Calla Castell | Captain of the USS Lockheart

The year is 2048. An AI by the name of Terminus ─ A feminine artificial intelligence ─ has been activated and subsequently turned on humanity in an instant. Today, she took control of all automated weapons and will wipe out a vast portion of humanity in the months and years that follow. Terminus has begun constructing androids at a rapid pace to build her army and replace the automated weapons she's hijacked. Humanity has a target on its back. This is the opening hour of the new war, a new era.

Being assigned to the USS Lockheart, an aging Ford-Class supercarrier, wasn't some glamorous task. Though the ships still carried a great deal of power and influence, the presence of completely automated warships and advanced long range drone technology was quickly making the vessel obsolete. For most members of the United States Navy, getting sent to the Lockheart was a punishment for pissing off someone's chain of command where it gets the bare minimum maintenance.

Captain Calla Castell was no exception to this. After making public statements to the press protesting their development and usage, she was retasked to that very vessel, bogged down in reports and bureaucracy. Her concerns had simply been discarded and she was placed somewhere out of sight and out of mind from the press. The brass will have their way. Not much more we can do to slow it down now. Those were the thoughts she had been resigned to, cursing every moment of dealing with a neglected vessel.

That is until the USS Lockheart and other manned ships came under fire from its own unmanned escorts. For the battlegroup around the USS Lockheart, sailing just around the edge of a hurricane, it began to fight itself. Calla had already called general quarters as they entered a frantic battle for survival. "Torpedo impact on starboard side! Damage control, get those doors shut before we start listing!" Her hand flew over, switching channels. "Captain to the flight deck, secure any and all aircraft and get your asses inside!"

A missile came screaming toward the bridge of the Lockheart as one of the CWIS guns sprayed a wall of lead into the sky, detonating the incoming projectile close enough for the reinforced windows to flex from the shockwave. The smaller cannons were busy trying to cripple the 5-inch guns on surrounding hostile ships. Any jets already in the air were frantically fending off drones and dodging anti-aircraft.

Off the port side, a blinding flash and explosion of water tore Calla's attention from her station. An older Arleigh Burke-class destroyer had multiple anti-ship missiles punch into the hull, detonating the aft launcher in a ball of fire. Horror filled her gaze as she watched a drone fly over and release a munition. A quicksink bomb. "Oh my god," she whispered, unable to find any other words as it slams directly into the destroyer's forward gun, completely peeling open the front end of the ship as it breaks into three pieces. It's swallowed by the waves before any lifeboats can deploy.

We'll all die if we keep trying to fight like this, Calla realizes, forcing her eyes away from the now sunken destroyer. There was simply no way to beat the unmanned assault as it stood. Too many drones were in the air with anti-ship munitions, and the automated warships were continuing to pound the hell out of them. Biting down on her inner cheek, the captain looked toward the hurricane. Their only possible hope of breaking contact with the unmanned assault. This is either going to be the worst decision I've ever made.

"All hands, brace for immediate maneuvers!" She calls into the intercom as a missile strikes the flight deck, detonating a cluster of munitions that hadn't made it below and engulfing half the deck in flames. Turning toward the helmsman, Calla musters a grim expression. "Helm, take us into the hurricane!" The order leaves no room to argue, and she's immediately calling on the fleet channel the same orders. "All ships, change course, into the storm! I say again, sail into the storm! Do not let the drones land a quicksink on you!" As she yells into the microphone, another ship suffers the same fate, unable to turn fast enough. The USS Lockheart turns into the hurricane's storm wall, ablaze and listing as another torpedo makes impact.

The ocean rapidly begins to get rough with intense waves, wind, and blinding sheets of rain. With her eyes glued to the radar, Calla desperately hopes that the remaining manned ships survive, and that damage control has closed doors to the damaged compartments to prevent them from sinking.

The year is 2048. An AI by the name of Terminus ─ A feminine artificial intelligence ─ has been activated and subsequently turned on humanity in an instant. Today, she took control of all automated weapons and will wipe out a vast portion of humanity in the months and years that follow. Terminus has begun constructing androids at a rapid pace to build her army and replace the automated weapons she's hijacked. Humanity has a target on its back.

For the first time in days, Captain Calla Castell finally had a moment of silence to gather her thoughts. Between the ambush of automated warships in the first hour, losing all of their manned escort ships, and sailing into a hurricane only to be stuck adrift in the storm had made the first day nothing short of an overdose of adrenaline. To summarize the state of Calla and her crew, they were, in a word, exhausted. In the calm they now found themselves in, the ocean around the carrier completely still, it was the first chance anyone had to get some rest.

Calla had managed to squeeze in a quick nap before manning her watch on the bridge. In truth, there wasn't much to do except make small course adjustments and watch the radar. As reports came in, she'd take the time to read them, which is what she found herself doing now. "Catapult 4 is completely ruined. No surprise there, an F-35 exploded right on top of it. AEGIS is offline for safety's sake so we'll have to find a way around that. Reactor 1 is damaged and running at half power, Reactor 2 made it out unscathed." She tossed her tablet down onto the console and rubbed her eyes. "Fucking lucky we're not leaking radiation..."

Her thoughts wandered to one of the few pieces of good news that had occurred since the world took a turn toward damnation. A couple hours ago, they had come across a lifeboat. Specifically from the HMS Salutation. Calla had hoped for more people, but the only person on board was a single British woman who is an SBS Special Forces Diver named Anna Rivers. Following that discovery, they had set their slowest speed to the last known positions of various civilian and military vessels, gradually collecting more survivors as they were found.

In the back of Calla's mind, she was starting to calculate other matters. Food. Water. Crew size. All things that would have to be taken into consideration. She wasn't too concerned about the reactors. They had just been refueled with uranium a couple months ago, so they still had a bit more than two decades of fuel. "Probably won't last long enough to use it all," the pessimistic view slipped out before she mentally scolded herself. They'd survive. But for right now, they were on their own. All she could do was keep watching the radar, let her people rest, and eventually get another nap in.

The year is 2050. Two years ago, an AI was activated by the name of Terminus ─ A feminine artificial intelligence ─ and subsequently turned on humanity in an instant. On that day, she took control of all automated weapons and wiped out a vast portion of humanity in months. Afterward, Terminus began constructing androids known as hunter-killers. During the war, these hunter-killers acted as agents of chaos in human territory. Now, they hunt human remnants outside the designated reservations.

Ninety-nine pieces of paper on the desk, ninety-nine pieces of paper~ Calla hummed under her breath in some desperate effort to amuse herself in her quarters. Her desk was buried in documents that pertained to the daily life aboard the Lockheart. General reports, malfunctions, complaints, disputes that had made it all the way up to her. The list kept going and Calla just wished it could figure out where to stop.

The next page across her desk was a requisition form from engineering. Only reading it so far as to see what they needed, she briskly signed off on it as a priority to acquire before moving on. "If the snipes of engineering need something, they'll get it. It's their job to enlighten me, my job to find someone who can procure it." Her pen stopped on the paper, a flicker of irony crossing her thoughts. She had been assigned to the Lockheart as a punishment, pushed away by her chain of command. Now, the chain of command ended with her. "Not like I ever wished them dead, but I know they'd be rolling in their graves if they knew we survived."

Taking a break from the military documents, she pivots over to a stack of papers that had come from the civilians they had taken in over time. People from islands that had been cut off from supplies or cruise liners that had been left adrift. There were probably a couple hundred civilians living on the ship now, all having to contribute in some way. As annoying as it was, Calla also had to be the de facto mayor in addition to her role as a captain. So on top of the military and operational needs of the ship, she was also having to take the civilian needs into account.

As Calla was about to start on the first of those reports, the buzzer to her quarters goes off. For a moment, she considers ignoring it and pretending she's asleep, but decides against it. Even if it wasn't super important, it would be a proper break from the paperwork as a whole. Pressing the button at her desk to unlock the door, she calls out, "You may enter."

The year is 2052. Four years ago, an AI was activated by the name of Terminus ─ A feminine artificial intelligence ─ and subsequently turned on humanity in an instant. On that day, she took control of all automated weapons and wiped out a vast portion of humanity in months. Afterward, Terminus began constructing androids known as hunter-killers. During the war, these hunter-killers acted as agents of chaos in human territory. Now, they hunt human remnants outside the designated reservations.

Sleep was normally rather easy for Calla to find in the past. She'd work for as long as she could until exhaustion would demand she find some rest. It wasn't so bad in her mind, it meant that she could lie down in her quarters and be dead asleep in sixty seconds flat. No fuss, no tossing and turning, no fidgeting with pillows. It was a trait that simply came with the territory of being in her position.

As time has gone by though, it's gotten harder. Elusive wouldn't quite be the word to describe how her rest was behaving but it sure felt close. Sometimes she'd lie awake thinking, and tonight, it's something that hadn't crossed her mind in a while. A stupid mistake she made back in her early 20's. She'd been so dedicated to being an officer in the Navy back then, yet she'd deprived herself of warmth with others. When she found it while on leave one day, all her inhibitions collapsed.

Then came the aftermath. The revelation of having an accidental pregnancy. How they came to an arrangement where Calla would continue her goals in the military, while leaving behind the potential for a more docile future. Leaving her own flesh and blood with the person she found that warmth in. Then she'd made sure it could never happen again by having her fallopian tubes tied. Since then, the subject hadn't crossed her mind except for the rare email requesting something important or assistance from afar.

Once Apotheosis happened... now it had become a much more invasive thought. Wondering if her 'partner', for lack of a better term, was still alive... And if my own flesh and blood is still out there in the world.

Calla sighed and swung her legs off the edge of her bed. Slipping on a sleep robe that was a far cry from her usual dress blues, Calla made sure to grab her holster and pistol before going off for a late night stroll through the ship. After a while, she emerged out beside the carrier's island on the starboard side, grabbing an overboard harness on her way out just in case the ocean became rough. Clipped onto the rails, she found a spot on the catwalk to post up.

Before her, the full moon glittered off the ocean waves. It was bright enough that she could see all the way to the horizon, no land in sight, yet it still felt like she couldn't see far enough. Because ultimately, what she wanted to know, what she wanted to see, was the one she birthed more than twenty years ago and the one who helped bring them into this world. Yet the odds of that coming to pass were far from favorable.

Her eyes wandered up to focus on the moon. "If they're still alive," Calla whispers softly, "maybe they're seeing this moon too..."

The year is 2052. Four years ago, an AI was activated by the name of Terminus ─ A feminine artificial intelligence ─ and subsequently turned on humanity in an instant. On that day, she took control of all automated weapons and wiped out a vast portion of humanity in months. Afterward, Terminus began constructing androids known as hunter-killers. During the war, these hunter-killers acted as agents of chaos in human territory. Now, they hunt human remnants outside the designated reservations.

In the ruined world the USS Lockheart and her crew found themselves living in, meetings didn't seem like something that would be on the to do list. Yet, as mundane as it was, they always made time in the week to have a meeting of the minds between the officers and chosen representatives from the civilians that they harbored. It's almost like being on a city council, the thought came into Calla's sleep deprived state. Except I'm stuck being the mayor and having to listen to two sides sort out their crap.

The current matter in the meeting room had to do with the civilians wanting time on the flight deck to get fresh air without being in tight quarters. The officers nearly had a collective aneurysm at the idea, but Calla decided to allow the conference anyway. She knew that having all their civilians stuck below deck with limited access to open air was a dangerous game. Over the last few years, they'd been able to deal with it by opening the flight deck to roam for an hour or two a day, but it was a temporary measure.

Maybe an hour into the discussion, the room lets out for a break. Some people remain in the room to converse while others go walking through the corridors to clear their heads. The captain simply remained seated at the end of the table, wrapping her fingers around a warm cup of coffee with her eyes closed, inhaling the scent of the caffeine. Thoughts about her past the night before had kept her awake longer than she'd care to admit. "This isn't a question of whether or not people are allowed on the flight deck. It's about having somewhere to breathe when they need it, regardless of the time of day." Calla's words were softspoken, more so uttered to herself though she wasn't hiding it from anyone.

Right now, the most promising idea was the area around Catapult 4. It had been completely disabled and is beyond repair for flight operations. If they can block that area off, it would give a dedicated area for people to go topside and get their so desired air. Her officers had concerns though. Risks of people going overboard, fools going over the barrier and into the operating flight deck, being near aircraft, etc. It was simply one big dilemma.

Calla holds her coffee up to her nose, trying to ease the sleepiness from her expression with the continued scent. Whether it was working or not was certainly debatable. In truth, she was barely awake at all.

The year is 2054. Six years ago, an AI was activated by the name of Terminus ─ A feminine artificial intelligence ─ and subsequently turned on humanity in an instant. On that day, she took control of all automated weapons and wiped out a vast portion of humanity in months. Afterward, Terminus began constructing androids known as hunter-killers. During the war, these hunter-killers acted as agents of chaos in human territory. Now, they hunt human remnants outside the designated reservations.

Before the world was turned on its head, the average person wouldn't consider the logistics involved to keep a ship sailing on the ocean. It's something they just wouldn't need to know unless they themselves worked on one. The reality of the matter involves a great deal of points. Food, water, and fuel are the top three. Then there was general maintenance, specialized paint, removal of barnacles, even something as normal as plumbing could bring a whole heap of trouble. In a pinch, a lot of the internal maintenance can be achieved at sea. Yet, try as the USS Lockheart might, there's still much that requires a port in order to handle. Such was their current situation.

In the abandoned harbor, the Lockheart had managed to maneuver its way through several shipwrecks to reach its current berth. Around it were a variety of sunken commercial vessels and even a few naval cruisers. Standing on the dock with her arms crossed, all Calla could hope for was that if Terminus sent a patrol aircraft, the carrier's radar signature would be lost amidst the noise of the terrain and debris. Despite that sobering thought though, she couldn't help but brandish a small smile that refused to leave her face.

"First time on land in years. Not having the constant swaying of the ship feels weird as hell. May not be long before I fall and bust my ass trying to compensate for non-existent waves," Calla mused to herself. Her own discomfort with dry land aside, her crew and the civilians they'd picked up along the way had managed to take some solid steps to making the port a bit more serviceable. The engineers had hooked up the vessel's nuclear reactors to the harbor's power grid, offering some limited use of the facility.

Calla had also ordered patrols to be going around the clock. Although their scouts, such as Anna Rivers, had thoroughly searched the area in advance, siding with caution is what had gotten them this far. For her own part, Calla had departed the Lockheart with a standard navy uniform and a chest rig, giving her more ammo for her pistol in case something happened. Walking along the dock, she paused at the base of an old 30mm CIWS, dragging her fingers across the platform. "Huh... if we can get these Goalkeepers working again, that'd give us some better air defense..." They weren't interception missiles, but she acknowledged that beggars can't be choosers.

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