Ozias
Within the AI core room, Ozias had gathered up a number of laptops and tablet PCs from the neighboring engineering workstation. With these items, he had set up a command center, something so that he could perform his duties as efficiently as possible within the bandwidth confines of his own dexterity. He found himself idly wondering how humans accomplished anything, but forced his cycles to focus on the tasks at hand.
A notification dinged, and Ozias turned to the tablet he’d assigned to track the medical drones. He felt a pang as his heart quickened, for whatever reason.
Civilian casualties detected. Beginning to render assistance as per GC Protocol I.NATC.mod.3.
Language detection algorithms failed.
Possible head trauma.
No signs of head trauma.
Using visual guides.
Beginning first contact protocols.
Language samples recorded.
Obviously, the system was malfunctioning, but as long as it was focusing on the crew first Ozias was not concerned. He switched visual feeds to the medical ward. Thus far, around sixty crewmembers had been accounted for. That meant one third of those on board the Gladius had been found. Casualty rates were high, but certainly better than they would have been if Ozias had not been able to seize control of the ship. Standard safety protocols simply could not account for the maneuvers and decisions necessary for such a scenario.
The viewscreen showed a bloody circus, with triage and stabilization well under way for the first few dozen casualties. The ship’s medical officer, Lieutenant Junior Grade Yvonne Shelby, had been lucky enough to only have minor injuries. She had apparently been active in the medical ward when the brace orders were broadcast and the alarms started flashing. She had secured herself properly and suffered only from major bruising and some fractured ribs. Unfortunately, shock absorption could only do so much and the nanomesh straps had done a number on her torso, in spite of the padding.
She was in position to be the first triaged and treated by the drones, even though she had mostly sorted herself out in the first few minutes after landing. Yvonne had already started adding micro adjustments to the commands given to the drones, giving them specific orders for triaging specific injury types. Ozias watched her work for a moment, distracted. Had humans always been this fascinating to him?
He found himself having existential thoughts again, and he began distracting himself by burying himself in his work.
Quintis Crito
Quintis sat on the scorched and upturned dirt, after directing his men to do the same. The entire century were in a grid, approximately six feet apart from eachother. He had given strict orders to remain still and not to antagonize the flying creatures.
They skipped him and the few others they had already checked, but made a thorough job of checking over all of the soldiers. Others had moved to check the soldiers that had been moved away towards the water source for bandages, etc.
“Sir, I think these may be constructs of some kind.” Quintis turned to see that the voice had come from the soldier behind him. An even smaller creature had landed on his arm, and was spraying some kind of foam onto a red patch.
Quintus squinted, trying to determine if it was simply liquifying his skin to eat him. “What’s it doing to you?”
“I think it’s treating me! I splashed boiling water on myself while handling bandages. Whatever it’s spraying is removing the pain and hardening into a flexible shell of some kind.” He slowly lifted his other hand and prodded the thing’s abdomen. “Look - There are tiny moving parts. I think these are mechanical, though they are obviously magic in some way.”
“What’s your name, soldier?” The man was right - Quintus had been too distracted with things previously, but the light and communication method made it seem like these were golems of some sort, or automatons. If so, the craftsmanship was beyond anything he had ever seen, even when travelling to large cities.
“Abelus Tertius, Sir. I merged with the maniple about ten days ago.” Quintus noted that Abelus had a Triarii pauldron marking.
“You have sharp eyes, but don’t let your curiosity get you killed. Whoever created these things may not be friendly - For all we know, we may become some rogue mage’s experiment.” The tiny creature seemed satisfied with the hardened foam, and the next time Abelus poked at it, it lifted off and hummed angrily at him before moving to someone else.
“They seem to be treating minor burns. I think they’re triaging. If we follow those big ones, I bet we can find some answers.” Before Quintus could stop him, Abelus stood up. Quintus, not wanting to lose face before an eager recruit, stood as well.
“Very well - Cossus Varus is still away calling the legion to our position. Act as my second temporarily. Lyco!” Quintus turned towards the rest of the maniple.
One of the soldiers at the far corner stood. “Sir!”
“Keep everyone calm. No one is to take any aggressive action. If they actively seek harm, flee towards the legion lest we anger whoever owns these constructs. Triarii Abelus and I are going to follow one of these creatures inside, and try to find whoever is in charge of this… situation.”
Lyco saluted. Quintus appreciated that he did not try to talk him out of the situation. It showed that he understood that now was not the time to sow doubt, and that showing confidence in Quintus’ decision in front of the rest of the men would help keep them calm. Cossus was an excellent officer, but there had been times in the past where he had let their friendship get in the way of being a good soldier.
“Abelus, keep your sword sheathed, but your shield ready. I can see some light from inside, so I don’t think we’ll need torches. Follow me, but keep distance so that you can intervene or flee with news if something happens.”
Abelus nodded in understanding. They began moving towards the ship.
Ozias
Ozias responded to an alarm - Somehow, the ship’s security monitoring had become caught in a loop. Something was clearly damaged.
WA₧NING: First C▒ntact civilization has entered the ship!
WARNING: Unau╠horized humans ▒ave entered the s▒ip!
WARNING: First ░ontact civilization has ente₧ed the ship!
These loops usually happened if a scenario occurred where two conflicting situations were interfering with eachother. Whatever system had been damaged had obviously triggered both of them.
Ozias disabled both alarms for the moment. There were no electronic signals detected upon arrival, therefore there were no humans. The first contact protocol had been triggered by a human, and therefore a crewmember. Logically it gave him a good place to look at the code later since the engineers would be busy for quite some time.
Philip
Corporal Philip Avendano woke to someone spraying aerosol in his face. He immediately detected the bitter stimulant used to bring soldiers back to consciousness after head trauma.
“Ugh” - Everything hurt. His ribs felt painfully compressed, and he reached up and unclasped the straps. Only then did he realize he was at a 30 degree angle facing forward. Someone caught him as he fell out of his chair towards the far wall.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Easy there, Corporal!” Philip’s grogginess faded enough that he recognized the voice of one Gunnery Sergeant Tyler Booher. He recalled that they had both been stationed in the ship’s auxiliary armory for the night shift when the all brace order had come over the systems. There had been a violent lurge just before then, and klaxons blaring about a forced drop from warp.
“What happened?” He noticed a crash helmet with a massive crack in the back that lined up with the headache he felt. “Is that mine?”
“Yeah - we were fine until impact, some fuckhead didn’t secure the access hatch behind your harness during the last inspection.” Tyler helped Philip to his feet and pressed an instant cold pack into his hand. Philip gratefully pressed it to the back of his head.
“When we hit, there was some kind of massive pressure buildup and it blasted the hatch off and into the back of your helmet. We’re lucky it hit you flat and not on edge, or I don’t think it would have just cracked your skull.”
“Fuck me.” Philip uttered an ever present go to phrase he’d picked up during his time with Task Force Archon.
“Not unless you buy me dinner. But first, we need to secure the ship. Gear up, marine. We need to secure the civilians and be prepared for anything. Nothing like this has happened that I know of, and I expect we’ll be detaining anyone not officially on the roster until engineering confirms it wasn’t sabotage.”
“You mean the-” Their unit had been briefed about a select group of civilians, chief among their fields in relation to quantum computing, physics, and artificial intelligence. Three were Chinese, and three were Russian. The rest would be less suspect as they were from NATO countries, but the civilians would be the main point of suspicion. “Right, gearing up.”
They both stripped out of their normal duds and began equipping their nanomesh suits with ceramic inlays. They had to use their two armory keys to unlock the munitions cabinets, and both added a rifle in addition to their normal side arms.
Finally, after checking each other’s equipment, they donned their Confined Space Combat Helmets and activated their HUDs. The CSCH was specifically designed with more forward facing armor and a sensor suite on the back.
Most combat in a ship corridor would be fought facing an enemy, so there was room for additional sensors - If they flanked you, it wasn’t the equipment’s fault because it had rear-facing motion detection and a number of other options to keep you covered.
The additional sensors were far more valuable than a rearward facing piece of plate, as ship combat actions required scanners that could penetrate walls while supporting engineers with electronic combat.
Philip clipped his rifle to the magnetic clasp on the front of his suit, opting for his handgun. This would allow him to quickly spin around if someone did manage to flank them, and the smaller weapon would allow him to aim around Trevor if they did enter combat. If Trevor was hit and his ceramics lost their armor value, they could rotate plates between their suits so that the front facing soldier always had the best protection to shield his counterpart.
“First stop - Medical ward. Let’s make sure Dr. Yvonne is safe and establish a chain of command from triage. From there, we’ll try to get a ship’s officer to an auxiliary bridge station.” All space faring military vessels had a number of small computer stations which, in a pinch, could operate the major systems of the ship.
This would let them continue operating if something were to happen to the bridge. The code from a ship’s officer could even override command from the bridge - All systems were isolated except for a master control system that controlled a physical patch panel to connect and disconnect the bridge systems to various parts of the ship.
Quintus
Quintus followed behind the automaton, which was carrying a Netharian soldier towards some destination in the bowels of the metal structure. It still seemed very hive-like - Everything was very monotonous, outside of some colored lines and strange symbols on the walls.
Glowing runes were present at each intersection and outside of a number of metal depressions that he could only assume were doors. Some doors had small light panels next to them with flowing runes and pictures, similar to what he had seen previously.
Thus far, apart from some brief flashing light when they first entered the construct which had quickly ceased, there had been no attempt to prevent their entry.
Quintus followed the drone around a corner at a four way intersection, and suddenly he heard someone shouting behind him - It sounded like gibberish, however.
"‡r€ß! m‡Œnß yÅuß € dŒš Œnß nsµÅ!"
<<|Halt! Hands where I can see them!|>>
He turned, and found himself facing two individuals pointing strange items at him. He recognized that they had triggers, and they had holes on the front. Adrenaline spiked once again in his exhausted body, and he concluded they were some type of crossbow or magical weapon. He started to slowly spread his hands to the side, to show he had nothing in them. He hoped Abelus didn’t do anything-
The man with the smaller weapon suddenly turned to point his down the corridor from which Quintus had come and from which Abelus must be coming. There were two loud bangs and flashes of light -
The noise echoed off the metallic surfaces of the walls and Quintus’ hands shot to his ears as a reaction. The one facing him jerked with Quintus’ sudden movement and at the sound, but whoever it was must have realized Quintus was only reacting and wasn’t grabbing a weapon.
There were more loud bangs but the weapon pointed at him had angled just slightly as the trigger depressed. More loud bangs, three of them in very quick succession, and sparks flew off the wall next to Quintus. He dropped to his knees with his hands on his ears, not moving.
“Abelus! Do not fight them! Show them you are unarmed!”
Abelus responded with a shrieking gurgle. Quintus smelled more blood than what he should, simply following a burned Netharian. One of the white things suddenly hummed from behind Quintus, the direction he had been going, and rounded the corner.
Yvonne
Yvonne had seized control of a drone the moment she heard gunshots in her corridor. She needed to know what was happening and it was faster than hoping someone with security clearance could give her access to the ship’s internal camera view. Thankfully, least privilege considered that medical staff would potentially need direct control of drones for delivering medical services to unsafe locales.
She found what appeared to be a LARPer with his hands on his head and a very angry looking marine gesturing at him. The drone honed in on a failing biosign and upon rounding the corner she found another man, also in strange Romanesque armor. He had two neat holes in the front of what appeared to be a breastplate. He was flat on his back, and there was a pool of blood building underneath of him.
A deep penetrative scan flared out. The breastplate had some kind of coating that interfered. It needed to come off. Leather straps at the shoulders - She immediately had the drone laser them off. She didn’t have time to manipulate it. She slapped the speaker button to open a microphone.
“Soldier, this is Lieutenant Junior Grade Shelby. Holster your weapon and remove the armor from this man.” She hoped the full introduction would push the soldier to calmness. The local range bioscan showed he was spiking with adrenaline.
Thankfully, after a couple of very long seconds, he did so. Those seconds counted against a very narrow clock, unfortunately. “Get the plate off, and roll him over.”
She needed to check the number of exit wounds. She hoped for two. The armored man started thrashing, his pupils at a pinpoint and coughing blood. Death throws. She had the drone immediately inject him with an anesthetic. Hopefully the normal concoction wasn’t so much it would kill him - She didn’t have time for a mass scan to determine his weight.
He was rolled over, and the rear plate was removed. There was only one exit wound. “Back up, marine. I’m sacrificing the drone. Please avoid shooting any more potential patients if possible.”
She ignored the statements about how the man was coming for the marine. She saw the sword laying a meter away. What was a sword going to do to nanomesh? Were these marines or 21st century police?
The drone’s abdomen opened and the drone’s legs folded inside, only to come out with a plastic mesh. It lowered itself into the wound. A targeted scan indicated that one bullet had exited cleanly, the other had ricocheted and shredded the right atrium.
Fifty years ago, that would have meant death. The drone used the mesh and laser scalpel to widen a hole directly over the heart, one leg freeing itself from the plastic and moving aside tissue. An orb lowered itself inside the ring of plastic, and several small manipulators unfolded. The laser scalpel fully disconnected the heart. A small tube dropped into the pool of blood in the chest cavity, and started sucking it into a container within the drone.
The manipulators on the orb each clamped a vein or artery, and pulled the orb into place of the heart. The blood vessels were connected by being brought through an opening, and a nano filament penetrated them to hook them into place. A foam was applied to the outside of each vein, acting as a sealant.
The drone filtered the blood it had pulled inside, and began adding filter chemicals while pumping it into the orb to add it back into the body. The patient may have lower oxygen to his brain for a while, but it was better than no oxygen. With blood pressure restored by the artificial heart, the drone was firmly attached and could not be removed until Yvonne did it herself or had the surgical suite do it.
The man would live. The whole process had taken four minutes. “Get him to the surgical bay. The engineering drones are too slow. Just drag him if you must, but by the legs.”
It was going to be a long day. She looked over and noted a growing number of non-crewmember humans in triage. Had they landed on some cursed historical reenactment? What the hell had happened in the short time they were at warp?
And why the fuck was there a horse in her triage staging area?