Reborn as a Spaceship

Tacci Station had never seen this kind of traffic with ships too big for the ports stacked in orbit, luxury cruisers jostling with battle-hardened destroyers. You could feel the desperation in the system. All of these ships relied on Slipstream and now they couldn't use it. They were stuck with nowhere to go. The mix of races, and desperation was going to lead to only one outcome and that was aggression.

I'd worried, at first, that someone would out us. That some bureaucrat on the station staff would pull our name out of the logs and realise we'd sent a warning before any of this happened. Painting us as a target. But the bored comms officer, the one who'd laughed off our message earlier? Either he didn't remember or he knew better than to speak up.

Either way, we were safe.

But still trapped.

I had tried, of course. Spent hours cycling through the drive configurations, searching for dimensional weak points, adjusting every variable I could find. But the system wouldn't even budge. I couldn't open a window. It was like like hitting a brick wall and hoping something would shift.

It was time for one of our classic crew meetings in the crew lounge. Each of the crew had retreated to their comfort zone after we were forced back to the station. Each clearly dealing with some inner turmoil,

If we were going to survive this, we had to make a plan. The first step is honesty.

I called everyone into the lounge, T'lish, who emerged from the lab with a distant and haunted look. The others filtered in slowly with Mira and Stewie clinging to cups of synth-tea, Kel yawning dramatically, Lynn already cranky and complaining of a headache that wouldn't quit.

And Laia, of course. She manifested her fairy form near the ceiling, glowing dimly.

"I think we should all talk," I said. "About what the Architect showed us."

Everyone pause. Shuffling. Uneasy glances.

"To be fair," I added, "I'll go first."

So I told them. About the Architect, about the virtual bridge, about how it tried to manipulate me by wearing the face of my wife. I told them it had given me knowledge, raw and brutal. I now understood more about the slipstream than anyone likely ever had… and that it had been taken from us. Sealed. Made inaccessible.

I explained what I believed: that the dimensional walls had been thickened, and reinforced. The holes were patched, and the fractures healed. "We can't punch through," I said. "At least not the way we used to."

Lynn leaned forward. "So they just… handed you the keys to the kingdom, then welded the door shut?"

"Something like that," I admitted.

She frowned, rubbing the back of her neck. "That doesn't feel like a denial of access. That feels like an invitation to kick the damn door down."

Laia floated lower, her expression unreadable. "Did they tell you why?"

"We were risking time leaks and the breakdown of the energy lattice. Honestly, I think it was more about the Mother," I said. "They have been using the lattice like they owned it. The Architect didn't like that. I think this." I gestured around vaguely, "This whole thing might be a test. Of us. Of all of us. To see how the younger races react to losing their shortcut."

T'lish shifted in her seat. "And perhaps to weaken their hold on the younger races. If the slipstream drive is their technology, I could understand the reasoning"

Everyone went quiet.

T'lish cleared her throat and continued. "The Architect told me… I was broken." Her voice didn't tremble, but something in her posture did. "Not just because of the human genes. Not entirely. But because the Kall-e were meant to pass down our memories. A kind of… generational continuity. Memories from parent to child. The short life span, but long memories were supposed to maximise our evolution"

Kel blinked. "Wait, you're saying your people are supposed to remember their ancestors' lives?"

"Yes." She looked down at her claws. "But the Architect said something or someone had tampered with it. Blocked it. It's still there. Just... buried. There is no history of Kall-e having this ability, so it must have happened a long time ago"

Laia leaned forward, brows raised. "And you can access them now?"

"I'm starting to," she said. "Slowly. It's not like downloading a file. It's more like remembering a dream you never had. I haven't had time to investigate it"

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Mira reached over and took her hand, squeezing it. T'lish looked surprised but didn't pull away.

Stewie was next. He looked miserable. Pale. Eyes heavy with whatever visions still clung to him.

"I was shown three futures," he muttered. "One where I worked on ships, just a normal guy with a normal job. My perfect life really. One where I was in an immortal army, fighting for you Laz, wearing some kind of tech-body and just fighting over and over. And one where… I was stuck. Frozen. Forever. Never changing"

I didn't know what to make of it, I had to wonder if the Architech could see the future, for all their powers it didn't seem likely, otherwise, they would have known of the slipstream usage ages ago.

No one spoke for a long moment.

"I don't think they were real," he added. "Just… scare tactics. Or lessons."

"They showed me futures too," Lynn said quietly. "Same three. Living peacefully. Fighting. Stuck in time. I think they're aligned with the three sides. The Architects, the Mother, and The Harmonics maybe. That's who gave me the 'frozen' path."

She shook her head.

"But I don't like being manipulated," she added. "And I sure don't like being someone's test subject."

Kel leaned back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head. "Still… we were given something, weren't we? Even if it was a lie, it told us what they think of us. We are just pieces to be moved"

"And that we must pick a side," Mira added softly.

I turned to Laia. "Did they talk to you?"

She looked at me, and her expression turned... sad. "No," she said. "Not directly. My clone spoke with them briefly. But the Architect never addressed me. I believe it already saw everything it needed."

We were all thinking the same thing.

Each of us had been touched. Nudged. Shown glimpses. And we were all still here, sitting in this room, pretending things hadn't fundamentally shifted.

Because they had.

Slipstream was gone. The galaxy was in a quiet panic. And somehow we were supposed to decide what came next.

"So," I said finally. "What do we do?"

No one answered at first.

T'lish tapped her claws against her knee, thinking. "You said it was about access. Maybe not complete closure. Maybe we could find… new access points. Weak points they missed. Places the Architects don't watch."

"That sounds like a great way to get deleted," Kel muttered.

I let them go back and forth for a while. Debating. Speculating. Arguing.

But I kept staring out the viewport at the fleets hovering around the station like frightened birds. So much power, all of it neutered. All of it grounded. And yet… I didn't feel defeated.

Somewhere, underneath the fear and confusion and everything else, I felt something else rising.

Opportunity.

We knew more than anyone else in this system. We understood the truth about the slipstream, about the forces behind it, about the war quietly being waged across dimensions and ideologies. And knowledge was always power.

We couldn't come to a conclusion at the meeting.

Too many questions. Not enough certainty. Everyone had opinions, instincts and theories, but no one could offer a definitive path forward. I hadn't expected us to, the meeting was just to get us on the same path.

The only solid consensus was that we needed a new form of travel.

Slipstream was gone. Dead, or locked, or buried under layers of cosmic politics. Whatever the case, it was out of reach, and we were stranded like everyone else.

The Chunkyboy could still be deployed if needed. It was slow, but worked. That was something.

The military ships were the first to adapt. A few days after the lockdown, the first warp tugs arrived. Old-school tech. Soon, more arrived. Big, ugly things with thick hulls and thicker engines, designed to pull stranded cruisers out of nowhere and haul them across known space like interstellar oxen.

One by one, ships started to vanish from the station's orbit. Warp tethers glowing dull red, engines flaring to life as they were pulled away, to somewhere. Anywhere.

We could've joined them.

I'd received at least three offers for towage at "reduced panic pricing" but we had nowhere to go. No port. No homeworld. And let's be honest: I wasn't exactly a ship you tow. I'm meant to run, not be dragged. I refused for that reason alone.

So while others were escaping, we stayed.

And I studied.

Buried myself in the data the Architect had burned into my brain. I went deeper than before, diving through layers of code, structure, and memory of the theoretical frameworks stacked on top of impossible equations. My systems weren't just translating the data, they were feeling it. My core resonated with it like it recognised something in the noise.

There had to be a reason they gave me all this. They hadn't wanted me to sit still. That much, I was sure of.

So I replayed the moment. The jump. Not a warp jump. Not slipstream either. Just movement. Instant. Effortless. Not bound by space or time. The way the Architect had taken us from the system to Tacci Station, without any trace. No tunnel, no distortion, no delay. Just—here, then there.

That was a clue.

And the energy lattice, what had they said? It was never meant for travel. It was a lattice for transferring energy and light. Both of those could be used to transfer information.

I sat with that thought for a long time. Turned it over. Held it up to the light.

Transfer of information.

What if… we weren't supposed to ride the slipstream?

What if we were supposed to use it as a locator?

What if we didn't travel through it at all?

My mind surged with activity. It was like seeing the edge of a picture but never quite the full image. I didn't have the math yet. But the shape of it was forming.

A map. Not a road. The slipstream could tell us where to go. Show us the door.

But the door still had to be opened. Could we send the energy across the lattice that was needed to form an entrance and an exit without ever entering the lattice ourselves? Could we use the stream for triangulation instead of travel?

I didn't know. Not yet.

And I didn't know how to access the lattice directly. Not the way the Architect could. But maybe… maybe the slipstream drive wasn't as useless as I thought. Maybe it could still tune into the energy. Serve as a translator. A focusing tool.

The old framework was broken.

But maybe the pieces could build something new.

I wasn't there yet.

But it was the start of an idea.

And sometimes… that's all it takes.