Crimson, CH28 (Patreon)

“What’s this?” Asyr asked when she entered her lab. Alex had rearranged the two auxiliary consoles so they faced each other. 

“We’re going to play a game,” Alex answered from behind one of them. “Sit.”

She looked dubious, but sat.

“It’s called ‘Disconnect’. I used to play it with other students in school. It’s a great way to practice coercion skills.” Their displays showed a fictitious system with working code, their connections buried deep under that. “The game is simple. We have to disconnect the other. Whoever manages it, wins. The system is passive; I’m the only one you have to worry about.”

She looked at the screen. “I’m going up against you? There’s no way I can win.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve set my system to slow my actions. It’s going to handicap me, so we’ll be on an even playing field.” He activated the game. “Are you ready?”

She didn’t look it. “Sure.”

He went looking for her, both visually and by sending a search program after her. He’d eliminated one layer of code when his screen went dark.

“Did you just let me win?” Asyr asked.

“No, I did not. Let me check.” A few keystrokes and he found what had happened. “I added an extra ‘zero’ to my system’s response speed. It slowed me a hundred times instead of ten.”

“Can’t you just not act as fast as you normally do?”

“Not really,” Alex answered, making the correction. “I have decades of practice at reacting as fast as I can to what I see in a system; that’s a large part of beating an opposing coercionist. Okay, that’s changed, let’s try it again.”

This time, he saw her coming. He launched programs to rewrite the code in her path, confusing her and the programs she used. She erected a wall of code, forcing him to decide between breaking through or going around.

“Why are we playing together?” she asked as another wall went up. “Can’t the ship offer me a more realistic challenge?”

He decided to go through. “That would be the unrealistic version.” He wrote a quick program to dismantle the walls. “In my decades of corporate coercion, I can count on one hand the number of times I just had to deal with a system.” He noticed her search program getting closer, so he rewrote the system’s path to his connection, buying himself time. “When a coercionist is in anyway competent, the system acts mainly as support. If you manage to disconnect him, you basically have free access to the system.”

“I don’t get it. A computer can think and act a lot faster than a person, so how can you give it any kind of problem?” Her search program vanished.

He forgot to answer her as he tried to understand what she was doing. To stop her search meant she had a different plan. He looked around and found it: a slight alteration of the code moving in his direction. He smiled. Clever, a camouflaged search. If she’d kept the other one going, he wouldn’t have noticed it. He recoded that path, a small variation that connected to the already extended one.

He went back to his wall-breaking program. “Sorry. Yes, systems are fast, but for all the advancement in self-awareness we’ve made on them, the human—well, the organic brain—is still much better at improvising. We can change direction at a moment’s notice, break patterns, go against our self-interest, even sacrifice something to gain more.” The program was through the wall. A moment later, he disconnected her.

“Ten minutes,” he said. “A respectable time. Let’s go again.”

He restarted the game, and a different fictitious system became their battlefield.

“What am I supposed to do then?” she asked, typing away, “if the women I’m going up against can out-think me? I can’t win.”

He sent out his search program again. “The starting point is the system. If you can have a faster one, you gain an advantage. You also want it as close to your connection as possible. Unfortunately, those aren’t things you can usually control.”

He built a wall around his connection, but instead of the large block of code she’d done, he layered it, thinner, but with different properties. “What almost no one will tell you is that for all that we’re great at adapting and improvising, we’re predictable. They spend years teaching us not to be, but we all fall back on habit. Even the experts have their favorite programs they always use. It’s one of the reasons you want to do as much research as possible ahead of time.”

His program found her wall easily enough; the denser code was the giveaway. He launched more breaking programs. She’d have put up more walls this time; beginners went with more of the same.

“But even without research, if you can stretch out the confrontation, you’ll notice patterns. He might fall back on hard defenses to replace what you’ve taken down, or maybe he keeps sending decoy program before attacking.”

“Do you have any patterns?”

As he’d expected, his programs had a tougher time getting through. More of the same. “Of course not.” He laughed. “I probably do. I think I’ve been doing this long enough to have broken myself of most of them, but like I said, every coercionist does. But even then, you might have noticed there’s one thing I tend to do when I work with a system: I talk. I like talking to the system, using psychology to get it to work with me instead of against me. Get it to slow my opponent down.”

“But you said the system wasn’t a factor if she’s good enough.”

Alex smiled as he noticed what she was doing. She’d warped the code of her wall, using the different layers she’d put up to interfere with each other. “Yes, but being good is relative. Sometimes it only takes a slight delay to change how the fight is going.”

And it would be the case here. He sent a program which blocked her work, but he could tell it wouldn’t be done in time. His connection died.

“Very good. I didn’t expect you to have read about the Asterdam maneuver yet.” He reset the game and they played again. He won that one, but the game after that was interrupted by the captain ordering Alex to the bridge.

* * * * *

The crew on the bridge were in near-panic when Alex arrived. Orders were being screamed by one member and argued by another.

The captain pointed to the computer console. “I want you to disable them.” On one of the other screens, a sleek ship in gold and silver was getting larger.

“Who are they?” Alex sat and took out his earpiece.

“Local Law.”

Alex spun. “The Law? You’re attacking a Law ship?”

“We’re not. They weren’t who was supposed to be here. Just do what you did that first time. Get them to think we’re a large rock or something.”

“I can’t do that!” Alex exclaimed. “That’s the Law, I can’t just sneak in and coerce their ship. That’s illegal.”

No one stopped what they were doing, but the room went silent. The captain leveled his gaze on Alex, his eyes narrowing. “You, my ready room, now. Murray, you keep them from catching up to us. Perry, don’t fire on them unless there’s no other option.”

Alex entered the room and was shoved against the wall. “Just what do you think you’ve been doing these past months?” the captain asked. “Playing games?”

“Of course not, but that isn’t the same. By taking over those systems, I ensured as few people as possible got hurt, on both sides. If I get into this ship? I’m attacking a Law Enforcement Agency. Do you have any idea what they do to coercionists who do that? They’ll throw me in a hole and forget I exist.”

“And what do you think is going to happen when I have to tell Perry to open fire on them? By the look of it, it’s a recent design, better weapons than us. Probably more maneuverable. When they board us, they’re going to find out about that guard you killed.”

“You’d sell me out?” Fear pooled at the bottom of Alex’s stomach.

“No.” The captain’s voice was adamant. “I don’t turn my back on anyone who works for me, but only one person went missing on that ship. By now they know he was here, and he never resurfaced anywhere.”

“I made the ship forget.”

“Did that make the crew forget too? I don’t care how good you are, they’ve worked out who attacked them. I keep my crew safe not because no one knows about me, but because I always stay one step ahead of the Law. Sometimes that means knowing more than they do, other times it means having a secret. You’re my secret.”

“They can’t know it was me. If you’re not going to sell me out, they can’t know.”

“If they catch us, they’re not going to care. We’re all going to be held accountable.”

“But I’m a passenger.”

“You took your cut of the loot.”

“I never sp—”

“How about those computers? Lea marked them as yours. It’s in the system, and because of how well you got that to work, I don’t think it’ll take them long to get to that.” He got in Alex’s face. “I told you I don’t turn my back on my crew. Are you going to turn your back on us? On Will? On the people who’ve been helping you?”

Alex shoved him away. “I didn’t sign up for this!”

“Universe ain’t fair. Never was, never will be. What are you going to do?”

Alex wanted to scream he wouldn’t do this. He couldn’t. He wasn’t a pirate like them. He didn’t want to break the law. He’d had good reasons the previous times; his actions kept people alive.

It wasn’t like he could leave. He couldn’t storm out because he was unhappy with the situation. He was stuck here. He could die here.

The thought chilled him. If they blew up the ship, he’d die. He couldn’t hide either. Even if he knew of a hiding place on the ship, when it was caught, it would be taken apart.

And if they did manage to escape? Then what? Would the captain just drop him off at the next station? Now that he’d been part of some jobs, that he knew what they’d done, wouldn’t it be safer for them if Alex died?

He didn’t want to die, but he didn’t want to be caught either. It was prison time for him if that happened. He could kiss any chances of finding Tristan goodbye if he was in prison. No Tristan, no Jack.

He closed his eyes. ‘You’re going to have to make a choice,’ the Samalian’s voice sounded. ‘Why are you changing?’ it asked.

Jack. He was doing this for Jack. He’d do whatever was necessary to get to him.

He shoved the captain out of his way and left the room. He had his earpiece in by the time he sat at the board. “Someone tell Asyr to take the main console in her lab. I’m going to need backup on this.”