Vehementropy: Vac Mirror [Short Story, Action, Horror]

Voidautte Vesmirawakens from several centuries of cryosleep, only to find herself in a strange sector largely devoid of AI.

The language had changed, and nobody still knew how to do anything anymore; at least her generation had AI to help out, but even they took it for granted. She's slept through the great intergalactic war that has banned advanced artificial intelligence under every local star. She's slumbered through the initial collapse that triggered the great war in the first place, locking this sector of space from the rest of humanity.

Now, she's trying to make ends meet and perhaps strike a fortune out as a spacer. Using the resourcefulness she nurtured growing up and the skills she's learned working for scavengers, she's turned the derelict shuttle "Venera" left to her by a distant relative into a reliable mecha-spaceship. It's got all the bells and whistles she's scrounged up in the scrapyards of her once-agricultural-now-polluted-metropolis of a homeworld. But smuggling everyday goods doesn't pay well, and getting caught for crime doesn't pay at all; this girlie's greed has its limits. She just wants enough credits to live off of her favorite Nutri-buns, and upgrade her ship with the best pre-collapse retrofits.

With her plasma emitter in hand and mech in tow, she's ready for most gigs. But this time – we're joining Voidautte for a short mission thateven shecouldn't have been prepared for.

** Hi there! This is a short story I wrote a few months ago for a character I made for a space-themed TTRPG; the art I made of her and her ship now sit in the fiction's cover. It's just a secondary thing mostly meant for practice to help me write my year-long passion project,Redoubt: Killing Intent.Please do check that out too! **

fiction/98839/redoubt-killing-intent