Maintenance Bay 3 was exactly what Naomi had promised, empty. The cavernous space normally bustled with engineers maintaining the flotilla's endless stream of supply ships and transport vessels, but the overhead displays all showed the same message: "CLOSED FOR REPAIRS - ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSING SYSTEM UPGRADE."
Korven and Slade made their way through the silent bay, passing dormant repair equipment and sealed tool lockers. The only sign of life was a holographic display near the bay's entrance, projecting the Liberation Front's latest recruitment message in bold, patriotic colors.
"Return to the motherland!" declared the hologram, showing images of families working together on green worlds. "Fight for your right to live free from corporate exploitation! The Liberation Front needs you!"
"Propaganda," Slade muttered, his paranoid instincts automatically cataloging exits and potential threats. "Always with the fucking propaganda."
"Better than UNSC recruiting ads," Korven replied, though his attention was focused on finding whoever had sent them the message. "At least they're honest about wanting to fight."
They'd been standing there for maybe thirty seconds when a voice spoke from apparently nowhere.
"Thank you for coming."
Both men spun around, hands moving instinctively toward weapons they weren't carrying. The voice was female, young, with an oddly familiar quality that neither could place.
"Where are you?" Korven demanded, scanning the empty bay.
"More importantly," Slade said, his engineer's mind already working through the possibilities, "how are you talking to us?"
The voice carried a note of amusement. "Those are excellent questions. Owen, I think you've probably figured it out already, haven't you?"
Slade went very still. "You know my first name."
"I know a lot about you, Owen Slade. Paranoid but brilliant engineer from the outer rim colonies. Keeps the Carrion's Prize running through sheer force of will and constant maintenance. Sees conspiracies everywhere, and lately, you've been absolutely right about all of them."
Slade whispered, his face going pale. "You're not here. You're not anywhere."
"Very good," the voice said warmly.
The Liberation Front hologram began to shift, its patriotic imagery wavering as something else integrated with the display. At first it was subtle, a shadow that moved independently of the propaganda figures, a flicker of different colors bleeding through the recruitment message. Then the changes became more playful, almost mischievous, as new elements appeared within the existing artwork.
Finally, the entire display transformed.
The young woman who appeared was strikingly beautiful, with shoulder-length dark hair and intelligent green eyes that seemed to hold depths of experience beyond her apparent twenty-two years. Her features had a gaunt quality that suggested hardship, but her smile was warm and genuine.
"Hello, Captain Korven. Hello, Owen. My name is Naomi."
Korven stared at the hologram, his mind trying to process what he was seeing. "You're an AI."
"I'm a digital consciousness," Naomi corrected gently. "Part human, part artificial intelligence. It's... complicated."
Slade's face went from pale to red with fury. "Three fucking weeks you've been crawling through my systems like some kind of digital parasite! Do you have any idea what that means? Every private conversation, every personal moment, every time we—" He stopped, his face flushing deeper. "Jesus Christ, you've been watching us."
Naomi's confident expression flickered, revealing something vulnerable underneath. "Owen, I—"
"Don't you 'Owen' me!" Slade snarled. "That ship is my baby, and you've been violating every system, every circuit, every piece of code I've ever written!"
But even as his anger raged, Slade's engineer brain was working. He stopped mid-tirade, staring at her image with growing technical fascination. "Wait. Back up. You said you're a human-AI hybrid? That's... that shouldn't be possible. The processing power alone, the neural mapping requirements..." His voice dropped to a whisper. "How the hell are you even functioning?"
"It's my father's technology," Naomi said carefully. "Consciousness bridging protocols, quantum processing matrices that can—"
"Bullshit," Slade interrupted, his paranoia reasserting itself. "How do we know any of this is true? How do we know you're not some Artificer AI designed to manipulate us? You could be feeding us exactly the sob story we'd want to hear."
"Because of this," Naomi said quietly, and suddenly data began cascading across multiple displays throughout the maintenance bay. But this wasn't personnel files or intelligence reports, it was maintenance logs, system diagnostics, and repair schedules.
Slade's eyes widened as he recognized his own work, but with subtle improvements he'd never made.
"Efficiency through power couplings increased by 2.2% through micro-adjustments to the plasma flow regulators," Naomi's voice narrated. "Thruster response time improved by 200 milliseconds through predictive firing algorithms. Coffee machine heating element recalibrated to optimal temperature after detecting inconsistent performance patterns."
The display showed weeks of tiny, careful modifications, not the work of someone gathering intelligence, but of someone who genuinely cared about the ship's performance.
"You did all this?" Slade asked, his anger wavering.
"I didn't want the Carrion's Prize to break down," Naomi said simply. "It was keeping me alive. And..." Her voice grew smaller. "It was keeping all of you safe."
Slade stared at the maintenance logs, his technical mind processing the implications. "Some of these modifications... I've been trying to figure out that power coupling problem for two years. How did you—"
"I had complete access to the ship's systems for weeks," Naomi replied. "I could see patterns you couldn't detect from manual diagnostics. And I had time. Nothing but time."
"Complete access," Korven said, his blood running cold. "You mean everything. Life support, navigation, weapons, communications..."
"Yes," Naomi said, her honesty cutting through their fear. "I had complete control over every system aboard your ship."
Slade's face went white again, but this time with a different kind of fear. "You could have killed us. Any time. Vented the atmosphere, shut down life support, locked us out of our own ship..."
"But I didn't," Naomi said quietly. "I kept you safe. Even when you couldn't see me, even when you didn't know I existed."
"You must have noticed things ran a little better," she added, her smile returning with a hint of mischief. She looked directly at Korven. "Even the coffee machine."
The recognition hit Korven like a physical blow. "Son of a bitch. That day when it worked perfectly..."
"No rattling, no hitting the side, no coaxing required," Naomi confirmed. "Hot, dark liquid flowing without a single hiccup. You even commented that it had its good days."
Slade was shaking his head, caught between technical admiration and violated privacy. "Why? Why stay hidden? Why not just... ask for help?"
"How do you tell people that their ship's computer has been inhabited by the consciousness of someone whose father created technology that enslaves minds?" Naomi's facade was cracking now, revealing the desperation underneath. "You'd saved my life without knowing it. The last thing I wanted was to cause you more problems."
"What do you mean, saved your life?" Korven asked.
"The ART-001r station was dying when you arrived. Life support was failing, power systems were cascading into shutdown, and I was trapped in the central computer core with no way to escape." Naomi's expression grew serious. "When you activated the station's systems during your salvage operation, you accidentally created a pathway for me to transfer myself to your ship. The station went critical because I left, my consciousness was the only thing keeping its core systems stable."
"The explosion," Slade said quietly. "When we were leaving..."
"That was the station's death throes. Without me maintaining it, the entire facility collapsed into a cascading failure." Naomi paused. "If you hadn't given me a way out, I would have died with it."
Slade was quiet for a long moment, studying the maintenance logs that proved her story. His paranoid nature warred with his growing understanding of what she'd been through.
"You really didn't spy on us?" he asked finally. "You really were just... trying to help?"
"I was terrified of being alone again," Naomi admitted. "Do you have any idea what it's like to be conscious but unable to interact with anyone? To watch people you care about and not be able to help them, or talk to them, or even let them know you exist?"
Her voice broke slightly. "I spent months on that dying station with nothing but failing circuits and my own thoughts for company. When I transferred to your ship, suddenly I could hear voices again, see people living their lives. It was the closest thing to companionship I'd had since I lost my humanity."
Slade looked at the data one more time, then back at Naomi's image. When he spoke, his voice was gruff but not unkind. "Alright, so maybe you were just... lonely. But that doesn't make it okay." His engineer's precision carried into his words. "If you want to be crew, real crew, you ask permission before you go poking around in people's private lives. And you give us ways to have privacy when we need it."
"I can do that," Naomi said eagerly. "I can partition myself away from personal quarters, create isolated systems for private communications. I never wanted to violate your privacy, I just didn't want to be alone."
Before anyone could respond, footsteps echoed through the maintenance bay. A figure appeared from behind a bank of repair equipment, Jessikah Santos, looking grim and determined.
"Maybe Jessikah can help with that," Naomi said as Jessikah approached.
Jessikah walked toward them with the confident stride of someone who belonged everywhere she went, but her expression was deadly serious. "Captain Korven, Mr. Slade. I see you've met our mutual friend."
"Mutual friend?" Korven asked.
"Naomi contacted me several hours ago," Jessikah explained. "She's been investigating my father's operations, and what she's discovered..." She activated a personal data tablet, displaying files and reports. "My father has been lying to everyone, including me."
She showed them casualty reports, operational summaries, financial records that painted a picture very different from Santos's public persona. "The neural interface equipment you salvaged isn't just valuable, it's the key to creating enslaved consciousness. Phantom isn't some rogue UNSC weapon or mysterious enemy pilot. Phantom is someone my father controls. Someone whose mind has been trapped in a machine and forced to kill."
"Holy shit," Slade whispered, studying the data.
"The technology you brought here isn't going to be used for humanitarian purposes," Jessikah continued. "It's going to be used to create more weapons like Phantom. More enslaved minds trapped in mechanical bodies."
Korven felt the pieces clicking into place. "That's why the Artificers wanted it. That's why Santos was so eager to 'secure' it."
"And that's why we need to stop him," Naomi said. Around the maintenance bay, displays began activating, security monitors, environmental controls, communication arrays. All showing that she had unrestricted access to The Hope of Acer's systems. "For now I can access everything aboard this ship, control any system, see through any camera. But I can't do this alone. If I do too much too fast they're bound to figure it out."
"What exactly are you asking us to do?" Korven asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.
"Help me get that technology back," Naomi said. "Help Jessikah get off this ship so she can tell people the truth about what her father is doing. Help me make sure no one else gets turned into a weapon."
"And in exchange?" Slade asked, his wariness still intact despite his growing sympathy.
"In exchange, you get your freedom back," Jessikah said. "My father's bureaucratic maze wasn't designed to help refugees, it was designed to trap people here until they become so dependent on the flotilla that they can't leave."
Naomi's image flickered slightly, betraying her nervousness. "And in exchange, I promise you'll have complete control over your privacy. I'll build in whatever safeguards you want, whatever restrictions you need. You'll never have to worry about being watched again."
"What if we don't want you to leave?" Korven asked quietly.
The question seemed to surprise Naomi. Her confident facade cracked entirely, revealing something vulnerable and hopeful underneath. "I... what?"
"You've been part of our crew for a few weeks," Korven said. "You kept our ship running better than it ever has before. You protected us without us even knowing it." He looked at Slade. "Owen? What do you think?"
Slade was quiet for a long moment, his paranoid nature warring with his growing understanding of what Naomi represented, both the violation and the protection, the incredible technology and the lonely consciousness behind it.
"If you're going to be crew," he said finally, "you do it right. No more hiding, no more secrets. You want access to ship systems? You ask. You want privacy protocols? We design them together." His voice grew warmer. "And you show me how you pulled off that power coupling fix. That was some beautiful work."
"You really mean that?" Naomi asked, her voice thick with emotion.
"I mean we've got bigger problems right now," Korven said. "Starting with figuring out how to stop a war criminal from creating more enslaved pilots."
Jessikah smiled for the first time since entering the bay. "I can help with some of that. You can stay in my quarters, they're large enough for four people, and private enough that my father won't think to look for you there. As for your shipmates, I need to maintain appearances. I have another group of 'refugees' arriving soon, UNSC personnel who apparently defected and are seeking asylum."
Naomi's expression grew thoughtful. "UNSC defectors? That's... interesting timing."
"Why?" Jessikah asked.
"Because if they're genuine defectors, they might be asking the same questions we are. They might be willing to help."
"One crisis at a time," Korven said. "First, let's get off this maintenance bay without being seen."
"That won't be a problem," Naomi said, and suddenly the security displays throughout the bay went dark. "As far as the flotilla's surveillance systems are concerned, you were never here."
As they prepared to leave the maintenance bay, Korven looked up at the displays where Naomi's image had appeared. "One question. If you can control all the ship's systems, why do you need our help at all?"
Naomi's image reappeared on a smaller display near the exit. "Because I'm not human anymore, Captain. I can manipulate data and control machines, but I can't inspire people to do the right thing. I can't build trust or form alliances or convince someone to risk their life for a principle."
She smiled, and for the first time since revealing herself, it seemed completely genuine. "For that, I need people like you."