Relly was restless, they were out of communication, and had been for quite some time. Relly had tried sending in a bot after modifying it with a highly focused microphone rig, but there had been no response, and the ship couldn’t mobilise without orders, meaning even though her Captain could be in danger she was stuck here like a damn paperweight. It was absolutely infuriating, maddening, and annoying, in fact, there wasn’t even a word in her archives fitting for the level of aggravation she was currently experiencing. Any she could think of just started to feel completely insufficient.

If she had some sort of a body this wait would have left her pacing a hole in the floor, but they didn’t, all she had, all she was, was a ship. She pinged every five seconds as if by some miracle she would magically be granted reception by some higher power. It was so infuriating to be so helpless, time was she could have cratered a small planetoid, and wiped out all weapons systems they had placed. Now she was completely grounded, and her arsenal was limited to glorified pea shooters. It was enough to make her want to scream, but blowing a couple of speakers was hardly likely to help here, she needed productive solutions, and to leave the pointless and irrational emotional outbursts to her crew (who were in all fairness much better than her at both emotion and irrationality. It baffled her how they managed to keep her guessing so much, she was capable of calculating countless possible outcomes, but every hare-brained scheme they cooked up was so mind-mindbogglingly ridiculous as to leave her gobsmacked.

To make matters even more aggravating when she pointed the drone’s rigged microphone at the door she got nothing, in fact, WORSE than nothing, she got absence, this was really, really, terrible news. Nothing just meant the mic wasn’t capable of picking up. But that thing could probably hear a mouse farting in the cargo holds, if you soundproofed the holds, and the mouse was the silent but deadly type. This was a complete absence of any data, that meant something capable of deliberately blocking her. They weren’t just in a dead zone, they were being kept in the dark.

She tried opening the doors with the drone, but before she even got through the first doorway it went blank, like a puppet with its strings cut. If her crew weren’t in there right now she’d be tempted to blast the entire place to smithereens, anything capable of blocking a Flotilla Dreadnought with special access codes was not a good thing. It either outranked her in physical rank, which at this time was most likely impossible, or was just that much more powerful than her, in which case they were completely screwed.

Well for now she needed a way to help them should they wake anything up while they were down there, dormant security systems on the scale to block her were definitely not something she wished to fight, she really needed a hell of a plan.

Then she noticed a signal beacon she had practically ignored until now, and a plan started to form. This was a terrible, stinking, AWFUL idea, she knew once she got her crew back they were going to LOVE it.

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Nara tapped away at the terminal, trying every trick she could think of to get the system to let go of Eileen, but at the minute it was like trying to rip off a tick. Could you do it? Sure, but you’d only get the surface-level stuff, leaving the real problem still burrowed into her. At best it would leave her glitchy and miserable, at worst rig her to self-destruct.

Nara felt panic and despair bubbling up at the thought, as Jenel held onto her, trying to help her stay calm enough to help. At this, all they could do was wait and see, and make sure she didn’t get hurt.

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Bleyk meanwhile was completely unsure what to do, they didn’t even know how to help. The level of technology that went into this setup was primitive and completely alien to them. Even if their nanites could fuse with it and start to get through to her, there was always the risk of a brute force security system basically destroying the base as a contingency, what Bleyk could do, was stang guard, they took up position in the doorway, weapon readied, and even drew their lethal backup just in case. Hopefully, that would be enough to allow the herd to feel secure enough to focus on what they needed to, it wasn’t much for passage off a world, and trust without asking too many questions. But it was the best they could offer right now.

Something that was slightly easier to do before something started slamming into the sealed door like a battering ram.

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I tried my best to parse the data I could before my systems completely locked me out. Flitting through the scraps that I could reach (hey I was good at that, I had plenty of practice after all.) It wasn’t much to get in exchange for a computer rummaging through my brain like a sale rack, but sometimes you’ve gotta take what you can get. There wasn’t a lot to go on mind you, a few names that were deader than disco, some projects I knew The Cartel or The Sisters already had their grubby little mitts all over, some long since dead and salvaged ships, but, OOOOOH now that was shiny, a list of chart locations, I wasn’t sure how many were still useable, or even if I could wake up after all this. But if I could then this lot may just come in handy. If my theories were right about this, and this rig allowed me to memorise those locations, then it was time to give Sister Superior the shock of her life. I was pretty sure they weren’t equipped for somebody performing Necromancy on the skeletons in their closet.