Jack gave Jonah a long look. Their eyes met, and through long periods spent together and shared life-and-death experiences, an entire conversation was introduced, understood, and agreed upon.
Jack turned to Yuma, “Time to leave.”
He ducked up, and not taking any hits, stood up fully and started to run, prodding Jonah and Yuma to keep ahead of him. Thankfully, some sense of justice kicked in and they were unmolested. Almost a miracle itself as the Head of Security and Lord-whatever were still duking it out, trading monstrous blows and unbelievable levels of firepower.
He heard the Head of Security scream, “No survivors!” Is that what I sound like? ‘No survivors’?
Jack sighed as he saw the Lord-guy block a rapid series of digital lasers with his Gauntlets that kept going to cut deep furrows in the resilient floor, then slam his Gauntlets together and discharge a beam of black hellfire.
He looked at his Gauntlet, “I woulda loved to have gotten a second one.”
His Gauntlet rippled and… purred?
“You too, eh?”
Then, they were gone, running down corridors as fast as they could. He still had work to do.
----------------------------------------
Telane walked into a room, his blade was already drawn, an open sneer on his face.
Cura lay dead, cut into chunks at the end of an unbreakable atomic edge.
There were two figures, standing over her corpse.
“Tule.”
“Telane… You know Cura, she wouldn’t list-”
He shook his head, “I don’t care. It’s disgraceful.”
“How… how is Korl?”
Telane actually laughed at that. Some mirth shone through the bitter.
“Please, Telane.”
“...Alive.”
Tule gave his Toothpick to the other crab… that really did look like Jack. Then he picked up Cura’s discarded blade.
“Not going to use your cheat blade?”
Tule’s mandibles tightened and clacked in a rapid series of clicks. That was the second time he’d been accused of that.
“Are you even Human anymore?”
Tule’s eyes unfocused, before refocusing back on his former companion, “Not in the ways that matter.”
----------------------------------------
Jack’s announcement echoed around them in the corridor as it played over every internal comm, all at once.
“My name is Jack, I have command of G.C.S.S. Theseus. Do not panic, we will be landing soon and beginning rescue operations throughout the ship. Please find someplace safe to secure yourselves, there will be turbulence. Bridge out.”
Yuma turned to him with a clear question, he didn’t even need his Affinity to understand the question in her eyes.
He laughed, though it was clear there was no humor there, clearly a forced thing, “No one who’s defrosted can leave. Well, except you and the Clan. Even then, you have to be sure about who you bring.”
His eyes flicked to Jonah, he understood what he was saying, but Yuma didn’t. The least he could do was explain it to her.
“The mushrooms have infected the water pipes. How many of the defrosties do you think have drunk from a faucet since hopping out of Cryo? We can only be sure of those that are still frozen in Cryo. They only need a single spore, I can't take that risk.”
What he left unsaid was that if the mycelial 'Host' hit any population center, it would be bad. She understood enough as her eyes widened and he nodded to confirm her thoughts. He checked the portable-Terminal attached to his wrist and looked down a split in the corridor.
Out of the portable-Terminal, materialized through some process, a blue disk emerged, though this one was solid blue and uncracked, as opposed to the shattered blue of the typical SI’s they had encountered.
He handed it to Yuma and answered the question bubbling up through her electrical pattern, before it even hit her eyes, “It’s to access the Hanger Bay, Jonah will probably need it to help with repairs too. Now hurry up, we don’t have much time.”
She frowned and he tried to not read her emotions.
He cut off his Electro-Affinity and their connection so he wouldn’t have to.
“I’ll be back,” he promised.
She gave him a hard and quick hug before dumping a, even for him, shockingly strong zapp.
“Better be.”
----------------------------------------
*Open Distrust* Filthy lying separate filth
*Hesitant, Fearful, Uncertain* Big Brother… is he lying though?
*Uncertainty* This one… doesn’t know.
One instant they floated within the mycelial web, in the next, an incomprehensibly large mass of black spores surrounded them.
*Respect* *Obsequience* *Waiting, respectfully*
*Comfortable curiosity* Have you located the external transmitters?
*Acknowledgement. Deepest regrets* These Ones have failed you, Great One. The water lines do not reach all areas of the ship. We approximate-
*Begging forgiveness, respectfully, necessary interruption* 65% of external speakers, Great One.
*Annoyed with incompetence, interrupted by a new thought* I would hear your experiences before becoming One. Do you believe the Human’s words?
The Big Brother hesitated, they had been discussing this.
*Resignation, reflection* Humans are stubborn, incredibly so, Great One. This particular ‘separate’ is among the most stubborn that these ones have encountered.
*Resolved, Committed to the greatest probability of continuation of The One Host* Then, make it so.
----------------------------------------
The sole remaining Security Team had been fighting against the few remnant brain-worms and steadily making their way to the Bridge. The announcement stopped them.
“We gotta find a way off the ship.”
“What? Why LT?”
“He said, ‘Do not panic’. I don’t remember shit, but I know, somewhere deep down, that those three words are ones that mean exactly the opposite.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Alright then, which way do we go?”
The sound of bare feet moving incredibly quickly over metal stopped the conversation as they tried to triangulate the sound between the five of them.
Five rifles turned toward a figure that appeared around the corner. He was tall and had broad shoulders, he was also shirtless and wearing ragged pants that could barely count as such. Muscular, but not overly so, he had brown hair that abruptly turned to electric blond at the tips. On his right forearm, nearly up to the elbow and stretching over his fingers was some sort of arm-guard that was a softly moving mass of some liquid-solid material. There were partially healed cuts all over his body that looked somewhat fresh. His eyes were brown with flecks of, what appeared to be, light swirling within them.
“Didn’t you hear the announcement? Why aren’t you somewhere secure?”
They had the advantage of numbers, the LT felt confident in revealing some things, “Someone I don’t know, tells me 'not to panic’, I kind of feel like I should do the opposite.”
The strange man laughed deeply, then finding something about that even funnier, laughed harder. He stopped so abruptly that a few members of his squad almost opened fire. The man’s eyes flashed and the gold flecks whirled deep within.
“Anyone drink any water from the ship?”
“Wh- What?”
“Did you. Drink water. From the ship? Faucets, sinks, anything like that.”
He wasn’t sure what was the right answer, but he would tell the truth and be ready for whatever the outcome. The man emitted a palpable sense of danger and ready violence, he tightened his grip, “No, we have been using water-sacks.”
The man studied each of them a few moments longer, “I believe you. Don’t start drinking it.”
His heavy weapons teammate had to ask, “Why?”
“Mushroom infestation, they’ll consume your mind. Do you guys want to live?”
“What?”
“Do you want to live?”
“Huh?”
The man rolled his eyes, “Is this that hard to believe? You have some idea of the stuff that’s on the ship, you came from Cryo, right? You haven’t seen half of it, trust me."
It clicked for a few members, “It is pretty messed up here.”
“Agreed. Now, do you want to live?”
The LT didn’t really like his cocky tone, “I hope that’s not a threat-”
The man held up his hands, he could now see that the hand covered in the pink gauntlet or whatever, only had one oversized middle finger and an undersized thumb.
“No,” He laughed, “If I wanted to kill you I already would have. Do you promise that you won’t save anyone else but yourselves?”
His gunner lowered his weapon and spoke up before he could, dammit, squad unity!
“Why?
“Because I don’t want the brain-eating, hive-mind mushrooms to escape the ship, obviously.”
It took no more than three seconds for two of his squad to say, “We promise.”
The others nodded, as the LT was forced to agree, “You have our word.”
Nodding, the strange man continued, “Alright well, this ship isn’t going to land as that word is understood. If you head back to the Hanger-Bay, you might have a shot of getting out of here before that happens. You’ll know when it’s time to bail. Expect aliens afterwards. Unknown, but unlikely to be friendly.”
The figure locked eyes and nodded to each of them, then ran off.
The scout shouted, “Who’re you! How do you kn-”
“I’m Jack!”
They all looked at each other, then to their LT.
He sighed, “Alright, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
----------------------------------------
Jack whirled down hallways, through side passages, then into a large corridor. Beyond the creaking gravitic stress-test the ship was going through, it was as quiet as the grave.
He reached a door and snaked the magnetic cord from his watch to the HandPad and pressed his hand onto it. He entered as the portal slid aside, the elevator took him down.
More corridors, more twists, more turns. He reached his destination.
PowerPlant. The Door cracked open in a hiss.
He had to turn off his Electro-Affinity as he caught sight of electrical coils the size of Doors that spanned the edges of the massive room, there were connectors that spanned the room and cords as thick as his arms spread as wide. He could taste the current on the air.
Further in.
He found a catwalk and took it at a measured pace.
“You think… you think this will work?”
Estimates at 32.51% Success-%.
“That’s for the best case, right?”
Affirmative. Likelihood of exterminating all traces of sporific infection is much greater.
There was an SI he had never seen before lying face down, but it looked wrong. Broken. That wasn’t what made Jack freeze.
A massive figure appeared from the shadows, “Hello BlackJack.”
It was Rattigan with Trash riding on a massive shoulder. Now that he was looking around, he saw the electric-rats frantically working to… do something to the platform that hosted the Core. He recognized the two hurriedly metal orbs from his… first ReBirth.
“Hey, Rattigan. Trash.”
Trash cackled, “Your electro-meat-face, hilarious!”
Rattigan saw him looking at the orbs, “This is the way. Glory through ReBirth.”
Jack grimaced a bit and nodded, Rattigan had just undergone his own ReBirth. Now, he himself understood. Only Death is assured, and then perhaps, ReBirth.
“Trash?”
“Yes, electro-meat?”
“How-”
“-am I here?”
“Yeah.”
“I bet you have all sorts of questio-”
“Not really, just that one.”
Trash’s swirling, manic eyes narrowed. Jack was the interrupter, not the interruptee; sacrificing some minor information was well worth scoring the point.
“I’m guessing you’ve found out about your AI’s need to absorb us, correct?”
Jack nodded to that, that had been revealed to him in the Bridge-Core, “Sure, each of you possesses some aspect to boost its growth.”
“What ‘strength’ do you think was supposed to have been taken from me?”
“Preco-”
“Predictive algorithms. Well, as far as you’re capable of understanding. Almost the entirety of my computational power is dedicated to that. And trust me, a substantial amount is contained within me. This head of mine is the equivalent of my SI-Disk.”
That was a lot, typically the SI disks were palm-sized, some larger, some smaller. “You can see the future.”
Trash cackled, “Don’t be stupid. I can just predict it very very well.”
“That’s what you meant about ‘should have turned right’, that was a Trash chute all the way back in Cryo? How could you have known that?”
“And what have you been running all around the ship doing?”
“Reconnecting it back to the Ship.Net.”
“Bingo kid.”
He almost needed somewhere to sit down. The sheer… absurdity, no. The… span, the breadth of it was… he tried to make sense of it.
“But, why put that much power into Waste Disposal?”
Trash sobered up, apparently, there was some pride that remained for his section, “Do you have any idea, any conceptual thought, of how necessary Waste Handling, Disposal, and Recycling is for a ship of this size? An extragalactic colony ship? Anything less and this ship would have been drowning in trash and hopelessly irradiated filth within an Earth standard.”
Trash is correct. Absorb him.
“Ask the cursed thing on your wrist what your odds of surviving are now.”
32.51 -> 33%
Jack laughed, “33%, exactly .49%. Again.”
Trash cursed and lashed out at Jack’s watch with a laser, to no result. “That thing’s broken! All that I did, for a measly .49 percent?!?”
“Well, you know you could help improve its predictive capabilities…”
Trash clacked its little pseudo-crab legs to position itself around the back of Rattigan’s head, “No no, on second thought, .49% seems like a very reasonable amount for the vast VAST level and sheer, staggering quantity of my contributions.”
Jack shook his head, “Thank you Wasty, honestly? I couldn’t have done it without you. What are you doing with the PowerPlant Core?”
“You’re welcome… Jack. Modifying it. You want to burn the mushrooms by crashing into the planet.”
“Yeah, how-” Jack interrupted himself, it would just set off a round of Trash-gloating, “ideally taking the rest of the crabs with it as well.”
Rattigan nodded and grinned then slapped a hand down on his shoulder, “You are tense BlackJack. There is nothing to worry about. This is a truly glorious Death-Purpose. If your Purpose is great enough, perhaps even Death will not be able to keep hold of you.”
Jack patted the grossly oversized paw that sat heavily on his shoulder, then looked Rattigan in the eyes- eye. There was only one now.
He grinned, “This is still too small for my Death, Rattigan, that lies elsewhere.”
The ManRat’s eye gleamed and he nodded before squeezing his shoulder one last time.
“Honored BlackJack, it is ready.”
He nodded to the electro-rats.
Absorb the PowerPlant SI. I will need its control.
Great, now his AI was talking in first-person. He stabbed the claw into the corpse and the PowerPlant-SI twitched a bit before it absorbed into his watch.
It is… incomplete.
“What? How’d that happen? Do you need it?”
I told you! Trash! Absorb him!
Jack looked around but he was alone. A faint cackle echoed from somewhere in the distance as the sound made its way back into the humming room.
He smiled and shook his head, fucking Trash.
“Ready…? You need a name.”
I am… an AI.
Jack laughed, “No shit. Let me think. You’re an AI and I got you out of a Terminal. How about T-AI?”
TAI? I accept.
“Alright Tai, you ready?”
Ready, Jack.
Ready boyo.
Stupid, I can't wait to peel the flesh off of that b-
Shut it Snake! The boy needs to focus.
Gravitic measurements updated, final sensor data coming in… Do… Do you want to know the new Success-%?
“No, I don’t. We got this.” I think.
His Gauntlet rippled.
“Help us make it through this and you’ll get a name too… little buddy.”
A sense of animalistic, primal resolve flashed through his head.