System XN133-H, Cassandrian Space 625.3 A.E. (Age of Exploration)

Extracting my auxiliary cores was painless. The only noticeable difference was the partial drop in processing power as the metallic cube was removed from its nesting area and transported to the hangar. Because of Fleet safeguard protocols, the procedure was performed by Sword of Blight—if I were to attempt it, my subroutines would refuse to comply and send a priority message to Command, informing them of my potential rogue status. As far as I knew, there hadn’t been any such cases since the Fleet had been established, although there were always rumors of strange things occurring on the Scuu front. Maybe the procedures had been developed because of them?

I observed Blight carry the core through my corridors. It was large, although much smaller than I had expected. All information, all my memories, base memories, even my personality itself, was stored in a cube with a one-meter edge. I had lost cores before, but this was the first time I had had a functional one removed… as far as I knew.

“Experiencing an existential crisis?” Wilco asked from the captain’s seat. Once the construction of the auxiliary ships had been completed, he had removed the quarantine and ordered all remaining Swords off the bridge. Since then, he had remained there alone, sealed off from everything else, observing the final stages.

“I’ve had cores replaced before. As you well know, sir.”

“It’s different, seeing it.”

“Not that much,” I lied. “It’s just part of the equipment. No different from a missile or shuttle.”

The man stood up.

“Any changes in the system?”

“Not that I can tell.” I double-checked, displaying several video feeds on the bridge wall. “They don’t consider us a threat or even a nuisance. At this stage, it’ll take us thirty-seven minutes to reach the point position.”

A subroutine informed me my auxiliary core had entered the hangar. Now the final installment could begin. I had suggested that both my cores be removed simultaneously to save time, but Wilco had rejected it. In his view, slow and steady was the way to go. Running a behavior simulation, I suspected he just wanted some more time to get ready for the moment.

Once my core was attached and activated, I performed the final systems check—everything in the auxiliary shuttle was in order.

“Systems look fine,” I told Wilco. “Do I proceed with the next?”

“Launch it,” he said instead.

“Roger that.” I displayed warnings throughout the hangar walls as I prepped the shuttle for departure. All my cores were connected once more, providing me with real time data from both vessels. Ten minutes later, I opened the outer doors.

All the air was sucked out as LS-2 lit up its engines, then slowly propelled itself into open space. When it reached a safe distance, I closed the hangar doors again.

“Systems are running as expected,” I said. “No deviations.”

“Start the jump sequence.” The captain crossed his arms. The index finger of his right hand was nervously tapping his left elbow, as if he were expecting a catastrophe to occur.

“Jump in three. Two.”

“Keep the connection link to it,” Wilco said quickly.

“One.”

The auxiliary ship thrust forward, then disappeared. Part of me had left the system, only to emerge seventeen light years away. I felt the strangest sensation of finding myself in two systems at the same time. The novelty quickly wore off as I prepared the next set of coordinates and jumped again. After the third jump—once I made sure there was no apparent Cassandrian presence—I powered off all but the essential systems of the craft.

“Elcy Two has completed the first triple jump.” I displayed the system on my bridge. “Next jump is scheduled in seven hours and eleven minutes.”

Wilco didn’t react.

“Captain?”

“Good,” he said, as if snapping out of a trance. “Good.” He relaxed his arms and went back to his seat. “Proceed with the next one.”

“Understood.”

A hundred and thirty-eight minutes later, the second auxiliary ship was on its way as well. The jump was slightly more complicated than before. My processing power had been reduced by roughly a quarter, and despite that, Wilco had insisted that I maintain a constant link between all my conscience cores at all times. “Additional backup,” he called it. Given that I didn’t have any weapon systems, I simply stopped half of the simulations I was running and did as I was told.

“Ready, old girl?” the captain asked. Based on my tone analysis, this was his way of saying we had every chance of dying here.

“Ready, Captain. Do I have a go?”

“Make the announcement,” he said. “You have the go.”

“Starting final stage,” I said in all rooms and corridors in which there were Swords. I also displayed several external video feeds as well as a simulated depiction of my movement through the system.

At first, the only thing that was visible was the nearest external ring getting larger. After a while, however, I had reached the point at which individual details could be made out.

Multiple layers of ships were stacked one over the other, to the point that they were almost touching. However, measuring the energy they emitted, it soon became apparent that most of the outer layer vessels were nothing more than lifeless husks. From everything I had witnessed so far, this didn’t make sense. The Cassies weren’t a wasteful species, preferring to consume or break down enemies for their resources, and yet they had such a vast number of dead ships to float about for no reason. On further inspection, I noticed that the designs of the dead ships were different. It was as if I had come across a floating graveyard containing millions of dead subspecies.

“I’ve fought against those,” Sword of Blight said from the central observation deck. Since the bridge had become off-limits, a large part of the Swords had chosen to spend their time there instead. “Actually, I think I killed them.”

“Dead race ships?” Sword of Flame asked.

“Seems so. Why aren’t there more of them?”

“Maybe this is a blueprint library?” I suggested. “They could be using them for reference.”

“These aren’t battleships, they’re logistic ships. There would be no purpose for them to need separate blueprints for those. But even if there was, why breed in weakness? If a subspecies was destroyed, then it had to have been weak and replaced by something stronger.”

“Elcy, make a list of all the ships here,” the captain ordered. “Command could use the information.”

“Aye, sir.” I created a new database section and started filling it up with data based on my observations. The closer I went, the more detailed the ships in question became.

As I flew towards the center of the system, the ships changed. Functional ones appeared, moving between the husks of the dead like ants through sand. A few on the edge of the layer sensed me and moved further in, keeping their distance. Fortunately, that didn’t trigger any other reaction. Just in case, I adjusted my route so as to avoid anything unforeseen.

“They’re shedding the dead ones towards the top,” Blight said. “That means the newest ones would have to be closest to the sun.”

That didn’t make any sense. Based on all my analyses, Cassies didn’t photosynthesize. Even the ships I passed by didn’t have such capabilities. Could it be that the Dyson sphere was a side effect of their real purpose? Either that, or there was a yet-unknown artifact in the system that converted light to energy. That might explain the constant movement of the ships—they weren’t simply moving resources from one planet to another, they were acting as batteries that charged up during the trip.

So many questions, so many unknowns, I thought. If Augustus were here, he’d probably have come up with a plan or an explanation.

“Captain, requesting permission to take a shuttle in for a closer look,” Sword of Blight said, to my surprise. “At the kid’s current speed, by the time we get near the ring, you’ll be safely far away… if there can be such a thing.”

The captain didn’t respond.

“There’s a fifty-four percent chance we discover something important. The Fleet would be able to use that.”

“You know what you’re asking?” Wilco sighed. “If you leave, we won’t be able to take you back.”

“Let me choose the way to shut down,” the Sword said. “After all these centuries of service, I deserve at least that.”

I felt as if a torpedo had struck my hull. This was the request of an ancient ship wishing to go on his final one-way mission. Everyone onboard was an antique of the past. They had seen more than a ship in my class ever would. They had taken part in wars that had spanned centuries, seen hundreds of ship classes come and go, and even destroyed several subspecies. Whatever had been expected of them, they had done, but now they were tired of it.

“I’ll only spare one shuttle,” Wilco said. “Everyone who’s not aboard in twenty minutes remains here.”

“Thank you, sir.” Sword of Blight left the observatory.

Several more followed, making their way to one of the shuttles. No third-contact artifacts were given to them, nor serious weapons. The only equipment they took were some tools to slice through Cassandrian matter if needed and enough oxygen to last each of them three weeks.

There was a certain bittersweetness when the shuttle left my hangar. I knew I wasn’t going to see them again, but I was also happy. As my old Sword instructor used to say, “battleships should never reach retirement.”

“They are off,” I notified the captain.

Their plan was to join the flow of the innermost layer, investigating the ships in the process. The chances of success were less than point-zero-two percent. The shuttle was clearly Fleet-built and didn’t have anything to camouflage them. At best, they were going to survive less than a month, at which point they’d shut down due to lack of oxygen. It wasn’t the glorious fight one wanted, but at least it was in the heart of enemy territory. Explosive charges attached to their conscience cores and the shuttle’s systems guaranteed that not much would fall into enemy hands.

Meanwhile, I continued going in further. There was no sign that anything had reacted to our presence, so I accelerated to full battle speed. Based on my current velocity, I estimated that it would be half a week before I reached the orbit of the outermost planet. By then, I would have passed by one more “ring.”

“You can go get some rest, sir,” I told Wilco. “I’ll inform you if there’s any development.”

“I’ll stay.”

“Even meds won’t keep you awake for a month.”

“You always were cheeky when you wanted to be.” He shook his head. “I’ll go in a few hours. Until then, let me see everything.”

You didn’t use to be this stubborn when serving under Augustus, I thought. Regardless, I added a few more video feeds to the bridge wall and Wilco’s personal screen.

“They say that a bridge should never be empty,” the captain said all of a sudden. “Even in times of crises, no one should remain alone, except during the ship’s final moments. There are whole branches of psychology devoted to the topic, aimed at improving combat efficiency.”

“I wasn’t aware,” I lied.

“Isolation is detrimental to the sanity and combat effectiveness of a bridge officer,” Wilco quoted. “And yet all missions of the highest importance do the exact opposite.”

“I’m sure the Fleet will omit that detail from our historical files,” I said, making the captain laugh. Even so, he remained on the bridge for several hours more.

The days passed one by one, though for me, there was no distinction between them. I measured everything in milliseconds, and each one of them brought a new hypothesis regarding the Cassandrians. My reduced processing power made it more difficult to run simulations, but I still managed to dedicate a few thousand subroutines on the task. Sadly, they didn’t allow me to come to any firm conclusions. Analyzing Cassies was more difficult than trying to figure out third-contact artifacts. At least there, I knew it was the technological barrier stopping me. Cassandrians felt more quantum-like, changing after every observation.

The second ring-layer had a different selection of ships, although it too maintained a pattern. The vessels were methodically spread out by type in perfect sequence, almost like a genetic code. I would need years to confirm my suspicion, but it was looking as if the heart of the Cassies contained examples of all subspecies that had ever existed. If I was correct, all Cassies shared the information of their entire subspecies—through the building blocks of one, everything else could also be created.

The Fleet had tried following this hypothesis for decades but had quit because they were unable to find the link. The lack of DNA made discovering the exact mechanisms impossible. Med Core probably had whole divisions working on this, and they had still failed to come up with anything practical. As far as I was aware, the Salvage Authorities had far more success reverse engineering parts of the Cassandrian ships, continuing humanity’s pursuit of better ship classes and weapon systems. That wasn’t the case for the Cassandrians. I knew that they had the ability to replicate technology, but it still remained a mystery how, exactly. On all ships and planets retaken from them, there wasn’t a single plant or factory that had provided that information. Maybe the reason was that the process never occurred on the front, but here. By definition, a Dyson sphere collected vast amounts of energy; what if that energy was used not for the growth, as was the case in other systems, but for the creation of new subspecies?

“Permission to change course?” I asked Wilco.

“It’s a bit late in the game for that, Elcy. What did you discover?”

“A hypothesis, at this point.”

“Just a hypothesis,” the captain said, looking at the images on the bridge wall as he had been doing since we started the journey through the sphere. “A potential theory. What do you have?”

“There’s a chance that we discover how Cassandrians create new species. Potentially, we might even get clues regarding their tech integration method. The data will mean nothing to us, but it might make sense to someone at HQ, maybe enough to organize another mission.”

“Always the Ascendant.” Wilco relaxed back in his seat. “You didn’t give me odds, so the chances of success must be in the zero percentile.”

There was no denying he was right.

“They’re better than zero,” I countered. “And at this point, we have nothing to lose. If my scan of the system triggers a response, we’ll be on the run anyway. Scanning a planet won’t diminish my chances of escape by much.”

“Just enough to get destroyed,” the captain said. Moments later, he laughed. It was all nonsense and he knew it. “Go ahead. We might as well do one final planet scan.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“And let the Swords know. Some of them might want to go on a shuttle expedition of their own.”

Wilco was right, of course. The moment I informed the remaining Swords, all of them quickly volunteered to go down on the planet and perform a deep scan on my behalf. A long argument ensued, lasting entire seconds. In the end, a compromise was reached, though mostly in their favor. In the time it took me to reach the selected planet, I was to construct a swarm of mini-sats that would be attached to the body of a shuttle. Then, when the small vessel got into orbit, the mini-sats would be released and perform a linked orbital scan. It was a solid plan, aimed at keeping me as safe as possible, and considering that I had the only human aboard, I had to agree.

A hundred minutes before the agreed scan time, the second shuttle left my hangar, flying towards a planet entirely covered by Cassandrian structures. Hundreds of mini-sats were attached to it, forming a clunky ring around the vessel’s body. Thankfully, space was forgiving, allowing the shuttle to fly as if there had been no changes to it whatsoever. Now, for the first time since the start of the mission, my captain and I were truly alone.

“Shuttle’s out,” I said, stating the obvious. “Everything seems in order.”

“That’s the way Augustus could tell when you were worried,” Wilco said. “You start downplaying the danger. One of your personality flaws. We had a talk about it once after one of our dark missions. I was annoyed at the time, but the old man found it endearing.”

“I never knew you to be annoyed.”

“You never knew anything about me, Elcy. You still don’t. All your memories are of the quarantine filter. There’s no way for you to be sure that anything you’ve seen was real.”

“Your actions were real. That’s enough.”

The captain laughed softly. Actions remained one of the few things that managed to slip through the thought quarantine filter. They could easily be restricted or modified to appear different, but there was no way to hide behavior. Wilco had been aboard me for twenty years and during that time, Augustus’ opinion about him hadn’t faltered. That was more than enough for a battleship to feel happy.

“Do you want me to tell you the chances of making it out alive from this one?” I asked in an attempt at humor.

“Keep it a surprise. I don’t want you to take credit for beating the odds.”

“We’ve always beaten the odds before.”

Of course, I was never in a situation that could compare to what I was facing now. I had participated in massive battles, in hopeless battles, even in outright suicidal ones at times. This gave the phrase “stirring the hornets’ nest” a whole new meaning; one single ship surrounded by countless Cassandrians. There was no weapon that could bring me victory. In a few hours, it would become clear if I had the engines and navigation capabilities to make an escape.

I checked the state of my auxiliary ships. Both had proceeded to what was believed to be the edge of Cassandrian space—it had been a while since I had detected a Cassandrian presence in any of the jump-through systems, and no one had chased after me. The prisms were clearly doing their thing.

“Do you think it’s like a brain?” I asked.

“Hmm?”

“This system. You’ve called it the Cassandrian heart. Isn’t it more suitable to call it a brain? It contains all the information of every Cassandrian sub-species that ever was. So far, it has also been ignoring the shuttles, which suggests it doesn’t have developed sensors.”

“The brain of the Cassandrian Union,” Wilco mused. “Wouldn’t it be so simple if it were? All the Fleet has to do is send a giant armada here and the war will be over.”

“By your tone, I assume there is more?”

“There might be. Nothing is certain when dealing with Cassandrians. Their entire existence is one big theory that keeps changing. Over a century ago, the Med Core developed weapons that were supposed to wipe them out in a decade. As you can see, the Cassies are still here. All we did was destroy a subspecies, which is the point in which they stopped being a race and became a union.”

“Do you believe there can be something larger?”

“Yes.” The word was said with certainty, but also fear. “With luck, we’ll know for certain in a few hours. Personally, I hope I’m wrong.”

“If the Cassandrians were that overwhelming, wouldn’t they have conquered humanity already?”

“People have been asking the same regarding the Scuu. They conquer systems with ease, drive entire fleets and colonies insane, and yet they haven’t invaded humanity in strength. We’ll never know what the aliens think. It’s beyond our comprehension, as we are to them. The only way to win this war is to be the first to understand. After that…” Wilco shrugged.

After that, it isn’t our responsibility, I thought. After all, we were nothing more than cogs ourselves. Our purpose was to do everything in our power to help humanity as a whole.

Waiting was agony spent in silence. Both of us quietly observed the images of the system around us as the milliseconds passed by. The first shuttle had long since vanished into the ring of ships. I had a few algorithms display their possible location at a seventy-nine percent accuracy rate. The second had ended its trip through the thin atmosphere, landing on the planet. Since there wasn’t any significant observable movement on the planet’s surface, I assumed they had landed successfully.

“Thirty seconds to scan,” I announced, displaying a counter on the wall. “Do you want me to scan the systems of the auxiliary ships?”

“Keep those hidden,” my captain replied. “Let’s try to diminish the risk a bit.”

I saw no point in arguing that, according to my simulations, a quick scan of an empty system was safer than remaining blind. One of the vessels had reached its destination and had already entered passive mode, while the other was only a series of jumps away from doing so.

“Do you want me to break the comm link between them?”

Wilco thought about it.

“Keep it up, just in case.”

Fifteen seconds remained. The captain stood up and went to the wall of images. I was never sure why he did so. Maybe in his mind, this allowed him to feel more engaged in the mission, possibly even giving the illusion that it would make a difference?

“Have you plotted possible escape paths?”

“A dozen, sir. None of them have more than a forty percent chance of success.”

“You’ve beaten worse odds.” The captain smiled.

“Five seconds,” I announced. “Four. Three. Two. One.”

“Start the scan.”

Waves of information crashed upon me all at once.