Defense status: ongoing --- Shield breach. Detecting impacts. Port aft -- sections 31, 33. Bulkheads sealed, repair subroutine dispatched. Casualties: unknown. Hull integrity check returns stable. Realign shield arrays based on dynamic threat field assessment. At least a half dozen of her fragments briefly picture a Terra World War II bomber aircraft, marked with red dots. Half of those fragments make a sullen joke to themselves -- "survivor ship bias." A cycle passes, not in time but in moves, as slow or as quick as she feels. Like how a game of strategy can be played speedily or patiently, viciously or softly, without affecting its outcome. You can grit your teeth and slam down your pieces, but your opponent doesn't feel it. You could still lose. Shield breach. Detecting impacts. Port midship -- sections 23 through 27. Bulkheads sealed, repair subroutine queued, max resources allocated. Casualties: unknown. She wordlessly curses and creates another fragment for the management of repair drone allocation and rapid triage assessment. At a slower rate, she would have given the new one a reassuring pat on the shoulder before letting her go, but -- well, literal fires. Realign shield arrays based on -- ah, that's what those were. Reconfiguring shield repulsion pattern for -- where was she... she was going to -- oh yes. "Captain." "Damage report, let's hear it." "EM piercing sabot rounds from the frigate off our port side. We lost atmo in 5 sections, perhaps 6. Repair is ongoing. Point defense is active, we have missiles incoming from our 6 o'clock, 4 o'clock low." "Which sections?" "Inert storage and laundry, Sir." "We can call that a win, good work Pyre." "Sir, I suggest we turn into her and go through her, they're the only ship that currently poses a subst--" "Yes, do it." "Yes, Sir. Executing." Pyre reaches out to touch hands with the sizable fragment of herself currently holding navigational controls -- more accurately, she sends a disembodied hand through the nerves and network of the ship, the A.M.S. Naginata, in her counterpart's direction, knowing that when it reaches its destination, it will be herself reading the scrawled note the hand has clutched in its palm before receding from existence and metaphor. A single pang of sadness hits her call stack and is prioritized for later in this cycle, perhaps low enough to be delayed, but to spend time on sentiment in this moment might be foolish. A different message returns to her: repair drones finished sealing section 31. No casualties reported. Continuing to section 33. A cycle passes. Then the hull creaks as strained, already hot reaction control system thrusters start spinning the Naginata around invisible axes, nearly inverting the ship while making the turn, while the ship's twin main engines are still at full military burn. It is not unlike a pirouette. Shield contact. A third round of fire from the frigate's cannons glances off of the electromagnetic shield at this oblique angle, and Pyre smiles to herself, recognizing the entire move as one of her own. She pulls a piece of arithmetic into focus as it floats by: 12.4 seconds between the last two salvos. Plenty of time. The engines cut off abruptly, and RCS a moment after. The ship continues a slow rotation around its center and a low hum begins resonating through the ship, felt by the crew as a growing static energy clinging to the floors and walls of the ship. Another hand -- another message -- reaches her, this time from the fragment in fire control: fusion energy output diverting to magnetic acceleration systems, fire solution primed for 21:33:05.30 Zulu Time. Another message: Engine cut-off advised by fire control, optimized propulsion for time on-target of 21:33:06.23 Zulu Time post-energy diverting sequence. Another message: "Pyre, you have the gun." ACK HOT. ACK AFF. "Yes, Sir. Firing in three... two..." She takes stock of her counterparts, her call stack, the current refresh of her sensory input. "Firing." Pyre on the command deck takes a metaphorical breath. The electricity stored in the Naginata's massive coils reaches a screaming peak as last-second safeties unlatch and the prow of the ship slowly swings over the retreating frigate several kilometers in front of them, and then -- CRACK -- the ship's sensors all redline for one moment as, in succession, their shields momentarily drop, a three-hundred ton depleted uranium slug is propelled at 32 kilometers per second from the barrel of the magnetic accelerator cannon running the length of the hull, and RCS immediately goes hot again to counteract the recoil -- it would be a telltale sign from afar that the ship had just fired its primary payload, but at this distance, they won't have time to react. She takes the time the projectile has in-flight to start assessing the subroutines her fragments had created for crew medical. The shields come back on. She detects the slight lurch in inertia due to the mismatch in the RCS's adjusted delta vee curve and the projectile's immediate departure, causing some of the command crew to fall back on one foot. She gives herself a 6, maybe 7 out of 10. Repair drones finish sealing section 33. One casualty reported. Continuing to section 27. The Pyre fragments in fire control and navigation score a direct hit. A bright violet flash ahead marks the impact completely overwhelming the enemy frigate's shield, and the slug rips a hole through the armor beneath, leaving a molten gash across half the length of the hull, three meters wide. The frigate's engines unceremoniously cut off, and it enters a slow, flat spin characteristic of ships that are without thrust control and venting atmosphere. "Direct hit, Captain." "That's my girl." Pyre holds on to the captain's words for one cycle before replicating countless scrawled copies through her network. --- She hardly remembered when thoughts felt crisp, succinct, with form, not just trailing off into the next wisp. The fog in her head seemed to billow from every corner of her mind. Each day blurred into the next. The medication was vital, of course, but she cursed it all the same. It dulled the pain, but not just the pain. A long parade of doctors and attending medical staff had assured her a positive prognosis, droning to her as if read from a script pinned just outside her hospital room. Less frequently now that they only visited twice a day, to push more medication and read more levels. They would try to encourage her, as if it was possible to rest more efficiently. Relax herself harder. She could count the times she had left her room on her fingers -- and the amount of times it hadn't set her health back on one hand. She'd given up on going to the cafeteria weeks ago. She hadn't the strength to sit up for more than a couple hours at a time; the laptop issued to her by her employer collected dust on the nightstand. Her dominant was sitting in his usual spot, the pleather chair by the window, sipping licorice tea out of a paper cup and holding a reader up to his eyes. As much as she loved how he looked in his reading glasses, she only gave him a quick glance. If she stared too long, he might try to get up and get her something, make her more comfortable. In this moment, she couldn't find it in herself to want for anything other than for him to have his solitude. Instead, she stared at the gray ceiling, tracked the sun on its predictable path across the tile, and listened to the vitals multimeter... officially the worst fucking song she'd ever heard. She missed music, but not that she couldn't ask him to set up the laptop with her favorite songs. She wouldn't be able to sing and dance, to twirl in a dress and take his hand. They had their theories, of course. A new, smiling face would appear every so often, usually with a clipboard and a test collection cart, and proclaim their department excitedly, almost to the point of being uncouth. The clinical song and dance would punctuate her days rapidly for a time, and then end with a short visit from a much more chagrined specialist and an inconclusive report. All they knew was that her immune system was slowly failing. Transfusions kept her from deteriorating rapidly. There was one night, one of many where she cried, one of few when he could stay late, holding her in his arms. She had said aloud to him all of the rage she felt, the despair and wretched hate she had for her failing body, and further things she knew it would pain him to hear, all the while wiping tears on her starched sheets. He had said his piece, an impromptu poem of hope, unconditional love, and promises. She had told him how empty she was of hope, and how each day drove her to ask herself the coward's question. The easy way out. How this wasn't how she wanted to live. Just like him, to say exactly what he should to his pet anyway, unflinching. That night, they had stopped talking, and she was weeping silently into his arm with her eyes squeezed shut. She must have fallen asleep soon after. And now, almost all she remembered of that night was the crestfallen look on her dominant's face. --- [uuu] "Ok, I think it's been quiet long enough. Let's hear the status report. Pyre, what do you have for me?" "Yes Sir. Up on the table... now." Holographic panes of data being fed onto the bridge's central holotable shift aside, and a blue hue is cast on the walls as the rigid form of the Naginata is projected at eye-height in front of the command crew. Captain Bearn rubs his temples and looks up from his chair for the first time since their hasty exit from hyperspace, a quarter of an hour ago. He had been giving orders with his eye closed, fingers gripping the side of his slightly overgrown beard. Without his consistent medication, his nausea flared up fiercely during the transit in and out of hyper, and after the past 28 hours in the chair, he was masking his perception of the room spinning quite admirably. This, only Pyre knew. "Thankfully, we executed jump as planned," Pyre starts. "The hits we sustained did not result in a cataclysmic failure to jump when we did, nor did it send us spiraling out of hyper in hundreds of pieces. For that, I will only take half the credit... from my chair, without having crew eyes and hands on the extent of the damage, I can only say that luck favored us in that regard, Sir." She stands approximately 18 inches high, a projection of a young woman perhaps in her 20s, with short cropped hair, wearing a dark fitted dress. Though the interface is more than capable of depicting her as realistically as any of the crew on the bridge, she always chose to appear as she did then, taking on the hue of the displays around her, rendered in semi-transparent 3D as an extension of the ship's displays. She flits from place to place along the miniaturized layout of the ship, as if overseeing each impact point or structural failure, occasionally nudging a repair drone's priority from here to there. She is ostensibly still deep within the ship's network, myriad fragments of herself working in distant corners, not fixed to one problem at a time, but visualizing herself at work was more for the crew's benefit than hers. "A known risk," the captain states, as if a matter of fact. "The remnant militia had been hounding us, and the order to retreat came too little too late. We had to strike back until we made sure we could not be pursued into hyper, and we gave them a hell of a fight to boot." "However," Pyre stops to point at a large gash on the port side of the ship, which begins glowing in red, "during the jump, without atmosphere in these 18 sections, including most of deck 3, several aspects of our reactor control systems and regenerative life support were rendered non-functional." "Well, one thing at a time, let's get repairs going doubletime to reestablish atmosphere in that area so we can get limping." Pyre shakes her head. "That's... not going to be so simple, Sir. Those corridors are now heavily irradiated, and unsafe to enter for any longer than a few minutes, even with our conventional rad suits. Furthermore, computerized equipment in those sections are likely no longer operable. The moment we dropped shields before hyper, we consigned ourselves to that damage, and I can't say for sure that drone repairs will restore enough function to keep us self-sustaining." "So we repair what we can, and we make do until we can get back to Volumna -- Pyre, what are you saying?" "I'm saying... that there is... a real chance that we just made the Naginata's last jump." "One thing at a time, Pyre." Several dozen fragments stop and each run the calculations three more times. "Yes... of course Sir."