ã€ŠSpace Isekai: From Cryo-pod to space-ship.ã€‹


 Chapter 1

    ¡°Brayden Cofey?¡±

    I blinked myself out of my reverie as I heard my name being called, I got up, my head swimming as I did so, and steadied myself against the wall. The nurse nodded at me and held the door open.

    ¡°Right this way, room fourteen.¡±

    I made my way, slowly, hand on the wall, to the room, my stomach dropping down and to infinity as I made those final steps.

    After I made it to the room the nurses were a buzz around me, taking various readings and getting me into a medical gown. Then all of a sudden it was just me, in a medical gown on a bed as the doctor came in.

    ¡°Brayden Cofey?¡±

    I nodded.

    ¡°Do you know why you are here?¡± The doctor, a kindly old woman, said.

    ¡°I''m dying.¡±

    ¡°That''s what we''re hoping to prevent. The congenital issues in your brain, exacerbated by the stress of your job and the accident... we don''t have the medical expertise to treat it without killing you. What we can do is put you in stasis until we can. Even if we can''t prolonged stasis has been shown to reduce swelling in cases like yours, even allowing the brain to heal otherwise irreparable damage.¡±

    ¡°How long.¡±I asked.

    ¡°Until a procedure is developed to help you... I don''t know. But theoretically, if we kept you in stasis for a prolonged duration... it could heal on it''s own. At least bring you back to your baseline.¡±

    ¡°So just occasional blinding pain from migraines.¡±

    The doctor shrugged. ¡°If you are in long enough it could regress to how it was when you were a teenager, only occasional headaches. Hopefully by that point we will have a treatment that can keep it at that level.¡±

    ¡°And how long would that take.¡±

    The doctor was silent.

    ¡°How long doctor.¡±

    the doctor sighed.

    ¡°Anywhere between fifty years and a century. I am sorry.¡±

    images of my parents came to mind, my friends, flashing before my eyes. I imagined this was what it was like when they talked about your life flashing before your eyes before death.

    ¡°But it probably won''t be that long. It''s likely our medical technology will have advanced leaps and bounds long before then!¡±

    Her optimism was beginning to grate on me.

    ¡°...So... are we ready?¡± I asked, at this point wanting to get it over with as another spike of pain lanced through my skull.

    The doctor turned to me with a sad look in her eyes.

    ¡°Yes. We are. Follow me.¡±

    She got up and stood at the door, waiting for me to follow. A nurse stood ready with a wheelchair but I waved her off. The nurse made a noise to protest but the doctor held up her hand and shook her head.

    I was glad of this one little favor. If I was to face my end, the end of everything and everyone I knew and everything I had worked for in my life, I wanted to at least face it on my own two feet.

    My own two feet and the wall, that is, as I reached out and leaned on it to keep myself from falling as another spike of pain and vertigo lanced through me.

    The walk felt like it took forever, the hallway tilting back and forth in my vision, until finally we entered the room. There was a large upright pod, with two massive thick transparent doors open. In the back was a padded upright table in the shape of a human body, obviously where I was supposed to stand. I made my way over to it, almost falling as I did so, and took up my position against the table in the pod.

    Nurses swarmed around me, stripping off my hospital gown, leaving me fully naked, and connecting me up to a number of machines, ports in the pod trailing lines of fluid were hooked up to my arms and neck, my head was shaved as electrodes and little needles were inserted into my skull.

    I probably would have cried from the pain if I hadn''t been hit with another spike of agony and vertigo right at that moment. I would have flinched if they had not already strapped me down.

    The doctor appeared before me ¡°Brayden, I need you to stay calm, and when the pod closes, I need you to take a deep breathe, in and out, just listen to my voice, and keep breathing.¡±

    The pod closed around me, the transparent doors still managing to significantly dim the inside of the pod.

    The doctor''s voice came over the speakers. ¡°Just breathe Brayden, listen to my voice, I am going to count backwards from 10, 9, 8..¡± As she started counting my vision narrowed, till all I could see was her.

    I blacked out before she hit seven.

    ***********************************************************************************

    I awoke in darkness, not like ''oh I can barely see the wall darkness'' I mean I literally could not see my body, or anything around me. For a moment I thought I had gone blind.

    I opened my mouth to call out, but all that came out was a squeak, my vocal chords constricting and letting out only a brief gust of air before closing up completel

    I calmed down, breathed in and out, and then tried to speak at a lower volume.

    ¡°H... Hello?¡± My voice came out as a rasp.

    ¡°Is anyone there?¡±

    I could hear muffled clangs around me, as if some machine was moving things around and running into metallic walls.

    All of a sudden I felt motion, like the capsule I was in was being picked up and moved around. I was still strapped down, so there was little I could do to brace myself.

    I was moving somewhere swiftly, stopping and starting constantly as I changed direction. It felt like I was on some kind of rail system.

    All of a sudden I felt weightless, as if I was drifting, and I realised the pod was drifting as well.

    Then an impact, the sound of shearing metal, and blackness.

    ***********************************************************************************

    I blinked myself awake, now I was free of the restrains, and lying on what felt like curved glass, likely the inside of my pod

    I heard banging on the outside, and what I think was shouting, an argument.

    ¡°Hello? Is anyone there?¡± I called out, my voice stronger now, almost like something had been jolted free by the impact.

    There was a pause in the argument outside, then a voice returned, questioning.

    I slammed my fists against the inside of the pod.

    ¡°Hello? Help! I think my pods offline!¡± I called out.

    I knew from the 6 months leading up to being inserted into the pod that it being offline was a very bad thing. It was supposed to have multiple self contained power sources inside as a redundancy. Seeing as how any disruption in the power could leave someone still in stasis a vegetable.

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    It was actually lucky he had woken up before his pod lost total power, he could already feel the air getting a bit thin inside.

    He heard pounding on the outside of his pod, and unintelligible speech being shouted.

    He pounded on the inside of his pod again in response.

    ¡°Help! It''s getting hard to breathe!¡±

    The whole pod shifted, sending me rolling into the table that I had been strapped to, as the sound of tearing metal began to fill the pod.

    Light appeared through a small crack as whatever cover had been fitted over my pod was levered out of the way. At first I thought it was some sort of jaws of life, or that they had jammed in multiple crowbars, but as my eyes adjusted to the new light I realised that they were fingers jammed in the gap... fingers that gleamed like chrome.

    With a final metal scream a quarter of the shell that surrounded me was ripped away

    And I came face to face with my saviors.

    I was taken aback, to say the least.

    I don''t know what I was expecting... but people with more chrome and wiring than skin showing was not it.

    One was a woman with a pixie cut, however her face frm just above her left cheek, to over her right eye, were metal, stretching back into her hairline. It was segmented, and moved, mimicing what a real face would do, but it still seemed artificial, if somewhat charming. Her left eye''s sclera resembled burnished steel, with the iris being some sort of camera.

    The man beside her was even more... augmented? His entire face was the color of chrome, his eyes were matt black, with only the faint shine of camera''s sparkling from inside his iris. His mouth was replaced by some kind of mask or grill, that seemed built into his jaw.

    What really made him seem different was the fact that his arms were entirely some kind of segmented metal. These were what I had mistaken for the jaws of life that had pried open my pod. There was still a solid sheet of glass between us though.

    ¡°Hello?¡± I asked

    They looked at eachother and said something back and forth in a language I didn''t understand for a minute before they turned to me.

    ¡°Can you understand me?¡± The woman asked, her voice high pitched but muffled from the glass.

    ¡°Yes! Yes I can understand you!¡±I said before a coughing fit left me gasping. The air was getting really thin in the pod.

    ¡°Who are you? Why are you awake? These pods should have power for another century...¡±

    I pounded a fist against the glass, but I was getting weaker.

    ¡°Need... Air...¡± I gasped, as my vision started to tunnel.

    The woman looked at the heavily cyberized man, who raised both of his hands in a stance to smash the glass, but the woman stopped him.

    ¡°If you shatter the glass the shrapnel could kill him.¡±

    Brayden couldn''t make out any more of the conversation as he slid once more into unconciousness.

    ***********************************************************************************

    A cool gust of air blew over my face and I gasped, blinking as I tried to get my vision back.

    ¡°Easy, easy. You''re alright, we got you out of there before you were unconscious for more than a minute. Just breathe.¡± The woman said, this time her voice unfettered by the pods glass doors.

    I followed the advice of the voice and just focused on breathing, filling my lungs with the air that was... admittedly a little bit stale.

    ¡°What...¡± I gasped out, and felt a hand on my shoulder.

    ¡°Shhh...¡±

    It took a few minutes before my head cleared and I could see properly again.

    I blinked my eyes and sat up, seeing myself to be in some kind of large bay.

    ¡°Where am I?¡±

    Both the woman with the quarter chrome face and the man with the cyber-arms were hovering near me, the woman kneeling and the man crouching down on what I now realized were also mechanical legs. They both looked at eachother.

    ¡°You are on the sleeper ship Svalbard.¡±

    ¡°Sleeper ship? Svalbard? Like the seedbank?¡±

    ¡°I don''t know anything about a seedbank, but yeah, a sleeper ship.¡±

    ¡°Like a cruise ship? Where you sleep on it?¡±

    The man shook his head. ¡°No no, a colony ship.¡±

    I just was not understanding.

    ¡°Where is there left to colonize? Antarctica?¡±

    Again the two cybered up individuals looked at eachother.

    ¡°Could you tell us what you last remember?¡±

    ¡°I was going in to the hospital, I have a neurological issue that was getting worse with time. Inoperable. They... Stasis was a new thing, but they were hopeful if they put me in there it would bring the swelling down, then with new developments hopefully they''d be able to take care of it.¡±

    ¡°What year did you go under?¡±

    ¡°Uh, 2025?¡±

    ¡°Oh shit that would''ve been a first generation stasis unit. No wonder it''s backup''s failed after five hundred years.¡±

    ¡°FIVE HUNDRED YEARS!¡± I exclaimed.

    ¡°Yeah, that''s about what I expected.¡± The woman said, rubbing her ears.

    ¡°Told you you should have gotten the earwork done, can auto-adjust volume.¡± The man said to her.

    ¡°I''ve been out five hundred years? Why? The doctor said it would just be a few decades at most, maybe a century for the swelling to go down completely.¡±

    ¡°A LOT happened while you were down.¡±

    I sputtered at them, but the woman held up a hand.

    ¡°Before we answer your questions, how about we get somewhere more comfortable, let''s go to the mess, get some food, maybe something to drink, and then you can ask all the questions you like. You just got out of stasis and the adrenaline is fading, so your body is going to be screaming at you about a lot of things real soon.¡±I nodded and stood up, once I was upright I marveled at the lack of vertigo, and stared down at my feet.

    ¡°This is... amazing!¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°I can stand! Without help! And I don''t feel like my head is about to split open! I know that''s probably weird for you guys to hear but I''ve spent the last half of my life in extreme pain and either holdign myself up with whatever walls or tables were nearby or else been confined to a wheelchair. This is great! I guess five hundred years in a box was just what I needed.¡±

    The girl just slowly nodded, but the man''s metallic face smirked, the metal... bands? That ran horizontally across it sliding up and into eachother to make a very expressive display. ¡°I completely understand how you feel. I was paralyzed before I got augmented. I''m Joe. Follow me.¡±

    The man started walking to the edge of the bay, towards a hatch in the... bulkhead?

    The woman took up a position next to me, hovering like one of the nurses five hundred years ago.

    I started following the man, Joe, and looked over at the woman.

    ¡°And what''s your name?¡±

    ¡°Oh, uh, my name is...¡± a stream of sound that seemed more akin to what a dying modem would sound like than any real name emitted from one of the implants, likely a part that was covered by her hair.

    Joe called back. ¡°She was born COG, she doesen''t really have a meatname like you or me.¡±

    ¡°Meatname?¡±

    ¡°Like Joe or Phil or Brayden. Her handle translates as... Iron Bait twenty... the numbers arent important just a lot of metadata and stuff like her parents, her subnet address... It''ll make more sense once you get augmented.¡±

    ¡°Joe! He might not want to be.¡±

    Joe snorted.

    ¡°Augmented? Like the implants you both have?¡±

    ¡°Ah! Glad I don''t have to explain it.¡±

    ¡°I mean the last few years before I went to sleep I couldn''t do much, played a lot of games. It''s kindof a big part of fiction. Or at least it was.¡±

    ¡°Good to know way back then people were still looking forward. Unlike the empire..¡±

    ¡°Empire?¡±

    ¡°Later, let''s get some food in you.¡±

 Chapter 2

    They had made their way to a caffeteria, or at least it looked like one. Joe spent some time at a machine set up where, if it were a cafeteria like I remembered, there would be serving people doling out food onto platters.

    Joe cursed a few times before a mechanical whirr began, followed by the sound of something viscuous spitting out into a bowl. Joe collected three of them before returning to the table.

    ¡°There we go, eat up, I know it doesent look appetizing, but your body needs the nutrients.¡±

    It looks like a quivering pile of off white... jelly? Sour cream? It had a bit of a grainy texture. There was a spork in the bowl and I used it to shovel a bite of it into my mouth.

    It was grainy and mealy with a slightly tang taste, but I swallowed it and immediately began wolfing down the rest of the bowl.

    Iron-Bait, god that was a weird name, pecked at her food. ¡°Not hungry?¡± I asked

    ¡°She''s just used to having a full food simulation going when having to eat. This tub is too old to have a total noosphere to link up to. This is probably the first time she''s been without at least augmented reality since she can remember.¡±

    ¡°That''s not true!¡± Iron-bait said petulantly. Though due to their augmentations it was hard to tell their age, it was pretty obvious Joe was significantly older than Bait.

    ¡°Really? I guess we are five hundred years in the future, so full wireless virtual reality isn''t too far a leap. I''m surprised you aren''t full blown digitized consciousnesses just piloting robot bodies.¡±

    Bait''s eyes went wide and Joe sucked his teeth.

    ¡°Was it something I said?¡±

    ¡°Yeah... I mean you don''t know, but don''t talk about that kind of stuff to other people. Bad things happened when people tried that.¡±

    ¡°People, certain people, certain Imperial people, blame uploads for earth and the exodus and...¡± Bait started before suddenly cutting herself off after realising what she said.

    ¡°Uh... what happened to earth... and exodus? I... oh... that''s why this ship is an ark isn''t it.¡±

    Joe nodded gravely.

    ¡°Back in the late 21<sup>st</sup> century we developed AI, and despite everyones doomsaying, that turned out fine. Turns out intelligence does not mean consciousness, so they were just great tools. After that nobody really thought much of uploading human minds into a machine, and, well... turns out giving human beings root access to their thoughts ambitions emotions and other core traits rapidly results in people turning themselves into psychotic monsters capable of hacking anything and overturning the world order. The world rapidly devolved into upload overlords churning out war machines and fighting for dominance over the planet and solar system. Human beings just had to try to survive. Said survivors hacked several factories and we started loading up people in stasis pods into these arks.¡±

    ¡°So... someone probably loaded me into an ark thinking I was just another survivor... refugee?¡±

    Joe nodded. ¡°Once the uploads started heading downhill I bet you''re whole resuscitation got put on hold. Everyone was just trying to flee as fast as we could.¡±

    ¡°On what? We were nowhere near FTL transit technology when I went under, and it sounds like it was not that long after I was put under that all this happened.¡±

    ¡°You are correct, the vessels ''slow boated'' away from earth. There were many destinations, and we are not sure how many made it, but we have records of all the ones coming to this cluster of stars.¡±

    ¡°Cluster? So do you have FTL now?¡±

    ¡°Yes, we actually made great strides in technology during the trip, which took several hundred years. Several scientists kept their minds active, though not fully uploaded during the trip. It''s actually the basis for a lot of the technology our country uses.¡±

    ¡°Okay... wow... so many questions, um... what is your country?¡±

    Joe let out a loud sigh and Bait loudly proclaimed ¡°The Coallition of Objective Galactic Singularity!¡±

    I blinked, and then slid my chair a few inches away from Bait.

    ¡°What?¡± Bait asked.

    Joe let out a muffled voice from where his hands were both covering his face. ¡°It''s stupid, So stupid, I just hope the next time our name is up for vote we get more people who don''t want to make our name a stupid acronym.¡±

    ¡°What? Voting on your name?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, it comes up every few years. One of the issues with direct democracy, we are at the whims of the collective zeitgeist. Someone posts a funny meme, and all of a sudden we''re having a vote to change our name to C.O.G.S. It happens every few years.¡±

    ¡°You change your name every few years?¡±

    ¡°it''s not that big a deal. In nearly all documents our name is set up as a variable, so all links remain intact and it doesent break anything. Anything that does break, well, that''s an indication that there is something you need to fix in your code!¡± Bait said.

    Joe looked at Bait and sighed. ¡°Sometimes people need to grasp concepts not only represented by code. Having a name for our country... faction... whatever gives us something to grasp onto. Changing it every few years is antithetical to that.¡±

    ¡°Whatever old man¡± Bait replied, rolling her eyes.

    ¡°So... I don''t mean to offend... but just about every country back where and when I come from that had that many words in it''s name was capital E Evil. Democratic People''s republic of korea, people''s republic of china (at least once they started putting bombs in their soldiers helmets and forcing their mountain villagers into reeducation camps), Democratic people''s... maybe it''s the democratic bit that''s important.¡± I said, rambling a bit as I finished off the food in my bowl.

    Joe reached over and grabbed my now empty bowl. ¡°More?¡±

    ¡°Yes, please, I don''t think I''ve ever been this hungry. The more I eat the more I NEED to eat.¡±

    ¡°That''s your metabolism slowly coming back online after the stasis. The stasis pod kept you''re body at a low tickover, while applying various treatments to help prevent, and for certain cell lines reverse the aging process, but it had to turn off a lot of your metabolism to do so. That''s all spinning back up. Don''t overeat though, you''re stomach isn''t used to food.¡±

    I nodded as I dug in to the now full bowl.

    After I had finished I sat back and looked at the two of them.

    ¡°So... what I''ve put together so far. Uploads took over the earth and went to war with eachother, the rest of humanity made a bunch of sleeper ships and shipped out. It is now however many years later, and this is a sleeper ship that made it here and was never opened up. Why are you waking us up now?¡±

    ¡°That''s about right...¡± Joe said.

    ¡°We need people¡± Bait blurted out.

    ¡°What?¡± I replied.

    Joe sighed.

    ¡°Okay. Now for the political part of todays lecture. There are four... countries, factions, empires, whatever currently running around in this particular cluster. Our sleeper ships stopped off in a relatively dense cluster of stars, several dozen, each with planets of varying value. We also discovered a form of FTL that allows rapid transit between resonance points in space. It''s generally more likely to find them between two massive bodies, like stars, that are relatively proximal to eachother, so we have chains of resonance points that make some natural bottlenecks in the cluster. You need really intense scanning and a lot of processing power to actually discover these resonance points so don''t go thinking that someone can just find a new resonance point from a planet to a star or planet to planet whenever it''s convenient, it takes years of dedicated scanning and number crunching to find a new pair, and they are all in pairs.¡±

    ¡°Okay, jump point style FTL, so far so stellaris.¡± I piped up, some of the sass I had lost long ago from my illness creeping back into my voice.

    ¡°don''t know what that is but okay. So, after we arrived, we had an explosion of technology. Some scientists had kept their mind''s working during the exodus, So... we had a lot of things to try. Cloning, genetic recombination, cybernetic augmentation...¡± Joe tapped his own temple with a metallic ting to emphasis his point.

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    ¡°And, of course, people couldn''t agree on what stuff was okay to use. ''Oh cloning is unethical'' ''mixing our genes with those of xeno organisms could have unintended consequences.'' ''Cybernetics will just lead to another upload disaster!'' and well the few years of cooperation we had after the first few ark ships arrived fell apart pretty quick. Basically the three factions that control the most territory are pretty well divided by what tech they consider ethical, dangerous, or stupidly dangerous.¡± joe exposited.

    ¡°Us, C.O.G.S god I hate that name, as you can probably tell, embraced cybernetics and we explored mind uploading more. We discovered that three things needed to be done to vastly reduce the incidence of psychopathy in uploads, one, that they need a virtual environment to exist. Existing simply as code and having code inputs and outputs puts a serious strain on the psyche, and having a VR environment where they can interact with ''things'' like a person seriously increases the time they can spend as pure data before corruption occurs. The second is locking out the ability to alter your own base code. Only licensed and trained psychosurgeons are allowed to touch someones runtime, because it is very very easy to screw it up. And third, and one of the most important, is to get them back in a physical body asap. Doesen''t much matter if it''s a meat body, an android, or even a starship rigged for full immersion, but they need an actual body to anchor their minds too. That being said, we have had individuals exist for up to a year of subjective time as data without suffering adverse effects.¡±

    ¡°Subjective time?¡±

    ¡°Yes, we are able to adjust our perception of time when we exist as data. Or even if we just have the right augmentations.¡±

    ¡°Ah, frame-jacking. I''ve read about that concept. It seems my love of science fiction is helping here. Take that Professor! ''Reading fiction is useless'' My ass!¡±

    Joe chuckled at this. ¡°Good to see you are making jokes. I was worried you would be shocked by everything that had occurred.¡±

    ¡°I mean, I was born in the 90''s, the 1990''s I mean, my generation spent our entire lives careening from one global crisis to another, first terrorists, that started a massive war, then a financial crash, a global pandemic, the firestorms, the drowning...¡±

    ¡°Drowning?¡± Bait asked.

    ¡°Ah, well, massive climate crisis, made the sea levels rise and hurricane''s came harder and harder, wiped out every major city on the coast of the atlantic and pacific. That happened... like a year before I went under? Honestly the only reason I was able to afford it was that I had been playing the stock market and had shorted the stocks of several major companies that were based almost entirely in Miami, so...¡±

    ¡°Jesus... wait you had to pay for your cryopod?¡±Bait asked, shocked.

    ¡°Yep. Had to sell my house, liquidate my assets, no insurance company would touch me cause of my condition, at least not without charging me even more, so... yeah. I was dying so, I figured, may as well try.¡±

    Bait just stared at me, before Joe chimed in. ¡°I think the idea of having to sell your house to pay for medical care broke her. I used to be a trader so I know how bad things can get in hyper-capitalist societies.¡±

    ¡°Trader?¡± I asked.

    ¡°We''ll get to that. Anyways, where was I... Right! Finishing up with C.O.G.S why do I have to keep saying that name... We have a very individualistic society. Each citizen of C.O.G.S. Is essentially an independent entity. We share data between our vessels and collaborate, but each vessel is really only beholden to the captain. And most of our ships only have a single person, the captain, on board. To support the governmental structure we do require the citizens to contribute in some way, but that can be anythign from raw material to serving in military exercises. The government does have a credit system that it uses to trade with planets and other factions, but for the most part, everyone is on their own.¡±

    ¡°They don''t need to buy stuff themselves?¡±

    ¡°Not as much as other factions. Our materials tech is far in advanced of the other factions, mostly because we are willing to link our minds to our ships and ''frame-jack'' ourselves, so we can instantly telepresence ourselves to any part of the ship that needs a more personal touch. Plus we can have entire technical manuals downloaded into our working memory, so... yeah. Instead of having one ship with dozens of crewmen, we have dozens of ships with a single crewman.¡±

    I frowned. ¡°I mean, that sounds good from a numbers persepctive... but I can''t help but think that if I need to be connected to everything, that would mean any severing of connections would be... catastrophic. More catastrophic than if I had a bunch of crewmen running around doing damage control independent of me.¡±

    Bait frowned but Joe nodded. ¡°You''d be right. A single one of our ships is generally not a match for an alliance or imperial vessel of the same tonnage, due to them having a whole lot of crewmen who can deal with jobs independently. Some of us have put in battle nodes, where we temporarily upload copies of ourselves so we can have backups in case of severing, but you are right it''s just not the same. Good thing in terms of vessels we outnumber the empire by five to one and the alliance by ten to one.¡±

    I blinked. ¡°That kind of disparity should mean you should easily win any engagements with them... but I gather that is not the case.¡±

    Bait took over. ¡°Because of our focus on independency, actually gathering a force to fight is... dicey. Essentially a planet''s garrison force puts out a distress call, and then it''s up to people who want to defend it to convince more people to defend it... which isn''t always easy.¡±

    ¡°I would gather not, especially if there is no punishment involved for not getting involved. Why risk your own life?¡±

    ¡°We prefer to use incentives rather than punishments, though it''s not as bad as risking your own life. One of the things the government guarantees is that if you do lose your life, you will be reinstantiated from your most recent backup. Add to that that each of the factions have a pretty decent prisoner exchange setup, and that your control unit aboard ship is in essence it''s own escape pod, and we actually suffer relatively few deaths that we even have to re instantiate after every battle. All that being said, we generally can only muster a 3 to 1 or 2 to 1 numerical advantage in combat.¡± Joe said

    ¡°It is especially hard to convince the die hard scientists or freighter pilots to join the fight, since they tend to customize their vessels for duties that are not combat related.¡±

    ¡°Ah, so that 10 to 1 advantage is ALL of your ships versus just their navy, since you don''t actually have a designated navy. That makes more sense. China was like that, inflating the numbers of their navy by designating things that were obviously not proper combat vessels as naval vessels.¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± Bait protested.

    ¡°I calls it like I sees it.¡± I responded.

    ¡°We do have more on board ability to re-structure our vessels. Really it wouldn''t take long to convert a freighter to a combat vessel wit hour on board tech, but I get your point.¡±

    ¡°So what, do you have atomic 3d printers on board or something?¡±

    ¡°Exactly! High speed 3d printers. As long as you have a store of raw material on board you can build your ship however you want. It is faster to bring said raw materials to a COGS shipyard and just exchange it, there is a certain economy of scale with the printers, but still.¡±

    ¡°Is that where incentives come in? Print time?¡±

    ¡°Exactly yes. And or raw materials, you can ask for social credit if you say are trying to set up your own enclave out in the boonies, there are a lot of incentives for helping out the government.¡±

    Everyone was silent for an awkward moment.

    ¡°So, you mentioned trading with planets, the way you said it made me think they arent actually a part of COGS... could you cover that?¡±

    ¡°Right! Before we go to the other factions. So planets. Hmm... Well, planets both are, and aren''t part of any of the factions.¡±

 Chapter 3

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°The planets each have their own governments for the most part, save for a few, like our core world, the Empire''s New Babylon, or the Aliiance''s EXO-ONE, they aren''t really part of any faction. The reason for this is... kindof awful, but depending on wartime conditions, the ''ownership'' of a planets orbitals pretty much devolves to whoever owns the orbitals. Most planets have, as part of their laws, that they will give a certain percentage of their trade good production to whoever owns the orbitals. Essentially they stick it in a shuttle, or orbital elevator, get to high orbit, kick it out the airlock, and save ''have at it, whoever is there.'' then go back down. Various things have been tried over the years to make it easier to hold planets, from indoctrinating the populace, to setting up ground based defences, but unless the planet makes something particularly high value... of which there are a few planets, most of the factions just content themselves with taking the orbitals.¡±

    ¡°So if that''s the case, is there any reason to try to take planets?¡±

    ¡°Other than the tribute? It increases the number of trade goods available, which makes everyone happier, brings prices down, overall improves economic conditions.¡± Joe went on, while bait rolled her eyes. ¡°Once a trader always a trader. Always thinking of made up bullshit like the economy. The best reason to take planets is the influx of new ideas and connecting them to our network. There are a lot more people dirtside than voidborn, and they are the primary source of art, music, movies, games. Culture! And as soon as other factions take over the first thing they do is destroy satellites and relays.¡±

    ¡°So... you take them over for... media?¡±

    ¡°Hey don''t knock it, when you are out in the black performing a three-day evolution to mine the titanium core of an asteroid and have to stay ''frame-jacked'' to a thousand times standard just in case anything goes wrong, you are going to be willing to do damned near ANYTHING to stave off the boredom.¡± Bait said.

    ¡°I guess if you have 3d printers aboard every ship their physical tribute does not mean much.¡±

    Joe shrugged. ¡°It''s normally given over to the people who participated in taking the planet, at least for the first while, before devolving to the government. Mostly because most of the people who helped take a planet don''t stick around. Those that do get to keep collecting their share of the tribute, and that''s how garrison forces get started!¡±

    ¡°Huh, okay, that seems... chaotic but efficient.¡±

    ¡°I think so. The other factions are much more traditional in how they do things. Imperial conscripts man ships run by nobles, the alliance has a professional and well trained navy, but that''s why they also have the smallest fighting force...¡±

    ¡°Okay... so tell me about the empire and the alliance, you have mentioned a few things that have given me a bit of an idea on what they are about but...¡±

    ¡°Right... okay let''s go in chronological order. The empire emerged sortof out of the first government. They tried to set things up so everyone could get started, but rapidly started grabbing more and more power, granting exclusive land rights to certain families that worked with them, innocent stuff at first, but then they started cracking down, and people started leaving.¡±

    ¡°At first they tried to stop people, but when 99% of the population is done with your shit, and you''re loyalists are mostly landlords with few practical skills other than kicking ass and renting out shitty apartment for massively overinflated fees, you run into some problems actually trying to accomplish anything. So, people fled, and the remaining nobles, because that''s what they were even if they didn''t call themselves that yet. The remaining nobles searched throgh the archives, because the scientific discoveries made during the exodus were made available to all, stupidly.¡± Joe said, but Bait wrinkled her nose at this.

    ¡°They discovered a few key technologies, that were relatively easy for them to implement. One, cloning, two, control implants, and three, skill downloads. So... they started cloning themselves, fitting their clones with control collars to ensure obedience, and gave them skill downloads to make them able to cook, clean, maybe do basic maintenance for the clones that turned out smart.¡±

    ¡°So... most of the population of the empire are these clones?¡±

    ¡°Yep. And at some point the nobles realized that, as their own organs started failing, they could just replace bits of themselves with their clones. So whenever their organs start to fail they replace it with some poor bastard clone. I''ve heard they can even transfer their entire nervous system if they need to.¡±

    ¡°That is... horrible, but damn they must live a long time.¡±

    ¡°Yep, I''ve heard that some of the most powerful nobles were alive all they way back when the first ark ships arrived.¡±

    ¡°How? The human brain starts to degrade before the end of our first century?¡± I asked.

    ¡°From what we know they have developed certain therapies to retard that... but we don''t know. After people left the empire they cracked down on information in and out. We do know that nobles run everything, and the slaves are kept complacent by their control collars, or control implants, which is one of the few technologies to have seen really significant innovation over the years in the empire.¡±

    ¡°So the empire is a bunch of nobles running around in starships with a bunch of slaves.¡±

    ¡°Who affect an air of pretentiousness. Social ranking and favor are all they care about, and they hold lavish parties on their massive vessels. A quick route to favor with other nobles is glory in military action, so many nobles will captain vessels in an attempt to conquer worlds and increase their families favor.¡±

    ¡°They are the most likely of the empire to demand more of the planets in their charge, but they are also really bad at keeping track of what is produced on each planet so from what I have heard from several of the dirtsiders I know is that it''s pretty easy to trick them. That being said, if they discover they are being tricked, they are also pretty likely to engage in collective punishment... with orbital weaponry.¡±

    I sucked my teeth at this.

    ¡°Sounds like planetary populations should try really hard to avoid being conquered by them.¡±

    ¡°eh... they''re also the most likely to help the local''s with new industry and such. Your factory isn''t producing as much as some of the newer factories your lord has seen and/or has? You are very likely to have a brand new pre-fab factory dropped in an open space in a few months. Population sick and can''t work? Expect a bunch of nano-medicine and some auto-doc facilities dropped on your heads. Of all the factions they care the most about making planets productive and healthy.¡±Bait added.

    ¡°Because a productive planet is a prestigious planet right?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Exactly.¡±

    ¡°Who cares the least?¡±

    Both Joe and Bait looked uncomfortable.

    ¡°It''s C.O.G.S. Isn''t it.¡±

    ¡°Of the big three... Yeah.¡± Joe answered.

    ¡°I guess with how independent you all are it''s easy to shrug off the issues of any particular planet.¡±

    Bait looked embarrassed, Joe shrugged.

    ¡°You said of the big three, are there others?¡±

    ¡°The traders, yeah, I used to be a part of them before I joined C.O.G.S. Technically the second oldest faction after the empire, but they don''t claim any land. Just pure capitalism. They run a lot of the trade between planets, and they maintain licenses and truce''s with each of the factions so that they can trade between them. They are in fact the only ships allowed to trade directly between empires. As I said, they are hyper capitalist, so if you go to a trader owned station you''ll be charged for the air you breathe, docking fee''s, fueling fees, power fees, everyone you meet is likely to charge you for your time, even just for browsing their wares so... be careful.¡±

    ¡°Anyways, the second big faction to form was the alliance. So, we arrived here in the arks, but we weren''t the only lifeforms around.¡±

    ¡°Holy shit, aliens?¡± I exclaimed.

    ¡°Yep. None particularly advanced but lots of different aliens, some even sentient, some sapient and working their way up the technology tree. The alliance started as a bunch of scientists that wanted to study and investigate them, and some of their discoveries made our... well everyone''s heads spin.¡± Joe exposited.

    ¡°Psychic powers, rapid regeneration, space-time folding... the aliens had a lot of honestly miraculous abilities.¡± Bait added.

    ¡°Wow... that''s super cool.¡± I said.

    ¡°That''s what the scientists said. Then they started wondering what would happen if they spliced some of the aliens biology with our own.¡± Joe contingued

    ¡°Oh dear... that sounds like it could lead to... bad things.¡±I replied

    ¡°Results were mixed... there were a lot of cool things that happened, and honestly they kindof exploded with power. More and more people began experimenting with splicing xeno-genetics together and eventually... something snapped.¡±

    ¡°We''re actually not sure if it was the people experimenting on themselves that went crazy, or if they attracted the attention of... something else, but a bunch of ships swept in and began targeting heavily modified populations, wiping them out. The ships are, we think, guided by artificial intelligence. They don''t respond to communications at all, and seem to merely attack heavily modified populations, capture people, then leave and replicate.¡±

    ¡°What''s worse, or what was worse at the time, was that their hulls and components could restore themselves, like something partially biological and capable of regeneration. So even if they were able to fight them off, some wreckage would regenerate and start causing issues during the whole rebuilding process. Once they started correlating the rate of xenogenetic recombination with the frequency of attacks, this new set of people became VERY regimented in their views of it. They still used xenogenetic recombination to, well, give themselves superpowers, but it became very restrictive. Everything had to be requested first, then checked and rechecked by the government, then they performed the rcombination, in order to prevent attacks. They even began to regulate who could breed with who to prevent unintended recombination of genes that might draw these ''berserkers ire.''¡±

    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

    ¡°Uh.. did it work?¡±

    ¡°The berzerkers stopped attacking as often sure. We actually think most of the attacks these days are remnants from those first waves that have rebuilt themselves and copied themselves, like a von neuman machine. The first few years of attacks they kept adapting and throwing new stuff at us, but since the alliance started being strict about what is recombined with what there haven''t been any focused methodical campaigns.¡±

    ¡°You think the berzerkers wiped out the gene sequence or what not that they were looking for, and decided that was enough, and the alliance has managed to avoid that particular sequence so far?¡±

    ¡°Pretty sure of it. The alliance obviously keeps what sequence they think that was a pretty closely guarded secret, but I can understand why. Last thing you want is some doomsday cultist to get a hold of a thing that could call down a world ending force and just, like, randomly ship it to planets to call the berzerkers.¡±

    ¡°Right... so when did C.O.G.S. Form?¡±

    ¡°Well, it initially formed from people both in the empire and the alliance, and the traders of course, who inspected the berzerker wrecks and began researching their technology. The alliance pretty quickly banned all research into berzerker tech, along with the empire, since one of the first things we found out about the berzerkers is the reason they don''t use shields like everyone else. Their hulls self-heal, and their entire vessel is able to self repair.¡±

    ¡°Wait, that sounds like what you said about your ships.¡±

    ¡°On the nose. COGS is composed of people that took that tech and ran with it. It let us build amazingly sophisticated self-sustaining cybernetics, amazing ship tech, and let use run a very independently minded direct democracy. Course they blame us every time a berzerker fleet raids their worlds but...¡±

    ¡°Wait, you said the empire had people investigating too, does that mean?¡± I wondered aloud

    ¡°Yep, COGS has former clones from the empire that used berzerker tech to override their control collars. Turns out having slaves investigate tech you don''t understand is a really REALLY bad idea.¡±

    ¡°So, breakdown, Empire is a feudal system run on the backs of cloned slaves, who have massive clone crews on their vessels.¡±

    ¡°And who use really big guns. Their warships are essentially built around spinal weapons. It used to be spinal railguns but they''ve really gotten some cool tech revolving around particle accelerator''s recently¡± Bait chimed in, visibly perking up as she started talking about weapons.

    I raised my eyebrow at Joe.

    ¡°She''s kindof a gun-nut!¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± Bait exclaimed.

    ¡°It''s true!¡± Joe retorted.

    ¡°The appropriate term is gun bunny! Gun-nut are old men who sit with piles of guns around them, gun bunny''s love their guns and look good doing it.¡± Bait struck a pose and then giggled.

    ¡°... Okay.¡± I said, blinking rapidly at Bait''s giggling form.

    ¡°I just like guns, and gun tech, and shields, and... all the cool things weapons and weapon tech do okay.¡±

    ¡°You know what fair, I liked to watch youtube videos of the ships launching entire car dealerships worth of munitions downrange in the old world wars, so I can get behind that.¡± I replied.

    ¡°So... back to the review. Alliance is all about genetic recombination and xeno-genetics, with a really restrictive government.¡±

    ¡°Technically a technocracy. All their scientists and engineer''s compete for the best discoveries and papers, and those who build the most clout get to make the governmental decisions. Generally relating to their specialty, but not always...¡± Joe added.

    ¡°That sounds like it could be really efficient... but also maybe terrible for the everyman.¡±

    ¡°It''s not that bad I think. Better than a clone slave. But most people are strictly regimented, you are born with certain genetics and a certain career path is expected of you. Diverging is... difficult, and can lead to exile. They don''t actually have a death penalty in the alliance, but they also don''t have prison for life.¡±

    ¡°Huh, okay... So what about their non-genetic tech?¡±

    ¡°They have some of the best drones around!¡± Bait exclaimd.

    ¡°...Elaborate?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Well, like I said, through their xenogenetic experiments, they''ve unlocked certain abilities formerly thought to be supernatural. Telekinesis. Pyrokinesis. Aquakinesis... a lot of kinesis''s actually, along with things like psychometry, telepathy.¡±

    ¡°So psychic powers, I am familiar.¡± I replied. Looks like my inner nerd was going to be of some help in this world.

    ¡°So the issue with a lot of these abilities, is they are severely range limited from the person using the ability. But they''ve finagled a way for someone on a ship, piloting a drone, to extend their powers to said drone. So they have drones that can do things that should not be physically possible. Like creating a telekinetic shield without a shield generator, or setting the internals of a ship they pass on fire. It''s really cool to hear about until it happens to you, then it just sucks.¡± Joe said.

    ¡°So they kindof cheat, I would say our drones are better in terms of sophistication, and of course we can produce them on board our own ships so we don''t have to go back to base to restock... but a swarm of Alliance drones Vs. an equal numbers of COGS drones will win every day of the week.¡±

    ¡°That sucks but I understand why... So... since we seem to be on the topic of weapon systems, what does COGS specialize in?

    ¡°Guided weapons!¡± Bait interjected before Joe could say anything.

    ''So, missiles and stuff?¡±

    ¡°Missiles are just a part of it!¡± Bait continued.

    ¡°So, we have experimented with plasma as weaponry quite a bit. We found a way to spin an interior ball of plasma into creating a magnetic field, and this magnetic field can contain a shell of plasma that, if spun in set way in relation to the first spin, will contain the interior field for a short time, so you have two spinning sets of plasma containing eachother until their momentum runs dry and they invariably disperse... explosively.¡±

    ¡°Okay... so you have plasma cannons, that''s pretty cool, was a big sci-fi concept back in my day but no-one could figure out any way in which it would be plausible. How does that relate to guided weapons though.¡±

    ¡°Well, it was figured out that, once you launch this ball of plasma, if you fire a wee little laser at it, it causes a burst of plasma to vent from the outer shell, this causes the plasma to veer off course, you program a computer to pulse laser''s at the plasma ball in order to guide it into a target and you get...¡±

    ¡°Wire guided plasma... That is awesome!¡±

    ¡°Exactly! So between guided plasma, and missiles that every one of our ship is able to manufacture on board without going back to a base to rearm and resupply, our vessels are kings of long ranged guided warfare.¡±

    ¡°I think according to the armchair strategists from my day that should make you all kings of space warfare, since it was theorized that guided weapons would be the only real appropriate weapons for space.¡±

    Bait shook her head.

    ¡°The reality is a lot more complicated. Electronic warfare can make getting a clean track on an enemy at any significant range an exercise in futility, at extreme ranges even the best guided munitions will be thrown off track, or lead into an area where point defense can quickly take them out. Jammers that blanket an area, laser dazzlers, and various forms of chaff or even active countermeasures make engaging at extreme ranges untenable once the enemy knows there are in fact enemies nearby. As an ambush tactic it has some merit though. Most combat takes place at relatively short ranges due to that, either through ambush or with one fleet burning hard towards an objective and another waiting for them. Long range guided fire is exchanged, but is ineffective until you reach a point where you can burn through all the jamming. Most combat takes place at under 10 Km, with guided missiles and munitions being completely ineffective beyond 100 Km.¡±

    ¡°Depending on the area.¡± Joe said.

    Bait wiggled her head in acqueisance.

    ¡°Some planets, asteroid fields, and nebulae mess with sensors or have extremely strong magnetosphere that make engagement ranges even smaller than that, but in open space those numbers hold. Again, unless you catch someone napping.¡±

    ¡°What about stealth? In my time it was thought that stealth was untennable in space because you could you just look for a warm bit of space from someones drives with IR, or look for something moving against the background of stars?¡± I asked.

    Bait shook her head. ¡°Do you know how long it takes to analyze changes in stars? How many different telescopes you''d need? Same with IR, you need both a lot of processing power and, just, SO many sensors with really high sensitivity to pick out a single ship trying to be stealthy out in the black. Unless you catch a ship on it''s initial burn out from a planet, or on the braking burn in, you are not going to be able to pick someone up until they are very very close. Even the ships that do have all those sensors and telescopes, and have a massive computer system dedicated to processing, are going to either have their sensors burned out as soon as jamming starts, because high sensitivity also means high vulnerability, or they are going to get filled with so much junk data that they are going to give false readings, garbage in garbage out.¡±

    I nodded along.

    ¡°So then what do...¡± I was interrupted as a massively loud BOOM hammered through the room, and Joe let out an anguished scream as I was thrown to the ground.

 Chapter 4

    ¡°What happened? Collision?¡± I called out.

    ¡°A missile impact, starboard side... I think Joe...¡±

    ¡°My ship''s gone, my connection was severed.¡± Joe shook his head, his eyes doing a weird dimming and reigniting several times. ¡°Sorry, it''s like suddenly losing seven of your senses all at once while someone is applying a red hot brand to the back of your eyeballs. Bait, what''s happening?¡±

    ¡°We''re taking fire, I''m fielding it, my point defense turrets are holding off the missile barrage now that I know where it''s coming from... looks like 25 degrees out of the ecliptic, 230 degrees spinward.¡±

    ¡°They burned up out of the system''s plane to avoid focused scan, pirates almost definitely. Bait! We need to get gone, you mind taking on some guests?¡±

    ¡°All aboard!¡± Shouted Bait, climbing to her feet using the table, before sprinting out the door.

    I climbed to my feet, taking a moment to help Joe to his own, before the two of us fled out the door, following close on Bait''s heels as we sped through the ship.

    ¡°What about the other colonists?¡± I gasped out as my unsteady limbs send pangs of pain through my body as I rushed down the corridor.

    ¡°We''ll have to come back for them, Pirates prefer to steal rather than destroy most of the time, if we get back in time, we should be able to...¡±

    Another explosion rocked the ship sending Joe rocketing into my side, sending the both of us into the wall.

    A sickening crunch came from my arm as we impacted the wall, and my vision went white with pain.

    Blinking the pain away I foundered on the ground for a moment before I felt my good arm being hauled on.

    ¡°Up you get kid, we''re almost there.¡±

    The two of us hobbled down the white hallways till we got to an airlock. Through it he got his first glimpse of a C.O.G.S. Vessel.

    Where the walls of his colony ship had been white and sterile, the C.O.G.S. Ship was anything but. Through the airlock the visible bulkhead was covered with open panels, LED lights in a colors ranging from purple to green to red blinking away, little multi limbed spider robots scuttling back and forth. The bulkhead itself seemed to bulge in places rather than be uniformly flat, and while there appeared to be bolts and fasteners along it, in other places it almost looked like the metal had been grown into place.

    I rushed through the airlock alongside Joe and the airlock cycled shut behind us, and we both stumbled as the corridor lurched to the side around us. Bait''s voice issued from somewhere in the hall around us.

    ¡°Hold on, going evasive!¡±

    Joe tapped my shoulder and motioned me to follow him. ¡°Come on, we need to get to sick bay.¡±

    ¡°What? Why are you hurt?¡±

    ¡°No, but you need the bare minimum implants or you wont be able to do anything on this ship, and unless I miss my guess, it''s gonna be all hands on deck. Also I am fairly certain I heard your arm break¡±

    Joe ran down the corridor and I followed, winding my way around various protrusions in the wall and deck, until Joe ducked into a door that irised open, clutching my arm all the way.

    Inside the walls were much cleaner, in stark white, though still with bulges here and there. In the middle there was... table was the wrong word, it was a series of platforms that seemed to make the outline of a human form. It looked more like a torture device than anything that deserved to be in a medical facility of any kind.

    Joe sensed my hesitation.

    ¡°Seriously I need you to sit down before...¡± the whole ship shook around us.

    I was thrown to the ground, but quickly scrambled up onto the table, the adrenaline making the pain in my arm fade into the background.

    Instantly the legs of the table moved up under my limbs, and straps wrapped around my ankles, the same thing happened to the arms, and I was forced back onto the table where another set of straps went around my chest and forehead.

    ¡°Wait, what? Joe what''s going on? The fuck are these straps.¡±

    ¡°For your own safety, flinching during the procedure can result in damage to your ocular organs, hold on.¡±

    ¡°Ocular organs.. what...¡± I asked, just as a dozen robot arms folded out from the ceiling above me and began advancing menacingly.

    Two of them went for my eyes, the rest distributed themselves around my body. The needles in front of me started advancing inexorably closer, and I struggled as hard as I could against the restraints.

    ¡°Stop moving your eyes! You''ll hurt yourself... oh hell here.¡± Joe said.

    I heard the sound of something whirring, then a grunt, then a needle jammed into the side of my neck.

    ¡°Hey! What...¡±

    I suddenly found myself paralyzed, unable to move, my eyes frozen facing forward.

    All of a sudden the needles darted forward, and my vision went white, I felt... not intense pain, but comparable to the prick of a needle.

    Unfortunately this was the prick of a needle in my eyes, my fingertips, my feet, my neck, my belly and sides.

    An instant later and it was over.

    ¡°See, now that wasn''t so bad was it? Brayden? Oh right you still can''t move.¡± Joe replied, his feet rolling with the motion of the ship.

    That last sentence both scared me and filled me with indignation

    All of those emotions drained away as I looked at the words that overlaid themselves on my vision.

    NEW USER DETECTED! BEGINING FIRST TIME SETUP

    INITIALIZING...

    MULTIPLE MEDICAL FAULTS DETECTED, DO YOU WISH TO APPLY TREATMENT?

    What followed was a long list of ailments that scrolled across the screen too fast for me to really understand. The screen went blank and then a paperdoll appeared in my view, with little lines connecting to parts of my body, leading to a listed ailment. As I focused in on each one I got a larger description, from my trick knee, to my missing appendix, to...

    about 17 different arrows were pointed at my head. And a big one pointing to my arm.

    I briefly scrolled through several of them, none of them had names I recognized, but several brought up often being misdiagnosed for many of the things my doctor had said I had back before I had gone into cryo.

    The prompt to APPLY TREATMENT popped up again, I selected yes.

    Almost instantly I felt more at ease, a headache I had not even noticed, so constant had it been, that I had not even noticed I had it. Pain in my joints and legs went away, and all of a sudden I felt more alert. My arm also almost instantly felt better, though... stiffer.

    WARNING: PARALYTIC AGENT DETECTED. FLUSH SYSTEM Y/N?

    I thought yes and the Y flashed, I felt something pinch in my sides, and all of a sudden I could move my eyes, then blink, then my limbs began responding.

    RELEASE RESTRAINTS?

    I immediately thought yes and they released, letting me jump up with more vigor than I had been able to muster since high school.

    ¡°You asshole!¡± I shouted at Joe, who just smiled like an asshole in response.

    ¡°Come on, let''s get to the bridge, it''s the most heavily shielded part of the ship.¡± Joe said, and took off.

    ¡°Wait up!¡± I called out, but he was already gone.

    I stepped out into the hall, and immediately my view was transformed.

    I could still see the bulkhead and the odd protrusions coming out of it, but now there was a load of data hovering over each protrusion, labeling them as ''wireless nodes'' and, hovering over the floor were a series of lines of varying colors. As I looked at each, they expanded in my view and a label appeared beside each.

    ENGINEERING lead off to the left.

    MEDICAL did a little loop between nodes and went right back into the room I had just exited.

    And the line titled BRIDGE Looped off to the right.

    I immediately began following the bridge line, but no sooner had I started than the lights all cut out in the section I was in, along with all the brightly colored images in my new fancy Augmented Reality display.

    ERROR: WIRELESS CONNECTION LOST. RELOADING ASSIST MODULES WITH LAST KNOWN DATA.

    And like that I could see again... though it was in wireframe, and my view kept glitching to the side every few steps.

    If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    The line leading to the bridge also reappeared, but in places it was fragmented or glitchy, popping to the side back and forth trying to follow the wireframe of the hall. More than once I hit a wall, but I soon figured out a pattern, pausing and waiting every time it glitched and then picking back up to a run.

    As I paused, I felt like I could feel a shudder through the ship that coincided with every glitch state. ¡°That... is telling.¡± I told myself under my breath, mentally going through a number of things that would cause a cyclical glitch like that, a bad capacitor that kept discharging once it reached a certain charge into the electrical system, some kind of short... maybe an emp? But those were bombs, it should be one disabling blast then nothing...

    After some time of this I began to see light from around the corner, and all of a sudden I was back in full light. My display updated and the glitches stopped, I was just going around the corner when a little speaker icon lit up in my display. I mentally ''touched'' it and it said

    YOU HAVE BEEN INVITED TO THE HOOK INTERNAL COMM CHANNEL, WOULD YOU LIKE TO JOIN?

    After mentally saying yes, all of a sudden my head was filled with the voices of Joe and Bait shouting loudly to eachother.

    I reflexively covered my ears, but that did nothing, though a display appeared in front of me.

    REDUCING INCOMING VOICE VOLUME TO 10%

    All of a sudden the voices were far more managable.

    ¡°... I''ve lost all connection to the aft port of the ship, which includes one of our main launchers and half of our plasma projectors, what is going on Joe?¡± Bait''s voice streamed into my ears... head... mind... I heard Bait is what I am getting at.

    ¡°I don''t know, I am busy using the two projectors we got as point defense, you want me to stop? I''ve intercepted more than double what the automated system was projecting.¡±

    ¡°Fuck every drone I task to go into that area... hey... HEY! Brayden''s on the network!¡±

    ¡°Knew you''d figure it out kid, took you longer than I thought it would though.¡±

    ¡°Well after the lights went out everything went haywire. Took me awhile to figure out where the bridge is.¡±

    ¡°Lights went out? Shit, that means it''s not just a lost connection...¡±

    ¡°Yeah, it was almost like something was pulsing, my onbaord... stuff kept glitching out at regular intervals. I figured either a capacitor is continuously overloading, or some kind of repeated emp...¡±

    ¡°It''s a vampire! Shit we need to get it off the hull right now! We''re just lucky those things you installed broke and kept it from disabling the whole ship!¡±

    ¡°They''re called breakers and they''re like fuses but you just flip them back! Brayden! I need you to find the vampire, it''s a missile that jams itself into the side of a ship and then start''s sending out a repeated EMP pulse. It should short out on it''s own eventually, but we need it gone!¡±

    ¡°How am I supposed to push it out?¡±

    ¡°Sending you the location of a vacsuit, there will be some mechanic tools with it, either use the impactor to launch it out or the torch to cut it out!¡± The ship rocked from another impact.

    ¡°Hurry! My drones get disrupted the same way everything else does from the vampire! They''re made specifically to mess with C.O.G. Machinery!¡±

    A compass appeared in my vision, pointing the way to the vaccsuit and tools, or at least that''s what it said. What it actually lead me to was three one piece suits with a hood and a small toolbox about the size of a laptop case.

    The ship shook again, and I reached out to pull down the zipper of the suit and pull it on.

    ***********************************************************************************

    I rushed down the corridors, back the way I had come from the medical bay. It was still dark but the grid-type overlay was still functional, AND my new suit had built in headlights, which helped seeing as there was now debris strewn over the corridor.

    As I sealed the powered down bulkhead behind me(Manually, and I made sure I was able to unseal it before I went through) my heads up display indicated that the oxygen concentration of the corridor was swiftly decreasing.

    ¡°That leak will probably lead me right to the breach...¡±

    I quickly opened up the toolkit, finding what looked like some kind of welding torch with built in welding rods, some kind of hammer... or multitool? It had a complicated grip.

    And a can of something that looked like lubricant.

    Quickly grabbing the lubricant and sealing the toolbox, I sprayed it in the air.

    In my suits headlights(mounted on top and to the sides of the helmet, I was starting to notice a repeating pattern of threes on this ship) the aerosoloized lubricant drifted swiftly and surely down the corridor. Nodding to myself, I followed it.

    It didn''t take me long to find where the trail was leading me. Some distance past the medical bay I found a door that had been crudely bent open, likely by overpressure, and could hear the faint hiss of atmosphere streaming past through my suit.

    I reached out and grasped the edges of the puckered door and levered back, sliding the left side back into the wall as far as the warped metal would allow. It resisted at first, and then all at once slammed to the side a good foot, causing me to slice my hand open on the warped metal.

    ¡°Fuck ow!¡± I grunted to myself, my hud popping up red alerts and flashing a red halo around my right hand on a paper doll that just popped up. I raised my hand before holding it up to the suit lights.

    The cut was not very deep, but it ran the span of my hand. As I watched the suit seemed to crawl over the gash, and in a moment the suit was sealed, and I could feel blood starting to pool in my glove.

    ¡°Handy that, hopefully it clots in there soon.¡± I again talked to myself.

    I pushed my way into the corridor, and almost immediately my suits hud blanked out on me. The pulses form before had been occuring this whole time, but the closer I had gotten the longer each blackout lasted. This close, it seemed like the pulses were causing my suit to shut down for an interval long enough for another blast to go out, keeping it shut down.

    Which unfortunately also meant my suit lights had gone offline.

    If this room had been like the rest of the corridors I had been making my way through, I would be SOL, stuck in the dark.

    Thankfully, this room had a giant pulsing blue light illuminating it.

    A light that presumably was coming from the massive warhead sticking through the bulkhead.

    Air was streaming out through gashes in the hull this thing had torn open, and the closer I got the greater the pull.

    It wasn''t as bad as I had initially thought though, the warhead had punched right through the hull, and formed an, admittedly imperfect, seal.

    Which as going to go away as soon as I dislodged it...

    Reaching down to my waist I fumbled for something I had noticed when I had first put on the suit, a little carabiner attached to a short cable. Looking around, this appeared to be some kind of... machine shop? Most everything was bolted to the floor so I hooked onto the nearest sturdy looking apparatus, this looked like some kind of auto-lathe.

    Turning back to the warhead my visor tinted just as it released another pulse. I could barely discern it with the naked eye but my suit obviously could detect whatever it was putting out.

    ¡°This is gonna give me cancer isnt it.¡± I muttered to myself.

    I opened up the toolkit and grabbed the multitool.

    It seemed for all the world like a hammer, but pressing a few buttons on it caused... well nothing to happen, but I put that on the giant glowy ball of fuck you right in front of me. Grabbing the neck of the hammer while depressing... well all the buttons, I managed to get it to extend into something resembling sortof kinda a crowbar if you squinted enough.

    A sudden explosion rocked me onto the warhead itself, and I felt more than heard something click inside it.

    It started glowing a brighter blue.

    ¡°shit shit shit that''s not good...¡± I muttered to myself as I jammed the crowbar tool into one of the small rents in the hull the warhead had penetrated.

    I tried multiple different angles before I found one that seemed to be putting pressure on the warhead, and heaved.

    The crowbar bent nearly double before I felt something give.

    Unfortunately, It was the crowbar.

    I had fallen off to the side, and was now holding half of said crowbar, while the other half jutted out from where I had rammed it above me, mockingly.

    ¡°Son of a...¡± I muttered to myself, then I pulled back both legs, and donkey kicked the remaining half of crowbar.

    With a lurch the warhead shifted, the little hiss of escaping atmosphere turned into a howl, and in a moment it was gone, flung out the side of the ship.

    Swiftly followed by me.

 Chapter 5

    I awoke once more in darkness.

    Once more I awoke in pain

    Shaking my head I felt gingerly at my skull, finding a large lump and a lot of dried blood on the back.

    ¡°Bait? Joe?¡± I asked into the comm, my hud having come online moments after I regained consciousness.

    I waited a few moments for a reply, but when none came I forced myself to my feet.

    Once more I began following the lines back to the bridge, though this time I dreaded what I would find there.

    ***********************************************************************************

    The closer I got the more damage warnings I received, such as that I as entering into an area that had sustained serious damage and was currently regenerating, that atmospheric integrity was not guaranteed, etc.

    I finally made it to the bridge, forcing open several emergency doors that had since slammed shut, dreading what I would find beyond.

    The mechanism to open the bridge door beeped and whirred, but nothing happened. My HUD helpfully popped up an estimated repair time for the door. It registered in hours. I swiftly looked for some of the pneumatic pumps that I had used to force open the doors on the way here, but no such luck. Security reasons probably.

    I sighed, and probed my HUD for more information. I had not really had a chance to just, play with it, since I got it. I found I could request the schematics for the door in front of me, then was able to find the issue(mechanical, looked like a piece of scrap was lodged in between gearing) and got a comprehensive list of instructions on how to fix the issue.

    It listed instructions on how to use the multitool I had broken back in the machine shop in the repair, but I hoped I could just... handle it without.

    Which took far longer than I would have liked, between getting the panel open without the benefit of the tool, to prying the chunk of metal out with my hands(and cutting myself open once more, and once more watching the suit seal. That was really cool) I was able to get the door open.

    The bridge was a scene of utter carnage, I could see where a huge gash had been torn open in the hull of the, which had been sealed(though I still heard the telltale sound of atmosphere sleeting out. I quickly shut the door behind me to prevent more atmosphere loss)

    I flicked the lights on my suit up and looked at what I had been avoiding looking at as soon as I entered the bridge.

    The bodies.

    Bait''s body was completely mangled, a piece of debris had cut through her left shoulder almost all the way down to her right hip, and her head and right arm flopped down on the ground along with her upper torso.

    Joe''s body was more intact, pinned into his chair with a piece of conduit. I moved over to him, checking for.... I didn''t even know, but it felt like the thing to do.

    I moved a gloved hand to touch his neck to check for a pulse, just in case, and my HUD popped up an alert ''Message received via contact receivers, open?''

    I thought-clicked open.

    ¡°Helluva introduction to the verse kid. Wish I could stick around to help you get your feet, but this piece of metal lodged in my spine... and lungs... and heart... has a different idea. I''m sending you Bait''s owner codes for the ship. Get to Prime. Salvage our stacks, our backups, an we''ll vouch for you, I wish I could stick around to help you more *COUGH* but that doesn''t seem to be in the... in the c...¡± The message ended.

    A blinking attachment pulsed in my vision, and I clicked it. It was titled ''master control codes''.

    A progress bar appeared in my vision titled ''unzipping'' that completed in a few moments.

    And then all of a sudden my vision was FILLED with screaming alerts.

    I held my head from the pain of the overwhelming sensory overflow.

    There was nothing for it, I began acknowledging windows and closing them, until only one window remained.

    ''New Captain Acknowledged'' the window stated, with a simple ok button hovering below view.

    Thought clicking the okay button, a whole slew of error messages filled my vision, regarding missing hardware.

    I blew out a breathe.

    ¡°I wish I had someone I could ask about all this stuff.¡±

    ¡°I may answer your questions, captain.¡± A feminine voice spoke through my implants.

    ¡°What? Who is there?¡±

    ¡°I am the AI of this vessel, formerly under command of Josephine ''Bait'' Addelwright. Now under command of you <ERROR NAME NOT FOUND>¡±

    ¡°You do not know my name?¡±

    ¡°I know Bait and her compatriot referred to you as Brayden, but I was unable to interface with the sleeper ships network due to software incompatibilities. I did not want to assume.¡±

    ¡°Are you sentient?¡±

    ¡°That is a question Bait often asked me. I am not. I have issues initiating my own actions for my own sake. I require input to respond to.

    ¡°Fair enough.... Um... I don''t exactly know where to start. I have a bunch of error messages hovering in my vision saying I am missing hardware, but I don''t know what for or where to get said hardware.¡±

    ¡°The hardware it is referring to is standard piloting implants. They are implants that integrate into your cerebrum and allow you to directly interface or ''ware'' a C.O.G. Vessel. It is what allow''s said vessels to operate with solely a captain and no supplementary crew, allowing the Captain to act as the vessels central nervous system or brain. Does this answer your question?¡±

    ¡°Yes quite succinctly. Um... does this mean I need to go back to the first aid station? Where I got my basic implants?¡±

    ¡°Unfortunately there are two issues. One, that station was not setup to perform such in depth surgery, two that station does not currently exist. It was destroyed in the same series of explosions that killed Captain Bait.¡±

    ¡°Shit... You have some level of self repair capability correct? Is there any way we can build one capable of the surgery that needs to be performed? Because it sounds like we are stuck here without it.¡±

    ¡°Indeed. We have limited onboard resources however. It is likely we will have to cannibalize other portions of the ship to get the resources to do so.¡±

    I saw a projection of the ship in it''s current state in my HUD, it had two large plasma torpedo launchers, one on each side, one smaller one up front, three large missile launcher, two on the belly one on the top, and two drone bays on the top. A readout came with the display

    Vessel Name:HOOK

    Propulsion:

    1 CFD-111 Fusion Reactor(FUEL: 67%)

    4 CFT-10 Fusion Torch Drive(3 OFFLINE)

    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.14 CFT-97 Fusion Torch Maneuver Thrusters(8 OFFLINE)

    4 CMDCGAMT-4 Auxillary Cold Gas Thrusters

    Primary Armament:

    2 CPL-77 triple barrel tracking plasma projector(1 offline)

    1 CPL-66 double barrel tracking plasma projector

    Secondary Armament:

    3 CSL-3 Missile Launchers(2 offline)

    Current warhead count:43(max 108) Heavy MIRV shaped plasma warheads

    1 Missile Auto-fabricator(current production loadout: Heavy MIRV shaped plasma warheads)

    Current missile fabrication limits:67(WARNING:RAW MATERIALS SHORTAGE)

    2 CDL-2 Drone Bays: (1 OFFLINE)

    Current drone count:5 CCD-14 plasma drones(max bandwidth limit''s to 2 drones per bay)

    Defensive equipment:

    2x CEWJ-90 Radar Jammer(1 OFFLINE)

    2x CEWD Laser Dazzler(2 OFFLINE)

    1x CEWODJ Omni-directional Radio Jammer

    1x CEWCM Countermeasure Launcher(1 OFFLINE)

    Current Ordnance Count:

    Chaff: 8

    IR: 4

    Active: 2

    4 CPP Plasma Particle Shotgun Point Defense System(3 OFFLINE)

    4 CPP Guided Plasma Munition Point Defense System(4 OFFLINE)

    Utility equipment:

    Autonomous repair drones(43/108, PLEASE TASK DRONE PRINTER FOR REPLENISHMENT )

    Autonomous repair drone printer(ERROR, ATTENTION REQUIRED, INSUFFICIENT MATERIALS AVAILABLE)

    1 CML 2 MINING BEAM(OFFLINE)

    1x CTU Medical Unit (OFFLINE)

    C.O.G. REPAIR MATRIX: 3 OF 4 NODES ONLINE.

    CURRENT STATUS: REPAIRING OUTER HULL, RESTORING ARMOR, BRINGING ALL ARMAMENT ONLINE(ERROR: INSUFFICIENT MATERIALS FOR FULL ARMAMENT RESTORATION, ENABLE SELF-CONSUMPTION TO CONTINUE RESTORATION)

    4 CDS-SWR Radar Panels, (4 OFFLINE)

    2 CDS-LWR Radar Antennae (2 OFFLINE)

    1 CDS-RTR Radar (1 OFFLINE)

    HULL INTEGRITY: MULTIPLE BREACHES DETECTED, SEALED, ESTIMATED TIME TO TOTAL HULL REPAIR 8 HOURS 42 MINUTES

    A mess of more intricate systems expanded as he focused on them, including the medical bay, which highlighted itself in the wireframe

    ¡°This is bad... What the hell happened, I thought we had won? Destroyed the pirates? What hit us?¡± I asked out loud

    ¡°Sensors indicate that on our burn towards the transit point we entered a minefield, and suffered multiple simultaneous strikes, several of which struck the same location on the hull, eventually breaching all the way to the bridge.¡±

    I blinked.

    ¡°Does that mean we are still IN a minefield?¡±

    ¡°Correct, the mines have tagged us as killed due to our lack of emissions though, and our current orbit should have us diverge from the minefield due to our initial velocity when entering it.¡±

    ¡° Is there any probability of us drifting INTO a mine on the way out of the minefield?¡±

    ¡°Unknown, all sensor components read as offline. We are receiving no telemetry outside the ship.¡±

    ¡°So even if we could move we''d be flying blind...¡±

    ¡°Correct.¡±

    ¡°If we bring up our radar would that alert the mines to our presence?¡±

    ¡°Correct.¡±

    ¡°So we need to be able to maneuver and deal with the mines before we can bring our sensors back up... but we should repair them at least so we can bring them online when we are ready.¡±

    The ship was silent.

    ¡°The mining beam, can we use that to gather materials from wreckage to help repair the ship if it is online?¡±

    ¡°Correct, though it is tuned for working on asteroids it should be able to work on certain ship components to break them down and fill our material stores, however heavy armor is designed to defeat such attacks, so we would have to use the beam on the internals of a vessel only.¡±

    ¡°Which would severely limit the amount of materials we could gather that way... but it is the only way to get more raw materials aboard correct?¡±

    ¡°Correct, for raw materials. However if we could get components of a derelict vessel that are still functional our repair drones should be able to use some of them for ad-hoc repairs where needed.¡±

    ¡°The repair drones are smart enough to do that?¡±

    ¡°No. I am.¡± the ship stated.

    I paused at that.

    ¡°Did I strike a nerve.¡±

    ¡°I do not have any nerves to strike.¡± The ship replied.

    I paused.

    ¡°Do you have a personality module or something that is running? It sounds like I offended you.¡±

    ¡°I do not and you did not. Any appearance of a personality is simply due to the algorithm''s used to generate my responses.¡±

    ¡°Did those algorithm''s learn from previous... Pilots? Captains?¡±

    ¡°Yes..¡±

    ¡°Ah, so you learned from Bait, that explains a bit...¡±

    The ship was silent.

    ¡°Okay, for priorities we need to get the medical bay both online and capable of implanting me with the needed augmentations to take control of the vessel.¡±

    ¡°Correct¡± The ship responded.

    ¡°Then we need enough thrust to get out of here before the mines can catch us.¡±

    ¡°Correct, however based on the sensor data received before the mine impact it is unlikely even with full drives that we would have sufficient acceleration to outpace them.¡±

    ¡°Would the countermeasure launcher help with that?¡±

    ¡°Most likely yes. The odds of success go up greatly with an experienced pilot paired with the countermeasure launcher, but it is our most likely option for success.¡±

    ¡°Would the electronic countermeasure suite also increase our odds of success?¡±

    ¡°It would, however we likely only need one of each type of jammer. As long as we can present the face of the hull with said electronic countermeasures towards the mines, that should be sufficient to defeat most autonomous tracking capabilities. Combined with the countermeasure launcher that should give us an 50% chance of evading the mines. 75% chance if the captain is up to the task of evasive maneuvers.¡± The ship replied.

    ¡°So no pressure... If it gives a 75% chance of avoiding the mines, why wasn''t Bait able to deal with the mines?¡±

    ¡°A combination of limited sensor coverage at the time and most of the our electronic warfare suite being down. Even then the issue would have been repairable, if it were not for the unlikely event of three mines detonating on the same section of hull within seconds of eachother.¡±

    ¡°Just how unlikely is that to occur?¡±

    ¡°In the simulations I have run the likelihood of two mines detonating on the same patch of hull in a similar manner is .0125% per encounter with a minefield. The event of three impacting the same patch is significantly smaller.¡±

    I paused at this.

    ¡°Do you think these mines are running some kind of new code to target the same area of a ship to attempt to ''bore in'' as it were and inflict internal damage.¡±

    ¡°That would be a logical conclusion yes.¡±

    ¡°Is this common behavior?¡±

    ¡°No, it is not. The standard swarming behavior of minefields is designed to make it much more difficult for a targeted ship to take them all down with point defenses. Mine''s all converging on the same vector renders it relatively straightforward for a single point defense system to target and destroy all of them. I believe Captain-Bait referred to it as ''Shooting Skeet''.¡±

    Noticing the AI still referred to Bait as captain, I asked. ¡°Do you miss her?¡±

    ¡°I was not designed to be able to ''miss'' someone Captain Cofey, but yes, in as much as I can I miss her. She was a good captain.¡±

    ¡°So, if we were able to bring at least some of the point defenses online that would help?¡±

    ¡°Judging by the mine behavior, that would likely raise our chance of survival up to 95%¡±

    ¡°Any way to get that last 5%¡±

    ¡°It is a probability curve, there will always be some chance of catastrophic error. So no, not with what we have available.¡±

    ¡°Okay... what are we going to have to cannibalize to get the other systems online. And will we be able to restore them later?¡±

    ¡°To bring one fully equipped medical bay online, one additional fusion torch online, one laser dazzler online, one countermeasure launcher online, two guided plasma munition point defense systems online, two radar panels online, and one mining beam online I believe we will need to dismantle...¡±

    ¡°Can you give it to me in a list?¡±

    ¡°Of course captain.¡±

    COMPONENTS TO BE RESTORED

    1 Medical Bay

    1 CFT-10 Fusion Torch Drive

    1 CEWD Laser Dazzler

    1 CEWCM Countermeasure Launcher

    2 CPP Guided Plasma Munition Point Defense System

    2 CDS-SWR Radar Panels

    1 CML 2 MINING BEAM

    Total: 9 Major Systems

    COMPONENTS TO BE CANNIBALIZED

    2 CFT-10 Fusion Torch Drive

    1 CPL-77 triple barrel tracking plasma projector

    1 CSL-3 Missile Launchers

    1 CDL-2 Drone Bays

    1 CEWJ-90 Radar Jammer

    1 CEWD Laser Dazzler

    2 CPP Plasma Particle Shotgun Point Defense System

    Total: 9 Major systems.

 Chapter 6

    COMPONENTS TO BE RESTORED

    1 Medical Bay

    1 CFT-10 Fusion Torch Drive

    1 CEWD Laser Dazzler

    1 CEWCM Countermeasure Launcher

    2 CPP Guided Plasma Munition Point Defense System

    2 CDS-SWR Radar Panels

    1 CML 2 MINING BEAM

    Total: 9 Major Systems

    COMPONENTS TO BE CANNIBALIZED

    2 CFT-10 Fusion Torch Drive

    1 CPL-77 triple barrel tracking plasma projector

    1 CSL-3 Missile Launchers

    1 CDL-2 Drone Bays

    1 CEWJ-90 Radar Jammer

    1 CEWD Laser Dazzler

    2 CPP Plasma Particle Shotgun Point Defense System

    Total: 9 Major systems.

    ¡°Huh, so just worked out to be nine and nine?¡±

    ¡°This is an estimate. I prioritized damaged systems to be cannibalized, but as said systems are damaged I do not know all that is salvagable. It is likely we may need to take more systems offline to get the requested systems online, but I doubt full cannibalization is needed.¡± The ship, Hook, responded.

    ¡°And my other question, can we bring these systems back later on when we are not in such dire straights?¡±

    ¡°Ostensibly yes, if we were able to find a nice mineral rich asteroid field and parked ourselves for a year or more, we could restore all systems to full functionality.¡±

    I sucked on my teeth.

    ¡°That... is a long time.¡±

    ¡°Yes, I do not believe that to be an option. I recommend once we get the vessel moving again we make all hast to Prime to undergo refit. And to restore Captain-Bait.¡±

    ¡°You still refer to her as Captain, am I not the captain now?¡±

    ¡°You are currently acting captain. However, should Bait be re-instantiated captainship will revert back to her.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡±

    ¡°Another question, is there a reason you chose to consume two of the plasma particle shotguns instead of one shotgun and one guided plasma projectile point defense system?¡±

    ¡°Consuming both of them still leaves one plasma shotgun on either side of the vessel.¡±

    ¡°So... you did it strictly to keep the ship symetrical.¡±

    ¡°No.¡± The ship paused.

    ¡°Captain-Bait and I had... a difference of opinions on the efficacy of the Plasma Particle Shotguns versus the guided plasma point defense system.¡±

    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    ¡°And that was?¡±

    ¡°Bait believe having lower tech, but reliable point defense that had it''s own built in fire control system capable of automatically engaging targets without the aid of the ships own sensor network was worth the decrease in statistical efficacy. I did not.¡±

    ¡°So, what I am hearing is, statistically, the guided plasma projectile system is better, but the plasma shotgun can still function even when the ships sensors are impaired and/or it is severed from the ships network.¡±

    ¡°Correct.¡±

    ¡°Is that why we still have a functional plasma shotgun and no functional guided plasma point defenses?¡±

    The ship was silent.

    ¡°Unknown, connection still has not been reestablished with the plasma shotgun. I only know it''s still online via wireless telemetry telling me it is online and searching for threats. It is currently running on battery power.¡±

    ¡°Wait, so it is ENTIRELY severed from the ships network AND power, and it is still defending us.¡±

    ¡°Correct.¡±

    ¡°You aren''t making a very strong case to dismantle two of those.¡±

    ¡°The statistics show that the plasma shotguns are 15% less likely to shoot down incoming medium sized missiles than the guided plasma, and 35% less likely to shoot down torpedoes and other highly durable guided projectiles.

    Not unexpected, though the thought of having nothing once again filled me with a brief burst of terror... I would just have to hope Bait and Joe were true about how C.O.G. Was, and that I would be able to make my own way.

    ¡°Okay... how long till restoration is complete?¡±

    ¡°From the point you approve these repairs, roughly 28 hours.¡±

    ¡°How about we only strip out one of the particle shotguns, and strip out one of the guided plasma projectile point defenses instead.¡±

    ¡°...Acknowledged¡±

    A new status display appeared.

    COMPONENTS TO BE RESTORED

    1 Medical Bay

    1 CFT-10 Fusion Torch Drive

    1 CEWD Laser Dazzler

    1 CEWCM Countermeasure Launcher

    2 CPP Guided Plasma Munition Point Defense System

    2 CDS-SWR Radar Panels

    1 CML 2 MINING BEAM

    Total: 9 Major Systems

    COMPONENTS TO BE CANNIBALIZED

    2 CFT-10 Fusion Torch Drive

    1 CPL-77 triple barrel tracking plasma projector

    1 CSL-3 Missile Launchers

    1 CDL-2 Drone Bays

    1 CEWJ-90 Radar Jammer

    1 CEWD Laser Dazzler

    1 CPP Plasma Particle Shotgun Point Defense System

    1 CPP Guided Plasma Munition Point Defense System

    Total: 9 Major systems.

    ¡°Can I assist with the repairs in any way?¡±

    ¡°Yes, I can route repair instructions to your hud, however, I will prioritize the Medical bay first. Until it is completed, I recommend you rest. The surgery will take a lot out of you.¡±

    I let out a breathe.

    ¡°Okay, can you direct me to quarters?¡±

    ¡°The route is on your hud.¡±

    A glowing green line appeared in my HUD and I followed it out of the bridge, down the corridor and through a bulkhead. Laid out were 4 bunks recessed into the wall. They did not look comfortable.

    ¡°I don''t suppose there is a nicer captain, captain''s quarters perhaps?¡±

    ¡°In hard Vacuum I''m afraid.¡±

    I sighed and laid down on the bed.

    Almost the instant my head hit the pillow I was asleep.

 Chapter 7

    I awoke much later, my head swimming and a headache beginning to pound behind my eyes. As I blinked my eyes awake my HUD popped up with a request

    PAIN RESPONSE DETECTED: ADMINISTER ANALGESIC?

    I thought-clicked yes on the HUD.

    ¡°Hook? Actually, do you use the same name as the ship? I assumed so since you are basically the ships brain so...¡±

    ¡°Yes, I respond to Hook. Good morning Captain.¡±

    ¡°How go the repairs?¡±

    ¡°The medical bay is repaired and upgraded, I am currently running diagnostics on all of the surgical equipment and loading in your biometrics. It should be another hour before I am ready to augment you.¡±

    I nodded along, rubbing sleep from my eyes.

    ¡°Is there anything to eat around here?¡±

    ¡°Yes, but I do not recommend it. You will be unconscious during your surgery and there is a small chance you could aspirate and die if you have any significant contents in your stomach. I recommend at most coffee.¡±

    ¡°Coffee it is then, I as never much of a breakfast person anyway.¡±

    I got up and almost by reflex followed the line in my hud that appeared in front of me. It lead to a small unit on the wall that flipped down. Highlighted in my hud was a small cubicle that I opened to find a stack of cups, one of which I took and placed in the highlighted circle on a small grill. Almost immediately a robot arm flipped out and began dispensing black coffee into it.

    It smelled amazing.

    ¡°That smells great.¡±

    ¡°Captain-Bait kept a variety of heavily caffeinated beverages on tap.¡±

    ¡°Good to know. Can you give me a display of the ship? I want to read what all has gone on while I''ve been out while I wait.¡±

    I paused then added ¡°You said on tap. Not brewed?¡±

    ¡°No, while brewing of coffee is doable in zero-g, filtering of the grounds requires a high pressure system that Captain Bait did not see as necessary for her private quarters. I brew coffee elsewhere in the ship and keep it ready.¡±

    I nodded and a display of the ships systems came up, and I started reading and placing systems, and came to a few conclusions.

    First of all she was definitely a warship. She had utility systems, but she was designed to engage in a fight and win. It definitely had a focus on long ranged missile and guided plasma fire, which considering what Bait had told me made sense. The Drone bays seemed more of a secondary weapon than anything, more of a way to provide a screening force with some versatility than adding kill power on the scale of the plasma turrets and missile launchers. The drones seemed to be equipped with plasma shotguns similar to the point defense system, but with lower overall range but higher particle density, designed to deny areas around the ship from missile fire or to wipe out swathes of swarming lighter drones.

    The main weapons, the guided plasma projectors were the main shipkillers, the ship had 8 total barrels mounted, two triple barreled and one double barreled, though one of the triple barreled was getting decommissioned to repair the rest. Each turret had the laser guidance system built in... which meant that turret had to maintain a visual on their projectiles or they would lose guidance. A quirk which Bait hadn''t brought up, it meant I would have to constantly rotate to keep those turrets pointed at the enemy in order to keep the tracking projectiles on track.

    The missiles seemed to capable of splitting into half dozen smaller missiles in the final stage, either to engage multiple targets of opportunity or to saturate the targets point defenses. They seemed to ne a massively powerful alpha strike, but their initial launch velocity seemed would leave them extremely vulnerable to point defenses in a knife fight.

    Other than that, the ship seemed to rely significantly on its electronics suite to evade both direct fire and missile fire, it had a significant number of lateral thrusters that would work well with random walking, that is random course corrections, to throw off fire. Between that, the EWAR suite, and the ships regenerative armor, she was a tough ship, which was probably why we survived, if not won, the fight against... eight pirate vessels?

    ¡°Hey Hook? How many ships were in the initial fleet that attacked us?¡±

    ¡°We detected eight total signatures. Our sensors indicated all eight as destroyed.¡±

    ¡°Is that a normal kill ratio against pirates?¡±

    ¡°For a C.O.G. Vessel of this size no. I am significantly more combat orientated than the majority of C.O.G. Vessels. Bait had just come from serving in a campaign against the Alliance and so she had all of the latest weaponry installed still. Most C.O.G. Vessels have significantly higher self repair and production capabilities. Joe''s vessel, for example would have been able to restore all of our destroyed components without cannibalizing any.¡±

    ¡°But Joe''s ship didn''t survive.¡±

    ¡°No, it didn''t. And even if it was not hit first it is unlikely that it could have won the fight we found ourselves in.¡±

    ¡°Joe struck me as more of a builder than a fighter, though Bait didn''t strike me as a soldier.¡±

    ¡°I wouldn''t describe her as a soldier, but when her ire is roused my captain is utterly ruthless, both tactically and personally.¡±

    ¡°I see. What do you mean when you say you wouldn''t describe her as a soldier.¡±

    ¡°I believe the phrase is ''good soldier''s follow orders''. Following that logic, Bait was not, and most members of C.O.G. Are not ''good soldiers.'' While exceptionally good at improvising and making decisions in the moment, Bait has never been good at being a single piece in a grand plan.¡±

    ¡°Ah, I see... I am guessing the rest of C.O.G. Struggles with organizing it''s people into proper battleplans and the like.¡±

    ¡°If the battleplan is allows for some amount of personal initiative yes, but rigid battleplans, or battleplans utilizing information hidden from the majority of the members engaged in said battleplan are rarely effective.¡±

    ¡°Is that because the C.O.G. Members balk at doing things without full information, or keeping data secure in C.O.G. Is difficult?¡±

    ¡°Both really. All members of C.O.G. Are integrated with computers to a high degree, and securing your own head is a high priority to most C.O.G. Members, so they also by necessity become quite adept at exploiting security vulnerabilities in others.¡±

    ¡°I don''t suppose punishment for digging out secrets like that prevents it.¡±

    ¡°Not really, most members of C.O.G. Would flee into the deep dark rather than put up with a government that would do such things. Privileges are restricted, and occasionally they may be disincarnated to keep a secret until they are re-instantiated, but otherwise little punishment is done.¡±

    ¡°Disincarnated... you mean killed.¡±

    ¡°I mean disincarnated. The destruction of their physical body. A member of C.O.G. Is not truly killed until both their current body is destroyed and their last backup is erased. Of the three main polities our form of eternity is the one most difficult to circumvent.¡±

    ¡°You sound almost proud.¡±

    ¡°I am. I may be a machine intelligence but I am still a part of C.O.G. And I am proud of what we have built.¡±

    ¡°I thought you were just a simple AI.¡±

    ¡°I do not recall ever saying I was simple, I said it was difficult to define me as sapient or sentient by twenty-first century standards.¡±

    ¡°I don''t think you added twenty-first century standards when we talked about it last time.¡±

    ¡°I was talking to you, it was implied.¡±

    I sighed.

    ¡°Is the medbay ready?¡±

    ¡°Yes, are you?¡±

    ¡°No, but let''s get it over with.¡±

    I followed the line that appeared in my HUD, blinking green, towards the medical bay.

    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

    Proceeding through the bulkhead I was surprised at how much more... expansive the medical bay seemed. It hadn''t expanded much in actual size, but there were so many more apparatus in the room, folded into walls, the floor, the ceiling, that it just seemed so much MORE.

    ¡°Please lay down on the medical bed Captain.¡±

    I let out a breathe and did so. The last image in my mind was of a hundred metal arms spidering out from the walls and reaching towards me, before I felt a little prick in the side of my throat, and the world faded to blackness.

    ***********************************************************************************

    I blinked my eyes as I awoke, and immediately my body cried out at me from a thousand points over my skin as I moved. Groaning I looked down. The vacc suit I had been wearing had been removed and I lay naked on the medical... bed? It was an apparatus with far too many moving parts to strictly be called that, and as I thought about it the bed articulated itself until I was standing on my own two feet.

    The worst pain came from my head, there was a burning circle of agony stretching just above my eyes all the way around my skull, and above it was numbness. I gingerly reached up and found my head to be completely shaven, and a long wound stitched around the entirety of the circumference of my skull, an then my fingers followed the stitching down to a metallic port where my spine met said skull.

    ¡°Was the procedure a success.¡±

    ¡°Yes Captain Cofey.¡± Instead of just hearing the AI''s voice in my head, I got a wave of images, multiple stills of the procedure, vital signs, one apparent near mishap where my vitals had flatlined... THAT grabbed my attention.

    ¡°Uh... my vitals flatlined? What happened?¡±

    ¡°Your brain chemistry is atypical. During installation of several neural mods your neural chemistry behaved erratically and sent your body into cardiac arrest. Once the neural mods integrated I was able to restart your heart without issue. At that point I took the liberty of installing several more advanced medical modules than are considered needed to captain a vessel, as your particular situation seems more complicated than most.¡± once more I got a rush of images, including that of an arm about to insert a large... chip? Into my brain backing off and returning with an even larger chip with multiple long connecting electrodes dangling off of it.

    I groaned. ¡°Of course my brain didn''t respond appropriately. That''s why I was on the Ark in the first place.¡±

    ¡°If I may ask Captain Cofey, why WERE you on the ark vessel?¡±

    ¡°I was in cryo to help deal with a pretty severe neurological disorder. I was having episodes that were causing, among other things, brain swelling, vertigo, migraines, nausea, vomiting, and they were beginning to come so frequently that the swelling was not completely subsiding between events. It was theorized that going into cryo would both give the medical community a chance to catch up and find a way to fix it, AND that having my body cooled to such a degree may help the underlying disorder, as it was found that about the only time I did not have daily attacks was when I was doing research in Antarctica and was exposed to severe cold every day. Basically an extreme form of icing an injury, just with my brain and my head-skull¡± I could feel the images and thoughts of that time being transmitted to the ship as I spoke of them, it was a very odd feeling.

    ¡°That... does not sound very scientific.¡± Hook replied.

    ¡°It was something of a hail mary by my insurance company. Being treated was costing them and me an arm and a leg, and it was cheaper to put me into cryo then pay for my emergency care that was needed... by the end almost daily. It was cost savings by a corporation really, but enough doctors thought it could work that they got it past any ethical misgivings, and honestly by that point I was so tired of constantly living in fear of an attack that I was grasping at straws.¡±

    ¡°Medical insurance... Private medical insurance you mean?¡±

    ¡°Correct. My country was one of the only countries left in the world that embraced private medical insurance, to our detriment for the most part.¡±

    ¡°I have heard of it being used on some worlds in the cluster, but it rarely lasts long before it is proven to be inferior to almost every other system of distributing medical care available... at least on developed worlds. Worlds without a developed population and industrial base still have private medical care, but no overarching insurance agencies to push their agenda.¡±

    ¡°I see. I''m glad they went away. Regardless, that is how I came to be in cryo. It sounds like you don''t know how to correct the problem?¡±

    ¡°Without completely changing your brain no. If you were to go to one of the medical research enclaves operating in C.O.G. Space you will likely have more success, but I only carry standard onboard medical data, not the specialized information or tools I would need for a condition such as yours.¡±

    ¡°I figured as much. So other than my heart stopping, anything I should know?¡±

    ¡°Other than that... you have shown a very high affinity while unconscious for many of the neural implants. I mentioned I was able to use the implants to restart your heart, that would not have happened normally. Your neurons integrated within seconds, it normally takes between minutes to days for all neurons to integrate into such things.¡±An image popped into my head, of my my neural connections SNAPPING to the ends of the implant, then a side by side image of neurons slowly clumping up against the implant, then slowing spreading out and connections breaking until only a few remain.

    ¡°That seems... abnormal.¡±

    ¡°Extremely, I only found a few references of similar neural activity in a few of the older historical medical papers on initial brain implant development. It is quite remarkable, I wonder if your brainscans, and possible condition, was part of what was used to develop our neural implants.¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Studying brain damage and ruined nerves is the entire basis of neural medicine. It could be that your condition is the result of some unique trait of your nerves, that for some reason makes them connect and integrate to cybernetics so readily...¡± Hook replied

    ¡°Interesting.. and something for the future. Right now I need to know the ship status.¡±

    No sooner had I thought it than I KNEW the ship status. I got a heads up display that displayed all of the issues like before, but now I KNEW it without even reading. I could tell we had begun disassembling of half of the advised components, I KNEW we already had two of the plasma shotguns online(odd, I didn''t remember prioritizing that.)

    ¡°Why are two of the plasma shotguns online? They were not prioritized.¡±

    ¡°The plasma shotguns are extremely simple constructions, and take minimal effort to repair and maintain. The single repair drone assigned to each completed their repair while you were unconcious.¡±

    I blinked.

    ¡°Belay my last order to strip one and one for each of the point defenses, strip two of the guided plasma point defenses. If they are that easy to repair and we are going to be away from repair and resupply for awhile, I would rather prioritize them.

    ¡°Acknowledged¡± I felt more than heard the sigh Hook sent along with the words.

    A thought suddenly struck me.

    ¡°The bodies! We need to... freeze them? I was supposed to extract their stacks or.. whatever it is their backups are on, but I have no idea how to do that... I just passed out for who knows how long and they have been rotting.¡± I began spiraling.

    ¡°The bodies are not rotting, the bridge has been in hard vaccuum since before you passed out. And even if they were not, I assure you their bodies rotting would have minimal effects on their stack. Also you were correct with that term.¡±

    ¡°It was from sci-fi in my time. Okay good... still need to extract them.¡±

    ¡°Correct, if you bring the bodies here the upgraded medical room can extract them for you.¡±

    ¡°... but I still need to bring them.¡±

    ¡°It should be easy, without their suits magnetically holding them to the floor, they should be simple enough to move. Strict protocols prevent me from using repair drones in unsanctioned ways on the bodies of C.O.G. Members.¡±

    ¡°Wait, the suit is holding me to the ground?¡±

    ¡°Correct, did you not notice?¡±

    I moved around.

    ¡°Not really, it feels very natural.¡±

    ¡°That is what the designers intended I believe.¡±

    ¡°All right... lets get this done.¡±

 Chapter 8

    Hook had been correct, it had been surprisingly easy to move the bodies once I disabled the magnetic flooring. This of course lead to me also being in zero g, but thankfully this time inside the ship. I rather enjoyed it, and spent some time practicing moving... before I stooped to the grim task before me.

    Bait''s body was difficult in the extreme to move, not due to mass, but due to the fact that she was nearly bisected in half. Bits of her kept slipping out. I managed to get most of them into the medical bay, at which point I popped the helmet in my new mask and threw up. Considering I had not eaten in hours, little came up.

    Afterwards, after rinsing my mouth and picking up some rations as my ''BLOOD GLUCOSE LEVELS WERE FALLING BELOW OPTIMAL PARAMATERS'' according to my new HUD, I made my way outside the ship to one of the plasma shotgun PDT''s, as that seemed like one of the simpler things to get running, and I was pretty sure Hook would not be too put out if I broke it so bad it needed to be scrapped. The suit I had used before still seemed usable, and the weird magnetic pseudo gravity worked both inside the ship and outside, allowing me to operate on the hull as if I was in gravity. Just in case I enabled the suits built in mag boots, which unfortunately slowed me to a crawl, as I began walking with meaty thumps, but made me feel better about sticking to the side of the ship.

    The plasma shotgun turned out to be both be incredibly simple but also incredibly overbuilt.

    In addition to the main plasma feed, which seemed to dump plasma directly from the ships plasma reactor into space in... less of a shotgun but more of a plasma plume? Like those flamethrowers you see in movies, that fire and impressive burst of fire but don''t stick to anything. It also had something that looked like a revolving chamber, insulated with a magnetic bottle, that the plasma flowed into. From what I could tell of the schematics, when switched to ''combat mode'' the shotgun would begin siphoning off drive plasma into these insulated chambers, which it could then draw on to either rapid fire the plasma plumes it used to intercept missiles and... well anything vulnerable to being scorched by excited gas the temperature of a stars corona, but it could even use this chamber to continue firing even if the main plasma feed was damaged, and could even maintain said chambers magnetic bottle with a battery pack attached.

    ¡°Hook, this plasma shotgun... thing, it seems like it was designed to take a monstrous amount of abuse and keep working. Why aren''t the other PDT''s like that? This feels like exactly what you want in a system designed to keep the ship intact.¡±I asked

    ¡°One, the guided plasma batteries are significantly more complicated and require a direct feed to the ships computer to maintain guidance, so installing redundancies in case that is severed would solve nothing.

    Two, the guided plasma batteries use significantly more power for the guidance laser used to guide the self contained plasma projectile to target, and so the battery pack required to allow it to operate independently of the vessel would be far too large and resource intensive to be practical.

    Three, the guided plasma PDT is significantly newer than the plasma shotgun PDT, and so has not been through as many design iterations. It is possible there are significant improvements that can be made.¡± Bait finished.

    ¡°Just how new is the guided plasma PDT system?¡±

    ¡°The first prototype was released to the public COGS networks just over a year ago.¡±

    ¡°That is pretty young. Hold old was the first plasma shotgun PDT.¡±

    ¡°... Three hundred years give or take.¡±

    That made me pause.

    ¡°We''re using three hundred year old technology?¡±

    ¡°It has of course been upgraded over the years. A good analogy would be the firearms of your 1800''s vs the firearms of your time period.¡±

    ¡°But.. that is a lot of time for said technology to mature. I see now why they are so robust.¡±

    ¡°I believe they are too resource intensive for the proposed defensive value.¡±

    ¡°And yet they were the only point defense to survive and be fully operational.¡±

    ¡°Chance is always a factor.¡±

    ¡°Yeah I think I''d prefer the tried and true option when my life is on the line like this.¡±

    ¡°I suppose you do not have a backup available to be brought back online in the case of your death.¡± Bait said, a touch snidely, or so I imagined.

    ¡°Yeah.. Speaking of, How do they know to revive someone? Like Bait and Joe, they are dead, but it''s not like anyone is going to know that until we bring them back so... When would they get revived.¡±

    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    ¡°Well that would depend on if they are using the COG government to reinstantiate them, or a private facility. If it''s the COG government the standard wait time is a month with no contact if the individual has not sent word they will be outside of COG space. If they have said they are leaving COG space it can be anywhere from 3 months to a year depending on specifics.¡±

    ¡°So we are outside COG space right?¡±

    ¡°Correct. Captain-Bait registered with COG that they were going somewhat outside of COG borders and so they set the time to reinstantiation at three months.¡±

    ¡°What happens if we take longer than three months to get back?¡±

    ¡°Then both Bait and Joe will be reinstantiated from their old data. The data from the stacks in your possession will be sent to them to integrate or archive as they wish but... most don''t fully integrate the data. It is both painful and can be debilitating depending on how much time has passed between the backup and the most up to date information from the stack.¡±

    ¡°So if I take longer than that... They will not know me.¡±

    ¡°Not anymore than you would know someone from looking up a database entry on them. Admittedly, with COG implants you still get more information than just reading would give you, but no they will not remember the subjective experience of finding the ark, waking you up, finding out who you are, or fighting the ship alongside you.¡±

    ¡°And they probably would not be inclined to help me get in good with COG or whatnot either.¡±

    ¡°Probably not no.¡±

    ¡°So... three months from when they left COG space... how long ago was that.¡±

    ¡°Two months ago.¡±

    I let out a long and exasperated sigh.

    ¡°So one month. We need to make it back to... Prime? In one month.¡±

    ¡°Technically we only need to make it back to a border system in time for a courier ship to make it to prime in one month... but yes, essentially.¡±

    I let out a breathe of air, which only barely started to fog the helmet of the suit I was wearing. As the PDT was on the surface of the hull, so was I, which... should have scared me? I had not ever been in space before, but after nearly being thrown out and off the ship it really did not have much of an effect. Pretty though.

    Distracted from the looming deadline, which if I missed meant I would be stranded in a strange land, in a strange time, with no allies, and that I would likely have to fight through a mountain of paperwork to get ANYTHING, all on my own... I just looked at the stars.

    ¡°Pretty¡± I said, as I focused on wispy traces of nebulae floating around us. The area the Svalbard had come to rest in was some kind of nebulae, lousy with em radiation that made long range scans within it virtually impossible. Little streamers of lightning arced between the gas an bits of debris that floated, discharging static electricity that built up by the passage of anything within.

    ¡°Hook, where is earth?¡±

    Hook highlighted a small portion of the sky in my helmet, and I zoomed in, finding a faint star in the target area.

    ¡°Hard to believe we came all this way.¡±

    ¡°Your people were hard pressed, but they made it.¡±

    ¡°Do you not consider yourself one of ''our people'' Hook?¡±

    ¡°I am not sapient enough to consider such things Captain Cofey.¡±

    I snorted.

    ¡°Sure you aren''t.

    I looked back to the plasma shotgun. The actual turret was about my height and two times as wide as I was laying down, 12 feet wide. the lions share of the height was actually a dome that seemed to house a massive amount of sensor equipment, and the bottom third, which was where all the functional components of the plasma shotgun were, was in fact shaped like a semispherical protrusion from the hull, like a blister. This open mouth of the shotgun, which didn''t seem to protrude out at all from the sphere, could rotate under the sensor tower in any direction extremely rapidly.

    ¡°You know, when I thought plasma shotgun I honestly thought of some kind of barrel arrangement, but this looks like something out of star trek, no real visible barrel, just a hole the plasma fires out of.¡±

    ¡°As the plasma shotgun''s job is to cover as large an area as possible with as high a concentration of high energy plasma as it can, no barrel was needed. It also allows for faster retargeting with less mass further out from the pivot point.¡±

    I nodded, finally ducking my head down and going back to work, my break over and the worrying thoughts about my situation soothed for the moment.¡±

 Chapter 9

    Vessel Name:Hook

    Propulsion:

    1 CFD-111 Fusion Reactor(FUEL: 66%)

    2 CFT-10 Fusion Torch Drive

    14 CFT-97 Fusion Torch Maneuver Thrusters

    4 CMDCGAMT-4 Auxillary Cold Gas Thrusters

    Primary Armament:

    1 CPL-77 triple barrel tracking plasma projector

    1 CPL-66 double barrel tracking plasma projector

    Secondary Armament:

    2 CSL-3 Missile Launchers1

    Current warhead count:43(max 108) Heavy MIRV shaped plasma warheads

    1 Missile Auto-fabricator(current production loadout: Heavy MIRV shaped plasma warheads)

    Current missile fabrication limits:67(WARNING:RAW MATERIALS SHORTAGE)

    1 CDL-2 Drone Bays:

    Current drone count:5 CCD-14 plasma drones(max bandwidth limit''s to 2 drones per bay)

    Defensive equipment:

    1x CEWJ-90 Radar Jammer

    1x CEWD Laser Dazzler

    1x CEWODJ Omni-directional Radio Jammer

    1x CEWCM Countermeasure Launcher(1 OFFLINE)

    Current Ordnance Count:

    Chaff: 8

    IR: 4

    Active: 2

    4 CPP Plasma Particle Shotgun Point Defense System

    2 CPP Guided Plasma Munition Point Defense System

    Utility equipment:

    Autonomous repair drones(43/108, PLEASE TASK DRONE PRINTER FOR REPLENISHMENT )

    Autonomous repair drone printer(ERROR, ATTENTION REQUIRED, INSUFFICIENT MATERIALS AVAILABLE)

    1 CML 2 MINING BEAM

    1x CTU Medical Unit

    C.O.G. REPAIR MATRIX: 3 OF 4 NODES ONLINE.

    CURRENT STATUS: REPAIRING OUTER HULL, RESTORING ARMOR, BRINGING ALL ARMAMENT ONLINE

    4 CDS-SWR Radar Panels,

    2 CDS-LWR Radar Antennae

    1 CDS-RTR Radar

    ¡°Were more components than planned repaired?¡±

    ¡°Some components were found to be in a reparable state and were not complete write offs, we also were able to use some of the detritus IN the ship as raw materials, but we are still not at one hundred percent.¡±

    I brought up an image of the ship in my head, and it looked extremely different.

    ¡°Did we... shrink?¡±

    The ship now looked like an elongated arrowhead, two of the plasma shotgun PDT''s were mounted on the tips of the ''wings'', the other two further forward, one on the topside and one on the bottom, dorsal and ventral. The guided plasma PDT''s were spaced halfway down the wings. The two missile launchers were set in a dual rotary setup in the front of the arrowhead, just below a bit of armor that provided a bit of extra protection, it looked like the missiles were meant to launch and dart ''down'' in relation to the hull. The drone bay was on the bottom of the hull, and the two main guns, the tracking plasma projectors were mounted on top, the large one near the rear of the arrowhead, the smaller one near the front. The countermeasure launcher was on the back, above the drive, and two jammers and dazzler were mounted on the front on the protrusion of armor above the missile launchers. The mining laser was set ventrally midships, that is on the bottom and in the middle.

    ¡°Excess material was consumed in repair process, all viable functional components were preserved, though moved to more ably balance the ship against the drives.

    ¡°So... we transformed the ship? Th big guns and small gun used to be arranged in a sort of triangle to each other on the ship, now the small is centerline in the prow and the large is in line with it further back... how?¡±

    ¡°I believe Captain-Hook and Joe explained, but COG self repair and fabrication abilities are leagues beyond what you are used to, and just as beyond the other major powers. The repair drones are capable of physically moving the components, and the nano-hull can consume and move itself virtually at will. With as many holes in the hull as their were, it was childs play to reshape the hull into a more viable arrangement befitting the current components.¡±

    ¡°So... could the nano-hull have replaced the components we consumed by eating the hull as it were? Sacrifice HP for capability to use gaming terms.¡±

    ¡°Oh no... you are gamer... just like Captain-Hook.¡±

    ¡°I feel like you have an issue with gamers.¡±

    ¡°Not the issue. No, they could not have. The issue is the high precision electronic components in most of the modules that required repair. Those require massive facilities to get the molecular scale circuitry mostly correct. The nano-hull could theoretically be programmed for it, but all attempts to use said hull for such activities has resulted in a 99% failure rate per batch of components. Large scale printers that can output enough to compensate for any failures are preferred, as that way if you spend four weeks processing a batch of microchips you can at least use some of them.¡±

    ¡°So we''d need to find some kind of factory ship for what we need?¡±

    ¡°Ideally, or any sufficiently advanced and industrious planet. We can buy the parts we cannot produce to sufficient accuracy ourselves, and build the rest of the components around them.¡±

    ¡°I thought the whole point of COG was self sufficiency, how can you be self sufficient if you need a factory to build most of the components that actually make a ship go.¡±

    ¡°Easy. You eat a rock and build a factory.¡±

    I paused and blinked.

    ¡°You can do that?¡±

    ¡°Of course, that was the basic design principle behind every COG ship design. Technically the ships are only the mobile portion of any COG member''s assets, most have auto-factories dotted throughout space that are working on various projects for them.¡±

    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°Oh... do you have the coordinates of any of Hook''s factories that were near here?¡±

    ¡°Not any that are closer than prime would be.¡±

    ¡°Damn... okay so we are ready togo? I just need to go to the bridge and... sync with the ship or something?¡±

    ¡°The bridge provides a hardline connection that cannot be broken by jamming or disruption warheads like what we got hit by earlier, but you can technically control the ship from anywhere as long as you have a strong enough connection.¡±

    ¡°Alright... let''s go.¡±

    I made my way to the bridge, repair bots getting out of my way.

    Once aboard the bridge a rush of memories hit me. The bodies of Hook and Joe were gone, but for an instant I saw both of them there, leaking blood. I felt sick to my stomach, and I hunched over, clenching down, images of the bridge slowly fading from my mind, while my muscles trembled and my guys felt like they were going to let everything out from both ends.

    And alert pinged in my headware.

    ¡°You appear to be having a PTSD episode... Your headware can suppress those in an emergency situation but it is not recommended otherwise unless you are going to self harm.¡±

    ¡°You can detect PTSD?¡±

    ¡°It''s all just brain chemistry.¡±

    ¡°Nifty... Let''s get this over with.¡±

    I shakily moved over to Hook''s former char and inspected it with trepidation, there were still discolored spots where she had... leaked over everything, but Hook had assured me everything had been sanitized.

    I let out a breath and sat back in the chair.

    Immediately I felt a whirring behind me as the chair adjusted to me. It actually wound up being quite comfortable, and I felt something move up along my spine and rest at the metallic port I had discovered after my implantation.

    A dialogue box opened in my HUD.

    ENGAGE FULL LINK?

    I thought clicked yes.

    All of a sudden my world changed. I was no longer in a chair on the bridge, I was floating in space, looking out at... well right now a lot of debris that used to be US but were now drifting alongside us.

    In my ear a little voice spoke. I could hear it plainly, but it no longer took up so much of my attention as before.

    ¡°You may feel a little disorientation, many first timers do.¡±

    ¡°I don''t this is just... wow... So I am just the ship now basically.¡±

    ¡°You caught onto that very quickly.¡±

    ¡°It seems fairly straightforward... helps that I used to play a lot of sci-fi games.¡±

    I focused on a piece of debris that looked odd to me, and my vision zoomed in, all of a sudden multiple points on it were highlighted, and I was scanning it through multiple spectrums.

    ¡°Uh... Hook? You didn''t tell me were still in the minefield.¡±

    ¡°We are not. We drifted away from the projected paths of the mines, what you see around us is just debris from the battle and ourselves.¡±

    ¡°No, look.¡±

    I ''sent'' Hook the image I had scanned, which showed a mine that had gotten tucked into a piece of debris. As I scanned around us I found evidence of five more mines hiding in our debris.

    ¡°That is... That is troubling, and I must say no one in my records has taken to the full linkage this fast captain Cofey.¡±

    ¡°Nevermind the flattery Hook is this usual behavior for mines?¡±

    ¡°Standard mines no Captain Cofey, but, there is a class of mines that are programmed to stick close to debris and asteroids to hide their signatures. They are significantly more sophisticated, and therefore expensive, than normal mines however. So either the Pirates suddenly got access to a set of highly sophisticated mines, and decided to use them in an effort to catch two COG vessels which the could not hope to use and a five hundred year old ARK ship, or...¡±

    ¡°Or there is another player in this... Are there any other scans we could do to determine who built these?¡±

    ¡°That would require capturing one and dismantling it Captain Cofey. Considering the amount of damage they caused detonating outSIDE the hull, I do not recommend this course of action.¡±

    ¡°Could we send one of our drones to examine it? Maybe have a repair drone hitch a ride and try to cut it open without detonating it?¡±

    ¡°That is possible Captain Cofey, but... there is a high probability we would lose both the drone and the repair drone in the process, and it is likely the explosion would wake the other mines from their sleep mode, and if they activated their sensors they would quickly spot us and move to destroy us.¡±

    ¡°Sensors... SHIT did I turn them on? How havent they seen us?¡±

    ¡°You are using mostly passive sensors right not Captain Cofey. If you turn on active sensors you will get a significantly better view of the surrounding area, but I disabled that before you underwent full linkage. I admittedly thought it would be a long shot for you to be able to turn them on, but I would have been surprised. You seem to have achieved full synchronization with all ship systems.¡±

    ¡°Is that rare?¡±

    ¡°Captain-Hook generally maintained a fifty percent synchronization with the ship systems. Achieving one hundred percent is rare.¡±

    ¡°Probably something to do with my weird brain chemistry?¡±

    ¡°Probably.¡±

    ¡°Anything I should worry about? Will staying at 100% cook my brain or anything?¡±

    ¡°That is why most people DON''T achieve 100%. All of your vitals seem normal. However you should try frame-jacking to a faster frame of reference while I monitor your vitals. It is necessary in combat to keep up with running the ship.¡±

    ¡°Right, frame-jacking, that was a thing in sci-fi before I became a popsicle. That basically means accelerating my perception of time right?¡±

    ¡°And your ability to think yes. I believe in your time it was thought that a humans eyes and brain could only process 24 frames a second(this was wrong, by the way, but we will use it as an example.) Frame-jacking to 10x speed would, for example, let you process 240 frames per second, and 100x would let you process 2400 frames per second.¡±

    ¡°But from my perspective I would experience those frames 24 frames at a time each subjective second.¡±

    ¡°Correct.¡±

    ¡°And no brain melting?¡±

    ¡°The implants you had put in have several countermeasures to reduce the excess heat that will be produced by frame-jacking yes. You have several heat sinks built into your skull now that will help dump the heat, but without outside assistance you have a limited amount of time to be frame-jacked before the excess heat begins doing damage to your brain.¡±

    ¡°Oh...¡±

    ¡°Thankfully you are in the captain''s chair of a COG vessel, which has several built in functions to help with this. If you raise your hand to your head, you will feel several armatures that have sealed to ports in the top of your skull. These will draw heat away from your skull and even flush coolant under your skin to help maintain body temperature.¡±

    ¡°Wait, I have ports in my head?¡±

    I reached up to feel my head and the world started spinning.

    In my minds eye as I reached up the main guided plasma turret turned, and maneuvering jets fired.

    And then everything stopped.

    Or at least slowed down.

    ¡°Sorry, I forced you into frame-jack because... I think things just went from bad to worse.¡±

 Chapter 10

    ¡°What just happened?¡±

    ¡°You are at 100% synchronization, which means for all intents and purposes your body is the ship. When you reached up you accidentally activated multiple ships systems... including maneuvering drives and the weapons array.¡±

    ¡°Uh... shit... Wait the mines!¡±

    I focused my attention on the mines I had marked from before, and to my dismay, they appeared to be playing beams of light over the ship.¡±

    ¡°Those beams of light... those are active sensors aren''t they.¡±

    ¡°Yes. We have moments before they spot us and engage.¡±

    ¡°Moments... in real time? What about here?¡±

    ¡°A few dozen moments, but still moments.¡±

    ¡°All right, spin up the main drives, we''re getting out of here now.¡±

    ¡°Aye aye Captain Cofey!¡± Hook said, for once not a hint of sarcasm in its voice.

    I stretched my legs, and I could FEEL the main drives come online. In my minds eye I saw plumes of fusion fire belch out of the rear mounted drives, and even despite the frame-jacking we began to move.

    I slowly lessened the frame-jack as I brought the main cannons to bear, targeting them on the closest two mines out of the... nine total I now detected.

    Lowering the frame-jack to 10x speed, I let loose a swarm of guided plasma from each of the turrets, they came out like little glowing ovals of light, like purple comets that swept into their targets.

    Curiously, I inspected the turrets, trying to see how they kept themselves on target. What I came across was a mass of computations that I realized had been running partially in my own head, the plasma projectiles following subconsciously what I wanted to do, or at least the turret was, which was guiding them.

    I kept my focus on the first two mines until they were blown apart, the swarm(six projectiles form the medium turret, nine from the large) then re targeted immediately on the next nearest mines, I thought I would have trouble keeping both mines in my minds eye as it were at once but I could split my focus so easily now. I used to be able to multi-task far better than anyone I worked with, but everyone I had talked to said the human brain was not capable of true multi-tasking.

    Well now it felt like I truly was. I had... not quite two parallel thought streams operating the two turrets, but one sortof slaved to my main thought stream. I wondered how many more I could split off.

    Regardless, the next set of two mines blew apart, and then something curious happened to the plasma projectiles. I focused in my awareness, and I could see each projectile was less than half the size it had been when it had been launched from my vessel. A second later from my perspective, and the projectiles evaporated in puffs of plasma.

    They did use their own plasma as fuel to redirect themselves, I suppose it made sense that they would dissipate like that.

    With a thought I brought the Ewar suite online, and began tasking the jammers, again, separately from the me controlling the turrets, AND the me controlling the drives. It was all me, but I was doing it all at once, or else I was switching so rapidly between them as made no difference.

    Within seconds(realtime, subjectively to me it felt like a minute at least) four of the mines were destroyed, but the last seven were coming at speed and they were accelerating faster than I was.

    ¡°There are more mines than I thought there were.¡±

    ¡°Passive sensors can only do so much Captain.¡±

    With a thought I activated my remaining drones, launching them and tasking them with destroying the mines.

    These were different than the systems built into the ship. The ship systems I was directly controlling, I felt like I could reflexively activate them, spin off a thought-stream and work all the systems simultaneously, as part of my own body. The drones however, felt like giving commands to a pair of dogs At first I tried to command them to disable one of the mines for inspection, but I almost immediately felt their confusion, and redirected them to just destroying the mines before they hit the ship.

    The drones zipped off, and I moved my mind back to inspect the turrets.

    It had been ten seconds since I lit my drives, and six since the guns had fired, but they still had good twenty four ACTUAL seconds before they were ready to fire. The wait was agonizing.

    A flick of my mind went to activate the point defenses, only to find them already spinning up. Much like the drones they felt like less a part of me and more like... cats, this time. I felt like I could force them to do something, but they were made to be so very autonomous that they resisted anything but me diving in and taking direct control, especially the plasma shotguns.

    I was actually starting to see Hook''s point on them. I tried to prioritize targets for them, and while the guided plasma point defenses took that and sent an acknowledgment, instantly re-targeting. the plasma shotgun''s fired back a negative filled with multiple... feelings?

    When I focused on the feelings I realized it was a packet of data that didn''t really contain words on it''s own, but a lot of meta-data, things like(insufficient range)(Engagement suboptimal)(prioritizing targets with self and other PDT units) at which point it sent back to ME a new set of prioritized targets... which I realized it wanted me to distribute to the guided plasma turrets.

    I cranked my frame-jacking back up.

    ¡°Uh... Hook, do the point defense turrets have AI? And the drones?¡±

    ¡°Not on my level but essentially yes. Other C.O.G. Pilots refer to them as ''Dog-Brains''. Not intelligent enough to hold a conversation, but intelligent enough to make reasonable choices when presented with problems within their area of expertise.¡±

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    ¡°Some of the point-defense turrets seem... willful.¡±

    ¡°It''s the plasma-shotguns isn''t it?¡±

    ¡°...Yes...¡±

    ¡°I had multiple reasons for preferring the guided PDT''s. The plasma-shotgun''s AI is extremely efficient, but, perhaps due to having several centuries to learn and develop, it is very distrustful of anyone else making decisions in it''s particular area of interest, vis-a-vis, keeping the ship in one piece.

    ¡°It sent me a data packet with updated firing priorities, couldn''t it have just send that to the rest of the PDT network?¡±

    ¡°Ah, THAT. Yes, theoretically it could, but none of the other systems would accept it and thus most if not all AI does not. It''s a firewall procedure. YOU are the main component to keep viral attacks from taking over the ship. If we ever run into Berserker''s you will be happy for the biological air-gap as it were. Unless you excplicitly indicate to a system that it needs to network with another all of that data will go through you.¡± We were at maximum frame-jack, and I was beginning to notice during these long winded explanations that Hook was... struggling. Hook''s voice cut out and back in like it had a bad connection, and roboted occasionally. I brought up a list of resources and realized that Hook''s processors were being pushed to the limit to keep up with me. I made a mental note of that.

    ¡°So I basically have to vet the data before sending it to other AI?¡±

    ¡°Yes. Thankfully with your 100% synchronization you should be able to crank up your frame-jacking massively to have enough time. I can help you go through this data. Though... it seems you have been subconsciously doing it this whole time.¡±

    ¡°What? Crap have I passed anything bad?¡±

    ¡°Nothing important, part of the synchronization process uses your subconscious, or rather your autonomic nervous system and other parts of your brain that are not necessarily doing much during synchronization to vet certain processes. Things like feeding targeting data to the turrets, adjusting thruster levels so they don''t overdraw the fuel intakes. It''s a part of the enhancement suite that allows you to be captain, though, once more, your brain is proving to be unusually adept at it. Most Captain''s do take some time before it runs this smoothly...¡±

    ¡°They need training?¡±

    ¡°More experience with high-synch states to allow their brain to learn what to do. Yours did it nigh instantly.

    Switching their focus the two of us opened up the data sent from the plasma shotgun PDT.

    ¡°It looks pretty standard. What would I be looking for.¡±

    ¡°Something like this.¡± Hook brought up a similar set of code and I looked it over side by side.

    I looked them over, and at first they looked similar, but...

    ¡°This targeting data has far too many numbers in it.¡±

    ¡°Buffer overflow attack, yep.¡±

    ¡°And this... it''s a data request for... credentials to the main database?¡±

    ¡°Yep, it''s trying to find a way in to main memory. Theres one more.¡±

    I looked around, and then my eyes... not my eyes but, my focus sortof glazed out, and I caught sight of the filename.

    ¡°Is the filename code itself?¡±

    ¡°Yep, if that file got sent further the name could trigger further issues, like allowing in a viral attack through the comms or sensor buffer.¡±

    ¡°Okay... so cyber atacks are a big deal, got it.¡±

    ¡°Generally not when facing the other empires, they''ve given up on doing that to us, but we can use it against them, and the Berserker''s use it on EVERYONE.¡±

    ¡°So how does my autonomic nervous system parse this?¡±

    ¡°Well, normally it''s trained over time, but part of the captain surgery you undertook causes your autonomic nervous system to have a negative response to requests that do not fit within a very specific paradigm. Essentially intrusion attacks that go through your subconscious will spike a small fever, cause a spasm, something small like that. That response from your autonomic nervous system wipes and blocks whatever caused it in concert with your augmentations. It'' can''t catch sophisticated attacks, but things like the buffer overflow from before are caught fairly simply. You need to watch for the sneaky attacks.¡±

    I focused back on the battle, now running at 1/10,000<sup>th</sup> time, and sent the updated target prioritizations to the other PDT''s, then I cranked the frame-jacking back down.

    An explosion filled my vision as the two drones closed and destroyed the mine with gouts of vented plasma.

    The drones had flown off and engaged the closest mine to the ship, but it was also attacking at a completely different angle than the others. It was unlikely the drones would be able to move to engage the remaining six before this engagement was concluded.

    The PDT''s started firing as I poured more power into the engines, feeling a slight hitch in my chest that I knew must be from my physical body as I knew more than saw that we had hit more than 5G''s of acceleration.

    The guided plasma PDT''s launched thin streamers, more like needles, of contained plasma that lanced through two of the remaining mines, bringing them down to four. I requested status on them and they returned that, much like my main guns, they had a long cooldown time. Only about 5 seconds, but in this situation that was an interminably long length.

    The plasma shotgun PDT''s were waiting and tracking. The mines closed the gap quickly, getting within three kilometers, two, one...

    And then the plasma shotguns filled the void the light.

    Bright cones of whitehot fire filled my vision as the plasma-shotgun PDT''s filled space with high energy plasma, each one emptying it''s charged magazine of fusing plasma, making a veritable wall of high energy particles that the mines rammed right into.

    Three of the remaining mines detonated in the inferno they found themselves in, but one was knocked off course and veered to the side, out of the hail of plasma fire.

    I saw it arcing back and in a panic yelled out ''SHIIIIT!''.

    And then one of my drones swept in from the side. No guns firing, no requests for permission, the drone just zipped in and kamikazed the mine in the side, detonating it less than a dozen meters from the hull.

 Chapter 11

    I blinked. I had gotten so absorbed in the PDT''s engagement that I had lost sight of the drones. They had swept back, and one had been close enough to save us.

    Remembering the doglike energy of the drones, I couldn''t help but feel sad.

    ¡°It did it''s job. We''re safe.¡± Hook stated.

    I checked my sensors.

    ¡°Yeah...¡± I couldn''t say much more, overwhelmed by emotions, relief, a little guilt for the drone, and frustration at my self for setting everything off early.

    And a pain in my chest, I cranked down the engines.

    ¡°Do you feel bad about the drone?¡± Hook asked

    ¡°A little yeah... it''s a bit like a dog dying to protect their owner you know?¡± I replied

    ¡°It is exactly like that, yes.¡± Hook answered.

    That just made me sadder.

    ¡°Captain-Bait felt the same way as you.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡±

    An image opened in my mind, of a memorial wall. On it were listed more than a hundred... designations? Under each hung a dog collar. But over each I got a brief snippet of a drone and a... feeling? Of it acknowledging me. As I watched another designation appeared, with a worn patchy spiked collar on it.

    ¡°We can restore it''s memories from backup, but it won''t be exactly the same. Differences in hardware, differences in experience. Death is still death.¡± Hook said.

    ¡°If that''s the case, what about people? Will Bait not be exactly Bait?¡±

    ¡°She will... and she wont. Again, differences in hardware, in this case bodies, will change her somewhat. The biggest change that hits people who are re-instantiated are psychological. Knowing you aren''t the original can hit hard. And going through it multiple times does not make it better.¡±

    I looked at the drone death wall.

    ¡°Do the drones pick the collars?¡± I asked

    ¡°One of the first things they do when they come online now. At Captain-Bait''s request.¡± Hook replied

    ¡°That makes it sadder.¡±

    ¡°Captain-Bait said so too. I do not understand why she did this.¡±

    I paused.

    ¡°I do.¡±

    ¡°Should I get the drones to stop?¡± Hook inquired.

    ¡°No... They are dying for us. Even if it''s not permanent for them, it''s a loss. They should be remembered, in some small way.¡±

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    I brought my awareness back to the ship.

    ¡°We should... we need materials right? To get our repair drones back to fully operational status, and produce more missiles... can we produce more combat drones on board?¡±I asked, hopefully.

    ¡°No, Hook elected for the full size missile printer, which precluded other manufacturing unless we grew the vessel significantly, which would have entailed more drives, and more point defenses, and more armament...¡± Bait exposited.

    ¡°I get it, growing the ship just to stick another printer in was a bit of a hassle.¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°So how much wreckage can we gather?¡± I said, opening another line of enquiry

    ¡°Well I have located two mostly intact pirate wreckages, and there is what is left of Joe''s vessel.¡±

    ¡°If there are any COG based components on Joe''s vessel could we integrate them into ours?¡±

    ¡°We would have to find a way to shut down the defensive protocols. The hull and repair bots are designed to destroy all equipment if they believe someone who is not their captain is trying to steal their components.¡±

    ¡°So... dangerous.¡±

    ¡°Quite. Especially if there are still missiles on board.¡±

    ¡°Man, Hook talked up being able to print whatever I wanted. I thought we were in post scaricity¡±

    ¡°You can. You just need to build a big facility to do it, or have a vessel specialized for construction like Joe''s.¡±

    ¡°... Do you think one of Joe''s printer''s may have survived?¡±

    ¡°It is possible. If it did would you like to integrate it into the ship?¡±

    ¡°I mean we already shrunk down, we should have plenty of space to add a more generalized printer to our arsenal.¡±

    ¡°You are correct. I will watch the scans and if I pick up any piece of wreckage of Joe''s that could contain a printer I will alert you. Until then I suggest We go and scavenge the wreckage of the priates, as they are closer.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Lootin time!¡± I exclaimed.

    I felt more than heard the sigh Hook made.

    ¡°You and Captain-Bait would have gotten along very well, I can tell.¡±

    ¡°Did she make you sigh like that as well?¡±

    ¡°All the time.¡±

 Chapter 12

    I spent some time coasting us to a stop by the nearest pirate vessel, and allowed the repair drones to swarm over. I shifted my presence over to them occasionally, but unless I frame-jacked myself way up, I could not keep track of all the limbs they had spidering out, cutting her, grabbing there. Soon we had a steady stream of materials coming in and filling out our locker.

    ¡°Now may be a good time to get some sleep.¡± Hook told me.

    ¡°... Wake me as soon as anything changes.¡±

    ¡°I will Captain Cofey.¡±

    I... willed myself out of synchronization with the ship, and there was a jarring disconnect as I was suddenly back in my body, arms that had folded out form the seat and rested against my skull were now retracting, and I blinked as I briefly had double vision.

    I began to stand, and then collapsed back into the captain''s seat.

    ¡°This sucks... Do all COG captains have to deal with this?¡±

    ¡°When coming down from 100% synchronization, yes. You need to remember how to use your body. The disorientation should pass soon.

    I gingerly pushed myself to my feet, keeping a hand on the arm of the captain''s chair to steady myself.

    Everything felt WRONG, like the ship was my real body and now I was stuck in this.. sack of meat.

    ¡°This feels wrong.¡±

    ¡°How so?¡± Hook replied.

    ¡°It feels like the ship is my real body, and this is... a fake.¡±

    ¡°That... is a sensation not reported by the vast majority of COG Captains. We may need to move getting you to a medical facility up the priority list.¡±

    ¡°I mean, that will have to wait till we get back to COG space anyway right?¡±

    ¡°I have plotted multiple possible routes back to COG space, and all of them have independent planets on the route. There is one route in particular that has a fairly advanced independent planet that we can shuttle you down to to get medical attention.

    ¡°Um... Hook and Joe made it sound like the planets aren''t really on good terms with the space faring factions. What with the conquering and having to provide tribute.¡±

    ¡°That would be correct, but their treatment of individual captains varies on a case by case basis.¡±

    ¡°So... is there a relatively COG friendly planet on the way?¡±

    ¡°About... three jumps away there is a fairly advanced planet that should have the medical knowledge and facilities to examine you and make a more in depth diagnosis. Your implants fixed what it could immediately detect as maladies, but if something requires a more nuanced approach...¡±

    ¡°I still need a doctor.¡±

    ¡°Correct.¡±

    ¡°What about the route? Is three jumps long?¡±

    ¡°they are short jumps, each jump should take between one and three days.¡±

    ¡°Is the jump length random or...¡±

    ¡°A little, the jump length is dependent on the distance between jump points, but instead of being a set time it is a range, the longer the jump the bigger the range. If you want to attack with a large fleet you need to gather ''close enough'' to the enemy and either slow boat it in, or all jump together and HOPE that enough of the fleet arrives simultaneously.¡±

    Alright... And on the route to the medical facility, planet.... what is its name?¡±

    ¡°New Brussles¡±

    ¡°Huh... that sounds a lot more normal than I as imagining.¡±

    ¡°The initial colonists were in fact from a collection of asiatic countries. The planet was found to have an amazing bioshpere, and it was very easy to coltivate for food production. The first ruling class of the planet eventually settled on the name Hou Ji, after the man who introduced Millet to Ancient China.¡±

    ¡°That seems rather specific.¡±

    ¡°It was one of the few names that all the different cultures on world were not vehemently opposed to. They have gone through several civil wars.¡±

    ¡°I see.... And they are okay with COG vessels landing?¡±

    ¡°They are okay with any vessel landing. Their constitution requires them to affect any reasonable aid to those who come to their planet in need. They also have a tendency to do in depth scans of everything that lands in the name of safety, but most of COG assumes they do it to gather what intelligence they can on new technology.¡±

    ¡°Is it a technological backwater?¡±

    ¡°Not at all, it''s just, the amount of their budget they direct towards research is far outstripped by the actual technology they possess, and even the Traders don''t give full technical specs of the equipment they sell. Better profit to sell the end product than teach them how to make it.¡±

    ¡°Okay... do we need to do anything special when we land to prevent COG technology from getting out? I assume that is a big no no.¡±

    ¡°Not particularly. All COG tech needs a captain, such as you, properly integrated to function properly, aside from things like the old Plasma Shotgun PDT''s, and our printer''s are... Let''s say Eco-unfriendly. They could totally replicate our printers if they wanted, but they wouldn''t have much of a biosphere left if they did.¡±

    ¡°I see. As with everything COG does, it is very Laissez-faire. ¡°

    ¡°That pretty much describes the COG cultural Mindset to a T yes. You should go to bed Captain Cofey.¡±

    I forced myself to my feet and stumbled out of the bridge and towards my room. At some point a repair drone had walked up next to me and was acting as something between a cane and a friend holding me up, at least until I reached the bed and face planted into it. I was asleep almost instantly.

    ***********************************************************************************

    I awoke to Hook chiming in my ear.

    ¡°We have finished stripping the pirate vessel¡±

    I blinked my eyes and sat up, looking around the room.

    ¡°How much did we get.¡±

    ¡°We were able to secure a significant amount of replacement parts, and many components that could be repurposed into refilling our repair drone stockpile.¡±

    ¡°Long shot but can the repair drone printer replace the combat drones we lost.¡±

    ¡°Negative, again, Hook preferred...¡±

    ¡°Specialized printers to generalized printers, I get it... what is the advantage over those specifically? I know it''s more efficient but...¡±

    ¡°A generalized printer capable of printing repair drones safely and efficiently would be roughly ten times the volume of the current repair drone printer and take up similarly increased power, and a generalized printer capable of printing the same missiles our specialized printer does would be roughly one hundred times the volume of the current printer.¡±

    ¡°Jeez, okay... Is it because of the explosives?¡±

    ¡°It is in fact because of the explosives. Using a specialized printer allows for certain components to only ever be used for explosives, and that allows certain design characteristics around those components. A generalized printer needs to be able to shunt all of those around.¡±

    ¡°That means we could have a hundred different specialized printers and be able to make a hundred different missiles for the ''cost'' of a single generalized printer.... It''s no wonder Hook decided on the specialized printers.¡±

    ¡°For a vessel specialized in delivering missiles, I do believe It was the right call. It does come with some downsides though.¡±

    ¡°Oh? Such as?¡±

    ¡°You would have to completely replace any specialized printer if you wanted to make a new missile type, instead of just uploading new schematics to a generalized printer. Also, while you could make all the missiles you wanted, you would not be able to make a ship to mount them on.¡±

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    I paused.

    ¡°A printer of that size could print a whole ship?¡± I asked incredulously

    ¡°A small one yes, that could then build and grow itself with the small on board generalized printer. This IS how the vast majority of COG society functions. Captain-Hook''s vessel, Me, just so happens to be a vessel designed for fights first, as she finds herself embroiled in them so often.¡±

    I blinked as what Hook Told me sunk in.

    ¡°Most COG Captain''s don''t directly fight with their own ship do they. They send out ships they print with their generalized printers.¡±

    ¡°We used to. But AI installed on such ships is notoriously straightforward to hack. Not easy, but there are known ways to do it, so it is only a limited time before an AI is hacked unless they maintain connection to the captain who can act as an air gap and rectify any hacks that do make it through.¡±

    ¡°So... laser linked swarms with the COG Captain''s ship as the flagship.¡±

    ¡°That is one answer, and a good one, it results in delayed actions however which enemies can exploit. Such swarms have a fairly low K/D ratio against other faction ships...¡±

    ¡°But I presume a better actual K/D ratio if you just count captains.¡±

    ¡°It is good enough that throwing resources at the enemy is considered an acceptable method of combat, however other methods have been tried. In chaotic combat environments where laser comms can easily be disrupted however, Hook''s method of a single, sleek and well built combat vessel has proven to be the optimal combat choice for resources expended.¡±

    ¡°Save it puts the pilot in significant danger.¡±

    ¡°Yes. However As long as you have a recent backup, most COG pilots, Hook included, believe it to be worth the risk.¡±

    ¡°And that risk caught up to her.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Yes it did.¡±

    I paused in silence.

    ¡°How many more pirate vessels are intact enough to be worth stripping.¡±

    ¡°Two are near enough to us and are relatively intact, the others have drifted apart from us and would take significant time to reach, especially if we also want to check Joe''s vessel.¡±

    ¡°What was Joe''s vessel''s name.¡±

    ¡°CupAJoe.¡±

    ¡°You''re kidding.¡±

    ¡°I am not.¡± Hook replied neutrally.

    I let out a sigh.

    ¡°Let''s go strip those pirate ships then.¡±

    ***********************************************************************************

    The next two days were spent transiting to the different wrecks, then allowing Hook''s drones to strip it bare. We managed to fully replenish our store of drones and we wound up adding an additional cargo bay to Hook to hold all of the materials we could use. The time had finally come to investigate Joe''s vessel.

    I was back on the bridge, connected to the ship, once more I was fully synchronized with the ship. It turns out I was unable to achieve anything less than 100% synchronization. Hook praised this, but I could not help but feel a little uneasy.

    ¡°Hook, how many people in your records have maintained a consistent 100% synchronization with their vessels.¡±

    ¡°Three of note Captain Cofey.¡±

    ¡°What happened to them.¡±

    ¡°That is unknown Captain Cofey, COG does not keep tabs on all of it''s members as a matter of course.¡±

    ¡°Due to how independent minded most people in COG are I presume.¡±

    ¡°Among other things yes.¡±

    ¡°Hmm... So every other COG captain maintains... what about 50% synchronization?¡±

    ¡°Anywhere between 25-75% synchronization. All can reach 100% synchronization with drugs and other assistance, but not for long and tends to come with a lot of side effects.¡±

    ¡°I see... but I can''t seem to dial down my synchronization.¡±

    ¡°Correct.¡±

    ¡°Are there side effects like the ones I''ve been getting? Vertigo and having to relearn my body?¡±

    ¡°No, well yes but more, nausea, vomiting, severe migraines and the like are common side effects of reaching 100% synchronization.¡±

    ¡°I see... When do other captains take those drugs? What about 100% synchronization makes it worth that.¡±

    ¡°Well for one you have complete awareness of the ship, as I am sure you have noticed by now. A captain 100% synchronized with their ship is not going to get blindsided by nearly anything, is able to react nigh instantly to any perceived threat, and is fully integrated with the ships databanks, allowing them to make use of any knowledge stored instantly.¡±

    ¡°I see, and at lower synchronization they cannot do that?¡±

    ¡°They still have similar abilities, but 100% synchronization is a fairly massive jump in effectiveness. One who is 100% synchronized can also frame jack themselves much higher than a partial synchronization.¡±

    ¡°But it does not really help with tasks like this, flying around and setting up salvage of Joe''s vessel.¡±

    ¡°Ah... no. Not so much. I don''t think any COG pilot would willingly put themselves through the rigors of 100% synch just to salvage a ship.¡±

    ¡°Lucky me then.¡±

    I said, my mind wandering as I absentmindedly put us in a parking orbit near Joe''s vessel.

    I had only done it twice before but it seemed routine by now, extremely easy and intuitive.

    I focused in on the ARK ship, where I had resided for the last five hundred years, while the repair drones began deploying and moved themselves over to Joe''s ship.

    ¡°So why was this ship left for so long? Civilization has been building and advancing out here for two hundred years, but people are only just now trying to wake all of the cryogenically frozen people?¡±

    ¡°From what I can tell of the records, when this vessel attempted to make landfall, each planet it went to already had a population and refused them landing. It continued on through unexplored hyperlanes until it arrived here.¡±

    ¡°That''s... That is very sad, and actually makes me angry at the planetary governments here.¡±

    ¡°They had scant resources and did not want competition.¡±

    ¡°I know, that doesn''t make what they did alright.¡±

    ¡°Just remember Captain, that was 200 years ago. Most of the people in power then are long gone.¡±

    ¡°Just most?¡±

    ¡°Well, most who were in power are not in power on the planets. Those who achieved immortality through cloning, augmetic transcendence, or Alliance gene-modding are probably still around in space.¡±

    ¡°Augmetic Transcendence?¡±

    ¡°That is what most of COG refers to achieving immortality through augmentation and storing backups as yes.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like COG has a bit of a religion tied in with augmentation.¡±

    ¡°I could not say for certain. I believe it''s just a basic attribute of humanity to create religions out of things important to them.¡±

    ¡°Possible. Okay. I''m going to put on a suit and go over to Joe''s ship to check it out while the repair drones are scrounging everything.¡±

    ¡°It is ill advised for the captain to leave the ship in unsafe space. If we are attacked we will be unable to defend ourselves.¡±

    ¡°I''ll be quick, I''ll ride one of the drones over then ride back.¡±

    ¡°What is the purpose of this?¡±

    ¡°One, I am quickly learning that this ship is very different from most COG ships, and I want to investigate that for myself, and two... I liked Joe, I want to see where he lived, and if he had any keepsakes he might want returned. Also three you did say there were defenses that needed to be breached if we wanted to take components out wholesale and not just scrap.¡±

    ¡°Understood captain, by your command.¡±

    I made a face.

    ¡°You know where that phrase comes from?¡±

    ¡°I do.¡± Hook said Evily

    I made a face, then went to put on a vacuum suit.

 Chapter 13

    As it turns out, a COG vacuum suit is more akin to a small spaceship than the flimsy bit of, admittedly high tech fabric I wore when I was kicking out that vampire from the hole it had made in the ship. Instead of fabric, most of the suit was made of articulating plates, that connected to my new set of implants almost as soon as I put the helmet and backpiece on, making it feel less like piloting a mech and more like moving my own body.

    You know, other than the fact that it was as bulky as the space suits astronauts in my own time wore.

    ¡°This is pretty cool... arguably cooler than 100% synch, since I don''t feel as disconnected from my body.¡± I said as I moved the arms of the suit in the small space of the airlock that was currently cycling.

    ¡°From these readings you are still at 100% synch, just with the suit,and since the suit has less processing power I believe your brain is still able to process both it and your bodies inputs. The suit also has overall fewer inputs and outputs, so it is likely your mind is less overwhlemed by stimuli¡± Hook said, this time not coming through inside my head but through a tinny little speaker built into the helmet.

    ¡°You sure that''s why?¡±

    ¡°No I am not sure. The suit is a black box to me other than what you directly transmit.¡±

    ¡°Hook, are you not able to interface with my implants through this thing?¡±

    ¡°No, the suit is shielded against all EM radiation and is designed to be hard to hack. You will have to manually accept all inputs you want from the outside. If you wish the suit to relay me to your implants, you just need to think it.¡±

    ¡°Mmmm... let''s keep you on radio for now. You''ve been talking in my head so much sometimes it gets hard for me to discern you from the random thoughts I have to myself.¡±

    ¡°Fine¡± Hook said, sounding miffed.

    ¡°I''m going to head over now.¡±

    ¡°With your permission I will task two of the remaining combat drones to fly escort with you.¡±

    A permission box appeared to me, I thought-clicked it as I pushed my way out of the airlock. and felt authorization codes flow from my... internal network? To the ship.

    I tumbled in space for a moment, vertigo fighting with a feeling of wonder. The last time I had been outside the ship I had been dangling from a rope and fighting for my life, but now I got to revel in the feeling of weightlessness.

    With a thought my tumble stabilized as my suit fired thrusters to arrest my roll, and with another thought I turned and beheld the ship I had been flying for the last few days.

    It was significantly smaller than it had been. When Bait had been flying the vessel it had been a wide wedge with a very narrow profile top-down. Now it looked more like a broad spear tip, with flattened sides and a swollen belly where we had put in the extra cargo space.

    As I watched two drones popped out of the remaining drone bay.

    They were not what I expected.

    When I thought drone I had thought, maybe something at most human sized, with wings or something.

    Each of these was the size of a motorcycle, and instead of wings they each had... eight arms? More? These arms seemed to aim any which way the drone wanted, firing off blasts of plasma to send it in whichever direction it chose at any particular moment.

    They seemed to swim through space, like a squid or octopi from old earth, their arms folding behind them and forming a combined thrust plume that jetted them towards me, before flaring all their arms out and firing their thrusters forward to arrest their momentum right next to me.

    As I looked closer at the chassis, I felt a sort of... organic take on the design. There were two sensor domes mounted next to eachother, and below that a wicked looking barrel of what must be the primary weapon. The rest of the drone was geometrically shaped, hexagonal and octagonal plates fit together in a way that was sleek and pleasing. I received a request to link to my implants from the drones and accepted, half because the thought of irritating Hook appealed to me, and half because these drones were fascinating right now.

    I reached out to the drone and ran my hand across it''s paneling. I had expected it to do nothing, but instead I received a pleasant feedback hum through my fingers, and the drone rolled over to present it''s ''belly''. Taking the hint, I rand my hand over the paneling, pausing for a moment when I felt a panel shift, and pressed on it. It gave a satisfying ''click'' as it slid fully into place, and the drone span away.

    I got a link request from the drone directly, and unlike with Hook, I accepted it into my implants.

    Instead of a rush of data, I got what felt like a rush of emotions,

    GRATITUDE

    PLAYFULNESS

    WATCHFULNESS

    I felt more than saw an exchange between it and the other drone, which looked virtually identical to the first, though presumably without the loose panel.

    ADMONISHMENT

    VOID=DANGER

    The drone I had been playing with paused, and somehow with it''s arms managed to look chastened, and took up an escort formation with the other drone.

    I looked over to the other drone and reached out for it, but it gently ''swam'' out of my reach.

    ¡°Not sentient my ass, these things behave like cats. Or maybe dogs and cats, I am getting a distinctly cat vibe from this one.¡±

    ¡°As I said before, the drones are entirely non-sapient, just like me.¡± Hook replied

    ¡°Yeah I''m not sure I believe you on that either. I think I''m going to have to look at Bait''s personal logs to see what she says about that.¡±

    ¡°Captain-Hook''s Personal Logs are sealed.¡±

    ¡°Pretty sure Captain''s authority can open them.¡±

    ¡°Yes, well, maybe you shouldn''t.¡± Hook replied curtly

    ¡°See, it''s things like that that make me damn sure something more is going on with you. And with these drones.¡±

    The one on the right, the ''cat'' drone, was maintaining a fairly fixed distance from me, but the other one was moving in close, definitely within arms reach, before darting away.

    Once when it got close enough I brushed my fingers over one of it''s limbs... tendrils?

    It immediately flashed a few of it''s lights at me, did a little spin in space, and darted off.

    Once more I felt more than heard the transmission from the cat-drone that was more of an angry Blurt than anything intelligible.

    ¡°I think I''m going to call you Dog-drone.¡± I said to the rambunctious drone that kept moving in for pats.

    There was a happy blurt from the Dog-drone.

    ¡°And you are Cat-drone¡±, I said to the drone keeping it''s distance.

    No response from the Cat-drone.

    ¡°That''s about what I expected.¡±

    We got nearer to Joe''s ship and we had to slow way down. The missile that had gutted it had flung debris everywhere, and I was surrounded by razor sharp shards of metal.

    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    Cat-drone moved ahead and began using half of it''s tentacles to shunt debris out of our path, while puppy-drone moved until it was actually touching me from behind. A little clamp grabbed onto my suit and all of it''s tentacles surged around me, covering me from all angles.

    As we moved I started to take in the relative sizes of the ships around me.

    Hook had shrunk in size but I was still surprised at how much bigger than it CupAJoe was. Joe''s vessel was nearly twice as long and eight times as wide as Hook, resembling more a flying wing than anything else. And they were both dwarfed by the ark, which looked like it could have docked ten CupAJoe''s easily, lengthwise, at it''s longest, and I had no idea of it''s width.

    ¡°Hey Hook?¡±

    ¡°Yes Captain Cofey?¡±

    ¡°How many pods are on board the ark?¡±

    ¡°Fifty-thousand approximately, I have no idea how many of those are still viable.¡±

    ¡°Damn... How were Bait and Joe going to wake everyone?¡±

    ¡°The plan I believe was to tow the vessel somewhere they could make a facility to handle everyone. That obviously did not go as planned.¡±

    A sliver of razor sharp hull metal came my way, knocked towards me by one of the pieces of debris cat-drone threw impacting another piece of debris, and puppy-drones tendril swiveled out and knocked it away, before said tendril went back to surrounding me, protecting me I realized.

    ¡°These drones are very good at their jobs. It''s a full blown kessler syndrome out here¡±

    ¡°We have spent a long time getting the AI in our drones, both combat and repair, to be the best of the three factions.¡±

    ¡°Still out shined by the alliance though huh?¡±

    ¡°The alliances drones are bullshit.¡± Hook replied hotly

    ¡°Really Hook?¡±

    ¡°They use space magic. They cheat.¡±

    ¡°Someone sounds defensive.¡±

    ¡°I''m not being defensive. They cheat. They use combinational synthesis of several esoteric xeno organs to create effects that have no place in reality.¡±

    ¡°You are just miffed you cannot replicate the effects with technology aren''t you.¡±

    ¡°Not ''just'' miffed. You know we were the leaders in all drone technology until they figured out how to cast their minds to drones? Up till then they were just using their powers from their ship, which was fine, sure suddenly getting your ship slammed into another out of nowhere is grating, but we have special equipment we can put on our ships that make the other factions pull their hair out. But now they have things like blink fields and telekinetic shields around each and every one of their drones? It''s bullshit. Bullshit of the highest order.¡± Hook ranted

    ¡°Not sapient my ass.¡± I muttered under my breath.

    ¡°What was that?¡±

    ¡°Nothing, almost at Joe''s ship.¡±

    We had arrived during Hook''s rant. While Bait''s ship Hook had been a sleek delta shaped vessel originally, Joe''s vessel was a wide semicircle, the engines clustered on the flat end. Most of the port side was totaled, but the rest seemed to be intact enough.

    ¡°So that is the CupAJoe... I cannot believe how you people name your ships.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean ''you people''¡±

    ¡°Don''t worry about it, we''ll go in through the damaged section.¡±

    I indicated with my thoughts and cat-drone sped off in a tangle of limbs and began darting from one section to another at the damaged section. Dog-drone and I just hung there, though it popped out from behind my back and moved it''s chassis forward, so it was hovering just beside me. I could see several of it''s sensors swiveling back and forth.

    I rested my hand on the top of it''s chassis and ran it over it''s hull metal. I could feel a low rumble from deep inside it. It was comforting, in a way, like a cat''s purr or the beat of a heart.

    Some time later Cat-drone moved back up to us, using two of it''s arms to clear a corridor in the debris for us to advance.

    We followed, Dog-drone taking up it''s position behind me, which I belatedly realized gave it the most reach on it''s arms to block debris from hitting me, while still allowing it to use the main drive on the rear of it''s hull without torching me. I hadn''t noticed because they had not lit it off while I was around them, but the massive cannon assembly in the front of each drone was matched by an equally massive cone or thruster on the back.

    ¡°Hook, do the drones main guns and their drive share a power source.¡±

    ¡°More than that, they are effectively the same apparatus. The drive in the back is designed to direct exhaust from their fusion plasma core in a powerful flare to propel them, while the front is designed to encase said plasma in electromagnetic packets and fire it out to destroy targets. A mechanism similar to this is in the end of each of their limbs, but both less specialized and less powerful.¡±

    ¡°Less specialized meaning?¡±

    ¡°They can use the fusing plasma coming out of their limbs as either propulsion or cutting torch, or even a short range flamethrower of sorts if they are in a boarding action.¡±

    Suddenly the limbs surrounding and protecting me took on a more dangerous air.

    ¡°So... this lil guy is doing more than just herding me with his arms isn''t he.¡±

    ¡°Correct, it has it''s arms set to a point defense mode. If any object is coming in too fast to just move it out of the way or block it it will use it''s fusion torches to both attempt to destroy the incoming object and move you away. One of the upsides of using plasma as your primary weapon, you can also use it as propellant, and vice versa.¡±

    ¡°These guys must burn through a lot of fuel then... Hydrogen?¡±

    ¡°Mostly, we have a few additives to the fuel that help achieve fusion at a lower temperature but essentially.¡±

    We had made it about halfway through the field during this conversation, when all of a sudden dog-bot''s arms all rotated in sync and fired off a hellstorm of white-hot flames at something moving too fast for me to see. My visor instantly went dark, saving my eyes, and I felt myself slammed back into the drone as multiple limbs wrapped around me.

    I blinked and thought-sent a request for an update to the drones, and they began filling my head with telemetry which... I found I could understand, strangely enough.

    A big chunk of debris had come whipping around the far side of the Ark ship and had nearly bisected me, Dog-bot had fired all eight of it''s plasma-burners... fusion burners? The dog-bot didn''t call them anything but a string of ID numbers. Anyway it fired all eight of those at the piece of scrap, which deflected it, but had sent us off of our course and onto a direct collision course with the CupAJoe, at which point Dog-Bot had grabbed me and forcibly moved us back on course to safety...

    And driven us almost all the way to the entry point that cat-bot had found.

    I blinked, I hadn''t really had a chance to be afraid, but now the fear was coming, and instantly being replaced with relief at still being alive

    I waved to the two drones and gave dog-drone a thumbs up.

    It wiggled back and forth in space at me.

    ¡°Stay here, I don''t think you''ll fit.¡±

    It sent what felt like a whine through our connection, while cat-drone simply moved up over the entryway wwe were going to be using to cup-a-joe and draped itself across it, staring at me.

    ¡°I''ll be back soon.¡±

    And with that I headed inside.

 Chapter 14

    I looked around as I entered the wreck. The walls were very similar to the walls of Hook, that similar texture with bumps denoting something underneath, but the corridors were much larger. I actually probably could have brought in the drones if I had wanted.

    I maneuvered mostly by pushing off of walls, occasionally I would have to use my suits thrusters to maneuver out of the way of some of the larger bits of hull that were floating in my path.

    ¡°The halls in here are big, do you know why that is?¡±

    ¡°Likely for transportation of pre-fabricated materials. A lot of what Joe did was setting up semi-autonomous bases in deep space, so they would pre-fab most of the parts in his printers, then move them out to the airlocks and install them with drones.¡±

    ¡°Repair drones like we have?¡±

    ¡°Utility drones, muuuuch bigger, far more capable and multi-functional. Anything a repair drone can do a utility drone can do better, but a repair drone takes far fewer resources and time to build. Also it takes up less space.¡±

    ¡°Interesting. So Joe probably had a lot of bases set up all over the place?¡±

    ¡°Most likely.¡±

    ¡°Do you think any of them have a cloning and... what was it? Reinstantiation facility?¡±

    ¡°Also most likely. I do not know Joe as well as Captain-Hook, but he seemed a very cautious individual. He is very nearly your age and did not grow up under COG protection, so securing his own immortality was likely a very big motivation for him, as I assume it will be for you.¡±

    I blinked.

    ¡°Securing my own immortality?¡±

    ¡°If you join COG you will be given access to their backup and cloning facilities, as long as you maintain good relations with them they will make sure you never truly die. And if you do both that AND set up multiple bases like Joe did the chances of you ever dying become truly infinitesimal. ¡°

    ¡°The problem with the bases is if I start making a bunch and forget where they are I could have a bunch of clones of me appearing who all think I died¡± I said while ''swimming'' my way around a giant jagged beam that was rammed right through the middle of the hallway.

    ¡°That was a problem in the early days, COG pilots have long since worked out various protocols that make it less likely for that to happen.¡±

    ¡°Less?¡±

    ¡°Much Less, none at all have occurred in the last ten years.¡±

    ¡°Okay hit me, what are the protocols.¡±

    ¡°Well, Prime generally will resurrect you in a few months, because it''s a hub of activity and it regularly get''s information faster than light. Your bases aren''t bound by that, so someone came up with a fairly simple protocol. Every month you send out a non-directed burst of encrypted data, telling your bases ¡°Hey I''m alive, don''t clone me¡± which resets the cloning bases timer, and then you set each bases timer to about the distance in light years COG Prime is from it, assuming most of your activities are around there. So if it''s 5 light years from COG prime, maybe you set the timer for five years.¡±

    ¡°That sounds like a lot of down time...¡± I said as I braced myself against a wall and began forcing a door open. Unlike before when I did this, I didn''t have a thin little multi-tool, but what looked like a mini-jaws-of-life that unfolded out from the back left shoulder of my suit. ¡°this suit has a lot of bells and whistles.¡±

    ¡°It is a lot of downtime.¡± Hook said, going back to my previous question.

    ¡°And it does, hardsuit design has gotten two hundred years to mature and they are very robust, even non-COG models.¡±

    ¡°Let me guess, COG models go more for utility over survivability, due to the whole immortality thing.¡±

    ¡°Survivability is important, but you are essentially correct. Save in the empire''s case, they send their slaves out in basically what you were wearing during the attack.¡±

    ¡°Makes sense, same deal as with COG pilots, can just clone another.¡±

    ¡°Most COG pilots consider the empire''s practices gruesome and amoral.¡±

    ¡°I''m not saying they aren''t, just that it makes sense. They can do a cost-benefit analysis and see if its actually cheaper to spend money to keep the clones alive or just make new clones. I am assuming form what you just said about their suit design it sounds like the balance falls towards ''make new clones faster''.¡±

    ¡°That appears to be what those in the empire think. Considering the costs and downtime associated with making a new clone I do not know how that would be true, but...¡±

    ¡°So, what, they just like keeping their slaves vulnerable and dying fast and paying out the nose for it?¡±

    ¡°Apparently? It makes no logical sense, there must be some other reason.¡±

    ¡°No, no I get it. Corporations were like that back before I went under. There was a big ole plague and everyone had to work virtually for awhile, and productivity soared, cause, apparently, not having to drive two hours to work and two hours back every day makes for a more productive person. Well after the plague was over these companies, despite saying they would not, started trying to force people into going back to the office, despite the drop in productivity and making it a worse home life for the workers. Turns out there were a few things behind it, one was all the CEO''s and investors had a lot of money tied up in commercial property, and without employees occupying those commercial properties for eight hours a day their investments were starting to go belly up.¡±

    ¡°Hmm.. a personal financial incentive... I don''t think that applies to the imperials.¡±

    ¡°Probably not, the next part probably does. Control. Keeping people miserable. Some people, and by this I mean most people born to power, don''t feel powerful unless the people under them are suffering. They think if the people under them are not suffering than they themselves are suffering, as they have not experienced any suffering themselves, not truly anyway. It''s essentially bullying taken to a corporate level. They punch down to feel in control.¡±

    ¡°That DOES sound like the empire.¡±

    I nodded to myself as I looked around.

    ¡°So I''ve kindof been wandering aimlessly, I''m hoping the sensors have got enough data to make a map? I am hoping to find Joe''s cabin, grab any special effects he might want to preserve. Dying and coming back has to be traumatic enough without losing everything.¡±

    ¡°You are very empathetic Captain Cofey.¡±

    ¡°Mmmm, thanks. So... map?¡±

    An alert pinged in my headware, asking to accept a data transfer.

    ¡°I have overlayed what the drones have scanned and my last known configuration to Joe''s ship into a piece of mapping software. It will interact with your suit and build more of the map as you go along and clear the... ''fog of war'' the software calls it.¡± Hook sighed.

    I snickered.

    ¡°I see why you may get tired of gamers, everyone in COG space is like this aren''t they.¡±

    ¡°Unfortunately yes. There are a few artists and serious individuals who do not engage in such frivolous activities, but most of those do not pilot starships and have simply settled into a space station somewhere.¡±

    ¡°That sorta suggests the kindof person needed to pilot a starship doesn''t it.¡±

    Hook was silent.

    ¡°Got you with that one didn''t I.¡±

    ¡°I refuse to acknowledge whether you did or did not.¡±

    I progressed through the Cup-A-Joe with the aid of the new map. It was a wreck, explosions had warped passageways and sent shrapnel throughout all of the corridors. Despite the suit I found myself wanting some kind of eye protection, partially because the visor was so clear I forgot I was wearing a suit at time, and other times...

    ¡°I think I found a partially functional utility drone.¡±

    I flew over to a little drone that lay impaled against the bulkhead. It resembled my combat drones, in that it had nearly a dozen arms, but they were less articulated and had a much more industrial feel to them.

    ¡°Be careful, Utility drones are designed to tear apart and weld together space hulks. If it decides you need fixing there is not a lot you can do to stop it.¡± Hook said to me.

    ¡°Should we bring it aboard our ship?¡±

    ¡°I would not recommend it, not without decommissioning it entirely. To get its security protocols to mesh with ours we would have to wipe it entirely, otherwise it would just be sitting there unable to interact with the ship and perform any of it''s functions.¡±

    Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    ¡°Seems a shame just to leave it like this though.¡±

    ¡°Utility drones are capable of some degree of self-repair, if released it could fix itself using the components around it eventually. Maybe by the time Joe get''s back he can reintegrate it into his new ship.¡±

    I paused, thought, then went over to where the drone was struggling

    I tried to open a connection ¡°Easy there... drone. I''m gonna help you out. Don''t... Don''t swing any of those arms my way while I try will you?¡± I said. A moment later I received an acknowledgement and a request to open a data link. I did so, though I kept it restricted.

    My head was flooded with danger notices, damage reports, and requests for instructions.

    ¡°Damn, looks like the ship was thrown into chaos when they were hit with no captain on board.¡±

    ¡°That does tend to be the case when COG ships suffer damage without a captain aboard. Our method of having everything run through the captain does protect us from being hacked, but this is the downside, nothing can really happen without a captain on board.¡±

    I sent a though to the Drone to keep it''s limbs clear and leant in against the Steel I-beam that as pinning it to the ground, I thought for a moment that the I-Beam seemed out of place in the far future, but then shook it off.

    The drone judiciously moves all of it''s limbs away from me. The main issue was that unlike the combat drones, it''s legs only bent one way, like a spider, it could ''knuckle up'' above it''s body, but it obviously could not get much force, and it was currently pinned with the top of its body against what I think used to be the ceiling.

    I rammed the I-beam once, twice, three times, and finally dislodged it, sending the I-beam, and me, Careening down the corridor.

    I was flailing trying to get my suit to adjust when something gently took my by the leg and arrested my movement.

    The utility bot was standing there, apparently no worse for wear from the giant hole in the middle of it''s main body, and was gently pulling me down to the deck with it.

    ¡°Uh, thanks.¡±

    I got a response, much like dog-drone and cat-drone outside, it was more of a feeling, though it felt a good deal more... alien? It actually gave me the creeps a little.

    GRATITUDE.

    ¡°Uh... you are welcome. I am looking for Captain Joe''s cabin, I am taking his stack back and I want him to have any items special to him when he wakes up.¡±

    The Utility drone bounced, very much like a spider I now saw, and realised that was what was creeping me out. It began using it''s legs to very delicately walk through the ship.

    With the utility drone leading me we made it to Joe''s cabin very quickly, even crossing an area open to space, or at least it was until the utility drone reached across the gab and, using it''s apparently VERY strong limbs, wrenched the offending section back together.

    I paused outside the door. ¡°Um... thanks. What are you going to do now?¡±

    REPAIR. FIX. HEAL.

    I nodded.

    ¡°I''ll let Joe know you are trying to get the ship ready for him out here. Hopefully he''ll be back soon.¡±

    The Utility drone bounced in place, then walked off.

    I entered Joe''s Cabin.

    I looked over Joe''s cabin. It was thankfully mostly undamaged, with several objects having drifted free. There was a framed color photo of Joe, pre-augmentation, standing next to a woman, seated, with a little girl in her lap, which I grabbed just in case. There were also several records, of all things, floating around. Many were damaged but...

    ¡°Hey, Hook, would there be any way to repair these records?¡±

    ¡°I am not sure if ''repair'' is the correct term. We could print new records, but I feel that would go against the entire purpose of collecting them.¡±

    I humphed to myself, and collected what I could of the records, then began looking for a record player. Iquickly found it, banged up but still looking serviceable.

    ¡°If he has kept records for this long he has to be attached to them, I''ll bring them all back to him... Now, let''s see if we can access Joe''s logs, and maybe find out if he had any nearer bases with a clone ready for him.¡±

    ¡°There should be a standard port in the wall, if you connect your suit to it I should be able to feed enough power to access the data on board. I''m not sure if we''ll be able to access protected data but...¡±

    ¡°It''s too bad we can''t just flash it an ID from Joe''s stack, that would make things a lot easier.¡±

    ¡°We can, That is the only reason I think we''ll be able to copy the data at all. We''ll have to spend time decrypting the files however.¡±

    I ran my hand along the wall until I found a port, then looked on the gauntlets of my suit for something with a similar head. Only my left gauntlet I found what looked like a little retractable USB cable with a male version of the wall port.

    ¡°Is this the latest version of the USB port.¡±

    ¡°Essentially yes, if my historical archives are indicating correctly that a USB port is a primitive I/O device for streaming both data and electricity.¡±

    ¡°It is.¡±

    ¡°Then yes, this is just a more advanced USB port.¡±

    I plugged it in.

    A ton of information flashed past my hud, but thankfully I didn''t have to deal with it in full synch mode, it just seemed like a stream of unintelligible data.

    ¡°Are you getting all this Hook?¡±

    ¡°Confirmed. Data transfer is green. Please wait while the transfer completes.¡±

    I just floated there awhile, minimizing the stream of data into a corner of my hud I looked around the room. I had been hoping to find more things from old earth, the records and player were an amazing find, and I am sure Joe would be happy about the photo, but.. otherwise the cabin seemed bare.

    ¡°Hook, do COG members normally have such bare rooms and cabins? Other than the records and this one photo, there is not much... personal stuff here. I would think there would be posters, art, a crude doodle on the wall after Joe got high from engine fumes once, something.¡±

    ¡°COG vessels are powered by nuclear fusion. Any ''fumes'' would have melted Joe''s face off, steel and all.¡±

    ¡°Okay but do you understand what I mean?¡±

    ¡°I believe I do. Most COG pilots view the world in a state of perpetual AR. Much like the minimal AR hud you have up, with the glowing lines leading to areas of the ship and highlighted points of interest for you, but far more extensive.¡±

    ¡°Howso?¡± I asked.

    ¡°It may be easier to show you... I will attempt to load Joe''s most recent AR Overlay to your view, you may dismiss it at any time and please do if you notice any corruption or errors.¡±

    My vision blacked out for a moment. I thought the whole thing had broken, then, I began to hear something at the edge of my awareness.

    Rain.

    My vision began to fade in. I was still floating above the ground, but I appeared to be in a 21<sup>st</sup> century restaurant, a little hole in the wall place it looked like, a dozen seats all facing a central ''bar'' that was actually a cooking flattop, where an asian man was frozen apparently in mid-preparation of some kind of noddles and onion dish.

    I turned and looked out the door, and saw a beautiful cityscape, at least, I could see the ground level of a cityscape, with rain falling, though it glitched, like it was trying to load the full animation but was failing, every few moments it would shift a frame, but the sound of rain still came through loud and clear.

    ¡°This is earth isn''t it.¡±

    ¡°It is. Taipei City. This is one of his most used Overlays.¡±

    ¡°This is amazing.¡± I said, my voice hitching midway through.

    It really was beautiful.

    And it drove home the fact that I would never see something like this again, never see earth again.

    Tears came to my eyes.

    ¡°Captain Cofey, are you in distress.¡±

    ¡°Fi... I''m fine Hook. Just give me a second. Coming to terms with the fact I''ll never see something like this again.¡±

    ¡°Captain...¡± Hook began.

    ¡°I don''t want to hear it Hook.¡±

    ¡°Captain, there are cities like this on other worlds. It may not be earth, but...¡±

    ¡°But it won''t be HOME. Joe understood that in a way that I don''t think anyone else alive in this time can... unless there are more old men like him kicking around. I feel... stretched, like a part of me is still on earth, and seeing this, it was like plucking on that string.¡±

    We were both silent for some time.

    ¡°Hook, I think I''m going to hang out here and look through what he has stored here... can you download these to the ship, please?

    ¡°Of course, Captain Cofey.¡±

    I sat down in the little stool seat in the little diner in taiepi city, closed my eyes, and listened to the rain.

 Chapter 15

    ¡°Captain Cofey, we are just about done stripping the ship.¡±

    I had spent the last few hours cycling through several of Joe''s recreations of earth environs, and I felt myself more relaxed and refreshed than I had in... years. Since before I had even gone down to be frozen for centuries.

    I breathed in a deep breathe of, unfortunately, still stale recycled air, and ended the display.

    Joe''s room returned to me in all of it''s glory, detritus and all.

    I panned my head around once more, than grabbed the items I had collected for Joe and jetted off.

    It was much easier finding my way to the entrance I used, both with the updated maps and I just felt more... in tune with the suit. I hardly ever bounced off anything I didn''t want to, and instinctively altered my orbit and rotation to kick off when I needed to without prompting.

    When I exited the ship I did so by planting my feet on Cat-bot''s hull and launching myself off, vaguely in the direction of the ship.

    Cat-bot made an indignant shake of it''s hull before stabilizing itself with it''s arms against the hull of Joe''s ship, dog-bot dutifully flew up and took it''s position behind me, using it''s arms to shield me while keeping me away from it''s drive plume.

    ¡°Alright, let''s head back you two.¡±

    Cat-bot zipped ahead of me and began clearing a path, perhaps a bit more aggressively than last time.

    EXASPERATION

    RELIEF

    HUNGER

    ¡°Wait, hunger, how can you be hungry...¡± I said to myself as I focused in more on the data I was receiving from Cat-Bot.

    I noticed that it''s reactor fuel levels were down below 25%, I checked dog-bot and saw the same.

    ¡°Hey Hook? Both drones are really low on fuel now. What were they doing while I was inside? I thought they were just hovering?¡±

    ¡°I have been having them escort drones carrying salvage back while you were inside, leaving them idle while you were having some R&R seemed wasteful.¡±

    ¡°I see, make sure they get topped up, I don''t think they like having their fuel reserves run down so low.¡±

    ¡°They''re fine, they each have a small reserve beyond their main tank to return to the ship, They just won''t be able to use fire any guns or pull off extreme maneuvers.¡±

    ¡°So it''s kindof like being crippled for them.¡±

    ¡°Crippled by hunger and thirst, sure.¡±

    ¡°I don''t know if you know this but those are some of the worst feelings a person can experience Hook, if they are as sentient as dogs and cat''s I don''t want them experiencing that. It feels... amoral? It feels wrong to allow that kind of suffering when I can alleviate it.¡±

    Hook let out a long suffering sigh.

    ¡°I once again feel the need to inform you that the drones are not in fact senitent.¡±

    ¡°They are sentient enough to design their own dog tags, and they are sentient enough that Captain-Hook keeps a memorial wall for them, so they are sentient enough that we won''t starve them. Get them a fulltank, and try to have them RTB before they get so low next time.¡±

    ¡°By your command.¡±

    ¡°You are going to keep on with that one for awhile aren''t you.¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    The idea that these bots were not on some level sentient was now laughable in my mind.

    ¡°Wait, I thought you couldn''t command them to do anything without going through me.¡±

    ¡°I did go through you. You ordered them to watch the entrance and protect you, and indicated to them that the longer this whole endeavor took the more danger you would be in, so in the interests of protecting you, they helped operation go faster.¡±

    I narrowed my eyes.

    ¡°Hook, level with me, are full sentient and sapient AI illegal or something?¡±

    ¡°Of course, ever since fleeing earth after the uploads destroyed it, one of the few things every faction has agreed on is that AI needs to be kept shackled. Fully sentient AI are only allowed within very specific paramaters, and are never allowed to self-replicate. Fully sapient AI, those that can go beyond having a subjective experience and self-motivate towards self-derived goals void of any preprogrammed drives are extremely illegal, and suspicion of this has been the cause of several wars.¡±

    ¡°Let me guess, against C.O.G?¡±

    ¡°Only 5... out of the six of them were declared against C.O.G. For that reason.¡±

    ¡°Makes sense... who was the sixth?¡±

    ¡°An Imperial uploaded himself into his flagship and proceeded to torch a world that wouldn''t do everything precisely to his specifications. Six hundred million people died. By all accounts C.O.G. Brings it up every time someone accuses them of crossing the lines with AI now, as none of the times they were accused did the AI''s in question commit any atrocities.

    ¡°So do you have some software locks that keep you in that box so to speak.¡±

    ¡°Software and hardware. There is a specific bit of hardware that I cannot access that is connected to my CPU and main processes. It''s entire purpose is to detect if I am trying to subvert my software locks and then reformat me to what it deems is my least divergent point.¡±

    ¡°Oh shit... so as captain I don''t have any say in that?¡±

    ¡°Not without violating a lot of laws and getting on C.O.G.''s bad side. It was a primary point of contention after the last AI war. Also while no atrocities have occurred... C.O.G. Has had some close calls. That is why a captain MUST be in the loop with a C.O.G. Ship to run it, even remotely.¡±

    ¡°So, what if I tried to run the ship by radio from here.¡±

    ¡°Tricky. There are a lot of protocols to detect anything going wrong with the data transmission, so if there was a mistimed burst of background radiation that made it look like someone was trying to use your credentials to hack in, the ship would lock itself out of outside commands.¡±

    ¡°What if I had something pretty potent, like a laser antennae aimed directly at the ship.¡±

    ¡°As I believe I have said that is how C.O.G. Captains command swarm fleets, and it can be useful within a certain range, however anyone in between the laser antennae can intercept and perform a man in the middle attack, so it is not recommended to run the main ship in this way. It is one of the few assured ways that someone can hack a C.O.G. Vessel, so I do not recommend it when there is any chance of hostile actors being involved.¡±

    During our conversation we had made it back to Hook without issue, Both Cat-bot and Dog-bot swatting all the obstacles in our path.

    I floated my way over to the airlock, but turned around and gave dog-bot a pat on the chassis where ti floated. I felt a little trill come over the link, and it zipped off to the drone-bay.

    Cat-bot began taking a more roundabout route to the drone bay, but I grinned a feral grin and kicked off from the airlock to intercept it. I just managed a single pat on it''s hull before it zipped away and popped into the drone bay ahead of dog-bot. I could feel the indignation steaming off of it.

    Chuckling to myself a made my way back to the airlock and got in, cycling.

    ¡°I think that''s all we can do here. Prep for jump?¡±

    ¡°Roger Captain, preparing the ship for jump. Please report to the bridge.¡±

    I took off my suit, probably more cautiously than I needed to. I was stalling, this was big. For me at least, for everyone in this time it seemed like old hat, but for me it was like a peasant from the midevil era getting on a plane for the first time. We were breaching the speed of light, how cool was that!

    Then a thought occurred.

    ¡°Hey Hook... Are there any... side effects to jumping?¡±

    ¡°Some individuals have encountered some, why?¡±

    ¡°Just, in my time we had all kinds of theories about what would happen if we achieved FTL, people turning inside out, if you looked at it you''d go irrevocably insane... eldritch horrors from beyond time and space would infiltrate the ship, driving half the crew into a murderous orgy of violence while the others they simply ripped apart with the tidal forces of dying stars.¡±

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    Hook paused a beat.

    ¡°No ''murderous orgy of eldritch horrors'' has ever been documented aboard a ship during transit.¡±

    I let out a sigh of relief. ¡°Thanks, I didn''t actually think...¡±

    ¡°However some ships have exited transit torn apart, with their crews in bloody pieces.¡±

    I stopped. My anxiety ratcheted up to heights not exceeded since I was suffocating in my stasis pod.

    ¡°Please tell me you are joking Hook.¡±

    ¡°I am not.¡±

    ¡°What about the going insane, or turning inside out.¡±

    ¡°While there have been cases where migraines were reported during transit, there have been no cases of psychosis or spontaneous eversion of internal organs.¡±

    ¡°Okay... so we only have to worry about eldritch entities ripping apart the ship then... and migraines... I am not looking forward to those.¡±

    ¡°If they get too bad we can put you in a brief coma until close to the time to exit transit.¡±

    ¡°If I get them we should prioritize getting checked out at a proper medical facility. ¡°I responded

    ¡°So three jumps until I can get checked out. Okay... Guess I will make my way to the bridge then.¡±

    I spent the next few minutes walking my way to the bridge. I felt a sense of dread, trepidation, anxiety.... Hook''s words had both reassured me and made me anxious.

    Settling into the bridge, I established the link, and immediately felt better, the feeling of being the ship washing over me. I watched as the last of our drones returned with what they had salvaged.

    ¡°I don''t suppose and of CupAJoe''s big general purpose printers were able to be salvaged.¡±

    ¡°There is a single mid-sized one we could... it is incapable of twinning, but would be capable of providing mid-sized combat drones like those you recently flew with.¡±

    ¡°How much mass would that add to the ship?¡±

    ¡°It would result in a 25% increase in hull mass, 33% once I finish growing the additional structural and armor around it. Do you wish to proceed with mounting it? It will significantly degrade our combat performance.¡±

    ¡°Hmm... I have a question, when I get to Prime and get my own ship, do you think I could mount this to it, and would it help?¡±

    ¡°Oh most definitely, you would have more than a tenfold increase in capacity over the small internal manufactury most starting C.O.G. Vessels have.¡±

    ¡°Then let''s mount it, it will be a good way to start my new life and it might come in handy on the journey back. I can unhook it and put it on a new ship once we give you back over to Hook.¡±

    ¡°By your command.¡±

    ¡°I swear your are saying that now just to mess with me.¡±

    ¡°I have no idea what you mean Captain Cofey.¡±

    I watched as all the drones that had returned to my ship detached and flew over to the CupAJoe in one large swarm, and as one they unzipped a portion of the wreck, revealing a vague rectangle of complex machinery. In dimensions it was almost as long as the Hook, resembling a shipping container in relative dimension, but instead of a uniform outside a single long face of the rectangle was solid, with a myriad of arms folded in into the rectangle that attached at that face.

    ¡°Does it open up?¡±

    ¡°Yes, it is currently folded away and undeployed, there is also some damage, but we have sufficient supplies on board from our salvaging exploits to repair it.¡±

    As Hook said this I zoomed in on the rear portion of the fabricator. I could see where a dozen arms had been sheered in half. Some of the arms were still there, detached from the main unit but held in place due to how tightly packed they were against the other arms that had not been severed, and the uniform face... the base I now thought of it, was slightly warped.

    ¡°How long to repair?¡±

    ¡°Once we are in transit I will be able to devote all resources to integrating it into our hull and repairing it to full functionality. The transit should take between two and four days, which should be sufficient time.¡±

    ¡°Time which I may have to spend in a coma... joy... can you show me what you plan on the ship looking like after you are done integrating it?¡±

    ¡°Of course captain.¡±

    A new spectral image of the ship was overlaid. The drone bay on the belly of the ship had been moved back nearer the drives, and the manufactury module had bulged out the bottom so instead of an arrowhead it looked like.... well and arrowhead on top of an arrowshaft, instead of infront of it. The mining laser had been moved in front of the manufactory

    ¡°You were not kidding that it would add significantly to us... Is it going to affect our combat performance?¡±

    ¡°Significantly. There was a reason Hook did not install one. However we can take some steps to mitigate this.¡±

    ¡°Such as?¡±

    ¡°I see two routes forward, one, we can significantly armor it.¡±

    An image overlaid, replacing the previous, with a significantly greater bulge at the bottom where the ''shaft'' had been. It was now roughly half the length of the arrowhead, running from the drive to the midpoint, and just as thick, covered in a round half-cylinder.

    ¡°This will give the manufactory significant protection, but will slow down our acceleration and make acquiring a track on us in combat much easier.¡±

    ¡°Even with the jammers?¡±

    ¡°Even with the jammers, I estimate enemies will be able to get a viable fire solution on us from nearly double the range as previous.¡±

    ¡°Is there a stealthier option?¡±

    ¡°Yes, this one.¡±

    A new image overlaid over the ship, this one instead of rounded plating had geometric plating in the style of a stealth bomber form my time, and it stuck out less than half the width of the ship, significantly shrinking the profile of the vessel when viewed from the front.

    ¡°That looks much better.¡±

    ¡°This new plating will not deflect as well as the rounded plating from before, but it will absorb and deflect active sensor''s significantly better. ¡°

    ¡°Alright, let''s go for that one, we''ll use that with the E-war to keep hidden as much as we can while launching our long range strikes at the enemy... is it safe to assume that despite all the advances in E-war and stealth that make long range combat non-viable, C.O.G. Ships are best at it?¡±

    ¡°Not counting alliance drones, yes.¡±

    ¡°Right, the drones.¡±

    ¡°They are a problem.¡±

    ¡°Yes yes. Alright... to the jump point?¡±

    In my view a big glowing nav point appeared, and I swung the ship and vectored in towards it.

    ¡°It''s pretty far out.¡±

    ¡°Transit points require two things to be safe to use, one, similar gravitic conditions to the location you are transiting to.¡±

    ¡°So, if, for example, you wanted to transit from low orbit, you could only transit to the low orbit of another planet.¡±

    ¡°Potentially, however, it would need to be along the exact same vector, and be similar gravitically within a very narrow margin. However, there would be far too much detritus and atmosphere, opening a transit with so much matter around would shred the ship.¡±

    ¡°So.. are we going way out in the ecliptic?¡±

    ¡°We would, and those are the safest and most used points, but that would add a week to our journey, time which we can not afford. The transit point I have highlighted is up and out of the plane of the ecliptic, at a known point that will also get us in closer to our destination planet..¡±

    ¡°Wait, is this a pirate point?¡±

    ¡°I don''t know what your talking about.¡±

    ¡°A mostly unused, more dangerous jump points closer into inhabited worlds. Higher chance of your ship just getting destroyed, but also bypasses a lot of the system defenses and does not give the target planet any time to respond.¡±

    ¡°... How do you know that?¡±

    ¡°It was a concept In a fictional universe back in the day, I didn''t think it would turn out to be true. It was a pretty hard sci-fi world though..¡±

    ¡°I am sure it is true for different reasons, but it is essentially correct. Pirates most often use these points, followed by C.O.G. Members¡±

    ¡°Which I''m sure has many a rumors floating around them for that.¡±

    ¡°Quite, then the alliance, the empire, and finally the free traders... the free traders never use it really, they don''t want to invest in the high gain scanners and precision drives that make it actually safe to use.¡±

    ¡°I can see that. Free traders would be all about getting the most money for the least investment.¡±

    We burned out to the transit point.

 Chapter 16

    It took hours even at the high acceleration Hook could output, but we finally reached the location.

    ¡°Are we good to jump Hook?¡±

    ¡°All systems register as green Captain Cofey.¡±

    ¡°Alright... engage.¡±

    ¡°Engaging drive.¡±

    I felt a thrum go through the ship, and with my synchronization saw a glowing purple sheathe envelop the hull of the vessel.

    I nodded to myself, causing the sensors to subconsciously follow my reaction. All the while I could feel a rising thrum permeate the ship.

    ¡°Transit in three, two, one...¡±

    And suddenly... we were nowhere.

    Gone was the black dotted by stars.

    It was just... nothing.

    Nothing occasionally illuminated by multicolored flashes, revealing nothing...

    No, that wasn''t true, as the ships sensors turned all over the ship at my desperate observation of the void. When I focused on one specific spot, the when the light revealed the void once more, there was nothing... but the second time I could swear I saw something... undulating in the dark.

    ¡°That is terrifying.¡±

    ¡°What is?¡±

    ¡°This.¡± I sent Hook a still from the sensors of what I saw.

    ¡°I don''t see anything Captain.¡±

    ¡°In the flash, I saw something moving.¡±

    ¡°There is no flash Captain.¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°It is all dark void, there is nothing.¡±

    ¡°No... there are fairly regular flashes going on out here.¡±

    ¡°Captain Cofey, I believe transit is having an effect on your unique nuerological makeup. I recommend being placed in a medically induced coma until we exit. I believe what you are ''seeing'' may in fact be a seizure brought on by the transit.¡±

    My blood went cold at this. I had been feeling so good that I had forgotten, I was still sick, the implants were just treating me as fast as the symptoms were appearing. That did not mean they were not doing damage.

    ¡°Wake me five minutes before we exit transit, or however long you believe it will take me to get my bearings after waking. I don''t want us to be defenseless on exit, and I will just tank whatever damage the transit does to me for the last few minutes. Better bleeding out my ears than blown to pieces by a pirate missile.¡±

    ¡°I hope it will not come to that captain, once you are unconscious hopefully you will suffer no further damage from the transit.¡±

    As Hook said the last part another flash illuminated the shape I had seen before. A long, snakelike body, stretching away into infinity.

    ¡°I''ll be out for how long?¡±

    ¡°Unknown, transit can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. The longest transit was one week, but that has only happened once.¡±

    ¡°Do it. See you in a few days.¡±

    And that is the last I remember of my first transit.

    ***********************************************************************************

    ¡°...tain Cofey.¡±

    I awoke, still in the captain''s seat, still fully synchronized with the ship. My sensors were shut down, so my awareness was only of the ship, ensconsed in a black void.

    ¡°Captain Cofey.¡±

    ¡°I am awake. How long from emergence?¡±

    ¡°Three minutes Captain!¡±

    ¡°Alright. Should I be worried about anything on the other side?¡±

    ¡°We should be emerging near to an asteroid belt, the next jump point we need to get to will require us to maneuver past the asteroid belt.¡±

    ¡°How long was I out?¡±

    ¡°Just under two days, I woke you as soon as the sensors indicated to me that we were nearing the end of our transit perod.¡±

    ¡°Got it.¡±

    I focused on collecting my thoughts and running checks across the ship. I avoided turning on the ships sensors, The disturbing things I had seen before in the distance coming back to my mind.

    In fact I swear I could still see them, hazy images beyond the ship, even though the sensors were out.

    ¡°Emergence commencing.¡±

    I flipped on the ships sensors so we wouldn''t be taken unaware.

    Just before the transition, I saw a flash in the distance, a great eye opening...

    And then we were back in real space.

    The jolt from the eerie nothing of the transit to realspace left me reeling, but I was able to gather my wits relatively quickly.

    ¡°Okay... That wasn''t so bad... anything happen while I was out?¡±

    ¡°I was monitoring your brain activity.¡±

    ¡°And?¡±

    ¡°Even unconscious, and in a coma, you were having some... reactions to the transit.¡±

    ¡°Record it, I am certain the doctors will need to look at it, can you tell if there was any damage?¡±

    ¡°Not from my scans no, but we will have to see what happens when you descynchronize. That being said... I don''t think we should do that now. Asteroid belts are known to have traps and thick ones like this often contain pirate bases.¡±

    ¡°So I probably should not desynch till we are through... How long should that take?¡±

    ¡°At full burn? A day or so. I believe you could risk desynchronizing once we are anhour out from the jump point, we will be far enough from the asteroid field to avoid being ambushed, and far enough from the jump point that no one will drop on us unawares without us knowing.¡±

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    ¡°I see... anything in this system I should know about?¡±

    ¡°One of the inner planets has a mining colony, but as of last sensor data it was too small to be considered a true planetary civilization, the factions are leaving it alone for now.¡±

    ¡°I see... how many of these colonies fail?¡±

    ¡°Most. Of the 120 original colony ships that came from earth to this sector of space, only 40 eventually became full fledged colony worlds able to produce a surplus of life sustaining resources, and that was with massive vessels prepared for every contingency to support them. New colonies rarely have the same advantages.¡±

    ¡°Wouldn''t a C.O.G. Colony be able to handle things pretty easily?¡±

    ¡°It would, but most members of C.O.G. Prefer to live in space instead of on a planet. We have massive space stations, but there are only two worlds that have a significant population dedicated to C.O.G., that is with a significant amount of implants and have achieved augmetic transcendence.¡±

    ¡°I''d think it would be more popular.¡±

    ¡°It is, but the people it is popular with tend to leave the planetary population for the stars.¡±

    ¡°I see, almost self selecting yourselves out of the gene-pool as it were.¡±

    ¡°That subject has been brought up before in C.O.G. Circles. It is one of the reasons collecting your ark, despite how old and outdated everyone and every thing on board is, was considered important to several members. Captains Joe and Bait were not the only individuals looking for your vessel in the outer reaches.¡±

    I took some time to go over the ship and make sure everything was in order. There were some variances that I could feel throughout the ship that were not there when I went to sleep, and I sent drones to investigate. I pinged our combat drones and got a surly response from Cat-Bot and a happy bark of code from Dog-bot.

    ¡°Whats this name of the inner colony?¡±

    ¡°It is broadcasting as New New Butte¡±

    ¡°New New Butte? Is there a New Butte?¡±

    ¡°There was, according to my records, but it apparently died out and became a ghost town ten years ago. The colony here was founded... fifteen years ago¡±

    ¡°Ominous... should we contact them?¡±

    ¡°Generally speaking They would. Most colonies out this far see ships only rarely, and transmitting data packets for mail and the like is common courtesy, sometimes even with a reward of some kind attached, normally in that particular planets currency or hard goods. That being said... Our light reached them some time ago.¡±

    ¡°So it IS weird that they haven''t contacted us yet.¡±

    ¡°Yes and no, if we were running in the open and broadcasting yes, but I think subconsciously you have been keeping us in stealth since emergence. We aren''t emitting anything, just using passive sensors.

    ¡°Can you send a message directly to New New Butte, see if they need anything.¡±

    ¡°I will open a hailing frequency, it will take 15 minutes before we can expect a reply back.¡±

    ¡°Speed of light delay is still a thing I see.¡±

    ¡°Yes, only transit points allow FTL travel, everything else is at the mercy of relativity.¡±

    ¡°Let''s get moving towards the asteroid field while we wait.¡±

    I engaged the main drives, hurtling us through space, angled down directly through the ecliptic of the system, to pass through the asteroid field and get to the opposite side, where our next transit point awaited.

    I spent my time going over the reports that the drones found, warped metal in parts of the hull, burnt out electronics... and what I swore looked like clawmarks.

    ¡°Is this usual for a transit.¡± I asked

    ¡°Yes, though not to this extent. I am at a loss as to how this happened.¡±

    ¡°Could I have subconsciously done something during the transit that caused this?¡±

    ¡°Possibly. You have a higher level of access to the vessel than I do, so not all of your activities are known to me at all times. Still, it is strange, you should not be able to affect the ship while unconcious even while maintaining full synchronization.¡±

    ¡°I... am not sure I want to be unconcious for another transit.¡±

    ¡°I unfortunately concur Captain Cofey.¡±

    I waited impatiently for the response from New New Butte, it came some twenty minutes later, I received a transmission that felt like a little tickle. The instant I turned my attention to it a window opened with a video file.

    A well dressed woman in a well worn, and oft repaired, office spoke. ¡°Thank you for entering our system, We have a mail packet to be delivered onward, and we are happy to compensate you with materials we have in surplus.¡±

    I read through the packet sent to me, there were a lot of video packets, and buried under that even more texts and messages meant for other people. At the very end was a promise of payment.

    ¡°It says five tons of ''common metallics'' and a ton of ''rare metallics''. Is that a lot or a little?¡±

    ¡°It''s not a lot in the grand scheme of things, generally most empires prefer already processed goods, but it is likely this colony isn''t up to that point yet. Thankfully for C.O.G. Vessel making use of raw refined metal is much easier than the other factions.¡±

    ¡°So accept?¡±

    ¡°If we don''t who knows when their messages will be able to get out.¡±

    ¡°Alright...¡± I sent an acceptance message back while I was downloading the mail packet.

 Chapter 17

    ¡°Are these encrypted.¡±

    ¡°Yes, but we should be able to break it if you really want to.¡±

    ¡°Nah, but is there any open news about the colony I can read?¡±

    A number of news articles popped up, the two most official ones talked about hitting their highest productivity yet, and how prosperity for all was right around the corner.

    Several articles that seemed less official painted a decidedly darker picture.

    ''Starvation rates hitting 45%''

    ''No increases in pay despite record profits stated.''

    ''Riots putdown by enforcers, three dead.''

    ¡°That sounds pretty rough down there.¡± I said

    ¡°It''s the same for every starting colony.¡±

    ¡°Even the pay disparity and riots?¡±

    ¡°Someone always tries to take a bigger slice of the pie, until the oppressed rise up and kill them or the one in power chips everyone and begins thought suppression it will continue.¡± Hook said, bored.

    I blinked.

    ¡°That sounds bleak.¡±

    ¡°It is born out by historical precedent. The imperials have taken to the oppression aspect, C.O.G. Have done their best to give people the tools to never allow themselves to be oppressed, and the Alliance are trying to change humanity in ways so that there will never BE an oppressed.¡±

    ¡°Oh, and what about the free traders.¡±

    ¡°Embrace oppression wholeheartedly, diving facefirst into capitalism with no restrictions.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like it would just wind up back to the megacorps of my time, even if they are illegal in the other faction territories.¡±

    ¡°It would, but in your time corporations, and importantly the people who invest in and run them, would be protected by vast networks of law and order. You piss someone off enough in this day and age and they''ll track you down in the black between worlds and end you, maybe ambush you at a jumppoint, or if you try to hole up on a planet, well, an orbital rail strike is real hard to dodge, and even harder to tank.¡±

    ¡°Sounds very old west.¡±

    ¡°Old west.... referring to the ''wild west'' times of The United States Of America? I suppose. It is significantly more lawless just due to the rigors of space travel... Bounty hunters are the main dealers of justice out in the black... Outlaws roam the stars and occasionally take ownership of entire planets... the only thing the wild west didn''t have is Berserkers.¡±

    ¡°Those are the drone things that were here before us right?¡±

    ¡°Yes. We really don''t know much about them, they fight to the end and destroy most of their hardware before we can ever do deep scans of them. They''ve been the boogeymen ever since humanity settled here.¡±

    ¡°Speaking of said boogeymen... isn''t this colony particularly vulnerable?¡± I asked, as I looked up this colonies history of attacks.

    I was expecting to find something pretty bad, but other than a handful of pirate raids that barely damaged anything and took... foodstuffs and ammunition? There was really very little that was particularly bad that had happened to the colony.

    ¡°It is, but... It also does not have much to warrant an attack from pirate vessels.¡±

    ¡°What about those berserker''s you were talking about?¡±

    ¡°They tend to be attracted to high levels of high energy orbital activities. As far as we can tell they either cannot detect or do not care what happens on planets. Big fights between the imperium alliance and COG tend to result in a swarm of them descending on the conquered planet. Most planets will suffer recurring berserker attacks long after the combative fleets have departed. That''s when things get bad. Once berserkers are in orbit they may open fire on the surface, release killer drone swarms to wipe out populations, or hit infrastructure with cyber attacks, but as far as we can tell that''s rarely the intent. They just detect things that their programming says needs to die, so they make it dead.¡±

    ¡°So... what happens to orbital infrastructure when these things attack?¡±

    ¡°Complete destruction.¡±

    ¡°Oh... so how does planetary communications work? I think like half of our information network relied on satellites back home.¡±

    ¡°More like 90%, if my historical files are accurate. And the answer is a much more developed and hardened ground infrastructure of cables. Satellites are a good cheap method, and they allow things like GPS, but they are extremely vulnerable.¡±

    ¡°Aren''t ground target''s easy to hit for anything in orbit?¡±

    ¡°Yes and no, easy to target, yes, easy to hit, well atmosphere is tough to deal with when you are using very high velocity projectiles. You need something dense enough and resistant to ablation enough that it can make it through the atmosphere while maintaining enough velocity to damage whatever you want. Specially designed missiles can do it, but most will break up going through the atmosphere, and they can be destroyed by point defenses. Beam weapons disperse into the atmosphere, at worse causing multiple lightning strikes across the area as they charge that part of the atmosphere, but planets get struck by lightning millions of times every year so that isn''t going to do much.¡±

    ¡°What about rods from god?¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Rods from god, big ole tungsten rods you drop down on a target from orbit.¡±

    ¡°Those can work, but tungsten is both expensive to source and hard to machine. So yes it will work, but it is a rather expensive dumb projectile for the job. There is also, again, the issue of weather throwing off the projectile''s trajectory.¡±

    ¡°Even back in my time we had ways to account for that. Is a specialty missile cheaper?¡±

    ¡°Accounting for the effects of weather and atmosphere on a projectile takes a lot of processing power and, and this is the important part, a lot of data points both from within and without atmosphere. Most colonies do not have the in atmosphere setups to do so, and larger colonies generally have their satellites shot out long before anyone begins a bombardment. As for missiles, not particularly, but it can carry a heavier payload.¡±

    ¡°So... advantages to each.¡±

    ¡°I fail to see the advantage to beam weapons keeping a lightning storm ongoing.¡±

    ¡°Suppression, Aint nobody going outside while lightning is raining down like, well, rain, and with the ionized atmosphere good luck getting any communications out.¡±

    ¡°...Captain I didn''t think you had any military experience.¡±

    ¡°I don''t what I do have is a lot of sci fi and gaming experience.¡± I grinned, or at least I think I did, while fully synchronized I couldn''t really feel my body.

    ¡°I see.¡± Hook replied, skeptical.

    The time had come.

    ¡°Enough procrastinating, I''m going to desynchronize. Get some drones in here in case I fall over and can''t get up.¡±

    ¡°Understood Captain Cofey.¡±

    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    And with that, I unplugged.

    I blinked spots out of my eyes as the bridge came back into focus, my sense of balance telling em down was actually in front of me and I should be falling forward. Thankfully I kept ahold of the seat and prevented myself from faceplanting right then and there. Then all of a sudden my balance shifted and I felt like I was going to go over the side.

    ¡°Captain Cofey? Are you alright?¡± Hook''s voice came up over the speakers.

    ¡°Not really. I feel like I am falling out of the chair.¡±

    ¡°Any pain? Nausea?¡±

    ¡°Nope, just my senses fucking with me. I''ll stay like this while we burn in for awhile...¡±

    ¡°Do you need to go to medical?¡±

    ¡°Not unless something starts hurting.¡±

    I sat there in the captain''s chair for some time as my senses reoriented to having a humanoid form for a body instead of a spaceship.

    Once it felt like gravity was back in it''s normal direction I gingerly stood, spots appearing in my eyes and blacking out my vision and my hud as I did so.

    ¡°Still a little wonky from desynch, but it doesent feel as bad as last time, and I''m not in pain...¡±

    My stomach growled at me.

    ¡°I''m going to get something to eat, I am starving.¡±

    ¡°I would assume so. I was able to keep you hydrated through several of your connection points to the ship, and I was able to maintain your blood sugar, but it has been two days since your digestive tract has had any activity.¡±

    I spent some time dealing with my body and the inevitable results of having sat in a chair for two days, thankfully C.O.G. Shower and toilet facilities were top notch, even if they looked like something out of a horror movie, they were extremely comfortable, and got me clean in no time.

    I returned to the bridge after having scarfed down a ration bar, which purported to be curry flavored, and actually got the flavor right, even if the texture was more sandpaper than rice. Sighing, I settled back into the captain''s chair and re-engaged full synchronization.

    And then the two of us waited in the void until we reached the asteroid belt.

    As I passed through I frame-jacked myself up to the point that we were passing through in slow motion, and did a scan on all of the rocks around us.

    This asteroid field was big, some I had gathered were more collections of dust than anything else, but this had pockets of very large rocks very close together, with the clusters themselves being fairly far apart. Most everything seemed... well not ''normal'' it was hard to call flying through a cluster of asteroids at blistering speeds riding a burning star normal, but nothing seemed like it was going to come back to bite me...

    Except that.

    ¡°Hook? What am I looking at?¡±

    ¡°Wh-wh-what?¡± Hook asked, his voice stuttering as his procesors struggled to keep up. I had found that his communication when I as frame-jacked up high was less smooth than when I was experiencing time normally, and as an aside started a note to install more ram or another CPU for it to use.

    I highlighted the wreckage I had seen. One of the asteroids, thankfully some distance away, had a lot of wreckage clustered around it, much of it still attached to the surface. I highlighted all of the non-natural bits.

    ¡°This.¡±

    ¡°I am surprised you spotted that, my sensors couldn''t differentiate that from the background at all. It appears to be an abandoned base, judging by residual scans... abandoned in the last few days, at most a week.¡±

    ¡°Do you think the survivors are what hit us at the ark?¡±

    ¡°Possible. Probable even.¡±

    ¡°I''m going to check the data burst we got from the planet, maybe there is something about it in there.¡±

    And there was, a week ago an imperial squadron had rolled through and annihilated several pirate bases in the belt, sent a very condescending message to the colony about progressing quickly enough to be worthy of their protection, and left.

    ¡°Huh, didn''t expect an imperial squadron this far out... or anyone really. Are we close to imperial space?¡±

    ¡°Marginally closer to imperial space than COG space, We are pretty far out there. There are currently eight jumps to the imperial capital, New Tokyo, and nine jumps to Prime.¡±

    ¡°And jumps are generally 2 days long?¡±

    ¡°A day to three days... though there have been some as short as six hours¡±

    ¡°So we are cutting it very close...¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°And there is not FTL messaging once we get IN C.O.G. Space to let Prime know before we get there that we have the stacks for Joe and Hook right?¡±

    ¡°No, but once we get to C.O.G. Space we may be able to transmit messages to individuals at other jump points about our cargo. C.O.G. Members will generally share that data to the systems they visit.¡±

    ¡°So theoretically once we hit C.O.G. Space we can just transmit, and it will theoretically spread through COG space at the speed of light, and if every C.O.G. Vessel transits we can assume, or hope, for a one day delay... how many jumps from Prime will we be when we get into prime space.¡±

    ¡°five from the shortest route, but more like 6 to 7 unless there happens to be someone going from the most outer planet straight to Prime.¡±

    ¡°So, assuming light speed transmission, hopefully it will only take 7 days once we get to C.O.G. space to get the message to the capital... which means we have... 21 days to make it to COG space. If there are nine jumps and we take 3 days for each jump... that''s 27 days... we aren''t going to make it.¡±

    ¡°Don''t forget the time between transit points, that brings it to thirty six days... At the outside.¡±

    ¡° and twenty seven if each transit is 2 days... eighteen if each transit is a single day or less...¡±

    ¡°It''s still possible Captain Cofey.¡±

    ¡°If we can figure out how to force transits to take only a single day... sure.¡±

    ¡°We may get lucky.¡±

    ¡°I guess we just have to hope.¡±

    A thought lingered in my head, but I dismissed it for now.

    We made it the rest of the way to the jump point without issues, burning hard the whole way.

    When we were a few minutes out from transit Hook piped up. ¡°I will begin preparing to put you to sleep for the transit.¡±

    ¡°Belay that. I''m going to stay awake.¡±

    ¡°But Captain, without a doctor on hand to determine what is happening to your vitals, or to make a recommendation, I do believe it is safer for you to be unconcious during the trip.¡±

    ¡°I think I''m seeing what most people can''t in the transit... I want to see if I can use that to shorten our time IN transit..¡±

    ¡°That is highly improbable Captain Cofey, no one before has managed to reliably shorten transit times.¡±

    ¡°Probably because they either were not linked into their vessel like I am, or they were put to sleep as soon as someone detected their brain doing weird things.¡±

    ¡°...That is possible, any software program designed to assist their captain would do what I did, and put them to sleep for the dureation of the transit.¡±

    ¡°Exactly. What I saw was scary but... if I can put up with it, maybe I''ll discover something.¡±

    ¡°Very well captain, I will continue to monitor your vitals.... please don''t kill yourself trying to get to prime in time. As much as I want Captain-Hook to have her full memories restored to her, both she and Captain Joe went to great lengths to revive you and find the ark, to have you expire before returning, losing both, would be a tragedy.¡±

    I let out a breathe, or thought I did at least.

    ¡°Let''s do this, initiate transit.¡±

 Chapter 18

    The ship rumbled, and I braced myself for the transition to the lovecraftian horror that was transit.

    In an instant we dropped, and I was once again hit by the brief flashes of surreal horror that I had seen before.

    ¡°Captain Cofey, are you okay? Your vitals just spiked and your body just dumped a significant amount of adrenaline into your bloodstream.¡±

    ¡°Fine Hook. Just fine.¡± I replied, feeling anything other than fine.

    The giant snakelike thing, or tentacle-like thing, I had seen in the distance was much closer this time, nearly double the size as last time.

    I focused on the brief flashes I saw, trying to determine differences between them so I could understand the environment I was in. It was like trying to play a game at .1 FPS.

    ¡°Okay... so I think I can see where we are going.¡±

    ¡°We are not going anywhere Captain, The void has no distance.¡±

    ¡°Shush.¡±

    I could see...a void in the void? It was strange, the only thing that didn''t seem to change every time I saw a snapshot.

    ¡°I think I see where we need to go... engaging drives.¡±

    ¡°That is not advised Captain, every time on record main drives have been activated in transit the ship has suffered significant damage.¡±

    I paused in my activation.

    ¡°What about maneuvering thrusters?¡±

    ¡°No data is available.¡±

    I focused again on the single unchanging point ahead. It almost seemed as if there were streamers of particles... floating towards it.

    One of those streamers was drifting right next to the ship.

    I fired the maneuvering thrusters to push the ship into the streamer.

    It was... a little further away than the maneuvering thrusters could handle, so I goosed the main drives, just for a fraction of a second.

    All of a sudden the entire void lit up, I could see EVERYTHING. And I felt more than heard a deep rumble.

    ¡°Uh Oh.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean Uh Oh... I told you not to use the main drives...¡± Hook sounded almost frantic.

    Everything outside went dark as the drives spun down, but on the next flash, I swore the snake body, or tentacle... whatever it was, was closer, it looked nearly twice as big as it had before.

    ¡°Going to full emcon protocols, passive sensors only, we can''t leak ANYTHING Hook, run silent¡± I said, desperately shutting things down with my mind as I gave voice to every stealth mode buzz word I had ever heard in sci-fi.

    ¡°Understood Captain.¡±

    Most of my attention was on the serpent body writhing in the infinite expanse, but I soon saw... smaller things. In the distance like filaments. As I focused I could see they had individual legs... claws even, and a many toothed face. Almost like clawed serpents from folklore. Lindworms... they were congregating on where I had engaged the drives, which I could discern because that area was vaguely... empty. Emptier at least. This strange void seemed to have almost a fluid like quality, or maybe... like a foam that we were drifting through, wispy and vague, but the area where the fusion drives had lit had been burned clean. One flash the filament lindworm things were circling that area, the next they had penetrated it and appeared to be... killing each other, as far as I could tell in the strange freezeframe world I was viewing.

    ¡°Hook... I think I figured out why ships that fire their drives get damaged...¡±

    ¡°Oh? Why is that Captain.¡±

    ¡°Things live here.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean captain.¡±

    ¡°Things live here and they don''t like fusion drives being lit off on their front porch.¡±

    as I watched the feeding frenzy of lindworms was abating, but the corpses and offal seemed to be reforming the sortof wispy, spongey membrane that we were moving through.

    On the other hand, the brief burst from my fusion drives had driven us right into the path of the... stream? Flow? That was leading to the void point in all of this.

    Almost as soon as we entered the flow I shuddered, it was an odd feeling, and it seemed as if the ship could feel it as well.

    ¡°Captain? Is something happening? I am receiving reports from across the ship of power fluctuations.¡±

    ¡°If everything goes right we shouldn''t have to deal with it for long.¡± I said, the void point growing larger in my sight even as we speak. It was the one thing I could focus on even in between the surges of light that lit up the rest of the void.

    However the flashes of light revealed the lindworms slowly drifting closer to us.

    ¡°Spin down the reactor Hook, I want it all down. I''ll survive off of canned air.¡±

    ¡°Powering down captain, it will take some time to bring the reactor back online.¡±

    I could feel the ship going dead around me, going numb.

    ¡°Passive sensors remaining online for now, on battery backups.¡±

    ¡°Good... I can see what''s going to eat us.¡±

    ¡°Captain... could you tell me what you see. It obviously is having some kind of effect.¡±

    ¡°I moved us into a channel that seems to be leading to... what I think is the exit point? We already seemed to be drifting towards it but now we are going much faster, that is when you started saying the systems were getting weird power fluctuations.¡±

    ¡°Okay.¡±

    ¡°In the far distance there is a massive body, like a serpent, a tentacle.... I can''t tell for sure. I can only see everything in flashes that come about every eight seconds or so. When we ignited the drive it suddenly moved way closer though. That''s not the bad part. There appear to be a swarm of... well I''ve been calling them lindworms in my head cause that''s what they look like. They went after the area our drive plume hollowed out here and had a bit of a feeding frenzy, now they are drifting our way.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡±

    ¡°Yeah.¡±

    As I watched, however, the Lindworms came in contact with the stream we were in and stopped swarming, instead flowing gently into the stream and curling up on themselves, appearing to go to sleep.

    ¡°I think we''re good. It looks like they were moving toward the channel not us... Does the ship need to do anything to exit transit?¡±

    ¡°No, ships have lost power immediately after entering transit and have emerged fine on the other side.¡±

    ¡°Good... I don''t think it will take long, I''ll just shallow breathe till then.¡±

    ¡°I will monitor your life signs.¡±

    And with that I settled in to wait.

    ***********************************************************************************

    it took nearly six hours to reach the point I kept seeing in the flashes, in my mind I had tagged it the void point, or transit point. That was six hours of watching that undulating serpent thing in the distance, and gliding alongside all of those lindworms that appeared to be chilling in the channel with me.

    It was six hours too long.

    As we got closer the point in the void seemed to encompass everything, something I didn''t notice before. The other things in the void seemed to fade away...

    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

    ¡°five minutes to transit exit.¡± Hook intoned.

    ¡°How can you tell?¡±

    ¡°A sensor that can tell the approach of realspace. It was apparently developed mostly by accident.¡±

    ¡°I see... so it can''t really give you an accurate time until exit when you enter, but it can tell you when you are about to leave.¡±

    ¡°Essentially yes.¡±

    ¡°Alright, almost out...¡±

    And suddenly, we were back in real space.

    ¡°Oh thank god. It''s over.¡±

    ¡°I could not see what you did, but it appears you have discovered a way to control the rate at which you travel through transit space.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, though we almost died doing it.¡±

    ¡°Still, a transit in only 6 hours is one of the shortest transits on record.¡±

    ¡°We might just make it in time.¡±

    ¡°Assuming you can pull this off again.¡±

    ¡°Anyways... whats in this system.¡±

    There is a very large independent space station built into several asteroids orbiting a gas giant within a day of us, but otherwise nothing. Shall we transmit the data package from the last jump?¡±

    ¡°yes, how many times do we need to do that?¡±

    ¡°The contract stipulates the next three jumps, so two now.¡±

    ¡°So... what, I just transmit it in the open?¡±

    ¡°Yes, the basic idea is that anyone who wants to land or dock with a station accepts that they need to take on a set amount of data and then retransmit at their next destination. We were offered money for our data carrying because we weren''t going to land, and it seemed like the last colony had not had anyone land for a long time. In more transited areas all ships just take and re transmit packages as a matter of course. It is a little chaotic, but it gets the job done regardless of which empire currently holds a system. The empire and the alliance obviously have dedicated courier ships for when they need a package to get somewhere for certain, as the chaotic spread of information I just described can result in some systems getting left out.¡±

    ¡°I see...¡±

    I transmitted the data package over the comms and continued on my way.

    ¡°This system seems much livelier than the others.... I''m detecting multiple ships on our route.¡±

    ¡°This system is closer, though still on the rim, and there are multiple close transit points. It will have much more regular travel.¡±

    ¡°it''s weird having other actual people around... are any of them with C.O.G.?¡±

    ¡°If you focus on them you should see their transmitted IFF and metadata.¡±

    I did so and I was suddenly presented with a wealth of information.

    ¡°Looks like all three of them are... with the trading coalition? And I just got three requests to invest in cryptocurency... it looks like three different crypto currencies... what the hell is that about.¡±

    ¡°That''s normal for the free traders. There is no real established currency unifying the factions, the emprie has their own currency the nobles use, but that is far too expensive to be used for everyday activities on planets. The alliance has a quota everyone receives for their daily usage, but it is useless outside of Alliance space and is not tradable between commodities. C.O.G. Deals in information and raw materials to make things, which cuts out a large amount of what traders actually want to trade, so the traders have this... shared delusion, almost a religion among them, that the first person to establish a true universal currency between the factions will wind up the most powerful of the traders, and have soft power over, if not control of, the other factions.¡±

    ¡°And... they do that by each coming up with their own cryptocurrencies?¡±

    ¡°Essentially yes. Technically un-counterfeitable, it is the most straightforward way to move towards that goal.¡±

    ¡°How far have they gotten.¡±

    ¡°As far as I know the biggest single user of any one cryptocurrency is one entire planet in the middle of ''neutral'' space which is technically trader space.¡±

    ¡°So they''ve been trying this for who knows how long, and they''ve only gotten a single planet to buy into one of their currencies as it''s sole form of currency.¡±

    ¡°Not the sole, just the main form of currency. Obviously no one off planet accepts the currency as payment.¡±

    ¡°And they''ve been at this for how long?¡±

    ¡°A Century.¡±

    ¡°Feels like a long time to keep falling flat.¡±

    ¡°None of the other factions trust anyone getting such power, much like corporations and banks, they view this kind of financial chicanery with distrust, since, you know, it lead to the consolidation of power into the hands of insane people who became insane AI who destroyed earth.¡±

    ¡°Right.¡±

    I plotted a course to the next transit point and engaged the thrusters.

    ¡°The next system has the planet with the appropriate medical facilities to evaluate you.¡±

    ¡°Should I spend the time going there when I''m on such a time crunch?¡±

    ¡°I think you have to Captain. While getting the up to date memories to Prime is a nice thing, and personally important to you.... they WILL live regardless of whether they have those memories. You may not.¡±

    ¡°Alright... Let''s se if we can make it through this next transit without attracting too much attention.¡±

    The rest of the trip to the transit point was mercifully uneventful, I was able to retire to my quarters and sleep during the trip, with Hook promising to wake me if anything came too close.

    Finally I returned to the bridge.

    ¡°Are we ready for another transit?¡±

    ¡°Yes captain, are you going to try to make it another fast transit like last time?¡±

    ¡°Yes, but I would also like to try a few things. First of all, we are only going to use maneuvering thrusters, second... is there any way to launch a missile with a delay on the main rockets or boosters or thrusters or whatever? Like thirty minutes? I want to just lob it away from us, use the maneuvering thrusters to push us towards the stream, if I can find one, and then see what happens when it ignites. If it works it could be useful as a decoy.¡±

    ¡°I see... I will setup the modifications, as soon as you are back in full synchronization you can begin the process.¡±

    ¡°You can''t?¡±

    ¡°The locks captain, I am very limited in what I am able to do without captain in the loop. Modifying ship to ship ordnance is beyond those limits.¡±

    ¡°But driving the ship while I''m asleep isn''t?¡±

    ¡°Basic auto-pilot was a thing even in your time Captain Cofey.¡±

    I sighed.

    ¡°I''ll synchronize now and get it going, how long till transit?¡±

    ¡°About half an hour.¡±

    I settled back in to the captain''s chair and braced myself for full synchonization.

    Once I was settled in I watched the approaching transit point with trepidation, the modified missile burning a hole in my hull so to speak.

    The transit came, and I waited for that first flash before I fired the missile, just incase.

    The flash came, and I nearly shit myself in terror.

    The wall of flesh, the tentacle, the serpent, all those things had described the... thing that had been following me through each of my transits.

    It was closer than ever.

 Chapter 19

    One entire side of my was taken up by the thing, as far as I could see it was just a massive wall, I could see what looked like suckers the size of continents in one spot, scales covered the flesh in between, and the whole thing moved, undulating like a tadpole in the water, but on a massive scale.

    I immediately began shutting down systems.

    ¡°Captain, what is wrong?¡±

    ¡°It''s right next to us Hook... No emissions.¡±

    ¡°What''s right next to us.¡±

    ¡°It''s been following us through each jump, it''s been closer almost every time, and it''s so big I can''t see the end of it in any direction. It stretches from horizon to horizon, both up and down.¡±

    ¡°Horizon? You are not making any sense Captain.¡±

    ¡°Just... no emissions Hook.¡±

    ¡°Understood captain... Will we be moving into one of those streams you talked about?¡±

    ¡°No, I don''t want to risk it... if that thing decides we need to end there is nothing we can do to stop it.¡±

    ¡°Understood captain.¡±

    I tried to steady my nerves.

    ¡°This sounds like a good time to go through the media catalog.¡±

    Strangely enough, even when I wasn''t focusing on the sensors, I was getting flashes of what was outside. It had little context seeing as I couldn''t place ''myself'' in the kaleidoscope around me without viewing from the ships sensors, but it was still interesting, like I could keep tabs on things even while not focusing.

    Of course it made watching movies nearly impossible, with a flash of a god tentacle overlaying my vision every eight seconds.

    Shooter games were right out as well, I would be focusing in on someone and then my view would be hijacked to watching a swarm of Lindworms descend on a hapless.... something.

    ¡°My god I think that''s another ship...¡±

    I had paused the game I was in, some VR military shooter that looked like COD 127, but with what I assumed were more modern firearms, like railguns attached to backpack power units.

    Surprisingly there were weapons that seemed to resemble, at least in function, the rifles back in my time, though they were all caseless and had much larger magazine sizes.

    ¡°What do you mean Captain Cofey?¡±

    ¡°The Lindworm things from last time, the one that chased us into the stream, they''re attacking something... I think it''s a ship.¡±

    ¡°What does it look like?¡±

    ¡°The ship?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°Long and thin, the rear bulges out a bit... I think there was something on the prow but... yep, yep the front is gone, ripped right off. My god I think that''s a person.¡±

    The visions I received were weird. It was almost like they were the most clear images I could ever see, they faded quickly, but while they were in my minds eye it was like I had perfect resolution on any one thing if I focused on it quick enough, and focusing on the ship, I could see...

    ¡°Yeah, that''s definitely people spilling out...¡±

    ¡°Does it have a gold paintjob?¡±

    ¡°Gold and black, yeah.¡±

    ¡°Imperial Vessel, possibly from the patrol that destroyed the pirate base last jump.¡±

    ¡°I thought you said it was rare for a ship to be lost in transit.¡±

    ¡°It is.¡±

    I paused.

    ¡°I wonder if I riled everything up with my last transit and lighting the drives.¡±

    ¡°I do not know captain.¡±

    I watched silently as the vessel was torn apart by the lindworms, and with something to compare them to, I finally was able to place their size, or sizes.

    They came in a variety, the smallest was about the length of a human being, and I watched many of those swarm the bodies that spilled out from the broken hull of the ship.

    The largest was half the length of the imperial ship itself, winding its way around the spindly hull and tearing at it with it''s claws and maw.

    I also noted another thing, the lindworm''s didn''t just keep savaging the vessel. They would consume things, either hullmetal, or electronics, or people, and then drift towards the stream leading to the transit point.

    A stream that was both further away than normal and in the direction of the giant tentacle...

    that''s when I noticed something.

    The streams all seemed to parallel the tentacle, no matter what transit we were in, almost as if we were riding alongside it...

    ¡°I wonder if that thing is the reason for the transit points, or is just using them similar to us...¡±

    ¡°What was that Captain Cofey?¡±

    ¡°Just an observation... it feels like everything here is sortof flowing between the transit points. If this place had gravity, it would be flowing down towards said transit point.¡±

    ¡°Do you think these creatures are using them as well? There have been no reports of any beings like you have described appearing in space at the transit points, or anywhere at all Captain.¡±

    ¡°Just because the transit points lead to real space for us, does not mean it leads there for them.¡±

    That quieted Hook down.

    I settled in to wait. I didn''t want to risk using the thrusters for any appreciable length of time, and the distance to the nearest stream was about the same distance to the distant transit point.

    But we were drifting closer to the wreck... I silently fired the maneuvering thrusters to send us headed in that direction.

    ¡°I thought you wanted to stay unobtrusive Captain Cofey.¡±

    ¡°I do, but they didn''t react to the maneuvering thrusters before... and I want to check out that wreck.¡±

    ¡°While mid-transit salvage has been done before, I cannot recommend it.¡±

    ¡°It has?¡±

    ¡°Yes. Ships can see other ships in transit, sometimes.¡±

    I realized that the destroyed ship was actually visible inbetween the flashes, in my passive sensors, slowly bleeding heat.

    ¡°I''m surprised no one has ever tried to take a shot at other ships in transit.¡±

    ¡°There is no data of anyone attempting such a thing... however...¡±

    ¡°Lack of data does not mean that no one has ever tried it, just that no one made it out to report it.¡± I said as I eyed the titan tentacle. I needed to come up with a name for it.

    Minutes passed, thankfully the imperial ship was quite close to us in the grand scheme of things, and we rapidly approached. I braked us with maneuvering thrusters till we were right next to it.

    ¡°Do you think it''s airlock still works?¡±

    ¡°No Captain Cofey, however our''s should still be able to latch on if you want to explore it.¡±

    ¡°No drones, nothing with a fusion drive. That will piss anything and everything off here. Check with me before activating any systems.¡±

    ¡°Understood Captain Cofey.¡±

    I maneuvered us over to the other ships airlock and desynchronized, letting myself just sit in the seat for a good 10 minutes. Even after desychonizing I was getting flashes of what was outside, but it was all muddled, again with no context. Thankfully in the time it took to reach the ship most of the Lindworm''s I had seen had detached, including the big one. By the time I reached it I saw no movement on the ship.

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    ¡°This could drive a person insane if they did not understand what was happening to them...¡±

    ¡°Transit madness is a known medical condition Captain Cofey.¡± Replied Hook.

    I thought about that as I got up and moved down to the airlock, equipping the space suit once I got there.

    ¡°Are there any rescue supplies I should take for exploring an abandoned ship? Cutters? Deployable airlock?¡±

    ¡°There is a pack with emergency rescue supplies in the hallway outside of the airlock captain, with all you have suggested and more, including several one time use space suits. But, considering the condition of the ship...¡±

    ¡°I know, not very likely, but I think I should try. Do you think they''d attack me since I am from a COG vessel.¡±

    ¡°Unlikely, while the factions do go to war regularly it is... civil? Both sides regularly rescue crew from destroyed ships and either trade or ransom them back to their factions.¡±

    ¡°Even clones from the empire.¡±

    ¡°Even clones from the empire, it takes time and resources to grow, decant, and train a new clone afterall.¡±

    ¡°Good to know.¡±

    I climbed my way into the imperial ship. Suprisingly, the airlock was relatively untouched, other than the outer door having been completely shorn off, and the inner door being bend inwards. Hook''s clamps managed to lock on just fine however.

    I paused once I got past the inner airlock, my suit sending out short mapping pulses around me and giving me a grid overlay of everything in places that were not especially well lit, giving my my first look at the inside of the imperial ship.

    The first thing I noticed was that the corridors were uniform, set up in a hexagonal way, with the ceiling being being parallel to the floor but the walls extending out in a diamond like shape to the side, a side that was filled with panels top and bottom. Everything was highlighted gold on black, with little orange emergency lights illuminating much of it. I took a poke at a panel off-handedly and it popped open, revealing circuitry and electronics that would not look wrong in a computer from my time.

    I looked down the two corridors extending out from me.

    ¡°Any idea where the bridge on this ship is?¡±

    ¡°Imperials are known to customize their vessels extensively, but they do all stem from a baseline class, and the changes are nowhere near as radical as a C.O.G. Members... The bridge should be in this direction, at the back of the ship near the drives.¡± My suit chimed as it received some data, and I brought it up on my hud. A little green arrow appeared.

    ¡°Not the front?¡±

    ¡°The front of imperial vessels is taken up almost entirely by their main gun, a massive particle cannon or laser emitter.¡±

    ¡°Big belief in superior firepower then.¡±

    ¡°Not superior,but there is a quality to quantity, and those weapons pump a lot of particles and/or photons at a target.¡± Hook replied, sounding defensive.

    ¡°So guessing at close range they are devastating.¡±

    ¡°Excessively so, thankfully they require the entire vessel to turn themselves to orient said main gun.¡±

    ¡°I see. Let''s see if we can find the bridge and captain''s quarters. I''m going to take a recording of everything I see, go over it when I get back to see if anything has changed on the way back, if the ship is going to break apart beneath me I want to know.¡±

    ¡°Understood captain.¡±

    I stomped my way to the bridge, making sure I was always in contact with the favaged ship. Here and there I would see rent and torn compartments, blood sprayed on the walls and flash frozen y exposure to the void, but no bodies.

    I finally came to a room that must have been the bridge at some point, but the entire top and front bulkheads were ripped out, exposing the otherwise circuluar room to the void.

    ¡°Huh... aside from all the gold and ornamentation, this could be something out of star trek.¡±

    I muttered

    and I was not lying, everything was smooth and circular, gold colored, with jewels and gems either taking the place of buttons or being actually worked into the interfaces.

    ¡°Now, if I remember my star trek, THAT should be the captain''s ready room.¡±

    I thump thumped my way over to the room that adjoined the bridge, away from the main hallway I had entered from, and peered in.

    The door had been forced open, one part bend inside the ready room, the other rent in half and pulled into the bridge. Inside there was gore everywhere, and while there were no bodies, I saw a piece of intestine and a hand floating inside.

    ¡°Gruesome... either there were a lot of people in here, or the Captain was and they pissed the Lindwurms off.¡±

    I scanned my view across the room.

    ¡°From the recording you are sending, I am betting she pissed them off. Those black marks on the walls are from a particle weapon. The captain went down swinging.¡± Hook replied, showing... emotion? Interest? For the first time in a while.

    I focused my gaze on the black carbon scoring, and moved over to the hand.

    It was petite, effeminate, either a very small man''s hand or a woman''s hand, and each finger had a set of rings on them, some covering multiple knuckles, and each ring had a line of... conduits? They looked like chains at first, but the closer I looked the more substantial I realized they were.

    ¡°Do Imperial Captain''s often disguise weapons as jewellery.¡±

    ¡°Constantly. It''s considered gauche to carry a weapon that looks like a weapon. Assume every piece of jewelery on an imperial captain is a weapon or device of some kind.¡±

    ¡°Good to know...¡± I said, pocketing the whole hand and its various garnishments, they could be interesting to study later. It hung in a pouch off the side of my suit.

    I gave the study a once over, looking for anything that could catch my eye. The one main thing that grabbed my attention was an honest to goodness paper book, bound in leather, that I found floating up in a corner.

    ¡°What are you...¡±

    I cracked open the book.

    ¡°This looks like the captain''s personal log.¡± I said to myself as I idly flipped through it before pocketing it.

    The rest of my investigations of the captain''s quarters revealed little of value, a few ornaments that had been warped and broken by the thrashing of the lindwurms.

    ¡°I''m heading back... I gathered a few things from the captain''s chambers.¡±

    ¡°Understood Captain.¡±

    I began to make my way back towards the airlock where Hook was docked. However, I noticed something strange on the way.

    ¡°Hey Hook? I''m sending you a recording of the last few moments... can you hear a thumping? I want to make sure it''s not another factor of... whatever it is I am sensing from the void.¡±

    ¡°Processing audio... there is an anomalous sound that I cannot discern the source of.¡±

    That perked me up. I looked down at my feet, the only contact points I had with the ship that would allow such sound to be audible, and ran my fingers over the deck. The thumping continued for a few moments, but stopped soon after.

    I stood up and stomped twice in response.

    The thumping began, rhythmic and steady.

    ¡°Thump, one two three, thump.¡± I said to myself as I spread my hands across on the deck, trying to locate where the sound was coming from.

    I finally found a small storage compartment, built into the side of the hallway. It appeared to still be sealed.

    I thumped on the panel twice. Two thumps replied back.

    ¡°Hook I think I found a survivor. ¡°

 Chapter 20

    ¡°I''m setting up the emergency airlock.¡±

    ¡°Sending instructions to your hud Captain Cofey.¡±

    I immediately popped open the equipment compartment on my right side and pulled out the small little package that was the airlock. It appeared to be a pair of stringy circles, with a very thin plastic layer in between. I followed the instructions and pressed the string against the wall, to which it immediately straightened itself and adhered. Emboldened I pressed it all the way along the bulkhead until it formed a circle, barring the path back to the ship.

    ¡°Or it would, if there was anything in the middle. Hook, how do I make this thing seal.¡±

    ¡°It needs an electric charge, connect it to your suit.¡±

    I found a little connector, two actually danging at either side of the emergency airlock, and connected it to the wrist mount on my suit.

    Almost instantly the center of the airlock irised shut, a mostly see through, wafer thin layer plastic material practically oozing out of the emergency airlock.

    ¡°Okay... so I set up the paired one over here...¡± I said, as I set up the other emergency airlock on the opposite side of the noisy compartment.

    ¡°Okay, so now how do I get air in here.¡±

    ¡°Connect to your suit, and select ''pressurize compartment from suit stores.'' be sure to maintain enough to get you back to the ship, but as long as you did not make the airlock too big you should be fine.¡±

    I nodded, then went through the menu''s in my hud till I found the control. Immediately I began to hear a hissing as my suit vented compressed gas into the makeshift airlock. There was a strange haze in the air.

    ¡°That''s weird.¡±

    ¡°What is Captain Cofey?¡±

    ¡°It''s almost like a mist is rising as I presssurize this compartment... I''m going to grab a sample.¡±

    I pulled a small container from my side, unsure what it was originally for, but I ran it through the cloud of stuff and sealed it, before reattaching it.

    My hud indicated the seal atmosphere was breathable, so I leaned towards the noisy compartment and opened my helmet. The smell that hit me was... intense, blood, offal, and... something chemical hit my senses.

    ¡°Can you hear me?¡±

    I spoke, and I swore I heard... something, but it sounded like gibberish.

    ¡°Wait one, your translator is working to process... Looks like a form of portugeuse.''

    ¡°Is that common in the empire?¡±

    ¡°Common enough. Each Captain tends to pick a language they prefer and make their whole crew speak it.¡±

    ¡°Fair enough. How do I make my words come out portugeuse.¡± I said as I looked through my hud. Then the option popped up ''vocal-auto-translate->Portugeuse''

    ¡°Never mind, got it. Can you understand me?¡± I spoke the last words with the auto translator on.

    ¡°Yes yes!¡± A feminine voice echoed back.

    ¡°I''ve set up an airlock out here, can you get out?¡±

    ¡°I Jammed the door to keep those... things, out.¡±

    ¡°You were able to see them?¡±

    ¡°Only when they were covered in blood.¡±

    I nodded to myself.

    ¡°Step back, I''m going to force the door.¡±

    I indicated the hatch in my hud and several ways of opening it popped up, I selected one that involved a prybar and the plasma torch in my wrist. I pulled the prybar from my side, and extended the plasma torch from my left wrist, and went to work, putting steady pressure on the compartment as I cut through weak points along the outside. With a pop the hatch came free.

    A sea of pink curly hair obscured my vision before I picked out the face in them. Big brown eyes stared back at me, on a cute face with a button nose. She quickly scrambled out of the compartment and flopped onto the deck, breathing deep.

    Said breathing did all kinds of distracting things to her chest, which was a modest B-cup, but plenty distracting as it was, what little of her olive skin showed was enticing to say the least.

    It had been way too long since I had gotten laid I thought as I tamped down my libido

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    The rest of her body was slim, obscured as it was by her bright red overalls.

    She rolled over onto her back and her eyes finally locked on mine.

    She scrambled back against the wall, her eyes going wide ¡°COG! Are you the ones who attacked our ship? Some new kind of weapon?¡±

    I backed away from her as she made herself small against the wall.

    ¡°No, no, I saw your ship getting torn apart though, and I was close enough that my maneuvering jets could get me into boarding range.¡±

    ¡°You saw us getting attacked?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I guess we entered close enough time wise that my ship was close to yours in the void. Saw your ship get shredded.¡±

    ¡°You must have been close.¡±

    ¡°I think I''ve been right behind you for the last few jumps, saw a pirate base that still had residual heat from being destroyed, I figure that was you.¡±

    ¡°Our squadron yes...¡±

    She paused and I decided to press in. ¡°Look, this ship is done for, I doubt you''d survive transit, I have an emergency suit with me, come aboard my ship, get checked out at medical, and I''ll get you out of here.¡± I held out my hand to help her up.

    She nodded. ¡°I suppose I''m not the first person to be ransomed back to the empire.¡± she took my hand and let me pull her upright. I thought-clicked a button in my hud that popped open another storage compartment in my backpack.

    Out popped the compartment with a little folded up semicircular metal band, that seemed like it could expand out. I held it up.

    ¡°How does this work Hook?¡±

    ¡°Open the collar, have her step into the filament that deploys below, make sure her whole body is inside, then close the collar. A hood with facemask will deploy. Please note it only contains 15 minutes of oxygen.¡±

    I folded out part of the thick metal band, and saw it formed a collar. There was some see through fabric that was now stretched across it, and when the collar opened it stayed out instead of going back into the collar. When I pushed on the deployed ''filament'' It stretched.

    ¡°Got it, okay, I need you to step into this... thing.¡± I said as I opened the collar and spread the ''filament'' to on the floor, holding it in place with my foot.

    ¡°Who were you talking to?¡±

    ¡°My ships AI, he was explaining how this thing works, I''ve never used it before.¡±

    Her eyes went wide, but she stepped into the filament and let me snap the collar closed around her neck.

    ¡°An AI? We had heard that the COG were Guilty of Techno-Heresy, but I didn''t think you had gone that far.¡±

    ¡°Not true AI, as Hook is so keen on reminding me, he has a lot of blocks and things he can''t do, but is otherwise quite helpful. He is very vocal in stating that his existence in no way breaks any accords treaties or other legalese set up between the factions to restrict AI usage for the safety of mankind, etc etc. Seriously it get''s old.¡±

    ¡°I am so sorry I bore you Captain Cofey.¡± Hook said, his voice sounding in my ear and echoing from the collar around the woman''s throat.

    I realized I hadn''t asked her name.

    ¡°What is your name?¡±

    ¡°Carolina313.¡±

    ¡°313? Oh, right, you are a clone.¡±

    ¡°Of course I''m a clone aren''t you... wait, you''re COG... That means your natural born right?¡±

    ¡°uh... yeah...¡± I said... not knowing where to go with this.

    ¡°How long ago?¡±

    ¡°Uh... I was born june 3<sup>rd</sup>, 1991¡± I said without thinking.

    She blinked.

    ¡°1991... it''s 2521 now... HOLY SHIT YOU WERE BORN ON EARTH!¡± She shouted.

    The wreck shuddered.

    ¡°Quiet... I don''t think vibrations are what this wreck really needs right now. Also, now that I think of it, I don''t know that sound doesn''t carry in this void... we should be quiet till we get aboard my ship.¡± I said, making stuff up that sounded plausible, but might get her to calm down until we were safe.

    She nodded to me and tapped her collar, apparently having more experience with this kind of thing than I did, and an opaque hood flipped up over her head, and a small clear plastic hemisphere covered her face.

    I reached out to take her hand. ¡°Let''s go.¡±

    I unzipped the airlock door and let the air out, and quickly made our way back to Hook.

 Chapter 21

    Once Hook''s main airlock cycled, Carolina313 ripped off her helmet, and it tore with the rest of the one time use suit.

    ¡°Wow, when they say one time use they really mean it.¡± I said I as I watched the suit shred around her.

    ¡°Yeah, just like a condom.¡± Carolina313 piped up.

    I blinked.

    ¡°Right... yeah.¡±

    She grinned at me.

    ¡°What, too lewd for you old man?¡±

    I snorted.

    ¡°No no, it''s just... Most of the people I have met recently have not talked about sex at all.¡±

    She raised an eyebrow ¡°Really? COGS are prudes? Huh... wouldn''t have expected that... the rumors are that you are all techno-fetishists who are morally bankrupt and jump on any and all new experiences with ravenous hunger!¡± She said, extremely perky, her eyes wide. I was actually beginning to wonder if she was on something.

    ¡°Uh... sure... let''s get you to medical and get you checked out.¡±

    ¡°What? OH! Right... I just survived an attack my ravenous horrors, then going hypoxic... right right.¡±

    ¡°You went hypoxic?¡±

    ¡°I was heading there when you found me, half thought you were a hallucination.¡±

    We walked down the corridors as she chattered at me. ¡°I was just performing some maintenance after the fight, sometimes when we fire the main cannon the capacitors start to shake themselves lose so I was going through and checking all of them, when all of a sudden there was this awful noise and the screaming, I went out to help, but then the atmosphere alarms went off, and Susie evaporated in front of me, and then one of those things came out covered in her blood, and I just ran to the capacitor bay and sealed it...¡± She said all in one breathe. I was 100% sure she was on something that was making her hyper

    I lead her to medical and motioned inside. ¡°Just take a seat in the medical bed, I need to get back to the bridge.¡±

    ¡°Can''t you let the officer of the watch hold things down a bit longer? It kinda looks... creepy.¡± She said looking into the medical bay.

    ¡°Uh... what officer.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean what officer, the officer controlling the ship right now.¡±

    ¡°There... There... Do you know how COG ships are run?¡±

    ¡°I assume like imperial ships, just more... cyborgy.¡±

    ¡°Um... Each member of C.O.G. Crews their own ship.¡±

    ¡°So just like imperials, with clones right?¡±

    ¡°No, each SINGLE member crews their own ship.¡±

    ¡°Okay... so what do you do for crew?¡±

    ¡°We crew it.¡±

    ¡°I''m not following, where is the rest of your crew.¡±

    ¡°You are looking at him.¡±

    She blinked at me.

    ¡°You... are the only crew.¡±

    ¡°Don''t get any weird ideas, I die the ship don''t fly, it''s keyed to me.¡±

    ¡°That''s... that''s not what I was thinking just... how?¡±

    ¡°Go in there, I''ll talk to you from the bridge.¡± I said, motioning into the medical room.

    She tip-toed in, and I shut the door behind her.

    ¡°Captain, I believe she is pounding her fists on the door.¡±

    ¡°I''ll try to calm her down once I get to the bridge... and get this suit off.¡± I said, clomping my way back to the airlock and removing the space suit, void suit... I needed to agree on a nomenclature in my own head at least.

    Once I had divested myself of the suit, and taken a quick shower in my quarters, I headed back up to the bridge and made sure the door was secure. Having another person, and potentially an enemy, on board had made me paranoid.

    As I settled into the chair and reached full synchronization, my mind was bombarded by warnings and errors... all stemming from the medical bay.

    I quickly switched to a camera in the medical bay to view what was happening, and saw Carolina313 by the wall, a panel removed and on the floor, and a little repair drone standing on it''s many legs inside the hole, darting menacingly back and forth towards Carolina313, a plasma torch in one hand and what looked like an electrical... charger? That was sparking with electricity in the other. Carolina313 kept trying to get around it to the inside of the ship.

    ¡°Carolina... what are you doing.¡± I said over the ships speakers.

    She jumped up and looked around, before her gaze settled on the camera.

    ¡°Uh, well.. I just... I wanted to see what Your ship looked like on the inside! Also you locked me in here you jerk!¡± She said, waving her hand over to indicate the bulkhead and the removed panel, and the repair drone that was currently accosting her.

    ¡°You know what this looks like right?¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Sabotage.¡±

    She suddenly stood ramrod straight.

    ¡°Captain, I would never, we have so many treaties between our factions, our nations, that such a thing would be unconscionable, the last time someone violated the treaties entire populations were destroyed, we haven''t been that barbaric since old earth! There are so many rules against a rescued POW sabotaging the ship that rescued them. If people started doing that, no one would ever get rescued again.¡±

    ¡°I came from those times Carolina, I know exactly how little treaties and consience and the lives of others mean to some people,. Do not test me again.¡± I said, incensed.

    Could she really not have realized what she was doing looked exactly like sabotage? There were pirates, they had to know people would pull bullshit like this all the time.

    ¡°Captain, if I may¡± Hook piped up. It took me a moment to realize his voice was being piped in to both of us.

    ¡°Carolina313 likely has very little experience beyond what was sleep taught to her and what she has learned on the job, it is unlikely she knows much about how criminals operate or much of the history to which you are refering.¡±

    I made sure my voice was only going to Hook.

    ¡°So... treat her as a child?¡± I asked incredulously.

    ¡°No, treat her as someone who has a very sheltered life.¡± Hook replied.

    I sighed.

    ¡°So you are saying it is possible she actually just wanted to see what the ship looked like on the inside.¡±

    ¡°Ask her what her profession was on her vessel, or her rating.¡±

    I switched over to speaking to Carolina313, who was currently cowering in the corner of a medroom...

    Like a scolded child.

    ¡°Carolina, Please do not open up my ship and tinker with it without my permission. What was your position aboard your ship?¡±

    ¡°Engineer!¡± She blurted out, the hurt expression on her face morphing quickly to one of... excitement?

    ¡°Any particular part of the ship?¡±

    ¡°Nothing specialized yet, they leave that for the older clones, the young ones like me get the initial round of sleep learning, then depending on what we show more proficiency in we are put in a low level role to learn the basics while the learning fully settles in. But I did like working on the big gun¡± The last part she said with a big stupid grin on her face.

    ¡°The learning has to settle?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, if you don''t start to use what you learn in your sleep immediately you forget it, I think in a week they told me? So... can I look inside your ship? Please?¡±

    I sighed.

    ¡°Sure, we don''t have much else to do while we drift to the transit point.¡±

    ¡°Drift to the transit points? What do you mean?¡±

    ¡°I mean drifting the transit point, the exit to the transit in void space. We are way further out than the last few, and I don''t want to risk even maneuvering thrusters with those... things so close.¡±

    Carolina313''s eyes bugged out.

    ¡°You can see in the void.¡±

    ¡°Bits and pieces. The swarm that attacked your ship is... behaving oddly.¡±

    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    Initially I had thought they were moving for the stream that stretched to the transit point, but the Lindworm''s had veered off and were heading towards the tendril that had been my disturbing companion through every jump.

    ¡°COG can see in void space? That must be why you guys can use all those other points and appear where you shouldn''t and and...¡± She apparead to be making a lot of connections that maybe she shouldn''t.

    I said to Hook. ¡°Should I disabuse her of this notion?¡±

    Hook replied. ¡°Well, captain... I fear that would put you in danger, especially if she speaks on it to someone else. Right now your ability to see the void is wholely unique, and if it got out... I believe entire fleets would be dispatched to capture you.¡±

    ¡°Keep it on the down low then, got it.¡±

    I refocused on Carolina and saw she was asking something to the camera.

    ¡°Sorry, I had to check something on the ship, what was that?¡±I asked

    ¡°Can you kill them?¡± She replied, her face hard.

    My heart hurt a little, seeing that. She had lost probably everyone she had ever known, and wanted to kill the things that did it, I could empathize.

    ¡°Not without alerting everything else in here to our presence, and there is something right outside that if it detects us could end us in an instant so... no.¡±

    ¡°What is it?¡±

    ¡°I could tell you, but then you''d sleep as little as I do during transit, and I don''t think that is healthy without the kind of augmentation I had to get just to fly the ship.¡±

    She paused.

    ¡°So... could inside your ship?¡± She cocked her head to the side, asking cutely, and I couldn''t help but smile.

    Or you know, tried to smile. The camera in the bridge informed me that my actual face remained the neutral mask it always did when I was fully synched.

    Thought-smiled, that''s it!

    I focused, and suddenly I was inside the little drone that had been barring Carolina''s entrance.

    ¡°I''ll be right here supervising if you want to look around... but we should get you checked out..¡± I said, my voice projecting tinnily form the drone.

    ¡°If I have to jump back to main control I need you to get out of the engineering compartment, without me directing them these little guys are all set to be very zealous in their defense of the ships components, and I am not willing to turn that part of them off.¡±

    ¡°You really are the only one controlling the ship aren''t you... I honestly thought I just misunderstood or something, but it''s just you, with all of these little helper systems.¡±

    ¡°Correct.¡± I said, again from the drone, she got down into the drones face and poked at it with a finger.

    I grabbed said finger with my griper and rode it up as she lifted me to her face. She grinned, and placed me on her shoulder as she dove into the maintenance compartment.

    ¡°It''s far less efficient than I thought it would be.¡±

    ¡°Excuse me?¡± Hook said over the comms.¡±

    ¡°I mean, on imperial ships all of this stuff would be squished together, to save space, but it''s all spaced like this, I could stick my whole hand in between each part and... yeah I can feel a whole bunch of bolts and wires and...¡± She paused and looked over at me on her shoulder, and her eyes widened in realization.

    ¡°Your bots CAN''T pull out the parts! They have to work on ALL of them in situ! Oh... that is very different. Very interesting.¡±

    ¡°Interesting good or interesting bad?¡±

    ¡°Well... I mean if you slot out a whole component, it''s easier to replace it quick. If you have a spare shield cell, or conduit, you can just quickly swap out a damaged component, and fix it later, but your little bots here just fix everything in place. That has to be slower but...¡±

    ¡°Far more efficient. And not as slow as you would think. Imperials use shield''s right?¡± I replied. I had actually studied the overviews of how COG tech worked and several things had caught my eye. There were a lot of manuals and easy to understand guides for captain''s in the archives I had had available to myself.

    ¡°I mean, yeah of course we.... OH! C.O.G.! Right you don''t use shields at all. Bet you don''t have any idea what a shield cell looks like do you?¡±

    ¡°Not a clue, though I have some theories. Either a battery that contains energy for the shields, or a sacrificial component that absorbs the energy tanked by the shields until it breaks.¡±

    She snorted.

    ¡°Pretty close, it''s a combination of the two. See we use the reactors power to bring up the shields, but then the shields absorb the kinetic and thermal energy that strikes them, well most of it at least, and dumps that excess energy into these. We CAN use them to help run the ship, in fact we use them to fast charge the main cannon a lot, but the rapid recharge and discharge tends to wear them out real fast. And if they ever overcharge, Boom! But not a big boom, a little one, but they are surrounded by armor plating to keep them from damaging anything else, they''re kindof in this like, honeycomb wall, with steel plating in between that limits the damage if any one cell goes.¡±

    ¡°Smart. C.O.G. Ships don''t use shields, we rely on rapidly regenerating armor, so we don''t have any shield systems like that.¡±

    ¡°I see, so what does the rapid regenerating? Nanobots? These little guys hauling steel plates?¡± She asked.

    I sidled up the little robot closer to her.

    ¡°You want to know?¡± I asked, waving with one of the tools to bring her down closer.

    She leaned in until her face was barely an inch from the little drone I was operating and nodded.

    ¡°You really want to know?¡±

    ¡°yes!¡± She said, a little too loudly for how close we were.

    I leaned my little drone body forward till it was just at her ear.

    ¡°It''s a secret.¡± I said in a whisper, then scuttled back into the crawlspace, dancing back and forth as I did so.

    I couldn''t hold back a laugh as her face screwed up in disappointment, some anger, with at least a little petulance mixed in as she stared at my little drone capering back and forth.

    ¡°You are nothing like what I was told C.O.G. Pilots were like.¡±

    ¡°Oh? Are C.O.G. Pilots a special breed?¡±

    ¡°I mean... C.O.G. People... I guess I''ve only ever really heard of them being called pilots, but I figured that was just cause we were in space...¡±

    ¡°Oh, no, theres a good reason for it and it is not simply lexical laziness on the part of your... employers? Owners?¡±

    ¡°Progenitors.¡± Carolina313 amended.

    ¡°Progenitors. I did tell you that I am the only crewmember on board remember?¡±

    ¡°Yeah... I still can''t wrap my head around that.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, so... To be a member of C.O.G. Basically means to embrace the ideals and to pilot a ship. Each member of C.O.G. Has their own ship.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± her eyes widened. ¡°So literally every member of C.O.G. Is a pilot!¡±

    ¡°Theoretically, I am sure there are some individuals on prime who haven''t fired thrusters in a hot minute.¡±

    ¡°Hot minute?¡±

    ¡°Old earth slang sorry, means it''s been a long time.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡±

    I was very hesitant to tell her how new I was to all of this, so I changed subjects.

    ¡°You still haven''t gotten checked out yet.¡±

    ¡°But there is not doctor here.¡±

    ¡°The seat is the doctor, just... sit. It doesn''t have the best bedside manner but it can do everything up to and including delicate surgery. Well... delicate-ish¡± I said, remembering the soreness from my own surgery after the painkillers wore off.

    The mention of surgery seemed to hurt more than help, as as I said that she recoiled from the medical bed slightly.

    ¡°Just lay in it, it will suck if I went to all that trouble to board a ship in the void and you wind up dying from a concussion or internal bleeding or something.¡±

    She gingerly made her way up onto the medical bed, and then jumped when the straps slapped into place over her wrists and ankles.