They packed the auditorium until the air felt thin.

  Kaden sat shoulder to shoulder with Navarro and Song on a a bolted-down bench, dress blacks sharp against the scuffed gray of Valiant’s interior. The ceiling arched low enough that the front rows could probably read the weld seams. Lighting strips along the edges bled a steady glow that never quite shook the shadows from the corners.

  Row after row of marines in Fleet uniforms filled the stepped seating. Sailors and techs took the side sections. A few officers dotted the front row, silver and gold catching the light when they moved.

  Kaden’s HUD tagged the event in a thin line at the top of his vision.

  ALL HANDS: NEW PERSONNEL BRIEFING

  LOCATION: AUDITORIUM – MARINE DECK

  HOST: CAPT. E. GAUNT – CO, HIS VALIANT (VAL-329)

  He shifted his weight, feeling the faint tackiness of someone else’s dried sweat on the seat. Valiant had been doing this a long time. Onboarding replacements. Plugging gaps.

  Navarro nudged his boot with hers.

  “You look like you’re about to bolt,” she murmured.

  “I’m sitting,” Kaden said.

  “Very tensely.”

  On his left, Song was half-slouched, hands linked across his stomach, eyes on the stage.

  “I’m just wondering,” Song said quietly, “how many times they’ve done this speech. ‘Welcome to Valiant, please ignore the missing limbs.’”

  “Shut up,” Navarro said, without much heat.

  The stage at the front was a raised platform carved out of the hull’s curves. No curtain, no ornamentation—just a podium, a simple Hegemony crest projected on the bulkhead behind it, and three ranks of seats off to the side where senior staff and officers waited.

  Kaden scanned them, letting his implant quietly tag faces as their ident data drifted into range.

  LCDR. L. TAM – CHIEF ENGINEER

  CMDR. HALVORSEN – EXECUTIVE OFFICER

  LT. D. OKAFOR – 3RD SHOCK PLT CMD

  Okafor was tall and dark-skinned, close-cropped hair threaded with gray, his posture that relaxed-straight line of someone who’d been in uniform most of his life. Even sitting, he radiated the sense that he saw the whole room and was already sorting it into useful and not.

  A little further down the row, two marines in blacks sat apart from the bridge officers. One was a compact woman with sleeves rolled just far enough to show the beginning of pale scars on her forearms. Staff sergeant chevrons marked her rank; her name tag and HUD agreed.

  SSGT. R. JAX – SQUAD LDR, THETA-3

  She sat with her arms folded, eyes scanning the crowd instead of the stage. Hair shaved close on the sides, longer on top and pulled back tight. A faint puckered line ran from behind her right ear down beneath her collar. Her gaze passed over Kaden’s section once, unhurried and unbothered.

  Next to her, another staff sergeant in marine blacks sat with her hands loosely on her knees. Slightly older, sharp-featured, dark hair pinned in a bun that looked like it had survived a few bad days. Her tag blinked up a second later.

  SSGT. E. MOREAU – SQUAD LDR, THETA-5

  Song leaned forward a little.

  “Those are ours,” he murmured. “Third Shock royalty.”

  “Don’t call them that,” Kaden said.

  The auditorium lights dipped. A soft chime rolled through the space. Side doors slid shut with hydraulic finality.

  Kaden’s HUD flickered.

  PRIORITY CHANNEL – SHIPWIDE

  LIVE FEED: CAPT. E. GAUNT

  The captain walked out from the left.

  Elias Gaunt wasn’t tall, but he moved like the deck belonged to him. Lean, dark hair going silver at the temples, skin creased at the eyes and mouth from a lifetime of frowning into status displays. His dress uniform was immaculate in a way the room wasn’t. He stopped behind the podium, rested his hands on either side, and waited.

  The noise died in a breath.

  “Welcome aboard Valiant,” he said.

  No echo, no lag. Just his voice threaded cleanly through the air, carried by whatever the ship used for sound now.

  “You are here,” Gaunt went on, “because someone out there ran out of bodies, or time, or both.”

  He let that hang, eyes sweeping the tiers. They were a flat, steady gray. Kaden felt them pass over him and move on.

  “Some of you transferred from hulls that took hits and stayed in the fight,” Gaunt said. “Some of you, like our fresh marines, came straight from nodes that pretended to be ships. All of you have one thing in common: Aurora looked at your numbers, the Hegemony looked at your files, and both decided you were worth sending to a hull that doesn’t get to retreat when it’s inconvenient.”

  A few people shifted in their seats.

  “Valiant was commissioned fifty-six years ago,” Gaunt said. “Assault cruiser. Spearhead-class. Built to run the corridors, hit hard, and make other ships’ lives miserable. She’s held mouths in the Carina Corridor, pulled freighters out of Ross Spur while Opposition guns chewed at her flanks, and boarded more hulls than you have birthdays.”

  Kaden pictured the scarred hull he’d seen through the berth window. The faded eagle with its sword. The fresh plates over old burns.

  “That’s what the log says. What the log doesn’t tell you is that every one of those lines is built on bone and blood. Some of the people who earned those numbers are still here. Most aren’t.”

  Silence settled heavier.

  Kaden’s HUD ticked a quiet annotation at the bottom of his vision.

  HOST NODE: HIS VALIANT – ACTIVE

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  PERSONNEL INTEGRATION: IN PROGRESS (MULTIPLE)

  Gaunt didn’t glance at the overlay. He didn’t need to.

  “You all watched the Erebus updates,” he said. “I know this because I’ve seen the access logs, and because you’re not idiots. You saw the words: failed offensive, strategic redeployment, reconstituted formations.”

  His tone didn’t change, but the temperature in the room seemed to drop.

  “Valiant was at Erebus,” Gaunt said. “We took a beating. We did not break. Some ships didn’t. Some squads didn’t. We are now in the part of the war where the Hegemony scrapes together what’s left and plugs the holes.”

  He lifted one hand from the podium, fingers splaying briefly.

  “That’s you,” he said. “You are plugs. That is not an insult. A good plug keeps the hull from venting. A good plug keeps the line from collapsing. A good plug buys the people behind it another day to breathe. That is what is expected of you.”

  Song’s foot tapped silently against the deck. Navarro’s jaw clenched.

  “In three weeks ship-time,” Gaunt said, “we will exit the main corridor into the Andromeda forward muster. From there, we will join whatever invitation the Opposition has left us. You are not here to watch. You are here to work.”

  He turned his head toward the side seating, picking out the platoon commander with a glance.

  “Lieutenant Okafor,” Gaunt said. “On your feet.”

  Okafor stood smoothly, hands falling to his sides, then clasping behind his back. He stepped onto the edge of the stage and faced the room.

  “This is Lieutenant Daniel Okafor,” Gaunt said. “Platoon commander, Third Shock. If you are a marine in Third Shock, he owns your duty roster.”

  A couple of thin laughs flickered and died.

  “Third Shock fields five Shock squads,” Gaunt continued. “Theta-1 through Theta-5. Two of those squads, Theta-3 and Theta-5 namely, took the worst of Erebus and are rebuilding hard. Some of you will be in those stacks. Some of you will support them. All of you will feel it if they fail.”

  He shifted his attention down the row.

  “Staff Sergeant Jax. Staff Sergeant Moreau.”

  Jax and Moreau rose together and joined Okafor on the stage, flanking him. Jax to his right, Moreau to his left. Three different shapes of the same thing: people whose lives were measured in operations, not semesters.

  “Jax leads Theta-3. Moreau leads Theta-5,” Gaunt said. “You’ll get to know them. Some of you faster than you’d like.”

  He looked back to the crowd.

  “In a moment,” Gaunt said, “you’ll be dismissed to departmental briefs. Third Shock will stay put and get more bad news from Lieutenant Okafor and his sergeants. Before that, one last thing.”

  He let his hands rest on the podium again, posture easing a fraction.

  “Valiant is old,” he said. “She creaks. She smells like scorched metal and recycled sweat. Her paint’s half gone. Some of her plates don’t match. Out there”, he tilted his head toward the unseen hull, “the Opposition does not care how pretty your ship is. They care whether your guns fire when you pull the trigger, whether your pods hit where they’re supposed to, and whether your boarding teams keep moving once they’re inside.”

  He glanced back at the crest behind him, the stylized aurora swirl and the Hegemony eagle.

  “This hull has come home from every fight they’ve sent her to,” Gaunt said. “That’s not luck. That’s the people on her decks. You’re part of that now. Don’t embarrass her.”

  He straightened.

  “Dismissed to departmental briefs,” he said. “Third Shock, remain seated.”

  The room exploded into motion. Buckles clicked, boots scraped. Groups peeled off by color-coded tags in their HUDs: engineers, gunnery crews, navigation, general marines.

  Kaden stayed where he was. Navarro did too. Song let out a slow breath and scrubbed a hand over his face.

  “Third Shock,” he said. “We really are the stupid ones.”

  “Shock, not stupid,” Navarro said. Then, after a beat, “Maybe a little stupid.”

  Rows thinned until only clusters marked for Third Shock remained, split across both sides of the auditorium. Above Kaden’s section, text floated.

  3RD SHOCK – THETA-3 / THETA-5

  Okafor stepped away from the officers’ row and came to stand where Gaunt had been, the podium between him and the marines. Jax and Moreau moved to either side, a deliberate flanking.

  “On your feet,” Okafor called.

  Third Shock rose.

  “Look at me,” he said. “If your HUD says Theta-5, you’re mostly looking at Staff Sergeant Moreau. Theta-3, you’re looking at Staff Sergeant Jax. Everybody looks at me when I’m talking.”

  A murmur of amusement, quickly gone.

  Kaden’s HUD confirmed.

  UNIT: THETA-3

  SQUAD LEADER: SSGT. R. JAX

  “Try not to miss me,” Song murmured.

  “Try not to die stupid,” Navarro said.

  “Same,” he said.

  Okoye let their voices die down, then continued.

  “Third Shock took losses,” he said. “You know this. Some of you were there. Some of you weren’t. I’m not going to recite names at you now. They’re posted outside the marine chapel. You can introduce yourselves later.”

  He didn’t soften it.

  “Here’s what you need to know,” he went on. “The Opposition didn’t stop to mourn you when your squads died. Valiant didn’t stop. The front didn’t stop. We don’t have the luxury of building you slow and safe. So we are taking what’s left, what’s new, and what Aurora says might be worth the trouble, and we’re turning that into five squads that can board and not fall apart.”

  He nodded toward Jax, then Moreau.

  “Theta-1 through Theta-5 are my Shock squads,” Okoye said. “Today, the focus is on the ones rebuilding hardest, Theta-3 and Theta-5. You are going to be at the sharpest end more often than not. Sometimes you go together. Sometimes one of you opens the door and the other cleans up. You are the tip of the spear. That means when planning is wrong, you bleed first. When planning is right, you make everyone else’s job easier.”

  He stepped back a pace, ceding the front to the squad leaders.

  “Staff Sergeant Jax,” he said. “Theta-3 is yours.”

  Jax moved forward a step, hands clasped behind her back.

  “Theta-3,” she said. “Stand.”

  Tags and names flickered in Kaden’s periphery as people straightened more fully. He kept his eyes on the front and let his implant do the looking: Navarro next to him, chin lifted; Tanaka’s larger silhouette three rows ahead; Vos off to the side, tech harness sitting awkwardly on dress blacks.

  LCPL. K. TANAKA – THETA-3

  CPL. E. VOS – THETA-3

  PVT. T. NAVARRO – THETA-3

  PVT. K. MERCER – THETA-3

  “We’ll talk properly downstairs,” Jax said. “Right now, you just need three things.”

  She held up one finger.

  “One: You will not die for free,” she said. “If you die, it will be because I misjudged something or the Opposition did something clever. You will not die because you weren’t listening, because you were staring at your HUD, or because you decided to freelance.”

  Second finger.

  “Two: You are not a family,” she said. “Not yet. You’re not even a squad. You’re a pile of tools the Hegemony and Aurora dumped on my deck. Over the next few weeks we’ll see if you can become something that doesn’t break at the first bad corridor.”

  Third.

  “Three: Whatever you think you know from the Academy or your last hull, Valiant will prove you wrong. This ship has her own way of doing things. You’ll learn it, or Lieutenant Okafor will send you somewhere that needs you less.”

  Her gaze drifted over their section for a moment, weighing. It paused on Kaden’s row, on the cluster of rookies. It wasn’t hostile or welcoming—just measuring.

  “Theta-3,” Jax said. “Follow the blue AR path to your ready room on the marine deck. You’ll find your bunks, stow your gear, and then we’ll find out what you’re good for.”

  A thin blue arrow appeared in Kaden’s HUD, leading out toward one of the side exits.

  Next to Okafor, Moreau took a small step forward.

  “Theta-5,” she said, her accent clipping the words. “You’re with me. Green path. Same drill.”

  “Dismissed,” Okafor added.

  The spell broke.

  Theta-5 peeled off toward a green line drifting in their HUDs, Song’s shape vanishing into that current of bodies. Theta-3 turned toward the blue arrow, boots ringing on the metal deck as they funneled toward the hatch.

  Navarro bumped Kaden’s shoulder with hers as they walked.

  “Welcome to the Valiant,” she said under her breath. “Think she likes us?”

  Kaden glanced back once, just long enough to see Gaunt leaving the stage, Okafor speaking quietly with Jax and Moreau. The ship-node hummed at the edge of his awareness, logging, measuring, filing them under some internal category.

  “I don’t think it matters if she likes us,” Kaden said.

  “What does?” Navarro asked.

  He followed the blue line out into Valiant’s corridor, breathing in the dry tang of metal and old fires.

  “Whether we make ourselves useful before she makes up her mind,” he said.