Synthesis - James Swallow [1]
“Incursion Event Detected”
Interrogative: Location?
Quadrant 79548/33/8754
Process: Evaluate threat.
Working…
Threat identity: Null incursion clade—Grade Six/Seven/indeterminate.
“Threat Condition ELEVATED”
Interrogative: Engage incursion affirmative/negative?
Energetic barrier: Impact [Multiple] [Directional] [In-creasing].
Drives: Standby.
Go to Status 2.
Offensive systems: Active [Firing] [Ineffective].
Working…
Process: Evaluate threat.
“Threat Condition CRITICAL”
++WARNING++ ++WARNING++ ++WARNING++
Energetic barrier: Collapsing [Imminent].
Systems: Damage [Ongoing].
Interrogative: Retreat possibility?
“% Negligible”
Energetic barrier: Inoperative.
Drives: Inoperative.
Process: Initiate core protection protocols.
“Attempting to Complete Function”
Working…
Working…
System Failure. System Failure. System Failure. System Failure. System Failure.
System Failure. System Failure. System Failure. System Failure. System Failure.
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ONE
Floating there, Melora Pazlar reached forward and carefully, delicately, put out the star with the cupping of her hand. The most gentle of radiances pushed back at her fingers, brushing lightly against her palm. She held it there for a moment, wondering about the shadow she was casting across a dozen worlds, the great darkness she had brought. If she wanted, she could have seen it for herself. A simple command, spoken aloud. A shift in viewpoint, down to the dusty surface of some nameless planetoid. Easy.
“The thing about this place is,” said a voice, “you could let working in here go to your head.”
Melora grinned and let the sun go, falling backward, dropping away. She made herself turn in midair, the spherical walls of Titan’s stellar cartography lab ranged out around her, and found Christine Vale looking up at her from the control podium. “It’s been said,” she noted. “Sometimes it is easy to lose yourself in the scale of things.”
Vale brushed a stray thread of hair back over her ear, unconsciously straightening a recently added gunmetalsilver highlight amid the auburn bangs. She glanced around. “Like looking the universe in the eye, right?”
“That’s why we’re out here.” Melora drifted gently down to the same level as the commander—it was a subtle thing, but she had always thought it bad form to look down on a senior officer—and she floated closer to the podium. The small catwalk and open operations pulpit were the only sections of the chamber given over to Earthstandard gravity. The rest of the room replicated the microgravity environment that Melora had known growing up on Gemworld. Her tolerance for the so-called standardg setting deployed aboard most ships of the line was poor, and when she wasn’t floating here, a restrictive contragravity suit was required to prevent the stresses overwhelming her body. The technology was leaps and bounds beyond the powered chair or exoframes she had used in the past but still not enough to tempt her outside the lab without due discomfort.
Holographic projection grids hidden inside the walls threw out scaled images of stars, nebulae, and all manner of other astral phenomena, filling the lab with its own tiny universe. It was a great improvement on the earlier versions of the imaging system installed on the old Galaxy class ships, flat-screen renditions replaced by this interpretation of the interstellar deeps. She gave Vale a smile. “Want to step up?”
The other woman folded her arms. “Nah. I’ll stick to solid ground for the moment.” She refused with a half-grin, as if on some level she was hoping that Melora would try to convince her otherwise. But then the moment passed, and Vale tap-tapped on the console before her. “You’ve got something interesting for us?”
The ghostly pane of a control interface followed Melora as she moved, always staying within arm’s reach, and now she reached for it, nodding. “I’m starting to think we might need a new scale of defining things, Commander.