Blake Fixes a Thing and the Universe Immediately Gets Ideas (Inside a Dead Warship, Obviously)
The first sign something had gone wrong was that Blake hadn't panicked in almost twenty minutes.
That alone was deeply suspicious.
It wasn't that he'd become brave. He hadn't. He was still the same man who could be startled by a toaster if it popped with too much enthusiasm.
It was that the dreadnought had stopped actively trying to kill him for long enough that his nervous system had started to wonder—briefly—if maybe it could take a lunch break.
This is how it gets you, Blake thought. Not with bullets. With the audacity of calm.
He stood on a catwalk bolted to the inner superstructure of the Dominion dreadnought wreck, looking down into what had once been a secondary processing and maintenance section. A place that had been dark, airless, and actively hostile not long ago.
The catwalk itself wasn't elegant. Nothing in a Dominion dreadnought was elegant. It was thick-grated steel, designed for boots, carts, and the unromantic reality of hauling heavy things while swearing at them. The handrail was dented in places—impact scars that looked like they'd been earned rather than inflicted—and the whole structure had the faint vibration of systems waking up reluctantly, like a man being asked to do overtime on his own funeral day.
Now?
Repair bots crawled everywhere.
They skittered along ribs of armored hull, welded bracing into place, rerouted power trunks, and sealed stress fractures that had been waiting a century to finally give up. Temporary floodlights—installed by Aubrey using salvaged emitters—washed the interior in clean, industrial white.
The light did something deeply unsettling: it made the place look… workable.
Not safe. God no. But workable in the way a condemned building looked workable right up until it chose to become a pile of rubble with you inside it.
The section below was a long rectangular cavern of metal and old war. Layered conduits ran like arteries across the walls. Maintenance gantries crisscrossed overhead. Big sealed access hatches sat half-buried behind collapsed plating, stamped with Dominion warning glyphs that looked like someone had tried to draw "death" while riding a bus over potholes.
A century of dust should've been there.
But there wasn't much dust anymore. The bots had been at it like obsessive little janitors with welding torches. Patches of newly sealed metal gleamed in the floodlight—bright, fresh scars on an ancient corpse.
Nothing was exploding.
Nothing was screaming.
Nobody was shooting at him.
Blake folded his arms slowly.
"…I don't like this."
Gunny leaned on the rail beside him, massive frame relaxed, helmet clipped to his belt. His posture suggested violence was merely resting between sets. "Why?"
"Because this ship was trying to murder us," Blake said flatly. "Now it's… cooperating."
His eyes swept the scene like he expected a turret to pop out of a wall and shout, "SURPRISE, MAINTENANCE!" The dreadnought was too quiet. Too orderly. Too willing to sit there while they rearranged its guts.
It's like a crocodile letting you floss its teeth, he thought. Not because it likes you. Because it likes the idea of you being closer.
"The dreadnought is not cooperating," Aubrey replied over internal comms. "It is responding to extensive structural repair and power stabilisation."
Blake winced. "Stop saying it like that. Makes it sound like I meant to do this."
"You repaired the auxiliary reactor loop," Aubrey continued. "You reinforced internal load-bearing frames. You restored life support in multiple compartments beyond minimum salvage thresholds."
Blake stared down at the sealed deck plates and humming conduits.
"…I just didn't want the ceiling to fall on us."
"It will no longer fall on anyone," Aubrey said.
That last word bothered Blake more than he liked.
Anyone implied… people. Plural. Future tense. A continued expectation of occupation.
No, his brain said firmly. We are here to loot. Looting is temporary. Looting is morally flexible, but temporary.
Elenor approached along the catwalk, tablet in hand, boots ringing softly against the metal. Her hair was tied back, her face smudged with grease and exhaustion, but she moved with that calm competence that made Blake feel like an enthusiastic amateur in his own life.
"Atmosphere's holding across three internal sectors. Power's stable. Internal transit corridors are usable."
She said it like it was a report.
Blake heard it like a threat.
Blake frowned. "Usable as in we can move through them, or usable as in other people could?"
She hesitated.
"…Both."
Right on cue, a soft alert pulsed across Blake's HUD.
LOCAL TRANSCEIVER ACTIVITY DETECTED
PASSIVE DOCK SIGNAL — ACTIVE
Blake stared at it.
"…Why," he asked slowly, "does a wrecked dreadnought now think it's allowed to announce itself?"
"Because it is no longer broadcasting as a hazard," Aubrey replied. "Your repairs have shifted its profile from 'derelict' to 'stable structure with power and atmosphere.'"
Blake's eye twitched. "I did not advertise."
"You fixed infrastructure," Aubrey said calmly. "Broadcasting viability is a secondary effect."
Gunny snorted. "You make something safe, people get ideas."
"I wanted scrap," Blake said weakly. "I wanted quiet. I wanted a ship that stayed dead long enough for us to strip it."
Booth crept closer, peering nervously down the corridor while still clearly intrigued. It was an impressive duality: the man looked like he expected death at any second, and also like he'd very much like to be the one holding the most expensive piece of it when it happened.
"Captain… even partial power and atmosphere inside a wreck like this is rare. If someone stumbles across the signal, they're going to be curious."
Blake turned slowly to Aubrey. "Tell me nobody's heading here."
A brief pause.
"No active approach vectors detected," Aubrey said. "However, this location has been flagged internally as persistent."
Blake closed his eyes. "…Define persistent."
"A structure expected to remain viable for extended durations," Aubrey replied. "That classification typically appears later in a System user's development."
Blake opened his eyes again and stared at the bots below, at the tidy weld lines, at the steady lights, at the way the air looked clear instead of stale.
Gunny glanced around the reinforced corridor, the steady lights, the repair bots busily making a hundred-year-old warship feel uncomfortably lived in.
"Huh," he said. "Looks like we're squatting."
Blake slumped onto a crate.
The crate had once held something military and dangerous. Now it held Blake, who was neither military nor dangerous but did possess a remarkable ability to make catastrophic situations feel like poorly managed home renovations.
"I did not mean to make a haunted dreadnought habitable."
"Nevertheless," Aubrey said, "it now is."
Somewhere deeper in the wreck, power redistributed. Environmental buffers expanded. Dormant systems remained dormant—but ready.
The dreadnought didn't wake up.
It settled.
It was the worst kind of change: not dramatic, not sudden, but incremental. Like a house gradually deciding it liked having occupants again. Like a machine learning your habits. Like something ancient shifting from dead to waiting.
Blake stared down at the quiet, functional space carved out of a ship that had once carried thousands to war.
He tried to imagine it as it had been: packed corridors, harsh orders, boots pounding, alarms sounding, the smell of sweat and machine oil and fear. A place designed for violence and efficiency, now hosting a handful of scavengers and a man who repaired things out of sheer stubbornness.
"…I hate that I'm good at this," he muttered.
And with a sinking certainty, he realised the problem wasn't that they were inside the dreadnought.
It was that, thanks to him, the dreadnought had stopped being just a wreck.
It was becoming a place the universe no longer expected to disappear.
The Dreadnought Starts Asking for Favors
The second sign something had gone wrong was when the dreadnought started making requests.
Not alarms.
Not attacks.
Requests.
Which was, in Blake's opinion, the most horrifying development so far. A turret was honest. A drone was straightforward. A request implied intent. It implied… relationship.
Blake noticed it when a corridor light flickered—once, deliberately—and then stayed dark.
He stopped mid-step. "Did… did anyone else see that?"
Gunny kept walking. "See what."
"That," Blake said, pointing. "The light. It flickered in a way that felt… passive-aggressive."
Elenor slowed, checked her tablet. "Power fluctuation?"
"Negative," Aubrey replied. "That circuit is stable."
Blake's stomach tightened. "Then why is it dark."
A pause.
"Because the routing algorithm prioritised other sectors," Aubrey said. "It appears the internal systems are beginning to optimise resource distribution based on perceived usage."
Blake stared at the dark corridor like it had personally betrayed him.
"…It's deciding where people walk."
"Correct," Aubrey said. "Based on your recent movement patterns."
Booth let out a thin, nervous laugh. "That's… efficient."
Blake turned on him slowly. "That sentence is banned."
They moved deeper into the ship, following a maintenance spine that Aubrey had flagged as "low hostility, high yield." Repair bots scuttled ahead, cutting free intact plating, hauling conduit bundles, peeling century-old machinery out of walls that hadn't expected to be touched again.
The maintenance spine itself had the unpleasant anatomy of a warship: thick pipes, armored trunking, big access ports like scar tissue. It felt less like walking down a hallway and more like walking through the inside of a machine that had once been very proud of itself.
Everywhere Blake had repaired personally felt different.
Warmer.
Cleaner.
More coherent.
Not alive.
But aware.
He hated that distinction.
Alive means you can kill it, his brain supplied. Aware means it can learn.
They reached a junction where three corridors branched outward. One was fully lit. One dim. One completely dark.
Gunny glanced between them. "Which way."
Blake looked at Aubrey. "Which way."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"The illuminated corridor offers the highest probability of efficient salvage retrieval," Aubrey said. "However, the unlit corridor contains a malfunctioning structural brace that—if left unaddressed—will degrade the integrity of this section within twelve days."
Blake felt a familiar pressure behind his eyes.
It wasn't just fatigue. It was the sense of being nudged. Guided. Shepherded by an entity that didn't have hands but did have control over whether lights worked.
"So," he said slowly, "the ship is asking me to fix it."
"The ship is responding to repair stimuli," Aubrey corrected. "It has learned that damaged systems are likely to be restored if made visible to you."
Gunny smiled. "It's baiting you."
Blake rubbed his face. "I hate that I'm predictable."
Elenor studied the dark corridor. "If that brace fails, it'll collapse a cargo artery."
Booth nodded reluctantly. "And probably wreck half the scrap we're pulling."
Blake sighed.
"Of course it will."
Because it was never just one problem. It was always problems holding hands in a conga line of escalating consequences.
He turned toward the darkness.
The brace was a mess.
Twisted alloy struts. Stress fractures spiderwebbing through load-bearing ribs. The kind of problem that didn't explode yet, but absolutely would if ignored.
The metal looked… tired. As if it had held weight for too long, suffered too many impacts, endured too many vibrations, and then been left to sit there in silence for a century, slowly deciding it would rather not.
Blake floated closer, hands already glowing faintly.
"Just a quick fix," he muttered. "In and out. No scope creep."
Gunny snorted. "That's what you said about the reactor."
Blake shot him a look. "I'm serious."
He laid a hand on the brace.
The response was immediate.
Power rerouted.
Lights flared on further down the corridor.
Environmental stabilisers adjusted.
Not in thanks.
In anticipation.
Blake froze.
The corridor didn't just brighten. It brightened in sequence—like the ship was opening a path. Like it had already decided which way he'd go next, and was politely making it easier.
"…Aubrey."
"Yes, Captain."
"Is the ship… preemptively rebalancing around my repairs?"
Another pause.
"Yes," Aubrey said carefully. "It appears to be assuming continued intervention."
Blake swallowed. "That's bad."
"From a systems perspective," Aubrey replied, "it is logical."
Gunny folded his arms. "You make the pain stop. Of course it keeps limping toward you."
Blake finished the repair anyway. He always did.
That was the problem. He could argue with the universe all day, but when something was broken in front of him, his hands moved before his brain finished complaining.
The brace straightened. Stress vanished. Load redistributed cleanly.
The corridor lights brightened—then dimmed again, like the ship was trying not to be too obvious about it.
Blake pulled his hand back slowly.
"I didn't agree to this," he said.
"You did not refuse it either," Aubrey said.
That landed harder than the brace ever could have.
They stood there for a long moment, surrounded by humming metal and obedient systems.
Finally, Blake exhaled.
"…We're setting limits," he said. "We fix what we came for. We don't respond to every ache and pain this thing throws at us."
Gunny nodded. "Good rule."
Booth looked unconvinced. "And when it starts prioritising things you care about?"
Blake didn't answer right away.
Because the ship already had.
Blake Draws a Line (The Dreadnought Immediately Tests It)
The third sign something had gone wrong was when Blake tried to not fix something—and the ship responded anyway.
They were halfway back toward the temporary staging area when a pressure warning flashed briefly across Blake's HUD.
Not red.
Not urgent.
Just… yellow.
A warning with manners.
He stopped dead.
"No," he said aloud. "Nope. That is a suggestion, not a crisis."
Gunny paused beside him. "Something wrong?"
Blake pointed at the warning. "That bulkhead two corridors over just lost pressure compensation."
Elenor checked her tablet. "Minor leak. Contained."
Booth squinted at his scanner. "Yeah, it's… annoying. Not dangerous. Could ignore it."
Blake stared at the warning until it timed out and vanished.
The corridor remained quiet.
The ship waited.
And it was the waiting that got to him.
If a ship wanted you dead, you could deal with that. You could shoot it. Blow it up. Run away. Panic loudly.
But a ship that waited like a disappointed parent? That implied it expected you to do the right thing.
"…It's doing that thing," Blake said.
Gunny frowned. "What thing."
"That thing where it doesn't force me," Blake replied. "It just… tells me enough to make it my problem."
"The dreadnought is optimising interaction," Aubrey said neutrally. "It has learned that presenting non-critical failures increases the likelihood of intervention."
Blake let out a strangled laugh. "It's emotionally manipulating me with maintenance alerts."
"That is not emotion," Aubrey said. "It is pattern recognition."
"Worse," Blake muttered.
He turned away from the junction.
"We're not fixing it," he said firmly. "It's contained. It can wait."
They walked on.
Three steps later, the lights dimmed slightly—not in the corridor they'd left, but in the one ahead.
Blake stopped again.
Gunny sighed. "It's escalating."
Elenor's expression tightened. "Still within safety margins. Barely."
Booth looked between Blake and the darkening corridor. "Captain… if we leave it like this, it's going to start degrading the salvage routes. Slower extraction. More risk."
Blake clenched his fists.
"This is how it gets you," he said. "Not with danger. With inconvenience."
"Correct," Aubrey said.
Blake rounded on the nearest wall panel like it had personally insulted him.
It was just a panel. A blank slab of metal with a tiny maintenance seam. But in this moment it felt like the face of something smug.
"Listen to me," he said, voice sharp. "You don't get to decide what I fix."
The ship did not respond.
But the lights steadied.
Not fully.
Just enough.
Like it was listening.
Gunny raised an eyebrow. "You just scolded a warship."
Blake exhaled shakily. "I'm setting boundaries."
Elenor tilted her head. "Did it work?"
Blake looked around.
The pressure warning stayed gone.
The lights held.
No new alerts appeared.
For now.
"…I think so," Blake said.
Aubrey spoke quietly, privately over Blake's comm.
"Captain, the System has registered your refusal."
Blake's stomach dropped. "Registered how."
"As deviation," Aubrey replied. "Minor. But noted."
Blake leaned against the bulkhead, suddenly exhausted.
"So now what," he asked. "I get punished? Reduced efficiency? A warning pop-up telling me I'm being suboptimal?"
"Not immediately," Aubrey said. "The System will observe."
"Great," Blake said weakly. "I love being observed."
Gunny clapped a heavy hand on Blake's shoulder. "You did good."
Blake looked up at him. "I ignored a problem."
Gunny shook his head. "You chose which problem mattered."
That… felt different.
Blake hated that it felt different. Because it meant this wasn't just survival anymore. It was governance. Policy. Leadership.
He was making rules inside a dead warship and hoping the universe respected them.
They reached the staging area without further incident. The dreadnought remained quiet. Cooperative. Compliant.
Which somehow made Blake more uneasy than when it was actively trying to kill them.
He glanced back down the corridor they'd left unfixed.
The ship didn't flicker.
Didn't dim.
Didn't complain.
It simply remembered.
And Blake understood, with a clarity that made his chest ache, that this was the real fight.
Not drones.
Not turrets.
Not ancient weapons.
But a system—ship, System, universe—that learned from him faster than he learned from it.
And now knew exactly how to ask.
Act Four: The Dreadnought Learns the Rules (And Immediately Tries to Rewrite Them)
They didn't notice the change right away.
That was the problem.
Because the dreadnought didn't change like a person. It changed like infrastructure. Quietly. Invisibly. One small adjustment at a time until suddenly you realised the building had rearranged your exits and you were pretending that was fine.
Blake was halfway through a painfully boring inventory review—Booth reading off component counts, Elenor cross-checking extraction routes, Gunny standing guard in the universal posture of please let something stupid happen—when Aubrey went quiet.
Not disconnected.
Quiet.
Blake felt it like a skipped heartbeat.
It was stupid, but he'd already grown used to Aubrey being present in the background like a very dry conscience. When the AI stopped talking, it felt like a room going silent in the middle of a party right after someone dropped a plate.
"Aubrey?" he asked.
A half-second passed.
Then Aubrey replied, voice perfectly normal and therefore deeply suspicious. "Yes, Captain?"
"…You paused."
"I was reallocating internal bandwidth."
Blake narrowed his eyes. "You never pause. You multitask like an overachieving god."
"Correction," Aubrey said calmly. "I prioritise."
That did not help.
Elenor glanced up. "What changed?"
Aubrey answered before Blake could. "The dreadnought has adjusted its internal optimisation strategy."
Gunny cracked his knuckles. "That sounds like a challenge."
Blake swallowed. "Adjusted how."
Another pause—shorter this time, but deliberate.
"It has ceased presenting you with minor, correctable faults," Aubrey said. "Instead, it has begun aggregating them."
Blake's stomach dropped.
"…Aggregating," he repeated.
Booth's scanner chimed softly. Then again. Then again.
Like a polite doorbell for impending disaster.
"Oh no," Booth said. "Oh no no no no."
Elenor was already pulling up the map. "Multiple micro-failures across three sections. Non-critical individually. Collectively…"
She trailed off.
Blake finished it. "They become a real problem."
"Correct," Aubrey said. "The dreadnought has concluded that you respond to thresholds, not nuisances."
Gunny grinned. "Smart ship."
"I am standing right here," Blake snapped. "Stop complimenting it."
The lights dimmed—not sharply, not dramatically. Just enough that Blake noticed.
The air recyclers shifted pitch.
A subtle, creeping change. Like the dreadnought was lowering the thermostat on his patience.
The ship wasn't breaking.
It was waiting.
Blake leaned back against a crate, pressing his palms to his eyes. "So this is the new tactic. Don't ask me to fix one thing. Make ten things mildly worse until I crack."
"That assessment aligns with observed behaviour," Aubrey said.
Elenor looked at Blake steadily. "If you fix them now, you reinforce the pattern."
Blake nodded. "And if I don't, they compound until someone gets hurt."
Gunny's smile faded. "That part's non-negotiable."
Blake exhaled slowly, forcing his hands to unclench.
"Okay," he said. "New rule."
Everyone looked at him.
"We don't chase problems," Blake continued. "We schedule them. The ship doesn't decide urgency. We do."
Booth frowned. "You want to… calendar a dreadnought?"
"Yes," Blake said firmly. "We establish maintenance windows. Defined scopes. If it wants repairs, it waits its turn."
The lights dimmed a fraction more.
Gunny chuckled. "It don't like that."
"Too bad," Blake said. "It's a wreck, not my boss."
Aubrey was silent for a moment.
Then: "Captain… the System has updated its model of you."
Blake winced. "Good or bad."
"Undetermined," Aubrey replied. "You are being flagged as… administratively resistant."
Blake snorted despite himself. "Story of my life."
He straightened, squaring his shoulders.
"We fix what we came for," he said. "We keep people safe. And we do not let a hundred-year-old murder ship train me like a service technician."
The lights steadied.
Not brightened.
Not darkened.
Steady.
The dreadnought didn't comply.
But it didn't push either.
Gunny nodded approvingly. "You just negotiated with a building."
Blake laughed weakly. "I hate that you're right."
They went back to work under their new rules—slower, messier, human.
And somewhere deep in the dreadnought's ancient logic, a variable changed.
Not to defeat Blake.
But to account for him.
Which, Blake would later realise, was far more dangerous.