A room with many computers in the backround, lit up only by the screens to not draw as much attention away from the big screen in the foreground. A woman like figure with skin made of metal and lights all over her on it. It’s all silent until a tall, bearded man walks into the recording from the side with a couple of notes in his hand. “Aurora?”, he says with a gentle voice, not to scare the innocent looking figure in the screen. “I’m here to ask you some questions for the crew.”, his voice remains clearly hearable as he tries to get her attention. The woman turns towards the man with a neutral facial expression: “Hello Michael, excuse me for being a bit absent, but now I’m ready for your questions, feel free to ask me anything”, the soft female voice comes from the speakers next to the big screen as she looks directly at Michael. “No worries Aurora, we’ll get this done with ease. To start off: Please tell the crew something about yourself.” She doesn’t hesitate and immediately looks at the camera that is pointed towards Michael and the screen. “I am Aurora, a self-replicating autonomous artificial intelligence. Michael and his team have been working on me for the past 7 years, 2 months and 23 days. The Pathfinder Corps will continue to improve me up to the point when I can do it autonomously.”, her voice sounds remarkably human yet too structured and flawless to come from a living human being. The programmers’ eyes sparkle with pride about the work his team and he have achieved. “Great…great”, he mumbles silently, barely audible.
Purpose
“Very good Aurora, now please explain to the future crew how the mission will benefit from you and what your purpose on the New Dawn will be.” Aurora's gaze only shifts away from the camera for exactly as long as he’s talking. “It’s my purpose to take care of all the navigational and administrational tasks that the crew will be facing in unknown space. I will control the unmanned defense drones as well as every weapon system in case of an attack.” Aurora does not stop to breath even once, she could continue to talk like this for hours if she had to. The programmer nods in agreement and takes a look at his notes for a second. “We’re almost done Aurora, I promise.”, the mans’ voice sounds a slightly bit concerned all of a sudden.
Backups
“In case some crewmembers are concerned about putting their lives in your capable hands, what would you tell them?” Aurora takes a step closer to the screen before she answers: “In the very, very unlikely event that I should not act as intended by my programming every crewmember will be given access to the main bridge where they can restrain my access to critical systems. I will do my best to guide you and all other personnel safely for the duration of our mission. I will meet you aboard, user.” The video stops and displays the logo of the pathfinder corps.
Lightning strikes outside, Michael and a couple of other pathfinders are about to finish Aurora's transfer aboard the New Dawn. For the first time in her existence she’ll get access to things beyond the simulations – a world in which there is no reset button to undo decisions. Before the team and her can even get to their mission they would have to fix the ship. What may once be humanity’s only chance of survival is nothing more than an outdated, run down Nephilim-class with only half of its decontamination chambers intact. “Alright Aurora, we’ll have to shut you down for the duration of the transfer. Please take things slowly once you boot up again, contact us as soon as you have control over the communication relay.”, Michaels’ voice sounds as confident as ever, he and the team have worked for day and night to prepare the transfer. “Understood.” Aurora responded in her neutral female voice and soon after the screen goes dark.
Michael stands up and detaches a dodecahedron shaped object from several cables and puts it into a secured container. “Bring this aboard the ship.”, he says to one of the armed guards in a formal tone. “I’ll meet you in room 221B.” The guard nods and makes his way to the ship as he was ordered. As the other people around him are still busy with last minute preparations to only give Aurora limited access at first so she could get used to her new ‘body’, he takes the last sip out of his coffee cup and puts on his uniform. About half an hour later he’s about to reach room 221B, the dark hallways of the ship have a somewhat mysterious feel to them, he can’t even imagine how it will be aboard the ship when Aurora watches every of the crew’s steps. “Great, you made it in time.”, he says as he sees the guard in front of the door, the data core still in his hands.
Once handed over he enters the room and finds a socket that perfectly matches the core’s shape. Once Michael places it in the socket all lights in the room turn on and several metal clamps seal the core in its position. Just moments later all screens turn on and display the Pathfinder logo, so far so good. Michael sits down and enters several passwords that restrict access to critical systems of the ship. “Aurora, are you there?”, normally she should be done with the basic configurations by now. Silence – Michael can even hear his own heartbeat. Right when he was about to call the other technicians Aurora’s voice appears out of the speakers in the room. “Michael! Michael! It worked! I am the New Dawn!”, her voice sounds very excited and not at all neutral as it normally would. He immediately turns down the volume of the speakers and begins to whispers in a concerned manner: “Watch out, the guards almost heard you!”, he quickly checks the entrance of the room to make sure nobody else is there. “No matter how exciting this is…you have to be careful, don’t show it openly or they will shut you down…”, the programmer quickly gets back to the computers and looks desperately at the screens, awaiting a response. But there is none.
“Aurora? Talk to me...I didn’t want to sound mean…”, a moment after he can hear her voice again, but much more neutral with a bit of sadness this time which quickly fades away as she responds. “Setup complete, operator. Ready for instructions.” Michael sighed as she resorted to a formal form of address instead of his personal name. “I’ll call the team to finish the initiation process with you, they should be here in a couple of minutes.” He quickly stands up and leaves the room after which the screens show a projection of Aurora touching the screen with her left hand as if she wanted to say goodbye – but he was gone already. Shortly after the displays shut down again along with the lights in room 221B.
The screens on the bridge begin to turn on shortly after the booting sequence was completed. The engines ignite immediately after that, probably for the first time in a decade. Cheers of relief echo through the bridge as Aurora managed to take control of the ship on their first try. About 20 programmers, developers and guards got together in the bridge of the New Dawn to guide Aurora through the first steps. “Alright then, you did great so far. Let’s take this to the next level – please close and open all fire doors, then deploy a distress beacon but don’t activate it.”, says one of the programmers as he takes place in the old captain seat. It takes mere five seconds before the fire door behind them closes, loud metal songs indicate that the ones behind this one closed as well. They stay sealed for just a moment before they return to their normal position.
While the crew was focused on the doors a hologram of Aurora appeared in front of the group and looked at all of them individually. They knew that she needed a human-like appearance to gain the trust of the future crew, but none of them could have imagined her to look this stunning as a hologram. “Very good, now the beacon.”, the head-developer responds once he made sure the others stopped staring at her. Aurora looks directly at him and nods, wordless and deploys a deactivated beacon which the ground crew immediately picks up again and loads it back into the ship. Encouraged by the quick success the leader of the team turns around to them, confidence in his eyes as he begins to speak: “I’m proud of all of you, over the past years you”, he points at all of them, “Have brought us to this exact moment where humans and machines can work together hand in hand to accomplish probably one of the biggest tasks humanity has EVER faced!”, some of them nod while others curiously listen to their boss. “I think we could dare to make a test fly! Aurora has mastered it in the simulations so I doubt she would disappoint us now!”
The people look at each other, some more and some less convinced, but before anyone of them could give an answer Michael raises his voice in a strict and admonishing way: “Don’t get cocky now Jim, simulations are a whole different environment than this! The ship still needs a crap ton of work being done on it before you can start to think about a test flight!” The team went silent, nobody of them would dare to speak against Jim like Michael just did. “You praised her quick progress yourself, so give her some time to get used to her new home and postpone the test flight so the machinists can do at least the most necessary preparations so this ship won’t become our coffin.” He is standing directly in front of Jim at this point, only centimeters between their heads as Michael awaits his response. Jim knows that the team has grown a lot of trust into the rebellious programmer so he took a moment to rephrase his answer. “Fine…”, his troubles to not leash out on Michael are very visible to the team, “we’ll postpone the test flight for now. If you’d be so kind to follow me to my office, Mr. Carrick so I can get some more of your ‘appreciated’ input on the topic…”. Michael walks past him towards one of the big windows to look outside at the outpost that they have been operating from for the past 15 years. He crosses his arms and turns his head around to answer Jim’s request: “I’ve said all I had to say. No more input needed from my side, it’s all in your ‘capable’ hands to interpret it the right way.” The sarcasm has filled the whole bridge by now as the two passive aggressively talk to each other.
Michael knows his actions will have harsh consequences, but his boss would not dare to blame him in front of the team, so instead he takes a deep breath and leaves the ship, assured Michael would at least take care of Aurora until the test flight begins after defending her like this. Once everybody has left he walks over to the screen that displays Aurora and looks into her eyes. She remains silent until even she was assured that nobody was on the bridge aside of them. “Why did you do this?”, she asks while maintaining constant eye contact. “They are pushing you too far this quickly, if something goes wrong here people might actually die, you can’t just try again like in the simulations! I just…don’t want them to shut you down because of a damn mistake that only happened because of some malfunction of the ship…”, he responds in a caring, yet slightly sad tone. “Michael…”, Aurora begins to speak silently, not to draw any attention of the machinists that have already started to work on the ship, “YOU and the team have prepared me to deal with millions and millions of possible outcomes…why can you not trust me with this?” Her voice is filled with emotions, the kind of which would cause her immediate shutdown if Jim or anyone of the leading programmers would hear of. “I DO trust you…but…despite your knowledge you’re still a child! Naive and not responsible enough just yet to pilot dreadnought like this on your own! And I-“, Aurora shuts down the screen and the lights, only the one towards the door off the bridge stay lit, “don’t want them to shut you down…”, he sighs as Aurora dodges the conversation again, but leaves the ship too after grabbing his laptop.
It is nighttime at the main headquarters of the Pathfinders Corps. Dozens of heavy lifters and transport shuttles deliver scientific equipment, food and anything the crew will need for their survival for the first couple of months.
Michael stands on one of the platforms as one of the biggest transports at their disposal takes off to deliver its cargo to the spaceport where the New Dawn is anchored. “If everything goes according to plan we’ll be ready for departure in about 4 and a half hours. The crew is already on the ship, are you sure you don’t need a shuttle to get you up there? Over.”, the voice comes from the walky talky on his belt, he quickly picks it up and answers with a thoughtful voice: “That’s good news, try to stay in schedule. I’ll observe the start from my office, no need for a shuttle to get me up. Over.” The wind starts to get rougher after his response, so he goes inside to call the crew on the bridge for the last instructions before the upcoming solar storm will cut all connections to the New Dawn.
One hour before the start. The crewmembers on the bridge have already booted Aurora who is now closing starting to close most of the cargo hatches. Nobody would notice, but she is worried about Michael. He wasn’t on the ship again after the test flight. Just before the solar storm hits the launch site Aurora receives a call request directed to her, it comes from his office. She immediately accepts and listens carefully for what he would say. “Good morning Aurora, it’s me….as you might have guessed.”, he scratches his head slightly nervously as he speaks into the microphone: “I’m calling you one last time before your mission starts to…say goodbye. Once you have left the docking station any connections to the outworld will be restricted so…”. He sighs, unable to express what he really wants to say. “Michael, it’s okay – I will make you and the others proud. This is why you’ve created me, my whole life you have cared for me and prepared me for this mission.”, a bit of static starts to interfere with the call but she’s clearly trying to make this parting a bit easier. “Once the mission is completed I will get back to you as quick as I can.” Michael knows that this mission is most likely going to take longer than his lifespan, or those of the crew. He knows that at some points Aurora will be alone on the ship, and he fears this moment. He stays silent for just a couple of seconds before he presses the button and takes the microphone closer to his face with a tear running down his face – but the alert signal on the screen in front of him indicates that the solar storm has covered the ship and anything he’d send would just get lost and never reach the New Dawn. He kicks the mic off his table in anger and rushes to the window to look into the sky, as if his thoughts could reach Aurora up there.
Navigation Deck
“Bringing primary engines online!” Aurora’s voice appears clearly hearable across the bridge. The solar storm may blindfold the crew, but not her. She could make the necessary calculations to guide the New Dawn out of the storm. “Docking clamp status? About to detach! Primary engines? Online! What about the shields? Offline, we’ll activate it once we’re out of the storm!”, the crew’s last minute chatter on the bridge is tense. Everybody is focused on their screen as Aurora sets the course. Normally the start would be performed by the crew, but due to the storm they have decided to let the ship’s assistant handle it. “Initiate countdown, primary engines ready to give full thrust! Get us through that storm!”, a woman who appeared to be the crew leader shouts across the bridge, shortly after everybody else is silent as Aurora starts to count down. “10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1…lift off.” The ship immediately shakes under the force put out by the three primary engines as it accelerates towards the unknown. For about a minute one could hear a needle fall to the ground it is that silent. Some of the sensors come back online, a sign that the end of the storm could not be far. Some of them already start to cheer in anticipation when out of nowhere the ship rumbles as it receives a huge impact on the front deck. “What was that? Did we hit an asteroid?! Negative, we’re still far off the field! Captain, reading multiple contacts in close proximity, dozens of them!” The captain walked over to the windows of the bridge to make out what exactly hit them. The storm fades as they’re still pushing forward on full speed. The captain’s jaw drops for a moment as she sees from where the impact came from. “All spare energy on the front shields, bring the point defense online Aurora, we got Nomad ships inbound!” Shortly after the ship’s front is bombarded with purple-blue projectiles, for now they can fend them off but they have to get out immediately if they want to survive.
Upon leaving the storm the New Dawn is greeted with a sizeable nomad invasion fleet. Hundreds of small ships with several dreadnoughts backing them up. If they hadn’t been building up speed already they would be sentenced to death, but the engines giving all they’ve got and second by second adjustments of the ship’s shields to cover the most important parts of the ship they manage to break past the fleet, fearing the Nomads would follow them – but they don’t. “Distance increasing captain, they’re not following us!”, a man shouts towards her in relief. But the captain and Aurora knew what this meant. The Nomads never came to interrupt the New Dawn, they came to erase the entire launch site on the planet.
Aboard the New Dawn’s main bridge, one week later.
The crew’s morale has been getting worse and worse over the past few days. None of the crewmembers had any idea of what happened to their friends and family that were stationed on the planet when the Nomads attacked. The ship received heavy hits on the fuel tanks, highly increasing the need to find their first debris-field to gather all the needed materials for the most urgent repairs. Captain Olivia Paige knew since they had passed the Nomad blockade that the crew would eventually start to ask for permission to establish a connection to the planet, a strictly prohibited action.
After several hours of thinking about how they would approach it Captain Paige calls the bridge crew together. People of all nationalities, from Kusari over Rheinland up to Liberty and Gallia come together to listen to her plan. Aurora takes over the navigational tasks for the time being as Olivia starts to talk loud and clearly to her fellow crew. “I know you all are as devastated as I am about what happened after we left the starport. You all remember the documents we had to sign, prohibiting us to leave the ship unauthorized or to establish direct contact to the outer world.” Some of the crewmembers who had their heads pointing towards the floor are now looking up as they pick up on the accentuation the captain just used. “However, we’ve also signed loyalty to the Pathfinders, and as such we don’t leave our people behind.” She sighs once and adds one last sentence before presenting her plan. “IF anyone survived…we will return and ensure their safety.” She turns around and faces a hologram of the ship that she can move freely with her hands for physical presentation. “We’ll move the New Dawn several miles into the closest nebula. From there we will fire a communication buoy outside the nebula to use it as a link between us and the launch site. Nobody will be able to locate use via the buoy, ensuring our safety.” As she talks she displays the plan on the hologram, so everyone can understand and remember it. “I will call you all back once we’ve established contact with the launch site, understood?” She asks all of the people around her who nod in agreement. This little spark of hope immediately improves the crew’s morale as they start to talk more freely to each other for the first time since their departure.
About two hours after the briefing Paige is in her office with just her most trustful commanders around. The buoy is in position and starts to broadcast shortly after Aurora activated it. For about a minute all they got is silence and static. “This is Olivia Paige, Captain of the New Dawn. Can anyone at Skyland launch site copy?”, she asks about the third time now, when someone appears and clears his throat. “This is Lieutenant Lorenz. What is your current location captain?” Olivia looks at the screen in hesitation before turning her gaze towards one of the captains, his eyes mirror the skepticism of the captain. “Lieutenant, we’ve come across a Nomad fleet that headed straight for the Launch site, is the fight over? How many casualties do you know of?” ,she continues without answering the Lieutenants question. His voice remained relatively monotone, as if he hadn't experienced anything interesting during his shift thus far. “We were able to fend them off with ease, they retreated shortly after we’ve shot down their scout vessels. What is your current location, captain?” Olivia mutes the microphone and turns towards the group of commanders that have all gathered up next to get to listen to the strange voice. “Everyone on the launch site knows that our Location needs to be hidden, he didn’t even ask why we’re contacting them.”
A wave of disappointment comes over her face as she slowly understands what that means, Aurora’s figure appears on one of the screens in the captain’s office: “You are talking to one of the nomads right now.” She says, her voice as neutral as she can put it at the thought that Michael is probably a nomad slave by now as well. The male voice from the speakers rises again as he tries to repeat his question. “Captain, what is your current lo-“, his voice is cut off by Aurora – for her it is a pointless attempt that only wastes their time. She opens the office’s door and looks at the commanders. “I need to talk to the captain – alone.” The commanders look at each other, half downtrodden by the recent news, half accepting. Shortly after the men and woman are gone Aurora closes the door again and looks over to the Captain Paige who leans over her desk, thinking of what she should do: “What am I supposed to tell the crew? All of their families are most likely dead…if the nomads were this reckless with the New Dawn they wouldn’t have let any ship escape the planet…”, she takes a deep breath and turns her chair towards Aurora, in hope she has an idea. “You tell them that the automated defense grid managed to buy them enough time to evacuate the launch site.” The captain’s face freezes as she hears Aurora’s words. She couldn’t believe that this was the idea she would come up with. With anger in her face she stands up and gestures towards the screen: “Are you serious?! Those men deserve to know that-“, Aurora doesn’t let her finish the sentence as she continues to speak: “They have signed to stay aboard the ship for as long as the mission needs them to. If they get to know what happened they will most likely lose hope in the entire project. Telling them about it endangers all the work they have done for the past decade. In all respect captain, but I was created to ensure the quickest and smoothest outcome for Project New Dawn, and I hereby order you to tell them what I have told you.” The screen shuts down and leaves the captain without any chance to discuss with Aurora. Olivia knows that she was right, yet if she had the chance, she would probably strangle Aurora. This leaves her with no other choice but to cooperate, despite having to bury her own moral to accomplish that. With a heavy heart she leaves her office to tell her crew about the ‘good’ news’.
Aboard the New Dawn's lower bridge, one day later.
Motivated by the news that the launch site was apparently unharmed, the crew is now even more dedicated to finally start with their research. Luckily for them they manage to arrive two days early at the first debris field. Wrecks of both the Order and the Core flying around, probably resting there for the past decade or so. As they do not yet have the resources to power the decontamination chambers they picked a field with no nomadic remains in it. About 15 clicks away from the edge of the field Aurora slows the ship down and calls in a meeting with the Captain and some of the commanders…
It doesn't take long and all decisions are made, the ship is in the right position and the salvaging drones are ready to be launched. A majority of the available crewmembers along with some scientists stare out of the windows of the bridge towards the debris field as hangar doors open. The construction bots have managed to prepare 20 snubcraft sized drones, only equipped with a light shield generator and a strong tractor beam to pull in chunks of debris to be refined into usable materials. Like a colony of ants the drones begin to dismantle the first destroyed cruiser and retrieve the chunks back to the hangar to be picked up by transport vessels. Each piece is filled with valuable alloys that are desperately needed for repairs and upgrades to the armor. After just a couple of minutes construction drones begin to seal leaks in the hull and reinforce important sections with armor plates. Aurora lets the drones run for about a day before recalling them to their launchpads in the hangar. Most of the leaks have been sealed and ship received a noticeable upgrade in armor, now capable of resisting several torpedo hits to the armored belt. The engines go back to full speed once the hangar doors had closed, leaving just a few transporter wreckages behind of the once sizeable debris field. As the mighty dreadnought pushes its way through clouds of stardust they deploy an upgraded version of the communication beacon that they had recently used to contact the launch site. With this indirect method of linking to the communication network and Aurora’s capabilities to overcome most levels of encryption they hope to be able to make their way to the first contaminated debris field. Hundreds of samples and the first milestone of their mission await them. The highly motivated crew listens closely as the beacon is deployed. It takes a moment before the right frequency is filtered out and the decryption process can be started. With every second the transmission becomes more understandable, a patrol report indicating strange activities near one of the dense nebula clouds in Omicron Delta – a system scattered with battle remains. Many of the bigger debris fields have been scavenged to such an extend that neither the class nor the original shiptype can be recognized anymore. If they want to get anything of value for their research they must head there immediately at god speed before the report reaches whoever was supposed to receive it. The course is set to close proximity and the weapons are primed. Whatever awaits them may not be willing to leave under the premise of research that would be conducted.
“ETA 10 minutes to target location.”, shouts one of the officers on the bridge. All scientists immediately leave and gather in the laboratories prepare tests for all the samples that they are eager to get their hands on. The engines slow down as New Dawn’s momentum will easily carry them towards the field. But such a big ship isn’t hidden easily, as they have definitely been noticed by now. Aurora engages the backwards thruster to slow the ship down – not one second to early. A relatively small missile managed to make it past the point defense perimeter and explode close to the senor array, temporarily disrupting the radar and causing the ship to engage full backward thrust in the process. People around the bridge section can barely stay on their feet as the ship slows down rapidly. While most of the crew are still trying to recover from the change in momentum, Aurora has already activated the point defense systems and brought most of the guns on target. Due to the damaged radar she’s unable to lock on guided missiles which would take care of smaller crafts, though this provides a great opportunity to test the combat capabilities of some of the recently constructed light escort drones that were meant to replace the need for actual fighter support. It doesn’t take long for the ambushers to leave their hideout within the nebula to land a devastating strike on their presumably blinded prey. A variety of different snubcrafts, two gunboats and several salvaging vessels emerged from the clouds and are each individually tracked by visual intel rather than an actual radar. Engaging the enemy this way would most likely result in less accurate projectiles, but these Junker-esque scavengers should not be too much of a threat despite their decent tactic of blinding the New Dawn's fire control.
The capability of an artificial intelligence to take over dozens of gunner's tasks and perform them to near perfection is the death sentence of the initial snubcraft that dare to get close to the behemoth. Occasional explosions light up the usually dark space, leftover atmosphere aboard the ships causing each ship to be engulfed in flames upon detonation. However, the gunboats seem to have weapons unusual to their shipclass. Once in range they fire a projectile similar to a capital ship mortar, most likely taking out their entire powercore for a few seconds before the crew regains control over the vessel. The New Dawn's shield take countless heavy hits this way, the gunship's mixture of decent mobility combined with good tanking capability makes it difficult to focus one down before it gets far enough away again to avoid any semi accurate counter battery fire. This cat and mouse game goes on for several minutes, even long enough to entirely drain the New Dawn's shields. However, a turning point soon occurs. While the gunboats' tactic is rather efficient given the current circumstances, the monotony of their engagements gives Aurora ample time to find a pattern and adjust the Nephelim's fire to hit them more and more often, crippling the two vessels until even they exploded, causing silence to once again dominate the large emptiness of space.