The Privateer

Yvian woke. It was a pleasant surprise.

The last thing she remembered was Mims, carrying her like a child. He ran, streaking down the corridor, his voidarmor enhancements keyed for maximum strength and speed. Her HUD had been flashing some kind of warning, but her eyes were too blurry to read it. The numbing influence of her armor had shielded her from the pain, but her injuries were too great for its limited medical capabilities to overcome. She was dying. Jostled by the human's motion, she had felt her consciousness fade. She'd tried to say one last thing, a message for her sister. She did not know if she'd succeeded in getting the words out.

Yvian took a deep breath, let it out, slow. She was alive. She was lying on something firm. The medpod. A half cylinder encased the area above her. She reached up and pressed a button. It retracted, revealing the med bay of The Random Encounter. Yvian sat up. She gasped.

Her legs. They were supposed to be gone. Torn away in a torrent of plasma and alien goo. Her voidarmor ended where they'd been cut off, revealing smooth, light blue skin and two perfect appendages. Prosthetics? Yvian reached down and pinched one of her feet. It felt like... well. It felt like her normal foot. Like she'd never been injured. She stood. Everything felt normal. What in The Crunch?

The medbay door opened. Her sister walked in. Lissa had a bag in her hands. Upon seeing Yvian, she broke into a grin and yelled, "Sis!" She dropped the bag on a med table and swept Yvian up in a big sisterly hug. Yvian hugged her back. It was nice.

"Sorry, I'm late," Lissa told her. "Mark made you some lunch, but I got halfway here before I remembered I forgot to grab you a drink." She released the hug and handed Yvian the bag. Yvian's mouth watered at the smell of lasagna. She was ravenous.

Yvian pulled the covered dish out of the bag, along with a fork and a pair of beers. Lissa took one of them. "You've been in there a while," she said. "We knew you'd be hungry."

"How long?" Yvian managed to ask before stuffing her face with pasta.

"Five days," Lissa told her. "You were hurt pretty bad. You almost didn't make it."

Yvian nodded. "Muh legsh?" Lissa looked at her quizzically. Yvian finished chewing and tried again. "My legs?"

"Oh! Right," Lissa gestured at the pod. "They're not prosthetics. The pod regrew the tissues."

Yvian stared at her, swallowing. "It can do that?"

"Apparently. Mark said its a Venturetech Plus-Ultra Automated Medical System. Top of the line." She took a sip of beer. "He always has the nicest toys. Your new legs should be just the same as the old ones. They shouldn't function or feel any different."

Yvian wiggled her toes. They felt like her toes. She decided not to question it further. She washed down more lasagna with a swig of beer. "Did we win?"

Lissa frowned. "We don't know."

"What does that mean?"

Lissa thought for a moment, then said, "It'll be better if we wait til you get to the bridge. Mark can explain it then. In the meantime, you should eat your lunch and get changed. Your voidarmor's ruined. There's a spare GR17 on the counter, there." She pointed. Yvian nodded. Lissa took another sip of beer. "I'm going to head back up, give you a little privacy. Come join us when you're ready." She gave Yvian another hug, narrowly avoiding a forkful of lasagna. Then she left.

Yvian tore through the meal, thinking. Not about the battle. About the future. Her ship was gone. She still had money, but not enough to replace The Wandering Lady. Her dream seemed farther away than it'd ever been. She would need a new plan. It irked her to admit it, but she could only come up with one way to go.

Yvian changed into the new voidarmor. Just like her old GR17, it molded itself to her body, adjusting its fit for maximum comfort. She walked to the bridge on feet she'd never used, wearing clothes she'd put on for the first time. Physically, it felt no different than every other time she'd walked to the bridge of the human's ship. Comfortingly familiar. Emotionally, she wasn't so sure. There was a lot to unpack, there.

When she got to the bridge, Yvian got another hug from Lissa. Her sister must've really been worried, if she was this happy to see her. Mims gave her a smile and a wave. He'd never made any attempt to touch her in an affectionate manner. Yvian didn't know if it was because he sensed it would make her uncomfortable, or if he just wasn't a toucher himself. Either way, she was grateful. With the exception of her sister, her mom (sometimes), and the occasional girlfriend, Yvian hated to be touched. She grinned back at him and returned the wave.

Yvian took a seat in front of one of the consoles and asked, "Did we win?"

The human shrugged. "We don't know."

"Lissa said the same thing," Yvian told him. "What does it mean?"

"It means we don't know." Mims fiddled with his console. "Here, let me give you a replay."

Yvian's console came to life, showing the battered remains of The Wandering Lady. "The plan worked pretty much how we wanted it to." The display quickened, showing the ship turning much faster than it could've in real time. The crumpled freighter sped into the mass of debris. Silvery strands spread out like a net over the Lady, then stretched further to encompass the broken ships. The freighter pushed forward, dragging the whole mess along. "We were worried the extra mass would throw her off course, but the Lady corrected herself and headed straight for the Queenships." Yvian's ship was barely visible under the wad of goop and dead ships, but Yvian could see it wobble and change it's heading slightly. Mims increased the replay speed, and the Lady's kamikaze attack shot forward. Destroyers and Frigates leapt out to meet it, but their beam weapons couldn't penetrate the silver liquid and dead ships enough to stop the Lady. In a last ditch effort, they slammed into the silvery mess, but their engines weren't enough to overcome its momentum. The Lady slapped her silvery cargo against one of the Queenships. The liquid stretched out, jumping from one of the massive vessels to another. Then something shifted, and the Queens were drifting. "Once the silver goo hit the Queens, they shut their own portal down. Cut off half their own ships."

"Doesn't that cause a reaction?" Yvian asked. "I thought doing that makes the portal expand."

"Not when they do it, apparently." Yvian watched the remains of the Queenships being overrun by the silver material. "But that's why we don't know if we won or not." The human scratched his head. "Eight Queens made it to Krog Prime, but with only half a ship each. No weapons or shields with that kind of damage. Either Fightsmart got close enough to take them out, or they organized the Klaath and overran the sector." The human shrugged. "There's no way to know from here."

"How can we not know?" Yvian asked. "Lissa said it's been five days. The news has to be all over the..." Yvian trailed off as a thought struck. "Wait." A bad thought. "Where are we?"

"We're still in Klaath space," Mims admitted.

"What? Why?" Yvian demanded. "I thought you said the Jumpdrive could get us out of here."

"It can," he assured her. "But we've never seen anything like this liquid metal stuff, before. We want to get as much information on it as we can before we go."

"That shit tried to eat us," Yvian pointed out. "Isn't hanging around kind of dangerous?"

"Moderately Dangerous, yes," the human agreed. "But we're keeping our distance, and the Encounter's fast enough that I'm pretty sure we can get away if it starts looking our direction. There are no Gates in this sector. Once we leave we won't be able to come back. I want all the intel we can get."

Yvian sat back in her chair. "Ok. Makes sense, I guess. What did we learn?"

Mims turned to her sister. "You want to take this one, Lissa? I'm not a scientist."

"Engineer," she corrected him. She turned to Yvian. "I got some pretty thorough scans of the stuff while it was trying to eat you. It's... weird."

"Wow, Sis," Yvian grinned. "I never would have guessed. Good thing we've got a certified engineer to tell us these things."

"Shut up," Lissa smiled back. She continued. "It's nanotech, mostly. The little bots swarm over materials and break them down. Inorganics get turned into more bots. Organics get digested and turned into fuel."

"Grey goo scenario," Mims interjected. "We've seen a couple different species deploy nanobot weapons. Kills a whole planet if it doesn't get stopped quick."

"Yes, but its more than that," Lissa continued. "The things are modular. We've seen them change their make-up to form muscle tissue, sensory organs, even energy weapons. And they can co-opt other tech. Not only did they correct the Lady's course, but they made repairs to its engines. It was accelerating at max capacity by the time it hit the Queens." She frowned. "That's the part that scares me. Doing that shows intelligence. Problem solving ability. They're not just some mindless superweapon that got out of hand. They can think."

"That sounds bad," Yvian agreed. "Any idea where they came from?"

"Not the Klaath," Lissa said. "This doesn't match any tech we've seen from them. If I was to guess, I'd say that big blob of the stuff that hit their planet came from out of system."

"Portal?" Yvian asked.

"I don't think so. If they could make portals, they'd have followed the Klaath to Krog Prime." Lissa activated a console, showing a holographic sensor display. "And they wouldn't be doing this."

Klusters. Infected. Thousands of them. Flying in circles. "Are they..." Yvian's pulse quickened. "Are they making portals?"

"They're trying," Lissa told her. "They've been trying for days. I don't think they can do it, though. The Confed's been studying Klaath wreckage for decades, and they don't have a clue how the motherless sons make portals. The prevailing theory is its some kind of biological ability. Psionics, maybe. We know that's how they communicate."

"But if they can mimic tissue..." Yvian trailed off.

Lissa shook her head. "I don't know. The tissues they form function like organics, but they're not quite the same. I have no idea how closely they could mimic the Klaath, or if they'd even try."

"Well, that's scary and interesting," Mims cut in. "But lets skip to the good part. How do we kill them?"

"We can't."

"Can't?" the human frowned.

"Can't," Lissa confirmed. "The bots are modular and adaptive. Means they can regenerate. If we blow a hole in them they'll just reform. We can take out ships they've infected, but the stuff itself? We'd have to atomize every single bot to stop them. Anything less, and they'll just rebuild."

Mims grunted. "I don't think that kind of firepower exists. The main body's spread half a kilometer thick over an entire planet. The Confed's best Planetcrackers couldn't atomize that much. Even if we got ninety nine percent, they'd just make more nanobots out of the wreckage."

"Exactly," Lissa changed the display. The sensors shifted to show the remains of sixty four Klaath Queenships. At least, Yvian assumed that's what they'd been. Now they were a giant clump of silver goo with engines sticking out of it. "The Klaath fought as hard as they could, and not a single one survived. The goop's massing them all together. I think its going to repurpose their engines to head for another sector."

"That's a long way to travel with conventional engines," Mims remarked.

"Decades or centuries," Lissa agreed. "Maybe longer. But I'm pretty sure that's how they showed up here. No portals, no Gates, just a bunch of engines pushing a bunch of goo."

"Are we still calling it goo?" Yvian asked. They looked at her. "I mean, we're the ones who discovered it, right? Doesn't that mean we get to name it?"

Lissa and the human exchanged a look. Lissa spoke. "We're, uh... having a disagreement about that."

Yvian smiled. "Can't decide, huh? What did you come up with?"

"Greygoo," said Lissa.

"That name sucks," said Mims. "Nanophage."

"That's a scientific term for nanomachines that target other nanomachines." Lissa pointed out. "We can't use it as a name."

"Its better than Greygoo," Mims huffed.

"Well," Yvian smiled wider. "I can see the problem. You're both right. Those names suck."

They both glared at her. Mims asked, "What would you call it, then?"

Yvian thought a moment. "Omniphage?"

"Huh," Mims grunted. "I guess we all suck at this."

"Omniphage is a great name!" Yvian protested.

"No, its not." Lissa grinned. "Thanks, Sis. I feel much better."

"You guys suck."

"We can worry about names later," Mims decided. "What matters is we're all awake and up to speed. Lissa, do you think we'll learn anything else if we stay here?"

"Not really," she checked her own console. "I don't think we should stay here much longer, anyway. They've been ignoring us since we moved to the edge of the system, but that won't last forever. We should go."

"Let's go then." Mims switched a console to the nav configuration. "I'm taking us to Kilv. It's two sectors from Krog Prime. We'll find out how the fight went and plan our next move."

"Yeah...about that..." Yvian shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. Mims turned to look at her. "Look, uh, I know I've been kind of a pain lately..."

The human stood. "You're apprenticeship's still valid for two more months. You get apprentice rates until you're licensed. Same rules as before. What I say goes. Once you're licensed we'll do a partnership. Equal shares, equal say, but I want command in the field." He held out a hand. "Agreed?"

Yvian stared at him, then shook his hand. "Agreed." He sat down. "How did you know?"

The human snorted. "You're the most transparent person I ever met." He started programming the nav console. "Besides, you lost your ship. What else would you do?"

Yvian huffed. "You don't have to be a jerk about it."

"Of course I do," Mims grinned at her. "That's what friends are for. Initiating Jumpdrive." He pressed a final button.

The Random Encounter hummed. The ship's computer spoke. "Jumpdrive activated. Charging." The humming grew louder as the computer reported it's progress. "Twenty percent. Forty percent. Sixty percent. Eighty percent." The humming reached a crescendo. "Jumpdrive at one hundred percent. Initiating Jump."

The crescendo did not stop. The Jump effect did not begin. Yvian waited. The ship continued to hum. "Uh...is it supposed to do that?" she asked.

"No." Mims alternated his attention between the nav console and his ship status display. "No it is not."