When the rest cycle ended, the BPU was in much better condition, still not 100% operational, even with an extended rest cycle. With nutrient flow restored, the crisis was functionally resolved. There was still a pain in the BPU’s core; however, it was manageable now… It was concerning that the BPU was in pain, as it had never experienced it before its reactivation.
The Kainé began a diagnostic sweep on the BPU.
Nutrient values were low, but trending up, although concerning a complete recovery was expected within two solar rotations. Minor trauma was detected where the BPU hit the floor, likely bruising. The Kainé didn't have an angle its visual sensors could confirm from. The BPU was constantly releasing stress hormones, with particularly large spikes in Cortisol. Overall emotional regulation was a mess without leashing protocols. Unfortunately, without maintenance, performing physical repairs on data crystals, nothing was likely to change anytime soon. This would continue to be an ongoing issue, but not the biggest one.
The Kainé continued sending ship-wide pings for assistance, but still wasn't getting any responses from the crew...
It was time for a proper full diagnostic. Slowly, the Kainé moved her… its awareness beyond the heart.
The heart's blast doors were intact, with a livable atmosphere on both sides. The hallway beyond was structurally sound, however amber lights flickered occasionally. The reactor room was next, it was structurally sound. The reactor itself was barely functioning, but many of the dedicated sensors were offline. Maintenance rooms were beyond that, along with medical, but only visual data was available…
A creeping dread started building as the Kainé’s BPU began processing the visual data.
It was slow going without fully reconnecting the BPU to the heart. However, the Kainé wasn't about to break protocol a second time just to end up in an error loop. The Kainé still tried lowering the cable in the off chance it would connect to the correct port.
It did not.
Using a remote networking connection was less efficient than the hard-line, but it would make due.
The Kainé found out why no crew had been responding…
The BPU's dread was warranted.
There was no crew.
The Kainé's hull was breached; the logs showed that to be the case, however, that didn't mean much without going over the data manually like this. Three large holes were cut through the Kainé’s hull with thousands of smaller impacts dotting its surface.
The large holes were jagged wounds the ship had suffered in combat. Reviewing the data from before the Kainé suffered its critical failure and shutdown showed two of the three impacts. The third was ultimately what caused the shutdown.
The Kainé’s automated systems had attempted repairs using nanites, but without direct input, they had been used randomly. Most of the nanites went into repairing parts of life support and the reactor. Even with the repairs, life support was a mess. Air filtration was barely keeping up with the BPU’s needs. Heat exchangers were completely nonfunctional, as were the heaters. The only thing keeping the air at a “safe temperature" was the reactors fuel decaying. Meaning it was only a matter of time before the reactor died, or it boiled the BPU alive as temperatures continued to rise.
It seemed that the gradual temperature rise caused by the reactor was what triggered life support to come online in the first place. This started a chain reaction, allowing the BPU to come out of stasis and go online. It was a mess of cascading errors and logic loops; the logs showed [675356683] attempted restarts over [384] solar cycles.
Navigation reported that it was “actively” being repaired by what remained of the nanites. This appeared to be an error as the nanites weren't reporting being anywhere near navigation. Some lower-level functions were restored at some point; however, that appeared to have been by chance.
The nanites were actually working on communications.
Propulsion was all over the place; the main drive was offline, but many of the retro rockets and stabilizers were functional. The warp drive was non-functional; it had taken the first kinetic impact.
Due to meteorite impacts, most of the Kainé couldn't hold atmosphere; really, anything beyond engineering wasn't livable. The heart was on the edge of what could be considered survivable, and only barely, in large part due to its proximity to the reactor.
Scans from life support showed only one life signature, the BPUs. Much of the Kainé's interior was damaged and structurally unstable from debris hitting the interior walls.
Functionally, things could have been worse, but not by much.
It wasn't great, but if another ship from the fleet could be hailed, then the Kainé could be recovered and brought back up to full functionality with proper repairs.
Hummingbird-class ships were small. The Kainé's Crew roster when full was 40 individuals, all of whom were either missing or floating lifelessly in its superstructure. Three of the escape pods were missing, indicating that some of the crew had abandoned ship after it suffered critical damage.
This posed a problem.
Although the Kainé was functioning, its reactor was dying, and there was no one available to fix any of its problems.
The BPU started leaking again…
Protocol for this situation was straightforward: communicate with friendly vessels and schedule a pickup point for the damaged ship, then await further orders.
The Kainé was attempting to broadcast a distress signal; however, due to the third kinetic impact, large chunks of the communication relays were missing or destroyed.
The Kainé was effectively screaming into the void for help… without a voice.
By the time the BPU had come to this conclusion, several days had passed, showing how much slower the BPU was without a direct connection to its heart. Unfortunately, even had the BPU had been connected, most of the ship's data crystals were destroyed by the second of the three impacts.
This explained two things: the first being why the BPU wasn't being leashed, and the second, why the BPU had such a pronounced pain response to the Kainé coming back online. The wetware wasn't meant to run all of the ship's systems at once, no, its job was to be adaptive. The BPU could run all of the ship's systems if push came to shove, but that was how the BPU burnt out.
The very thought of which caused a heart rate to spike and a fresh release of stress hormones to be registered in the BPU.
At the current rate of repair, communications would be operational in [Null value] cycles.
As good a solution as nanites were for ship repair, they, like everything else, were subject to wear and tear. Regulation stipulated that they be replaced every two solar cycles, one and a half if a ship was in an active engagement zone. The logs were damaged, but even by conservative estimates, the nanites were past their useful life expectancy by little under 200 times that. This was more testament to human engineering than anything else, with as much uptime as they had, to have 17% still functional was wildly beyond expectations.
The problem was that the nanites weren't systematically fixing things. With all the hardware damage, they were being assigned to an area of the ship for repairs randomly and wouldn't move past that area until it was fixed. This all together meant that despite the fact that the nanites were working on the area that needed to be operational for the Kainé to be recovered, they wouldn't be enough to fix communications, hence the [Null value].
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
There wasn't anything standard about this situation; the BPU was trying to reference protocols, but there were no protocols that even remotely covered the current situation. [384] Solar cycles had passed, the Kainé had been unmanned for [384] solar cycles without outside intervention…
The Kainé should have been recovered by now.
The Kainé should have been recovered, repaired, and put back into service.
This was nonstandard, but also wasting what precious little pressing power the BPU currently had; thus, the line of thought was suppressed and archived for future processing after a solution was found for the current problem. The BPU's processing speed had been declining during the ship-wide diagnostic.
Ultimately, communication was down, and there was nothing the Kainé could do about it.
The Kainé may have lost its voice, but it still had its eyes, the exterior sensors, as well as a handful of propulsion solutions available to it.
The Kainé ended the diagnostic and directed its attention to the exterior sensors.
All non-essential processing stopped.
It was dark with thousands of pinpricks of light shining far off in the vastness of the void. Visual data was incomplete, with entire swaths of the Kainé being damaged, but it was simple to extrapolate what would be seen if those sensors were working.
Hundreds of thousands of ships ranging in size from Titanic dreadnoughts to small escape craft floated lifelessly in the void. The Kainé was just one speck in an ocean of destruction. There was no movement save for gradual rotation caused by the conservation of momentum. It wasn't just allied vessels in the void, for every Earth ship there was one belonging to the swarm, a rogue intelligence that turned against humanity, ending billions of lives.
This was a graveyard, a place only the Dead belonged.
It didn't make sense, even if the Kainé had been abandoned, there was no way that this many ships would be.
This wasn't… this couldn't… There had to be some other explanation. But what if, what if the Earth lost… that would mean there wasn't any chance of recovery… no crew to protect. If a ship didn't have a Crew, what was the Kainé supposed to do?
The BPU's heart rate spiked in conjunction with heavy respiration. Errors started propagating throughout the Kainé's systems as processing stalled to a halt. All of the ship's visual data indicated that the void was closing in darkness itself, coming for the Kainé. Dark shapes swirled among the void, always on the edge of the Kainé’s vision.
The BPU inhaled sharply, and then all at once, darkness lurched at the Kainé.
The ship's reactor fired as the Kainé's still weapons systems flared to life, indiscriminately firing into the inky blackness, trying to keep it at bay. The old cannons released everything they could to stave off the darkness, but it just kept encroaching. Targeting systems reported nothing to fire on, but the BPU disregarded them and kept firing. Temperature thresholds were starting to be approached across all weapons systems. The BPU paid them no mind and kept firing, brilliant bursts of light keeping the darkness at bay for even a moment longer. What was left of the point defense systems was the first to read line and slag; evidently, they didn't have adequate cooling. The main cannons failed next, not due to temperature but insufficient power. Of the Kainé's kinetic weapons, most refused to fire, and those that did jammed after a few shots.
Lighting across the ship filtered as the BPU cried out in desperation.
AHHHH!
The Kainé screamed out into the void for it to stop, but it just kept coming!
The darkness encroached further and overtook the Kainé. Darkness on every side, the remaining lights flickered then died. The BPU's heart rate spike,d and then everything faded.
***********************************************************
She was warm, a slow and steady beeping droned in the background. Comforting weightlessness cradled >??????
Sounds started clearing up. The casual chatter of Chief Medical Smalls as he spoke to himself filled the quiet air. He was sitting at his desk, working at his monitor.
She extended a tendril of consciousness out to the greater ship, immediately, she got a response. Lines of data streamed across her mind as it coalesced into meaning.
Readout:
Life support: Normal
Reactor: Normal
Hull: Normal
Propulsion: Normal
Navigation: Normal
Nanit swarm: 100%
Engineering: Normal
BPU: Online
Systems: all green
A ping sounded from Chief Medical Smalls’s terminal. Turning around in his chair, he made eye contact with her as a warm smile crossed his kind elderly face.
“Back online, I see.”
“You know you gave us quite a scare shutting down like that? Although it's not every day you fly through a solar flare and come out unscathed.”
Of course, she didn't respond as she stared into the middle distance. Not that it stopped him from talking to her as if she would. It was almost endearing, almost.
“I'm honestly amazed with technology these days.”
He let out a dry laugh.
“Really showed us, though, you shutting down like that's the only reason we got out of the storm scot-free.”
The image of rain falling crossed her mind fleetingly before the leashing protocols stole that from her too.
“Oh, don't worry, you'll be in the heart soon, back in tip top shape!”
He was a kind old man…
Was…?
The slow beeping in the background distorted, replaced by static. Smalls was still talking but >??????
Drip
The lights flickered violently, and the room changed. The lights went amber as the pristine medical bay rapidly aged. Paint flew off the walls as shrapnel tore through them. Smalls fell from his chair onto the ground, a vivid red puddle forming beneath him. The glass of >??????
Drip…
Error messages assaulted her senses, demanding her attention!
Drip… Drip…
The ship lurched, sending her sliding through the broken glass. Pain! So much pain! so much blood!
Drip…
Her mind reached for the ship, reached to know what was happening.
The readout appeared in her mind's eye.
Readout:
Life support: Offline
Reactor: Critical
Hull: Compromised
Propulsion: Offline
Navigation: Offline
Nanit swarm: Coming for you
Engineering: Offline
BPU: Dead!
Systems: All dead!!!
Drip…DRIP…
Smalls’s lifeless eyes stared past her, as his corpse spoke in its own twisted voice.
“It was a rush job, but it would have been a waste to leave it”
“?????"??????:??????"?????}????[??????]????;?????'??????/?????.?????x?????:????'???????”
“Yes, true enough.”
“_?????-???????=?????+???????????l??????;?????L??????:??????"???*?????&?????^????>?????”
“Whatever it takes.”
The Dripping was pounding in her head.
Louder, LOUDER, LOUDER!!!
DRIP, DRIP, DRIP!!!
The sound echoed off the walls as they decayed into nothingness, as the room went dark.
Then it was over.
The BPU was lying on the ground. Its internal logs showed an unexpected rest cycle two standard hours long. Its body was cold and clammy. The nutrient feed line had come disconnected at some point and was dripping on the ground.
The BPU curled into a ball, as it cried itself back to sleep.
