5 .

Darkness.

The ever-expansive darkness of space would forever remain in everyone's thoughts.

The historians of the past had stated that darkness and night were synonymous with tranquillity, a moment of peace and respite to the weary souls of humankind. The human spirit would be more alive during the hours of the night.

This, however, wasn't meant for humans of the current age.

It had been easily served to the ancient people of Earth, people who had yet to venture into the frightful depths of space. There was no day here.

The few sporadic stars provided minimal light. Not enough to call day but enough to see the monstrous obstacles and objects littering the desolate darkness.

It was in this starlit darkness that a lonely shuttle slowly traversed. These types of vessels were not meant for deep space voyages. They had a similar purpose with aircars, only that they were safe to bring out to space while the cars could not.

They were too small to have FTL drives, considering an FTL drive was almost as large as a shuttle. And with their small size and component structure, they could never survive travelling at speeds faster than light.

*******

An armored hand reached out to a container rack.

The manly, metallic, servo-controlled piece of technology maintained its slow gait before stopping by the side of a bed. It walked to the right and dropped itself gently onto an awaiting seat.

Calmly waiting. Like a parent, watching his/her sick child after surviving surgery. A pile of food containers calmly lay by the side. Cleaning time was not yet at hand.

After thirty minutes of silence. The armor slowly rose and walked over to the humming machine by the side of the bed. It gently pricked the seal on the container, pried open some parts of the machine and deposited the contents of the container into the machine.

This was achieved in a span of a few seconds. A brief intensive scan had been performed. It had been classified safe for human consumption. The pile of containers grew larger by one more.

The armor sat down again. And the earlier silence made it's presence known once more.

*******

Jack abruptly sat up, a stinging pain assaulted his lungs. He felt his head spin as his stomach welled up.

His throat itched, something slowly rose from the pit of his stomach. He turned to the side and heaved

Eugh! Eugh!

Thick vomit stained the floors. Dry heaves replaced the vomit spewing out of his mouth. He had fully emptied his stomach.

He swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. Lucky thing he hadn't stained his lips. It would be hard to clean himself up if he couldn't get to a cleaning room.

He was blind after all.

[Cleaner E 321 online]

He froze. Cleaner bots were not intelligent enough to produce sound.

'That voice sounds familiar...'. His thoughts swam. That voice reminded him of the ship Ai.

"Silver?" He asked.

He had a ton of questions that he needed to ask. How could he still be alive?

Last he heard, they were trailing fuel, losing oxygen, the ship was breaking apart, FTL drives had been activated. There were so many things the above information could have helped in. He being alive was not among them.

[...] there was no answer. He didn't expect one.

'She could have survived. Being virtual and all, her drives can't fit into another fast enough to avoid the transition. Maybe she's incomplete'.

"Where am I?"

[You're onboard Bolt of silver 002]

'A shuttle? What a charming name…'

Ship companies had a hard time maintaining order in the naming of their vessels. They had hundreds of ships, with hundreds more in the number of ferrying shuttles. A name had to be made if they wanted air traffic, or space traffic control teams to have an easy time identifying vessels.

Security reasons forced the naming of shuttles as well. So some smart bloke came up with the number system. It was a simple solution.

Find a collective name for a single ship's shuttle transports then assign them numbers. The silver stroke had approximately thirty to fifty shuttles.

He couldn't be sure. Different ships could handle different shuttles capacities. He figured he could ask the AI but that wasn't essential information. The ship had gone to hell. He had more pressing concerns.

"How did I get here?"

[I moved you]

"…"

Well, He didn't know how to respond to that.

'She can move? How? She's a ship Ai…'

Mechs had artificial intelligence too, Jack's memories attested to that. They could move the gigantic fighting machine in limited ways. The Presence of a pilot was the restriction. The mech couldn't move without the presence of one.

The destruction a rogue mech could hand out was limited, even if it blew up its reactors and energy cells or fuel in a suicide. A ship on the other hand was much more dangerous.

A mech was always under human control, no countermeasure was more secure than the human brain. It was an impossible enemy to all artificial intelligence.

Ships had compartments. No one person could ever be enough to run an entire ship. The Ai however could control everything. If it was given the right equipment and authority, of course.

"How did you?...". He only realized his mistake after he had said it. Ai s' were smart, that was without a doubt. They had no learning limit, only their memory size could hinder their growth. That wasn't a point to bring up with the current state of technology.

They, however, had one massive disadvantage, that was in their lack of judgmental skills. That's what separated them from humans. They had to check through references every time before coming to a decision.

How was the Ai supposed to explain such a phenomenon to him without knowledge on how? Ship Ai s' were hard to transfer from drive to drive. And the Ai could be none the wiser of its different cores. Its programs could outright ignore the quirk and prioritize efficiency.

[Drive transference]

That's the most information he could ever get from her. It wasn't her fault though.

'Why do I suddenly feel like I'm in the presence of an abomination?' Such a thought did fleet through his mind.

"What happened to the ship?"

[FTL transit confirmed]

He exhaled.

'She somehow managed to get me into a shuttle, and got the shuttle out of the ship she was supposed to commandeer, without her drives experiencing any errors. Wait I can't think of it like that…'

"Did you manage to transfer all of your drive files?"

[Affirmative]

Phew!

He let out some foul breath.

"How long has it been since the ship transitioned?"

[84 hours]

'Not too much, not too little....'

He paused.

How was it that no ship had transitioned into the system yet? It was a moderately used route there was at least one transit a day.

'Ah, why would they allow their ships to pass through a system that has had an entire ship massacred?'

Pending investigations would soon follow. However useless they were.

'We should receive visitors in the next few hours'.

He got a strange sensation. His hand reached out and touched something

"…"

Some tubes floated above and below his, ahem. Waste clearance systems.

'Thank the gods for technology. These things don't have to be inserted…'

He would have hated for something like that to happen. Even if his life depended on it.

'Wait… What would I say to the officials if they transition to this system?'

'How could I possibly explain my survival? A moving ship Ai?'

He was pretty sure he didn't want her to be taken in for study. She was one of a kind. She had also saved his life.

"Can you estimate how long it will take for an official investigation to begin?"

[Estimated arrival in Three hours]

'Frankly, I didn't expect such an answer from you…' His lips curled up in a small smile.

"Is there any way we could leave this star system?"

[Negative, no presence of FTL drive on the vessel. Energy levels are insufficient for long voyage]

'Informative. Did this Ai grow smarter? Most of the Ai's I've dealt with can only answer the asked questions. I have never worked with a ship Ai before. Maybe they're all like this?... '

He stopped. That sense of incongruence had hit again. He felt both involved and detached.

'This is troublesome. Let's assume I'm a lost soul inhabiting the body of its last owner, Bearing some of his memories'.

That… Helped alleviate the situation by a little bit. It was rather surreal.

'This kind of stuff will only get more annoying from here'

He turned his head to his right. How could he have missed it? The Ai had an output audio device by his right. That voice had sounded too close.

'Did she pluck those from the ship?'.

'That's impossible, Moving me could be done via those floaters.' He hadn't noticed this fact before. Well, he had been crawling for his life back then.

'She can view telemetry, according to Jack's memory, ship Ai's can't control any part of the vessel. This includes the shuttles within it.'

Now that he thought about it. Where could she have transferred her drives to? He had heard her say exactly that before his floater dumped him. Literally.

How had she moved all the food he had consumed? He didn't remember arriving at the eatery. She couldn't load the food onto the floater all by herself without a body.

'Is this some sort of horror where a machine possesses the body of a human?'

His thoughts took a dark turn.

He was prepared to ask for this information. Afraid that the Ai would kill him? He had already died once, by torture. All things considered. He didn't believe it could ever get more painful than that.

Besides, she had nursed him. What would that amount to if she killed him now?

He cleared his throat.

"How did you…"

[Energy fluctuation detected at co-ordinates *************]

He got interrupted.

[Calculations estimate the presence of four ships]

Had they finally been caught? He couldn't help but question himself.

[Markings on the ship are not similar to any regiment forces in the database]

[Possible identity of the ship fleet is...]

'Pirates…'

Jack thought in helplessness.

Dealing with the military would have been less bothersome…

He also conveniently forgot to question how she had read the ship emission from that far without any present scanner. Shuttles only had a single node for communication...

*****

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