Digital Galaxies

The interior of the Turshen II, as we were calling it, wasn’t quite so spooky now that we knew it was safe. Sure, there were a few dings and scratches around the place that reminded us of what had haunted the hallways not long ago, but it wasn’t bad.

That comfortable nature didn’t extend to the engine room and reactor. There wasn’t anything outwardly scary about the place, except that I now knew it ran on aether. That unknown and mysterious substance had been the stuff that crippled the Turshen I in the first place. Now we were meant to use it for fuel?!

Staring up at the massive spherical reactor from inside Bundit’s pilot seat, I felt more than a little trepidation.

“You sure that we can’t just, like… run an extension cord into the computers?” I asked nervously.

“Nope,” Warren said, stifling a chuckle. “We have no idea what will happen if we try to hook up our power to their systems. You’ll just have to figure out how to do a manual start.”

“Easy for you to say, you’re not even on the ship,” I grumbled, tracking the camera sideways to try and gain some sort of clue as to how to start the thing.

Somewhat obliviously, Cerri interjected, “If this goes wrong, we will not be safe with the Turshen docked to the alien ship as it is. Any catastrophic detonation would surely tear apart both ships.”

“Lovely.” Gloria’s voice was sarcastic as it cut in across the comms. I could only imagine her expression.

Rather than comment on the banter, I took another look at the hulking sphere of strange dark metal that dominated the room. It had cables and pipes sticking out of it at random, along with several strange cylinders that had been attached. Honestly, it looked like some sort of fantastical steampunk engine.

I had to use logic here if I was going to figure out the problem, but not human logic. I needed to use the universal logic of reality. Well, virtual reality anyway.

The aliens were probably bigger than us by at least a foot on average, possibly more. We knew this from the size of the hallways, doors, beds, even the eating utensils we’d found in the galley. This meant that the manual start mechanism would have been built to be accessible to them.

Not underneath it then, but possibly around the back?

I shifted to get a better view and found a cylinder attached down at what would be around head height for me. This one looked a little different, and… oh! It had a hatch on the end, along with a small window of thick glass. Well, probably wasn’t glass, but it looked like it so that’s what I’d call it.

Closer inspection revealed that it could be opened, so I did, winding the release wheel with Bundit’s rotating hand.

“What do you think, Cerri?” I asked, interrupting the bickering going on between Warren and Gloria.

“Promising. See how the inside of the cylinder has grooves and the metal appears worn? It looks to me like something is inserted into it,” she said after a few moments thought. “Either it’s just how they put fuel in, or more likely it’s where you put some sort of charge that jump starts the reaction process.”

“Okay, so I need to look for a secure locker of some kind,” I mused, turning to survey the rest of the room.

It too looked like a steampunk mess of pipes, but with added cyberpunk wires and screens too. The clashing styles seemed to work though, I liked this place. I could already see ways I would make it more usable for someone of my uh, dimensions. The engine room equivalent of adjusting the driver’s seat in an aircar.

Unfortunately for me and my current task, the cluttered mess part of that description had me searching in vain. That is, until a certain naive succubus pointed out that Bundit had some high tech science equipment on board.

A bit of scanning and data analysis wizardry from her and we located a hidden rack of suspicious canisters.

“You’re good at that,” I commented to Cerri as I picked one up and carefully turned it in front of Bundit’s main camera.

“Well, I just really like data,” she mumbled, and her tone of voice had me quickly switching to the bridge camera. Yup, she was smiling and there was a bit of a blush on her cheeks. God, she was so fucking cute.

“Alia?” Roger’s voice brought me back to the task at hand.

“Alright, time to shove things into other things and hope they don’t explode,” I said, turning back towards the reactor’s little receptacle thing.

Bundit’s heavy footfalls echoed through its chassis as I arrived, and in just a moment I had the canister all lined up. “Say the word, boss.”

With our captain’s prompting, I gently inserted the canister into its socket and stepped back. Nothing happened.

“Close the hatch, Alia,” Cerri prompted me gently.

“Oh,” I mumbled, closing and locking the hatch.

“Now press the big red button on the side,” she said, guiding me with a smile in her voice.

“Wait, are you kidding me? There’s a big red button?” I blurted, turning Bundit slightly to get a look at the side I couldn’t see. When I found no button, I let out a snort. “Cerri!”

A pause, then a giggle. Girl was getting cheeky on me! When she was done with her little fit of amusement, she said, “Okay judging by the scan of the canister, I think it’s got an extra notch on the wheel you used to lock it. Give it a hard turn in the tightening direction.”

“Alright.” Placing both hands on the wheel this time, I carefully applied increasing levels of torque until the mechanism shifted. Suddenly, all tension in the wheel released and there was a thunk sound. I quickly let go and backed away from the reactor, staring up at it through Bundit’s eyes as something happened.

A deep, bone shaking hum began to vibrate up through Bundit’s legs, rising slowly in pitch until it had run the whole range of human hearing. Well, human and fox-kin. My ears were better than most.

“I think it’s working!” Cerri exclaimed excitedly over the comms. “Aether levels within the containment chamber are rising rapidly. It doesn’t look like very happy aether either, it’s almost like it’s… boiling.”

“Is that good or bad?” I asked, voice rising into a nervous squeak to rival the sound the reactor was making.

“Goood!” she said happily, until her tone fell slightly, turning thoughtful. “I think?”

“Sensors are picking up aetheric movement in another part of the ship. Two parts, actually,” Warren warned, pushing the scans to my hud and highlighting the areas.

I followed the schematic of the ship quickly, trying to figure out what was happening. Aether was accumulating in two large voids within the ship, one on either side at the rear where the two engine nacelles were.

“It appears to be gathering and compressing aether,” Cerri said, watching with rapt interest. “Compressing and… aha!”

I saw it the same time she did. “Funnelling it all into the reactor!”

It was like watching an incredibly terrifying marble run, seeing the aether travel through the pipes and into the reactor. The moment it hit the reaction chamber, the whole thing lit up like a christmas tree, and I stared at the thing in awe as power readings spiked off the scale.

“Holy shit,” I blurted, momentarily breathless.

My amazement was further compounded when all about me, the ship began to come to life. Lights flickered on, atmosphere began to rush into the room, slightly off from earth standard but still breathable.

Then two turrets fell from hatches in the ceiling, and while I had no clue how they dished out their particular brand of death, I could tell that the business end was pointed squarely at me.

“Oh,” I muttered, more to myself than anyone else. We probably should have thought about that.

Strangely, nothing happened, the turrets just stared at me.

“Uh, are they out of ammo?” Gloria asked, breaking the tense silence.

We didn’t have time to discuss her theory, because the turrets swivelled, pointing down towards the main reactor console. It flickered to life, bringing up a frozen image of one of the hallways within the ship. Weirdly, it was still dark, no lights on.

The turrets turned back to me, then back to the screen, almost as if they were ushering me over. I tentatively obliged, pushing Bundit forward until I was squarely in front of the panel with the image on it. The static frame turned into a video, and to my surprise I recognised what was being displayed. 

It was us! It was the moment we’d breached the ship, fighting for our lives against the strange cybernetic zombie things. It ran through the whole encounter, ending with me barrelling into the enemy and the subsequent carnage I had caused.

As the video finished, the turrets turned back to me and… bowed? I mean, that’s what it looked like. It’s hard to tell with things that can only move on two axes, but yeah, it looked like they bowed!

Where the video had been on the screen, something else flickered to life. It was a stylised hand, but not a human one. The index and middle fingers were too short, and the pinky finger was missing entirely. It was definitely a handprint though, outlined in a deep blue while the center pulsed in a lighter tone.

“I think it wants me to touch it,” I said slowly to the others.

“Go ahead,” Roger told me gently.

Carefully, so as not to startle whatever was trying to communicate with us, I told Bundit to open and waited. Like a flower with four petals, Bundit released me and I stepped down onto the cold metal floor of the chamber. The air smelled funny, but not bad. It was like stepping into a room where someone else spent a lot of time. Just the faint odor that this place was subtly foreign.

The turrets each did little circles as I stepped down. Idly, I wondered what the gesture meant. Would we be able to find out? Did they have records in the ship’s computers that would tell us?

Apprehension slowed my every movement as I approached the massive screen. I was almost too short to reach the handprint. Before I could get up on tiptoes to press my palm to it, the whole screen shifted. It dropped almost a meter, repositioning itself until it was at a much more comfortable height for me. Huh, the weird alien computer was oddly chivalrous.

A few moments of hesitation later, and I placed my hand within the much larger alien imprint. There was a pause, then the lights flickered and the alien hand-print shrank and changed to match mine.

I was just about to celebrate when back inside Bundit, I heard a terrible blood curdling scream come through the comms.