I count down on my hand to signal the Captain and she hits it on the second. The door slides open just enough to let me through and I see a expanse of un-protected decking, two sailors working on consoles and another 6+ pointing at the access door to the bridge. I pull a plasma grenade out of my fanny pack and toss it toward the group and just before it hits the ground I start shooting.
There’s no “pew pew” from my laser pistol, just a slight buzz of energy as the atmosphere vibrates more dramatically. The plasma grenade however makes a bang and emits the sound of spreading flame, a fwoosh if you will, before the superheated gas impacted clothing, flesh and metal. I have now found a horrendous use of Parallel Minds.
My enhanced processing slows down my perceived time-space and while making it easier to hit the lethal shots with my pistol, it also shows me the waves of heat and sound and shrapnel that envelops the 6 crew that are waiting for my Security team’s assault. As soon as I check that the rest of the bridge is clear or disabled, I shoot the men and women that are covered in fire. Perhaps Annihilation grenades are more merciful.
/Captain, can you operate the door to the bridge?/
/Astoria, it is currently reading mechanical malfunction./
/Then get out here and assess our situation. These consoles are locked./
I check the two console operators and I take their pistols. There aren’t any keys, but they both have visual tech upgrades. Tessa, can you scan them for what I can expect from the others?
We don’t have the skills for that kind of diagnostic. You could flood them with Aether and attempt to mutate the flesh off of their tech.
What the fuck Tessa? That is horrible.
I am merely facilitating your intent. I will restrain from offering gruesome or undignified actions.
Sorry Tessa, I’m just not feeling great after seeing that plasma grenade in hyper-reality. I also feel that parallel minds is distorting my reactions to all this.
That, is partially my fault. My counterpart is occupying a mind, I am as well, and we are attempting to integrate through a third. That integration space is what you tapped to assess the bridge at an accelerated rate.
Yeah, okay. I don’t mind the analytical focus, but making me feel justified in mutilation is a bit too far. Enough of this for now; introspection isn’t helping me take this vessel.
“Captain, tell me something useful!”
“We’re 60% battery, Brahe and Kepler are still advancing and there’s another ship zipping around out there. I need main power to engage all internal sensors and weapons.”
“Is this ship equipped with shields?” I ask.
“Not enough to absorb one of those torpedoes.”
“Then tell them anything to keep them from firing on us!” I shout in frustration as I’m rifling through my menus.
“Then get main power back online!” She doesn’t break her concentration on the console she’s stabbing with her fingers.
Make your anger productive Penny. I dash back into the captain’s quarters and port down to engineering forward to check on the airlock. I see fifty people stuck in that damned thing. Fuck me. I get pulled out of my frustration by something punching me in the back.
I flop and roll, whipping my pistol around to see two Sailors with rifles shooting at me. Everything slows when I focus, my pistol rounding in a perfect, slow arc. I pop off a charge on the first man high in the chest and another in the next man straight in the face. I kick myself for not securing the room before checking on the prisoners, but that’s over now.
Seeing no one else, I tap the console and find it locked out. I ping the Captain my location and she holds the door open. I start picking people up and dragging them out. I only have to convince 5 people before the rest stand and rush out of the space. I ping again and the door slams shut.
The people look up at me and a few faces ping on my HUD. “I’ll be injecting you all with a swarm so you can advance with the rest of humanity. You can reject it after I inject you if you want, but if you run I will maim you and then catch you.”
I start with my strain on the pinged faces and then hit the rest. A few tried to run in panic, probably afraid of needles, but they’ve been starved and tire quickly. I summon a stack of rations and leave them to blip back to engineering.
Maneuvering has been shot to shit, so I’ll have to start-up manually. Fuck me. I blip to the diesel and start the heating coils and prime the supply pumps. I blip over to reactor control and spend a minute to review the manuals. I run around like a damned frantic Jack Russel Terrier transferring power, starting pumps, and energizing rod-control coils. I blip back to the diesel and follow the startup procedures and transfer the main buss to diesel power.
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/Diesel is the best you’re getting for the next half hour, Captain. Security, where you at? I just got prisoners out of engineering forward./
/Shit. We’ll re-direct to the brig./
Note to self, train people before throwing them into a shit situation. I blip back to the other side of the bridge door and start clearing the passageways and compartments moving aft. I meet little resistance. Several of my opponents were passed out in officer’s quarters; some were in the mess spaces playing games; and some were in watchful readiness in the wrong direction. There were two many people in the mess spaces and the security team for me to reasonably survive without using grenades.
/Admiral, Admiral. The brig is a nightmare./
/Any survivors?/
/No ma’am. There were two eating corpses, so I kicked everyone out and put ‘em down./
/Shit, DeGurgis. You okay?/
/Fuck no. But I’m going to lump them into the other people I have to shoot until I have time to scream about this. Anything left for us?/
/Lieutenant, get as many folks as you can on your shuttle and get them to Bikini Atoll on Earth. I’ll deal with the rest of this./
/Aye aye, Ma’am./
I blip back to the Captain’s quarters and enter the bridge again. I walk up to a panel and arrange for the view screen to display space. “Shit they’re close. Whelp, no point in fucking around.”
Tessa, can you get me a drive by on the two ships. She buzzes me a negative. Well, hell. Sensors, get me a range finder. Two range vectors pop up on the main screen and the numbers scroll down.
With a regretful sigh, I pull a football;-sized device out of my bag and pay the transport fee for the System Host to send me the one I hid in Astoria.
“May the breath of history speak of you fondly.”
I spend the full concentration of my parallel minds on transporting the contents of one hand to the Brahe, and the other hand to Kepler. My will and Aether try to transport me with them, half of me with each, but I clamp that down, and feel the force of Tessas anchor me in place. The objects disappear from my hands.
I look up to the screen, and after a few seconds the center of each ship explodes for the barest of moments before collapsing into a warp and disappearing. Hundreds of people, scattered to the winds of probability. They weren’t responsible for what happened on this ship, but they fired on me repeatedly.
I’ve already murdered 73 million, what’s another couple hundred?
“Where’d they go?!”
“I sent them away Captain. Barely a blip on the tally of carnage I’m responsible for.”
The fear is back in her eyes. My respectful treatment must have given her a sense of control. She doesn’t feel it now. “Are you going to kill us too?”
“Many of your Sailors are on their way to a refugee station in the south pacific. My shuttle, once it sheds the remaining torpedoes, will take as many as she can handle. After your crew is returned safely, I will ask you to surrender the ship and your security access to me. This is what you owe me. If you don’t, I will take the ship, gut the electronics and rebuild it, and you will still owe me.”
“Don’t have much of a choice then do I?”
“Just because the choices are crap, doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Other options exist of course, but I don’t see any that you live through.” I walk over to what would normally be her seat on the bridge and sit in it as a statement. “Any other questions?”
“Got any food?”
I can’t help but smile at that. I order up a few meal rations and my remaining unused rum rations to the panel in front of her. Fuck it, berry and aether infused beer for me. I pop the Belgian stopper and take a swig. Hell, these are delicious.
“Will we be able to do that?” She asks with her mouth full. I shutter at the nasty behavior.
“Yeah. You should see an integration percentage when you try something. There will be plenty of folks to give you a lesson at the station on Earth.”
“Are you really an admiral?” She continues chewing while she speaks. I sigh and get up and walk into her stateroom. Or at least I try to. I hear a chuckle behind me.
I stomp over to the Captain and lean in real close. When she holds my gaze I take the rum and walk back over to her seat, putting the rum in my pack as I do. I sit back into my chair and summon her a sippy cup full of juice with a cartoon character on the side.
She looks up with a scowl on her face and she meets my flat stare, hopefully conveying that I chose an insult over murder and she should be fucking grateful. Instead, she’s mowing down on the food and calculating some sort of response.
Tessa responds that she finally shook the torpedoes and would be heading back to the Galilei. I tell her to engage with a forward hatch first and then transfer to the small hatch in engineering aft.
“Captain, announce to the maintenance bay to make their way to the port, aft engineering airlock where a shuttle will be by to transport them to Earth.”
She finishes her meal, then makes the announcement, daring me with her eyes to speed things up. This is more trouble than it’s worth.
“Tessa, we’re having trouble with the security system cooperating. Blast the airlock and connect at your leisiure.” She pings the affirmative.
“You wouldn’t risk a life for pettiness.”
“Bitch, I am trying to help re-structure a country, and keep the fucking planet from breaking down into warlord states and here you are wasting my time. I have an advanced starship rescuing the prisoners aboard the Copernicus, and here you are, wasting my time. So here I am, wasting your time with the mere seconds you have left to buckle in or get sucked out.” I click my belt and engage my boots.
She panics and does not get the belt in time. The ship lasers make quick work of the doors and the Captain breaks her arms on the way out. I un-clip, push out into space and teleport to the captain. I teleport her into Indulgence’s cargo hold and check her vitals. Her eyes are blown and she’s bleeding from her nose and ears. Her vitals are weak, but it doesn't seem like she held her breath, so her lungs should be fine.
“Alright Tess, Take us aft.”
In the end I send Lemoore back up in their shuttle to evacuate the rest. I ask Tessa to upload herself and work on fixing the system that Morris wrecked. She’s not optimistic.