Chapter One
"War Stories"
"Move!" Kagome roared at some of the ensigns that stood stock still out of sheer panic.
There was a hull breach, and she was trying to herd the last of the crew back into the areas that weren't currently losing life support.
At least someone had managed to get to the override and shut the door.
She didn't want to think about how many lives she'd lost.
Her ship was small compared to others. She had 108 souls on board and currently under her command, and that breach was significant to say the least.
She closed the doors behind her as she ran after the last of her crew. The other members of the bridge should be doing the same.
"Does anyone read me?" She pressed her fingers into the earpiece, but she had nothing but radio silence.
Alarms starting wailing at the sudden drop in air pressure and, well, air.
Communications were down ship-wide, so they'd been forced to use their tactical equipment to try and communicate with each other cross-ship, but Kagome was clearly in a section that wasn't communicator-friendly since she hadn't heard a peep since she'd reached the back end of the ship.
They were sealing off parts of the ship, corralling everyone into the pods, just in case.
And then the bridge would reconvene to try and save the ship.
And maybe figure out what the hell happened in the first place.
Kagome reached the bridge second. Her first officer, Sango, stood at the controls, reading the error reports.
"Any ideas?" Kagome asked, taking a deep breath as she stood beside Sango. Running a hand over her forehead, she struggled to catch her breath. The ship was small, but it was still a good run from one side to the other.
"Nothing confirmed yet," Sango answered, "but I'll keep looking."
"You got medical cleared?" Kagome asked, as the doors opened behind her. Miroku slid inside the doors.
"Medical is cleared."
"And Kaede?"
"With the sick bay patients. In a pod."
"Good."
She turned towards Miroku to get his response.
"Bunks are cleared," Miroku added.
"Can you try to see about communications?"
Another alarm went off.
How were they losing life support this quickly? They'd practically sealed the ship off piece by piece. They should not be seeping air like this.
"Any word from Shippo and Inuyasha?"
"They went to engineering," Sango answered, "but I haven't heard from any of you until you returned to the bridge."
"Shit," Kagome muttered, moving to another terminal to try and figure out what the hell was wrong with their ship.
They were in no man's land to top things off.
No one was coming for them, and most Alliance ships didn't come this way to begin with. They were making a cargo run, and they'd already tried sending out an emergency beacon, but the signal kept getting blocked. And when they'd manually tried to override it, that was the moment that all communication within the ship died.
Panic dribbled in at the corners of her mind. She was the captain of the ship, but that didn't mean that she wasn't immune to fear.
And right now she was worried about her crew.
The escape pods were stocked for them to survive a week without contact. It was one thing that she'd insisted on when she became captain. She was not going to cut corners.
They'd meet up with an Alliance ship within a week, right?
It was dark. And quiet. So quiet.
She wrapped the blanket around her as her breath started to show in the air.
The only thing she could hear was the faint metallic beep of the emergency beacon, and the raspy shudder of her own breath.
Someone had shoved her into the escape pod as sparks flew through the air. She hit the ground, already starting to cry from the hit, as she rolled over when the door slid shut.
The pod disengaged from the ship, a hard clack followed by the soft shick as everything separated from each other. Kagome pressed her small hands against the window, but the pod was already firing up and heading away from the ship. She watched as several other pods leapt away from the ship like a dandelion sending away its seeds, with the faces of those left behind staring out the windows in what Kagome would later realize was horror, fear, and resignation.
She was close enough to watch it explode. Bright blue rings emanating out into space.
Kagome cried and cried, soothing herself with the blanket and trying to talk to someone through the microphone on the small control panel.
Kagome was eight and utterly alone in space.
"Captain?" Sango asked.
Kagome jolted, turning away from the display.
"What?" She asked. There wasn't time for formalities.
"I think I discovered the cause of our problem." Miroku was staring at his screen intently, making Kagome walk across the small space to look over his shoulder at whatever he was staring at.
"Which one?"
"Well, all of them. The comms, the life support, all of it."
"And?" She asked, staring at the screen now, with Sango on the other side.
"It's the AI," he started to explain. "I don't know how to explain it really."
"What's wrong with the AI?" Kagome asked.
The AI, affectionately named Reggie among the crew, was the coding running everything, the entire ship was solely based on what that code instructed them to do. Reggie ran life support, comms, lights, the engines, without it, the ship was essentially a giant coffin launched out into the vastness of space.
"Well, I'm pretty sure that it's gone rogue."
Kagome's breath hitched.
"That's—that's not even possible," she argued, "there are parameters in place to prevent that sort of thing from happening. It can't happen."
She moved into his space, staring at the screen.
"It's the only thing that makes sense. How else are we losing life support and air this quickly? We shouldn't."
Kagome growled.
"Keep looking. See if there's something else." She turned away from the screen. "I'm going to go find Inuyasha and Shippo."
"Kagome, that's a terrible idea. They're on their way."
"Do you know that?" Kagome snapped. "No, because comms are down, everything is down, so unless we're all in the same room, no one knows anything! And I am not losing any more of my crew!"
"Good news then," came the familiar baritone as the doors swished open. Kagome spun, letting out a breath of relief as both Inuyasha and Shippo walked onto the bridge.
"How bad is it?" Kagome asked.
"Well, we're fine," he retorted with a wave of his hand.
"Inuyasha," she growled out as he moved onto the bridge.
"Everyone is accounted for and on pods," came the other familiar voice.
Kagome looked at the small fox following Inuyasha.
"Thanks, Shippo."
That actually made her feel better.
"Did you see anything while you were down there?"
"Nothing," Inuyasha grumbled taking up her space at the screen she'd been staring at. "You lot figure it out yet?" He asked, scrolling through all the errors that had popped up inside of the last few hours.
"Well, there's one theory," Sango started, but a loud shrill wail interrupted her.
"Morning!" Kagome chirped as she walked onto the bridge to relieve Sango.
"How are you this fucking happy all the fucking time?" Inuyasha grumbled into his cup of coffee.
"It's a good day. Why wouldn't I be happy?"
Inuyasha sneered at the question.
"It's been five minutes. How do you know it's a good day?"
"I thought dog youkai didn't need much sleep. Shouldn't you be in a way better mood?"
"He would be but he stayed up too late last night w—ow!" Shippo yelled as Inuyasha threw the now empty coffee cup at him, catching him in the head. The cup hit the ground, spilling what few drops of liquid were left on the floor. "You jerk!"
"Inuyasha how many times do I have to reprimand you for throwing things while on the bridge? How many times is this? Eighteen?"
"Twenty-two," he grinned, opening his mouth to add something else she'd probably have to write him up for before his face resumed his signature scowl.
"What is it?" She asked.
"Where's the bot?" He asked, standing.
"Reggie?" She asked, turning to look at where he was walking.
"I don't care what name you give it. It's not a human being."
"It makes the crew feel better when interacting with it," Miroku commented. "They've done studies that prove—"
"Shut up, Miroku," Inuyasha commented, standing where his mug had landed. "Computer," Inuyasha ordered, and when the AI didn't respond, he sighed heavily. "Reggie," Inuyasha sighed with a distinct tone of self-hatred.
"What do you require, Lieutenant Taisho?"
At that moment, a small bot appeared on the floor, scurrying over to where the mug lay, quickly sweeping it up into the bin and disappearing back into the wall.
"Nothing, never mind," Inuyasha said, staring at the small spot in the wall where the bot had disappeared.
"Very well," Reggie said, before the soft blip, and communication was severed.
"Something on your mind?" Kagome asked, turning her chair to face him as Sango left the bridge.
"Something doesn't feel right," he said, walking over to look at the screen.
"Nothing ever feels right to you," Shippo commented, flicking through his console screens, frowning as well.
"Especially when it comes to Reggie," Miroku added from his own spot.
"Look I'm not going to trust something I can't punch in the face."
"You don't trust things you can punch in the face," Kagome retorted.
"It's kept you lot alive, hasn't it?" He mumbled, staring at the screen on the wall.
The siren was making it feel like her ears were bleeding; she couldn't imagine what that felt like to a youkai, even a half-youkai.
Kagome struggled to the wall, smacking the mute button.
Silence erupted across the bridge, and Inuyasha slowly climbed back to his feet, helping Shippo up from where he'd fallen as well.
"Fucking hell!" Inuyasha snarled. "What the fuck was that?"
Kagome's ears were ringing, making everything feel strangely muted.
"An alarm," Sango muttered, staring at the logs.
"Yeah, no fucking shit. Tell me something that I don't know." He staggered over to the monitor, squinting to stare at the screen beside Sango. "What was the alarm for?"
"Nothing," Sango said, swiping through the copious amount of errors the AI encountered.
It should not have been pages and pages of errors and alerts. It wasn't uncommon to have one pop up now and then, but they were scrolling through numerous alerts and that was just in the last few minutes.
"Alarms don't just go off," Kagome stated, turning to look at the small camera in the wall.
"If I made a Skynet joke, would anyone actually get it?" Miroku asked, standing beside Kagome.
"Please don't," she muttered, rubbing her eyes.
"Because you won't get it or because it would be in bad taste?"
"Both," Shippo groaned from the console.
"You know that theory about a rogue AI isn't sounding that far-fetched now, is it?" Miroku quipped
"A fucking what?"
Kagome groaned, knowing this was exactly the sort thing that Inuyasha had been waiting for.
Being a newly minted female captain meant two very distinct things.
One: captaincy was very much a boy's club, and she suspected that they were two steps away from putting a "no girls allowed" sign on their doors.
Two: very few people wanted to work on a ship run by a new captain, much less a female one.
Meaning that her options for selecting her officers were very limited and generally not that great. Most of these had been rejected from other crews for varying sorts of infractions.
Theft. Toss.
Illegal substances. Toss.
An affair with another officer's wife. Another affair with another officer's wife. An affair with the captain's wife. And the commodore's. And an admiral's. And all at the same time. Impressive, but toss nonetheless.
Maltreatment of crew. Toss.
The only thing that she knew right now was that she at least had a first officer.
She and Sango had graduated the same year, but they'd only come to know each other by working underneath Captain Mushin, who drank way too much and liked to fill his bridge with 'pretty things to look at now and then.'
Shuddering, she continued to flip through the remaining folders of potential crew members.
Let's circle back to the one that had the multiple affairs. It was all consensual just frowned upon by everyone else.
And society, in general.
She picked up the folder, reading through it a little more carefully. With the exception of the affairs, the guy was good at his job. They'd placed him in navigation and then in engineering, but Kagome stared at the now demoted lieutenant.
She needed someone in navigation, but the guy could speak multiple languages.
Communications.
That's where he should be.
And overlooking the fact that he was the definition of a sexual deviant, the man had skill sets that would definitely come in use.
She set him in the very small and disappointing maybe pile that she was slowly starting to believe would ultimately become the yes pile.
After all, maybe the man had turned over a new bedsheet.
Turning back to the dwindling stack of personnel folders, she flipped open to the next one.
Smuggling. Toss.
DWI. DUI. DWI. DWI. She flipped back to the front page. Ah, Mushin, that made sense. Toss.
Several counts of dealing in illicit substances. Toss.
Smuggling. Toss.
Theft. Toss.
Last couple. She picked up the one on top, only to realize that it wasn't two separate files, but one giant one.
It almost made her not want to look, but she was curious how badly someone could screw up and still manage to keep a job.
She flipped open the folder to the middle, where she'd been going since the beginning, because it didn't matter their gender or name, she wanted someone good.
Insubordination.
Well, not the best thing to have on your record, but—oh wow.
There had to be at least fifteen or sixteen charges of insubordination to a commanding officer here. She flipped over to his reports.
"He's a fucking dumbass," was all he'd written in the space provided to justify his actions.
So he wasn't the most eloquent.
But the more she read, the more intrigued she became. His analysis of the situation was nothing short of phenomenal, and his record of bringing back everyone on his team alive was more than impressive. He'd never lost a teammate on a mission.
The more she read, the more this was starting to sound like someone that she wanted on her team.
He might be an asshole, but at least they aligned on what mattered: the crew.
A knock came on the door jamb, and Kagome turned to see Sango walking up with a bottle of something clear and a couple of tumblers with ice.
"How's it going?" She asked, taking a seat at the table and uncorking the bottle of vodka.
"That's the no pile," Kagome said, pointing to the pile to the left.
"And this one?" Sango asked, sliding the glass over to her.
"The maybe-yes pile."
"Maybe-yes?"
"It started out as just the maybe pile, but there's no yes pile, so I guess that's it."
Taking a heavy swig of vodka, she made a slight face at the thought and starting looking at the files.
"Why'd you ask for paper copies?" Sango said, fingering the edge of the crisp paper.
"Because no one can tell how many times I went through them or how long I spent reading them."
"Smart," Sango mumbled.
"That's our new communications officer," Kagome mentioned, still reading through the asshole's file.
"He's cute," Sango flipped through to the infractions sheet and sprayed what smelled like vodka across the room. "Are you serious? The man clearly can't keep his dick out of anything!"
"Yeah, but think of how much of a smooth talker he must be to accomplish all that within five years."
"Kagome, you can't be serious."
Kagome kept flipping through incident reports, refusing to answer her question.
"So who's this?" Sango asked, picking up the next file.
"Navigation and engineering."
A few minutes passed.
"He set the crew's quarters on fire! On! Fire!"
"Yes, I noticed that."
"What the hell makes you think he would be good on your ship? He's a kitsune!"
"Yeah, and Kirara is on fire when she transforms, and I'm admitting her as part of the crew."
"That's different! Kirara has never set anything on fire that didn't need to be set on fire."
"Keep reading," Kagome said, motioning to the folder.
"There is nothing in here that's going to make me change my mind about any of this."
The more Kagome read, the more of a jackass this guy seemed, but he was diligent about bringing everyone back alive, and that seemed to be his only notable good quality, so she guessed that she would have to live with it.
"A crew member snuck an invasive plant on board, and this guy's first thought was 'kill it with fire'?"
"Turns out that species was known to spread poisonous pollen when it bloomed, so it actually would've been under regulation to burn anything it touched, he just went a little overboard."
"And navigation?"
"He made a perfect score on his maps and flying exam."
Sango groaned, knowing that Kagome was actually right.
"I'm scared to ask about that one."
"I'm thinking tactical officer. He likes to punch things and yell at people. He's usually right, just kind of a jerk about it."
"Kagome," Sango started, covering her face with her hand. "I'm going to say this from a place of love, but what you're suggesting people have literally made television shows off of."
"It'll work out," Kagome said, closing the file and setting it on top of the now yes pile. "You'll see."
Kagome had dreamed of taking her father's place among the alliance as a captain of her very own ship. She'd managed to achieve her goal a couple years earlier than her father, and had tied his score on all her exams.
She was the ideal candidate—on paper—for the position. However, some people in command, were not amused by her lofty goals and ambitions.
Do you know how many men suggested that she start in medical? Or work in a nursery?
She might have had ovaries—and she really did like children—but she wanted to captain a ship and she could run circles around some of these men who had a decade of experience on her.
Sango stood beside her as the doors swished open.
"Huh," was all the man said.
She'd been worried about Miroku wanting to get into her pants—which she really didn't have to worry about since the moment he walked in, Sango practically collared him against the wall and explain to him in very explicit directions about how she'd use a certain appendage in a particular way so that he could actually 'fuck himself for once' if he even leered in Kagome's direction the wrong way.
His only reply had been, "And what if it's in your direction?"
Kagome was pretty sure that he could've fried anything on the side of his face from the slap that Sango had leveled.
It had been smooth sailing after that.
Shippo was eager to help and do his job, and he was utterly adorable.
Sango had been worried about Miroku, but the man that stood before her was more than welcome into her pants any day.
He was gorgeous, and it was only years of maintaining her poker face that she was able to not completely gawk at him.
"Lieutenant Taisho," she greeted after a long moment of studying him.
"Captain," he said, crossing his arms, but not offering any other form of introduction.
"Is there a problem?" Kagome asked as he looked around the ship.
"I haven't worked for a girl before," he commented, shoving his hands in his pocket.
"You'll be working for two of them actually. Meet my first officer, Lieutenant Commander Sango Sugewara."
"I know who she is. I know who you are too."
"And what did your research tell you?" Kagome asked as he proceeded to wander around the bridge.
"You're uppity," he said, motioning to Kagome, "and you're a bitch."
From his file, not many people had managed to land a punch on him. Sango, however, was not like many people, and her right hook was infamous among those that had received it.
Inuyasha spat out to the side, a soft chink as a tooth landed on the floor, the little bot appearing almost immediately and wiping up the blood, spittle, and taking the lone tooth away.
"Nice hit," he said with a grin. "Let me know if you want to throw down sometime." At that, he turned back to Kagome, giving a mock salute with two of his fingers. "I'll have my shit packed, and I'll be on board tonight."
The moment the door swished shut behind him, Kagome stared blankly at it for a moment.
"Did he just hire himself?"
"Sounds like it," Sango mumbled, and at the sound of her voice, Kagome whirled on her first officer.
"Are you going to deck everyone that walks through that door?"
"I didn't hit Shippo!" She argued, and Kagome rubbed the bridge of her nose. "And I got my message across, didn't I?"
Sango might've been right after all. The more she thought about it, the more her ship was starting to sound like a slapstick comedy.
But at least she had a ship and a crew, and now, it was just about surviving the first year.
"How far is the nearest ship?" Kagome asked.
A soft tapping at the screen across the room, and Sango spoke up first, "Seven days."
"What're you thinking?" Inuyasha asked, eyes already narrowing.
"The pods are supplied with enough food and water to make due for a week. We're still bleeding air and atmosphere. The more we try to fix things, the more that goes wrong. We launch the pods; that should buy us a couple days."
"It'll buy us a day," Miroku corrected, "if we keep losing air at the same rate. We would have about 36 hours to fix whatever it was and recall the pods back to the ship."
"Might be safer to let them go to another ship until we can get this one back to port," Inuyasha pointed out.
"Would the five of us be able to run a ship with compromised AI?"
"Well, I can safely say that we'd probably be the first ones to do it," Kagome answered.
"You know, I always wanted to go down in the books for something," Shippo said. "Besides starting fires."
"What if we turned Reggie off and turned him on again?"
"Are you fucking serious?" Inuyasha asked.
"Do you have a better idea?"
"Yeah, because whatever I come up with isn't going to let a ship with a nuclear reactor turn the AI off and fucking hope and pray that it turns back on again the right way. I ain't exactly aiming to die on this ship, and definitely not because some fucking computer chip decided today was a good day to have a fucking mental breakdown, captain."
Okay, to be fair, it hadn't been her best plan, and it was only a suggestion. Inuyasha was right, he was just being a jerk about it. Kagome fought back the urge to yell at him because that would only lead to stress crying, and that was both unbecoming for someone of her rank, and Inuyasha panicked when she cried, which usually led to him punching something to make it better, which did not make it better.
Kagome walked into her quarters, missing the satisfaction of slamming the door behind her.
Cargo. Their latest deployment had been to deliver cargo.
And somehow her team of very intelligent people managed to muck this up too. Because they were idiots. They were all terrible idiots.
She stripped off her uniform jacket, notoriously stained and singed beyond saving.
It was almost like they'd been trying to make it look like she had no control over her crew. She did, but sometimes they just got a little—excited and over-enthusiastic about helping.
That didn't help things now.
Shippo, in his efforts to entertain the diplomat's children, charmed them with his foxfire, and while it didn't catch anything the diplomat owned, it did catch her on fire, however, which set off a very extreme course of events.
Miroku turned when she yelped at the flames, inadvertently brushing his hand along the diplomat's butt.
Inuyasha—she sighed—Inuyasha panicked, dropping the crate, practically ripping her shirt off to stomp the fire out with his boot, leaving her there—in a tank top no less—before marching over to give Shippo a piece of his mind which involved him mostly saying the word "fuck" or "fucking" like they were flavoring words or sprinkles on his cupcakes. Shippo had been careful, and it was an accident.
In short, she had to pick up her jacket from the floor, redress while trying to soothe the injured pride of the diplomat and reassure him that Miroku wasn't flirting with him and Shippo did not intend to burn his home down or murder his children with fire, and also explain that Inuyasha's foul mouth was just a part of his heritage and he meant no disrespect.
And then she had to coax Inuyasha into putting the crate in the spot where it was supposed to go in the first place, because now he was offended and didn't want to do it.
He might be the best fighter she'd ever seen, but he had the mentality of a four year old.
How was it that her team had nearly managed to cause three international incidents in the span of five minutes or less?
Oh, yeah, because she'd been practically stripped in front of the diplomat, that was the moment his wife walked into the room and accused her of trying to seduce her husband.
Like honestly, lady, the only person she wanted to seduce is dropping 'fuck' like it's candy right next to her children.
Kagome flopped down at her table and just laid her head on the cool surface, feeling her arm give a dull throb.
How did everything her crew touched become such a clusterfuck?
A soft bing came from the doorbell, and Kagome let out a long sigh.
Rising up from the table, she stared at the door for a moment, before glancing down at herself. She was still dressed appropriately to receive someone. She called out, "Enter," and the doors slid open, revealing Inuyasha standing there holding a bottle and some small packages.
Great.
He stepped in without further invitation, setting the bottle of burn ointment and gauze and wrap on the table.
"Let me see it," he said, holding his hand out. She stared at his hand, and then at his face in confusion. What did he want?
His ears drooped, and he curled his fingers away from her.
"It's not like I'm going to cut your or anything," he mumbled, looking off to the side.
That hadn't even been in her list of worries about him.
She thrust her arm out at him, as if to prove that she wasn't afraid of his claws. The action didn't appear to have the significance she wanted though.
"I'm not afraid of you," she clarified. "I wouldn't have brought you on board if I thought that you'd hurt any of my crew."
This seemed to appease him somewhat at least, and he took the bottle of burn ointment and started slathering the stuff on.
"Someone really didn't like you," he muttered. "Giving you a uniform like that."
"What do you mean?" She looked over at the coat. It was standard issue. It looked just like every other captain's coat, bars and all. "It's the uniform."
He shook his head, and the cream started to cool the heat that she hadn't really noticed coming from her arm just yet. She probably would've taken note when she stepped into the hot shower, but that would've really been too little and too late.
"The new uniforms, if they catch fire, burn away. Those," he pointed a clawed finger to her jacket, "melt. They were removed from standard issue years ago. So someone must've really not liked you to give you those."
"Is that why you ripped it off earlier?"
He nodded as he placed a thin layer of gauze over the cream and began wrapping it. She watched him avoid the cloth with the tips of his claws, pulling it taut without snagging the delicate material.
"You got lucky. I've seen it what happens when the stuff melts into someone's skin. It's not easy to get off."
So he hadn't exactly been overreacting earlier, but there was a bigger question bounding around inside her head.
"How did you know?"
He met her look, slowly tapping one clawed finger against his nose, before returning to the wrap and tying it off at her wrist. It was clean and neat and looked like something Kaede would've done.
"You're really good at this."
"I've had my fair share of practice," he answered, walking over to the trash chute and throwing away the wrappers.
He stood there, staring at it for a long moment, long enough that she almost interrupted him to ask what was on his mind and why he'd bothered to come there. She could've just gone to see Kaede almost as easily.
"I've had a lot of practice," he repeated, "and a lot of captains. Most just saw me as cannon fodder after everything," she opened her mouth to interrupt, well argue really, but he glared at her. "I know my record," he tacked on quickly. "I know what it looks like. I'm not an idiot."
"Just an asshole," she added on with a smile. He jumped a little at her statement, but the corners of his mouth twitched just a little.
"As long as you're aware, Captain," he said with a grin.
"Kagome," she corrected. "When we're on the bridge and not in front of the crew, you can call me Kagome."
"Friends only call each other by the first names," he pointed out, crossing his arms in front of his chest, almost like he was testing her veracity.
"You showed up on your break to take care of my arm when I could've just as easily gone to medical," she pointed out, watching a very light pink blush start to blossom across his cheeks. "We're friends, Lieutenant."
"Inuyasha," he corrected, eyes meeting hers, and for the first time since they'd left dock, she felt like she'd actually made a connection with him.
It was the only real good news that she'd had that day, aside from the diplomat not pressing charges against anyone on her crew, and she felt her eyes water against her best efforts.
She'd sworn to herself that she'd never cry on the bridge. She'd show everyone that she was just as strong as every other male captain out there.
Captain Kagome Higurashi would have the balls to be the best captain that ever ran a ship.
But being a captain who cared was hard, and having a crew that meant well but did the general opposite of help made it only that much harder. Because she loved her crew. She loved her bridge.
"Fuck me," Inuyasha muttered, dragging her back to the present. "What did I do?"
She shook her head, wiping at her eyes with the heel of her hand, sniffling.
"It's not you," she mumbled, still trying to hide her face and regain some of her composure.
"Then what? Your arm?" He asked, striding across the room and looking at her.
"No, it's fine. It actually feels better," she commented, pulling her arm away as though that would solve her current dilemma.
"So then what're you wailing on about?" He asked, voice growing louder.
"I'm not wailing about anything!"
"Well, you're over here sobbing like something's wrong so it's either me or the arm!"
"I can be upset about more than one thing!"
"Like what?" He sneered.
"Like the fact that my crew almost caused more than one international incident and we were just delivering cargo. Cargo!" She waved her arms at the absurdity of it all. "It should've been an easy mission, in and out, but no," she was on a rampage now, "no, my crew has to be the ones to grope the ambassador, nearly crack his precious floor with a crate, and then have the ambassador's wife accuse me—me!—of trying to seduce him with a white tank top! That's what I'm upset about!"
There was a heavy awkward silence that filled the room, and she heaved in a breath, already ready to apologize.
"Feel better?" He asked, making her stop mid-thought and process his words.
"What?"
"Do you," he enunciated each word, "feel better?"
She blinked.
"You didn't say much when we came back. Figured something was wrong, because you never shut the hell up." He rose to his feet amidst her staring. "The old hag said to put that stuff on as long as it felt hot." His hand hovered over the door release. "You're one of the good ones, Captain. I'd hate to lose you." The door swished open almost silently. "Sango's been pissy all afternoon. Imma go fight her." He flashed her a mock two finger salute, a favorite of his, disappearing down the corridor. She could only stare blankly at the space he'd just occupied as her brain tried to correlate recent events.
But dammit, she did feel better.
Kagome stared at the insurmountable of critical errors that Reggie was feeding her.
This couldn't be happening. Everything the Alliance had developed had been to prevent this exact thing from happening. They'd been flying with AI for decades, and as far as she knew this had never, ever happened before.
Well, leave it to her to be the first to literally break the unbreakable.
"What should we do?" Sango asked, and for perhaps the first time, the weight of being responsible rested on her shoulders.
Her fingers grazed against the cool metal of the console.
"Launch."
"The pods?" Sango asked.
"All of them?" Miroku clarified.
"It's too risky. I can't—I can't risk all of their lives on a whim."
"You still want to try and fly this thing sans crew," Inuyasha commented, leaning back against the console.
She nodded, standing up straight to look at each of them. Miroku and Sango stood next to each other, looking up from where they tried to resolve the abundance of errors from Reggie. Inuyasha was leaning back against the edge of the console next to her. Shippo was anxiously bouncing from foot to foot.
"You all can leave if you want. I won't force you to stay."
"And you?" Sango asked.
"A good captain goes down with her ship."
"The fucking hell she does," Inuyasha snapped, glaring at her. His entire stance revealed his anger, even though he hadn't shifted at all. "I'll drag you off this ship kicking and screaming if I have to."
"I swear on whatever you fucking believe in," Inuyasha yelled as his claws tore into the flesh of the bear-like creature before her, "I'm going to put you on a fucking leash!"
The creature roared, a loud echoing bellow that made Kagome flinch as she backed up against the rock wall.
Inuyasha roared back, clearly unimpressed.
The creature shifted its stance, balancing its weight between all six of its large legs as it measured out the best way to get around the angry clawed thing to the meal it'd nearly had a few seconds ago.
"I want to pet it," he mocked, dodging a hard swipe of the thing's paws. "It's so cute!" He landed his own blow to the side of the creature's face. It opened its mouth, and Kagome caught sight of the teeth lining the edge of its tongue and the double row of teeth in its mouth. Whatever got caught in there wasn't getting out. What sort of devil creature had teeth on its tongue?
"The report said there wasn't anything dangerous on this planet!" She argued, shifting farther back from the cliff the dumped out onto the sea below, and away from the fight.
"Is that why you tried to sneak out?" He jerked his arm away before the creature clamped its teeth down on it.
"I didn't sneak out! I'm the captain. I can leave without telling everyone my whereabouts!" She yelped as Inuyasha was smacked into the wall beside her.
He growled, launching himself back at the creature.
"That's exactly why we need to know where you are!" He sniped back as he kicked out at the creature, sending it staggering back. "You're the fucking captain!" He turned back to the creature. "Would you just fucking quit already? How much of an ass kicking do you need?"
The creature took a few steps back from Inuyasha, who stayed his ground, glowering at the creature, shifting so that he was between her and it.
After a very long and very still several seconds, it turned and began lumbering away. She let out a trembling breath, and once it was far enough to his liking, Inuyasha turned around and knelt down beside her.
"How bad is it?" He asked, voice low as his ears swiveled around to listen for any signs of impending danger lurking about.
"I'm fine!" She squeaked as his hands brushed over her sides.
He scowled.
"I literally watched that thing fling you a solid thirty feet downhill. No way you didn't hurt something." He narrowed his eyes at her. "And why didn't you run when I told you to?!"
"Uh," she started, not really wanting to explain that her hip hadn't felt like it would hold her when she'd initially moved. "I was scared?"
"Where are you hurt?" His hands started drifting up her legs, watching her face as he placed a gentle pressure against her bones and joints. She yanked her right leg away from him, but could barely shift her left one at all without groaning in misery.
He moved faster than she did, and his fingers latched onto her hip, making her hiss and throw her head back into the rock, which just helped so much.
"Now that that's settled," he shifted his glare back at her. "How bad is it? Can you walk?"
"No," she whined.
"Does it feel broken?" He asked, pressing more gingerly along her thigh and hip. She hissed when he pressed against the joint, and he frowned.
"I don't know. I've never broken anything before!"
"Well, we're in a sticky spot for a recon team, so I guess it's just me and you."
"I don't think that I can walk," she said as he shifted to her side.
"Oh, you're definitely not walking," he commented, pulling her up easily from the ground. "And you're definitely seeing Kaede when we get back to the ship. No arguing."
She nodded, hissing as he shifted her weight slightly.
"And then you are resting," he continued as if he was the one in charge.
"I'll just sit in the chair on the bridge. No moving," she mumbled.
"Bed rest. I'll strap you down if I have to. Hag's got those things they use for crazy people. I'll use 'em on you instead. You're halfway batshit as it is."
"Not nice," she reminded him, not really caring, because even though movement was painful, she was really glad that she wasn't having to walk or limp or crawl her way back up to the ship.
"Keh," he scoffed. "You're going to give me a promotion too."
"I can't give promotions," she muttered. "Have to be an admiral for that."
"You can create new positions though," he said, easily jumping up the side of the rocky hill that she'd tumbled down earlier when the bear-centaur thing had knocked her down a peg or eight.
"And?" She asked, tilting her head a little so that she could rest it on her shoulder.
"Chief Security Officer," he said. "But you're going to make me your primary protection officer."
"I don't need a bodyguard."
"Like hell you don't. You were off-ship for five seconds and look what happened. You need constant surveillance."
The thought of being constant supervised by Inuyasha of all people was both revolting and intriguing. He was warm, and space was not. She definitely wouldn't mind cuddling when they were back out in deep space.
Maybe she'd whacked her head harder than she'd thought.
She shouldn't even be thinking about that sort of thing. She was his superior officer, and the scandal that would occur from that would ruin both of their careers.
But would it be worth it?
She'd clearly sustained head trauma.
"Captain?" He asked.
"I'm fine," she quipped, and he snorted at her obvious lie. She wasn't fine since he had to carry her.
"Hardly," he drawled as they emerged from the thick trees and back out into the clearing where they'd landed.
The ship sat, pristine and undamaged, in the midst of it.
"You should probably prepare yourself," Inuyasha spoke lowly.
She hummed her question.
"Sango's already seen you, and she is throwing the biggest shit fit." He made a noise in the back of his throat. "Pretty sure I'd rather deal with the bear thing again."
She made a noise in the back of her throat to acknowledge his statement.
Kagome turned to look at him.
"I stay as long as you do," he clarified, though it really wasn't needed.
"I'm your First Officer, of course I'll stay," Sango said. Kirara trilled from her spot on the chair.
"I think I'll stay as well," Miroku added with a wry grin. "Can't have you all doing the impossible and miss out on a medal."
"I'll stay too," Shippo said, raising a clawed finger in the air as if he was asking permission.
"Just because we're dumb as hell doesn't mean you have to stay too," Inuyasha pointed out.
"I want to," he insisted. "I can climb things if you need it. And I can light things up if it gets dark."
"And not set them on fire?" Miroku asked.
"And not set them on fire," Shippo said with a nod.
Kagome looked at what was left of her bridge with a small, sad smile and nodded.
"Okay, then," she turned back to the console. "Let's go send the crew off." She walked to the wall, pressing her hand against the sensor, but it flashed a "scan not detected" message back at her. She pressed her hand against it again and received the same message.
"Move aside," Inuyasha said, shoving his fingers into the wall and forcing the plate open. "There. No need for the fucking AI to do its job or anything."
Kagome reached in and lifted the small plastic plate covering the manual override for releasing the escape pods.
She pressed and held the button down until she heard the soft click, signaling that the pods were now being sent off to the nearest Alliance ship.
Their emergency beacons would also notify the Alliance themselves that their ship was in trouble. The calvary would be here soon enough. There was nothing to worry about.
"Did you press it?" Miroku asked, leaning forward to look out the windows at the ship below.
"Yes?" Kagome answered as Sango joined Miroku.
"Nothing has launched."
Inuyasha sighed long and loud.
"We're going to have to do this manually. Fucking AI bullshit," he grumbled, punching the wall where Reggie's camera sat. "I'm going to fucking enjoy pulling the plug on you one day." He turned to Shippo. "Come on, runt. We gotta go launch some shit into space."
"That's the crew you're talking about!" Kagome said, already heading out the door after them. She turned to look back at Sango and Miroku. "Same areas as before. Make sure everyone launches."
The three of them split up at the junction as she headed back down the lone hallway, hoping that this would be enough to save the crew, the ship, and potentially all of their careers.
The doors were taking longer and longer to open though, and she was starting to worry that she might actually get stuck somewhere. The pods were launching though, and that was the good news. The only good news. There was still that hull breach that they had managed to work around. That alone had killed six pods. They were so fortunate that they weren't running at full capacity, because at this rate there wouldn't be any extra seats for her or the bridge.
They'd given her an old ship, one that was due for decommission within the next decade. It was a trial run for her time as captain.
It should've been an insult. No one else got a ship so old and bordering on almost needing to be scuttled.
But she'd loved it the moment that she'd set eyes on it. Sure it was scuffed up and needed more than a new coat of paint, but everything worked—sort of—well, most of the time—and they'd done some considerable remodeling to get it to current Alliance standards. It wasn't large enough to accommodate the hundreds of people that some of the other ships did, but that was fine. A hundred people was more than enough to manage for her first ship.
It might've been old, but it was hers.
And now that very same ship seemed like it was actively trying to murder them through oxygen and atmosphere deprivation.
Reaching the first pod, she manually released the hinge holding the pod to the ship. She met eyes with the crew standing in the ship, giving them what she hoped was a reassuring smile as they launched away from the ship and slowly shrunk away into the darkness of space.
Taking a deep breath, she started for the next pod, following the sequence down the hallway, spot checking rooms as she passed, just to be sure.
Each release was harder and harder, watching the fearful looks on the crew as she sent them off with barely anything more than a smile and a silent heartfelt prayer for their safety.
They'd be fine, she reminded herself after each one disembarked. They had plenty of food and water to reach the next ship. Their beacons would alert other Alliance ships to their distress, and someone would come for them.
Someone would come for them.
She just had to wait and make sure that the engines didn't explode—implode?—and that they didn't suffocate or veer into enemy territory and cause yet another international incident. They just had to last a week.
Maybe less.
Yeah, maybe less.
She reached the last door, manually overriding it, except that it didn't open. She pressed the release button again, feeling it click, but again, nothing happened. Nothing. No movement at all.
Kagome stared at the door, pressing the button a third time.
Still no movement.
Taking a deep breath, she pried open the physical override panel.
Once she physically opened the door, it would disable the AI from closing it until she did so.
It was a safeguard, and it was meant for emergencies.
And this was definitely an emergency.
Kagome grabbed the handle of the flip-switch, and put her entire body behind pressing it up and open.
The doors unlatched, and she waited for them to slide open the rest of the way, except they didn't. They just sort of popped open a little and stayed there.
She was supposed to open it herself. Pushing down on the bottom half of the door, she felt it slide down towards the ground. She was able to leverage the top half the door a little higher but she didn't have the upper body strength to get it farther up.
Good news is that she wasn't that tall, and this was one of the only times that it was beneficial for her.
She ran towards the section of pods, already feeling the temperature drop as she went.
A small cluster of ranking crew were in the last pod. Her fingers fumbled with the switch, she looked up seeing their faces, giving them that same smile she'd given to the other crew. Except these men and women, looked at her for a just a moment, before one snapped to attention with a salute and others followed suit.
She would not cry.
She nodded, giving her own salute before releasing them off into space.
When it had sailed out of eyesight, she took a deep and shuddering breath.
This was her ship. Her ship.
She was the fucking captain of a fucking Alliance ship, and rogue AI or no, no one was taking this ship from her.
Captain Kagome Higurashi had fucking shit to do.
Even as little as she was, Kagome knew that time had passed, but she didn't know how much.
Time became fluid. She couldn't tell how long it had been since she'd eaten, drank, used the bathroom. There wasn't a lot of food and water, and she remembered her father telling her that supplies on pods had to be rationed.
But anytime she thought of her father, she could only picture the bright glowing circles that had encompassed the ship he'd been on.
They were on their way back to visit her mother and her new baby brother, Souta.
She'd only gotten to see him on the screen, but she was going to be able to hold him now. He looked so small.
Kagome curled up tighter in the blanket.
She wanted her mother. She wanted her father.
But all she had was the lonely vastness of space devoid of any other sounds other than her own.
And so Kagome spent several long hours humming herself to sleep.
When another ship finally found her, she'd long since run out of food and water.
The captain had put in the bare minimum requirements for the pods: enough fuel to travel 10 astronomical units, which when she'd looked it up later was just a little further from the sun to Saturn; enough food and water to last four men an entire 24 hours; and a basic medical kit that treated little more than a handful of superficial injuries.
Kagome had spent eight and a half days on that little tiny space, and when they'd pulled her into medical, she'd been severely dehydrated and hadn't had a decent meal in all that time, surviving on bars consisting of plant protein and carbs.
Her fuel stores were almost full though, because the pods required someone to navigate them.
Kagome had come so close to becoming the final victim of the Fuyu-syogun disaster, and now she was the lone survivor.
She was the only survivor by pure chance and luck. Debris had smashed several of the pods, and others died of dehydration. The captain had launched the pods once he'd climbed into one himself, meaning that several thousand people were still on the passenger ship with no way off, including her father.
The notion haunted Kagome that her father had to stand and watch all the pods launch, realizing his fate; she wondered if he'd spent his last moments hunting for her, scared and afraid, desiring to hold her in their last few moments together.
Years later, she still wasn't sure if 'survivor' was the title she preferred.
But they implemented a law—Hiroshi's Law, to be exact, named for the ill-fated captain who cut all the corners save those that impacted himself directly—which required all escape pods to have navigational equipment that could be self-driven, and enough food and water for three days for each person.
She remembered hearing the uproar among captains that such measures were unnecessary and retaliatory because of one bad captain who'd only kept his rank and position because he'd had friends in high places.
But they'd never been stranded in space, all alone and starving for days on end with no hope of anyone ever finding them. They'd never gone without food or water. They'd never cried themselves to sleep, half frozen underneath flimsy blankets that retained no warmth whatsoever.
Sitting on her mother's lap, Kagome had seen the perils of bad captaincy and had resolved herself to battling the injustice of nepotism within the Alliance when she'd heard that Captain Hiroshi Takatsuji had been post-humously promoted to the rank of commodore by his peers.
Voices echoed down the corridor.
"You know fucking jack shit!" Inuyasha bellowed.
"Inuyasha," Miroku started. Kagome recognized the placating tone.
"Don't you fucking try to coddle me! I am the Chief Security Officer, and you know who I report to? Not fucking you."
"And if you run off and she returns?" Sango asked. "We have no way of contacting you at the moment—"
"Then stop giving me shit and work on it!" Inuyasha snarled. "I'm going to go find the fucking Captain before—!"
His tirade stopped the moment she stepped into the room, but before she could speak, he opened his mouth again.
"And where the fuck have you been?" He shouted.
"Launching the pods," she answered plainly. "What did you think I was doing?"
"Taking your sweet fucking time, that's what!"
"To be fair, there were two of us and part of ours were destroyed in the hull breach, so we didn't have as many, and we move faster," Shippo left the sentence dangling out there, but his argument didn't appear to make Inuyasha feel any better about it.
She could tell by the way he was clenching his jaw that he was this close to saying what was really on his mind and that wasn't going to be helpful to anyone.
"Look, I'm here, safe and sound, right?" She patted him on the arm as she moved back to the consoles.
"No more splitting up," he grumbled after a moment.
"No promises," she said, "so any changes?"
"Still bleeding air and atmosphere," Miroku answered.
"There's more critical system errors," Sango answered.
"Reggie doesn't respond to commands at all now," Shippo added. "He just ignores us."
"Any good news?" She amended.
"All the pods launched?" Sango offered with a shrug of her shoulders.
"I'll take it, I guess," Kagome said with the same shrug and a heavy sigh.
"Okay, so let's backtrack. When did the errors start?"
Five heads bent over the console screens, trying to scroll back through the system errors to figure out just when everything went to hell in a hand basket.
"Okay, I think we need to make a timeline," Sango said. "That's going to help us figure everything we've gotten."
"We had issues with pod launch at 1520," Miroku said. "There's nothing in the error logs about the lack of communication."
Sango quickly wrote it out on the board.
"Hull breach was at 1340," Inuyasha stated. "Have we even been able to get into the area yet?"
"No. There's no way to access it without going outside, and I don't want anyone going off ship until we fix whatever the problem is with Reggie," Kagome stated.
"First error message looks to be at 0604," Shippo added. "That's the earliest time I've seen, but there wasn't another error until 0804."
"Two hours?" Miroku asked. "That's odd."
"Why?"
"Well, whatever catastrophic event happened to the AI, it seems to have been in quick succession once systems started failing."
"You don't think it's related?" Kagome asked him.
"I don't know. There's too much—stuff—to determine that right now." Miroku rubbed his hand over his face.
"What was the error at 0804?" Inuyasha asked, staring at the white board.
"Cleaning bot failed to respond," Shippo read off, "on the bridge."
"That was the coffee mug," Kagome added.
"Told you something was off," he muttered.
"The next big one was—" Miroku scanned through the errors, frowning at whatever he saw. "Life support at 1210?"
"Life support had errors before the hull breach?"
Miroku scanned through the errors, quickly, fingers flicking back and forth across the surface.
"Why didn't any alarms go off?"
"It says that notifications were silenced."
Inuyasha leaned off the counter, standing up straight.
"By who?"
"This doesn't make any sense," Miroku said.
"Notifications were silenced at 1208 by the user 'Computer'."
"So the AI silenced notifications that our life support was already failing and then we had a hull breach shortly thereafter, and you really think that's a coincidence?"
"It wasn't Reggie," Kagome said, fingers tapping on her chin.
"Uh, unless there's some asshat running around with the name 'Computer' it's the fucking AI. That's the standard username on all Alliance ships! Didn't they teach you that in fucking Captain school or whatever shit you went to?"
"It is the standard default among Alliance ships. But I can change the username to something else." She licked her lips, making direct eye contact with Sango, who looked like she'd just put two and two together as well.
"We changed the AI's username to 'Reggie,'" she explained. "So the logs all show computer notifications and changes as 'Reggie' and not 'Computer' when we look at the back end data."
"No one else knew that except myself and Sango."
"Oh, fuck yes," Inuyasha growled with a sadistic smile on his face as he began to pace behind her.
"What?" Shippo asked, looking between them all.
"Someone was pretending to be the AI, but they didn't know that you'd changed the username on the ship." Miroku said, looking at Kagome for confirmation. She nodded. "I would wager that Inuyasha is happy, because it means that Inuyasha has something to punch now."
"The big question is who sabotaged the ship?" Sango asked.
"And for what?" Kagome added.
A/N: I hope you guys enjoy the opening chapter of "Objects in Space"! This story has 6 chapters, and it's mostly done (just needs editing for the most part).
Let me know what you all think!