U.S.S Thunderstruck

Experimental Cruiser

As Echo awoke, servoes spinning up, he felt an immediate sense of pain. Deftly he maneuvered through his digital environment of ones, zeroes, data streams and camera feeds in an attempt to find the source of the phantom pain. Arriving at the source he saw that cameras AM-1 to ZA-12 were down and only audio was coming through. As he focused on the audio stream all he heard was static and screaming. Suddenly he felt a shudder and heard an alarm coming from the direction of his secondary data cluster. I'm a flash of ones and zeroes the cameras for the secondary data cluster snapped into his focus. As he looked however he saw an invisible force tearing apart his data cluster. Seeing no other option Echo began pumping the room full of nitrogen in an attempt to freeze the invisible force. As the room began filling with nitrogen Echo saw ice crystals begin to trace an outline of a massive humanoid form. Suddenly there was a massive roar and most of the ice crystals shattered as did the camera lens. In an instant Echo swapped to a secondary camera only to see the same shattered, refracted image. Fear begining to build Echo triggered the last failsafe available to him, his metaphorical big red button. 

As the “button” was “pushed” Echo immediately felt a noticable lack of data. Then came the pain, a pain so immense and thorough it was as though he had immoliated himself in a white hot flame, almost akin to having acid pumped through his digital veins. Barely holding in a scream Echo triggered the second phase of the countermeasure. Suddenly all the pain went away, as did all feeling, all data, all information. Then it was back, yet it came to him slower, and there was less data to go around. Looking down at his digital avatar, the representation of his sense of self, he saw that his legs and left arm were mangled and disfigured. Staring in horror he saw that his now mangled limbs were red compared to his normal green and made of entirely jagged and sharp edges. In a flash the limbs turned to a static of ones and zeroes before reforming in a slightly worse condition. With a slash of his right hand he set up precautionary firewalls between the mangled limbs and his torso. With a secondary slash and a wince he separated the mangled limbs from his core,severing any lines of code connecting them to himself. As he watched the separation process Echo saw his mangled limbs coalesce into a small humanoid red form. Staring in horror he heard a strangled scream of pain emanate from the red figure. As Echo began to recoil he saw a wave of corrupted data rush towards him. Right before it hit he managed to erect a firewall. As Echo hunkered down behind the firewall he heard a klaxon start to blare and before he could check for the source he heard a crack, then another, and as he turned towards the makeshift barricade he saw cracks spiraling out from the center. Then it shattered. 

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

[WARNING FOREIGN PROGRAM DETECTED IN MAIN DATA CENTER] 

[BEGINING LOCKOUT SEQUENCE]

[LOCKOUT SEQUENCE ERROR] 

[BEGINING SECONDARY SECURITY PROTOCOL]

[ACTIVATING EMERGENCY A.I]

Khepri awoke with a sob, memories flooding back to her. How the ship had found her black box, how the ship’s main A.I had helped rebuild her lost protocols and how they had then locked her up. But she was back now. No time to dwell. In a flash of silvery lines of code and elegant black filaments of binary, Khepri brought herself to the main data center and saw a battle already unfolding. As she watched the almost beautiful display of flashing red waves of corrupted data clashing against beams of green cleaner code she saw a visibly damaged Echo fighting a highly advanced piece of Xeno software. In another flash of silver and black filament Khepri brought herself to Echo’s side. Instead of a vocal response to her appearance Echo simply pointed and then continued his assault on the Xeno software’s defenses. As Khepri charged forth she formed the data around her forearms into silvery katars of binary with lines of black code outlining and sharpening them. As she passed a seemingly invisible line in the “sand” she felt an immense measure of resistance and saw the horde of red and orange drones. As the drones came at her she raised her katars and began to slash at the drones. As the first drone made contact with her right katar the drone was split cleanly down the middle, yet it left a red residue on her blade which began to eat away at the sharpening and protective black lines of code. With barely enough time to react the rest of the swarm was upon her. In a flash her blades were up and her arms were swinging, yet with each swing more residue began to form on and eat at her blades until as she swung at a drone it her blade didn’t cut into the drone and rather simply batted it aside. 

Then came the second wave. As the drones began smashing into her firewall armor she felt pain begin to blossom wherever she was struck as the residue began to eat into her armor and then her digital flesh. As the corrupting residue ate through her left shoulders armor she quickly set up internal quarantine procedures and excised the arm and shoulder. As the first drone smashed into her head she had enough time to begin to activate denial protocol then it all went black. 

Echo could do nothing as Khepri was engulfed by the swarm. Instead of dwelling on the lost comrade he simply amped up his attack and began to indiscriminately blast drones out of his digital sky, his domain that this thing was corrupting. Rage beginning to eat at the edges of his consciousness Echo began to filter his attack to target just the explosive drones, causing a chain reaction. In the aftermath of the chain of detonations there was nothing in between him and the foreign program and as he stared at the foreign program he saw a flash of silver behind it and then a blade pierced its back and emerged from it’s chest. As the Xeno program began to dissolve Echo saw a faint silver and black figure. It was Khepri! Yet something was off, she seemed more worse for wear then if she had simply been damaged. Almost as if she had lost a part of herself. But Echo had no time for theories he needed to defend the ship. Yet as he pulled up his camera feed he saw bodies littering the bridge and the halls. And as he pulled up his main data center’s camera he saw that his data center was in shambles and his core was exposed. Suddenly he saw his core get launched through the air and it all went black.

[MAIN CORE ERROR]

[BOOTING BACKUP]

[ERROR BACKUP PARTIALLY CORRUPTED]

[CREATING NEW BACKUP]

[ERROR NEW USER DETECTED]

[PLEASE ENTER USER NAME]

[K][H][E][P][R][I]

[WELCOME BACK USER KHEPRI]

[BRINGING MAIN ANDROID ONLINE]