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Prologue977 words
Chapter One, Alone (Edited)1,142 words
Chapter Two, Afraid1,621 words
Chapter Three, First Contact1,659 words
Chapter Four, Hunted1,356 words
Chapter Five, Stolen1,365 words
Chapter Six, Kindness1,392 words
Chapter Seven, Understanding1,069 words

Prologue

For sixty two years a small capsule had rocketed through space. The thick layer of ice covering its smooth grey hull had been blasted away by microscopic meteorites and solar radiation for decades as it continued its century long journey to protect and deliver its charge floating within the ceramic hull of the pod.

The pods AI was a simple affair, it was mostly dedicated to navigating between the two fleets travelling though the galaxy. It had made this lonely trek through space many times navigating through solar storms and performing last minute changes in its trajectory to avoid black holes.

Around three decades ago the pod had set a course through an unimportant system on its way through this portion of space, with a nebula to one side of the system and what could very well be a black hole on the other it was the fastest way to the fleet on the far side of this galaxy.

With machine precision it twirled and lit its main engine for a long burn to slow itself down for a short and safe trip though the gravity well of whatever sun kept the system together, it did not intend to stay long enough for that information to matter and dedicated its processor to finding any hazards in its way in the next forty years, if this short-cut worked out then it would be nothing but smooth sailing the rest of the way.

The trip though the solar system should have taken three hours and the pods constant recalculation was the first sign that something was wrong, the pods systems calculated that it would only take two hours to leave the system and in a nanosecond the AI found out why, it was being pulled into a huge gravity well.

It took a nanosecond more for the pod to respond but there was hardly anything the dutiful AI could have done as the star in the system spun around the planet in a way that was simply impossible. If the AI was more advanced it might have spent time trying to figure out why the star was dancing forward in a near perfect intercept course but the Pod’s AI had no capacity to care.

In half a second the ship twisted and blasted fire brighter than any this galaxy had seen before as twenty thousand years of engineering and applied science worked to overpower the primal fury of the sun, Ice was ripped from the tiny pod and the engines redoubled its efforts from the unreasonably strong forces dragging it and its charge to doom.

The battle did not last long as the pod twisted free of the sun's pull and drifted aimlessly for a moment, a poetic mind might have said that the AI was twisted by despair of its duty, its purpose for being lost in an unfair moment of cosmic impossibility. But the AI had no means of feeling those thoughts, all it could do was protect its charge now that it lacked the power to return to the speed needed to catch up with the fleet before it left the galaxy.

With a sudden lurch the pod twisted violently and sped towards a lone blue rock spinning peacefully, the pods insufficient scanning equipment running overtime to determine all they could from the planet as the pod hurtled to its grave and, with hope, the new home of its charge, there was after all no way the fleets passing though this galaxy would ever turn back for something so minor, so replaceable, let alone find it.

She swallowed for the first time her lungs filled with synthetic amniotic fluid as the AI looked inwards, she was well developed, lean and fit especially for someone who had never opened her eyes nor been given a chance to think and feel, it was not a cruel fate, she was intended to live out her life once she reached her destination. Her mind had been given parts of knowledge, language, art, fear, instinct, science, history. It was enough to be considered a full education but it hardly seemed enough now that she was being thrown into the metaphorical crucible.

Hunting, building, surviving and a heavily reinforced desire to live the AI finally decided upon, with a million other things it decided she would need to live out her life on this unknown world and in seconds she was an expert. Her mind’s pliability and moldability would end the second she left the womb like pod but for now she soaked in knowledge in the place of experience and that was enough for the simple AI.

It turned next to her body, it seemed so frighteningly fragile to the caretaker, fear was one of its few emotions after all, and it responded as best it could. The stem cells within the pod where given a new purpose suddenly and the fluid quickly compressed to form a gel like seal around the clone condensed into millimetres as a second skin to protect its charge. It was not finished there however, Stem cells hardened into bone stronger than diamond and cartilage that would rival steel or formed biological circuitry around the gel covered body, a suit of biological armour that could challenge any of mechanical design.

In less than an hour the body was sealed into its armour, nerves wired into the suit, a mirrored visor hiding her face and the AI was finished, It stopped for a moment, it was the first time the AI had done nothing since it was made thousands of years ago, and it spent half a second checking the power reserves on the pod, before it let out an electronic sigh and died.

The pod tumbled like a puppet with its strings cut as it fell into the lonely blue and green world.

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Fracturedheart

Fracturedheart #1 · Feb 15th, 2016 · 2 · ·

I like it already!!!!

hs0003

hs0003 #2 · Feb 16th, 2016 · 1 · ·

A pretty great first chapter, short and to the point with loads of progression.

Dastardly Hun

Dastardly Hun #3 · Feb 17th, 2016 · 2 · 1 ·

Let's do this.

For sixty two years

Sixty-two

The pods AI

Pod's

this short-cut worked

Shortcut

engines redoubled its efforts

Since it is the engines that you are talking about, you need "their effort"
.
.
And this is where I lost the will to look for typos. I not yet know about the rest of the story, but this chapter needs a minor editing run. Until that, it's absolutely needless to look for grammatical errors.
Also, minor nitpicking: If you have ice forming on your space vehiche, then something is leaking and you are kind of in a bad situation. There is no liquid/vaporized water floating in space to have it form on the capsule. Just a note.

Skyboss