>>5567742Turning to the task at hand, you only need to think about the levers and dials Peedee indicated and you find yourself in front of them. Almost identical to those around them, these particular input/output devices resemble crude throttles and joysticks of a bygone age. An array of small monochrome monitors flicker green above them, displaying crude crosshairs.
"Which one is the-" you stop short, suddenly unable to form a coherent thought, let alone string words together. Pressure builds around your mind greater than ever before and you feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Your heart pounds and breathing becomes ragged back in your actual body - the connection between your mind and the ship fraying for a moment before you regain control.
"Control show Peedee. Now Peedee show Dal!" The squeaky, chirping voice of the entity comes clear and crisp from right behind you. There's no electronic distortion whatsoever in her voice now.
You open your mouth to voice your alarm but only static comes forth.
Peedee's two detached hands brush past your shoulders and make to guide your own onto the appropriate controls. Your hands flinch away at the last moment, unsure what physical contact with the entity might do to you with your willpower stretched so thin from recent overuse. But…
<span class="mu-s">No.</span> You cannot, will not show fear in the line of duty. Peedee is just another crew member who needs her commanding officer’s trust and guidance. You will not show fear, you will not use mere cognitive exhaustion as an excuse to lessen your image in the eyes of <span class="mu-i">your</span> voidship! You will show her that you are fit to command, you’ve resolved to be as a guiding star to her - a shining beacon amongst fields of all-consuming black. You will teach her, and you may learn in turn, but through it all - you. Are. <span class="mu-s">The. CAPTAIN!</span>.
“<span class="mu-s">SHow mE! TOgeTHhEr!</span>” You gasp out the words in a spluttering burst of white noise and force the back of your hands into Peedee’s waiting palms. For a moment you feel only the strange sensation of her dual thumbs wrapping around your wrists, her digits neither warm nor cool - but as the moment passes you are struck with an uncomfortably familiar sensation of vertigo as your command connection to the ship expands a thousandfold. Everything goes white.
You have connected yourself more closely than ever before to your voidship, and you drift as but a stubborn will amongst an ocean of overwhelming stimuli. Well versed with the agoraphobic vastness of the ship’s reach and yet claustrophobic shackles of its failing and jury-rigged systems, you focus your entire being on the thread linking you to the core of it all:
<span class="mu-s">PD-113.</span>
There is no finesse here, no clever tricks or backdoors. Simply raw willpower pitted against an unknowably vast and yet dangerously naive mind unable to control its emotions. Maybe luck is on your side, maybe you don’t need it. All you know is, you <span class="mu-i">must</span> succeed!
