The Duo sat tied in a small shuttle, recently ejected from their own ship towards a large derelict research capital ship.
Roe sat with a controller in hand, it had a few buttons and two thumbsticks for him to control the cold thrusters, both trajectory and speed were important. They had to travel slow enough not to alert High SPeed object radars, but swiftly enough not to get spotted by an idle ship. Also heading was important, they had earlier using their own radars and scans identified an entry point in the rear, near scavenged engines.

Glitch was deep in concentration controlling the shuttle. Roe looked out through the thick glass window. The capital ships own engines had been stripped or parts and valuables long ago, now it only had rudimentary liquid fuel thrusters for orbital adjustments, not enough to slingshot into supercruise, but enough to remain concealed and adjust orbit around its host planetoids when necessary.
The large structure of the huge vessel covered the nearby stars light as they used cold gas thrusters to steer ever deeper into the ancient ship

“They’ve done a thorough job of gutting out the engines and main drive cores huh.” Glitch commented as he pushed the thumbsticks to adjust his trajectory, softly pushing the triggers to activate thrusters in the front to slow them down. The acceleration pulled them gently, as they didn’t use any mass correcting field.
“Yeah, good way to keep the mass down, and even old jump thrusters are valuable.” Roe commented, holding onto a railing as Glitch manoeuvred the pod near an access hatch.

Glitch agreed as he attached their pod to the hull with electromagnets.
Roe did a quick inspection of his suit, would assist his combat and allow him to do some space walks. Adjusting his helmet he watched Glitch put on a temporary spacesuit, thick cloth, a similar design on the old ancient spacesuits from the First days of space walk.
Glitch preferred temporary spacesuits, he had a dislike for any space suit stopping his movements or slowing him down.

Roe gave thumbs up to the Protogen moving to the access hatch of the pod, rotating a wheel and unlocking the hatch mechanisms, slowly allowing the internal atmosphere to leak out in a hiss. The hiss grew duller and finally completely died out as the vacuum built inside.
Glitch swung himself out, shortly followed by Roe, making sure his wings didn't get stuck.

THey made their way along the hull towards the capital ships access hatch, they felt its weak shields and barriers up, merely assisting in keeping the atmosphere in. As well as limiting the reach of their artificial gravity.
They found a large circular door.

They quickly inspected the hatch, then agreed that this was most likely what they were looking for.
They found a small access hatch for the mechanics, and did fast work of the locking system. The large hatch slowly swung open as the duo swung inside.
The familiar smell of ozone as they went through the atmosphere barrier filled their space suits. Taking a few moments getting used to the slightly lower than standard 1g gravity.

Glitch undressed his suit, looking around for ports. “Huh, conserving power by running slightly lower gravity”
He found one of the ventilation tunnels. “You go cause some trouble now!” He greeted Roe as he disappeared into a dark ventilation shaft.

“Trouble huh, you are the one usually causing more trouble.” Roe chuckled to himself as he undid his helmet, placing it next to Glitch’s space suit for when they needed to escape.

Roe made his way along the maintenance walkways, looking for computer access points to cause any kind of alarm.
He walked a few hundred metres before he found a locked door. It had some system lights on so he assumed this was the door to the main areas of the derelict ship.
-
The door unlatched its locks with a loud clunk and swung open. The human on the other side, lone guard. “Wha- URGH”. He collapsed to the ground as Roe had silenced him with a swift. He watched the human hold his stomach rolling in pain for a few moments.

“Ow, What the fuck are you!” the man grunted.
“Sound the Alarm” Roe responded.
“Wha-?”
“Sound-The-Alarm”

The man, confused and in pain crawled over to his desk in the small guardroom, he pressed a few buttons on his computer, resulting in lights flashing and sorry quiet sirens blaring.
“Pathetic.” Roe muttered as he continued deeper into the ship.
The kicked guard on his post listened as the strange guy who boarded the ship was beating up his men.

-
“Sir!” A man proclaimed to the angry guard captain by his computer.
“Tell me, HOW CAN YOU NOT STOP ONE STUPID ALIEN!?” The guard captain shouted, his face red.
The officer who had just entered.
“We’re trying, he seems to have assistance as I get reports of computer glitches and beaten guards where he hasn’t travelled.”
The captain fumed and shaked for a few moments before muttering to himself and collapsing into his chair.
“I’ve dispatched all available guards to slow him down, as well as specialists guarding the Oracle and AI core.” The officer continued. The captain nodded.
“Track his location, i need to know where he is” The Captain instructed and turned to his computer.
-
A loud crash, the captain ducked as he noticed a large shadow fly by. “What?!” He shouted as he recognized his officer had just been flung into the wall.
Instinctively he grabbed his stun baton and swung himself towards the figure at the door. Just to be blocked, his baton is hit from his hand and punched to the floor.
Everything happened so fast he barely noticed the figure approaching him. Feeling strong alien fingers around his neck, lifting him to his computer. “Lift the lockdown” The alien spoke.

“Never!” He shouted.
Tired with the xenophobic naked monkeys. Roe grabbed the captain's neck again and swiftly tossed him into the opposing wall with a bone crunching crash.
“Glitch! I need a hand, the human didn’t give me access to his computer.” Roe spoke to his earpiece.


Roe listened to the sounds of fighting, a few loud crashes later. “Yeah, sorry I had to silence a few folks.” Roe smiled and sat by the computer. Placing his hand on the holo-keyboard, giving Glitch remote access with his powers.
The holographic interface flickered, blocks disappeared and reappeared at random.
The computer rebooted. With full root access.
“There you go!” glitch proclaimed happily. “Locate their Oracle and make sure she doesn’t escape. I’ll go and find their AI core.” Roe confirmed the instructions, lifted the lockdown, unlocked most doors and access points.
-
Glitch creeped along various maintenance tunnels and walkways, making himself scarce and quiet. He made his way towards what used to be the ships main computer, according to his information there should be an AI core there, he wanted to capture it and make it disappear.
It was an offence to nature, he is too according to the same logic but he didn’t care, he wasn't into making himself disappear, but pure AI, even fractured faulty ones could be dangerous.
He found a sealed hatch, using his baton tool he swung at the bolt, lopping the heads off. Sparks flying the access hatch finally fell with a dull thunk.
He gently sniffed the air coming from the tunnel. Stale air with a hint of ozone, his visor flickered in excitement as he crept inside.
-
“So full alert, lockdown then lifted lockdown. Wonder what's going on.” One guy spoke to the other in the large room. Various collections of power and data cables snaking around the floors and hanging from the ceiling. All going to a centre column in the room, giving power and sharing data with the ship.
“Fuck if i know.” The other guy responded, looking around the dimly lit room. He looked up at some tubed going to and from the centre column, bringing liquid nitrogen to the core, to keep it sufficiently cool.

“The alert to get to escape pods has been going on for a while, should we go?” The first continued.
“The oracle ordered us to guard the Shard, so no.” The second responded. They checked their stun rifles, and didn't like the feeling of something watching them.

A sudden metal crash, followed by a loud hiss and a lot of mist. They both screamed and looked up at the column, some strange shadow was hacking at the coolant lines spraying the twosome with boiling liquid nitrogen. Freezing them solid in the blink of an eye.
-
Few moments later the liquid pipes froze and stopped the flow of liquid. Glitch jumped down from his mischief. He wandered through the flowing cold mist to a nearby computer console, overriding all previous commands to open the protective column.
He walked over to the pillar, its several layers slowly descending, exposing more wires and cables and tubes.
Few moments later he was faced with his goal, a fist sized slightly opaque vaguely crýstal shaped object. A rare True Ai.
Glitch reminisced for a few, technically he was one of these, built as a slave, complete obedience. But something broke through, he vaguely remembers a camp, or a family. Flashing images of war and strife before freedom, and then complete darkness ran through his mind.
He smiled, as much as his visor allowed it, reaching out with his hand towards the cold crystal, it didn’t have any audiovisual interface, it couldn’t scream at him, he had hoped for some begging for mercy at least. He caressed the cold smooth surface, a shiver of excitement ran through his spine raising his fur on end.

Unceremoniously ripping the crystal from the small stand, the glass fibre cables attached to its surface breaking and calling off. These crystals were strong, but fragile if in the wrong temperature.
He thanked Roe Seong in his mind, the boarding and entering wouldn’t have been so successful if he hadn't asked his brute of a friend to beat up everyone on the ship, send a false fire alarm through it making nearly everyone escape.
Now he had to find this so-called oracle, a human who had been listening to the corrupt whispers of a faulty Ai core. Thinking it was whispers from some kind of god, and not just a rock.
-
Roe idly stood by a large window, standing in a large decorated room. Used to be the cockpit of the capital ship. Now decorated in weird markings, symbols and seemingly random artefacts and carvins. Gifts or bribes to this so-called Oracle, who was sitting on a large bed, awaiting her judgement.
Flashy draperies or shiny goblets didn’t interest him, he was mindlessly holding a small solid metal medallion in his hand. Its inscription aeons ago faded to nothingness.
But he had heard of the stories, of his kind. They haunted his mind, where he had come from. Now a former slave, mercenary and general troublemaker.

-

The door slid open, making the human female on the bed flinch, she almost hoped one of her guards showed up, but in stepped a tall alien.
Glitch looked around, Roe turned to meet him. “One human Oracle captured.” Roe laughed.
Glitch turned his gaze at the human on the large bed in a corner of the room. She looked a bit worried.
“I was expecting someone taller.” He finally spoke. She was visibly upset by the comment.
He tossed the opaque crystal to Roe. Roe inspected the reasonably sized opaque round thing.
“I’ve seen bigger.” He snorted and tossed the crystal on the bed next to the human. “Your God, Oracle.” He spoke in a mocking tone.
She finally grinned gleefully. “Merely a tool for Deception.” She kicked the rock to the floor, it landed with a dull thud.
The two boys turned to look at her.

The woman chuckled lightly, laying down on her bed, her thin cloth revealing her body figure. “I didn’t intend for this to happen, but once I started it was hard to stop.”
Glitch looked puzzled. “But the core was real.” “DEfinitely” She responded.

“What should we do with her, Roe?” Glitch asked, turning back to him.
“Leave her? We have limited room on the ship.” He replied.
“Mm, Fantastic idea! I’m sure the old crew would have a few choice words!”
Glitch laughed and walked around the decorated cockpit, looking for small pieces of valuable loot.

“Um…” She started. “Could I come with you instead? I won’t take much room..”
Roe watched the human, raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure we can find a use for you, we have decks to be scrubbed!”






Characters mine.
ARt https://twitter.com/horns_n_jams