This is a work of fan fiction. All characters, places, events, ships, ship designs and other content originating from Star Citizen, Squadron 42 or their publishers and developers remain the property of Cloud Imperium Rights LLC and Cloud Imperium Rights Limited.
The first thing Jim noticed about MacArthur, in the Kilian system, was how crowded the sky looked.
The Crusader Industries Genesis starliner had been descending for several minutes before the cloud thinned enough for the shipyards to appear. Until then there had been only pale morning light across the window and the occasional change in engine note as the transport adjusted its approach. Then the world opened beneath them and half the cabin leaned towards the glass at once.
The shipyards were everywhere.
Structures hung above MacArthur like pieces of a second horizon: docks, construction frames, orbital platforms and the long angular shapes of Navy vessels being built or serviced among them. Some were too distant for him to identify. Others were large enough that distance barely seemed to matter. Tugs moved around them like sparks around machinery. Closer to the planet, atmospheric traffic crossed in ordered lanes, military craft mixed with transports and service ships in a pattern that looked chaotic until he watched it long enough to see the discipline underneath.
Jim had grown up around civilian transport crews and maintenance yards, so ships had never seemed mystical to him. They leaked. They overheated. They broke at inconvenient times and cost more to keep alive than their owners liked to admit. The people who flew them complained about them endlessly and took personal offence if anyone else did the same.
MacArthur was different.
It did not feel like a world that happened to have ships.
It felt like a world built around the assumption that ships were the reason for everything else.
The cabin of the Genesis had been noisy for most of the trip. Nearly forty cadets occupied the passenger seats, all heading for the same Academy intake, most trying not to look as nervous as they were. The air had the familiar dry, slightly warm smell of a passenger vessel that had carried too many people for too many hours: recycled atmosphere, fabric, hot electronics and somebody’s aggressively sweet breakfast drink from three rows behind Jim.
Across the aisle, a dark-haired cadet had spent much of the descent pretending he wasn’t looking out of the window as often as Jim was.
“First time?” he asked.
Jim turned from the shipyards. “Is it that obvious?”
“You’ve been staring out there for ten minutes.”
“So have you.”
“Different reason.”
“Which is?”
He leaned slightly towards the window as another restricted pad slid beneath them. “I’m trying to work out which areas we’re not supposed to go into.”
Jim looked at him.
He grinned and held out a hand across the aisle. “Isaac Morrow.”
“Jim Radcliffe.”
They shook hands.
“Radcliffe,” Isaac repeated. “That’s too long.”
“It’s two syllables,” Jim said.
“Still too long.”
“You’ve known me about six seconds.”
“Exactly. Haven’t got time to waste.”
The Genesis banked gently. A broad field of Academy buildings came into view beyond a wide flight apron and low service structures. Another Genesis was already descending towards a neighbouring pad, and a third waited farther out in the approach pattern. The sight gave Jim a better idea of the intake size than the briefings had. They were one cabinful among several.
Isaac looked back at Jim as though the answer to some private calculation had just presented itself.
“Rad,” he said.
“No.”
“Definitely Rad.”
“No.”
The transport shuddered through a pocket of rough air.
Isaac nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. That’s staying.”
Jim decided not to dignify that with an answer.
The landing itself was smoother than the approach. A low vibration ran through the seat frame as the Genesis settled, followed by the change in engine tone that told everyone aboard they were finally on the ground. The restraint indicator went dark.
Nearly forty new cadets stood at once and immediately discovered that nearly forty people could not retrieve luggage from the overhead bins at the same time.
A duffel dropped two rows ahead. Someone swore. A tall cadet blocked the aisle while trying to pull a case free without turning it. Behind Jim, somebody attempted to climb across the seat rather than wait.
Isaac watched the congestion with growing interest.
Jim should have recognised the expression.
He was looking at a problem and considering how much worse he could make it.
“Don’t,” Jim said.
“I haven’t done anything.”
“Yet.”
“You really don’t know me.”
“I’m learning quickly.”
By the time they reached the exit, the second Genesis had touched down. Through the open view beyond the terminal structure Jim could see its passengers beginning to move, another stream of uniforms and bags joining theirs. The air outside the transport was colder than he expected. It carried a faint metallic tang beneath the clean morning chill, along with the distant smell of hot machinery from somewhere beyond the landing field. Engines rumbled across the apron. A service vehicle passed behind a marked barrier, its tyres hissing over the damp surface.
For the first time since leaving home, the decision felt real.
Jim had arrived at MacArthur.
At twenty, he had more hair than sense, a duffel containing everything the Academy had permitted him to bring, and a fairly uncomplicated ambition.
Jim wanted to fly.
Not command a squadron. Not stand on the bridge of a capital ship while everyone waited for him to produce a brilliant decision. He had never imagined speeches, ceremonies or medals. He wanted a cockpit, a destination and enough responsibility to matter without having everyone else’s life balanced on whatever he said next.
The Academy, as it turned out, cared far less about what Jim wanted than he did.
Their first military operation was defeated by a luggage scanner.
The intake hall was bright, crowded and ruthlessly organised. Coloured lines marked the floor and divided arriving cadets into processing groups. Identification terminals stood in rows between uniformed staff. Other lanes led towards medical screening, equipment issue and accommodation assignments. The place smelled of floor cleaner, fabric from freshly issued uniforms and the faint electrical warmth of too many terminals running in one enclosed space.
A screen above them repeated the same instruction in three different formats.
KEEP IDENTIFICATION READY. FOLLOW ASSIGNED ROUTE. DO NOT LEAVE YOUR PROCESSING GROUP.
They managed two of the three.
The scanner in their lane swallowed the identification tag of the cadet ahead of him, made an unhealthy mechanical click and stopped.
The display turned amber.
Then red.
PROCESSING FAULT. WAIT FOR ASSISTANCE.
Isaac leaned around Jim’s shoulder.
“That’s useful.”
“Leave it.”
“I’m looking.”
“Look from there.”
A maintenance panel sat beneath the display.
Jim saw Isaac notice it.
“Isaac.”
“What?”
“You’ve been here less than half an hour.”
“That sounds right.”
“You’re already opening Navy equipment.”
“I’m not opening it.”
The panel clicked.
He pulled it towards him.
“Now I’m opening it.”
A broad-shouldered cadet waiting behind them exhaled through his nose. He had short dark-auburn hair and the sort of hands Jim had seen around workshops all his life: clean enough for inspection, but marked by tiny cuts and stubborn grease that never entirely left the creases.
“If you bridge that,” he said, nodding towards Isaac’s fingers, “you’ll probably shut down the whole bank.”
Isaac stopped with his hand halfway inside.
“I wasn’t going to bridge it.”
“You were looking at the bridge contacts.”
“I was considering them.”
“Consider something else.”
Isaac withdrew his hand with exaggerated care. “Please. Be my guest.”
The other cadet crouched beside the scanner.
He did not touch anything immediately.
That caught Jim’s attention.
People who did not understand machinery tended to press things. People who did understand it usually looked first.
He traced the cable run with his eyes, reached behind the scanner housing and pushed one connector firmly home.
The terminal restarted.
The red message vanished. A moment later, the missing identification tag slid back onto the tray.
Isaac looked almost disappointed.
“That’s it?”
The cadet stood. “Loose connection.”
“You could’ve made it sound more impressive.”
“Why?”
“Then I’d have learnt something.”
“You learnt not to touch the bridge contacts.”
Jim laughed.
Unfortunately, so did the petty officer walking towards them.
Not because she found Isaac funny.
She stopped in front of the three of them and looked first at the open maintenance panel, then at Isaac.
The intake hall continued around them: tags scanning, names being called, bags thumping onto counters. None of that helped.
“Cadet,” she said, “did you open that panel?”
Isaac hesitated just long enough to consider lying badly.
“Technically—”
“Close it.”
He did.
The petty officer looked at the cadet who had fixed the connection. “Name?”
“Daniel Cross, Petty Officer.”
Her eyes moved to Jim.
“Jim Radcliffe.”
Then back to Isaac.
“Isaac Morrow.”
“Good. Now I know what to put on the work detail.”
That was how Daniel, Isaac and Jim spent their first thirty-five minutes at the Academy carrying sealed supply crates from one end of the intake hall to the other.
It was not especially difficult. Jim suspected that was deliberate. The point was not punishment so much as making sure Isaac understood that touching things created work, and that the people standing nearest to him were likely to share it.
Daniel carried his crates without complaint.
Jim complained once.
Isaac complained continuously and somehow sounded cheerful about it.
By the time they finished, their original processing group had moved on without them. An administrator checked their tags, frowned at her terminal and pointed them towards another marker.
“Seven-C. Join them before they leave.”
Their new group had gathered beneath a blue sign on the far side of the hall.
Somebody underneath it was arguing with two administrative staff at once.
He was wiry, dark-haired and apparently incapable of speaking without his hands becoming involved.
“I’m not saying your list is wrong,” he told them.
One of the administrators folded her arms. “Then what are you saying, Cadet?”
“I’m saying the people are wrong.”
“The people are not wrong.”
“They’re standing in the wrong place.”
“Then move to your assigned position.”
“I am in my assigned position.”
“Then there is no problem.”
“There are six people here assigned to Seven-B.”
“Then they should move.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to—”
A young woman nearby finally stepped forward. She had dark hair tied back neatly and the patient expression of somebody watching two doors repeatedly attempt to close on each other.
“Seven-B is the next marker down,” she said. “Their floor indicator isn’t illuminated.”
The administrator looked.
The indicator was dark.
The talkative cadet pointed at the woman as though she had just proved his entire philosophy of life.
“Thank you.”
“You could have said the marker wasn’t working,” she replied.
“I did.”
“No. You said the people were wrong.”
“Same problem.”
“No, it isn’t.”
She moved away before he could answer.
Isaac watched her go. “I like her.”
Daniel adjusted the strap on his duffel. “You don’t know her.”
“Neither do you.”
“Exactly.”
The talkative cadet turned towards them. “New additions?”
“Apparently,” Jim said.
“Luc Moreau.”
He pointed after the woman. “Aisha Rahman. She has been here approximately fourteen minutes longer than me and already thinks she’s in charge.”
Aisha turned from several metres away.
“I can still hear you, Moreau.”
Luc grinned. “I know.”
That was his first useful lesson about him. Silence did not simply fail to bother Luc. He seemed to regard it as an empty space somebody ought to fill.
Before they could say anything else, the noise in the hall began to change.
It did not stop at once. Conversations died in patches as people noticed the officer approaching. Bags lowered. Backs straightened. A cadet near the front ended a sentence halfway through and never finished it.
The officer was younger than he expected.
At twenty, Jim thought thirty-six qualified as ancient. Lieutenant Commander Adrian Hale was thirty-six: tall and lean, with dark hair kept close to regulation and pale grey eyes that moved over a group without seeming to hurry.
He stopped in front of Seven-C.
“Group Seven-C?”
Nobody answered quickly enough.
Hale waited.
Aisha spoke first. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. At least one of you knows where you are.”
Luc’s mouth twitched.
Hale noticed.
He seemed to notice everything.
“You have been told that admission to this Academy means you are among the best candidates available to the United Empire of Earth.”
A few shoulders straightened.
“It does not.”
Those shoulders relaxed again.
“It means somebody believes you might eventually become useful.”
Isaac glanced at Jim.
Jim kept his face still.
“The next stage of your lives is not designed to confirm what you already think you’re good at,” Hale continued. “It is designed to prove you wrong. Some of you arrived expecting to fly fighters. You won’t. Some of you intend to command ships. You shouldn’t. Some of you believe engineering is beneath you.”
His gaze drifted towards the bank of luggage scanners.
Isaac became fascinated by the floor.
“Some of you will discover that you are considerably better at something you currently dislike than the thing you have spent your life wanting.”
That bothered him more than he wanted it to.
Jim had come to fly.
It had not occurred to him that the Navy might let him discover he shouldn’t.
Hale began walking.
“Bring your belongings. Stay together. If anybody becomes lost between here and accommodation, I will assume the rest of the group deliberately abandoned them and evaluate your teamwork accordingly.”
Luc raised a hand.
Hale stopped.
“Yes?”
“Is that a joke, sir?”
“No.”
Luc lowered his hand. “Understood, sir.”
They followed.
The Academy complex unfolded around them through broad corridors, enclosed walkways and open training areas. Windows looked towards the distant shipyards and the continuous movement above MacArthur. Heavy transports climbed through the grey morning. Smaller craft crossed between facilities. Beyond a security fence, ground crews worked around training hardware while another group of cadets jogged in formation under the attention of an instructor who appeared deeply offended by their pace.
The place had its own smell: cleaned floors indoors, cold air outside, machine lubricant around maintenance areas, hot food near the mess and the faint dry scent of fabric from hundreds of new uniforms.
Luc spent most of the walk trying to memorise where everything was.
Aisha checked the route twice.
Daniel watched maintenance crews whenever they passed them.
Isaac watched restricted doors.
Jim watched everyone else.
Jim did not think of that as a skill.
Not then.
It was simply something he had always done. Around the maintenance yards where he grew up, small inconsistencies mattered more than confident explanations. A vibration that had not been there yesterday. A loader arriving late. A mechanic checking the same coupling twice. Most expensive failures announced themselves quietly before anybody wanted to admit there was a problem.
People were not so different.
By the time they reached accommodation, he knew Luc talked more when he was uncertain, Daniel became quieter when concentrating, Isaac disliked being told not to touch something and Aisha checked information even when somebody competent had already given it to her.
None of those observations felt important.
They were simply there.
Their barracks consisted of two long rows of bunks, individual lockers, shared washrooms and a communal study area that somebody had designed under the optimistic assumption that several dozen young adults would keep it tidy.
Three cadets were already inside.
One sat on a bunk surrounded by his belongings as though unpacking had happened to him rather than been performed by him. He was stocky, with sandy-brown hair and a short beard that looked as if it had reached the exact limit the Academy would tolerate.
The other two were obviously brothers.
Actually, they were more than obviously brothers.
They had the same dark-blond hair, the same grey eyes and the same habit of glancing towards each other before answering a question. One was slightly broader through the shoulders. The other looked as though sleep had been an optional activity for most of his life.
The stocky cadet looked up from his half-open bag.
“New victims.”
Aisha dropped her duffel beside an empty bunk. “Cadets.”
“Give it a week.”
He stood and offered a hand. “Henry Voss.”
Then he pointed towards the twins.
“Tobias and Caleb Ward.”
Luc looked from one to the other. “Which is which?”
The broader twin raised a hand. “Caleb.”
The thinner one nodded once. “Tobias.”
Luc considered them. “Excellent. I’ll forget that immediately.”
“Call us Ward,” Caleb said.
“Both of you?”
Caleb stared at him. “That’s generally how surnames work.”
Henry laughed.
There was a familiarity between the three of them the rest of them did not have yet. They interrupted one another without offence. Tobias knew where Caleb had put something without asking. Henry started a sentence and Caleb finished it incorrectly just to annoy him.
They had grown up together, they learnt. Henry was a year older and not related to the twins, but the distinction seemed mostly legal. They had arrived from the same community, applied separately and somehow ended up in the same intake group.
“Thought we’d finally get rid of him,” Tobias said, indicating Henry.
Henry looked wounded. “You’d miss me.”
“We’ve been trying to find out.”
That was how it started.
Nothing dramatic happened. Nobody shook hands and announced that they would still matter to one another decades later. They were young, tired, away from home and assigned to the same building.
Friendship did the rest.
The first week was designed to remove any remaining belief that joining the Navy involved spending most of one’s time heroically staring through cockpit glass.
They ran.
They studied.
They were scanned, measured, shouted at, issued equipment, corrected on how to wear that equipment, corrected again and taught an impressive number of ways to stand incorrectly.
MacArthur changed character with the hour. Mornings could be cold enough that breath showed briefly above the flight apron. By midday the training areas smelled of warmed paving and sweat. In the evenings, the shipyards lit the low cloud with industrial glow while transports continued to rise and descend long after the Academy day was supposed to have finished.
The mess hall became their first real territory.
Not because the food was good.
It wasn’t.
But because it was warm, loud and full of people who were equally tired. Trays struck tables. Chairs scraped. Somebody was always arguing about an assessment. Someone else was always asleep upright over a drink.
Caleb spent the week waiting for flight training.
So did Jim.
Tobias became noticeably happier whenever somebody gave him a terminal and a problem with too much information.
Daniel was drawn towards anything with a maintenance panel.
Isaac was drawn towards anything with a warning label.
Luc somehow knew everybody’s timetable by the third day and still managed to arrive late twice.
Aisha rarely spoke first during group exercises. She simply waited until the rest of them had made a mess of things and then asked the question that made everyone stop arguing.
Henry collected stories.
Not important stories.
Not at first.
Which instructor had once locked himself out of a simulator room. Which hangar’s coffee dispenser had been declared a maintenance hazard. Which cadet had tried to impress a flight instructor by quoting regulations and been asked to recite the next nineteen pages from memory.
Most of it was probably rubbish.
The problem with Henry was that he remembered rubbish with remarkable accuracy.
“I never said that,” Isaac protested one evening.
They were meant to be studying. Their tablets and notes covered the communal table, but very little studying was happening. Rain ticked against the windows, soft enough that it was almost lost beneath the distant vibration of traffic climbing away from MacArthur.
Henry looked delighted. “You absolutely did.”
“I said I thought the safety limiter could be bypassed.”
“You said, and I quote, ‘If they didn’t want us to bypass it, they’d have made the panel harder to remove.’”
Daniel looked up from a maintenance manual. “That sounds exactly like you.”
Isaac pointed at him. “You’re supposed to be my friend.”
“We’ve known you a week.”
Aisha did not look up from her notes. “And already you’ve united us.”
Luc raised his cup. “Leadership.”
Isaac muttered something about betrayal.
The room settled into the easy noise they had begun to develop: pages turning, someone laughing from the bunks, Caleb complaining about a navigation worksheet, Luc talking while pretending not to talk.
Henry eventually ran out of current gossip and moved on to ghost stories.
There are places where ghost stories should sound ridiculous.
A brightly lit Navy Academy surrounded by thousands of personnel ought to have been one of them.
Mostly, they did.
That was why they enjoyed them.
Henry told them about a freighter whose crew supposedly vanished between two systems while the ship kept flying its route. Caleb dismantled the story in less than a minute because the route Henry gave did not even connect the systems in the version he had heard.
“That proves my point,” Henry said.
Caleb stared at him. “It proves the story is rubbish.”
Tobias looked up from his terminal. “It proves that version is rubbish.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No, it isn’t. Stories change.”
Caleb folded his arms. “Things that happened don’t.”
Henry pointed towards Tobias. “Exactly.”
Caleb looked from one to the other. “I wasn’t agreeing with either of you.”
Jim was sitting on the floor with his back against a bunk, enjoying the argument more than the stories.
“Got any that might actually be true?” Jim asked.
Henry stopped smiling for a moment.
“Maybe.”
Isaac leaned forward. “That’s better.”
Aisha sighed. “You realise he did that deliberately.”
“Did what?” Isaac asked.
“Said one word in a mysterious voice so you’d stop pretending to study.”
Henry looked offended. “This isn’t mysterious.”
Luc settled deeper into his chair. “Excellent. Tell us the completely ordinary story.”
Henry glanced at the closed door, caught himself doing it and smiled at the ridiculousness of the gesture.
“It’s Navy,” he said.
Luc spread his hands. “We are Navy.”
“We’re cadets.”
“Administrative detail.”
Henry ignored him. “I heard it from somebody back home who’d heard it from a logistics officer.”
Caleb groaned. “Here we go.”
Henry pointed at him. “You’ve heard it too.”
“I’ve heard you tell it.”
“Before that.”
Caleb’s expression shifted slightly.
Tobias noticed. “So have I.”
Henry turned to him. “Which version?”
Tobias set his tablet down. “Didn’t have a name.”
The change in Henry was small, but Jim saw it. Henry was still enjoying himself; he had simply become more attentive.
Daniel noticed too.
“What happened?” Daniel asked.
Henry hesitated before answering. “A ship disappeared.”
Isaac waited for more, then frowned. “That’s it?”
“No,” Henry said.
Isaac leaned back in his chair. “Good, because ships disappearing in space isn’t much of a ghost story.”
Henry looked at him. “It came back.”
Luc sat forward. “Better.”
Daniel glanced between Henry and Tobias. “Where?”
“Depends who’s telling it,” Henry replied. “One version says near the Vanduul frontier. Another says it was found well inside UEE space. I’ve heard one that says it appeared near a jump point that wasn’t active.”
Aisha closed her tablet. “Ships don’t just appear.”
“I know.”
Daniel asked, “What kind of ship?”
“Nobody agrees.”
Caleb gave a satisfied nod. “Of course they don’t.”
Henry ignored him. “Some say military.”
Daniel asked, “Human military?”
“Human in the version I heard.”
Tobias shook his head. “The one I heard said alien.”
Henry pointed at him. “Exactly.”
Tobias frowned. “That isn’t exactly. That’s the opposite.”
“That’s why it’s interesting.”
Isaac grinned. “This is already better than studying.”
Aisha gave him a flat look. “Everything is better than studying to you.”
Henry continued. “In one version, a patrol finds it drifting. No running lights. No transponder response. Nothing on comms. They approach, and before they can board it, every system on the patrol ships goes down.”
Luc asked, “EMP?”
“Maybe.”
“Then that’s equipment failure, not a ghost.”
“They get their systems back.”
Daniel waited. “And?”
Henry shrugged. “The ship’s gone.”
Caleb laughed. “Come on.”
“I told you it was a story.”
Daniel was still considering it. “If it was drifting and genuinely abandoned, somebody would have boarded it eventually.”
“Another version says they did,” Henry replied.
Isaac looked pleased. “And?”
Henry met his eyes. “They didn’t come back.”
Caleb threw a cushion at him.
Henry caught it.
“You asked.”
“I absolutely did not.”
Tobias had not joined the laughter.
He was watching Henry.
“You said there’s a name,” Tobias said.
The room did not become frightening. Nothing changed outside. The rain continued. Someone in the next barracks laughed loudly enough for them to hear through the wall. A shuttle climbed beyond the window and its engine note briefly deepened the hum in the floor.
But their table went quieter.
Henry glanced towards the door again.
Aisha noticed and rolled her eyes. “If you’re about to tell us this is classified, I’m leaving.”
“It isn’t classified.”
“How do you know?”
“Because if it was classified, I wouldn’t know it.”
“That is not how rumours work.”
Henry conceded the point with a small movement of his head.
Tobias leaned forward. “What’s the name?”
Henry took a breath.
“Odin.”
The word meant nothing to him.
Not then.
Caleb frowned. “That’s it?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Sounds like somebody named a ghost story after an old god.”
“Maybe they did.”
Isaac looked disappointed. “I was expecting something more sinister.”
Luc asked, “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something with numbers.”
Luc nodded gravely. “Numbers are terrifying.”
Aisha reopened her tablet. “Solved, then. Ancient mythology attacked the Navy. Can we finish the navigation work now?”
People started talking again.
The moment should have ended there.
It almost did.
Then a voice came from behind them.
“Where did you hear that name?”
Nobody moved for a second.
Lieutenant Commander Hale stood in the doorway.
Jim had not heard him approach. Judging by everyone else’s faces, nobody else had either.
Henry sat very still.
The change in Hale was slight.
He did not look frightened. His posture did not change. He did not reach for a comm or suddenly become theatrical.
The small trace of amusement he usually carried when cadets were being idiots simply disappeared.
Henry cleared his throat. “Just a story, sir.”
“I asked where you heard the name.”
“Someone back home, sir. A family friend. He’d heard it from somebody else.”
“Who?”
Henry hesitated. “I don’t know the original source, sir.”
Hale looked towards Tobias. “Ward?”
Tobias straightened. “I’d heard something similar before, sir. No name.”
“From whom?”
“My father mentioned it once. I don’t think he believed it.”
Hale’s gaze travelled across the rest of them.
Nobody volunteered anything.
Finally, Hale’s eyes settled on Jim.
“Radcliffe?”
“No, sir. First time I’ve heard it.”
Hale held Jim’s gaze for another second, then looked back to Henry.
“There are enough real dangers beyond these walls without cadets inventing new ones.”
Henry nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You have assessments tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then concern yourselves with those.”
He turned to leave.
Isaac spoke.
Of course he did.
“Sir?”
Hale stopped.
For the first time since Jim had met him, Isaac looked as though he genuinely regretted attracting attention.
“Was there actually a project called Odin?” he asked.
The room went completely still.
Hale looked back at him.
Several seconds passed.
Then he said, “Get some sleep, Cadet Morrow.”
He left.
They listened to his footsteps fade along the corridor.
Caleb broke the silence first.
“Well.”
Luc looked at Henry. “Your stupid story just became considerably less stupid.”
Aisha stared at the empty doorway. “No.”
She spoke quietly, more thoughtful than worried.
“It became stranger.”
Tobias already had his terminal open.
Henry saw it. “Don’t.”
Tobias looked at him. “I’m just checking something.”
Aisha pointed at the screen. “He very clearly told us to go to bed.”
Isaac leaned over Tobias’s shoulder. “Technically, he told me to go to bed.”
Daniel looked at him. “You’re helping nobody.”
“I rarely do.”
Tobias entered the word.
ODIN
The Academy search returned almost instantly.
NO RECORDS FOUND
Tobias frowned.
Henry leaned closer. “There. Nothing.”
“Try it again,” Isaac said.
Aisha exhaled. “Why?”
“Because that’s what testing is.”
Tobias changed the search scope and ran it again.
NO RECORDS FOUND
Caleb shrugged. “Mystery solved.”
Tobias did not move.
Jim watched his face rather than the screen.
“What?” Jim asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
Caleb pointed at the display. “That’s what it says.”
Tobias shook his head. “No. That’s the problem.”
Isaac moved closer. “Explain.”
Tobias cleared the search and typed another old mythological name.
The screen filled with results: historical references, civilian ship names, articles, old fiction, organisations and surnames.
He cleared it and entered another.
More results.
Then he typed ODIN again.
NO RECORDS FOUND
Luc looked from the screen to Tobias. “All right. I admit that is odd.”
Aisha folded her arms. “Or the Academy search is badly indexed.”
“Possible,” Tobias said.
“Good. We’ll choose that.”
Isaac smiled. “You can’t choose the answer before we test it.”
“I can choose sleep.”
She reached across and closed Tobias’s terminal.
He looked offended.
“Tomorrow,” Aisha said, “we have medical before breakfast, physical assessment after that and systems familiarisation before lunch. If all of us are exhausted because you’ve decided to investigate a ghost ship during our first week, I am telling Hale whose idea it was.”
Isaac looked at her. “You’d inform on us?”
“I’d draw him a diagram.”
Luc laughed.
Even Tobias smiled.
The tension dissolved into the ordinary business of getting ready for bed.
That was important.
They were not frightened.
Not really.
They were young cadets who had discovered a strange search result after hearing a good story. The Academy still smelled of detergent and warm electronics. Somebody still needed to use the washroom. Caleb still accused Tobias of stealing his socks. Henry still had not finished his navigation work.
Normal life did not stop because one word behaved strangely on a terminal.
But later, in the dark, Jim found himself replaying Hale’s question.
Not what he had refused to answer.
What he had asked first.
Where did you hear that name?
If Hale had laughed, Jim would probably have forgotten Odin by morning.
If Hale had dismissed the story without caring where it came from, Jim might have done the same.
Instead, he had tried to trace it.
There was a difference between dismissing a rumour and wanting to know its source.
At twenty, he did not know whether that difference meant anything.
Jim only knew it bothered him.
Outside, MacArthur carried on without them. Engines rose through the night. Somewhere beyond the Academy, shipyard crews worked beneath floodlights and unfinished hulls. Thousands of other people were studying, training, repairing, building, flying and sleeping.
The universe remained exactly as large and ordinary as it had been that morning.
Odin was still only a story.
It was simply a story that, for reasons none of them understood, the Academy could not find.