Unexpected II

- Bridge of the spaceship Shield of Humanity -

Pain, endless pain, is what I felt as we pass the vortex into the void between realities.

There is a reason that beings from realspace don't go here.

The energies of the void corrode all matter that enters, it breaks and ruptures everything in the body. And it finally dissolves all matter to be turned into more void.

[Emergency!][Emergency!][Emergency!][Emergency!]

System alerts sound in my head. But I can't focus on them with the overwhelming pain.

[Emergency system activation requested...]

[Emergency system activation failed]

[Emergency system activation requested...]

[Emergency system activation accepted on conditions]

[Reviewing the situation...]

'System, do anything you can to save me!'

[Reviewing the situation...]

[Calculating probabilities...]

'Everyone is going to die if you don't do something fast!'

[Reached conclusion, abundant energy sources surrounding host, possible solution, energy to remove lock from system, sufficient...]

[Permission to end suffering?]

'Yes!' I directed my thoughts at the system in desperation. 'Do anything that will end this!'

[Permission granted...]

[Beginning process]

---

Alexander's body began glowing with an unnatural light as the energies of the void suffocating the bridge were swallowed into the man.

"Insufficient energy"

The voice coming out of the admiral was monotone, robotic even.

"Emergency protocols activated, survival of host paramount"

Alexander stepped and appeared in front of his second in command. In a second, his hand had gone forward and was piercing the heart of the officer, who screamed in terror and pain before dying.

[+1 Soul adquired]

The puppet body of alexander committed a massacre on the bridge, as every one of the officers was impaled through the chest as they writhed in pain in the floor from sustaining void energies.

[+1 Soul adquired]

[+1 Soul ad...]

[+1...]

---

"Sufficient soul acquired, void beast materials present in large quantities in the surrounding area, bloodline integration possible, strengthening of host necessary"

The pieces of the void beast remaining in the debris field began to turn into motes of light that shot out into the bridge.

By this point, Alexander had lost consciousness and had no idea what the system was doing.

"Miscalculations, type 9 void beast not expected, not enough soul for refinement."

The system interfaced with the controls of the ship and vented its atmosphere, killing everyone inside instantly.

[+12402 Soul adquired]

"Insufficient soul, sufficient soul to interface over large distances, acceptable loss"

The system vented the atmosphere on the rest of the fleet.

[+212402 Soul adquired]

"Sufficient soul acquired, assistance from 'immortality serum nanites' required, being deep interface"

The body of Alexander began to disintegrate as more and more light coalesced into him from all directions, replacing skin and bones, muscles and nerve tissue with better and better alternatives using the biology of the void beast.

The blood of Alexander burned as it was replaced with a golden ichor. His skin turned pale and his eyes a royal purple, like amethysts, and his hair lost all color, turning a silvery white color.

From his back, 3 pairs of pristine white wings, 6 in total, materialized and covered his nude body.

On his head, an amethyst halo manifested, floating on top of his head and looking like a crystalline crown.

Alexander's once-handsome face had softened and his entire body had become younger, reaching the pinnacle of beauty; when dressed appropriately, he could easily deceive numerous men.

"Sacrifice needed to return to reality, not enough cultivation to return to realspace without permanent loss..."

[Calculating...]

"Costs acceptable"

[Massive loss of soul power required...]

[Costs reasonable, action required]

With a wave of his hand, the system opened a rift in the void. The opening grew large enough to let the fleet pass through, and with a similar wave of the hand, the ships shot through the rift into realspace.

The wings and halo dissipated as the body of alexander stopped moving and fell to the floor.

The rift then closed before any void beast got any ideas.

---

I woke up in a scene from hell, first; I had no clothes, they somehow disappeared, second the bridge is covered in blood and everyone is dead.

There is another thing, and that is how strange my body feels right now, stronger in every aspect, even with the lights turned off. I can clearly see with a quality like never before.

My hair changed color, and my manly muscles disappeared. The shape of my body is also different somehow.

It is not impossible for this to happen with the technology of the federation, but in this situation it really is impossible, no one could have grabbed me and changed my body for no reason, this kind of thing takes a long time to happen, so the best explanation is to stop thinking about it and investigate later.

First, I need to get power up on the ship. The emergency reactors must have shut down too, but they are close to the bride in case of emergencies, and their activation protocols are completely manual in case of something like this.

With a last look at the bridge, I come to the doors and open them manually, as they have no power to open automatically.

I begin my walk to the emergency power room. It is only 400 meters away, well... I better get there fast in case of something is happening outside.

- A few minutes later -

I discovered I can run quite fast now, and I don't get tired at all. The strange thing that happened to my body must cause this, too.

Anyways, the emergency reactor is offline and I need to flip a bunch of levers and press a bunch of buttons too, in the correct order, of course. I designed this ship, after all, and I know all of its functions.

When I finished pressing the last button and flipped the last leaver, the reactor came to life, the lights, well, lighting up, and the sound of drones going from one place to another easy to hear with no other sound on the ship.

It is actually quite strange that I haven't found anyone on the way here, not that this control room is in a critical place, but the ship is quite big, with over 12000 crewmembers, to provide the best rotation of crew, so that the crew is always fresh and to have enough crew to fight off boarders if that ever actually happens.

It is strange that I have found no one on the way here. It would be less strange if there was blood or bodies somewhere, but it is empty, and that doesn't give good vives.

My return to the bridge was no less unnerving, the only thing I ever saw being cleaning drones coming and going from the bridge to the vents the drones use for more efficient transportation.

When I eventually returned to the bridge, I saw that the drones had cleaned most of the blood and the corpses were carried to cold storage so that they may be revived at a later date.

That's right, as long as the brain is not damaged much, the body can be revived, and in most cases, it is successful. I don't dare to hope much, though; we passed the void between realities and that place is corrosive to real matter, so their insides must be half melted. If nothing can be made, they can be buried later.

I seat myself and open the console in front to inspect the damage the ship suffered.

Structural integrity is at 92%, close to no damage to the support pylons holding the ship together, exterior hull suffered minor damage, nothing that a few repair drones can't fix, the photonic circuits around the ship are damaged in some areas, particularly around the primary reactor, which is offline and not sending any signals, worrying...

Less than half secondary reactors around the ship are operational, 19 are offline and won't be able to activate quickly. The remaining 5 reactors can be activated within a few minutes after the capacitors store enough power for the activation.

The offline reactors are misaligned and need maintenance, that or we risk breaking the reactors or, even worse, causing an explosion.

The 5 remaining reactors can be reactivated. There is nothing wrong with them, but it will take a few minutes for the capacitors to store power from the emergency reactor.

The main engines are intact, surprisingly; the vectoring engines have received some light damage, which can be repaired by drones in a short time.

Sensors and communication equipment have received the most damage, being the most fragile components. Thankfully, there are many replacements all over the ship, so no loss of functionality happened.

All point defense arrays are operational, other weapons beside the main cannon are operational too.

There are no life signs on the ship, which is strange.

Before taking any action, I used the sensors to scan the system, knowing our location is very important to continued survival.

A surface scan was performed, and the location was found. We were on earth; a deeper scan was done next to ensure we didn't return to a destroyed earth, or that there were alien vessels present.

"What?" When the scan returned, I could only look in confusion at the information.

There were no signals coming from earth, or anywhere else in the system for that matter. The clock that uses the movement of the stars to calculate the year was saying we were thousands of years in the past, at least 20 thousand years.

"This can't be right...?" I was flabbergasted at that.

My body becoming strange, the crew of the ship disappearing, and now we have traveled back in time.

The consequences of going into the void are becoming apparent now, with strange and mysterious things happening for no apparent reason.

For now, we can postpone investigating this. There are more important things happening, like the ship approaching earth, and not slowly.

If nothing changes in a few hours, we will crash into the planet and cause major damage. As we are a gigantic ship made out of very dense materials, at worst we will pierce the surface and be buried kilometers below the earth, causing a blast that level hundreds of kilometers.

The reason this is not considered as a weapon of war is that ships or objects of this size are easy to shoot down with anti-asteroid cannons, when they don't try to evade that is.

And population centers won't be damaged because they are behind very powerful shields, unless you do a direct impact.

But planets have more than one population center, and if you can waste ships of this power doing this, then you could use your resources to do more logical things.

While thinking, I already started scanning the ships around my own, and their state was the same, if not worse, of the 300+ ships remaining. The only one with power was the one I was at.

Seeing no other option, as the ships weren't responding to my signals, I was forced to send drones to take command of the ships.

It took a few minutes, but ships were starting to come online on emergency power around me, and the secondary reactors that could be activated were being activated.

Ships larger than destroyers aren't supposed to land on planets, but they can, on emergencies. They will need the help of tugs or other ships with tractor beams to leave the planet later.

My mind was running at full speed, trying to make a plan, something.

The ships are going too fast for them to stop before entering the atmosphere, at which point the largest ships will be forced to land.

If I used the smaller ships as tugs, we could have half the fleet in orbit, but without any space station or shipyard to dock at, they will just be left orbiting earth without any way to defend themselves.

VI is incredibly incompetent against organic commanders, it has been proven time and time again, so if an alien fleet appears I will be forced to self destruct the fleet or risk capture.

The only real way to do this is to hide the fleet somewhere on earth. The atmosphere will hide the ships to low-level scans and cloaking technology can be built in the future with the limited manufacturing capacity of the fleet.

The frigates and destroyers can be used to mine asteroids, as they can escape the planet without problem, while the rest of the fleet hides on earth and conserves strength.

No human alive was found in the entire fleet. They were all dead, like they suffered a sudden heart attack or something. Autopsies will have to be made.

I am the only living thing on this fleet right now.

This will be horrible for my mental health. I can feel it, although I am used to being alone in a laboratory, so time will tell.

***

End of second chapter.

2179 words in total.

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