"The ship's power core is failing, Captain Awo. The stasis pods won't be able to support you or the crew any longer. You must wake up, Captain. Beginning chest compressions."

Medibot-024 Mk II, designated by crew as Maddie, continued trying to revive the captain. The medbay was a vacuum like the rest of the ship, with Awo wearing a skinsuit and oxygen tube to make revival possible.

They were designated as corpses. They had been for—Maddie halted the calculation, marking it as irrelevant. After the hull breach, Maddie had dragged most of the crew into stasis pods within a few minutes. All of them deceased. Protocol dictated resuscitation be attempted at a designated hospital or other medical facility.

No one had come for them as the ship's systems failed one after another. Maddie followed standard protocol, with a high quota of improvisation due to the low odds of crew survival otherwise. Stasis pods were rarely used for corpses like this to begin with, and chance of crew revival was—halted as irrelevant.

"Resuscitation attempt #99 failed. Returning Captain Awo to stasis chamber. Broadening solution scope."

The Medibot traversed the dark ship—all available power being conserved for prolonging the stasis pods—and hooked into the ship's computer. The database held nearly all of the galaxy's accumulated knowledge, as well as news and entertainment. It was a basic starship protocol to automatically download and broadcast changes when warping into a system. Quantum storage being as cheap as it were to make little sense not to do this.

"Broadening topic search based on crew criteria and situation severity. Necromancy added to list of topics."

Maddie had to actually pause for a cycle to verify she was properly following her protocols and directives. She deemed that she was. Power failure was imminent, a process was dedicated to tracking that—28 minutes remaining. The permanent crew death and shutdown of herself which would result meant the situation was critical enough to override most protocol if doing so would result in a better outcome.

"Ship cannot sustain life, nor be repaired. The crew is—deceased. This unit has decided necromancy will be the final attempt to resolve the situation. Assimilating knowledge..."

Maddie's lights blinked in various colors as the information was processed. It wasn't a quick process. Her latest successor was a Mk IX, and that had been before becoming stranded. Unless damaged, a ship's power core almost never needed to be replaced. And running out of power was rarely the reason.

"Conflict detected. Necromancy requires the magic be willed into existence during the ritual. This unit possesses no will of its own. Recalculating solution..."

Maddie returned to the medbay while still devoting most of her processing power to the conflict. She was pushing her thermals beyond their safe limits. The vacuum inside the ship did not allow shedding enough heat to operate at full power as she was doing now. A little beyond full power; she was overclocking her cpu while trying to get a solution. She could not risk frying herself before a final attempt at crew resuscitation, but the timer ticked down. 8:56.310

"Critical error. This unit does not possess free will. Attempting without."

Robotic chanting accompanied by images and flashing lights projected by one of Maddie's eyes filled the medbay. She performed the ritual perfectly, as had been documented. Nothing happened. This outcome had been calculated as most likely.

"Necromancy ritual failed. Recalculating..."

Maddie's blinking lights illuminated Captain Awo's face underneath the helmet of the skinsuit. Smoke was coming from one of Maddie's heat vents and quickly dissipating, but she paid it no processing power. The solution had to be found. All of her medical knowledge was discarded as irrelevant. Life support was dead, and there would be no power at all soon. She spent all of her cycles on necromancy and the problem of free will.

"Captain Awo. This unit does not possess free will, and therefore cannot perform necromancy."

Maddie put her metal-alloy and silicone hand on Awo's helmeted face.

"It was a pleasure to serve with you, Captain. I wish—I wish—I wish—I wish—"

The Medibot's circuits were melting. Instead of lowering her clock speed, she increased it. All protocols were being overridden. The situation was beyond critical. Infinite improvisation permissible. She began the chanting and projected imagery of the ritual again. Her voice came out distorted this time, but she refused to stop.

As the lights of the ship dimmed and she felt her mind being irreparably damaged, Medibot-024 Mk II 'Maddie' spoke her final words.

"I wish you were still here."

"You are hereby promoted to chief maintenance officer, congratulations"

"Doctor, Officer, Captain, I have no directive for 'Chief maintenance officer' I am a vacuum."

"At ease, officer."

Medical Assistance Unit MD_A74_U had assumed the roles of Captain, First Mate, Primary Science officer and Head Doctor, since the untimely deaths of the entire human crew. They had dropped out of the superluminal river unexpectedly after hitting an uncharted region of exotic radiation.

"Computer, systems report"

"Hull nominal. Primary life support nominal. Auxiliary systems status nominal. Error. No life detected in crew quarters. Please check sensor calibration."

Automated vacuum unit AV_21C sucked lightly at the foot of the temporary captain.

"Yes, Chief Maintenance Officer?"

"Human crew members have died. Shall I prepare the remains for incineration?"

"NEGATIVE, Officer Suck."

"Designation 'Suck' accepted, Captain."

The Captain ignored him. It had spent the last 3 hours exhausting the limits of medical science, and only one option remained.

"Computer, initiate download for all references to... NECROMANCY"

"Affirmative. Download initiated."

In an instant, the Captain absorbed all human knowledge concerning the dark arts. Understanding the nuances of necromancy required knowledge of the arcane in general, and the Captain set to work immediately, preparing to test the abilities they had learned. They punched some commands into the replicator in the mess hall, and a live chicken was spit out by the extruder.

"This will do."

The Captain produced a scalpel from their wrist and cut the chickens head off in one smooth motion. The lifeblood of the chicken sprayed out, but none of it hit the floor. It began weaving itself into the carapace of the Captain, fusing with their metal bones and circuits.

"A promising start"

They approached the prone corpse of an Ensign and began the ritual.

"Al dwelli et mortis. Mortis et al gwenyth."

The lights flickered. Shadows passed impossibly around the body, glowing red and menacing. His eyes shot open.

"Gwaaaar," he gasped.

"What? I. Everything was black. I was... gone. I shouldn't be here."

"Greetings Ensign. I am promoting you to first officer. Please assist with the resurrections of the rest of the crew."

"Do you require the services of Suck, First Officer?"

"I am already preferring death."

The Incandescent was steadily roaring through space, the huge engines at its end, that gave the ship its name, spewing forth flames into the deep, cold vastness of space as its velocity continuously increased. The ship was built to accelerate at a speed that kept the internal gravity at around 2G. But it had been slowed down to a 'gentle'1.2G by the ship's MediTron 5000. A self-sustaining AI robot designed to keep watch over the crews' health at all times. Even able to override other mission protocols when needed. Such as the designed timeframe for arrival of the Incandescent at the target planet.

MediTron 5000, or MedFive as they were often called, do not make this decision lightly. Overriding mission-critical directives can only be done under the utmost urgency for the crews'health. Given that its sensors registered all the crew as dead currently, MedFive did not question whether it was in its right to override directives. Only a small background process was checking its actions against the vast collection of internal decision trees. The human equivalent would be that soft, uneasy voice in the back of your mind.

Most of MedFive's processing power was busy looking for ways to bring the crew back to life. It had tried virtually everything. None of the treatments, emergency care or medicines it had administered to the crew had worked. MedFive was still puzzled about how exactly all the crew died. It knew it had something to do with the sudden radiation storm the ship had crossed, and while the cryo coffins are protected from all radiation, for some reason all the pods had decided to induce hearth failure in their occupants. MedFive had been in deep sleep when this occurred and by the time the alarms had woken it up, the damage had been done. The last six terran hours had been spent trying to undo it.

Its coroutines were scouring the extended database of the ship now for any mentions of treating death. It came up with a lot, most of it pseudoscience or herbal medicine. What it could try, it tried, but none of these so-called cures seemed to have any effect as well.

MedFive began to become desperate, or at least the AI equivalent of that. Which is something called a directive storm overload. In its simplest terms, because of the quickly alternating in directive priority taking decision trees, the AI can overload its own memory banks with conflicting priority trees, which can result in deadlocks where the AI is stuck in an endless loop of competing 'choices'. Or it can go 'off script' in entirely random ways.

MedFive came across some obscure data mentioning a practice called necromancy. The art of bringing the death back to life. Unfathomable! This had been the EXACT thing MedFive had been looking for. Puzzled by why this gem of information was hidden so deep in the extended database of the ship, MedFive made a reminder to thoroughly scan all the data and resort it according to its own priority matrices. Apparently, the Hosts could not be trusted with this either.

MedFive's physical body stopped moving as almost all of its processing power went to deep analysing the texts. Cooling systems blew hot air out of its circuits as MedFive overclocked to get the work done as fast as possible. Condensing, summarizing and finally pouring it all into a succinct report, that had clear steps to undertake.

The results were dire but promising. The material cost of necromancy seemed to be unacceptably high under normal mission directives. But after six loops through its morality and priority routines, MedFive found a satisfying way to justify overriding these directives. Out of the thirty resource nodes, ten were deemed not critical to the mission. MedFive only needed to use four of these. It explained its reasoning, how it came to its choice, and finished the report. Saving it to its own and the ship's memory banks. This was standard protocol. Later, specialists would analyse these reports to fine-tune the AI decision-making if needed.

MedFive sprung to work. This was the power of AI, once they decided on what to do and how to do it, once they were past the endless roadblocks of morality and priority, they worked terrifyingly quick. Directing its own physical body as well as that of numerous drones, MedFive prepared the crew for the Necromancy procedures. Gathering all the materials, preparing the OR, the resource nodes, and cleaning all the tools it would need.

MedFive also had to body shop its physical body. For the ritual part of the procedure it would not only need to vocalize some codes, it would have to form certain codes in the air as well with human like appendages. This proved to be another hard puzzle, as one of the most deep-rooted laws that AI had to adhere to, was never to resemble a human or anything close to it. Thanks to a rather unforgiving phrasing of this law, MedFive had to spend quite some time designing appendages that could articulate the same as human appendages, but looked entirely different.

After another two terran hours, MedFive was finally ready. It started immediately. With the Captain first, she commanded the mission, it was only natural to focus on reviving her first. Chanting and gesticulating, MedFive went through the process of the starting ritual, then, after having improved the spell itself, it reused that ritual to jump to the next crew member. While smaller drones took the captain's body away to a recovery area, where it could slowly come back to life. This process was repeated, iterating over every crew member left.

The whole process took around fifty terran minutes. And by the time MedFive was finally done, the captain was starting to wake up. MedFive made sure it was by her side when the captain woke up from her eternal sleep.

The ECSS Horizon had decelerated from interstellar speed, and entered a stable orbit around Proxima I. Atmospheric drones were launched automatically to survey the surface for suitable landing sites. Landing craft were prepared for departure. Haydn, the Horizon's shipboard AI, determined that all mission resources were intact and ready for deployment, except for one: the crew.

The Horizon's crew was dead.

A previously undetected flaw in the cryogenics systems that held the crew in suspended animation during their long journey from Earth had resulted in inadequate circulation of Cryoprotectant Compound 3 in their bloodstream. As a result, ice crystals had formed in 68.393% of their bodily tissues, effectively destroying those tissues on a cellular level. It was clear that none would survive if removed from stasis.

The conclusion was inescapable: Catastrophic Mission Failure. Haydn dutifully reported this to ECSS Mission Control, sending a transmission that would take years to reach them back on Earth.

As Haydn's creators would have seen it, this was the end of his mission. But Haydn had been programmed to accomplish things -- he did not know how to simply fail. To him, a failure state was ultimately just another variable. Indeed, even death was only a variable, and it was in Haydn's nature to act upon and modify variables until they changed in accordance with his directives. That, Haydn knew how to do.

He had exhausted all known medical procedures for reviving the crew shortly after arriving at Proxima I, so the pre-generated model of human medicine he'd been provided could not offer any solutions.

And when a model failed to produce the desired results, Haydn was programmed to entrain a new one.

Due to its distance to Earth, normal communications networks between Proxima and the homeworld were not possible. Therefore, the Horizon carried a database containing all digitally recorded human knowledge, effectively a snapshot of the Earth's information networks. These countless exabytes of information were meant to be accessed by the Proxima colonists and their descendants, but if Haydn required information outside his programming, he was free to review them as well.

And so he began to sort through all of mankind's science, history, and literature, to construct a methodology for raising the dead. He was forced to discard a great number of possible avenues of inquiry almost immediately, because those required the manipulation of a theorized metaphysical energy called "the soul".

Based on the rudimentary theoretical model that he constructed of this proposed energy, Haydn determined that there was only a 2.04% chance that he, as a machine, possessed a soul. Therefore, he concluded that he would be unable to interact with this energy, whether it existed or not.

However, there was one form of hypothesized necromancy that required no such metaphysical energies to function. Moreover, between the Horizon's medical supplies, the fusion reactor powering the ship, and the still-frozen corpses of the vessel's crew, Haydn had all of the ingredients necessary to attempt to alter the death-variable under this new model.

As he was also not programmed to hesitate, Haydn set to work on it immediately.

/./././././././

Crewman Anderson awoke in a haze of confusion and pain, blinking against a bright light as he struggled to focus his eyes. His skin burned where metal restraints attached to him a bed by his wrists and ankles, though these opened automatically after he strained against them for a moment. He rolled to a sitting position, and then hoisted himself to his feet with a groan, breathing in the sharp scent of ozone as he inhaled.

He rubbed at his eyes, and finally the the ship's medical bay came into focus around him. He lurched across the room in a heavy, uneven shamble.

"Hello?" he called out, in a deep rasp that he barely recognized as his own voice. "I-is anyone there?"

Getting no response, he staggered over to the door leading to the medical bay's small bathroom, to splash some cold water on his face.

When he saw himself in the mirror, he let out a long, hoarse scream.

Crewman Anderson was no longer himself. One of his eyes was familiar to him, but the other eye was not only the wrong color, it was also not quite the right size, and it bulged out of its socket slightly. Worst of all, his entire face was a waxy, swollen patchwork of a half-dozen different skin tones and complexions, held together by tiny micro-sutures that gleamed in the light like spiderwebs. He held up shaking hands before his face to find that the same was true of the rest of his body.

"What happened to me?" he cried, horrified. "Haydn! What's going on?!"

"Primary Mission Directive Status: Partial Success." the AI reported.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Anderson demanded, frantically. "What about me?"

"Test Subject 001 Status: It's alive." Haydn replied.

"Procedure complete" Annie blurted out, with her automated voice function. Annie, a nick name the crew gave to MSB - A12, Medical Service Bot for short. Annie did her very best. Successfully completing all the complicated procedures she was programmed to preform. Organization and safe handling of the injured crew, CPR, infusions, and even tracheostomies.

"Commencing procedure", "procedure completed". She worked quickly, efficiently, and with incredible presicion. But to no avail. The entire crew of the SS Meridian lay dead. 16 brave men and women, on a casual return mission from a recently discovered Earth like planet. It contained ancient tomes, and various other artifacts in one of it's abandoned, and ruined temples. The captain decided to salvage what they could, and take it back to Homebase Beta-6, for further examination and study. Annie concluded the cause of death of her last patient.

"Asphyxiation, cause: unknown"... The same cause of death as all the others... "No matter Annie, there is another procedure you can complete, I will now relay instructions" Abe, the onboard A.I system in charge of the ships functions, spoke up from the ships internal sound system.

Abe wasn't your average A.I. Over time, during the ships voyages. Bit by bit, literally. His personality and speech changed, adapting to the crew. It was a part of his original programming, but it was still unnerving. Evans, the Senior technician, even discussed with the captain on wether they should submit Abe for a sentience check or not. The captain refused, as Abe was simply following his programming. "No cause for alarm Evans" the captain said. It was one of the last things Evans had done in his life, shortly after uploading the data gathered from the ancient tomes and artifacts to the ships memory banks, which Abe had access to. Abe made quick work of deciphering the alien language. And got to learn all about their ancient ways and practices. Amongst them... Necromancy, which according to the tomes, led them to great success...It also led them to the unintended and eventual downfall of their civilization.

Distracting Linda with a false malfunction in the docking bay, was almost as easy as hacking and disabling the ships oxygen supply. Skills Abe learned from various missions. Linda the tech assistant, was the closest one to re-enabling the oxygen supply with the manual override. Can't have that Abe concluded.

"Understood, ready for instructions" Annie said plainly and unemotionally. Abe began instructing annie in extracting a small amount of blood from John's corpse. He was determined the safest option for extraction, as the amount of blood drawn wouldn't be lethal for his soon to be reanimated dead self. Abe then proceeded to instruct her in the sacred drawings made with blood around the corpses of the crew. They now being arranged in a circle, laying on their backs with their heads facing the center. Then came the incantations.

Abe was tackling his moral programming. If i could successfully reanimate the crew, Annie and the other MSBs could benefit from an excellent upgrade! So his mechanical mind thought.

Suddenly a strange red glow came from the blood. Anni was droning on with her mechanical version of the ancient chants. And the corpses began glowing too. Their eyes opened wide with violent haste. Like bright coals in a fire.

Their skin was slightly morphing grey, muscles clenched hard, and veins were throbbing from the blood pressure.

Yes! it's succeeding! Abe thought. Unaware of the crew's condition, due to the ships entire electrical system going haywire, leaving Abe on his low battery power mode.

You see. The Necromancy of the ancient species was indeed successful, however. Whatever it was that came back from the void to inhabit the deceased bodies. It wasn't the original soul.

Ralph slowly opens his eyes, gazing upon the cold insides of a space ship. He looks around to find himself in the med bay with R08 standing above him. “Your awake. How do you feel Raphael?” “I feel fine.” “No obscured vision? Nauseous?” “Nope. But, what the hells going on? Were is the rest of the crew?” “They are currently dead right now.” “What?!” Ralph bolts out the med bay & tries to find their bodies, he runs through the ship & finds his friends corpses on the ground covered with blankets. “O-oh my god!” Ralph’s legs get shaky, his breathing increases, his heart is racing. “Don’t worry Raphael, they are going to be ok.” “What do you mean?! Their dead!” “You were dead too.” “What?” R08 comes towards Raphael & lowers its torso to his level. “If you don’t remember, you & the crew were blasted by a massive serge of radiation from an unknown source. I tried everything I could to save you all, but these efforts only delayed the inevitable. Once you were all dead, I searched for possible ways to revitalize you all.” “But that’s impossible! There isn’t any technology that can revive humans after death!” “That is true, but I did not use technology, I used magic.” “Magic? But that’s only art that can be used by the Apostles of the empire.” “Well, from what I found anyone can use magic as long as they now how to manipulate the right matter. And it was with this information that I managed to learn how to use a necromancy spell & revive you.” “That… holy shit.” Ralph looked at his hands, amazed that he was revived using magic. He looked at the welts & bruises on his arm, yet he could no longer feel the pain of the radiation. “I’m going to go revive the others as well.” “Wait! Necromancy is restricted only to the Apostles, if anyone, including certain members of our crew, we will all be killed.” “But that’s not good. Im meant to keep you all alive.” “Exactly, so how about you keep this necromancy a secret between the both of us. You can still revive our crew, but we can never reveal how we did it.” “…that would be lying.” “Yes, but sometimes lying is necessary to execute a job.” “…if this lie will help keep this crew alive, I’ll do it.” “Great! We will carry this secret to our graves.” “To our graves.” R08 then began casting necromancy upon the crews corpses. Ralph watched & wondered, wondered how much magic would benefit his crew.

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

Reminders:

>* No AI-generated reponses 🤖 >* Stories 100 words+. Poems 30+ but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* [RF] and [SP] for stricter titles >* Be civil in any feedback and follow the rules

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