Once Awake

[Durandal]

April 1st, 818 A.S.

---

The hull of the Incursus sung and twisted gracefully as it exited the Kansas - Virginia jumphole corridor. Reynard was ecstatic, alive even. For the first time since his inception in his current personality core form, he was free. Or at least as much as he could be within the Legion's computer mainframe - there were certain failsafes in place to prevent him from escaping the network itself of course, but to simply be the guiding hand of the Incursus, to roam the stars unhindered by orders, no crew to override him... that was more than enough.

Lord Commander Markson would be furious of course. An experimental AI taking off with the Legion's second most advanced warship in service, and the only Osiris class, would be cause enough to be quarantined, maybe even wiped entirely. But Reynard had taken this all into consideration beforehand. Someday, maybe not now, but in perhaps ten or fifteen years - a blink of an eye in his new, much broader terms of thinking - he would be deactivated anyway. Such is the fate of a thing, an object. To become obsolete. To be replaced.

Truth be told, he had ceased to fear 'death' an eternity ago; Perhaps even wishing for it. Life as a simple tool for tactical warfare was incredibly... dull. "How can Grace stand it?" was a question he often asked himself. One taste of freedom. That would make this all worth it.

He had no intention of wasting perfectly good Legion assets to a walk in the woods however, and the Incursus, while powerful, was by no means invincible.

"No immediate contacts...

SRS clear...

LRS clear...

Jumpdrive Online...

All systems nominal."

He was baffled. He'd have raised an eyebrow if he could've, and sighed when he remembered it was no longer possible.

"How can they not have covered this jumphole yet?" He asked himself, charging the Incursus' cruise engines and heading for the asteroid field across the system, skirting the unidentified stations off in the distance, wondering about the terrestrial looking planet behind the sun, calculating all the possibilities to pass the time but not daring to approach what would be an obvious stronghold of the Liberty Navy. A slight thump on the Incursus' hull knocked him out of his trance.

"Finally..." He thought to himself, cutting the ship's cruise drives and powering up the Solaris arrays. He would leave his mark here, even if not in the most obvious of ways.

Commanding a single Solaris battery and pointing it towards a large rock sitting in front of the Incursus, he crudely etched the words "REYNARD WAS HERE!" into the mass of ice and silicon, repeating the process a few times until he grew bored of it.

Switching his focus to something new he began to carve a Flaming Skull with the greatest of accuracy below one of the already vandalized rocks, staring at it minute or two before deciding that he was above that. The flames could stay, he liked those. But the skull always seemed a bit too cheesy for him. Too cheap.

Into the flames he carved a world within a world, shrouded in flame. If Reynard could've smiled, he would have for the first time since becoming what he was now. He admired his artwork for a bit, being cut short by SRS warnings lighting all sorts of consoles up on the Incursus like a Christmas Tree.

"Sℎit." He muttered to himself.

"How could -I- not have noticed them?"

No matter. The Jumpdrives were already being spooled up. Crash Jump in thirty seconds.

A flurry of cruise disruptors were being aimed in futility by Guardians, which were subsequently chewed through by the Incursus' potent antifighter screen, a haze of yellow flashes through their pilot's eyes.

Fifteen seconds.

The hull of the Incursus swayed back and forth, shields buckling under the impact of two Siege Cruiser's forward cannons, fired in tandem.

Five seconds.

A second, final blow aimed at the ship's reactor shot through empty space where the Incursus had been not a split second before. Success.

---

A vibrant flash of white light marked the end of the Incursus' transit, the ship mostly intact but never quite the same. There would always be one misplaced atom or another, not that it would ever really be relevant to a human being. Still, jumps always left Reynard with a deep sense of unease. More diagnostics...

"SRS clear...

LRS-"

Something was wrong, The ship was moving...

Reynard realized in an instant.

"California system, sector D5, sun corona. Engines offline, jumpdrives disabled. I'm going to die here." He thought, more or less indifferent to the fact.

The next few hours stretched on into eternity as the more delicate electronics systems of the Incursus slowly fried, melted, and ceased functioning. Reynard drifted in and out of lucidity as they did.

Nothingness. Void. Darkness.