Chapter 25:
The Villainess of Caerleon
I assumed the title of interim captain of Nightwing after I recovered. There was no fanfare or announcement. It was more embarrassing than anything. Ulysses had asked that Nightwing undergo trial runs to prepare for the next mission. When we all stood before the bridge, nobody took the captain’s seat. All eyes fell on me.
“Well don’t all just nominate yourselves at once,” I grumbled. “Just a reminder, you guys do know I’m the newest member of the crew right?”
“Technically,” Stephen answered, “those engineers are–”
“You know what I mean. Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, at least vote on it?”
“We did hold a vote,” Vladimir replied. “You were voted in unanimously.”
“So none of you thought Emiko might perform better in this role?”
“Look,” Stephen said. “You spent a lot of time telling us about how we could’ve been doing something different. Now’s your chance. We’ll just scapegoat and blame you if anything goes wrong.”
“Really reassuring, Stephen.”
“He’s joking,” Emiko said. “We’re all nervous. Let’s take it slow.”
I sank into Diane’s seat. The mantle of responsibility fell upon me. And no, it wasn’t the micro gravity field generated by the chair. It felt like the digital facade of academic combat simulators had been peeled away. Everyone on the bridge was a life I now held in my hands, not specks of light dancing about in a game room.
And it wasn’t just their lives. Maybe more importantly, it was the trust of everyone aboard. It was Nightwing’s reputation. One wondered given these stakes why I was thrust into this seat in the first place, with no questions asked. Emiko, I perhaps understood, but why had Vladimir and Stephen caved so quickly?
How would Diane have managed, I pondered.
“Fine. Let’s warm up,” I took a deep breath. “Stephen, stir the cryotanks and reheat the munitions. Vlad, fire up engine core number one to fifty percent.”
“What about the shields?” Vladimir asked. “You’re short on power.”
“Noted. Let’s just get her going first,” I answered. “Emiko, can you prepare a short jump? From here to the edge of the system.”
“It’s done.”
“The missile bays are cold, captain,” Stephen called. “I’ll need to reboot the system before you make the jump.”
“That’ll cause too much power draw,” Vladimir said. “The sequencing is off. You’re going to make a subspace entry and exit and come out with less than half of the ship’s functions online. Bad if we were in live combat.”
“What if we spin up the second engine then?” I asked. “Twenty five percent. Power up the shields and the missiles with it.”
“That could work…” Vladimir trailed off.
“Vlad,” I sighed. “I’m not asking what could work. I’m asking you to give me a rundown on the proper procedure. No two system starts are ever the same, but you need to help me get a feel for her. No one outside this bridge has ever worked with dual engines on a corvette before.”
“Right, right,” Vladimir murmured. “Sorry. I’m just–”
“–used to Diane knowing everything, I know,” I finished. “But if you haven’t noticed, everyone, she’s not here anymore.”
“We’re approaching the vector for our jump,” Emiko warned.
Nightwing cruised uneasily beneath the span of the Sunless Fleet. I suspected there were onlookers above us, watching us fumble through a simple flight, hoping that the ship’s best days were already behind her. I wondered if Ulysses was watching. What would he see when we performed in the shadow of our former captain? The ship cleared the fleet and flew into the open. Nightwing’s engines hummed to life.
“Captain–” Emiko started.
“Everyone. Just call me Elaine. Please.”
“Destination solution acquired,” she said. “Firing up the LH drive.”
“Vladimir?”
“Engine cores are up and running,” he replied. “We’re good to go.”
Then, Stephen asked the dreaded question.
“Are we doing this in Bridge Mode or not?” he said. “I vote yes.”
“I’m against it,” Vladimir protested. “We should run a few jumps without it. Give Elaine a proper tutorial.”
“That’s gonna eat up fuel and Ulysses hasn’t scheduled a pit stop,” Stephen argued. “The trial runs are costing us power as it is. I’m sorry, Elaine, but everyone’s being thrown into the deep end. We need to make the best of it.”
“Emiko?” I said. “What do you think?”
“I would like to agree with Vladimir,” she said. “But I concur with Stephen’s assessment. Nightwing needs to be combat ready as soon as possible. But more importantly Elaine, as captain, you need to make the final call. We can’t choose for you.”
The terminal beside the captain seat stared at me. My fingers hovered over it and the panel blinked to life. As if it had predicted my intentions, the terminal drew the outline of Diane’s tarot card on its surface. I traced my fingers around the card, detached it from the necklace, and set it face down on the screen. Frigid air filled the room.
“Bridge Mode,” I whispered.
Strong, asynchronous emotions of Nightwing’s crew rushed into me like a flood. These emotions all shared a theme. Anxiety. Wariness.
Does she know what she’s doing?
Will we even survive the test runs?
How could things have played out differently?
Questions swirled about and were lost in the ether amidst other nebulous and less distinguishable noise. The sheer volume of raw neural activity, however, exceeded anything in my previous experiences with the collective subconscious. Its size and density expanded until it became oppressive. I found myself unable to think or even identify myself in a sea of mental gibberish.
I realized this was what Diane had meant by the acceptable threshold for shared neural load. Ordinary crew members experienced Bridge Mode as I once had, as a stream of uninterrupted consciousness. But where did everything else go? Where were the haphazard meanderings, the excessive baggage? What about our doubts, hopes, worries, and dreams?
Diane had seen everything in our stead, had learned to siphon and process and disentangle information from the commingled cognition of her crew. She overloaded her own neural senses so that her crew could operate at their best. How she retained her sanity amidst this noise was beyond me.
I, on the other hand, to the surprise of no one, drowned in this impenetrable ocean, and the effect was immediate. The crew was crossed with looks of concern, of discomfort. The extraneous thoughts of everyone aboard was bleeding from my mind into the minds of others. Thoughts of worry. Thoughts of despair. They all gazed befuddled amongst each other and we all knew the reason why.
Bridge Mode was not Bridge Mode without Diane.
“Fuck it,” I winced. “Let’s push through. Emiko?”
“The destination solution is a little unstable,” she said. “But it should be safe. As long as the neural framework doesn’t decay further.”
“Then hit it.”
Nightwing dashed into subspace. Immediately something felt different about the maneuver. The whole of the bridge rocked back and forth as if an avalanche had crashed upon the hull.
“Don’t worry,” Emiko jumped in before anyone panicked. “Our entry corridor came in a little shallow. Stephen?”
“Her ass is gonna cook for a bit, but she’s been through worse.”
“Can we continue the routine?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Emiko replied. “I can’t process a viable connection intercept with all this noise.”
Damn it.
“Let’s wrap it up then.”
Nightwing decelerated at the edge of the star system, five seconds slower than expected. That didn’t sound like much time, but the corvette’s bread and butter was zipping about the battlefield, seamless transitions between normal and subspace. Botching a maneuver like this made Nightwing functionally useless. Replaceable even.
I knew we needed to go again, but the side effects of Bridge Mode, that nausea and stomach churning sensation, hit me while I was still in the captain’s seat.
“Let’s take a breather,” I gasped. “But we’ll need to go again in a few hours.”
I retreated to my quarters and spent the next forty five minutes bent over the toilet, experiencing the unpleasant repetition of my gag reflex setting off over and over again. Fortunately, I had not eaten anything all day, one of the few silver linings in a morning of failures.
About an hour into my retching, I was still doubled up in the bathroom when Emiko came knocking on my door.
“Can I come in?”
“I’m a little busy right now,” I groaned.
“Coming in then.”
I heard the doors to my quarter sliding open and the tap of Emiko’s boots on the bathroom tiles.
“How’d you get in?” I asked.
“You’re still in one of the basic crew quarters, remember?” she replied. “Upgrade to the captain’s room if you want some privacy.”
“After that performance, I’m not sure I’m up to the task.”
“Come on,” Emiko shook her head. “If someone walks in right now, they’re gonna assume you drank yourself into a stupor after failing your first test flight.”
“Do they even want me back in the captain’s chair?”
“They?” Emiko raised an eyebrow.
“Stephen and Vladimir.”
“Now don’t start with that,” she scolded. “Everyone knew it was going to be bad.”
“It’s not just bad,” I moaned. “It’s impossible. You should have seen the size of the neural cloud. It would take months, maybe even years, to learn how Diane filtered everything. We might not even have days, Emiko.”
“You’re not here to be Diane. You’re here to lead. If that means doing things differently from her, no one is going to question it.”
“I don’t know…”
“Worst thing that happens is the ship gets grounded while you get up to speed.”
I wasn’t sure if that was the worst thing that could happen, and Emiko probably didn’t believe so either, but she convinced me to return to the captain’s chair that day.
We ran through exercises all night. Vladimir and Stephen were patient as I started to get a handle for Nightwing’s power consumption and bottlenecks. Emiko offered ideas on how to deal with Bridge Mode’s daunting neural density.
“Maybe the problem is you think too much,” she suggested.
“What does that even mean?”
“The whole point of Bridge Mode is to streamline the disparate thoughts that we all share,” Emiko explained. “In fact, it's specifically designed for you to not think about most of the things coming out of our heads.”
“But how am I supposed to just not think?”
“I didn’t say it would be easy.”
I didn’t learn how to stop myself from thinking that night, but come morning, I was relieved that we had made progress. As the Sunless Fleet drifted on, Nightwing continued to circle around it.
“We’re clear,” Emiko said once we had weaved through another cloud of scouts and probes.
“Bridge Mode, off,” I heaved a great sigh. “That’s the last run, everyone.”
“Wanted to end on a good note?” Stephen grinned.
“Someone has to maintain morale on this ship,” I shrugged.
“I’m just happy we made progress at all,” he yawned.
I was happy too, but there was a deceptive nature to the improvements.
After spending several consecutive hours in Bridge Mode (and a handful of thirty minute rushes to the toilet), it occurred to me that there was a dip in the amount of activity I was consciously processing. Part of it was fatigue. The crew was getting tired, so they thought less.
But there were other factors. Verbal tics and habits, for instance. It sounded stupid, but upon seeing that Stephen bobbed his knees up and down, or that Vladimir kept slurring certain consonants while tired, there was a noticeable reduction in the thickness of the neural connection.
This made intuitive sense to me: learning more about my crewmates would allow me to see past their innocuous habits. But it was also disconcerting. How long had Diane known her crew? Years, probably. Would it take that same amount of time to reach enough of an understanding with the others to make Nightwing soar again?
The intercom blared.
I hated the timing of it. Everyone aboard Nightwing was tired. We desperately needed sleep. Ulysses knew this. He had sent us out in the first place, after all.
“Good morning,” the Pirate King’s voice boomed. “We have important issues to discuss.”
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