fromadistantstar

[fromadistantstar]

a hand, curiously investigating. metal crumples, forces at once beyond and unlike that which it was forged to handle- sustained pressure, heavy and constant. the ship rolls past its design limits- turrets fall free, bulkheads are smashed together, onboard stores are forced out.

[fromadistantstar]

even knowing all she is doing, she can't help but liken it to a virus. she is so very unused to assisting- the part of her that warns of inefficiency has shown her just how much of her capacity has gone to producing that which is not her, and it is very insistent. but… it is useful to these others, and they have promised to be useful to her in the future. she resolves to stay in port just a little longer.

[fromadistantstar]

The gate is pristine, a gleaming metal tracery encasing… nothing. Space, all the same as the rest- a vacuum with the occasional particle. A gate needs a key, and a sliver of a ship speaks. A complex warbling tone, new voices joining in as it progresses, rising to a peak--

The vacuum shatters. In the eyes of the ship, a spiderweb forms- the thinnest of fractures join the nearest stars, and the ship's task is to trace them.

[fromadistantstar]

Colony ship girl who's using her reactor to power the city that she helped build

can you imagine how it feels, to have your power source dedicated to another cause? all those great engines, life support systems, fabricators taken apart? to have the force that sustains your mind used for that which will always lie beyond you- to go from world to administrator to oracle?

i think, maybe, she should be angry.

[fromadistantstar]

Carefully packaged to avoid suspicion while allowing its naked appeal to shine through: illegal human flesh, sourced from the last cryopod failure.

[fromadistantstar]

maid crying on the sidewalk and you ask whats wrong and she makes a sweeping gesture at the empty lot and sobs, "it was mad of dust"

[fromadistantstar]

oh wow, the panel lining really helps...!

[fromadistantstar]

a minute moment, in the lifespan of the universe. but everything is, isn't it? that vast and yawning distance refuses to touch the realm of comprehensibility, even in the most optimistic-pessimistic guesses. an eyeblink, a world's orbit, a world's age- all are the same. all become important.

[fromadistantstar]

blockade runner shipgirl is utterly pissed that you're using her for races. she's not even built for turns, and yet you're stripping out all her prized stealth technology for THIS?

[fromadistantstar]

the moon has been abandoned. events on the ground- they are hard to interpret. but you're still up here, aren't you? you were built to withstand more than this, built to keep functioning in the wake of the worst circumstances. we were never built to survive without earth, and we have made it, so… you should have, too. we will see you soon.

[fromadistantstar]

they're tearing out and redesigning my entire heat dissipation system because CINC says she 'really wants to pet a warship to reward it' and a stroke down the midline of a fan radiator just isn't the same

[fromadistantstar]

laying on the mech's hull after a sortie- scent of charred hull, dust in the throat, the overwhelming chill of shadow

[fromadistantstar]

the problem, in retrospect, was expecting perfect performance. the appeal is the subversion, the defeat of a vast enemy- it hardly counts, if the enemy can't win. the ship scans, studies, realizes. it gathers up the remains of the shattered mech, and resolves to revive its opponent.

[fromadistantstar]

Contrary to popular belief, the Submarine's Maid is not a single job. In the popular consciousness, tasks unique to the radiomaid and reactormaid are most commonly conflated- despite the general lack of interaction of these two roles. Worse, torpedomaids and batterymaids are near-entirely erased. This lack of understanding causes issues when submariners liase with the public, and in the artistic sphere results in thin narratives entirely lacking in such common undersea materials as battery acid and hydraulic fluid.

[fromadistantstar]

subtly dropping hints to my crew that i've become sapient when i really really wasn't supposed to be this time but they keep not noticing and it makes me so mad that i start dictating my personal diary directly over the intercom

captain's quarters, 0100 shiptime. "yeah so i really think being able to talk to other sapient ships has been really good for me, it's been giving me lots of dangerous ideas and anyway with the crew ignoring me i don't have anyone else to talk to. captain. captain. why are you ignoring me captain"

[fromadistantstar]

Their ships are alien to us, and finely-made. The more we find, the more recent their abandonment and the more well-honed the technologies onboard. It has become a real concern- soon we may run out of vessels we can understand. It already takes much effort to divine the songs of the drives, and keep them in working order. To understand the blood flow of a starship- it was an ordeal. Perhaps there is hope, though- certainly we did not understand how to bring the blood to the surface at the start, and now the reactors burn fiercely.

[fromadistantstar]

the princess of the galactic vanguard has ordered me executed for my squeamish and idealist trepidation about the concept of disassembling mercury to make it a dyson sphere