Theta-3’s squad room lights were down to a dim strip along the ceiling, just bright enough to keep the benches from claiming shins.

  The far bulkhead was all holo.

  Kaden’s own view filled most of it: helmet cam, running in smooth replay. Tanaka’s shield out front, Navarro’s rifle muzzle flickering in the left corner, Vos’s silhouette at a panel on the right. The HUD floated over it—time stamp, ammo count, red and yellow markers—but Jax had stripped most of the clutter out. Just enough to track what was happening.

  “…and pause,” Jax said.

  The image snapped still.

  They were frozen mid-movement: Tanaka set wide, shield angled; Navarro covering a cross-corridor; Kaden half-turned toward a blinking casualty icon just beyond the doorway.

  Jax sat on the corner of the table beneath the holo, boots resting on the bench, slate in one hand. Helmet off, sleeves rolled. She pointed at the frozen frame with the slate.

  “Mercer,” she said. “Tell me what you hate about this.”

  Kaden took a breath.

  “I’m facing the wrong way,” he said. “My gun isn’t covering Tanaka. I’m already thinking about the casualty two rooms down instead of the one we haven’t made yet.”

  “Good,” Jax said. “What should you have done instead?”

  “Waited until Navarro had the cross-corridor under control,” he said. “Stayed on Tanaka’s back, cleared the room properly, moved only when we had actual space.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Navarro, what were you doing while Mercer was thinking noble medic thoughts?”

  Navarro squinted at the image.

  “Trying to keep that guy on the left from getting clever and flanking us,” she said. “Also thinking that if Mercer pushed past Tanaka I was going to shoot him in the ass on general principle.”

  “See?” Jax said. “Squad-level accountability. Play.”

  The feed rolled again.

  Kaden watched as his past self shifted forward, then caught himself, checking the urge, keeping the muzzle lined up over the top of Tanaka’s shoulder instead of slipping past him. He remembered the extra beat of effort it had taken to stay put.

  Jax let it run through the rest of the breach and into the short, messy firefight that followed. When the last Opp tag winked out, she paused again.

  “Better,” she said. “Not perfect. But better. You can want to run to someone bleeding and still keep your weapon pointed at the thing making them bleed. That’s what I need from you.”

  Kaden nodded. Watching it from the outside made his stomach tighten, seeing how fine the line was between doing it wrong and getting it right.

  “Next,” Jax said. “Vos. Your turn to be admired.”

  Vos muttered something under his breath but flicked his wrist. His slate pinged the main display, swapping the feed.

  Now the view was from Vos’s helmet: same corridor, slightly different angle, Tanaka’s shield filling more of the frame. The replay jumped to a time stamp Vos had tagged.

  He was crouched by a panel, hands moving fast. The turret icon on his HUD glowed orange.

  “Play,” Jax said.

  The video rolled. Vos’s past self hammered through the interface, bypasses flashing. A corridor camera popped up in a corner frame, showing an Opp firing point down-range. He looped something, injected a pulse.

  The turret switched from orange to green on the HUD and started raking the Opp position instead.

  “Pause,” Jax said, as the icon flipped.

  She tilted her head.

  “Good moment?” she asked.

  Vos shrugged.

  “It worked,” he said. “Fast enough. Didn’t get anyone shot.”

  “It worked well,” Jax said. “You didn’t just shut it off. You turned it. That’s a useful instinct. Now show me the one that makes you want to crawl into a vent and never come out.”

  Vos grimaced and flicked the slate again. The scene jumped to a different junction. This time his viewpoint was half-hidden behind Tanaka’s shoulder, panel open, warning lights flashing.

  The turret warning symbol sat in the top corner of the HUD, blinking faster.

  “Play,” Jax said.

  The video rolled. Vos dove deeper into menus, fingers flicking. The warning symbol shifted from orange to red. A second turret icon lit up off-screen. Kaden’s own line of fire spat muzzle flashes, barely visible at the edge.

  “Pause,” Jax said, just before the first simulated shot hit.

  She pointed at the HUD.

  “Talk,” she said.

  Vos sighed.

  “I was trying to trace the whole system,” he said. “Find the root node, not just slap a local override on it. I wanted to know where else the turrets were tied in so we didn’t get jumped by a second bank later.”

  “And what was actually happening while you were communing with your inner engineer?” Jax asked.

  “Tanaka and Navarro were keeping me alive,” he said. “Mercer was trying to watch my lane and theirs. The turret almost put a round into Tanaka’s neck because I decided I needed the elegant solution instead of the fast one.”

  “Correct,” Jax said. “Elegant gets you killed if it shows up late. Next time, local override first, big-picture mapping later. You want to explore the full Opp network, ask Sato for a sand table and off-hours. You don’t do it with your ass hanging out in a kill box.”

  Vos nodded once.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “Good,” she said. “Navarro. Let’s see your highlight reel.”

  Navarro groaned but keyed her slate. The main feed swapped again.

  Her view was disorienting for a second—more movement, more swings of the muzzle—but Kaden recognized the moment as soon as it settled: the second sim’s smoky corridor.

  Navarro tagged a time stamp. Jax nodded.

  “Play.”

  They watched Navarro sweep her lane, short bursts precise. An Opp silhouette tried to cut across the corridor; three rounds cut it down. Another leaned out; she snapped to it, fired, snapped back.

  “Pause,” Jax said.

  She tapped the frozen muzzle position on the wall.

  “This is the good one,” she said. “You checked your corners without letting your rifle drag you into the next room. You didn’t go chasing every motion like a dog after a laser pointer.”

  Navarro snorted.

  “High praise,” she said.

  “Don’t get used to it,” Jax said. “Now show us the one where you tried to be a squad all by yourself.”

  Navarro’s mouth tightened. She flicked her slate. The video jumped backward to the first sim: her stepping a fraction too far, rifle sweeping into Tanaka’s lane, clipping Kaden’s peripheral.

  Jax let it play long enough for the tension to come back into Kaden’s shoulders, then stopped it.

  “Seen?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Navarro said. “I remember feeling like everything was my responsibility. That if I didn’t sweep it, something would slip through.”

  “That feeling?” Jax said. “That’s your enemy. You watch your lane. You trust your squad to watch theirs. If you don’t, you start doing this—” she flicked a hand at the frozen image “—and then Mercer has to patch holes in people that didn’t need to be there.”

  Navarro nodded, jaw tight.

  “I get it,” she said.

  “Good,” Jax said. “Tanaka.”

  Tanaka had been quiet, watching, hands folded loosely on his knees. He reached out, tagged his slate. The main feed swapped to his viewpoint.

  The first clip he chose was simple: second sim, first intersection, him hitting the doorway clean. Shield up, feet planted solid, shotgun just visible at the edge, not firing until the space in front of him was clear.

  Jax let it run a few seconds, then stopped it with a small nod.

  “That’s your job when everything goes right,” she said. “Now show us the other one.”

  Tanaka didn’t argue. The feed jumped.

  Back to the hostage sim—Tanaka pushing just a little too deep into the room, shield angled too far toward the left corner, leaving the right side exposed.

  From Kaden’s memory, the simulated round had taken Tanaka in the neck an instant later.

  Jax froze the frame just before that.

  “There,” she said. “Talk.”

  “Too far in,” Tanaka said. “Tried to block for everyone at once.”

  “And?” she prompted.

  He hesitated, then added, “Didn’t trust Navarro to pick up the right side fast enough. Didn’t trust Mercer to call it if he saw something behind me.”

  Navarro’s eyebrows rose slightly. Kaden glanced at her, then at Jax.

  “There it is,” Jax said. “Trust cuts both ways. You don’t get to complain about them doing too much if you’re taking away their work in the first place.”

  Tanaka’s expression didn’t change much, but he nodded.

  “I’ll work on it,” he said.

  “You will,” she said. “Fixing takes time.”

  She let the holo hang in silence for a few seconds, then dismissed it with a flick of her wrist. The wall went back to dull metal.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “All right,” she said. “You’ve seen yourselves at your best and your worst from the last couple days. Good news is, your ‘worst’ isn’t catastrophic. Yet. Bad news is, in the evaluation, we won’t have the luxury of low stakes.”

  “Nice balance,” Navarro said. “Tiny gold star, giant boot.”

  “That’s the job,” Jax said. “You’ve got the rest of today and tomorrow morning before we strap in. Command wants your heads clear and your bodies not falling apart. I want you using the time to fix what you can control.”

  Vos leaned back against the bench.

  “What does that look like, exactly?” he asked.

  “Sleep,” Jax said. “Food. Stretch your legs without trying to impress anyone. Don’t change your kit at the last second because you had a great idea in the shower. Think about your tells. We’ve all seen them now.”

  She pointed, one by one.

  “Mercer: you want to chase red icons. You fight it, you’re solid. You don’t, we lose you. Navarro: you want to cover the whole ship with one rifle. Your lane is enough. Vos: you want elegant hacks. I’ll take messy and fast. Tanaka: you want to eat every round that might hit someone else. Let them work. You’re not a wall, you’re a door. You move.”

  Her gaze settled on Kaden again, softer for half a second.

  “None of that is a verdict,” she said. “It’s just who you are under load right now. Aurora loves that kind of data. So do I. The question is what you do with it.”

  Kaden nodded. The knot in his chest felt contained now, less like a cloud and more like something he could pick up and examine.

  “Questions?” Jax asked.

  Nobody spoke.

  “Good,” she said. “Then we’re done here for now. Go be people for a bit. We meet again tomorrow before the evaluation for gear checks and last stupid questions. After that, you get to see what a Gamma cruiser looks like from the wrong side of the hull.”

  She slid off the table.

  “Try not to break anything important before then,” she added, heading for the hatch.

  The door shut behind her. The squad room felt a fraction larger without her in it.

  Navarro blew out a breath.

  “Well,” she said. “I don’t know about you, but I am not going to spend the next few hours alone with my thoughts. That’s how people go insane.”

  “Productivity through avoidance,” Vos said. “Any plan in mind?”

  “Cards,” Navarro said immediately. “Barracks. We’ve got a table, we’ve got time, and Mercer owes me back pay from the Academy.”

  “I do not,” Kaden said. “You cheated.”

  “I bluffed,” she said, already heading for the door. “Big difference.”

  Tanaka stood, stretching his shoulders until his armor joints creaked.

  “Better cards than pacing hallways,” he said.

  Vos glanced at his slate.

  “Fine,” he said. “But I’m not playing for actual credits. I know how Navarro treats money.”

  “Coward,” she said over her shoulder.

  Their barracks compartment wasn’t fancy. Four bunks, two stacked on each side. Lockers. A bolted-down table in the middle with fold-out leaves and scars that said it had seen more knife sharpening and gear maintenance than card games.

  Navarro dropped into a chair and slapped a battered deck of cards down onto the tabletop.

  “I knew you had a deck stashed,” Kaden said.

  “Contraband,” she said. “Don’t tell the sergeant. She might make us play for push-ups.”

  Tanaka took the chair to her left. Vos sat across from her. Kaden took the last free seat, the bulkhead at his back.

  Navarro snapped the deck into a shuffle. The cards had the soft, familiar sound of worn corners and too many hands.

  “What are we playing?” Vos asked.

  “Five-card, no wilds, no Aurora interference,” Navarro said. “Loser does laundry. Winner gets to brag. Ties mean everyone calls Mercer ‘Doc’ for a day so he gets used to it.”

  Kaden frowned.

  “Absolutely not,” he said.

  Navarro grinned.

  “Afraid to tempt fate?” she asked.

  “Afraid you’ll commit to the bit,” he said.

  Tanaka rested his elbows on the table.

  “Laundry is acceptable,” he said. “The rest is optional.”

  “Fine,” Navarro said. “Laundry only. For now.”

  She dealt, flicking cards around the table with easy rhythm.

  Kaden picked his up. It was muscle memory: thumb, fan, sort. For a moment he was fifteen again, dim light in the Academy dorm, cheap cards, Jensen’s laugh somewhere to his left, Navarro’s voice needling them both.

  You always play it safe, Kade.

  He blinked once and focused on the present cards. Different table. Different stakes. Jensen was gone. Navarro was still here.

  “Mercer,” Vos said, eyeing his own hand. “You going to stare those into better numbers?”

  “Working on it,” Kaden said.

  They played. Navarro talked the most, a steady stream of commentary and jabs. Vos played tight, folding often, occasionally scooping a small pot with a hand he’d been sitting on quietly. Tanaka was straightforward—honest bets, no flashy bluffs, sometimes punished for it, sometimes rewarded when Navarro overreached.

  Kaden found himself sliding into the old rhythm. Watch faces, not just cards. Listen for the pauses that meant someone was thinking too hard.

  Navarro tried to catch him in a bluff and failed. Vos folded at exactly the right time and glared at the next card like it had personally betrayed him. Tanaka took a round with a satisfied grunt and no visible change in expression.

  For a while, there was no Aurora, no evaluation countdown hovering in his HUD. Just cards on scratched metal and the quiet undercurrent of banter.

  “You’re getting predictable,” Navarro said after losing another hand. “I don’t like it.”

  “Predictable keeps us alive,” Kaden said.

  “Boring keeps us alive,” Vos corrected. “Predictable gets you shot if the Opp figure you out.”

  Tanaka considered his next bet, then shrugged.

  “Better predictable than scattered,” he said. “We’ve done that already.”

  They played until Navarro had to concede she owed at least two loads of laundry and Vos declared his brain done with probabilities for the day.

  Kaden gathered the cards back into a stack, the edges warm from use.

  For a second, he thought about all the things that could go wrong in the sim. Then he looked at the three people at the table and decided that could wait. Tomorrow, he’d be watching their vitals blink on his HUD and dragging them out of imaginary blood. Tonight, they were just marines in a cramped room, arguing over who had miscounted their chips.

  That felt like enough.

  Forty-eight hours went by faster than they had any right to.

  There was another Theta Platoon block the next morning—light work, focused on comms discipline and moving past stalled bodies in narrow spaces. No heavy weights, no endless sleds, just enough motion to keep their edges from rusting.

  Rumors floated through the ship like usual. That Gaunt’s career hinged on this evaluation. That Valiant’s next assignment in Andromeda would be set based on their performance. That Aurora paid more attention during these runs and made adjustments afterward.

  Kaden ignored most of it. He slept when he could, ate when he remembered, and watched his own feeds until he could feel the moment his past self was about to make a choice he now hated. When his HUD finally ticked over to EVALUATION – T-0, he felt as ready as he was going to get.

  The armory was busy but orderly.

  Theta-3 had a bench and a rack section to themselves. Armor plates lined up. Weapons on their designated hooks. AP readouts floated in the corner of each of their HUDs already—full and clean.

  Kaden stepped into his armor, feeling the familiar squeeze as the chest piece sealed. Greaves, thigh plates, gauntlets. The contact points at the inside of his elbows and knees hummed as they synced to the implant in his neck.

  He ran through his med rig systematically, touching each piece in turn. The injectors were slotted into their keyed ports: pain management in one row, coagulant in another, stims tucked into the top. Armor access needles sat in their clips where they’d be able to punch through undersuits and into skin without shredding the seals around them. Combat gauze, sealant patches and auto-tourniquet wraps filled out the rest of the pouches.

  The HUD acknowledged each check with a soft icon change. Nothing flashy—just a quiet shift from amber to green.

  “Check your access ports,” he said, glancing at the others. “Last chance to find a damaged seal before I try to stab something through it.”

  Navarro thumped the side of her leg armor.

  “Ports are fine,” she said. “The person inside them is the questionable part.”

  Vos snapped his SMG’s mag in, then backed it out a millimeter to check the alignment before slapping it home again.

  “Wasp’s synced,” he said. “AP profile looks good. If Aurora decides to have opinions halfway through, I’ll complain later.”

  Tanaka pulled the Bulwark down off its rack. The shield was a shaped slab of composite and kinetic gel, scarred from more than just sims. He ran a hand over its face, then checked the tracers along its edges where Aurora tagged impact dispersion.

  “Lock is solid,” he said. “No play in the mounts.”

  Jax moved among them, already geared up. Her armor was the same pattern as theirs, only more worn at the corners. She checked Tanaka’s shoulder harness herself, testing the give on the shield mount, then smacked the plate twice.

  “If that comes loose in there, I’ll make you carry it one-handed for the rest of the run,” she said.

  “Yes, Sergeant,” he said.

  She moved to Navarro next, flicking open a mag pouch with one finger.

  “Count,” she said.

  Navarro rattled off numbers without looking.

  Jax closed it again.

  “Good,” she said. “Try not to empty them in the first five minutes. We’re not being graded on volume.”

  She stopped in front of Kaden and tapped the med rig panel.

  “You know the order?” she asked.

  “Bleeds, airway, breathing, breaks,” he said. “Danger first, the ones least able to move second. No hero runs into crossfire.”

  “And if someone screams at you to ignore that order because they’re sure their buddy is more important?” she asked.

  “I tell them to hold pressure and wait their turn,” he said.

  She held his gaze for a moment, then nodded.

  “Stick with that,” she said. “Even when it’s me yelling.”

  Vos glanced up at her.

  “You’re planning to get shot?” he asked.

  “I plan for the possibility,” she said. “That’s why you’re here.”

  A call came over the armory intercom.

  “All Theta squads, report to Pod Bay Two,” the voice said. “Repeat, all Theta squads, Pod Bay Two. Evaluation launch in thirty.”

  Jax’s slate pinged in response. She checked it and clipped it back onto her belt.

  “That’s us,” she said. “Helmets on. Last chance to remember you like being alive.”

  They sealed up. The world narrowed to the frame of Kaden’s HUD, the edges of his vision dimming as the helmet’s optics came fully online. Squad tags sparked into place: SSGT JAX, TANAKA, NAVARRO, VOS, MERCER. All green.

  They moved out with the flow of other armored bodies, boots ringing on the deck.

  Pod Bay Two was a long, high space carved into the spine of the Valiant, lined with rows of launch pods on either side. Techs moved between banks of consoles, cables snaking into the pods’ backs. Up above, a narrow gallery ran along one wall. He could see silhouettes up there—Gaunt, Abramov, Okafor, other officers, their faces lit in pulses by holo glow.

  Five pods near the center were tagged in Kaden’s HUD with Theta designators: T1 through T5.

  Theta squads broke toward their assigned pods. Jax led them to T3.

  “Last circle,” she said, raising her voice just enough for them to hear clearly over the background noise. “Closer.”

  They formed a tight half-ring in front of the pod: Tanaka with the Bulwark resting against his leg, Navarro with her rifle mag-checked, Vos with his SMG slung and the Wasp’s node indicator pulsing faintly on his pauldron, Kaden with his med rig panel still open.

  Jax looked at each of them in turn.

  “Listen up,” she said. “This isn’t a scored game at the Academy. This is command watching to see if we can be thrown at a real hull without embarrassing everyone involved.”

  “High bar,” Navarro muttered.

  “Relax,” Jax said. “You’re already above ‘embarrassing.’ We’re shooting for ‘useful.’”

  That earned a snort from Vos.

  “Remember the basics,” Jax went on. “Talk. Don’t clog the net with nonsense, but don’t go radio silent and assume everyone can read your mind. Watch your lanes. If you don’t know what to do, default to not dying and not letting the person next to you die.”

  She nodded at Tanaka.

  “You anchor us,” she said. “Don’t try to be a wall. Be the thing we move around.”

  She tipped her head toward Navarro.

  “You break things that need breaking,” she said. “If you don’t have a target, ask for one.”

  Then Vos.

  “You open the doors,” she said. “And close the ones we don’t want following behind us. Fast and ugly beats slow and clever.”

  Finally Kaden.

  “You keep whoever’s still moving that way,” she said. “If you lose track of yourself, you’re no use to anybody. Breathe. One problem at a time.”

  He nodded.

  “Yes, Sergeant,” he said.

  She gave a short, sharp smile no one outside the circle would’ve noticed.

  “Once we’re in there, I’m in the stack with you,” she said. “No more watching from a balcony. Proper pod, proper drop. You’ll get a very clear view of what it looks like when I’m trying to keep three bad decisions from killing us while we slam into an Opp hull at Mach-fuck.”

  Navarro’s mouth twitched.

  “Somehow that’s almost encouraging,” she said.

  “Take what you can get,” Jax said. “All right. Mount up.”

  The pod hatch irised open, revealing the cramped interior: five harness stations, padding, the faint glow of status lights. It smelled faintly of lubricant and old sweat.

  Tanaka went in first, taking the forward harness where the shield would lock into the pod’s support rail. Navarro and Kaden took the middle left and right. Vos slid in behind Kaden. Jax took the rear position, where she could see all of them and the narrow strip of space between.

  Kaden settled into his cradle. The harness swung down, locking across his chest with a solid clack. His HUD synced to the pod, new icons blinking into life: heart rate, AP reserve, squad vitals tighter in the corner.

  Above, the gallery lights dimmed. The bay’s general hum dropped a notch.

  A calm, neutral voice came over the internal speaker.

  THETA SQUADS, STAND BY FOR SIMULATION LINK.

  NEURAL INTERFACE SYNC IN FIVE… FOUR… THREE…

  Kaden felt the familiar prickle at the base of his skull as the implant leaned into Aurora’s signal. The pod around him became both more solid and less, edges sharpening and smearing at the same time.

  TWO… ONE…

  The world outside his helmet narrowed to black.

  He heard Jax in his ear, steady and close.

  “Theta-3,” she said. “Set.”

  The HUD flickered, wiped itself clean, and began to draw a new world.