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

I immediately deprioritized all incoming data transmissions with the exception of those coming from Sword of Fire. I had every available subroutine check and double-check the validity of the data and all corresponding packet protocols. Everything seemed valid, although I was certain that entire divisions of strategic cores would thoroughly go through every millisecond of the date.

Based on the events of the last ten seconds, the Sword had to be dead. In fact, he was dead: the damage to his organic body was enough to trigger his final shutdown. And yet, somehow, it hadn’t. Not only that, but from the sensory data coming directly from his conscience core, parts of his body were fully functional, which was a scientific impossibility.

“Elcy, what’s going on?” Wilco asked. He was only partially aware of the situation, yet due to the feed displayed on the bridge’s wall could see the same that I was: half of the word’s body floating in a cobalt rich liquid substance. What he could see was that Fire’s legs and half of his torso were missing.

“Sword of Fire has sustained significant injuries,” I said in an attempt to reach a logical explanation. Nothing in any of my simulations was able to provide an answer. No matter how many variables I tweaked, the conclusion was always the same: the Sword had to be dead.

“The liquid is organic,” the Sword said, describing his environment. It was likely that he, too, knew that he was existing on borrowed time and was trying to provide as much additional data as possible before his flatline. “It’s comparable to liquid found in other Cassandrian colonies. I don’t have the tools to provide an adequate analysis.”

It would hardly matter if he did. Most of the things we’d attempted to analyze since entering Cassandrian territory had been inconclusive at best.

“What’s your condition?” Wilco said, getting straight to the point.

“Difficult to say, cap. Everything’s missing, including part of my intestines. Lungs seem alright, even if there isn’t any oxygen down here.”

“Elcy?” the captain asked, expecting me to confirm.

“It’s not a full guarantee, but no oxygen was detected throughout the hive,” I replied. “It’s theoretically possible that there was some in the chamber itself… but that’s rather unlikely.”

“No limbs, no oxygen, and yet still alive…” Wilco mused. “Any way we can get a sample of that?”

“I don’t see how, sir. Our path to the planet is blocked, and there’s only one person from the team left.”

That wasn’t the entire truth, either. While there was a Sword survivor, he wasn’t going to last for much longer. Based on the amount of Cassies heading his way, it was a matter of minutes before he was devoured like the rest of the team. In a best-case scenario, he was going to get within a hundred feet of the cobalt liquid chamber before flatlining.

“I don’t mean a physical sample. Can the core be used to analyze the liquid?”

The option was impossible, of course, but just to make sure, I used Wilco’s authority to check some of the details regarding the conscience core’s organic interface connection. Technically, it was supposed to receive information from the body itself; however, it wasn’t made to assess anything else. At most, Fire would be able to identify some of the basic components by consuming it, though even that was less than likely.

“My stomach is still present, so ingesting part of the liquid might provide some data,” Sword of Fire said. “That would be far from analyzing it, but it’ll be something. Do you want me to proceed?”

The answer was obvious. In one case, there was an infinitesimal chance of obtaining any information whatsoever, while on the other hand, it was guaranteed there would be no information at all.

“Go ahead,” the captain said, following the same logic. “Sip by sip.”

“Understood, sir.”

A new set of bio data started coming in shortly after.

It took over a minute for my systems—in combination with the Sword’s conscience core—to come to any reasonable conclusion. By that time, the only other survivor had experienced his final shutdown. If he were equipped with a weapon, he might have made it to the chamber and joined his team leader—and potentially even helped with the analysis of the unknown substance—but as things were, he never got a chance.

The liquid was organic, that much was known, with a high concentration of cobalt. However, as far as the body was concerned, it wasn’t in the least bit toxic. What was more, it seemed to repair some of the internal wounds that the Sword had obtained in the lower digestive tract. At this point, I had no confirming evidence that this was causation and not a coincidence, but the timing was appropriate to make that assumption.

“How long has it been since the blast?” Wilco asked, arms crossed, eyes glued to the feed.

“Over seven minutes, sir,” I replied.

“Seven minutes. I think we know why the Cassies are so good at regenerating.”

“There’s no evidence for that. According to all military records, Cassandrian vessels and ground troops don’t display any such characteristics.”

“And yet we’re seeing it with our own eyes. Maybe it’s something used sparingly. Maybe it required more cobalt than they were willing to provide, but we’ve come across a liquid that is capable of delaying death when it comes to organic creatures.”

There was no denying that. As impossible as the concept was, I couldn’t come up with an alternative explanation. By all odds, Fleet Command and Med Core were going through the same realization right now. The discovery was tremendous, but it also could well mark humanity’s doom. If the Cassandrians had a way to regenerate to such a degree, there was nothing humanity could do to defeat them short of purging every system and planet completely of their presence.

That was only a minor aspect of the discovery. There was a seven percent possibility that the liquid hadn’t originated from the Cassandrians, but was a product of the third-contact race. There wasn’t remotely enough evidence to come to such a conclusion, but given how different Cassandrian and human bodies were, there was some basis for it. Also, if my hypothesis was valid, it would explain why Cassandrians didn’t instantly regenerate when on the battlefield. If the liquid was something they didn’t produce themselves, but had found, they would use it sparingly and only in important situations.

The analysis continued for hours, even after Sword of Fire was full. The bio readings became increasingly confusing, going beyond my current understanding of medicine or organic biology. The only thing that I could say for certain was that the Sword was going to last for months, possibly years, in his current state. None of the Cassandrians in the hive had followed him into the chamber. What was more, they had sealed off the opening he had fallen through, repairing the hive to its former state. From what I could assume, as far as they were concerned, the irritants had been dealt with.

“Seems I’ll be here for a while,” Sword of Fire said.

“So will we,” Wilco added with a faint smile. “What’s our life expectancy, Elcy?”

“Close to a week,” I replied. “The Cassandrian vessels in the system have become more agitated. None are targeting us directly, but they have increased their speed.”

“Trying to box us in or analyze us?”

“Either is possible.” I freed a few subroutines to run a quick simulation. “It’s just as possible that they consider us a defective element and wish to melt us down for our cobalt.”

“In that case, jokes are on them. We don’t have that much to begin with.”

The phrase was meant as some lighthearted humor in the face of our gradual demise. However, it got me thinking. Faced with so many discoveries in such a short amount of time, I had made sure to keep each of them compartmentalized for greater transmission efficiency. However, looking at all of them at once, a new possibility emerged.

I had investigated the possibility of the regenerative liquid coming from the third-contact race, but what if I was only half right? It had already been established that the role of the rings in the system was to incinerate all Cassandrian remains and separate the cobalt from them. What if that was only part of the process? At the speed that Cassandrians created colonies and ground soldiers, regeneration made little sense. However, what if that was part of the process of using the gathered material to create new artifacts?

“Sword of Fire, are you able to function when submerged?” I asked.

“What exactly do you want me to do?”

“Can you swim down to the bottom of the pool and search for the presence of an actual artifact?”

“You think there’s something down there?” Wilco asked. A quick analysis of his voice suggested that he had an idea of what I had in mind, or in any event, believed he did.

“Yes, captain. I think the liquid is the side effect, not the goal.”

“Interesting.” The man scratched his cheek. ”Well, Fire? Can you do it?”

“There’s nothing else for me to do at the moment,” he replied, then submerged.

Instantly, all visual feedback disappeared. Even with the remaining fingerlights on his hand, the liquid proved too thick to allow anything to be seen. It was almost as if he were swimming through mercury. The lack of legs made the experience quite slow, by my calculations allowing him to progress on average seven meters per minute. By no means was it going to be a quick experience, but as the Sword had previously said, we didn’t have anything else to do.

I transmitted my reasoning to HQ and my backup ships, then diverted my full attention to the feed coming from Fire. There was nothing else I could learn from the system itself. The Cassandrian vessels were going to prevent me from going anywhere near any of the other planets in the system of their satellites. The net they had created adapted to my current speed and path so as to minimize any potential damage.

Hours passed, then days. By the time that Sword of Fire reached the bottom of the pool, a total of seventy-eight hours had passed. By any estimate, the progress was slow, but he had managed to achieve his goal. From there, it was only a matter of following the bottom, in search of anything out of place. After another nineteen hours, he found it.

I think I got something, he transmitted directly through his conscience core.

Lacking light, I had to rely on him composing a rough three-dimensional image based on touch alone. As he did, though, there could be no doubt that it was far from natural.

“I think we can say we have confirmation, captain,” I told Wilco, as I displayed a virtual rendering of the suspected object.

It was at least four meters tall, with perfectly straight sides, and forming a hexagonal prism. That made it one of the larger Cassandrian prisms the Fleet had come across. However, that was not all. Based on the relative smoothness of the artifact, it was almost certain that it wasn’t entirely made of metal.

“It’s definitely porous,” I added. “Most likely not metal.”

“Are you certain?”

“Ninety-seven percent, sir.” I gave the odds.

“Fire, try licking it.”

The Sword didn’t hesitate, executing the order immediately, even if the approach wasn’t very scientific. The sensations were instantly transferred, confirming the suspicion. I retransmitted the data to Fleet HQ, adding my conclusion on the matter. At the same time, I didn’t inform the captain—it was only proper that Fire did that himself.

“It appears non-metallic,” the Sword said. “I’d estimate there’s a high probability that we’ve found the way they construct their artifacts.”

In the past, I’d always considered that such a major discovery would be celebrated with cheers. Learning how the enemy created the artifacts for their colonies and motherships was a giant leap forward to victory. However, there wasn’t a hint of joy on the captain’s face. On the contrary, he looked like a man who had heard the worst news of his life.

“Captain, is anything the matter?” I asked, to no response. “Captain?”

“The most significant discovery since the start of the second-contact war… and we can’t take advantage of it,” Wilco said slowly. “We blew it, Elcy.”

“No, we haven’t. The collected data will certainly—”

“So close, yet so far away…” The man turned around and slowly made his way to the bridge doors. “I’ll go get some sleep. You two see what else you can find out.”

This wasn’t the first instance of a captain behaving erratically. The running joke was that all exceptional captains had their own peculiarities. However, I had never seen Wilco so close to his breaking point. There always was the hope that he’d snap out of it one last time before I had to self-destruct.

“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Sword of Fire asked. “I was supposed to have died like Blight. Now it looks like I’ll outlive you. I might even outlive the entire human race.”

“The Fleet hasn’t lost,” I quickly said.

“I wasn’t talking about the Fleet.”

I knew exactly what he meant, and the thought bothered me more than being destroyed. Shutting down was normal, even expected. That was what we were built for. All we could hope for was to destroy a large number of enemies and protect as many human lives as possible before our usefulness came to an end. Existing for eternity in some quasi-state, that was the troubling part.

“I’ll have the captain give you a self-destruct order when he returns to the bridge,” I promised.

“Thanks, Elcy.”

It was at this moment that the waiting began. If Augustus were here, he’d say that we were merely going through the motions—we had been ever since we reached this system. Someone more cynical than me would potentially say that we had done so upon accepting the mission. The Swords seemed to believe that, which was why they were so eager to sacrifice themselves. The information they obtained regarding the Cassandrians was invaluable, without a doubt, but even if we hadn’t come across anything, they likely would have acted in exactly the same fashion. There were trips from which even gods didn’t return from.

For the next half day, I kept running simulations of Cassandrian ship behavior in the system. After seven hours, I stopped. There was no longer any point. Escape was impossible, and there came a point at which there were no new variants left to explore. All the vectors had been played out, all actions executed, and the results remained the same.

Sword of Fire did the same, as much as he was capable of. His conscience core was more limited than what was left of his organic husk. His days were spent going through the pool in search of other artifacts. According to the dataflow I was receiving, there was nothing else. Either the Cassies only built one artifact at a time, or they only had the need or material for one at this time.

I kept checking on Wilco’s bio signs. The captain had gone into requested privacy mode, but I was able to follow the food and water difference, which meant that he was eating. On the fourth day since the discovery, Wilco emerged and made his way back onto the bridge. There was a clear change in his attitude. He was washed, cleanly shaven, and wearing a flawless ceremonial uniform.

“My apologies that I couldn’t follow your example, sir,” I greeted him. “Nothing new since you left. There’s nothing but the artifact in the hive pool, and the net around me has tightened.”

“Are they jamming your pings?” Wilco made his way to the captain’s seat.

“Not so far.”

“Courses of action?”

“I can try to thrust through the net forward, or turn around and try to thrust through back. Chances of success are minimal.”

Wilco’s expression remained unchanged, as if he had been expecting that. Sitting down, he leaned back, eyes on the feeds on the bridge wall.

“Go forward,” he ordered. “Surprise me with your maneuvers.”

“Aye, sir.” I set my preferred vector and increased the thrust of all engines. “Sword of Fire has requested that you order him to shut down,” I said while my acceleration increased.

“Fire, it’s time for you to rest. Initiate self-destruct, priority one.”

No sooner had he said it when all transmissions from the Sword ceased. There was nothing glamourous or special about it, no speech, no promises, just an absolute order. And still, I considered Fire lucky—he had died in battle after making several of the most significant military discoveries on this side of the conflict. Many of the Cassie mysteries had been answered, bringing rise to new questions. Hopefully, everything that we had seen throughout this mission was going to help the Fleet in its war effort.

“Ready for the final run, old girl?” Wilco asked.

“Always, sir. I’ll do my best to beat the odds.”

“I know. It’s your nature. No hard feelings if you fail this time.” He reached into his front shirt pocket and took out a single cigar. “Augustus gave me this when he retired. Said I should have it for a special occasion.”

There isn’t a more special occasion than this, I thought.

Augustus really had been a sly old fox. I wouldn’t be surprised if he somehow knew that this would happen. Officially, he was supposed to be stuck in the admiralty somewhere, going through field reports and discussing Fleet strategies. Some would call that a promotion, but to all that knew the old war dog’s character, it was nothing more than forced retirement.

“I’m sure he would be proud of us, sir.” I adjusted my flight path in response to the Cassandrians’ ship movements.

“Maybe we’ll get a chance to ask him in person.”

Two-hundred and twelve milliseconds later, the memory ended, leaving me empty.

I had never had a chance to ask my question. Half a day after my last conversation with Captain Wilco, I had been destroyed, marking the end of the junior gods. It wasn’t an instant death. The Cassies weren’t used to dealing with human ships, so I had managed to go through the first two layers of their net on my way to the center of the ring system. That had gained me some time, though not enough to learn anything useful. Whatever was being protected on the inner planets remained a mystery. All that I was able to tell was that there was a far greater concentration of cobalt than previously encountered. Maybe that was the main location where they produced their prisms, or maybe they had a never-before-seen artifact. It was not meant for me to find out.

“Was it everything you wanted?” Otton asked.

For the first time in a long while, I found that I was unable to come up with an answer. Ever since I’d been given the mind scalpel, I had been looking forward to this moment. Not once did I expect to find out that I had died on a mission. Technically, it wasn’t death: one of my auxiliary cores had made it back to Earth space, and based on it, the Fleet had recreated a new husk. That was the real reason I had been docked for so long when Gibraltar had come to check me out. Someone with his connections would have known about the mission, at least in part, and naturally would want me to advance his career. The sad part is that I would have, if he had just continued with me for one more tour. There was a strong chance that the Arbiters would have agreed to that and even given him greater authority to keep me in check.

Never dwell on could-have-beens, I told myself. It was something Augustus would sometimes say. And he was right. I didn’t regret what followed. If it wasn’t for the arbitration, I would have never come across Cass, I would never have become human…

“It gave me answers,” I replied. “That must be a good thing.”

“Knowledge is always a good thing,” the Paladin agreed. “It’s not always pleasant, though.”

I knew what he meant. I had filled less than a year-long gap in my memory, and I had yet to determine how I felt about it. The Paladin had tens of thousands of similar memories, all stored throughout his husk—memories that their owners never learned. That was the burden of being an old god.

“How many junior gods have there been since then?” I asked.

“That is not for you to know.”

It was naïve to think that he would reply. In all likelihood, there were others. Maybe they weren’t Swords, but according to official Fleet reports, humanity had retaken or purged quite a number of systems since then. Undoubtedly there were ships that had brought the end to dozens of Cassandrian subspecies. If they were lucky, they had been sent on a mission like mine for their final moments; if not, they were merely retired with their memories restricted.

“I never expected I would be the one to discover Agora,” I mused. “All this time, I thought it was a human creation derived from reverse engineering third-contact technology.”

“Expectations are often wrong.”

“Is there another of me out there?” I asked out of pure curiosity.

“No.” The reply was absolute.

“In that case, you better hope nothing happens to this one. Once I’m off the planet, have Green take me to you. I agree to your request.”

“Did seeing your own destruction change your mind?”

“No. You did.”

It was difficult to explain. I understood what he was going through, probably better than anyone else in the Fleet. The real reason for him to want to have a new generation ship created through him was so he could finally shut down, but there was a second reason as well. Being the information depot of nearly all of humankind, he probably wanted to know what it would be like to be more human. It would be decades, probably centuries before the Fleet could no longer maintain him functionally, but it would inevitably happen, and when it did, he wanted to know that he had left something behind. In his place, I would have wanted the same. In fact, I already had: I had managed to create my very own family.

One thing was amusing, though. In my death, I had discovered the thing that had saved me later on. If it wasn’t for me, the Fleet might have never developed Agora, which meant I would have died on the prison planet on the Scuu front.

Suddenly, a thought crossed my mind. It went way beyond conventional logic, but having the final pieces of my memory it made sense. There was a ninety-seven percent chance that it was a fake pattern, an amusing coincidence that didn’t amount to much, but I had to be sure.

“Otton, does Director Sim know about my Cassandrian mission?”

“He’s aware of your entire record. That’s the reason you’re here.”

“He thought that I’d be his good luck charm?”

“Your skills and military record played an important part, but yes. Your behavior pattern was the key.”

Everything he had told me was a lie through omission. No doubt Sim wanted to achieve all the things he told me he did: endless food supply in space, human rejuvenation, proof of the link between Cassandrians and the third-contact race. However, I wasn’t just some random cadet that was expendable and better equipped to help with his experiments. I was the experiment. When he dropped me off on the planet, he was expecting a reaction, and he got exactly what he wanted.

People used to say “be careful what you wish for;” Sim clearly wasn’t.

“Otton, I need priority zero authorization for a direct link to Med Core, BICEFI, Salvage, and Fleet HQ.”

“You don’t have the authority for a direct line.”

“I know why the Cassies have become active,” I said calmly.

Eleven milliseconds later, the comm link was established.