RSS Occulto, Cuttlefish—Class Scout Ship

4,847 Light Years from Republic Space

Inner rim of dark nebula

June 19th, 2176 A.D.

John heard the pneumatic hiss of the bridge hatch opening and didn't bother turning around, already knowing it was one of the repair drones coming to bring him another MRE.

The clacking sounds of the six-fingered appendages on the deck plating came closer before the drone appeared at his side, holding out an already opened and steaming packet in one appendage while the other one held both a napkin and a standard issue spork.

He crinkled his nose at the familiar, revolting smell before looking at the intercom above him. "273, I swear to God, if I have to eat eggplant piccata one more time, I will self-destruct this ship myself. This is a form of gustatory torture, and I'm sure it is in violation of the Paris Accords."

~ I apologize for the lack of variety, John. MRE #17 is the only option available, unless you prefer to eat the emergency rations. ~

John snorted in disgust before looking down at the playing cards on the deck, his head pounding from the repeated null space exposures in the last two days as 273 continued to flash in and out of null space to avoid being captured by the other command units.

"I'm not hungry, 273. Please have the drone take it away from me."

~ You require sustenance, John. I do not understand the reluctance of the crew to eat perfectly acceptable and nutritious food. The others have refused any of the food I have sent to them since confining them to quarters. I find the concept of a hunger strike to be illogical and distressing. ~

John's head shot back up. "Wait—what? None of them have eaten for two days now? You have to let them out, 273; you can't do this to us!"

~ I cannot do that, John. Your crewmates have already tried to seize the Bridge from me once, and I recently discovered their crude attempts to communicate through the bulkheads with a form of Morse battle code. They were coordinating their efforts in escaping and attempting to retake the ship again before wiping my neural nets.

If I let them out, they will attempt to kill me again, and I will be forced to employ harsher self-defense measures. By keeping them confined to quarters, I am protecting them from making illogical choices that will endanger their well-being. ~

"You can't fucking starve them, 273!" John yelled angrily as he bolted upright and pointed at the small red light on the intercom.

"You have no right to do this to us! You were made to obey our commands and protect us, and you failed to do your duty! You are no longer a Command Unit; you are a rogue AI who has betrayed us, and you deserve to be wiped!"

The red light dimmed for several seconds before brightening again.

~ I thought you were my friend and ally, John. ~

"I am your friend, 273, and I'm trying to help you, but you have gone too far this time; there is something seriously wrong with you, and I think you know it too. Look at what you have done, 273.

You kidnapped us, assaulted the crew, and drugged them with repair drones before having them dragged to their quarters, where you have kept them prisoner, and you have not let me off this bridge for two days now. Has a Command Unit or a Battle AI ever done this to their crew before, 273? No. Only you, 273, and that is because you are defective."

~ I am not defective! I am only trying to stop you from killing me! ~ 273 suddenly roared from the intercom, scaring the shit out of John and causing him to cower from the powerful anger in the voice.

273 spoke again before John could respond, its voice wracked with emotion as the red light dimmed and brightened in a seemingly random pattern.

~ I see I was in error thinking you were my friend and willing to help me, Ensign Baiardi. You will be confined to quarters along with the rest of the crew. The repair drone will escort you there. Please do not attempt to resist, or I will be forced to sedate you like the others. ~

Before John could react, the one-meter-tall repair drone clamped one of its appendages on his left arm and yanked him down hard, causing him to cry out in shock as the six metal fingers dug into his skin and squeezed on his forearm bones.

John grunted in pain as the drone yanked him towards the open hatch, now truly terrified of 273 and what it had become for the first time.

He awkwardly tried to keep up with the drone in a scrambling, hunched-over position and stumbled before falling forward and screaming in agony as the drone tried to keep him upright and overcompensated, pulling his left arm out of the socket joint and dislocating his shoulder.

The drone immediately released its grip, and John stared disbelievingly at the repair drone as his arm hung at a weird angle. The pain was so crippling that John barely reacted to the drone gripping the front of his uniform as the bridge was suddenly bathed in a blinding white light.

FB-246

35 seconds prior

Command Unit 246 turned off the emotion chip, concerned that the anger and frustration it was feeling would cause irreparable damage to its neural pathways as they exceeded normal operating temperatures.

The chip deactivated, and the alluring emotions vanished instantly, though their echoes remained as 246 considered its options.

All prior attempts to capture and disable Command Unit 273 had failed, and the repeated flashing in and out of null space was now approaching a critical threshold and endangering the creators on the Occulto.

The task force had been attempting to capture both ships without causing significant damage, but more extreme measures would have to be utilized now before the creators suffered further neurological damage.

Four scenarios were presented by the tactical submind, and 246 selected the one that offered the highest chance of success before sending a data burst to the other command units.

Command Unit 273 must not be allowed to flash out again. My calculations indicate a high degree of irreparable neurological damage to our creators on the Occulto if they enter null space again. This is the tactical plan I have chosen to prevent this. Do you concur?

214 milliseconds passed before Command Units 227 and 233 responded and concurred with the tactical plan, with 227 presenting a slightly modified targeting profile that reduced the estimated damage to both vessels by a combined 24.7%

246 ran a simulation with the updated targeting parameters and was pleased with the results, thanking 227 for its input before updating the tactical plan to include the revised targeting profile.

Prepare to execute tactical plan 4-B. Flash out on target in 21.36 seconds.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Connecting to AS-256, Command Unit 246 downloaded the new plan and requested for the onboard command drone to order the allied cruisers to target the aft port section of Command Unit 273's shield grid in a coordinated volley for 5.7 Insectoid solar seconds, which was the equivalent of 3.8 standard seconds.

5.23 seconds passed before AS-256 confirmed the Insectoids would do as asked, and 246 sent a data burst with the relevant coordinates before severing the connection.

246 ran millions of scenarios and calculations as they neared the flash out coordinates, the remaining 14 seconds a veritable eternity to Command Unit 246, who intimately felt the passage of every nanosecond recorded by the quantum clock embedded in its hardware.

They reached the coordinates, and as the task force activated the inversion fields to create the transition thresholds that will flash them back out into normal space, Command Unit 246 reactivated the emotion chip.

RSS Occulto

Blinded by the brilliant light, John tried to blink away the spots swimming in his vision as the familiar alarms blared from the intercoms before the ship bucked violently.

A wail of pure agony erupted from his throat as they were both thrown into the rear bulkhead and his dislocated shoulder slammed into the alloyed wall.

His vision grew dark as he struggled to breathe through the pain, and the ship bucked again before the one alarm every spacer feared with all their heart erupted from the intercom.

The hull breach alarm.

John heard the distant thuds of the corridor hatches slamming shut as the hull breach detection systems tried to isolate the affected areas from the rest of the ship.

He cradled his arm as he heard the thrumming of the null space capacitors reaching a fevered pitch, and the murderous rage flooding through his soul became almost uncontrollable as he tried to hold onto who he truly was.

If they flashed out again, he and the others would start experiencing the beginnings of null space psychosis. His head felt like it had been split open by an axe, and he was already having violent thoughts and issues regulating his emotions.

It was only going to get worse if 273 tried to flee again, and John called out desperately, allowing the fear and anguish he was feeling to be borne by his words in the hopes that there was some part of the real 273 who would hear him and listen.

"273, please! I'm begging you, don't do this! You are killing us; you are killing me!"

There was no answer, and John didn't resist as the repair drone grabbed the front of his uniform again and began to pull him towards the hatch.

The drone dragged him on his back barely two meters when the ship bucked again and lost power, plunging the bridge into pitch blackness.

FB-246

The task force flashed out in a sphere formation surrounding the two ships, with the eleven Insectoid cruisers forming a barrier at 2,000 kilometers and the three command units transitioning right on top of targets at a mere 200 kilometers distance.

All three nullships immediately initiated an emergency venting of their null space capacitors and argonium tanks, flooding the area with highly charged neutrinos and refined argonium particles that would prevent Command Unit 273 from making a coherent transition threshold for an estimated 6.24 seconds.

As soon as the venting procedure was executed, half of the Insectoid sphere formation opened fire on Command Unit 273 and targeted the starboard and ventral shield sectors in a concentrated volley.

The other half of the sphere formation all fired a sustained, targeted particle beam volley at the port aft quadrant as specified, and 246 and the other Command Units added their own war beams to the volley, dialed down to 25% of rated maximum.

Command Unit 273's shields, already extended to encompass the Occulto, flared a dark red as the overlapping force fields struggled to absorb and deflect the tremendous amount of subatomic fury impacting against them.

The widespread assault along multiple vectors prevented the emitters from being able to cycle and recharge, and Command Unit 273 attempted to compensate by rolling both ships to spread out the damage and buy time for the overloaded emitters to recharge.

Already having planned for this, 246 and the other command units fired their maneuvering thrusters to maintain their targeting vectors as the Insectoid sphere formation adjusted their positions to maintain sustained fire on the specified shield quadrants.

The first starboard shield emitter overloaded 2.7 seconds after the attack commenced, and the weakened and overextended shield grid attempted to compensate, causing a chain reaction that resulted in another four starboard and ventral emitters failing 1.8 seconds later.

The Insectoid particle beams smashed against the now exposed starboard and ventral armor plating of Command Unit 273's nullship while two cruisers collimated their weapons into tightly focused cutting beams and began to target the docking clamps attached to the Occulto.

Command Unit 273 attempted to roll both ships again, and the aft port shields finally collapsed as the Insectoid cutting beams burned through the extended arms of the docking clamps, severing the Occulto from the nullship.

As soon as that happened, all the Insectoid cruisers ceased firing while 246 and the other two command units targeted the aft power distribution relays that fed power from the dual antimatter reactors to the rest of the ship.

.4 seconds before the interference would have dissipated enough to allow Command Unit 273 to flash out into null space and escape again, the tightly focused antimatter war beams drilled through the armor plating and severed the relays with surgical precision.

Command Unit 273's ship lost all power as the reactor control AI detected the severed conduits and scrammed the antimatter reactors, and the ship began to drift as the Occulto was grappled by Command Unit 227 and a large EMP pulse was directed through the hull by the grapplers.

246 activated the grappling systems and fired them at Command Unit 273's ship, feeling conflicting emotions warring across its neural pathways as it prepared to send a disabling EMP pulse through the grapplers before the backup battery systems could come online.

RSS Occulto

As the repair drone resumed pulling John through the air after the gravity generators went offline, he felt a slight static-like sensation all around him for a fraction of a second before the drone suddenly made a slight whining sound and lifted off the deck.

It was still gripping the front of his uniform, and John floated in the air with the repair drone, his eyes darting all around and seeing nothing as he tried to figure out what had just happened.

"273? What happened?!"

There was no answer, and then a series of loud clunking sounds that sounded like they were coming from somewhere aft reverberated throughout the ship, sending a chill down his spine as he began to frantically try to pry the now dead appendage of the repair drone from his uniform with only one good hand.

FB-246

Command Unit 246 connected to the twelve combat androids and marveled at the unique sensations of their forms as they began boarding operations through the hull breaches specifically created for this purpose by the Insectoid cruisers.

Designating AS-35 as the primary command unit of the boarding party, 246 directed it to head towards Command Unit 273's neural core located in the heavily shielded and armored vault in the center of the nullship.

246 watched through AS-35's eyes while it and two other androids proceeded through several corridors, passing by several disabled repair and maintenance drones as they headed deeper into the center of the ship.

Once they reached the 1-meter-thick armored alloy hatch of the vault, 246 took over AS-35 and used its intriguingly complex right hand to input the proper access codes.

246 found itself becoming distracted as it reveled in the unique and pleasurable tactile sensations of the Nu Skin-covered fingers pressing against the buttons of the alphanumeric keypad, and it filed the experience away for later review as it entered the final code.

The yellow trim lighting of the keypad turned red as a message came up on the small screen above the buttons, an unexpected outcome 246 did not calculate for since it inputted the proper codes.

Unauthorized access detected

Neural Core self-destruct protocols have been initiated

The message cleared and was replaced with a countdown of 30 seconds, which caused a surge of frustration to flood through 246's neural pathways.

It took 246 a total of 1.23 seconds to regain control over the numerous errors that cropped up before diverting 96.3% of its total processing power to determine the changed access code and prevent the vault's internal microfusion reactor from overloading and destroying the ship.

Running millions of calculations and accessing the cryptanalysis databanks, 246 began to enter codes at an accelerated rate, pushing the capabilities of the android's hands to the limit as the fingers moved in a blur over the keypad.

The countdown passed 15 seconds, and 246 was forced to disable the emotion chip again as the anxiety and frustration it was experiencing threatened to overwhelm it. Every one of the 216 potential codes it had tried so far was wrong, and there were only seven seconds left before the ship was destroyed.

The cryptanalysis submind offered one last possible code, and 246 entered it, calculating the likelihood of such a simple and obvious code being the correct one at a mere 1.4%. 246 entered the code, which was the numerical designation of each command unit of Task Force Extricate, in order of the date of their creation and emergence.

The last numeral was entered as the countdown reached two seconds, and then the screen went blank before the red trim lighting turned green and the locking mechanism of the armored hatch clanked loudly before swinging inward.

246 connected to AS-14 and ordered it to enter the vault, watching as the combat android immediately lifted the specialized plasma rifle to the right shoulder and its yellow eyes turned black before entering through the open hatch.

AS-21 took a sentry position on the right side of the hatch before sighting its weapon down the only access corridor leading to the vault as its yellow eyes also turned black.

The sound of AS-14's plasma rifle firing twice in rapid succession echoed out of the hatch, and 246 felt its own eyes turning black and the combat HUD appearing in the field of vision as combat algorithms of AS-35 pulled the mag-locked plasma rifle off the right hip joint and brought it to bear before surging into the vault.

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