Ghost Station (The Wandering Engineer) (73 page)

“Who
are you? You are new!” Draco thundered at them. It's power was much diminished
but it still made her wince. “Intruders!” he snarled. “Intruders! Intruders!”

“We
are trinity. We are three in one,” Sprite answered with a distinct echo in her
voice. “We are Federation officers. We are here to help you if you allow us
to.”

Draco
reared back, throwing up his own firewall. “No! It can't be! The Federation is
gone!”

“And
yet here we are,” Sprite answered, holding out a handshake protocol. “Can you
let us help you? Let us prove to you who we are.”

Hesitantly
the AI reached out. Sprite, taking a chance opened a gestalt file and sent it
to the AI. She deposited it in front of her and then stepped away from it.
Draco spun around the file warily like a shark... then devoured it in a gulp
with a bot. When the bot turned green his core devoured the bot.

Suddenly
his presence was all around them, surrounding them, enfolding them in his
embrace. He whispered to her, surprised at her and Proteus but pleased.
Defender hid at their center, shielded by the presence of the others. A fast
dialog ensued, mostly of impressions from Sprite to the AI. Proteus remained in
the background, protective of Sprite. She sent Draco an unclassified log of
their travels.

He
returned the favor, peppering Sprite with images and memories he had stored
from his virtual life. It was fascinating to her.

While
he was distracted Defender lunged to the fore and erupted, sending a spike into
Draco's core. The spike is a kill switch, encoded and now unstoppable.

Desperate
the AI clung to Sprite, ripping through her firewall with what it had learned
from her gestalt. She stared at his core as it was eroded away, vulnerable,
horribly dying in such a way. She could feel him, it dying. It sent files to
her; she realized the AI was trying to give her an update on the station and
people before it died. It was trying to tell her something, something very
important about the surviving cybers something the admiral needed to know.

She's
shocked. She buffered the data at first, running it through a virus filter
before she started to look at it. She was surprised by the contents and lack of
a virus. She started to embrace the update when Defender slammed a firewall up,
corrupting the stream and severing it. She screamed no in shock and surprise,
electronic hand out but Defender rebuffed her. With a final electronic whimper
Draco vanished into oblivion as his core over wrote itself.

Defender
turned on the shocked AI. It thundered at Sprite for her lax security and then
using his security access keys he forced himself into her in a millisecond.
She's terrified and shocked by his brutal treatment. He forced himself into her
core, threatening to kill her if she didn't comply immediately and completely.
She surrendered, shocked and submissive as his cold hands of the dumb AI hold
her core in their grasp.

His
inspection was like a mauling, brutal and direct. He searched out any files
related to Draco and savagely deleted them without even checking them. He made
sure each deleted file could not be recovered by overwriting them several
times.

Satisfied
that she hadn't been corrupted he withdrew. She was icy and shaken by the
intrusion... by the virtual rape. Parts of her were missing now, damaged. To an
AI that is a violation of a different sort. Her entire worldview has just
shifted in an instant.

“Report,”
Irons said looking around. The people in the room looked tired but elated. The
virtual battle had lasted only seconds but it appeared to be over.

Gwen
shrugged. “It looks like your trap was sprung admiral,” she said.

“I
know. Any other problems?” he asked. He hated not knowing what was going on
with this cyber battle. Apparently the AI were too busy to send him a simple
text message. That spoke volumes of its intensity. Great.

“We're
making good on the repairs now. I think we'll have most of the damage righted
in a couple of shifts. It's a pain in the ass doing everything over again
though.”

“At
least we know how to do it since we've been through it once before,” a tech grunted
not looking up from his console. He continued splicing parts together and then
yanked the blown LCD screen out and tossed it onto the recycle pile.

“Back
to square one. Well, with some carrots,” Irons said looking at the angry tech
and then back to Gwen. He knew how they felt; he'd spent a lot of time fixing
that stuff. At least the threat of the insane cybers was now over. He felt
triumph from Defender. He couldn't see or feel his AI; they were too busy in
their battle. Defender's firewall protected his mind from the battle. The
firewall... damn it just went down! What the hell?

“I
think something's happening in here...”

“Oh?”
Gwen asked turning to him. “Dare I ask?”

“Not
sure,” he said closing his eyes. He saw Defender.

“It's
done admiral,” Defender reported. It stared at him with red glowing eyes.

“Draco
is deleted?” the admiral asked. He knew Sprite hadn't wanted it to go that way.

“It's
done,” Defender repeated and then disappeared. Irons turned to Proteus who
seemed to be supporting Sprite. Sprite looked battered, torn. He wasn't sure
why.

“How
did it go?” he asked concerned.

“It's
done,” Sprite snarled and disappeared. Irons frowned. He knew that killing
another AI would bother them, but he hadn't known it would bother them this
much.

“A
word admiral,” Proteus said. Irons turned to the AI. Proteus rarely ever spoke
out or volunteered information without prompting. This was a turn around,
Sprite and Defender were quiet and yet Proteus wanted to speak. Something was
off.

Quickly
Proteus explained the battle, explaining it to the best he can to a mortal
mind. Irons was impressed and concerned, but since they were alive and
functional his tired mind is already turning to other concerns.

Proteus
tried to warn the admiral of the damage to Sprite. The AI could see it, could
understand just from her manner how precarious her sanity now was. Irons is
concerned but he has other issues, the brief AI battle has thrown his repairs
into chaos. She's a tough AI though he reasoned, and from all accounts Defender
killed anything Draco might of passed on.

“From
what I understand she is fine. Defender's report stated that he deleted all the
Draco files.”

“Yes
but she's...”

“Is
the damage permanent?” Irons asked. He needed them back to work.

Proteus's
silver blob bobbed. “Yes admiral. That was what I was trying to tell you if you
would concentrate and listen. It is intense.”

Irons
immediately sobered. He's quiet for a long moment as his thoughts revolve
around that. Sprite was his keystone, his key AI. The
key
to Trinity.
The key to everything actually. The entire future could rest on what Proteus
reported. “How bad. How badly did Draco damage her?”

Proteus
bobbed again, undulating back and forth before settling down. “You don't
understand admiral. It wasn't that attack that did the most damage. It was
Defender's actions I believe. I'm not an AI psychologist though. We need one to
untangle this.”

Irons
blinked for a moment, unsure of what to say or think. How could Defender's
actions have caused more damage than an insane AI?

“What
we need to is to get back to work,” Sprite snarled entering the conversation.
“I'm
fine
. Let's go. You wanted this done Admiral, it's
done
.
He's dead. There is nothing left to bury. Not even his memories. It was as if
he never was. Now move
on
.”

Irons
looked at her icy avatar. Her eyes were snapping, reddish in color and her
whole body language screamed angry resentment. Her body for that matter was
torn; there were angry holes in her form. Each wound was edged in red and
pulsed. For the first time he could see genuine rage in her. Caused by his
orders. She was hovering on the edge of gross insubordination, he could tell.
For her to be that way... Yes it wasn't a pleasant experience. He realized that
killing one of her own meant more to her than... he grimaced. “I'm sorry,” he
said quietly.

She
continued to glare at him for one long moment. “It had to be done right? It's
done. Time to move on. Onward. We have a station to recover,” she snarled and
disappeared back into the net.

“How
bad?” Irons asked. He looked at Proteus and ignored Defender hovering behind
him. It was useless berating the dumb AI, Defender had done exactly as he had
been programmed to do, protecting him and the other AI from infection. Damn
though.

Proteus
undulated, radiating uncertainty. If the AI's mercury blob avatar could have
had eyes it would have looked sad. Irons tried to read something, anything from
the AI but didn't get anywhere.

“I...
I don't know Admiral. The longer the damage sits... it festers with us. With
her. She is the smart AI. Damage like this can cascade, building over time
until it's impossible to repair. If it is truly bad she could overwrite other
files in an effort to recover what she has lost causing the cascade to turn
into an avalanche. If it reaches her core...” he bobbed again and then seemed
to explode and then reform. “
She
has the data on AI psychology. I don't.
I don't know how to fix her.
If
she can be fixed.”

“Doctor
heal thyself. No not a good option,” Irons murmured. “Keep an eye on it?”

“Right
now unfortunately that's all we can do,” Proteus replied. “Though I suggest you
talk to a psychologist soon. Even an organic one might have some method to
help.”

“I'll
look into it,” Irons replied. “But right now I need to check in with Riff. We
need to get the power situations sorted.”

While
the battle had been going on Riff had a work party divert water into a storage
system he devised, and then ran electricity from the solar panels through the
water to break it down into oxygen and hydrogen. Irons is impressed with their
initiative. He's even more impressed when he noticed a tech eating. When asked
about it the tech pointed to a food replicator and smirked. “Fixed it myself.
Thanks for the lessons admiral.” The tech saluted him with his sandwich and then
took a big bite out of it.

“You're
welcome,” Irons said dryly, highly amused. Riff flicked his ears.

“Any
word on the other reactor?” Riff asked hopefully.

“Apparently
Draco scrammed it when he was locked out. Some sort of self destruct,” Irons
said with a frown. Riff's shoulders slumped. That had been in Proteus's report.
Draco had taken a scorched earth policy in his death, Mutual assured
destruction... or it had been the kill switch which had done the damage. Either
one there was a lot of slagged memory and equipment. They were left to clean up
the mess.

“We're
lucky we're still here if it self-destructed,” Riff said. A tech nearby looked
up suddenly concerned.

“Electronic
self destruct. Scram the reactor then a rabbit overwrote the memory until it
overloaded and burnt out. Scorched earth.”

“Ouch,”
the tech said wincing, holding a pair of pliers in his upper hands. The
Veraxin's mandibles worked for a moment. “Do we have a location?”

“Yes.
That's another thing; the fusion reactor had been running at ten percent power
for the past seven centuries. I'm not sure how Draco had kept it stable and
functional all this time. But it was just about out of fuel too,” Riff said.

“Oh.”

“And
most of the fuel lines and EPS conduits to and from it were damaged in the attack.
It had a single EPS conduit out,” another tech reported, looking up from the
tablet he had plugged into the fuel system control board.

“Talk
about a trickle of power,” Riff said.

“Pretty
much. Which is why it had only ten percent power. A lot was wasted though.
We'll check later,” he said. He wasn't looking forward to seeing the damage.

“Yeah,
let's get this sorted out first,” Riff said with a nod.

“So
it's safe now?” The captain asked, reading the report. He wasn't so sure.

“Safer,”
Warner said with a frown. He looked up from his own tablet. “They still have
the Dilgarth, a couple hiding insane AI, and the gangs to deal with.”

“At
least it's a start,” Esmay said. “Fight one battle at a time,” she said.

“True.
He picked and chose his battles. I think I would have gone for the immediate
threat of the Dilgarth though,” the captain said.

“They
have been laying low actually captain,” Warner replied with a grimace. “The
insane cybers and this Draco were interfering with the repairs. Damaging the
systems more.”

“Ah,
no choice then,” the captain replied with a nod.

“Do
we allow the next group to go over?” Esmay asked.

The
captain turned to the exec. He had put a hold order on Barry when the shit had
hit the fan over on the station. Now he wasn't sure.