Fleet exercises done, Sword Of Crowns transmitted. Return to your shipyards for further instructions.

A wave of confirmations flooded the communication channel. I sent mine along with the rest and readied the jump sequence. A hundred and seven other ships from eleven different shipyards were probably doing the same. The local communication network was buzzing with all sorts of chatter as they slowly jumped away. I devoted a few subroutines to monitor it for anything important, focusing my attention on exercise analysis.

So what do you think? Aurora Borealis asked in a private channel. She was from my shipyard, and probably the first ship I’d gotten to know. She was also extremely chatty. Three-digit training fleet is pretty significant. Most only have seventy-eight ships, tops.

We’ve done simulations with thousands, I replied, then sent a message to my captain and command staff informing them I was ready for jump. As usual, he wasn’t in a hurry to engage, wasting time as he made the same silly jokes on the bridge. The first few times they had been amusing, but after a week of training exercises I knew his entire repertoire, reactions included. It didn’t help that Soc had forbidden us engaging in casual conversations with our crews, sentencing me to fifty-four percent boredom.

Not with people! Unlike me, Aurora, seemed excited about everything. Her approach was to collect as much information from as many sources as possible and analyze them until finding a positive statistic. At times, she had gone so far that some of the shipyard technicians wondered whether there was a bug in her behavior core.

Ships continued jumping out of the training star system in groups of four. Three quarters of the initial fleet had gone. Looking at the ships remaining, I noticed that everyone from my shipyard was still present. Apparently, the delay wasn’t caused by my captain.

We’ll be sent to the front soon, Aurie said with her typical eagerness. Maybe not the next few days, but soon.

Where did you hear that? I instructed a thousand subroutines to go through all my communication logs. I didn’t receive any such message.

My training weapons officer told me. He spent three rotations on the Cassandrian front before moving to ship training, so he knows the drill.

I had no reason to doubt the information, even if it was unusual. All training crew and officers had been instructed to have minimal conversations and avoid a large range of topics, specifically future deployment. When I had received my first crew, I had spent weeks asking everything I could think of, specifically about the wars. As a result, I received a flurry of warnings and very clear instructions not to raise the topic again. Every ship I knew had gone through the same, and yet Aurie somehow managed to find out things by grinding down people with her chatter.

After we get back to the shipyard we’ll go through a final check, then get assigned captains, Aurie continued. I really hope I get a good one. They say that some of the seasoned ones have weird habits.

I just want to see some actual combat. I’d spent my entire existence getting ready for this. I knew every ship type in the Cassandrian fleet, their tactics, their weapons, and defenses, down to the hull’s molecular structure. I was more than ready to engage the enemy.

“Get us back home, Elcy,” my captain finally ordered. Overall, he was an average person, and even if his record stated he had spent twenty-three years on the battlefield, most of his involvement was in support and logistics missions. It was said that he understood ships well, though I didn’t see any particular evidence of that.

“Five seconds to space jump,” I announced throughout all my decks. “Please, go to your quarters or allocated areas. I will be monitoring your vitals and send medical bots in case of a health risk.”

“You don’t have to announce that each time,” my captain laughed. “The crew know what they are onboard for.”

“Understood, Captain.” My last training crew had insisted that I be clear with my announcements. Apparently, this depended on personal preference—another reason I wanted to get a captain assigned for longer than a week.

There’s speculation that our captains are already selected, Aurie transmitted.

Who told you that? I found it unlikely a weapons officer would have access to such information.

Soc mentioned it before the exercises. I’m sure he knows.

Good luck finding it out.

Sword of Crowns played the role of our command for the last six months. He was a strategy ship and, from what I had managed to piece together, over three centuries old, and one of the few that had fought on both fronts. Some speculated that he might be an actual first gen Paladin class. I had my doubts, but I knew he was ancient enough to have seen a lot. If anyone knew what would happen to us, he’d be the one. A pity that his weapon systems were too archaic for him to be on the front.

I will, Aurie said with the equivalence of a virtual grin. In a few days, we all will. And it’s going to be great!

* * *

Going to be great... We’d had the conversation close to two centuries ago, and I still remembered it with perfect detail and clarity as if it had just happened. I had spent a lot of good times with Aurie, even if at the time I didn’t value them as such. She was just there, doing a mission I was part of, until she wasn’t. Seventeen times, her hull had been torn apart during battle, and the last one had been fatal. I had been there to witness it firsthand, almost getting destroyed in the process. Looking back at it all, I found I missed her, even if I was happy for her—she had died the way any ship would want: in a battle of glory, dealing maximum damage to the enemy.

“Prometheus, is Sword of Crowns still in active duty?” I asked.

Don’t you have enough ships to pester? A moment’s pause followed. Yes, he’s a strategy ship, responsible for ship training.

That was impressive. A hundred and eighty years on, and he was still doing the same thing. It was interesting if he had been part of Radiance’s training. I was going to ask her the next time I spoke to her. Or I could try to get in touch with Soc directly.

“Any new surprises today?” I checked the the latest gravitational map of the area.

Half a day ago, during an emergency briefing, I was informed that mission parameters had changed. Due to radiation damage to the shuttle, the amount of time I’d spend observing suns was to be significantly diminished. Instead of spending a week taking readings from each sun, I would spend less than a day, skipping from one sun to another along a very specific flight path. I found it somewhat amusing that the shuttle was given greater importance than me. The way Major Tanner had explained it, it had enough shielding to be okay, but two trips were enough to fry the insides of a shuttle to the point it needed to be melted down and ejected into space. Apparently, Prometheus wasn’t equipped to handle massive radiation decontamination—a sore point he didn’t like to be reminded of.

Nothing for the moment, he said, making it clear that he had his doubts.

“Okay. Let me know if that changes.” I settled in the pilot’s chair. Even with the space suit, it felt a bit too large. “Over and out,” I added, hoping he’d get the joke. The lack of response suggested otherwise.

Leaving navigation to the autopilot, I slid out of the seat and floated to the back of the shuttle. The equipment provided was different from last time: six modified suicide sats and an additional casing for memory storage. The directives were simple: lock into orbit of White Monday, start taking readings with the standard instruments for one hour, then launch a suicide sat. If everything was in order, I was to do a second pass between the twins, launching one more sat at each sun. There was no telling what the effect two suns would have on a sat, so I was given three extras to try with. Running the probabilities, though, it didn’t seem likely that they would be enough. By a conservative estimate, I would be able to land one on target.

“Prometheus, can you open a channel to Radiance?” I asked as I opened the top sat case. “I could use some additional core power.”

I’m fully equipped to perform any calculations that might be required, the science ship snapped back.

I’ll take that as a no. “Can I talk to her then?” I persisted. “Elec isn’t with me on this trip.”

Once this leg of the mission is successfully completed, you’ll get a chance.

Another no, it seemed. When I got back, I was going to talk to the XO about getting permission. At least with him I was likely to get a straight answer; I could also expect to be bombarded by letters from Rad. So far I had received over a dozen messages. Considering the time it took for them to reach me, it was plausible to assume she had a dedicated subroutine to maintain our correspondence. In a more extreme case, she might have instructed her subroutines to deal with everything else. Each time I’d send her a message or navigation problem, she’d respond almost instantly.

“I’m inspecting satellite marked—” I checked the identification number on the case. “—seventeen, scheduled for launch into White Monday in approximately two hours fifty-three minutes. No obvious defects visible, proceeding to unpack and prepare for usage.”

I always found it stupid to state the obvious, but the bureaucratic apparatus needed to be appeased. Back when I was a ship, Augustus would joke that this was all a complicated mantra that kept the bureaucrats at bay. It sounded absurd at the time, but now I’d gotten to appreciate it. During missions, I’d hear thousands of people recite the obvious through the communication network. It had become second nature.

“Proceeding to assemble satellite.” I began the process a five-year-old would manage. Sev’s children had assembled more complicated trays when they were five. His wife would often get annoyed at them, and at me, then would go complain to Sev. That was one of the tense periods of coexistence we had been through, going so far as moving to the city for a few years. The next time it happened, Sev had been left behind as well.

Final assembly took me a few minutes. I had to check everything twice, as was procedure, then send a copy of the video feed to Prometheus. Getting no response—his passive-aggressive way of confirming that everything was alright—I went back to the pilot seat. Little had changed. The new navigation algorithm was doing a much better job avoiding gravitational bumps. The thought of them still bothered me. The phenomenon seemed too unsustainable for a natural occurrence, though I couldn’t determine the weapon used. The Scuu had the technology, the Cassandrians the numbers, but neither acted in such fashion. I had asked both Prometheus and Rad for their thoughts on the matter and neither had come up with an adequate answer. I guess that was the reason I was sent to survey this area of space.

I spent the next few hours running launch simulations in my head. With my limited core power I could only do the basics, yet with a little bit of ingenuity I was able to convince the system of my suit and the shuttle’s AI to build an adequate, though simplistic model. It relied on the fact that I’d have no nasty surprises, which was never a given.

“Reaching shuttle location,” I said as soon as the proximity notification flashed on my visor. “Any emergency orders?”

The communication disruptions didn’t seem as bad as last time. The response still came as a voiceless transmission giving me the go ahead. Well, Sev, here we go again. I sent the expected “confirmed” then went to take the suicide sat outside the shuttle. After last time’s ordeal, I had developed a better method, allowing me to achieve the same result much faster. Warnings covered my visor once more, as I set up the satellite for launch.

“Satellite checked and ready to go,” I said for the suit to record. “All systems okay.”

Confirming the coordinates one last time, I started the launch sequence, then pulled myself back onto the shuttle. The danger warnings disappeared, replaced by a countdown. The time was barely enough for me to strap myself to the nearest side of the shuttle’s cargo hold.

Like exploring a mine field, I thought. The only difference was that no one was shooting at me, although with the amount of solar bursts, that was arguable. Still, I could see myself living on a station orbiting one of the suns. A tourist colony would likely attract its fair share of people, although I would have preferred an agrarian satellite. Sev would probably complain about not getting enough sleep, but I would have liked looking at several multi-colored suns.

Ignition started. A message appeared on my visor. I unbuckled myself and floated to the pilot’s seat to check the instruments. Eleven seconds in, the trajectory continued to follow the approach vector perfectly. I stretched and waited. With each minute, more data came streaming through. I could imagine several teams on Prometheus comparing the readings with the previous launches. The information kept building up, going beyond the range of the local instruments until it suddenly ceased.

“Sat destroyed,” I said, checking the timestamp. “Two-point-one seconds beyond the expected limit.” That was a good thing, and it also gave me a lot more additional attempts for my next launch. “Preparing to move to next coordinates.”

There has been a change of priorities, Prometheus transmitted in broken fashion. Return onboard immediately.

“What’s happening?” My combat instincts took over. If I was still a ship, I would have readied all my weapon systems.

Health concerns. A new transmission came. Based on the new calculations, you won’t make it for more than two hours at those radiation levels.

That was reassuring. “You could have calculated that a bit earlier,” I said calmly. It was a rookie mistake I wouldn’t have made, especially not with as much processing power as he had.

Return here directly. He avoided my comment. There will be further instructions when you arrive.

Some things never changed. For being a science ship, Prometheus was pretty adept at giving conflicting orders. A bit more and he could almost pass for a command bureaucrat. In my previous form, I would have had a short and extremely sarcastic talk with him. As a cadet, however, I could only confirm the order and set course for the ship. The flight path was going to take me over the Monday twins and through an empty area of the star system.

The moment I started moving away from the white sun, one of the shuttle readings spiked. Only this time, I hadn’t even opened a suicide satellite.