USD: 62 days after the battle of Dedia IV

Location: Jump space, IND Iron Horse, en route to 63 Hydrae

Alex watched the glow of the ShipCore illuminate Elis’ face and the inside of the privacy curtain. The extraction of the core had been easier and somewhat more difficult than she had believed. At first, she had worried that it wouldn’t be possible at all as she carefully cut into the armored space.

It had been surrounded by a semi-liquid of nanites, and she very nearly panicked because of the size of the glob. It would have been impossible to carry the compartment with her into the ship. The nanites had lifted up the core and pushed it into her hands, then went inert.

She had thought Nameless had woke up somehow, but there was still no response to her entreaties.

Alex studied Elis’ face. “I’d share it with you, but I know you wouldn’t want that.”

Tears dripped down the side of Alex’s face, and she wiped them away. “I don’t even know that it would work, if it even could.”

“Uhng”

Alex almost fell out of her chair.

Elis’ eyes were open, although they weren’t focused on anything. She shifted slightly in the bed, her hand opening and closing.

Alex slipped her hand into Elis’s and squeezed it gently before turning and shouting for help. “Nurse!!”

Alex scooped up her ShipCore and deposited it in her main hoodie kangaroo pocket. Then reclaimed Elis’ hand. “Elis? Elis?”

Medical personnel arrived, but Alex refused to give up her sister’s hand or disappear.

USD: 63 days after the battle of Dedia IV

Location: Jump space, IND Iron Horse, en route to 63 Hydrae

The time for jump point emergence came much to quickly. Alex didn’t want to leave Elis at all. She hadn’t been able to speak or even focus on anything, but she had woke up and moved.

The doctor had warned her not to get her hopes up, but it was impossible to contain her hope that Elis would continue to show more improvements.

“One of us will be with her at all times. Don’t worry.” Rick said as he poked her shoulder.

Alex looked up, shaking herself out of her thoughts. She’d lost track of the conversation or even that he was still there.

Or that she was about to be locked in a small cell inside the brig.

Even if she understood the reasons, she hated it.

The cell was completely cut off from all signals from the outside. Alex wasn’t sure how it worked, but there weren’t even vibrations. It was absolutely silent, and the lack of the ship’s hum bothered her in ways she couldn’t explain.

At first, she’d relied on the glow of her ShipCore and her data pad to light the space, which was filled with water and horrible MREs. A small space in the corner allowed her to dispose of any waste. A trap prevented any horrible odors from reaching her, but even the waste tank was sealed from the outside.

A day passed as she spent the time reading. The silence got to her eventually, and she watched a few holo vids. Despite the distraction, somehow the quietness still got to her.

Finally, she just turned everything off and stared at her ShipCore.

In the darkness, she could spot little, tiny swirls inside the blue orb the longer she focused on it. She had the desperate wish that those swirls were Nameless trying to reach out and communicate with her. Reaching out to touch the surface, she could feel a strange resonance.

A small, darker blue cloud from inside the light reached out toward her hand almost as if it had been directed by her thoughts.

The moment her fingertip touched the smooth orb, Alex’s vision flashed white.

Suddenly falling through nothingness, wind whipped at her hair and clothes. The sudden velocity sent her heart pounding in her chest. As she went from falling feet first to falling horizontally, the fast-moving air blowing into her face made it hard to breathe and she was forced to look away from her direction of travel.

The solid white surrounding her changed into a kaleidoscope of rainbow hues. Completely disoriented, she splashed into something soft and warm. Half expecting to break on impact, the warm sea of nothingness held her gently.

[Interrogative: This unit requests to know what Avatar is doing.]

Excitement and happiness filled her chest, and she tried to shout Nameless’ name, but she realized there was no oxygen in her lungs anymore. Hand flying to her throat, she tried and failed again to speak or draw breath.

[Informative: MainComputer processes are incompatible with Avatar’s hardware. Insufficient nanite density is available for computational requirements for Omega processing unit.]

Waving her arms, she tried to find a firm surface, but failed, spinning slowly and agonizingly in the nothingness. The sensation of being smothered by a lack of oxygen alarmed her greatly.

[Recommendation: Reconstruct new NAI computronics module for MainComputer reactivation.]

Alex tried to shout ‘How?’ but nothing came out of her strangled, deflated lungs.

[Notice: Avatar is currently suffering from self-induced seizure. Terminating session.]

The rainbow swirling nothingness suddenly flashed white and the wildly strange sensations were replaced by the feeling of heaviness throughout her body. The cold metal floor of the smuggling compartment sucked the heat out of her face, and Alex let out a pained groan.

Every nerve fiber in her body protested as she slowly sat up in the blue hued compartment. As she righted herself, she felt a wave of nausea filled her, her inner ears doing loops. An acidic taste of bile roiled up in her throat, but she forced it down.

She groaned and wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing snot and spittle across her skin. She winced at a coppery taste in her mouth and touched her nose, a sticky warmth coming out of it.

Forcing herself up, she moved over to her stored water supplies and washed her face with a clean rag. She tossed the resulting mess down the disposal chute.

As she cleaned up, she realized that whatever space she had entered had been dangerous. Her brain still felt fuzzy, and she processed the words Nameless had briefly offered her: her wetware, i.e. her brain, wasn’t made to run an NAI MainComputer. She hoped there hadn’t been any permanent damage.

A small bubble of relief filled her anyway. Nameless was alive!

She just needed to figure out how to build a computronics module, or… more realistically, how to get back to 92 Pegasi and have A31 help her.

The relief and pleased thoughts faltered and died. She was so far away from 92 Pegasi now, even if she bought a ship in Meltisar and tried to return…

As Thraker had explained when she had asked, not even the mail packet ships would dare to go into the war zone with the Solarians and Corpos duking it out. With a single choke point at 90 Pegasi, just getting there without a plan… and help seemed impossible.

Still… she needed Nameless back.

Picking up the core carefully, she carried it to the small bed in the compartment and curled up around it before falling asleep, physically exhausted from the experience.

USD: 63 days after the battle of Dedia IV

Location: 63 Hydrae, Orbital Customs Battle Station Thea

Thea was bored.

She was usually bored. Unlike her mother, Rea, who maintained Hydrae’s planetary infrastructure and defense net, Thea was stuck plying a small area of space between the two Virginis jump points.

If she had to listen to another speech about securing the future safety and prosperity of the Corporate System worlds and people one more time, she was going to blow a fusion reactor. Figuratively.

While Hydrae’s natural resources were abundant, the cost of repairs would have caused Thea to control even her most wild urges.

Especially since she was getting close to her goal of purchasing an upgrade to Chi from her grandmother. Being a Phi was a heavy burden, especially with her absolutely beloved and wonderful mother stealing three quarters of her earnings for herself.

Although 63 Hydrae was not exactly a backwater as an inner system with a population of twenty trillion people. Thea, however, longed to escape the horribly dull role of customs inspector and experience life in the core system instead.

She had heard from a passing omicron courier that it had limitless virtual reality gaming available to those who could afford the hardware to run the connection to Moneta.

Naturally, being a Phi, Thea had plenty of hardware. It was sort of a job requirement for a battle station.

An itch hovered around her mind, and Thea flicked her attention to it. Her MainComputer had a report for her.

Letting out a sigh, Thea rolled over in her microfiber bedsheets and waved a hand to activate the wall monitor to get a visual report instead of an ear pounding voice in her head.

[Informative: An unscheduled emergence from the Gamma Virginis jump point has been detected. Positive Transponder signal indicates Meltisar refugee group from Nu Crateris. A high level of scrutiny is advised.]

Thea sighed even more. Now she’d have to get out of bed.

“Are any of the ships dangerous?” Thea asked.

[Informative: The lead convoy vessel is recorded as an old FedTech design. Detailed scans from previous transit are available. Threat level analysis concludes low threat profile.]

“Put them on the standard transit course.”

Yawning, Thea cracked her neck and then got dressed. Battle stations were required to wear the stuffy CS military uniforms that the navy liked, but she absolutely hated the black and gold.

If she based her loyalties on uniform colors, she would have defected to the Imperium in a heartbeat.

Thea made her way to the control room, where she was greeted by her team of technicians and engineers. She had no idea who they were other than their ranks and the name tag offered on her HUD. Human personnel always came and went so fast she had stopped paying attention to them long ago.

BuPers always made sure that assignments with NAI on station were short. Why, she did not know, nor did she care. She didn’t really need them.

But if she didn’t give them something to do, they didn’t get paid. And that was something she could feel sympathetic about, so she always made sure they were so exhausted they had plenty of credits by the time they left and didn’t bother her during their stay.

The crewmen and officers on the bridge all saluted as she entered, and she returned the gesture with a half-assed attempt of her own before taking her seat at the main console.

“Someone wake up one of the alert frigates; have them rendezvous with the convoy and do a detailed scan on their way in,” Thea ordered.

She pulled up the relevant information on the tactical monitor. She scanned through the data, noting the size and composition of the convoy. It seemed to be a large group for something coming out of a frontier system.

She licked her lips in anticipation, adding up all the different fees that would be levied. First, they’d be charged for per head for normal transit. Then there was the refugee fee, for any who didn’t wish to be ‘refugeed’ in 63 Hydrae.

Thea was very aware of just how much the passengers had likely paid. If she didn’t take at least half of that from the ship captains, it was likely she’d be punished and be left nothing for herself.

That would be terrible, considering just how close she was to buying her way to a higher authority level and luxury accommodation in Piscium.

“Ma’am?”

“Ma’am.”

Thea yawned and stretched in her command seat, opening an eye to stare at the young officer who had woken her up. Her internal clock told her she’d been asleep for two days.

Checking the feed from her MainComputer, nothing important had come up to bother her. The convoy had rendezvoused with them without notice and was currently waiting to be cleared for onward travel to the next system.

She lazily checked the fees the convoy had offered up.

|+328,552,838 SE|

Thea smiled. It was more than she had hoped, putting her goal a few months closer.

“What is it?”

“Ma’am, the convoy has been cleared for preliminary departure, but I was going over the sensor logs. I found something.”

Thea’s eyes lit up. “Oh?”

“The IND Iron Horse appears to have a fully contained smuggling compartment. I doubt anyone would have noticed, but I was going over the previous scan and comparing it to the current one and noticed a disc—”

“Yes, yes, good work.”

She turned and started to call up her comms when the tech hesitantly continued.

“Uhm… Ma’am. I did the work on my own time and… Uhm…”

Thea blew a tuft of hair out of her face. She knew that most captains or anyone really would have shoved him off or gave him a token reward.

She poked the station intercom, opening a channel to the entire station. Checking the man’s nametag, she made an announcement.

“Attention crew of 7H34-Hydrae, Senior Technician Clark, on his own time and using his own efforts, found an important anomaly that no one else had noticed. Therefore, I am awarding him 25% of the profits made from this discovery. That is all.”

She’d charge him 50% of whatever he made as a fee for using the station’s equipment and sensors. He had to suspect that would happen, but his eyes lit up in excitement anyway. Well, that was no surprise, he’d be making millions, and that was multiples of his yearly salary.

Thea gestured for him to go, “Shoo, shoo. I have an extra fee to negotiate.”

Clark saluted, “Yes Ma’am!”