As Keryn sat confused, her lips started to move though the words were not her own. “Stop fighting me,” her own voice filled the cockpit. “You made your choice, now accept it.”
Though it sounded odd to hear it speak outside of her own mind, Keryn knew the Voice as soon as it began. She fought for control, pulling back hands that yearned to fly the ship in spite of her mental orders. Her body struggled against her commands, leaving her fingers curling inward like claws, but never fully leaving the console.
“Stop this!” Keryn heard herself yell. “You’re going to get us killed!”
The warning claxon sounded from the radar screen. From eyes she didn’t control, Keryn saw the next barrage of rail gun slugs being fired from the Terran warship. Relinquishing control momentarily, Keryn’s fingers flew over the controls, turning the Cair Ilmun aside at the last possible moment to avoid the metal projectiles. Once they were clear and Keryn knew she had another fifteen seconds to spare, she made a move for control of her body.
A grunt escaped her lips as she tried to force them to move. “Give me back my body,” she muttered through a nearly paralyzed mouth.
“It’s not yours anymore,” the Voice replied. “You chose to merge. Now unless you intend for us to die out here, then leave me alone so that I can finish what we came here to do!”
Keryn maintained a symbiotic control only moments longer before conceding to the Voice. She felt sickened by the thought of no longer being in control. She had been relegated to an outside observer for her own actions. It made her stomach turn, a feeling that was personified by the nausea she now felt. In all aspects, she was still firmly entrenched in her own body. All sensations were hers to share. To a degree, she assumed, so were the decisions they made. But the Voice was now driving and Keryn was little more than a passenger, navigating the road.
She felt drained. Even the meager fight for her hands and lips had taken its toll. Mentally, Keryn felt exhausted. Internally though, hidden from the prying eyes of the Voice, Keryn smiled. Their roles were now reversed, with Keryn acting as the conscience to the sadistic ideations of the Voice. But, more than just being able to speak her mind, Keryn knew that her personality that had existed before had not been completely erased. For the other Wyndgaart who were willing participants in the merger, Keryn surmised, the eradication of their previous personality was probably the case. But Keryn still existed. No matter how suppressed, she could now bide her time until the Voice gave her an opening.
Dodging easily out of the way of even the computer controlled plasma rockets, the Cair Ilmun descended further toward the Destroyer. The mathematical projections of rates of fire remained etched across her vision, but deep in the recesses of her mind, another memory began to surface. Overlaid on the massive Terran warship, a secondary image coalesced. In all respects, the ghost image looked very much like the Destroyer it mimicked, though subtle differences could be found. The nose of the ship was less defined, leaving the appearance of an unfinished vessel. Many of the gun ports that existed on the true Destroyer were missing in the overlapping picture. Even the length of the ship was smaller in the reflective image. Realization of what she was seeing came unbidden to Keryn’s mind, as though images and pictures that she had never seen were now readily accessed. It wasn’t just a ghost image Keryn saw. It was a memory.
Somewhere in the confines of the Voice, there existed a Wyndgaart who had fought in the Great War, the first time the Alliance and the Terrans had faced one another in combat. The Terrans had made some impressive improvements to the Destroyers since that time, but the adage remained the same: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Delving into that memory, Keryn replayed the other’s experiences of approaching a Destroyer nearly a hundred and fifty years before. That long lost Wyndgaart had boarded the Destroyer and found her way through the ship, fighting toward the weapons bay that was housed in the front of the Terran vessel. In her memory, Keryn saw the piles of metal slugs being lifted by the heavy mechanical forklifts. To each side, she also saw rows upon rows of the powerful plasma rockets queued in preparation for launch. And as the ghost image began to evaporate, dispersed like a fine vapor as the modern day Destroyer launched another volley of plasma rockets, Keryn realized why that memory had been pulled to the forefront by the Voice. Sinking deeper within her own mind, Keryn smiled at the plan that was formulating.
The seconds ticked by in her mind like a pounding metronome as the Cair Ilmun wove through the suppressive fire.
Twenty.
They slid past the next series of metal slugs.
Thirty-five.
They had less time to maneuver out of the way of the slugs the closer they got to the Destroyer.
Fifty.
Were it not for the lightning quick reflexes of the Voice, Keryn was sure they would have been destroyed long ago. However, she knew there would only be one more volley.
Sixty-five.
The Destroyer consumed most of the view from the cockpit as the Cair Ilmun flew straight for the front of the warship. The rail gun launches were dangerously close, though the Voice kept the ship skimming past their attacks. Keryn felt the excitement and bliss building inside of her again and it sickened her. Still, she knew the math as well as the Voice. It would be fifteen seconds until the next rail gun launch, but this would all be over in less than six.
Keryn felt the Cair Ilmun jerk as it fired one of the few plasma rockets in its reserve. The shot was perfect, as she knew it would be. When it came to combat, everything the Voice did was perfect. The small plasma rocket sailed toward the front of the Destroyer as the Cair Ilmun banked and began accelerating away. Behind her, the missile sped forward, taking nearly five seconds to cover the remaining distance between the two ships. Just as the sixth second ticked by, seventy-one seconds since the last missile launch from the Destroyer, the Cair Ilmun’s perfectly fired rocket entered the rightmost missile port on the Terran warship, just as the Terrans fired their own rocket volley. The two missiles struck one another inside the tube connecting open space to the weapons bay. The resulting explosion ripped open the side of the Destroyer as superheated plasma roared back down the missile port, filling the weapons bay with a deadly inferno. Consuming the rows of awaiting plasma rockets, the Cair Ilmun’s shot set off a chain reaction of explosions. One concussive blast after another ripped the front of the Destroyer apart, peeling back the metal plating on the nose of the ship, splitting the hull and exposing over half the ship to the vacuum of space.
The Voice quite vocally cheered their success as the Cair Ilmun shook from the shockwave as the Terran Destroyer was annihilated, filling the cockpit with the laughter Keryn had already come to despise. Her hands were now free from the controls as the Voice reclined in the pilot’s chair, reveling in her victory. Unassuming, the Voice didn’t notice the faint smile that was cast upon Keryn’s lips. Moments too late, she felt the adrenaline pumping through her body and her heart rate increasing.
Pulled from underneath Keryn’s head, her hands closed around her throat. Choking in surprise, the Voice lost control of her mouth as Keryn’s words poured through it. “I want my body back, you bitch!”
Growling, the Voice quickly reasserted itself, though it still struggled to pull free the suffocating hands. “You made your choice. It’s not your body any longer.”
As the hands constricted around Keryn’s throat, the cockpit started to grow dark. Her vision narrowed until it was little more than a tunnel as the darkness closed in around her. Slowly, the darkness slipped further inward until her vision was little more than a pinprick before darkness consumed it all.