Attack from the Future

Unknown Spaceship

Debra, a self aware eight hundred-year-old artificial intelligence living in a created human body appearing to be fifteen-year-old of Irish decent with pale skin tone, curly red hair, and green eyes, was floating in space with a magically maintained shield of compressed air performing maintenance on solar panels in orbit around Venus. The power had been fluctuating all day, like something was blocking the sunlight from reaching them.

The panels were normally invisible to detection surrounded by a force field shield, also invisible. In order to work on them, she deactivated their cloaking device and shield. Everything she checked was perfect, leaving her wondering what was going on.

Suddenly, she and the panels were in a shadow. Looking toward the sun, a huge spaceship was between her and the sun. It turned on its tracker beam and pulled both Debra and the panels into an open cargo bay. She sent a detail warning to the Emperor June before the bay's door sealed her inside. Her air jets were useless against the beam, while the panels' antimatter rockets had a minor effect. She turned them off to save them from breakage.

The empire started in the twenty-first century by the same human June, running it now eight hundred years later. It included trillions of star systems over multiple galaxies with millions of member species. The owners of the spaceship were an unknown species that somehow snuck into the heart of the empire, where every star system within the Virgo Supercluster had a presence looking for trespassers. How did they escape detection here and everywhere else?

With the bay pressurized, her air shield automatically shutoff. She attempt to perform magic but it failed her. She also could not connect to the supercluster wide Internet. This meant they had a device that block wormhole connections as Debra was Bluetooth connected to the panels, but its wormholes were no longer connected to the empire. That meant the mental magic of the connection continued working, while new magic did not. She turned her air shield back on and it continued providing air from Earth. This at least made her blaster resistant. A laser beam could kill her, but the empire could bring her back to live with full memories up to the bay door closing.

A group of unknown aliens entered, weapons pointed at her. She stayed still as they spoke a language unique from the billions she knew. She tried a few of those that had multiple star system empires prior to assimilation into this empire without reaction. Debra had hoped they would know Billions Annorum as it existed in ten galaxies over billions of years. They indicated they wanted her to move with their weapons, so she slowly started. One led the way, the other five followed her. She realized out of range she should have destroyed the panels to prevent its technology from being stolen.

Debra reminded herself, 'always have an escape plan. A few backup plans beyond that are even better.'

She figured to first learn the language, second win the confidence of someone, and third disable the ship's computer. That was how she conquered other species, so it should work here. She just has fewer resources at her disposal.

They put her into a cell similar to those the empire used once in the past for the leader of the Earth invasion force when he refused to surrender to June before he became a trusted member of its hierarchy. Without her magic, there would be no transportation out of this force field. She was out of Bluetooth range, so could not control the panels remotely. Since they did not wear clothes within the empire, she had no tools to hack into their computer. Those she had remained in the bay with the panels.

She played with all the existing magic, still available to her, looking for something useful without luck. Her magical energy was still being automatically replaced with every breath and heartbeat. She could still receive and transmit Bluetooth signals. Her message, video, and audio systems are all still magically running, which allowed transmitting an internal message, her vision, and her hearing to the network or receiving messages, video, and audio from the network. Her magical energy to her brain, muscles, and mental shield was still occurring, making her twice as smart and strong as her normal body would support, plus making it difficult to read her mind. One word magics did not work for her.