Jessie tentatively cracked open the shield and tested the air. It was just as stale but at least the oily, moldy taste was gone. It was still chilly but not subzero. He shed the suit and started looking for something smaller.
“Do I even need a space suit?” he asked. “The life support systems working, right?”
“There are many parts of the vessel that have been breached and are open to space.” It said. “Deep penetrating reactor seekers were employed along with a swarm of cybernetic hunter killers utilizing caustic weapons.”
“Whoa. You mean like terminator robots?” Jessie asked as he pulled on a pair of stretchy fabric pants.
“I am unfamiliar with that term.” The voice said then told him again how long the ship could sustain life using whatever backup power it was using.
He still didn’t understand how long it meant but a part of him was eager to explore. He was on a real space ship in outer space and if he was going to die anytime soon, he wanted to see what there was to see before he did. It took a little mixing and matching but he put together a suit that fit pretty good except for the extra finger. It wasn’t too bulky and became snug once the voice told him which button to push that activated the contraction feature.
“For optimal probability of survival, you will need to maneuver to living quarters. There you will find sections that can be sealed, the attacks were primarily focused on the engines to disable me.”
It took him a moment of hand waving to get the door sensor to recognize him and slide open He entered a plastic and metal hallway that looked like a lot of space ships he’d seen in movies and on TV. Clean, neutral colors and uncluttered.
“How big is this thing and which way do I go?” Jessie asked and saw something pop up on the helmets face shield. He lowered it, saw a glowing dot where he was on a 3D schematic and a path to follow.
“Wow.” Was all he could think of to say.
“I am evacuating the air to equalize the pressure but will keep the gravity on where it is still viable. The next corridor has been breached; you will have to float across to the next undamaged section. Ensure you do not drift out of the opening. There is nothing I can do to retrieve you and I will be unable to communicate if you do. Please stay as close to the wall as you can and lock the shield in place before opening the door.”
Jessie double checked the face plate as he neared the door and was nearly jerked off his feet as it slid open. There wasn’t much air left in the chamber but it was sucked out in a rush. He started floating as soon as he crossed the threshold and tried to get close to the wall. He waved his arms but nothing happened. A massive section of the ship was missing and he could see across seven or eight corridors to the blackness of space. The edges of the opening looked melted, like someone had burnt through a plastic model with a blowtorch. He slowly rolled upside down and no amount of swimming or hand waving did anything to stop him from drifting towards the hole. Towards the vacuum of space. He caught a dangling cable and grabbed on for dear life.
His breathing calmed as he held on and he had time to marvel at weightlessness. It would be fun if he wasn’t worried about being pulled out into the blackness. He hung on to the wires, floated lazily and stared straight down. The ship was the biggest machine he’d ever seen and he’d been on an aircraft carrier tour with his dad in Virginia. This dwarfed it. Whatever had melted its way through the space ship hadn’t stopped until it punched through the other side. He could see stars at the bottom of a hundred-foot-wide hole as it angled through the craft and came out a long, long way away. It looked like it might be a mile or more to the other side.
The ship was enormous, had hundreds of levels and thousands of rooms. At its widest section, it was as tall as five World Trade center buildings stacked atop each other. It carried enough firepower and troops to conquer worlds. It had been one of many flagships that was decimated by small, maneuverable spaceships that appeared out of nowhere inside the ship’s defensive perimeter. They destroyed the behemoths with weapons of war so powerful a handful of them brought a galactic empire to its knees. They were God like with their power and the battleships. AI didn’t know who they were or how she’d been defeated so easily. The wars started and ended almost as quickly with an absolute, crushing defeat of the Federation. Thousands of mayday emergency transmissions were received the same instant she was sending her own distress call. Entire worlds had been destroyed, the victory was assured and just as quickly as they came, they disappeared. After thousands of years, once the radio communications started trickling through, did she finally piece together the full extent of what had happened.
The wars hadn’t just destroyed her, hundreds of billions of lives had been lost, planets had been rendered uninhabitable and the galaxy had been knocked back into the stone age. The Federation was slowly rebuilding but entire races of beings had nearly become extinct. The planets weren’t as civilized as they used to be in the golden era and only in the last few hundred years had things started to get back to where they once were. Technology was brought back to ruined worlds, old
