Space Odyssey: Spectre

"I know." Taylor grunted, acknowledging her necessary task to close the airlock quickly because the swarm was already close to the station. But she stumbled for a moment as a hand reached up to her head. "Why do I have such a bad headache?"

Salem could not answer that because she did not know. Unlike most people, Salem could not read Taylor's mind. She had a whole phase of her life where her mind was literally jumping through time. Almost acting like an ancient oracle. Now that her mind was repaired it was no longer jumping back and forth, but it also meant her mind was blocked by a literal time displacement.

"I don't know but we have a limited amount of time before we have to be on that ship." Salem reminded her and moved quickly. "The swarm is almost here. Fleet Commander, take the co-pilot controls!" She yelled out to the front as the first of them went through the air lock.

"What's the plan, Salem?!?" Director Fenrir was shuffling people into the air lock as the younger Dakota broke out in a sprint that kicked up wind.

"To get away from the station." Salem answered as the last of them went through the door with Taylor spinning around once they were through the airlock and the metal door spun and manually sealed closed. "Aside from that, we will be playing it by ear." She explained more quietly as they began to run through the connector.

The entire thing shook for a moment and Taylor stumbled and was about to fall. Salem reached out and picked her up with her telekinetic abilities and threw her the rest of the way. Unfortunately she tackled through some unfortunate people who were at the end of the tunnel.

"I can hear something eating through the tunnel." The director pointed out as they crossed over from the tunnel into the ship. They were the last one's through and Taylor who was still on the ground reached a hand up and the airlock began to close.

Salem jumped over the pile of people and towards the ship's pilot cabin. "Then it won't be long before they latch onto this emergency ship." She quickly moved around others until she jumped over and into the chair. She began to complete an emergency check.

"The airlock is jammed." Dakota informed her immediately. "It just happened, it was fine a second ago."

Salem nodded. "Blowing the airlock connector." She stated plainly before looking over her shoulder to the rest of the ship where people were quickly finding seating. "If you are not secure, grab onto something."

Bang!

The ship jostled slightly as it pushed away from the connector and station. She was fine because she was in a secure position. But those in the back who either did not take her warning seriously or did not have a chance to secure themselves were falling over themselves.

Salem took a hold of the controls and launched the ship forward and away from the station heading towards a fleet of other ships. "Now I am detecting something damaging the outer hull of the ship." Dakota quickly informed her.

Salem clicked her tongue in annoyance as she quickly began to flip a few switches and the hull of the ship pulsed with a wave of electricity that killed their power for a moment but not their momentum. "Now what does it say?" She asked as the systems began to boot up and she moved on an intercept course with the closest vessel.

"Still damaged but it is not building up. Was the nano plague swarm eating away at the hull of our ship?" Dakota asked in surprise.

Salem reorientated the ship so they would fly backwards and get a view of the station while also sending a message to have them retrieved because while the damage did stop, some of it was to the engines and she did not want to rely on their engines when another ship could catch them.

"Lords…" Dakota quietly mumbled as they spun around and the gravity station came into view. The station was a giant piece of metal floating in the void with a few planets as its backdrop. The orbital station and the sun were behind them.

But the sight that was more provoking was the ship floating in space near the station. They could just barely make out the swarm of nanites that made up the plague swarm as it broke down the ship then the swarm flooded into the station. "Was the swarm like this before?" Salem asked in confusion.

"No, it only ever jumped from person to person. Or machine to machine this is… on another level entirely." Dakota had far more experience with the nano plague swarm but even she seemed to believe that it was 'acting' out of character.

Her thoughts stopped as a semi-translucent white sphere began to radiate from the gravity station. Going outward in all directions and growing. Along seemingly random points the white sphere had thicker lines that almost looked like veins as it pulsed and grew outwards. It slowly passed over them and for a moment Salem could feel something change. Then glowing white words appeared in her view just like the system interface would.

[Spectre Galaxy System Program Initiated. Standby for Administrator.]

—-----------------------

The mass of electricity with hexes carved into it began to change shape as Jace leaned back against the inclined side of the circular void that was once empty. Now it was filled with this massive electrical storm.

But now it was changing from several spinning runes into a new shape and slowly the massive amount of electricity began to shrink. The rings of runes and hexes seemed to form into solid lines but were actually just moving so quickly that they could not be seen by the human eye.

Jace saw something out of the corner of his eyes. Small nanites almost imperceptible to the human eye began to spill into the room and went towards the center of the new gravitational anomaly. Jace released his control over it and launched himself toward the center of the anomaly as well.

But a moment later the world twisted as he felt a gut wrenching pain.

Then as he blinked he appeared on some strange open plain made of some type of sand. But he could almost immediately tell that something else was going on. He was here, but he was not actually present.

"I told them you would realize it quickly." He looked over and saw a humanoid figure but it was a flat and lacked any details. Although its hands had only three fingers while its legs were bent the wrong way with hooves instead of feet. But once again, it was featureless and was instead a solid gray color throughout its entire form.

Jace looked down at his own body and just saw a white body. "Featureless forms…" He mumbled as he looked around at the sandy landscape and could see it start to grow while overhead the black sky began to fill with stars that he immediately recognized as the Spectre Galaxy. "A space between spaces?" He asked as he spotted a white dot at one part of the map which happened to be where the Underworld System was located.

"Something like that." The gray figure answered.

But he was no longer the only figure. More figures began to appear as Jace looked at them. "I see, it only makes sense that mythos about gods and higher level beings would come from somewhere. Just as every other tale and story did from Ancient Earth. Everything has an origin."

"Indeed." The gray figure looked over and Jace looked over as well as a black humanoid figure began to appear as well. "Seems the other one arrived as well." Once it fully formed it started to seemingly glitch and its face opened to soundlessly scream. "But his sense of self is fractured beyond understanding."

"Hmm…" Jace nodded in agreement and then turned his attention to the gray figure. "I am guessing you were the original system." He then turned and looked at the other figures that had gathered around. It almost seemed like there were dozens of them gathered here. "I suppose these are others like the Centuria System or the dormant vampire nanites."

"You know and you understand that will make the decision and process much easier." A multi colored female humanoid figure stating. She is definitely the Centuria Nano System.

"But first, I believe there is some business to be had." The gray figure pointed out and literally pointed at the glitching black figure. "It realized that you wanted to completely unite the systems under one concept and came to corrupt it. I think it would be best if you finished it off before we got started."

"Well…" Jace sighed as he looked around them while he could already understand this 'world' as well as its rules. "Then I might as well make a show of it."

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