Statistically, one in a million ground troopers suffered a UAD. Up until recently, I thought that I had only witnessed ninety-seven cases during my entire service. The truth was far different. Going through the numbers, a thousandth of a percent had died in unidentified circumstances. In the vast majority of cases, the cause remained a mystery to this very day. Knowing what I knew now, though, I could hazard a guess. It wasn’t so much the third-contact artifacts, although they had their effect as well; rather, it was the Cassandrians.

“Ready when you are, Elcy,” Colonel ‘Rissa urged.

It had taken the construction team less than three days to construct the elevator base. A marvel of practical physics and engineering, it was able to lower seven tons’ worth of people and equipment kilometers beneath the surface with no energy sources on site. Taking precautions against the incident that had plagued the research facility in orbit, all engines were located kilometers from the opening, powered by a high-intensity beam coming from Med ships in low orbit. The energy waste was tremendous, but it had been deemed necessary.

I stepped onto the metal platform. There were seven of us in total, all wearing low-tech suits and only the most vital equipment placed in isolating casing. It slightly annoyed me that the colonel was equipped with a sidearm, especially after my own request had vehemently been denied.

“Seen anything like this before?” the woman asked. The tone in her voice suggested she wasn’t making idle conversation.

“From a distance, ma’am. Some of the basics are similar, but that’s it.” There was a sixty-four percent chance that the hive layout would be completely different from anything in my memory. The Cassandrians I fought in the war were young, probably a few millennia old at most. Based on the geo analyses of the soil strata, this hive hadn’t been disturbed for ten times that long at the very least. “Have you, ma’am?”

“No.” The reply was short and sweet. “Take us down,” she said to the operator team. The platform started descending.

As we went down, I went through the scanned layout. Dozens of probes had been sent in the last two days, mapping the area and collecting all data they could. Once a probe was done with its assigned course, it would be returned to the bottom of the entry shaft, where it would be sealed off in a secure container and destroyed. Due to the danger of another infestation latching on to more potent power sources, no exos had been sent—that was to be our honor. Personally, I was surprised that a whole team had joined me. Based on past experiences, I had assumed that I would be sent solo. I could speculate that the prize that ‘Rissa was hoping to claim was greater than the potential danger.

The network of tunnels was larger than any ship or space station I had seen. Running a projection simulation, I estimated it to be as big as a core system city, with layers of inhabitable space bent upon each other. The entry point we had created was in the middle of the seventh octant. From there, we would have to make our way through the winding tunnels and larger chambers to the core, then continue on to the second octant where a second shell had been discovered. The scientific consensus was that the shell could be part of another, possibly younger, colony created in a response to the decline of resources over time. Our mission was to locate a suitable point and breach through.

Unofficially, I was told to be open to unexpected casualties during the mission. In part, that was why everyone’s helmets were set to full opacity—Sim didn’t want me to look through the personnel files of the crew, as if that might decrease the pain caused by losing them. Humans remained humans, even when I didn’t know who they were.

“How well can you see in this light?” the colonel asked.

“Not much better than you, ma’am. I’m still human to a large degree. I can memorize everything we pass by for future reference.”

“Everyone, we’ll have the light on max when we get down there. Jespersen, you’ll be tracking bio.”

“Got it,” the man replied with a nod. The fashion of his response told me that he was more than an ordinary scientist. “Normal split?”

“Only when we get through.”

You have a second mission as well, don’t you? I thought. Just like Wilco had so many times when serving under Augustus. Interesting, were there any similar missions under Gibraltar? It was too dangerous to use the mind scalpel with so much attention on me, so I couldn’t be sure. However, there were instances which made me wonder just how much of the mission had been restricted…

* * *

Vega Yujol, Cassandrian Front, 629.1 A.E. (Age of Expansion)

Augustus would say that between every two battles, there was a third waiting to happen. So far, he had been right more often than not. My last combat mission had ended four days ago—a skirmish aimed at provoking the Cassandrians into flooding an ambushed system. The mission was a complete failure. The damage was minimal, but the enemy hadn’t taken the bait. They had strengthened their lines, causing all fleets to pull out of the sector. Gibraltar had been furious. It was the first time I had seen him shout at HQ, going as far as threatening to request a transfer. As a result, we had been given a new set of orders. The contents of those orders remained unknown.

“The ground troop officers have made a formal objection, sir,” I reminded the captain as he sat in his quarters.

“I’m aware,” he sighed, skimming through news reports on his private screen.

“Soldiers cannot be podded for more than twenty-four hours without a written explanation, sir. Let alone ninety-five percent of all ground troops.”

“I’m aware of the regulations, Elcy.” Gibraltar sighed again, still focusing on the screen. “Those are the orders. They can take it up with Command once this is over.”

“Is that the response you want me to give them, sir?”

“Your sarcasm is getting annoying.” He closed his eyes. “They’ll have some action soon enough. Let them enjoy what they can.”

“I still need to tell them something, sir.”

“Then tell them they’ve been volunteered for warm breach.”

“I’ll let them know, sir.”

“Thank you, Elcy.” He returned to his screen. “Privacy mode.”

I conveyed the message to sixty-seven officers ranked lieutenant-colonel or higher. None of them were particularly pleased, but they pulled back their complaints. I couldn’t blame them. According to official records, there had been seven thousand and eighteen attempts of warm breaches, the majority done during the early decades of the war. Back then, the Cassandrians had been attacking human colonies, trying to change them into something where they could survive.

Ground troops had been sent to reclaim them. In a state of desperation, the commanders of the era had ordered their troops to enter battle without full protective gear in an attempt to capture the landed Cassandrian ships. That was how the term originated—“warm enough for casual clothes.”

Nothing was said on the matter for the next thirty-eight hours. When Gibraltar unsealed the specifics of our mission, I was to announce them to the rest of the crew. The mission, as I had forecast in my simulations, was to attack a Cassandrian planet with a high life factor and a breathable atmosphere. Fleet Strategic Intelligence believed a ship construction facility to have taken root there. In order for the mission to be successful, I was transmitted schematics of a new version of nanites to be injected into all ground troops in a series of five treatments.

“All procedures complete, captain,” I announced. “General Olinni has requested to be allowed to compose a notarized will before starting the mission.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Gibraltar waved his hand. His bio readings suggested he had recently used medication. “See to it.”

“He also requested that the soldiers be allowed to do so, as well.”

The captain’s expression suddenly changed.

“No.”

“The mission specs were shared, sir. They know the odds.”

“Officers only.”

“Understood.” I didn’t like him when he acted like this. “Three minutes to the rendezvous point. No further instructions from HQ.”

The bridge remained silent. We had been through a lot in the last month. Most of the time, the officers had to rely on stimulant shots to remain awake through the missions. Even so, morale had taken a hit.

“Entering rendezvous system,” I announced.

It was a large system—twenty-seven planets and over a hundred satellites orbiting a red giant. My orders stated that a flotilla of over seven hundred ships was supposed to participate in the attack. Instead, I found the system empty.

“No ships present, captain.” I performed a close-range scan. The attack fleet wasn’t there. “No new instructions from HQ. Do I send a query?”

“No need. From here on, we’re going dark. Do a quick diagnostic, then get the shuttles ready. We’re heading to our destination.”

“Without support, this is a suicide mission.” I felt a sliver of pain as I said it. “We must abort.”

“New mission parameters.” The captain stood up from his seat. “There never was a support fleet.”

Quarantine imposed

Quarantine removed

I didn’t respond. This wasn’t the first suicide mission I had heard of. Personally, I had been through my fair share, as had almost every ship on the front. When ground troops sacrificed themselves, though, the feeling was painful. It was said that a ship wasn’t supposed to outlive her captain. I also was of the opinion that I shouldn’t outlast my crew, either.

“I’m not detecting any enemy presence, sir,” I announced. “FSI target area located on the third satellite of the second planet. Planet conditions are capable of sustaining humans. Solar radiation is high. Staying longer than twenty-three days without additional protection is not recommended.”

“That will hardly be an issue,” someone said. Unfortunately, I had to agree. With warm breaches, people either were brought back to the ship in a few days, or not at all.

“Detecting remains of a human colony.” That was surprising. According to the database, this system was supposed to have been devoid of human presence. I had a hundred subroutines independently recheck my findings and the Fleet database for mistakes. Everything checked out. “Cassandrian ground presence detected twenty-eight kilometers from the colony ruins. Advised course of action?”

“Split the ground troops,” Gibraltar ordered. “Ninety-ten. The ten breach the colony, the rest go for the Cassandrian patch. Have them prepped in three hours.”

“Sir, the nanite treatment suggested by HQ will take five hours.” I ran the numbers. “Plus one additional hour to monitor the side effects.”

This wasn’t the news my captain wanted to hear. Running a few simulations, I suspected he was going to order me to start the treatment and drop them on the planet without monitoring the side effects. This wouldn’t be the first time Gibraltar had made a hiccup under pressure, although his missteps were becoming more and more noticeable.

“Get them ready in six,” he said, to my surprise. “Then drop them on target. Stealth approach. I don’t want the Cassies knowing we’re there before pods start raining on them.”

“Aye, Captain.”

He went back into privacy mode, leaving me to get on with my work. Some of the officers did as well. I couldn’t blame them.

“Starting nanite procedure,” I announced.

It took me a total of two-point-three seconds to start the production of the new type of nanites, and another thirty-nine to start distribution. Normally, the permission of a medical officer was required to administer them. HQ’s blanket permission had superseded that requirement, giving me the green light to pump the nanites into the ground troops, even while they were podded. The whole experience was highly irregular, but given that it increased their chances of survival, I went ahead with it.

As the ground troops were being pumped full of nanites, I ran a long-range scan. No Cassandrian ship activity was detected in the entire sector. That gave me some breathing room.

The hours passed in combat simulations. Every hour, I’d administer a new dose of nanites, as per the FSI’s instructions, then monitor the reaction. The nanite rejection rate was double what I was used to, though still well within Fleet safety limits. All in all, nine hundred and fifty-one troopers required medical attention. Everyone else was considered fit for the mission, and by the time we reached the mission’s orbit, they were informed of it.

The awakening was brutal—everyone’s bio readings spiked like a wave the moment they were roused from their pods, then again when they were told the details of their mission. The ground officers, used to this treatment, quickly took over, commencing with their own reign of terror, distracting the trooper’s minds from the real danger that awaited them.

Platoons were formed and gathered in my hangars, where they were packed in shuttles to be sent off. None of them were particularly enthusiastic about the mission. If they only knew that the chances of them returning were less than a thousand to one, they’d require stimulants in battle. According to my simulations, the only instance in which most of them came back alive was if the mission ended in failure.

“Ground troops ready for deployment, captain,” I informed Gibraltar.

“Good. Record all feeds on an external source. I want to know everything that goes on down there.”

“Aye, Captain. No Cassandrian ships have been spotted and their ground forces have not taken any action.” Statistically, it was almost a given that they were aware of our actions. Somehow the Cassandrians always knew, despite their communication technology being far inferior to ours. “First wave underway.”

I displayed the feeds on the wall. Dozens of shuttles packing hundreds of soldiers began their approach and subsequent descent. The dozens soon became hundreds, filling the sky above the areas. Soon after, the fighting began.

“Hostiles encountered.” I displayed the feeds on the bridge wall, redirecting the ones I considered most notable to the officer’s personal monitors. The audio was muted—Gibraltar didn’t particularly like hearing the sound of the battlefield—yet, I still heard every noise and word.

Soldiers started flatlining, entire platoons, killed off by weapons and enemies that I was unable to see. Most of the feeds were covered with black shapes—courtesy of the Fleet’s thought quarantine.

By the time the second wave of soldiers was transported to the planet, thousands had perished. The fight for the Cassandrian ship factory was fierce. The reclamation of the deserted human colony, though, was remarkably calm. As far as I could tell, there hadn’t been a single enemy sighting.

“The troops could use some orbital support, captain,” I said.

“No on that, Elcy,” Gibraltar replied, his eyes glued to the feeds. “That will disrupt the facility. We need to get as many details as possible.”

Down on the planet, commanders were yelling orders, shouting at me for data and equipment support. I reassigned a thousand of my subroutines to focus on their demands, while following the overall development.

Whatever modifications the Fleet had made to the nanites I’d injected the troops with, they weren’t particularly effective. The rate of death was within range of most warm breaches I had on record. If it weren’t for the secondary combat area, it would have been even worse.

“Need assist!” A priority one transmission burst came from Major Illian. In itself, this wasn’t extraordinary. The Major was considered a veteran and top specialist, granted the authority to issue priority one requests when he saw fit. What confused me was the fact that no fighting had been observed in his combat zone. He, along with six thousand other troopers, had been making their way through the empty remains of a colony with nothing to show for it.

“Elaborate on that, Major,” I transmitted.

There was nothing particular in his feeds. The bio readings of all his personnel were well within safety limits, and there hadn’t been any spikes since they had been dropped on the planet. Compared to the main force, they were enjoying a pleasant stroll. Just to be completely certain, I analyzed the chemical composition of the air in their surroundings. While overabundant in oxygen, I detected no harmful gases on biological components. Even so, I tagged them for a more thorough decon procedure upon return.

“Major Illian, confirm your order,” I repeated. There was no response. The major had gone further in, exploring the subterranean sections. “Captain, there might be a situation at the secondary site. Permission to look into it?”

“Send an orbital mini sat, and redirect all grunts to join the main group,” Gibraltar ordered.

“Aye, Captain.” I rechecked the feeds. The major confirmed the order, then joined the rest of his company on their way to the main battle. Three minutes in, the major and all his subordinates flatlined.

* * *

I remembered that mission with perfect clarity. I knew of every soldier’s action from the moment they received the first dose of new nanites to the moment they died on the planet. And yet, to this day, I had no idea what had actually happened on the planet. The event was classified as a standard ground operation—an attempt to breach a Cassandrian ship construction facility. However, if that were the case, why was the mission classified as a warm breach? Humans could not survive in the Cassandrian atmosphere and vice versa, and still that had been exactly what had happened… and until now, I hadn’t questioned it once.

“What is the real mission, Colonel?” I asked. The question made most of the team pause momentarily—I could tell by the way that their steps were prolonged all at the same moment.

“To locate samples,” ‘Rissa replied without a moment’s hesitation. “The same purpose you came here.”

That is not the real mission. “What if there are none? After so much time, there’s no guarantee anything survived.”

“You know too much about third-contact artifacts to discount such a possibility.”

“You’re hoping to find a dome,” I said. The fact that no one flinched when third-contact artifacts were mentioned meant that they had the appropriate clearance and were handpicked, if not by Sim then by the Colonel herself, to take part in this mission. “Not because of the dome itself, but because of what might be wrapped around it.”

‘Rissa’s silence confirmed my suspicions. That’s why I was here—they had found what they believed to be a third-contact dome within the Cassandrian cluster and wanted me to activate it. While I had to admire their ingenuity and determination, I had to acknowledge the tremendous risk involved. A single spore had managed to shut down a significant part of the research base orbiting the planet. If a full third-contact dome was to be activated, there was no telling what the damage could be. In the worst case scenario, a new breed of Cassandrians could emerge and retake the system, transforming it into a staging area for further attacks. They might even establish contact with the rest of the Cassandrian Union, causing a breach in human space to occur. I suspected it was no coincidence that there were several Med Core ships in orbit observing our progress. They weren’t here just to monitor our findings; if push came to shove, they were going to bombard the site, possibly taking out the planet along with it.

That’s why you didn’t want me to be in contact with Lux, I thought. If the BICEFI learned about the toy, they’d start a battle behind the scene to claim it. It wasn’t that Sim wanted to keep them from getting it, he just didn’t want to give it up before he was finished playing with it.

“There is no second hive, is there?” I asked.

“Of course there is.” I could hear the Colonel smile as she spoke. “It’s only different in nature. Wasn’t it you who speculated that there might be a link between the third-contact race and the Cassandrians? Wouldn’t you like the opportunity to find out?”

“Not if it would kill everyone in the system,” I said calmly.

“Then act as our safeguard. It’s nothing that you haven’t done before.”

As much as I didn’t like the potential outcomes, there was no denying she was right.

“I’ll need my thought quarantine lifted.”

The colonel turned in my direction. Even at full opacity, I could imagine the expression she was making.

“There are details about the domes I need to have access to.”

“Weren’t you given access already?” The colonel sounded surprised.

“Partial only.” On a technical level, that was true—I had been given access to all my memories relating to the third-contact race, although there remained one exception: the segment that had been extracted. ‘Rissa didn’t need to know that, and I wanted to decrease the need to resort to the mind scalpel.

“Give me a moment to get you clearance.”

It took over an hour for the wheels of the bureaucratic apparatus to turn. By the time they did, we had reached the suspected heart of the cluster. While it was tempting to compare the Cassandrian structure to an ant-farm in zero gravity, its architecture was immeasurably more complex. If anything, it more resembled a synaptic network of a living thing. I could only speculate how many creatures had inhabited this place during the height of its activity, but there had to be billions: from single-cell organisms to large creatures capable of slicing up a squad of ground troops. All of them were different and yet one and the same—part of a Cassandrian subspecies.

“Hold,” Jespersen said all of a sudden. From what I could tell, he took on the role of second in command. The other person of note was Itea—a theoretical scientist of some sort. Whenever one of them spoke, even the colonel listened. “There are signs of organics.”

“Are you sure?” ‘Rissa asked. “The probes didn’t spot anything during the initial scan.”

“They must have activated recently. It’s not much, but we’ll have to undergo a full decon before we get topside.”

“Do we need to purge the area?” I asked.

“Just a temp measure.” Jespersen placed a canister on the tunnel floor. “Everyone hold still, this won’t take long.”

There was a loud hissing sound as the canister released whatever gas was inside into the surrounding area. Chemical droplets covered everything in a two-meter radius. Everyone stood still.

When the sound ended, Jespersen ran another scan. I couldn’t identify the device he was using, but I could assume it was an analyzer of sorts. Or maybe it was suction-based?

“All clear,” the man said after a while.

“Keep monitoring,” the colonel said. “I don’t want any surprises.”

According to my estimates, we had walked for over seven kilometers. Despite that, most of the group seemed fine with the pace. Another two thousand meters or so, and I estimated we would be at the edge of the sphere. However, even before reaching it, I had started to notice inconsistencies. The closer we got, the more the tunnels began to change. It was small things, unnoticeable to most people: repetitive patterns along the walls, occurring at regular intervals like sign notifications. To my knowledge, the Cassandrians didn’t need markings; their method of orientation remained unknown, but they always knew where they were and what direction to go towards.

Running a series of comparison and prediction algorithms ended with mixed results. Despite all my processing power, I failed to predict the next symbol sequence. However, the symbols themselves matched something of my past perfectly.

“There are markings on the walls,” I informed ‘Rissa. “They start at the center and increase in frequency the further away we go.”

“Good to know,” she replied, not particularly impressed. It was hardly a surprise that someone else would have spotted them. I wasn’t the first conscience core to have analyzed the findings. However, I had one thing that most others didn’t—a proper perspective.

“They are third-contact symbols,” I said.

“Are you certain?” Itea asked. This was one of the few times she had spoken directly. “They don’t match anything in the database.”

“Not the surface symbols, they match a flattened image of the rods, but at a different angle.” So, the BICEFI hadn’t shared their findings with the Med Core. Interesting detail to know. “The angle changes the closer we get to the dome.”

“It does?” Itea’s voice was filled with enthusiasm. “What do they stand for?”

“I don’t know. I can just identify the pattern.” As far as I was aware, there wasn’t a core cluster in existence that could decipher the meaning. Even my experience was extremely limited. I knew far more about fractal space than I did about rod symbols, even if I had memorized a vast collection of them. Thanks to the three-dimensional scans Sim had sent me of the rods at the Med Core’s disposal, my list of symbols had grown, but not enough to fill all the blanks.

“You’ll have time to go through that later.” The colonel turned to Itea. “Let’s go on.”

After another two hundred meters, we were forced to stop again. Jespersen had found further traces of organic matter. My fears that our presence had disturbed something were starting to come true. For the moment, chemical treatment was enough to deal with the issue, though for how long, it wasn’t clear. If this had occurred on me while I was a ship, I would have quarantined and purged several of my decks. ‘Rissa, though, only gave the order to keep on moving.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” she said after the fourth incident. “We’ve taken all necessary precautions. Even if there’s an outbreak, we’ll be safe. All we need to do is obtain the information while we’re within the window of opportunity.”

While I agreed with the latter, I had serious doubts regarding the former. The colonel was either lying about the dangers involved, or she had accepted them. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen someone from Med Core sacrifice themselves in the name of progress. Med ships in particular did that a lot.

Another hundred and sixty meters, and the tunnel abruptly ended. There was no gradual narrowing, just a wall cutting off our progress, as if whoever had constructed this hive had decided to give up and move on to more important work. The number of third-race symbols on the wall, though, told me this was no accident.

There were several cases of equipment left on the floor, probably brought by probe drones at some point during the initial mapping.

“Jespersen?” the colonel asked.

The man diligently scanned all walls of the tunnel in the immediate area, then put away the device. “We’re good.”

“Perfect. Everyone, get the tools ready, we’re going to cut through the shell. If the break spot was any indication, this might take a while.”

“We’re going to drill into the dome?” I asked. There were too many ways this could go wrong.

“Not quite, we’ll just remove the Cassandrian layer, and you’ll help. It’s not like this will be your first time doing it. You’ve already done it once before while serving on Prometheus, right?”

So, Sim, this had been your plan all along…