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008 - Life as a Starship Captain
🕑 Added 2024-07-03 17:44:42 +0000 UTCA searing pain assaulted Qin Yun’s vision cortex as his sight became a sea of white. He could feel the pressure mounting in his brain as his heart pumped ever-increasing amounts of blood through his body. Still, his lungs couldn't keep up with the increased demand for oxygen, and his mind felt slightly dizzy. The world whirled around him, and soon, all that remained was blackness. He had lost consciousness.
Despite all this, a piece of him remained aware as scenes flashed before him. He was in an unfamiliar place. All around him were men and women, all dressed in what seemed like military uniforms, reminiscent of what he knew when he was still just a scientist. Yet, some of those individuals were far from humans.
Some sported alien features, like tentacles for arms, while one seemed like a giant mantis. Many more sported strange and exotic physical traits so far removed from what one would consider humanoid. Yet, all the humans around seemed familiar with these sights as if it were all too common. Qin Yun looked around, trying to get his bearings.
He seemed to be on the bridge of a ship, yet the technology was years ahead of what he remembered of his former life, maybe even centuries. Not many would compare, even if he were to liken it to some of the worlds he had explored.
He looked down at his hands, only to discover that the large hands he remembered were now slender and somewhat feminine. He noticed a strand of long hair resting on his chest. Except his black hair was now green with a shade of orange. Furthermore, a bulging chest rested beneath that hair as if trying to overflow from the same uniform. Indeed, he was now a woman.
"Reporting," a man in front of a console shouted over the cacophony in the room. "Captain, we have many hostile signals on the hulls of deck 13 through 21. They are breaking through. ETA, less than three minutes."
“Those damn bugs,” the woman cursed, irrelevant of Qin Yun’s own will. “Send the security droids and shut all auxiliary bulkheads. While it can’t stop them, it might buy us some time.”
A large explosion was heard, which shook the command bridge, prompting some of the officers to hang onto their consoles. Some of the less fortunate were thrown to the ground. One even hit his head on the side of a console. He slumped to the ground, unresponsive. Blood flowed from the wound, and Qin Yun could spy brain matter also leaking out.
"Medic!" the woman shouted in a hoarse voice. "Give me a damage report!"
The man at the helm tapped furiously on the translucent keyboard hovering slightly above his console. Countless windows of light appeared and disappeared in quick succession. His eyes darted back and forth between them, scanning all the information available. A neural link downloaded an unending flow of strange, obscure symbols directly into his brain. He then reported his findings.
“Captain! The enemy's ion beams just grazed our starboard side. While the shield dispersed most of it, they were able to hit the core. Shields are at maximum capacity; we won’t be able to endure another hit unless we vent them.”
“Vent the shield in the middle of battle? Are you mad, Helmsman?" the woman replied with a slight self-deprecating smile, then took a deep breath to regain her calm. "How's the engines? Can we outrun them?"
“With the core in this state, we'll be lucky if we can even run them at half power," the chief engineer said over comms.
“Can it be fixed?!” she barked with a gloomy expression.
"Not unless we shut it off," the man said after a moment of hesitation. "Their beams severed the main conduit for the coolant while the backups are now at full capacity. If we try to push the engines further, we risk critical system overload or core meltdown."
“Speak plainly, officer!”
“Fireworks, M’am!”
As the woman contemplated the options left to her, a massive ship appeared before them, easily three times their size. Unlike their state-of-the-art ship, comprised of the newest technology available within the Systems Commonwealth, their opponents seemed more like an amalgam of space debris, held together by their own gravity alone. Yet, despite all their efforts, they were outmatched.
"Captain, they are hailing us," the Helmsman said. "Your orders?"
“On screen.”
What appeared before her was some sort of crystal life form. She knew them well as they were the greatest enemies the Commonwealth had encountered in the eons since it was founded.
Those creatures weren't made of organic matter but of some sort of silica base. As far as they knew, they didn't require oxygen to function and could overcome the vacuum of space, making them one of the most adept space-faring species. Despite all the research the Commonwealth had poured into understanding these creatures, they still had little idea how they developed sentience.
The most accepted theory was some sort of neural network that utilized background radiation originating from sub-space and linked all creatures in some kind of hive. They were more akin to bugs than any other lifeforms, and their appearance reflected that.
A stringent sound was heard over the comms, which seemed to want to bore right through her brain. She felt an intense pain assault her, and then the chip in her skull interpreted those sounds into something she could understand.
“Surrender and become part of the collective, or face imminent destruction.”
She didn't bother to respond as this was nothing more than a prerecorded message playing on repeat. She motioned for the Helmsman to cut communications before mulling over how she could get out of this one.
They were light-years away from Commonwealth Space on a secret mission from High Command. They had no backup, no one to come and save them. They were all but doomed. Still, she couldn't let the artifact they were sent to retrieve fall into those creatures' hands. She steeled herself. She was, first and foremost, a soldier and would do her duty.
“Helmsman! Full speed ahead!” She screamed over comms. “Chief Engineer, give me all she’s got!”
“That’s madness!” the man replied. “Are you trying to kill us all?”
“I'd rather take them with me than become one of those things," she said in the coldest tone the chief engineer had ever heard. Despite all his years serving aboard military ships, he couldn't overcome the dread overwhelming him.
Seeing his hesitation, the woman wanted to berate him for insubordination, yet she was interrupted by another communication link flashing on the display overhead. She clicked the red button and opened the line.
“This is security! Decks 13 through 17 are lost. We’ve taken heavy casualties. Most of the droids have gone down. We’re holding for now, but not for long. Requesting reinforcements!”
“Denied,” she responded. “There’s none near your position. Just fall back for now. Prioritize buying time.”
"Aye, M'am," the man replied in a grim tone. "It's been an honour."
While the line was still open, the bridge was flooded by the sounds of laser turrets hitting their enemies' crystal carapaces, metal being ripped apart, and men and women's screams of agony. The woman had done it deliberately so that her staff would be aware of what they were facing. While their demise was imminent, they were seasoned soldiers, so morale remained high. They would see this through to the end.
"Are you going to give me what I want, or are you still going to waste time?!" she barked over communications.
The chief engineer gritted his teeth as he heard people dying left and right. He was no soldier, just the guy responsible for keeping this baby in running condition. Yet, even he would have to make his choice eventually. Whether to die in a blaze of glory or at the claws of these pests. There would be no happy ending this day.
“Disabling all limiters... Injecting supercritical mass into the core... Core now operating at 120%... Temperatures are now out of control... Estimating two minutes before Core Meltdown..." the onboard AI stated apathetically.
The woman smiled slightly, yet her smile was laced with insanity, the same madness one would have as they stared death right in the face.
“Helmsman! Forward!” she ordered. “Drive us right into their bellies. They want to assimilate us? They should be careful we don’t give them an indigestion.”
She rose from her command chair and opened comms to all parts of the ship. She addressed all her crew in a voice so calm and cold that her earlier display of madness seemed non-existent.
“Ladies and gentlemen, and others, whatever you may be, this is your captain speaking. This is the end of the line for us. There is no retreat, only the path ahead. Still, for those unprepared to meet their makers, the escape pods are at your disposal for whatever good they might bring. Know that it was my pleasure to have lived and died in service of the Commonwealth alongside all of you. We may perish on this day, but we won't go alone. We'll drag all these bastards to hell with us! To whatever God out there, I'm not going to pray to them. My life has always been my own, and I’m proud to say that my choices led me here, and I don’t regret it one bit. My only regret is that I won’t be around to see the day these bugs are exterminated to the last. That’s all from me. Now, Helmsman, let her rip!”
She sat back down on her chair while still connected to the ship-wide comms. She could hear her crew drop left and right as the bugs flooded the interior of her ship, ripping apart anyone they encountered. Soon enough, she seemed to have heard the peculiar voice of her chief engineer as bugs ripped his limbs from his torso, yet her expression didn't change at all.
With a glacial gaze, she looked forward through the front screen at the ship they intended to ram. Countless error and warning messages flashed on her command screen, but she ignored them, only focusing on the end of her journey. Even as bugs invaded the bridge, dismembering her crew as they pointlessly tried to fight back, the woman didn't move one bit. She only waited for her inevitable end.
She didn’t have to wait long.
Her large ship, spanning tens of miles and supporting a crew of tens of thousands, was now nothing more than a dead weight as it drifted at break-neck speed through space. The runaway heat from the core melted off entire decks as if it were a small star.
Still, she didn’t even have to wait for the core to melt down or the approaching bugs to cleave her in half as the ship rammed into the bugs' mothership. As the inertial dampeners were now offline due to critical system failure, the woman died at the moment of impact as her brain and organs flattened themselves inside her body, killing her instantly.
Moments later, the core cracked, and an explosion akin to a supernova destroyed the entire star system, reducing all the bugs and their ships to dust. Everything in a radius of a light-year was extinguished and turned into subatomic particles.
This was the last scene Qin Yun witnessed before being brought back to reality. He could feel his brain throb as an excess amount of information was thrust into it. It took him a moment to adjust himself to his new knowledge.
His bride to his side looked at him, and he could spy something akin to concern even despite the veil covering her face. Qin Yun took a deep breath and calmed himself. He could now remember all of that woman captain's memories as if he had lived through her life. He needed some time to reorganize those memories and partition them away from his own so as not to confuse his identity with hers.
Fortunately, this wasn't the first time Qin Yun had to do something similar. It had happened so often that he was now highly familiar with the process. He calmly processed the information but was soon interrupted by maids standing before them.
As the banquet ended, his bride was led away toward a secluded pavilion, while Qin Yun was required to meet with the clan's patriarch.
