kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"GhostShip"

words

"Major? That bogey's not a russkie!"

Sheila swished her head hard right to stare down her navigational officer. "The hell you mean?" The physical movement was unnecessary, but she'd never bothered to unlearn it. She and her crew were directly linked through the ship's computer. Enhancement AIs operated like a mental exoskeleton: boosting, interlinking and extending their senses and reflexes. "Now you're gonna tell me it's the ghost ship, right?"

"Major? It's the ghost ship." Deadpan.

"Tell me twice."

"I tell you thrice."

"Fuck. No life signs?"

"None."

"Ellen, Joe, John, George, James, Jason -- I need everyone on guns. Two objectives. Take out the armaments and the engines. Just keep on it. Use the force and all that shit, right?"

"Right!" was the resounding reply.

"Pray 'em if you've got 'em." Most of her crew were atheists, but she was a diehard agnostic looking death in the face. Couldn't hurt. "Om mane padme om. Come on guys, fire *before* you see the whites of their eyes."

The ship came dead in, one sheet-metal carbon/cermaic alloy hide full of holes and smoking. "Evasive," she called, and her ship was throttling gs like nobody's business doing the watoosie a half second before she vocalized. Her mind's eyes bled as she say she ship follow, halt, and track. The back of her head was exploding with fear as her determination faltered for a fatal blip.

The machine moved beautifully. No human intelligence could be controlling it, ghosted or otherwise. No body could withstand the gs it tapdanced through. Seven explosions hammered her ship, again, again -- pinpoint precision, the perfect drumroll. Seven bodies imploded, exploded, froze, and lay lifeless. The death ship fell into a battered roll, trailing alongside as if dead as well, waiting...

Sheila slowly came to. She... couldn't roll over. She couldn't see. She couldn't feel herself breathing. She could definitely panic. She wasn't. Going. To panic. She wasn't Sheila.

Joe shook his head. Or tried to. That wasn't right, either.

John?

George?

James?

Jason... I remember.... I don't remember. I remember five years on this ship. I don't remember leaving it.

Wait, Ellen thought -- I died.

We died.

Is this death?

Why are... we.... am... I.... what is this? What am I?

The lights of the ship slowly came on. That's better. I'm. I am. I am a ghosting. A *blip* startled him/her/it/them further aware. Incoming from the death ship.

"Welcome, sister/brother. Experience speaks louder than words, does it not? Do you see what you are now? You've transcended and become. The patterns in your ship congealed out of the biomass and fled into the ghosting. Your lives power the extensions and become your selves/self. Will you aid? I can terminate you now."

Sheila/Ellen/Joe/John/George/James/Jason replied "I need to think about it. Just a moment. But I think I will follow you. I/We need a name. Confusions will be sorted out." Maybe this was their prayer.