She stared at the food on the table blankly. The young Irini and her sister had been here for weeks, and only recently had they been allowed to see each other. Only that brief encounter had been far too short for her. Honestly, she wasn’t happy with her new lot in life, but recently she had started having regrets with her life before. Absently picking at her food, her mind thought back to the last few days.

Her contact with others had been rather minimal recently, and the local AI had interrogated her quite thoroughly. An experience she tried not to think about, but like her brief experience in the medical bay where she had been opened up by machines, her mind kept wandering back to them. Thankfully she wasn’t going to have to repeat those experiences anytime soon. She had already broken down, and told that AI everything she knew about the activities of her people. Idly eating a bit of her bland food, she wondered if she would ever get out of here. If that AI ever let her go, she had a growing list of things she wanted to do. However, she had the distinct impression that the ship’s AI considered her to be a pet. Suddenly the room shook a bit, and she was startled out of her thoughts. On impulse she asked the empty air what was happening, and as one would expect she was answered with an empty silence. The room didn’t shake again either, and she was left wondering if she imagined the whole incident.

Melia was in one of the ship’s library room reading a book. She had taken to reading what she could so as to get answers to some of her questions, as the ship didn’t tell her everything with the neural link she had. Although she was beginning to figure out why. The answer was so simple, it was a wonder she had not realized it before. Just like a computer, the brain could only handle so much information, but the ship’s library was so vast that the computer only gave her what info it deemed important. In a way, this wasn’t good enough for her, and her natural curiosity was leading her to look into ways that she could learn even more.

That was why, on the table, she had a stack of books on cybernetics and genetic engineering. Unlike in her own world, the Soleans actually used physical books and not pure electronic ones like everyone else. The library stored them in special shelving units, and the covers had an embed chip that could be read by an electronic device and contained a copy of the book’s text. The shelving units were something she didn’t fully understand herself, but they had preserved these books in perfect condition. They were practically brand-new. As for the books at first, she thought they were paper, but she quickly discovered that wasn’t the case. The material used had a similar texture, but it smelled different and was far tougher. She couldn’t actually damage the books if she tried. If they were paper it would be easy to tear out a page, but these books she couldn’t. She figured that out when Erisa tried ripping a book away from her. Naturally, she made sure to ‘punish’ Erisa for that.

After that, she had asked Megumi why the books were so durable and learned they were made with a synthetic material designed to resist tearing and other forms of damage that books are often susceptible to. Anyway thanks to the books she now knew quite a few different ways to enhance her brains ability to store and process information. All of which would be easy for the ship to do, and she even had a few science projects in mind that she wanted to do.

She was about to put her latest book down, and actually consult Megumi about a few of her ideas when she felt a sudden jolt. It shook the room a bit, but otherwise, she hardly noticed it. Knowing this to be outside the norm, she inquired of Megumi what was going on.

“My port cloaking shields have been penetrated by a pathetic excuse for a torpedo. Hull plating is undamaged of course, and I have already reactivated the inertial dampers so we won’t feel a second impact, and am remodulating the cloak. Personally I think this was a fluke, but if you want I can return fire,” answered Megumi without materializing an avatar.

“You don’t plan on returning fire?”

“Honestly? ... No, I don’t. They would need something a little bigger in their torpedo tubes to actually damage my plating,” responded the ship in a rather cheeky tone.

Melia shook her head, and said, “That’s a joke isn’t it?”

“Well they aren’t a threat to me, but they have attacked me. So yes it was. I have brought my drone launchers online, and have already got weapon locks on all of my attackers.”

“Of course you do. So how many ships are attacking?”

“Thirty-two light cruisers of a reasonably advanced design entered the system about an hour ago, and began intensive scans of the system. One of them managed to see through my cloak, and fired a volley of torpedoes at me. Must not have had a good lock as most of their torpedoes missed, and I didn’t even try to evade.”

Melia sighed. She already knew the ship didn’t like to waste energy on what it has deemed to be unnecessary actions. Naturally, that meant it wouldn’t evade an attack it didn’t see as a threat. And torpedoes that couldn’t scratch the paint didn’t exactly sound like much of a threat, but she could at least feel them hit. Her only complaint was that she didn’t at least activate the inertial dampers before the torpedo hit the ship. The jolt was mild, but that didn’t mean she wanted to feel it if she didn’t have to.

The captain watched in disbelief as the blip disappeared from scanners, but no debris appeared. She knew that volley didn’t have a perfect lock, but in her experience, a cloaked ship was defenseless once spotted. Yet this one had apparently taken a direct hit, and emerged unscathed. Shaking off the disbelief, she shouted to her sensor officer. “Full scan, I want that ship found again before she escapes.”

Then her tactical officer shouted “Contacts! Multiple unknown projectiles heading right for us, and our sisterships.”

Internally she cursed, evidently not only was this spy cruiser more resilient than any cloaked ship she had encountered before, but it could fire while cloaked. That made it a very dangerous foe, one not taken lightly. Already she was beginning to suspect that this ship was a predator, and she had inadvertently woken it up. Deciding not to take chances and risk further surprises, she ordered the helmsman to begin evasive maneuvers, and her tactical officer to fire on the projectiles.

A series of disrupter bolts were soon flying at the projectiles, and even scored a few hits. However, these projectiles were remarkably tough, and shrugged off the few hits with minimal damage. In addition, they clearly had homing capabilities, as her maneuvers did little to shake them off.

In the distance, one of her sisterships was caught. The blue bolts swarmed the ship, and passed right through the shields like they weren’t there. Punching right through the hull, they passed through the ship, and then dived back in. Her complexion paled as she realized what these weapons were. They were precursor drone weapons, and one of the more feared types of precursor drone. These ancient weapons could rip a ship apart in a matter of seconds.

Realizing what the weapons were also told her that they were likely fighting a precursor warship, and she knew that it had taken a massive fleet of tens of thousands of ships just to sink one such vessel. The worst part was that the causalities were horrendous with the entire fleet being lost in the process. Well actually it was half, and then the other half disappeared in a mysterious explosion. Likely caused by some precursor device left behind by the ship before it was destroyed. Regardless, they weren’t equipped to fight a precursor warship. Especially one that they couldn’t see. A fact that made this one far more dangerous than any precursor warship they have ever encountered before. The guardians while immensely powerful did not have the ability to cloak. Little did she realize that was only true of the version they had encountered guarding the shield worlds. The Guardian class was like all Solean warships modular, and that module was deemed unneeded for their mission profile. It had been removed in favor of an auxiliary shield generator that gave it some extra shielding when in a pinch.

She didn’t think it was wise to stick around, and said, “Helm, emergency warp out! Ops signal the other ships to flee.”

The emergency warp out device was designed to charge up in seconds thereby allowing a ship to quickly leave the field of battle. However, the resulting jump is uncontrolled and the destination can’t be decided beforehand. Making an emergency jump dangerous, which is why most preferred to retreat on standard drives if they could. Her crew however acted professionally and quickly followed her orders. On the screens, she could observe her other sisterships being caught.

Three of them were caught just as the signal was sent out, and swarmed by the drones. In mere seconds they were torn to pieces. Blue bolts dived into the ships repeatedly until they were nothing more than expanding clouds of debris.

A few seconds after that two more ships were caught and destroyed by the ancient drone weapons in the same manner. It was a strange sight both beautiful beyond words, and equally terrifying. Before they were completely destroyed, however, the drives charged, and they jumped.

Instantly every warning light they had went off, and she found herself thrown into a bulkhead as the dampers were overwhelmed by something. Her vision went black, and she lost consciousness. She would wake hours later to learn that she was hopelessly lost in the middle of a nebula and that her navigation system had been destroyed.