The next day passed in recuperation for Carolina313, and tense fear and anticipation for myself. The tentacle stretching into infinite stayed as close as it had since it's last jump towards us, and I, mistakenly, used paralax to determine it's minimum size as we drifted. Manually. Because I hate myself.

  At the smallest potential size, given the largest theoretical errors I could justify, it was as wide around as the moon. I didn't bother calculating it's largest potential size.

  After calming myself down from my bout of existential dread, I focused on spending a lot of time interacting with Carolina313. It turns out the empire severely limits what kind of entertainment their slaves have access to, it is almost all propaganda and, at least it felt like, full of subliminal messaging to reinforce their servitude.

  What I am saying is we spent a lot of time playing games and watching movies.

  About partway through the second day she asked me a pertinent question, as she sat in her room wearing a bulky VR interface I had fabricated for her(the multi-function fabricator was already paying dividends!)

  “So, just... why are you out here Captain Cofey?” She asked, while in the game she sheathed her sword and buckled her shield over her shoulder.

  “Brayden, please, Captain Cofey sounds too formal.” I replied as I let the crackling lightning in my left hand fade, the charred remains of the weapon I had been enhancing with it blowing away like so much virtual dust.

  “Brayden then.”

  I hesitated. On the one hand I would love to have someone else to talk to about my situation

  On the other she was technically the enemy, or at least the enemy of the people who saved me, and wasn't particularly restrained. I could maybe put her down with the repair drones, but they were pretty small, if I had to bring in the actual combat drones, well... they were not exactly designed for non-lethal takedowns.

  I decided to be cautious.

  “I was undergoing a medical procedure while my friends were on an archeological expedition. Everything was actually going good until pirates hit us while we were all docked at the site. My friends... didn't make it.” I said. I hadn't really processed the whole thing and I started shaking as I did, or at least my avatar did. My own body, jacked into the helm, remained a dead fish as always.

  “I got out of medical and got to the bridge. Things were... bad, but I managed to save the ship, affected some repairs, almost got sucked out into space... This isn't actually my ship you see, It's my friend's Captain Bait, the ships name is Hook, because she thinks she's funny.”

  “Oh my god... I'm so sorry.”

  I nodded. “I'm trying to get their bodies back to prime before they're reinstantiated, if I don't they'll be remade with their old backups, they'll lose all their memories... and we had some I don't want them to forget."

  She blinked at me.

  “Reinstantiated?”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “I would think you all would know, from what I've heard it's one of the main ways the empire demonizes COG. We take backups of our brains, and if we die we are re-instantiated, uh, resurrected I guess? In a new, generally heavily cyberized, body.”

  “OOOOOH! Okay yeah. Everyone says when you do that you lose your soul but... You don't seem so bad.”

  “I actually haven't undergone it.”

  “What?”

  “Yep, same body I was born with. Hoping to keep it that way.”

  She looked me up and down.

  “But, you're so old... you don't look that old.”

  “Medical technology.... and, and cryostasis. I've spent a looooot of time in cryostasis.”

  She blinked.

  Then she smiled.

  “And here I thought you were so much older and more experienced than me, You can't be THAT much older, in terms of actual conscious real time, can you?”

  “In terms of time spent alive, I'm twenty-eight. Still more than ten times your span sorry.” I said with a smirk.”

  Her face screwed up into a pout, before dropping. “Still better than a hundred times! Wait, you were in the middle of a medical procedure when your friends were attacked?”

  “Technically we were all attacked, I was in a medical facility when we, and the facility, got hit. Everything kindof went to hell and I had to rush aboard and hole up in the medical bay... Then the bridge got hit.”

  “Oh shit... are you okay?”

  “Not really. As soon as we get to the planet in the next system I'm going down for emergency medical treatment. What I have is too... wishy washy and weird for the automated system to figure out what to do other than cut out bits of my nervous system and replace it until the problem goes away, and I'm just not there yet.”

  She shivered as I described haphazardly augmenting my body like that.

  “So... what is your condition?”

  “Lil personal but if you must know, I get these stroke like episodes. I'll start hallucinating, seeing things, then pass out. Medical scans afterwards will look and say they think there is damage, or it might be too subtle to see, as I'll display the conditions of brain damage, and each time it builds up. I was getting a new implant to handle it, and as long as I am hooked into the ship we seem to be able to head off the attacks before they occur, at least with the new implant, but...”

  “So everytime you 'disconnect' or whatever from the ship, you are at risk.”

  “Theoretically yes? But I haven't had a bad one happen since the surgery so maybe it worked.”

  “The surgery... that you had to abort partway through... to rush into combat... and... when you say synchronize what do you mean?”

  “I sortof, become the ship. I control it with my thoughts as if it were my own body.”

  “No I mean, how does that happen, when you rushed to the bridge what did you do?”

  “Besides pull Hook's body out of the captain's chair?”

  She rolled her eyes at me.

  “Yes besides that stop trying to gross me out.”

  “Had to stick a big ass cable with a giant needle on the end of it into my spine.”

  She cringed and shook herself in discomfort at my delivery.

  “Oh my god that's awful.”

  “Yeah it's why I don't like getting in and out too often. It hurts every damn time.”

  She shook herself, the heebies chasing the jeebies all over her body. I could not keep the shit eating grin from covering my face.

  At this moment a flash blared out my vision and I paused for a second. One of those Lindwurm's was, for once, alone, and swimming along just outside the hull.

  “Shit...”

  “What?”

  “You might have to play alone for awhile”

  “Brayden? What's going on?”

  “One of the things that attacked your ship is sniffing around us, far too close for my liking.”

  She froze in terror, and started removing her VR gear, but my focus was already back on where I thought the thing was. I was using camera's to observe the part of the hull I thought it was closest towards, and was focusing on all the various sensors in that part of the hull, pressure, temperature, everything to see if I could pick it up.

  Or at least tell if it breached the hull.

  “Brayden? Do you have any weapons?”

  “On the ship? Some tracking plasma turrets and missiles, why.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “I meant... for us, if it gets on the ship...”

  “...I can't leave the bridge, Carolina, it messes with me too bad. I wouldn't be able to shoot straight until... well long enough that it would all be over...”

  “... Then how are you going to stop it getting to you?”

  I didn't answer her. Another flash of the void revealed the creature circling around the opposite side of the ship.

  This one was small, more the size of a large dog in length. It seemed more curious than anything. It touched the outer hull with its tail and I immediately checked the logs. There was a minute change in a pressure sensor, but well within error.

  “Brayden... May I have a weapon?”

  “I don't know what works on them... also you can't see them., how would you fight them.”

  “I could see them when they were covered in blood.” Carolina said grimly.

  “Only people's blood here is yours and mine, and I don't know about you but I'm kinda attached to mine.”

  “Do you have any lubricant or spray we could use?”

  “I don't... hmmm.” I thought. These things hadn't reacted to the the maneuvering jets when I fired them outside the ship, they seemed to only react to very hot, very energetic things...

  “I'm going to try something... um... brace yourself. If I'm wrong we may wind up in the longest shortest day of our lives.”

  “What do you mean by that...” Carolina asked.

  “I mean if this doesen't work like I think it will we may have about five seconds of screaming followed by instant death.”

  Carolina blanched.

  “Maybe... maybe don't do it then.”

  “Don't worry, I think I'm right.”I said, cockily.

  Hook piped up.

  “Sir, I do not believe we are in danger... tempting fate seems excessive at this point.”

  “I think it's tempting fate that all of humanity regularly dips their toes in here with these things while knowing nothing about them.”

  Hook did not respond.

  I waited, watching and figuring out the pattern of the Lindwurm's movements by the brief flashes I saw. It seemed to be interested in some of the ports in the hull. It never went deep into the maneuvering jets, but it coiled around them.

  I waited, and timed when I thought it was near one. I counted down the seconds as I estimated where it would be before I sent out a brief burst of the pressurized gas... plus a little something I had the repair drones add into the mix.

  The Lindwurm recoiled form the blast of the maneuvering jets. And the fact that I could see it recoil was heartening. I could actually see it on sensors.

  I had mixed in electrostatically charged paint into the maneuvering thruster. It was offline, but the Lindwurm was now covered in a silvery white powder. I took several pictures of it and archived them.

  I say specifically electrostatitically charged paint because when I had looked up paints that can be sprayed in space I got a whole bevy of information, most of it pertaining to getting it to adhere to surfaces, and I just picked on at random.

  I watched it coil and writhe, it obviously didn't like being sprayed. I had every sensor I could take as many pictures of it as possible.

  The result was... astounding.

  We could see a ghostly apparition against the pure black backdrop of the void, writhing through empty space.

  It began retreating, heading to the same stream that the rest of it's brood had gone, and I watched it the whole way.

  Having the rest of the void blink into existence around it every few seconds was... disconcerting, but here it was, concrete proof that I wasn't insane.

  You know.

  If the shredded imperial ship hadn't been enough proof.

  I sent the images to the data pad that I had fabbed up for Carolina's use.

  She stared down at the images.

  “This is proof... people will have to believe us when we take this out!”

  “I wonder how many people have suspected something else was in the void, and were just laughed at.”

  “I don't know, one of my sisters mentioned it once, but... we didn't see her after that.”

  I paused.

  “What?”

  “She mentioned it after dinner one night, and then we woke up and she was gone.”

  “What exactly did she mention.”

  “She said they had to do an emergency vent while in transit space, some fluid had gotten somewhere it shouldn't, and she was watching out the window when it sprayed out. It hit... something, and covered it. She swore something screamed and shook the ship, but... everyone else just said it was the engines acting up.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  “Did that kind of thing happen often?”

  “Not too often. But we all knew that if we talked about a topic that was taboo we'd get disappeared. Guess that was one of them.”

  The chill remained.

  “So either they just didn't want you talking about this as it was too far afield or...”

  “Or they know... and don't want word to get out.”

  “Why the fuck wouldn't they want word to get out.” I said, more to myself than anyone.

  “Maybe they don't want people poking the bear, experimenting with the transit space.”

  I thought about that.

  It made a sort of sense.

  If they knew that SOMETHING was in the transit, and that something responded poorly to attempts to study It and/or activating high energy systems while in transit... they might keep it a secret to keep people from getting curious.

  They might especially do so if it meant certain transits getting and remaining very dangerous for long periods of time. My eyes flickered over to the massive tentacle that had been seemingly following me since I had gotten here.

  “That's probably it... I get the... feeling there's something out here much bigger than that Lindworm”

  “A feeling?”

  I kept my mouth shut, at least until we could break her conditioning.

  “How about we move on to other topics. When we get out of bridge transit should I just drop you off at the nearest planet or...”

  Carolina gave her best glare up at the camera that was currently letting me look her in the face while I was talking to her, before relenting. “Well... most planets have an exchange station, they'll pay you the going rate for turning int someone of my rank for the empire and then they'll handle the actual delivery.”

  “I see.”

  She frowned at this.

  “If you had a chance to avoid going back, or to do something else with your life, would you take it?”I asked, probing.

  “Yes? I mean... I mean...” Her eyes got that glassy look again, but it didn't seem as intense as before.

  “Never mind. Want another round?”

  “Yes!” She replied, and we jumped back into VR.

  ***********************************************************************************

  Later, when Carolina had fallen asleep, I talked to Hook about her conditioning.

  “Do you think it's working?”

  “I believe so captain. I simply do not know if three days is long enough to break multiple years of conditioning.”

  “I hope it is... it's been nice having someone to talk to out here, and I don't think sending her home to get her organs harvested or whatever is something we should feel allowed to do, morally.”

  “You can't solve all the galaxies problems on your own Captain, And the empire probably won't immediately harvest her organs... hopefully.”

  “You are terrible at reassurance.”

  “I do not want to lie to you Captain, and the entire situation is bleak.”

  “If they don't kill her for being the sole surviving clone of a ship where her captain died, do you think they'd kill her over what she's learned of the void.”

  Hook was silent for some time.

  “Insufficient data.”