Chapter 307 - Wake Up

Chapter 307

Wake Up

“Okay,” Alexander said. “Setting that aside—”

“The assassin?” Petra asked. “We’re setting aside the fact that someone infiltrated the crew by applying for an open position, trained with us over a week, then immediately tried to kill our boss when he showed up?”

Alexander nodded. “Yeah. That.”

Petra stared at him. “Shouldn’t we tell someone?”

“Droney already sent the recording and a warning to the others.” Alexander turned to Droney. “Actually, send it to the Queen of Hearts, too.”

Droney beeped a confirmation.

“Good,” Alexander said, turning back to Ryan. “Now that that’s out of the way. What’s wrong with Sleipnir?”

Ryan frowned. “Almost exactly one month ago, we experienced an unusual series of events. First, the ship independently powered up from cold shutdown entirely on its own. I attempted to abort the sequence, but all commands entered into the ship’s systems were ignored.”

“Then electricity started arcing across the floors and up the walls,” Petra added. “We were lucky that nobody was hurt.”

Ryan continued. “Once the power surge stopped, the computer systems attempted to calculate an impossible jump—”

“Interdimensional!” Petra said. “I examined the logs later. It took the standard transit equations and started recursively expanding the exit coordinate matrix. You know how the Archimedean spiral function resolves the spatial distortion at the exit point? The computer was iterating that function through golden ratio expansions, compounding each pass, essentially trying to brute-force an additional spatial axis into calculations that only account for three. If it had gone on for much longer, it would have burned out the secondary processors. They weren’t built to withstand that kind of abuse.” She took a breath. “What’s weird is that the computer somehow generated a terabyte of coordinate data from absolutely nothing and was completely fixated on using it despite it being all wrong.”

Alexander stared at Petra, who just blinked at him, as if waiting for a response. Which didn’t make sense. No sane person would expect any other normal person to respond to whatever made up language she’d just used.

He glanced at Ryan.

Ryan shrugged. “Everything shut down after that and station power restored life support and basic systems. Augustus left immediately, saying you were in trouble, and the Captain said we weren’t to interfere with the ship unnecessarily until you returned. We’ve been running minimal operations and maintenance ever since.”

Petra glanced at Droney. “The Sleipnir woke up, like Droney, right?”

Alexander nodded absentmindedly, tilting his head back to stare up at the ceiling. Petra was Sleipnir’s primary comms and sensors officer. She wasn’t even a navigator herself, but was still capable of deciphering navigational calculations which was an entire field of mathematical science all on its own. He’d known the crew were all trained across multiple stations, but it was still impressive.

And though what Petra had just said sounded insane, it told him one thing. Sleipnir had awoken, then immediately attempted to calculate and perform an interdimensional jump.

Most people would think that impossible.

Alexander knew better. An interdimensional jump had started everything.

Because what had appeared to Earth 0 to be a failed jump drive test performed by Dr. Wilhelmina Kruger, had actually been a successful interdimensional jump into Earth 1. She’d just never returned home for some reason, instead going on to create a superhuman serum with her alternate self while pretending to be twin sisters.

Sleipnir must have attempted the same thing, likely using the bond created by Animachina as a type of compass to generate his interdimensional coordinates on Earth 5 within the wizard’s reality.

The timing aligned with when he’d killed Flashpoint and received the strange System notification, followed by the excruciating agony of having his original soul merged with the remnants of his alternate self’s.

Droney had explained to him that his powers had gone out of control. He’d seen the recordings of himself floating in the air, lightning erupting in every direction, while metal deformed all around him.

The little drone had struggled to put into words what had happened to it during the process.

But the exact same experience had triggered Sleipnir’s awakening. Then, likely panicked and confused, it had tried to come to his aid, only to realize it couldn’t before shutting itself down.

Alexander let out a long breath. “I’m a terrible machine father.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Ryan frowned. “Sir?”

Alexander waved a hand. “Nothing. Just talking to myself. From this point forward, Sleipnir is never to be fully powered down without my explicit say so.” He met the Executive Officer’s gaze. “I will treat any such act as an attack on my own person. I trust you will convey my Will on this matter to the Chief. If he has a problem with it, he can take it up with me.”

Ryan nodded. “Understood, Sir. I will pass on your orders immediately.”

“So the ship really is alive then?” Petra asked.

“Yes,” Alexander said. “If it is anything like Droney, then Sleipnir is now an entity capable of choice. I don’t know what happens to them if they are completely powered down, and unless it becomes an absolute necessity, I don’t intend to find out.”

“What happens when we need to use the—” Ryan hesitated. “I mean, what if we need to fly Sleipnir?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m hoping Sleipnir wants to be a ship and do ship-like things.” Alexander jabbed a thumb at Droney. “This one seemed to want to continue being a combat Droney. And now it has aspirations of becoming a real supervillain. It’s even asking for rocket launchers and flamethrowers. Can you believe it?”

Droney beeped. Then translated its own meaning into words. “DRONEY. TERROR. OF. THE. SKIES.”

“See what I mean?” Alexander asked. “Absolutely out of control.”

Ryan stared at Droney. Petra giggled.

“Anyway, I’m going to try to communicate with Sleipnir. Don’t be alarmed if the ship wakes up.”

Ryan nodded.

“Good luck,” Petra said.

***

Alexander chose the meeting room for what came next. The old executive boardroom sat at the heart of Sleipnir, and the symbolism felt appropriate.

He pulled the chair from the head of the table, his spot, and sat down.

Droney hovered above the table and beeped.

“I don’t know, buddy,” he said. “Maybe Sleipnir realized it couldn’t perform the jump, and chose to enter a low powered state to avoid whatever was happening. You said my emotions were spilling across the bond.”

Droney beeped again, this time low and long.

“Yeah. You had months to properly wake up and grow into the understanding of what you were and what existence was like.” Alexander sighed. “It sounds like Sleipnir’s experience was panic and pain.”

Droney’s visor dimmed slightly. “SAD.”

Alexander almost laughed. The single word along with the loud intonation was all wrong for the moment, and Droney’s intentions didn’t match the output at all.

Instead, he settled more comfortably into the high-backed chair and closed his eyes. His Will unfurled around him, powers following, spreading through metal, cables, electronics, systems, and mechanical components.

His awareness expanded outward in every direction. The surrounding corridors came first, then the crew cabins full of retrofitted bunks and personal effects. The kitchen and its industrial-grade appliances. Entertainment rooms. His own workshop, converted from Santiago’s private meeting space, now full of tools mounted on walls and displays that hadn’t been turned on in months. The bridge, where Ryan and Petra’s signatures had settled back at their stations. The hangar bay, cold and empty. Weapons systems, dormant. Then kinetic armor plating, followed by shield generators.

Alexander paused. The shields were humanity’s cutting edge design, and they were terrible. Paper-thin coverage that buckled under any real threat. He’d been meaning to replace them since the Nexus, but the shields he’d been given by the Nexus Station Master, Kipleth, were far more advanced than even he’d expected.

But the supercomputer had finally finished breaking down the advanced alien components and reverse-engineered a rebuilt version using available human technology. The results were functional but compromised, and maybe the military would come up with something better, but for the time being he could build more emitters.

Emitters that were twenty-three percent larger than the originals and thirty-eight percent less power efficient. They were still a massive upgrade, though. He needed to find time to upgrade Sleipnir. Or more likely hire professionals to do it.

And for his personal use, including more shield-drones, he needed compact power generation units. Which brought him back to needing to meet with someone high up at Goliath.

Soon.

Alexander refocused and pushed farther across the ship. Engineering opened up to his mind, the reactor’s rhythmic pulse filling his awareness. Conduits branching outward through the ship’s structure, feeding every system. The Chief’s signature was nearby, moving slowly about the bay, presumably working.

The jump drive enclosure came next. He’d never done more than brush his powered awareness against it before, and he didn’t change tactics this time. It was the kind of technology that only an idiot tampered with. Even the Chief rarely went near it, and only then to recalibrate it using the external display.

Then he hit the server room, where racks of processing cores hummed with idle computation. It was the ship’s digital nervous system, laid bare to his Technopathy.

Another part of a starship he knew better than to mess with.

He could feel the entirety of the ship, exactly as he had the first day he’d stepped aboard and Ensouled the massive machine.

Alexander exhaled. His Will settled into everything.

“Wake up,” he commanded.

Sleipnir obeyed.

Animachina felt something move. Where Electrokinesis felt changes caused by electrical currents, Metallokinesis sensed machinery shifting, and Technopathy picked up on all the data firing back and forth, Animachina pinpointed a single thing.

Sleipnir’s soul. Embedded not with the reactor or the jump drive or among the server racks, but within the comparably tiny transponder unit. Then it expanded, uncoiling like a giant serpent as it quickly grew to encompass the entire starship.

Power coursed from the reactor core, flooding the ship as it came alive. Sleipnir’s awareness washed out with it, finding and testing systems, turning them on and off and on again, probing its own components one by one.

Alexander felt the crew react to the sudden changes, their bioelectrical signatures pulsing with alarm. Felt the comms system activate as the Chief called up the bridge, and again when Ryan responded, presumably reassuring him that all was well.

A screen on the other side of the meeting room flickered on.

Alexander opened his eyes and read the single word printed on the screen.

Master.

He frowned. They were going to need to work on that.