The bridge was in a state of organised chaos. My mind still reeling; was ill-prepared for the various audio inputs this brought, forcing me to lean against a nearby wall for stability as I took a moment to ground myself.

 

Ironhound clocked in on my arrival and made his way slowly towards me. In a rare show of companionship, he waited for me to regain my balance and focus.

 

“How-“ I hesitated and cleared my throat. “How many ships are there? What’s the situation with the scouting vessels?”

 

“It’s probably better you check for yourself,” he said, his face grave with fear.

 

It wasn’t good. The enemy fleet was small in number, but each ship was magnitudes larger than our own. To top this off our scouting vessels had gone dark 2 hours ago; we had no way of knowing if this was the main fleet or not.

 

I handed him back the datapad. “We were not prepared for ships of that size,” I warned.

 

“We have to make do. Tell me the magnetic accelerator cannons are ready.”

 

I thought inwards. The alien vessels were here much sooner than we had predicted. Only half of the MAC ordnance would be operational, and even then; they hadn’t been properly tested yet. I knew the one mounted to the external of our ship would work, I had overseen that one myself, but the others…

 

“Honest answer. I don’t know. Give me 10 minutes to get a report from all batteries.”

 

Ironhound gave a quick nervous glance towards the alien fleet. “Make it 5.”

 

I was already moving. I looked around for a terminal I could use; there were plenty empty, but the one I required was special. I found it, manned by a young woman in trainee officer attire. “Move!” I commanded. The woman made a few disgruntled comments and returned to what she was doing. Not having the luxury of time, I removed the sidearm from my holster and pressed it flat against the back of her head. “I won’t ask you again. Move.” She did.

 

I was once again reminded of how technologically inferior humanity was. The terminal, officially Terran-made, was actually a sub-computer used on the Quinoth vessel; which you may have put together, was the leading element in my research. There was more processing power in this one machine than the combined total of all the other terminals on the bridge. To think the officer was using it for monitoring radio channels. I pulled out a cord held in an undisclosed compartment and connected it to the biochip in my neck.

 

[Warning! Data traffic exceeds recommended safety limits. Proceed?]

 

I pressed yes on my interface, and was immediately overwhelmed with traffic, both inbound and outbound, from the Spirit of Atlantis. This was another Quinoth secret. I called it mind-melding.  You see, half of my brain had been replaced with machinery, resulting in a full localised network with various sapient-ai that could parse and analyse information in nano-seconds. There were two big advantages to this. First, I had no equal when it came to data analysis. Second, although very rare; I could connect to certain terminals that allowed me to directly monitor and influence data in the conduit I was connected to. In this case, the Spirit of Atlantis. The downside was the information still had to feed to my conscious brain. Every time I fractured my mind like this, I felt like I was sinking under a great weight, the more I fractured it, the deeper I sank.

 

I sent status requests to the 4 battleships mounted with a MAC. As I awaited replies, I split my mind into 12 more pieces and connected to the network hosting the defence stations, each also mounted with MACs. Of the 12, only 4 were operational. The other 8 while active, didn’t have the correct parts they needed to survive the weapon charging up, let alone it firing. Fucking Accord. Always happy to cut corners.

 

Reports were coming back from the battleships. Only Broadside’s MAC was operational. Not good. I slowly pieced back my mind and moved towards consciousness, when I came to my ears were buzzing, the world spun and I felt like I’d been hit with a sledgehammer. It took several moments, but eventually, I was able to recompose myself and report to Ironhound.

 

“1 ship and 4 orbital stations report ready to fire. I can confirm that the tri-MAC is also ready to fire on your orders.”

 

“Good! Zeitha, you take a break, you look like hell.” I moved to argue and then thought better of it. I was in no condition to keep pushing myself and I knew it.

 

My thoughts were once again interrupted, this time by the sound of an incoming transmission addressed to the bridge. I had a feeling this interruption thing was going to become a particularly bothersome and repeating issue. The transmission was put on full-screen but no visual feed was provided.

 

“Hello, little Petals. Can you hear me?” a feminine voice asked. I was instantly enthralled. While the sound was alien, the cadence was soft and kind, and something about it demanded my attention. Which I found myself very happy to give. “We understand you have some reservations about our being here, but we do hope you’ll surrender peacefully. Please break your blockade and allow us entry into your system. Failure to comply will result in forced-“ the voice faulted, it was obvious she was having difficulty finding the right word. “Forced-demilitarisation. You have 10 minutes to comply.” The transmission was cut without any chance of a reply.

 

There was a moment of brief silence before Ironhound made himself heard. “Relay the order to move to position Epsilon-3 and tell all batteries to open fire, target the centre flagship!”

 

Within seconds the fleet began to manoeuvre into a defensive position. As planned the Spirit of Atlantis positioned itself towards the centre rear, flanked by various battleships at intervals of 6 kilometres. Both Horizon and the Spirit of Ire were positioned at the far rear of the fleet, each super carrier housing over 500 strike craft. The remainder of the fleet was positioned forwards, breaking into 9 separate segments, led by a heavy cruiser and consisting of several light cruisers, frigates and corvettes. Each segment was held in a wedge formation with strike-craft interweaving between the nodes, forming wedges of their own.

 

In total the Terran fleet consisted off;

• 1 Titan (Spirit of Atlantis)
• 2 Super Carriers (Spirit of Ire and Horizon)
• 17 Battleships (Broadside and many more)
• 9 Heavy Cruisers
• 18 Light Cruisers
• 30 Frigates
• 60 Corvettes
• Over 3,000 strike craft
• 12 Orbital Defence Platforms

 

The Affini fleet consisted off;

• 1 Large Command ship (180km by 60km)
• 2 Small Command ships (60km by 25km)
• 5 Large Warships (16 to 30km)
• 3 Medium Warships (8 to 16km)
• No auxiliary support
• No strike craft

 

The start of the battle was signalled by a salvo from the Terran rear line. 5 beams of white light arced through the void and hit the Affini flagship head-on. Each beam represented a 2,500-ton ferric-tungsten shell accelerated to 10,000 kilometres per second. They were the true definition of kinetic bombardment. After a small delay, a second beam joined the salvo, only this one fired in 3 parts; first red, then orange, then blue. If you blinked you would have missed it.

 

I took a moment to admire my handiwork. It hadn’t been easy designing the Magnetic Acceleration Tri-Cannon, but with the resources afforded to me by the OCNI, I managed it. The MATC operated in a 3-part cycle; A gel was launched and upon making contact with a surface an embedded agent would crack, solidifying the gel, causing any surface it touched to harden into a brittle substance similar in nature to that of clay. Within microseconds, a second shell with a heat intensity of over 4000 kelvin, would penetrate the now weak surface and bore into the armour. The final shell carrying an explosive payload similar to that of a small nuke would enter unrestricted, before detonating within causing significant internal damage.

 

Commands were bellowed across the bridge as the fleet prepared a second salvo, intent on finishing what they had started. Before they could the alien fleet returned fire, directly hitting the 4 operational orbital defence platforms and broadside head-on. Damage reports were requested but none had been sustained, the MAC ordnance however was offline.

 

My interface was flooded with requests at the same time that Ironhound and many others started to call my name. Shit. Not good. I was getting sensory overloaded again and I could feel my mind trying to force me to disassociate to cope.

 

Admiral first.

 

Gripping the nearby rail for support and positioning myself upright, I forced myself to look in Ironhounds direction. “Zeitha, report!” he bellowed. “What the fuck is going on!?” I shrugged. A shrug that said only one thing, I have no idea what the fuck just happened.

 

If you could measure respect then you would have deduced one thing in that instance. Any scraps that I previously held in the crews’ eyes had completely vanished, replaced with a layer of disgust and foreboding. “Figure it out!” Ironhound snarled.

 

“Yes Sir!” I replied timidly and without thinking.

 

Fuck! Fuck! FUCKKKK! What did he want me to do!? I was a scientist, not a god-damn mechanic. I fractured my mind into 5 different pieces, each dedicated to analysing an individual MAC. The information-overloaded my brain and I felt like my skull was about to burst. Despite this, I pushed through.

 

I pinpointed the issue to the stabilisers. On the surface the devices were fine, however, there were traces of foreign code stopping Terran commands from being accepted. I moved to work on all 5 MACs simultaneously and nearly passed out from the feedback alone. My body violently jerked and I coughed up blood several times. I couldn’t work on them all simultaneously. I silenced all other feeds and directed my attention to Broadside. I pulled up a 3d holographic display and began to decipher what I could. It was difficult, most of the code was in a different language and appeared not to play by the same rules that were universally known. I redirected every resource I could spare; I couldn’t break it. I retried over and over, frustrated at my incompetence. Eventually, by sheer chance, I stumbled across a human element in the alien code. I honed in on it.

 

It took me two minutes to break, upon doing so I realised the segment formed part of a shut-down command, and- Wait… Was that Adams’s signature? Without warning my head surged with pain and I screamed an inhumane scream, falling to my knees, clutching my head.

 

The last thing I remember seeing in my HUD was one simple phrase.

 

[You do not have access to that file Petal]

 

I passed out.

 

 

 

I woke up in the med-bay. My head felt awful but not as bad as I presumed it should have.

 

Checking my surroundings, I noticed no one was present, not even a guard to keep me company. My first instinct was to pull up my interface. I tapped my node twice and as expected my interface booted to life. What was not expected was the message taunting me dancing across the screen.

 

[Access denied to naughty Terrans]

 

I blinked.

 

I tried again, and the same message. I swear it had got more mocking the second time, emphasising the word naughty. Well shit. I had been compromised…

 

Noticing a nearby data pad I reached out and checked how long I had been out. 32 minutes and 15 sec- 32 minutes and 16 seconds.

 

I checked for friendly signatures and noticed there was far fewer present than 30 minutes ago. I needed to reconstruct what had happened.

 

It appeared the MACs had remained inoperable. The alien fleet had begun moving forward which the Terran fleet attempted to intercept. Off the 3,000-strike craft, over half lost signal in the first 10 minutes and both Horizon and the Spirit of Ire had been attached- I re-read that. Yes. Attached to by the smaller alien vessels. Broadside was currently not responding and many other ships were reporting boarding.

 

22 minutes in and the Spirit of Atlantis and the remaining half of the fleet still functional had started pulling back, leaving the rest of the fleet as cannon fodder for their escape.

 

25 minutes and 54 seconds, the fleet is intercepted by a secondary Affini fleet, smaller than the primary fleet, but large enough to cut off escape.

 

Right, here we are. 30 minutes and 15 seconds. Reports coming in across the Spirit of Atlantis of hostile boarding. Oh… Not ideal to be honest.

 

I pulled up a log of known boarding locations;

• Central Bridge
• Secondary Bridge
• Reactor Control
• Targeting Control Centre
• Shuttle bays 2
• Shuttle bays 3
• Shuttle bays 5
• Storage area 1
• Storage area 3
• Storage area 4
• Science Labs
• Experimental Labs

 

New Entry;

• Medical Bay

 

I put the datapad down at the sound of gunfire.