The Silver Stella - 1. Chapter 1

Farewell, mother Donatella,
The endless sky,
The ever deep waters,
The boundless grains,
The untainted perfection.
Forgive us, mother Donatella,
The arrogance of man,
The silence of the wind,
The gleaming silver prison,
The harvest of your heart,
Your death.
Farewell, mother Donatella,
Your soul free,
Your children weep,
Fleeing to Terca Lumeris.
- A poem, inscribed in the engine panel of the Silver Stella

Chapter One
The light steps of metal boots on a metallic floor woke Tyro again. He panicked, looking for a familiar sight but soon he remembered he no longer would wake up to a bright sunny day or the illuminating reflections of Donatella’s silver skin casted on his bed, only the cold empty darkness of space was at his window. He rose quickly, cracking open the door soon enough to send Stewart the signal that he was awake so he could wake the others. Tyro stretched his body at all angles to get them ready for the day’s work.

He turned to the computer, putting authority in his voice, “Awaken, Elco.” First, the harsh artificial light of the overhead lights came on, blinding him for a second. “Begin, full scans of the ship and its contents.”

“Yes, Captain Tyro.” Elco replied sourly as if he had truly just woken up.

A humanoid shape appeared in front of Tyro. A man around the age of mid thirties with immaculate raven black hair parted to side with white circle rimmed glass, wearing a tailored gray suit with shimmering black tie. Tyro had tried altering Elco’s appearance but the program was stubborn.

Tyro made an irritated noise, muttering, “I’m not the Captain, Raito is.”

Elco looked down through his glasses, “As I remember, your parents made the Silver Stella with you in mind, so by-.” Elco felt his ability to talk was gone.

Tyro looked at him coldly, “Raito is the Captain, am I clear?” The program nodded and then disappeared.

Tyro felt guilty immediately for reprimanding Elco. He just hated being reminded of his parents and their intentions no matter how noble or good it seemed to them, but it wasn’t just the memory of his parents that bothered him. There had been reports of fainting spells in the Solarium on the third level of the recreation deck of the ship.

He had checked the ship’s ventilation in the sector, but there was nothing wrong with the vents themselves, for some reason, air wasn’t being equally distributed around the entire ship. Tyro would fix it as soon as he found out what the problem was, but in the mean time, he lied to everyone, saying the vents were damaged in the launch and he would get maintenance to fix it, but no one under no circumstances were allowed to go in there.

Tyro shook his head clear of the thoughts and went to the shower. The strange but faint buzzing noise began, signaling Tyro that the tiny vibrations had begun cleaning his skin. How he missed taking hot showers back on Donatella, but they couldn’t waste water for showering when they could use the sonic showers, which admittedly cleaned better than actual water, but he still craved it.

Overall, the “shower” only took seconds to finish and it was the same with brushing his teeth only that his teeth vibrated a bit afterwards. Next, was he checked the mirror, admiring his features until he remembered way they were so perfect. He started at his hair. From the back, it started off obsidian black gradually growing lighter to a pale blue then at the tip to white. His face had witchy look to it with large mercury colored eyes, and high cheekbones. His skin was tight, flawless, and as pale as marble yet soft to anyone who touched it. His long wiry frame had been horned to sculpted perfection by nature, well not nature, but close to.

“Tyro,” Elco whispered his voice cautious. Tyro found it comically how human the computer tried to be. “There’s someone at your door.”

Tyro nodded and stood on the pulsing circle in the corner of his room. Warm air blew across his whole body and he found himself in the cozy black jumpsuit that carried the symbol of his position. A patch above his heart was a cursive S with a key striking through it. It wasn’t as creative as the others were but he was fine with it.

He opened the door to find that no one was there, “Tyro,” a little Oceanic girl let out in a desperate voice. She immediately pulling on his finger, but gained no movement. “Come on, before all the cinnamon rolls are gone!”

Tyro couldn’t let that happen to poor Monica. He swung up onto his shoulders and sprinted off to the mess hall. Monica let out a burst of giggles and screams as she buried his hands in his hair, tugging to the right, “Right, the right!” At the last second, Tyro played as if he had lost his balance, hopping on one foot then righted himself, flew off into the mess hall, and snatched the last cinnamon roll before Ash had a chance at it.

Ash, a year older than Tyro, waved his fist at Tyro in mock angry, “One of these days, Tyro, I’m going to get the last cinnamon bun and you little girl too.”

Monica couldn’t fight the grin on her face as Tyro set her down at her table to eat her still hot cinnamon roll. “Thank you, Tyro.” He winked at her and joined the line with Ash.

Ash narrowed his eyes at the little girl, then Tyro with a rueful smile. “She woke you up, again?” Tyro nodded, grabbing trays for Monica and himself. “I don’t understand how can run from the other side of the ship, carrying a fifty pound girl, grab the last cinnamon roll and not be out of breath.”

Tyro, shrugged. “Some people have it, some don’t.” He said simply.

Ash just smirked and shrugged himself. Even though, Ash and Tyro didn’t know each other growing up, Tyro found it relatively easy to befriend Ash or maybe it was the other way around, Ash easily befriended Tyro. Tyro always had a problem with other children when growing up; claiming he didn’t understand the ‘friend’ conception but Ash made it so ease.

He was the son of the Head of the Engines. He too wore a tight form-fitting jumpsuit but green lining run all through it, meeting at the center where a small “e” overshadowed by rocketing ship to show he was his father’s protégé. Tyro wondered why his parents named him Ash, after the Crystal War hero of 2347, when the hero was tall and beastly and Ash was beastly but he was incredibly short, reaching only 5’7” with a jutting jaw, thick brows, and sharp green eyes, but Tyro just accepted that his parents liked the sound of the name and there was no other reason behind it.

On the way to their table, Tyro dropped off Monica’s tray, but the girl had just finished eating all the icing first and tore fiercely into the sweet bread. Tyro just stared for a seconds and slowly walked away not to draw any unwanted attention to himself about how a little girl could be so…brutish.

Ash leaned forward, looking around suspiciously, “Did you find out what was wrong with the vent?” He kept his tone low not to alert anyone to the danger. Tyro felt a twinge on guilt in his chest for lying to his friend. Actually, he had only half lied, telling Ash that he didn’t know what was wrong with the vents and told him to tell everyone that the vents were clogged to avoid suspicion.

Tyro nodded, swallowing a piece of toast first, “Yes, the vents’ OS is damaged. I should have it working by the end of the day, but don’t let anyone go into the Solarium until I say so.”

“What?”

Tyro rose his brow in question, “What do you mean “what”?”

Ash let out an irritated sigh, pointing his fork crudely at Tyro, “Didn’t I tell you I don’t speak Tech? I don’t know what OS is.”

“Oh,” Tyro smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, OS stands for Operating Systems. The module was hit during the launch and I guess it’s finally acting up, but it won’t be fixed until late today or early tomorrow.”

“Aw,” he whined like a dog, “Can’t you work any faster than that? It’s our spot.” The ‘our’ stood for Stacy and himself.

“You two aren’t even dating, besides, you only saw her there a few times. It’s not “your” spot.” He informed.

Ash wiggled his hairy brows at his friend, “Oh, we will be, just you wait.”

“Okay, stalker.” Tyro accused.

“Hey, I take offense to that.”

“That was the point.”

Ash scoffed at him, “If I’m a stalker, then what is Kathy?”

Tyro’s skin crawled at the mention of her name. “She still won’t leave me alone. She cornered me in the Solarium yesterday, saying she felt light headed and collapsed on top of me.”

Ash tried to fight the laughter but he couldn’t get the picture of Tyro straining to get Kathy off him without touching her breast. Suddenly, something got stuck in his throat. He tried to dry swallow but he couldn’t because he was laughing too hard. With a hit to the chest, he swallowed, wiping the sweat from his face. “Whew, that was close.”

“Maybe you should learn how to chew first.” He muttered.

Ash told him to shut it about his piggish nature but he didn’t drop the subject. “I don’t see what’s wrong with her. If Sandy wasn’t in the picture, I’d be hitting that.”

Tyro rolled his eyes, thinking, if she had a penis and no breasts, she might be attractive. However, she didn’t. “She’s just so whorish.” He hated to say that about the girl, about any girl because there were more men than women on the ship, putting girls into awkward positions, but Kathy graduated from the Whore Institute of Nymphomania as Valedictorian. It was even worse because Kathy’s mother was the Head of Medicine. Whenever Tyro got hurt, she was the first one to see him.

Ash’s brutish face turned pale, looking directly at his food, “Dude,” his voice was tense, “Here she comes.”

Tyro knew he shouldn’t look but he was already looking for what made Ash turn pale, but he changed his expression from anxious to uncaring in seconds before he saw Kathy. It wasn’t difficult to find her though because the mess hall was suddenly quiet.

Kathy was naturally tall for a girl with long silky platinum blonde hair and gorgeous blue eyes. She wore a white jumpsuit with red lining that intersected into crosses on her body at her hands, feet and the biggest one where the horizontal line seemed to cup her breast while the vertical went right down the middle of her body. Her uniform was together than others and zipped almost a third of the way down but not enough to be unladylike. She smiled widely at Tyro, seeing his mercury eyes from a across the room but he turned back around uncaring.

Tyro felt his legs quiver in response to the urge to run but he stayed put and continued to eat his eggs. “Is she coming over here?” Ash gave an affirmative grunt.

As Kathy walked up she heard them talking about Antimatter something and an electrical storm but the rest was too tangled up in technological lingo for her to understand.

She sat next to Tyro, batting her long nearly invisible lashes at him. “Good Morning, Tyro,” she purred softly in his ear. “Ash.” Tyro smiled faintly and waved while Ash just nodded. “So what are you boys talking about?”

Tyro pointed at Ash with his fork, “Ash was just asking what would happen if we flew through an electrical storm and it reversed our generators.”

“What would happen?” She asked innocently.

Tyro’s lips went to a tight line as he thought the process out. “Well, I would assume that the generators would go out of control, overpowering all systems until they burned out and we would most likely die of asphyxiation in a matter of minutes.”

Kathy gasped in horror, turning to Ash. “Why would you think of something like that?”

Ash smirked, knowing Tyro was dying to laugh on the inside. “I guess I’m just a sick person with a sick mind.”

“Oh, Tyro,” and it began. Her long arms wrapped Tyro tightly, squeezing her impressive chest against his body. “You wouldn’t let that happen, would you?”

Tyro shot Ash a look of hatred and patter her back twice, “If I could help it, of course, not, I wouldn’t won’t everyone to die.” Except maybe you, he thought quietly.

She hugged him even tighter then, burying her face in her neck. Tyro felt molested. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She cooed.

“Uh, Kathy?”

“Yes?”

Tyro looked down into her eyes, realizing how close her face was to his. “Could you let go of me, now?”

Kathy pulled around, blushing from feigned embarrassment, and started eating her breakfast. Sandy joined them next and started the conversation again, of what they missed about Donatella. It was incredibly depressing to Tyro. He never had much human interaction other than school. He was never invited to go to a party or dance, or any games. Nevertheless, he liked hearing their stories because it gave him something to hope for when they reached Terca Lumeris.

Tyro heard someone mention his name, but he sensed racing along the edges of his consciousness, screaming into his mentally ear, “Tyro, Raito needs you on deck!”

“Why?”He sent back. Mental communication was a new power he had discovered when he was trying to hide himself from Raito, but the process was dangerous as it dragged Tyro’s conscious to enter the ship’s mainframe to do so.

“Oh, nothing,” Elco said nonchalantly. “If you’re okay with running out of oxygen in the next four hours.”

Tyro felt an odd sensation rippled through his mind. “Tell Raito, I’ll be there soon.” Before Elco responded, their connecting was cut and Tyro was painfully aware that his own air had been cut off.

At first, he thought the air in the mess hall had gone out but something had lodged itself in his throat. This was the price of mental communication with Elco. His mind would put his body on autopilot as he conversed with Elco, but any shocking emotional response would still make his body react. Tyro didn’t know what it was but he felt panic begin to set in. It was a new and crimpling emotion that he had never had to deal with before, so he didn’t know how to calm himself down.

Steel bars compressed his ribs, driving whispers of air from his lungs. He wanted to suck the air back, but the bars collided with his sides again. He tried to stop his brain from over thinking and relax. The bars were warm and uneven, hard yet soft. He felt them again and realized they were cords of muscle. He relaxed more and finally, the crushing pressure forced the piece of half-chewed sausage from his airways. Still, it was too late. In response, his body was trying to knock him unconscious to avoid brain damage from the lack of air and his panicking didn’t help the matter.

A blurry figure crossed his line of vision. Something rough pressed against his lips and pounded on his chest. Warm air was blown into his body. The air tasted like eggs. It happened two more times before Tyro lurched upwards, pushing the person away. The last one, the person’s tongue had brushed against his like a snake.

His eyes refocused themselves on Levi, not Ash, who Tyro thought it was. “Thank you.” Tyro said breathlessly. Half of Levi’s handsome curled into a smile as he patted the younger boy on the back.

Levi rubbed his back slowly. The heat from his hands gave Tyro goose bumps. “Are you okay?” Tyro nodded, catching his breath. “Okay, I’m going to have Kathy check you out okay?”

Tyro almost protested but Kathy had already shined the tiny annoying light in his eyes. “Great Donatella, you could learn how to chew your food, Tyro.” She sounded stressed. She tilted his head left and right, asking him how many fingers she was holding up. When she had finished poking and prodding him, he escaped, thanking them.

He found a dark corner of the ship and sat there. Thoughts of Levi were at the forefront of his mind. Tyro had known him before Donatella collapsed. He had worked for Tyro’s parents for years. Tyro didn’t know much about him except that Levi had shown up at his father’s laboratory looking for work at the age of 17 while Tyro was 11. Rollin, Tyro’s father, hired Levi mostly because Levi knew how to work with Mimic Alloy, which was a rarity in the Empire.

Sometimes, Levi watched over Tyro for his parents while they were away, but Tyro never grew close to the boy. He never grew close to people in general. There was no need at the time for such a bond. Tyro wished he could’ve been more interactive with his parents, with anyone, but he wasn’t jealous that Levi had grown close to his parents. He was happy that they had a child that wasn’t what he was. He was also happy to just be around Levi. Levi had a witchy look to his, narrow eyes and thin eyebrow and a full jaw, wide lips and a narrow nose. Levi was a little over average height, making him six foot, two inches. His eyes were a shimmering violet and his voice was low and sober always having a hint of cheer in it.

“Tyro?” He heard Levi’s voice approaching. Levi rounded the corner as Tyro stood up, acting as if he was checking the vents in the area. “Tyro?”

Tyro’s forehead wrinkled in fake surprise. “Yes?” Levi was dressed similar to Tyro but his patch were cogs of a machine spinning.

Levi peered into the vent and looked back at him. “What are you doing?”

Tyro’s face stared neutral and his voice monotone. “The ship’s sensor went off in this area. I was checking if there was another short.”

Levi pushed his lips together, thoughtfully, trying to gauge whether Tyro was lying to him but he could never tell. “Well, Raito says he needs you on deck immediately.”

Tyro nodded and walked off at a determined pace. When he was sure Levi couldn’t see him, He burst into a sprint to the other part of the ship taking the stairs to think things out. For starters, how did Levi find him? The thoughts vanished as he heard Elco’s voice from the deck.

The door whooshed opened, and Tyro entered hitting his heart in a salute. “Captain.”

Raito broke eye contact with Jason, his second in command and glanced to him. “Tyro, I trust Elco has told you the problem.”

He was handsome in the classic pirate way, which he was. He had medium length wavy brown hair with bands on gold in it with a sharp nose and piercing eyes and his hand always on the gun on his side. He looked at me, his face frowning more than Tyro thought possible.

Tyro hit his chest again and ship’s holo-frame came to life. “Yes sir, Stella is running out of air.” He didn’t bother looking for what was wrong with the ship because Elco had already feed him the information. Now, he was pulling up the blueprint of the ship. “The problem isn’t the Carbon converter, it is located on the Stella’s haul. There’s a medium size hole in the hull above the Cryo-Center.” Tyro’s eyes widen as the words rattled from his lips.

The Cryo-Center was the big project his parents were trying to finish before Donatella collapsed. Most people thought that his parents were doing this to cryogenetically freeze themselves to get to Terca Lumeris, but his parents built it for food. They couldn’t carry living animals on the ship and people would refuse supplementation, so they simply butchered the animals on Donatella and froze their meat and vegetables. The idea was brilliant and other Arks began to do the same thing, but Cryo-centers worked on an air pressure constant rate. The ship had been overworking to provide constant pressure to the center, but why didn’t the ship tell Tyro?

Tyro snapped around to tell Raito how to fix their problem, but his vision swam and legs collapsed underneath him. It had been a long time since he had used his strange communication with the ship to find the answer. This was his secret.

Parts of his brain, heart, lungs, eyes, and others had been enhanced by his parents. Mostly, it meant he was more resilient than most humans were, but his communication and the manipulation of the Silver Stella and most electronic devices, but it has its drawn back. The more inept he becomes with technology, he loses bits of his humanity in order to control himself, or it used to be that way until-

Cool liquid went down his throat in a steady stream, reviving him to the realm of consciousness. “Tyro, can you hear me?” It was Levi. Tyro could smell him to the point it almost hurt his nose. He had a certain sweet musk. Tyro could almost taste it.

His body started reacting to Levi’s smell, but Tyro immediately imagined cold water running through his veins, slowing his heart rate and decreasing blood flow to his groin until he was in control of himself again. “Sorry,” he mumbled, opening his eyes slowly. He stifled a gasp when his eyes opened, scanning Levi’s height, weight, race, and etc. He shut his eyes tight, fighting the feeling of detachment that the ship gave him. When he opened his eyes again, he just saw Levi small half smile.

Levi leaned closer, whispering, “I’m starting to think you’re doing this to get my attention.” Tyro felt the heat rolling off him.”

Tyro scoffed at him weakly, “Please, I wouldn’t sink so low to do such a thing. Besides, I have no desire to be constantly rescued.” He snipped.

Levi wasn’t expecting that answer, but he didn’t let it affect him. “Are you sure that you’re okay?”

“I’m positive. I just didn’t eat much this morning.”

“The sausage incident.” He supplied. “But if you’re sure you’re okay, then I’ll leave you in the very capable hands on the captain.”

He watched as Levi turned to leave, and then it dawned on him. “Wait!” He shouted. He tried to get to his feet, but they were still wobbling and he started to fall. Levi caught him without hesitation. “There a hole in Stella’s hull above the Cryo-center. We need you the fix it.”

It didn’t take Levi long to grab his tools, which was fortunate for the ship, but unfortunate for Tyro. He couldn’t fight the sense of impending doom on the other side of the air lock. He had to go with Levi to direct him to the hole since Stella was originally a leisure ship and was later converted into an Ark. Leaving Stella made him feel extremely naked.

“Are you ready?” Levi asked.

“Yes.”

He dialed the lock to open and the doors were swallowed up by the darkness. Tyro searched for some form of light from the stars but they were too dull to cast even a sliver of light. Tyro found his body unable to move. What if he lost his communication with Elco or the ship? What if once outside Silver Stella, he no longer had any abilities and he lost Levi and himself in space? The whole ship would die then and it would be his entire fault just like Donatella.

“Tyro,” Levi called to him. “Maybe you should stay on the ship.”

Tyro felt the stringy panic leave his system, clearing his mind of those dark thoughts. “No, the hole is between the 3^rd and 4^th auxiliary food stores. It would take you too long to find it and patch it. I can bring you to it easily.”

Levi held one hand onto the outside of the ship and the other out to Tyro. “Then we shouldn’t keep everyone waiting.” Tyro took it, and ventured outside of Stella.

Absolute silence pressed them against the outer shell of Silver Stella. The sun flared in the distance like a fading star as they flew further and further away. They had long passed the last dead planet, which had also been harvested for the “restoration” of Donatella, of the Toulus galaxy, and now they had entered the Void, the dead space between galaxies.

Levi pressed his hand against the body of ship, activating the grip of his gloves and boots. Tyro shivered, feeling an alien presence on his chest like a tiny ant was crawling on him. The feeling got stronger when he started crawling along its surface. It was a new level of awareness out there. He could feel the imaginary line that Stella was following to get to Terca Lumeris. He felt the shooting stars racing past the Silver Stella.

They stared crawling over the ship’s hull, hating how painfully slow they were going. He was also having a hard time not bursting into fits of laughter from the feeling Stella gave him from crawling over the hull.

“How are you doing?” Levi’s voice came through his helmet, controlled but still concerned.

It was hard to hide the smile, but he did. “I’m fine, keep going.”

“Do you know how much further ‘til we reach it?”

Tyro stopped moving, extending his senses through the ship’s hull. “Tyro! We have a problem!” Elco echoed through his mind. “The ship is trying to reroute all of the oxygen to the Cryo-Center. I’m holding it off as best as I can, but it has gotten its hands on the command prompts for the living quarters.” Mental images of people with fluttering eyes, sliding onto the floor as the air got thinner and thinner. “People are going to start dying soon. You only have an hour.”

Tyro dove deeper into Stella. The ship was made with restorative metals that would repair the ship if there was any damage on its outer shell, but something had prevented it. He needed to reactivate that part of Stella’s programming to help Levi repair the hole.

He looked up to where he thought Levi might be, but his eyes were seeing the mainframe of the ship. “The hole is exactly 22.3 feet to your left. You do that, and I’ll see if I can activate the ship the repair itself. You have twenty minutes.”

Tyro dove back into the mainframe, looking for the route to the power center. There were so many things. First, he needed to stop the air from being pulled from the living quarters, then restore the healing mechanism, and finally the ship’s power core to stop it from overheating.

The mainframe looked like a perfectly timed city moving according to preset principles and order it had to follow. It was just like the planet core, only less vast and not damaged. Before he began to think where to go first, he already knew the answer because of Intellectus. It was a mode of existence. All questions would be answered if the correct question were asked in the beginning.

The artificial city blurred around him and he understood was being brought. He stood in the center of the Self Preservation router and across from the program itself. The program looked exactly like Elco in a vibrant red suit and black tie and white rimless glasses.

In one swift motion, red Elco brought up a gun to Tyro’s face and spoke in a detach voice. “Unauthorized Entry. Identify yourself.”

“I am Tyro Ameinias, Head of Security of the Silver Stella.”

The program looked at him sharply and lowered the gun. “You’re the Carta?”

Stella had already provided the answer to his question. A Carta is an organic being that can infuse its consciousness with an inorganic object of artificial intelligence. The only Carta besides Tyro in existence were medical nanobots. Elco, Tyro’s Elco, was the reverse of him. An interface between Tyro and the ship so Stella could understand his commands and actions.

Tyro pinched the bridge of his nose, forcing the dizziness from his mind and continued. “Elco, I need you reroute all the oxygen from the Cryo-Center to the living quarters.”

Red Elco looked back at his server and shook his head. “I am sorry, but I cannot do that. The Cryo-Center must be protected at all costs.”

“No, the people need protection at all costs. That is your purpose.” He spat. “The Cryo-Center is only food storage, we can get more food.”

Red Elco’s eyes flashed red. “Without food, how can people live? I will not reroute the air.”

“If the people die from asphyxiation then there will be no one-.” Tyro stopped himself uttering the rest of his sentence. The program hadn’t realized that it had created a contradiction.

Tyro turned away, thinking of another way to override the program, but another problem had presented itself. Someone had altered the Self Preservation program. Its role was to make sure they reached Terca Lumeris as quickly and efficiently as possible to complete its mission, meaning it had the power to override any program if necessary. If Tyro had made it realize that it contradicted itself, all of Stella would shut down, and he didn’t have the time to rewrite the program.

The answer smacked him by the way Intellectus. He clutched his head, biting back the scream. “Program Preservation,” His voice rang with authority as his father taught him to. “I, Security Officer Ameinias, override your programming by the code: Gravity.”

Red Elco froze in place as his eyes glowed blue for him to stand down, but they shifted to purple back to red again. “Access Denied.”

“What? I gave you a direct order, disengage immediately.” Tyro commanded.

Red Elco shivered and pulled out his gun again, “Unauthorized Access to system’s mainframe. Orders to terminate renegade program without haste.” He said coldly.

Tyro cursed himself for having to do this. “Program Preservation, if you continue on this order, you will kill the people to save the food, thus if you kill the people, who will eat the food, and better yet, you will have failed your mission.”

Red Elco blinked as if something was in his eyes then he dropped the gun, holding his head tightly. “No, you are wrong.”

“You’ve contradicted yourself.”

The program did only what it could. Red Elco wrapped his arms around himself, shaking furiously as he just burst into data and everything went dark. The ship stopped all together, including the life support, electricity, the engines, and the generators.

“Silver Stella, I, Officer Ameinias, give the override command by the code Hometown Glory.”

The darkness was banished by a lone beam of light coming from the center of darkness. Tyro was already there before he tried to move. First, he turned the life support back on and the generators and set the self-healing to begin then turned everything else on slowly. He felt Levi closing the hole with the Mimic Alloy being helped by the ship’s own healing process, but there was a slight problem.

In all of the confusion, Tyro had lost track of his body. When he caused the contradiction, the whole ship went offline and now, it was rebooting itself slowly. He asked the ship were his body was but, he had used so much of the ship, it read his body as a part of the ship, meaning it was no longer considered an organic being and since the ship called it inorganic and he considered it a Carta, the ship only understood that he still thought of it as organic in some form. Since neither he nor the ship could agree, it was lost. He would have to wait until all the programs came back online for Elco to find his body if it hadn’t drifted too far away.

Since he had nothing to do, he pulled Red Elco’s data stream for examination. Sure enough, Red Elco’s personality had been highlighted in certain parts, making him direct all of his attention to keeping the air pressure in the Cryo-center. Not many people could reprogram such a being as Red Elco given the fact he was considered one of the more important programs of the ship, but it did make sense why there were no security protocols in place to stop Tyro from entering the Preservation center of the mainframe, except for Elco holding a gun to his face.

Even as the Head Security Officer, he wasn’t always logged in and when he just appeared in the ship’s mainframe meant someone else had already hacked Stella but didn’t have enough time or the ability to turn its security back on again. He began to wonder why he didn’t notice this. His consciousness was almost always in contact with the ship’s mainframe through Elco, but even without him, Tyro would’ve noticed this.

He went back to where the ship had been pierced. It was awful hard place for random debris from the rush launch to hit since it was between two decks and not many random things can pierce Stella’s shell unless a Diamond Ray laser just accidently went off and hit them but didn’t destroy them. Someone had just tried to kill them. They had left too much time and with his contact with Elco, running constant checks, there was no doubt of him finding this leak. It was too flawed, so-

“Tyro!” A girl’s voice bellowed, as something snapped Tyro’s head around, making his face sting like lightning. Another blow made his body jerk back in reaction, grabbing the hands before he could be slapped anymore.

It took a while before he could force his eyes to open. “Ow,” he cursed. “Did you have to hit me so bloody hard?” He snapped at Kathy. Tyro rubbed his cheek, knowing that there had to be a handprint on it now.

“Oh Tyro!” Once again, Kathy wrapped her cool arms around his body, squeezing hard enough to severe his spine. “You didn’t respond to anything! We thought you were dead!”

“We?” he thought to himself. Raito, Ash, Levi, Monica and the other department heads surround him with cautioned eyes relieved.

Raito convinced to leave Tyro to get his rest, only Valarie and Jason stayed behind. Raito patted him head and smile, still holding onto his gun. “Good work, Captain Tyro.”

Tyro made a disgusted noise, “Stop calling me that, you’re the Captain.”

Valarie snorted a bit, “All he can do is drive wildly to escape being caught and a little of navigation, he’s no Captain.”

“But he has the charisma of a king,” Tyro countered. “I don’t want to be Captain. I like being unnoticed by people. Most of them think I’m just on Stella because my parents made it, and we might need that now.”

Jason stood next to Raito, his baldhead shining from the light. He was a curious one, so big and polite with this thick mustache above his lips, and he was quite perceptive about things. “Why?”

“Was anybody conscious when the ship went offline?” Tyro asked.

Raito nodded. “I had everyone put on the Aero-masks before you shut it down, why?” He told them all of his findings and theories. “So someone made a hole large enough to threat our food supply and reprogrammed the overseer program, left us enough time to figure it out, and made sure the security was off so it couldn’t slow you down, but you haven’t told us why.”

Tyro smirked bitterly. “You’re thinking about it like the person had always been on the ship. There’s someone on the Silver Stella who wasn’t here before.”