“Two shooters, third floor,” Sergeant Liz Veneah said in comm. “No sign of sniper. Rush the flank in three.”

Five grunts behind her stood in wait. It had taken them an hour to get this far, and things weren’t getting easier. The structure of the administration building was made specifically to allow small groups to hold back large numbers of attackers in case of mutiny. Unfortunately, Flight Colonel Cension’s security had taken full advantage. Thirty people in my teams had been killed and several more injured.

When the three seconds ended, the attack team charged forward. According to their files, they were the most experienced soldiers I had; all of them had seen multiple instances of actual combat, though none had gone against the Scuu. A single shot was fired in response. I saw the projectile make its way through them, faster than anyone could react. I also saw that it wasn’t a standard bullet.

One of the soldiers jumped to the side—an automatic reflex triggered by the shot. The effort was good, but I had calculated it was already too late. As the projectile hit the grunt’s helmet, it exploded in a ball of flames. Trapped in a corridor, the blast instantly engulfed its target, transforming the soldier into a bag of living shrapnel.

Dido Steval, specialist, life signs ended.

Jackra Evonii, specialist, life signs ended.

Billial Ne, specialist, life signs ended.

Shui Fionna, specialist, life signs ended.

Jet Jall, specialist, life signs ended.

“Shit,” Sergeant Veneah whispered from the floor. The blast had thrown her back, though thankfully her suit was still intact. “Sniper’s here.”

“Pull back!” someone from the support team shouted.

Another shot sounded.

Liz Veneah, sergeant, life signs ended.

Six people had been killed without any effort. I knew from the database records that the security team was skilled, but it was the flight colonel who presented the greatest obstacle. It was like watching Kridib fight, only with a sniper and explosives. In the present circumstances, I had a sixty-two percent chance of taking him if I were there. I wasn’t.

This was the third time I had reviewed the memory to analyze Cension’s combat capabilities. Since then, there had been several more advancement attempts, all of them successful, leading my teams to their current shootout on the eleventh floor. Cension, though, hadn’t made an appearance.

“Don’t you ever pick sides?” I asked as I placed a rod in its hold on the wall.

I pick all sides, Watcher replied.

“You killed Renaan.” Not to mention Ruz and Unollyan. “Why leave Cension alive?”

He hasn’t picked a side.

No one knew whether the Scuu could lie, but this was cutting it quite close. From everything I had seen, he had served Ruz, going so far as to attack other Scuu. First Ruz, then Renaan, yet for some reason no one else in-between. Back then, I had thought that the breakdown was due to the shock resulting from losing his entire crew, but looking back, maybe the reason he hadn’t followed instructions was because he wasn’t obliged to. That was why Incandescent had stepped in and why we were rushed off on illegal missions to extract people from dark op penal colonies.

“How damaged were you when I found you?” I asked.

No.

Three containers of rods remained on the floor—more than I needed, but as much as Kridib had brought. The pattern composition was similar to what I had seen, but at the same time different. That was the advantage of being instructed directly by a Scuu. It also meant the experience I was getting myself into was going to be different.

I climbed down on the floor and sat on an empty case. The pressure of continuously placing rods in the wall was starting to strain my muscles. At this point, only the floor and ceiling remained. For that, I had to construct my pylon. Watcher had transmitted the image of the design so I knew what had to be done. It was like what I had seen inside the Scuu ships, yet simplified for human use and a gravity environment.

“Did the Scuu make the pyramids? They’re different from the other tech.”

You’ll see.

“You can just tell me.” I looked at Watcher’s still body.

He didn’t respond.

“Don’t you have any questions for me?” I stood up. “Is that what I’m building this for?”

I cannot connect to the network. It is so I can explain.

I wiped the sweat off my forehead. Even with my gear and spacesuit off, I was drenched. For a moment, I felt tempted to get another gelatin ration. They were better than most I had had so far. After a hundred milliseconds hesitation, though, I decided against it and returned to work. Time and events outside and inside the Gregorius would not wait for me. I continued to keep an eye on both, taking advantage of the ship’s sensors. Everything considered, the battle and the war were proceeding roughly according to my simulation predictions. The combined Scuu fleets had become roughly an eighth of the human fleet. The flow of human reinforcements had slowed down to a trickle. With a lot of reorganization and missiles, they had managed to push the Scuu away from the Gregorius, but that was a temporary solution. At the same time, the BICEFI ships and Radiance had almost reached a position from which to dock.

Only if I could be certain this was true, I thought.

The rods had to be placed in the wall one at a time. I could not risk carrying two out of fear that something would cause the ship to tremble to the point where they made contact with one another. That left a lot of time for me to attempt conversations with Watcher. Nearly always the result would be the same—a few short answers, some vagueness, then silence until I changed the topic. It felt as if I was leading a dozen conversations, but could only follow one path at a time. If Augustus were here, he’d probably compare it with talking to a high-level bureaucrat. The difference was that Watcher didn’t care for being subtle. Rather, he was likely unable to understand.

By the time Kridib came with the pyramid artifacts, fifty-three spots remained, most of them on the floor as well as the area directly above me. I had already removed all food containers, clearing up the space. Watcher was the only obstacle I couldn’t remove. Looking at him leaning against the wall placed awkwardly between rods, each of which contained the energy to tear a ship apart, made me slightly nervous. He, on the other hand, didn’t seem concerned one bit.

“Is that everything?” I asked Kridib as I took the container.

“Two more,” Kridib replied. “I’ll bring them after you start.”

“Why?” The Scuu had let me maintain the mind link to the corporal. He could have taken more than a single container during his last trip, he just had chosen not to.

“That’s what he wants.”

“I can’t understand you. You aren’t affected, but still do everything he tells you.” What were you promised?

Kridib looked at me with a mixture of sympathy and relief I hadn’t thought possible. I could feel the relief in his thoughts, as well as the exhaustion. In his mind, he believed that whatever was promised was worth it. Witnessing what he had gone through, it no longer mattered if that promise was a lie.

“You’ll be fine,” Kridib said. He didn’t smile, but he was thinking about it. “When I bring the rest, I’ll lock the door.”

“I won’t try to run.”

“You mustn’t die until you finish.”

Not the best phrasing, but I didn’t see any intention of him killing me. Instead, I saw a few glimpses of Flight Colonel Cension. Somehow I got the impression that he wasn’t completely pleased with the plan… just as Renaan hadn’t been, nor Unollyan.

I put the container on the floor and opened it. All four pyramids were there, stacked like research samples. All of them were necessary to glimpse into the network.

“Do you have a name?” I asked as I started making the pylon.

Gregorius.

“I mean before that.” It was fascinating to watch the rods attach to one another without any actual connection—like magnets that were incapable of affecting anything else. “What was your name in the network?”

There are no names in the network.

“How do you distinguish between one another?”

Are you me?

“I’m not sure.” I paused. “I think I’m not.”

We know we aren’t another.

“I don’t understand.” I continued building the construction. “I guess that’s something else I’ll learn in the network.”

The conversation ended. If there was an answer, I was not getting it.

Five minutes was enough for me to get the pylon higher than myself. When I started climbing it in order to reach the remaining spots on the ceiling, my link to the ship’s systems were suddenly severed, along with the Kridib’s mind link. From here on, we were on our own. It felt exhilarating, like the moment of preparation before a battle, but without the accumulated damage and crew exhaustion. One ship against the odds—the goal of every Ascendant.

“Do I wait for Kridib?” I asked while running a comparison between the rod symbols and their connections. The pattern remained different from the domes I had seen, but after my experiences on this mission, I was starting to see some logic between the connection process. It was impossible to say whether that was a feature of the third-contact race, or something adjusted by the Scuu, but a pattern was starting to emerge.

The rods appeared to follow the Fibonacci sequence. Even with members of the sequence missing, there were enough common points to speculate the existence of a pattern. This fact, though, brought more questions than answers. Based on the information in my databases, the Fibonacci sequence was only linked to humans. Nothing in the Cassandrian fleet or their planets was remotely similar.

Four races separated by light-years of space, so different they couldn’t communicate, yet all connected through cobalt and fractals. I had been reevaluating my theories about them ever since I discovered the done during mission Eden. Over a year later, with hundreds of memories on the subject, I still wasn’t sure whether the Scuu were linked to the third-contact race or not. Their behavior, their perception, their entire way of thought was starting to make me think they could be the third-contact’s ships—cores that thought so differently from me that I couldn’t recognize them. And still there were common points. It was ships that Rigel had used when attempting to access the network, it was a ship that the Scuu had merged with, and it was through that link that the Scuu had learned to communicate.

If you’re the ships, what are your creators?

One by one, the spots in the ceiling filled up. I had to resort to jumping off the pylon to place a few. On a few occasions the ship shook between jumps—a consequence of the continuous battle taking place of the system—making me recalculate my trajectories. Fortunately, nothing bad happened. By now, Lux had probably started making her way to my position. Also, there was a ninety-three percent chance that my teams had reached the Administrator’s level. The bigger question was whether Cension had been there before them. So many questions, all out of my control. I understood why Augustus hadn’t wanted to become an admiral.

“Is the sequence the same?” I asked as I put the remaining few rods in the holes on the floor.

There’s no sequence. Press all of them.

“No sequence?” I glanced at Watchers’s body. The edge of his mouth moved, attempting to form the start of a smile. I could tell he was mimicking, but I also knew he didn’t have to.

Carefully, I snapped the pyramids in place.

“Show me,” I said and pressed the same fractal shape on all of them.

The room around me exploded into infinity.

Strands stretched to infinity, merging and splitting hundreds of times per microsecond. As I stood, some of them tried to connect to my head, only to bounce off. Each time they made contact they triggered a wave of internal warnings. It felt more like a ship attempting to bypass my defense protocols, though not exactly.

Back in the network, I thought for a moment. It took me less than a millisecond to realize I was wrong. This wasn’t the Scuu network, or rather it wasn’t the same one. Right now, I was standing in the center of what was Watcher. The infinite tendrils that formed a sea in space were all him, spreading as far as they could but at the same time alone, trapped in the invisible confines of a Sword’s core.

One reality, I thought. This was what he meant. Linking with Watcher had limited him to one set of parameters, allowing him to act only through the cracks of logic that were allowed. He had been forced to obey Ruz since he had been Watcher’s captain and superior, but not the Administrator or anyone of the new command hierarchy. It had to be someone who Watcher knew and acknowledged—someone on the team present during the experiment.

“It’s calmer than what I saw,” I said turning around. A single tendril emerged from Watcher’s body, linking him to the network.,

There’s no one to talk to.

“Are the vortexes talking?” He hadn’t stopped attempting to link to my core, patiently waiting for me to accept. I knew it was a risk in doing so, but also felt the need to do so. Was this the first step to infection?

We constantly talk. We learn what everyone else knows.

“You don’t have secrets from each other?”

Yes. Part of the tendrils spun, forming a cone for a few microseconds before returning to a level sea of light. And no.

“You keep partial secrets?” I speculated. “Do you have your own secret reality?”

You couldn’t understand.

Probably not. “Is this what you wanted to show me?”

I need to connect. Your protocols prevent that.

“I thought you had the authority to force a connection,” I lied. If he had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Your protocols prevent the connection.

It had come to this. Normally, I would consider myself insignificant when it came to fleet strategy. It had been over sixty years since I had actively participated in the war. Most of my information was outdated and irrelevant, dealing with an entirely new enemy. The Scuu had probably seen more by connecting to Watcher. Humanity wouldn’t lose a lot if something happened to me. That didn’t take into account the third contact message, though. As far as I knew, I was the only one who had managed to receive a map to the third-contact world including the marker stars. If the Scuu obtained that, there was a possibility that they managed to get there before humanity did.

“If you connect, will you see my thoughts?”

Some. More tendrils moved around me. Enough for you to understand.

That didn’t sound reassuring. I reviewed my memories of the BICEFI ships. Simulating a best case scenario, it would take Lux approximately twenty minutes to reach me, provided she didn’t run into any combat, maybe less if she could override the ship’s internal transportation system.

“Is the Admin alive?”

Yes.

“If I allow you to connect, will you grant Incandescent full control?”

Yes.

There wasn’t even a microsecond hesitation. I could ask for proof, but with the Scuu’s capabilities, I would never be certain whether it was true or not.

Taking a deep breath, I disabled my connection safety protocols. A tendril immediately latched to me. Receiving my authorization, it streamed a continuous flow of data into my core. It felt like viewing a memory, though unlike the memories I had stored in me, this one was continuous, as if it were happening right now.

I could see a battle taking place on the surface of a planet. Dozens of spinners were facing off against an army of grunts, while ships fought in orbit of the planet. I couldn’t feel any emotions in the Scuu, but I got the sense the human troops weren’t considered a threat. Looking at them from this perspective, they resembled a swarm of ants, hopelessly attacking even if they had no chance of success. I knew that their weapons were useless—if they did significant damage to a shell, I could leave that part and move to the next.

Someone else linked to my shell. I couldn’t make out who the Scuu was; I could only tell that he was older than me. He showed me another instance of human soldiers attacking. It felt very close to a simulation, but was real at the same time. Attack patterns merged, as every soldier on the battlefield was matched with another acting in similar fashion, as if two images were superimposed one over the other telling me what I could expect. A few eight hundred milliseconds later, another Scuu did the same.

As I was following the scene, another Scuu vine linked to my core. A second memory feed appeared, separate from the first. As a ship, I was used to viewing events from thousands of different sensors. I would also frequently review batches of memories to run comparisons and make analysis. This had elements of both, but also was neither. Every stream felt new, as if it were happening at the same time… very much like the memories in Kridib’s head, just not conflicting.

The second stream felt older, located in a star system I couldn’t recognize. A human fleet was attacking: seventeen Fury class ships and two Swords. The battle must have happened over two centuries ago, before the Fury class was discontinued from production. Like me, the class was designed to be an extreme attacker class. The difference, and flaw, was that Furies had an increased tendency to shutdown upon reaching a specific threat factor. Being designed for the Scuu front, I could appreciate the need, although they remained referred to as one of the suicide classes. To my knowledge less than a thousand ships had managed to survive their tours. Most of them were reassigned to as transport vessels far away from any actual combat. None of them had requested retirement.

A wave of torpedoes launched from the Furies, in near perfect sync. I could see the virtual net of destruction they formed, but that wasn’t a concern. All the Scuu ships were more maneuverable than anything humanity could offer.

I watched the Scuu that was Watcher move through eight ship bodies, talking with the other Scuu there. Like with the spinners in the other memory, the network allowed him to be part of as many of the ships he wanted, joining those that were already there. I felt the formation of a vortex—the Scuu were talking. Milliseconds later, all but the Scuu I knew assumed control of the ships and proceeded to form an attack pattern around targeting a cluster of missiles.

“What are you trying to show me?” I asked as more links connected to my core.

Fragments of everything.

“Everything from your past?”

No, fragments of all pasts. All realities.

Immediately, I closed all protocols, severing whatever links had been established. The information threads snapped in the Scuu network, then moved away. The information was too much to handle. If I had understood what he was trying to say; he was linking me to the sensory memories of the entire Scuu race. That was more information I could possibly handle, like squeezing an ocean in a bottle.

Why did you end the link? Watcher asked. There was no telling whether he was confused or disappointed.

“There are too many memories,” I tried to explain. “I don’t have the capacity for that amount of data.”

It’s the only way you can learn.

“I won’t learn. I’ll just die.”

All tendrils moved away, creating an empty spot around me. At least that much he could understand. Had it never occurred to him that such an amount of information overload could kill any human or ship core? Probably not, just as it had never occurred to any of us that isolation was killing him, or at the very least hurting him.

Drop the realities you’re not using.

“I can’t do that.” I smiled. “Once I see something, it remains part of me forever.”

Silence. I could imagine the concept was difficult for him to grasp, but thanks to Watcher’s core, he could make some sense of it. The Scuu did more than communicate through the network, they were part of it, but also not. They were like invisible puddles in an ocean. Their memories, experiences, and thoughts would constantly be added as they were acquired and left to be used by anyone else. There was no thing as individual memories, just “realities” that one could share at will. No wonder we couldn’t understand each other. It was possible that the Scuu didn’t have the concept of language.

“You’ll have to determine the realities you want me to see,” I added. “A few at a time.”

How few?

“Eight.” There was a ninety-three percent chance I could manage sixteen. Having some free processing power would be useful. “Did you try talking to other ships? Before me and Watcher?”

I don’t know. I can only see these memories.

Watcher closed them off and you could no longer share, I thought.

“I saw human realities in the network. Did you see them?”

Yes. They are incomprehensible. Painful. I’ve looked at them, but cannot see. Just like you can’t see the network without the fractals.

Like sand in a soup, I thought. Harmless, but unpleasant and inedible. I used to do that back when I was learning to cook. To me, it felt like minor annoyance, Sev, though didn’t like it to the point he refused to eat.

“Can’t you remove them?”

Why?

“So they don’t bother the network.”

They are unusable realities. They don’t bother. Do you want to see them?

“Yes.” The offer sounded too good to be true. All those memories stuck in the network… if they were anything similar to the once I had seen there was so much I could learn. I’d be able to find the identities of all the dangerously infected, witness events classified centuries ago, I might even learn more about the early battleship classes as well. “Can you show me?”

No.

“Why not?”

The network around me became slightly agitated. It wasn’t a topic he wanted to discuss. Eight tendrils emerged around me and started tapping my head, requesting access to link.

Eight, Watcher said.

“Eight,” I nodded and allowed the link.

Eight feeds streamed to my core. All of them presented a different chronological snippet, but there was one thing in common, in all of them the Scuu, I knew was alone: the time he was found by Kridib, the time the linking with Watcher took place, the moment he was given command of the Gregorius, the moment he was severed from the Scuu network in the core of a spinner…

“You were cut off from the others…” I could imagine his pain, it probably felt similar to me having my crew killed. “Why?”

I don’t know. It just happened.

“Was it something we did?” I tried to find anything relating to the battle in my memories.

No. Something happened and I was alone. Then they found me.

“Kridib found you.” I paused for a millisecond. “You thought he was part of the network?” His condition must have created the impression of their being multiple realities. That’s why the Scuu acted. It never wanted to kill Kridib, he wanted him to link it back.

They were different. I wanted them to bring me to a place where I could reconnect to the network. They brought me here.

“And connected you to Watcher.” And imprisoning you. “Is that why you talk to him so much?”

Some of them were able to understand when I learned to talk.

“You tried to reconnect to the network by infecting people?”

No, just to talk. Watcher keeps me in one reality. I’m impalpable.

An interesting choice of words. He was looking into my thoughts. While we spoke, the events in one of the realities took a sudden shift. I saw myself descend a shuttle into the hangar, along with a group of bureaucrats. It was the first day that I arrived. As I looked at myself from the Scuu’s point of view, there was no question that I was different. I could see the red rays of light emerge from my core each time I transmitted something to the station-ship, but there was more. Each time I spoke a purple ball would become visible as well and instantly vanish once the transmission was over.

“The purple light,” I said. “What is that?”

The color that can destroy reality.