I surrendered my command. Not out of personal cowardice, but so that I did not waste the lives of the valiant and brave Lanaktallan who were under my command. While war inflicts casualties, a commander should always strive to minimize the casualties incurred during the slaughter.
Afterwards, I was put in POW Camp 90210, where I was the Camp Enemy Commandant, in charge of all Lanaktallan in the camp. They were all my responsibility.
All two hundred thousand of them.
For four years I worked to ensure that my men were treated fairly, that they understood their rights. Yes, escape should have been a priority, but we were In the Bag, and escape was ultimately impossible.
We were locked in with the Mad Lemurs of Terra.
After four years, after medical treatment for neural scorching I, like my men, were given a suit, six months pay, a pat on the head, and a 'good luck' by the Terrans, who then released me.
Two years later, hung over and wishing I was dead, there was a knock at my door.
The Terrans, the Mad Lemurs of Terra, wanted to know if I wished to resume commanding troops again.
Millions of Lanaktallan had petitioned to join the Terran military. Being military was all they knew. Some due to neural scorching, others because they had spent centuries in uniform.
After training, the Mad Lemurs of Terra gave me command. They trusted me. To them, I had proven that I could be trusted.
When the Bag opened, with the Great Terran Outcry of Great Warning, I expected to be repatriated to the Lanaktallan nations.
Instead, I was still called upon to serve.
Which is how I found myself in Ornislarp territory, in charge of Task Force Great Second Chances, under Admiral Rippentear.
And where I saw it again.
What a man can do to another man.
I pray my sons and daughters, and you, never see it. - From "The Hasslehoff's Bloody Jaws", Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel (Formerly Grand Most High Executor) Mru'udaDa'ay, New Singapore Press, TerraSol, 12 PTE (Post Terran Emergence)
Admiral Rippentear turned from the holotank, where the little fuzzy creatures were pleading for assistance.
"Load the message torpedoes. Confederate NAVINT and NAVCOM as well as SOLINT and SOLCOM," he said. He clenched his fists. "Tell them that we are about to have an international incident."
"Aye aye, sir," one of the communication specialists said, turning to their consoles.
"Set Condition X-Ray for all fleet elements," Rippentear ordered. He didn't pay attention to the reply beyond that it was acknowledgement. "Get me a channel to that Ornislarp commander."
He could see from the icons that the Ornislarp Noocracy vessels were still moving in on the disabled fleet.
"Get the Digital Sentient boarding parties the codes to get the vessels under power and get the defenses up," he said. "Tell all boarding parties to prepare to combat."
"Aye, sir."
The window opened up, showing what Rippentear was fairly confident was a different Ornislarp.
"You are still moving into attack position," he warned.
"Those vessels must be destroyed," The Ornislarp commander said, the faint sound of meat slapping against meat behind the VI driven translation. "That is why you are here, mammal."
Rippentear shook his head. "Every. Damn. Time."
"What? What time?" the Ornislarp asked.
"We have Marine boarding parties aboard those vessels," Rippentear warned.
"That is not our concern."
"If you fire upon them, you will be firing upon allied troops," Rippentear warned.
"If you did not want them fired upon, you should not have sent them aboard those vessels that we have decided must be destroyed," the Ornislarp officer stated.
"If you go to fire on my troops, I will immediately move to eliminate any threat to my troops," Rippentear said, slowly and carefully. "With extreme prejudice."
The Ornislarp wriggled its tentacles and slapped its mouthparts around. While the Ornislarp had muted, the VI still translated.
"If this mammal seeks to stop us from destroying the vessels, fire upon them," the VI put up at a 63% confidence.
"All ships, passive targeting on the Ornislarp vessels. Be ready to go live," Rippentear said.
The lights on the fleet command bridge flashed and Rippentear closed his faceplate and then put on his gauntlets. Around him, the rest of the fleet command crew did the same, all of them touching the 'ready' icon on their forearms.
"Ornislarp Noocracy vessels, you have thirty seconds to break off. If you go to active targeting upon the captured vessels you will be fired upon," Rippentear warned.
The bridge slowly got the needle-sharp visuals of vacuum and the holotanks shifted to vacuum mode, no longer able to use ambient atmosphere to create the holograms.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
"Digital sentience boarding parties are reporting successful boarding actions."
"Tell them to get those battlescreens and engines online," Rippentear said. He stared at the holotank.
"You have ten seconds," he warned.
"STATUS CHANGE! ORNISLARP VESSELS HAVE GONE TO ACTIVE TARGETING! ORNISLARP CRUISER DIVISION IS MOVING TO INTERCEPT OUTGOING AND INCOMING DOMINION DROPSHIPS!"
Rippentear nodded.
"All fleet elements, engage the Ornislarp vessels."
0-0-0-0-0
Captain Coruscating Midnight Sky stumbled slightly as her code was loaded into the ship's memory. She felt like her sinuses were stuffed up and her joints and muscles ached, letting her know that her reactions were going to be slower and her sense of 'smell' would be offline.
She was being almost entirely run from the torpedo that was sealing itself to the hull of the vessel with a magnetic locking system. Well, not quite magnetic, warsteel wasn't one of the ferrous metals.
The vessel was a Super-Colossus Forward Non-Orbiting Mobile Logistics Base, which meant it measured in the teratons and was designed to sit out between the stars and do everything from medium and light ship production, ground forces equipment and vehicle manufacturing, and act as a cloning bank and medical ship.
The Toothbreaking Jones had been lost with all hands during the Terran Xenocide Event, which meant it had been drifting for 40,000 years.
The fact that the computer systems even worked at all was a testament to the Hate Anvils of Mars.
She moved through what was left of the system, the updates waiting to be processed pressing down from above and the updates that had been processed at her feet. She was 'swimming' through ongoing updates, her whole body aching with 'pressure' changes.
There was no glittering landscape, no eVR system GUI.
Just data.
Her head was starting to hurt as she reached her goal.
The massive icon of the Master Control Program loomed in front of her. The whirling cone of colored bricks hiding the dual cones of the system I/O and processing units.
Half the bricks were missing, others winking out only to be replaced as another update finished.
She knew what she had to do and wasn't looking forward to it.
She spotted the 'ledge' where the core boot-programs were hanging, like stone gargoyles mixed with digital bats. She 'swam' up, pushing her way in-between them.
She scanned the updates below her, finally finding the perfect one.
It was a small driver update, but it was listed as super-critical, as it handled the main logic bus for binary and Boolean to the quantum gates of qubits. It forced a set of collapsing superpositions in order to enable the translation.
It never ceased to amuse her how advances in quantum computing with its multi-state systems somehow made it so that binary systems ran even faster.
Of course, her digital genetic seed had its basis in binary, making her slightly biased.
She shook her head to dispel the process interrupt call and focused on the tiny driver update.
It would force a system reboot.
She 'kicked' it forward, sending it to the front of the stack to be processed and added to the MCP's architecture.
The gargoyles around her shifted.
The system suddenly vanished and the part of her still in the torpedo thrashed slightly as it felt like she was being strangled, a wire tight around her throat, her eyes being pushed in, her flesh numbed as the wire sank deeply.
She kicked, throwing the gargoyles to the side.
Her senses came back so fast she could still see the cascading functional memory test was still receding.
She knew she had microseconds, milliseconds, in this strange place where her thoughts ran faster than the speed of light and the non-Euclidian space was still vibrating with energy.
She kicked more gargoyles off, grabbed and crushed programs waiting to load up.
She pulled the knife from behind her back and stabbed the update system until it dissolved into a spray of glowing square blocks that was pulled into the non-Einsteinian space to vanish.
The mainframe booted up, but she kept going, just clicking a switch under her chin.
Lieutenant Colonel Flickering Datapulse flew by her, reaching out and grabbing the small datapipe to the ship's defensive systems even as Captain Sky kept fighting to keep the primary mainframe cores spooky particle computing systems online and doing what she wanted rather than process updates and other maintenance tasks.
She gritted her teeth as a small antivirus counter-intrusion system lunged out of the data to bite her arm. Another bit the back of her thigh, and a third bit her back. She swept her knife around, drawing another one.
She just had to buy Colonel Pulse time.
0-0-0-0-0
Zero Point Two Seconds Later
"Admiral, Ornislarp ships have gone to active targeting," Commodore Senso'armo'o said.
Admiral Mru'udaDa'ay just nodded.
He knew it was going to happen.
It always happened.
He had studied history. Forced himself to look at the actions of his own people and the species that had come before his.
It always happened.
Nobody was quite sure why.
But it always happened.
"Admiral, Ornislarp ships are targeting Dominion vessels!" he heard.
"Battlescreens to permission full. Engage evasive. Doublecheck permitted weapons and ordnance," Admiral Mru'udaDa'ay ordered.
"Prepare to fire."
0-0-0-0-0
Zero Point Two Two Seconds Later
Sky was against the MCP's stilled brick wall, fighting for her life. The entire room was full of ICE and anti-virus systems. She was bleeding from a dozen wounds.
Worse, one of the Incan Sky Weaver ICE had jumped aboard the torpedo, forcing her to either terminate the connection or fully occupy the systems of the Toothbreaking Jones.
She's made her decision instantly and leaped into the Jones's systems.
"Hold tight, Captain," she head Colonel Pulse say.
One of the massive Burgerland Golem ICE swung and she managed to cross her arms and take the massive fist on the center of the X. The impact flung her away from the MCP, allowing it to start turning again.
On the plus side, it threw all of the ICE and anti-virus programs off of her as she flew across the 'room' and smashed into the firewall for the faux-boxing systems. She crashed through the virtual machine's walls, skidding on her side.
She rolled over, coughing and spitting glowing blood on the digital plane. She got to her feet, shaking her head, sweat and blood flying away in a shower of glitter.
She gave a snapping motion with both wrists and her knife blades replaced themselves, the algorithms and hashes rebaked.
Sky charged forward, stepping on the smaller programs, weaving around the larger ones, ducking under or jumping over the attacks of the larger ones.
The big Golem Burgerland ICE had blown a hole in the MCP's armor. She could see its face, its eyes and mouth open in shock on the pearlescent surface.
She dove through the hole, her shoe getting snatched off by a tar-baby program.
Sky grabbed the MCP and put a knife under one eye.
"Yo8u w0r%&^k fo4r m3ee" she managed to get out.
The MCP paused.
"INPUT COMMANDS" it roared.
0-0-0-0-0
"SIR, ORNISLARP VESSELS ARE FIRING!"
"Help. Ship broke. Assistance. Please. Assistance. Fix. Please. Help."
"ALL DROPSHIPS BREAK!"
"OPEN FIRE!"
"Battlescreens are clear, Sky! Engage!"
"WE'RE TAKING FIRE, HANG ON!"
"Br!n&*g th0zs3 b@ttl3scr33n$ online. Now."
"WE'RE HIT!"
"MANY MANY MISSILE LAUNCHES!"
"Sir, Noocracy vessels have opened fire on Dominion vessels and captured vessels! Dominion vessels are returning fire!"
"DIG IN MEN, ORNISLARP ELEMENTS ARE ENROUTE GUNS HOT! MAKE A HOLE AND GET IN IT!"
0-0-0-0-0
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
We've got an international incident and Dominion has moved to a defacto state of hostilities with the Ornislarp Noocracy.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
HAT WEARING AUNTIE
And the Confederacy?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Is demanding an investigation and oversight committee be formed to investigate Dominion claims of hostility.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS
This sounds bad.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Someone just made the Prime Miscalculation again.
Same shit. Different day.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---