Between the Black and Grey 70
Fen awoke to Ma standing over her, smiling with her eyes. "Fenchurch, you really know how to get into a mess, you know that right?"
Fen sat up. Here, she didn't hurt. "What can I say Ma? I'm tired of being told what to do, and am doing things that I want to do."
She nodded once and put her hand out to help her up. "Good. You're learning." Fen stood up and looked around. It was the same old place it always was, but they were alone in the forest. "It'll be hard though."
"hmm?" Fen wasn't listening.
"Doing things that you want to do. It's hard. It's easier to just listen to everyone else and do what they say."
Fen chuckled. "That's hard too Ma. No matter what I pick, it's hard."
"Yes," Ma agreed. "That's life."
Fen came back, pain still there, disorientation still there, but now she was also floating in space. Her suit was helpfully flashing all kinds of warnings about being adrift in space but she was able to dismiss them. The beacons on her head and shoulders flashed to alert any potential rescuers that she was out here, but scans from the - admittedly - low power radar on the suit indicated she was alone.
Where once there was just her expeditionary force and the white hole was now a... nebula.
No, more than that, it was stunning. Rainbow colors, swirling, dancing around her, visible in every direction. She was awash in a sea of color. But why? Was it the nanites?
As she floating in space, Fen stared at once location while time passed. She was sure that the nebula was very slowly moving. With a gasp that turned into a coughing fit, she realized what she was seeing.
The Nanites and Han'iel's nanites had consumed the entirety of the expeditionary force as raw material, and were now around her in the tens of trillions, fighting. The concentration of machines was so dense that she could see them.
Fen thought to herself, well okay Fenchurch. You came back here and you're making your own decisions now. So now what? Fen thought about the implant. It would make a dent in the volume of nanites here, and might be the tipping point to end the battle, but was she ready to do that? No. Not yet at least. Besides, if she did that now the virus in her body would never spread. She had to get closer.
Ugh, but how? The suit had maneuvering jets, but they weren't meant to be used for millions of kilometers. She could link again and get closer, but then that would be it. She'd be stuck. She queried the suit. 'Power options?'
INTERNAL BATTERIES 80%. USEFUL LIFE AT CURRENT POWER OUTPUT - 100 SOL STANDARD DAYS.
Well. At least she's starve to death before she froze to death. She tried again. 'Are the batteries sufficient to operate the wormhole link backpack?'
QUERYING... NEGATIVE. SUIT BATTERIES WOULD BE DEPLETED.
CONNECT TO POWER ON SHIP OR STATION.
Ugh, it didn't have like, solar panels or anything? Fen had no idea about suit design, but she felt like something like that as a last resort would have been useful. 'Radio?'
LOCAL AREA ONLY. NO SIGNALS IN RANGE CURRENTLY.
Dammit. It turned out that an emergency rescue spacesuit wasn't just a teeny spaceship after all.
While Fen was working through her options and arguing with her suit, the nebula slowly came closer to her. She noticed as the color outside her face shield changed, and she looked up and gasped. What she had thought was a slow wheeling progression of the nebula was actually the nanites moving at tremendous speed. They had traversed the distance to her in less than two hours. Before she realized what was happening, the swirl of color surrounded her suit. Red warnings flashed in her vision SUIT INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. SUIT INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. Her suit was being eaten for material.
"Oh fuck." She said aloud, "now you've done it."
Ah, Empress. You are alive after all. The voice was practically liquid in its smugness.
"I could say the same thing about you. How goes the war with Han'iel's creation?"
We persevere, Fen. We were built well.
"Oh goody. You can talk to me as well." Fen sighed. "Well, as it appears that I am being consumed for raw materials in your battle, you had better say your pieces before I'm gone entirely."
Gone? You're not going anywhere. You forget we can manipulate matter on any scale.
Don't worry Fen. Once these nanites are destroyed, we will take good care of you. Han'iel's nanites spoke to her with a K'laxi accent. Almost but not quite sounding like Han'iel himself.
Take care of you? They can't even tak-- Her original nanites started to argue again but stopped sudddenly. What did you do?
"Whatever do you mean?" Fen said innocently, while grinning wickedly. It was going to work.
You have introduced a... pathogen. How?
"Don't worry about how, worry about your own damn survival now. I don't even care that I'm out in space alone because I got you. Neither of you will be able to come up with a counter in time."
Both of the nanites pulled out of her mind quickly, without taking care to be gentle. Through the blinding headache they left, Fen was laughing. It worked! It really worked! Her idea worked! "See Ma? I did it! I beat them. Not Gord, not the Empire, ME!" She shouted.
Before her eyes, the nebula changed. Rather than a dancing, swirling rainbow colored cloud, it was slowly - but surely - turning gray. The virus was taking over the nanites, using them to make more, and then disassembling what was left.
Fen floated, between the black and the gray, and watched them die.
"They think we have Fen!" Chloe shouted, as Gord took control of the ship's operation to dodge the attacks.
"Well, we kinda did." Gord said, trying to keep his voice reasonable as he concentrated.
"We - you - saved her life!"
"Yes. but they don't know that, Chloe. We never told them. I was going to, but then there was the nanite thing, and we had to put her in hibernation, and then the virus... I dropped the ball." Gord did the virtual equivalent of a shrug. "They don't usually shoot first and ask questions later though."
"They don't? Gord, are we talking about the same humans?"
"Okay okay, sometimes they do. Open a channel, I'll explain it."
"They closed communication." Chloe scanned the logs. "Looks like they opened all frequencies and asked for an explanation... and someone told them to kick rocks."
Chloe shook her head. "Don't know. They were far away, probably out near Jupiter or further. They were on at least a couple minute delay."
"Dammit!" Gord swore and went over to the comm set. He set the power output to full and opened all the channels. As he did so, he moved some relays and rerouted power from the reactor. As environmental powered down, his array powered up. Across Sol, everyone's comm array was overcome with static. Media players, comm arrays, and even some larger metallic structures all obeyed his command. For now, Gord was the Loudest thing in Sol. "Attention Humanity. We do not have Empress Fenchurch. We did, but she left on her own. If you stop shooting and take an Ancestors damned BREATHER, we can discuss this." Gord cut the connection and put the power back where it was. Times like this he was annoyed that he couldn't snap a physical toggle closed. It was much more satisfying.
"Empress?!" The weapons officer looked over at Penny.
Penny was trying very hard to hide her expression, but she didn't have Fen's experience. Her eyes were giving it away, Zhe noticed. She was frightened out of her mind. "S-Stand down. Weapons to idle."
As the weapons powered down, and the ship got off of its battle footing, one of the younger officers eye's went wide. "Empress... you should see this," and gestured. She and Zhe looked down at their pads.
And stared at the stardrive of Home.
Before Home was the... well, home of the AIs, it was a colony ship. Nearly a third the size of High Mars Hyacinth, it was designed to streak through interstellar space, bringing thirty thousand humans in hibernation and enough supplies to start up at least three cities. Six were launched, three made it, one blew up just outside of Sol, and two were lost. This was one of them. In order to thrust up to 50% of C, the colony ships had positively titanic star drives. Large enough to swallow a Starjumper, their exhaust would streak behind for hundreds of kilometers when under full thrust.
And one was pointed directly at them.
They hadn't planned on running, they had planned on lighting their stardrive, Zhe realized with a shudder. Her fur puffed out in fear. She knew the value of the human's old drives as a weapon. She looked over at Penny; she hadn't figured it out. Zhe flicked her ears in irritation. Leave it to humans to forget about their own weapons.
"Penn-Empress." Zhe said gently. "They pointed their stardrive at us. They were going to fire it."
"And run away? They have a wormhole generator, why run away with their old stardrive?"
"We-el, yes, they would start moving." Zhe said carefully, "but more importantly the drive exhaust would have reduced us to our constituent atoms."
"Oh" Penny said, and then her eyes widened when she parsed what Zhe said. "Oh."
"Yes," Zhe nodded. "On the Heap we're taught to never go behind a human ship. We were never going to win this engagement."
Penny's shoulders slumped. "They don't have Fen and we were nearly destroyed." She looked at Zhe and mouthed "What do I do?"
"Empress?" Zhe said, in a normal tone of voice. "I recommend we open a channel to Gord's ship and take him up on his offer to talk. We can learn what they know, and maybe work together to find out what happened to Fen. After all-" She flicked her ears as she spoke "-if the AI faction supports you, then your claim to the throne is that much more valid."
Penny's eyes shone. She was holding back tears. "Yes, that is an excellent suggestion. Comms, reach out to Gord's ship and let the know we wish to talk." She looked again at Zhe, blinked her tears away and whispered, "Thank you."
Zhe's face was impassive, but her tail swished behind her.
