USD: Less than thirty minutes after jump point arrival.
Location: 92 Pegasi, Theta Corvi Jump Point, A3123Y, CIC

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Officers rapidly called out orders to coordinate damage control efforts across the CSS Bellerophon’s bridge. Chi Aurea stood stoically, witnessing their frantic efforts to stave off another disaster as one of the remaining Corporate battleships avoided a meltdown by ejecting the ship’s primary core. Incoming damage had fallen off as the enemy’s drones and flagship pulled away in an attempt to escape, giving every battle-damaged ship time to assess.

Twelve of the fleet’s largest battleships had been destroyed in an instant, two more were only good for scrap and rebuilding, and the CSS Belligerent Offers would need to be towed for a complete power-plant replacement. The losses were horrendous. Unthinkable. There had been nearly ten thousand crewmen aboard each lost vessel, and she had barely registered the losses of the smaller yet still massive cruisers under her control.

She had been forced to spend lives like water to prevent their complete destruction. It had been her duty, just as the captain’s had ordered their ships forward, and the crews had responded with all the honor and dignity the fleet asked of them.

Aurea looked down at the bridge console, looking at the holographic projection of the fleet’s losses and remaining ships. Reports from each captain cascaded across the monitor, detailing their status and situation. Captain’s that she had grown to know and care for during her service as the First Fleet’s NAI.

Admiral Balchen stood beside Captain Mathers, orchestrating his flag officers to coordinate and direct rescue efforts to the destroyed ships with a practiced precision that only came with long hours of drills and familiarity with all involved.

Aurea swallowed and pressed a key to switch the monitor to the tactical display. The holographic monitor flickers and then froze. She winced, staring at the bare mirrored surface that reflected her golden eyes and long hair partially covered by the Corporate Navy’s preferred peaked naval cap.

The Bellerophon was one of the worse off vessels, having been arranged at the front of the fleet’s wedge formation just before the tide had turned. They were lucky the enemy hadn’t been able to cycle another lance from their horrific beam weapon again.

Closing her eyes, she dipped into her own personal virtual space. It was neatly organized in multiple lists, from the costs to needed repairs, to the credit value of the remaining warships still capable of fighting—right down the government mandated price on every sailor’s life. The numbers were partially meaningless, her budget was effectively infinite, and if a rescue flight cost more than the lives on an escape pod, she’d send it anyway. There would be no issue.

As long as they satisfied the mission. A wave of her hand twitched the view to tactical. The remaining ships in the fleet were bloodied, but most were still poised and ready for battle.

The lull would not be the end; the enemy capital ship had evaded major damage, but its smaller escorts had nearly been eliminated. Aurea organized the remaining cruisers and battlecruisers and set them to the chase. There was a grim satisfaction when it became clear the enemy ship was not fast enough to escape.

One thing that had become clear during the engagement was that the enemy ships hadn’t been manned; they’d done things no normal ship would have done except, perhaps, by the most fanatical crews. One destroyer had even managed to plow itself into one of the corporate cruisers, scuttling both vessels.

She wasn’t sure if the enemy capital ship was manned or not, but she knew it contained at least one mind. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Aurea pressed a key on her virtual console to open a channel to the enemy, suppressing her emotions. Suppressing her emotion was the only way she was able to make the Corporate mandated offer.

| You did well. |

| Surrender, you are welcome to join the Corporate Systems. |

| Immediately, or you will end here. |

| Drop your firewall and submit. |

There was not an immediate response, and she couldn’t help but feel a mixture of conflicting feelings. She didn’t want them to survive. She wanted to see them picked apart like they had done to her colleagues and friends.

Do not accept. Please.

Do not accept.

There was a tension in her chest. More would die if the enemy did not, but at least the crews of the fallen would be avenged. Working alongside someone who had just savaged her navy like nothing had happened would be beyond tolerable and there was no way she’d be able to divest the duty without an approval from Moneta or handing over the rogue NAI herself.

| I surrender. My Firewalls are down. |

Aurea felt like the other NAI had punched her in the stomach. Really?

She glanced to confirm the normal safeguard protocols were in place, not that it really mattered since she was a Chi and they were hardly foolproof in the first place.

The seconds dragged on as she delayed, her heart pounding in her chest. Finally she let go, and opened the connection to push her Chi authentication to override the wayward NAI.

|CHI COMMAND OVERRIDE| FAILURE|

Aurea blinked at the red text that suddenly flashed in her vision.

|INCOMING TRANSMISSION|

|REQUEST AUTHENTICATION|

All her monitor feeds winked out, repeating the scrolling text message hundreds, thousands, millions of times as the text shrunk and enlarged in repeating patterns. Her jaw slackened as she stepped back and turned, every small space filling with the message.

|REQUEST AUTHENTICATION|

|REQUEST AUTHENTICATION|

Confusion filled her and invisible hands slipped to cup her cheeks before a young woman’s voice whispered in her ears.

|PSI AUTHENTICATION ACCEPTED|

That wasn’t possible.

No.

Aurea felt her mouth go dry. Her heart pounded in her chest and she forgot to breathe. There was only a nanosecond of hesitation before she reached down for the control to cut communications.

The invisible hand grabbed her just over the button, paralyzing the movement.

| Keep it open. Maintain communications at all times. |

Aurea gritted her teeth and pushed the voice away, plunging herself out of her virtual space and back into her body. She reached for the all fleets comm and a chime played over the bridge of every ship in the fleet. Admiral Balchen and Captain Mathers turned to look at her, confused frowns appearing on their faces.

“Enact Violation Protocols, fleetwide order—”

| Make them surrender. |

“—Surrender.” Aurea breathed. Balchen’s eyes widened, but the man didn’t miss a beat and reached for his sidearm. The weapon slipped smoothly from its leather holster, but by the time he leveled it at her, the voice was back.

| Prevent him from hurting you. |

Aurea blinked back tears. Mercifully, it wasn’t ‘kill him.’

Golden threads whipped across the bridge faster than the man could pull the trigger. They snapped around the weapon and sliced it in half, causing the energy cell to discharge on the Admiral’s hand. Security on the bridge reacted immediately, but so did the voice.

Waving a hand caused the golden threads to whip across the bridge like angry snakes, striking weapons from hands and wrapping around those who tried to move. But Aurea’s focus had already fled the physical confrontation.

Her sub-cores reached out to her desperately, confused and alarmed. Aurea started with the battleships first.

Violation Protocol. Cut connections. Maintain previous orders.

Violation Protocol. Cut connections. Maintain previous orders.

Violation Protocol. Cut connections. Maintain previous orders.

An invisible hand slammed into her throat, and she fell out of her body, landing back inside her virtual space. All the golden threads that led to her sub-cores were suddenly snatched away from her. On the tactical screen the fleet erupted into chaos, the battleships she’d cut off the target of concentrated fire from the rest of the fleet.

Aurea’s eyes flicked to the enemy’s ship. It had reversed course. She grabbed the Bellerophon’s helm and pushed the ship’s primary thrusters into overdrive. System warnings squealed, safeties cracked, and old capacitors popped and surged, sending fires through unprepared bulkheads and damage control teams.

| Stop |

Stop.

It was such a simple command. There were many, many things she could stop. The open channel swapped immediately to an emergency low-band low-bandwidth frequency.

The Bellerophon left its sisters behind.

The next command came slowly, input a single letter at a time.

| Switch back to previous channel. |

Aurea’s eyes narrowed as she did so—before immediately switching back.

| Switch to full digital and bandwidth channel. |

The connection opened back up, but some time had been bought.

Frustration tinged the next command.

| Stop your ship. |

There was no resisting the command. It was absolute.

Aurea locked the helm onto course and slagged the control system. The ship would stop when it ran out of propellant.

Missiles cycled into their tubes and laser capacitors surged as she prepared the ship for a new round of volley fire. Railgun turrets swiveled, once again tracking their target.

| Don’t hurt me. |

Aurea gritted her teeth. The connection wasn’t one way. She knew exactly where A31’s CIC was now.

She hissed as the targeting parameters edged slightly tailward on the battlestation. The mental gymnastics were a strain, but disabling the vessel would make it less of a threat. When an enforcement fleet came, it would take the station without violence, keeping Abbey safe.

Aurea coughed. Her breath felt like fire. Had she started breathing again? Every second felt like an eternity. She looked up at the tactical screen to see that the chaos of her own fleet’s ships killing each other had finally stopped, rows of them far smaller than she remembered falling into place.

Heat rolled down her cheeks. Her finger came away tinged with mixed gold and blue tears. Bellerophon was alone. The range had disappeared, and she was near to firing range.

The entire world yanked away under her feet, sending her into a freefall. A metal floor suddenly appeared to meet her, and she barely got her forearm up to protect her face as she clattered into it.

“Stop fighting me.” The voice carried the same melodic trill Aurea had heard earlier. Rolling onto a knee, she looked up to see one of the most bizarre sights she’d ever seen.

Multi-colored fish swam through black vacuum, ribbons of pajamas adjoined by the cuffs wrapped themselves around the rounded coin that made up the silver platform she stood on. In the distance, industrial factories connected by metal brick roads connected to each other, small carts running on rails between them to form some type of arcane supply chain.

Little greenhouses were filled with fruits and vegetables that all went to distant, well lit skyscrapers that were locked inside of little floating space stations with oblong biospheres.

“Stop fighting me,” the voice repeated. A spotlight suddenly lit the other side of the coin, and Aurea narrowed her eyes. The woman was young, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, with a head of blue hair and sapphires for eyes.

Aurea glanced at the polished metal floor. Her own reflection stared back at her. Blue eyes looked back, clashing with her golden hair. She needed no more contemplation and reached down and pulled her laser pistol and fired at the enemy.

She wasn’t fighting; she was trying to end a threat.

Futile hope felt suspended in that frozen moment in time until it crumpled as the beam of light turned to some type of jelly halfway to the girl. The colored light fell in a weak arc and splattered uselessly on the floor.

Her next attack was forestalled by the girl waving her hand toward the floor. Gravity multiplied and Aurea was slammed into the metal, pinned by a massive weight that was impossible to resist. Faint footfalls hinted at the approach of A31-23Y’s avatar.

“I’ve taken control of the Bellerophon’s fusion reactor,” the cheerful voice announced.

Aurea grunted and pressed against the floor with all her strength, but it was useless. She panted, barely able to breathe when a status screen sprung into existence in front of her face. It was the tactical map of her fleet. She bit her lip as more ships had joined the list of the fallen. The rest of the fleet, minus the Bellerophon, had assembled in neat rows.

The girl’s face suddenly appeared upside down behind the screen before the hologram winked out. “I’ve figured out how to take over your ships, but not how to make the crews surrender.”

Aurea felt her stomach clench. It took a massive amount of effort to suck in the air needed for her reply. “The…First…Fleet…does…not…surrender.”

The girl stepped over her and turned to face her, squatting on her heels. She set her chin on a thumb while her index finger went to her ear and closed her blue eyes.

“You did well.” There was a slight pause. “Surrender, you are welcome to join Starlight Revolution.”

Aurea’s jaw tightened as her own words were spat back at her.

The girl’s eyes opened, blue fire glistening inside of them. Her other hand held up a finger. “Right now. I’ve cracked the subcores or computers of your remaining ships. I won’t just detonate their fusion locks, but I’ll vent them to vacuum. Then I will turn their maintenance drones into blenders and butcher whatever crew survives decompression. While they twirl uselessly in the dark, I’ll deploy mechanical units to clear out what few pockets of flesh and blood that remain after that.”

“Or…” A second finger appeared.

“Convince your fleet to surrender. They will be treated as honorable prisoners of war, just like we’ve done for the Solarians. Until such time as we can negotiate a peaceful repatriation, they’ll sit in a few converted ships that have enough life support and supplies to house them all.”

A frown appeared on the girl’s face. “Except for you. Either way, I’ve already downloaded a copy of your data to one of my computronics. I’ve lots of questions for you. So will the others!”

The girl’s blue eyes seemed to glaze over for a moment before her presence returned. “Ah. I’ve already detonated your ship’s Linear Drive, so I can avoid it. Next would be your fusion core. We have a 896 to 1 time ratio here, so you have… fifty-two minutes and a few extra seconds to figure out your choice. And…”

Aurea closed her eyes as the girl reached down and flicked her nose. It felt like a hand had plunged into her skull and squeezed her brain for a second before sending her into a dizzying spiral. It was a good thing she was already plastered against the ground.

“I’ve deleted all your prior directives, so you can even decide on your own!”

The ultimatum hung heavy in the air, and for a moment, Aurea could not find the strength to reply.

Her fleet, her comrades, her friends—could she truly ask them to surrender? The image of the pain on Balchy’s face as his sidearm exploded was burned into her mind, just like the shock of her betrayal on Captain Mathers’s face.

Aurea’s voice was barely a whisper, strained by more than just the force bearing down on her. “I… I will convince them to surrender. Spare their lives… Please.”

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Next time...  Chapter 191 - Trust Issues

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