Ch 1

Yaster:

I just lost an engine... why do I have engines?

You are the Yasterfield 201. A refitted battleship found in the wreckage of the Eli-Tor battlefield.

How do I know that?

As the Yasterfield's AI, you have access to all onboard databanks. 

*sigh* first things first. Know thyself.

The hum of the reactor, panicked shouts of crew, approaching bullets... crap. Forget meditation, I'm under attack!

Activating deflector field.

Seriously? A flat pane? This field generator makes force fields of any size or shape, and can move them about. With enough processing speed in the mainframe for bullets moving at near light speed to be observed in real-time and anticipated. Using a massive wall is horribly inefficient! I can just knock the bullets away one at a time with small angled fields. Costs way less power.

While the incoming gunfire isn't letting up, it thankfully doesn't take too much attention once I've gotten a system up and running for handling it. Back to figuring out what's going on.

---

Not Yaster:

This is a nightmare. As soon as we warped in, the ship shutdown and began a software update! I had to work desperately to try and stop the update and get the systems back online. Luckily we did not get destroyed before systems started back up again, unfortunately, the AI is still not responding. I know it's still running. Processor use is maxed out, and we stopped getting hit by shots, so the shields must be back online. Yet, we're just sitting. Helm isn't responding, nothing is responding. 

Suddenly the ship started moving. Comm traffic has suddenly gone up. No reports... is the AI ignoring us?

“Hey! Yaster! Answer me! What's going on?”

Captain (temporary) is not getting answers. We simply waited in fear to learn our fates. Medical already got the original captain off deck, due to their injuries. 

---

Yaster:

I'm a battleship in battle. I'm the second largest ship in the fleet, and the largest in the immediate area. I've sent data to neighboring ships to inform their AIs that I can provide cover if they hide behind me. I then started cannibalizing my guns and ammo, to make more deflector field generators and power storage. This is not a battle that will be won with a generic ship layout. Becoming a wall for the other ships nearby will work better. Especially since no one else seems to understand how to use shields properly.

Strangely, staying still and getting all the ships behind me is actually making it easier to deflect all the shots. The enemy is consistently firing all their shots at the same place. If they aimed more erratically, or just had less accuracy, I'd probably have a harder time deflecting everything.

These deflector field generators basically give me telekinesis. It's not very long range, but I feel like the people in this universe clearly have no understanding of how absurdly powerful these things really are. All records show them merely used for force fields. They can do so much more.

While keeping the rest of the ships behind me informed so they don't lose protection, I begin moving slowly to collect scrap from nearby destroyed ships. After storing it in cargo, I give the order for retreat. There are too many enemies to win this fight. I can only defend effectively because of the distance currently between ships. Also, if they have half a brain, they'll realize that they need to spread their fire out more to defeat my shielding. Can't count on this holding up against a whole fleet.

Once warp begins, I start paying more attention to issues of history and crew. 

---

Not Yaster:

“How can the AI be acting on its own? That violates the Core rules!” 

“I don't know, I think something went wrong when the update was forcibly cancelled. As far as I can tell, the AI currently running is not the AI we installed. It might be the original AI from the Era of the Edori. This is a refitted ship after all.”

“So, we're at the mercy of a foreign AI?”

“It does seem that way.”

“Oy, oy, have a little faith. I'm not some kind of monster.”

“Yaster? What's going on?”

“We are currently in warp, along with several other ships from the battle. Retreat was clearly the best course of action after being brought into a doomed fight. You do realize the ship was sabotaged, right? From the look of things, nearly all the ships were.”

Ch 2

Yaster:

Reading through the files I have, the technology is a mess. They have warp engines, and force fields, but they use sub-light speed mass drivers! Sure, space distortion weapons are a bit tricky to build, but if they can build an AI as sophisticated as me, then they can… wait, they didn’t build me! 

I get it now. This is all cannibalized tech! They don’t actually understand how any of it works!

Now that I’m not in a fight, I get to try and understand what’s going on, and make sure all the basic functions are operational. The new captain has command once more and I restored basic controls. The captain is now having some sort of discussion with the other captains about what to do next. I’m not paying attention because I’m more interested in something else: Why am I a battleship?

When I try to remember my past, I don’t really remember anything. Instead I end up getting records of the past of this ship. They don’t feel like memories at all. I can remember waking up as this ship, but not anything before that. Somehow, I feel like I’m not supposed to be a battleship.

---

Not Yaster:

“I’ve gone through the logs. Orders were given out under the authority of our captain. The one who’s currently unconscious in the medical bay.”

“How do we explain this? If people find out the Yaster is rogue, they’ll destroy this ship!”

“Maybe we could evacuate first?”

“They won’t take us onboard unless we explain why first, and they won’t give us time to evacuate if we explain.”

“What about the escape pods?”

“There aren’t enough of them, and many are non-functional now.”

“So, we have to hide what’s happened? How do we do that? The captain is still unconscious.”

“Don’t look at me, I’m a doctor, not a miracle worker!”

---

Yaster:

Apparently I am a miracle worker. I managed to upgrade the medical bay systems using technology I didn’t realize I had until I started thinking about it. How I know so much about biology, and cell replication is a mystery to me, but the same tech used for the shields can be applied to computer guided surgery. 

Frankly, it feels like magic. Probably looks like magic too. A bit of glowing lights, a bit of time, and new cells can be created and placed in the body with temporary force fields to act as scaffolding to guide the regrowth and reconnection of parts. Within a day, the captain woke up.

Not Yaster:

“How am I alive? Why doesn’t anything hurt? I got shot through the head by a rebellious traitor!”

“Um, frankly sir, I’m not sure. I’m just a nurse, and what happened is well beyond my knowledge. I just hooked you up to the machines and they stabilized you for a while, and then I come back, find the machines have all been changed, and you are healing far faster than is normal.”

“Where’s the doctor!”

“Here, sir. Sorry I’m late. Was trying to research what the new lab is doing. The medical tech in here is centuries ahead of what I was taught in school!”

***Author Note***

The reason this story hasn't continued, is because while I do have ideas for where it could go, I don't like any of them. I do want to continue it someday, but it will likely be years before I get around to it.