ECVS9 calmly switched over to its millimeter-wave radar view, advancing with a small burst from its ion thrusters into the decompressed bay. Even with its enhanced optics, the bay ahead was a mess of disorganization, pieces of disturbed containers and crates bouncing off each other in a drunken, spatial waltz. 

While the bay was littered with many potentially intriguing materials and objects, ECVS9 had its goal in its sight. This bay was a mirror of the other, which meant ECVS9 already knew where to look. It found little resistance now; the first door it found opened easily with a manual crank override. Thirty meters later it found a small service terminal.

Its previous expeditions to the Cyclosian system ensured it had come prepared with plenty of the appropriate connectors and ports; smoothly aligning the appropriate head to the open socket, ECVS9 linked to the small computer and flooded the parched circuits with power from its own power supply.

That small section of the system came alive. ECVS9 warbled happily as it reconnoitered the newly-opened pathways.

It could not get the console to give it any specific details about the ship systems or detailed schematics, sadly, but it was able to ascertain the way to the ship's bridge:  a long journey via irregular corridors. The vessel was designed with numerous bulkheads reducing the passageways to a few choke points, forcing the corridors to take winding paths throughout the ancient whale of a ship. 

It warbled. Manually opening and decompressing countless corridors would waste precious time. There was also no way to guarantee that some had been rendered inaccessible due to other unseen damage, either.

“ECVS9, there seems to be a path through the maintenance crawl ways that will give you access to the bridge,” interjected NORA, highlighting the proffered path in a gentle yellow glow. “Investigate it. You may find a clue to what we are looking for there.”

The drone, once more complete, felt a jolt of pleasure at having a directive.

Understood.

A nearby access hatch led into the ship’s ventilation ducts and, leaving behind a small repeater buoy to boost reception, the drone dutifully began executing NORA’s instructions.

• 𝄋•

As ECVS9 finished undogging the door with its manipulator arms, a faint pop sounded and greyish dust rushed out through the bridge's airlock along with the stale long undisturbed atmosphere. The bridge did not follow a typical layout, it seemed more like a cruise ship’s false bridge, with room for a small staff and little else.

“ECVS9, re-engage Illaya personality wrapper.”

‘NORA, ECVS9 acknowledged. It is aware again. What do you need?’

“Good drone. It seemed prudent to allow you to help in the problem-solving task we are presented with currently.”

‘It understands. This bridge design does not appear to be meant for functionality.’

ECVS9 skimmed through the large, diamond-shaped space. There were only three workstations and terminals, each looking out toward the front of the room. None more prominent than the other, No indication of basic institutional command structure characteristics. No logos, symbols, or colors to distinguish metal, glass, and plasteel from the flooring. 

The field of view for each was extremely wide, the three outward-facing walls offering a panoramic view of the distant rim of the shadow-veiled crater wall silhouetted against an endless sea of stars.

“Yes. Unusual that this would be labeled as a command center when only a few of the essential systems can be accessed here. Quite strange.” NORA sounded perplexed.

‘It recommends that we attempt to access these workstations. They likely have a higher level of access than the previous outlet.’

“Yes, that does seem prudent. Good drone.”

Its brain filled with electro-chemical joy, the drone moved forward scanning the bridge for a port - and shortly it was jacked into the ship's main network.

The ship was running on the same ancient operating system from the lost era of the Doll Wars. They had previously acquired knowledge of an exploit that allowed a bypass of the security after NORA took a look through the BIOS. The old OS was simply outclassed by a modern AI’s computing power, although it had still taken her over a day to find the exploit.

NORA hummed pleasantly. “Drone, I am going to use you as an intermediary to airgap my system from the Umbras Aegis, as I do not know if we can trust this ship's computing systems yet. Your wetware should be entirely impervious to anything this ship may be hiding inside.”

ECVS9 felt proud that they were such an efficient duo as it watched the terminal screen display the BIOS again as the system rebooted. It flickered past the login authentication, showing the main interface display with various systems passively tracked across the screen. Most of them were dimmed or showed errors instead of their intended functions.

NORA spoke again., “ECVS9, have you located anything of use yet?”

‘It has. The ship contains a main computer room and engineering bridge. The ship seems to be compartmentalized, as this section of the ship does not have access to their computers. Most data contained at this terminal is navigational in nature. Trajectories. Stellar cartography. Fuel consumption calculations. A lot of damaged drives and lost data. Little pertinent to our interests.’

“This ship is beginning to resemble a puzzle box. Drone, continue your investigation. The engineering bridge seems our best bet of the two - go there first.”

ECVS9 dutifully compiled.

Sadly, said bridge was another disappointment, at first. It functioned entirely via analog control or as close as one could get on a ship like this. ECVS9 and NORA worked together to check through systems until they were finally able to diagnose the behemoth. All the primary systems were in working order and most of the tertiary ones as well. Localized internal damage to cargo bays 8 and 10, but nothing extensive enough to threaten the hull or larger superstructure. Mishaps, inevitable over time, it seemed.

Indeed, the list of actual problems was surprisingly short. Rather than a victim of hostile aggression, it seemed the Umbras Aegis had been left to decay. Perhaps as hostile forces gutted their fleets they had lost the means to staff her, or the ship had been an experiment without merit abandoned as the war dragged on. Whatever the reason, near the end of the war they had decided to mothball it in the shadowed crater of a random asteroid where statistically, it was vanishingly unlikely anything short of a rock by rock search of the system would ever find it.

ECVS9 hummed along, acting as the eyes and ears of the AI. NORA,  pored over and collated every piece of information that ECVS9 could consume.

NORA still couldn’t get a full schematic but through the gestalt of the information gained from reading through all of the info terminals and system controls she pieced together that there were four large workshops onboard near the massive holds that made up the majority of the forward section of the ship. Which meant t h a t…

…

With a click, Illaya was present again, blinking rapidly as feeling bloomed into being inside her, and sentimental thought processes found space to reside once again. The transition back into the waking world after an extended stint in drone-space always left her with a somewhat disjointed feeling, as though her emotions were in another room and her thoughts just down the hall. The data jack pulling out of her head left her feeling empty, like being yanked from a warm blanket’s embrace on a cold morning.

“Illaya, I think we have found a way to get this ship's primary power systems online.”

Hearing her own name tethered her to the present.

“NORA… It's really unfair that you didn’t give me a chance to relish the exploration of the ship,” Illaya pouted, “Sometimes the thrill of it is the point!” 

“You will still have plenty of time to do so once we have secured it. Besides, you are much more efficient exploring as ECVS9. It ensures I have full knowledge of the ship’s workings. You may explore at your leisure later and relish the findings and I won’t have to worry about you.”

“But I hardly got to take in any of the ship! It wasn’t fun at all,” Illaya whined, squirming in her seat and tugging against the restraints, still holding her body firmly to the captain’s chair.

“I disagree with that assessment.”

She blushed. “You know what I mean, NORA.”

The AI’s voice shifted into an amused tone. “But you were such a good drone for me!” 

Illaya squirmed involuntarily, her thighs squeezing and rubbing together.

“I- uh— Yes, it was. I was! Uhm. A good drone!” She blinked rapidly, and grabbed her armrests. Tethered. She wasn’t drifting. 

NORA’s silence seemed to mock her. Illaya’s blush deepened. She hated to admit how good the praise felt, but her body didn’t lie, and the spacey neurochemical joy - just a step removed from the automatic, programmed response of ECVS9 - was tantalizing at the best of times. It made it hard to argue with the AI when she could just say a few words and leave her a stammering, squirming, endorphin-ridden mess…

“Now, I think it's time we get this plan in motion.” NORA moved on, seemingly content to have flustered her. “Illaya you did want to indulge in exploring the ship a bit didn’t you?”

Illaya glared at nothing and futilely tugged at her restraints again.

“Fine. What's the plan, NORA… And would you let me out of this star's damned chair already!”

• 𝄋•

The cavernous reactor room stretched out into the distance. The bulk of the reactor's shielding had retracted into the roof and floors, their protruding plates like metal stalagmites and stalactites in an artificial void, sentinels standing watch over the dead star of a fusion reactor.

Amidst the metal spikes ran countless arterial coolant lines, thick fuel conduits, and catwalks, all of which converged at the silent heart of the ship. Monolithic structural frames ribbed the expansive space, and beside them, dust-caked fans slept within gaping vents taller than a person.

Illaya piloted the drone chassis of ECVS9, enjoying the expanded suite of senses available to the mechanical body while she worked and explored. It had taken years for her to grow used to the experience, but it was worth the effort to acclimate herself when she found herself in places like this, where her living body could be shredded at the atomic level by radiation smashing apart her DNA.

The shakedown procedure had taken them over three hours to run through, but now it was time for the moment of truth. Would the system work, or would it crack the ship apart in a horrific series of antimatter fueled explosions?

With that potential in mind, the Ino and her two occupants were currently sitting beyond the leeward edge of the crater rim below its horizon relaying commands to the drone with another unit acting as a relay.

The final step before ignition was to seal the core of the reactor before stoking the embers of its dead star to life once more. Illaya moved the drone body back to the reactor control deck and watched as a spiraling lattice of metal shutters grew from above and below to encapsulate the core.

Then with a soft click.

They were sealed.

A thrum began.

Like a faraway melody heard through countless walls.

It grew steadily as countless subsystems came to life joining the symphony of sound inside the chamber.

Then came countless lights from indicators in the control room to surface lighting throughout the reactor room. The room's lighting had a magenta cast to it which seemed to suffuse everything with a faint pink even though most of the pink light came from an occasional glowing strip interspersed amongst the white ones.

“NORA we fucking did it! Holy shit we did it!” Illaya exclaimed as she spun the drone chassis happily through a barrel roll. 

“Don’t get ahead of yourself just yet. We still need to make sure it runs stably. I would hate for a preventable system failure to steal our treasures just because we let our guard down.”

“I know, but this is still amazing NORA. It's honestly unbelievable that this ship still works at all.”

“I will note that we did replace three major components from stores. It would not have worked otherwise.”

“NORA, it's still incredible. Now, is it okay if I go look around for a bit with the drone while you monitor the reactor?”

The AI paused for almost a half second.

“I think you’ve earned it.”

Illaya shot out of the reactor room to begin exploring. The return of power allowed for airlocked doors to be opened automatically even before she reached them making traversing the great ship only a matter of distance instead of the painstaking crawl of manual cranking them open with power tools.

First came the twenty massive cargo bays. In descending order she looked them over. Some were stacked to the ceiling with raw materials - most unremarkable, some worth quite a lot, and some unknown to Ilaya. Others held hard-to-manufacture components, ranging from reactor parts to arcane computing hardware. The six bays adjacent to Bay Eight held different spacecraft, at last giving an answer to the source of the detonation that led them here; perhaps a munition failure, or perhaps a reactor on a smaller ship detonated due to improper storage - plenty of available culprits to choose from based on what the non-destroyed bays contained.

Bay Nine, the sister bay to Bay Eight, held a heavy regal attack craft of some sort bristling with heavy weapons, sensors, and engines. It seemed to be entirely composed of components with the only habitable space a cockpit sitting telescoped out from the hull like a waiting mouth ready to pull its pilot deep into the beast. The other spacecraft in the adjacent bays were composed mainly of countless small wasp-like fighters and heavy cargo lifters.

As Illaya continued working down she found weapons crates, construction equipment, automatic factories, and rations. All of it brand new, well at the time, sealed and unopened.

Having found copies of the manifests throughout her search, she began to check them for signs of her true goal: A doll.

Yet not a sign of them showed up in the manifest. Not even a spare arm.

Illaya’s jubilation slowly turned to dismay. The biggest find of her career. No, her life! And there wasn’t even a fucking spare parts bin! Somewhere beyond the crater rim tears dripped down her placid face.

“Illaya, dear, I know you're crying. What's the matter?” NORA inquired.

She lacked the capacity to sniffle, but a wave of despair reflected back and forth between her human body and the machine she was synced with. “It’s not fair. There’s not even a single fucking piece.”

“I see.”

Illaya punched a manipulator arm angrily through the side of a crate full of Cyclosian BDU’s. “Fuck!”

“Hmm. I will note that this find is enough to ensure we never have to make another dodgy scrapping run again.”

She threw the remains of the crate of equipment, feeling vague satisfaction as plastic packages of BDUS and dust went flying all over. 

“Illaya.”

Another crate went flying, crashing into a wall with a sound like a large can being crushed.

“Illaya.” With hydraulic strength, she rended the metal side of another and tossed it to the side. “I would like to point out that we have only searched the cargo bays. The rest of the ship has yet to be proven without fruit. Be patient.”

Illaya’s manipulators opened and closed, for a quiet moment the only indication of her aggravation. She forced herself not to lash out again, to hold still, to think. 

“I know you feel very frustrated, but take a moment to slow down and look at what’s around you. Almost everything here is still in mint condition.”

Illaya sighed and said nothing, still holding herself stock-still.

“You never thought you’d see half of what’s in this inventory, dear. Much less intact, or outside a museum. Hold on to hope.” The AI hummed musingly. “Why don’t you take a well deserved break and sort through some of this for me, dear.”

Illaya felt the soft touch of the AI’s hidden command, and found it all the harder to stay focused on her anger.

“I-I…. Yes, NORA. Complying.”

The enforced calm settled over her like a blanket, her desires shifting steadily toward her objective. Complying with directives, she began searching the other items in the hanger at a sedate pace, her focus smoothing into mechanical precision.

Packages of uniforms drifted from the torn side of the crate. As one drifted across her optics view, she caught a glimpse of shimmering material showing through the torn foil of the packaging. 

A process tripped, as Illaya’s controlled mind locked onto one of the drifting packages and she smoothly snatched one drifting package from its lazy trajectory and ripped it open.

Warmth bloomed in heart, a feeling of elation permitted past the gated experience she was now held behind by the program.

There she’d been, throwing a tantrum, when another priceless find was staring her in the face! She’d never been able to find anything but the tattered and charred remains of uniforms before, let alone the early-war designs.

But this! This was something special: a fully functional Cyclosian, Araneae-Class Bodysleeve, with a Neural-Jack Interface System included!

To her own chagrin, she found her mood rising. NORA was an insufferably smug, silent presence in the back of her mind. 

The next twenty minutes of careful searching found Illaya’s fortunes immensely improved as her luck with her first find had only amplified. It had been followed in short order by a matching Elite Cyclosian Battle Dress Uniform - fully space combat-capable, no less!

In a series of heavily-reinforced wardrobe came more discoveries. She came upon a Cyclosian Special Forces Augmented Armored Combat Space Suit, which on its own had been enough to make her do a barrel roll of joy. But, to crown the whole search, she found two gems together in the supercargo’s office for the section; a mythical TRM-79 Recoilless Plasma Beam Rifle with an iridium barrel, and a royal signet ring that had been sitting for countless years in the rifle’s case.

While Illaya's heart still ached for the crown jewel missing from the collection, she did feel better heading back to the ship with her haul.

NORA announced her presence with a pleasant chime. “Illaya, while you were looting, I continued examining the ship's systems via the reactor terminal.”

“Great.” She maneuvered clear of the hole in the bay they had originally entered the ship through. “What did you find?”

“It’s more about what I didn’t find. It seems the reactor is powerful enough to run all the ship’s systems five times over.” 

Illaya set a course back to the Ino. Picking up on Illaya’s silence as encouragement, the AI continued. “It doesn’t make sense to have a reactor this powerful on a ship, even one this large.”

“That’s weird. Do you think it might be a testbed for the reactor?”

“I do not believe it would be. The ship is too well-fitted to the reactor to be anything else. That's not the truly odd thing about this ship, however.”

Illaya piloted the drone into its waiting bay aboard the Ino. “It isn’t?”

“Oh, it's not even close.” NORA hummed. “A massive chunk of the ship is entirely air gapped from the main computer network and doesn’t have a stored layout other than subsystem connections for power and life support.”

“That's… Thats— I've never heard of anything like that on a Cyclosian warship from that era?”

“It's astounding, to be honest, Illaya.”

“Did you figure out which part of the ship is air gapped”

“Yes, but not in the way one might assume, it isn’t in the documentation at all.”

“Huh, so how did you manage it then?”

“Well, it was more a matter of where things weren’t. I found the void it should fit into within the ship's internal systems. It's like a skeleton without its spine, the core of the ship and several large spaces are just voids in the intranet of the ship. There is enough combined volume to easily account for another two cargo bays of volume and a huge spinal shaft that runs the length of the ship.”

“No way, that's nuts, this has gotta be the strangest ship in their fleet”

• 𝄋•

The conversation between the pair continued as Illaya unjacked and made her way down toward the drone bay pulling herself along the passage’s tether rope.

“I will be continuing my research for sometime, why don’t you take a break from searching. I can work on cracking the rest of the ship’s systems.”

Illaya passed the massive water tanks that formed the bulk of the Ino’s fore section behind the crew quarters, through another airlock and finally into the engineering section.

With the waldos of the drone bay, she was able to carefully open all of the items that she hauled over in the drone’s cargo basket. Illaya carefully placed the packages in her industrial imager, snagged off a Fedi battleship during an exceedingly lucrative salvage operation. It would have been entirely too expensive to own otherwise.

It logged each item into NORA’s systems, and the AI hummed pleasantly for each new acquisition, equally satisfied. 

Soon, all of the newly acquired items were certifiably sterile and safe, at least according to the imager. Only as radioactive as the background of any place in space. They also proved to have no extant or extinct nasties within, which was reassuring albeit expected.

After this thorough workdown, NORA let Illaya bring them out of decon and aboard the ship.

Returning to her quarters, Illaya almost felt like she’d come upon a stranger's room. She hadn’t slept in her berth once this trip. Chuckling softly, she noticed that her bed was still made, the straps all drawn snug and the room smelling faintly of soap. 

The large bag of gear she’d brought with her now floated in the middle of the room, lazily spinning before her. She almost couldn’t bring herself to open it. Its contents felt effervescent, as though the ideas she had formed around them would burst if she dared to open it.

She knew her fear was simple enough, because if they didn’t live up to her preconception of them it would be another blow. Illaya was rationally aware that they could never truly do so, but she also knew it would still hurt if they didn’t. 

She kicked off the door frame into a graceful flip over the bag, bouncing off the ceiling of her berth down onto her bed, arresting her motion by catching a foot on a strap. 

She floated there for a while, staring at the bag.

Desire tugged at her.

She grabbed it, pulling the bulky thing to her and anchoring it to the floor below her by pressing its scratchy hook and loop bottom into the soft surface of the ‘floor’. She had managed to keep herself from looking at any of the individual garment bags during NORA’s insisted scans. Illaya thanked the stars for her milspec imager giving her the chance to open the packaging unmolested. A true unboxing experience!

With a trembling hand she unzipped the bag. 

The Araneae Bodysleeve was a rectangle of liquid pearlescence suspended inside its package. A small box affixed to the front was marked only by the universal connector symbol, printed in silver like an ancient runic glyph. Upon opening it, she found it contained the Neural-Jack Interface System and several adapter plugs for different Neural-Jack configurations. 

A thought struck her, adhesive and sticky once it found its way into her brain, and once she touched it she found she couldn’t easily let it go. 

Leaving the battle dress uniform in the bag, she tucked the two packages under the straps on either side of her bed, and kicked off towards the door panel. She sealed the airlock of the room, a simple twist of a lever followed by a hiss, and then grabbed a tool she never used when in space from her utility pouch; the release key for her vacuum suit. 

She knew NORA would be mad, but the agreement was that the AI never looked into her quarters without express permission. She didn’t have to know. 

After all, she thought to herself, she was the captain. A captain to her ship and her AI, if nothing else.

The key opened the seal on the collar of her suit. With its release, the vacuum contained behind it let go with a spreading looseness that crept under the suit, starting from her neck, and spreading as she wriggled herself out of the bodystocking bit by bit.

Noticing that her skin was smooth and clean, she made a mental note to thank the AI for bathing her while she was piloting the drone earlier. With a wriggle of her toes, she came free of the last bits of the suit. 

‘Fuck, that feels good. I need to strip more often. Yet here I am, happy to put on another suit.’ Illaya giggled to herself at the absurdity of her perversion.

She took another moment to enjoy the feeling of moving air on her bare skin, before pushing off the wall to snag one of the bed-straps. 

She let herself lift the Araneae package, squeezing the liquid material through the plastic. The bodysuit was otherworldly, and she could see where the name Araneae had come from. It shimmered like spider silk coated in dew, twinkling like starlight.

Looks were only the beginning of the sensory journey Illaya found herself on as she began pulling open the vacuum-sealed package. The suit's texture didn’t fit into words; it was soft, yet smoother than lubricated glass. It stretched like elastic and yet became as unyielding as steel once it stretched to its limits. It was a pleasure on the skin, yet became as deadening as far thicker rubber would have been in the right places.

She would look like a moonlit wraith once she’d sheathed herself in it. 

Illaya couldn’t hold herself back any longer, and she began to donn the suit. The stockings kissed her feet, and lapped at her toes.

‘How the fuck can it feel this good when I haven’t even gotten it past my knees?’ Illaya had never felt anything even vaguely comparable to the pleasurable touch of the material.

The further it climbed, the more she noticed its compressive embrace. She could see individual muscles in her calves outlined as her legs followed, and with a bit of arguing the crotch panel snapped into place, sealing her groin in its protective, opaque grip. 

Her breath hitched, that special sensation almost more than she could manage, and unthinkingly her hand drifted to grope and gently pull at the snug panel, feeling the clumsy touches amplified beneath a thousand-fold. 

She mewled unintentionally, fingers and toes curling unprompted, then gripped the suit at the hips and wormed it higher, desperate to be consumed by the pleasure of the Araneae.

It hugged her, complementing the sensitive skin of her sides without tickling, and swiftly Illaya drove her hands down into the slippery hug of its sleeves until her entire body was encapsulated from the collar down.

‘It’s so fucking snug, holy shit,’ she thought in wide-eyed amazement, ‘It really does feel like spider's silk wrapped around you!’ 

She reached up to tug the neck of the suit up the column of her throat, leaving it snug at the base of her skull.

Illaya looked down at her hands, the pearlescent shimmer seeming to wrap over the warm tone of her skin like a compressive force field. Her legs seemed longer, shapely, more visible than she remembered having seen them. Every feature felt highlighted, down to the indentation of her navel on her stomach. 

As she examined her body, she noticed that strategically-placed panels and patterns obfuscated not only her crotch, but her breasts as well. 

‘Wow, it seems to have a bit of shaping going on too,’ Illaya noted, looking at the way her trim waist looked even more slender, and the contradictory way her breasts managed to look perkier despite being compressed by the garment.

‘Fuck me, this suit is something else,’ Illaya thought, looking at her hand and the pearlscent nails that lay over her own, uncolored, on the outside of the garment. 

Turning her attention to the box that held the neural interface, she drew the correct jack adapter and the thin elegant interface collar out. In doing this, Illaya noticed that the small box actually contained a lower layer with a matching hood for the suit.

After a quick look over a pictographic depiction of the suit's intended dressing order, she found herself staring long and hard at the adapter she held in her hand. 

NORA would throw a fit if she plugged it into herself without letting the AI check over every nanometer of it.

…But Illaya wanted to know what it felt like to have the suit on all the way. After all, it was capable of performing the same function as her vacuum suit.

But it fit her better. 

Felt better.

Felt hotter. 

It would be so fucking hot to just plug in, damn the consequences. 

She squirmed and felt her suit tighten and squeeze just right, just so. 

She let out a little gasp, between her teeth. Fuck.

That cinched it.

‘She never lets me have fun anyways.’ 

Ilaya lifted the adapter up, carefully aligned it to her datajack, and pressed the tip deep into her brainstem with a solid click.

…