Gravity. In the past, it had rarely mattered. As far as I had been concerned, it was a force like any other I had to take into account and use best to my advantage. I had pushed enemies in gravity wells, and had been pushed there myself. Eleven times I had almost scorched myself in a planet’s atmosphere, barely escaping full reentry. Once I had even helped Aurie avoid crashdown. Yet never did I feel so at the mercy of its effects.

“Brace for fluctuations!” the pilot shouted.

Next to me, Elec gripped his safety restraints. The action was pointless—human muscles would hardly succeed where industrial carbon steel had failed—but I understood the sentiment. For the last two hours, each time the word “fluctuations” was mentioned, we’d get spun around like ice cubes in a cocktail mixer. Neither gravity dampeners, nor restraints, nor the new custom created spacesuits were able to fully absorb the shock.

Ten meters away, at the back end of the shuttle, all the equipment containers rose from the floor, only held in check by an array of steel cables. After seven seconds, they slammed back down, just to be pulled the side again. Logically, this wasn’t supposed to happen. The system was claimed to be stable, and as such the eight suns—with the exception of the Twirling Twins—were supposed to have the same effect as any large body. The first five probes sent quickly dismantled that theory, bringing Prometheus to a halt outside the system’s outer orbit. Half an hour later, I was on a manual driven shuttle on the way to the seventh sun.

“And we’re in the clear,” the pilot shouted, just as my body slammed down on the seat. “Almost there. Twenty minutes left.”

Doing my best to ignore the constant shaking, I brought up the system map on my visor display. All eight suns were visualized with their orbits and real time position. A thin, grayish semi-transparent mesh stretched between them attempting to map the gravitational anomalies of the system. When I first saw it, a few hours ago,in Fion Vexinion’s lab, the map had been a standard plane along the ecliptic, slightly distorted near the suns. Looking at it now, Prometheus had made a number of changes based on the data from the probes and my shuttle. Zooming in on our flight path, the surrounding area looked like my hull after a missile barrage.

“Elec.” I scrolled to the zones explored by the probes. “Are we the first ones here?”

“First manned flight,” he replied, with a mixture of tension and disappointment.

“What was sent before us?”

The more I looked at the gravitational map, the more I saw similarities with things I’d seen before. In all instances, it was on the front lines, and always after a battle.

“An S-20 was sent here last century.” He turned towards me. A slight tremble made him quickly get back to neutral position, back firmly glued to the seat.

An actual Surveyor Twenty. Those ships were considered very top of the line back when I was active. They were built on analogue technology, with the intelligence of an unmanned shuttle, constructed with one thought in mind: surveillance. It also was a military ship. I had seen hundreds sent to scout out systems before major military actions. The S-20 would be sent to all relevant systems up to seventy-two hours in advance and remain there until all military actions were over. Upon arrival, the ship would launch twenty specialized probes—where its name came from—and form a scanning cluster that monitored all in-system activities. During the war, it wasn’t rare for S-20s to be lost, abandoned, or forgotten in systems they had surveyed, yet I didn’t know a single case of them being sent to a conflict-free location.

“Do you know if there was combat here?” I closed the display. If I had unfettered access to the fleet network, I’d be able to see for myself. With Prometheus looking over my shoulder, I wasn’t so sure.

“We’re too far from the front for that.” He looked in the direction of the cockpit. “And nothing has come here in the past fifty years.”

It was good to see that Elec had done his homework, researching the relevant history prior to our mission, just as it was alarming that I was still being kept in the dark. The only things I knew were what Vexinion had told me, which wasn’t a lot. Unlike most of the crew, the man was a civilian with military clearance, which made him more chatty than even the fleet scientists on board. Unfortunately, everything he said was a mix of science jargon and stories about his family. According to the personnel file, he was serving a two year contract, on loan from a redacted corporate conglomerate. Everything else in the file was beyond my access level. I had no doubt Vexinion was skilled in his area of expertise and probably nowhere else.

Prometheus, what’s the location of the system? I asked directly.

You know better than that. I thought I sensed a note of smugness. Nothing remarkable happened here, so the information is irrelevant.

Why was a Surveyor used?

Distance, came the answer. It was cheaper than sending an observer team this far out.

Okay. Thanks.

The answer made enough sense to make it logical. An all-sun system so far out had no strategic value. I could see an S-20 being used as an explorer, yet it alone couldn’t have caused the gravitational anomalies we’d seen. I knew perfectly well what could.

* * *

Red alert messages flashed over all over my walls as all ground troops and non-emergency personnel scrambled to their quarters. Millions of my subroutines monitored the bio readings of every single person onboard, while millions more prepared the protocols for establishing a fleet-wide communication network.

“Ninety seconds to jump,” I announced in all sections. “Get to your designated areas. This one is not a drill.”

I very much disliked the standard protocol phrases. It was clear this wasn’t a drill. We had been engaged in non-stop battle for the last seven months. The only time we had left a fight was to be sent to an even more heated zone, in an effort to stop the enemy from advancing.

“Medbays, be on standby,” I added a thought of my own. “This will be a tough one.”

A few dozen responses followed, all of them sarcastic, some even amusing. War tended to twist everyone’s sense of humor. Thinking about it, I, the crew, and even Gibraltar, had become a near copy of my first captain. The way things were going, in another year, we’d even start talking like him, provided any of us survived so long.

“Sixty seconds to jump,” I said. Voice confirmations started pouring in. Five minutes since we’d received and the priority order was made, over seventy-eight percent of all crew had gone where they were supposed to and waiting for launch. The number increased every second. “Looks like we’ll make it on time, Captain,” I said to Gibraltar. “Want me to rush the jump?”

“What the status of the fleet?” Gibraltar asked from the middle of the bridge. The priority message had doubled his adrenaline flow, making him pace about. The command staff were no different; however, they didn’t know the full extent of the command’s transmission.

“Seventeen ships of the local group will jump in on the sixty second mark,” I checked. Some were already fully prepared, waiting for the official go. “Five groups of other systems are already en route, totaling a hundred and twelve vessels. Second and third wave ships are being assembled.”

We both knew we could not rely too much on them. The first wave was composed of all battle ready ships with no significant damage or crew shortages. In short, we were the ones fit for battle. Second wave were the fifty-fifty group, as for the third wave—it was whatever was left. The unfortunate truth was that despite all our initiatives, the Cassandrians were winning.

“Thirty seconds to jump,” I said. Less than two percent of the crew remained unaccounted for, rushing down my halls to make it on time. A few small groups had informed me they couldn’t manage and requested alternative jump locations. I had redirected them to storage holds with jump capabilities. It would be uncomfortable, but they’d avoid injuries.

Fourteen. That was the number of defeats I’d personally suffered in the last seven months. On file it wasn’t regarded as a personal defeat, referred to instead as an organized withdrawal, or reallocation, or regrouping. The truth was that we were losing territory. According to official channels, we had lost fifty-six systems on the front in the last five years alone. Our grand initial push, which was supposed to end the war, had resulted in a stronger push from the opposing side. While we had managed to break into their territory at one point, we had conceded seven more and they kept on coming. Confidential fleet reports said that additional shipyards were being constructed as the current ones were already at maximum capacity. There was also talk that we might have Scuu front ships join us in battle.

“Crew is ready for jump, Captain,” I said as I got the final confirmation. Eleven seconds ahead of schedule. “Communication protocols are all set and the mini sats are on standby.”

“Full battle readiness.” Gibraltar rushed to his seat. “Fire at will if needed. Full defenses.”

The second he buckled in, I jumped. In a single instant I, along with sixteen other ships, vanished from the system I had been fighting to protect for two weeks. Because of compartmental communication protocols, I had no way to know how many ships had been lost, but I estimated in the dozens, which meant hundreds of thousands of human casualties. The thought caused me more pain than the loss of my ship friends, especially since I knew a number of the ground troops among the fallen: hundreds had been on me during ground missions. In the grand scheme of things, we were all just chips in a giant game of war, but a ship was built to care for human crews, and that didn’t change just because they weren’t onboard anymore.

The first jump took two hundred and eleven seconds. Upon arriving in a red giant system, we were joined by two more fleet groups, increasing our number to fifty-one. Precisely half a minute later, we jumped again. This time there were eighty-five ships upon arrival, then two hundred and three, then five hundred and twelve. By the time we reached our final destination, there were over two thousand ships, with more expected to come.

“Launching mini sats,” I said as I performed a full system scan. The ident protocols of two thousand three hundred and eighty ships logged on to the communication network, starting a wave of data bursts I hadn’t experienced for years.

“What the heck?!” The communication officer shouted as he saw the data I had received. “Are we starting a new offensive?”

“Elcy?” The Capital hunched over his personal screen.

“Not that I know,” I said. Their confusion was understandable. In the grand scope of things, two thousand ships were an insignificant number, but far greater than anything we’d seen in the last few years.

I checked the classification of the all vessels. All were battleships like myself, gathered from pretty much the entire front. Strangely enough, there was no trace of any strategy or admiral ships. I sent a clarification request to command. The reply came instantly: Remain in battle readiness. Await further instructions.

“Command told me to wait.” I had my subroutines send a few hundred queries to some of the other ships in the system. “The local ships have no idea what’s going on. Possibly command thinks this is the minimum amount of ships needed to secure a choke point system.”

“Enemies?” Gibraltar asked.

“None according to initial scan.” The majority of my subroutines were still in the process of syncing with the other ships in the group to form a wide communication and sensor network. “Planets are classified as uninhabitable. I’m having difficulty scanning the rest of the system.”

I ran a diagnostic of my systems. Everything seemed in order, yet with as many subroutines I allocated to perform a deep scan, it also came with unrealistic numbers of anomalies. One millisecond I’d get a reading that there were five distinct asteroid fields throughout the system, the next there would be a sparse cluster of planets.

This is Light Seeker, I transmitted to the group communication stream. Does anyone have a gravitational reading? My scans keep getting corrupted.

Same here, Light Seeker, High Grace, an old Fireball class cruiser replied. The map is shifting non-stop. Transmitting my data for analyses.

Likewise, another ship responded. Sending data burst.

Dozens, then hundreds of ships burst their scan data into the network. Some had done scans every millisecond, others twenty times per second, yet one thing remained the same. The data that I had collected was random, but definitely not corrupted. All other ships had recorded exactly the same values in the same time period. Whatever the reason for these anomalies was it wasn’t faulty scanning.

“Captain,” I said to my bridge, as I armed all active missiles. “We might have a problem.”

* * *

I never learned the reason for the anomalies. The official reason was written down to “post-battle effects” and classified away. Quite possibly some of my memories had been blocked or purged as well. I did, however, remember the vast sea of debris I had found among the anomalies. Tens of thousands of ship carcasses, both ours and Cassandrian floating about with no explanation whatsoever. The only thing I knew for certain was that over two thousand of us had entered the system and only twelve hundred had left.

“Hold tight for another one!” the pilot yelled. Part of me felt he was enjoying this far too much. Being one of a dozen people that had seen actual combat, it wasn’t unexpected. “Should be the last one.”

Gravity pulled me up along with everything else in the shuttle. Instinctively, Elec twitched. I could tell that he was familiar enough with the experience not to panic, though not enough to be used to it. Hopefully once Prometheus assembled the data, he’d be able to plot a calmer course to our destination.

I closed my eyes, focusing on the mission parameters. Of the eight stars, we were going to start by observing the seventh—or Thursday, as Vexinion had named it—after which we’d move to the twin suns on the third orbit, before moving to the inner bodies. The plan was to monitor the activity of each sun from as close a position as possible, then build a suicide probe and launch it at the core. Normally this could be done by Prometheus himself, but because of the high level of radiation and gravitational anomalies, long distance communication was out of the question. So far everything seemed fine, yet once we got to the core of the tech system, I had no doubt issues would arise; I also suspected that beyond the twins, I would be performing the observation on my own—even with present generation shielding and modified space suits, the levels of radiation would be considered too intense for them to handle.

“Can you take pictures?” I patched my comm to the pilot.

“Huh, what?” he asked as a tremor passed through the shuttle.

“Can you take some pictures of the sun?” I repeated.

“Kid, you’ll be staring at that thing for the next twenty hours,” he laughed. “What would you need more pictures for?”

“I want to be able to see it as a sun, not a ball of gas.” It was amusing how he called me kid. I had no doubt he knew what I was, but habit was a difficult thing to kick. “To remember it by.”

“You’re one crazy cadet.” I could almost hear him shake his head as he spoke. “Taking you a few pictures. Hell, if any turn out good I’ll send a copy to my kids.”

“That’s not a bad idea.” Just like I’ll send them to my kid.