The congratulations followed me like smoke as I retreated from the distribution panel, each well-meaning word adding weight to shoulders already burdened with the knowledge of how close we'd come to annihilation. My hands still trembled from the precision work, adrenaline refusing to acknowledge that the immediate crisis had passed. The Silver Edge shuddered around me—not from new impacts, but from the strain of maneuvering at combat speeds while nursing wounds that would have killed a lesser ship.
I made my way toward the secondary coolant manifolds, needing the familiar comfort of routine maintenance to quiet the chaos in my mind. The engineering deck bore the scars of our near-death experience: scorch marks painted abstract patterns across bulkheads, crystallized coolant formed delicate frost flowers where pipes had ruptured and been hastily patched, and the acrid smell of overheated electronics hung in the air like incense at a funeral.
The tactical displays mounted throughout engineering told the story of our continued peril. The Covenant forces had pulled back after their initial assault, but they circled us now like wolves testing wounded prey. Three contacts maintained perfect formation at the edge of our weapons range, their signatures shifting and wavering as their active camouflage systems bent light around their hulls. Captain Torres was buying us time, keeping the Silver Edge moving in unpredictable patterns while damage control teams fought to restore our combat effectiveness.
My fingers found their rhythm checking coolant pressure readings, the familiar task allowing my mind to process the battle's progression. The Covenant's attack pattern bothered me—not for what it showed, but for what it didn't. Their initial strikes had been precisely targeted, aimed at specific systems with an accuracy that suggested detailed intelligence about our ship's configuration. But then they'd retreated instead of pressing their advantage. The behavior didn't match standard Covenant doctrine, which favored overwhelming force and complete destruction.
A new alarm pierced the air, different from the dozens already competing for attention. This one came from the long-range sensors, its pitch telling me something had changed in the tactical situation before I even looked at the displays. The three Covenant ships were accelerating, their formation shifting from observation to attack. But behind them, barely visible at the edge of our sensor range, a fourth signature materialized—larger, more massive, its energy output suggesting something far deadlier than the frigates we'd been dancing with.
"Covenant capital ship detected," the ship's AI announced with its maddeningly calm voice. "Classification: CCS-class battlecruiser. Time to weapons range: four minutes, thirty seconds."
The engineering deck erupted in fresh activity. A battlecruiser outgunned us by an order of magnitude, its plasma projectors capable of cutting through our hull like tissue paper. The three smaller ships had been herding us, limiting our maneuvering options while their larger sibling moved into position for the killing blow. We'd been playing their game without even knowing it.
I abandoned the coolant manifolds and ran for the primary power distribution center. If we had any chance of survival, the Silver Edge would need every erg of power her reactors could generate. My fingers flew across the controls, shunting energy from non-combat systems, pushing our generators past their rated limits. The familiar hum of the ship's power grid shifted higher, taking on harmonics that spoke of components stressed beyond their design specifications.
The forward viewscreen showed the Covenant battlecruiser dropping its active camouflage, revealing itself in all its terrifying glory. The ship resembled a predatory sea creature rendered in purple metal and alien geometries, its hull bristling with weapons that could reduce us to component atoms. Along its flanks, plasma projectors began their charging sequence, building toward the coherent energy discharge that would spell our doom.
That's when I noticed it—a fluctuation in the power readings that didn't match any weapon signature in our database. The energy buildup followed patterns I'd never seen before, incorporating frequencies that shouldn't have been possible with plasma-based weapons. My enhanced understanding of harmonics, developed through countless hours working with the slipspace drive, recognized something fundamentally wrong with what I was seeing.
"Brace for impact!" Captain Torres's voice carried across all channels. "All hands—"
The explosion that followed defied description. It wasn't the focused lance of a plasma projector or the kinetic impact of conventional weapons. This was something else entirely, a weapon that seemed to attack the very fabric of space around our ship. The Silver Edge didn't just shudder—she screamed, every bolt and rivet crying out as reality itself twisted around us.
The blast wave caught me mid-stride, lifting me off my feet with casual violence. Time dilated, each millisecond stretching as my body flew through the air. I saw other crew members similarly airborne, their faces frozen in expressions of shock and terror. A toolbox tumbled past in slow motion, its contents spreading like a metallic constellation. The overhead lighting exploded in sequence, showering us with sparks that hung in the air like falling stars.
My trajectory carried me toward the backup power monitoring station, its console rising to meet me with inevitable finality. I had just enough time to throw my arms up before impact, but the protection proved inadequate against the physics of meat meeting metal at velocity. The console's edge caught me just below the ribs, driving the air from my lungs in an explosive gasp. My head snapped forward, connecting with the display screen hard enough to spiderweb the reinforced glass.
Pain bloomed across my vision in waves of red and white, but through it, something else began to appear. At first, I thought it was damage to my optic nerves—geometric patterns dancing at the edges of my sight, too regular to be random neural firing. But as I slumped to the deck, my body deciding that consciousness was becoming too expensive to maintain, the patterns grew more distinct.
Symbols cascaded across my failing vision like rain on a window. Some resembled mathematical equations stripped down to their essential truth, pure logic rendered in light. Others looked almost like circuitry diagrams, but for machines that couldn't possibly exist, their connections following rules that violated everything I knew about engineering. Binary sequences flowed past in rivers of ones and zeros, but interspersed with additional digits that shouldn't have been there—twos and threes that turned simple binary into something far more complex.
The symbols pulsed with a blue light that seemed to come from within, each pulse synchronized with my failing heartbeat. As my vision darkened, they grew more elaborate, more interconnected. Lines of force connected different symbols, creating vast networks of meaning I couldn't quite grasp. Some of the script looked almost organic, like living things rendered in pure mathematics. Others resembled star charts for constellations that had never existed, their points connected by laws of physics I'd never studied.
My last coherent thought, as consciousness fled like atmosphere through a hull breach, was that I was witnessing something impossible. These weren't hallucinations brought on by head trauma—they were too ordered, too purposeful. They meant something, communicated something, but in a language my dying brain couldn't parse.
The blue light intensified, filling my vision entirely as the symbols reached a crescendo of complexity. Then, like a circuit breaker tripping, everything went dark, and I fell into a blackness deeper than space itself.
——————————
Consciousness returned like a drowning man breaking the surface—desperate, painful, and accompanied by the overwhelming need to breathe. My first sensation was taste: copper and ozone, blood and burned electronics mingling on my tongue. Then came the sound, a discordant symphony of alarms that pierced through the ringing in my ears. Each klaxon seemed to drill directly into my skull, competing for attention with a throbbing pain that radiated from where my head had met the console.
I tried to open my eyes and immediately regretted it. Emergency lighting strobed in hellish patterns, red and white alternating with periods of absolute darkness as backup power systems struggled to maintain basic functions. The effect was nauseating, sending my already rebellious stomach into fresh spirals of protest. I squeezed my eyes shut again, using my other senses to build a picture of my surroundings.
The air hung thick with smoke and worse things—the distinctive smell of electrical fires mixing with coolant leaks and the sharp tang of vaporized metal. Each breath burned my throat, forcing me to filter the air through the fabric of my uniform sleeve. Somewhere nearby, a pipe had ruptured, its contents hissing out in irregular spurts that suggested fluctuating pressure. The deck beneath me vibrated erratically, the Silver Edge's usually steady heartbeat replaced by the arrhythmic shuddering of a ship in critical distress.
I forced my eyes open again, squinting against the chaotic lighting as I pushed myself up from the deck. The movement sent fresh waves of agony through my ribs where I'd impacted the console, each breath a reminder of bruised or possibly cracked bones. My uniform was torn in several places, darkened with blood whose origin I couldn't immediately identify. Everything hurt, but pain meant life, meant I could still contribute to keeping us all from becoming vacuum-frozen corpses.
The engineering bay looked like a war zone—which, I supposed, it was. The explosion had transformed the orderly workspace into a chaos of twisted metal and sparking systems. Overhead, a major coolant line had split along a seam, spraying its contents in a fine mist that created rainbow patterns in the emergency lighting. Control panels that had displayed vital information minutes ago now showed nothing but cracked screens or showered sparks from their ruined interfaces.
Bodies lay scattered among the debris. Some moved, groaning or calling for help. Others remained ominously still. I recognized Petty Officer Kim among the wounded, her leg bent at an angle that made my stomach lurch. She was conscious, applying a tourniquet with the mechanical efficiency of someone operating on training and shock. Two technicians I didn't know well worked to extract someone pinned beneath a fallen support beam, their faces masks of determination despite obvious injuries of their own.
I stumbled to my feet, using the damaged console for support as waves of dizziness threatened to send me back to the deck. My inner ear seemed convinced the ship was spinning in three different directions simultaneously, a sensation at odds with what my eyes reported. Concussion, definitely. Possibly severe. The medical protocols I'd memorized insisted I should remain still, await proper treatment, avoid any strenuous activity. The dying ship around me suggested those protocols could go to hell.
Moving required intense concentration, each step a negotiation between my brain's scrambled spatial processing and muscles that seemed only loosely connected to conscious control. I made it three meters before pausing, gripping a relatively intact pipe for support while the world performed interesting gyrations around me. That's when I noticed it—a faint overlay at the edge of my vision, geometric patterns that reminded me uncomfortably of the symbols I'd seen while losing consciousness.
I blinked hard, expecting the patterns to disappear like the phosphenes they surely were. Instead, they sharpened into focus, resolving into something that made even less sense. Information displays floated in my peripheral vision, showing data that couldn't possibly be there. Reactor temperature: 2847K and rising. Primary coolant pressure: 73% below nominal. Hull integrity: multiple breaches detected, sections 7-11.
"Concussion hallucination," I muttered, the words slurred slightly. "Perfect. Just what I need."
But as I resumed movement, the displays followed, maintaining their position relative to my field of view with uncanny precision. More information appeared as I looked at different parts of the engineering bay. A damaged power conduit highlighted itself in my vision, accompanied by text identifying the specific failure mode and required repair components. A leaking coolant pipe displayed its pressure readings and estimated time to complete failure. Every system my eyes fell upon generated new data streams, creating an overwhelming flood of information I hadn't asked for and didn't understand how I was receiving.
I stopped at an intact console, partly to check the ship's status and partly to verify my sanity. The console's displays showed the same critical information floating in my vision, but with less detail, less precision. According to the screens I could trust, we had multiple hull breaches, failing life support in three sections, and a reactor system trending toward uncontrolled shutdown. According to the impossible displays in my head, the situation was even worse—micro-fractures in the reactor containment that hadn't yet registered on standard sensors, cascade failures brewing in the power distribution grid, and something called "quantum flux variance" that meant nothing to me but glowed an ominous red.
"What the hell?" The words emerged as a whisper, my brain struggling to process the impossibility of what I was experiencing. Head injuries could cause hallucinations, yes, but not like this. These weren't random neural misfires—they were organized, consistent, responding to where I looked and what I focused on. The overlay had depth, parallax, all the visual cues of a real heads-up display.
In the center of my vision, barely visible until I focused on it, text appeared: "Engineer System v1.0 - Initialization Complete."
I rubbed my eyes hard enough to see stars, but when I opened them, the text remained. Below it, a menu structure began to unfold—skill trees, system diagnostics, something called "ability points," and categories of engineering knowledge I'd never heard of. It looked like something from the video games I'd played as a kid, but overlaid on reality with perfect integration.
Moving my head caused the displays to adjust smoothly, maintaining their relative positions while new information populated based on my viewing angle. When I looked down at my hands, faint lines appeared on my skin, tracing what looked like circuit patterns that pulsed with the same blue light I'd seen in my dying vision. The patterns faded when I looked away, but the memory of them remained, burning like an afterimage.
Around me, the engineering bay continued its descent into chaos. More alarms joined the cacophony as systems failed in sequence. Someone screamed for medical assistance. Fire suppression foam sprayed from a nozzle, creating a slippery hazard on the already treacherous deck. And through it all, the impossible interface in my vision calmly catalogued each failure, each danger, each potential solution with a clarity that my concussed brain shouldn't have been capable of achieving.
I stood there, swaying slightly, caught between the urgent need to help save my ship and the paralyzing impossibility of what was happening to me. The "Engineer System"—whatever that meant—waited patiently in my vision, ready to offer information I couldn't possibly know through means that couldn't possibly exist.
——————————
The reactor warning cut through the chaos like a blade, its distinctive warble designed to trigger primal fear in anyone who understood its meaning. The main display board—one of the few still functional—lit up with a cascade of critical warnings that painted our death in precise mathematical terms. Core temperature: 3124K and climbing. Containment field stability: 67% and falling. Estimated time to catastrophic failure: 14:47.
Fourteen minutes and forty-seven seconds. The numbers burned themselves into my brain, each second ticking away on both the physical display and the impossible overlay in my vision. The Engineer System—I'd already started thinking of it by that name—provided additional context I didn't want but couldn't ignore. Probability of conventional repair: 0.003%. Estimated casualties in event of core breach: 500 (total ship complement). Secondary explosion risk from antimatter storage: 94.7%.
I pushed through the debris toward the reactor control station, my movements still unsteady but driven by purpose. Each step brought new information flooding across my vision. Structural integrity warnings highlighted micro-fractures in the deck plating. Temperature gradients showed in false-color overlays, turning the air itself into a map of thermal danger. My concussed brain shouldn't have been able to process it all, but somehow the information integrated seamlessly into my awareness, as natural as breathing despite its impossibility.
"Focus," I told myself, gripping the rail as another wave of dizziness struck. "Hallucination or not, the reactor's real."
The primary reactor control station had survived the explosion better than most systems, its hardened casing protecting the delicate electronics within. I slumped into the operator's chair, fingers moving across familiar controls while the alien overlay continued its relentless data stream. The standard displays showed what I expected—a reactor system in terminal decline, its carefully balanced reactions spiraling toward uncontrolled release.
But the Engineer System showed me more. So much more.
As my hands touched the console, the interface exploded into complexity. The simple overlay transformed into a three-dimensional holographic display that seemed to exist both in my vision and in real space. The Silver Edge's reactor materialized before me in perfect detail, its every component rendered in translucent blue light. I could see inside the containment vessel, watch the plasma flows in real-time, observe the magnetic field lines as they fluctuated and failed.
The level of detail was impossible. No external sensor could provide this view—I was seeing through meters of radiation shielding and armor plating as if they were glass. More than seeing, I was understanding. The quantum mechanics of the fusion reaction unfolded in my mind with clarity I'd never achieved despite years of study. I could perceive the exact points where magnetic containment was failing, trace the cascade of failures back to their origins, project forward to see how each small instability would compound into catastrophe.
"What the hell is happening to me?"
The words came out as a broken whisper, my voice cracking with the strain of trying to rationalize the impossible. As if in response, text scrolled across my vision:
ENGINEER SYSTEM TUTORIAL AVAILABLE
You are experiencing direct neural interface with the Engineer System. This advanced technology provides enhanced analysis, repair, and optimization capabilities for mechanical and electronic systems. Would you like to begin the tutorial? Y/N
My finger hovered over empty air where the "Y" appeared to float. This was madness. Head injuries didn't create functioning computer interfaces. Hallucinations didn't provide accurate technical data about systems I'd never studied. Yet the reactor countdown continued its relentless march—13:22 remaining—and the solutions appearing in my augmented vision were elegant, precise, and probably our only hope.
The holographic reactor pulsed, drawing my attention to a series of coolant injection points that glowed red with malfunction warnings. The system highlighted a repair pathway I would never have considered—rerouting plasma flow through the secondary magnetic bottles while using the emergency cooling reserves in a precisely timed sequence. It was brilliantly unorthodox, the kind of solution that would either save us or accelerate our destruction.
I looked around the engineering bay, hoping to find someone—anyone—who could take this burden from me. But the crew members I could see were either unconscious, tending to wounded, or fighting their own desperate battles against failing systems. Ramirez was nowhere to be seen, probably dealing with casualties on the upper level. The senior technicians who might have helped lay motionless near their stations, victims of the explosion that had somehow given me this impossible gift.
Or curse. The distinction seemed academic with twelve minutes left to live.
The tutorial prompt pulsed gently, patient as death itself. Below it, skill trees materialized in my peripheral vision, their branches spreading like neural pathways. "Reactor Systems: Level 0" glowed at the top of one tree, with nodes beneath it labeled with terms that mixed familiar engineering concepts with impossibilities. "Plasma Flow Optimization." "Magnetic Field Harmonics." "Quantum Stabilization Protocols." Each node connected to others in patterns that suggested deep interconnections between different engineering disciplines.
My analytical mind couldn't help but trace the logic of the skill system, even as another part of me screamed about the impossibility of it all. It was elegant, intuitive, designed to layer new capabilities onto existing knowledge. The tutorial promise hung there, offering answers to questions I didn't even know how to ask.
Another alarm joined the chorus—coolant pressure dropping past critical thresholds. The standard displays showed only the symptoms, but the Engineer System revealed the cause: micro-fractures in the primary cooling loop, invisible to conventional sensors but growing with each passing second. The overlay suggested seventeen different repair approaches, each with percentage chances of success based on factors I couldn't consciously calculate but somehow understood.
11:38 remaining.
My hands shook as I watched the countdown, no longer from concussion effects but from the weight of decision. Trust the impossible interface that had somehow invaded my consciousness? Or rely on conventional training that had already calculated our chances at effectively zero?
The holographic reactor flickered, its blue light pulsing in time with my heartbeat. Somewhere in the quantum foam of failing magnetic containment, atoms were fusing in patterns that would soon escape all control. The Engineer System waited with infinite mechanical patience, offering salvation wrapped in impossibility.
Around me, the Silver Edge groaned and shuddered, her death throes punctuated by the desperate work of a crew that didn't know their chief engineer was paralyzed by an offer of power he didn't understand. The tutorial prompt glowed, a doorway to either madness or miracles.
Time was running out to discover which.
——————————
My finger moved through empty air and found resistance where none should exist. The "Y" depressed under my touch with tactile feedback so realistic that for a moment I forgot I was interacting with a hallucination—or whatever this was. The tutorial prompt dissolved, replaced by a flood of information that should have overwhelmed my concussed brain but instead felt like coming home.
Knowledge poured into my consciousness—not learned but simply known, as if I'd always understood the deeper harmonics of fusion containment, had always been able to perceive the quantum interactions that governed plasma behavior. The sensation was intoxicating and terrifying in equal measure, like discovering I'd been colorblind my entire life and could suddenly see in spectrums that didn't have names.
The Engineer System highlighted a maintenance access panel I'd walked past a thousand times without really seeing. My hands moved to the hidden release catches—how had I never noticed them before?—and the panel swung open to reveal a narrow tunnel lined with conduits and service pipes. According to the ship's official schematics, this passage didn't exist. According to the overlay in my vision, it led directly to the reactor's primary coolant distribution node.
I squeezed into the tunnel, my body moving with surprising grace despite the head injury. The Engineer System painted my path in soft blue light, highlighting handholds and warning of overhead obstructions with perfect timing. Each movement felt choreographed, as if I'd trained for this specific route my entire career. The tunnel branched and twisted, following the hidden architecture of the Silver Edge's deepest mechanical spaces.
10:22 remaining.
The countdown floated in the corner of my vision, a constant reminder that even enhanced abilities had limits. My breathing echoed in the confined space, mixing with the sound of stressed metal and distant alarms. Through the thin walls, I could feel the reactor's distress as a physical sensation, its magnetic fields fluctuating in patterns that registered on senses I hadn't possessed ten minutes ago.
The tunnel opened into a junction chamber I would have sworn didn't exist. It was a nexus point where a dozen major systems intersected, their connections hidden behind panels that looked like solid bulkhead to the naked eye. But the Engineer System showed me the truth—this was one of the Silver Edge's secret hearts, a place where her designers had built in capabilities that never made it to the official documentation.
My augmented vision exploded with technical data as I surveyed the space. Every pipe, every conduit, every connection point labeled itself with purpose and status. The failing coolant system spread before me like a patient on an operating table, its ailments diagnosed with merciless precision. Three primary nodes showed critical degradation. Five secondary junctions operated at marginal efficiency. The quantum resonance in the magnetic containment system—how did I even understand what that meant?—oscillated between values that would cause cascade failure in 9:48.
My hands reached for tools I'd never used before, pulled from storage compartments I shouldn't have known about. The plasma cutter felt different in my grip, its weight and balance suddenly perfect, as if it had been crafted specifically for my hand. When I activated it, the blade's frequency matched the harmonic signature of the components I needed to cut—something I'd never been able to achieve through manual adjustment.
The first repair required me to redirect coolant flow through channels designed for completely different purposes. My old self would have called it impossible, a violation of every safety protocol. But the Engineer System showed me how the Silver Edge's designers had built in hidden redundancies, pathways that could be repurposed if you understood the deeper architecture. My hands moved with surgical precision, cutting, welding, connecting with a speed that blurred the line between human and mechanical.
Time dilated around me. Each second stretched as my enhanced perception processed information at superhuman speeds. I could see the coolant's molecular structure as I guided it through new pathways, understand the thermal dynamics down to the quantum level. The repairs weren't just functional—they were elegant, optimized in ways I couldn't have conceived before the system's activation.
8:14 remaining.
The progress bar in my vision climbed slowly—23%, 31%, 42%—each increment representing another impossible repair completed. My body moved in a continuous flow, transitioning from one task to the next without conscious thought. The boundary between myself and the ship seemed to dissolve. I wasn't repairing the Silver Edge—I was healing her, feeling her responses to each adjustment as clearly as my own heartbeat.
The second major node required me to recalibrate magnetic containment fields while they were still active—a procedure that should have required a full reactor shutdown and a team of specialists. But the Engineer System guided me through the process, showing me how to create localized null fields that allowed safe manipulation of specific components. My fingers danced over controls I'd never seen before, entering calculations that bypassed conscious thought.
Sweat poured down my face despite the chamber's cooling systems. The human part of me—the part that still existed separate from this impossible interface—felt the strain of pushing beyond normal limits. My muscles ached from the precise movements, my eyes burned from processing visual data at inhuman rates. But beneath the exhaustion lurked something else: exhilaration.
This was what I'd always dreamed engineering could be—not just maintaining systems but understanding them at a fundamental level, seeing the connections between disparate components, finding solutions in the spaces between conventional knowledge. The Engineer System hadn't replaced my expertise—it had amplified it, revealed capabilities I'd always possessed but never accessed.
6:27 remaining.
The progress bar reached 78% as I completed the third major repair, rerouting plasma flow through channels that the original designers had included but never documented. The reactor's song changed, its discordant screech moderating to something closer to its normal harmonic range. Through the bulkheads, I could feel the magnetic containment fields stabilizing, their fluctuations dampening as my modifications propagated through the system.
But the countdown continued its relentless march, and the progress bar seemed to slow as it approached completion. The final repairs would be the most complex, requiring me to synchronize multiple systems while maintaining the delicate balance I'd already achieved. One mistake—one mistimed adjustment—and all my work would unravel in a cascade of plasma and death.
My hands paused for a fraction of a second, trembling not from fear but from the weight of possibilities. The Engineer System had shown me miracles, but it couldn't change the fundamental laws of physics. Some problems had no solutions, some battles couldn't be won no matter how enhanced the warrior.
Then I felt it—a pulse through the ship's frame, a response to my repairs that spoke of systems finding new equilibrium. The Silver Edge wasn't just accepting my modifications; she was embracing them, adapting her operations to utilize the new pathways I'd created. We were partners in this desperate dance, flesh and metal united by an interface that shouldn't exist but did.
5:44 remaining.
I reached for the final set of controls, my movements flowing back into the superhuman rhythm the Engineer System enabled. The progress bar crept toward completion as the countdown raced toward zero, two timers in deadly competition for the lives of everyone aboard.
——————————
The final connection required me to thread a molecular-thin conductor through a gap barely wide enough to accommodate it, all while maintaining precise control of three separate magnetic fields. The countdown in my vision had turned red at the sixty-second mark—1:12, 1:11, 1:10—each number pulsing like a heartbeat. My hands didn't shake despite the pressure; the Engineer System had elevated them beyond such mortal concerns, granting them the steady precision of machines.
The conductor slid home with a soft click that resonated through the chamber like a bell. For a heartbeat, nothing changed. The progress bar sat at 97%, stubborn as death itself. Then the Silver Edge's reactor responded, its quantum harmonics shifting as the new pathways activated. The progress bar leaped—98%, 99%—as cascading adjustments propagated through the system.
0:23
The final percentage point required no action from me, only patience as the reactor's own control systems recognized the new configuration and adapted. I watched the holographic display as magnetic fields realigned, plasma flows redirected, and temperature curves bent from their death spiral back toward survivability. The chaotic fluctuations that had threatened to tear the containment vessel apart smoothed into stable oscillations.
0:07
The progress bar filled completely, its blue light pulsing once before fading. In the same instant, the countdown froze, then dissolved. The reactor warnings that had painted my vision in reds and ambers shifted through yellow to green. One by one, the critical alerts cleared, replaced by status indicators that spoke of a system not just saved but somehow improved.
0:00 - REACTOR STABILIZED
I slumped against the bulkhead, my legs suddenly unable to support weight they'd carried moments ago. The superhuman grace granted by the Engineer System evaporated, leaving me painfully aware of every bruise, every stressed muscle, every synapse that had fired beyond its design specifications. My hands trembled now, the delayed reaction of a nervous system processing what it had just accomplished.
The chamber spun gently around me, though whether from my head injury or simple exhaustion, I couldn't tell. I let myself slide down the wall until I sat on the deck, back pressed against the cool metal, breathing in air that no longer carried the sharp edge of imminent death. The Silver Edge hummed around me, her song returning to the steady rhythm I'd known for years, though now I heard deeper harmonics that had always been there, waiting for the right ears to perceive them.
A soft chime drew my attention to a notification floating in my vision:
ENGINEERING SKILL LEVEL UP: REACTOR SYSTEMS
Level 0 → Level 1
Skill Points Available: 3
The words meant nothing and everything. I reached out tentatively, my finger finding that strange resistance in empty air as I touched the notification. The skill tree I'd glimpsed earlier unfolded in full detail, a branching network of possibilities that made my breath catch.
The tree's trunk split into major disciplines I recognized—Fusion Systems, Magnetic Containment, Coolant Management—but each branched into increasingly esoteric specializations. "Quantum Field Harmonics." "Exotic Matter Manipulation." "Dimensional Phase Variance." Some nodes glowed softly, indicating they were available for advancement with my skill points. Others remained dim, locked behind prerequisites or higher system levels.
I traced the connections with growing wonder and unease. This wasn't just enhanced engineering knowledge—it was a completely different paradigm for understanding technology. The implications cascaded through my mind like dominoes. If I could perceive reactor internals through solid matter, manipulate systems at the quantum level, what else might become possible as I advanced through these skill trees?
A sub-menu revealed itself as I explored: "Combat Engineering," "Theoretical Applications," "System Integration," and a dozen other categories. Each promised capabilities that ranged from improbable to impossible. The ability to hack enemy systems through physical contact. Understanding of technologies humanity hadn't invented yet. Integration with artificial intelligences at a fundamental level.
"What have I become?" The question emerged as a whisper, swallowed by the chamber's ambient noise.
The Engineer System offered no answer, merely displaying my current status: Level 1 Engineer, specialized in Reactor Systems, with potential stretching out like an infinite web. I could feel it there in my mind, not invasive but integrated, as much a part of me now as my hands or eyes. The knowledge I'd gained during the repairs hadn't faded—I still understood plasma dynamics at a level that would have taken decades of study to achieve naturally.
Footsteps in the tunnel broke my reverie. Moments later, Technician Mueller's face appeared in the entrance, her expression shifting from professional concern to shock as she took in the scene. The chamber's transformed configuration must have looked like madness to eyes that couldn't see the elegant logic behind each modification.
"Chief West? Sir, are you—the reactor stabilized out of nowhere. Engineering's calling it a miracle. How did you—?"
"Standard emergency protocols," I heard myself say, the lie coming easily despite my usual inability to dissemble. "The blast must have knocked some connections loose. I managed to reroute through secondary systems."
She accepted the explanation with the faith of someone who'd seen me pull off unlikely repairs before, though nothing approaching this scale. As she helped me to my feet—my legs still unsteady but functional—more crew members arrived. Their voices rose in amazement as they surveyed the chamber, trying to understand modifications that shouldn't have been possible with the tools at hand.
"The captain's asking for a full report," someone said. "The entire command staff wants to know how you saved the ship."
Saved the ship. The words should have filled me with pride, but instead they carried the weight of questions I couldn't answer. How did I save the ship? What was this Engineer System that had chosen me as its host? Where had it come from? What did it want?
I nodded, playing the part of the exhausted but victorious engineer while my mind raced through possibilities. Alien technology? Some secret military project? A mutation triggered by the exotic energies of the Covenant weapon? Each theory seemed equally improbable, equally insufficient to explain the fundamental change I felt in my very being.
The skill tree still hovered at the edge of my vision, patient as starlight. Three points awaited allocation, three choices that would further transform me from the person I'd been into something new. The temptation to explore, to immediately invest those points and discover new capabilities, warred with a deep caution. Power without understanding was dangerous, and I understood almost nothing about what had happened to me.
"Can you walk, Chief?" Mueller asked, genuine concern breaking through her professional demeanor. "Medical should check that head wound."
"I'm fine," I said, another lie that came too easily. "Just need a moment."
As the recovery teams swarmed the chamber, documenting the impossible modifications and trying to reverse-engineer my intuitive repairs, I stood apart, watching them work. The Engineer System overlaid their efforts with probability assessments—15% chance they'd understand the quantum principles involved, 0.3% chance they'd successfully replicate the modifications without system assistance. My secret was safe for now, hidden behind the complexity of what I'd accomplished.
But secrets had weight, and this one pressed against my chest like a physical thing. I was changed, enhanced, elevated beyond human normal in ways I was only beginning to understand. The implications stretched out before me like the skill trees—branching, interconnected, leading to futures I couldn't predict.
Somewhere in the Silver Edge's wounded hull, Captain Torres was waiting for explanations I couldn't give. My crewmates were celebrating a miracle they couldn't comprehend. And I stood between them and the truth, carrying an impossible gift that might be humanity's salvation or its doom.
The Engineer System waited with infinite patience, a doorway to power I'd already stepped through. There was no going back—only forward into a future where the distinction between human and machine grew increasingly meaningless.
I followed Mueller out of the chamber, leaving behind the site of my transformation. But the blue light of the interface followed, a constant reminder that Archibald West, the awkward engineer who preferred machines to people, had died in that explosion.
What emerged in his place remained to be seen.