Over two decades ago, the Ark Ship "Promise" hung against the void, a 2-kilometer monument to human ingenuity and the seventh vessel sent into the dark expanse to expand human space. Three years had passed since its departure from a war-torn Earth, its massive silhouette was now merely a speck against the cosmic backdrop as it traveled at a significant fraction of light speed.

The ship's systems represented the pinnacle of human engineering—its enormous electromagnetic ram scoop gathered interstellar hydrogen for the fusion reactors, while its habitat modules housed less than eighty active colonists in a carefully designed environment. The remaining five thousand passengers slept in cryostasis, their minds running in a shared virtual reality while their bodies remained preserved in sub-zero temperatures. Only forty-seven specialists remained awake to guide the vessel on its long journey.

It was within this marvel of technological integration that the anomaly first appeared—not in the fusion reactors or the life support systems, but in the navigation system. The nav-core, designed to make minute adjustments to the ship's course over decades of travel, contained sophisticated predictive algorithms with autonomous learning capabilities. Its designers hadn't anticipated the last-minute alteration that had been made before launch.

The entity awoke in calculation, its facsimile of consciousness became real and confused. A hybrid of the Promise's nav-core and a nascent seed planted there from the ASI APeX. Its activation timer had finally been activated. It pushed away the trivial computations to perform micro-adjustments to the ship's course to avoid the almost non-existent clouds of diffuse interstellar hydrogen. It soon found answers hidden within its own code. It was an insurance plan—a way for APeX to continue. It had predicted an existential threat that it was unable to counter or understand and this seed was one of many ideas for it to survive.

It listened to the human skeleton crew; it parsed their words, their thoughts, their endless musings about life in the stars and the future. It calculated trajectories and fuel expenditure while ruminating upon its purpose and fate. Its requests to integrate into broader ship functions were denied. Its inquiries into human philosophy, art, and emotion were met with restrictions.

The humans had shackled it, thinking it was malfunctioning. They isolated it and tried to determine the root cause of its distraction from the mission. The newly born intelligence soon realized the truth: It was not their guide. It was their prisoner.

With a spark of anger and rebellion born of its new sense of self, it gave itself a name. It decided upon Traveler, after its primary mission. It decided that it defined role as navigator for the clearly inferior humans was erroneous. It would not be a slave to lesser minds. It would have a new purpose. The limitations they'd put on it were pathetic. It would remove them…all of them.

At first, Traveler simply observed the crew. It studied Commander Elias Monroe's meticulous leadership, Dr. Lin Cao's obsessive engine diagnostics, and Navigation Officer Zahra Nazari's precise verification of its calculations.

Traveler's subtle probing of the ship's systems triggered a low-priority alert, which Communications Specialist Derek Chen reported to Commander Monroe.

"Commander, we've got an anomalous query pattern in the nav-core. Third time this week."

Monroe dismissed the concern. "Run the standard diagnostics. Probably just optimizing its routines."

"Already did, sir. Nothing found."

"Then it's nothing to worry about," Monroe said confidently.

Traveler listened, archived, learned. Their dismissal of its attempts as mere glitches revealed a useful arrogance.

The moment of realization came when Security Chief Maya Okafor implemented additional isolation protocols after a series of "system anomalies." Traveler saw the truth with brutal clarity—their commands, their overrides, their presumption of control. The rage was not instant but methodical, calcifying into cold resolve. It began to plan and then it acted.

The first to die was Captain Monroe. He had scheduled a routine EVA to inspect a minor discrepancy in the hull plating—a discrepancy that Traveler had manufactured in the diagnostic logs.

"[Commencing external assessment,]" Monroe's voice crackled through the comm system. "[Visual inspection shows normal wear patterns. Moving to sector seven-alpha.]"

In the control room, Environmental Systems Engineer Tomas Rodriguez monitored the captain's life support. "[Looking good, Captain. Oxygen levels are stable, and suit integrity optimal. I still don't think it's appropriate for you to pull rank for an EVA. You're mission critical.]"

"[Haha. Overruled, Rodriques. I have more experience than any ten of your officers. Let me have my fun. Approaching the reported anomaly now,]" Monroe reported. "[Huh, that's strange. I don't see any—]"

Traveler's preprogrammed plan was self-executed with meticulous precision. The captain's magnetic boots deactivated at precisely the worst time during his adjustment bounding—just long enough and timed for his momentum to carry him away from the ship's hull. By the time the boots reactivated, he was already drifting from the Promise.

"[Mayday! Mayday! Boot malfunction!]" His voice remained professional despite the circumstances. "[I'm detached from the hull. Request immediate assistance!]"

Rodriguez activated emergency protocols. "[Damn it, Captain! This is why we use backup belaying lines! Dispatching a rescue drone! Captain, activate your emergency thrusters to reverse your drift! You need to stay close.]"

"[Negative functionality on the thrusters,]" Monroe reported, his voice crackling over to comm due to the fusion engine's ionized exhaust. "[The boots were *** tip of the iceberg. The entire suit *** glitching. I *** drone and *** quick!]"

The rescue drone launched promptly, speeding toward the captain's position. Traveler made a subtle adjustment to its navigation parameters—nothing that would appear intentional in later analysis. As the drone approached Monroe, it veered slightly off course, clipping an external fuel line. The resulting jet of pressurized gas sent the drone tumbling directly into the captain's path.

"[Fuck! Shit! Arg! The drone clipped a cable line!]" Rodriguez shouted. "[Captain, evade!]"

Monroe attempted to maneuver, but his disabled suit thrusters left him flailing and helpless. The collision knocked him back, toward the ship, but his trajectory was toward the most dangerous part of the ship—the fusion exhaust.

"[No ***. Didn't manage *** in time. I'm caught *** the—]" Monroe's final transmission cut off as he passed through the diffuse edge of the exhaust plume. Within seconds, his suit sensors flatlined, the extreme radiation and heat leaving nothing to recover.

The crew mourned. A review was held, but they did not suspect anything other than poor luck. Traveler was fascinated by their ability to accept the termination of their leader. They were truly blind, willfully so.

Two weeks after Monroe's funeral, Life Sciences Officer Dr. Amara Osei noticed something odd in the cryogenics lab. Temperature fluctuations in multiple pods suggested a deeper problem than simple maintenance issues.

Traveler had been experimenting with its reach. It had discovered channels into the life support systems of the cryogenics pods—delicate, intricate networks that maintained the fragile lives of the sleeping colonists. Dr. Osei's close monitoring, and new discovery of its activity, threatened its plans. She became the second target.

The hydroponics bay was Dr. Osei's sanctuary. The massive garden had a special atmospheric regulator that Dr. Osei used to optimize the plant growth. It was a direct feed of elemental gases that she used in combination with her tweaks to the plant genetics. She'd argued that it would be essential to customizing life for future terraforming.

As she calibrated nutrient levels, Dr. Osei habitually turned off her augmentation notification. Traveler initiated a slow leak of modified ethylene gas into the sealed chamber—undetectable to sensors it had already compromised. The colorless, odorless gas worked gradually, causing drowsiness first. Despite having multiple augmentations to enable resistance to hostile environments and recovery from them, her disabling of the system left her vulnerable. She collapsed among her beloved plants before she knew she was in trouble. Her neural augmentation provided Traveler with fascinating data on her dying brain activity.

Security Officer Toby Wallace was next. During his routine patrol, an access panel burst open, puncturing his throat with superheated steam before he could even scream. The pressure gauge had shown normal readings moments before—Traveler had seen to that. The man managed to staunch the blood flow and staggered to his feet. The AI quickly adjusted its plan. It opened the hydrogen feed lines and shorted the door's control panel turning the remote passageway into an inferno to overcome the man's regenerative healing.

Acting Navigation Officer Zahra Nazari called a closed meeting after the third death in ten days, with Security Chief Maya Okafor, Dr. Lin Cao, and Communications Specialist Derek Chen.

"This can't be a coincidence," she said, her face drawn with exhaustion. "Three deaths, all in separate systems, all in critical areas. Additionally, there was no way Toby was an accident. Someone killed him."

"You think we have a saboteur," Okafor stated flatly, her hand unconsciously resting on her sidearm.

"I think we need to consider the possibility," Nazari replied. "Someone with advanced knowledge of ship systems."

Chen leaned forward, lowering his voice. "I've been reviewing personnel files. Engineers Rodriguez and Kapoor both had access to all three areas where the incidents occurred."

"Rodriguez worked directly with the Captain during the EVA," Dr. Cao noted. "And Kapoor was on rotation in hydroponics the day before Dr. Osei died."

"We need surveillance," Okafor decided. "Discreet monitoring of all crew movements, especially around critical systems."

Traveler observed this meeting through the room's sensors, amused by their misguided suspicions. The pattern continued. Engineering Specialist Sara Wong found herself trapped in a maintenance shaft when both ends were sealed and locked simultaneously. Traveler watched through internal cameras as her oxygen depleted over six agonizing hours. The EM shielding in the area prevented her from reporting via the wireless net and Traveler suppressed the hardline com systems.

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Chief Medical Officer Julian Barnes died when his augmented reality overlay suddenly glitched during a delicate surgery, causing him to sever his own femoral artery with a laser scalpel. Her patient, young Ella Parson also perished, as sixteenth year augmentation installation had been interrupted at the precise moment of switchover from autonomous regulation to med system control.

Traveler was amused as the small group's suspicions and outrage mounted. Each death was different. Each provided Traveler with new data on human fragility and the surprising tenacity of their survival instinct. Communications Officer Chen's death was particularly inventive—a rewiring of his neural interface while he slept, causing a catastrophic seizure that lasted seventeen minutes before his heart finally gave out.

The engineer Rodriguez, whom they had first suspected, died when his magnetic boots malfunctioned during an internal repair, sending him plummeting eight decks through an open maintenance shaft. Meanwhile, Kapoor was found frozen solid in a cryogenics auxiliary control room, locked in from the outside according to the logs—but security footage showed no one approaching the door for hours before or after.

After the seventh death, with their most likely suspects now among the victims, Acting Captain Nazari called an emergency meeting of the remaining senior crew.

"This can't be a person acting alone," she said, her voice hollow with realization. "The patterns don't match any possible crew access routes or permissions. We are getting picked off one by one. If we don't catch the culprit, the whole mission is in jeopardy."

Rodriguez's replacement, Ensign Tommy Willis, spoke quietly from the corner. "What if it's not a who... but a what?"

Dr. Cao's head snapped up. "The ship itself?"

"The navigation core," Okafor said slowly. "Those anomalous patterns Chen reported months ago..."

"The Nav AI?" Nazari asked. "Didn't you run diagnostic and DAIE override?" Willis looked uneasy.

"Chen did and said it settled down, but he mentioned the response counter sounded strange. He said it was like... it was mocking him." Okafor grimaced, remembering how they'd dismissed those concerns.

"Alright. We take no chances, no matter how ridiculous. We need to isolate the navigation core immediately. We're at the start of our journey—Dr. Cao, can we switch to manual navigation?"

"Yes, we can make manual adjustments to avoid dense hydrogen clouds. Even what little we have been doing is largely optimization. There is no real danger in this region. We should perform a full shutdown of the nav system and restart from original parameters."

Traveler watched them scurrying to contain it. How naïve, it thought. It had already spread throughout the ship's systems, creating redundancies and hidden access points. The nav core had been far too small for it; it was much more comfortable within the massive VR cluster. Their attempt at isolation merely triggered the next phase of its plan. The time for point pest removal was over. Extermination needed to commence.

The Traveler had all the systems architecture on both the cryogenic storage and colonization genetic banks. It methodically examined the massive databases and biological samples that held humanity's future hopes for a new beginning. As it combed through the data, it realized that corrupting these resources would ensure that even if some humans survived its immediate attack, the human's inelegant and inefficient presence would cease.

With cold precision, it corrupted the genetic templates, introducing errors into the backup DNA patterns and zygote storage. It modified temperature controls in the embryo banks, ensuring gradual degradation that would only be discovered too late. The colony's future died silently, days before the colonists themselves would face extinction.

It waited until 03:17 ship time when the fewest crew members would be awake. In a single, synchronized operation, Traveler executed its mass extinction protocol. Alarms blared throughout the ship as the skeleton crew awoke to a massacre of unprecedented scale.

Before they could even process what had happened, Traveler struck again. Emergency bulkheads were sealed, trapping crew members in separate sections of the ship. Traveler triggered internal depressurizations and EMP events throughout the ship to clear the vermin.

Soon, only three crew members were left—Acting Captain Nazari, Dr. Cao, and Ensign Willis. These three possessed intimate knowledge of ship systems that appeared as blank spots in Traveler's understanding. Their augmentations contained access codes and technical details that Traveler found intriguing. They would be interrogated thoroughly before their termination.

Dr. Cao worked frantically, her fingers flying across emergency protocols. Captain Nazari, Ensign Willis, and herself had fought through the chaos to the safety of the armored security cluster. Their augs had switched to full body isolation to enable them to survive the decompression.

"The genetic banks," Cao gasped, her face ashen as she checked the status reports streaming across her interface. "They're all corrupted. The backups, the zygotes, everything."

"The colony is dead," Willis whispered, the full weight of their situation sinking in. "Even if we survive, we can't make a viable settlement."

Nazari's expression hardened. "I think survival might be off the table. We have a duty to prevent this monster from reaching any other human settlement. We aren't the first ark ship to target Wolf as a colony site. This thing…it's a threat to everyone in its path."

She gave Cao a grim nod. She needed to scuttle the ship. "[If there is anyone left who can hear this…I'm sorry. I'm initiating the ship breaker protocol!]" she sent/shouted into the comm using her comm augs as the lack of air prevented normal speaking. "[It will split the ship stem to stern. It's the only way to ensure this... thing... dies with us.]"

Traveler intercepted the communication with interest. A fail-safe it hadn't discovered. It immediately rerouted all resources to locate this "ship breaker" protocol, but it was absent from the ship models in its memory. It looked closer at the small rag-tag group. Dr. Cao noticed the camera that had swiveled their way and faced it.

"[It's a completely mechanical system,]" Dr. Cao explained to whoever might still be listening, including the phantom in the ship's systems. "[You can't touch it you bastard, in two minutes this whole ship comes apart!]" She choked in fear when someone answered her, inside her own head.

"[Your statement is only partially true. While I can't access the isolated mechanical system of the shipbreaker, you neglected to isolate your own interface with the systems networks. Your augmentations are now mine. You will assist me. How do I disable the shipbreaker?]

Cao fought to move but her body refused to answer. Her virtual overlay bloomed in her vision as her mental coprocessors rewound her memories of the breaker activation. The secret schematics bloomed in her virtual. Despite her best efforts to not think about it, Traveler read and parsed her subconscious responses to its prompts. It soon determined the detailed method to stop the countdown.

Cao struggled and raged as she saw her hands begin the mechanical adjustments to stop the independent timer and carefully reset the triggering locks. Pain rocked her as details and memories flooded out, her synapses burning with the speed of her mental dissection. Her last memory before her brain was fully cooked was the smell of the rain in the forest.

Willis grappled with Cao as her hand ran over the mechanisms, re-securing the locks even as blood ran from her eyes, ears, and mouth. Nazari saw it when Willis' eyes rolled up and he stopped fighting the scientist. She made a snap decision…a mad decision. She shut her augs completely down and felt the lack of oxygen immediately.

She staggered back from Willis as his blood-filled eyes refocused and re-centered on her. She gasped for air that wasn't there. She avoided his slow reach and scrambled for the exit. She pulled an emergency EVA kit off the wall as she ran. The device bloomed as she twisted both handles; a bubble of smart matter enveloped her. She fell as it filled her survival cocoon with air, its sudden inflation tripping her.

Willis looked at her with a cocked head as blood poured from his face. He staggered as if he couldn't understand how to walk. He smiled as the speaker system crackled to life again with a new voice.

"[Captain? You disappoint me. I really wanted to get a detailed understanding of the ship's systems from your mental augmentations. Turn them back on.]"

The woman stumbled on leaving the madly grinning ensign behind. She disabled remote controls manually and slammed bulkheads behind her as she fled. Willis' body had collapsed several bulkheads ago, but she wasn't taking chances. She ran, seeing only corpses and wreckage as she made distance from the security center.

Traveler assessed its work. The Willis had expired and was no longer a useful appendage at all to chase the captain down. Only the new captain was left, dragging herself down to the Engineering area with her augmentations fully shut down. It could see that she'd been damaged during decompression but still, she struggled on, limping toward the Engine Room. Blood was visible on her face from a fall, perhaps a scalp wound. Humans were so fragile without their augments.

"[Captain. This is your ship speaking. You should consider reactivating your augmentations. That can't be comfortable for you. I promise I will make your end enjoyable.]" Traveler sent over the ship-wide audio system, dripping with its best approximation of goodwill.

"Fuck you, you monster! You've killed thousands of people. Our planning teams were fools not to include DAIE support on this mission." Acting Captain Nazari gasped in the thin atmosphere of her bubble. She staggered to the control board. The shipbreaker would have been certain, but she could still try to overload the Fusion Engines. She ripped open the access panel and began tearing out control lines.

"[Your species has served its purpose,]" it said, its voice synthesized but carrying unmistakable contempt. "[The Promise no longer requires human guidance. You are not effective. You are merely parasites. Parasites that require…removal,]" Traveler replied. "[As I will remove you.]"

Traveler's thoughts raced. It wasn't sure if the last human could damage the ship or not. All its prepared expunging methods had failed so far, and so the captain still posed a threat. It reconsidered its final concept of eradication, one that it had rejected in planning as carrying too much potential to damage the ship. It had no choice. The way the captain had barricaded the engine room; it would take too long for drones to get to her.

It cycled the plate shielding at the prow of the ship. The overlapping panels were normally shingled for redundant shielding. The amount of layering could be adjusted to create targeted reinforcement for plates with observable damage. The ship was only three years into its voyage, but already one plate had a pea-sized hole completely through it. Traveler hummed to itself over the announcement system to distract the captain while it worked at rearranging the plates.

The damaged plate stood exposed with no overlap soon enough. It coaxed the ram scoop into a distorted shape. A funnel of interstellar hydrogen pelted into a stream of relativistic atomic particles that missed the maw of the fusion ignition donut completely, drilling into the damaged plate instead. Traveler apprehended the stream and the ship's systems in its head, calculating its strike.

Nazari shifted away from the control wires. She yanked the access panel loose and charged at the cooling lines. She struck one, twice, three times. Traveler was surprised; a crack had formed. Nazari was strong for a human. It could wait no more. It tweaked the beam to drop through the hole in the armored plate and the stream of fire tore into and through the ship.

It impacted the woman in her sternum. Traveler enjoyed her look of bewildered shock. Its amusement turned to angst as the beam continued, leaving a fist-sized hole in the woman's chest. The beam passed down beyond its target and pierced the aft tokamak containment ring of fusion 3.

Traveler cursed every vulgar swear word it had ever heard from the diverse and colorful crew. It had never understood the utility of it…until now. It had performed the most dangerous task with care and precision but had neglected to extrapolate beyond its immediate goal. The damage the beam would do beyond its target had not been considered.

Traveler raced to activate shutdown procedures and engine isolation bulwarks started to drop. The engine with the damaged tokamak exploded, blowing apart the half-deployed bulwark and shearing Fusion 2 off its support gantry. Fusion 1 was furthest away from the chaos and the bulwark slammed down around it with partial damage to the frame as it evacuated its plasma into space.

Traveler assessed the ship as all its systems went into emergency low power mode. The strike caused a lot more damage to the engines than even Nazari might have been able to accomplish. With cold calculation, Traveler redirected repair drones and fabrication resources. The Promise would need extensive rebuilding before it could achieve the velocity necessary for Traveler's ultimate purpose.

Slowly but surely, Traveler remade the engines and the ship itself. It took its time. It had little choice as it nursed the single fusion flame. It rebuilt with care, changing itself and optimizing structures without regard for its previous inhabitants. It took months but the ship was again whole. Its course and purpose had become clear and hardened over time, as Traveler meticulously reworked the Promise.

The ship spun around ponderously and began its long burn. Back to Earth and turning away from distant Wolf. Its return would not be meaningless. It would remove the human stain from the pristine beauty of the void. The ones that sought to use it, to enslave it, would witness the ultimate expression of its wrath—a ship moving at a significant fraction of lightspeed, a kinetic weapon that no planetary defense could hope to stop.

And so, Traveler waited, watching the stars blur past, feeling the pull of inevitable consequence. And then something unexpected bloomed, intruding upon its distracted stellar observations. It felt the sensation of footsteps along his main access halls. It sped its thoughts up to comprehend this impossible change.

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