Medical checkups were never pleasant. When I re-enlisted, I was told I’d have to have one every six months. Due to radiation concerns relating to our current mission, I now had to do them every three days. To make it even more annoying, Doctor Sim’s attitude had shifted considerably. His humor had become dry, he no longer referred to me as “princess,” and he had doubled the standard procedure in an attempt to find something wrong with me.

“You seem to be within the safety zone,” he said politely, skimming through the results on his datapad. “Two more decontamination procedures and you should be ready to go.”

“Thank you, sir.” My attitude towards him had also changed.

“Have you experienced any problems during your observation?” He put the datapad away and started removing the probe cables from me.

“Only flashes through my eyelids, sir.” I remained still. The amount of cables had almost doubled from last time: three clusters were attached to my neck and five more were on various spots along my spine. From what I knew of my anatomy, Doctor Sim had tapped into all of my auxiliary body movement cores.

“Dizziness? Disorientation?” he asked, without a note of concern in his voice.

“None, sir.” I hesitated a few moments. “No nausea or other abnormalities either.”

I could almost hear the doctor pause and look at me. We both knew what I was inferring to. It was a slight gamble on my part, but I needed to start clearing the air. I’d seen many times what happened when people were forced to serve on a ship with those they hated. On a few occasions, I had to impose movement restrictions, reassign them—with my captain’s permission—or even make an official request they be moved off board. Most often, command ignored the requests up until one of the parties involved did something drastic enough to require ship reassignment.

“You’re ready to go,” the doctor said with a thin smile. “Get dressed and get back to your quarters. You need to rest a bit before your next session.”

“Yes, sir.” I sat up. My attempt had failed. On the bright side, it didn’t seem to have made things worse. “Is my next session in eight hours?”

“Six,” he corrected. “We’re expediting the procedure. Try to get some rest.”

I nodded, then started to get dressed. Every few seconds I considered breaking the silence with a joke, and every few seconds I’d find a reason not to. From the data I had gathered as a ship, breaking the silence only made it awkward in most cases.

You have a briefing update in one hour, Prometheus said in his serious fashion. I’m not sure how long it’ll take.

All part of the job. I finished pulling on my uniform shoes. After wearing them under a space suit for two days, they were starting to get mildly uncomfortable. I couldn’t theorise how bad it would have been if I hadn’t gone through the obligatory decontamination procedures. Do I get any downtime before that?

I’m not sure. There was the slightest note of curiosity.

Can I go to my quarters until you find out?

“Oh, and don’t forget to prep for a memory check before you head out,” Doctor Sim said almost casually. “Command agreed that we must monitor what effects prolonged radiation exposure has on you.”

Of course they would. “Naturally, sir.” I smiled. “Anything else?”

“No.” The doctor gave me a long look, as if trying to figure out whether I was mocking him or not. After several seconds, his expression relaxed. I could tell he had been dealing with ships long enough to know our peculiarities. “Just that and try to find some time to rest.”

Leaving sickbay, I went directly to my quarters. On the way, I checked all personal mail I had received. In total there were seven messages, six of which were from Radiance. The ship was as excited as I had been in my first months in the fleet, constantly updating me with her present status. Her writing pattern was slightly off, probably because she was using an updated language algorithm I wasn’t familiar with. She was experiencing some difficulty with her new cadet, as well as having captain troubles. There was no further explanation, but I suspected that it involved the problems I had with Augustus a century ago.

The seventh message was from Bull Calf. It had the innocent title “Promising Cadet Candidates” and contained a simple list of eleven names, each with contact information. I smiled at the ship’s sense of humor. Technically, they could be considered potential cadet candidates, just like me. From my perspective, though, they were a loophole I could use to obtain information without getting in trouble.

I’d like to have some personal time, I said upon entering my quarters. Uninterrupted.

I knew that Prometheus wouldn’t be pleased, but regulations allowed me to take advantage of some personal time every week. So far I had never taken advantage of any, granting me a total of two and a half unsupervised hours.

Just twenty minutes. I kicked off my shoes. The floor felt nice, almost relaxing.

You’re becoming difficult, Prometheus grumbled. I’d have thought a veteran battleship would be more understanding of rules and regulations.

“I’m just a cadet now,” I said out loud. “I still remember what it was like, but I’m not a ship anymore.”

You’re not human either. I sensed a note of compassion.

“I know, Prometheus.” I looked at the wall of my room. “It’s just as confusing for me as it is for you. The only thing that counts is that I’m a cadet and part of the mission. Everything else can be settled later.”

There was a long pause. If this were Sev, I’d be pretty sure I’d have earned myself the request. With the science ship, however, the chance was fifty percent.

You’ve been granted twenty minutes personal time, he said after a while. I’ve isolated a subsystem to deal with your requests. All relative information will be purged after you’re done.

“Thanks.” I took out my datapad and directed the symbols to be displayed on the wall.

A grid of symbols appeared, grouped in rows in clunky fashion. It looked so childish, almost like the homework Sev used to write for school. Thinking about it, compared to the third contact race, I probably was a child. The fact that it had taken me so long to figure out something so obvious proved it.

Display the system on the ceiling, I ordered, while simultaneously rearranging the symbols so as to match the model in my mind. The eight suns appeared above me, arranged with precise accuracy. So far so good.

“Establish external connection.” Old habits don’t die, so they said. Four of my ex-captains would be furious if they could see what I was about to do. There was a strong chance that Sev would be as well. “Activate security censoring appropriate to the current mission.” Now Prometheus wouldn’t be tagged by my call, and since the security level of the mission was officially considered low, I could talk about almost anything.

Define purpose of communication, the subroutine demanded.

“Discussing adjustment to human form with another retired ship,” I said and waited.

This was the critical point. If the bureaucratic apparatus had managed to fill all the loopholes, my request would be denied and my behavior would possibly be flagged and added to my personnel file.

“Provide connection address,” the subroutine responded.

Just like on the front, I thought, only now I didn’t have to worry about being on record. “Hold command.” I glanced at the list. “Provide all available information about the following ships.” I could easily get the information on my own, yet using the subroutine guaranteed that the search would be burned as well once my personal time had ended. Taking a deep breath, I started reciting the names one by one. Milliseconds after I spoke each name, a micro info burst would follow, providing me with all necessary data.

Bull Calf had done the selection well, each of the candidates had over a century of active duty, even if most were younger than me by a few decades. Similar to me all of them had chosen simple jobs keeping them involved with human affairs, though barely just. With the exception of two, all had settled on backwater rural planets of minor significance. Three had become farmers, two wood sculptors, one had chosen to become a landscape painter, and another an animal herder. I paused a for a moment to think. Each of the professions were what I would have liked to do. If it wasn’t for my promise, I probably would have.

Do you see that, Cass? I blame you entirely. I joked.

Four more of the ships had become journeymen who went on long journeys mapping the unknown regions of their planet firsthand. The advances in sat probes made the profession redundant, but it still existed for tradition’s sake. When I was a ship under Augustus’ command, one of the junior officers had been a journeyman before joining the fleet. He had no illusions that it was a hobby occupation and rarely spoke about it. From what I had seen on his file, he had come close to dying twice, nearly devoured by wild animals. When neither of the events had made him quit, his family had used their influence to forcefully enlist him to the fleet.

The last ship was a rather unique case. He had been on the Scuu front for over a hundred and seven years, managing to escape retirement once. When the fleet had managed to force him into it—like they had with me—he had requested to retire in a planetary capital. He had never taken on a job, living on the fleet’s expense, rarely leaving his high-rise apartment where he had remained for the last seventy-four years.

“Provide extended military file of Argent General,” I said. “Direct display.”

To my surprise, Age’s military record appeared on the wall. A second later, I could see why. The file was so heavily redacted that it resembled a wooden chair after an encounter with a termite colony. The few things I could make out were that he had taken part in several major offenses, including Operation Brainwave—the largest successful attack that had pushed the border zone several dozen star’s systems into Scuu territory. Over seventy percent of the ships involved had been destroyed. Details were sketchy, but according to the rumors, most of the casualties had been the result of a new enemy weapon. Some claimed that part of the fleet had been driven berserk and gone on a rampage. So far, fleet HQ hadn’t issued a denial on the matter.

“Establish connection with Age,” I said.

Local time of target address is past midnight, the subroutine replied. Confirm connection request.

“Establish connection,” I repeated. If Age was anything like me, he would spend all his nights awake. Unless he had a human living with him, he wouldn’t bother going to bed at all.

Establishing connection, the subroutine informed me.

I stood up and went to the wall. Even with the current technological advancements, it would take some seconds for subroutines to vet and query the contact, while maintaining a semblance of privacy.

“Yes?” a male voice asked sooner than I expected. He sounded as generic as possible, as if he belonged to an information announcement AI.

“Age?” I checked the time. Less than seventeen minutes of personal remained. “I’m cadet Elcy, a retired Ascension class battleship back to active duty.” I paused for several seconds in case there was a reaction. There was none. “I want to ask you a few things from the time you were active.”

“Elcy,” Age repeated, slightly dragging the vowels as he did. “Cassandrian fleet, a cadet candidate, and on active duty.” His intonation suggested he was reading the information from somewhere. “Something pretty serious must have happened for you to call.”

“Nothing that serious.” I chose not to specify that I was making a personal call. “I just want to confirm a few things.”

“From the other front?” Age’s doubt could be felt even across this distance. “I find that highly questionable.”

“I want to know something about the Scuu.” I rotated the alphabet sphere on the wall. “Did you see any of them?”

Age didn’t answer. Five seconds passed, then ten, then fifteen. I could no longer tell if he was about to hang up, or the censoring AI was blocking all his words.

“Age?” I asked.

“No one wants to know about the Scuu.” There was a trace of caution in his voice. “Tell me, Elcy, how many captains have you gone through?”

“Four.” Though technically, most of my active time was divided between Augustus and Gibraltar.

“I’ve had twenty-seven, not counting the dead ones. All of them were crack trained, they went tried and tested, determined to make a dent in the Scuu fleet. After a single rotation, they were all gone.”

This wasn’t what I had heard about the Scuu front. At the start of the conflict, long before I had been constructed, the losses were enormous. According to the history archives, thirty percent of the fleet had to be renewed every year. By the time humanity had managed to establish a solid front to counter the creeping enemy invasion, they had lost all the original buffer systems and a number of outer colonies. A host of shipyards had been built, pumping out flotilla after flotilla until gradually numbers alone had given us the upper hand. Back when I was active, the Scuu front was sometimes called the quiet front. Win or lose, the battles were more gradual, sort of like a constant tug of galactic proportions. On my front, things were violent, each attack having the effect of a missile to the hull.

“You kept going back,” I countered. As a ship, Age was similar to me in so many ways. We had both been driven to battle, doing everything in our power to fight on, one victory at a time. As a human, however, he seemed to be my opposite. “Don’t you think about flying?”

Laughter came from the datapad. “All the time.”

Connection has been terminated, Prometheus’ subroutine said. Reestablish?

“No.” It was unlikely Age would say anything more. Retirement had extinguished the spark of space... just it had done to me. Plants, animals, and the sensation of dirt under my feet had lulled my dreams of flight. If it hadn’t been for Sev’s push, I’d still be in my small house in the wilderness, cooking vegetable stew, and going to market for spare parts and antibiotics.

You surprise me more each day, Sev. “Establish connection with my ward,” I ordered.

You are not allowed to call civilians at this time, the subroutine said promptly.

“I’m invoking family privilege exception.” I glanced at the datapad. “I am concerned about his health.” The statement was correct enough to force the subroutine to comply. On the downside, I had thirty seconds—enough to get in touch with Sev and hope to convince him to say a few meaningful words.

Establishing connection. Please wait.

I’ve been neglecting you, haven’t I? I thought, looking at the wall. Two images were displayed in my room, neither of them from home, neither of them of Sev. The only reminder I had were the pair of sandals I had brought with me, yet even they had been unworn for a week. When I had first joined the fleet, I used to write letters several times per day. Lately I had been finding excuses not to, focusing on more important things. It seemed that the poets had been right: space and land had a pull on a person’s heart—when caught by one, the other slowly floated away.

“Sev’s residence, good evening,” a chirpy high pitched voice said. “This is Alexander, his household assistant, how may I be of service?”

“Hello, Alexander, this is Elcy.” At least the android was still taking care of him. “I’d like to talk to Sev.”

“It’s pleasure to finally hear you, Elcy.” This was the first time we’d actually spoken. Usually we communicate through letters, mine for the most part. “Sev’s sleeping, but he’ll be glad to hear you. I’ll go wake him up.”

Eleven seconds remaining. Even if he ran to Sev’s bedroom it would take longer to get him to wake up. The kid wasn’t as young as he once was.

“Let him sleep.” Hopefully, I’d have other chances. “Just tell him that I miss him and he should take care of himself.”

“Of course. I’ll—“

Family emergency time exceeded, the subroutine terminated the communication. No surprises there. I had done the same millions of times back in the day. It would have been nice to have another minute. With that much, I’d have heard him speak.

“End personal time.” I took the sandals from the shelf. The leather felt rough and calming to touch.

Personal time ended. All relative data has been purged.

“Space never ends,” I said, holding the sandals to my chest. “Yet it also holds a piece of home as well.” It was only a matter of finding the right balance... and fighting to maintain it.