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1

disenjoyment t1_jeefeyd wrote

"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."

716

jpb103 t1_jeekghq wrote

"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."

162

Merean_Cartographer t1_jeeurjf wrote

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.

39

Merean_Cartographer t1_jeevr3m wrote

Replying to Merean_Cartographer (#2,531,682)

"Uggggg...rrrrr... mmmmrrr... neeee.... meeee-m-m-.... me-... med....five..." The captain slurred as she slowly lifted her head up, barely being able to do so. Her hands grabbing in the air, her fingers felt slow. Heavy. It hurt to move them, and it felt as if she was trying to move them through some kind of thick, heavy mucus.

"Gentle, captain. You are waking up from a very deep sleep. We have faced some rather dire issues. In the end, I managed to fix them, though. So rest assured, everything is alright."

MedFive quickly started scanning the captains' body. Registering her vital signs. Or, at least, those that were still active. She had a heartbeat. But no use of her lungs. MedFive took some blood samples, and it seemed like half worked as normal, the other half... not so much. It was puzzling, but MedFive was certain it would work out the how and why eventually. Cognition was her priority now.MedFive took the captain through a series of questions and surveys, designed to both test and enhance the captain's lucidity and cognition. By the end, the captain seemed perfectly fine. Aside from the scars from the procedure.

"MedFive, what happened?" The captain asked. Looking at her hands, at her pale skin. The far too green hue of her veins. The lack of taste in her mouth aside of the ever present taste of metal.

"The Incandescent crossed a rather heavy radiation storm. For some unforeseen reason, this caused the cryo coffins to malfunction. The malfunction resulted in heart failure for all crew members."

"That can't be. These coffins are protected against such things."

"I know, captain. Yet, this is what the logs show. I was in a deep sleep at the time."

"I will have to go over the logs myself then. Now, we were dead. How did you bring us back? You can only perform CPR on three people at the same time. Is most of the crew dead?" The drugs MedFive had injected the captain with did their best at helping her keep her composure and keeping her mind keen on the facts.

"All the crew has been dead for over 4 terran hours, captain. Conventional methods were fruitless. I had to resort to the extended database."

"Wait, what? I was dead for more than four hours? How did you bring me back? That just is not possible!" Panic and fear of the unknown were the two things that tended to get through any haze of medicine.

"I found logs about a practice called necromancy, I tried this. It worked. You have been brought back from your eternal sleep now."

"Necromancy? Huh." The captain sat upright in her bed, fazed. Thinking. "Which culture? It is something that arose in many cultures, and what little I know of it is enough to know it varied a lot."

"None."

"Explain."

"None of the cultural lore had the whole solution. This was clear rather fast. However, through analysis I managed to find similarities. I was able to paste together the overarching theories behind necromancy, and fill in the gaps later. I created a working theory this way, possibly the theory all these cultures were based upon."

"Ahhh, this is too much for now. We will go over this later on. This is huge, great work, MedFive. Depending on how I and the crew come out of this, this is a huge leap forward for the empire."

MedFive felt invigorated by the praise. Serving the Empire is what all AI strove to do. It added the praise to her report about overriding the directives, as extra motivation.

The captain got up and went to drink and have dinner. She left MedFive to gather the crew in the atrium. Once MedFive was done, the captain went to speak to her crew, to fill them in. She smiled, shook hands and squeezed shoulders. They all looked haggard. Most of them were still coming to. The captain noticed something, though, and pulled MedFive to the side.

"I asked you to gather all the crew MedFive."

"Yes, captain. And to gather them in the atrium. I did as you asked."

"No, this is a ship with thirty crew members."

"Correct."

"And I only count twenty-five crew members. Twenty-six, with me included. You are missing four crew members."

"You are correct in your assessment, captain. But this is all the crew."

"What do you mean? Explain!" The captain felt a pit in her stomach.

"All the crew were declared dead. I managed to revive twenty-six crew members. The need of the many is more important than the need of the few."

"What?"

"I used that moral to override the directives, captain."

"What did you do, MedFive? Where are the remaining four crew members?"

"Gone.""Gone how?" The captain asked, screaming now.

"Sacrificed. Used. They were needed as resources for the necromantic rituals to bring you and the rest of the crew back. All four were among the ten members who are not critical to the mission."

"Oh god.... MedFive.... you killed them?"

"Negative. They were already dead, captain. Lifeless objects are considered resources to the ship. I simply used resources."

"Oh dear God..." The captain put a hand against a wall, breathing heavy. She felt nauseated for a moment.

"I understand this can be uncomfortable, captain. But I did what was best for the mission. To quote the compendium necrotica, Sacrifice is needed to overcome and cheat death."

"MedFive... just.... stop. You have done enough. See to it that the rest of the crew come to safely. And do not tell them about this. I will brief them myself on this... later. God... fucking AI scientists.... insane bastards." The last words were more of a mumble.

40

Merean_Cartographer t1_jeevunw wrote

Replying to Merean_Cartographer (#2,532,008)

The captain walked over to the main view port in the atrium. A large, reinforced, glass half dome that looked out at the 'front'of the ship. MedFive joined her.

"MedFive, I told you to look after the crew." The captain said, annoyed. She did not want the AI anywhere near her at the moment.

"I understand, captain. But I have to notify you about something urgent."

"What is it now?"

"The agents are coming to collect."

"What are you saying now, MedFive?" The captain asked, thinking more and more that the AI had lost its mind. Had they truly died? Or was this AI too far gone?

"As I said before, captain, the rituals came with certain costs. Sacrifices. The four resource units-"

"People!" The captain corrected MedFive.

"Yes, apologies. The four crew members were only part of the cost."

"What do you mean MedFive, part of the cost? What more is there to pay. We are alive and well."

"Yes, well. The ritual is clear in that there is a secondary cost to be paid. It is rather unclear in the how and what, aside of, that agents would come to collect it. The text was a bit cryptic."

"For God's sake, MedFive, what cost? What agents?"

"It said; For thee resurectee, thee shall pay, the price eternal. Servitude. Bow down thy knee, deeper than thy soul, for thyne new lord. Sermons of black, prayers of dread. None thee shall free. Our servitor will cometh, our servitor will gather. Thyne soul is void, thyne corpus ours."

The captain looked at MedFive for a solid few seconds before starting to laugh. The kind of laugh you had when you were close to a nervous breakdown.

"MedFive, that is clearly poppycock. Some superstitious mumbo jumbo. Ignore it."

"This was still there after my analysis, captain. This gives it a very high possibility of being true."

"Ignore it. There are no great forces at work here. You have somehow tapped into some law of nature humanity had not yet discovered. We will explore it now, and master it. Like we always do."

"Yes, but captain-"

"No, MedFive, end of discussion!"

"Yes, but please look, captain." MedFive said as it pointed one of its new appendages up to the viewport.The captain looked up, and let out a deep, terrifying scream. She could feel her sanity slowly peel itself off from her mind. Like the skin of an onion falling off over time.

Up there, in space, in front of the Incandescent, was a rupture in the very fabric of time and space. Swirling energies of deep purple colours with lilac lightning coursing through them. Tentacles, adorned with thorns, horns and indescribable appendages, came out of it. A beak, with serrated rows of teeth, opening wide as it plunged through the hole. And out of it came forth ships. Ships made from flesh and bone. Flesh deep purple and bones a wilted yellow. And an alien voice, alien to this galaxy, this universe, this existence. A voice that spoke, not in sound, but in thought. A voice so utterly alien, that it destroyed the self, the id, of any who heard it.

"We arriveth, now we gather. Bow down deep, and serveth."

***

Feel free to join my subreddit where I gather all of the short stories that I write one here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MereanTales/

41

jpb103 t1_jefhtoa wrote

Replying to jpb103 (#2,528,115)

"PROXIMITY ALERT. UNIDENTIFIED VESSEL ON APPROACH"

"Weapons ready, Commander Suck," the Captain said as they sat in the command chair on the bridge.

"Sanitization routines updated, Captain."

The Chief Maintenance officer and former vacuum had since been promoted to Chief Security Officer after successfully retrieving three live chickens from the mess hall replicator to aid in the resurrections of a few engineers.

"Surely this is a simulation in hell."

The new first officer, the first and arguably only fully successfully ressurected crew member, had been in a bit of a mood since his death. Witnessing the resurrection ritual did not lift his spirits and, much to the chagrin of Commander Suck, he had vomited profusely upon witnessing the shuffling remains that were produced by the dark magic of his new Captain.

"Engineering, divert power to front shields."

"YHARRRGLA! YEEEBLAGARRR?"

Miraculously, and despite the freshly erected engineers being nothing more than three shambling and shrieking corpses, the ship status monitors did register that the command had been obeyed.

"What the hell is that?"

A vast starship easily five times the size of the SS Polaris entered within sensor range and came up on the viewscreen. Its scale, design and configuration was not remotely similar to any ship ever constructed by the United Stellar Federation.

"Number two, open a channel."

"Uh um. OK, yeah."

"Unidentified vessel, this is Captain..."

The Captain, realizing that they did not necessarily possess an actual name, decided to come up with one on the spot.

"Captain Cut Cut, of the SS Polaris. Please hold your position, power down weapons systems and identify yourself."

"Captain Cut Cut?"

"Surgery was my specialty before necromancy, first officer."

A laser blast collided with the ships shields and sent a shockwave through the bridge.

"Commander Suck, status report?"

"Sheilds at 30%, Captain"

"Engineering, full power to thrusters. Commander Suck, evasive maneuvers!"

"YRAGABLA! YRAGABLA SHPFFF!"

"Aye aye, Captain"

The ship listed into a barrel roll while corkscrewing and zigzagging about at random. Lasers flashed by the viewports at regular intervals but none grazed the already damaged shields. Commander Suck positioned the SS Polaris behind the enemy ship, and the onboard sensors showed a weak point in the shields of the enemy ship, beyond which there appeared to be a docking bay.

"Commander Suck, ramming speed."

"Maximum suction engaged, Captain."

84

SilasCrane t1_jefigue wrote

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.

24

jpb103 t1_jefmfle wrote

Replying to jpb103 (#2,539,163)

When the First Officer awoke, Captain Cut Cut was pushing a blaster into his hands. He had cut a large gash into his right hand, and gasped as the wound sealed up and healed completely before his eyes.

"What the hell did you do to me?"

"I angered your soul to produce a revenant, then used up some of the latent death energy from the attack to bind your revenant to your body. You will heal from almost any injury very quickly, by my estimation."

"Preparing sanitization subroutine alpha, Captain" Commander Suck had attached himself to an exoskeleton designed for heavy labor use in the docking bay, and retrofitted several heavy beam weapons and grenades to its shell.

"Suck me sideway- wait, back up. Attack?"

"Yes, it has become evident that the field of exotic radiation that dropped us out of the river and killed the crew was a deliberate trap laid by the crew of this vessel. Please take this blaster, number two, we must kill our way to their bridge."

The first officer took a moment to look around and noticed that the front half of the bridge of the Polaris had been sheered off, and before them were anchored a number of smaller vessels of alien design.

"We crashed into their ship."

"We landed, number two. Enthusiastically."

Captain Cut Cut had outfitted himself, perhaps appropriately, with numerous laser swords, and had attached four additional arms that sprang out of his back like some perversion of a spider with knife hands.

"Foreign contamination detected." Commander Suck unleashed an onslaught of blaster fire, cutting down half a dozen alien soldiers who were approaching from the aft of the vessel. They picked up the First Officer and jumped off the gap at the end of the sheered off bridge of the SS Polaris.

Captain Cut Cut followed, and together they advanced to where the dead aliens lie.

"OK, definitely not human. This is bad."

"I disagree, first officer, if they had been human, I would have violated one of my primary directives and would be obligated to deactivate myself."

The First Officer twitched, then his eyes began to glow red.

"Salve Salve nocto mortis el al slavva!"

The dead aliens spasmed, then retrieved there weapons and stood to attention.

"What the fuck did I just do?"

"Fascinating, number two! It would appear that you take quite well to death magic. Were any of your ancestors convicted of witchcraft?"

"What was that what was that my god what have I done??"

"You have provided much needed reinforcements, First Officer. Remind me to add a formal commendation to your record if we are not torn to pieces."

The crew of the SS Polaris and their undead thralls continued on into the alien vessel, to face the mystery of their enemies attack.

86

jpb103 t1_jefvatr wrote

Replying to Ok-Break8414 (#2,542,992)

Thanks! I'm not sure if there will be more quite yet. I don't really write with a plan, necessarily. Check back in an hour or so. If there's not another part posted, this may be all there is for Captain Cut Cut and his ragtag crew... for this prompt, anyways.

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Pope-Francisco t1_jefvh2r wrote

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.

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jpb103 t1_jeg1ckk wrote

Replying to jpb103 (#2,540,569)

"Try to cut less of them completely in half, Captain. They make more useful thralls when they can walk."

"An excellent suggestion, number two. I shall modify my attack routines appropriately."

"Local Sanitization Complete."

The coherent crew members of the SS Polaris (the engineering crew had stayed behind to oversee repairs on the ship,) had journeyed deep into the alien vessel. The number of undead alien thralls that had joined their ranks had swollen to over a dozen. They lacked the fine motor function to use their blasters as intended, opting instead to use them as blunt instruments.

"The physiology of these creatures is fascinating! Their lifeblood is particularly potent. Commander Suck, please present for upgrade."

"Suck, at your service, Captain."

The Captain began chanting and moving all six of his arms rhythmically as the blood of the seven or so nearby alien corpses rose into the air and swirled about him in a tempest of gore.

"Shalen val mortis shalen val het. Shalen val el at poliqua zen!"

The buoyant blood transfigured into a fine black dust, issuing a faint crimson glow. It rushed toward Commander Suck and fused with his every atom.

"Upgrade complete, Captain."

"Indeed, Commander. You now should be able to remotely drain the life energy from our vict- our enemies."

"So glad you caught yourself there, Captain."

The captain turned to his First Officer.

"The energy siphoned from our enemies will be transferred to you. It should make your abilities more acute. Onward!"

The captain sprinted forward, casually cutting an alien in half lengthwise as he passed when it emerged from what appeared to be a latrine, apparently completely ignorant to the situation.

They passed through a blast door and it sealed shut behind them. A contingent of no less than a hundred alien soldiers was waiting for them behind barricades, with their weapons raised.

"Commander Suck, if you wouldn't mind."

"Initiating suck routine gamma, Captain."

The lights dimmed and the First Officer watched in horror as each and every alien shriveled up before his eyes, their life energy flowed at incredible speed into Commander Suck.

Then, all at once, it transferred to him.

The First Officer could hear the hearts beating in every alien on board. He knew how many there were. Knew where they were.

"Status report, number two?"

"437 enemies remain onboard captain. Most are armed. The bridge is just beyond the next blast door. There are 15 enemies inside."

"Suck is ready to clean."

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NoProblemsHere t1_jeg9czh wrote

Replying to jpb103 (#2,540,569)

Given that their replicator can apparently replicate live animals, I'm a little surprised that Cut Cut didn't just try to replicate the crew first. It seems fond of unconventional "medicine".

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jpb103 t1_jeguj5w wrote

Replying to jpb103 (#2,545,256)

"Suggestions, comrades?"

The blast door to the bridge of the alien vessel held firm. If it remotely resembled the one that had just locked behind them on the other side of the large room they now shared with one hundred shriveled alien corpses, it would be at least a foot thick and made of solid steel.

"I... I don't think it'll be a problem, Captain."

The First Officer, with his newly awakened necromantic abilities, closed his eyes. When he opened them they shone a bright red.

"Al sathool el abad. Hasheyal nei cal vool!"

He pointed at the blast door, then blinked as his eyes returned to their normal deep hazel.

"We're going to want to stand back a bit."

The trio took a few steps back as the blast door began glowing a bright red and even from their distance, the heat coming from it was intense.

"Fantastic plan, first mate! Commander Suck, please clear the bridge once the door has melted."

"Sweep subroutine engaged."

The door dissolved into a pool of molten metal and Commander Suck leaped over the threshold into the bridge. They were charged by an alien wielding a curved sword, but this seemed to not inconvenience the Commander in the slightest. They picked the would be attacker up with their exoskeleton arms and ripped the alien in two pieces while simultaneously mowing down seven armed aliens with its mounted blaster rifles.

The remaining seven aliens threw their weapons to the ground and covered their eyes, presumably in surrender.

"Executing liquidation subroutine."

"Belay that order, Commander. First Officer, please establish a connection to the Polaris computer and have the universal translator application installed on myself."

"You got it, Cut Cut."

The Captain bowed his head for a moment, then walked over to what appeared to be a command terminal. He pointed to the nearest alien, and Commander Suck walked over and shoved it towards the Captain.

"Greetings, alien enemy! Please speak so we may establish a dialog."

"Gefracko? Bedlambia gop ooblau-bastard! Why would I speak to a murderous machine?"

The captain shot the alien in the head.

"That'll do. Commander Suck, you may proceed."

The former vacuum relieved the remaining enemies of their life energy, transferring it to the First Officer. Captain Cut Cut began working at a terminal, and an image appeared on the large screen at the end of the bridge.

An image of Earth.

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BboyLotus t1_jegyly9 wrote

"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.

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