"The Quality of Being Useful" - Utility vs Proverb Part 1

The erratic blinking of the communications display distracted her. An intruder. Level 0, Sector 1A of the lower Arsenal. The front entrance had been breached, but not through physical force.

“Captain, Captain, do you copy?” The Genesis comms officer frantically tapped away at her unresponsive transmitter panels. The reply was laden with static and rapidly fading from coherency. She heard what resembled the Captain’s voice for mere seconds before there was a massive power surge. Power in the bridge flickered for a second, accompanied by an ominous fluctuation in pitch from the hum of the secondary reactors.

She called up the power management screens with a vocal command. The surge had resulted from an unrequested diversion of power to Amy’s workspace. The intruder was seeking the contents of the Arsenal, and that could only mean one thing.

Another surge wracked the systems of the bridge. Power failed. The emergency lights flashed dimly before settling on a single state of yellow-dark illumination.

Translucent elemental screens spiraled outwards from her wrist console. Nine of them, arranged in a pyramid array at angles positioned for optimal viewing in her normal frame of vision, from her torso to just in front of her eyes.

Whoever was doing this was doing so for the sake of obtaining those Yellow Source components, and that was something she just couldn’t allow. Her forehead matted with silver hair and nervous sweat, Utility tapped away at her wrist console, bringing up security camera views of the interior of the Arsenal. Three angles, from front entrance, the rear vault, and the upper ceiling presented an image of the situation through the teal elescreens before her.

He had a man’s shape. She zoomed in closer with the rear camera with a tense reluctance to exhale. The camera rushed forward to display a sinister looking man with yellow eyes glowing brightly beneath the visor of his crash helmet.

“Oh God…” That man was a member of Discordant. Utility felt tears begin to well up beneath her artificial eyes. She didn’t stand a single chance against him, and with communication malfunctioning throughout the ship, she had no chance to call for backup.

Hours of training in the few moments of spare time she received, and even still she was the worst combatant, the worst elementalist, the worst strategist on the entire ship. The only saving grace to her namesake was the fact that she knew more about that ship than even she who had built it, he who commanded it, those who flew it. Twelve hours at a time working to maintain the working order of the shipboard systems, six hours of personal training on top of that, and even still she earned nothing but scorn at the hands of the bridge crew.

She had no real name to them. She was always ‘Girl,’ ‘Officer,’ a ‘Utility.’ A callsign she had inherited by no real usefulness on her own part, but assumed through the continuation of her mother’s legacy. Yet, even her own father treated her with scorn. It was only proper, however. What good was a utility if at best it had only a minimal quality of being useful?

It was only Rebecca and the others she had grown up with who had treated her with respect. They knew she had a name. To them, she was not Utility. She was not just a girl or an officer. To them, she was Amanda Jayne Achronas-Harper Williams.

To Kurtis, she was a person. When her physical and elemental potential had been permanently crippled. Kurtis had taken pity on her and helped her succeed when others had told her she’d be better off as a “non-combatant,” a civilian, for the rest of her life… but he trained her in just the way she wanted to be trained – so that she could take on her mother’s title and make her father proud.

Kurtis was her greatest friend and strongest ally after Trista had been taken. There was no dispute in her mind that he saw himself in her, doubted and questioned every step of the way, but they trusted each other. He was a technical genius on par with Amy and her father, yet nobody trusted him but her. Yet, his final lesson to her was one that would resonate in her heart forever, one she had never forgotten to that day.

“Amanda,” he had said. “I’ve pretty much taught you everything I know, but don’t let that discourage you from learning any more. This life we have is full of decisions, full of choices, and every time we make one, there is something to learn from it. The next time we meet, I expect we will have much to learn from each other. I’m looking forward to it.”

She had stuck out her tongue at him and given her the same goofy look she always had back then, and he had simply smiled, tousled her hair with one hand, and left, never looking back.

Yet, he had died that very day. Killed by Revelation and his sick followers. Just like Damien.

Damien, Damien was the only one who would stand up for her, and had stood up for her time and time again, and now he was dead too. Killed in action. Slaughtered by the Discordant… by Revelation, his slaves, and that helmeted bastard with the yellow eyes… taken from her, just like all the rest!

Her face contorted into one of tormented yet determined rage. She slammed her hand down on her wrist console and opened the link to the shipboard intercom systems, her voice trembling with furious emotion.

“You there, with the yellow eyes. I know who you are, and I know exactly what you’re after. So I kindly suggest you get off of my ship right now before I activate every weapon in that Arsenal and blow your sorry ass to kingdom come.”

The helmeted man brought his pace to a halt. He stood calmly for a second. He smirked. He reached for his helmet. Utility slammed another button on her console. Automated weaponry sprang from every known corner, niche, and floor panel of the arsenal, swiveling to point towards the intruder with fierce hums and charges.

Proverb was unfazed and continued on to press a small button on his helmet. A tiny comlink emerged from within its shadowy depths, crawling out to position itself in front of his stubble crossed face.

Utility stumbled for a moment as a booming, sinister echo of a laugh emerged from the com system in the bridge.

“Hahahahaha…. I didn’t know that there would be another person on board.”

The weapons within the Arsenal all clicked off their safeties and precautionary devices in a cacophony of clicks and whirrs. She couldn’t take any chances. He had came prepared, if he was able to hack the com system without a moment of programming.

“There’s about to be one less.”

“You can say that again!”

Utility heard a series of mechanisms emerging from the ceiling of the bridge. Eyes going wide, she ducked under her elesteel control desk to barely evade a volley of gatling fire… a volley emerging from the bridge defenses.

“Arsenal defenses, fire at will!” She literally screamed into her wrist console, hearing the satisfying explosions and beam firings not through her console but through the entirety of the ship. Soundproofing only went so far against hundreds of automated weapons, even through a mile of elesteel. The echoing laugh came from through the com system once again over the gatling fire.

“Ah, such a lively array of defenses, but, I’m afraid that you’ll have to do much better then that.” Glancing at the surveillance screens, Utility swore. He was the one with the Yellow Source based shielding. Could it really withstand the entirety of Amy’s defenses?

Utility couldn’t take any chances. She activated the ship mainframe interface, attempting to lock out the bridge defenses, swearing once again as Proverb’s voice emerged once more.

“I’ve already assumed complete control over those, and at the moment, I’m in the process of acquiring dominance over every defense system on your ship. Thank you kindly for your efforts to stop me, it makes this much more of a challenge than I would have expected otherwise.” In the surveillance panel, he was surrounded by a large sphere of yellow source energy, deflecting every projectile and explosion, occasionally launching a projectile back at the weapon that had fired it to destroy it. He was systematically destroying the Arsenal defenses while using a wrist console to interface with the ship’s mainframe as well.

Thank God for the security precautions she had established. They couldn’t block each other from the systems, but she could still attempt to make a grab at every other system Proverb currently hadn’t laid claim to. The comms officer directed her console towards accumulating dominance over as many systems as she could while securing them against any hacking attempts from Proverb. She had just initiated the command when she caught a stray ricochet bullet to one of her legs, screaming in pain as gray liquid elesteel flowed from the wound. It wasn’t a threat to her health or her mobility, yet the shock to her system from such a powerful elemental jolt was enough to cause her quite a bit of pain. Shrugging it off, she continued to work at her system grab, managing to acquire what was most important to her situation: surveillance. Now he would only be able to see what his eyes naturally allowed him to see. She had the benefit of absolute intelligence.

Taking advantage of her automated controls, Utility aimed her console up through the desk at the precise locations of the twin gatling cannons. Her mechanical eyes determined the distance to be roughly 15 meters away at a 62 degree angle from her position. Pressing a button on her console, she launched a concentrated sonic blast that vibrated through the desk towards the cannon. Much to her satisfaction, she heard it explode.

One threat was annihilated, at the expense of much power to her console. The self-regenerative batteries only worked so fast. However, she heard the mechanisms of the other weapons begin to clack into place…

“Impressive tech, young lady. However, I’m afraid that whatever else you may have acquired will not make much of a difference when you’re still trapped like the insignificant rat you are…”