It's still summer, but it feels all wintry to me for some reason. Sup with that?

*sigh* Whatev; I'm just pretending not to love the monads out of it.

ANYWAY

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"Anybody else see that?" the young woman stood from her chair; she was probably the only person on the staiton to notice anything worth seeing.

Frenick stood in response, mostly because he'd been sharply woken from reverie when she'd spoken. "Hm? What? See which where?"

The woman literally ran to one of the small side windows, adjacent to the larger window the rest of them had been staring boredly out, tossing herself against it with wide eyes and tense muscles. She was visibly shaken as she said, "Oh my... Dear God." And then turned to dart back to her station.

It was around then that Frennick finally noticed her body language, the aura of panic emanating from her every breath. He rushed over to the spot she'd just evacuated, looking out the window, seeing only the multiplicity of stations that populated space alongside them and encircled their small solar system. "What is it?" He said, "What's going on?" The other crew of the station were starting to take notice and glance around in bemusement.

"There's fifteen stations in the immediate channel!" She called back; the channel was the local communications network. There were usually only two or three stations connected to it at a time, either to discuss business or just out of boredom.

Frennick didn't bother to ask, he'd taken notice of a peculiar gap in the fleet. Had one of the stations misplaced themselves? No, two... three? An adjacent station was moving in to fill the gap, the others around it reconfiguring themeselves. Blue lights on their edges were beginning to flicker on... those were their projectile shileds, right? What was...

There were bits of metal and what looked like... debris? Some kind of accident?

"Put up the channel's audio!" Frenick commanded, his calm still about him. If something had gone wrong, it would have to be fixed quickly; gaps in the swarm would leave holes in their net protection of the solar system. Which, as a point of pride, simply couldn't be allowed.

He turned to look back out the window and saw the blue shield lights of one of the stations begin to flicker randomly, its thrusters beginning to spurt and sputter and toss it out of course.

There was a click, and Frennick's station was connected to the immediate channel. He turned pale at the cacophony of shouts he heard, the panicked cries, the chaos of hundreds of various stations - soldiers, engineers, commanders - all trying to shout over one another.

Overall, the channel had been piped in just in time for the death throes of the failing station he'd been watching. A sudden shrill cry rose above all the rest, one of confusion, a plea to an unnamed god, and as the other voices paused in response, he heard a young man's voice cry out, "God help us! We're not ready! I'm not-"

Frennick watched an explosion beginning at the station's power room reach throughout and tear the entire construct apart. He could make out the various sections of the station, just like his own; he could make out the crew quarters and operations centers; he could even make out the corpses.

Spinning on his crew with the intent to give orders, Frennick was frozen pale at what he beheld out the large front window; multiple stations among the thousands were begging to flicker and spin, and in the seconds that followed he saw three destroyed. The channel was full of incoherent shouts, confusion.

His own crew was moving quickly, more awake then they'd been in years. Calling back and forth to eachother, making their own efforts. His station's shields came on, and he heard someone yelling, "There's a virus in the channel! It's already in our systems!"

And in all of this, all Frenick could do is stand and stare at the chaos. The young woman that had been first to notice was now looking it him, yelling at him, "Frennick, take command! Tell us what to do!"

In a shaking voice, he just shoke his head and said, "It's true. We weren't ready."

No, they weren't. Even if they had believed their purpose to be a complete lie, they should have at least been alert, awake. Instead they'd all let themselves drift into an oblivious slumber. They were hundreds of thousands of people, all dedicated to defense of the system, and they'd all literally been caught dozing when the time came. The Great Threat... such an idiotic concept, but here it was.

Frennick shook himself, watched his crew's efforts for a few seconds. Yeah, they weren't ready, but they weren't going to roll over either. "Everyone!" he shouted, and he drew their eyes to him, "That virus is what's taking out the system! Concentrate of getting it out of our computers or we're dead!"

And then he went back to the center of the room, to his raised seat in the middle, and sunk awkwardly into it; he was so tense that it was actually difficult to force himself to sit. "Now, connect me to the fleet-wide channel."

One of the men at the front of the room, "But you could spread the virus!"

"Fuck off," Frennick snapped thoughtlessly, and didn't regret it. He gripped the arms of his chair with white-knuckled hands, "Connect me now! I'm not ready to die! I won't allow it!"