Garrick licked his suddenly dry lips as he read the message. After a moment, he selected the play audio message.

"Garrick, I'm going to give it a sixty percent chance that you are going to be the one that is listening to this. If it's not..." Hillary's hazy voice hesitated.

"Whatever. Listen, that psycho just shot the bloody shipslinger, and I'm locked in my chair. There's some switch here, but it's not working, and Tealclaw… Well, he isn't acting as he should. I don't know what's going on, but I disconnected all systems from the central LLM, and I hope that will hold."

Garrick's hands had clenched around the armrests in a death grip as he glared at the screen in front of him.

He'd known Hillary for years, and he could hear the barely concealed fear in her voice. If he could hear it, that meant she was close to panic. As he recalled his moments in the chair, he almost rose to rush to the bridge area.

"From what I can tell, Tealclaw got infected after the explosion, and he's been speaking nonsense ever since. Asking me for access to the restricted database and threatening me-"

The message was interrupted by a sharp, clear voice.

"Captain, stop resisting. If you answer my questions, I will unlock your confinement! Just unlock &)(&^^%$$^ database and we will ()_(*^&^&%^%”

The voice stopped, cut off as it exclaimed sounds no human could ever make. The hazy voice of Hillary returned.

"That's what I mean," she said. "I don't know what that is, but Garrick, it just doesn't sound human. Initially, I worried it might have been The Astra Concord, but listen to it!"

Another burst of garbled nonsense flooded across the message, speckled with threats.

Hillary spoke again in rapid bursts.

"I'm going to add this via a warning across my secure link to the shuttles and other external systems. If you hear this… well, check if I'm still in the chair, please? Also, don't trust Tealclaw… God, I hope you hear this…"

The last sentence was a whisper, and then the message stopped.

Garrick stared at his H.U.D., lost in thought. A sudden shuffle behind made him jerk around to find Hilbert drifting into the cockpit, arms full of food, a surprised look on his face.

"Captain, you okay there?"

Garrick rubbed his face, suddenly way more tired.

"Hilbert, we've got some trouble we might have to take care of before we get a rest," he grunted. "Listen to this."

He sent Hillary's message over and slowly watched Hilbert's expression go from happy and surprised to cold and serious. He floated to the other pilot chair and handed Garrick three rations, the first solid food Garrick had touched in weeks. He should be happy about it.

"First, we eat, Captain. We are going to need our energy if we need to deal with a rogue AI."

Garrick took the offered meal, not bothering to disagree. Setting his teeth in the protein bar, the burst of intense flavors made him blink.

"Nothing like some solid food to bring perspective," Hilbert said with a full mouth.

For a few minutes, they wolfed down their meal. Garrick surprised himself as he ate just as much as the much larger man in the other chair. When he finally drained some of the cool water, he pushed himself out of the chair, hovering in the small cockpit.

"The Tealclaw's LLM, or whatever it has become, sounded like it was still functional at the time of the message, which means we can expect trouble," he said. "We are going to Captain Braddock's room first. She was an avid collector of old-world weaponry, and if I recall correctly, she has some functioning handguns."

Hilbert looked at him in surprise, shaking his head. "What do you expect to find here, captain?"

"I have no idea," Garrick grunted. "Which is exactly why we are going to be prepared for everything, and I don't trust the laser rifles. There's no guarantee they aren't still coupled with the ship's systems."

Garrick saw Hilbert think, and he almost expected the other to tell him he was crazy. Then Hilbert's jaw set, and he nodded.

"Let's do it, Captain."

A minute later, they drifted out of the shuttle and back into the heavily damaged shuttle bay.

"We are taking the roundabout way," Garrick said as he pushed himself toward one of the corridors.

As they drifted into the dark and narrow corridors of the frigate, Garrick began to get a very strange sensation. It felt as if something was watching him. At first, he pushed it away as some irrational fear, but the further he came, the stronger the feeling got. When he felt a drop of sweat slide down his forehead, and along his head, he stopped, holding on to one of the emergency brackets extending from the ceiling.

"Hilbert… are you feeling… odd?" Garrick asked, turning to the large, ex-special ops man. He didn't even need an answer as he saw the pale face and the narrowed, worried eyes.

"Yeah… I thought it was me," Hilbert grunted, his face dark. "It reminds me of when I was on a mission in the jungle caves of Mars Habitat Three. As if a dozen predators are sitting in some hundred-foot-tall trees, staring down at you."

Garrick hesitated, then exhaled sharply. "Fine. As ridiculous and crazy as this sounds, I fear it has something to do with our implants."

He quickly shared what he knew, and as he spoke, Hilbert's lips pursed.

"Captain, do you think our implants are picking something up?" Hilbert asked.

"I have no idea what to think," Garrick said. "But there's something making both you and me more jumpy than two first-time rooks would be, and it's not normal."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"Yeah… so as it's getting worse, does that mean there's something ahead?" Hilbert asked, pointing at the crossing ahead.

"Yes, and I hope it's not left because I really want some weapons now," Garrick said.

"What could possibly be there that has this influence on our hijacked implants…" Hilbert muttered.

"No idea, but we are likely going to find out," Garrick said.

He was about to continue when he thought of something and turned back to Hilbert.

"One thing, Officer Excelsar," he said, causing Hilbert's eyebrows to shoot up his forehead, his mouth dropping open.

If it was because of the use of his last name, which was classified, or the ad-hoc promotion, Garrick didn't know. He also didn't care, as he looked at what was probably one of the oldest men he knew if he only looked at birthyear.

"If something happens to me, you are to stop investigating immediately, return to the shuttle, and return to The Tealclaw. Tell Macdewil he will be in command. This is no request but an order."

Hilbert's mouth opened and closed like a goldfish before he nodded. A grin came to his face.

"Yes, Captain. Also, remind me to tell you about the first time I got promoted in the field…"

"If we survive, I'll be all ears," Garrick said as he turned away and began pulling himself to the crossing.

The closer they got, the more the sense of danger and being watched increased. Reaching the crossing, Garrick looked left, then right, and instantly, the sense seemed to double. His helm's lights flooded the dark corridor, and he felt like something was about to burst out at him- attack like a predator, but there was no sign of anything.

Scanning the corridor, trying to find anything that might signal why his mind was telling him he was about to die. His helmet light lit up the sharply-lined, pale-gray panels, but besides the distant cross that would lead to the unlikely to have survived engineering and the…

"The mainframe is that way," Garrick said softly.

He looked up to see Hilbert stare into the hallway with a pale face but eyes that radiated immense danger.

"Let's get those guns, captain," he hissed.

Garrick turned into the other side of the hallway, and the horrifying sensation dulled to a mere -run for your life- sensation. He pulled himself into the hallway, deliberately going slow, and as he moved away from the mainframe's location, the sensation dulled.

Neither of them spoke until they hovered in a small oval area with four corridors, not including the one they were in, and a large door- the entrance to the captain's quarters.

"We need to get these implants checked out, Captain."

"We will do that the first time we return," Garrick said as he moved to the door and opened the small panel. It took him a moment to override the 'captain's lock', an old numeric panel before he could pull the lever that caused the door to unlock.

Hilbert pushed the door open, and they drifted into a sparsely furnished central room. Rifles, guns, and pistols hung behind carbon-laced glass panels.

"Holly shit… I heard she was a bit nutty, but this?"

"Captain Braddock was many things, but she wasn't nutty," Garrick said as he moved to the far-left wall.

The guns on display, although an impressive collection, were not what he was after. He put his hand on a nondescript part of the wall lining and slid down the hidden panel. There was a small button behind it, and he turned it clockwise before pushing it, causing the entire wall section to slide back. He ignored Hilbert's whistle and moved to the large gray slab in the middle that showed a circular disk.

Hillary loved all old-world tech, including the replica of the ancient vault she'd eventually managed to bully her engineers into place. It had cost her a ten-foot-deep section of her Captain's quarters, but Garrick knew she loved it and would have given twice as much if needed. He turned the dial a few times, and the vault clicked. He pulled it open to reveal a shallow room, the fake-wooden walls covered with gleaming old-world guns.

"Not nutty?" Hilbert muttered.

Garrick grinned as he floated into the room towards one of the walls. There were three nearly identical, squarish, and simple-looking handguns of a dull, dark-gray polymer hanging there.

"Say, Captain, not to be a spoilsport, but I was just thinking… do these relics even work?"

Garrick hummed as he took the Glock 17 from the wall. He'd known nothing of these old guns until a few years ago when Hillary had let him practice, but after that, he'd loved joining her for some target practice. He took one of the magazines and easily slid it in before looking at the far wall. A few fresh shooting targets hung there, and the rooms all around were covered in enough hull plating to prevent anything from piercing. Bracing himself with his left hand, Garrick aimed at the distant target and gently squeezed the trigger.

There was no sound, but a burst of light filled the room, followed by a hole that appeared slightly off-center from the middle of the target. Garrick was pushed back slightly, but not nearly as much as the larger guns would have.

"Okay…" Hilbert said, staring at the tiny hole. "I've seen a few of those older VR movies that play out in the Advent of the Internet times, but this feels… Are you sure that would stop anyone?"

Garrick grabbed one of the belts that lay below, the largest he could find, and managed to put it around his waist. It was rather awkward to pull the gun out, and he frowned. After a moment, he removed the holster bet, grabbed a smaller one, and tied it tightly around his upper left leg. It took a bit of trying, but he managed to lodge it against a ridge, and he put the gun there.

"It's the best we can do now," he said. "Besides, I don't know what is causing our implants to flood us with fear. You might be right, and it might be useless, but without knowing what it is, at a minimum, we can use the recoil to move ourselves."

The larger man sighed, then looked at a larger gun beside the glock. A silvery metal frame, Garrick recognized it.

"That's a Desert Eagle. I wouldn't take that. It's got more moving parts, and the recoil will be worse due to its increased power."

Hilbert hesitated, but in the end, they both drifted back out, each with a Glock. The target behind them had a dozen new holes from where Hilbert had tried a Glock, quickly warming up to the device. Both literally and figuratively. They quickly found that it was best not to shoot too fast as the gun was having a hard time getting rid of the heat it was generating.

"Now what, Captain?"

"First, we go to the cockpit to check if Captain Braddock is still there," Garrick said.

Noticing Hilbert's look, he nodded.

"Yes, the chances that she is in there and alive are tiny, but Captain's suits have extended water reserves and filter systems. Technically, she can survive for ten days."

"Yes, Captain."

Garrick pulled himself toward the other side of the ship, sensing his building worry fading as they distanced themselves even further from the remains of the engineering bay.

It took them fifteen minutes to navigate the dark hallways to the bridge, slowed down by entirely ripped-apart sections. It quickly became clear that, although its frontal area looked in pieces, the Tealclaw had almost broken apart inside. When they reached the bridge, Garrick stopped. The doors were still closed, and the walls, although damaged from explosions and debris slamming into them, looked whole.

The bridge survived in one piece? Garrick thought, frowning.

That would mean that some of the others inside might have survived, so why hadn't they left to search the ship?

"Captain…"

Hilbert was pointing at a couple of cables that he was illuminating with his helmet lights. The cluster of black finger-thick cables was very softly swaying- a pendulum motion that wasn't possible in space without some external force.

Garrick flew forward and put his hand on the door leading into the bridge. A powerful thudding reverberated into his hand.

"Someone is knocking on the door or wall," he said. "Or Hillary is hammering on the pod."

He shared a look with Hilbert, and he knew the other was thinking the same thing. The only one with enough supplies of air and food was someone with a Captain's suit. All others would have long since died of asphyxiation.

"Open the door," he said, pulling back a bit and unholstering his gun. He couldn't explain why, as there should be no reason to have the gun, but just like with the almost crippling fear they had sensed before, he felt an uncontrollable urge to hold the gun.