“Radiance,” I said into the communicator. “I’ve found the target. Awaiting instructions.”

My words echoed in the room. Once, it must have been buzzing with people, eagerly discussing the situation in the colony. Now, only furniture and statues remained. A glass of water stood on the table—the only sustenance that Renaan had spared to offer. Without my internal nanites, I wasn’t touching a drop.

“Radiance?” The device seemed to be working, but I still wasn’t getting an answer.

“Message confirmed,” Radiance replied amid static. Her being so formal only suggested that the Flight Colonel and everyone else involved were monitoring the conversation. “What is the status of the target?”

“Target is in good condition.” Not the best question to ask, considering that Renaan was a standing a step away. Judging by his expression, he wasn’t the least bit amused. “What are my instructions?”

“Did you explain the situation?” Flight Colonel Nitel’s voice sounded.

“To an extent.” Given the limited information I had been given, such a conversation would have been over in less than a minute. However, another topic occupied my time. Apparently, the colony—along with all the rest on the planet—had been created as a quarantine zone. A holding cell on a bare rural planet in a buffer zone close to the border… no wonder there was so much secrecy surrounding it. Initially, thirteen colonies were built, each named after a tree. Soldiers were dropped off for months at a time, then shuttled back up for their next mission. The practice had likely continued for decades, until it had abruptly stopped. At one point, somewhere in the vast bureaucratic structure, a priority had shifted. Since then, all trips had become one-way, and the soldiers only kept to provide relevant Scuu information when needed.

Back when I was a ship, I had seen soldiers and officers sent away for mutiny, disobedience, or other crimes of that magnitude. With the war raging, I had never given the matter any thought. My instructors had been very clear about it: Only worry about the crew you have. Once someone sets foot off your corridors, they aren’t your concern.

“To what extent?” the Flight Colonel pressed on.

“Why don’t you explain it for me?” Renaan snatched the communicator from my hand before I had a chance to respond.

“Captain Honea?” There was a slight tremble in Nitel’s voice.

“It’s been a while hasn’t it, Yui.” Renaan continued, his face twisting like a crumpled napkin. “The fleet has treated you well, I hear. Commander of a brand new battleship, I’m told.” He glanced at me.

“Flight Colonel,” Nitel corrected.

“Well, well.” Renaan clenched his fist. Three of the ten simulations I ran had him exploding in a fury of yelling. “And back to your old habits, I see. So, what’s the occasion? Need my help to rise up the ladder again?”

“The fleet has offered you a new command, Captain.”

“So I’ve been told.” Renaan’s lips curled in a bitter smile. “And still a snake. Nice touch dropping a battleship just to talk to me. I’ve always appreciated irony.”

“That’s not irony, sir,” the Flight Colonel said with a sigh.

“What do you really want, Yui?”

“I told you. I want you reinstated as Captain.”

“If you’re so determined, why don’t you come down here and ask me yourself?”

“That’s what I intend to do. See you in five hours.” The light on the communicator flashed off. Radiance must have used some kill switch on the Fleet Colonel’s orders. Undoubtedly efficient, although this was the first time I had see it used in such fashion.

“I’ll have that back, sir.” I extended my hand. Renaan calmly placed the device on the table, then went to the large alcohol cabinet in the end of the room. Only one of the bottles there was half full, and not with the original beverage. The captain grabbed it, then poured a small cup he downed in one go.

“So, what’s your story?” he asked, refilling the cup. “Which campaigns were you part of?”

“I can’t answer that, sir.” Given his new “status” and me being under observation, being evasive was the best policy. “They were all on the Cassandrian front.”

“You’re a Cassi grunt ship?” He downed a second glass. “You must have screwed up real bad.”

“I’m just a Cadet, sir. This is my second assignment.”

“The fleet doesn’t jettison expensive hardware just like that. Your gun.” He pointed at my holster. “It’s used for riot suppression. Great for breaking up crowds, or kidnapping someone, otherwise useless.” Filling a third glass, Renaan then went to one of the better-preserved couches and sat down. “Were you planning on kidnapping me, or killing us all with fourteen bullets?”

You’re testing me. I had watched it happen thousands of times before. Like a game of chess that had the same moves each time.

“Fortunately, we’ll never find out, sir.”

The man let out a single laugh, then sipped from his glass. I could tell he was a battle-hardened veteran that had seen a lot on the Scuu front. Compared to me, though, he remained a child. I had destroyed more ships than he could imagine. Even in my current body, I could have disarmed the colony’s welcoming committee and taken their weapons. Given my current information of the locals, I had a sixty-seven percent chance to reach him in one piece. And even if I failed, the murder troops after me wouldn’t.

“You really think he’ll come down here?”

“I have no idea, sir. I am not familiar with the Flight Colonel’s file.” He will. From what I had gathered about him from Radiance, he has too much ambition not to.

“And you’re not concerned you might spend the rest of your life in a male colony predominantly filled with grunts?”

“I used to transport hundreds of thousands of grunts, sir. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“At least you’re optimistic.” Renaan gulped the remainder of his drink, then put the empty glass on the table. “That’s the thing with you battleships. Always optimistic, even when you’re dying.”

You’re wrong. We cling to the hope that part of our crews will make it. Aurie had once compared us to clams: we had a hard shell, but were constantly worried about the squishy stuff in us. I would force shutdown myself in a millisecond, if that meant the survival of my crew. If Renaan became my captain, I would probably do the same for him as well.

“Do you know what the average life expectancy is here?” the man suddenly changed the topic. “Thirteen-point-three years.”

“That’s an oddly specific number.” I knew the statistics of life on a rural colony. Normally they were twice as long, even in unfavorable conditions. “Radiation?”

“Scuu.” He spat out the word. “When the system was taken, the fleet did something to the planet. No idea what it was, but Scuu ships stopped venturing here. Even during the height of the war, their ships avoided this whole section of space. Don’t know what it was, but it must have been pretty bad since we were told not to go near either. The first time I learned was when I was escorted to a drop shuttle under guard along with a dozen others and dropped here.”

When Gibraltar was my captain, he’d often say that there always was a bigger secret. Ironically, it was that train of thought that eventually made him retire from active fighting. The entire time we fought together, he viewed his service as a means to be catapulted to a position in one of the dark-op agencies. Even after witnessing combat on the front-line first hand, he never expected that there was a secret he didn’t know… until our final mission. That mission had broken him, changing him ever since. The question now was how much was Renaan broken.

“But?” I asked. There always was a but.

“The Scuu did the same. They never sent their ships, but every now and again they’d launch automated drop pods at the planet. The station is supposed to stop them, but they aren’t too efficient.” Pausing for a moment, the captain took the empty glass from the table and started rolling it between his hands.

“When a pod lands, you lose communications,” I added. Seems the Scuu are into the third-contact artifact game as well.

I looked at the dead communicator on the table. It would have been useful if I could have shared this info with Radiance before the backup squad landed.

“Sometimes.” Renaan’s frown deepened. “Lately they have a new trick. They shoot something that makes everyone go insane. No symptoms, no warning, no anything. A few months later, a new set of prisoners are dropped down and business continues as usual.”

Thank you, Flight Colonel. Good to know my services are valued.

Neither of us said anything else for the next ten minutes, just sat there looking at each other while thinking about various things. In my case, I was attempting to run survival simulations based on the new data. The process was slow and clunky, and only provided a less than seventeen percent reliability.

After half an hour, the captain left the room with the random excuse that he had to check on something, leaving me alone. It was stressed that I had to remain there until the arrival of Flight Colonel Nitel. Normally, I’d point out the uselessness of the request, though this time I chose to remain silent. The fact that communication to Radiance was impossible meant that the planet was in privacy mode, and that meant I could skim through certain parts of my restricted memories. There always was the risk that Radiance was keeping an eye on me using some next gen tech, but it was a risk worth taking.

Counting to five thousand, I closed my eyes and activated the trigger of my memory scalpel. After my previous mission, the Fleet had gotten into the habit of randomly scanning through my memories approximately every ten days. They would do a quick glance over, grab some core states, then send them for analysis in a bureaucratic department in somewhere in the fleet, all the time not realizing that the key was hidden in plain sight, staring at them from an image of a memory I’d had.

Time for another adventure, Sev. Let’s see what I’ve been hiding from myself.

The first memory I accessed was my first mission on the Prometheus. It was my first assignment as a cadet, and one I had been looking forward to at the time. There, too, I had been dropped alone on a desolate planet with nothing but a pod-full of equipment. Unlike here, though, the fleet had no idea what had been hidden under the planet’s surface. Going through the events, I watched myself find a first-contact artefact and plunge everyone aboard the Prometheus in panic. One simple probe ray; that had been enough to get a reaction out of the cobalt artefact and put an end to all communication between me and the ship. By all accounts, the same had happened in System Four. Still, that wasn’t what had caused the mass hysteria that Renaan had described.

Leaving the memory open, I unlocked another several weeks later. At that point, I was floating in a sphere of liquid cobalt—the second time I had entered a first-contact dome. Smaller artefacts, the size of my arm, floated about, arranged in neat spherical rows around me. Each represented an alien symbol, a part of a larger message which no one had managed to figure out. I could remember believing it was connected to the Scuu. Now, I wasn’t as sure.

One after the other, I opened seven more memories, all from the time I had been a ship. In each instance, there was an artefact for me to see, and each time, there wasn’t any hint that they had the power to drive people insane. Millisecond by millisecond, I watched and rewatched the memories, trying to find a plausible explanation. The minutes passed one after another, but there was no connection I could make. Three hours and seven minutes later, I decided to close the memories. In a single millisecond, all the information I had gained vanished from my mind like a static click. Only the sensation of failure remained. As Augustus liked to say, you can’t win them all, although he usually addressed that to the Cassandrian ships I’d destroy.

Standing up, after the four hours of stiffness, I went to the window. The sun was at the horizon, covering the entire colony in a deep reddish light. Leaning out, I saw three Radiance sats hanging in the sky. The kid knew how to be persistent.

“Captain?” I said loudly. It was mildly concerning that he hadn’t come to check on me once since he had left the room, nor had anyone else.

A few seconds later, Ogum walked out from under the house. Giving me a long stare, he pointed to his right eye then to me.

“Is Captain Honea coming back?” I pretended to be oblivious of the message.

The large man grunted and walked back out of view.

Thanks for the chat.

I waited a while longer, then moved away from the window. By my calculations, there were between ten and thirty minutes before the landing party arrived. The Flight Colonel had said five hours, but knowing the capabilities of the shuttles aboard, I knew they could be down in three. If it were me that’s what I would have done to give the locals less of an advantage. On the other hand, since Renaan and the Flight Colonel knew each other, it was likely for the captain to prepare for such an eventuality.

I slid my fingers along the wall as I made my way towards the alcohol cabinet. Chalky dust adhered to my fingertips. The house must have been left to its own devices, like everything else in the colony. Knowing that people had up to thirteen years to live tended to make them not care about maintaining things. Add to that the fact that the Scuu were constantly destroying whatever tech there was, it was a wonder that the colony was even standing.

All bottles in the cabinet had decades-old designs. One in particular seemed familiar—Augustus used to drink from one exactly like it during my service. Back in his day, he had several for different occasions, all against regulations, though HQ never seemed to care.

I took the bottle from the cabinet. It would have been nice to have kept one of Augustus’ ones as a souvenir. Had I asked, he might have even left one, despite regulations. Sadly, afterthoughts only come once things are too late.

The door opened. I could hear Renaan walk in—the metal pins on the soles of his shoes made the sound of his footsteps unique.

“Go ahead and treat yourself, Cadet,” he said. I could hear the smirk in his voice. “Fleet regs aren’t in effect here.”

“I’m not interested in the drink, sir.” Not on this planet. ”Just the bottle.”

“Suit yourself.” He walked to the window. “Keep them. That’s all you’ll be able to do anyway.”

I just need one. I brushed off the glass surface.

Green light flashed from the window. Looking over my shoulder, I saw three flares flickering out in the sky.

“Looks like we’ve entered the age of miracles,” Renaan said, crossing his arms. “Yui came here himself.”

“That was hardly in doubt, sir. Not with what’s at stake.”

“You don’t know him as well as I do.”

Considering that a week ago I hadn’t even met the Flight Colonel, that was obvious. The fact that he had risen to such a position meant that the fleet found him trustworthy and competent enough… at least to keep him on the Scuu front. He was also capable enough for Radiance to prefer to have him as a captain over her current one. Based on the few personal interactions I had, I could say he was no Augustus, though he had more than a healthy dose of ambition.

“Would that be a reason for you to reject command?” I looked at Renaan. I could tell from the way he narrowed his eyes that he understood exactly what I was asking.

“We’ll have the perfect opportunity to find out.”

An eerie silence followed. At this point, there was nothing left to discuss. I took a seat at the table, placing the empty bottle beside me. Half a minute later, Renaan did as well. As the seconds passed, noise started to erupt outside the mansion. Apparently, the Flight Colonel’s arrival was a far more important event than mine.

Six minutes and forty-nine seconds after the flares, the door of the room opened. The first person I saw was Kridib, holding a heavy rifle and, to my surprise, nothing but a light protective vest on top of the standard issue ground troop uniform.

So much for you being a cadet, I thought.

Kridib gave me a quick glance, then checked out the rest of the room. Finding it adequate, he took a step to the side, letting the Flight Colonel pass. The instant he did, Renaan stood up.

“I didn’t think you had the guts.” A crooked smile curved up the left side of the captain’s face. “Fleet must really have you by the balls.”

“Captain,” Nitel said with a slight nod.

“Didn’t expect you’d be here, Corporal.” Renaan redirected his attention to Kridib. “You always were a dog searching for a master, but I didn’t think you’d be willing to crawl so low.”

Renaan knew Kridib? That suggested that all three had served together at one point, or at the very least been in the same part of the fleet. Looking at them, they had nothing in common. Their behaviors were completely different, as were the environments they had lived in, and quite probably their assignments. Kridib was beyond doubt a trooper grunt, Renaan had to have been a ship captain at some point to be considered a valid candidate, and Nitel… Nitel gave the air of a ground officer or part of ship security. Considering there were significantly fewer ground troops on the Scuu front, it stood to reason that they had come in contact with one another; if what Renaan had said about the colony was true, all of them had potentially had first-hand contact with a Scuu.

“Yes, sir! That is correct, sir!” Kridib said loudly, although he didn’t stand to attention.

“This is hardly the best place to lead a conversation, Captain,” Nitel sighed. “We can continue the shouting match aboard the Radiance.”

“You knew when you came here that I’d make you beg for it.” There was a glint in Renaan’s eye.

“I did,” the Flight Colonel said through his teeth. “Was hoping I wouldn’t have to.”

“Cadet,” Renaan said, making me jump to attention. “Get out.”

“Don’t leave the room!” Nitel ordered. ”Until he’s officially taken charge, he has no authority. Close the door and kill anyone who tries to enter.”

Here we go down the rapids, Sev, I thought. In truth, I never expected it to be a smooth ride, though I wasn’t prepared for things to escalate this fast. Leaving the glass bottle in my seat, I went to the door. As I was about to close it, I saw Ogum approaching from the other side of the corridor. The moment he saw me, he instantly stopped.

Sorry, big guy. I shook my head as I slowly closed the door. Hopefully he’d get the hint and not try to barge in. Starting an armed confrontation because of a trivial matter would be extremely counterproductive.

“Ruz is dead,” Nitel said firmly.

“Hardly a surprise,” Rennan scoffed, though his body language suggested otherwise.

“I’m not going into details, but the fleet wants you to take his place.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t oppose the idea. Considering your newly achieved rank, it should have been easy to whisper a few things in a few ears.” The captain made a circle in the air with his hand.

“It wouldn’t have made any difference. You’ve already been selected.” He nodded his head to Kridib to cover the window. “Of course, you could refuse and save us all the trouble, but if you wanted to blast your only chance to get off this place, you’d have said so already.”

“I see.” Renaan paused for a few seconds. “So, provided I accept this assignment, you’ll take me to your shuttle and we’ll be off to my ship?”

“Pretty much.”

“What makes you think I won’t just take the shuttle and leave you here? Or would that damage your chances of command?”

“It might. Which is why we came in a drop pod. The extraction shuttle will only arrive once we reach the extraction point. The offer was made exclusively for you. Anyone else that tries to rush their way aboard gets drilled.”

My hand moved to my holster. If conflict would erupt, it would be now. My mind already started going through simulations to determine the best course of action. Considering that we weren’t directly on the main stretch of the colony, Kidrib could probably hold them off for eighty seconds. Meanwhile, I had to deal with Ogum and possibly two others in the mansion itself, while also hoping that the Flight Colonel was able to subdue Renaan. Even with favorable circumstances, our chances were incredibly low.

“You’re right,” Renaan said at last, then went to fetch the single bottle of alcohol from the cabinet. “I could have refused.” He grabbed two glasses and started filling one with whitish liquid. “You’d probably have turned your tail and fled, leaving your battleship cadet behind.” Once the glass was full, he filled up the other. “Maybe that would have been the sensible thing to do. But you know how I work. No matter the past, I always go by the odds.”

Returning the bottle, Renaan took the two cups and walked to the Flight Colonel, offering one. Despite the disgust on Nitel’s face, he accepted it.

“Besides.” Renaan’s smile widened. “If I had said no, you wouldn’t have flown down here. It’s a bit unfortunate that you brought the corporal with you, although fitting.”

“Oh?” Nitel took the glass, hesitant to drink from it. Quite possibly, his internal nanites had been removed prior to landing as well. “Why is that?”

“Because there’s no way off this planet,” Renan said, looking him straight in the eye. “The Scuu gadget doesn’t only affect transmissions, it also messes up navigation measurements. Once a shuttle enters the atmosphere, it’s not going back. Cheers, and may we all rot together.” He downed his drink in one go.