Wheat and the Mitch Menace

[Taeio]

Episode 5

After days interrogating Raeleth, she finally messed up. Something she said hinted to me that I should check the derelict Destiny for a clue to proceed. I sent a ship there with orders to use Essi to comb it's systems for anything that seemed out of place.

When the ship arrived, I got word that the Destiny looked gutted. My heart sank at this, but I should have expected such a thing. It had been 20 years since she was abandoned. Still, I told Essi to see if she could find something. And find something she did.

It turns out that the networking systems on the Destiny were still intact. And with those systems, a suspicious record. It would turn out that this was a location in Black Void space of a place I was looking for. Something that would expose Watson to me and bring about his downfall.

I contacted Kirk for permission to send one of our specialists on his pension ship (which he still hasn't named). He agreed. I gave instructions to the specialist to do whatever it took to take a data chip, which I gave him, and insert it into a terminal at the location.

When the specialist arrived, he noted that the location looked deserted. Inside, there was only one inhabitant, which he eliminated. He then found a compatible terminal and inserted the data chip.

Headquarters suddenly got a data dump on virtually everything stored at that data center. I had Essi look over everything with a focus on possible locations that Watson could operate from. It didn't take her long, and this information was sent to the fleet. The idea was to hit all these locations at the same time. Essi directed various ship groups in the fleet to their destinations.

Unfortunately, before they could set out, the Void had sent seemingly all of their remaining fleet to retake the station. It was also then that Watson attempted to hack Essi.

 

[Taeio]

Episode 6

It was a battle over who was superior. Essi was down for this entire time, and my fleet was fighting the enemy without her help. Watson, busy with hacking Essi, fortunately wasn't guiding the Void ships either.

It was hard to say who came out on top in the beginning. Multiple ships on both sides were rendered non-functional. It was only after Essi purged Watson from her systems that she was able to guide the fleet. Watson also tried to guide the pirates, but it quickly became clear that doing so wasn't a specialty of his like it was with Essi. He was outmatched, and the pirates were soon routed. Afterwards, Essi warned me that Watson had learned of my plan. "However, I hope he likes the present I gave him before I purged him," she said.

Watson knowing what I intended to do was meaningless. I felt at that moment that he couldn't stop the oncoming onslaught. I ordered Essi to direct all capable ships into groups to assault Watson's data center locations immediately. I then ordered those ships not capable of going but still capable of rendering aid to do so.

Those sent were ordered to assault the centers at the same time. They faced resistance at every location, but the attempted retaking of the station had crippled them, and they couldn't put up much of a fight. All the data centers were infiltrated, and the data contained within usurped and then erased. Nowhere in all that data did we find Watson's core programming; he must have escaped. After we were done with the sites, they were destroyed.

We had effectively won. We had the information necessary to locate any Black Void entity operating in the galaxy. The fleet was then directed to hunt them down. If they surrendered, great. If they didn't, they'd be rendered a space paperweight, rubble, or worse.

I still had some questions, though.