A metallic hammering woke him from his sleep. Blinking, he remembered where he was. He pressed a button on the inside. The PFC fluid was slowly sucked out of the capsule. The glass door swung open, and he could breathe properly again for the first time, even if the air smelled of metal and disinfectant.

  How long had he been asleep?

  He examined his naked body. The wounds were gone; only the worst of them had left any scars.

  Satisfied, he exhaled calmly. If he was honest with himself, he hadn’t expected to ever wake up again. He had looked truly awful when they hastily loaded him into the transporter with three people.

  The medic had done a good job. He would thank him personally, of course, though he already suspected the man hadn’t made it out alive—unlike him.

  He looked around. He was probably on the second deck of the Iron Fury, in the pod section of the medical station. All the other capsules were empty. That could be either a good or a bad sign.

  He continued down the hallway. The sterile silver-gray of the walls strained his vision after so long spent in eternal darkness. At the end of the corridor, he saw a room. “Patient Lockers,” a sign above it read. He stepped inside.

  The metal lockers were all numbered and labeled with names. He searched until he found his own.

  Sergeant Rhiv Mordo — he entered a code, and the locker opened. He was slightly surprised he could still remember the number combination.

  Rhiv quickly put on his uniform. He almost cut himself on one of his star-shaped badges. Finding not much else inside, he figured most of his belongings were still in his quarters.

  Rhiv left the medical station and headed toward the lift. As much as he would have liked to go to his room and rest more, he knew duty was calling.

  “We are at war, after all,” he reminded himself.

  The elevator made an unpleasant noise as it took him to the upper command deck. When the doors opened, the environment was completely transformed. It was still the same industrial, utilitarian design, but it was now swarming with people.

  Rhiv could hardly believe this was still the same ship. He had only ever served on smaller cruisers or frigates.

  The Iron Fury was, by comparison, a flying city—several kilometers long and armed to the teeth. This ship was truly something to brag about. Should he ever return to the officer academy on Dahanides, he would surely boast about it to the others.

  Still, he didn’t know much about the ship. After all, he was a ground forces officer, not part of the navy.

  Rhiv wove his way through the crowds. Many of them wore the grayish uniforms of the Logisticum. He pitied the commanding admiral. He knew firsthand how annoying Logisticum workers could be.

  Still, they were vital to any campaign. They were true masters when it came to sorting and categorizing things. Some of them took organizing so seriously that they had implants installed in their brains to increase memory capacity.

  Rhiv passed large storage shelves with labeled crates until he finally stood before his destination: a massive, wide steel door with the inscription “Command Deck-01” in red letters.

  He scanned his officer’s card on a device in the niche next to the door. With a hissing sound, the interlocked steel plates slid apart.

  He didn’t even wait for them to fully open before slipping through the gap, slightly nervous.

  Once inside the command deck, he was momentarily speechless. So many screens, devices, and navy officers working alongside navigators to steer the ship. The two armed soldiers at the entrance saluted him.

  One of them was a decorated veteran. His gray, well-groomed mustache seemed more important to him than his medals. Rhiv nodded at him respectfully.

  Just as he was about to locate the commanding admiral, someone called out:

  “Sergeant Mordo!”

  A man in a blue uniform approached him.

  “What a pleasure to finally see you fresh and awake again.”

  Rhiv could hardly believe his eyes when he recognized who stood before him.

  It was Captain Elias Castinus, Terror of Namomia, Admiral of the 2nd Fleet of the Core—and, above all, an old friend of Rhiv.

  “Castinus, since when do you command ships this big?” Rhiv asked in surprise.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  “Since the defeat at Neuphus. Captain Thane is stuck on Terra. The command deck of his ship was hit directly after the shields failed. He’s lucky to even be alive.”

  Rhiv nodded respectfully. He was about to say something when Castinus interrupted him:

  “But it’s perfect timing that you’ve awakened. I actually have a small task for you. Could you go down to the Lord Commander’s chambers and inform him that we’re nearing our destination? Here’s a report with all the details.”

  He handed Rhiv a datapad. Rhiv didn’t even get a chance to respond before Castinus was already back at work.

  He felt a bit empty. But with no further orders, he set off.

  On the way, he wondered why he, a sergeant, was being sent to do an errand boy’s job.

  To distract himself from his frustration, he glanced at the report on the datapad.

  “So I don’t look like a complete fool in front of him,” Rhiv thought.

  As he delved into the notes, he began to murmur thoughtfully and with interest. They were apparently on their way to a supposed uprising.

  The garrison on Crolla had requested support about a month ago, according to the report. But in typical imperial fashion, this had initially been ignored.

  Now, there had been no contact with the force for a week, and it was feared that the rebels had overrun the outpost.

  At that moment, Rhiv was glad that he had always been stationed on ships and not on some neglected outpost at the edge of the Core.

  His thoughts wandered as he admired the beautiful wall decorations.

  He had now reached the first subdeck. The area was normally off-limits to anyone not part of the Ordo Custodum or the Ordo Reliciam.

  But in Rhiv’s case, he had nothing to fear—he was acting under direct orders from the admiral.

  He saw hand-carved stone reliefs. The ceiling was adorned with gigantic paintings of glorious battles.

  He wondered how long it took to paint something like that. Years? Decades?

  No—probably an entire lifetime.

  He knew that no one was as devoted as the members of the Ordo Reliciam, but only now did he understand the full extent of it.

  He had always thought them unnecessary. For a long time, he believed the order existed only for religious purposes.

  Only later—during his military training—did he learn that they also cared for ancient relics and historical records. Art of all kinds was apparently their way of relaxing.

  As he walked across the white marble floor, a group of men approached him.

  They were clad in long white robes. In their hands they held rosaries and chains with hanging orbs that emitted fragrant smoke.

  They chanted in low, deep voices.

  Rhiv hurried past them without seeming disrespectful. He continued on, now in the domain of the Ordo Custodum.

  But even here, the breathtaking frescoes continued. He crept through rows of vaults and arches—the enormous corridors made him feel tiny.

  He simply followed the datapad’s navigation system.

  Eventually, he found himself at a wide staircase leading to a magnificent dark wooden door. Two Custodes stood guard before it.

  In their immaculate battle armor, they stood as still as statues. They might as well have been dead—he wouldn’t have noticed the difference.

  They didn’t speak; they didn’t move. Only when he showed one of them his officer’s card and stated his mission did one of the two nod.

  The Custos opened the heavy door and let Rhiv enter.

  Each of his steps echoed through the gigantic throne hall.

  Handcrafted mosaics stretched across hundreds of meters of floor.

  Four mountain-sized marble pillars, gilded with gold, supported the ceiling—which, surprisingly, bore only a neutral, yet noble, white.

  At the center of it all: a silver throne draped in black velvet cloth. Red rubies stared like menacing eyes.

  When Rhiv regained his composure, he remembered his mission.

  He looked around hastily but couldn’t spot the Lord Commander anywhere. He was about to turn back when he heard laughter coming from the direction of the sleeping quarters.

  Without hesitation, he ran toward the door.

  As soon as he reached it, he began to open it.

  He instantly regretted his mistake of not knocking.