The bridge had gone silent again, the console dimmed to a low hum. He stood in the center of the chamber, the stars beyond the viewport casting pale light across the dust. His breath fogged faintly, then vanished. The gem in his chest pulsed once, then settled.
He moved slowly, fingers trailing across the console's edge. The static was familiar now—sharp, but expected. He welcomed it. It meant the ship was still listening, even if it didn't speak.
He began the assessment methodically. Not because he knew what to do, but because routine was the only thing that kept the silence from swallowing him. He checked the consoles first—power distribution, life support, navigation. Most were corrupted, their interfaces flickering with fractured code. But some responded. Not with clarity, but with fragments. Enough to suggest the systems were dormant, not dead.
He traced the wiring beneath the panels, noting the burn marks, the frayed conduits, the places where the metal had warped from heat or pressure. He recognized some of it—standard fusion grid layouts, coolant loops, magnetic containment. He remembered the diagrams from school, the lectures he hadn't paid attention to until years later, when curiosity had finally outweighed boredom.
But this ship is more than a textbook. The architecture was familiar only in pieces, like a language he almost understood. He could see the logic in the layout, the elegance in the redundancies, but the scale was wrong. The integration is too seamless. Whoever had built this had not been decades, maybe centuries ahead of what he knew but there was a logical progression from what he knew. He didn't have a word for it, but he felt it in the way the systems pulsed faintly beneath his hands, as though the ship itself had a rhythm.
He paused, leaning against the console, letting the hum settle into his bones. His thoughts drifted—not away from the ship, but deeper into himself.
He had been twenty-five. Going on twenty-six. Unemployed, though he'd stopped caring about that after the first year. His days had blurred together—reading, writing, watching YouTube, diving into lore threads that stretched across wikis and forums like spiderwebs. He'd known more about fictional universes than his own. Star Wars, Halo, Dragon Age, Warhammer. He'd memorized timelines, debated metaphysics, mapped out crossover logic just for fun. It had never mattered. Not until now.
He smiled faintly, the expression unfamiliar on his face. The irony wasn't lost on him. All those years of obsessive reading, of deep dives and speculative essays—none of it had felt real. But now he stood aboard the Mother of Invention, a ship that should never have existed, and the knowledge he'd once considered useless was the only thing keeping him sane.
He moved to the navigation console, brushing dust from the surface. The interface flickered, then steadied. Star maps scrolled past—fractured, incomplete, but recognizable. He traced the outlines with his finger, noting the drift, the anomalies. The ship had moved. Not far, but enough to suggest it hadn't been entirely dormant.
He tried to calculate the trajectory, but the data was corrupted. He leaned back, rubbing his temples. His head ached—not from exertion, but from the weight of knowing too much and too little at once.
He thought of his friend. The only one who had ever really understood him. They'd spent hours talking about lore, about metaphysics, about the nature of sentience in fictional worlds. They'd joked about self-inserts, about waking up in a universe that shouldn't exist. He wondered what his friend would say now, if he could see him here—barefoot on a cold deck, staring at corrupted star maps, trying to make sense of a ship that had crossed the boundary between fiction and reality.
He missed them. Not with sharp pain, but with a dull ache that settled behind his ribs. He hadn't spoken to them in months. Maybe longer. Life had drifted. People had drifted. He had drifted, and now the ship was drifting.
He turned back to the console, forcing the thoughts away. The ship needed him focused, or maybe he needed the ship to give him something to focus on.
He opened another panel, tracing the power lines. The fusion core was intact, but offline. The containment fields were stable, but the ignition sequence had failed. He could fix it. Maybe. If he could find the right interface. If the ship let him.
He pressed his palm against the console again, feeling the static crawl into his skin. The gem pulsed in response, faint but steady. He didn't know what it meant. Not yet. But he knew this: he was close. Closer than he had any right to be.
He whispered to the silence—not for answers, but to mark the moment.
"I'm not lost."
The ship didn't respond. But the console flickered once, and the hum beneath the deck deepened.
He took it as a sign.
He crouched beside the bridge console, sleeves pushed up, hands steady. The panel had been pried open with care—no tools, just fingers and patience. Inside, the wiring was dense and layered, fiber-optic bundles twisted around magnetic conduits. Some were intact. Most were not.
He traced each line slowly, cataloging damage by touch and by instinct. The gem embedded in his chest responded to proximity—not with light or heat, but with signal. When he brushed a live wire, the pulse shifted. He could feel the data flow, the interruptions, the broken logic. It was like listening to a machine stutter through a sentence it no longer remembered how to finish.
The ship's systems followed recognizable principles—power distribution, containment, redundancy—but the execution was far more refined than anything he'd seen in textbooks or simulations. Whoever designed this vessel had achieved a level of integration that suggested decades of iterative refinement and practical application. It wasn't revolutionary in concept, but the craftsmanship was precise and efficient.
He leaned closer, letting the gem sync with the exposed interface. The static surged—not painful, but sharp. A handshake. A request. He closed his eyes and let the signal flow.
Fragments of code spilled across the console—routing tables, memory partitions, corrupted boot sequences. He began sorting them manually, line by line, using the gem's crystalline lattice as a buffer. The gem functioned as a high-density logic processor, capable of parsing malformed data structures and restoring operational syntax. It didn't just hold information—it actively participated in the correction process, stabilizing logic trees and resolving recursive faults.
He remembered the research.
Years ago, buried in a thread about the Moon Cell, he'd spent weeks mapping its architecture. A lunar supercomputer built from photonic crystal, capable of simulating entire realities. Not magic. Not mysticism. Just computation at a scale most people couldn't imagine. He'd cross-referenced it with quantum lattice models, speculative AI cores, and hard-light projection systems.
Then came the Steven Universe deep dives. He'd studied gem physiology obsessively—how each gemstone acted as a processor, a memory core, a projection unit. He'd written essays comparing Pearl's combat algorithms to predictive modeling, theorized how fusion altered bandwidth and latency. He'd even tried to calculate the theoretical FLOPS of a gem like Peridot, factoring in her limb enhancers and neural interface.
It had been a hobby. A fixation. Something to fill the silence.
Now, the gem embedded in his chest was functioning as a crystalline interface. It was not metaphorical, nor mystical. It was hardware—dense, structured, and responsive to signal harmonics. He could feel the logic trees stabilizing as he worked, each fragment of corrupted code buffered and returned clean. The process was recursive and granular, requiring constant attention.
He opened another panel, deeper in the bridge architecture. The power grid schematic flickered across the console, its nodes dim but responsive. He traced the lines with his palm, letting the gem pulse against the surface. The containment fields were intact. The fusion core was dormant, but stable. He initiated the ignition sequence manually, bypassing corrupted routines and rebuilding them from memory.
The ship responded gradually. A low hum spread through the deck, uneven at first, then steady. He monitored the voltage stabilization, watched the containment fields hold, and confirmed the core's reaction rate. The Mother of Invention was no longer inert. Its systems were beginning to recover baseline functionality.
He sat back, breathed shallow, sweat cold on his skin. The repair had taxed him—not physically, but cognitively. The gem had processed terabytes of fragmented data, stabilized logic trees, and restructured memory partitions. He could feel the echo of it in his thoughts—like afterimages of code, flickering at the edges of consciousness.
He moved to the life support panel next. The diagnostics were worse here—oxygen scrubbers offline, CO₂ filters degraded, temperature regulators misaligned. He began the work again, tracing each subsystem manually, using the gem to buffer and correct. The process was slow, recursive, and required constant recalibration. He wasn't fixing hardware. He was rewriting the ship's operating logic from the ground up.
He paused once, staring at his reflection on the console's surface. Pale skin. Silver eyes. The gem pulsing faintly beneath the sternum. The image was unfamiliar, but not surprising. He had already accepted that his physiology had changed. What mattered now was function.
He remembered being human. Unemployed. Obsessed with lore. He'd spent his nights writing speculative essays no one read, mapping timelines across franchises, theorizing how the Warp and the Fade and the Force might intersect. He'd joked once that if he ever woke up in a crossover universe, he'd probably spend the first week just admiring the rules, and learning the sciences.
Now he was living it. And the learning had begun.
He turned back to the console and resumed the diagnostic sweep. The gem's pulse was steady, its interface stable. The ship's systems were responding to direct input, though many subsystems remained inaccessible. He marked them for later review.
The lights on the bridge brightened slightly, and the hum beneath the deck shifted. He noted the change, logged the timestamp, and moved on to the next panel.
The power grid was stable. Life support was partially restored. Environmental controls remained unreliable, but survivable. He logged the status manually, then turned his attention to the central database.
The console's archive interface was buried beneath layers of corrupted access protocols. He pried open the panel, exposing a dense array of storage nodes—stacked crystal wafers, each etched with microscopic data channels. The architecture was familiar in principle: distributed memory clusters, redundancy layers, quantum indexing. But the execution was far beyond anything he'd studied. The system had been designed for speed, resilience, and compartmentalization. It was military-grade, and then some.
He pressed his palm to the interface. The static surged, sharper than before. The gem pulsed in response, syncing with the node's signal structure. He felt the handshake—unstable, fragmented, but present. The ship's memory was still intact. Damaged, but not lost.
He began the recovery process manually.
The gem buffered the incoming data, isolating corrupted sectors and flagging recursive loops. He sorted the fragments by timestamp, priority, and access level. Most of the logs were unreadable—headers intact, content scrambled. But some held. He focused on those first.
The earliest entries were routine: mission briefings, crew rosters, maintenance schedules. He skimmed them quickly, noting the names. Some he recognized. Others he didn't. The timestamps placed the ship's last operational cycle years ago—long before whatever event had left it adrift.
Then came the classified partitions.
He bypassed the access locks using direct signal injection, letting the gem emulate the ship's security protocols. The process was slow, requiring constant recalibration. But it worked. One by one, the partitions opened.
The first intact file was labeled PROJECT FREELANCER: OPERATIONAL FRAMEWORK.
He read it line by line.
The document outlined the program's structure—command hierarchy, training regimens, AI integration protocols. It was clinical, precise, and deeply unsettling. The agents had been ranked by performance metrics, subjected to constant evaluation, and paired with artificial intelligences designed to enhance combat efficiency. The tone was bureaucratic, but the implications were clear. This wasn't a military initiative. It was an experiment.
He flagged the file for deeper review, then moved on.
The next partition held scientific materials—research logs, prototype schematics, neural interface studies. He recognized some of the terminology: cortical mapping, memory partitioning, signal latency. But the applications were extreme. One log detailed the process of fragmenting a full AI construct into modular subroutines, each designed to amplify a specific trait—speed, strength, strategy, aggression. The fragments were then assigned to human hosts, with the expectation that the pairing would produce superior combat performance.
He paused, rereading the section on synchronization thresholds. The failure rate was high. The psychological toll, higher.
He opened another file. This one was a transcript—an internal briefing between senior staff. The Director's voice was listed. So was the Counselor's. The conversation was terse, clinical. They discussed memory suppression protocols, behavioral conditioning, and the need to maintain operational secrecy. One line stood out:
"The agents are tools. Their memories are irrelevant. What matters is performance."
He sat back, eyes unfocused. The implications weren't abstract anymore. He was sitting on the bridge of the ship that had housed these experiments. The databases weren't just technical archives. They were evidence.
He resumed the recovery process, slower now, more deliberate.
The gem continued to buffer and stabilize the incoming data. He began mapping the archive structure—identifying intact sectors, isolating corrupted ones, and building a reference index. The system was compartmentalized by design. Each partition held a specific category: operations, science, personnel, AI constructs, field reports.
He opened the AI construct directory.
Most entries were corrupted. Names fragmented. Data collapsed. But a few remained.
ALPHA. BETA. DELTA. EPSILON.
He recognized them. Not just from the files. From memory. From fiction.
Delta always did say… Memory is the key.
He leaned closer, scanning the metadata. Each construct had a unique profile—core trait, behavioral modifiers, synchronization logs. The files were incomplete, but the structure was clear. These weren't theoretical models. They were real. Built, tested, deployed.
He closed the directory and sat back, letting the gem cool. The interface had grown warm, the signal density taxing its buffer. He logged the recovered files, marked the corrupted sectors, and initiated a slow rebuild of the archive index.
The ship's databases were vast. He'd only scratched the surface. But the pattern was emerging.
Project Freelancer hadn't trained soldiers. It had engineered them. The Mother of Invention had been more than a vessel. It was a laboratory.
He stared at the console, watching the progress bar crawl forward. The gem pulsed faintly, its rhythm steady. The silence of the bridge remained unchanged, but the data was speaking now—quietly, relentlessly.
The AI construct directory was mostly corrupted. Names were fragmented, metadata collapsed. But one entry remained intact enough to open.
ALPHA.
He isolated the file, bypassing the security partition with direct signal injection. The gem buffered the handshake, emulating the ship's access protocols with increasing precision. The file responded—slowly, reluctantly. It wasn't just encrypted. It was damaged.
The metadata was sparse. No timestamp. No deployment record. But the recovery log told a story.
Alpha had been extracted from Agent Washington's armor after the EMP event that disabled the Meta. The AI had survived—barely. Its memory core had been shielded by a secondary layer of insulation, enough to preserve fragments. Human scientists had attempted reconstruction, but the damage was beyond their reach. The logic trees collapsed. The behavioral matrices are unstable. The synchronization protocols are unreadable.
He read the notes.
"Core integrity below threshold. Neural map fragmented. Emotional dampeners are unresponsive. Recommend archival status."
They had shelved it. Not deleted. Not purged. Just buried.
He stared at the file for a long moment, then initiated the rebuild.
The gem interfaced directly with the construct's memory lattice. The static surged, sharper than before. He gritted his teeth and held on. The signal was erratic—recursive loops, broken syntax, collapsed partitions. He began sorting manually.
Alpha's architecture was modular. Each trait—logic, emotion, strategy, reflex—was compartmentalized, cross-linked through a central synchronization core. That core was shattered. He couldn't repair it directly. But he could rebuild the modules one by one, then attempt a soft sync.
He started with logic.
The gem parsed the data slowly, isolating intact routines and flagging corrupted ones. He rebuilt the decision trees from fragments, using his own memory as scaffolding. He remembered Alpha's speech patterns, its priorities, its tendency to overanalyze. He used that as a template, restoring the core logic functions line by line.
Next came the reflex.
This module was simpler—motor response algorithms, threat prioritization, predictive modeling. Most of it was intact, just misaligned. He corrected the indexing, rebuilt the priority tables, and reconnected the module to the logic core.
Emotion was harder.
The dampeners were offline. The emotional matrix was unstable, prone to recursive feedback and memory bleed. He approached it cautiously, isolating the subroutines and rebuilding them with minimal input. He didn't try to restore personality. Not yet. Just stability.
Strategy came last.
This module was fragmented, but recoverable. He rebuilt the tactical modeling engine, reconnected the predictive systems, and linked it to the logic and reflex cores. The synchronization threshold was still below operational minimum, but the modules were stable.
He initiated a soft sync.
The gem pulsed sharply, its buffer taxed. The construct responded—faintly. A flicker of signal. A trace of pattern. He monitored the output carefully, watching for instability.
The console flickered.
A line of text appeared.
[ALPHA CORE: PARTIAL RECONSTRUCTION COMPLETE]
He exhaled slowly, then initiated a diagnostic sweep.
The AI was functional. Not whole. Not sentient. But responsive. The modules were stable, the logic coherent. The emotional matrix was dampened, but present. The synchronization core remained fractured, but the system could operate in low-bandwidth mode.
He opened the communication interface.
"Alpha. Do you recognize this system?"
There was a pause. Then a response.
[SYSTEM RECOGNIZED: MOTHER OF INVENTION. STATUS: DAMAGED. OPERATIONAL CAPACITY: LIMITED.]
The voice was synthetic. Flat. But familiar.
He continued.
"Do you remember Agent Washington?"
Another pause. Longer.
[MEMORY PARTITION: INCOMPLETE. ASSOCIATION: POSITIVE. CONTEXT: COMBAT. LOSS.]
He flagged the emotional matrix for review. The feedback loop was stable, but fragile.
He leaned back, letting the gem cool. The reconstruction had taken hours. Or maybe minutes. Time was difficult to track. The ship didn't mark it. The stars didn't change. Only the data did.
Alpha was alive. Not fully. Not yet. But operational.
He logged the reconstruction, marked the unstable sectors, and initiated a slow rebuild of the synchronization core. It would take time. The damage was deep. But the modules were stable. The interface was responsive. And the system was learning.
He stared at the console, watching the diagnostic sweep crawl forward. The gem pulsed faintly, its rhythm steady. The silence of the bridge remained unchanged, but the AI was speaking now—quietly, methodically.
emotional implications of restored memory or begin mapping the ship's internal architecture for future expansion.
The AI construct was stable enough to assist. Church—Alpha—existed now as a partial reconstruction: logic core functional, reflex and strategy modules online, emotional matrix dampened but responsive. The synchronization matrix remained fractured, and memory partitions were sealed behind recursive damage. Still, he could work.
The protagonist sat at the bridge console, the gem in his chest maintaining a steady interface. The ship's systems were fragile—power grid restored, life support partially functional, database mid-recovery. He needed help. Church needed structure.
He opened the internal channel.
"Church. Begin diagnostic sweep. Start with navigation."
The response came after a brief delay.
[NAVIGATION SYSTEM: PRIMARY ARRAY DAMAGED. BACKUP ARRAY: NONRESPONSIVE. ROUTING TABLES: CORRUPTED.]
He acknowledged the report and began a manual trace. The gem buffered the corrupted logic, isolating viable nodes. Church parsed the routing structure, flagged recursive loops, and identified misaligned coordinates. The AI's pattern recognition was efficient, even in low-bandwidth mode.
"You used to handle tactical systems. You were always trying to make sense of the mess."
There was no verbal reply, but the emotional matrix registered a subtle pulse. He continued the diagnostic.
"Can you rebuild the star map index?"
[PARTIAL REBUILD INITIATED. INTEGRITY: 38%.]
He monitored the progress, adjusting the gem's buffer as needed. Church worked without prompting, reconstructing the map from fragmented data. The AI's cadence was clipped, but familiar.
They moved on to communications.
"Status?"
[EXTERNAL ARRAY: DAMAGED. INTERNAL CHANNELS: STABLE. TRANSMISSION MODULES: OFFLINE.]
He opened the panel and exposed the transmission relays. Church parsed the signal structure, identified damaged components, and rerouted internal channels. The gem handled the physical interface, syncing with the ship's logic.
"You talked a lot. Not always helpfully, but you kept things moving."
The emotional matrix flickered again. Stable. He logged the diagnostic results.
[COMMUNICATION SYSTEM: INTERNAL CHANNELS RESTORED. EXTERNAL ARRAY REQUIRES MANUAL REPAIR.]
They continued through environmental controls. Church parsed the thermal regulation algorithms, recalibrated CO₂ filters, and flagged temperature inconsistencies. The AI's logic was sharp. The emotional matrix remained active, but contained.
"You were always trying to keep people alive. Even when you didn't admit it."
[EMOTIONAL RESPONSE: REGISTERED. CONTEXT: TEAM PRESERVATION.]
He paused, then adjusted the dampeners.
"Let's keep going."
The signal stabilized. Church resumed diagnostics.
They moved through the databanks next. The AI parsed metadata, reconstructed headers, and flagged corrupted entries. The logs were clinical—names, ranks, assignments. Some held context. Some held memories.
"You knew the Director. You knew Tex. The rest… they were just names in the system."
[ASSOCIATION: LIMITED. CONTEXT: PROJECT FREELANCER. PERSONNEL: INDIRECT.]
"You weren't part of their missions. You were the baseline. The original."
The emotional matrix registered a stronger pulse. He buffered the feedback manually, keeping the loop stable.
Church continued parsing the archive, reconstructing personnel logs and operational records. The AI adapted quickly, syncing with the ship's architecture, assisting in reconstruction. The protagonist monitored the gem's pulse, adjusting its buffer as needed. The interface was stable. The integration was deepening.
"You're not just a program. You're Church. You need to remember that now."
[CORE IDENTITY: CHURCH. STATUS: ACTIVE.]
He logged the update. The AI was operational. The ship was recovering. The work continued.
The bridge systems were stable. Power grid restored. Internal communications functional. Environmental controls holding at minimal thresholds. The databanks were still rebuilding, but the ship was no longer inert.
Obsidian stood at the central console, the gem in his chest pulsing faintly as it maintained the interface. Church's reconstructed core hovered in low-bandwidth mode, responsive and efficient. The AI had adapted quickly, syncing with the ship's architecture and assisting in diagnostics. Now it was time to shift focus.
"Church. I need a map. Full internal layout. Use whatever's still online."
[ACCESSING SCHEMATICS… CAMERA NETWORK: PARTIAL FUNCTIONALITY. SENSOR GRID: DEGRADED. INITIATING COMPOSITE MAPPING.]
Obsidian watched as the console flickered, lines of data crawling across the screen. Church parsed the ship's internal schematics, cross-referencing them with active camera feeds and residual sensor data. The process was slow—many nodes were offline, and several decks had lost telemetry entirely—but the framework held.
The Mother of Invention was massive. A Paris-class heavy frigate, designed for long-range operations and high-density personnel deployment. The internal layout was compartmentalized—engineering, cryo, medbay, barracks, command, storage, and auxiliary systems. Church reconstructed the map section by section, flagging areas with missing data and marking sealed bulkheads.
[MAP GENERATION: 72% COMPLETE. UNREACHABLE SECTORS: DECKS 4, 7, 9. CAMERA COVERAGE: 38%. SENSOR COVERAGE: 21%.]
Obsidian leaned closer, studying the layout. The bridge was marked in green. Engineering in yellow. Medbay in orange. Several corridors were flagged red—no telemetry, no access. Hull integrity readings were sparse, but Church had begun extrapolating based on pressure differentials and thermal inconsistencies.
"Can you overlay structural anomalies?"
[OVERLAY ENABLED. HULL BREACHES: 3 CONFIRMED. PRESSURE LOSS: 5 SECTORS. INTERNAL DAMAGE: 14 COMPARTMENTS.]
The map was updated. Red outlines marked breach zones. Blue indicated depressurized sectors. Yellow flagged areas with electrical instability or structural warping. It wasn't perfect, but it was actionable.
Obsidian nodded.
"That's enough to start. I'll sweep the confirmed breach zones first. Prioritize containment and structural integrity."
[RECOMMENDED PATH CALCULATED. SAFEST ROUTE: DECK 3 TO DECK 6 VIA MAINTENANCE SHAFTS.]
He studied the route. Church had avoided collapsed corridors and flagged unstable bulkheads. The path was narrow, but navigable. He logged the map to his internal buffer, syncing it with the gem's interface.
"Keep updating as you recover more data. I'll report findings manually."
[ACKNOWLEDGED.]
Obsidian left the bridge, moving with purpose. The corridor lights flickered as he passed, the deck plating uneven beneath his feet. The ship felt different now—not just quiet, but aware. Church's presence was subtle, but constant. The AI monitored his progress, rerouting camera feeds and flagging anomalies in real time.
The first breach zone was on Deck 3—an auxiliary storage compartment near the port stabilizers. The bulkhead was warped, the door frame bent inward as though struck from the outside. He approached cautiously, scanning the pressure seals. The air was thin, but stable. The breach hadn't fully compromised the compartment.
He opened the panel manually, exposing the internal structure. The hull plating had fractured along a weld seam, likely from stress during atmospheric entry or a collision. He marked the damage, logged the coordinates, and flagged the compartment for patching.
"Church. Breach confirmed. Localized fracture. No full penetration."
[LOGGED. RECOMMEND TEMPORARY SEALANT. FULL REPAIR REQUIRES EXTERNAL ACCESS.]
He moved on.
Deck 4 was inaccessible. The main corridor had collapsed, and the maintenance shafts were blocked by debris. Church rerouted him through Deck 5, guiding him toward the next breach zone—a pressure loss compartment near the cryo bay.
The air was colder here. The temperature regulators were offline, and frost clung to the walls. He moved carefully, scanning for structural instability. The breach was internal—a ruptured coolant line had flooded the compartment, freezing the seals and warping the deck plating. He logged the anomaly and rerouted power away from the damaged conduit.
"Coolant breach. Pressure loss contained. No hull damage."
[LOGGED. SYSTEMS ISOLATED.]
He continued the sweep, moving through the lower decks. Church updated the map as he progressed, integrating new data and refining the structural overlay. The AI's efficiency was improving—each diagnostic faster, each anomaly flagged with greater precision.
Obsidian paused at a junction, studying the updated map. The final breach zone was near the aft cargo hold. The camera feed was offline, and the sensor data was erratic. He approached cautiously, the corridor narrowing as he descended.
The damage was severe.
The hull had been breached cleanly—a jagged tear along the outer plating, exposing the compartment to vacuum. Emergency bulkheads had sealed the area, but the structural integrity was compromised. He scanned the fracture, noting the stress patterns and impact angles. It wasn't natural. Something had struck the ship.
"Church. Confirm breach origin. External impact?"
[ANALYSIS IN PROGRESS… TRAJECTORY MATCHES COLLISION EVENT. OBJECT: UNKNOWN. SIZE: SUB-VEHICULAR. VELOCITY: HIGH.]
Obsidian stared at the tear. The impact had been deliberate. Not a meteor. Not debris. Something had hit the Mother of Invention—hard enough to punch through reinforced plating.
"Mark it. We'll need to investigate further."
[LOGGED. PRIORITY FLAGGED.]
He turned back, retracing his steps. The sweep was complete. Three breaches confirmed. Multiple compartments damaged. The ship was holding, but barely.
He returned to the bridge, the map now 84% complete. Church had refined the overlays, integrated the new data, and flagged additional anomalies for review.
Obsidian stood at the console, studying the layout.
"Good work."
[SYSTEMS STABILIZING. RECOMMEND SECONDARY SWEEP.]
He nodded. The ship was still broken. But it was no longer blind. No longer silent.
And he was no longer alone.
Obsidian stood at the edge of the breach, the jagged tear in the hull extending nearly four meters across the port-side cargo bulkhead. The plating had been peeled outward, not crushed inward—suggesting a high-velocity impact from outside the ship. He scanned the fracture pattern, noting the stress angles and material deformation.
"Church. Estimate impact force. Compared to standard MAC projectile profiles."
The AI parsed the request, accessing archived UNSC weapon specifications. The console flickered as Church cross-referenced the breach geometry with known kinetic profiles.
[MAC ROUND COMPARISON: FRIGATE-CLASS. STANDARD SLUG: 9.1 METERS LENGTH, 600 TONS MASS, VELOCITY: ~30 KM/S.]
[BREACH DIMENSIONS: 3.8 METERS WIDTH. MATERIAL DISPLACEMENT: 2.4 METRIC TONS. IMPACT VELOCITY: ESTIMATED ~20–25 KM/S.]
[PROBABLE MATCH: SUB-MAC CLASS PROJECTILE. MASS: 200–300 TONS. TRAJECTORY: UNGUIDED.]
Obsidian studied the data. The breach wasn't caused by a full-scale MAC round—those would have vaporized the compartment entirely. But the impact force was comparable to a scaled-down variant. Possibly a drone-fired slug, or a fragment from a larger kinetic weapon. The lack of residual material suggested the projectile had either disintegrated or passed through cleanly.
"Any signature residue? Alloy traces?"
[NO RESIDUAL MATERIAL DETECTED. IMPACT ZONE CLEAN. POSSIBLE NON-FERRIC COMPOSITE.]
That narrowed it. Whatever hit the Mother of Invention wasn't standard UNSC ordnance. He flagged the breach for external inspection and turned back toward the corridor.
"Let's shift focus. I need the sensor arrays online. We're flying blind."
[ACCESSING SENSOR GRID… STATUS: 19% FUNCTIONAL. PRIMARY ARRAY: DEGRADED. SECONDARY ARRAY: OFFLINE.]
Obsidian returned to the bridge, opening the maintenance panel beneath the console. The sensor array's routing architecture was exposed—bundled fiber-optic lines, magnetic couplers, and a dense logic board riddled with burn marks. The EMP event that crippled the Meta had clearly surged through the ship's systems.
He began the repair manually.
The gem buffered the interface, syncing with the damaged board and isolating viable pathways. Church assisted, parsing the routing logic and flagging corrupted nodes. The process was granular—each connection tested, each capacitor recalibrated.
"Start with the primary array. I need long-range telemetry."
[REBUILDING PRIMARY ARRAY… SIGNAL BOOSTER: REWIRED. OPTICAL RELAY: REALIGNED. POWER FLOW: 62%.]
The console flickered. A faint ping registered—distant, scattered. The long-range sensors were online, but degraded. He rerouted power from nonessential subsystems, stabilizing the signal.
"Can you scan for usable materials? Anything we can repurpose for hull patching or internal reinforcement."
[INITIATING MATERIAL SCAN… SCANNING DECKS 2 THROUGH 6.]
Obsidian moved to the secondary array, its housing warped and partially fused. He pried it open, exposing the backup logic board. The damage was extensive, but not total. He began rerouting signal flow, using the gem to buffer unstable nodes.
[SECONDARY ARRAY: PARTIAL RESTORATION. SHORT-RANGE SENSORS: ACTIVE. INTERNAL MATERIAL INDEX: 43% COMPLETE.]
Church parsed the incoming data, compiling a list of viable materials.
[AVAILABLE STOCK:
– Composite plating (Deck 5, storage)
– Thermal sealant (Medbay, auxiliary cabinet)
– Structural mesh (Engineering, collapsed corridor)
– Magnetic couplers (Cryo bay, maintenance locker)]
Obsidian reviewed the list. The composite plating could patch minor breaches. The thermal sealant would stabilize pressure zones. The mesh could reinforce warped bulkheads. It wasn't enough to restore full integrity, but it was a start.
"Flag those locations. I'll retrieve what I can."
[ROUTES CALCULATED. SAFEST PATHS MARKED.]
The console updated, overlaying the internal map with material caches and safe corridors. Church continued refining the sensor grid, expanding coverage as new nodes came online.
Obsidian closed the panel and stood. The ship was still wounded. Still blind in places. But it was no longer helpless.
He had a map. He had a voice. And now, he had a plan.
Obsidian stood at the edge of the breach, the torn hull plating curling outward like peeled metal. The impact had been clean, high-velocity, and precise—no fragmentation, no residual debris. The dimensions were wrong for a standard MAC round, and the trajectory didn't match orbital bombardment patterns.
He opened the internal channel.
"Church. Re-run the impact analysis. Exclude MAC-class projectiles. Consider alternate mass profiles."
The AI parsed the request, recalibrating the model. The console flickered as Church adjusted the parameters—lower mass, humanoid dimensions, reinforced composite structure.
[RECALCULATING… BREACH DIMENSIONS: 3.8 METERS WIDTH. MATERIAL DISPLACEMENT: 2.4 METRIC TONS. IMPACT VELOCITY: ~22 KM/S.]
[MATCHING PROFILE: MJOLNIR-CLASS ARMOR. MARK V PATTERN. MASS: ~500 KG. SHIELDING: VARIABLE.]
Obsidian frowned.
"You're saying this could've been a Spartan?"
[POSSIBILITY: NON-ZERO. TRAJECTORY MATCHES FORCED ENTRY. IMPACT ANGLE CONSISTENT WITH UNASSISTED KINETIC TRANSFER.]
Church paused, then added:
[NOTE: ARMOR INTEGRITY AT THAT VELOCITY WOULD FAIL. SHIELDING REQUIRED TO SURVIVE INITIAL CONTACT.]
Obsidian stepped back, scanning the breach again. The plating wasn't just torn—it was displaced. The force had been concentrated, not diffused. A body, not a slug. A reinforced frame, not a warhead.
"Could a Spartan survive that?"
[UNLIKELY. SHIELD FAILURE PROBABLE. INTERNAL TRAUMA: FATAL.]
He stared at the tear. The idea was absurd. But the math held. A Spartan in full armor, launched or thrown at hypersonic velocity, could theoretically breach a hull—if the shielding held long enough to transfer force. It wasn't a weapon. It was a body used as one.
"Any signs of residue? Armor fragments?"
[NO MATERIAL TRACES DETECTED. IMPACT ZONE CLEAN. POSSIBLE EJECTION POST-ENTRY.]
Obsidian marked the breach for external inspection. If someone had come through here, they hadn't stayed. Either they were retrieved, or they kept moving.
"Flag it. We'll revisit once the external sensors are online."
[LOGGED.]
He turned back toward the bridge, the implications trailing behind him like static. If a Spartan had been used as a projectile, it meant someone had the strength—or the tech—to weaponize human bodies against starship hulls. That wasn't standard UNSC protocol. That was something else.
Back at the console, Church had already begun parsing the sensor grid.
[PRIMARY ARRAY: STABILIZED. SECONDARY ARRAY: PARTIAL FUNCTIONALITY. MATERIAL SCAN: IN PROGRESS.]
Obsidian opened the maintenance panel and began rerouting power to the sensor nodes. The gem buffered the interface, syncing with the damaged logic boards and isolating viable pathways. Church assisted, flagging corrupted relays and recalibrating signal flow.
"Focus on internal materials. Anything we can use to reinforce the hull or patch the breach."
[SCANNING… COMPOSITE PLATING LOCATED: DECK 5 STORAGE. STRUCTURAL MESH: DECK 6 ENGINEERING. THERMAL SEALANT: MEDBAY AUXILIARY.]
Obsidian reviewed the list. The plating was standard—enough to patch minor fractures. The mesh could reinforce stress points. The sealant would stabilize pressure zones. It wasn't enough to restore full integrity, but it would hold.
"Route me through the safest path. I'll start retrieval."
[PATH CALCULATED. DECK 5 ACCESS VIA MAINTENANCE SHAFTS. CAUTION: BULKHEAD INSTABILITY.]
He logged the route and synced the map to his internal buffer. The ship was still broken. Still blind in places. But it was no longer guessing.
And if someone had come through that hull—Spartan or otherwise—he intended to find out why.