McCloud rolled her eyes at Derek's expression. "God, you daft twit. You'll be getting some organic bits, yes. Just not a clone of your old body. We don't have a DNA sample of it, and if we did, I doubt we'd want it. God knows where 'goes berserk when space is warped' sits on the chain."

He tiltled his head at her. Dismay replaced with confusion in a fraction of a second. "Okay. So is it just going to be some random body, or..."

She stopped her repair work for a moment to glance up at him. "Okay, look. The computer running you right now? Can run faster and store more than a human brain. What we're going to end up with... Hm. You ever watch the terminator? Old classic movie, robot skeleton in a meatsuit?"

He nodded along, not sure he liked where this was going.

She tapped a button on her icon. A humanoid robot appeared.. only this one looked like a skeletal human. A perfectly formed; albeit metallic; human skeleton. "We're gonna put the brain you've got now in a shell. Then grow organs, flesh, skin, on it, so you can feel, and eat, and all that craziness. You'll even be able to turn some food into chemical energy for your shell... though the best route is just to plug in to recharge every month or so. When its all done, you'll feel perfectly normal... except, well. Better."

"That... actually sounds kinda cool. But if you don't have my DNA, what will you use?"

"We've got samples from over tens of thousands of donors; some voluntary, some not, from all over the world. Pick a set and you're good. Now look. We both have things to do. Why don't you get back to your overclocking research bull and let me do my job?"

Derek was still a bit concerned; but less than he had been before. He was reasonably confident that things would turn out fine in the end; he could look and feel how he used to, only without his... problems. He did wonder whether Shirkai had known all of this the whole time, and just decided to toy with him; scenarios running through his head of whether the man he was replacing was more upset than he revealed; perhaps trying to sabotage him.

Abruptly, Derek realized he'd been standing, lost in thought, as a clearly irritated Dr. McCloud was working on her machines just a few meters away. He backed up, heading out of the machine bay.. and started overclocking again. He had a checklist to finish. Time to get back to it.

***

A small pack of squid-shaped drones swarmed over the rock, their movements as fluid and seemingly random as their shapes predicted.Three of them dragged the bulbous masses that would someday be point defense lasers, charging them from their own internal capacitors, as the more humanoid machines completed the outside safety net; the last of three hundred and sixteen tiny nodes forming a rough ovoid shape, redirecting any loose debris back... towards the shape of 13. A minor flux in the bow wave as they passed a star system flexed the protective hyperdrive field; a few rocks broke free; and rather than passing out into relative nonexistance, simply drifted slowly towards the center. Breakthrough. The shell of the asteroid that was had finally started to develop cracks.

The outer hull of the ship was almost complete; deceptively thin scaffolding that had held things in place was being taken down in places; and in others, expanded, as the spine of a smaller; but still massive; vessel was precisely arranged among a spiderweb of connections, there to hold it all in place in the event of whatever manuevers the ship had to make.

Even before it settled into place, more drones were moving. The skeleton of what would soon be a destroyer was forming in the ghostly, distorted light hyperspace seemed to give over the cavern now that it was open to space.

***

Shiraki settled back into his duty station on the bridge. The actual bridge; buried in the heart of the ship, but arranged as a proper bridge should be, a rough, armored sphere surrounding the captain's chair, with screens and controls for every device on the ship being hooked into place. at the various crew stations surrounding it. His own system was fully operational already; he carefully checked the upcoming stars; the long, slightly twisted path the 13 would take on its route through hyperspace. There would be a minor course-correction to stay on track in a few days; a black hole they'd passed had slightly more of its gravity project into hyperspace than expected. Even without the course correction, they'd still reach the targeted sector; but that was fine.

Might as well enjoy the view for a few more shifts. The maddeningly competent upstart who would be replacing him would likely take over soon, and from the crew's perspective it'd be only a few weeks left til arrival. For just a moment, he imagined what it would take to fake a bout of whatever psychosis had taken over the civilian... former civilian... in his mechanical body. But no. He was navy, as much as one was left.

When Captain Peterson entered the chamber, Shiraki glanced up from his station. The old man seemed remarkably calm about all this. How long had he been up before he'd started turning the others on? Or had Dr. McCloud been the first? He'd been awoken before the bow wave hit; the captain wanted a real navigator to keep an eye on things for that first few tricky minutes. He'd even had the disturbing moment of integrating a last memory packet... his organic flesh-and-blood self had died a few minutes after the machine Siraki had woken up.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Two sets of memories with identical timestamps occuring at the same time. One of calm planning and preparing. The other of sheer panic and fear. Enough to drive a sane man mad.

Behind him, he heard a throat-clearing. Obviously a brief call for attention. He set his console to standby and turned to the captain.

"Alright, people. In a few hours, we're going to be starting up the reactor of our new Destroyer. We haven't given her a name yet... we won't until she's ready for independent flight... but she'll be a somewhat upgraded version of the Dragon class that came out of the yards in Shanghai a few months before the... event. In the sector of space we're going to be in, she'll be the only real warship."

"Some of you may have noticed that I've been bringing on extra crew. Replacements, in some cases, for your jobs. I'm going to be blunt here; while some of the replacements might have an edge on you in select areas, you were my first choices for a crew, for a variety of reasons. All of you are navy. All of you have some of the very little actual combat experience of any human ship; either during the last battle or those pirate incidents a few years back. I know this will come as a touch of an irritant for you, having fabricated quarters you'll never sleep in.. but I'd like to bring all of you over to the Dragon-C when its ready. This platform we're on, for all its size, is a civilian ship. That ship over there is going to be the founding flagship of the navy for sector 13."

"Thats not to say this will be mandatory. While you were my first choices, there are over a million minds stored in the database, including numerous competent naval officers. If you want to stay on in a civilian capacity, you can feel free to remain here. This is not a warship; its a terraforming and fabrication platform. Our current fabrication officer, Amari, is going to be taking this chair when we go, and I'm sure she'd be glad to have you as she gets to work building the future homes of humanity in the stars."

Shiraki smiled, and gave a short nod. "I'll be glad to take the job, Captain." A chorus of agreement filled the room. Half of the bridge crew had been looking at future replacements with varying degrees of irritation; for a less disciplined group, it might have caused problems.

"As you were, then. Our future Captain Amari needs to finish building my ship before she can claim this one. Until then... this might be Outreach 13. There might be dozens of other ships like it out there. But we can't count on that. Assume we're all thats left, because we might just be. I wouldn't put it past old man Harkness naming the only one to make it out alive the 13 just to give us hope that there were at least 12 others."

For a moment this last line strained everyone. Shiraki had assumed there were dozens, or even hundreds, of ships out there, and that someday they'd meet other survivors, even if long after they'd built a thriving new world of their own. He had a few friends he hoped to see again one day, given how long these new bodies and minds could last.

But no. Best not to dwell on that. He had a job to do; making sure this ship reached its designated star cluster safely.

****

In his freshly completed quarters; featuring a toilet, shower, and other fabricated fixtures that there were no living humans nearby... or possible even in existance.. to use.. Derek was standing in the midst of the room, engaging in yet more simulations. After what had seemed to him weeks and months of time passing; and subjectively really had been; he'd achieved what the 'quest' his captain gave him considered an acceptable knowledge of hyperdrives and navigation. He was actually supposed to go on for his first actual shift as navigator in almost day of real time; which, for the crew still running at 5%, meant less than two hours to go. Every officer on the shift had at least basic training in every position to run them in emergencies; but for Derek, that wasn't enough. He knew from his academy days that promotions generally went to people who both excelled at their field; and were competent at every other field. There were no Captains who didn't have at least a good understanding of every piece of their ship; even if not enough to rebuild a hyperdrive.

Training Checklist for Head Navigation Officer Slot:

[Learn Navigation Functions: 110%][Complete]

[Learn Hyperdrive Functions: 100%][Complete]

[Learn Fusion Torch Functions: 101%][Complete]

[Learn Basic-level functions, all positions: 100%]

[Build Own Quarters: 100%][Complete]

[Optional: Learn Terraforming Functions: 163%][Complete]

[Optional: Learn Hypercannon Functions: 81%]

[Optional: Learn Missile and Point Defense Functions: 68%]

[Optional: Learn full-level functions, all positions: 81%]

[Optional: Furnish Own Quarters: 0%]

The primary thing he was lacking at this point was combat training; which led to where he was now. Earthforge had never been about fighting; the Seeder ships could fight, sure, but he'd mostly left the weapons on automatic and just focused on moving the ship. That being said, the ship was much larger than a Destroyer, and more powerful than the ship his Ex had been serving on when she died.

For a moment, he almost checked the database, to see if a certain name was among the contents.. but he stopped. Went back to focusing on his simulation.

Space combat was relatively simple, in the grand scheme of things. Two sides would launch missiles at each other from extreme range; point defenses would try to intercept them all before impact. The attacker would balance how many missiles arrived at once; versus how much time the enemy had to observe the missiles and get a good trajectory. Either trying to overwhelm the enemy with more missiles than they could shoot down; or sneak the missiles in before they could get a good shot in.

Then, at a few light-seconds of range, the Hypercannons would come into play, and even closer, the point defenses would start hitting enemy ships as well. At this sort of range, with a main gun that traveled faster than light, generally an enemy ship would be destroyed once every few shots. The action would be so fast that no human could follow it; gunners and captains would make decisions during the long missile duel, and then during the few seconds of closing the AIs would handle everything; no human could aim point defenses and weapons during manuevering at the sorts of speed a hyperdrive-equipped ship could handle.

Still. If he overclocked all the way, he could take a few weeks to focus on what he lacked during the time available. And, admittedly, the captain giving to him as if it were a 'quest' seemed to be providing exactly the sort of motivation such things had with his fellow students back at the academy; a subtle compulsion to get those numbers all to nice round 100s, or more.