided he was going to do whatever it took to stop them. For the first time in his life, he had an epiphany: there was something he was willing to give his life for.

Making his way into the central plaza, Jack quickly scanned the crowd for Eve and Louise. He had a momentary impulse to call Eve but decided against it. If he was going to spend the next few months of his life on the Bismarck, he had to know more of his shipmates, maybe even some other people from the fleet. It was time to make some friends. He eyed a group of young-looking recruits in Interstellar Fleet uniforms, who were sitting on a few crates by the entrance, and decided to join them.

“Hi there!” he exclaimed, somewhat timidly.

They barely had time to acknowledge him before the ear-deafening noise of microphone feedback interrupted their conversation, and the gruff, only slightly less ear-deafening voice of Captain Stirling followed:

“Recruits. Veterans. Officers.” The captain paused and furrowed his brow until the crowd became all but silent. “There’s a hundred different reasons why we’re all here today, in this room. Some of you were drafted, others signed up for a quick paycheck, or to get away from a life that was probably better than whatever the Fleet can provide for you. The least lucky of you, the career men, probably thought they signed up for a cushy desk job on some unimportant ship or forgotten station. I myself am only here because I didn’t want to say no to my father.” He paused to allow for a subdued laughter from the crowd. “But regardless of why, you’re here all the same, and we’re all in this mess together. War has come to our borders, sooner and deadlier than expected. This is no longer about getting the Zargon and the Platharians out of the mess they made; it is about our continued existence as a species. And we are, as of this moment, the tip of the spear that will keep humanity safe. I know that this is not a position that any of you chose to be in. I know that many of you will falter under the weight of this responsibility, but I also know that even more will rise to the occasion. I know because I’ve seen it, countless times before, in the hundreds of people I’ve served with throughout my career.”

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Captain Stirling went quiet for a few seconds, letting a loud murmur build over the crowd before once again silencing it with just a look. He seemed to ponder his next words intensely, before launching into an all-out assault on the microphone:

“What I’m about to say next is something I have been explicitly forbidden from sharing with you, but I believe that you all have a right to know the exact situation we’re in. We have been betrayed. Out there, there is a human, or a group of humans, working for the Kharlath, feeding them information. There was a concerted, organized attack that aimed to decapitate our defenses in this sector and isolate us from the rest of the Commonwealth. And there is absolutely no chance they would have had the knowledge to pull it off without inside assistance. You already know about the Harrison and the Himerios, but at least 6 other nearby ships were all captured simultaneously. Yesterday, we’ve gotten news that Pallas station has seemingly self-destructed and Porphyrion remains radio silent. Both are presumed to have been lost to the same strategy the Kharlath employed here.”

A sharp pain shot through Jack’s heart upon hearing the captain’s words. Pallas Station was gone? He looked around before he asked one of the nearby recruits a question that he already knew the answer to:

“Pallas Station is where the Assault Corps recruits were training, isn’t it?”

Multiple heads nodded. Somehow, against all odds, he hoped the answer would be no. That it was simply something he had misheard one day. But obviously, he knew. Adam had told him countless times that this is where he was going. They took the same shuttle to Cerberus Station. Jack got on the one to Daedalus at 12, he stayed behind for the one to Pallas. Adam was there. His best friend was on a space station that exploded. Could he have survived? Maybe he flunked out immediately and they sent him home. Maybe he was taken prisoner. Adam was the strongest, smartest person he knew. Surely there was no way he was dead. He must have thought of something.

Jack felt his legs shaking as he stepped into the hallway, while Captain Stirling was still detailing all the ways in which they were screwed in the background. He made it two steps before he had to throw up. The rancid taste of bile filled his mouth as he reclined against a wall, slowly falling down as his back scraped against the cold metal. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t stand up, all he could do was look straight ahead as his eyes swelled up with tears.

“You lost someone, right? On Pallas?” A deep, booming voice spoke to him in an unexpectedly gentle tone. Jack looked up to see one of the recruits he had been standing next to moments ago, a tall, broad-shouldered, but somewhat lanky man with a sincere smile on his face.

“I lost both my brothers here, in the assault,” the man continued while sitting down next to Jack. “We were all spacers from Gaia, same as Captain Feldt. When we heard of his exploits, we all decided to enlist, make the station proud. A few hours later, I was holding their bodies in my arms. They never even got to see what hit them.”

“I’m sorry.” Jack could barely muster the strength to reply.

“That pain, the one you’re feeling now, the one that you think is going to kill you—it’s useful. It’s good. It’s what’s keeping me going. The pain of what I have lost, and the anger I carry with me. Because I know that if I stop, that pain and anger will dissipate, and no one will know what they meant to me anymore. And another piece of them will die along with me. So take your pain, and put it to work, because it needs you just as much as you need it.” The man spoke slowly and firmly, emphasizing every word.

Jack nodded solemnly and gathered all his strength to get up and shake his hand. “Thank you. That helped me. I’m Jack, by the way.”

The stranger took his hand and gripped it firmly but did not reply. Instead, he nodded his head and walked back into the room, disappearing into the crowd. Jack’s despair was now replaced by confusion and curiosity, though he took the mysterious man’s advice to heart. He walked back inside, initially attempting to track him down, but quickly changed his mind. If the man refused to even tell him his name, he probably didn’t want to have any more to do with him. So he remembered his original plan and set out to find Eve and Louise instead.

With the captain’s speech over, the crowd began to dissipate. An unemotional robotic voice recited casualty names, with all the pomp and gravitas usually reserved for listing arrivals and departures at a spaceport. Jack sent a brief message to Eve on his wristpad as he made his way through the thinning crowd. Her reply came a few seconds later: "Meet us at Docking Bay 7."

Once again, Jack navigated the labyrinthine corridors of Daedalus Station, guided by his wristpad. He made a brief stop at the cantina, where he was slightly disappointed to find limited food options. After some consideration, he settled on another protein bar and an extra-large cup of pistachio and mint-flavored pudding—the only kind left, and for good reason. He powered through his utterly unsatisfying meal with great effort, and then returned to being piloted through the chaotic guts of the station by his wristpad, now with renewed strength.

Upon entering the docking bay, he was greeted by a scene of incredible chaos, as dozens of recruits attempted to enter the Bismarck’s narrow airlock at once. Far from the noisy crowd, Eve and Louise lay on a bench, amused at the curious spectacle, alongside a man in a wheelchair. As Jack got closer, he recognized this man as Alfred, their boastful friend from the Saloon. He looked entirely different, with his head completely shaved and a freshly stitched wound running from his forehead to the top of his head. His face was bruised and swollen, and the entire right side of his torso, along with his shoulder and a good portion of his arm, was bandaged. But the biggest change was in his demeanor; his confidence and joviality were entirely replaced with a vacant, empty stare. He silently greeted Jack with a nod as he approached.

“You’ve got your duty roster?” Eve broke the uncomfortable silence.

Jack shrugged as she swiped her wristpad over his and continued, “You’re in Engine Operations with me. We’ve got the same shifts too. Lucky you.”

Louise interjected, somewhat reticently, “Hey, you said you had a friend who signed up for Assault, right? Was he...”

“He was on Pallas, yes.” Jack cut her off, barely holding back tears. Immediately standing up, she reached out and hugged him tightly. This time, Jack hugged her back, softly placing his head on her shoulder.

“You’re going to make those damn lizards pay, for your friend and for Anil.” For the first time, a bit of color returned to Alfred’s cheeks as he spoke.

The four of them sat in silence for a while until the commotion had all but cleared. Still in relative silence, they said their goodbyes to Alfred, with Louise administering another one of her patented hugs. As they moved closer to the ship, Jack had time to more closely examine the vessel that would be his home for the foreseeable future. It was an odd, very rectangular design, about 200 meters long, with few distinguishing features. The front third of the vessel was narrower, shorter, and thinner than the rest, protruding like a snout. Two drone bays and various weapons were hastily attached to its surface, though even at a glance it was obvious they didn’t quite belong. This was clearly not a ship designed for war, but hastily cobbled together from spare parts.

As he stepped through the airlock, Jack felt little confidence in the Bismarck’s prowess, and the cramped interior did little to dissuade his negative impression. Nevertheless, he was ready to embrace his destiny, whatever it had in store for him.