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3. It wasn’t my fault.

  3. It wasn’t my fault.

  It really wasn’t. I couldn’t have known that the strange phenomena I sensed ahead would drop me out of hyperspace, and that I should have warned the crew before we headed into it. I mean, I could have if I’d have read the primer on existence as a soulship that I was supposed to read, but I was like three weeks old, okay?

  Did you read the citizens’ handbook when you were three years old? No, of course you didn’t, you were too busy sticking crayons up your nose.

  So when my crew suddenly felt the ripple in their body that signaled a sudden exit into normal-space, they all ran to the bridge to figure out what was going on.

  “Arty, what was that?” Captain Min-jae demanded. “Did you turn off the hyperdrive?”

  “No, my foot just … I can’t feel it,” I said. I pulled up my holographic face to frown at him. “My foot feels weird. I can’t move. Why can’t I move?”

  “It’s an interdiction field,” he muttered, and he quickly looked through my ‘outside eyes’ to get a grasp on the situation. “Shit.”

  “You said a bad word.”

  “We’re on the edge of a battlefield,” he said. “And we’re completely helpless.”

  “We’re not completely helpless,” I said. “Just turn my weapons back on and—”

  “Rebekah, see if what you can do to reduce our profile,” the captain said. “And keep the kid distracted for me, I’m going to try to figure out who is fighting who.”

  “Okay, Arty, we’re going to be playing with your internals to try to reduce our heat signature. Can you power down your fusion core for me?”

  “I don’t wanna. What’s the captain looking at?”

  “Don’t focus on him, focus on me—”

  “There are other ships out there!” I said, and she cursed.

  “Sorry cap, Arty thinks you’re more interesting.”

  Captain Min-jae sighed and just continued looking through my outside eyes as he scanned the battlefield.

  “Looks like thirty two Brut-class fighters and their carrier against a … oh crap. It’s an old boy, one of the originals. Arty, look away, this is going to be messy.”

  “But I wanna see!” I protested, and I took the controls away from him to focus even more intently on the battle that was about to take place.

  So, I’ve thought a lot about that fight. The best analysis that I could compare it to is watching a lone samurai fighting against a team of bandits working together. The old soulship wasn’t scared, he wasn’t worried, he just blew the fighters up one after another in a workmanlike manner.

  But he didn’t use guns to do it.

  “How is he doing that?” I asked. “He doesn’t even shoot missiles or lasers. The ships just cut themselves in two when he looks at them, but it—”

  “It’s magic, Arty,” Rebekah explained. “Try not to think about it too hard, you’re too young to—”

  “Unknown ship, identify yourself,” A man’s voice suddenly said in my mind.

  “Hi! I’m Arty! You’re really strong mister. Have you seen this .jpg?” I asked

  “A child? Crap,” the other ship said, and at the same time that he said this some of the fighters began heading in my direction. They launched their missiles at me, and I screamed in fear as I suddenly realized that these were BAD SHIPS that meant to hurt me. I tried to power up my hyperdrive to get out of there, only for it to cause a bubble in the interdiction field that rippled out and did nothing but made me look like the scared child that I was.

  “Why are they shooting at me? What did I do? What do I do?” I asked my crew, trying to run and trying to understand what was happening at the same time.

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  “Calm down, Arty,” Rebekah said. “We have time to shoot down the missiles. I’m powering up your weapons now, just—”

  “AHHH!” I screamed, and as soon as the weapons came online I began shooting at the ships that were shooting at me.

  Helplessly missing.

  “The missiles, Arty, not the ships. Shoot at the missiles, or give me control,” Rebekah said, the tension in her voice palpable.

  I was so scared and acting on instinct, and the missiles were getting closer and closer while I was useless.

  “Arty, your shields, power up your shields,” The captain said.

  “They’re only rated for debris fields,” Rebekah said. She turned to the captain and said “It was a pleasure serving with you. I wish things had gone better.”

  I didn’t realize then that she thought we were all about to die, I was still shooting.

  Then suddenly the old SoulShip was there. It sliced the missiles in two with its magic, except for one that was out of reach. Then it jumped again, although I had no idea how it did that inside the interdiction field, and it shot the last missile down with a point-defense cannon. It stood between me and the attacking ships.

  “Be calm, child. I will protect you, just hide in my shadow,” the ship said.

  I shot him in the ass, blowing off his hyperdrive nacelle.

  “You little—” he shouted.

  “We’re sorry, ancient one,” my captain broadcast. “We’re disabling our weapons now. We are helpless, this ship only quickened three weeks ago. We only turned off the child-safety mechanisms to deal with the missiles and—”

  “Just shut up,” the ship grumbled. “And hold still. I’ll protect you, but I can’t do that if you keep moving about.”

  And so, with his back to me, I watched as the grumbling old samurai destroyed the rest of the bandit fleet, until there were only five ships left and the carrier. The ships retreated, disabling the interdiction field. The sudden release of hyperdrive energies caused me to Spurt forward by three light minutes before suddenly slamming into the ripple and blowing a fuse in the hyperdrive.

  Fortunately, we had spare fuses.

  I watched as the enemy carrier reloaded its fighters, and then it turned to escape. A sudden burst of energies that didn’t appear on my scanners hit it just as it was entering hyperspace, and the entire ship popped like a bubble, leaving only rubble and debris behind.

  It took some time for my crew to calm me down after that, but when I had, we went back to the old SoulShip and opened a line of communication between their captain and ours.

  “What the hell were you thinking bringing a child like that out into this zone?” the other soulship’s captain said. “If we hadn’t been here, you’d have been captured! Do you realize how close to a life of slavery you just came? Do you—”

  “Never mind them, young one,” the old soulship said, drawing my attention away from one captain lecturing the other. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “I shot you,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Aside from that, and it was a mistake on the battlefield. I forgive you,” the soulship said. “It’s not your fault that your crew brought you into a dangerous area while you were unable to defend yourself. You must have been terrified.”

  And then I began to cry.

  That cut the captain’s feed as my communications were filled with my crying face, and only the link with the soulship itself remained. Eventually my crew calmed me down, and my crew managed to make out a plan.

  Whatever magic that the other ship, whose name was Samonosuke, used to make short jumps within the interdiction field wouldn’t be able to travel between stars. So because I had shot his nacelle off, he was stranded. Fortunately, I wasn’t stranded, and after the fuses were replaced in my hyperdrive I was ready to travel again.

  I wasn’t a rescue ship, but I did possess a basic tractor beam that would allow me to carry Samonosuke to a base which didn’t appear on the public starcharts, but he assured us was there, where he could get the repair and refit that he needed. It was only two lightyears away, and even with me being limited to 6C while tugging the older ship, it would only take a few months.

  Our contract with the textile company was forfeit, but we couldn’t leave Samonosuke stranded after he had saved us either. So with the two crews working together, they figured out a plan.

  While an old master carefully kept the toddler distracted.

  Nobody even noticed when my fusion core began producing Qi. Not until the true ignition happened.

  Under Samonosuke’s guidance, I ignited my dantian.

  ?

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