If you can’t recognize this, don’t blame yourself, blame your internet.

By Joseph Fraese.

In A.D. 2101, war was beginning.

The Federation battleship traveled through space, en route to one of the far flung colony worlds, bringing supplies and news from earth. The crew was in its night cycle, with only a skeleton crew staffing the bridge.

Just before the night watch change, as everything was winding down, an explosion ripped through the ship, breaching the exterior hull and setting off panic alarms throughout the corridors. On the bridge, the scene was of panic.

The captain, having been woken up from his sleep by the alarms, was one of the first on the bridge.

“What happened?” His tone was slightly panicked, with good reason, as fire from the explosion shot past the observation window, highlighting the flashing alarm panels with an eerie glow.

“Somebody set up us a bomb,” said one of the engineers, not looking up from his display panel. “We’ve lost almost all our engine power, and a good two thirds of the crew quarters.”

The captain swore, and then turned his head towards the communications officer.

“Do we still have communications? Call for emergency backup immediately!”

“We’re getting a signal!” The comms officer looked confused, and then called over his shoulder, “Turn on the main screen!”

The holographic projector in the centre of the floor flickered for a second, and then a tall male figure appeared in the air above it. He was obviously mechanically augmented, and well known to the captain as CATS, the intergalactic terrorist.

“How are you doing, gentlemen?” He was smirking, obviously satisfied about something.

“It’s you!” The captain did a double take, almost unwilling to believe his own words.

CATS smiled, and waved a hand at the alarm panels going off. “It appears that you’re having some local technical troubles, hmm? I’m sure my news won’t come as a help, but it’s my duty to inform you that I’m in control of the Federation now! Oh, and I just activated the self destruct sequence on your ship, so don’t expect to live for very long!”

“What are you saying?”

“You’re going nowhere but hell, Captain.” CATS laughed heartily, fading from the screen.

Immediately the view changed to the self destruct countdown, with two minutes left on the timer.

“Deactivate that sequence, NOW! I don’t care how you do it, just get it done!” The captain looked furious, and immediately began working on his command console.

The engineers all spun around and immediately started working frantically, the communications officer attempting to shut down the signal that was keeping the self-destruct turned on.

“Sir, the signal is coming in on emergency red frequency, I need your authorization codes to block it!”

The captain immediately tapped in his codes, watching the timer tick down, with only a minute and fifteen seconds remaining.

“Signal blocked, get that sequence shut down, guys!”

The engineers started working frantically, two of them rushing out of the room towards the generator, where the self destruct explosives were located.

The captain started plugging all his authorization codes into the engineering network, making sure that they’d have access to anything they needed. As he did so, he saw a small file that shouldn’t belong with his authorization codes. He opened it up, and found the worm that had started the countdown.

The timer clicked again, down to 30 seconds, as the captain moved frantically. He yanked his console out of the network, and set a harddisk wipe, hoping to kill the worm before the countdown hit 0. It took twenty seconds for it to finish, but the worm was dead. He shouted out to the engineers to shut down the sequence in the normal way, and they hurriedly typed in their override codes. The computers took a second to register it, and then the countdown stopped, with less than a second left.

The captain sighed in relief. “Now all we have to do is find that CATS bastard and send him where he belongs! Let’s head to the colonies, we might be able to find support there.”

The crew cheered, and the wounded ship returned to hyperspace, moving towards freedom.

Theres my Sci-Fi story, I woulda made it longer, but due to losing the first draft and running out of time, etc. I had to make it short.