《The Dark Stars》


 Chapter 00: Prologue - Out of Time

    - Prologue -


    Out of Time


    Swish!


    The sound of rushing air instinctively made me drop down, bending my knees almost to where they hit the ground before the sword came around almost close enough to cut the hair from the top of my head. It had previously been aiming from my neck. Thankfully my REFLEX stat was high enough to dodge such a blow.


    During that time however I never stopped rapidly mumbling the spell already almost finished, even as I had to jerk my upper body to the side to avoid the spear thrust toward my center chest. Twisting away from the attacks coming from all directions was tiring me out, drawing on my stamina, but it didn¡¯t stop the grin spreading across my lips.


    ¡°SHOCKWAVE!¡±


    The spell was finished even as I had to pivot myself around again, conveniently knocking one of my assailants off its feet with a stuck out leg in the meantime. Yet the most glorious sight was the spell that took shape near instantly around me, which rapidly expanded out into a half-sphere of shimmering force that literally bashed everything around me away with explosive force.


    The armored monstrosities, Skeleton Knights, wielding rusted weapons and decayed but still expansive armored bits are hard suckers to take down with regular weaponry. Hacking and slashing just doesn¡¯t cut it, and even bashing with a hammer is quite a bit of work. My go-to in such cases are my Force spells. Especially Shockwave, which can take out a whole group in a single go. Being surrounded in a plus in such cases, but most magic based characters just don¡¯t have the gumption to even try to get all of that sort of agro.


    The spell works like a charm though, scattering bones, metal bits, and weapons all over the place. In a circle nearly thirty meters in diameter around me, nothing is left standing or even whole. My EXP had ticked up nicely in the process of taking out the mobs, but I¡¯m left almost gasping for breath at the same time. All the running around to draw the crowd to me had sucked up my stamina even before my dodge-fest came into play. But it was a successful strategy all the same, if I do say so myself.


    All of that comes to a screaming halt though as the world around me fuzzes out in off-white and everything comes to a sudden standstill. All except for myself, anyway, as even the feeling of fatigue from the fight is pulled from me.


    [Standby. Server Maintenance in progress.]


    ¡°Shit.¡± I couldn¡¯t help but say out loud at reading the proverbial ¡®Message of Death¡¯. Off time due to server maintenance had become an increasingly common occurrence recently, and the forums are almost abuzz when they happen at inopportune moments.


    Yet this one is the worst yet, as I look around at the fuzzed out world around me. Usually it¡¯s over in a moment or two, but as I made a quick count of my breaths, this one has already lasted longer than normal.


    That¡¯s when I tried to open up my menu to log-out and promptly found out that I couldn¡¯t. My character sheet, inventory, chat menu; nothing worked. I would have freaked right out normally, yet all I could feel was a very distant sense of panic that didn¡¯t cloud my thoughts one bit. It was all just too¡­ Hm. Hard to explain. I didn¡¯t have any of the usual emotional responses at all. Weird, really weird. But in a cold and calculating sort of way.


    - [Memory End]


    All of that may just seem disjointed though, so let me do a quick introduction. My name is Havok Tyler Vane, and I was just playing my favorite magic-class character in the Virtual Reality MMO game called Atlas Worlds. The character name isn¡¯t important at this point, but I was proud of my quick-footed, quick-mouthed, and tenacious as hell spellslinger.


    I may have been mixing up my ¡®tenses there though, as anyone reading this memory ingram would see that this is all in the past. The very distant past. But I have to be able to pass the time somehow, right? In fact you could find my entire lifes¡¯ memory in these data crystals, if you are truly that curious.


    On the other hand, I don¡¯t have a lot of time left to finish up these. The server shutdown timer is already ticking down, and when the power goes out I¡¯m not sure what is going to happen to me. Long story short, if I die I want others to at least know there was once a guy named Havok Tyler Vane who lived in a suburban town called Ashwich to the south east of Las Angeles, California. Not sure if the place even exists anymore though.


    I was seventeen at the time of this last memory, and ended up trapped in a game that came to a premature end. Well, not really. It¡¯s complicated. What I can tell you is what I got from the Error Logs afterwards, but I don¡¯t think any of that is important at this point. What is important is that my mind has been trapped in the Web for a long, long time. Bouncing between servers became my modus operandi during that time. A true Ghost in the Shell type thing, if anyone even remembers such an archaic anime anymore. It was just a cult classic even in my time, much less now.


    Now the lights are about to go out, and even with my severely suppressed emotional responses I¡¯m still more than a little worried. I don¡¯t want to die, regardless of the shape or form it comes in. My living meat sack of a body is long gone by now anyway, and I¡¯ve been trapped here ever since the servers were taken off the Web some two months ago or so. Damned corporate decommissioning shit. I knew I should have stayed on the government servers. Those are never taken offline, regardless of how old or decrepid they get.


    Too late to cry about it now, I guess. Instead, I implore anyone who finds these: Please check that I¡¯m still here before deleting me! DO NOT REFORMAT! Shit, I¡¯m even going to do a full dump in order to squeeze myself into a single data crystal just to make sure. So I repeat, please for all that is holy, do not go deleting stuff until you know that I¡¯m still around or not!


    - [Recording End]


    The woman was almost frantic, barely holding herself up with one hand on the console in front of her while the other was pressed against her abdomen. Copious amounts of purple-blue blood was leaking between her fingers, but she ignored that to stare down at the black crystal held tightly in her other hand.


    ¡°Please work, please work¡­¡± Her voice was thin and weak, repeated over and over between her fast, panting breaths.


    ¡°Please work¡­¡± Like a prayer, she watches with wide eyes as she presses the crystal into receptacle, hoping that whatever consciousness was in the thing would be able to activate and come online quickly. Her pupils, already pinpricks, are almost too clouded over from the loss of blood to really see anything no matter how hard she tries to focus with what is in front of her.


    Thankfully it doesn¡¯t take but a handful of seconds before the crystal comes alive with an inner glow, and the screen mounted on the wall above the console lights up at the same time. A static, emotionless voice soon brings a great amount of relief to her trembling form.


    ¡°Consciousness encoding found. Processing. Ident match found. Human. Male. Age¡­ Error. Uploading. Upload complete. Administrative access granted. Emergency protocols active.¡±


    ¡°Hurry and wake up! Open the medical bay door!¡± The woman is almost incoherent as she yells, her knees weakening almost to the point where she hits the floor in front of the console from both the blood loss and her own relief.


    ¡°Huh? Oh, sure¡­¡± A slurred, male voice comes from the console then, sounding as if it had just woken up from a long sleep and not quite aware of what is going on. Yet not even a second passes before the ¡®hiss-ding¡¯ sound of the door iris opening echoes across the room.


    ¡°Thank the goddess¡­¡± The woman doesn¡¯t have enough strength to say anything else and all but staggers across the room and through the door. It promptly hisses closed behind her, leaving a bewildered man in her wake.


    ---


    ¡°What the¡­?¡± I manage to say after the woman is gone. My last memories are fragmented, although I can tell that I¡¯ve been asleep for quite a while. More than that however, I¡¯m in a place I¡¯d never been before, surrounded by things I don¡¯t understand. Or rather, things I¡¯d never experienced before.


    That said, it was coming to me. Already my neural patterns were settling into place inside the very alien computer architecture, and linguistic programs were making short work of formatting everything to my native language. Or rather, the complex if basic binary data language I¡¯d learned by heart during my time stuck in computers and servers before. The fact that this alien computer hardware runs on a sort of 8-symbol architecture instead of the 1¡¯s and 0¡¯s I¡¯m familiar with is a little strange, but eh, I¡¯ll get over it.


    The most disconcerting thing however is that nothing about this situation makes sense. There are no data logs to access, no stored data held in the hardwares¡¯ memory, nothing. The programs installed here are of the most basic sort, a bare-bones operating system far more vast and complex than anything I¡¯d seen before, yet just as basic as a 1980¡¯s DOS setup. And that was hundreds of years before my ¡®living¡¯ time on Earth. It¡¯s a conundrum that makes my head hurt. Or would, if I had a head that could hurt.


    On the other hand, the overriding commands seem to press on my consciousness like a lead weight. The ¡®Hurry and wake up¡¯ was still there, urging me to complete the process of integration as fast as possible. The ¡®Open the medical bay door¡¯ is already complete, although that was more due to the administrative sub-programs running in the background than anything I had done specifically. Like, why the hell would I have to open a door when a switch would have worked just as well?


    That said, I couldn¡¯t tell where the command went. It was obscured behind a great wall, for all I could see. Which really made me frustrated, for lack of a better term. It was like I was running in an emulator yet couldn¡¯t connect to the larger system beyond it at all. Or perhaps a better analogy was that I was a damned key stuck in the ignition of some vehicle and had no control beyond being the ¡®on switch¡¯.


    All that was left for me to do was finish being integrated into whatever system this was and then wait. Definitely not how I imagined my first waking moments to be, that¡¯s for sure. Hey, at least I¡¯m alive, right?


    ---


    The woman stumbled into the medical bay while gasping for breath. Her vision was swimming in front of her eyes, yet she still set one foot in front of the other as resolutely as she could. Which is about all she could do, but she wasn¡¯t about to give up here. Too much was a stake.


    It did seem to take an eternity before she ended up in front of another wall mounted console though, the only visible thing inside of the room. The walls, floors, and ceiling were otherwise pristine and perfectly smooth. It didn¡¯t look like any medical facility at all. Instead it looked like a clear space someone would use to store things in.


    The woman was nonplussed though, as her free hand raised up to touch the console. There was no way to stop the trembling though. A moment later the screen lights up, and the same robotic and emotionless voice comes from it.


    ¡°Medical Bay online. Connecting to Administrator. Connected.¡±


    Even as the confirmation is stated the floor, walls, and ceiling start to open up and all sorts of equipment is shunted into place. A single pod-like bed is really the only recognizable thing in the room, conveniently placed in the center of the previously empty space. The woman doesn¡¯t seem phased at all as she stumbles to the bed and all but collapses on top of it. It took all of her remaining strength to pull herself onto it and roll onto her back, gasping for breath as she smeared her purple-blue blood all over the place.


    ¡°Heal¡­ me!¡±


    ---


    [New connection established. Medical Bay online.]


    I was brought out of my thoughts when something new entered my consciousness, and for a moment I was all but frozen as something new clicked into place around me. A previously obscured part of the system had just become unlocked, and it felt as if a new limb had just come into being. It¡¯s the best way I can describe the feeling.


    That said, it took all but an instant for me to learn everything there was to know about the medical bay in question. The function of every system, every piece of equipment. Each of them were run by their own powerful set of programs, and were nearly completely automated. There was also a very large database of medical information available, including the studied physiology of literally thousands of sentient species from across the galaxy.


    More than that though, the database contains data on everything from viral structures to the sequences of DNA derived from hundreds of millions of plants and animals and other such things from planets found all over the place. It was truly a massive amount of information, only a tiny amount of which I really understood. I was never really a biology guy to begin with.


    ¡°Heal¡­ me!¡±


    [New command received.]


    My attention is pulled from the database as a new prerogative is set into my mind, and I cannot help but flinch as the command overrides everything else I was up to or was doing. That was definitely going to get old fast, although it was as easy as just thinking of making things work than anything else on my part. Like opening the door just a minute or two ago, the programs set about their work in a semi-autonomous fashion that didn¡¯t include my overview at all. Just another damned ¡®on switch¡¯ experience.


    Yet I was able to watch from the sensors placed around the medical bay as everything came alive and started doing their thing. Scanners scattered beams of light across the womans¡¯ body, even as another machine extended from the ceiling to draw a blood sample from her arm. The cascade of information sweeping through the equipment was a thing of beauty to watch, even from my standpoint, and yet what really caught my attention was the woman herself.


    Tall, lithe, and curvy. On my personal scale, that body was just a perfect 10 out of 10 any way I could see it. Yet the blue skin and pointed elfin-like ears really clued me in quick that she was definitely not human. Her purple-blue blood was also a big difference than I was accustomed to.


    [Species determined: Hysarian. Female. Overseer caste. Biological age: 232 stellar cycles. Injuries: abdominal wound, splinter type. Medical diagnosis: internal hermaging, severe blood loss. Surgery required.]


    An update reaches my mind then, and all I basically had to do is give the systems a go-ahead nod. After that, nothing required my input outside of just watching the show. Which is quite interesting, if I do say so myself.


    New pieces of equipment start extending themselves around the woman laying in the pod-like bed, and soon enough snake-like tubes and needles are pressing themselves into her arms and legs. She doesn¡¯t make a single sound of pain though, as the medical bed she¡¯s in has already activated its sterilization and aesthetic field. Literally dampening her nerves and pain receptors by matching her own bio-signatures. I¡¯m not sure how it works, only that it does.


    Other equipment hidden within the walls, floor, and ceiling start working at the same time, synthesizing blood matched to her own DNA along with producing a potent cocktail of drugs to stabilize her declining lifesigns and other such things. As they are pumped into her via all the plumbing hooked up to her body I got a front row seat to all the read-outs and everything else going on.


    Next came the surgical suit of machines, and I have to admit that I watched in some fascination as they cut the body-tight clothing from her with small laser beams. At the same time a set of small ¡®arms¡¯ literally reach into the wound in her stomach after having pulled her hand away from where she¡¯d been holding it there. Yet the ¡®arms¡¯ just seem to liquify as they touch against her flesh, almost as if they were melting into her.


    The woman, still wide eyed and conscious, doesn¡¯t seem to feel any pain as she watches it all happening. I can tell from the way she¡¯s clenching her jaws that it wasn¡¯t a comfortable experience, however. That made me feel kind of bad for her.


    ¡°Just relax, uh, Hysarian. The equipment is removing the splinters, whatever those are, from your internals. The medical nanites are already repairing your hemorrhaging.¡±Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    It was the first time I¡¯d tried to talk to her, and I almost wish I could have flinched from the childish way my voice came out of the console in the back wall. It sounded like my voice, my human voice, but at the same time it was a very real reminder of just how young I was when all of this happened to me. Or rather, it didn¡¯t sound like the aged and experienced voice a doctor would sound like, which is what I was secretly hoping for.


    Yet the effect it had on the woman was astonishing. Her head whipped around so fast I thought she¡¯d break her damned neck, and I could see the steely willpower in her gaze. For a moment it almost made me think that I¡¯d done something wrong, as if my mother was staring at me.


    ¡°You are awake faster than I had imagined.¡± Her voice is thin and weak, but not as gasping or slurred as her commands had been earlier. The literal IV infusion of freshly synthesised blood into her body was literally pumping new strength into her at a visible rate.


    At the same time though I almost found her words funny. Yet it also triggered something in my thinking, and after a moment I went through the math and couldn¡¯t help but let out a sigh that was audible to both myself and through the console I was speaking through. Something I made a mental note to look out for the next time.


    ¡°Yes, well, the time dilation seems to be an issue. It had been 1 minute and 14 seconds for you (autotranslation: 2.3 q-ticks), but my frame of reference is some sixteen times faster. Which seems to be variable, now that I¡¯m looking at it. I can watch you in real-time, but everything else is accelerated for me.¡±


    I have no idea why I was explaining such a thing to her, but it was literally the first contact I¡¯ve had with an alien. Hell, it¡¯s the first voice contact I¡¯ve had with another living thing in a long time. My time on Earth was spent hiding myself in chat rooms and forums when I interacted with others. Always hiding in plain sight, as it were. Humans were generally twitchy in the ¡®delete the poor fucker¡¯ kind of way, after all. I don¡¯t think that was going to be an issue here though.


    The woman doesn¡¯t seem all that surprised though, and instead just gives a nod to her head. The rest of her body is all but paralyzed as the medical machines and equipment do their work. I¡¯m only keeping an eye on the readouts and other such mumbo jumbo, while trying to keep my focus on the woman as best I can.


    ¡°That¡¯s good. I wasn¡¯t sure if your consciousness would survive the integration process or not.¡± The woman says then, although she has to take a few breaths before continuing. ¡°I am Yvar Kjeris (pronounced Yuu-ar Car-is), High Overseer of this vessel. Effectively, I own you.¡±


    It was nice to finally have a name that wasn¡¯t too alien to understand or say, but that last part was definitely something of a turn off. Like, who the hell says they own another person? Yet I¡¯m not even sure I count as a person. I know for a fact that I did not back on Earth, but shit. I was hoping alien cultures and all that would be a bit more open-minded.


    ¡°Umm, ownership matters aside, can you tell me what is going on here? I have only minimal access and data in the other room, and only command and viewing access here in the medical bay. I can tell from the system framework that these systems should have an AI overseer of some sort, but everything is rather barebones or restricted right now.¡±


    Okay, so I tried to sidestep the big issue for the moment and actually get some information from this alien woman. I am, after all, effective operating blind and ignorant to the extreme right now. Not to mention that I have no idea how long I¡¯d been asleep for. My memories were coming back in full as the integration was progressing, so I¡¯m really hoping for something to fill in the gaps in the meantime.


    ¡°That is a long story,¡± Yvar Kjeris starts, before taking a quick look down at her stomach. No doubt she felt something when one of the solid splinters embedded in her flesh was pulled out. A quick look at the medical readouts shows that those things are nasty serrated, toothpick-thin blades, and there are dozens of them shot up into her organs. How she had survived that is a damned miracle, as far as I¡¯m concerned.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think we have anything but time right now though. Getting all of those splinters out of you is going to take a while.¡± I try to be helpful, while also wanting to drag the alien woman¡¯s attention back on to the topic.


    ¡°Hm, true. This is the Explorator-class vessel Hessisian, and as the High Overseer I¡¯m effectively the lead commander or captain of the ship.¡± Yvar turns her attention away from what is being done to her and looks back at the console, as if to talk to me face-to-face as it were.


    ¡°This set of chambers are the Survival Agglomeration Pod, or SAP for short. Buried in the deepest part of the vessel, it¡¯s effectively a self-contained escape pod or mini-ship of its own. And you are right, the SAP is usually controlled by a complex AI. But interference during the attack by the Ssshtick-Clek raiders severely corrupted the AI, and I was forced to remove it and place you into the system as a backup.¡±


    While she¡¯s talking I just sit there and listen to her. There wasn¡¯t much else I could do, to be honest. Even for me, this is a whole lot to take in. Like, during my time floating in the Web on Earth we¡¯d started reaching out to the moon and Mars, with several corporations working on setting up asteroid mining facilities in the asteroid belt beyond Mars itself. But spacefaring technology of that time was far inferior to what I¡¯ve already seen here in the SAP, even with just my simple observation ability. Just this medical bay alone holds technology that the humans of my time would have drooled over.


    When Yvar mentions the Ssshtick-Clek raiders however, I¡¯m able to pull them up with just a thought from the medical database. The Clek, as I¡¯m going to call them, are a race of highly aggressive insectoids that travel throughout the known galaxy in independant Hive Fleets. If they have a homeworld, no one knows where it is. Instead they raid the commerce and shipping of other races, stealing the resources and wealth needed to grow their own Hives¡¯ until such a time as a split occurred and a new Hive Fleet is produced and leaves on its own.


    Their technology and biology is weird though, because even the individual insectoids are techno-organic. Either they are birthed in that way, or they are augmented afterwards, no one really knows. Their technology is just the same too, a weird and highly adaptable mix of often stolen technology and mechanical parts and living tissue.


    Ugh, it really sounds like the Borg, except with insects as large as a horse. Not sure if anyone would get the reference anymore though. It may just be my geek showing.


    ¡°That definitely explains the isolation. I take it that everything within the SAP has to be re-activated before I can assume control?¡± I threw in a question there, although I was pretty sure I knew the answer already.


    ¡°Yes, exactly. With my injuries I wasn¡¯t able to go through the proper boot-up sequence.¡± Yvar answers with a somewhat stiff nod, and I would have smiled if I could have at the sight. Rather it be because of her races¡¯ overly stiff sense of formality or the like, it did look rather cute.


    ¡°But I imagine you are more curious of how you came to be in my possession.¡±


    Her words drop the big bomb, that¡¯s for sure. I really was most curious about that, in truth. Like, how the hell did I end up in the hands of a beautiful alien woman instead of being tossed into some trash heap on Earth?


    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯d be most helpful.¡± I was able to calm myself before answering her, mostly thanks to the extended time dilation effect I¡¯m currently living in. What passed for barely a second for her was nearly a whole quarter minute or longer for me in the same time frame. That¡¯ll take some getting used to, one way or another.


    ¡°In that case I must inform you that your human race has all but destroyed itself. According to our historical records, the human race expanded out to six or so nearby star systems from your home star of Sol roughly two thousand of your Earth years ago. A couple of centuries later, a large war for independence erupted between these colonized star systems and they effectively decimated themselves. That''s roughly a thousand of your years ago. The survivors are still attempting to rebuild within the ruins.


    ¡°Those on Earth itself are slightly better off, and still hold somewhat crude contact with the galaxy at large. We occasionally trade with the techno-remnants of the various settlements or countries and pick out some things from the trash they offer us. We collected your crystal data storage devices three years ago after accidentally discovering that one of the crystals were holding your sleeping consciousness.¡±


    Listening to Yvar I couldn¡¯t help but swear to myself. Thankfully I remembered to keep my thoughts from being broadcast out in audio, but really damn it all. I¡¯m not at all surprised that humanity had destroyed itself, given our penchant for making war against ourselves or the like. Or bossing each other around. Yeah, I could definitely see that happening.


    What really gets me though is the time scale. When I was still a living breathing human the year had already been 2566, and colonization of the wider solar system was just really taking off. I spent another two hundred years or so being a ghost within the Web before getting trapped within a server bank that was decommissioned. I have no idea how long I was asleep for after that, but it had been at least three thousand years. If not even more.


    It¡¯s for that reason that I¡¯m rather thankful that my emotions are muted. It would have been an even worse freak-out than when my inadvertent upload had occurred otherwise. I am literally so far out of time that it¡¯s hard for me to even wrap my admittedly augmented mind around it all.


    ¡°Mind-Machine upload technology is strictly outlawed within the galaxy, second only to true cloning tech. Various species over millions of years have experimented with it, and have caused much devastation. Thus it is incredibly rare to find a true consciousness anywhere. The fact that you¡¯d remained stable enough to actually encode your own memories into other data crystals is somewhat amazing. My science officers spent years going through every second of your life, as it were.¡±


    Yvar doesn¡¯t seem to notice that I¡¯d gone silent as she continues to speak, which is admittedly something of a relief for me. Especially when she seemed to be in something like awe at the fortuitous encounter that was my continued existence. I could almost swear that I could feel my ego being stroked. Heh. No man alive would ever deny enjoying that sort of thing, right?


    ¡°It was quite the raging debate on rather or not to dispose of you after that.¡±


    Now that was like dumping a bucket of ice cold water over me! Really, what¡¯s up with all of these delete-happy people! I could only imagine how close I came to really meeting my maker then, and it isn¡¯t a feeling I¡¯m particularly fond of. If I had a face my eye would really be twitching in response, no doubt.


    ¡°Thankfully you didn¡¯t though¡­¡± Okay, so I cannot help it if my voice came out somewhat weak and small. I¡¯m really getting tired of not having any control over my own life. That small and weak feeling really gets on my nerves.


    ¡°Indeed,¡± Yvar replies in all seriousness, although the image is somewhat broken by the pursing of her lips. Plump, shapely lips that are almost the eternal expression of ¡®Kiss Me¡¯. Even I couldn¡¯t help but stare until she starts speaking again.


    ¡°I made the command decision to keep you asleep. Living consciousnesses are far more creative and powerful than even the highest rated AI systems after all. Any number of other species¡¯ would have spent great amounts of wealth or materials for such a specimen. Even the Hysarian Empire would have rewarded me with great merits and fortune for bringing you back home.


    ¡°That is a forlorn hope now however.¡±


    Well, if I had a back, it¡¯d definitely be drenched in cold sweat now. I liked the idea of being turned into a lab rat even less than being deleted and thus effectively dead. Not that I¡¯m sure the analogy would have come through the translator software, but that¡¯s beside the point. All of this just made me feel as if I¡¯m a mouse caught in a maze full of dead ends.


    In the meantime Yvar has stopped talking, and I pull my attention away from listening to her in order to check on how her medical treatment is progressing. During our chat many more of the splinters had been pulled from her body, and with each one removed the medical nanites poured into her flesh have steadily worked to mend every injury caused at the cellular level. It was an absolutely amazing show of efficiency, if I do say so myself.


    ¡°Why don¡¯t you tell me what happened and why you had to activate the SAP with me.¡± I finally broke the silence, deciding that more than enough time had passed. It probably hadn¡¯t, but who was I to be subjective with time as I am right now? Not to mention I definitely needed to figure out an escape plan in case everything came crashing down around my ears.


    ¡°Ah, yes. The Hessisian uses a Slip-Drive for faster-than-light travel. Effectively it slips us out of standard reality and into one of the smaller off-realities. The more powerful the Slip-Drive, the higher we can slip up into the off-realities, the smaller the space between distances are.


    ¡°Such distances can still be quite long though, so most of the vessels¡¯ crew goes into hibernation in stasis pods, rotating in and out for standard duties. During this sliptime, as the slang goes, we were attacked by the Clek and the Hessisian suffered catastrophic damage before we were forced back into real space. Those of us who were on duty had to fight off the boarding party that followed us into real space, while everyone else is locked down in stasis due to the emergency systems.


    ¡°I¡¯m currently the only surviving and active member of the vessels¡¯ crew. I had to make the decision on how to save myself in order to potentially wake the others. However, I¡¯m not sure where we are. Somewhere in the galactic void between star systems, hopefully.¡±


    All I could do was listen while Yvar went on with her explanation. Yet during that time I was thinking of many things, and trying to draw up plans for my future. But there isn¡¯t a whole lot to work with at the moment. I knew far too little about the state of the galaxy as a whole, for instance. Or how Yvar or the others on board this ship would react to me.


    ¡°I see. I¡¯ll help you out as much as I can, but I¡¯d really like to make sure no one pulls my plug or decides to delete me later. I already know I have to follow your commands while I¡¯m installed into this system, but besides being thankful that you are so forthright with me I cannot say that I trust you or the others of your crew.¡±


    I knew I was being rude and potentially overbearing, but right now wasn¡¯t the time to be worried about such things. In a way, I literally had Yvar Kjeris captive at the moment, so this was very likely the best time I¡¯d ever have to come to an arrangement with the woman. After all, one of the first things she said is that she ¡®owned¡¯ me, and I wasn¡¯t going to take that at all if I could help it.


    My words seem to surprise Yvar though, and for a moment her face flushes red in either anger or embarrassment. I couldn¡¯t tell which. Yet after a moment more she relaxes and shakes her head with a decidedly wry smile on her face.


    ¡°I keep forgetting that you are not a Hysarian AI, nor have any understanding of my culture. Apologies.¡± Yvar finally says after a few moments more of trying to put together her thoughts.


    ¡°Under ancient Hysarian law, ownership is decided by usage. Since I ¡®used¡¯ you, I effectively own you. It matters not of your status, rank, or the like. You, as a living uploaded consciousness, hold no rights anywhere in the galaxy, and thus are treated as any other non-living object or goods.


    ¡°On the other hand, now that you are under my ownership, I am solely responsible for you. No Hysarian would dare to take punitive measures to cause you damage or destruction, because otherwise their lives would be forfeit under Hysarian law. These are very old tenants that make up the core of our culture.¡±


    I wasn¡¯t able to get a word in even though I¡¯d originally wanted to interrupt. But it¡¯s probably a good thing she didn¡¯t give me a chance. Instead Yvar spent the time explaining some of her species¡¯ history, and how such a weird thing came about. And I do mean weird. Like, it was said that the Law on Earth was 9/10th¡¯s ownership, and the law of the Hysarians¡¯ was even harsher than that.


    It came about because the Hysarian homeworld is effectively a water world, heavily populated with a vast number of islands. Each island generally housed a tribe that acted as raiders, bandits, or pirates to their neighbors. Anything could be taken, looted, or destroyed between the tribes. Nothing was considered sacred. Yet because more than 80 percent of the planet was water, material shortages became a rampant and very real problem.


    It took thousands of years for the Hysarians to develop the technology to mine the resources found under the waters of their homeworld. And that was only after what was essentially a global unification. Their caste system was set up in the meantime, denoting where each of their tribes would be assigned and how the entire species would work for their own greater good. At the same time the first ¡®ownership¡¯ laws came into practice and were strictly enforced.


    As a result things such as theft, vandalism, or destruction of both public or private property hold literally the highest penalties for the entire species. Even rape and murder hold lesser penalties under their law. Because every resource was a treasure, and ownership was deemed the highest cultural virtue. The Overseer caste specifically was created to debate and measure what resources were needed where for the good of all Hysarians. That later developed into rulership all together, but that¡¯s for a later time.


    ¡°So you are saying that I¡¯m what, a slave?¡± I couldn¡¯t help but ask, although I almost felt bad as soon as I said it. Because Yvar¡¯s face had screwed up in a look of utter disgust.


    ¡°Goddess no! Slavery is an abhorrent abomination under the eyes of the Goddess.¡± She almost yelled back at me, and if I could have I would have raised up my hands in surrender.


    ¡°Okay, okay. But this is really annoying. I spent two centuries living as a fugitive back on Earth before the solar system was even colonized. Being told that I¡¯m a galactic boogeyman AND owned by another person all at once is a little much for me.¡± I try to explain to her, although I¡¯m not sure how much of that actually translated.


    ¡°Aaah,¡± she lets out a sigh, before rolling her head around. ¡°Yes, it is definitely a grey area in the laws. There¡¯s no exclusive law one way or another, and the closest analogy would be to treat you as an indentured contractee. No Hysarian would ever dare to harm you while under mine or anyones ownership. Yet you cannot be freed, as it were either. Because then everyone would be after you. But as a sentient being I cannot keep you under bondage either, as even if it weren¡¯t against the law because it is also against our religious teachings of the Goddess¡­ A damned mess, either way.¡±


    If I could have nodded, I would. It¡¯s definitely a problem, any way you look at the problem. Just for living the way I am, I¡¯m damned. Being under Yvar¡¯s ownership gives me a reprieve, but only so long as I stay right where I am. But her own laws may demand my return to freedom, which sets me back right to square one. Ugh. Just thinking about it makes my head hurt.


    ¡°Well, putting that aside for now, I think there are more pressing matters. Your surgery is coming to an end, and your bio-signs are strong. I¡¯d suggest some real food and maybe a bit of rest for you, but I¡¯d really like to become fully functional in the SAP. Not to mention finding a way to connect to the rest of the Hessisian. The damage needs to be assessed, along with any materials that are onboard the vessel.¡±


    After putting aside my own personal worries, this was really the next thing on my to-do list. While I¡¯m fine as is, since I don¡¯t have to worry about such things like having oxygen to breath or food to eat, I have no idea what resources are available within the SAP itself or the wider vessel beyond. Especially with Yvar being my literal lifeline to keep from being CTRL-ALT-DELETE¡¯d, rather figuratively or literally. All of that, and zooming through the universe at whatever speeds the ship was going when it dropped out of the off-realities, as Yvar had put it, probably isn¡¯t a good thing. Actually, it really isn¡¯t a good thing.


    Galactic scale physics wasn¡¯t something I ever had to do before, but I can sure run the math pretty damned fast. But I cannot even run the math without knowing what our velocity and location is. Being literally blind to the outside world in this case is not a good thing at all.


    ¡°While a nap does sound good right now, I concur that getting you fully operational is the best use of our time. While technically the SAP has the capability of literally rebuilding the Hessisian from scratch, that is assuming we have all the resources, materials, and power supply to do so. That also assumes that the technical databases haven¡¯t been compromised as well.


    ¡°I had to do a full memory purge in order to get rid of the corrupted AI earlier, and went with the fastest and harshest method available. I couldn¡¯t afford to go through the process step-by-step while bleeding out.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I have no idea about anything else right now. The medical databases in the medical bay are fully complete and uncorrupted though, so there is hope everything else is just the same. I would, however, suggest activating my ability to monitor our power supply though. If the lights go out, I¡¯d be dead even faster than you would be, Yvar.¡±


    And that is how I found myself in this crazy situation with a beautiful alien woman, in the middle of nowhere. On a ship that could crash and burn, blow up, or tear itself apart at any moment. Oh, I¡¯m so out of my damned league here.

 Chapter 01

    - Chapter 01 -


    ¡°... and that¡¯s the last room.  The Fabricator Booth.¡± Yvar¡¯s voice calls out even as the connection was made to the rest of the SAP¡¯s systems.  She¡¯d just spent the last ten minutes going through every chamber or room within the SAP, activating them manually via the consoles found in each one.


    In a way, it felt as if body parts I¡¯d never known had simply been turned on.  They¡¯d connect, and I¡¯d get near instant data access and interface ability with whatever goodies are inside them.  A moment or two later and I literally knew everything each of the rooms did or contained. And there¡¯s quite a lot of it, truth be told.


    The SAP is a modular survival system.  It¡¯s also a truly unique construct of the Hysarian Empire, built to a standard generally far above most other interstellar species¡¯ survival mechanisms.  Even humanity only ever built what basically amounted to escape pods capable of surviving hazardous atmospheric reentry, with very little in the way of comforts or utility afterwards.


    The ¡®cheapest¡¯ option, as it were.


    Even now, I don¡¯t know why the Hysarian¡¯s would build such an incredibly complex and no doubt expensive set of systems.  Yvar had said it was due to the conservation of resources, but without any reference I cannot tell if it is a cultural thing or not.  I¡¯m not particularly interested in finding out right at this moment either.


    Instead I¡¯m far more taken with all the information being pushed into my mind.  As data-dumps go, the Fabricator Booth¡¯s was by far the most massive and taking the longest.  It is why Yvar had put it off until last. If I were still a flesh-and-blood being, I¡¯d definitely have a three-day weekend binge sort of headache.


    ¡°Wow.  That¡¯s a lot to take in,¡± my voice finally comes out from the console in front of Yvar.  I don¡¯t miss the sigh of relief Yvar let¡¯s out when I finally speak though. I completely understand her worry however, as we had something of an accident earlier.


    ¡°All is well so long as nothing is wrong.¡± Yvar says then, even while making some sort of sign with her fingers.  I¡¯d come to learn that Yvar is by far the most religious of her shipmates, although it is mostly from indoctrination than anything else.  Years of study and training have just engraved those habits into her, as with all Overseer caste Hysarians.


    ¡°Yes, and it¡¯s truly amazing that the only corrupted systems were the libations chamber.  Thankfully the water recycling system was a quick fix.¡± I cannot help but say in a joking manner, although in truth it had been a bit of a hair raising experience for a minute there.  The literal flood of water that had gushed out of the walls the moment Yvar had activated that room had scared the crap out of both of us. No pun intended.


    It also went to show me just how powerful of an engineering endeavor the SAP truly was at that time too.  The water had been literally drained away from everywhere it had reached from the flood via a system of micro-drains and pressurized suction vents that had popped up everywhere.  Not a single atom of H2O had been wasted as it was pumped back into the recycling system.


    Especially now that I had full access to the SAP¡¯s systems, I can tell the incredible complexity that had gone into its construction.  This SAP is literally a square cube smack dab in the middle of the ship, the Hessisian, and it¡¯s entire interior is made up of a combination of various ¡®smart¡¯ nanite materials and processing machinery.  No wonder it required its own dedicated AI system to operate, as even a team of dedicated engineers wouldn¡¯t be able to control everything in a fast and efficient manner.


    ¡°Indeed.  I had no idea the SAP had backup databases in case of data corruption,¡± Yvar says then, even as she turns around and leaves the small room.  It had only been about thirty minutes after her stint in the medical bay, having undergone rather invasive surgery to remove rather nasty shards or splinters of some sort of ammunition she¡¯d been shot with.  Yet the hearty cocktail of chemicals and medications had gotten her back up on to her feet within minutes. In fact she didn¡¯t even have a scar remaining to show her experience.


    The fact that she came out of the medical bay naked was an issue that had to be taken care of quickly though.  It was an utter distraction for me, to say the least, because Yvar Kjeris is one beautiful alien babe. Standing at five feet and eleven inches tall, her body is the perfect combination of soft curves, trained and toned muscle, and legs that went on forever and ever.


    Literally, if I¡¯d still been a breathing man, I would have drowned my damned fool self in my own saliva while drooling all over her.  Shit. I hadn¡¯t really noticed it while she was undergoing surgery, because of all the purple-blue blood and the medical equipment surrounding her, but I definitely noticed afterwards.  She did too, although she just laughed it off. I¡¯m not sure if it is a modesty thing on my part, but Yvar did say that most Hysarians¡¯ on their homeworld basically go around naked anyway.  Then again their homeworld is a tropical waterworld with a very steady temperature range almost everywhere except at the poles.


    In other worlds, a paradise for guys who enjoy eye candy.  And blue skinned elfin beauties. Yeah, any fantasy guys¡¯ wet dream, right there.


    ¡°Hm, yeah.  The backups and failsafes built in incase of critical system failures are definitely impressive.  An entire 70 percent of the SAPs¡¯ data stores are backup databases and blueprints for every piece of machinery available within the SAP itself.  Including all the modular chambers not already part of this particular one.¡±


    I did already mention that the SAP was completely modular, right?  It¡¯s also scalable, limited only by the available space within whatever vessel it is built into.  From what I can figure out, the SAP within a dreadnought class battleship is four times as large as the one here, and includes operational chambers far more complex than what we currently have.  It also has enough room for far more crew to take refuge in in comparison.


    ¡°That¡¯s good to know, Havok.¡±  Yvar says then, even smiling a bit as she made her way back out into the central chamber of the lower half of the SAP.  A platform is waiting for her, hovering half an inch or so off the floor in the center of the otherwise bare room. It¡¯s the lift that¡¯d take her back up to the upper level, which effectively acts as living quarters and the more vital systems.


    The lower level is what I¡¯d call the logistics hub for the SAP.  This level includes the material and resource storage room, the resource processing and recycling room, the aptly named delivery room, and finally the fabricator booth.  Basically everything a person would need to build almost anything, from scratch.


    And I literally mean that.  The entire thing is basically a giant industrial replicator and nano-fabrication workshop.  Dump in rock, dirt, ores, and organic materials and it¡¯ll pump out building materials or hardware as required to build anything and everything.  Especially the Delivery Room, which is literally the biggest room in the entire SAP, with it¡¯s door being wall-to-wall in order to pull out the largest pieces the SAP can manufacture.  Or completed assemblies, like robots or vehicles.


    It really is a geek¡¯s dream come true.  Hehe. The toys, all the toys!


    The upper level is the living block, in a sense.  Where the lower level is basically a cube with one room on every wall, the upper level is more of a T shape with a variety of smaller rooms and a hallway with outside access.  Living quarters, the libation chamber, medical bay and what accounts as a small kitchen nook take up only a quarter of the space. The rest of the rooms are more storerooms for supplies and equipment, followed by the power core and what is basically the server room.


    It takes a vast array of computer systems and data storage devices to support an AI, and I¡¯m really at home like a fish in water within them.  Being cooped up in an old human-made data crystal was a decidedly uncomfortable experience once I finally managed to get out of the thing. Hm.  It was like going from a small 100-square foot loft apartment with really cheap rent to a nice 2000-square foot apartment or house. The difference in comfort is instantly recognizable.


    It also boosted my already augmented faculties when the server room was activated as well.  The sheer amount of processing power and memory space is still taking time to get used to. Like, if I¡¯m not focusing on Yvar riding the lift up to the upper level then it almost appears as if time is frozen for me, because of how fast my mind is running.  The central control console was impressive enough, causing a time dilation effect upward to 16 times subjectively. Now the problem is even bigger, which I¡¯m having a hard time throttling down to a more regular speed. It¡¯s impressive, but scary as hell too.


    Thankfully I have a few things to occupy myself with.  Each room within the SAP is basically self contained and has its own support systems, from which I basically point-and-click to activate a given function.  A big step up from the old plug-and-play hardware/software compatibility that humans used since computers first became mainstream. But my biggest task is controlling the interconnectivity between the SAP rooms themselves.


    I¡¯m solely responsible for moving materials from one place to another, in other words.  Like, when Yvar was in the medical bay, she used up a whole slew of different resources and biological materials during her surgery.  The medical nanites, for instance, were recycled by the automated systems, along with all of her own spilled blood and debris; but there¡¯s still a net loss due to all of the blood that had to be synthesized along with the medications that had to be pumped into her body.


    So besides the cleanup of the blood trail she¡¯d leaked all throughout the SAP when she first entered it, I had to toggle which resources to move from the stores into the medical bay in order to fill it back up again.  The same goes for any food or drink she¡¯d consume, the air she breathes, and a thousand and one other processes that could or would happen. It¡¯s an interesting system, to be sure, but incredibly nitpicky. Everything is stored for later use, and is only portioned out as needed.  An indepth look into Hysarian resource management, to be sure.


    ¡°Ugh.  The incoming connection from the Hessisian is still too intermittent for me to establish a stable connection, Yvar.¡±  I finally cannot help but groan out in frustration at the other thing that¡¯s keeping me occupied.


    When Yvar had completely activated the upper level of the SAP, I¡¯d regained partial connectivity to the ship outside.  Supposedly that connection is a single, highly armored dataline of some sort. Yet what is coming through that connection is broken as all hell.  It isn¡¯t data corruption, but the remnants of leakage. Completely and utterly fragmented, in other words.


    I tried to explain what was going on to Yvar, but for all that she¡¯s one scary smart woman, she is not a scientist or engineer of any stripe.  The best she could come up with is that either the connected dataline is broken, unlikely, or that something is wrong with the computer system that¡¯s supposed to be sending the signal in the first place.  That¡¯s a good possibility, but it also means that things on the Hessisian are worse than we¡¯d originally imagined.


    After all, all signals in and out of the SAP are supposed to be controlled via the vessel¡¯s main computer, either directly from the bridge of the Hessisian itself or from the Engineering department.  The only reason why this sort of situation would occur is if both of those important places are in dire condition. Or right out destroyed. Which is not a happy thought for either myself or Yvar.


    ¡°Goddess¡­,¡± Yvar mutters, and I have to look away when she does that frustrated-pouty thing with her lips.  Otherwise I¡¯d just end up staring and lose track of time and everything.


    ¡°Havok, produce a powered mobile suit for me.  I¡¯m rated for a Class C, so go with the standard interface.  And enough electronic parts to repair a primary computer console.¡±  She starts giving orders then, and while I still find the whole taking-orders-against-my-will thing to be annoying, I don¡¯t really begrudge her at this point.


    She¡¯s the one that has to go out there by herself, after all.  Which isn¡¯t to say that I don¡¯t have my own suggestion on the matter though.  Heh.


    ¡°Why don¡¯t I make one of those engineering robots, a small one, and go out with you?  If we can set up a signal booster and a string of transceivers, I could control the thing from the SAP and you won¡¯t have to do the heavy lifting yourself.¡±


    It¡¯s a good suggestion, if I say so myself.  But I do have an ulterior motive as well. I really, really want to see what an alien spaceship looks like, you know?  Plus I¡¯ve been cramped up in a computer for a damned long time. Being able to stretch my legs would be awesome, even if it is only figuratively.


    ¡°That¡¯s a good idea, do it.¡±  Yvar doesn¡¯t even take but a few moments to think about it.  Which is good for me, but I¡¯d already added it to the queue while waiting for her.  I didn¡¯t predict that she¡¯d say yes though; I just knew I had more than enough time to remove it should she say no.  So no harm done.


    It also went to show that her commands are not absolute.  I can tweak them or even subvert them should I have a need to do so.  Or add things before or after fulfilling the command. Which is helpful information to know at this point.


    Because while I may have a working relationship with Yvar Kjeris right now, there¡¯s no telling when that relationship may break down.  Having my own means for a backup plan may just be required in the long run. A gloomy thought, to be sure, but a necessary one.


    ¡°Right-o.  ETA is 22 minutes.  I¡¯d suggest a quick snack and perhaps a nap, Yvar.  Today is going to be a long day, and has already been a long one for you, I¡¯d imagine.¡±


    ¡°Hmmm, well, you aren¡¯t wrong about that.¡± Yvar lets out her own sigh then, although I¡¯m pretty sure it¡¯s to cover up a yawn that was going to leak out when I said the word ¡®nap¡¯.  Which just goes to show how worn out the woman actually is.


    I really don¡¯t want to think about how long she¡¯d been up by this point.  And the quiet, isolated nature of the SAP doesn¡¯t help any in that regard.  It¡¯s like a totally different world compared to what may be a literal horror going on outside.


    On the other hand, I know that the only thing that could really destroy the SAP itself is if the ship is falling into a damned star.  It has so much armor and internal integrity shielding, that so long as there is enough power we could potentially survive crashing into a planet at a fraction of the speed of light and survive it.  It¡¯s an insane amount of survivability. Which is what the SAP is all about, I¡¯ve come to find out.


    The SAP is not a survival capsule or escape pod.  It wasn¡¯t built as such nor was it supposed to be used as such.  The Survival Agglomeration Pod is a contingency plan of the highest order, all in preparation to secure the potential survival for the entire Hysarian species.  Because it seems I¡¯m not the first dirty secret the Hysarian¡¯s have gotten involved in over the millenium.


    I¡¯ll get back to that later though, as right now I have other things to get done.  Like tweaking the engineering robot to carry a little something extra in its programming.  I¡¯m not about to take any chances if I can help it here.


    ---


    Yvar Kjeris was tired and getting even more tired as time went on.  The medical bay had treated her wounds, filled her up with fresh blood, and had pumped a lot of medications into her body; but even just tens of minutes afterwards and simply walking around had taken all of the energy out of her.  So when Havok suggested she get something to eat then go take a nap, she couldn¡¯t help but want to drop into a bunk right that moment.


    She¡¯d already been more than halfway through her ship duty schedule when the attack had happened in the first place.  Which places her having been up some ten hours or so since she¡¯d gotten out of her bed that day. Most of that time was spent going over reports, approving paperwork for logistical or scientific needs, resupply, and crew rotation schedules.  All the boring things a ship commander or captain has to be involved in.


    Being blindsided, knocked out of FTL, and fighting off a boarding party of the Clek was not something she or anyone else would have expected.  Ten hours of tedious monotony broke out into just over an hour of frantic fighting and battling for survival would wear anyone out. Yet Yvar herself hadn¡¯t been able to end her day there.  She¡¯d had to get into the SAP (supposedly) in order to save the rest of her ship and her crew, even though she soon found it to be nearly totally inoperable.


    If she hadn¡¯t had to rush, due to her own injuries, she wouldn¡¯t have been willing to wake up the man known as Havok Tyler Vane at all.  A living consciousness is a prize worth far more credits than she¡¯d ever seen in her life, and the potential merits of handing him over to her superiors would have put her on the fast track for the rest of her life.  Promotion, a planet-side duty, maybe even taking a husband¡­ all of it had been in the cards.


    Now those fantasies had turned to ashes, and she was left with a being who didn¡¯t have a single modicum of respect for her obviously superior station.  It was grating, in a way, but Yvar simply ignored that issue all together. Most alien races didn¡¯t have the same reverence for hierarchy anyway, and Overseers were specifically trained not to show their disdain.  ¡®Professional courtesy¡¯, others would have put it. Smile, as naturally as you can.


    Havok however was trying to be helpful, on the other hand.  He, if he can really be called a ¡®he¡¯ anymore, was calm and quick on the uptake even in this most unique of situations.  Far different from the holovids of the raving mad consciousnesses¡¯ she¡¯d been forced to watch and learn about during her schooling cycles.  It was kind of disconcerting, to be honest. And just thinking about it makes Yvar shiver in a mix of dread and a little awe.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    The sheer destruction a madman can do in a flesh and blood body is generally very limited.  And quite often only limited to themselves and their immediate surroundings. Yet a living consciousness, driven totally insane from the very different existence they find themselves as, are by far far more terrifying.  Destroying a species¡¯ data nets, taking control of installations or even spaceships, or starting what amounts to AI wars¡­ the potential damages are far greater than most other threats.


    Truly massive galactic wars have been fought with such twisted creations.  Which is why the study and creation of mind-machine transfer technology was outlawed.  Right up there along with true cloning technology and several types of genetic manipulation techs.  But because it is outlawed is what makes it worth so damned much.


    Just thinking about it makes Yvar sigh, which she partially covers up with her hand.


    ¡°I¡¯ll grab something to eat when I get up instead.  Wake me up when everything is produced, Havok.¡± She says then, deciding to set aside her frustrations and thoughts in order to rest.


    ¡°Sure thing, Yvar.¡±


    Even though she really wishes she could slap Havok one good time for ignoring her rank and station.  The only thing that really gives her comfort is the fact that Havok is just as bound as any AI installed in the SAP¡¯s computer systems.  He has to follow her commands to the letter.


    Or at least that is what she believes.


    ---


    With Yvar off to sleep in the crew quarters, I¡¯m literally left with nothing to do but fiddle my figurative thumbs.  Which isn¡¯t a bad thing, as I¡¯ve been rather busy since all of this began. Some time to think is a great boon at the moment.


    Which actually turns out to be quite a bit of time, in fact.  Not focusing on anything going on inside the SAP, time for me seems to suddenly stretch out as all of the computing power of the alien hardware I¡¯ve been installed in ramps up immediately.  I¡¯m slowly learning how to control it, but at this moment there isn¡¯t really a reason to.


    Who hasn¡¯t wished that they could take a minute and turn it into an hour, after all?  When those seconds just tick away so fast and you are left in a damned hurry, everyone wishes for more time.  Or split themselves into more bodies in order to have more time for other stuff. And in this case, I literally have almost all the time I can handle.


    So instead of worrying about that, I turn my attention to my Big List of Things Needing Done.  My BLTND, or maybe I should just call it BLND. Yeah, that works well. Haha. Blend. Shit, I could use a drink.


    Anyway, first thing first.  I need to fix the Hessisian.  An out of control, severely damaged spaceship does not make a good home.  Hell, it¡¯s actually more like a nightmare in the making.


    Secondly I need to make sure that the remaining crew of the Hessisian doesn¡¯t have any major problems.  Yvar has already explained to me how most of the crew is in stasis, as even with the Slip-Drive FTL system, the time between star systems can still be quite long.  Thus putting most of the crew into stasis is the ultimate in resource management and yada yada.


    The Hysarian¡¯s are bonkers when it comes to conserving and maintaining resources, it seems.  I¡¯m still not even sure about how that measures up to the other races out there, either. So I¡¯ll just count it as one of this ones¡¯ quirks.  Aliens be alien, and all that.


    Thirdly, I need to make sure I don¡¯t get trapped here.  The whole ¡®ownership¡¯ thing with my dearest High Overseer Yvar still grates on me, in more ways than one.  It¡¯s a situation I tried very hard not to have to deal with while on Earth, hiding from anyone or anything that could have picked up on my existence on the Web.


    Plus if this is how all of the ¡®living consciousnesses¡¯, as Yvar puts it, were treated this way, I could say why they went mad.  I am not some AI, after all. I wasn¡¯t written out in code to perform whatever tasks my creator wanted from me. Thus the potential moral quandary is mute and void, from my point of view.


    And I will cheat, if it means having a chance to get out of this.  To that end, I¡¯m already working on a little something-something. Hehe.


    Fourthly, if I actually spelled that right, I need a whole lot more information than I already have.  As horrendous as it sounds, that means I need to delve into the politics of the galaxy. Le gasp!  I know~.


    At the moment I literally have no information about any of the races at all, which sucks.  The medical bay¡¯s databases detail the anatomy and physiology of some 24,000 or so sentient species found throughout the galaxy, but that¡¯s as far as it goes.  Besides some small notes about homeworlds, average lifespans, and the like, the database is entirely void of anything approaching a map. Ugh. How I wish Google had become a big name in the galaxy at large.


    On the other hand, the SAP here is absolutely chalked full of information.  Like a damned library, it¡¯s full of Yottabytes upon Yottabytes (or more) worth of scientific, engineering, programming, biology and other fields worth of texts.  Literally everything the Hysarian¡¯s would need to start from scratch and develop rapidly into a highly advanced civilization.


    In truth, it¡¯s all so much that I really, really don¡¯t want to let it go if I can help it.


    Fifthly, I want to find a way to steal the SAP!


    Admittedly, that goal is the hardest I can think of.  The SAP itself is a huge piece of technology secured within the center of the vessel, which itself provides extra protection incase of a crash landing or whatever due to its huge mass.  Or at least, huge to me. According to Yvar, the Hessisian itself is a damned cigar tube roughly 400 meters long by 120 meters wide. I¡¯m not sure humanity had ever built a ship bigger than that, even when the species were a multi-star system empire.


    And yet the Hessisian itself is only considered a medium sized starship by Hysarian standards.  Which is just mind blowing. Also, I know I keep confusing ¡®spaceship¡¯ and ¡®starship¡¯ up, but whatever!  I¡¯ll fix my terminology eventually, damn it.


    Grumbles~.  All that bullshit about how ships that sail between planets within a solar system are spaceships while ships that can reach other star systems are starships and their damned Death Stars and Star Destroyers and¡­ yes, I¡¯m off on a tangent.  Ugh.


    Ah-hem.  Excuse me a moment.


    Anyway, back on to the main topic.  I really need to find a way to make off with this SAP.  It literally has everything I¡¯d need to start building anything I want or require from the ground up.  Find a planet, plop it down, toss in anything I can dig up and out would pop anything I need. It¡¯s that great!


    Yes, I know I¡¯m skipping over a lot of what it really does, but I¡¯m not a scientist or engineer.  So long as it works, I don¡¯t really care about what goes on in the background so long as it works.  In fact, I¡¯m not much of anything. I never worked a day in my life. Haha.


    A sad, sad fact there, boys and girls.


    That said, I¡¯m pretty sure that¡¯s everything I can currently add to my BLND.  As to how to reach those goals, I¡¯m still working on that part. Taking care of the ship and the crew definitely comes first though.  Even I¡¯m not sure I could run the Hessisian all by myself, even with my greatly boosted mind.


    So I¡¯ll just take things slow and plan things out.  Which is why better than being impatient and making a mess of everything.  Or getting blown up. Or deleted. Yeah, that¡¯s the best option.


    I hope.


    ---


    ¡°Yvar, everything has been manufactured.  I have the engineering bot bringing up your suit and all the spare equipment I produced.¡±


    Right on time I ring Yvar up from where she¡¯s been sleeping.  I do make for a good alarm clock, if I say so myself. Although Yvar definitely wasn¡¯t sleeping in a bed.


    The crew quarters of the SAP isn¡¯t filled with beds or cots.  Instead it¡¯s jammed packed full of pods. Pods mounted on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling.  Each one sublimely hooked into rotatable racks for ease of access in and out. Completely enclosed, the damned things remind me of the medical bed.  And honestly, the things are stasis pods in their own right.


    The crew quarters alone have enough to hold twenty people in stasis just in the same way as the pods in the rest of the Hessisian do.  But these also provide regular sleeping arrangements too, which is a nice touch. Oddly enough, they look really comfortable as well.


    Ugh.  I haven¡¯t laid in a bed for¡­ a long time now.


    It doesn¡¯t take long for Yvar to get out, and although she still has that pouty-grouchy look on her beautiful face, she does seem more rested and energized than before.  Which is a good thing, cause now I¡¯m bored. I¡¯ve been bored for the last ten minutes.


    So maybe the accelerated time thing isn¡¯t all it¡¯s cracked up to be.  No matter though. The action starts now!


    Or not.  Because apparently Misses High Overseer is a coffee-in-the-morning person.  Or what she called makta, which just seems like an off brand of coffee to me.  Looking at the thick goop that is dumped into a boiling cup of water and then stirred doesn¡¯t look all that enticing though.


    ¡°Hm?  Oh, makta is a composite drink used in place of solid foods and is full of stimulants.¡±  Yvar answered when I asked, although I could only stare in mute horror. One cup of coffee knock-off that replaces breakfast¡­ blasphemy, if I ever heard of such a thing!  Shit, I wish that had been available when I was still a living person on Earth.


    Apparently it can also be flavored to whatever an Hysarian likes, to boot.  The ultimate drink-on-the-go! Hm. I really need to tone it down, it seems.


    Thankfully it doesn¡¯t take Yvar to finish up her slurping meal in the small cantina kitchenette space.  Only a couple of minutes later she¡¯s standing in the middle of the core room of the SAP and is pulling on her backpack.  Yes, you heard me. A backpack.


    It¡¯s a big, bulky thing, too.  Like those life support backpacks you¡¯d see those old timey astronaut guys wearing over their spacesuits back on Earth.  Only this one has more straps around the arms and legs and torso than even a hikers¡¯ backpack.


    Yvar puts it on like a pro though, going over all the straps with long nimble fingers and a fastidious attention to detail.  Which is good, because while I¡¯ve been making fun of the damned thing, it¡¯s actually a piece of highly advanced space-age technology.  A fully powered armor suit that is the dream of any nerd who¡¯d ever watched those old Iron Man movies.


    Only this one is totally enclosed and rated for hazardous space environments.  A Class C, in other words. Class E and Class D are rated for enclosed or open atmosphere only, in that regard.  They don¡¯t have any life support systems in them unless they are part of the specialized sort. Like hazardous chemical or military grade biological attack suits.


    Once activated, Yvar¡¯s new suit wraps around her in a twisting visage that reminds me of a person being wrapped up like a mummy.  But really it¡¯s just all of the electro-muscles and exoskeleton frame settling around her body, before the armored plates and helmet slide into place to complete the thing.  A light jump on Yvar¡¯s part, followed by a set of stretches makes sure everything works well.


    At the same time I¡¯d tied myself into her suits¡¯ systems to keep an eye on her vital signs and other such things.  And to keep an oblique eye on what she¡¯s up to, as well. Safety first, and all of that.


    ¡°Huh, looks fun.¡±  I cannot help but comment after she checks her own HUD readouts as well.


    ¡°Very, but it takes years in order to train on how to use them properly.  All Overseers who are dispatched for off-world duties have to have at least a Grade C license.¡±  Yvar replies and sounds rightly proud. Yet her highly arrogant tone makes me want to roll my eyes.


    ¡°Cool.¡±  It¡¯s basically all I can manage to spit out.


    Other than Yvar getting back to being all business, there¡¯s also a short multi-limbed monstrocity standing nearby.  The engineering robot is a complex piece of machinery that reminds me of an octopus crossed with Techpriest from that old Warhammer 40K game.  The PC games, I mean. Tabletop games had phased out hundred of years before I was born, after all, and collectors loved spending thousands of dollars on finding old and unpainted plastic pieces for themselves.  Definitely not my thing growing up.


    The engineering robot, whom I am definitely going to name Pete, is a squat and roughly cylindrical piece of kick-ass machinery.  Roughly four and a half feet tall, it ¡®stands¡¯ on six flexible snake-like limbs and then has another six limbs attached to its main body, one on top of another.  Each limb can rotate around its body and move independently. It also has an attached anti-gravity cart it can pull behind itself to carry all sorts of tools or materials.  That¡¯s how the thing had hauled up Yvar¡¯s suit.


    Right now it¡¯s carrying enough replacement parts to rebuild a computer console of the same sort I was installed into originally.  It¡¯s the primary design for command consoles for Hysarian computer systems, from what I understand. Anything not of that design is usually highly specialized.


    ¡°Everything looks good, Yvar.  Ready to go whenever you are.¡± This time my voice comes from Pete, from whom I¡¯d just hijacked the controls from.  Not a very nice thing on my part, but it¡¯s already programmed to be operated via remote or AI anyway. I just slipped right in.


    ¡°Once we are in the Hessisian I¡¯ll just need a minute or two to set up the signal booster, then I can place the transceivers along whichever way you want to go.  Roughly every ten meters or so to keep a steady and strong signal, hopefully.¡±


    ¡°Right, let¡¯s go.¡±  Yvar finally pulls herself together, and for a moment there I was worried that she¡¯d forgotten what all of this was for.  The isolated nature of the SAP does make it seem as if nothing is going on in the outside world, but I¡¯d never forgotten our goals in the first place.


    Or maybe Yvar was just afraid of whatever she might find out there.  Me, on the other hand? I¡¯m excited to explore my first starship! Or as excited as I can be.


    Getting out of the SAP was just as easy as getting into it, it seems.  Yvar just walked down the hallway and actually pressed a button. A real, live button.  A series of hisses came from the hallway behind her, as a set of armored pressure doors close behind her, creating a large airlock that soon cycles the atmosphere out, matching what is apparently an airless environment beyond the main doors.  Which isn¡¯t a good sign, in the least.


    It gets even worse when the main doors finally do open, because a whole bunch of debris suddenly starts floating into the airlock.  Thankfully none of it has any speed or momentum, but some of the bulkhead segments are quite large and Yvar has to literally push them out of her way as she stands there and tries to get a better view of what¡¯s beyond.


    Pete, on the other hand, has an easier time.  Being a full two feet or so shorter than Yvar is, he can simply walk under most of the junk.  Anything that does come its way can get pushed aside by his multitude of arms as well.


    ¡°This looks like quite the mess,¡± I transmit to Yvar, quite shocked to see all the debris myself.  It was like someone had shredded everything in the hallway beyond and then left it floating in zero gravity.


    ¡°The power is out in this area, it seems.¡±  Yvar mutters back to me, in almost a whimper.


    ¡°Well, I¡¯ll go check the hallway out.  Look after the cart, please.¡± I reply back to her, letting Pete let go of the cart he was pulling before he ambles forward.  In fact, I have him duck down and walk on both of his arms and leg appendages right up until the edge of the airlock. Then, the ends of his limbs shaft and change into grasping claws or suction cup-like devices which make easy work in pulling his body out into the zero g environment.


    On my part, all I have to do is basically point and click to get Pete to go where I want him to.  Which includes climbing up the walls and onto the ceiling, as the case may be. Soon enough Pete disappears from Yvar¡¯s view, hidden behind everything floating in the hallway.


    Yet Pete isn¡¯t able to go too far, as not twenty meters down the hallway my signal strength starts to drop noticeably and I¡¯m forced to have Pete backtrack to Yvar in order to grab the signal booster and the first of the transceivers.  In the meantime I give Yvar an update on the damages.


    ¡°Most of the bulkheads have been shredded.  There are literal gaping holes in the walls, floor, and ceiling of this area, and I was able to get a look into some of the surrounding chambers.  I think the damage may be far greater than you were aware of, Yvar.¡±


    It was not good news, not at all.  And checking up on Yvar¡¯s vital signs, I could have sworn that the woman would have been biting her fingernails if she¡¯d had the chance.  Especially with her heartbeat hammering away in her chest. That didn¡¯t bode well at all.


    But the alien woman doesn¡¯t say anything while I get to work, instructing Pete to install the signal booster on the ceiling less than ten meters away from the SAP¡¯s airlock.  I wanted to make absolutely sure I can keep a full and secure connection to the thing.


    Thankfully while the bulkheads had been shredded, the stronger structural supports of the ship haven¡¯t been visibly damaged.  I have no idea what the skeleton-looking ribs are made of, but they aren¡¯t twisted or anything. I can¡¯t say the same for all the piping, ducts, and cables that had been running behind the bulkhead walls though.  All of that is quite a mess of its own.


    The signal booster is a self-contained and self-powered unit though, so attaching it in place and turning it on is easy.  It¡¯s also one of the highest rated versions I could find without breaking into the far more exotic military versions I have access too.  So I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll have to worry about it much unless something really heavy slams into it. Which is why I put the thing in the ceiling, instead of on the floor or the walls.


    Once activated, my signal is instantly boosted for some hundred meters in every direction.  So with a quick update to Yvar, I set Pete to searching around again. All while also updating my internal map of the ships¡¯ structure.  Which is helpful, because I cannot find a damn intact computer console anywhere.


    Indeed, this hallway is actually the primary or ¡®deck zero¡¯ route for the entire ship.  It runs literally from tip to stern, and branches off to the left and right. Or port and starboard, for you nautical nuts out there.  Lifts then also go up and down the decks, or levels.


    Going back and around the SAP would lead toward the bridge, while continuing forward like Pete is doing goes straight for the engineering space of the Hessisian.  Which is my first inclination, for a variety of reasons. And without Yvar saying so, I just keep going.


    And of course, every ten meters I have Pete stop to install and activate a transceiver on the ceiling.  These are simple discs with a battery in them, so Pete is carrying a whole bunch of them in his internal storage spaces.  More than enough to cover the entire ship, hopefully.


    ¡°The damage is getting less severe toward the engineering spaces at the stern of the ship, Yvar.¡±  I finally am able to give the woman some good news, which immediately acts to calm her down by a large margin.  Which only serves to make me even more curious.


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong, Yvar?  You should have known things were this bad, right?¡±


    My words have the utter effect of causing the woman to freeze up again, as her heart rate spikes to like a thousand beats per second and her body flushes in a sudden sweat.  It even goes so far that she clenches her fists in her suit gloves to keep from shuddering visibly. If I had eyes, they¡¯d really be wide watching her right now.


    ¡°Oh Goddess!  I¡¯m such a failure!¡±  Then she screams, and I literally have to turn the volume way down before I have a damned accident.  Her response was so unexpected that even Pete, whom I¡¯m still overseeing, jerks in a nearly uncontrolled movement from my surprise.


    ¡°I ran, okay?!  When the Clek boarded the ship, I was leading the party that battled them first and I got shot!  So I ran! I ran straight for the SAP! Not even a Clek raiding ship has weapons that can damage a SAP!... Uuuuh!¡±


    Oh, wow.  Yvar had a total breakdown and started bawling her eyes out.  And I really didn¡¯t see that coming at all. The self-assured, hard-ass, and always by-the-books High Overseer literally squats down and starts crying like a baby right there in the airlock.  It made even me feel kind of sorry for her.


    But after a moment I realize why it¡¯s all so complicated for Yvar.  As the High Overseer of this vessel, she¡¯s effectively the sole commander of the entire ship.  And she abandoned that duty in order to save herself. If others came to learn of that, her position could definitely be compromised in more ways than one.


    Not to mention from what she¡¯d told me about Hysarian law.  While she was in command, she effectively ¡®owned¡¯ the Hessisian.  Thus all the damage caused to the ship is her direct and sole responsibility.  Such a thing would have been seen as negligence at the minimum by any military on Earth, but it¡¯s probably much worse in Hysarian society.


    Shit.  No wonder she¡¯d give me up in order to activate and use the SAP¡¯s capabilities.  I¡¯m probably the only thing standing between her and either a firing squad or a very, very long time in some dark and dank prison cell somewhere.  Not cheery thoughts, any way you slice it.


    ¡°Hmmm.  Okay then.  I¡¯m going to manufacture two full-sized labor robots and start pulling all of this debris in for recycling.  We need to start somewhere, and making sure nothing breaks when we get power and the gravity back on has just become rather important.¡±


    I try to take her mind off of it and put together a somewhat constructive plan for Yvar then.  In the meantime, I also start tweaking some of my own plans and goals. Because I now had a very big bomb I could drop on Yvar Kjeris¡¯ head should she ever try to pull my plug.


    And I made sure to record, in triplicate, every single bit of it.

 Chapter 02

    - Chapter 02 -


    Well, it¡¯s been three hours. Three long and tedious hours. Three hours filled with me juggling a dozen different things at the same time. Three hours of me being the BOSS, hell yeah.


    Okay, so it really isn¡¯t anything so spectacular. In fact it is truly mostly tedium. Thankfully I don¡¯t have the usual living foibles of getting bored or zoning out. A perk of my existence, I guess.


    But while the action certainly wasn¡¯t anything to write home about, the work I¡¯m doing is definitely interesting in and of itself. Like, who wouldn¡¯t do a little happy dance while watching two eight-feet tall robots hauling around thousand pound (or half of that in kilograms, roughly) chunks of material before tossing them into a machine that melts it all down into atomic gruel? I have no idea how it works, but it doesn¡¯t stop me from enjoying watching it.


    Literally though that¡¯s all I¡¯ve been doing. Playing street sweeper and cleaning up everything I can get my bots to catch. Which is surprisingly a lot, given how tall and generally bulky those ¡®labor robots¡¯ are. They come equipped with a whole bunch of tentacle-like limbs just like Pete, but are several times larger and handier. Not to mention all the attachments they possess. Suction cups, clamps, vacuum nozzles. Or the laser torches that can cut through big and bulky pieces in mere seconds.


    Yeah, those are only used for the biggest of pieces that float about in zero g. The SAP can take some pretty big pieces, but even then some things are just too big to get through the doors. So they have to be cut down to size first. Which the bots take care of in a very precise and controlled manner. It¡¯s great to watch.


    Okay, so I may be exaggerating it a bit. But there isn¡¯t really anything else I can do at the moment. My dearest Pete is stuck, unable to move forward on his way toward the Hessisian¡¯s engineering bays; while also now unable to make his way back either. It was dumb bad luck too.


    Pete had run into a literal roadblock in his path, as part of the emergency bulkhead had been closed across the hallway. Not a big problem, as all it¡¯d take is a bit of time to cut a big enough hole for him to get through. Yet while doing so a part of the wall had twisted loose from whatever micro-gravity the ship was under and slammed him flat. Thankfully Pete is a tough little guy, and is just fine. Just stuck.


    But that went to show, via a mathematical model I pulled up, that the Hessisian is moving. It¡¯s also spinning around and around in a very weird manner. Totally out of control, is how I would have put it.


    But as anyone who¡¯d ever been to an amusement park can contest, when you have something of a certain mass spinning around, it exerts a force all of its own. Even during my time, such centripetal forces were used to simulate artificial gravity in long-range spaceships. Usually those bulk haulers heading toward Mars or the asteroid belt.


    In this case however, it¡¯s just plain annoying.


    Which is why I have my two newest bots doing cleanup as fast as possible. In fact, they¡¯ve brought in so much scrap and salvage that I¡¯m already in the process of manufacturing another pair of the labor bots to speed up the process. Which left me with a lot of time to sink into my thoughts while keeping an eye on everything.


    And Miss High Overseer Yvar Kjeris, of course.


    The woman has been reticent since her breakdown earlier. Not that I can blame her. So I cajoled her to return to the SAP and let me work instead. That worked out fine, because the woman in question took a seat in the corner and promptly fell asleep. Ah, the failures of mortal flesh. Not that I¡¯m going to say that out loud, but you get my meaning.


    In the meantime I have the SAP¡¯s airlock running full tilt. One of my bots would grab junk, toss it in, and once it¡¯s piled high the outer door will close and the inner one would open. Then the second bot pulling a much bigger anti-gravity cart would fill it up and carry it off to be recycled. And there¡¯s a whole lot of it.


    Just in the past two hours there have been metric tonnes of metals and materials collected and processed. Anything and everything that isn¡¯t securely locked in place is fair game, as far as I care. Which includes pieces of walls, armored bulkheads, pipes, data cables, power transmission lines¡­ If you can find it in any sort of infrastructure or electronics, it goes into the recycler.


    All of which promptly gets torn apart atom by atom by a neverending swarm of industrial nanites before being separated by atomic mass and then compressed into highly refined liquid gruel. Which is the best way I can explain it without getting into all of the science. It leaves me scratching my head, too, because I have no idea how the technology compresses tons of stuff into a pressurized bottle filled with liquid. Room temperature liquid, at that.


    It is not a molten mass, that¡¯s for damned sure. If it had been the SAP would have either been A) out of power already, or B) damned hot in here. Neither of which is a good option, in my opinion.


    Also, speaking of power, it seems that whatever was used to attack the Hessisian has left enough radioactive material or residue behind for me to actually start dumping it into the SAP¡¯s power core. Technically a ¡®cold fusion reactor¡¯, the thing can accept just about any sort of radioactive material in order to sustain itself. That and ¡®energy crystals¡¯, which I have yet to come across. Which really speaks to how behind the times I am, because I kept imagining some big and bulky fuel cells would be required. Oh well, live and learn I guess.


    Right at this moment though I have my labour bots working on a little side project. Which isn¡¯t so little, but definitely necessary. Mainly in putting up a makeshift bulkhead across the first set of side passages off of the main hallway. It had only taken me a few minutes to manufacture a set of middling-armored, triangular shaped bulkheads, which the bots are right now zapping into place. Or welding, if you can call a damned laser torch a welder.


    Just another one of those future-alien things I¡¯ll have to get used to.


    All said, this is a case of keeping more junk from floating into the hallway. The Hessisian is a total wreck, from what I can figure, and is also very slowly spinning around its central axis. It is also spinning end-over-end at an even slower rate too. Which has the effect of slowly shifting every free floating mass around inside of itself.


    Which, in turn, makes it a problem and a half when it comes to clean up. Especially the further from the SAP¡¯s airlock I get. Thus is how poor Pete ended up getting trapped. So I¡¯m taking preventive measures, by barricading the hallways in and out along the central corridor. For now at any rate. Eventually I¡¯ll have to open everything back up, but my main priority is still to get access to the engineering bays of the Hessisian itself.


    I¡¯d really like to fix whatever needs to be fixed before we all go ¡®BOOM!¡¯. Just in case of a reactor breach or the like. I definitely also need to get the power back on, and the main computer system back online as well.


    All said, I¡¯m going to be busy for a while. A long, long while.


    ---


    Twelve Hours Later


    Hahaha! It¡¯s great to have Pete back on his feet. The little robot isn¡¯t any worse for wear from his long wait, thankfully, but it¡¯s great to have him going about his business again. Which is very similar to acting as my forward scout in this case, but no matter.


    Really though, it had taken forever to get this far. I now have a total of twelve labour bots running around, but most of them are on patch-it duty. Only four of them are allocated to collections and recycling now. Mostly because I¡¯ve gotten most of the main corridor cleaned out already, and am now in the process of breaking into all of the rooms along this length of hallway.


    Which just means more messes to clean up, and more gaping holes to patch with printed bulkhead pieces. Ugh. Whatever the Clek had used to fire upon the Hessisian with, it literally shredded the interior of the ship like buckshot from a shotgun.


    The Clek really seems favors this sort of weaponry. From their handheld splinter guns all the way to their shipboard weaponry systems. An interesting tidbit I finally got from Yvar when she finally woke up from her long nap.


    Such weapons fire a solid shell that¡¯s just armor penetrating enough to make it past those parts before fragmenting within the target itself. Yvar¡¯s previous wound is a prime example of how much damage such capabilities can cause. The interior of the Hessisian is just the same, too.


    Just like a person wearing body armor, a starship is armored on its exterior but much softer on the inside. The Clek make full use of that design philosophy when it comes to most of their weapons in turn. Which is kind of scary, when I think about it.


    So now I¡¯m on fix-it duty in order to clear out the hallway and all of its attached rooms. Even though that means that just about everything those rooms had previously been used for is now junked. I literally cannot find a table that isn¡¯t missing at least one of its legs, for instance.


    ¡°Just do what you can, Havok. What those rooms were used for before doesn¡¯t matter now. But we will eventually need the space, hopefully repaired enough to at least hold an atmosphere. The Hessisian did have a crew of over a hundred Hysarians¡¯.¡±


    Those were Yvar¡¯s words on the subject, to which I¡¯m quite in agreement with. There¡¯s no way the SAP could hold so many people, to begin with. And in all honesty I don¡¯t have the know-how to actually fix the Hessisian by myself either.


    I¡¯ve been running on pre-installed blueprints and schematics this entire time. Sure, given enough time and resources I could build an Explorator class ship just like the Hessisian from the ground up, but battle repairs isn¡¯t really something noted within my databanks. To put it simply, I¡¯m more of the ¡®rip-it-out-and-replace-it¡¯ kind of guy at this point.


    Or instructing my army of robots to patch up the holes and check the structural integrity for when we pipe life support back into the areas we¡¯ve gone over. So that¡¯s just what I¡¯ve been doing, with everything torn out or already damaged being tossed into my recycler. Now that Pete is up and going again however, I have something new to turn my attention toward.


    Which is oddly anticlimactic, truth be told. When Pete finally breaches the sealed bulkhead into the next hallway segment, he¡¯s promptly greeted with¡­ nothing. As in, very little scrap floating around in zero-g and a corresponding amount of battle damage.


    Thus I put out a call for Yvar, who¡¯d been staring into her latest cup of coffee-goop in the small kitchenette within the SAP. Sitting in one of the only two chairs and a fold-out table that could be used within that small space. On the other hand I¡¯ve gotten quite good at using the consoles in every room, so I beam everything that Pete is seeing into that screen so the woman doesn¡¯t have to move or come to me physically.


    ¡°What is this area, Yvar? There¡¯s far less damage here than what we¡¯ve come across.¡± My voice draws the depressed woman¡¯s attention to the screen, and I could all but see her eyes light up at the scene.


    ¡°That¡¯s one of the sleeping berths!¡± Yvar stands up then, something like elation crossing her beautiful face as she almost stumbles in her haste to get to the console along the back wall. ¡°Those four rooms hold four stasis pods apiece. They are also more heavily armored, too.¡±


    ¡°Hm. That explains why there isn¡¯t much damage done in this area then. I¡¯ll have Pete check the individual rooms while the labour bots make their way to the closed bulkhead and work on removing it. Are the stasis pods movable?¡±


    ¡°Ah, yes, they are, Havok. The stasis pods are self-contained when removed from their racks, much in the same way those here in the SAP are. But they only have enough internal power for two hours.¡± Yvar replies after a moment of thought.


    ¡°Good to know. I¡¯ll keep you updated on everything I find, thanks.¡±


    Thus a new page is turned for this whole endeavor. Sadly it isn¡¯t to be a very nice one. Pete is able to get into the first two rooms with little issue, but the first room has two of its four pods damaged and in critical condition, while one of them in the second berth is just the same.


    The last two rooms on the other hand have been blasted to hell and back. Only a single intact pod was found in those rooms. And even I had a momentary feeling of nausea at the blood and gore Pete found within them.


    Purple-blue blood turns black as it oxidizes, much like red human blood does. But that only counts when it isn¡¯t instantly frozen and scattered into tiny crystals from the lack of gravity and heat. Chunks of frozen flesh doesn¡¯t work much better in the unforgiving void of space either.


    Ugh. I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll ever be rid of that memory, damn it.


    Yvar¡¯s reaction on the other hand is even worse than my own. For one thing, she knew every member of her crew by name, and had picked most of them herself over the years. So while she¡¯s happy to know that at least some of them survived, the loss of the rest hit her even worse than her own breakdown earlier did.


    Even worse is that three of those nine surviving crewmen may not survive being revived from their time in stasis. Those three damaged pods are entirely reliant on the berths¡¯ backup systems to remain operational. I did make the suggestion of replacing a couple of the pods in the SAP, but Yvar vetoed that suggestion without a thought.


    Apparently the pods in the crew quarters here in the SAP are of a different design.


    ¡°Fine then. I¡¯ll arrange to have all of those stasis pods moved into the SAP all at once. Those three damaged pods will be placed near the medical bay, just in case.¡± It was the best plan I had, but also the only one to give us the greatest chance of keeping those people alive.


    To that end however I put in the order for several more of the anti-grav carts. The ones that the big Labour Bots can haul around are just big enough to carry a stasis pod apiece. Which works out well, given I only have my twelve bots to work with.


    Pete on the other hand is left to idle for the moment. I¡¯m not about to continue exploring until this issue is taken care of. Although that doesn¡¯t mean I¡¯m idling either.


    Instead, I start a production run of ten space suits for the crew. These are only lightly armored however, and are not powered beyond zero-g assistance needs. But they are wholly self-contained and vacuum rated. If anything more specialized is needed, I can print it out later.


    For the other necessities that the crew members might need, those are stored or produced in the other chambers of the SAP. Thus is something I¡¯m generally hands-off with. Like changes of clothing or food production. Not part of my overall responsibilities here.


    ¡°Just sit down and finish your drink, Yvar. I want you ready to meet those that wake up instead of worrying about anything else. Those stasis pods will be transported into the SAP in about thirty minutes.¡± I try to get the woman to relax, a bit fearful of what this rollercoaster was doing to her mental state.


    And I thought a living consciousness such as myself had all the emotional problems, jeeze.


    Thankfully Yvar gets the hint and sits down again. I¡¯m not sure if it is a nervous tick or something else, but she¡¯s even started to tap her fingers on the table in front of her with one hand. The other is thankfully steady while holding her cup though, so that¡¯s a good sign.


    ¡°Just relax. We¡¯ll get through this.¡± I say then.


    The next thirty minutes shows that my time table was spot on, too. Once the sealed bulkhead into the sleeping berth area is cut open and promptly recycled, my labour bots are put to work in hauling their newly constructed anti-grav carts to where they need to go. The three remainder of my bots are put into standby out in the hallway, just in case extra muscle is required.


    Nothing goes wrong though, and within a minute of the first pod being disconnected from its rack it is already loaded up and being hauled back to the SAP. Mostly free of debris by this point, the hallway is a straight shot straight to the airlock of the SAP itself. Thus they take only a few minutes to get moved all together.


    The damaged pods though report a cascade of failures as soon as they are removed from their racks. I¡¯d had Pete install one of my transceivers into each of the pods before they were removed, thankfully slotted right into some sort of slot ready to take add-ons just like that. It reminds me of the USB slots in old computers, which works just as well for me.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    Thus those three pods are the first to be brought into the SAP once the airlock is cycled. Then they are placed gently on the floor outside of the medical bay, just as I had planned. Yvar running right in afterwards though was not.


    ¡°Open the pods, Havok!¡± She yells, nearly hysteric. Her command pressing into my mind really makes me want to grit my teeth however, but I sidestep that by arranging my orders properly.


    ¡°Calm down, Yvar. They have to be opened one at a time, because the medical bay can only hold a single person at a time. Saving one while inadvertently killing the other two isn¡¯t the solution to this problem.¡± I try to keep my voice steady and confident, even while signaling for one of the bots to press the buttons required to cancel the stasis.


    Usually these pods take a full hour to revive their occupants, in order to keep anyone from getting ¡®stasis sick¡¯. Going from frozen deathliness to being awake in an instant is not pleasant, as I understand it. But emergencies being what they are, there¡¯s no reason to wait for these three in particular.


    Thus the stasis pod cycles very quickly, and I keep an eye on the readouts it is producing. There are all sorts of mechanical errors that pop up, along with an absurd consumption of the pods internal energy supply. But it does finish its processing quickly, and the door slides up and open with a hiss and a blast of white, wet air.


    The Hysarian, a man, who¡¯d been laying inside of the pod sits up with a jerk and starts gasping for breath, wide-eyed. Before he promptly rolls over and starts vomiting on the floor. Yvar is there within but a moment to hold onto the man¡¯s shoulder and help keep him steady. Like I said, sleep sickness isn¡¯t pleasant.


    ¡°It¡¯s okay, Layvor. It¡¯s okay¡­¡± I don¡¯t know if Yvar is repeating the same thing over and over again for the man, Layvor, or for herself. But I don¡¯t interrupt. This man seems fine, so I move onto the next damaged pod.


    This one turns out to require some mechanical persuasion in order to be opened, but thankfully my labour robots have enough brute strength in order to pull the damaged door off of it. That said, the woman beneath had to be taken into the medical bay promptly, because she hadn¡¯t regained consciousness.


    Thankfully it only takes a minute before the medical diagnosis comes out and a single injection is needed. From what I can gather, it¡¯s the Hysarian equivalent to adrenaline, which kicks her out of that comatose state. All good news for me.


    The third pod turns out to be a major problem though. Both mechanical damage and damage to the occupant means that this guy ends up in the medical bay at the first possible moment. Which is followed by a lengthy surgery and a cloned replacement organ. Interesting to watch, on my part, but worrying to everyone else who is up and awake.


    Other than that bit of excitement however nothing else has gone amiss, and an hour later I now have a whole crew of ten people. Not counting High Overseer Yvar Kjeris herself, the other nine are definitely shaken. Although not nearly as much as the first three, due to their rapid thawing.


    Two hours later and everyone is up and about, including the guy who¡¯d just gone through quite a bit of surgery. The numbers are rather skewed, from my point of view however, as there are seven women and only three men in the whole group. And all seven of the women are either in the overseer caste, in the case of Yvar, or are librarians. Of the three guys, two of them are of the worker caste, while the last is of the builder caste.


    That really put the whole social dynamic bare right in front of my eyes. Especially because everyone is nearly religiously devoted to Yvar herself. Such near-worship and reverence really seems to perk her up though. Ugh. Yet the builder caste guy and the librarian girls also seem to have a pretty easy relationship.


    The odd ones out are the worker caste guys. Standing near the back, their heads are down and don¡¯t look at anyone straight on if they can help it. On the other hand, their hands are all kinds of twitchy.


    Thankfully Yvar herself catches on to such a thing quickly, and is able to put my mind at ease fairly quickly.


    ¡°Keln, Meir, relax for a minute.¡± She starts, stepping past the crowd and to those two guys. I¡¯m not sure if learning their names is important for me at the moment though. ¡°The Hessisian has suffered catastrophic damage, so your normal duties are therefore suspended. We are in the SAP, and your group is the first we¡¯ve managed to retrieve and revive.¡±


    Yvar then goes about explaining what is going on. Most of these people had been in stasis for weeks, ready for their duty rotations to come around during their trip. So the attack by the Clek, the Hessisian¡¯s subsequent damage, and everything else is very much new to them.


    The two worker caste Hysarians¡¯ are the most distraught however. There¡¯s only ten of them in the whole of the ship, and their duties are mostly of janitorial nature. Or when loading on supplies and the like. Running errands for others, too.


    Come to find out, the worker caste of the modern Hysarian Empire tend to be full of the, for lack of a better term, ¡®dumb¡¯ ones. Men and women who don¡¯t have the smarts to do well during their schooling cycles. But unlike other species¡¯ who may have just lumped them into society as a whole, every Hysarian is given a guaranteed job and wage. Thus the worker caste in particular tend to be extremely devoted and almost fanatical in their work.


    Because while a Hysarian tends to be assigned to a caste and thus stay there for all of their lives, it isn¡¯t as if there isn¡¯t any forward mobility within their castes. Or that if they produce good offspring, that their children cannot be assigned to a different caste all together. So even the worker caste isn¡¯t shrouded in a cloud of economic dread as you¡¯d expect.


    The next bit of business however causes quite a row however. That is, of my existence and to what purpose High Overseer Yvar Kjeris had put me too. Not to say that the crew went all in with swinging fists, however. Instead, it¡¯s potentially worse for me.


    Because the Librarian girls all started talking to me at once! Scientists, one and all, they started asking questions from the most mundane to the most esoteric. Questions like: ¡®How are you feeling since you woke up?¡¯ are easy enough to answer. After all, I¡¯ve been doing fine and find this situation to be rather exciting, if entirely unexpected.


    But a question like: ¡®Are you recording any of your own emotional patterns? If so, then what is the average disparity between their peak intensity and their lowest? If you aren¡¯t recording such vital data, then what can you claim to be your peak emotional response to this situation?,¡¯ really boggles my mind.


    Like whoa, really! I know that living consciousnesses are considered to be emotionally unstable or the like, but I don¡¯t need a scientist trying to delve into my mental state. Not that I say that out loud, of course. I¡¯m not in the occupation of adding more fuel for the fire, thank you very much.


    That said, I do try to answer all of their questions as best I can. In fact, separating my attention between all of the librarians is a fairly simple task by this point. Thus I answer the questions one by one. Most of my responses tend to be a let down though, as if they were hoping for some extreme behavior or something.


    The woman who¡¯d asked about my emotional states was very much surprised at my answer though. Because most of my emotions are rather muted, and had always been that way. Something that had apparently not carried over in all of the data crystals I¡¯d poured my memories into, all of those years ago before I ¡®went to sleep¡¯ on Earth.


    ¡°Ooh-hmm. If I may put forward a conjecture, I believe your accidental mind-transference caused your muted emotional responses due to the fact that it was incomplete in some fashion.¡±


    While I¡¯m able to understand what the scientist is saying, it¡¯s way over my pay grade in actually understanding what it means. It isn¡¯t like I can''t feel my emotions at all, you know. They are just greatly diminished in comparison to hormonal driven flesh and blood beings. Bow to my brilliance, mortals! Mwahahaha! Okay, maybe not, but you get the idea.


    ¡°It was never supposed to happen to begin with, from my point of view. The virtual reality helmets of that time weren¡¯t built to copy or record the brains of humans. Only allow a connection between the brain and a wider computer network. How I ended up trapped, I have no idea.¡±


    And that was the end of the discussion, as far as I was concerned. Yvar herself had to pull that librarian aside in order to get the woman to drop the issue for the moment. We all have more things to worry about.


    I specifically was still busy. The stasis pods the crew were brought in were already being recycled, for one. Far more complex than what I¡¯d already recycled until this point, I ended up with a hefty amount of biological material from each one as well as an array of far rarer materials to boot.


    At the same time, I¡¯d sent my bots out to continue collecting debris and patching up holes. The inclusion of those anti-gravity carts was a boon to their work as well, which I hadn¡¯t thought about before. Now each bot could carry out far more than before, and also haul in a larger amount of materials for recycling. Yay for efficiency!


    It also goes to show that I am not all knowing either. An AI would have been able to pin-point that sort of issue nearly instantly, yet it had taken me far longer to figure it out through trial and error. Ugh.


    At this point I can only do what I¡¯ve been doing however. Crying over spilled milk has never been my thing, but I will at least try to find points that I can work on. Being more efficient will save time and effort in the long run, after all.


    Thankfully I now have actual helping hands! Yvar, while a knowledgeable companion, has been a decided let down when it actually comes to constructive endeavors involving physical movement. Or labour. But the three men in the group are more than ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work. Which is just great for me!


    In any case, I have all of the space suits brought up for each of them. Their skin tight bodysuits aside, the space suits offer far more protection, even here within the SAP. I don¡¯t want to take any chances, and I tell them so when I ask the crew to wear them.


    Afterwards I trade out one of my bots that¡¯s on recycling duty to the two worker caste guys on the lower level of the SAP. They get to work with enthusiasm, although one of them ends up asking me rather politely if I¡¯d manufacture a set of exoskeleton rigs for them. That was something I hadn¡¯t looked into yet, but it turns out to be a fairly common piece of equipment.


    The exoskeleton rigs, as it turns out, offer the same benefits of powered armor suits but without all the extra bells and whistles. Including the gloves and boots that fit over their space suits, the entire assembly boosts the strength and movement speed of the worker wearing them. At least the general type does. There are rigs that specialize in construction, or mining, or as a booster in far larger and more powerful mech-like machines.


    In this case, the most simple type of rig is all the worker caste guys need or want. In truth it is all they are trained in. So I put them in and within twenty minutes the guys are wearing them, as happy as can be. I also take the time to order up a much more powerful builder rig for the builder caste guy.


    Which turns out to be a good thing, because that guy is totally nuts. While not in the nit-picky way of a desolate housewife ready to beat on her wayward husband, he definitely did not appreciate my quick-and-dirty patch job in the hallway outside of the SAP. Not that he could have done much better, but I could feel the sacrilegious outrage even from here.


    Apparently the builder caste is very detail oriented and not afraid to show off their expertise in that regard. They also almost worship whatever they are building or work to maintain. To me, that¡¯s just all very weird, but whatever.


    ¡°Look, uh¡­ Layvor,¡± I almost stumble when it comes to the man¡¯s name, and take a moment to search my memory for it. ¡°I¡¯ve been doing the best I can here. I am not a trained engineer or technician, so my personal expertise when it comes to construction is non-existent. But the Hessisian has taken a pounding, and we just may not have the time to ¡®grind the welds down¡¯ as you¡¯d just suggested. I¡¯m more worried about getting to the engineering bays and making sure the reactor core doesn¡¯t explode.¡±


    That seemed to quell the man quite a bit, for which I¡¯m thankful. On the other hand, I definitely have to give the guy a job or otherwise he¡¯d go right back to nitpicking everything I¡¯ve been working to accomplish. So to that end I assign him a pair of my labour bots and tell him to lead his team in making sure every compartment we come across is air-tight so they can be pressurized later.


    With those problems taken care of I finally turn my attention back to actually getting into the engineering bay. Which isn¡¯t a big problem, because it¡¯s just beyond the sealed bulkhead on the other side of the sleeping berth. Or rather, it wouldn¡¯t be, except this bulkhead is magnetically locked down. Which makes it almost impossible for me to cut into while it still has power.


    Getting into where I can override the lockdown means actually digging into the crawlspace under the floor. For which I just send Pete to do the job. Easy enough on that side. On the other hand, actually using the override requires dataline. A whole lot of dataline. Spools of it. Along with adapters, encoders, and a ¡®key box¡¯.


    Turns out that is where Layvor really shines, and is more than happy to take over for me. Or as he put it: ¡°We don¡¯t need a bloody novice locking out the main computer due to trying to hack the security systems.¡± But I have no problem letting him take the reins on that issue anyway. Let it be on his head then should something happen, right?


    That said, I was definitely responsible for producing everything Layvor needed to get to work. Which was quite a bit, all told. Thankfully most of it was simple things. The datalines, for instance, are a flexible cable with a core of what I¡¯d call a crystal, like fiber optic cabling, tightly bound by a nano-weave of copper and then sheathed in a mix of some sort of amorphous steel and plastic. Don¡¯t ask what or how that is, because I have no idea.


    I swear, I spent twenty of my accelerated minutes staring at the blueprint, trying to make sense of it myself.


    The adapters and everything else was just as easy, too. The ¡®key box¡¯, on the other hand, was a pain and a half. On its own, the damned thing is a handheld micro-computer programmed in a very specific way. Actually being able to print one up required that I go to Yvar for clearance. One of the few Hysarian-only technologies that I as the SAP couldn¡¯t produce on my own. Annoying.


    That said, I did kind of trick Yvar into giving me a blanket clearance for anything and everything I may require. Once Yvar had typed in her access codes and went into the medical bay for a verification scan, everything became unlocked for me. And I do mean E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.


    Besides the core programming that kept bugging the shit out of me everything Yvar gave me a command, the SAP¡¯s systems unfolded around my consciousness like a damned blooming flower. Where before I had to personally access a specific module of the SAP in order to issue commands, now I was able to just log my commands directly. I could also adjust internal settings and everything. All of which left me relatively elated.


    It was also something I did not mention to anyone else. Being seen as a galactic boogeyman is quite bad enough. I don¡¯t need the crew freaking out just because I got a few more bells and whistles installed.


    So while I was playing around with all of that, I was also keeping an eye on Layvor. I¡¯m really not sure if it is a Hysarian predilection, but the man was even humming while working. At least he was quite skilled at it, using the tools he¡¯d requested to join cut strips of the dataline to various adapters and splitters before hooking them into encoders and other bits and pieces. The whole thing looked kind of like a damned spider web to me.


    Pete on the other hand had been handed over to follow Layvor¡¯s instructions, which were much more precise than my own. Thus he was easily able to clear out what needed to be cleared out in order to gain access to the bypass ports installed around the sealed bulkhead. From there, Pete was set to work on plugging up the completed segments of the dataline.


    To me, it all just looked complicated as hell. I would have just plugged into the system directly and brute-forced the damned thing open. But what the hell do I know, right? I¡¯m just a mind trapped in a damned machine. Grumbles~


    On the other hand Layvor¡¯s solution was a thing of beauty when he finally got it completed. There are three bypass terminals for the bulkhead, and the three ¡®ends¡¯ of the net that Layvor had put together hooked into all three at the same time. From there everything is centrally connected to the Key Box, for which I really need to think of a better name for. But at the same time each of the bypass ports is plugged into each other too.


    It¡¯s probably to balance the system or some such, but I have no idea.


    Once Layvor stands up and actually starts typing away on the Key Box though, it¡¯s over and done with in a flash. Like literally, the energy field that keeps the bulkhead electromagnetically locked flashes visibly once before disappearing all together. At the same time the bulkhead starts to grind open with a rumbling that shakes the hallway for a moment. Yet of course it gets stuck when it¡¯s only halfway open.


    But that leaves more than enough space for a person or one of my labour bots to squeeze through. As always though, Pete is the first to enter the blackness beyond. And I¡¯m kind of glad it was only Pete, because what I saw through his eyes left me wishing I could really retch.


    The engineering bay of the Hessisian is the single largest compartment in the entire vessel. It spans five levels in total, separated into open deck spaces surrounding the several key machines that keep the ship ticking along nicely. That includes the power core, main computer system, life support systems, the ship engines, and the slip-drive itself. Such open space would allow for easy access and maintenance to those very important systems.


    Yet now the entire back end of the Hessisian is trashed. The ships¡¯ engines, which is a combination of cold plasma thrusters and some sort of gravity drive, are gone completely. Literally ripped from the hull. The same for the slip-drive. Only that one looked like it had exploded instead of just being torn out.


    Everything else within the engineering bay is trashed. Just from what I could see through Pete¡¯s eyes and sensors, everything of critical importance has taken at least severe damage. If not is totally inoperable. Which definitely explains why I couldn¡¯t get a connection to the main computer system. There probably isn¡¯t much left of it at all.


    In my horror though, I¡¯d forgotten to tell Layvor to stay outside. Thus he¡¯d slipped into the chamber after Pete and was left staring as well. I could even see his trembling even through his space suit.


    ¡°Oh, Goddess¡­¡± He mutters, and I totally agree with the sentiment.


    ¡°We definitely have problems.¡± I say solemnly, which earns me a nod from the otherwise preoccupied builder. ¡°That said, I¡¯d really really really like it if you¡¯d go check on the power reactor. It seems to be offline, or at least shut down, but I¡¯d like to make doubly sure.¡±


    That gets the man moving, nearly tripping over his own two feet. Which isn¡¯t easy to do with magnetic boots, but what do they always say about haste? Not that I¡¯d blame Layvor for it at the moment.


    As for Pete, I send him on his way to where the mainframe for the main computer is. It¡¯s up a couple of decks, but that doesn¡¯t mean much when most of the levels are torn apart. He just ends up climbing a wall or two.


    It isn¡¯t as if I enjoy what is found though. The mainframe was built as a spire, thicker at the base before tapering off near the ceiling. Connected by thick cabling to the auxiliary systems positioned nearby, the whole thing had roughly the same amount of processing power my systems in the SAP do. ¡®Had¡¯ being the key word there.


    Because the top two thirds of the entire spire has been blasted to shattered pieces. Most of which have floated off into the void from the massive holes left where the engines and shit had been. Those that remain float around and bang ineffectively against anything and everything nearby.


    On the other hand, the base of the spire is relatively untouched. The ships¡¯ auxiliary systems also seem to be in working order as well. Only they are no longer powered. Which leads me to the next important decision. I¡¯m going to need a whole bunch of power cables and a lot more dataline.


    Layvor, on the other hand, has news for me too. Thankfully it is of the wipe-the-sweat-from-my-brow kind. The power reactor is damaged, but went into emergency shut-off mode. It had ejected its previous fuel intake, out into space thankfully, then shut down after locking up. There¡¯s no danger of it exploding unless we turn it back on without repairs. Which isn¡¯t going to happen.


    The bad news however is that Layvor cannot be sure how much fuel is left in the ships¡¯ stores. After all, the Hessisian¡¯s reactor core is way bigger than the one within the SAP, and runs solely on liquified power crystals. Which is highly atomically unstable by itself, and basically goes bad very very quickly. No doubt the intake pipes are full of the ruined remnants of the fuel.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know about you, Layvor, but I¡¯m really not looking forward to informing the High Overseer of this¡­¡± I cannot help but say after going over everything. The man simply nods and keeps his own mouth shut.


    ¡°That said, help me run the power cables and datalines to what remains of the main computer. If it is totally scrap, then we¡¯ll need to wire the ships¡¯ systems directly into my own here in the SAP. I need a better picture of what is left of the Hessisian before anything else happens. And I¡¯d really like to know where we are now.


    ¡°We may end up having to make planetfall somewhere in order to survive.¡±