The first thing I noticed was the imperial ships that were getting closer, or rather that we were approaching.

  There were definitely three of them, though they were still emitting jamming signals that made them harder to individually identify, this close I was able to pierce their more passive jamming and discover what was beneath.

  There were two Baron class corvette's, and one larger vessel. My computer helpfully identified it as a Margrave class vessel.

  Looking through the tactical specifications, it LOOKED like it was similar to the original design of Hook, a pure combat vessel made to dump missiles on a target. Only while Hook had endurance to keep dumping missiles on targets in multiple combats, this looked like it was meant to blow it's load in a handful of salvos. It had ten missiles tubes to my four, but only a single small turret that was smaller than any of the turrets I had, along with what I was gathering was the signature weapon of imperial ships, the spinal cannon.

  “Do those spinal cannons vary at all? Like are there some that are rail guns, some that are lasers, etc?” I asked.

  “Yes, though C.O.G. Has no information in their database as to why one vessel will have one weapon preference over another.” Hook said.

  Something to ask Carolina.

  Speaking of.

  I switched over to the camera in her cabin.

  She was still fast asleep, leg half off the mattress, her other arm sprawled along the wall next to her. She reminded me of a puppy that had been in the middle of playing when it decided it was sleepy and just passed out mid motion. Her blanket was barely even on her.

  My attention was wrenched away from her by a slight motion in the corner, which as I panned the camera I realized was Dog-Bot! Now fully ambulatory on all of his tentacley legs.

  Wait... did he have that many before?

  Dog-bot obviously noticed the camera and turned to look.

  ORDERS?

  Dog-bot sent to me, along with the load of meta-data all of my drones always sent with every simple message. This one had the feel of... anxiousness, desire, and protectiveness.

  YOU WANT TO PROTECT CAROLINA?

  I asked.

  ACKNOWLEDGED?

  There was something more there. It wanted... not necessarily to protect Carolina, it wanted a function shift... destroying things in space was what it was made for sure, but something had clicked in it, fighting aboard the ship, with... The meta-data was unclear, but I think it meant 'squishies' on board it needed to protect.

  It liked that. Wanted that.

  'Not sentient' my ass.

  I thought for a moment.

  NEW DIRECTIVE: PATROL HOOK INTERIOR. PROTECT CREW.

  I sent to it, hoping I could make it clear. The drones sent so much more information than simple text, and I think I was getting the hang of it. It was like transmitting all of your body language and intonation on top of the text, along with all of the data necessary for the communication protocol and all the technicalities that actually made digital communication work.

  Dog-bot's whole body turned and straightened, looking at the camera. I could feel a little nervous excitement in it.

  ACKNOWLEDGED.

  It sent. The text felt dead but all the meta-data was alive with possible patrol routes, defensive positons, optimizations for it's shell...

  Crew safety priority list...

  It had put me at the top, followed by Carolina, then Megan, Hwang, Doctor Smith...

  And Rekki-Ricky at the bottom.

  QUERY: CREWMAN REKKI-RICKY SEQUENCE ON PRIORITY LIST?

  I sent, getting the hang for it's protocols.

  ERROR: DATA NOT FOUND.

  It sent back. It wasn't actually data not found, it simply couldn't articulate what it meant through text. Instead in the meta-data I got a lot of disjointed information about systems errors whenever it got close to Rekki-Ricky, or looked at Rekki-Ricky, or thought too much about Rekki-Ricky...

  Man, Rekki-Ricky was all kinds of hazardous to machines.

  I let Dog-Bot go about it's new business, and checked on a few of the production items that had been submitted while I slept, queuing them into the manufactory.

  “Let's bring up Doctor Smith and Megan's work on that paper.” I said, to Hook specifically but really it was just a way to anchor myself. Being fully synched like this it was really easy to get 'lost in the sauce' of all of the data and information at my disposal, I needed something to focus on, and a communication with Hook did that.

  I brought up the paper, and twitched while I kept myself from dropping into a higher reference frame as I watched the imperial ships get closer.

  It was so second nature at this point to experience everything from a higher reference frame that I could commiserate with what Bait had told me about about all of C.O.G. Being desperate for Media. I could shunt in and out of higher reference frames like breathing, but if what Doctor Smith told me was to be believed, it was damaging for me to do that.

  Yep lost in the sauce again focus on the paper Brayden damnit stop getting sidetracked.

  I focused in on what was written.

  I had never read the paper before, and it actually hurt. I could immediately tell from the writing whether Joe had written a section; the preface, introduction, and historical relevance sections were all one hundred percent him; or Bait had; I found more than one lewd joke baked into the data sets; and it.... it hurt.

  I hadn't known them long, but it had been an intense meeting, and I missed them.

  Or at least wished they were alive and breathing.

  “What do you think Hook? I don't see any references to the ARK or ancient people.” I said.

  “You are not exactly ancient Brayden, however it does look well sanitized. It looks like a basic report on the tolerance of people outside of C.O.G. Space to C.O.G. Practices and a viability report on integration... It won't hold up to direct scientific inquiry though.” Hook said.

  I begrudgingly nodded.

  It was missing entire sections. I could tell from how the tone abruptly shifted or from sentences that seemed to be setting something up only for them to go nowhere. These were where there were huge chunks of the report that had been torn out by Doctor Smith and Megan, and there was not a whole lot we could do to make it better in the time we had.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Think it will come back to bite us?” I asked.

  “I think it will come back to bite C.O.G.'s diplomatic corps.” Hook replied.

  “They have a diplomatic core? I can't imagine they are very good at it.” I said jokingly.

  C.O.G.'s government in general felt like it was more inclined to send an emissary from another faction memes and insults than anything actually useful.

  “Their results are... mixed. C.O.G. Is a direct democracy so their diplomats have dozens of polls going over any particular issue, and they'll generally pick whatever polls the highest for a distinct issue.” Hook said.

  “That sounds like Trolls could easily sway things badly.” I said.

  “They can, but the majority of C.O.G. members who vote in these instances are A: In the system where this is happening, and so can be shot at by other Captains who think they're being assholes, and B:are, in fact, captains of their own vessels and so have a stake in how things go. If the diplomatic situation deteriorates then they are going to have to fight their way out of said system, so it does keep the number of trolls down on important decisions. Less important decisions, like naming things, however...” Hook continued.

  “Yeah I bet that can get Hilar... I mean chaotic. I meant chaotic.” I began and corrected myself.

  I could feel Hook giving me the side-eye.

  Literally.

  I had begin to really understand metacode and could almost see Hook as an individual looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

  It was really weird.

  “Right.” Hook said.

  Once I finished going over the research paper, and barely resisting adding my own edits, I moved over to look at Rekki-Ricky's design.

  “This is...” I began.

  “A gun with engines.” Hook finished.

  “I mean, that's not necessarily a bad thing.” I said, trying to defend Rekki's work.

  “It's not necessarily a good thing either.” Hook countered.

  He was getting faster with the comebacks.

  I wasn't certain it was a good change, but it was definitely a change.

  I stared at the design. It really was a gun with drives. It was built around one of the big tracking plasma cannons that our ship mounted, the double barrel one.

  I could see signs that he had tried to go for a spinal mounted design initially, a lot of internal bracing, but had abandoned it partway through and slapped the massive turret on the underbelly of the ship, giving it an unobstructed view underneath the ship but with no view above.

  And every extra space was lined with... well they weren't thrusters, they were channels for the main drive. It was actually an interesting design, it had... not a reactor, it was still a drone, so it had a limited supply of drive plasma that would be piped in, but a suitably large reservoir, and it could be piped in any which direction.

  No cold gas thrusters though, you couldn't take this thing into the atmosphere without pissing off a whole lot of people.

  Or the void either, but replace 'people' with 'monsters'.

  “I wonder why he abandoned the spinal arangement.” I said to no one. No one but Hook at least.

  “Likely because the tracking plasma packets need a rotating assembly to keep the plasma packets on target with the laser that distorts the plasma envelope.” Hook replied.

  “It would have worked with a different gun yeah?” I asked.

  “There are other weapon systems that would have worked yes, however the best would be the beam weapons found on imperial vessels, as spinal weapons have been part of their battle doctrine since the beginning, and they have made cramming the most power and efficiency into a spinal beam into something of an art-form.” Hook replied.

  “Did you tell Rekki-Ricky this?” I asked.

  “I told Crewman Ricky about this yes. When he asked what our equivalent weapon system was I told him homing weapon systems, and then he went off searching through our databanks.” Hook said.

  “And he didn't go for missiles right away?” I asked surprised. That's where my thoughts first went.

  “No. He has actually avoided any explosive ordinance hardpoints at all in the design, which does follow drones design of having only a single primary weapon, however...”Hook continued.

  “This is more like a battle rider than a drone.... missiles might be the way to go.” I continued.

  “I believe he may have also been aiming for endurance in the design. The ship would only be able to carry a handful of shipkiller missiles in it, and our vessel can already throw out more of them and faster than the fighter ever could.” Hook said.

  I chewed on that.

  “Aside from homing weapons... C.O.G. Produces a lot of really high end plasma weapons right? Over and beyond the tracking plasma weapons?” I asked.

  “The tracking plasma cannons are the current top of the line, top rated in nearly every military weapons messaging board and scoring high in all metrics.” Hook replied.

  The idea of choosing a weapon based on up-votes through me for a second, but it made sense with the C.O.G. National identity.

  Reddit as a nation.

  It beggared belief.

  Or are they more like 4chan?

  I shuddered at the thought.

  “The tracking plasma is not the best at everything though.... This turret on the bottom feels far too kludged together to be useful. Everything else on this design screams hyper maneuverable fighter, maybe we should lean into that.” I said.

  “If by 'everything' you mean the drive channels slapped to every surface, then yes. It is meant to be a 'hyper maneuverable fighter.'” Hook responded.

  “Do you have any existing models we could use as a baseline to compare to? See what it has that this does not?” I asked.

  “There are several planetary defense fighters that are similar in design objectives to this, though those are made to work primarily in atmosphere whereas so far this is designed only for space.” Hook continued.

  “The fusion drives everywhere would mess up a planets surface huh?” I asked.

  “I am fairly certain your rapid exit from the surface of Hou Ji with the main thrusters likely destroyed most of the landing space at the starport.” Hook said as an example.

  Shit.

  I hadn't thought of that.

  “No wonder they were pissed we left.” I said. I bet that contributed to the whole bounty thing.

  “Indeed. Ah, here is the latest planetary defense fighter used on C.O.G. Worlds. At least as of our last full data update.” Hook said.

  “When was that?” I asked.

  “Roughly... one year before your awakening.” Hook replied.

  “Why so long?” I couldn't stop myself from asking.

  “You would have to ask my former Captain.” Hook trailed off.

  I switched my attention to the planetary defense fighter design.