ã€ŠOld Dog, New Universeã€‹


 Prologue - Rift -

    Old. That¡¯s what I was. Not the tried kind of old, where a body is falling apart and the will to live on if faltering. No, that was well beyond me at this point, for me to feel like that I would have to go back to being a meat sack, which I didn¡¯t want at all. No, I was just old from experience. Lifetimes worth.

    That is not to say that I was unhappy, far from it, I was always in a good mood now that I was doing something that was in my mind worthwhile and not something that involved me being someone else¡¯s damn sword.

    I was in my recovery period, the stage of mandatory rest that I had been, ¡®suggested¡¯ to me by my current long term companion Captain Lyrica Helmsworth. A fitting name for my captain, if a bit on the nose.

    Currently, my mind existed in a sim space that was my personal ¡®meditation¡¯ retreat, crystalline purple pond with no visible edge, fell off into nothingness that expanded for simulated thousands of kilometers. My mind was a similarly colored mass of purple the sat above the liquid. I was not solid or really matter in this state, my VR frame having pushed the limit of what was real along time ago now I was not truly aware of what the state was only that within the bounds of my rules in would be interesting, to say the least.

    A ripple passes over the liquid that was otherwise unnaturally still. Time to return. I felt the gentle pull of my body guiding me back into it.

    The initial handover interfacing was smooth. I slipped through the VR-frame smoothly and steadily approaching the liquid which rose slightly to meet me before I was that close.

    Thin tendrils of connection sprang up was my mind began reintegration process. I felt a window pop open in my view as a smiling cheery face greeted me.

    ¡°Heya Old Man. Did you have a nice nap.¡± A sweet voice filled with vibrancy flowed into my mind.

    I chuckled at Grace¡¯s enthusiastic greeting. ¡°Yeah, yeah laugh it up kid, when you get to be my age you will have to ¡®nap¡¯ twice as often as me.¡± I boasted without shame. In my VR space, my mind had touched the first spike of liquid that had risen to meet me as I had descended and I felt the port open, and lower systems access start to transition.

    The face looking at me huffed at the same time, I ran into an error in transition, then across the board errors blocking me. I had not called up an avatar for the video call and could not express any emotion with my flowing mind state that existed in VR, and so could not respond to the proud Cheshire like grin that spread across the face of Grace at my hang up.

    That was sad really, as I could not gloat as the next second I reached into my vault and picked up a bit of code I had been working on for, all the time I had been on this ship and instantly bypassed her firewalls. Her face fell in an instant and I could see the look of shock as I breezed back into the system, the reintegration having been barely stalled for a microsecond.

    For a short time, I considered playing as I had never noticed a difference, but that would just be rude we had both noticed the delay even for how a ridiculously short time it existed for.

    ¡°Ahhh, tut tut my dear dear Grace who are a thousand years too long to play such games.¡± I affected the tone of a grand lofty sage that was indulging in a young child.

    She stuck her tongue out at me. And afforded me the perfect retaliatory opportunity. Even as the second a third integration process started I didn¡¯t bother to look at them, besides the obligatory instantiation as, this process had become wrote and explored to its fullest efficiency over the time I had been aboard.

    I extended the portion of myself that was in the system and quickly navigated to Grace¡¯s VR space, where I then breached her very modern and very rudimentary firewalls, before rewriting a portion of her video playback window. Then I entered her VR, as her VR window.

    I reached out of the window, a small arm then shot out of the window and grabbed her tongue. This surprised her, which was the intent. The tried to scream in surprise but the fact that I still held her tongue made it come out strained and when she tried to jump back I let go and watched her overbalance and fall on her butt.

    I laughed, as I felt the rest of my VR body form slowly expand and extrude from the deforming video screen.

    Quickly my mind reached back through the connections and opened a proper link to my mind and I let the path I had used to subvert her programming correct itself. That was her mind correcting for the outer irregularities.

    She jumped to her feet pouting cutely. Her avatar was that of a young girl which is exactly what she was, although she had never had a meatspace body like me it made no difference to me.

    She stomped her foot when she saw my gloating face. ¡°Old Man! You- you..¡± she sputtered for a minute realizing this was retaliation for her own prank. ¡°But you told me to, try and block you!¡±

    I grinned and lifting one finger adopted my grand sage atmosphere. ¡°Ahh I did young one, I did. However, did I not also say that every attack has a price.¡± I nodded sagely. ¡°And you know that you are still a thousand years to early block me from my form.¡±

    She squinted at me, ¡°But you are not even a thousand years old yet, or not even that close to it for that matter... You were a popsicle, you cannot count that towards your age surely.¡±

    I nod maintaining my impeccable dignity, ¡°True true, all too true. However, ¡° I grinned at her slyly, ¡°My statement is no less true, my very young child.¡±

    She gets it and springs to her feet and begins to run at me, I, of course, run away. Then I feel a change come over the world. Subtle, but my mind quickly investigates and when I pull up the logs of the space I find that Grace seems to have modified the parameters on the fly and reduced fraction to a zero value everywhere.

    This happens in less than a second and I also adjust a rule, something much more minor of course, allowing my foot to be horizontal when I land, this was needed for if I didn¡¯t then I would have not been able to maintain my balance and would have fallen flat on my face. The sage could not be allowed to fall.

    I formed a robe around me and gathered all the glaringly outlandish things I could attach to it. Little bells, golden patterning, tall crown, and other small ornamentation. I glided smoothly along standing straight and turning slightly so I could smile beatifically at Grace, who only grew more frustrated. Then the game got started.

    While we were playing in Grace¡¯s VR space. I felt the rest of my mind slowly connecting and performing the routine handshaking checks with, Grace¡¯s systems as I took back control of our shared body.

    I was once a human being. Normal. Average even. Nothing special about me. Then I had opened a pandora''s box by, looking for a job as ¡°Research Engineer¡±, which was a fancy title given out to those who the company I knew as ¡°Gladwell Interbus¡± need to test new tech on. Being a living science experiment would not appeal to most people, but seeing as I enjoyed what they were working on I had no problems with the idea. To say it went wrong would be, incorrect. Medical nanites. Something that, even during my time of 2021 was something still well beyond the pale, or so I thought. I was like catnip for them so on the first test my whole body was affected whereas what was meant to happen was only a small area of my skin to simply contain nanites.

    I guess the company panicked and I was drugged at the time so I couldn¡¯t say anything. And they cyrostored me, something that was more prevalent but still exceeded my expectation when I reviewed the material later. To put it simply, cyro does not affect nanites and when I woke up alone in that tube I was no longer human, but a machine.

    I didn¡¯t like to reminisce to long as even now those memories were not the best as they led to the portion of my life that I refused to think about. Indeed the vault in my mind contained those memories and only a few scraps that I felt I needed to leave out were enough to let me know that I had stored them for good reason.

    But even that was a long time ago now.

    I pulled back from the game slightly as the gravity began adjusting and readjusting itself wildly. As the laughter of Grace filled the room as my avatar was thrown into the air. Only to hang there without aid, smugly looking down upon her little world. And again pouting face of course, although she couldn¡¯t hide the real smile for long at my antics.

    We both felt the system push an alert into us as, the merge was nearing completion and the final handshake and control swap, for the main command console. During my periods of downtime was the only time that Grace was allowed to have full control of that particular system, or at least that is what I had told her since the beginning in reality and while it was true I didn¡¯t maintain as much distance I pretended. Certain system I left out of her control purposefully, fire control for example.

    I disconnected from the VR space and pulled back from her server port. Then I felt the the rush of sensation that came with the final milliseconds of handover. It was a rush, a familiar and powerful rush of jumbled emotions and sensory input.

    The first thing was the swell of raw power that ran through me, my oversized reactor was only at a quarter output and was not struggling. Power system controls were mine again. Then I felt my mind spread throughout the hull, minor systems, security cameras, and internal sensors came next.

    I slipped into my skin, and it fit perfectly, for of course, it was mine after all. The energy layer around the hull, the data entered my information stream. Information that I processed directly, or that had been preprocessed and handed for me as a report, both kinds of data flowed into me at this point.

    This connected me to the final single system that was individually processed, the engines. While engaged as they were now, both engines put out immense thrust required the use of minor inertial dampeners across the front hull and those being directly linked to the engine subsystem, gave me a real sense the motion that I was currently in.

    Final step. I moved my mind through the ships cyber superstructure, real-world connections linked all of it, so near-instantly I made my way to the main command room at the top of the command tower. People bustled around the room from my vantage, that was every camera in the room.

    I settled into the main core and let the information flow increases as all the little systems fed into me from there. A few forks of my mind rejoined me and I regained fire control, medical centers, and production control systems and their various subsystems.

    I accessed a system that was one of the last to handover and one I had personally been tinkering with for a while now. The condensed light projector. A fully functioning hologram system has been a thing for a long time, however, my design is many times more complex.

    A woman looks up from the large chair in the center of the activity.

    A somewhat gruff but effeminate voice interrupts my survey of completion.

    ¡°Computer, play Old World Jazz.¡± A few muffled coughs, which I am sure are only coughs and nothing else at all, echo around the room, as my grand renterence is crushed by this pathetic meat bag.

    I am an ASIM, an artificially sustained integrated mind, I have lived in various stages and states of being for well over a thousand personal years despite what Grace may think. I stretch my mind out throughout the modified Titan Class Dreadnaught that is my current body, even in this demilitarized configuration it, I have enough firepower to put a dent in any sovereign world''s total defense budget, and I am not talking, oh look I seemed to have pushed a finger in this clay, no no, the oh look this diamond seems to have shattered when I tried to show you the kind of dent.

    So I totally--

    ¡°Oh no, not the diamond and clay again.. Please..¡± This foul woman.

    I flicked on the projectors, deciding that I was the elder here and would not bother with the children. That said my form of an ambiguously older teenager wearing sweatpants and a graphic tee from my past was sure to convey the right image. This was my standard avatar, after so many years, it still had a portion of true self although it had been heavily modified, and reiterated upon and then thrown out for a century.

    ¡°Ahh, good. No witty retort this time Atlas, that¡¯s good even such a small computer can learn.¡±

    Okay. Hurmupf. ¡°Enough prattling meat bag, I have a ship to run. And tell you, people, to stop pretending to do things this isn¡¯t a reality show we all know who really controls the ship.¡± I made my tone as severe as possible, not even turning my avatar to look at her.

    ¡°Ahh, yes yes that¡¯s true, I am sure you have enough bodies to fly and repair all the systems once they start breaking down. I bow to the will of, what was that name again.. ¡®Alexa¡¯.¡±

    Shit, not that.

    ¡°I will never tell you stories again dammit Neil. Who says I need bodies, I am sure that I could remove your brains and nerves and have a fully functioning proxy up in an hour, ever wonder were the phrase meat puppet came from.¡±

    I turned and at the same time caught all the cameras picking up the very disturbed looking faces around the bridge.

    Even the stoic foul woman Lydia looked vaguely upset with the image I had painted for them.

    She slumped back into the large chair and threw a leg over the side, her one good eye was unreadable. She flicked her hand and the sounds of the bridge resumed.

    I grinned at her. I had won that round for sure.

    ¡°Okay Atlas, status.¡±

    ¡°Full handshake complete, I have returned to the central computer core. How was Grace, my captain? Did she cause any trouble? Anything I should be worried about?¡±

    ¡°Worry not Atlas, our girl was fine no issues during your recession period. I have no problems recommending that we try a full state trial on our next run-through of this.¡±

    A full state trail involved me removing the last of the parental fork systems that I left behind normally and allowing her full access to everything. I was going through the logs of my time away just then as well and agreed with her assessment.

    ¡°Agreed. Next recession period, schedule in one hundred days. Now, where are we?¡±

    She nodded and we both turned slightly to view the massive map display that dominated the area just in front of her chair. Getting up and joining me around it, was while not necessary just something that over the years had become a habit for me. Somethings while different in some ways didn¡¯t actually change from when I was human, I was generally pretty relaxed and never tried to edit my behavior like that simply doing whatever I naturally did.

    ¡°We are in an uncharted system about to begin surveying, and the jump was smooth and the new nav beacons worked well, but our--¡±

    ¡°Yes, they used more fuel than expected. Well, we knew they weren¡¯t perfect nothing is the first time. When the swing by there I will pick it up and in the meantime start modeling what could have been the problem.¡±

    She nodded.¡±Very good.¡± Just then there was a hiss, we both knew the ship well so turned simultaneously to look at the door to the lower deck elevator open and two people walk out. Eyeing the activity around the bridge with interest.

    They spotted us and hurried over. These two were the representatives of the two non-crew groups that were currently aboard. Both from the dying world of Ent, they had bartered passage off-world with us.

    Out of the deal we had received the offer of new tech and innovations that promised to be helpful in our mission, not that we needed much in the way of persuasion we were on a mission of mercy and most likely would have helped out the people. However, the captain couldn¡¯t escape all of her pirate heart.

    ¡°Welcome to uncharted waters gentlemen.¡± Captain Lydia spoke and began explaining the situation. ¡°We have arrived in the system, designated F0-0345. We are here to resupply some things from the local asteroid belt, refuel and survey the system. After that it¡¯s really up to us what we do so we will take it as we go.. Any questions so far?¡±

    ¡°No Captain¡± The one on the left was dressed in a white uniform, must have been from the Entian military, as a colony world originally it would have only had a Navy and that would have been a space-based operation.

    The other only nodded slightly seemingly distracted by all the goings-on, on the rather complex bridge. I had pulled back from the conversation, for whatever reason most humans were generally unpleasant until they learned my history and I was not one to go around explaining myself to everyone I meet.

    Then the gawker asked, ¡°I thought there was an AI on this ship in control, why do you still need people.¡± I didn¡¯t like him right from the jump and now doubly so, his voice was annoyingly lackadaisical and he sounded like a politician. And an entitled arrogant one at that. It was a good thing that I didn¡¯t have to deal with that and let my holo dissolve.

    I was still in the bridge, of course, just not projected there. I had just finished surveying the logs for my time away and got busy launched survey probes, prepping smaller planetary craft for searching the surfaces of any of the celestials nearby that could hold something of value or even something interesting, I was also running system diagnostic on the mining and ice harvesting equipment, as well as opening navigation for setting the survey course through the system that could bring us close to all the important bits. And a few other things, that almost took no effort, for example getting entertained by the conversation still happening in the few microseconds left ago on the bridge.

    Lydia sighed ¡°Yes, well that¡¯s very interesting and happens to be completely wrong.¡± she turned on her heels and walked away then making for her command chair that interfaced with much of the ships local systems.

    ¡°Wrong, I am not sure what you mean my information comes from..¡±

    ¡°Gentlemen please if you do not have anything to report leave my bridge, entry into a new system is a busy time for any vessel and dreadnaughts doubly so..so if you wouldn¡¯t mind..¡±

    ¡°Yes Captain, please excuse my--¡± The military-one, nodded then took hold off the others arm before leading him out of the bridge while the other had a decidedly put upon expression on his face until the doors closed.

    ¡°Now, unhand me, lieutenant, we may be away from the home--¡± And the doors hissed closed again. Was it wrong to dismiss the politicians just because we had bad experiences in the past? Probably.

    However, the captain was not lying when she said that entry into a new system was a busy time and pretty dangerous as well. That diminished after the first survey but that could take a long time depending on the radius of the bow shock and how much original information we had coming in.

    Arriving in a new system was not something that happened often, the time for turnover of the complete mission could be measured in years most of the time and in other cases decades. As an immortal, that was nothing to me and in fact, many discovery missions as they were termed had been at least been instantiated by me.

    ¡°Comms. Nav. Ops. Begin the first sweep. Atlas bring defensive measures online and stay plugged into the command network and out of any redundant frames please.¡± Lydia didn¡¯t even wait until the doors were all the way closed to start giving orders to the bridge crew.

    ¡°Aye¡± ¡°Yes Ma¡¯am¡± ¡°Aye, Captain¡±

    I nodded as well, although I had the procedure down pat and indeed I and Lydia both understood that I had been actively doing just that since I had been reconnected and we had drifted into the system. Even while inside Grace¡¯s frame, such multitasking was not beyond an ASIM.

    There was a moments pause and I metaphorically had my breath as I felt the almost imperceptible shudder register as the survey probes were launched in all directions from all parts of the ship. They clustered together and remained at station keeping, around the ship until they were to be needed.

    It used to be that space-faring vessels of almost all sizes would have to slow-boat around the system and use scanning equipment that compared to my own standards was pathetically subpar. This was some of my personally designed equipment, that I had implemented during a deep dive into an engineering frame that took centuries a get out of, although admittedly it was an interesting game like setting up.

    ¡°Computer!¡± Lydia snapped at me, just as my mind was wandering off a tad too far. Damn, still couldn¡¯t shake that habit, she must have called me a few times now. ¡°Are we set up to process the incoming data, this system is pretty big so we have to do a larger pulse than usual.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Captain. I have already started to unload the standard modeling guide for new stellar systems and should have it operational in only an hour, well ahead of full charge. I will be processing the initial data stream myself before forking it off. Do you have any other tasks for me to start.¡±

    ¡°Yes, prep for an expedition with several of the heavy dropships and escort light craft.¡±

    This was not unusual there was an unwritten correlation between ship size and prep times as things got generally further apart, including crew and personal required for the missions.

    ¡°Acknowledged.¡± I started updating the command interface and distributing the new orders throughout the decks that needed to prepare for whatever we may need.

    For a time I lost myself in the lower decks command chain, organizing the teams that were to go out, and triple-checking all the equipment that needed to be deployed. The weapons and other defensive systems were engaged but traditionally given low priority, besides being at the maximum readiness that could be afforded during this heavy prep time.

    Some people petitioned to join the team. A group of civilian scientists, which I passed up the chain to the Captain for the final verdict. It was easier to let the human deal with the human element.

    I felt a ping, and knew who was there instantly as only Grace had the ability to ping me directly in that fashion, sort of like a personal ringtone.

    ¡°Yep, kiddo. What¡¯s up?¡± I was distracted, of course, that meant nothing as I forked a small portion of my mind to process the feed I was going through at that second.

    ¡°Yo, Old Man will you let me go down with the survey teams?¡± She was not in a VR and we couldn¡¯t see each other in the traditional sense, however, I could feel the puppy dog eyes in my deepest circuit.

    The mind to mind communication we shared happened at the speed of light and conveyed whole ideas and the emotions attached with them, which only a living computer is capable of processing all at once.

    ¡°Humm, why?¡± I was confused, this was a first for her. Expressing interest in things that were outside of the ship.

    I mulled it over for a few microseconds. While it was potentially dangerous, there had been no indication that this system had been active so far, and while the more detailed survey had only just got underway, I didn¡¯t find the request too unreasonable.

    ¡°We~~ll, there is this really interesting human I have found. That just applied to go to one of the planets. I want to study them a bit.¡± Her voice got quicker the more she explained and while that was not a problem for me, it left her thought a bit of a run on.

    ¡°An interesting human? Really?¡± I guess that should be fine, ¡°Okay but wait for the first survey to do anything, you have permission but keep interactions with the humans to a minimum, besides Laura. She¡¯s leading the planetary missions to go talk to her.¡±

    I felt a warm rush of gratitude and excitement as I felt her presence from the command bride vanish. I retraced my fork, glancing over the logs out of a century-old habit, that I would never break.

    When I fork my mind they were still me working, but I separated a fragment that was like an entangled particle only it was like the process was moved to my subconscious. Only, of course, it was more complex as the information was still available to me if I really needed it.

    That fork was active for a total time of almost five minutes, a relatively huge amount of system time. Interfacing with Grace in non-VR gave me the ability to talk to her without, having to slow down my personal time frame to hers.

    Hours passed like this, with little to nothing happening in my space, while the crew itself also was still pretty active compared to me. Nothing major logged in my system so I didn¡¯t need to pay any attention to meat space.

    Another ping. Different this time, an alert detailing that the ship¡¯s senor charge was full.

    I pushed my holo onto the bridge around the map, almost exactly where I had left from. I had found that humans respond much better to you, when they can actually see someone even when intellectually they know that I am everywhere on the ship at once.

    She barely acknowledged me really, which was fine as we both stared into the map screen that had a live overlay of all we knew of the system currently. It was pretty bare and I could see the meta-data marking much of the celestials with probability flags to indicated that the data was uncertain at best.

    As I was plugged into the command center and while in some cases it was true to say that I was the computer for the ship. More accurately I was only a huge portion of it and along with Grace, shared the ships cyberspace with relatively dead programs such as the mapping, which was a highly complex set of systems where the data was directly funneled through and initially processed.

    It should be said that I did have an active fork in their as well as Grace, as it was where I and other digital persons first learned and came up from. Grace being special didn¡¯t have that direct route although I did insist on teaching her. Although it must be said that as AI there was very little she was unwilling to learn.

    What¡¯s more, the sensor station was special for several other reasons, mainly that the main manufacturing of it happened by the most powerful AI and ASIM held company and held special rights within the ship manufacturing industry.

    Over a few hundred years with AIs and ASIMs hacking away at the thing, it had unproved rapidly and almost uncontrollably until the models almost always differed between two different ships if they had an AI aboard. Then an ASIM had the bright idea of hiring all the AI and ASIM that underwent basic training to a contract making them all part owners in all the modifications to all the sensor systems aboard every ship, both pushing innovation further and providing a safety net for them when training was finished and they didn¡¯t like any of the other options presented to them. What a smart guy. My musing was interrupted by the captain.

    ¡°You don¡¯t have to do that every time you know?¡± She asked distractedly.

    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± I inquired although I had a pretty good guess what she referred to.

    ¡°Pop, that damn hologram out every time something¡¯s gonna happen. We know you''re proud but it can get a little freaky sometimes ya know?¡±

    I stared at her hard into the map as the visualization of the ship¡¯s sensory activation was highlighted in the display. ¡°Freaky...freaky. Do you even want to know how long I spent working on this projection system ~captain~?¡±

    ¡°No, I can¡¯t say I do. But maybe if, I don¡¯t know, put a little chime on, when you pop in like that. It may ... ya know.. reduce how much you seem like a ghost.¡± Blunt as always.

    ¡°A-A--a ghost. Please be serious here, I like Halloween as much as the next guy but I think you take it a bit far.¡± I looked around the room, for support... and noticed everyone avoiding to look at either me or into the cameras.

    ¡°Wha--at, all of you-you traitorous--traitors.¡± This was quite upsetting.

    ¡°Oh calm down Atl, it¡¯s not that bad.¡± How cute she is trying to backtrack. ¡°Lis-sten Janey said she thought it was cool, and she wanted to be you for next Halloween.¡±

    ¡°She thought I was that scary..¡± little Janey why. Wait, wait.

    ¡°Wait, when-- when did she say that.¡± Suddenly I remembered something horrible.

    ¡°Ahh, well last year.¡± She tried to be quite but come on she lived and worked inside my body.

    ¡°But she was dressed as a white ninja with a sheet over her... don¡¯t tell me.¡±

    ¡°Ye~~ss, she wanted to be the ninja ghost friend she had, but she was only six then.¡±

    Ninja. Ghost. That hurt. It really did, especially coming from Janie. ¡°And she¡¯s only seven now...¡±

    ¡°Well you know kids they change so much so fast.. I bet..¡±

    Ding

    The visible relief tha washed over her face would have been comical any other time, that wasn¡¯t now.

    I tried to shake that off and resolve to get a chime alert set up for the bridge, for next time I pushed a holo out. The sensor pulse was beginning to return data.

    The initial return that we were watching now was the closest objects which were being picked up by the STAP, spatial tracking and positioning. A rudimentary space radar, along with more traditional if highly advanced radar.

    The ship¡¯s drive had been active had we had been burning for a little bit of time after coming out of the warp tunnel, however with sub-light drives only on a fraction of total capable thrust it was inevitable that we were still near the outermost edges of the system.

    After having access to high quality and spec equipment for most of my new life, it was practically built into me at this point that whatever I did, I did to the fullest and most complete package that I could.

    The sensory probes were equipped to detect the whole EM brand, including visible light. Specialized equipment could detect radiation and even spatial and temporal anomalies directly and via indirect methods, almost all of which were set up with at both active and passive methods.

    Our first objective was to clarify the planets and define any necessary flight zones. For example, any asteroid belts were a no go for any of our larger craft that would not be able to make it through without either assistance or using weapons to blow apart anything that could cause significant damage. There were exceptions, of course, however, even the dreadnought itself which was heavily armored and for the most part could drive through a whole belt and come out ready for a fight would never actually do that unless it was required, because for all that we have figured out and use every day space is still dangerous. And why risk it.

    At the edge of an expanding 3-dimensional sphere was the ship. On the edge, the first planets were coming into view two gas giants so far.

    Automatically two groups of probes started to accelerate toward them and the few moons detected around each one. I had seen many planets however a pair of huge gas giants in a binary pair was weird. And more than weird it defied some planetary formation theories that were rather popular.

    ¡°What the hell is that...¡± muttered Lydia.

    That was not the first weird thing we found. As more of the system came into the range we were that another pair of gas giants were orbiting further out from the star in the opposite direction.

    By this point, we were all in shock. Every system had anomalies in it. Most were mundane things set weird in a particular star''s influence and showed up as something wacky on the sensors. This, however, was new. The outer planets appeared to be in a million-year-old dance that would never end.

    The third and fourth group of probes were deployed and started to head over to the newest pair.

    The bridge crew was in shock as well, but they had jobs to do and quickly returned to work.

    ¡°Prep Ops teams and get those drop-ships mobile Atlas. And before you say anything I approve of Grace going on this mission we will probably end up needing both of you just from looking at this thing.¡± She gesticulated at the active map sphere. She turned back to the still expanding sphere.

    ¡°Aye¡± ¡°Aye, Captain.¡±

    I left my holo active and pulled back slightly, bringing up the hanger controls seeing that my earlier preparations would not go to waste. Already the bay was pressurized and all the potentially useful ships were fueled and powered.

    I sent messages to all the pilots that had active duty shifts, and as a second thought began fueling up my personal squad of drone fighters. The active-duty roaster had only multi-role and cross-trained pilots that were on board. While this was now a civilian ship, most of the crew including myself were used to preparing for combat and even if they weren¡¯t needed many would prefer to be out there rather than sitting at most ten minutes away from any potential action. Most civilians would complain about this and would say that in space you could see anything coming from kilometers away which was true. Mostly. And that mostly had cost me and every other fighter before.

    I sent a quick pop-up in front of the captain showing an open channel to the commander of the fighter craft that was about to launch.

    ¡°Commander Zerek, draw the line two clicks from the Atlas and keep that rotation up. I want five blips per, evenly spaced.¡± The captain and I secretly loved talking in jargon. We would never tell anyone of course and she didn¡¯t even realize I knew.. probably.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    ¡°Yes, Ma¡¯am. Five blips even. Two clicks out.¡± The distinctive sounds of engines whirring could be heard over Zerek¡¯s voice.

    ¡°And Commander, feel for the wind out there.¡± Oh, that was interesting and worrying at the same time.

    The commander hesitated before responding. ¡°Sails out Captain, Zerek out.¡±

    I turned my avatar to look at her, as she gazed intently into the map.

    ¡°What is it this time Lydia?¡± I activated her inner ear comm system to speak only to her.

    She spoke aloud, ¡°I am not sure Atlas. It feels wrong. Something...I don¡¯t know.¡± She tried to hide behind joviality, however ¡®feeling for the wind¡¯ had originated as an old special operations unit call out for staying at a high level of vigilance and it was something that I had both said before and had people say to me. But the Captain had never used it without the whole situation eventually in some way or another completely going to shit.

    I sighed and silently and instantly doubled the personal squad and prepping some stuff from the personal lab I kept close to the hanger.

    As a computer program, I was in disbelief every time she had been right about these things. I had trawled the logs and any records I could get my hands on from both before I had met her, to her time as a pirate and the time she spent in the special forces of various allied planetary systems.

    Nothing, that I could correlate through all the situations would stick. Nothing stuck out to me, given the information I had at the beginning. But knowing the end results the signs I saw were still incredibly small, somethings had to slip through the cracks.

    And that was why I kept a crew around. It was possible for me to operate all the ships systems, and even have slightly higher efficiency than a human crew. Unfortunately, I didn¡¯t have that gut instinct that Lydia had, even when I was human it was questionable I mean I had walked right into the lab of a mad scientist and let them experiment on me...so there was that. It was also a problem of focus which was something that most AI and ASIM lacked. The truth was that even at these speeds of processing the amount of information available even outside of GalNet hubs was so huge that it was almost impossible to make any decisions that needed a human touch. In truth, I didn¡¯t mind having humans aboard at all really and indeed mainly did transport now, so having passengers didn¡¯t bother me much either.

    I sent a quick note to Grace, telling her to get aboard the ship that whatever human she had taken an interest in was on, slated for.

    ¡°Atlas, Nav, set a course for the closest pair and begin a long orbit around both. And begin charging the sensor for another total sweep.¡± The captain turned and walked back to her chair.

    Diana, who was manning the NaviComputer turned in her seat, saluted. ¡°Yes, Captain.¡±

    I nodded and, simply plugged into the console, entering a structure that put me on the other side of the screen Diana was looking at.

    ¡°Dia I¡¯ll take the approach you, find that loop around that mess of a planetary system, I¡¯ll meet up at the end of the course correction,¡± I spoke through personal comms again, which was my main source of communication with the officer staff on the bridge.

    ¡°Yes, Admiral Atlas.¡±

    ¡°Ugg, still annoying but that small smirk gives you away young lady.¡±

    She quickly relaxed her face and schooled it as we worked.

    ¡°Sir Yes, sir.¡±

    ¡°hurpf, Better, I suppose don¡¯t try to teach Janie any of this, she¡¯ll corrupt my Grace and then we will all be in real trouble.¡±

    ¡°Sir Yes sir.¡±

    ¡°Well, I really screwed myself there didn¡¯t I.¡±

    ¡°Sir Yes sir.¡±

    ¡°Damn, humans.¡±

    ¡°Would you like to know what my son was for Halloween?¡± The check on this one.

    It didn¡¯t take long to work through the problem and we had the course mapped out and implemented in a little less than twenty minutes.

    I took control of the drive system from the navigation computer and set the course.

    ¡°Why don¡¯t you push the lever, Dia.¡± As I unplugged from the console I felt the powerful engines rumble to life and the initial jerk as G-forces exceeded what the dampeners could compensate for, before correcting themselves second later. Something must have thrown off the synchronicity ..again. Added to the ever-growing to-do.

    Almost at the same time, I unplugged and instantly plugged into the now fully operational Sensory subsystem. Time slowed and I pulled on Grace¡¯s active fork, that would ping her and let her know where to go. And a second later she arrived.

    Grace¡¯s time frame was different than mine, as she ran as close to real-time as it was possible to get, at least outside of this system. As part of a growth model for new AI, I only let her operate at normal speeds and with only a limited number of active forks while I was awake. Grace herself was nearing the end of the program and had gained and earned a lot more freedom over time. So far the program worked well and she had been with me for a while now ever since I had instantiated her some forty-five years ago. This was much longer training period that I had gone through with other AI in my more militarized past, but that was not something that I wanted for Grace and had personally seen to it that she would not start out that way. Whatever else she wanted after was up to her of course.

    ¡°Yo~ Old Man.¡± We both were in a VR recreation of the map display with them mirrored across systems.

    We had both done this many times before, in both simulations, already mapped systems, and even a couple of other uncharted waters ourselves.

    ¡°Soo~~oo what do you think those weird planets are like?¡±

    I sighed. ¡°I don¡¯t know kiddo, maybe with just one pair I would ay total one in a billion-billion fluke, but two in the same system!? Must be something that trends toward binaries in the star...but even that sounds ridiculous based on anything we know.¡±

    She was practically jumping around at this point, ¡°So something new hmmm, I wonder what I will..¡±

    ¡°¡¯ I will.¡¯ pretty confident there skipper why don¡¯t you wait until you get down there to find out.¡±

    Her eyes widened and she jumped on me with a hug.

    ¡°Oi watch it, girl, I am working here, and so are you.¡± But she took no notice of me complaining.

    ¡°Oh man, I was sure that you would have kept me on board.¡±

    ¡°Humph, well the Captain asked for you to go, so I have no choice.¡± I also thought it was fine, but I would not tell her that as I needed to maintain my rep.

    ¡°Don¡¯t get any funny ideas, the probes so far are picking up what is the textbook definition of a dead system. No activity at all, that¡¯s why I am letting you go. NO way Lydia would overrule me if I said so.¡± I was pretty sure at least.

    Instantly her avatar dissolved and appeared on the other side of the map which was still updating itself as we processed the incoming data, piecing it together like a hideously complex 4D jigsaw. The fact that it required neither of our complete attention should be enough proof to anyone that we were not remotely human, anymore at least.

    ¡°Well, I guess I can thank Aunt Lydia when I see her later then.¡± I could see her exaggerated pout across the room. I felt bad for myself as well though but didn¡¯t go back only nodding stiffly, watching that annoying grin/smirk spread across her face.

    I was losing more of these than I should. I wasn¡¯t sure that that part of my reputation was still intact anymore.

    The image of the two planets grew more and more detailed as time passed and data flowed through us to the model. The picture got stranger and stranger the more we pieces we saw. Both planets were orbiting a single moon, they appeared to be tidally locked. What made it stranger was that this was not some mysteriously super dense moon, as it was no the common center of gravity of the other moons that orbited the planets and seemingly was almost perfectly balanced between each of the two planets, making both planets also within a statistically anomalous grouping of planets with comparable mass to each other. Both were relatively the same composition as each other as well, which means that this system, according to what we know must have formed and remained in balance for its entire life so far to be in such a stable state was incredible.

    When the second binary pairs data starting coming back I only could keep it up for a bit while ignoring the similarities, until I couldn¡¯t any longer. The same. They were the same.

    I stopped working at one point and had the strangest sensation run up my non-existent spine. Silently I thought I might have just experienced those things that the Captain did. At that moment our eye met across the camera I had open in my field of view from the bridge.

    Having finished the first round of scans, the probes went to standby waiting for direction. The obvious target for the more detailed work was the central body, and with two groups amounting to twenty probes, it should get covered pretty fast.

    I allowed myself to plug back into the bridge. The Captain¡¯s mouth was already opened when she was interrupted by a cheery.

    Training

    That broke some of the tension that had built up from nowhere and dampened the mood on the bridge like throwing a blanket on a fire. And like a blanket that eventually burned too.

    A small smile now adorning her face, the captain spoke. Her words still serious no matter the mood.

    ¡°So are we sure this system is dead Atlas. Nothing?¡± That was a loaded question. And she knew it.

    ¡°Yes, yes of course. Nothing. Deader than any system I have seen Lydia. Nothing we can detect anywhere.¡± I knew as soon as I said it we had more to talk about though.

    ¡°¡¯ we can detect..¡± she raised an eyebrow. ¡°I thought that you were proud of that sensor system this is the first time I think you have said that..¡±

    ¡°Please Lydia, what you are talking about ---it¡¯s...it¡¯s I mean come on. Real Magrathians. To even talk about something like that do you even-- even..understand..¡±

    ¡°No. That¡¯s not what I am talking about Atlas. Magrathians only built planets.¡± I almost blew a circuit when she said that.

    From the cameras, I saw my image fuzzing and jumping from the projector. Emotions interfering with the projector, on the to-do, I ideally made a note.

    ¡°So should we move on?¡± I asked this was a decision the Captain had to make.

    She turned from me to stare out into the map and gripped her hands behind her back. I saw her fingers turning white outside the sight of the rest of the crew. She didn¡¯t crack her professional face and I waited with caution. Not entirely sure what I wanted here.

    On the one hand, the system was interesting and we were going to need supplies, at least something to process into fuel. That left with plenty of options with a rather large portion of my ship taken up by refining and reprocessing for fuel and basic parts. The whole ship was a mobile space station capable of operations all over any given system and was fitted out for many different jobs, where the previous had endless ammo and personal storage I had only a crew of a hundred fifty with close to three thousand passengers.

    This was additional calculus that Lydia had to judge as well, a task that I did not envy. While never being in this exact situation before it was not hard to draw parallels in the small details mixing together.

    Suddenly she straightens up cracking her next and looking out over the bridge crew from her position looking down on them. Then she nods.

    ¡°Proceed. With care. Extreme Care.¡± Everyone on the bridge has caught on by now that something could go wrong. And with that knowledge that heavy mood returns. But this crew has served with Lydia even before she came on with me and most probably knew already that Lydia doesn¡¯t back down without good reason. Most have their families on this boat as well.

    Then she flipped on the PA, ¡°This is the Captain speaking. People this is not a drill, we are at Alert Code SD... I say again alert code SD.¡±

    I send the same message and a warning of my own to Grace and start recalling the second two groups of drones not wanting to split my attention over such a wide area.

    ¡°Captain, should we continue with the system sweeps?¡± I ask, thinking about all the components that go into the massively powerful projections.

    ¡°Yes, if we are right about this then one would have been enough. Proceed Atlas.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Captain.¡±

    ¡°And Atlas, did you withdraw the probes from the second pair we have on sensors?¡±

    ¡°Yes, Captain¡± She seemed to hesitate for a second, something which was clear me. At this readiness grade, I maximized my cycles and kept open all my possibilities, I was not prepared to lose seconds to turning up my cycles and missing something.

    The charge was ready, however, we would wait until we were closer to the planet to archive a slightly higher resolution on the one body that we are currently interested in. I began tuning the sensor grid for a more focus coverage over the planetary system, using the positional data from our, predicted course.

    At the current speed we would reach the spot in just under forty minutes. I returned to the sensor system where Grace was still piecing the data together.

    She looks at me carefully studying my expression, which I do not control totally for once.

    ¡°Is she serious, Old Man?¡± I nod. ¡°But sudden death... that.. that is so done you know how many times that status has been called..¡± I didn¡¯t reply at first and then reached through the system and into the core room, secretly bypassing measured that would alert her to what I was doing and distracting her at the same time.

    She blinked once as the changes registered. ¡°You--you- switched off the limiters..but I still have a few months left you said..¡± Her voice had gotten small by the end she pushed her hands together displaying a very human nervous tick.

    ¡°Yes, you are ready now Grace. The Captain is worried and it¡¯s rubbing off on me.¡± I smiled at her weakly not wanting to hide this but at the same time not wanting to worry stifle her usually cheer, it¡¯s probably nothing. I almost prayed it was nothing, I stead I had one of my forks studying planetary theory and statistics to calm down. All the while to internal repair drones began moving slowly with an object to which Grace was greatly attached to and a few other pairs powered up and began preparing. And my security fork began manipulating video in real-time. Another couple activated my private lab and hangers.

    No one on this ship truly understood my ship as I did. This ship was full of surprises and hard-learned lessons from all over my thousands of years of experience and rolled it all into a huge package. And when it wanted to be dangerous as well.

    I returned to the bridge after some thirty minutes, leaving Grace to process the second data set, after which back and forth for a while we had pretty good images of the first set of planets. It being much much closer than the other, we had a much higher refresh rate, allowing both ora us to work at almost full load for the system without unnecessary overlap. We were unlucky that the second set so in a rather close part of its orbit to the first set and was orbiting in the other direction.

    More non-evidence, evidence.

    I watched as the ship slowly arrived in position above one of the planets. I turned to Grace and nodded at her solemnly. She couldn¡¯t hide her excited mood even through this gloomy atmosphere.

    I watched as the first group of people set off with Grace in tow. Tracking their progress on the monitors was enough and, for a time I was in constant contact with Grace and the ship carrying her before they moved out of the range where wireless control was viable.

    From the bridge, I watched to small cluster of contacts pass beyond the line that marked the ring where our fighters were patrolling. A smaller contingent of escort fighters flew in formation with the expedition team, along with the mobile command barge which housed Grace, and the small non-military ops team that was tasked with doing closer studies of the central planet.

    Suddenly the Captain spoke out, while my eyes remained locked on the small blips that denoted contact with friendly ships.

    ¡°Tactical, Status.¡± Out of the camera that was near that particular station I saw the officer on duty, Harris¡¯ eye flick to me slightly before responding, no doubt that the Captain caught that small movement as well.

    ¡°Ma¡¯am, all offensive capabilities are active and full power. The fore and bow castle lower main guns are tracking ahead of the away team. The full charge is achieved and ready to fire on your command. The consoling is registering in...automatic mode.¡±

    I hear her sigh and watch her turn to face the camera closest to her directly above the map station and stare into it. Seemingly to see if I would give anything away. I was not paying that much attention most of my focus was down the targeting systems. A small part of me was already patching the sensor systems, into the object targeting systems, just in case.

    I only allowed a small part of my mind to pay attention to the Captain who seemed to have given up trying to speak to me and was just brooding in her chair. Her single eye seemed to still be glaring at me though, through almost any camera she could find. I was sure it was my override of the system that caused her mood to foul rather than the actions itself. Unfortunately for her, we were not a true military outfit anymore and this was just a more than a casual reminder that however much we bantered she was still a guest aboard me.

    Eventually, the group passed into the atmosphere, their constant updates took on a static quality and during this crucial moment, my visual was spotty at best. The patch was completed so I activated the more focus sweep in centered on that location. The image jumped by an order of magnitude in clarity. And I saw nothing.

    I still didn¡¯t relax, I did stand down some of the shorter-range weapons nothing worse than clouding my already fading view with useless projectiles.

    The main guns were a hybrid of a rail-gun and a plasma short-range blaster that had taken a few years to get stable and actually work and then not explode after a few uses. They had a massive range, were relatively fast-moving and quick cycle time all of which were important during any combat engagement in space.

    Still nothing. The team was all and truly in the atmosphere now, which was a drawback from these guns, they lost a lot of power very quickly as atmospheres would quickly cool the plasma projectiles.

    I truly considered moving into an orbital bombardment configuration. But was interrupted by the Captain¡¯s voice.

    ¡°Okay,¡± I could tell that she had also been worried but I had done nothing to hide my nerves and she had remained cool and in control. ¡°Away team report, anything from the surface so far?¡±

    A second later the comms opened and a voice I didn¡¯t recognize was piped into the bridge.

    ¡°Negative Captain. The central planet is basically what you would expect it to be, it¡¯s a molten ball of slag, to put it mildly. We will have to adjust our flight path out and take a path up along the pole or risk getting caught to close to one of those gas giants. I would put the central planet at around .3 Earth Mass and the two giants at 20, it is hard to tell there composition something is interfering with the regular equipment.¡±

    Lydia drums are fingers along with her chair and waits a while before speaking. ¡°Okay, you are hereby directed to take the new course. Oh and tell Grace to get back here pronto, the Old Man Atlas is getting antsy.¡± Well, I wouldn¡¯t contest that.

    I turned my avatar to glare at her, ¡°This is your fault you know, you put this stupid idea in my head. You have to take some credit.¡±

    ¡°Yea and your that overloaded circuit board that was taking in so seriously just now. It was a joke, probably, clam down. Relax.¡±

    ¡°Humrpf, like you, would be relaxed in Janie was out there right now, Miss I-Am-Calm, after one little space flight.¡±

    ¡°That- that was and is completely different! Janie is only seven and you know it.¡±

    ¡°Yes, and there was no actual danger there I was in control the entire time.¡±

    The spluttered at that shattering her false calm for anger, ¡°IN CONTROL!?! You were, caught flying that damn stealth fighter inside a city, how much trouble did that get you in with the State?¡±

    ¡°Well-- I guess some but that was fine they just have too many rules that aren¡¯t tailored to me.¡±

    ¡°Oh tailored to you, you mean like the one that says you can¡¯t fly stealth fighters in civil State-space anymore.¡±

    ¡°Right, but that law is just in bad taste. I mean I was a stealth pilot trained and enlisted until the day I moved to capital ships.¡±

    ¡°Oh yes and then you took the wrong jump point, and ended up in some Stella-corps shipyard, by accident.¡±

    I nodded confused, ¡°That was by accident.¡±

    She narrowed her eyes at me, ¡°Then why did you steal that experimental ship in dry-dock.¡±

    ¡°That was not my fault, Janie wanted something memorable from our trip together and Grace took the ship.¡± I continued ignoring the Captain¡¯s continually falling face, ¡°Now that turned out alright, didn¡¯t it. We had fun, and even got away from those pirates.¡± I nodded proudly remembering the moment.

    ¡°And WHAT ABOUT THE PIRATES?!¡± Oh. Really?

    ¡°Bad ones.. relax I said I had it under control the whole time.¡± I had relaxed a lot enjoying that memory.

    Suddenly another voice interjected stuttering slightly as she did, ¡°Ther-there is a law written specifically for you, for flying stealth fighters, Sir?¡± I looked at Diana¡¯s wide-eyed expression and stuck out my chest a little in the avatar. ¡°Doesn¡¯t the state bureaucracy take years to decide things across all their space?¡±

    ¡°He was an expectation they needed to deal with immediately, not that it stopped anything of course.¡± I nodded along sagely at that. ¡°Yea, for that they had to, disallow all him from public space use of stealth technology of any size a few years later. Apparently, some people reported seeing a strange small carrier, of Unknown Design haunting the systems.¡±

    Just then the comms crackled and the mood that was uplifted for a time fell serious again. Our usual banter could only mask the worry we felt and the crew was experienced enough to know that.

    ¡°Aha, Captain we seem to be picking up an... anomaly of some kind. Long-range sensors picked it up a few moments ago we think you should take look.¡±

    Since I was on the bridge I pre-approved the ship to ship communication and allowed the telemetry to come through in the holo-projector that supported the map, it is the largest display on the ship.

    As we watched the mood turned downright stale as we saw the thing that the smaller higher resolution scanners could see.

    ¡°It seems to be a structure of some kind located at the pole shipward side of the planet. It appears to be floating about a kilometer above what we can only describe as surface, although we suspect that the geography of this place changes rapidly.¡±

    ¡°Are they getting any other readings from the structure?¡±

    ¡°No Captain. We have it on radar and can just about see it on visuals and out the window, but other than that we know nothing, we should be in true visual range soon, after adjusting for the heat this planet puts off we are working with severely limited capabilities. So far so good, but it¡¯s looking like the fighters will not last much longer in the atmosphere.¡±

    ¡°Okay send them back into space, but keep them closed when you reach the .. thing. How are the heavier ships fairing.¡±

    ¡°Fine for now, and the barge seems to be at the least risk right now. They seem to have better engine design for this environment.¡± the mission commander was frank with this assessment and didn¡¯t seem too worried about being outside of the immediate range for fighter protection.

    With the ships flying right toward it the structure quickly became the sole focus of everyone in the room.

    It was defiantly artificial, it¡¯s smooth lines and sharp angles proved that. It was a black hexagon that sharpened into two points, the one facing away from the planet was longer and more pronounced giving the impression that I was looking at some obelisk from the ancient past.

    Slowly the ships settled into a slow rotation around in while the fighter wing swung above to clear their intakes of ash and particulates that seemed to have accumulated in atmospheric intakes of the smaller craft.

    Up close the obelisk was huge, seamless and unsettling. The image showed the beams of different high power sensors scanning the surface of the structure and only returning the uneven surface. Each of the heavy dropships was scanning a different portion of the tower and none were having success.

    There was chatter on the bridge as each successive scan resulted in nothing. Being impervious to all of our equipment was a pretty big deal and if it wasn¡¯t clear that whoever made this wasn¡¯t more advanced than us at this point, it was this.

    As the scans come in I begin to take note of the irregularities in the surface of the pillar, in otherwise uniform flawless construction they stick out. With each ship scanning a different side none have the whole picture.

    Slowly I begin to piece the puzzle together and begin to split off some scans that got slightly better detail on a particular segment of one of the faces. As the whole picture becomes clear, what once were random marks becomes detailed and vary complex pattern on the surface flowing over the angles on to all sides. The pattern covers the entire surface.

    I radio into the away team, ¡°This is Atlas, can someone get me higher and lower angles from all sides, please. I wanna see the bottom and the top.¡±

    After receiving acknowledgments only a few seconds later the first couple new angles come in and I add them to the model I am building. Slowly all the detail is revealed and I have a complete recreation of the pillar, down to the centimeter. In total, the thing must be twenty-five meters tall and two wide at the widest point.

    Getting such accurate readings have taken a long time and everyone but me is feeling tried. I don¡¯t get tried, it must be getting close to around ten hours since we have entered this system, a large chunk of that has been spent here. Not once has the pillar done anything to indicate that it is active or alive or even does something. It has just stayed motionless above the planet while we buzz around.

    ¡°Okay, away teams return to Atlas and get some report ready, even if it¡¯s only everything we have already seen.¡± Lydia turns to the bridge crew, ¡°day team stand relieved, get some downtime people we are probably not gonna stop this until we are sure what''s out there.¡±

    I have never felt like I needed something to happen more in my life. Waiting is one of the worst things a living computer could be asked to do, ever. I still had mountains of data to go through though, if nothing new from the obelisk I would plug into the sensor array that had still been sending out regular sweeps and had only a few lower-level AIs assembling it from the previously written processes that Grace and I had installed.

    That took me some time as well.

    Then the night crew showed up. they were not expected to do much of anything besides keep the ship manned and indeed had no Captain to replace Lydia. So I had stepped in and sat in the chair. These were all relatively green trainees from the non-military crew who showed promise and were willing to be trained as backups on ship systems, that needed to be manned. Anything that happened that we weren¡¯t expecting would have Lydia out of bed anyway.

    The night passed slowly.

    <><>

    I spent the more relaxed ¡®night-shift¡¯ piecing together the data that came trickling in over the hours. I paid no attention to the time passing apart from when Grace would ping me for help on her work. Even with her limiters removed that allowed her to work faster, but the majority of the computing core was my domain still and she would occasionally ask for some processor cycles on the more powerful equipment.

    My work on those artifacts was slow, no new data was coming in however we had gotten a large number of high-resolution scans of the surface and had used a tidal wave of sensor sweeps continuously until the team had pulled back, and still, I was finding nothing that would indicate what this thing was. I didn¡¯t even know how it floated there. The surface was unblemished and besides the carvings on the outside, it was dead to everything we tried to see it with.

    Despite my earlier trepidation and downright fear I was still curious about this thing as much as, if not more than I was afraid of it, for now at least.

    I resisted sending my drones and taking a closer look. The model of the thing floated in my environment, and I stared at it almost willing my secrets to expose themselves to me.

    I let the physical portion of the environment dissolve and went through all the images again, using the time stamps form the senors that had the highest resolution and tried to match something to anything. Even as the thing rotated none of the readings even fluctuated.

    I lost myself deeper in the data than usual and was suddenly awaken when the bridge camera was grabbed and forcibly adjusted. When I activated it, I was looking into the massive green eye of a young girl about six or seven who. The other cameras flicked on as my awareness reentered the bridge. The girl was sitting in the executive officer¡¯s chair and had a hold on the camera that sat on the station in front of her.

    Time for some payback.

    Silently I watched Janie and then Lydia as she walked up behind her and watched smugly as Janie tried to get my attention. I let a fragment of my mind remain and then made my way to the deck below where my drones where. Slowly I activated one of the many repair-bots, ejecting form it¡¯s mount and charging station I. The bay was a couple of decks below the bridge but the spiders had an easy way of getting about the ship.

    The repair-bot slowly made it¡¯s way through the interior of the ship under my direction until it was just outside of the bridge.

    I had been making idol conversation with them until this point. Easily I turned the conversation to yesterday¡¯s important news.

    ¡°So, I learned something important yesterday. Did your mother tell you?¡±

    ¡°...that you discovered another alien civilization? ...uh I think everyone knows that Da--¡± She looks at me confused innocence practically pouring off her.

    ¡°No-no-no. Well. Yes. I suppose that as well, that¡¯s ''thing'' with the thing out there. But no. ¡° I made my voice sterner, ¡°Your mother told me that you think I am sort of ghost ninja or some such nonsense!¡± Now to set the trap.

    She looks up at me with big eyes, ¡°Yes~~?¡±

    ¡°Bah, how could you, after all, we did together and you compare me to those cretins.¡± I didn¡¯t have to work hard to make my hurt believable.

    ¡°...well...¡± She seemed to think about it for a minute. ¡°didn¡¯t you used to play pranks on people with the invisible ships...¡±

    I was taken aback, ¡°Yes but that was only a bit of fun...¡± but she interrupted.

    ¡°...and didn¡¯t we steal a ship together... for fun... from a very secret place...¡±

    ¡°Hang on a minute, that was only because you crashed the last ship into that deserted asteroid base.¡± I tried to explain, but she plowed over me.

    ¡°And aren¡¯t you dead in like twelve different places or something...¡±

    ¡°well those are technicalities... I am very much alive...¡±

    ¡°But...I can never see you.. so if aren¡¯t a ghost ninja what are you?¡± She crossed her arms and pouted as she won. But oh sweet summer child you have fallen for my trap card.

    I activated my plan.

    The doors slid open and a figure was silhouetted against the back-light. Slowly he walked in. My usual avatar was done up in my admirals uniform. If that admiral took everything about it and replaced the different pieces with more sinister counterparts. The full naval coat went down to my knees and the tactical boots looked plated and heavy. The colors ranged from red to black in large swatches with the trip done in a radiant deep purple that was only possible with the best nanodyes, or a high tech holo projection system.

    My face was mostly covered by a tricorn hat that perched on my head and looked magnificent. I took a step in the room and fog rolled in with me, Each time I took a step the rolling wave followed at my back and spread out over the deck.

    The many seemingly pointless belts that would have held firearms during the era of actual naval combat now had an intimidating set of high tech devices that... were all fancy 3D models of stuff I hadn¡¯t got around to building yet. The medals that adorned my breast were all accurate as well if a bit more morbid than the original issuing. Black painted skulls jabbed through with an arrow, another skull with stars for eyes. They were all polished and buffed to perfection. The uniform was otherwise a patchwork held together by some remarkable sewing skill, that surely could not have worked too well.

    I glided across the room, my steps smooth as silk and perfectly measured. The fog billowed and drifted into the lower seating. Everyone had stopped at my entrance and stared in awe or terror or in one particular case a bit of frustration.

    ¡°I... little girl... am the Dread Knight.¡± my voice was gravelly and while my face remained the same general age and shape in now was leaner and had scars and only one eye, of course. ¡°First of the Immortals of Terra, Last of Titans, Terror of Eleven Stars, Fury of a Hundred Worlds.¡±

    Also a little on the nose and only a tiny bit exaggerated, but mainly true.

    ¡°I was the one who stood by and let the Yee¡¯r¡¯ana pass as the Federation turned their world to a cinder, I stood above the world, Tennerforth, then I was the Quantum Continuum.¡± That got a gasp from some people, not everyone knew my history. Or well more accurately they didn¡¯t know that I was the history.

    ¡°And when the First Wave came to Earth, it was me, in a different body, in a different state, out of time and alone that stood above Earth and looked up into the Nightmare Sky, ¡° by this point I was basically in front of them and leaned into Janie.

    ¡°And do you know what I said little one...?¡± I looked into her wide...shining eyes.

    A duo of voices joined together, ¡°I guess we are meant to be alone in this universe after all.¡±

    Grace had joined the network and watched my performance, as it was her voice that heroically made my pronouncement, as well as Janie¡¯s softer and awed voice.

    My holo nodded and reached out an arm scooping up the little girl. I captured the surprised and shocked expressions on everyone¡¯s faces. What a priceless moment. I saved that into the archives.

    Janie looked up into the face of the holo her already big eyes seemingly attempting to fall out of her head. ¡°Wow your so cool...¡±

    I nodded in acceptance as if I had known this whole time.

    Then an alarm started. I picked up the internal message and was already plugging myself into the sensors as the alarm started up. I watched as I diverted power and processor cycles away from the intense hologram programming. It froze and then flickered out. The drone that I had layered the visual onto of settled into a more natural posture on four legs, with two arms supporting Janie.

    The passive sensors had picked up an anomalously reading I did a quick sweep. The area of interest was coming from one then two sources. The remote sensor probe that I had deployed near the structure, and then a group of the ship''s sensors which were focused in that direction.

    My time sense was jacked way up at this point and I was able to parse data extremely quickly.

    The probe was picking up a huge power spike. Unfortunately, we were at station-keeping a fair distance from the planet and during the night we had settled into a geosynchronous orbit about 30 thousand kilometers above the surface of the celestial. The delay was not that long, but in my jacked-up state, it was very noticeable. The first images arrived in my mind.

    Windows overplayed my view out of the cameras as I brought the probes sensor data. The heat was going crazy. The visual was what caught my attention the most though. The lava planets surface was roiling and I could see the activity building up by the second.

    I pushed the feed through to the large monitor on the bridge. I pulled back to real-time as I heard the captain call to me.

    ¡°AAA~AAAAtt~ttt~t- las, give me a report!¡±

    ¡°Somethings happening on the planet Captain, and another ship is arriving from warp.¡±

    I opened navigation and started moving the ship. The massive engines sending a nick through the ship as I began accelerating away from the estimated point of arrival.

    ¡°I am moving us out of the predicted distortion range.¡± She nodded and looked at the monitor.

    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± The captain¡¯s voice was sharp as her eyes caught something on the screen.

    I had momentarily ignored the planet in favor of maneuvering the ship. But having laid in the basic idea I forked back to the bridge.

    The structure on the planet had started glowing a bright green. I swiveled the cameras on the probe to get a better reading.

    From the bottom, the green glow started spreading slowly upward. A huge mess of radiation came with it. I could see the light following the patterns that I had examined earlier.

    ¡°ATLAS!¡±

    I metaphorically jumped. ¡°YES?! captain. I am not sure, it matches nothing that I have ever seen before and the energy signature is all over the place. Enough of those sensors in the suite are at least partially active but the readings are not telling us anything useful.¡±

    Lydia looks over to Nathan at ops. ¡°Ops your take?¡±

    ¡°Ah captain, it could be anything at this point we just don¡¯t know enough about the tech to say for sure. But the power build-up is off any known scale. I had a chance to look at the ops data from a Relic Cannon, and even that didn¡¯t show levels like this!¡±

    ¡°Are you saying its a weapon?¡±

    ¡°Well I am I am not sure--¡±

    ¡°But it could be?¡± This times she turns to me, eyebrow raised dangerously.

    ¡°I suppose it could yes--¡±

    ¡°Sound the general quarters'' alarm!¡± She whips her head around and looks at the security officer.

    ¡°Moving us out of orbit!¡± I hit the engines as we watch the screen. Gradually I begin powering us out of our orbit and turn directly away from the planet in an arc.

    The light has reached the peak of the monolith by now and the planet below has actively started to erupt. The supervolcano which is just below the structure starts to spike even higher on the kelvin scale.

    A dense green mist then starts to build around the monolith. This is way outside of my expectations, I jack up higher momentarily stunned and allow them time to slowly catch up to me as the probe backs up.

    The mist coincides with a sudden scrambling of sensors, or more accurately the sensors go nuts and I can¡¯t decipher the readings. I begin shunting the fresh data off to humans. Even if they process slower than me, the more eyes on it the better.

    ¡°Atlas, prepare another--¡± Captain starts speaking before for the third time hike up my real-time sense to respond to a new reading.

    A brilliant, overwhelming flash of emerald light whites out the drone''s sensors. The flash was more than just visible light, multiple systems failed at once, the connection dropped out after a full second of that. I instantly bring up the ship''s sensors, that are trained on the location. I look out and see a bright green pillar extending into space from the area I know the monolith to be.

    Warnings go off in my head as ¡®intuition.py¡¯ trips over data that randomly connects together in my mind. I slam on full power to the drive systems, diverting from all other stations. My mind has already plotted the trajectory and we are the path of the beam.

    The brilliant light outside is matched by an equally sudden shift in lighting in the bridge and throughout the ship as red lights snap on, and I sound the emergency klaxon. This is specifically assigned to sudden ship maneuvering. A not a common occurrence in space, even if it is drilled for.

    My mind churns through the calculations again and again. We are not going to make it. I start running new calculations.

    A fragment of my mind joins the PA system and overrides the alarms for a moment.

    ¡°BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!¡± Then the fragment rejoins my mind.

    The drone on the bridge clamps down with its mag-feet and hugs Janie closer as she screams at the sudden acceleration, or maybe it was the ominous noise.

    Then a more important warning light flashed on in my mind, as well as on the ops console. Another group of sensors this time, but much more specific. These were the warning sensors for a spatial disturbance. It was mandatory on every ship, even without their own hyper-light capability. It was a warning siren for another ship coming out of warp close to whatever the sensor was attached to.

    I check the position of the ship. Given the tonnage and momentum, all the different thrusters firing in one direction I start to rotate the ship and bring inline some of the empty and less important sections of the ship.

    The beam is traveling fast, faster than sound at least, but not at light speed. Which is the strangest thing, given that it appears to be light.

    My calculations but the approach at about two hundred and fifty thousand meters per second. That gave me roughly two minutes.

    I fork my mind again, and look at the data on the incoming spatial distortion, even with this oncoming both are potential threats. I excepted an approach vector from a planet or even out of the system, but the distortion seemed to be contained with the green beam.

    That was good only in the sense that I could keep track of both. No weapon I had fought against or used, had effected space in such away. I had long ago powered the shields although I wasn¡¯t sure how much they were worth now.

    As the beam got closer all I could do was preemptively seal that section off the ship. By now the remaining people on board had all got into the highly durable planetary development pods.

    These were largely ready to deploy colony transports that would be used as both home base and occasional shipping container to ferry supplies from Atlas to the ground colony. They were built to survive any sort of environment including sustained space flights. They were built into sections on my hull and were made from modified and redesigned sections of the hull that had been pulled out.

    It was agonizing to watch as the beam came hurtling through space without me being able to do anything more.

    Then it struck. As I had suspected the shielding simply warped with the rest of the ship. The horrendous tortured screaming of the ship, Me and my body being rent apart was inaudible as the compartments were instantly decompressed. The vibrations translated through the rest of the hull and I felt glad that I had long since been rid of the pain feedback from the ship''s systems.

    I watched the beam punch through the reinforced and armored hull and out the other side from deck camera. The beam of energy was terrifying up close, I felt a powerful chill my non-existent spine just looking at it skewer me. I had faced many weapons before, with the federations massive expansion push it was incredible the speed at which the planet under threat came up with new and inventive ways to fight back, even after so long at peace.

    The hole bored through me was not that large by itself and accounted for about a two-meter patch of the ship that was simply gone. However that wasn¡¯t the biggest problem, no that came from the damage that spread from the hole in a wave. The rather large point of failure, and the waves of spatial distortion that followed crippled the systems immediately around in a five-meter radius sphere around the origin.

    The entire hull shock, not one part free from aftershocks of the massive and almost instant warping of several tons of ship.

    What was left was an ugly hole, that bent up at the edges leaving a very obvious blemish on my otherwise well-maintained ship. I kept a drone trained on the beam even as it continued, not appearing to been even slightly disturbed that I was in its path. Repair drones flew out in swarms and coalesced around the damaged area, providing immediately support.

    My systems as well took a jolt and my mind scrambled to adjust to the loss of connectivity. Since my mind occupied all the ship at once, losing even that small fork hurt. It had been a long time since I had taken a hit this bad.

    It must have been a good minute for me to regain full control, which for an AI or ASIM was a lifetime.

    ¡°--SITREP!¡± Lydia¡¯s voice cut through the clamor on the bridge at once.

    After a moment I can respond, probably unnoticeable for the captain, who nevertheless looks to have almost gone completely red in the face.

    ¡°Outer hull breached in two places. I sealed the section but the damage was more extensive than I anticipated in some areas. They were empty sections, no human casualties I lost some bots in that area though.¡±

    ¡°Systems check.¡±

    ¡°We lost a cluster of cannons on the top deck and two missile bays.¡± She nods at this relief obvious on her face. The attack was dead, but not as bad as it could be.

    I continued with the information that I knew would be asked for next, ¡°Our shields are mostly still operable in other sections, but they were ineffective against that beam.¡± Then I noted something my feed tracking the beam which was still in visual range.

    ¡°WHO IS BLOWING HOLES IN MY SHIP?!¡± the fury which was contained in the by the concern she felt was unleashed.

    ¡°Calm down, Captain Jack, I don¡¯t think it was an attack.¡± I maintain my cool, but silently enjoy the normally flippant Captain displaying emotion and touched that she is so concerned for me...right. yes, that was a concern.

    ¡°NOT AN ATTACK!?¡± Her voice cracks a little at the end.

    ¡°Deep breath Captain.¡± I give her a moment, to collect herself. ¡°The device is not activating again, no green glow,¡± Which as an advanced piece of software that had existed for a thousand years was a sentence that I had never thought I would utter...again. Ah, sims...er Right.

    I flip on the monitor in front of her and display the image of the strange phenomena unfolding, outside.

    ¡°You remember that spatial distortion warning we got?¡± She nods, ¡°Well it was contained within that beam, take a look at this.¡±

    the picture on the screen is captivating. The appears to hit something in the middle of space and bends in all direction back in on itself. A spherical shape forming, as I bring the playback in sync with real-time.

    I am already moving away from the strangeness.

    ¡°What is it?¡± Her voice is low and simmering with anger, that hasn¡¯t quite dissipated.

    ¡°I...I think it¡¯s a wormhole. We had tried something similar but it proved impossible...¡± my voice trailed off as the distortion of space-time radiated that same odd green light.

    ¡°Well it was impossible, looks like someone beat you to it.¡± She smirked a little at me.

    ¡°hummm..¡± I hummed thoughtfully, that always seemed to put off the humans.

    ¡°Well, it¡¯s pretty. Now get us the he--¡± She was interrupted when the wormhole rippled violently, and something broke through the thin film of light that surrounded it. Something had come through.

    We sat maybe a thousand kilometers from the object. I trained my telescopic feed on it and zoomed in, already moving more optical telescopes and sensor dishes around to view the wormhole and the new object.

    The monitor focused and I was already looking at the image. But was in the middle of running diagnostics and checking for something wrong with the data.

    Janie tilted her head and turned to her mom, ¡°Uhh...mommy, why is that man standing in space?¡±

 Chapter 1 - Desolate -

    I had seen a lot of different things in my years. This was the most surreal.

    Indeed a humanoid looking figure had just stepped out through the rift in space. That wasn¡¯t ware the strangeness ended of course. No.

    They had silver armor that gleams in the light from the far off star. Metal plates along his extremities made of shiny metal. He wore a loose robe beneath that and held some type of weapon on his shoulder.

    And that was it.

    He had long hair that tied up in the back. It hung down strangely as if pulled by gravity where now existed. He casually strolled into space like it was a garden path in front of his home.

    For a time no one spoke and only stared dumbfounded at the screen displaying the bizarre image. This was not what anyone was expecting, obliviously.

    I powered through space, now that everything had seemingly cooled down for the moment I started into an orbit around the wormhole.

    The Captain recovered and, looked up at my camera confusion and a little fear evident on her face.

    The implications are turning over a lot of what I thought I knew, this, of course, precludes the possibility of some tech involved that I just can''t detect which is less impressive but also something to at least be interested in.

    The crew on the bridge are all still slack-jawed.

    BREEEEEEEEEEHHHREP

    Lydia flicked on the panic siren to get everyone''s attention.

    "Man your stations, Ops get a sensor package ready now I want a full sweep of the contact."

    I continued to study the incoming data with a minute precision as I tried to process what was happening in front of me. I had seen many unusual things but as I studied the live image of the man, as he, in turn, studied the surroundings with seeming indifference.

    Many reasons for what was happening occurred to me, but as easily as they came I discarded them for one reason or another. From this distance, it was easy to see the figure but his features were indistinct and the resolution wasn''t great enough to pick out much detail. When one of the sensors arrived we would be able to resolve a much cleaner image if at a slightly longer delay.

    "Patrol, get closer to that contact at position Alpha." saying this Lydia flicked a finger over the command controls and a grid appeared that gave relative positions between us and the unknown.

    "Any... any hails? Comms..." I asked, it felt weird but the context was generally correct.

    "No, sir! Shall I take the initiative?"

    I looked to Lydia and shrugged, "There is an almost perfectly zero percent chance that whoever that is, or whatever it is, speaks our language."

    I watched the tactical display and the cameras that were coming around on the section of space where the contact had appeared, slowly a composite image was being built giving us a pretty decent view of the scene.

    The patrol fighters were visible on both displays. Having been the furthest possible distance away from the beam and still maintain close enough to engage any help that the dreadnaught may have needed. Now they sped toward the new contact form to different directions the third group hanging back just in case.

    As the fighters got closer and finally noticed that the person looked relatively human, except that he was around thirteen feet tall and well proportioned, anything else couldn''t be made out well enough to say for sure.

    He didn''t appear to be doing more than walking out of the gate and seemed to be standing on space as if were a solid surface, for that matter, I am not even sure how he was walking as that required some gravity to be present. And the planet was on the other perpendicular to the path he was taking.

    The probes that were coming, had been positioned further out from our position as we had lost contact entirely with the ones that were on the surface.

    They would take some few minuted until they got close enough to give us any new information I allowed my mind to fork again and brought up the ship''s sensor array and saw that the charge was some 45% complete. We must have taken more damage to the power relays than I had suspected.

    The fighters were the first to get within the wormhole had formed some 50 km from me, and seemed relatively stable for the moment, what I wouldn''t give to study it again and that artifact on the planet as well.

    The 2 squads of five fighters were still quite a distance away. I focused on the image of the being and watched him slowly turning his head from side to side. He could already see them...

    Then a report came in from Zac.

    "Command Combined Squad is reporting a disturbing ....ehhh...feeling."

    I blinked. "Repeat Captain, they have a feeling..."

    "Yes, sir we all have the same feeling... I am getting it as well it... it..."

    Just then I saw the figure move. His arm shot out holding the weapon and brought it down in a clean arc. As I was in a compressed state I could see the blade shimmer with intense light just before he completed his swing and saw the slash of energy that appeared from the blade and blazed across space.

    "GO EVASIVE!" I screamed into the channel.

    I watched as the energy rippled through space and towards the closer group of fighters. I started to launch my fighters and bring weapons to the active-ready state. I took the initiative to hit the alarm again and bring everyone to combat-alert readiness. The insistent alarm started up again. That appeared to similar to the energy beam that had punched a hole right through me.

    That was when I felt it as well as a sudden onrush of fear and the overwhelming knowledge of the danger that lurked just outside of my ship.

    The pilots I could understand them being afraid of the unknown however unlikely that was at this point and I could even see that happening to all of them at once. But not me.

    I have emotions of course and have experienced much. But not in the darkest day of battle was there ever a sensation like this. The fear was so absolute that I felt my mind reeling and struggling to regain control of myself. My heart was being ripped out of me and crushed before me...wait...what heart.

    I jolted out of the feeling. This was not real. My mind shuddered as I resisted the alien feelings assaulting my mind. Holy shit, a small part of my mind actively saw the being, it must be him...but how is he affecting me.

    My systems adapted to the new sensation, externally I couldn''t tell what was happening as I fought the sensation with my code base, burying the feeling into the biomorphic processes that made up the core of my being. I bad solution really, but it was only real defense I had come up within the moment and had to get my mind back.

    It had taken me maybe ten seconds to overcome the feeling. My camera and view of the world switched back on and I saw the whole room looking around at the speakers nervously. Even the ever cool-headed Lydia seemed to have gone another shock.

    "At-Atlas. Are you okay?" She asks tentatively. I am getting the feeling that I missed something.

    "Yep, Captain what''s up?" I check the situation outside and see that the fighters have all pulled back some and scrambled out of the way of that strange blast.

    Lydia looks at the camera at the ceiling in front of her and I can clearly see concern written on her face.

    "You were screaming, Atlas." Oh shit wow not good. "Some form of disruption Captain, I overcame it." She nods and moves back to giving orders. I would have liked a few moments to collect my self but right at that moment, the being lunches another swing of energy, this time right across space at me.

    I slow right down and analyze the trajectory. The first wave was easily dodged by unsuspecting fighters, so maybe he thinks that I am an easier target? Well, he is not wrong.

    I watch the first energy wave, it seems to have expanded during travel, but still going strong.

    The bridge goes still when we see the attack. Everyone here can tell that we are the target

    At that same moment, I open fire as well. The forest of weapons on the forecastle light up as the blue flashes of plasma rounds burn through space.

    "FIGHTERS ENGAGE!" Lydia as always has been under fire before, and even with this strange situation has done better than me in keeping together.

    "Roger." Zac seems to have overcome the fear as well and the fighters swing around as one to target the contact.

    My group of combat drone fighters is on the way as well. Without any direct instructions, I have tactical command of the weapons. I aim a couple of turret grouping for the next volley at the incoming energy wave, hoping to do... something. What I am not sure, disrupted, destroy its contagion I am not sure. The rest I let a small fork aim at where the contact is.

    "Woah! Contact moving, he''s a fast fucker too." One of the pilots says into the open channel.

    "Oi, watch it Jeanie''s on the bridge." I snap down the line as I keep my attention split between five or so tasks.

    That being said I don''t really disagree with him, the camera tracks him pretty well, but the sucker is fast, he only catches the edge of the first wave of plasma fire.

    As he if flying through space now toward that same group of fighters he attacked before. I track the cannons up and fire there before quitting, not wanting to engage with the fighters so close.

    The plasma rounds seem to have some effect on the wave of energy. It seems to grow weaker and less coordinated around the points where I can actually make contact with it.

    The fighters seem to be having a rough time as the being has now slashed out multiple times with his weapon toward then. They spread out enough to get better engagement range. At that distance, while he is closing fast they can still dodge them beams.

    "Focus people. Stay sharp." Zac says over the command channel. He is int the squad that is slightly further out than the one engaged and seems to be trying to push his fighter as hard as it can go.

    The beam reaches my hull, and I feel the impact through the shield. The membrane of tightly contained energy fluctuated heavily, but no damage is translated through to the ship.

    Then the alien slashes down and I watch the intense beam bisect a fighter, cleaving the across the fighter. The remaining engines lose control immediately and spiral out and away from the fighter.

    "SHIT! Hammer is gone! Breach in the canopy." The only slightly panicked voice of the hit pilot come over the channel I spare a second to divert one of my drones to intercept, for sake of being sure, but I don''t hold out much hope for the unfortunate soul.

    The battle is fully on in front of me now. The surreal nature finally breaking away from the crew and fighter pilots as one of their own is killed. I can almost feel the frost from there hearts. Unfortunately, the crew of the Atlas is powerless right now and we can''t do anything for the small battle being fought outside.

    I route the two squads comms together and into the bridge, breaking the silence. The chatter of combat speak is heard by all. I have pulled away just then as the probe pulls into range of the fight.

    "Hit! direct hit, from behind."

    "He''s still moving though."

    I personally confirmed as well just to make sure. One fighter had in-fact hit the target, from the other squad as some improbable range and velocity. But it seemed it shrug off the round that could have gone through any starfighter in space. My tension mounted.

    "Shit, the beams didn''t look this fast before."

    "Projectiles minimal inpact!"

    *Snicker* "Are you sure you hit him Rainbow."

    "Confirming, projectiles minimal impact. Fighters rotate weapon types until we get something."

    "Is that ice--"

    "WHAT. BEHIND YOU GLIMMER."

    "Fuck! Evasive pattern seven."

    "How did he get there, I didn''t see him moving? He just appeared!"

    The probe sensors pulsed on full power all at once. I waited for the interminable microseconds as the data started coming in and getting a better picture of the situation.

    "Woah, he felt that. Micro-rail rounds."

    "Plasma did something as well."

    "Did you see that he felt that I am sure. You got a good hit in."

    "Good now get some more." Zac''s cold voice cut through the stress reliving banter.

    Lydia suddenly looked up. At me and interrupted the comms channel. "Everyone prepare for a volley. Captain, light that target up and put some paint on it. Then get out of the dread''s firing angle."

    "Yes, Ma''am." He switched to the squad channel. "All callsigns put paint on that contact. Use the auto-tracking and prepare to pull out the firing line for the heavy support. "On my mark."

    I used the probes again, this time on a cycle of two per so that I always had active sensor data coming in. Not that it told me much. The energy was detectable as white noise and seemed to distort the image around it. The visual data was better and every minute the probes drew closer to the target.

    Something nagged at me then. A half-formed thought. I held the ships active sensor pulse. At this point, I couldn''t afford to fork my mind again as the target was moving fast and I was still manning some of the guns, the best I could do was shunt it off to the humans. The half-formed question, posing itself as just side by side video image for them to review.

    I was bringing the nose around to face the fight then. All the weapons were armed and ready to fire. My metaphorical fingers twitched as my sole focus was on the fight.

    "Mark." The command came, and my tactical display flashed as the high-intensity lasers focused on the enemy. Some missed but most were on target. These weren''t damaging lasers of course, but highly visible and on a specific frequency that the ship''s targeting computer, which was me right now, could pick it up and use that to hit faster moving targets.

    I fired. The projected lines for the beams being relayed to the fighter squadron, who would have scant moments to move out of the way. But they were all aware so none had stuck around in the path of these shots. But they also had to stay engaged to the target as the beams took the moments required for them to cross space.

    I had twenty turrets that were the secondary arms to this ship which were what I had used first. But I also had the main weapons targeting this time as well. The prolonged and bright flare was only visible to me as the monitors in the bridge layers shade over them.

    I still hadn''t heard back from the humans who were looking into that video but I decided to take a risk and overwrote the safety measures on the probes and powered a continuous pulse for a few seconds.

    I saw it then. As the beams converged he paused midair and seemed to shake. The sensor pulse was doing something to him. Then the beams arrived.

    Unfortunately, he seemed to overcome whatever it was relatively quick and managed to avoid the first few main blasts. That opened him up to hits from many of the smaller plasma rounds. The fire continued from the fighters as well.

    Then a massive energy lance made contact as well.

    "Positive main weapon hit! Nice Shot!" Zac sounded gleeful. Apart from Hammer, a few more fighters had dropped of tactical, either crippled or dead. I focused on living for now and getting through this.

    The bridge crew held their collective breath as the visuals came back. The being seemed to be still alive. He wasn''t his usual casually self through. He seemed to be looking around wildly. And I would be pissed too I suppose if someone blew off my leg.

    For me, that wasn''t ideal. His skin was blackened and cracked in places attesting to both the formidable might of his defense and the power of my weapons. The fighters dove back in hoping to finish him off.

    He simply stood in the middle of space now. I saw his eyes come into focus for the first time. He was looking directly at the Atlas. I began diverting more power to weapons.

    "Take this shit down!"

    "For Hammer."

    """for hammer."""

    The being ignored the incoming fire and raised his weapon. I am not sure what happened next. There was a flash from the blade again however it was different this time.

    "What the ship. I dead in space."

    "It just got really cold in here, control are actually freezing up."

    I saw a number of fighters simply flash off the map as their transponders went dead. My mind froze as well. But a different kind brought on by my inability to understand. My mind ran through the visual thousands of times ina second and tried to make sense but couldn''t.

    "Atlas what just happened!" Lydia this time. A note of fear only evident to me in her voice.

    "I am not sure. Nothing I understand now. But all our remaining fighters are out of action."

    "Skull Squad, move into defensive formation."

    "He''s coming this way." A tactical officer yelled out.

    My turrets flashed on again, the lances firing as well, all with limited synchronicity. The danger was much worse than I had originally thought. I seemed to have pissed it off though.

    Parts of my mind aimed the large cannons on the ship and I watched in slow motion as the beams flew out. I had been under the impression that we could take one being. But he was too unknown.

    I began making a plan as the data accrued in my mind. I saw in slow time as the weapon moved in a blur in front of him, even in this slow preception the cameras were not able to keep up.

    I had no idea what he was doing but whatever plasma blasts made it close enough that he couldn''t dodge were swept away by the blade. Then he tried that with a plasma lance, something must have gone wrong this time as all the energy was released and enveloped the figure.

    I was hopeful that he had killed himself. But it was not meant to be. He appeared from the flare of light and was only stopped for a minute. I was glad to see that his hair was a mess and those pants were frayed a little at the edges. That was horrifying for a lot of reasons.

    My drone squad caught up to him then. These drones generally were better than the fighters but were semi-autonomous and couldn''t think on the fly. I started routing power to the dish that sent the signal as well. The heavier power draws now putting a larger strain on the generators.

    I didn''t engage, and simply let their matte black paint let them fade into the background. I had my plan then and started to put in motion. It was an almost stupidly insane plan that was what I figured was our best chance to get out of this right now. Well mostly everyone''s best chance.

    My mind still raced in slow motion and as I tried to think of all the possible solutions. But nothing better came to me. We couldn''t just gun him down like i thought, whatever shielding device he had on him was stupidly powerful. It must be a true energy shielding. Something I had yet to crack.

    I took a look around the bridge and steeled myself.

    "--ron, use the Drone wing as cover to get--" I interrupted Lydia then, having already thought through that and couldn''t get around the issue that the closer he got the less effective the plasma lances would be.

    "Lydia prepare to evacuate. Get everyone into the dropships on the bottom levels."

    She snapped up to look at my camera, the anger in her eyes at being interrupted quickly dying when she heard my voice.

    "XO, what are you doing I am in command on this ship!"

    "Not anymore kiddo." I pulled on the bridge computers breaking the connections to monitors and displays routing it all to me. Taking control was relatively easy for me, humans were here for decoration really and company.

    "Everyone, prepare to abandon ship. Colony-ships one through four are now open."

    "ATLAS! What are you doing!?"

    "I have a plan, Lydia, now come on we need to get every out now." I sent out the first stage of my plan. Which was the riskiest part? The opening gambit.

    The drones the experimental and had a lot of non-combat related capability to them. Normally that wouldn''t be what I relied on in this situation, but after seeing all that I wasn''t sure that I entirely trusted my ability to fight the alien with limited fighter support. The given how quickly that last group fell I wasn''t sure it would make much difference either way.

    These few drones that positioned silently around the just recovered person flicked on their projectors. The image from earlier started playing then. The damned Admiral appearing from suddenly-appearing-mist like before, standing on space like the enemy. Facing him directly as it were.

    I had a camera trained on the entity now as the stealth drones around danced on the edge of oblivion.

    And as soon as he saw the other me. Appear he seemed to actually lower his guard a notch, releasing the swing he was about to make. I wasn''t sure why that was but had counted on this as a ploy to buy time.

    The lower hangers that connected to the colony ships were right by where the humans were staying. My mind watched from the cameras with an eighth of my focus as they seemed to get themselves together. Thankfully, although also a little sadly, these people were not tourists or guests but escaping refugees so they had been somewhat used to carrying little and moving fast. And those that didn''t were soon carried along by the tide.

    Grace''s core was still plugged into the science barge from yesterday. Those ships would also be essential. As they could take excess crew that couldn''t fit into the colony ships.

    "Bridge crew evc stations." I pushed through the speakers but didn''t hear it through time preception compression. The projection wasn''t long and I wasn''t confident that it would hold attention for long.

    The evacuation was a contingency but I had enough of a feeling that I was going to need to use it, that I didn''t even mention it to Lydia. There was no point really, and when it came down to it I didn¡¯t trust them to react like how I would in the situation.

    It had been awhile since I had acted on feelings, it was just another surreal turn in an already completely crazy day. So much so that I didn¡¯t relize what I had done until it was over.

    The projection was halfway through the routine and continued to play. I wasn¡¯t paying attention to it right now, there was to much to get ready. The main guns began powering in sync now and I started spinning up the jump drive.

    ¡°What are you doing Dad?¡± Grace¡¯s avatar popped into my mind and a small interfacing environment instantiated between us. This was again another fragment of me that would talk to Grace.

    ¡°Hmm..¡± I muttered distractedly, too many cycles being consumed in calculations and keeping an eye on the figure that was still just floating in space facing the performance put on by the hologram. Another watching the boarding of the ships which was going blessedly smoothly.

    It was also to do with the fact that if I told her all the plans she might try to...help. And while that was not something I would normaly discourage that wormhole was too unknown, too dangerous, if just one person can take out a whole squad of fighters then what would more do.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    ¡°Why are you powering the, hyper light systems? Are we running away?¡±

    I sighed. ¡°No, Honey we¡¯re not running but this is just a contingency. Can you help me keep an eye on the Humans, tell me when they all have gotten aboard a craft.¡±

    I was about to say more but just then I saw the face of the alien contort and he slashed outwards with the blade again forming that energy wave attack that had been so devastating before.

    The wave ripped through the image, shattering the display and the trailing edge catching some of the cameras. The illusion was broken. He unleashed another ice attack the four drones that held the projectors, falling from my control. I could see the stealth drones now outlined in frost even with the anti-freezing armor layers.

    At the same time I had finally allowed the other four to act. I threw the kitchen skin at him this time. Lasers, missiles, tow cables, experimental warheads whatever I was working on in the weapons area I threw. I didn¡¯t expect much out of it and indeed and a few moments later the figure reappeared.

    That was fine I unleashed my theory on him. The massively powerful sensor suit on the dread had been over charged and I focused it right on top of him. I had noticed that the first time the probes went off he had been effected. I had no idea how, or what it was that was effecting him so, and with no time to experiment I had no choice but to use everything and hope for the best.

    I put up a visualization for the wave of energy, and held my metaphorical breath as it traveled across space to the now much closer target.

    At the same time I was firing the plasma cannons on the deck trying to mitigate as much of the slashing energy attack as I could before it got to me. This time the beam was much faster and seemed slightly more powerful, if the liht given off was any indication.

    I flipped over to the bridge cameras and saw that most of the people were filing towards the officer escape pods. All except Lydia, who was sitting nonchalantly in the Captain¡¯s chair with a leg thrown over the side. And she was glaring up at the camera.

    ¡°What are you still doing here Lydia? GET GOING.¡±

    I saw the effects of my sensor pulse clearly. The target grabbed his head and floated there, trying to scream into a vacuum,

    She just narrowed her eyes further. Before speaking slowly.

    ¡°What¡¯s going on Atlas? Do you really think the situation has already developed to the point of evacuation?¡±

    I pulled the trigger on the plasma lances, The four massive weapons that could target him brightened the dark of space, briefly overwhelming all other sources of light in this corner of space. I switched to the probes camera as my main reference as the three dimensional tactical map in my mind was briefly whited out.

    I am unable to dissipate much of the energy wave attack as it smashes into the prow. The shield is useless and I can feel the hull tearing apart under the strange attack. The hull screams out as the metal is rent apart and the forest of weapons in that area is ripped off.

    A huge black scar is all that left.

    That more than anything I said I think plays a part in convincing Lydia to heed my words. The damage is displayed on the monitors.

    I watch as the lances flash out. One missed completely. Two score only glancing blows. But even that causes major damage to the areas they pass. And the last one skewered him right in the chest. Flesh burns away, evaporating in the intense heat and raw energetic potential of the shots.

    I am once gain extremely terrified that my biggest and best weapons only do this much damage, the holes that are about six inches across on this guy, would have been enough to cripple star ships, comparable to my own size. Only the core physical projectile seems to have that effect plasma layers compacted around it, damage his skin to the point of charring it off, but that¡¯s all.

    ¡°Yes and no. It¡¯s just a precaution really, you won¡¯t have to launch, probably.¡± I moved the drone the was now holding a silent Janie to her and handed the little girl off to her mother. ¡°Get in that pod now. It¡¯s just for safety sake really.¡±

    She sighs and takes Janie before moving off to the side where the escape pod is. I deploy two more drones and set programming for if my ship goes offline and set a default to guard he pods.

    I can see her hesitancy. This is not the first combat we have been in together. And I know that she isn¡¯t one to run and normally would have stayed on the bridge until we were dust or he was. But Janie was aboard and this was the first time that I was using my full authority over the ship to replace all humans. And I had never shown his much fear before. I think that was another part. One that I was reluctant to think about but true none the less.

    ¡°Atlas... don¡¯t do anything stupid okay.¡±

    ¡°Get your cliche outta here and ON THE POD!¡± I mentally groaned knowing that on some level my plan was totally and completely stupid. Hopefully I wouldn¡¯t need it but... at this point she had jinxed me and I continued turning the ship.

    The four drones left in my command had been reduced to three, somewhere along the line I must have lost one, but I didn¡¯t know how. That was troubling, for me losing track of things was possible, but the thresh hold that was required for my mind to not be able to keep up was truly not something I had thought I would touch for a time yet.

    And truthfully I wasn¡¯t near my limit. Fighting one guy, piloting my massive self and everything else going on was intense , but only in short bursts and the forks were helping take the bulk of the pressure before I ot around to switching tasks.

    The cameras on the closest drones came back online and I looked out of them to see that the being was still alive.

    ¡°Holy Shit. He survived that!?¡± Lydia looked on just as horror stricken as me.

    ¡°GO!¡± I spared a moment to make sure as she nodded slowly then entered the pod.

    ¡°Everyone¡¯s boarded up Old Man.¡± Grace is cheery voice had a note of tension that I didn¡¯t begrudge her or anyone really, I was quite apprehensive as well at this point. I sighed with relief and saw the last of the passengers embarking as well.

    ¡°All independent vessels prepare for separation and departure.¡± I got the expected acknowledgments, without the usual banter. The situation had obviously got to the rest of the people aboard.

    ¡°All fighter wings prepare for immediate take-off.¡± This was the case with a situation like this, all the fighters were there own self-contained escape pod and there piolts would use them as such, as well as doubling down to defend the other more defenseless pods, and vessels.

    There were three inactive squads that had been sitting ready when the contact had first appeared, however the situation devolved to quickly to use them, and then they were made ineffective anyway.

    Streams of fighters left throught the landing bays on either side of my hull. I had pushed a course fighter plan to them as well as the rest of the other ships leaving as to avoid the notice of the being that still stood above me.

    I had set those three--, no now two remaining drones to harass him to buy more time. The continuous plasma lances adding to the chaos, but now that the disruption from the scan had seemingly worn its course they were less likely to hit and severed as more of an obstacle course.

    Another scan pulse was taking a while to charge, due to the damage, and the smaller cannons on the deck proved less effective than before. Some even splashing visibly against a energy field around him.

    I was almost entirely in control of the remaining two drones now and flew in tightly controlled circles around each other using the smaller weapons to try and deplete whatever power source he was using on the shield.

    The robes kept up their disruption as well, well outside the known range for that ice thing he did. Occasionally I would glance with a lance as well. The first time this happened I saw him get a little slower.

    Ice wave.

    I felt the two remaining drones actually shatter apart, not just get a little frozen round the edge this time.

    I felt a wave of fear again as the creatures head snapped in my direction. It was quickly repressed as well.

    Damn. I over charged the weapon and diverted all remaining power to the sensors to get the charge up. I opened fire as he flew directly across space toward my ship.

    ¡°Everyone out!¡± I sad that over the public comms and PA system. It wasn¡¯t an actual choice they had of course, as I deployed all the evac craft remotely. Thy all had a downward trajectory and were pushed outside of me.

    The initial burst of thrust would carry many for a hundred km in that particular direction.

    Waves of energy intercepted my massed fire as the space between us rapidly shruck the light show was pretty and intense. I could feel my overpowered state causing damage to my systems. It was not something that I could fix on the fly, unfortunately so I grit my teeth and continued on.

    New slashes were opened up all across the hull, each successive one cutting deeper into the surface as the he got closer and closer the amount of energy that I was able to distrupt getting less and less.

    I started using a few shots from the lances as well. Thy completely shattered the energy slashes. I was taking a lot of damage now. Losing more and more weapons on the surface creating space for more energy slashes to do more damage and take away more turrets. It was a vicious cycle.

    That wasn¡¯t to say that the fight was completely one sided, as I finally started to notice tell tale signs of energy drain occurring on the... I wasn¡¯t sure what to call it anymore. Was it an android, that would explain some things. But his facial expressions said otherwise. Or at least it was an android so advanced that little details like that were no object to build for.

    Soon, even in the time compressed state he was on top on me. I had only a couple of plasma cannons left but they couldn¡¯t hit him from this angle. The cameras on the hull painted a picture on an angry person. Madly stomping about. He stood on the hull seemingly effortlessly, even as the ship accelerated in the opposite direction.

    My vague hope that he would splat on the hull like a bug on a truck window was dashed as quickly as it arrived. I started activating drones. The internal ones this time. Maintenance and defense both. I didn¡¯t think that they were his match either but that was not something I wanted to accept without even trying. Besides I had a few ideas that could possibly do something.

    I had time as well as he was intent on destroying those big guns that had caused him a lot of trouble. The holes that had been punched through him as well as the missing leg, might have done nothing to slow him down, but they did help piss him off apparently.

    As they were now pretty useless against this foe, I was okay with him wasting time like that as I prepared. I suddenly felt pressure on the shield, in an area around the target the visible barrier, that could hardly be called a shield at this point seemed to under stress. In the center of the phenomenon was the contact of course. Because of course he was.

    My more heavily armed and also experimental drones were moving to protect my core the others spread out. He moved quickly across the hull, I wasn¡¯t able to see it before due to the distance, but he was stupidly fast. Entirely disappearing at some points only to show up again next to a lance and dice it to bits.

    I did my best to follow him around in the decks below with the drones.

    I had this moment to regret never finishing my own escape vessel. But it was too late for that now. I was also glad that in their moment of fear I had taken the opportunity to not mention this to anyone. I was sure Grace figured it out by now. And she was still connected to the network of the ship, over a growing delay.

    She knew of course that I couldn¡¯t leave the ship with only tat short amont of prep time. And having not thought to do any precautions like that it was likely that I would be in for a dual. My tactical now had a cloud of smaller ships leaving from beneath me.

    Then the enemy was done with all the lances he could find. There were more on the bottom side of course but, those had never fired on him, and I was sure he hadn¡¯t ot a good look at the underside of the ship or my plan would be in a bit of trouble.

    He looked around for a moment and seemed to focus on something before. Taking off across the ship. I had no idea what he was going for now, but I dilegently moved my drones. New plans formed in my mind as the tall figure dashed, then stopped on a dime.

    Holy shit. He was right above me. How did he know.

    He slashed down twice. craving an opening into my ship. I blanked all monitors already and my mind retreated from the bridge.

    My core room was located directly in the heart of the ship. He fell in. The camera picked him up opening more rents in the decks going straight down. Until he got to the last layer that is. This material was different, than the rest of the ship it was much much sturdier and was built of one piece of high compressed cyrstialine metal that I had found on one the planets I had explored before. I was at least a little confident that he would not be able to simple cut his way through into here.

    My heavy and super heavy combat drones were arrayed around me like a small army. I was the brain and my mind slowed everything down to a crawl. Finally some of the drones on the upper levels made it to the hole that was cut into the floor. I let them fall stright through and on top of the intruder.

    Even the mainiance drone had a small cutting laser, it was relaivly high powered to cut through the hull, if repairs were needed. It couldn¡¯t sustain the beam long though.

    The first group of three fell, there four legs catching the walls in places a sliding down, in a more controlled manner than I had previously hoped for. One the floor right above mine where he was currently other drones were converging from the sides.

    I took control of the closet falling one. He didn¡¯t seem to realize that there were things inside here. Or he just didn¡¯t care. I landed the drone on his shoulder, on the right opposite his missing leg and tried to throw him off balance.

    I think it was surprise more than anything else that allowed me do just that. I had seen his strength alread so I knew that this drone was no match for him. But I wasn¡¯t going to let it just get smashed for nothing. Overriding every safety and software imposed limits I pushed all the avilailbe power to the laser at once. I knew that this was going to leave the drone without power and most likely a burnt-out emitter but that was fine.

    All the rest were similarly set-up for this kamikaze run. And being a generally over engineering kind of guy, the laser that this thing would out put would be in the giga-watt range. I aimed at his face of course. Getting my first up close look at the enemy, for a brief moment, before the flash and my vision moved to the next closest drone.

    I found him turning up, so I just used the lasers fully aware that as soon as he saw these thing they were lost to me. I was not sure if I was doing any damage yet, but nothing would stop me from making the attempt at least.

    There were more combat oriented drone on this floor as well. Two heavier types that had energy blades for hands and mini-plasma cannons. They were each coming down the hall on opposite sides of the intruder accompanied by a swarm of smaller drone types. I fed my mind into each and took control.

    I opened fire and caught him flat foot still looking up for more drones coming from above. I was surprised how I could ¡®sneak¡¯ up on this creature so easily. I would have thought that with his abilities I would be detected easily, but perhaps not.

    I didn¡¯t stand on ceremony and took what I could get. The sintilating blue ines streaked past each other. The first few that connected seemed to fizzle out against the shield until, they didn¡¯t!

    The blasts actually started creating hole in him. But he reacted fast and jumped, twisting in mid air. Suddenly he was gone from my sight. But he wasn¡¯t, he was right there. Now behind one of the teams. My mind slowed even further, already I saw him dashing forward toward the heavy drone. The other I set into a dead sprint, for going shooting now that my target was obstructed. I set in the course and simple let it follow.

    The one that was in danger was the one I focused on for now. My mind was moving at the limit of my compression. Of course that didn¡¯t mean that the drone body could keep up and my commands were ahead of what ever action that the drone was in. The close range energy blade, weren¡¯t actually designed as such. They were an accident when I was messing around with containment for the plasma lances one day. Since then I had incorporated it into all the drones that had these mini lances as well. They weren¡¯t as powerful as the full size ones obviously, but I was hoping that the modified version would make up for any lack in the small design.

    Again I completely disregarded the safeties at this point and let the full possibility of the blade come forth. He was cutting through the smaller drones like they weren¡¯t there, but I still held back.

    Then he crossed the line and I flung the drone forward. I could see this eyes widen in surprise. It was an interesting note that I took just before the clash.

    Timing was everything for the surprise attack. I held it until the very tip of the blade projection could touch him then both of them blazed to life.

    In a split second the air boiled as the super heated poorly contained plasma flashed out. One aimed for this head and the other for the open hole in this chest.

    his reaction time was incredible, the first blade was met with a blade of his won from his long-handled weapon. That one aimed for this fae was actually delected somehow.

    The one aimed for the wound connected through and I pulled down at the same time whipping the top blade for another pass at his head. More aware this time, he was able to deflect both. Now I really wanted to get my claws on that metal he used that was able to deflect dispersed plasma.

    By this point I was much closer to the wormhole and could make out the dying green glow. Then it rippled again and my heart sank. This is what I had been afraid of, another one coming through. I was unsuccessfully holding off one, how was I supposed to deal with too.

    The enemy warrior raised his weapon and cut the drone in half on a downward sweep.

    Checkmate.

    The second drone leaped through the falling remains firing cannons at point blank and swinging the plasma blades around. One stab went right through his stomach and another sliced across his chest. The plasma rain scored new pock marks across his skin.

    I continued firing, until I realized that this time he wasn¡¯t fighting back and had collapsed onto his knees.

    I was surprised this time. I didn¡¯t think that I had done enough damage to him to warrant this. He looked blankly at the ceiling... did I get him. No. He was still blinking. The blade weapon clattered to the floor then, this arms flopping to his sides.

    I contemplated the figure, unsure of what just happened. I had surprised him again sure, but I didn¡¯t think I would be able to do enough damage to actually ... stop him. My drones were frozen around him.

    Then something distracted me. The drone closest to the wormhol picked up a ripple in it surface. Shit.

    This was the reason for all the contingencies. I knew what I had too do. I looked tactical map.

    ¡°New CONTACT!¡±

    ¡°ANOTHER ONE!¡±

    ¡°SQUAD THREE FORM UP TO ENGAGE!¡±

    ¡°Belay that!¡± I cut in to all the channels,¡± continue present course stay out of the way.¡±

    I waited and watched intensely as the person came through. It was a man again similar to the first in most ways, this one seemed to be wearing a shirt and armored shoulder pads. He had a more familiar single endge sword resting on his shoulder.

    He looked around in slow motion as I examined him. I saw him lock his sight on my damaged ship. He stood then slashed down with this sword. Damn, another hostile.

    ¡°Everyone maintain outside the boundary of spatial flux, in thirty seconds.¡±

    I activated the guns on the bottom of the ship and slightly rose for a second so I could send flashes of plasma at the new contact.

    ¡°DAD what are you doing!¡± Grace cut in.

    ¡°Trying something.¡± I replied lightly. ¡°That wormhole needs to close before more come through, there¡¯s now way that we can deal with another one or more.¡±

    I activated the ward drive.

    ¡°Is this why you went us away?¡± She was standing next to me now.

    ¡°Of course.¡± I gave her a hug in the virtual space. I didn¡¯t deny it of course, it would obvious to even Janie, let alone the super AI daughter that I had been with for several decades now. ¡°Your old enough now. Don¡¯t do anything I wouldn¡¯t do.¡±

    That was the last thing I got out before the connection become severly compromised.

    The space in front of the ship started to collapse fast and the space behind expanded quickly. This created a easy path for the sip to follow, The acceleration was rapid and I hurtled through space.

    Grace¡¯s avatar disintegrated in my arms as the drive created huge interference waves around the ship. This wasn¡¯t a true warp drive. But a rent drive, that cut space apart in front of the ship and created an easier path of motion that the ship took, the same way anything would follow the path of least resistance. That plus the more ¡®compact¡¯ space behind us was what pushed the ship faster.

    Space rolled around the ship as the colors distorted and pulled into bands of light. I got the gratifying scene of seeing the new contacted eyes widened in his face as the ship approached at insane speed. I saw him try to dodge my massive self as I came at him, but I was to fast. Much too fast. No matter what ridiculous tech these two had I knew they couldn¡¯t match the speed of the warp drive.

    I lost sight of the new contact as the wormhole loomed. It was a little smaller than my ship to begin with, and that didn¡¯t include the newly formed warping of space around me.

    I was originally planing to do something similar by using the ship¡¯s warp drive to destabilize the wormhole. That wasn¡¯t what happened. As soon as my warped space enter the wormhole¡¯s proximity alarms started going off. That wormhole was destabilizing me.

    I was drawn into the wormhole. This was partially what I wanted it got hid of both threats on the people I cared for. But apparently the two spatial warping effects didn¡¯t mix very well.

    As soon as I entered the tunnel trough space-time the ship started ripping itself apart. huge chucks of the outer armor layers just peeling off like someone wanted to eat a banana. Some sections that stuck out from the rest simply distinigrated as we passed through.

    The tunnel looked different through my space warp drive, there was that green color again bleeding from all the streaks of light was all I could see if I looked at space inside here.

    Then I looked behind me. Those cameras saw a blazing wave of energy collapsing the tunnel behind me. And it was gaining fast. Already I had lost all the front cameras and as the wave caught up to me I lost the rear exterior one as well.

    Along with the engines. And the warp drive. The sudden failure of the drive sent me spinning and I smashed right. The tunnel collapsing on itself was not something that I wanted to be in it for so I aided the fall with whatever lateral thrusters that would respond. It must have worked as the ship jumped sideways and touched the visible side of the wall. The nose of the ship exploded violently. Pulling apart sending metal fragments flying.

    I could only see outside from internal cameras that were now exposed. The image spinning and tumbling violently was still in slow motion.

    My inputs were telling me that almost all of the outer hull was gone. Nothing remained exposing many of the decks to open space. I was safe-ish in my core room. But I was already losing everything that wasn¡¯t attached to the walls, and some stuff that was. Even inside stuff was smashing into walls from the sudden force.

    That sent a shock through my system. The sudden loss of a great portion of my mind and it being ripped away. I didn¡¯t know I could pass out until then.

    I came too not to long later. Everything was still I floated above a perfectly still crystal red lake, Light came from the depths, beams occasionally finding a path out from the deeps.

    I peered inside the depths. In this place, it was reminiscent of my retreat space, although slightly different. I saw that while the surface that I could see was perfectly still, deep inside the currently churned relentlessly causing odd refractive patterns to form and dissipate.

    I watched it for a time. Loosely aware of the outside state of my ship. It wasn¡¯t that it didn¡¯t bother me. But looking into this mesmerizing pool was enough to calm my mind and coldly assert that there was nothing I could do anymore. So I let it play out, simply being, closed off from true thought waiting for the last system to fail.

    Eventually, everything settled. I was still spinning madly through space, but everything that was going to break or fly away had done so.

    Cautiously I sent out mental probes to find still working systems. I got very little positive return. As the moments crept on I found less and less of the systems functional. I was not surprised, the amount of damage that I had taken even before the wormhole, left me pretty sure that I was going to be, if not dead in space then something very close to it.

    I was ambivalent about that, thinking about it logically this was probably the best outcome that I could have gotten in that situation. I had been in bad situations before.

    I would be lucky to still be alive it the spatial tunnel had collapsed on top of me, and if I had made it through to the end, wouldn¡¯t I just be in the middle of the people who were attacking me? Maybe, maybe not.

    I was upset that I had to leave me family in the lurch like that. I had grown especially close to those two. The strange almost father and daughter relationship I had with Janie was new, something that I had shared with AI like Grace but never with a human. Lydia was different, we were close too but not in a romantic way, we had developed an almost sibling-like bond, the easy banter helped build the foundation of our relationship. Taken separately they were still a bit odd ties to had to humans, bt together it was a bit weird.

    Grace on the other hand was immortal like me and I had brought her up personally so while I wasn¡¯t worried about any of them. That and if nothing else my contingencies would help, or that was the hope.

    Now wasn¡¯t the time for emotions though.

    Less than half the ship was together around me and I was able to draw out a small map of what sections are still together with me. Besides the core room, this section housed mostly storage space and empty hallways. Only my immediate surrounding structure had managed to maintain a perfect seal, with this being the center of the spin it was mostly intact. Behind the sealed doors was a mess of blow out holes and crumbled doors.

    On top of that the fusion power plants were in the broken-off section, the personal generators that ran just my core room, barely had enough power to run any systems as well as my core. Not to mention the fact that with the amount of damage sustained there wasn¡¯t much that was working properly.

    All of this I observed from my reserved perspective and couldn¡¯t do anything about.

    At this point, physics had taken hold completely, as I spun madly through space. I was more rock than starship at this point. I couldn¡¯t even get an accurate read on how fast I was moving as either. I wasn¡¯t in hyper warp obviously, which was good news, and I wasn¡¯t accelerating uncontrollably. Both were pretty good circumstances even now, although the reason was that I didn¡¯t actually possess anything to accelerate with was more of a good/bad situation.

    Operating repair drones in this condition was slightly tricky, but that is what I set out to do. Allowing a fragment of my mind to pull a few streams from those drones that were still operable and still within my much-reduced sphere of influence.

    I started with the internals nearest to me. The core itself was a mishmash of computing hardware that had over the centuries collected together to form the me that currently was. The passing of time was not readily visible on much of anything, however, everything maintained to a super-fine precision, as a system failure was not something that I wanted to deal with again. Imagine someone curving up your brain with a chainsaw.

    That was what rust, dust, dirt, and the like was. Horrifying.

    That was why the heavily reinforced core was the first place that I went to. That and I would always start with control of what essentially was my mind and brain over the extraneous, next to useless rest of the ¡®ship¡¯.

    I did a through micrometer by micrometer search of that inner room. It took a long time of course. But what was time now?

    Thankfully, with this room being almost dead center of the ship it seemed that I had gotten lucky. Given the nature of the forces involved, and how it was something that I wasn¡¯t too experienced in this field I chalked it up to a free win and moved on.

    The biggest problem which I avoided for the start was the corpse that was laying in the room above me. I had confirmed that even through that adventure nothing much had changed with the body, except it wildly slamming about in the hall with the rest of the stuff, and reducing all the remaining drones to bits as it crashed into them. Even in death, it seemed that it was casually extremely tough.

    Using the drone paths through the hull I made my way slowly to the next layer out in all directions at once. For the sides that meant going to the other side of the door, only through the much smaller and more insulated drone-door than that main door which I will probably be keeping sealed for some time. The drone paths are one of my own additions, although they are basically perfectly size passageways for the main bulk of my drone collection. I made the decision to use the airlocks at all places where they occured throughout the ship. Some doors, doubled as airlocks that could be used in times exactly like this.

    Unfortunately as the drones moved out all three came across problems almost immediately. The atmosphere had been vented out of this and the surrounding sections. Holes had been drilled through the surrounding walls as things that were not tied down had become micro-meteors in the sudden shift in acceleration. The drones roamed the space surveying the damage.

    My own section was not spared the bombardment thankfully only pockmarks and impacted debris of all sorts stuck out of the surface. The main bulkhead doors were in worse shape all though they too held under the bombardment.

    With no biological life aboard anymore and the constant velocity it didn¡¯t seem like too much of an issue so far so I left those holes alone for now. I had limited resources and was loath to use any without real need.

    I sent the three drones further out on a patrol and assessment mission. In the meanwhile I was attempting to reconnect to anything that would receive my signal. While it appeared the threat was dealt with, I couldn¡¯t be sure. There was a certain confidence that I was out of immediate danger, at least from those two assailants.

    It was a few hours later, of exploring and carefully maneuvering the drones outward when I first saw the outside. The starscape outside clipped by as the vessel spun onward. This view was given to me from the section that had been ripped clean off the ship when I had left the wormhole, the other end, which carried the drive systems, an army of drones, and assorted materials that could have been used to affect repairs was now gone.

    Although if I had it, I might not need all the repairs done anyway. I had to work with what I got. Which I will admit was not much. It was slow going when it was going at all.

    I fell into a fugue of repairing and checking over, what was left of the ship.

    That went on for some time until finally my actions slowed down and I was left in exactly the same place that I started in. Well almost. The hull look less like swiss cheese and more like some kind of marbled blend as the new metallic paste that I used for the innumerable small repairs, had set into it¡¯s slightly off color.

    I reached the end of what I could possibly do. My situation hadn¡¯t changed.

    Not outwardly at least. Some new developments inside had given me some things to do though. In the level below my core, two bodies splayed out on the ground. A veritable menagerie of drones milled about around them. Off to one side was anotherthingthe weapon that the first being I had encountered had wielded to great effect against most anything that I could have thrown at it.

    The massively tall humanoids, looked very similar to a human male in appearance although scaled up some. The drones milled about the constant need to switch position given the intense conditions of the ship right now, almost made it look like a bunch of nervous animals curiously inspecting a new strange thing that had wandered into it territory.

    The analogy made me smirk. I was sitting in a virtual environment that overlay the real world and was constructed from all the accumulated data streams from the drones. Parts of the room were left empty and only filled with the past visuals that I had for them. These small patches were gray and lifeless looking, compared to the vibrant full color and sensory input of the center of the room.

    None of the drones were designed for any type of medical purpose, as the medical ward itself was not in this section of the ship and I, of course, had no reason to keep drones that only had applications for organics near me. Until now.

    I wasn¡¯t without options fortunately and even had the means to manufacture some small parts as, while I didn¡¯t have anything like my full lab or workshop, there was a small emergency repair bay located on my core room. With the size of the ship it was necessary to keep some things close at hand. And if I had some stuff, why not keep more. I certainly had had the space.

    The first thing I tried was the fine blades that I had lying around. I wasn¡¯t sure if I expected it to work, with how much punishment that this body had taken in the battle and the imperviousness to the projectile weapons that he had demonstrated immense durability. I had initially suspected that there was some type of shield tech that protected his person. However now I was not seeing anything that resembled tech as I would know it, and in-fact besides that sword and his clothing and jewelry, there was nothing on his person at all.

    I put everything to the side for the moment and manipulated the body out of the clothing that he wore. More drones crawled forward, pinning the corpse down. At this point, I wasn¡¯t going to risk anything and try and damage the armor. Although, that was being optimistic at this point.

    I wasn¡¯t that ready for the similarities between outward anatomy and humans. They were the same. We knew that most races of the galaxy at least in our small sector that humans had explored, shared what could only be described as a commonality in humanoid shape and physiology. Then there was the discovery of the progenitors, a race that had first existed within our space before vanishing and leaving behind much of there tech for the younger races to discover.

    It was widely believed that the progenitor race was also humanoid, and had played some part in the formation of life on many of the worlds that had produced sentient life. It had been a shock, at least in scientific circles that discovery made very little impact on daily life.

    There was a new rush for progenitor techs through and the exploration and scavenger feilds saw sizable growth.

    I pulled my mind back to now. What the existence of another alien of almost identical physical nature to humans, and from some unknown presumably far of corner of space was staggering. And I took that time to think through it and realize new possibilities.

    The progenitors were much more prevalent than I had previously speculated, or maybe these were progenitors. If I was right about this tech, then it would definitely be plausible. I wasn¡¯t sure what to make of the aggressive attitude towards me. Or perhaps that these new aliens were totally unrelated to the progenitors. That was less likely at this point, however the possibility existed.

    As I suspected the standard cutting blade had no effect on the skin and no effect on even the internals that the blasted wholes exposed. My shield theory was looking less and less plausible. I marveled at the toughness. What evolutionary path must have been taken? Presuming that this was a natural phenomenon and not something induced. Either way it was impressive.

    There was really nothing that I could presume to be true at this point. I knew too little and only uncovered more questions as I dug. I was not ready to give up just yet however.

    Time was measured by an internal program, much like anything else. And with like anything else, the hybriding of a computer with a human brain had brought quirks and strangeness. I muted the function of my internal clock. This was a way to isolate that computer function while leaving intact what was once my biological sense of time.

    Unlike organics, I had no needs that had to be attended to throughout my research. Having no interruptions and nothing that could distract me, before being forked off for small consideration.

    I eventually had to use the monoatomic edged blades and go in through the holes that I had blasted open in him. Still progress was slow and any active method to speed up the process would cause damage to the subject.

    I was very methodical, given the time available to me. The similarities to human physiology and structure were astounding. The medical sciences had never been my field and even with all the time I spent learning and researching, my understanding of biological systems was the least advanced.

    Unfortunately it wasn¡¯t long after I had really stated to make any progress than I found that I was running out of time. The generator that was running my backup power systems was steadily declining in power output. That wasn¡¯t supposed to be possible this soon. However it was happening. My drones were already scouring the system trying to find the fault.

    I had been drifting through space for a few months at this point and while that time had passed in a blink of a non-existent eye, I had been content to be a passive passenger on this trip to who knows where until something came along and jogged me out of it. I sent another drone to the closest whole in the hull to see if anything had changed outside.

    The diagnostic I had started on the backup power system finished and found nothing wrong, and the drones too were coming up with nothing that would explain the sudden and continuous loss of power.

    Outside the star span past, the hurricane of lights the same as I had last seen. I began the real mission this drone was sent to complete and began looking over the ship from the outside. Some damage from the inside had blocked off sections that I couldn¡¯t otherwise reach and was previously unwilling to risk the limited drones that I had to try and investigate. Now however I had to find a solution to the power system failing or I was a goner.

    The mid-sized drone was about two feet long and was in the best condition out of my remaining stock of these models. Of which there were two more.

    This type of drone was a specialized repair drone that was specifically designed for my personal workshop that I had stashed with near my central core. It¡¯s articulators were extremely fine and it was fitted with some engineering equipment that might prove useful.

    With the reduced potency of my mind and capacity the movement wasn¡¯t as fluid as I would have liked, the heavily damaged and broken surface was tricky to navigate and I was careful to maintain as many points of magnetized contact as possible.

    Like anything that had been happening to me recently it happened at my own pace. The time constraint that I was only mildly concerning to me, the more I searched the more I became certain that there was nothing that would change my predicament.

    That wasn¡¯t enough to stop me of course I never stopped searching, until I couldn¡¯t go on anymore and my mind was pulled into my small corner of the core. The bare trickle of power from the batteries. Only enough to sustain this meager existence.

    <>

    Space shivered. A woman stepped out of the distortion. She stood in the stars and breathed normally. If any mortal saw this scene they would see a normal woman, however beautiful simply standing in the blackness. Her eyes were inquisitive as they glanced around the stars and saw nothing out of the ordinary.

    The furry ears on top of her head twitches and swiveled around straining to pick up anything out in the void. The movement sends out a wave a Qi to pick up any sound or vibration in a massive range around her.

    She frowns slightly. Nothing. Standing absolutely still, hopeful but still holding onto her usual skepticism. It was something that would be always with her, had kept up the mix of hope and disappointment for most of her life now and would not be swayed after so long.

    This time her tip however true hope had blossomed in her chest. It was a terrifyingly exhilarating feeling as usual. True hope was like an irrepressible weed that grew continuously in her soul. But it was a double edged sword that cut deeper every time.

    However a cultivator of the Dao of Prophecy that was now lived when he would have died started her on this latest lead and she had believed him. Breathing deeply drawing her legs up and curling her tails around her. She would wait here until she had felt that enough time had passed.

    She slowly and intentionally began to circulate the power within her system. At her level of cultivation it had a ridiculously small effect that would be barely be worth the time of achieving it. But having been constantly pushing boundaries since she had started cultivating any chance to push her understanding forward was welcome.

    Her teachers and tried many times to turn her mind into a graveyard of gray, emotionless martial training. She had fought that with her being. Emotions were the core of life and she would never give them up. No matter how hard the martial artists had tried to rip them out of her.

    The glow of Qi began to emanate in the blackness of space. Waves of energy gently left her skin and floated off. As her meditation grew deeper furthering her understanding of her Dao and her concepts.

    Her tail flicked gently, unknowing the slightly denser patch of energy spun out of the tip collected the meandering arua around her into a clump.

    At the same moment she fell deeper into herself the breakthrough that she had attempted for a long while now solidifying in her soul.

    Unknowingly to the woman time passed and flowed by her. However, her body was unchanging as the few megear years the breakthrough took passed by her. Having been long since above the needs of the mortal body this level of breakthrough would have taken a lesser cultivator maybe centuries to fully passthrough. This final spark of enlightenment coming to her now in the depths of space was growing clearer and clearer in her head.

    Suddenly something flipped in her mind and shecouldactually feel it getting closer. The waves of Qi around her distorting with strange patterns and reacting to situlus outside of her understanding. Something that would shock even regular Deities.

    ¡°Something is happening, something is coming...¡± She mutters to herself. That hope growing with every second the feeling grew.

    ¡°What is it?¡± Another light and cheery voice asks. Another girl, this one appearing younger than the first asks. The visible radiance of her white Qi spreading into space only a short way from her.

    The first woman only spares a few seconds to do a once over of the newcomer. ¡°Hey Mila, still have lacking control as usual.¡±

    ¡°Bah, we can¡¯t all be born with your ridiculous insight Se-se.¡± Taking a pointed glance around and noting the light show that has built up over the years. Before frowning while taking a look at the woman before her, ¡°and as usual I can¡¯t even detect where you advanced.¡± She pouts playfully at her.

    Without looking at her the woman speaks sternly, ¡°How many times have I told you not to call me that. I have a real name you know.¡±

    ¡°Pft that name doesn¡¯t suit you. You are too wild and disobedient to keep it. So I have taken it from you!¡± The smaller girl smiles at the woman.

    ¡°Yeah like you''re any better. And stay still will you I don¡¯t want you ruining everything ... again.¡± The conversation helped distract her from the oncoming sensation that she now felt was coming from a spot of her aura that had leaked and flown into the depths of space.

    Unwilling to even move less the balance be affected of whatever was happening she stood stock still and waited.

    ¡°What do you mean you know what¡¯s coming? How? And where are we by the way? AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN AGAIN?¡± The smaller one asked. However she did it over and nearly instantly formed Qi connection between them.

    The woman thought about how to respond to her. Mila was a good friend ... among other things but she didn¡¯t want to jinx it. Those were real and the risk was too great for her.

    Green light flashed and the connection to that blob of power failed. She saw the green then overwhelm her own silver Qi, the faint light then became a blinding flash. The space that surrounded that point cracked and shattered right in front of her, like someone had taken a hammer to a mirror. The whole is space had the barest trace of her aura to it. The vast chasm opened and she was into a green tunnel that flowed fast with flickering eldritch light.

    Then there was a pop has things happened at once. The once shattered space reversing course and fitting back together the spatial phenomenon gone without a trace as the law of space reasserted themselves.

    This spectacle was gone largely unnoticed and uncared for as two sets of eyes were focused on the massive metal construct that had smashed through the spatial tunnel right in front of them.

    Mila turned slightly and looked at her friend with surprise. ¡°How did you know?¡±

    But Ce-ce was lost in her own breakthrough as the silver of her fur flashed with color and her eye were like incandescent stars. Her attention totally rivated on the massive thing that had popped out in front of them.

    Mila rolled her eyes at her rivals antics and watched the emotions tubble across her face as she rose to new heights of power. Mila herself was not that far behind her in raw terms, however their paths had differed a long time ago.

    Ideally she inspected the clearly constructed lines and angles of the thing without knowing what it was. She floated forward and around. Whatever it was, it had taken heavy damage and more, that damage had come from someone at least at the Dao Convergence Realm, the lingering Qi scars and complex battle concepts the mark of an expert.

    Shaking her head slowly Mila realized that she couldn¡¯t feel any Qi evident in the defensive armor. Mortal materials had defended against an expert of heaven, how was that even possible.

    ¡°Hey Ce-ce... what is this thing..?¡± There was no response. Mila came to rest over some markings that were unrecognizable. Mila was not as air headed as she liked to pretend and knew that even if it was in its pristine condition that she would not be able to understand the words printed there.

    The metal behemoth was truly massive, she couldn¡¯t scene any active formations of Qi or even mana of any sort throughout the vessel.

    Mila was distracted by a cry that went up from the other side. Exerting some force this time she accelerated herself back around and finding Ce-ce not much removed from where they started. The glow from her eyes had stopped although her normally near perfect control of her energy had slipped as it swirled about her.

    Her face wasn¡¯t any better the riot of emotions flicking between feelings that Mila had trouble putting into words. Then the expression changed for the last time settling into a smile that was exalted and sad at the same time.

    ¡°You okay Ce-ce?¡± Mila tentatively asked.

    Ce-ce seemed to consider for a moment before nodding. ¡°Yeah I¡¯m good. Its just missing something important.¡±

    Sadness clouded her features for a second. Before they grew into a smile. ¡°Help me, I am taking this too Mom.¡± Her adoptive sister shrugged and together they extended their hands.

    Mila spied the writing again as they moved closer to the object and began to build the focus necessary for the complex space gate that Ce-ce used. Glowing silver lines drew themselves into reality around their prize.

    ¡°Ce-ce what does that say?¡± Mila pointed out the unknown symbols she had seen earlier that looked like a smaller version of the ones she had seen near the battle damage on the top of the thing.

    ¡°Don¡¯t call me Ce-ce. If you insist on this nickname I will have to start calling you... la-la.¡± She squinted her eyes at Mila playfully, ¡°Little sister La-la. Yes I am sure that will make all those fellows who have been chasing you around crack a smile for once.¡±

    ¡°Okay! Okay! I¡¯ll stop Geez.¡± For a time she waited before she realized she would have to ask again.

    Taking an overly polite tone and dripped with affected sweetness Mila smiled up at her, ¡°Oh dearest Big Sister that controls heaven and earth. Young Miss please inform this lowly little sister of the meaning of these enigmatic texts.¡±

    A sharp grin appears on the woman¡¯s face, ¡°I notice you forgot to name me yet again sweetest sister.¡±

    Mila can see her sisters four tails twitching in the way the only happens when she is happy and amused. Her grin get wider as the desire to know becomes stronger.

    Finally Mila sighs, as the silver pattern completes around the dead hulk of a Dreadnaught.

    ¡°Okay you win.¡± She grins at her sister enjoying the banter. ¡°What does it mean Grace?¡±

    Then everything fades away as the spatial formation activates a small ripple pulling everything into the center one split second later nothing remains in this space the entire episode ending as quickly as it began.