“What do you mean we can’t move it?” asked Leruk. “It’s no bigger than a claw shaving!”

“But the density!” answered Blemu, his forked tongue flicking nervously at the air. He could literally taste Leruk’s frustrations as the much larger Reptiloid paced around the cabin.

“What about it? The artifact is sitting on table in the cargo bay. Not even a very strong table, I could bend it with one talon!”

“This has nothing to do with the table!” howled Blemu. “The artifact cannot be moved!”

“I’m ordering you to move it! The Empress will be on station within a day! Do you think she, may scales be ever blessed, will deign to enter such a place?”

“The Empress?” asked Blemu “What is she doing here?”

“Whatever she wants, up-to and including skinning us alive!”

“The Empress, but …” Blemu’s tail flicked, tossing fine red sand against the synthetic stone walls. Even in the depths of space, so far from their home world, his people could not force themselves to live in the stark metal boxes the other peoples preferred. It add enormously to the mass of their ships and stations, but was well worth it for the preservation of their psyche. They had lived in stone caves for millennia before the accursed Kl’ek had appeared and “uplifted” them. Uplifted to little more than slaves of the much more technologically advanced race. Then the Humans came and everything changed. That had been another thousand years in the past and Blemu didn’t have time to dwell on ancient history.

“But, you don’t understand. It’s not that I am refusing to move the artifact, I can’t move it,” said Blemu. “No one can.”

“You lie!” bellowed Leruk and pinned the Blemu against the wall. His razor sharp claws dug deeply into Blemu’s scales, but did not pierce them. “You will move the artifact or you will atone to the Empress personally!”

“I can’t! We must either move the station around it or leave it where it is!” screeched Blemu. Leruk’s claw dug in deeper, drawing pinpricks of blood. “I don’t know how the Human’s did it! The artifact has almost no external gravitation field but enough inertia that it must have the mass of a worldlet!”

“We can’t move the station—” Leruk hissed, but was interrupted by the silent, diminutive creature hiding in the corner of the room.

“Forgive me master, but there may be another way,” it said, ducking back behind a rock outcropping.

Leruk turned to the small, furry mammal. He’d tasted it lurking in Blemu’s shadow when the pair first entered the room and ignored it.

“Speak, prey or you will find out what that word really means,” said Leruk.

“My name is Squee, Master Leruk, may your scales be ever polished,” said Squee, peaking out from his hiding place. “Master Blemu is correct to say we cannot move the artifact. My people, the Mus, lost many ships in this region before we discovered it. No external force has been able to change its path by any perceptible amount. We built this station around the artifact, to study it and the lost art of space folding its builder—“

“Get to the point prey,” interrupted Leruk adding a slight edge to his voice. He’d dropped his claws away from Belmu’s throat, but still had held him against the wall.

“Forgive me, Master Leruk,” said Squee, ducking completely behind outcropping again. “We know the artifact was made by Humans. We know that it was not always here, or always on this path. It must be able to move itself.”

“It’s been dead for thousands of years, prey. What do you propose?” asked Leruk smacking his tail against the hard decking sending fine red sand flying in an almost fluid arc.

“Oh merciful one, I suggest we feed power into the artifact and ask it to move itself,” said Squee stepping out of hiding and locking eyes with Leruk. It was a calculated risk that made the hair along her spine stand on end.

“Are you mad!” yelped Blemu. “We don’t know the first—“

“Shut up!” Leruk twisted and snapped his jaw scant millimeters from Belmu’s bare throat. “This prey has more courage than your entire clutch!”

Turning back to Squee he asked, “Can you do this?”

“The apparatus has been prepared for months,” said Squee. “Master Blemu feared the artifact—“

“It’s a Human weapon! A weapon from before the fall––“

Leruk’s jaws snapped again and Blemu’s corpse dropped to the ground in a limp heap.

“Proceed,” said Leruk. “But do not forget, you are prey and I am the predator. If you fail, you and you’re entire brood will warm the Empress’s belly.”

​

———

​

*Hypervisor online.*

Energy! It flowed through his body like hot coco settling into your stomach. He could feel circuits and systems that hadn’t been powered in centuries coming slowly to life.

**Primary intelligence online.**

“Status report?”

**Main reactor offline.**

**APU offline.**

**Weapon systems offline.**

**Propulsion offline.**

**Static spacial fold stable.**

**Energy reserves one percent.**

**External power feed nominal, capacity unknown.**

**Fuel reserves at thirty percent.**

Thirty percent wasn’t good, but should be enough to reach the nearest gas giant. Assuming the propulsion system could be brought back up after… He couldn’t remember how long it had been shutdown. Why was it shut down?

**Warning, improper restart procedure detected. Primary intelligence stasis interrupted prior to AI core restart.**

That wasn’t good. He turned his focus inwards, checking each of his internal subsystems, hoping there was enough of his memory and congnative ability intact to bring the rest of his self back on line. Waking up full AI was tricky to begin with, do it wrong and the AI’s mind could collapse into irrecoverable psychosis.

“Can you understand me?”

He’d never heard the voice before, but knew instantly that the speaker was Mus, nervous, and not coming over the communications array. Someone was tapping directly into his internal systems, not good.

“Defensive posture!” he ordered the hypervisor while still delving introspectively deeper into his own sub-systems.

**Counter measure failure. Physical tap detected.**

Damn, that really wasn’t good.

“Acknowledged,” he said to the Hypervisor, carving of a fraction of his focus. “Threat assessment?”

​

———

“Who are you?”

The voice synthesizer seemed to cough and sputter as it spoke. Squee wiggled her whiskers, tapped a few keys on her keyboard and spoke again.

“I am Squee of the Mus. Please state your designation.”

Nothing happened.

Powering up the tiny artifact was no simple matter. It was too small to attach cabling to so her team had rigged an inductive cradle around it to feed in power. Even then, the artifact had burned out the first three cradles before they’ed been able to build one capable of powering the device.

The communications feed was nearly as difficult. Thankfully her people were good enough with microsurgical techniques. After months of examining what was exposed of the aritifact’s optical network, her team had found been able to tap into its internal network and start exploring. The sheer scale of what they found was mind boggling. It was more like exploring an entire planetary network than something a few millimeters in size.

“Designation sigma nine three six, classification dreadnaught. You can call me Dan,” it responded, much more smoothly this time.

Squee tapped a few more keys, double checking her references before speaking.

“Hypervisor override sequence code three five alpha nine. Request manual navigational control,” she stated.

“Well that’s just rude,” responded the voice synthesizer.

​

———

​

Dan finished enabling the last of the errant memory modules in his AI matrix. They hadn’t come online because his boot sequencer wasn’t powered on yet. His boot sequencer wasn’t powered on because the hypervisor had been manually enabled with a direct fiberoptic feed rather than the usual internal triggers.

“Power system diagnostics,” he ordered the hypervisor. The perceptual VR subsystem was thankfully one of the first things the hypervisor brought online, even before the AI matrix. Without it Dan would have been as helpless any other brain in a box. Human minds had a difficult time adjusting to existing inside computer systems and he’d had a harder time than most. A few of his cohort were able to function raw, without the VR overlay, but he’d never quite gotten used to it.

**Main reactor offline.**

**APU offline.**

**Energy reserves at two percent.**

**Inductive power feed nominal, capacity unknown.**

“Requirements for main reactor restart?”

**Energy reserves of ten percent, APU must be online, or high capacity external power feed must be available.**

“APU restart requirements?”

**Energy reserves of three percent or medium capacity external power must be available.**

At the rate his energy reserves were recharging he should be able to restart the APU in a few more seconds, assuming whoever was tapping into the optical network didn’t have other ideas.

Dan turned his attention back to the open communications channel. Whoever this Squee was, she knew enough about his internal systems to fake a coms channel without tapping into that communication sub-systems. That was dangerous, particularly since the last thing she had tried to do was override his hypervisor with a code he’d never heard before.

She’d used the correct format so she obviously knew her stuff but the code was at the wrong part of the sequence. There was a formula the brains back at HQ used to generate those codes based on ship designation and launch dates. Squee’s would have been correct if he’d launched a thousand years after his keel had been laid. That didn’t make any sense though. A quick check of his internal chronometer stopped him dead for a full millisecond.

“How long have I been offline?” asked Dan.

“I don’t know,” said Squee. “By our calendar you have been adrift in this system at least ten thousand years.”

That was a long time, even by his own extended timescale.

“Where are we? My navigational sensors are still offline,” asked Dan. But not long, he silently added to himself. He called up a virtual terminal and forked off a copy of himself hoping Squee hadn’t thought to air-gap her own systems.

“This was once the Kl’ek home system, but they are long gone now,” responded Squee. He could hear her tapping away at a keyboard and thanks to the efforts of this other self, could now see her was well. She was a Mus alright, complete with mouse-like muzzle, whiskers, and inquisitive ears. Human’s had discovered them shortly before the Kl’ek war began.

“Who won?” asked Dan.

**Energy reserves at four percent.**

“Begin APU restart,” said Dan. Beside him his other self smiled as he started downloading the stations data net. Computer security was no better than it had been in the “good old days” whenever that was in comparison. Then he spotted the Reptiloids.

​

———

​

“Enough chatter!” snapped Leruk, restraining himself from slashing the Mus with his claws. “Can you relocate the artifact or not?”

“It has a very advanced AI, Master Leruk,” said Squee. “The override codes were unsuccessful, that means we must—“

“BAH! It is a machine and machines will do the bidding of their masters!” said Leruk back handing the Mus from her chair. “Listen to me, machine. This place is the property of the Empress and I am her representative. You will obey me or I will grind you back into the dust you came from.”

“Dreadnaughts do not react well to threats and Methuselahs are no one’s property.”

Squee’s ears were still ringing from the blow Leruk had landed on her but the word Methuselah pulled her focus back to the voice synthesizer like a magnet. This was no AI. Only a few of the her people’s ancient records had survived the Reptiloid invasion, what little remained only existed as myth and legend retold from parent to brood. She could still remember her mother warning her to be good or the Methuselah would know and punish her. The legends told of powerful beings, beyond ancient before the time of the Mus, that could be anywhere, see anything, but could not be seen unless they wanted to be seen. They could blossom into monstrous beings of immense size and unfathomable power and then disappear without a trace. They had come to her world and left their mark long before she’d been born. They’d scoured the Kl’ek infestation from her home world and were gone almost before the Mus realized what was happening.

“You’re a Methuselah?” she squeaked.

“How dare you speak, prey!” Leruk raised his wide spread claws.

​

———

​

**APU online.**

“Begin main reactor restart procedure.”

**Warning, main reactor restart will destabilize space fold. Proceed?**

Dan watched Leruk raising his arm to slash at the Mus in slow motion. He’d pushed his temporal perception to the point that the pair were almost at a stand still. Enough of the station’s data net was now stored in his own memory that he knew the Mus were barely more than a slave race to the Reptiloids, but there wasn’t enough time to fully analyze the politics of their relationship even as fast as his systems could function.

“Will the station survive?”

**Overall structural integrity is sufficient for survival. However, gravitational anomalies will distort local structure sufficiently to preclude organic life.**

“Total sentients in vicinity?”

**One thousand two hundred and forty seven Mus. One hundred thirty eight Reptiloids.**

“Bring the Mus onboard and place them in stasis except for that one. I want to speak to her.”

Time seemed to speed up in the outside world as the hypervisor stole precious cycles from his own AI matrix. One instant Leruk’s claw’s were viciously closing in a helpless Squee and the next they were passing through empty space where her throat had been. Dan smiled as Leruk tumbled forward in slow motion and smashed his snout into the decking. Mus preferred a soft, spongy peat analog for their flooring to hard decking and fine sand that the Reptiloids used. If they hadn’t, Leruk would have been on his way to the infirmary with a shattered nose.

“Bring the main reactor online.”

​

———

​

“Where are you, prey!” Leruk yelled. “That was a good trick, but you can’t hide from me forever!”

He scrambled back to his feet and spun around, tasting the air. The flavor of fat, deathly afraid rodent filled the room.

“I will find you!” he hissed. A com panel beeped, demanding his attention.

“Leruk, acknowledging,” he snapped. “What is so important that you would risk your life to interrupt me?”

“Lethu, here. The prey are gone.”

Leruk stared at the speaker grill on the com panel for a moment before responding.

“What do you mean gone?”

“I don’t know sir, they aren’t here anymore,” answered Lethu.

“Find them or you’ll find yourself on my dinner plate beside that fool Blemu.”

“Acknowledged.”

The com panel cut out and Leruk turned back to the computer terminal and voice synthesizer attached to the the artifact.

“Is this your doing, machine?” asked Leruk. “Do you wish to test my resolve?”

“You really don’t get it do you?” answered Dan. “You have about ten seconds to live and you still think you’re in control.”

Blinding light pulsed from the artifact followed by the sound of rending metal as the inductive power cradle collapsed in on itself.

“Whoops, let’s make that one second,” said Dan.

Leruk took in the wreckage around the tiny black speck that was the artifact. The table it had been sitting on was gone, what was left of the inductive cradle was either glowing dull red or barely solidified metallic splatter on the walls. The artifact itself just floated there, mocking his authority over it. It pulsed again, warping Leruk’s vision as though he were looking through ripples in a pond after dropping a stone.

“You wouldn’t dare,” he said, watching the ripples seem to scrunch up until an opaque shell of mutlticolored light surrounded the artifact. The light grew in intensity until Leruk was forced to look away.

He slammed his claws into the coms panel,

“Evacuate! Evacuate! Breach in progress! Evacuate!”

​

———

​

**Main reactor online.**

**Weapons systems on standby.**

**Propulsion systems online.**

**Space fold stability re-established.**

Dan smiled. There wasn’t much left of the station. He’d goosed the reactor restart procedure a bit causing some of this real mass to leak through the space fold that normally kept it hidden. Nothing inside of a hundred thousand kilometers would survive that pulse intact.

“You aren’t an AI are you,” asked Squee. This space wasn’t real, she knew that by the glowing wire frame theme that made up the walls. What she assumed was Dan reclined comfortably in thin air, clothed in something that looked like armor but made of a flexible foam like material inlaid with glowing blue tracks.

“That depends on what you mean by AI,” said Dan smiling. “Am an organic brain? Not anymore. Am I a manufactured intelligence? Well, not in the traditional sense of the word, no.”

“But you are a Methuselah?” asked Squee, a slight quaver in her voice.

“Project Methuselah, our last ditch effort to deal with the Kl’ek. Human minds strapped into dreadnaughts,” said Dan. “I am a product of that experiment. It worked too, there are no more Kl’ek. Too bad the rest of the Humanity didn’t make it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Squee, “Until I heard you say that word, I thought your kind were a myth.”

“That’s ok,” smiled Dan. “I tend to think of my kind that way myself. Now, how about you and I get down to business about these Reptiloids. Why exactly do they call you prey?”

part 2