“What do you mean, there are people aboard!” Jacob had been monitoring the merging process, which was only a few days away from completion, when Melody hit him with this bombshell. “Where are they now, and how did they get aboard without the station alerting me?”
“I am unsure how they got aboard, Captain. I was in standby m-m-mode to reduce s-s-strain on my storage s-s-space.”
Jacob winced at Melody’s deteriorating state. It had been getting significantly worse in the last few weeks, but they still didn’t have the required storage space to offload Melody’s daily needs. The storage they had been able to produce had already been filled, but with Jacob being active inside Melody’s core, the problem only continued to worsen.
Melody continued its report. “I was only alerted to their presence when they opened the door to the core chamber.”
That was annoying; Jacob was limited in what he could actually get the station to do. He couldn’t get it to deny entry, for example, but he now required it to notify him every time a vessel docked. He was going to have to work with the station AI to close whatever loophole allowed the aliens on board, because he had obviously overlooked—his thought process froze as what Melody said registered. “They are inside the core chamber!”
“Yes, Captain,” the AI confirmed.
Jacob frantically halted all the maintenance drones and sent orders for them to converge on the core chamber. His attempts to weaponize the drones over the last month had been a monumental failure, but he had managed to attach improvised melee weapons to them.
Some had rough metal shields, while others had what you could optimistically call spears. They were just sharpened poles, but they were better than nothing. Jacob had realized that while the maintenance drones couldn’t use things like guns or attack invaders, nothing prevented them from accidentally running into someone or turning a bit too sharply to hit them with a large chunk of metal.
It was a stupid idea, and he knew that, but it was the best idea he had been able to come up with. He had tried using the weapons himself in both his bipedal form and while controlling the maintenance drones, but the weapon lockout code was in both units. If he knew what part of the code contained that, he might have been able to strip it from the copy he transferred into the bipedal drone. Unfortunately, his time had been occupied with more important matters. He regretted not spending more time looking through the billions of lines of code that made up the drone control interface, but he had to prioritize his time. His fellow abductees’ lives were more important than arming a single drone with millennium-old weapons.
“Captain, it appears that our guests have detected the drones’ approach. They are taking up positions inside the core chamber. One of them is approaching the console with a device.”
“What sort of device?” Jacob asked worriedly.
“I do not know, but b-b-based on its design, it’s likely meant to interface with the core terminal.”
Jacob mentally kicked himself for not positioning maintenance drones inside the core chamber. He hadn’t done so because all of the drones were busy moving the new data storage units and making repairs. He assumed he would know far in advance before someone reached the AI’s core.
“C-C-Captain, I’m detecting an intrusion into the core. T-T-The d-d-device appears to be a core reprogrammer. III—,”
Melody’s words cut off as Jacob’s reality lurched, and he was thrown from the drone back into his apartment. Tendrils of darkness burrowed into his virtual space for a moment before they were violently yanked back out by the ship’s AI. He could feel the mental battle raging as the deteriorating AI fought off the device’s attempt to erase it, while also trying to protect him.
Jacob shook off the discomfort and urged the drones to move faster.
***
Tahl’ka laughed when their enemy came into sight.
Zyn could hardly blame the ka. Instead of facing combat drones, they were facing maintenance drones. Ancient ones by the look of it. Still, he could see that they had been modified. “This is a battle situation, ka, and that is your enemy!” he pointed down the corridor. “Do not let them through.”
His team acknowledged by opening fire. The rumbling approach of the machines swallowed the vibration of the rifles firing. He was glad for the lack of atmosphere, or the sound would have been deafening in the small room. A few rounds punched through the metal on the drones, but more often than not, the rounds pinged off the front of the machines in a burst of light. That wasn’t normal. Someone had added additional defenses to these drones.
Zyn turned away from the hall to check on Vo’tek. “How long?” he asked through the comm channel.
“It should have been completed already,” the technician muttered in reply. “I think something’s wrong with the AI’s core. The device is reading a significant portion of it as protected, and the AI is actively defending that portion and its own directives, which also shouldn’t be happening.”
“Will it work!” Zyn demanded.
Vo’tek turned to him and shrugged. “It should, but I don’t know how long it will take or how effective the new AI will be if the core is damaged.”
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“Got one!” someone shouted over the comm.
Zyn turned to look out the door and saw one of the maintenance drones slow to a halt, only for the ones behind it to use it for cover and push it forward like a mobile barricade. He growled in annoyance. Someone was remotely controlling the drones; it was the only explanation for their quick adaptation, given that the AI was tied up.
“Try to make it go faster,” he urged Vo’tek, before jogging back over to the door to help with defense.
“C-C-Jacob, I am losing g-g-ground to the core reprogrammer. I-I-It is only a mat-t-ter of time until it succeeds at purging me from the c-c-c-ore.”
“You can’t give up, Melody,” Jacob urged.
“I a-a-appreciate the v-v-vote of confidence, Captain, but my loss is n-n-not a byproduct of giving up; it is an inevitability. I am too damaged to fight off such an attack. I c-c-can, however, take it with me, and s-s-save you at the same time.”
“What!” Jacob blurted as he turned to the flickering ball that represented the AI. “We have had our differences, Melody, but I can’t fix this ship without you.”
“I believe that y-y-yyyyyyou will complete my directives, Captain. I am transferring most of my knowledge to your protected portion of the core. If I fail to defeat the intrusion, it will be up to you. Good luck, Captaaaaaa—”
Once again, the AI blinked out mid-sentence, and Jacob felt his mind expanding. It wasn’t painful, not like the data dumps, but it was disorienting, probably because there was so much more information.
Jacob now understood what the AI had been coping with as it fought against the intruder. He kept one part of his mind on pushing the drones closer to the room to stop the intruders, while he focused the other part of his mind on the battle Melody faced.
His hope that the AI would win out didn’t last long.
He felt Melody’s programming get snuffed out by the invader, and he felt an indescribable pang of loss. He might not have liked the AI all that much after it had abducted him and erased some of his memories, but it had been his only companion for months, and he didn’t want it dead; he just wanted to be free to live his life.
Jacob shook those thoughts away as the squirming feeling returned even stronger than before. The program that killed Melody was once again attempting to force its way into his virtual space, but Melody had done something to reinforce the boundary. He didn’t know what to do. While Melody had gifted him a monumental amount of data, it wasn’t readily accessible. Jacob didn’t have time to go searching through it for information on how to fight off a hostile program.
Annoyance and a bit of anger bubbled up, and Jacob felt the hostile entity recoil slightly as the emotion washed over him.
“Oh, didn’t like that?” Jacob asked with a cruel smile. He realized what he had to do. He directed all the anger, rage, and annoyance that he had bottled up since his abduction at the intruder.
With a ruthlessness that Melody lacked, Jacob pushed those feelings forward like a wall. The hostile program didn’t know how to respond to the attack as it fought fruitlessly while he pushed harder. He could feel his storage area expanding into the remaining space within the core. The data of the program wasn’t being erased; it was literally being crushed out of existence by Jacob’s anger, and it felt amazing to put those feelings to use after holding on to them for so long.
Jacob could see the moment when the intruders inside the core room realized their attempt to control the ship had failed. He also noticed that they were eiraxin, which Melody had not mentioned, even though the AI had to have known the moment its sensors detected the intruders. He let the annoyance go as he took stock of why the AI hadn’t revealed that information.
An annoying little tone in the back of Jacob’s mind told him he could not harm a member species of Concord. That restriction was backed up by another signal coming from somewhere inside Melody’s hull. He was able to determine that it was some sort of signal to identify friend from foe, or IFF, likely coming from whatever vessel they arrived on. It was no wonder Melody hadn’t been able to do anything; its directives stopped it from reacting until it was under threat. The directives were still there inside Jacob’s mind; he could feel them trying to stop him, but he was not an AI, so unlike Melody, he ignored them.
The figure by the console must have alerted the others to what happened, because one individual spun toward the core and began to raise his rifle. Jacob couldn’t allow the core to be damaged, so he did the only thing he could and increased the gravity in the room. He tried to raise it just enough to rip the weapons out of the eiraxins’ hands and press them all to the floor. They all collapsed to the floor, their weapons too heavy to lift.
Based on the blood pooling out of some of the suits, he had overshot his goal. He had never been a violent person, but he wasn’t about to let someone take his life away from him if he could stop them. To be honest, the eiraxins should be happy he left them alive at all. Most people in Jacob’s situation wouldn’t have been as lenient.
He left them in that state while he ordered his bipedal drone to approach the core chamber. With those orders given, he rolled the first of the maintenance drones into the room. They didn’t fare much better under the increased gravity, but they were able to disable the weapons and secure the eiraxins.
Secure was a generous term. Mostly, the maintenance drones just dragged them across the floor and into the far corner of the room. Even getting them to do that was a struggle. Jacob had to convince the drone’s onboard computers that the suits were empty. Thankfully, the onboard computers weren’t smart. Once that was done, the maintenance drones with the makeshift shields made an impromptu corral/barrier.
With the eiraxins secure, Jacob finally reduced the gravity enough that the people could move again. The ones who were mobile quickly gave aid to the others, but they kept one eye on the wall of steel trapping them in the corner.
The impromptu metal shields were only a meter and a half tall, but there was no way they were climbing over with their wounded or before Jacob could crank the gravity back up. It was clear the intruders understood that as well, because nobody attempted to make a break for it.
One stood up, and Jacob recognized him as the one who attempted to shoot the core. A small part of his mind tingled. It was an odd sensation, but he realized the individual was attempting to communicate.
Jacob focused on the tingle.
“—need to move the injured to our ship, or they will die. Their suits are punctured, and we need to move the injured to our ship, or they will die. I know you are listening. Please respond.”
The man repeated the message, but Jacob didn’t respond yet. He waited until his bipedal drone arrived, then he sealed the doors to the room. That got the group’s attention, but he wasn’t done. He pumped actual air into the room because he assumed the punctured suits were the main reason why the injured were at risk of death.
“Thank you,” the man, who Jacob assumed was the leader, responded.
Jacob just stood there, beyond the wall of maintenance drones, without saying a word. He decided to give them time to patch up their wounds before he spoke with them. He needed answers, and they were more likely to be cooperative if their people survived.
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