The mess hall had cooled from chaos to a low, steady buzz.

  Most of the rush was gone. What remained were scattered clumps of uniforms and fatigues, people hunched over trays or leaning on mugs. Forks on metal, voices kept below a shout, the occasional short bark of laughter from a table that wasn’t tired enough yet.

  Theta-3 came in wearing shipboard grays instead of armor. Clean, but moving with that particular stiffness that said their bodies wanted horizontal surfaces and not much else.

  Kaden felt every step in his thighs. The shower had cleared the sweat, not the ache.

  “Think they’ll notice if I fall asleep in a tray?” Navarro asked as they joined the short line.

  “They’ll notice when you start snoring,” Kaden said. “Barracks window still remembers.”

  “That was one time,” she said. “And those windows were fragile.”

  Vos stood behind them, tray in hand, gaze drifting across exits, occupied tables, the angle of the wall screens. Tanaka brought up the rear, quiet, calm, like this was just another ship on another night.

  They took what the serving line gave them: a ladle of thick stew, a roll, something green trying very hard to be a vegetable. The cook glanced at their shock patches, then moved on without comment.

  Vos gave the room one last sweep.

  “Center table,” he said, nodding toward one away from the bulkheads. “Close enough to a hatch. Not under a screen.”

  Navarro arched a brow.

  “You expecting company?” she asked.

  “Not expecting,” Vos said. “Practicing.”

  Tanaka gave a slight nod, as if that made perfect sense.

  They claimed the table. Metal creaked lightly as Kaden sat. For a while, only cutlery moved. The stew was salty, dense, and hot. Good enough.

  Navarro slowed first. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Day one on the Valiant,” she said. “How are we feeling, on a scale from ‘Academy hazing’ to ‘regretting every life choice’?”

  “Above hazing,” Kaden said. “Below ‘Opp boarding torches through the hull.’”

  “So, ‘mildly traumatized,’” Navarro said. “Good baseline.”

  Tanaka took a drink and set his cup down.

  “I’ve had worse first days,” he said. “At least nobody tried to sleep on the deck plates between shifts.”

  Vos nodded once.

  “And the food’s better than the last frigate I was on,” he said. “You can tell they expect people to survive here.”

  Navarro blinked.

  “You two really have a different idea of ‘reassuring’ than I do,” she said.

  Kaden looked between them. There was no wide-eyed curiosity in Tanaka’s posture, no uncertain edge in Vos’ voice. This was familiar terrain to them: shipboard mess, end of shift, bodies tired, minds still ticking.

  “Feels bigger than the Academy sims,” Kaden said. “They never got the sense of layers right. Just flat corridors.”

  “It is bigger,” Vos said. “And older. You can hear it in the drive noise. Academy runs you through clean models. The fleet gives you ships that have been patched three times and upgraded twice.”

  Tanaka glanced toward the overhead where the faint vibration of the ship’s systems ran through the structure.

  “You’ll stop noticing it in a week,” he said. “Until something sounds wrong. Then you’ll notice it a lot.”

  Navarro nudged Kaden with her shoulder.

  “Hear that?” she said. “Veteran wisdom. We’re in good hands.”

  Kaden snorted.

  “You didn’t sound this confident the first time we hit sim ladders,” he said.

  “That was before my calf tried to detach,” she said. “Now I’m enlightened.”

  Vos watched the two of them trade jabs, eyes narrowing slightly in amusement.

  “How long have you two been doing that?” he asked.

  “Three years,” Navarro said. “Academy. Same intake, same squad, same terrible coffee. Same demerits. Mostly his fault.”

  Kaden held up his hands.

  “I maintain those charges were never proven,” he said.

  Tanaka huffed something like a laugh.

  “Good,” he said. “Helps to know who’s already broken in.”

  They ate. Overhead, a screen flicked from a bland news anchor to a tactical feed. Andromeda appeared, sector lines traced in light. C17 flashed with a red arc and a few careful phrases: FRONTLINE READJUSTMENT, FORCE REDEPLOYMENT. The text crawled on. No numbers.

  Kaden kept his eyes on his tray.

  Vos chased a bit of green around his bowl.

  “Jax runs hard,” he said. “That hasn’t changed.”

  “What do you know about her?” Kaden asked.

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  “The reputation,” Vos said. “She was on a different ship. Different corridor. People talk. ‘Shock leader who doesn’t waste bodies’ was the line I heard most.”

  “Could have fooled me,” Navarro muttered. “My legs would like a word.”

  Tanaka shook his head slightly.

  “She pushed us,” he said. “She didn’t cook us. There’s a difference. I’ve seen officers who only care about the op and the numbers afterward. She watched us the whole time.”

  Kaden remembered the feeling of being under glass in the sim, but with someone actually paying attention instead of just ticking boxes.

  “She also added sleds after two sims,” Navarro said. “I reserve the right to complain.”

  “You’re allowed,” Tanaka said. “Complaining and quitting are different things.”

  Navarro tapped her spoon against his bowl.

  “You’re full of fortune cookies tonight,” she said.

  “I’ve had practice,” he said.

  Boots scuffed near the table.

  “Mercer,” a familiar voice said. “Navarro. Look at that, you both survived.”

  Kaden looked up.

  “Song,” he said. “Pull up a seat before Navarro decides you don’t need that bread.”

  “I would never,” Navarro said. “Out loud.”

  Song slid onto the bench beside Kaden, tray in hand, Theta-5 patch obvious. He looked tired, but in a “long day” way, not a “just sprinted through a grinder” way.

  “Theta-5 made it through our first sim,” Song said. “Moreau didn’t even yell. I’m questioning reality.”

  “One sim?” Navarro said. “We got two and then the gym from hell. I’d like to report an imbalance in the universe.”

  Song blinked.

  “Two sims,” he repeated. “And a gym block. Today.”

  “Yep,” Kaden said. “Breach and clear, then hostage extract. Then circuits.”

  “Full kit,” Navarro added. “Because why not.”

  Song let out a low whistle.

  “Moreau ran us through one scenario,” he said. “Then drills, review, and orders to hydrate and not do anything stupid before we even leave dock. She keeps saying she wants to ‘see where we fall apart’ before she starts pushing.”

  “Jax skipped that part,” Kaden said. “Went straight to pushing.”

  “Different styles,” Vos said.

  Song finally seemed to notice the others properly.

  “Song,” he said, nodding. “Theta-5. I survived three years of these two, which apparently makes me experienced now.”

  “Vos,” Vos said. “Tech. Previously Sixth Shock, now here.”

  “Tanaka,” Tanaka said. “Heavy. Epsilon-2 here on the Valiant before this.”

  Song’s brows rose a fraction.

  “Transfer veterans,” he said. “You’re the ones they keep mentioning in whispers.”

  “Whispers?” Navarro said. “Now I’m curious.”

  “Something about ‘mixing survivors with academy fresh meat,’” Song said. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” Kaden said. “That’s accurate.”

  “Command likes to seed experienced people through rebuilt squads,” Vos said. “Keeps the failure rate lower. On paper, anyway.”

  “Cheery,” Navarro said.

  “Accurate,” he replied.

  Song dug into his stew with less enthusiasm than hunger.

  “Jax really put you through all of that in one go?” he asked.

  “She did,” Kaden said.

  Song shook his head.

  “Rumor always said she ran hot,” he said. “Even before Erebus.”

  Navarro frowned.

  “You keep saying that,” she said. “Before what, exactly?”

  Song opened his mouth, then flicked his gaze to Tanaka and shut it again.

  “Not my story,” he said.

  Tanaka had gone quiet again. Not withdrawn, just somewhere else.

  “Epsilon-2,” Navarro said, softer now. “You were on the Erebus op, right?”

  Tanaka set his spoon down, fingers steady.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We were there.”

  Kaden didn’t ask anything yet. He just waited.

  “Different ship than this,” Tanaka said. “Same front. Harrow brought in a lot of hull. Big push. Everyone felt good about it. Aurora was paying out. Levels, skills, commendations. People started thinking the numbers meant they were safe.”

  There was no heat in his voice, just an even cadence.

  “Command targeted a heavy cruiser in the middle of their line,” he went on. “Decapitation strike. Cut the head off, everything falls apart. On paper, it looked pretty. In reality, the formation wasn’t where it was supposed to be when we dropped. They had more guns and better angles than the brief said.”

  “Harrow pushed anyway,” Vos said, not quite a question.

  “Yeah,” Tanaka said. “Pods launched. Epsilon-2 went in midships on that cruiser. That was us. I was on the door with the Bulwark. Same job I’ve got now.”

  Kaden could picture it too easily.

  “We clamped,” Tanaka said. “Cutter burned the hull. Breach charge went and we stepped through. Corridor on the other side was already wired. Opp blew charges as we came out. The squad got taken out of the fight before I got the shield up.”

  Navarro’s fingers tightened around her spoon.

  “How’d you get out?” Kaden asked.

  “Someone sealed the breach,” Tanaka said. “Then someone dragged me. Could’ve been a tech, could’ve been another squad, could’ve been some auto-recovery routine keyed to vitals. I woke up in a med bay with a new assignment waiting and a casualty list where my squad used to be.”

  He said it like a report he had given too many times.

  Song shifted, uncomfortable.

  “Jax was in that offensive too,” he said. “Different hull, but same front.”

  Tanaka nodded.

  “Back then she had Kappa-1,” he said. “First Shock detachment on one of Harrow’s cruisers. They went in on a carrier up the line. Timing went bad. Ship took heavy hits while they were still aboard. Their pod never got the green to detach.”

  Vos spoke up, voice low.

  “I saw the after-action on that one,” he said. “No comms. No telemetry. Just a lot of red tags.”

  “Whole squad marked KIA,” Tanaka said. “One extra file tagged NBI. Her. Compartment failure, catastrophic hull breach, survivor pulled out of a pocket someone managed to seal. She spent a lot of time in a tank and longer in evaluations. When she came back up, Kappa-1 was a name on a wall. Eventually they gave her a different posting.”

  “Valiant,” Navarro said. “Theta-3.”

  Tanaka met Kaden’s eyes.

  “And you’re surprised she’s running you hard on day one?” he asked. “She knows what it looks like when a squad dies under her name. She’s not rolling those dice again if she can help it.”

  Kaden thought about Jax in the sim booth, that steady voice in his ear. Thought about her in the gym, watching form more than time, pushing but not breaking.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I get it.”

  Navarro stabbed the last piece of bread on her tray.

  “She still owes my legs an apology,” she said. “But I get it.”

  Vos tilted his cup, looking at the dregs.

  “I was on a different ship in that same offensive,” he said. “We boarded smaller hulls in the outer screen. Mostly transport escorts. Took losses. Nobody came out clean. Harrow’s idea of pressure is…thorough. Compared to that, what Jax did today was focused. It had a point.”

  Song eyed him.

  “Sixth Shock?” he asked.

  Vos nodded once.

  “Used to be,” he said. “Now I’m here.”

  Song checked his HUD, then let out a breath.

  “I should get back to Theta-5 before Moreau decides we’re slacking,” he said. “She wants us bright-eyed and ignorant in the morning.”

  “Tell her Theta-3 says hi,” Navarro said. “And that we’re already sore on her behalf.”

  “I’ll translate that into something that won’t get me extra laps,” Song said. He looked at Kaden. “Try not to let Jax kill you in training. I’d hate to lose my best source of terrible ideas.”

  Kaden gave him a tired half-smile.

  “No promises,” he said. “We’ll try.”

  Song stood, grabbed his tray, and gave the table a two-finger salute.

  “See you in the sims,” he said.

  He merged into the slow line at the disposal slots.

  Theta-3 stayed put. Navarro nudged the last of her stew around without much purpose. Vos finished his drink and lined the empty cup up exactly with the edge of his tray. Tanaka cleaned his bowl like it was another drill box to tick.

  Kaden leaned back and let his muscles complain.

  “New rule,” Navarro said after a moment. “Days like this, we end here. Food, complaining, make sure everyone’s still around. If somebody doesn’t show, we know who to go bother.”

  Vos considered that.

  “Morbid,” he said.

  “Practical,” Navarro replied. “And the mess has coffee.”

  “Then I approve,” Tanaka said.

  Kaden nodded.

  “I’m in,” he said.

  Vos hesitated, then gave a small shrug.

  “Better than pretending I enjoy quiet,” he said. “Fine. I’ll be here.”

  Navarro looked satisfied.

  “Look at that,” she said. “We have a tradition.”

  Kaden pushed his tray away and stood. His legs objected. He ignored them.

  “Come on,” he said. “If I sit much longer, I’m going to need a medic just to get off this bench.”

  “Good thing we brought one,” Navarro said, standing too.

  They dumped their trays and drifted out together. Not marching, not even walking in sync, just four people heading in the same direction.

  The ship hummed around them. Somewhere on a map, an Andromeda corridor glowed red.