This was the fourth time it happened, and it happened the same way each time.

Nic went to throw his Grenades. They left his hand but never went off, dropping idly like stones. Instead, he watched Edith casually capture the red flag, and the instant she did so, his feet left the ground. He paddled the paper-thin air with all four limbs as he tumbled off the face of the planet and into deep space. Only it wasn’t his proxybot—it was his physical body in the cold vacuum of space, trying to suck in a breath that would never come.

Nic gasped when his eyes snapped open.

RTIFIS asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

“No.”

Nic found himself on Planet Slate once again, a featureless gray planet that served as the training environment in the Wargame sim. He faced off against Team Platinum, a squad of five AI proxybot avatars—all cranked up to the highest difficulty setting. No room for coddling myself anymore, Nic thought. It’s only me in here. That means I deserve every outcome. Every failure. Every victory.

He had stopped practicing with the rest of Team Scarlet. He could barely bring himself to look at them in the four days that had passed since their first outing and heartbreaking defeat on Planet Gwher. His reaction to losing, the way he blamed and divided his squad—it made him feel like an impotent little child, to the point that he couldn’t stand to show his face out in the Corvette common areas. Now he drilled Wargame endlessly in the Simnasium all by himself.

He didn’t shower or change his clothes. He didn’t do anything else. Meals passed, sleep passed, days passed without him, and he ate a hurried snack alone in the kitchen only when his nausea or splitting headache broke his concentration, visited the bathroom only when it became distractingly painful to hold it.

It didn’t matter what time it was. In deep space, there was darkness and starlight around him at all times. Time was relative—literally. He practiced until his body physically gave out on him. He resumed the moment his body could move again.

Nic aimed his virtual SMG and opened fire on the gray avatar in front of him.

‘Sorry to hear about what happened out there, folks,’ Hansen Dyne had told them through an FTLCom beacon. His words still reverberated in Nic’s exhausted subconscious. ‘RTIFIS tells me you lost the match 2-1, and the final round 3-2. You came very close to winning! Sadly, though, close only counts in two places, right? Old saying from Earth. If you don’t know what it means, ask Maqsud or Nic.’

Team Platinum’s first fighter fell by Nic’s hand. It came at a price, though—he’d lost 49% of his health already. AI proxies on the Expert difficulty had shockingly precise aim.

“Platinum 3 eliminated,” he mumbled to no one, practicing his in-game callout cadence. “Proceeding to Gray Base objective.”

‘Anyway, now’s the time to pick yourselves up and dust yourselves off, all right? You’re still Wargame players! You’re still in this competition. You haven’t been terminated... yet. Per the contract you signed, any team—and this goes for all companies, not just Red Terraforming—any team that has lost two planets more than they’ve won is automatically disqualified and terminated. I’m sure you guys have done the math—you’re knocking on that door, right? Another defeat means you’ll be sent back to Planet Ayrus for additional vocational testing and labor reassignment. You will never be able to compete in another Wargame again.’

Nic reeled from the force of an exploding Frag Grenade. It wasn’t a real explosion he felt, but neither were the explosions that were transmitted to him in an actual Wargame—they both still felt plenty real. He breathed through his teeth until the stinging passed. “Engaging Platinum 2.” His callouts were even stranger given the fact that he didn’t program any squadmate AIs into his drills; it was always him alone against five Expert-level proxies.

‘That’s the bad news. The good news is that I’m sure your fearless leader Nic has turned this defeat into a bonding experience and a valuable lesson for all of Team Scarlet! Nic, you’ve got a very talented team here, I’m sure you know, and I can already tell you’re a great leader who is probably bringing your squadmates together as I speak.’

Nic emptied his last SMG magazine and switched seamlessly to his Pistol to finish off another enemy. His health was languishing down in the sub-10% range. He scavenged ammo from the dead gray bot and pressed forward. “Platinum 2 eliminated. 100 meters to Gray Base. Objective in sight.”

Just then, the sharp tip of a virtual Combat Knife bit into the base of his metallic skull. He sputtered and died.

‘That being said, I won’t keep you any longer. I’m sure you were in the middle of rallying your troops for the next Wargame! Celebrating a victory as a team is important. That goes double for banding together after a tough loss!’

“No.” Nic waited alone in the dark of the post-death lobby to respawn.

‘Team Scarlet, I believe in you. I believe you have what it takes to make us proud—all of you as the cohesive, united team I know that you are. Heal your wounds. Regroup. Stay focused. Be on the lookout for your next planetary assignment in the coming weeks! Hansen Dyne signing off.’

At some point between death and rebirth, Nic nodded off again.

This was the fifth time it happened, and it happened the same way each time.

The dud Grenades. Team Scarlet: Defeat. Gravity: 0%. Falling upward. Naked. Freezing. Suffocating. Solitude.

“Nic?”

He picked his head up. Even as his helmet detached, his head felt weighed down as if by bags of wet sand. The same went for his eyelids.

“Nic? Are you... okay?” Perri stood in the doorway of the Simnasium.

“Perri,” he croaked groggily, hanging in place by the support cords.

“I didn’t know if you heard RTIFIS. Corvette’s water filter has a broken check valve. RTIFIS says that because we still have plenty of potable water, it can’t authorize an automated repair using the emergency valve in storage, and it’s going to reroute us to the nearest colony that can offer repairs instead. What did the AI say again? Oh, right—‘this saves the emergency spare for a true emergency.’ So... I just thought you should know we’re going to be stopping off at some random colony. RTIFIS hasn’t calculated the best one yet, I guess.”

“I see.” Nic nodded weakly. “Thanks.” Perri rapped her knuckles twice against the door, her lips spreading in a flat non-smile, non-frown, an awkward look she gave when she didn’t know what else to say. She turned to leave. “Perri, I wanted to tell you something...” But she was already gone.

Nic peeled himself out of the SimSuit and promptly collapsed face-first on the floor, motionless.