The mess hall's fluorescent panels cast harsh shadows across Yoon's face as she methodically consumed her morning rations. Twenty-three minutes had passed since her return, each second marked by a deliberate motion—fork to tray, tray to mouth, chew seventeen times. A mechanical ritual, performed with a soldier's precision while her mind retreated behind armor.
Across the scarred metal table, Fiona watched in silence. Her own food sat untouched. The gauntlet on her wrist pulsed in faint, irregular intervals—less like a machine and more like a wounded second heartbeat trying to sync with her own. Each throb carried strange impressions: the chill of antiseptic air, the hush of hospital hallways, the hollow reverb of whispered Korean she couldn't understand. Then—gone.
Yoon's eyes snapped up, sharp and fast. "What are you looking at?"
"Nothing. Sorry," Fiona muttered, dropping her gaze.
"You're lying." Yoon's voice was level, too calm. She set her chopsticks down with deliberate care. "You saw something. In your head. Just now."
The rest of the table remained noisy—Davis was laughing at his own exaggerated shore leave story while Nakamura offered dry nods. Only Singh noticed the tension tightening between the two women, his eyes narrowing.
"I didn't mean to," Fiona said quietly. "It just—happened."
Yoon's face shifted—an instant, subtle recoil. Then she leaned across the table and took Fiona's arm, a gesture that might have looked like camaraderie. But her fingers pressed into the gauntlet with pinpoint force—deliberate, sharp pain bloomed beneath the skin.
"My mother's condition is not your entertainment, civilian," she hissed, barely above a whisper. "You will forget what you saw."
The pressure climbed. Fiona flinched, but said nothing. She wanted to say, I know what it is to be alone, to be cut off from your family while the world forgets you exist. She wanted to say, I've lived entire years hearing nothing but the silence between people who should have loved me.
But these weren't people like her. These were soldiers. Words like that didn't heal—they exposed. And Yoon didn't need more wounds.
"I wasn't trying to pry," she whispered instead.
Before Yoon could respond, Davis leaned in with a grin. "Everything okay over there? Sharing battle strategies?"
Montoya laughed. "Maybe Vega's getting extra training. Can't hurt."
Yoon turned to them, gaze like the vacuum of space. "My mother is missing," she said flatly, voice just loud enough to silence the entire table. "So perhaps you could leave me alone by shutting your worthless mouths."
The words dropped like a guillotine.
Davis's smirk dissolved. Nakamura quietly set down his chopsticks. Singh lowered his eyes.
Montoya opened his mouth, perhaps to apologize, but Yoon raised a hand—sharp, final. A gesture that brooked no reply.
"I don't want your sympathy. I don't want your understanding. This isn't a team-building exercise." She stood, tray in hand, posture locked in perfect form.
"My mother served thirty years in the South Korean Marine Corps. She survived the Jakarta Insurrection and the Kamchatka Engagement. She knew what sacrifice was. She would not understand why I'm wasting time here—" her eyes swept across them, burning but dry—"with people who think pain is a game and service is a punchline."
She walked away, boots clicking in perfect cadence, shoulders drawn like a blade in its sheath.
Silence followed in her wake. Then a breath. Montoya murmured, "Jesus. I didn't know."
"None of us did," Nakamura replied softly. "That's rather the point."
Fiona sat still, staring at the pulse on her gauntlet. The rhythm was fading now—calming, like whatever link had sparked between her and Yoon was quiet again. But not broken. Just waiting.
Sergeant Ashby's voice sliced into the room through the ceiling speakers.
"All personnel to the Tactical Classroom. You have four minutes. Anyone arriving at 07:31 will enjoy my personal attention for the rest of the day."
Trays disappeared into recycling ports. Conversations died. The mess hall emptied with military efficiency.
Fiona rose, her food barely touched. But she didn't feel hungry anymore. Just... grounded. As if a piece of someone else's grief had lodged itself next to her own.
And she carried it with her, silent, into the next hall.
As they navigated the facility's stark corridors, Fiona found herself walking alongside Nakamura, the Japanese soldier's pace matched precisely to hers.
"Give her space." he said quietly, without looking at her. "Grief makes strangers of us all."
"I wasn't trying to intrude." Fiona replied. "Something happened with my gauntlet. Some kind of... connection."
Nakamura's eyes flickered briefly to her wrist.
"Streagrian technology operates on principles we barely comprehend. Neural resonance. Quantum entanglement. Or something beyond our current scientific vocabulary entirely. Be careful what doors you open, Vega. Not all of them close again."
Before she could respond, they reached the Tactical Classroom—a semicircular chamber with tiered seating facing a central presentation area. Unlike the utilitarian simplicity of the barracks and training facilities, this room contained technology that made even Nakamura pause fractionally in the doorway.
Holographic projectors ringed the ceiling. The instructor's podium sprouted interface panels that appeared to respond to proximity rather than touch. The walls themselves seemed to pulse with subtle patterns—not decorative but functional, though their purpose remained unclear.
Yoon already occupied a seat at the far end of the front row, her posture rigid, eyes fixed on the empty presentation space. The others filed in, instinctively leaving space around her—not from fear but a kind of awkward respect.
Fiona hesitated, scanning the available seats. After a moment's consideration, she settled three spaces away from Yoon—close enough to communicate if necessary, distant enough to respect her clearly established boundaries.
Corporal Crowe entered first, his massive frame somehow diminished by the technological sophistication of the environment. He moved to one side of the presentation area, standing at parade rest with the practiced stillness of a monument.
When Sergeant Ashby followed moments later, Fiona noted a subtle shift in his demeanor. The calculated brutality of the training yard had given way to something more complex—the bearing of a man preparing to share burdens rather than impose them.
"Be seated." he said, though all were already in place.
The lights dimmed automatically. The subtle patterns on the walls intensified, shifting from barely perceptible to actively luminescent.
"What you are about to hear is classified Level Eight." Ashby began, his voice stripped of its usual performative harshness. "Outside this room, this information does not exist. You will not discuss it. You will not reference it. You will not acknowledge its existence even under direct questioning from your own countries superior officers without the proper clearance codes."
He moved to the podium, placing his palm against a scanning surface. The holographic projectors hummed to life, casting a three-dimensional representation of the galaxy into the center of the room.
"For the past twenty years, we've been creating the Heavenly Knights army."
The known universe's model rotated slowly, specific regions illuminating with soft amber light.
"In 2090, we made an expedition to Mars using technology a cosmic warrior brought and discovered what we now call the Streagrian Library—a vast repository of knowledge left by a civilization that predates humanity by millions of years."
The hologram shifted, focusing on a structure unlike any human architecture—flowing, organic lines interpenetrating with geometric precision, the entire complex partially embedded in Martian bedrock.
"The Streagrians achieved interstellar capabilities approximately three million years ago. Their civilization spanned eighteen star systems at its height."
Another shift in the hologram—strange vessels moving between worlds, technology that seemed to blur the line between biological and mechanical engineering.
"They were not warriors. They were scholars, diplomats, philosophers. Their technological advancement centered around cooperation rather than domination. Their weapons were defensive, their social structures based on mutual benefit rather than hierarchical control."
Fiona felt a strange resonance with these descriptions—not from the gauntlet this time, but from something deeper, a recognition of values that transcended species and time.
"And they are completely extinct." Ashby continued, his voice tightening. "Eradicated from existence approximately one million years ago."
The hologram changed again—worlds desolated, structures collapsing, extinction still playing out in abstract representation that somehow conveyed more horror than graphic detail could have achieved.
"What you are about to see has been reconstructed from fragmentary records. It represents our best understanding of what happened to the Streagrians. It is not complete. It is not definitive. But it is what we have."
The sergeant nodded to Crowe, who stepped forward to stand beside him. The corporal's usually impassive face now showed something Fiona hadn't seen before—a controlled tension, the expression of someone preparing to revisit trauma.
"Corporal Crowe was part of the third expedition to the Streagrian homeworld in the Boötes Void." Ashby explained. "He has firsthand experience with what we're about to discuss."
The hologram shifted again. This time, the images carried a different quality—not the abstract representation of ancient history, but the sharp-edged clarity of recorded experience. A landscape unlike anything on Earth—vast crystalline structures beneath a sky of deep violet, gravity that seemed to operate by different rules, allowing impossible architectures to reach toward the stars.
"The Streagrians were not alone in their expansion through our galaxy." Crowe spoke for the first time, his deep voice carrying a weight beyond mere volume. "They encountered numerous other spacefaring species. Some primitive, some advanced. Some peaceful, some hostile.
The hologram displayed entities that strained the boundaries of human comprehension—forms that seemed to exist partially in dimensions beyond normal perception, beings composed of energy patterns rather than matter, intelligences that manifested as complex mathematical equations rather than biological organisms."
"But beyond all these, they discovered some more. Older. Something that had been watching the evolution of intelligent life across the galaxy for billions of years."
The hologram darkened, not to emptiness but to something worse—a representation of void that somehow conveyed presence rather than absence. The negative space between stars became suddenly significant, the darkness taking on purpose and intent.
"They called them the Old Gods." Crowe continued, his voice lowering. "Not demons. But something beyond conventional categorization. Entities that existed before the current configuration of the galaxy. Beings that viewed younger civilizations as we might view bacteria in a petri dish—subjects for study, experimentation, slavery and ultimately disposal when the experiment concludes."
Fiona was aware of the others' reactions—the subtle shifts in posture, the controlled breathing of trained soldiers confronting concepts beyond their preparation. Even Nakamura, normally impassive, had leaned forward slightly, his focus absolute.
Yoon alone remained unmoved, her posture unchanged, her gaze fixed on the hologram with the detachment of someone already familiar with horror.
"The Streagrians discovered that these old gods had been enforcing their rule across the universe." Ashby continued. "Seeding worlds with life, guiding evolution, allowing civilizations to develop in their terms, then harvesting or enslaving them when they reached a certain threshold of advancement. Their technologies, their knowledge, their biological peculiarities—all collected and repurposed for these old gods and their incomprehensible designs."
Davis raised a hand, the gesture oddly childlike in this context.
"Harvesting, sir? You mean—"
"Extinction." Crowe answered flatly. "Complete eradication of species and civilizations." Not from malice as we understand it. Not from conquest or competition. But from a perspective that views all younger life as raw material or labor for purposes we cannot comprehend.
The hologram shifted again, showing the Streagrian civilization at its height—peaceful, advanced, harmonious. A species that had achieved what humanity still struggled toward.
"The Streagrians made a choice." Ashby said, his voice taking on a quality Fiona hadn't heard before—something approaching admiration. "When they discovered the pattern, when they understood what had happened to countless civilizations catalogued as lesser races, they chose resistance."
The images changed, showing Streagrian vessels positioning themselves between predatory entities and younger civilizations, defensive technologies deployed to shield developing worlds.
"The Oort cloud is one example." Crowe said. "They used their advanced technology not for dominance but for protection. They reshaped the cloud as a spiral mirroring the movement and the shape of the Milky Way to make us invisible. They violated the old gods' rule by directly intervening to preserve species that had been marked for harvest and in our case, slavery."
Singh spoke for the first time, his voice carefully controlled.
"They saved others at the cost of themselves."
"Yes." Ashby nodded. "For nearly two hundred thousand years, they fought a war they knew they couldn't win. Not for territory. Not for resources. But for the right of younger species to exist without becoming mere components in the old gods' designs."
The hologram displayed the gradual diminishment of Streagrian territory—world after world falling to forces that manifested as distortions in reality itself rather than conventional weapons. Their stars forced to die slowly.
"They left their knowledge scattered across the bootes void." Crowe continued. "Hidden repositories in closed by worlds. Encoded in astronomical phenomena. Buried beneath the surfaces of moons and asteroids. The Library on Mars was one such repository—placed there when they recognized Earth's potential to nurture our species."
Montoya leaned forward, his usual bravado replaced by focused intensity.
"And their weapons? The ones we're training with?"
"Not weapons originally." Ashby corrected. "Tools repurposed for defense when necessity demanded. The XR-17 you handled yesterday was designed as a terraforming instrument—meant to restructure matter at the subatomic level for habitat creation. The Streagrians adapted it as a weapon only when the old gods began their final assault."
The hologram shifted one last time, showing the Streagrian homeworld—a place of impossible beauty even in holographic representation. Then darkness swept across it, not as destruction but as erasure—reality itself seeming to fold around the planet, removing it from existence.
"You're not training to become tools for war, we're subverting the concept of the universal soldier." Ashby said, his voice hard with conviction. "We don't fight to continue wars but to end them."
Silence filled the classroom—not the awkward silence of social discomfort, but the profound silence of minds struggling to accommodate concepts beyond their evolutionary preparation.
Fiona found herself looking at her hands, at the gauntlet pulsing gently against her skin. The message she heard when she put the gauntlet on her hand the first time took on new significance—not just alien engineering, but the legacy of a civilization that had sacrificed itself for the fundamental principle that life deserved to exist on its own terms.
"You won't be just soldiers." Crowe said into the silence. "You will not be just representatives of your respective nations but Earth as a whole. You are inheritors of the Streagrian legacy. You are the continuation of their resistance against forces that would render humanity's or any other lesser race in the universe meaningless."
Ashby moved away from the podium, standing directly before them without the barrier of rank or protocol.
"You will learn from tactics to diplomacy." He said simply. "You will be trained like astronauts, the future explorers of the cosmos."
Davis swallowed audibly, his childhood dream taking shape.
"And what are ten recruits supposed to do against entities that wiped out an entire advanced civilization?" Nakamura asked.
"You're not the only ones. There are others in motion. Not many. Not yet. But enough." Ashby replied. "You're here because you have been given a second chance, that's all."
Yoon spoke for the first time since entering the classroom, her voice carrying an unexpected certainty.
"Why humanity?"
Ashby nodded slowly.
"Because our capacity for war can rival the hostile races of the universe."
"What?" Singh asked. "What could we possibly have that they didn't?"
Crowe's massive shoulders shifted in what might have been a shrug.
"Adaptability. Resilience. Or perhaps just the right kind of stubbornness. The Streagrians were peaceful by nature. Cooperation was their evolutionary advantage. Humans on the other side..."
"We're fighters." Montoya finished. "We've been killing each other since we figured out how to pick up rocks."
"But that capacity for violence is only part of the equation." Ashby said. "It's our capacity for both cooperation and competition that makes us unique. Our ability to shift between individual achievement and collective effort. The Streagrians believed this duality might be the key to eventual resistance."
Fiona felt the gauntlet pulse once, strongly, as if in confirmation. Across the room, she noticed Yoon's hand move to her head, the Korean soldier's expression shifting fractionally.
"So what now?" Nakamura asked, his voice carrying the focus of a tactician already calculating possibilities.
"Now you understand what you're truly training for." Ashby replied. "Not to fight other humans. Not to defend territory or resources. But to become something new—warriors and diplomats simultaneously. The Streagrian technology you're learning to use doesn't just give us weapons. It gives us the potential to communicate with other species, to form alliances, to stand between the lesser races of the universe and the old gods."
Crowe stepped forward.
"You're here because that cosmic warrior that started everything said that you losers still have something to prove. So your training will be unlike anything in conventional military history. You will learn combat techniques, yes, but also xenolinguistics, multidimensional mathematics, and psychic shielding protocols. You will become Earth's first true interstellar representatives."
The weight of the revelation settled across the room, transforming the air itself into something heavier, more significant.
"Questions?" Ashby asked, though his tone suggested he expected none. How could there be adequate questions for revelations of this magnitude?
Fiona surprised herself—and everyone else—by raising her hand.
Ashby turned to her. "Speak, Private."
She hesitated, the gauntlet pulsing like a held breath.
Fiona poised her question "Will we ever come back to Earth?"
Ashby's eyes glazed over. "There is no point, when you go out there, time would have moved on here, so if you come back, everyone you knew would be long gone."
Then academic training started after that exchange.
The holograms never stopped.
One moment, they were running simulations in zero-G tactical chambers, trying to track movement in a rotating combat shell with four axes of gravity. The next, they were decoding Streagrian diplomatic glyphs—symbols that changed meaning depending on the emotional state of the reader.
By 1130 hours, Fiona could no longer tell which part of her mind hurt more—the tactical cortex or the one still reeling from the revelation of entire civilizations reduced to echoes.
Crowe's voice. Ashby's glare. Lessons about interdimensional projection fields and non-violent pressure theory. Specialist Irina with shimmering cybernetic implants explaining how to negotiate with a race that spoke only in starlight pulses.
Montoya whispered, "This ain't basic training anymore," and nobody laughed.
Even Nakamura's pen, once precise as a blade, now dragged slightly as he took notes.
The mess hall buzzed with low, tired voices. Nobody joked about Ashby anymore. Nobody talked about going home. The world beyond the installation had become something they only remembered when the walls were too quiet.
Singh stirred his nutrient paste with the resignation of a man whose body was ready but whose mind wanted mercy.
Montoya had stopped making wisecracks. He was just eating.
Fiona sat, her tray untouched, eyes scanning the benches. Nine trays. Eight recruits.
Yoon was missing.
Fiona wrapped the protein bar in a napkin and slid it into her undershirt like she'd once hidden stolen bread in Bucaramanga. A movement born from poverty, not stealth—quick, practiced, invisible.
No one noticed her slip away. The others didn't lift their heads. Even Nakamura didn't look up this time.
The corridors hummed with low reactor noise, a comforting machine breath beneath concrete. Fiona moved silently, guided by instinct—not just training, but the familiarity of looking for someone trying not to be found.
It was the muffled curse that gave it away. Korean, muttered under breath, like someone trying to will a broken world to respond.
The door to the communications room was half-open. Inside, Yoon stood alone before a console that blinked silently back at her. Her shoulders were rigid, one hand gripping the edge of the interface like a lifeline.
"Come on," she whispered. "Just route me through. Please."
The system flashed red: ACCESS DENIED. NON-PRIORITY TRANSMISSION.
She slapped the console. Then again. Her voice cracked.
"Just let me talk to my aunt. She could know where my mom is. She—"
She covered her face. Stood motionless for a moment. Then exhaled slowly, trying to compose herself.
That's when she heard it.
A breath. A shoe against the metal floor.
Yoon turned.
Fiona stood in the doorway, tray in hand, eyes soft.
Neither spoke.
Yoon turned away, too late to hide the red in her eyes. She wiped her face on her sleeve with soldier's efficiency—methodical and emotionless.
But Fiona had already seen. She knew those signs.
From living.
And from losing.
Fiona didn't ask if she was okay. She just stood there—present, unmoving, unafraid to stay.
And for the first time, Yoon didn't send her away.