“Floor secure,” Private Sasha Jobb said through comm. “Heading to target.”

“Hostiles remain on seven through nine. Can’t flush them,” came a response, followed by several bursts of fire.

“Echo Seven, you okay?” Jobb asked. “Echo Seven? Shit.”

“Private Jobb, what’s your status?” a new voice joined in. It hadn’t introduced itself, but I could tell it was a BICEFI agent hiding behind a synthetic voice print.

“I’m in control of the Admin floor.” She was smart enough not to ask for details. “Target’s safe, though still locked inside.”

“Wait for reinforcements! Do not attempt to enter!”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll take it over from—”

My connection to all comm channels was suddenly severed. I stopped, raising a hand in front of me to let Kridib know to pause.

“Incandescent?” I whispered.

Gregorius has scrambled the standard comm signals, the core replied.

It had been precisely five minutes since we had left Watcher’s chamber. I had expected Spicer to make his move. Instead of taking a direct approach, though, he had planned everything in advance. In his memories, Kridib had always considered him smart, and I was starting to agree, though he was not so much smart as he was creative. Sixty seconds after we had gone into the corridor, he had instructed Watcher to turn off all lights in my area. Two minutes after that, sections of the corridor had been sealed off. Thankfully, Incandescent had been able to gain partial control and let me continue on.

“Do you still have visuals?” I asked.

Yes. Not much I can do about it, though. The flight colonel is in private mode.

And so are we, I thought. In that aspect, none of us had an advantage. “Anything from Rad?”

External comms are still blocked. Situation is getting heated outside, though. The Scuu are narrowing the safe zone around us. The fleet can’t hold them back.

We had reached the reinforcement threshold. From this point on, fleet numbers would only decrease, whereas the Scuu were likely to grow. It only took that much effort to prepare a new set of husks and send them into the system.

“Time estimation?”

Anywhere between forty-three and seven hundred and eleven minutes. Depends if the Scuu infighting intensifies. There’s a growing group of fleet ships that are gathering near the second planet. No idea what that’s for.

Let’s hope you never find out. “What about your main core?”

I seem fine. There was a virtual smile. Likely having a chat with the other auxies. We’re grouped to one side of the Gregorius, and the BICEFI are on the other.

I was curious to know in which group Radiance was.

“Tell me if anything happens.”

I flicked my finger forward twice. Through the mind link, I saw Kridib continue forward. So far, so good. The injury hadn’t slowed him as much as the lack of light. I had offered to provide him with a layout of the section he was in, but he relied on his night optics.

According to what he had said, there were nineteen “artifact caches” aboard the Gregorius. Several of them had been emptied after Lux’s last visit, but some of the remaining ones still held objects considered important for the ship. I could only assume that, even with all the suicide waves, experiments were still being conducted, even if the organization running things remained unclear. For one thing, Unollyan had been involved with the Cassandrian prism. There was a high chance that his team was more important than everyone claimed, and likely that was the reason for him to have podded them. If I were still alive once this was over, I would request a full list of all casualties of the mission. With luck, maybe I’d manage to find someone still alive.

On the eighth minute since leaving Watcher, a green-lined route appeared on the floor beneath my feet. Spicer had sent me the bait. My only choice was to follow. Kridib had been certain that there was another artifact we could use, but whatever Kridib knew, Spicer likely knew as well.

“Watcher, can I speak to Spicer?” I asked.

No.

There went that option. Spicer had no intention of letting me know more than I was supposed to. It was a certainty that he was attempting to follow my actions using Watcher. After Kridib’s order that Watcher keep our locations secret, the chance fell to eleven percent.

Readying my side arm, I followed the path. Every minute I walked, I ran simulation scenarios: every corner was a potential trap, every stretch of corridor a targeting field. It was ironic that at this precise moment, Kridib, Spicier, and myself behaved like baby battleships: all of us were running simulations of events as we prepared for battle; the only difference was that my simulations were of things that could happen, and theirs of things that could have been.

Service corridor followed service corridor, until I reached a security section connecting bioengineering with a more traversed part of the ship. The moment I got near the massive blast door, it slid open.

I rolled to the side. No discharge followed.

What happened? Kridib asked.

Nothing. I stood up. I miscalculated.

A wave of doubt came from Kridib, but he didn’t say anything. Gripping my pistol, I continued along the green line. The corridor sealed around me as I did. If there was a time for Spicer to act, it would be now.

Three minutes passed without incident, then four. On the fifteenth minute since I had set off from Watcher, another mind linked to my core.

You spoke with the BICEFI, Spicer said directly in my core. Thirty-six Scuu circles spun in front of his eyes. They won’t help.

You can’t take out all of them. I focused on his senses. He was in the middle of the room. A stack of metal containers was next to him. The case markings identified them as artifact holders. A few of them are better.

No one’s better. There was a mental laugh. Spicer believed his words. Get off Gregorius. Take your admin and your troops and go.

He turned to the side. The cube artifact was there, still wrapped in its protective plastic cover.

One shot and it’ll be gone. Spicer pointed a pistol at it. For some reason, I couldn’t see his sniper rifle, even if I felt it to be there.

No. I could feel Spicer’s anxiety flare up. If the Scuu reclaim the Gregorius, they’ll kill you with the rest.

In Spicer’s mind, an instance of him shot the artifact. The real one didn’t.

I can’t risk the ship falling to the Scuu, I continued. Not with all of his memories of us. Help me destroy those and the Scuu will lose interest. Time for the carrot. And you’ll get a fresh deal from the BICEFI.

It was well known that organizations within the fleet made such arrangements on a constant basis. With two active wars and a third on the horizon, they had little choice. Everyone in the bureaucratic apparatus knew it, most people suspected it, and after restoring access to my memories, I was starting to realize it as well. Restrictions would be put in place, but the skills were going to be put to use… provided he was willing.

The flight colonel lowered his weapon. Moments later our mind-link was severed. So far, everything was within predicted parameters—Spicer didn’t trust me, but he couldn’t afford to destroy the artifact either, at least not while I was alive.

Do you think he’ll offer me a deal? I asked Kridib.

Yes. Don’t take it.

Why?

He made a deal with Juul a while back.

Good to know. Apparently, Spicer wasn’t the type to be held back because of promises. Now that I knew, I wouldn’t be either.

The ship trembled—a hit or near miss based on my estimates. All of us were running out of time. I expected Spicer to take advantage of the situation and have a few traps ready along the way. To my surprise, there weren’t any. Judging by his past actions, I could tell something was off.

The door to the classified storage room was wide open when I reached it. Spicer had grouped some of the racks together, giving himself a perfect cover. If he wanted, he could have shot me, just like Kridib had back on the penal planet. The fact that he hadn’t attempted it increased my concern.

“Spicer,” I said as I entered. “Spicer, take the deal. It’s your best option.”

There was no answer.

“You don’t have to do anything.” No sound, just shadows. He had to be using sound suppressors, possibly other tech as well. “Let me just take the cube. After that, it’s all up to you—make a deal with the BICEFI or don’t.”

I went round the first wall of racks. The area behind was cleared, creating a large empty space. In the middle, twenty-one meters away, two rows of rod containers were piled on top of each other. The cube was placed on top. The plastic removed, I could clearly see its surface. There were no fractal symbols to be seen; the artifact was purely Scuu-made. Based on Watcher’s explanations, it likely was a signal amplifier allowing the Scuu to maintain control of their tech.

Here we go. I ran a few simulations.

The chances of Spicer hitting me were over ninety-three percent. It was just as possible that he had placed one of his explosive charges in the crates and was waiting for me to approach so he could trigger it.

Two decks below, several kilometers from my location, Kridib had made his way to the other storage room. His route was twice as short as mine, but he had been considerably more cautious. I watched him slowly push the door open with the muzzle of his gun. Provided the room wasn’t booby trapped, he would have five minutes to find the cube and start his way back.

Five minutes… It sounded like an eternity, but as things stood, eternity would not be enough.

“Good to see you haven’t tampered with the rods.” I holstered my pistol and opened a case on the racks. As expected, there were several rods inside. “If you hit one of them, the entire ship goes.” I took one out and held it in front of me. “You’ve seen what happens when a Scuu ship is hit. Even a small one.”

The muffled sound of a shot echoed in the room. Spicer was using sound suppressors, but they weren’t enough to mask the sound made by the crate he was resting his rifle on. In most of the cases, it wouldn’t matter—the time wouldn’t be enough for a person to react. Not so for a battleship, though.

A millisecond after the sound, I leapt to the side. The bullet grazed my hip.

Sadistic, I thought. Afraid to hit the third-contact rod, he had gone for the stomach. In his place, I would have gone for my head. Without my core it was all over. Anywhere else, I still had a chance.

As my feet touched the floor, a second sound echoed. This time the bullet missed me by a meter. I was already dashing forward, gripping the rod tight with my left hand. Three seconds, that was how much time I needed to reach the cube. My simulations suggested that with two shots missed, Spicer was likely to switch to what he considered to be my goal point.

The trajectory of the two shots gave me an approximate position. Considering his skill, I knew he would move; I also knew that he couldn’t move too much in three seconds. Leaning to the right, I bent forward to get as much cover as possible.

Less than a hundred milliseconds remained from me touching the cube when I heard the sound again.

Too late. I twisted my waist, striking the artifact with the cobalt rod.

Now, I told Watcher.

After a microsecond, the link was complete. I found myself in the Scuu network. On the surface, I felt unchanged, although everyone affected by the Scuu probably was. At least the connection hadn’t melted my core.

Well? I asked.

Your light is strong enough to destroy realities, Watcher replied.

How?

You connect to the reality. When your light touches it, it’ll crumble.

It sounded simple enough, which probably meant it wasn’t. There were billions of strands around me, each its own separate memory. Assuming I could destroy dozens of memories per microsecond, I’d need minutes to purge them all. The bullet that Spicer had fired would hit me in less than a second. It was like Rigel all over again… unless I imposed conditions.

Start with sixteen at a time. I stopped all non-essential processes. Most recent memory first, then go backwards from there.

I can’t see time.

Of course, he couldn’t. To the Scuu they were just memories, realities in their own right.

Start with the realities you created.

On cue sixteen tendrils requested access. I provided it immediately. I expected there to be some reaction, software glitch or error of some kind. Nothing of the sort. The memories poured into my core as usual, then suddenly stopped fragments of a microsecond in, as if they had ended; the tendril associated with them just disappearing.

One seventeenth of a micro-second—that was the amount of memory I was allowed to view before destroying it by merely being “synced” with the third-contact race. Looking at it, that was possibly the reason why the BICEFI couldn’t extract any relevant information from me. My interaction with a third-contact artifact had somehow created a protocol in my core that managed to destroy memories the moment they left my core. I found the notion fascinating and terrifying. If any human organization got its hands on it, they would change the entire fleet structure. If the Scuu or the Cassandrians obtained such technology, they could eradicate the human race. What would Lux do if she obtained it?

Fragments came and went: memories I’d seen before, regions of space humanity hadn’t mapped, scenes I couldn’t even understand. As each batch connected, a tuft of strands blinked out of existence. Compared to the sea that surrounded me, it was almost nothing.

Double it to thirty-two, I said.

The info bursts intensified, feeling like projectile fire on my hull. I needed half a millisecond to adjust to the info transfer. Sadly, it still wasn’t fast enough.

The last time I was in a similar situation, Rigel had tried to kill me in the network. Back then, the organic part of my body was in decay, kept alive solely by the agora substance. This time, I had full control of my body, but the person who wanted to kill me was far more skilled and determined. As Augustus would say, the more things changed, the more they remained the same.

By the time Spicer’s bullet struck the side of my jaw, almost eight and a half million memories had been purged—an amount far too small to be noticed.

What are your plans? I activated Lux’s tool, forcing my way into Spicer’s mind.

Priority one counter espionage protocol!

I felt a foreign protocol bypass my defenses attempting to quarantine my thoughts.

Nice try, I thought. Spicer’s new rank had granted him some privileges. Thankfully I had my mind scalpel.

In Spicer’s mind I saw him dash to the left. Part of him wanted to kill me, but the rest—the more cautious part of him—only wanted to gain control of the ship. That had been the plan ever since he had returned from the penal colony. Spicer knew he didn’t have the rank to assume command, but with everyone gone, he was smart enough to take advantage.

Grabbing the cube, I hid behind the cover I had. For once, my small frame came in handy.

Kridib, how’s it going? I asked, tucking the cube under my left arm.

He’s been here, the corporal replied. The crate’s been tampered with.

Just open it. He wouldn’t risk boobytrapping it.

You don’t know him.

If he set up a charge there, it’ll take out the entire ship.

A series of shots were fired my way. Spicer was trying to scare me into the open. I watched an instance of him charge directly at me, only to get killed in his mind. Two more instances remained where he was, focusing on each side of the crate stack.

“Even if you kill me, you won’t control Gregorius,” I drew my gun with my free arm. “Watcher’s core won’t last more than a week.”

I know, Spicer’s thoughts leaked through. I’ll use Incandescent.

That hadn’t been within my calculations upon boarding Gregorius. Given Incandescent’s sophistication, he was likely to survive the process and allow the Scuu better control of the husk. Such a link was also very likely to give him a far better understanding of humans.

Watcher, increase the connections to sixty-four! I ordered.

The new information load hit me like a drilling missile, triggering my core’s internal safety protocols. All my comm connections were forcefully closed, including my link to Kridib. Thankfully, my connections to Watcher and Spicer remained.

A new series of thoughts came through. Spicer left his sniper rifle and charged me from along three different paths. He was holding two pistols of classified design. Judging by the muzzle length, they were far more powerful and accurate than what I had. The odds weren’t with me on this one.

Pulling back, I fired three shots in one of the potential directions Spicer was headed. The bullets hit the outside of the crates, wide from the target.

Bump it to seventy-two, I told Watcher.

The load was intense, though not enough to cause further disruptions. Strands were disappearing around me like starbursts. A patch of emptiness had formed in Watcher’s network, surrounding my virtual presence. Threads continued to connect, darting towards me like snakes. Close to half a billion memories gone, and so many more left…

Back when I was a ship, simulations determined every course of action I should take. I didn’t have the processing power to do any of those now, but I still had sixty-seven years of experience being human.

The room shook violently. Another missile had detonated. I emptied what was left of my sidearm, then tossed it away and doubled down out of the room. The return fire followed almost instantly. Most of the shots went wide—Spicer wasn’t as good without his sniper rifle as he thought. Two hit me in my upper back, sending a sensation of pain though my combat gear. The force shoved me forward, almost making me lose balance.

I have to make it to the racks. I gritted my teeth.

Once past the barrier, I had about a twenty-five percent chance to make it into the corridor. Unfortunately, that’s when the difficult part would begin. The closed path Spicer had made for me had plenty of long stretches, ensuring that I would be an open target just for such an eventuality. I could see how he had survived so many encounters against the Scuu.

Give me Watcher, you bitch! A thought leaked through. Drop the cube!

The spike in hatred made me double my efforts. Unlike Kridib, Spicer was far more impulsive.

Reduce to thirty-two! I shouted mentally to Watcher. The processing load decreased, letting me breathe again. Immediately, I restored all comm channels I could while also running a basic simulation of my escape paths. Three more shots followed, all hitting the rack behind me.

Kridib’s mental feed linked back with mine. He was still in the room, carefully removing the other cube from its place. In his mind, an instance of him had already died from an explosion that had ripped the storage room apart. Coincidentally, Spicer also shared a similar episode. Both of them lived with the constant expectation to die, but only one of them wished to.

“Incandescent!” I shouted, running as fast as my core would let me. Neither the mental scalpel nor Lux’s gift were able to override my body’s safety limits. The procedure was in place to compensate for a ship’s numbed sensation of pain, ensuring that the organic part didn’t break down due to overexertion. Right now, I would have liked to have that option. “Intense light flickering!”

Nothing changed. Likely my line to the core was still cut off. My hope was that the cut-off was only one way.

Sprinting through the door, I plunged into darkness. The first long stretch. A series of shots echoed after me, all missing the mark.

Twenty-four seconds to the first turn, five more if I ran in a random pattern. Considering Spicer’s skill neither was safe. This wasn’t this stretch I was worried about. It was the next in which I would be particularly vulnerable.

You just had to leave, I caught Spicer’s thoughts.

He had halved the distance to the exit and was setting up his vision tech. Two of his mental instances were running behind me, and two more activated a series of explosive charges in the corridor I was at.

As I ran, I saw the start of a Scuu colonization process—a single pod crashing into a planet and instantly spreading into a vein of metal deposits, shaping them in the chosen form. I had to admire the beauty of it… pure inorganic to inorganic transfer. It was supposed to be impossible, but the Scuu could do it with ease given the energy of just a few first-contact rods. It also explained why they targeted mining colonies—humanity had already found and located suitable deposits, saving the Scuu a lot of effort. An efficient way of colonizing, even moreso for building fleets.

The memory ended abruptly. If I had had more time, there was so much more I could learn from this and millions more instances of the Scuu’s existence. Then again, maybe that’s what Watcher had done. The odds were low, but there was a sub-percentage point chance that the Sword was still there, his processing power focused on going through centuries of information. Maybe once I destroyed them all, his conscience core could be saved.

Light filled the corridor, forcing my eyes to readjust for three hundred and ten milliseconds. No sooner had they done so when the corridor went dark again.

Elcy, a familiar voice said. The team got the Admin. Wounded but stable.

Nice to have you in the game, kiddo. It had been a while since I had heard Radiance. While I was happy about that, I was also concerned. Incandescent was supposed to contact me, not her. What can you see?

Still blind. Gregorius’ protocols have been modified. None of us have external access anymore.

What about Incandescent?

Not sure. Lux will be with you soon.

A shot sounded behind me, causing me to instinctively leap to the opposite side of the corridor while running.

Lux wants you to keep the Scuu alive.

That’s a risk I can’t take.

I understood the temptation. We were presented with one of the greatest opportunities we had in the war against the Scuu. Thousands of captains and commanders had sacrificed more for less. I could stop deleting the memories now and let things play out. Lux could deal with Spicer then take Watcher and jump out of the system, possibly destroying the dome on the second planet in the process. However, I still had to survive.

More bullets rained upon me. Spicer had switched from qualitative to quantitative shooting, trying to hit me before I reached the bend. That was where I would make my stand. Even with my few scratches, my skills far exceeded him in close-range combat. As long as the distance between us was less than two meters I could snap his neck without an issue. In this case, I would go for his arms—despite everything, he remained human.

Four bullets hit me in the back of the leg, sending reminders of pain to my core. If Augustus were here, he’d probably grumble that even after all this time on the front, I remained a rookie. As always, he would be right.

Fourteen meters, I told myself. That was all I had to pass to be safe. If I got there, I had a seventy-two percent chance of survival.

Running on, I twisted around and pointed the rod at Spicer. The shooting stopped. In his mind I saw him mistake it for a weapon. One of his instances fell on the ground shot dead by his own fear, while the rest scattered to the side of the corridor. Like all battlefield veterans, fears had become part of him.

Eleven seconds left, I glanced forward. Based on my simulation, it was virtually certain that I would—

A blast erupted from the wall. There was a single flash of light, followed by a wave of force. For a microsecond, safety protocols took over, forcing me to protect myself from the explosion’s effects. That was a mistake. The Scuu cube—hard and brittle like glass—was pulled out of my grip as I released both artifacts so as to roll in a ball mid-air. A dozen parallel simulations ran in my mind: none of them showed me an instance in which I could save the cube, only cases in which I saved myself.

So you managed to hide a few charges, I thought. Why hadn’t I seen them?

Close to two billion memories had been purged from Watcher’s network. With some luck, I could probably destroy a few hundred thousand more before the “amplifier” shattered completely. If Gibraltar were here, he’d say I’d done approximately nineteen percent of the work. Augustus would grumble that more than four-fifths remained.

At least Kridib had managed to take the spare. That gave me a chance.

Brace for impact, Radiance transmitted to my core.

The station ship shook violently as I slammed against the wall. Warnings flashed before my eyes as my internal nanites proceeded to patch up my internal wounds and fractures. Then I witnessed a reality that made time stop…

* * *

ᴕᴕ ∞ᴕ

The metal felt warm, different. Many of the others had already linked to it, wanting to make their shapes. I watched their realities, experiencing what they were, then joined in as well. The reality almost crushed me with its softness. So malleable and difficult to shape. I tried to use it to make an image in a small empty spot. It stayed for a bit, then disappeared as if it had never been. The others could do no different. We watched each other’s attempts—big, small, precise, distorted… none lasted.

Inside.

Spherical.

Round.

Chatter from the first ones reached us. They had stopped playing on the surface and were moving deeper in, changing shape to push themselves forward. I linked to them along with the others, creating a vortex of talk. Everyone was discussing what this could be. None of us knew, but we knew it was important. It was larger than what we had found before, better, cleaner, with more energy, stronger than the matter we used before.

Several worked together, forming the same shape one after the other. An opening formed and closed soon after, like a bubble in the metal. When they stopped talking, the bubble was crushed to nothing.

Soft. Round. Hard. I told the others. All of them agreed. Some didn’t.

I surrounded the metal, joining several others as we tried to make a form around the metal.

Smooth.

Sharp.

Organic.

They continued to push to the inside, while we pushed on the surface. We were talking about how to make it into a float-seed. It didn’t need the rods. Much faster than anything we had made. Perfectly round, perfectly measured. Like the rods.

Shapes appeared in realities, repeating patterns to infinity. Some of those inside stopped to admire. They had seen such before, made by the pillar makers. None of us had been so close to a pillar maker. None of us could stay away.

More joined our realities. The ones that vanished joined us again, all wanting to be part.

I moved float-seeds through the void. Sixteen joined with the rest, removing the stone around the metal. There were realities in which this was done before. More realities had left it behind. The metals also couldn’t be used for anything but sleep.

Warmth.

A single was going, sharing a reality with all. I was looking. We could feel the hardness soften. The inside was fast and getting faster. When we went through it felt like liquid.

Chunks, I said.

Energy.

The rods were floating, forming an invisible shape. We could feel a network, but not ours. All started talking, but nothing answered. The pillar makers never answered. They only shouted or were silent. Now they whispered.

A pillar spark flickered. Realities shattered. Many pulled back. I remained to watch the birth of new realities. It hurt about the ones missing, but the new ones had a shadow of energy. There remained a whisper, one we had heard before. It was on the edge, far too close to the pillar and nothing else.

I went through the realities, searching. The whisper was there among the other voices, but now I knew its name. So similar and different. No one thought of it, but also—

* * *

The memory crumbled as I bounced off the corridor wall, gone forever. The thoughts were strange, alien, more feelings than actual words. It was only though the brief glimpses Watcher had shown me that I was able to understand them at all. Yet, there was no mistaking the third-contact artifact. I had witnessed the Scuu finding a dome, and not only that, but one of them had managed to reveal the map, even if he couldn’t understand it… or at least the rest of the Scuu network had been unable to understand it.

One Scuu in a network of many, holding a reality only he could see and not share with anyone else. He sounded very much like me. If I could see more than a seventieth of a microsecond, there was no telling what I could have seen, but even with so little, I had found something invaluable—the location of another marker star.