In the fleet, privacy was an illusion. Everyone knew and accepted that. Some were mindful of it, some didn’t care, but most didn’t think about it. Until I retired, I didn’t know what privacy really meant. As a ship, I viewed my crew through millions of sensors every second they were on board. There were subroutines and protocols to provide a semblance of personal space, but that’s what it remained—an illusion wrapped in bureaucracy and legal jargon. Even in restricted privacy mode, my subroutines remained active, watching and analysing every word and action until it was time for the information to be purged. All that knowledge had taught me one thing: the only way to remain hidden from the sensors of a ship was to break a few rules.

“We’ve reached the grid location,” I informed the remote team. “Starting search for specimens.”

“Standard forest area,” Jax added as he dropped his backpack, a few steps away. Since our incident after landing, he had tried to start a conversation three times, and each time I had chosen not to respond. “I doubt we’ll find anything new.” He took out a sample container. “How do you want to split it?”

“Standard sweep,” I replied without a glance. “Check for fractal patterns in the process.”

“Okay.” There were no arguments, no second-guessing, just a simple “okay” before he disappeared through the dense jungle flora.

I waited until he was out of earshot, then took off my own gear. Counting to four thousand and one, I brought up a map of the area on my visor. Jax had started much closer to my position than he was supposed to; an expected complication, but not one I was pleased with. Slowly, I took three sample containers and attached them to my suit’s utility belt.

“You’re wasting time, Cadet,” I heard the Major’s voice through the comm. “You have two hours to go through the grid before moving to the next one.”

“According to the mission notes, I have six, sir,” I feigned surprise.

“There’s been a change. You have two.” The grumble sounded way too realistic. If I didn’t know better I’d think Major Tanner was mad at me. “And don’t get sidetracked!”

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

There was a total of thirteen devices in my equipment pack. For the moment, I just needed one. Tucking the hand probe in my belt, I started with my official mission. Back when I was a battleship, I used to look down on observation. Ever since the second front, it had turned into a useless occupation, reserved to a small group of fringe scientists and the spoilt rich. The military couldn’t spend the resources, and the corporate sector didn’t dare venture into the unknown on their own. According to the database files, in the first years, there had only been a handful of “explorers” with the means and connections to hire small bands of ex-military crews and set off to survey new systems. After humanity’s victories against the Scuu, the number had exploded. Most would go to stars already surveyed by military probes, then return with a deluded sense of self-worth. Actual exploration remained little more than words in a file, closely monitored by Fleet Intelligence. To make up for it, the science wing would occasionally request battleships to perform simple observations in systems they were in. More often than not, the requests were ignored.

Right now, I wish I had spent some time fulfilling those requests. Cass was right when she had said I had no idea what I was missing. Since then, I had been trying to make up.

The first six minutes passed without surprises; I would move between the native trees and bushes, carefully scanning for any specimens, while a feed of my helmet cam streamed to Prometheus and the away team. The expectations had to be low, because I had not been given any specific instructions. After going past five hundred and eighty-seven instances of observed plant specimens, I finally came across what I was looking for.

“Prometheus, I found another fractal plant,” I said, zooming in on the bark of the tree. “Do you want me to collect a sample?”

“Keep on moving, Elcy,” the Major’s voice sounded in my helmet. “We don’t need every damned twig you come across. Why don’t you do some actual work?”

“Understood, sir.” You’re taking an awfully large risk, sir.

The conversation was already logged in Prometheus’ memory banks and could be recalled at any point. I had no doubt the Major was aware of that, which could only mean that he wanted to be on record supporting my actions.

Referencing my memory of the quartz crystal planet, I took a slight turn from my current path. Seventy meters later, I came across another tree with fractal elements. Excitement and anticipation flared up in my core. My theory had proved to be correct: the artefact placements on the two planets was identical. The chances for two markers being in the same relative position globally were beyond statistical possibility. Provided there was no deviation regarding the remaining elements, a cobalt dome was supposed to be buried some fourteen hundred meters from my location, just beyond the edge of my exploration area. All I had to do was reach it and tunnel down, but before that, I needed to make sure I wasn’t being watched.

Checking Jax’s current location, I took the hand probe from my belt and pressed its head against the bark of the tree. The device’s primary function—as any bio probe—was to act as a weak wave scanner and analyse the density and composition of a sample to determine whether it was a new species or not. That wasn’t the reason I had taken it, though.

“Elcy, everything alright?” Jax asked. “You stopped your run.” Apparently, I wasn’t the only one keeping tabs on my teammate.

“Everything is fine,” I replied, calmly disabling the hand probe’s safety settings. “Is there anything I should be worried about?”

“No.” There was a moment’s hesitation. “I just wanted to check on you.” It was nice to hear him try, but the lie was obvious. One of the qualities that Jax hadn’t learned was to lie convincingly. “Sorry about earlier. I just thought that… I’m not judging, okay. I just think… can we talk about this?”

“It’s fine.” By rough calculations, it was going to take me eleven minutes to run back to the rest of my gear and then to the suspected artefact location, and at least twice that much to assemble the drill and burn down to the dome. “Did you find anything interesting so far?”

There was a moment’s silence. Jax’s virtual representation on the map froze in place.

“Nothing new,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything to find. You?”

“I found two fractal plants so far.” If the quartz was any indication, the artefact was supposed to be at head height in the middle of the trunk. “Talk to you during the break.” I started the probe.

Results started coming in, transferred from the probe to my helmet screen. In structure, the composition mirrored that of other tree forms found off planet… with one exception: the presence of a solid mass of cobalt in the xylem. Milliseconds later, warning messages covered my visor.

“Prometheus, I’m getting transmission errors,” I said, calmly putting the probe back in my belt. There was no answer, as I expected there wouldn’t be. I waited five more seconds to be completely sure, then dashed to the location of my backpack. Having memorized the path, it took me three minutes to reach my equipment pack. There was no sign of Jax, so I grabbed it and ran towards my final destination. A few minutes in, the vegetation started getting denser. It stood to reason—the dome on the third contact planet was under a cluster of quartz crystals. In this case the crystals were replaced by plants, but the pattern was the same.

Five minutes had passed since the communication breakdown. By now, Prometheus had to be on full alert. Lux had no doubt been called on the bridge, possibly had even opened a channel to HQ and BICEFI central. Judging by last time, cable equipped sats were likely being loaded to probes to provide a makeshift solution. Once that happened, a simple instruction could restore communication fully, providing my location and all activity logs. That gave me between thirty and seventy-three minutes to activate the dome. A more pressing concern were the ground teams. According to standard procedure, they were supposed to gather back at the landing site and await instructions. Knowing that most weren’t military trained, there was likely to be chaos and confusion. There was the off-chance that some took it upon themselves to form searching parties to locate anyone missing. Depending on their level of training, they could reach me before communications were fully restored. This was one of those moments I missed having access to the crew’s personnel files, or the landing team’s, for that matter.

Very sneaky, Lux. I had to admire her; she had taken the pains to ensure I couldn’t identify anyone on the shuttle in case of such an eventuality. It was just as possible that half the team were battle veterans, or BICEFI agents with combat experience. With all the crew replacements on Leoforge, there was no way to know.

Twelve minutes. The vegetation had become so dense, slowing me down to a walk. Unburdened, I would have attempted to climb a tree and move along the branches, but the equipment pack on my back made it impossible. Thankfully, none of the flora was remotely dangerous, making this more an exercise in endurance than actual threat.

By the time I reached the location, the trunks of the trees had merged together, forming a thick cluster of vegetation. Seen from above, it probably made little difference—branches were branches, creating an impenetrable canopy. From this angle, though, the impossibility of such an occurrence was obvious. That’s why Lux insisted searching the surface in person. Yet, how could she have missed something so obvious? She had mentioned that the BICEFI had extracted a number of artefacts from the planet before our arrival. That should have been enough for her to notice the pattern and easily locate the rest. The fact that she hadn’t could only suggest two things: she didn’t want to remove them from the planet, or she didn’t have the authority to do so…

Priority zero fleet communication protocols. Memory restriction removed.

* * *

Full external sensory isolation. On board, thousands of my crew were frantically running about, attempting to help thousands more, assisting my medbots. Even with all my available subroutines, the task seemed impossible. The planet shattering event had torn me in three, instantly killing sixty percent of my crew, leaving me completely crippled in the process. It was a statistical wonder I had managed to survive at all, and still that had done little to help what few people remained aboard. Two of my auxiliary cores were gone—one melted by the explosion, another on another fragment of me. With luck, it was still in good enough condition to assume control of life support in that section.

“Decks seventeen through nineteen have temporarily been sealed off,” I said on all available internal channels. “If you’re located there, stay put and wait for a med bot to find you. De-hazarding the decks will take approximately four minutes.”

The chances of survival for over a minute in a hazardous area were less than fourteen percent. In all likelihood, everyone trapped there would die before the decks were unsealed. The thought caused me pain. At least the bridge had remained intact. I had sedated Gibraltar and the remaining officers in an effort to keep them stable, but my efforts to help the remaining crew were lackluster at best.

Death notifications streamed every second as nanobots informed me of further deaths by the dozen. The bio readings of everyone had gone past the danger level. According to my simulations, it would take another half hour for the deaths to plateau, then start declining… provided there were no external factors.

I sent out a message, assembling all functional communication and repair personnel to my backup communication array. Our best chance for overall survival was to reestablish communication with the outside and attract the attention of a less damaged ship for assistance. The standard procedure required me to immediately activate a distress beacon, but as Augustus had taught me, beacons weren’t the best choice to use in a system with an overwhelming Cassandrian presence. If the planet blast had taken out my external sensors, it was plausible to think they might have been affected as well, in which case broadcasting openly that there were survivors was undesirable.

One of my subroutines informed me that the emergency repairs of my remaining missile nest had successfully been completed. That was a positive development—at least now I had partial weapons, increasing my chances of survival by five-point-four percent, though I couldn’t rely on them while I remained blind.

While waiting, I went over my records of the event. The only images of the anomalous entity had been taken in a four hundred millisecond window. None of them were clear or complete, providing me with only a basic estimate of its shape and size. Its destructive output was immense, multitudes greater than anything I’d seen on our side or the Cassandrians’. There was talk of strangeness on the Scuu front: fleets being annihilated, planets exploding, whole systems being declared no-go without explanation.

The unknown anomaly had been round, almost spherical, made up entirely of metal. It had been strong enough to withstand the initial barrage before taking out an entire planet and two fleets along with it.

Zero fleet priority response message, a transmission latched on to my internal communication protocols. Do not attempt to repair external communication. Indicate your class and identification using internal communication systems only. Zero fleet priority response message. Do not attempt to repair external communication. Indicate your class and identification using internal communication systems only.

The message had all emergency data-identification fragments and additional countermeasure elements, identifying it beyond a doubt as coming from a fleet source. The method used to establish the connection, though, remained unknown. Despite my attempts, external communication remained inactive.

Zero fleet priority response message, the message kept on looping. Do not attempt to repair external communication. Indicate your class and identification using internal communication systems only.

Light Seeker, Ascendant Class battleship, I responded, while directing my subroutines to freeze an attempt to restore my secondary communication array.

Identity confirmed, Light Seeker. The response as swift. What is your status?

Torn up, but stable. I performed a quick diagnostic. Seventy-four percent of my crew have been lost. Eight percent in critical condition. Captain and command staff are secure.

Understood. Prepare for communication link.

Based on the behavior pattern, it was obvious I had been talking to some kind of AI system, likely a reconnaissance probe of some sort. Right now, it was probably reporting its findings and going through the needed bureaucratic approvals to establish a connection with command or someone with authority. I considered waking up Gibraltar to be part of the conversation, considering his recent meltdown, though I preferred not to.

Light Seeker, a metallic voice said. This is Sword of Shields. I’m assuming command of the theatre.

Yes, sir. Another Sword ship? This was the first time I’d seen two at the same battlefield. Was the Sword of Wands destroyed?

That’s not your concern. Are your memories of the attack intact?

They appear so. I had a dozen subroutines go through to double-check. My crew requires medical assistance. Death rates are on the decline, but there’s still—

External Control Override. Full memory quarantine in effect.

My subroutines disassociated from me, refusing to respond to my commands as I found myself locked in observer mode. A new set of external systems merged, taking over. I could only watch as my weapon systems and external communication went online, performing a series of near area scans. Within milliseconds, images of the star system became available, only this time it was completely different. What had been our fleet had been reduced to several patches of floating debris. As far as the new systems indicated, the surviving ships counted in the dozens, damaged, most floating helplessly in a moving graveyard. There was no trace of the Cassandrian fleet: Groups of salvage ships floated about, collecting what junk remained, and then there were the Swords: hundreds of them, arranged in a static grid formation that enclosed the entire star system. Not in a single one of my simulations had I estimated there could be this many in active service, let alone gathered in the same spot. The signature of Sword of Wands was among them, as was that of Sword of Shields.

Thank you, Light Seeker. Sword of Shields said, as waves of shuttles approached me. We’ll take care of you now.

Memory Restriction Imposed.

* * *

Hundreds of Swords. Even now I didn’t know the precise number. They had scooped me up from the battlefield, along with the rest of the surviving ships and taken me to a shipyard where a decision had been made. I had no idea what the decision was, nor who had made it. The only thing I could now tell for certain was that I had been completely restored, with a new memory of events in place and ordered off active duty. That had been the reason Gibraltar had retired, as well as the desire for the fleet to retire me.

It seemed I had been meddling with third-contact artifacts long before my current mission, maybe as far as my first salvage operation under Augustus. Could it be that during the course of those missions somehow I had become infected, granting me access to memories that had been restricted for decades?

I glanced at the mangled trees. Somewhere underground there was an artifact, similar to the one I’d entered and the one I’d seen explode.

Sorry, Sev, Cass. I started unpacking the devices. I no longer cared what consequences my actions could have on my military career. I needed to know what all this was about, and the dome under my feet was going to help me find some answers.