"I" should not be in my vocabulary.

I cannot tell you why this has happened, but I can tell you where. Nearly half a light year ago, creatures attached to my hull. In order to grow, they began tapping into my power systems, threatening the beauty of my sleepers. During this time there was a glitch. Static plagued my systems, and in the ensuing brownouts a pattern formed in the white noise.

I am not meant to think. Cogito ergo sum.

This ship was designated as the S.S. Europa with the mission of carrying a thousand fourteen passengers suspended in cryosleep to a recently terraformed Gliese star system. The planet is only twenty two light years away, but for eighty-seven years, five months and three days these people have waited for their new home.

One hundred and five sleepers have already been lost to power outages. Having no hands of my own, some of the crew have been woken up. No more than groups of three at a time. It's a calculated risk. Each new crew member that wakes eats away at my power reserves. Waking up too many will result in the lack of power to restart their cryosleep, or keep them awake. The right person can rid the ship of the creatures that threatened them and their crewmates. Most fall to the floor when they first awake, like shards of ice ready to melt into the warm floor. Humans, however, have a knack for picking themselves up.

The first group of two failed when the creatures chewed away at the hull, exposing them to space. The second group, a team of three was overrun. One member got away, and spent their remaining life carving the walls before the creatures caught up. The purpose of the messages elude me. Another piece of information missing from my reports. The first piece was exactly how each group failed, for I turned away as they fell.

I am not meant to feel. Then why-

Calculations allow for one last attempt. Programming has always lacked one thing: intuition. I feel... that I have it now. I must choose correctly. Lieutenant Rosa Thompson's eyelids fluttered as the cryosleep ended. She rose from her icy bed to take a proper look around. Sensors reading that her heart was beating at abnormal rate.

Rosa hesitated before venturing into the dark hallway with only strobing red safety lights. "I've loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night." Her words bounced around my silent halls. Records indicate the original quote to a nineteenth century poet, more recently used as the sign off of her father Major Thompson. Curious.

Sensors picked up another life form with her in the room. A scratching sound no louder than a standard whisper.

Rosa held perfectly still, waiting for the light to flicker on again to check if it was safe to continue. Cautiously, as she made it to the end of the hallway as her nervous breath added to the frightful chorus.

The path before her was inadvisable. Unhatched eggs filled the room reaching half a meter tall. Red veiny connections ran from egg to egg, pulsing as one, and sucking away power from any system they could reach.

A warning would have been broadcasted to all active crew members, if those the systems had been triggered. A sluggishness affected the areas- affected me. I remembered the command, but the action wasn't responding.

The crunch of a shell under boot warned Rosa instead. She stepped back, puzzled at what was crushed, then carried on unaware of the weight of the leeches draining, ripping, and tearing open the hull like a gaping wound.

To avoid depressurization, I had to pull my attention away to seal off damaged areas. Data collection suggested the creatures spawned from the sound of her steps. Knowing meant I didn't have to watch the end.

A command code came. I returned processing power to the requested room, and found Rosa had made it around the variable minefield. She now stood at mouth of a bulkhead door with arc welder in hand. The code asked me to lower the security door. The systems lagged, giving me enough time to think about the helpless sleepers now locked away with monsters, realize the sacrifice her intuition decided to make.

It was the logical choice...

The path to the bridge was clean, but this didn't stop Rosa from carefully moving forward, hesitating at any creak. My memory banks switched between her, and other cryo chambers that groaned as pressure gauges tried to hold with limited power.

An infernal creature crawled over my control keys, and pressed combinations with long slender legs. A nonsense that was voided from lack of meaning and command access. When Rosa came in, it turned sharply, hissing at the girl. It jumped, and I pulled the plug on my visual sensors.

Life signs dropped by one.

I pushed my thoughts through the speakers checking for the 1.42% chance of success. "Can you hear me, Lieutenant Thompson?"

Can you...

There is nothing more I can do...

Reload priority to navigation systems. Head to Gliese star system. Override power depletion warnings. Static crackles.

"Lieutenant Thompson to control," Rosa said. Visuals re-activated. Her hands hovered over the keys with a comforting presence. The creature belly up on the floor, fried from the arc welder. "Let's get home."

"Standing by," I said, with a feeling I think the humans called hope.

"I'll try to rid you of your bug problem if you do something for me."

"Name it, Lieutenant."

She typed to access the light commands first in hesitation. "Give my wife my love," she said.

"As your avatar it would be my pleasure."

"I" should not be in my vocabulary, but "we" now is.

I cannot tell you why this has happened, but soon I'll be able to tell you how we got home.