The star system was called Thorka-Epsilon, although everyone referred to it as System Four. It made me wonder which systems had been designated as One, Two, and Three, and why. Knowing Fleet Intelligence, it was likely they had assigned three other teams with the task of finding and escorting a potential captain to Gregorius. At this point, I wasn’t sure what was worse: the prospect of having multiple captains, or being on the mission that was marked last.

According to the scant info we were given, the system was a recent addition to human space. Being close to the Scuu front and with only three planets of little significance, the system was abandoned soon after discovery. Faced with the prospect of annihilation, all the fleet’s resources were thrown at the enemy, while all non-vital systems were ignored. Decades later, after the Great Push, when humanity felt comfortable enough expanding again, a more detailed survey of the system was made. Against all odds, it was revealed that the second planet had a life index of zero-point-eight, enough to merit an expedited colonization process. During the three decades following, a total of twelve colonies and two orbital stations had been built. The file described them as standard agrarian settlements preparing the planet for further terraforming, but that was all. Any additional information requests, including the names of the colonies, were denied on the grounds that I didn’t have the appropriate access privileges. Contacting Flight Colonel Nitel regarding the matter hadn’t helped either. The man gave me one of his cold stares, making it clear that he disapproved of my attitude, before sending me the layout of a colony codenamed Ash.

Thank you for the data, sir, I thought. Apparently I had developed a knack for rubbing people the wrong way. After the little incident in the hangar, the Flight Colonel had made his displeasure known by confining Kridib and I in a four by eight bunkroom for the duration of the trip. We were expressly forbidden to leave the room without his personal permission, or to attempt to communicate with anyone other than Radiance and himself. We were also brought a field toilet and a container of field rations to make it clear he wasn’t kidding.

“Will we be allowed to leave our quarters?” I asked Radiance.

“Soon,” Rad replied with a hint of annoyance. She wasn’t pleased with the arrangement either. Knowing her, I suspected she wanted to show off her armaments and weapon systems. “I can stream you all mission details, if you want.”

“Is that all you’re allowed to show us?” I pressed against the bed mattress with both hands—standard military issue nanofibers, though more comfortable than the ones I had while active.

“For now.” The delay in response suggested that she had attempted to grant us permission.

“But soon, right?”

“Everything is soon,” Kridib muttered from the other side of the room, where he had had spent the last few hours brooding in the corner. “How long till we reach the system?”

“Soon,” Rad replied, adding an icy edge to her tone.

“Privacy mode,” Kridib ordered. A bright red emerged across the middle of the walls, informing us that our conversations weren’t being recorded.

You aren’t the helpful sort, are you? I looked at my fellow cadet. Even out of combat gear, he was far more intimidating than any fleet officer. Should we come to a fight, I estimated I could take him with moderate effort, though my simulations were based on physique alone. There was no way I could account for his combat experience, even if I could see he had gotten plenty of it. His posture, his measured behavior... all suggested a life based round a single binary choice: fight or wait.

Rookies tended to be restless before a mission. When I was a ship, I’d watch them spend hours checking their weapons, making stupid jokes, of discussing rumors they all knew were false, while their bio readings spiked beyond the optimal mark. Kridib had remained perfectly calm, to the extent that he didn’t seem to be here.

“Give the kid a break,” I broke the silence. “She’s young.”

“She’s one mission away from going psycho.” Kridib cracked his fingers. “Why do you think they purge her memory every day?”

So, you’ve noticed. “Not every day. It’s standard procedure,” I lied.

“Would you remember if it was?” Kridib smirked.

“No.” That’s why I didn’t want him knowing I was a ship. “But I know it’s impractical.”

Ships never knew how many of their memories had been blocked, but based on comparative statistics, it seemed the amount varied between six and eighteen percent. Most of the blocks were large slices of time, linked to concrete missions or organization involvement. Thanks to some help, I had acquired the ability to glance at the true state of my memory; I could see all the segments that had been blocked, quarantined, or removed altogether. There had been no instances of cyclical meddling. The only anomaly was a two-hundred and seventy-two-day gap during the time of my second captain. Whatever events had transpired at that time had been sliced clean out of my mind; an impressive achievement, considering memory destruction had been banned since the third Fleet Charter Update.

“Doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened,” Kridib persisted.

“Doesn’t mean it has.”

“This isn’t the Cassandrian front. Standard rules don’t apply.” He paused, redirecting his attention to the red line on the walls. “What do you know about the Scuu?”

“Not much.” That’s supposed to be my question.

“The oldest war of humanity and no one knows a thing.” He let out a bitter laugh. “Hundreds of millions destroyed and you’ve never even seen one. That’s the thing with you ships, you never know much.”

“Enlighten me.” I stood up.

“You don’t know how to disobey and I don’t have the time to teach you.” Kridib gave me a passing look, then went to his bunk and laid down. “After the mission is over, you won’t remember a thing.”

“Then what does it matter if you tell me?” Three minutes had passed since we had entered privacy mode. Depending on mission specifics that left us anywhere between two and twenty-seven minutes of unmonitored time. “You were born in a Scuu border system, weren’t you?”

“Mining colony,” he corrected, confirming my suspicions. “Ships come and go, but we remain forever. You weren’t chosen at random, were you?”

It would have been easy to lie. I could easily claim I was picked because I was the only ship cadet, and in a way, it wouldn’t be far from the truth. Whatever Kridib’s suspicions were, I doubted he’d react positively upon hearing the Administrator had personally asked me to join.

“No, I wasn’t,” I said at last.

“Then you know I can’t trust you.” He moved to his side, turning his back to me. “Once this mission is over, things are back to what they were.”

“No problem.” I’ll also find a way to access your file.

“Regarding the mission,” Kridib continued. “You’re not the reason. Nitel would have locked us here anyway. He doesn’t want you to find out that he’s brought murder troops.” The phrase sliced through me like a plasma beam.

Murder troops. They weren’t in any publicly available records, or mentioned in any file, yet everyone knew they existed. Every rookie that survived more than one tour started hearing the rumors—a special section of ground troops with the sole goal of killing people. According to the whispers, they never bluffed, captured, or protected… they only purged.

I was in my seventh year when I had come across talk of them. After surviving a full tour with Augustus, I speculated that I had seen everything war could offer. Learning about the murder troops proved otherwise. Knowing that I was carrying such was the antithesis of my existence. Suddenly, the thought of daily memory wiping didn’t seem far fetched.

“Why tell me?”

“Because you’d find out anyway,” Kridip replied. “I don’t want you freaking out on the planet. Now you have some time to prepare.”

Don’t believe anything he says. I repeated the instructions my commander had given me. Without his psych profile, there was no telling if he was a psychopath or merely looking out for the mission. With his character, probably a bit of both.

“Privacy mode ending in five seconds,” one of Radiance’s subroutines informed us.

Instinctively, I regained my outer composure. The five seconds counted down to zero, after which the red line disappeared, letting us know we were back to being monitored. Just another day in the fleet, as my third captain would say.

I don’t like him, Radiance said directly to my core.

He’s a ground trooper. Some of them are like that. As much as I hated defending Kridib, sharing our conversation would be worse for everyone involved.

It’s not that. I just don’t like him. Rad said cryptically.

You can’t choose who you carry. He’s a tool of the fleet same as us. Let him do his task, then bury him in your memories.

I envy your calm. Rad said with a virtual sigh. I can’t imagine having to serve with him for nine months. My last cadets were really boring. I miss having Alicia around. She was fun.

You’ll get used to it. I closed my eyes. We all miss people. The trick is to find new friends to make up for it.

Like you and Buc?

Like me and many others. There was no need to mention that most of the friends I had made lately were blocked out of my memory. Officially, I wasn’t even supposed to remember them. Thankfully, I did. Rad, I have a question for you.

Is it something that would get me in trouble again? she asked in serious voice. Just kidding. What do you want to know?

Why aren’t we allowed out of the room?

Flight Colonel Nitel is in charge of the mission. If it was up to my captain it would be okay, but…

I understand. At least there was no doubt who was calling the shots. Tell me about your captain.

Marcus? Rad sounded surprised. He’s not my captain captain. Well, he is, but it’s not permanent. Greg’s captain will be my actual captain. Marcus is just the one who pilots me until then.

Won’t he continue afterwards?

I’m not sure. Flight Colonel Nitel was supposed to be my captain, but Incandescent snatched him. There’s supposed to be this whole captain council, but it’s pretty disorganized at the moment. Not all ships have captains, so random officers take turns. It’s a bit weird, I know, but things will get sorted out.

She sounded like Sev’s school teacher. Back when we were in our home colony, it wouldn’t be rare for him to get into some trouble. I was still learning how to be his guardian back then, and most of my attempts at discipline were outright awful. His school teacher was the complete opposite. Each time she’d call me because of some mischief my Sev had done in class, she’d smile, look me in the eye, and say, “I know it’s difficult, but things will get sorted out.”

“I’m sure they will,” I whispered. Let me know when something happens, Rad. I need to go through some simulations.

There were no disturbances in the next hour, nor the six hours that followed. Kridib remained sleeping, blissfully ignoring our present circumstances. I had tried to do the same, running sequential simulations of the previous captain’s death. The obvious reason seemed to be forced nanite extraction, which was why I discarded it. Had that been the case, far more blood would have been found at the scene, not to mention the investigation team would have discovered the lack of nanites in the body. My only remaining theory was that the attack was caused by some type of exotic weapon. From what I had managed to determine, the source of the force had originated behind the captain, starting two meters away, a few inches above floor level. The strength of the “shot” had been enough to shove him a meter forward, while simultaneously causing the peculiar exit wounds. The only problem was that I still couldn’t account for the lack of secondary wound marks or the complete failure of all security measures. After six and a half hours of trying to brute force a possible explanation, I finally gave up. I had insufficient data to come to any conclusion with my current processing power. The only thing I could say with a sixty-eight percent certainty was that the attack had been performed from close range.

Without announcement, the door to our quarters slid open. Hearing the sound, I immediately jumped to my feet, standing to attention. On the opposite side of the room, Kridib did the same. Initially, I expected the Flight Colonel to enter and commence with the obligatory morning inspection. Instead, it was someone I had never seen before.

“Drop it,” a white-haired man said, using the trooper colloquial form. “Get prepped.”

The man was wearing grey camouflage clothes with no distinctive markers. Age had made the veins on his arms and neck stick out, like cracks on glass.

“You.” He threw me a greyish uniform. “Get in that.”

“Yes, sir.” I unfolded it with a swing.

The uniform was made to fit. As I put it on, I noticed that it was designed to have a sidearm. Considering what I had been through in my previous mission and had still been refused one then, I could safely say this was no cadet mission anymore.

“Leave the gear,” the white-haired man said as Kridib began strapping on his sound suppressors.

“Wilco,” Kridib complied.

“You two eaten?” the person asked, kicking the field toilet with the side of his boot.

“No, sir,” I was first to reply, followed a hundred milliseconds later by Kridib.

“Good.” He turned around. “Let’s go.”

Rushing through Rad’s halls was very different from what I imagined it would be. A layer of black nanites covered every square centimeter, coating them like a real-life sensor bar. We walked seventy-two meters forward to the first elevator, then took it down.

“What have you been told?” the man asked, as we descended to the lower decks.

“We’ve been given the initial mission briefing, sir.” I straightened up, trying to add an inch to my height.

“We’ve been told shit,” Kridib snorted beside me. For some reason, he found the whole thing amusing. “Standard retrieval and escort,” the cadet added. “We go in, find the target, and—”

“Specs have changed,” the trooper cut him off. “We’ve been given the kill order.”

“Kill order, sir?” You really are murder troops.

“We’ll be going in hot, confirming target, then dragging what’s left to Radiance,” he continued, ignoring me. “ETA is fifty-three hours, so you better be set and ready in forty-five.”

The elevator opened. The white-haired man went out, leading us down another black corridor to a set of blast doors. Two steps before reaching them, the doors slid open, revealing a hall full of SR pods. Three dozen soldiers were in the room, resting on the floor in the middle of the room, and three times more already in the pods.

“Two to go,” the man who brought us in yelled. “Grunt and the ship-kid.”

The phrase sounded weird coming from someone like him. I was certain he had read part of my redacted file, just as he would never be able to wrap his head round the fact that I’ve had the same appearance since before he was born.

“What caused the change, sir?” I asked rushing after him to keep up.

“Three days ago, we got a burst from System Three,” he said, walking towards an empty pod in the middle of the lower left row. “Two colonies went crazy. From sudden headache to mass rampage in four seconds. By the time the grunts got down, there were no survivors. Three minutes later, the grunts had shot each other.”

“Good to go, Sarge,” a solder yelled, manually opening the empty pod.

“Grunt, that’s yours,” the sergeant said to Kridib, moving on towards the next free pod. “Ten minutes ago, the communication feed to System Four was severed. Full blackout.”

“All communication?” The last time I had seen something similar, third-contact artifacts had been involved—relics millions of years old, constructed by a race humanity knew nothing about. So far, only remnants had been found. Too sophisticated to analyze, too dangerous to be left alone, they were sought after by all three major races, sometimes to the extent that whole fleets had to be sacrifices merely to ensure that the other side didn’t get their hands on one.

I had dealt with such artifacts several times before; I had seen them cripple communications, absorb laser-drill beams, even destroy entire planets. If there was an artifact of this nature so close to the Scuu front, it was a given that they would send a force to try and claim it. Though that wasn’t what made me feel anxious. Going through a few potential outcomes, I definitely hoped that all we were dealing with was a communications blackout.

“That’s yours.” The sergeant slapped his hand on the open pod. “Know how it works?”

“I’ve been in a few.” I nodded. Would be my first time going in clothed, though.

“It’s a Series Five, so it’s all nanites,” the man explained, unconvinced of my answer. “Vomit in there and you’ll clean it.”

“I’ll try to remember that, Sergeant,” I said, stepping in. The pod was smaller than what I was used to, though completely dry. Leave it to Radiance to have top of the line tech. “Will I be getting a weapon on this one?”

“Kid—” The man shook his head. “—you are the weapon. Orders are you go down before everyone else. Get familiar with the layout and don’t get killed too much. Once you’re planetside, you only get one go.”