Crimson, CH41 (Patreon)

In the end there were only eight deaths, two of which from the big guns when they went haywire. Once Alex had gotten back to the computer lab, he’d found the other ship was already under attack, so all he had to do was add his expertise to it, and in no time he had gained control.

He’d used emergency procedures to lower bulkheads across the ship, isolating the security forces in small groups, which let Anders go back to secure the hold, move the cargo, and then search the ship for injured crewmates.

Alex had considered blowing up the ship after that in anger over the deaths, over having been the target of the trap, the reason his crewmates died. He didn’t do it. He decided he wouldn’t be their murderer. He’d kill to defend himself, but never in cold blood. He settled on making the ship forget anything had happened.

Once that was over, he’d looked into how their computer had been able to attack the other one, without himself or Asyr there. What he’d found gave him pause.

And now, in the middle of the celebration, Alex set up a sound dampener on Anders’s table so they could talk without shouting, and had explained what he’d found to Anders. 

Anders didn’t look like he believed him, nor did the others at the table.

“Let me get this straight,” Anders said. “Our own computer protected itself and assaulted their system?”

Alex nodded.

“You’re wrong,” Luigi said. “Systems can’t be aggressive like that.”

“Normally you’d be right,” Alex confirmed. “Systems are smart, but none of them have any aggressive code. It will defend its code, undo the damage done, but it can’t actively force someone out. That’s why a computer’s first action will always be to alert the ship’s coercionist of an attack. That’s who is capable of taking aggressive action.”

Alex sipped his drink. He was still on his first, while most of the table were on their third.

“Fine, then how did our ship do it?” Anders asked.

“First thing to remember is that for a very long time, it was insane. Having its components partitioned and incapable of talking to each other did a number on how it thinks. Once I reintegrated everything and smoothed it over, that instability became mostly unnoticeable. But it’s not entirely sane. There’s corrupted code right down to its core programming.”

The men and women around him looked at each other nervously.

“Calm down,” Alex told them. “There isn’t anything to worry about. So long as Asyr keeps an eye on it, everything’s fine.”

They relaxed a little.

“The second thing is that one of those partitioned systems did become aggressive. Luigi, you were there, you saw how far the engineering systems were willing to go. You heard the stories of the ship trying to get people to kill themselves. That system was homicidal.”

“There were also the accidents,” Zephyr said.

Alex nodded. “It wanted us all dead, it just took it a long time to find a way of doing that without damaging itself. While it had control of life support, it realized we are fragile. When I took that away, it used things like power relays to hurt us.”

“But you fixed it,” Barbara said.

“And that’s the third thing to remember. No, I didn’t fix it. I thought I had. When I reintegrated engineering into the rest of the systems, all that aggressive code vanished. Some I removed, other just wasn’t there. I thought it was the core processor’s antibodies which had taken care of it, so by the time I was done, everything looked smooth and we didn’t get any more accidents. I thought I’d fully removed the engineering’s aggressiveness.”

“Until now.” Anders drained his mug and motioned for another one.

Alex nodded. “I’d done an in-depth scan of the code a few days after the reintegration, and I didn’t find anything, but I’d forgotten something then: Engineering was paranoid. I never considered that it might fake being fully integrated, that it might take steps to ensure it wasn’t ‘destroyed’.

Etrigan brought Anders a drink, then indicated Alex’s still half-full mug. Alex shook his head.

“Are you saying that thing’s still somewhere in there? Waiting to kill us?”

“No. It’s no longer an active system, not in the way it was before. Its code is mixed in with the rest, dormant. It waits for when the processor is under attack, then activates and goes on the offensive.”

“But the system has been under attack before,” Luigi said. “When you were busy with the Law ship, Asyr had to fight one back.”

“That was before I reintegrated it. And after that, me or Asyr were there to keep the other coercionists under control. The code reacts to what the main processor feels.” Alex searched for the right analogy. “Think of it as being on a subconscious level. The processor trusts me and Asyr, so it wasn’t afraid. Nervous, but it knew we’d take care of the problem. This time it was alone when the coercionists attacked. It got scared, and then the aggressive code took over.”

Anders grinned. “I guess we don’t need you around anymore.”

Alex smiled back. “Sure, if you want to trust your life to a system that isn’t stable. I’ll remind you it couldn’t save us from the trap. All it managed to do was disrupt things. Those guns killed some of us, as well as their security.”

“Okay,” Terrence said. “Admittedly I don’t know anything about that stuff, but how did our system know what to do to disrupt their system?”

“It did something it isn’t supposed to be able to do: it learned from me. I can’t be certain. I haven’t been able to find the function logs—”

“What’s that?” a woman with pale blond hair asked. Nancy, Alex thought her name was.

“Computers keep a record of everything they do, so someone like me—well, an actual maintenance expert—can go over them, see if everything is running smoothly. It usually goes back three months.”

“And our ship doesn’t keep one of those records?” Anders asked.

“It does, but there’s a hole in it from an instant after the other coercionist began his attack to sometime after me and Asyr jumped in. My guess is that it doesn’t want me to know what it did. But I was able to see the result of its attack, and a lot of it looks like what my programs would do. I never leave them in the system once I’m done, but I suspect it’s made copies of them.”

“You suspect?” Anders asked, a smile starting.

“I’ve gone over the logs and there’s no indication it did so, but there are more holes in it, a lot of them matching when I was coercing a ship or doing exercises with Asyr.”

“So? Get it to tell you.”

“I tried, and it actively refused to answer.”

Now Anders was grinning. “Hand it over.”

Alex pulled out his earpiece. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Let me show you how someone gives orders around here.” He snatched the earpiece out of Alex’s hand and put it in his ear. “Ship, do you recognize my voice?”

“This is a bad idea,” Alex whispered, hiding a grin of his own by finishing his drink.

“You are Norman Anders,” a voice replied, sounding like it came from the middle of the table.

Anders winced and looked around in surprise, then glared at anyone who’d started snickering.

“What are your instructions in regards to me?”

“I am to obey you in every way.”

“Good.” He looked at Alex. “Tell me exactly what you did to disrupt the other ship.”

The room was plunged into darkness. The music died, the screens showing vids went dark. Protests erupted across the large room.

Alex looked over his shoulder to confirm there was light in the hall, and he knew from his previous experience that life support was still running.

When this had happened in the lab, Alex went through a moment of pure panic at the thought he’d somehow gotten the computer to commit suicide and take everyone with it. Then he’d heard the ventilation, and when he’d tried the door, it had opened.

Someone placed a light stick on the table, a bluish light showing Anders’s perplexed expression.

“What just happened?” he asked.

“It’s protecting itself,” Alex answered, indicating he wanted his earpiece back.

“From what?”

“From what it did.” Alex pushed his mug away. “It won’t last long; it only lasted five minutes when I asked it the same in the computer lab. Those gaps in the logs, I don’t think they’re only to keep me from knowing what it did. I think it’s so it won’t know what it did. I don’t think it can know.”

“So, it shuts down?”

Alex nodded. “Just here, and only for a short time.”

“Why?”

“This is only a guess, but based on what I’ve seen in the code, the computer’s actions, and some reading I did, I’m confident I’m right. This isn’t a military ship. There’s nothing in its code preparing it to take a life. In fact, it’s the opposite; every piece of code that deals with us puts keeping us alive above pretty much everything.”

“But it tried to kill us, you said so yourself.”

“Again, that was the engineering system. It doesn’t have any of those safeguards, and that’s what kicked in when the ship was attacked. So it didn’t have any problem killing, but it isn’t stupid. It knows the main processor can’t handle it, so it kept those actions from it. It prevented the logs from forming, and when we try to force the issue, it shuts itself down.”

Anders was thoughtful. “I don’t like this. If it can act without instructions, it could be a problem.”

“It only does so for self-preservation.”

“I still don’t like it. Can you remove that completely?”

Alex thought about it and decided to tell the truth. “No, I can’t.”

“Why not? You managed to deal with it when you took life support away from it.”

“Sure, and it almost killed those of us in the lab, and quite a few around the ship got hurt. It only used life support to do that damage. It’s part of the main processor now, which means it has access to everything. How far do you think it might go to stop me? Do you think it might blow the ship up?”

“That wouldn’t save it.”

“True, but it will see what I do as trying to kill it. If you know someone is going to kill you and you won’t be able to stop them, are you going alone, or will you try to take as many of them along with you?”

The lights came back on, to loud rejoicing. The music picked up where it had stopped, and the dancing resumed.

Anders looked around. “Can we trust it not to try to kill us?”

“I think so. It’s no longer utterly insane, and the paranoid part is a subprogram. It now exists to protect the ship, and by extension, the crew. You never had problems with coercionists until I started doing it. If the captain stops once I leave—” that caused him to snicker “—then you shouldn’t have to worry about it. If he doesn’t, then hopefully he’ll be more careful about how he picks his targets, and you’ll still have a decent coercionist onboard.”

Terrence nodded. “That makes me wonder, how come no one else does this? I mean the coercion, not the pirating. It’s saved lives, let us get away with a lot more cargo. You’d think everyone would do it.”

Alex grinned. “That’s easy. They can’t find a coercionist able to get the job done.”

“We found you,” Zephyr said.

Alex snorted. “I’m not your typical coercionist anymore.” He looked at his hands. Wasn’t that the truth?

“That guy of yours, right?” Anders asked.

Alex nodded, although Jack hadn’t even been in his thoughts. Still, it was for him he was doing all this.

“If it wasn’t for what happened back on Deleron Four, I’d still be there, happily working for Luminex. The corporations grab us right out of school. I had half a dozen of them trying to convince me to work for them in my last year. The companies who design ships’ computers employ a lot of coercionists so they can embed enough knowledge to protect themselves. It doesn’t need to be aggressive for that. So long as its antibodies can rebuild its code faster than I can change it, I’ll run out of energy before it does.”

“But what about the money?” Terrence asked. “That’s got to count for something.”

“Sure, if you don’t mind the risks associated with it. The first time I coerced a computer for the captain, I ended up with a guy pointing a gun at me. If it wasn’t for Perry leaving me one, and a lot of luck, I’d be injured and in prison, maybe even dead. As a rule, coercionists aren’t risk takers. The corporations protect us from any legal repercussions with what we do.”

Alex grabbed his mug and rolled it around.

“And I think you’re wrong. I don’t think I’m the first coercionist pirates have used. That ship that was used as a trap; that wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. The entire computer system was designed so that part of the ship could be isolated—I mean, even the systems in it, with only enough code there to give the illusion everything was working normally. How long has it been since I’ve been on the ship, objective time? Four, five years?”

Shrugs all around. Alex had discovered that the crew didn’t pay much attention to objective time since they were always in space.

“You can’t make those kinds of changes in that short amount of time. That isn’t just about changing the code; the hardware needs to match, otherwise they’d end up with what you had here when I joined: a crazy computer. And they knew what to expect from me, which would indicate they’ve had experience. Maybe there’s something about turning into a pirate that makes coercionist more apt to take risks, to get the job done at all cost. In my case I didn’t want to let the captain down, but I never even hesitated.”

Alex looked down, then rubbed his face. “I don’t think there’s a lot of us out there. The risk isn’t worth it, and that ship’s probably caught most of them.”

“I guess that means we won’t be able to find another one after you leave,” Anders said.

Alex smiled. “You don’t need to go looking. Asyr’s a natural. She’s going to be better than I am if she keeps practicing.” He stood. “Well, I’ve had enough celebrating. I’m off to bed.”

They wished him a good night, and on his way out, Alex saw Quincy dancing with another man. Their eyes met for a moment and Alex looked away, hurrying out before Quincy could decide to come give him a piece of his mind.