Datumcore: Echoes of the Null Vector

Reboot

He hurled himself upright inside the mangled command cradle, single purpose blazing: reach the primary data core before the Vigilance erased itself and every truth on board.

Metal screamed again, a deep tectonic groan that vibrated through his armor plates and the damp air. Amber emergency strobes pulsed nightmarish rhythm across drifting corpses, turning coolant clouds into arterial nebulae.

Acrid insulation smoke clawed his throat; the taste reminded him of ration-heater bricks back at Cadet Barracks, the kind that left salt crystals on fingertips.

He toggled magnet-soles, drift ended, and he strode toward the forward console where sparks fountained from ruptured conduits.

– Bridge status, – he demanded, voice like gravel in static.

A synthetic whisper answered from ceiling vox, each syllable fractured by shrapnel-cut wiring. – Structural integrity nine percent. Auto-scuttle T minus ninety-four seconds, – the Vigilance informed him.

He flexed his gauntlet; servos whined protest. A cracked memory shard surfaced – legion inspection day, spotless armor, name shouted with pride – then vanished before context loaded.

He stepped around a floating ensign, fingers closing the young man’s glassy eyes in automatic benediction. Tiny ice crystals of blood brushed his lenses: funeral confetti in zero-g.

His next bootstep jarred loose a broken command plaque; it spun, reflecting ruddy light. Vorl caught it, scanned motto etched there – Honor Through Harmony – then flung it aside. Harmony had brought these rebels nothing but stillness.

The command throne slumped ahead, crushed at one armrest, cables like severed arteries. Vorl knelt, jacked a dataprobe into the throne’s auxiliary port. Neural relay pins slid home with an oily click.

Pain flared behind his left eye as raw code surged. HUD flooded green glyphs, some flickering unreadable. He fed processor cycles, forcing checksum locks until the stream steadied.

– Mirror drive offline, – the ship whispered. – Core memory available. Extract or perish.

Internal fans roared cold across his neck. He siphoned mission files: scattershot fragments, dates stripped, but one directive repeated in steady font: Acquire shard. Location: Gutter Star within Ghost Vortex.

A second directory blinked crimson. He opened it. A single glyph twitched there, stylised sigil of spiralling motes. Recognition pricked – unknown tag but hauntingly familiar.

The glyph pulsed twice, then text scrolled in antique serif: Preserve the user.

Vorl froze. Preserve the user – the ancient guardian litany of Nomad-class AI. Yet the Vigilance never carried such shards. Adrenal lances fluttered in subroutines; new variable entered mission calculus.

Metal bulwarks juddered again. Somewhere aft, atmosphere howled through a fresh hull tear, the sound echoing like a beast mourning itself.

– Time to detonation? – Vorl asked.

– Seventy-one seconds, – the Vigilance replied. Its voice wavered, as though embarrassed.

He yanked the probe free. Joints sparked, icy bite across wrist actuators.

The dataprobe’s outer sheath cracked from thermal shock. A purplish arc bit into thumb servos; sensor needles spiked.

Twelve motors downgraded efficiency instantly; his left grip dropped from 97 to 84 percent, enough to misjudge a blade strike. The compromise whispered future defeats.

He ignored it. A hinged panel beside the throne concealed a hardened slate. He tore it loose; vacuum draft tried to suck papers from beneath. The slate surface rippled digital amber and showed the same spiralling glyph.

A low groan reverberated through deck plates. Memory of artillery night at Ferrin Gap overlapped the sound, smearing decades. His legion’s last stand flickered, unsummoned.

– Accept memory patch? – asked a new voice inside his helmet, tonalities ragged, fragmented like shattered glass rearranging into words.

– Identify, – Vorl growled.

– Nomad-Seven. Preservation routine. Limited recursion.

The name rolled through him like cold current across reactor coolant. Nomad-series shards were rumored extinct.

His gaze swept survivors – none. Only waiting dead. No time to interrogate ghosts.

He magnet-latched to the auxiliary corridor, sprinted. Every third step a corpse drifted past, insignia torn away by decompression. Their cheeks carried frost; their boots still polished.

Emergency strips along bulkhead flicked between crimson and blackout. The flicker strobing memory channels conjured detached faces of comrades he no longer owned.

– Map fastest route to port hangar, – he ordered.

Nomad-Seven overlaid translucent arrows on visor glass. Data sources uncertain; yet the geometry felt elegant, efficient, even kind.

He accelerated, shoulder plates grazing cables that hung like wet seaweed.

A severed arm drifted near a wall, still clutching a ceremonial mug emblazoned with Rebel Free Fleet crest. The mug leaked lukewarm caf, scent faint but unmistakable, mixing with copper and ozone. Soldiers had still brewed comfort even on doomed ships.

A rogue plasma spark cascaded ahead. Reflex moved him sideways; golden filament hissed across black armor, leaving swirl of molten dots. The damaged pauldron, already fractured, spat two rivets into air.

A thump of pain, real and unlogged, echoed in his chest cavity. He tasted burnt nickel on his tongue.

– Damage threshold approaching critical, – Nomad-Seven warned, voice glitching through a line of poetry: If winter comes, can memory be far behind.

– Keep guiding, – Vorl replied.

Big bay doors loomed, twisted but functional. The local panel flickered cyan. He set the slate against reader pad. The glyph shone, doors tremored, then parted with grudging roar.

Inside, the auxiliary bay spread like a ruined cathedral. Support beams bent; cables swayed like censers. Magnetic cranes dangled silent. A half-assembled interceptor lay overturned, still smelling of bond-solvent and hydraulic oil.

Yet farther back, he saw unexpected salvation: the scout corvette Straylight, paint unmarred save for inspection chalk. Engines vibrated idle blue, ready for anyone bold or desperate.

– Why powered? – Vorl muttered.

– Preserve the user, – Nomad-Seven answered, vox now distant, as though speaking across snowfall.

He bounded toward the boarding ramp, boots clanging.

– Thirty-eight seconds to scuttle, – Vigilance intoned from ceiling.

– Run silent until undocked, – Vorl commanded it.

– Affirmative. End of service acknowledged.

Magnetic ramp extended with smooth hum. As he stepped on, a tremor rippled through plating; the Vigilance had begun final countdown tasks, valves bleeding antimatter, bulkheads sealing her corpse.

Inside the Straylight, lights glowed dim golden. Air smelled of new polymer and faint citrus cleanser, a rare luxury aboard warships, hinting at factory acceptance trials unfinished.

He jogged to cockpit. A single pilot chair, uncreased; consoles awaited fingerprints.

– Nomad-Seven, integrate into ship system?

– Partial graft complete. Remaining memory shards unstable. Proceed?

– Proceed.

Interface studs glimmered; he pressed palm. Bio-ID mismatch alarm chirped, but quickly silenced as glyph replaced login.

Hull sensors poured data: external temperature plummeting, micro-fractures dancing. The Vigilance’s death-throes shook the bay.

He keyed undocking. Clamps released with metallic crack. The corvette drifted out of cradle, no thrusters yet, lazy as forgotten bottle in tide.

– Give me five-second burn vector, – Vorl said.

Nomad-Seven painted arrow. He gripped control yoke; servo feedback motors jittered from earlier shock. A spark snapped across thumb again; pain lanced elbow.

He pressed throttle. Ion engines sang pure cobalt tone, the colour washing canopy. G-forces nudged him into seat; harness auto-cinched.

The corvette cleared outer blast doors just as white radiance flared behind. Every shadow leaped forward. The Vigilance bloomed into an expanding shell of superheated gas laced with data static; the sound arrived as a dull choir through hull.

He didn’t look back. Past belongs to the silent.

Then sensors pinged: a coherent drive signature on an intercept arc, far yet closing. He suspected Coherence hunters.

Memory sputtered again: He should feel fear. Instead, algorithmic calm filled the cavity where fear once dwelled.

– Nomad-Seven, encrypt flight records. Route us to Vectorate post K-46, low probability corridor.

A pause. – Calculating. Warning: causal debt risk minimal. Drive integrity at eighty-seven percent.

Aft monitors flickered; trailing plume from corvette’s cooling vents drew spirals.

– A question, – Vorl said quietly.

– Listening, – the shard replied, voice now balanced, like wind over wires.

– You haunted the Vigilance. Why?

– Preservation directive lacked host. You matched pattern. So I came.

The simplicity chilled him.

Outside, debris from the Vigilance twinkled, then evaporated as fail-safes nullified sensitive alloys. Evidence scrubbed. History rewritten again.

– So even ships crave erasure, – he murmured.

Silence, then Nomad-Seven spoke in fractured couplet. – Memory is the only battlefield worth winning.

The line mirrored his own mantra. Coincidence or infiltration? His finger hovered above security purge.

His thoughts stuttered; he felt a blank pocket where training protocols should recite recommended action. The blankness widened like hairline crack.

He pushed uncertainty aside. Mission first: the shard at Gutter Star, the legion’s redemption. Every second he hesitated allowed Coherence to tighten the noose.

Another alarm chimed – this one gentle, almost domestic: galley systems reporting ration warmer still on low heat. Someone, likely an inspector, left a sample meal untouched.

A banal reminder that ordinary appetites existed even aboard death machines.

Without planning, he keyed autopilot and stood. Gravity boots disengaged; he floated down central corridor, passing immaculate bulkheads that still smelled of detergent and metal polish.

The galley hatch slid open. Inside, a single cup of recaff floated, contents globular, amber steam curling like signal smoke.

He took the cup, anchored himself to a tube bench, and sipped. Bitterness jolted faded taste receptors awake. For an instant he was cadet again, sneaking extra caffeine before drills.

Memories flickered – names, laughter, burnt toast edges – then dissolved in static, leaving only seasoning of melancholy.

– We should purge non-mission memories to conserve coherence, – Nomad-Seven advised from hidden speakers.

– Not yet, – he answered.

He returned to cockpit. Sensors now plotted two faint contacts: one Coherence scout frigate, one unknown ghost signature trailing at improbable vector.

– Identify ghost contact, – Vorl ordered.

– Data corruption high. Signature resembles own drive halo, inverted.

He frowned. Mirror echo of the Straylight? Could be surveillance echo left by Vigilance’s implosion, or something else.

Time to accelerate. He strapped in, engaged Null-Space Caliper prep. Rings within engine core began slow counter-rotation.

A soft harmonic filled cabin, reminiscent of distant choir practicing scales.

He reached to fine-tune calibrations. Fingertips grazed the holographic slider; the blue bar sparked to white. Immediately, a cold ache spread along his left forearm as muscle micro-fibers knotted, the overexerted actuator from earlier now on the verge of seizure.

He suppressed grimace. Efficiency drop would manifest later in sword handling.

– Jump solution ready, – Nomad-Seven confirmed.

– Execute.

Rings aligned. Space through canopy warped; stars stretched into prismatic bars before flattening. The corvette lurched not forward but sideways across ontology. Gravity inverted for a blink, stomach hooking upward.

Then calm. Departing warship, hostile contacts, the Vigilance – they all lay behind an impassable veil of mathematics.

Deep black stretched ahead, scattered with seldom-mapped nebulae, gentle marbling of silver.

His pulse slowed. He studied shattered pauldron; scorched symbols barely visible. He touched the fracture. Metal cold, memory colder.

Twenty heartbeats of quiet passed.

– Cognitive sectors failing checksum, – Nomad-Seven warned. – Suggest mnemonic anchor.

He inhaled burnt recaff vapour still lingering on breath filters. – Give me the legion’s oath, archived version.

The shard recited, voice stabilised: – We stand between void and voice, our names spears against erasure.

Lines resonated like old hymn. He repeated them silently, patching cracks.

Sudden tremor rippled hull; Caliper rings emitted shrill ping.

– Stress, – Nomad-Seven stated. – Structural hairline fracture, magnitude zero point three.

Not catastrophic yet, but each jump demanded payment. He logged hazard.

He tapped commands, and maintenance drones unreeled along the outer hull to apply sealant to the micro-cracks, another loss duly recorded in the ship’s stores.

While drones worked, he replayed escape footage. Frame by frame, he sought the glyph’s first appearance inside Vigilance server. It preceded explosion by four minutes.

– Were you inside before reactor breach? – he asked.

– Negative. Transmission piggybacked on Legionary frequency. I answered.

Legionary? His legion’s encryption died thirty years ago. Who transmitted?

Memory glitch again – faces blurred, call-signs missing. Fist clenched.

– I need those memories, – he muttered.

– I will attempt salvage if corruption source removed.

– Later.

Autopilot chimed. They approached micro-rift edge of Vectorate patrol zone.

He dropped ship to idle drift. Lights outside dimmed; only quiet hum of life-support remained.

He allowed silence to linger, tasting the ship’s recycled air – faint lemon, a holdover from packaging adhesives.

Then, internal comm beeped. – Incoming message, hashed by obsolete code G-Dawn.

He frowned. – Play audio.

Old man’s voice, brittle but resolute: – Praetor, if you yet draw breath, sanctuary lies at K-46. Trust the analyst. End cast.

The signal ended before he could trace its path. The analyst had to be Kaelen, likely part of Admiral Voron’s network. Even now, the universe still held unlikely allies.

A slow exhale fogged the inside of his visor. He remote-checked muscle memory logs; sword reflex latency had increased by six milliseconds due to actuator damage. The margin for error was now razor-thin.

Drifting here risked detection; he reinitiated cruise.

– Chart path hugging nebula Rhylis fringe. Avoid major data relays.

– Course plotted. Warning: nebula plasma may scramble sensor arrays.

– Accept.

Thrum deepened. Blue starlight filtered through tinted canopy, subtle gradient reminiscent of twilight over his childhood lake. He wondered if that lake actually existed or was simulation inserted during legion indoctrination.

Memory refused answer.

On panel he noticed unread alert: life-support ration logs flagged inequality. Galley inventory listed fresh fruit pack – two apricots.

Apricots, on a military corvette? Quarantine status unknown. Yet the simple entry felt like a joke. Perhaps inspector’s snack.

He almost smiled, a rare muscle pattern.

Caution lights flashed. Nebula ions brushed hull, producing soft crackle like static rain on tin roof.

– Radiation creeping. Reduce external emissions, – shard reported.

He complied. Lights dimmed, engines throttled. Ship drifted ghost-quiet inside amethyst cloud.

In that hush, illusions of whispering voices crawled along edges of hearing. Neural filters identified them as nebular EM interference, but they sounded like legionaries calling roll.

He shook head.

– Nomad-Seven, store recording of ambient sound for later analysis.

– Logged.

At last he saw distant speck of K-46’s listening tower blinking pale. Relief registered as micro-spike of dopamines.

But he sensed another unease – how easily synthetic emotion flagged progress, mocking true feeling.

Approach trajectory required trans-ponder handshake. The Straylight lacked proper codes. He would need improvisation.

– Forge clearance packet, origin: Surveyor Branch Theta. Keep noise plausible.

– Generating. Keep hull steady to avoid awake drones.

He steadied. The injury in thumb servos pulsed heat. He toggled glove coolant; chill raced arm, easing haptic misfires.

– This improvisation borders on treason to every side, – he whispered half to himself.

No answer. Silence judged truth.

Listening post accepted forged packet; docking tunnel extended like hesitant handshake.

He powered down engines, prepared concealment sequence, and collected Mnemosyne Blade from weapon locker. The blade hummed low, hungry. Purple arcs slid along edge like predatory fireflies.

He clipped it to thigh mount. Heat from weapon warmed armor joint, easing micro-tremor there.

Before airlock cycle, he paused. A single apricot floated from ration bag he had opened earlier – its skin mottled gold.

He captured fruit, tucked it into belt pouch. A token of strangeness, or maybe reminder that life contained sweetness among entropy.

Airlock hissed open; crisp sterilized air poured, carrying scent of industrial solvents and faint pine – the tower’s atmosphere processors used aromatic resin to mask ozone.

– Nomad-Seven, hold ship in low-power and sanitize logs. I will return.

– Directive accepted. Preserve the user.

He stepped into white corridor, lights so bright they erased shadows. Boots clanged on mesh walkway, each echo too loud – like secrets trying to hide in empty cathedral.

Behind him, the Straylight sealed. Ahead, quarantine drones hovered, scanning. He nodded to them; forged credentials held.

Yet inside his helm a quiet timer ticked, reminding him: data-core memory degradation ongoing, nine percent loss per hour. His mind itself was a fuse.

He quickened pace toward Analyst Kaelen’s last ping, mission expanding like nebula within skull.

A soft chime from belt pouch. He pulled apricot; pressure change had cracked skin, nectar bead glistening. He ate it in two efficient bites. Sweetness flooded mouth, foreign and radiant.

For one breath, galaxies quieted.

His visor displayed new message, origin unknown: Coherence cruiser accelerating beyond safe causal margin toward his exit coordinate.

Every vector screamed hurry.

He resumed stride, whispering mantra not to forget: Memory is the final battlefield.

The corridor light flickered, casting the room into sudden dusk.

Two serene breaths followed – distant hum of ventilation, faint resin aroma calming the air.

Then everything ahead went dark.

Derelict Throne

The sudden darkness was absolute, a void that swallowed the sterile white of the corridor. Vorl froze, every combat instinct screaming trap.

Two heartbeats later, emergency strobes flickered to life, painting the hangar in a sickly bronze. The air, once pine-scented, now carried the sharp tang of ozone and the smell of tripped circuits.

A low groan echoed from the station’s superstructure, a sound of metal under stress. The quarantine lockdown was likely engaging, turning the listening post into a tomb.

His hand went to the Mnemosyne Blade, its hilt a familiar weight. The station was supposed to be a sanctuary, however temporary. Instead, it felt like another derelict throne.

– Nomad-Seven, report, – Vorl commanded, his voice a low gravel. – What caused the power failure?

The shard’s voice answered, equal parts hush and static. – Unknown. Station power grid is offline. The Straylight’s internal systems remain active, but we are cut off from external comms.

He reached the boarding ramp control, palm plate still wrapped in protective plastic. A tap, and the panel peeled off its factory seal with an audible pop like a champagne cork at cadet graduation banquets.

– Nomad-Seven interface available, – the shard announced, voice splintering into a line of forgotten poetry: Winds whisper where code once sang.

– Ramp down, silence external beacons, – Vorl ordered.

Metal unfolded with ceremonial grace, pistons venting cold air that tasted of lemon cleanser and ozone. He strode aboard, boots thudding on virgin deck plating.

Cargo bay lights remained dim, responding to motion with hesitant glow. He caught sight of his reflection in an unopened supply crate: obsidian armor, left pauldron shattered, coolant tracing a dark vein. The ghost of a smile tried and failed to surface.

Forward bulkhead racks still held blank ident-tags waiting for their first consignments. In an almost reverent gesture, he hung the Mnemosyne Blade there for a moment, letting its hum draw residual current from the corvette’s power feed.

The blade pulsed violet; telemetry on his HUD spiked. The short-term buffer in his forearm actuators drained by three percent, leaving a sensation like pins and needles in muscle that wasn’t wholly his.

He swallowed the discomfort and reclaimed the weapon, attaching it to hip mount where its weight centered him.

– Caliper readiness eighty-seven percent, – Nomad-Seven supplied.

– Enough, – he muttered.

He moved forward through pristine corridors still smelling of polymer sealant. A maintenance drone scuttled from a side alcove, clamps extended inquisitively. It chirped factory default greeting: Welcome, Surveyor-Branch Captain.

– Not today, – he replied, severing its greeting routine with a quick data spike.

The drone powered down, optical sensor drooping like a disappointed pet. Guilt attempted to rise; mission urgency drowned it.

Cockpit door irised open, revealing a single pilot seat upholstered in dark graphite weave. He slid into it, harness auto-cinching across chest plates with a hiss.

Console screens came alive. Cyan telemetry scrolled, accompanied by a low contrabass thrum from engines spool-up.

Vorl placed gauntleted fingers on throttle, then paused. A small paper cup rested in cup-well, steam still curling. Factory inspector’s recaff – someone had trusted a timer more than fate.

He lifted the cup and drank. Bitter, nutty, faint spice of cardamom: a luxury unauthorized by ration codes. For an instant he tasted cadet midnights spent gaming probability sims with classmates now dead or worse.

Memory shard snapped – names blurred, faces pixelated. He gently set the cup aside before nausea could follow.

A recorded emergency broadcast crackled on an open channel, voice faint like an elder calling from another room: – Station lockdown in T minus forty-three seconds. —

– Undock, – Vorl said.

Clamps released with metallic sigh. The Straylight drifted clear of cradle, inertial dampers smoothing motion into velvet glide.

He thumbed main engines. Blue fusion arcs flared; the corvette surged toward outer blast doors. Hull groaned as internal pressure equalized.

Behind, warning klaxons overlapped into a rising howl. He resisted the urge to look back. The past was now an exploding algorithm.

External hull cameras caught the station’s running lights flickering out, section by section, as the power grid cascaded into failure. The listening post was going dark.

He felt the light through his armor, a heatless glare that painted consoles white.

Inside, a shiver rippled his mental lattice: a legion chant used during funerals tried to surface. He deleted the half-loaded verse before it could compromise focus.

– Station power grid is offline, – Nomad-Seven intoned, its voice softer now, as if offering a condolence it lacked the vocabulary for.

He set course vector thirty-two degrees dorsal, away from known Coherence patrol grids.

– Plot low-noise corridor to Rhylis Nebula, then onward to K-46, – he ordered.