Brinus was up early to brush his teeth with Simmie. Yesterday’s events left him unable to sleep. He was awake before Simmie at 4 a.m. Brinus rinsed out his mouth and spat into the sink. Brewing a cup of coffee, he sat on the countertop with the medical vape in his mouth and ankles crossed.
Simmie joined Brinus moments later. “Are you going to tell me what is on your mind, or are you going to sit there and smoke?”
“Couldn’t sleep either?” Brinus looked at Simmie and winked.
Simmie rolled his eyes as he replicated a cup of coffee. “How could I? You were tossing and turning all night. Next time you have combat stress, sleep on the couch or talk with me about it.”
“You know I ain’t much of a talker.” He said, staring into the mirror paneling.
Simmie sighed, taking the vaporizer device out of Brinus’s mouth and taking a deep drag. “Talk about it with Calnori or that Cassie person you met yesterday. You see her today, don’t you?”
“All sessions with my therapist have been canceled during the war games. I see Cassie after breakfast.”
“I have to do a 24-hour shift today, so I need to get ready. I won’t be in the mood for stress sex tomorrow.”
After taking a second drag, Simmie put the device back into Brinus’s mouth. He then gave him a light peck on the cheek after crushing his quarter-smoked cigarette in the ashtray.
“I’m not sure if I like using a vaporizer. It doesn’t satisfy me the same way smoking does. See ya tomorrow.”
Brinus slapped Simmie on the ass as he Jumped down.
****
Brinus stirred his coffee finger using magic while spinning a metal spoon in his coffee twenty minutes later. He was in the break room of the simulation room. Cassie came into the room and saw Brinus.
She replicated her coffee and got a sandwich from the vending machine. She sat across from Brinus and began eating. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“The battle scenario reminded me of the Battle of the Caliver System.”
“I heard a lot of people died in that battle.” She crossed her ankles and spoke in a hushed voice.
Brinus shifted in his and looked into his coffee. He said in a higher voice than normal, “About a third of the fleet was lost. Most of the students from the academy were killed or wounded.”
Cassie took a sip of her coffee. “What was the battle like?”
“I don’t know how to describe it. I just focused on my station and did my duty.”
“What is it like to be in combat?”
Brinus flashed his teeth in a fake smile that didn’t quite go to his eyes. “I enjoy the adrenaline.” Brinus lost focus for a second. The coffee then boiled and flashed over in a cloud of superheated steam. “The rush, the focus, the kill.”
Cassie leaned forward, “seems you don’t enjoy war as much as you say you do.”
Brinus pointed his finger at the mug, which melted into a clay blob. “Why are you awake?”
“Same reason you are.”
Brinus chuckled and then said, “Third pirate wars?”
Cassie shook her head. “No. I lived on Earth before the invasion of the Confederacy.”
Brinus pointed his finger at the blob of molten clay and it reformed into a duck. “I think we’re both the only combat veterans.”
“Knautz, too. Did you hear what happened in his homeworld? The First Task Force stepped in to stop the First Federation Junta from glassing the planet.”
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Brinus began tapping his vape pen on the table. “What is it like to see society fall apart?”
Cassie said with a stiff smile and perfect body posture. “Something you hope you never have to experience.”
“I heard a lot of stories about Earth growing up.”
Cassie took a sip of her coffee with her pinky sticking out. “Like what?”
“Like how street gangs ruled the world by 2050 and a quarter of the world’s population died. That there was no electricity and most of the water on the planet was undrinkable, so it had to be heavily processed.”
Cassie made a wide, toothy grin. “Some things cannot be simulated.”
“True that.”
Brinus and Cassie tapped their coffee mugs together after Brinus remade his duck it to a coffee mug.
***
Brinus reported to his pod at 2 p.m. He was dressed in skateboard shoes, blue jeans, and a black hoodie. He had his triquarter in his pocket as the downtown area materialized in the simulation pod. Cassie explained their mission before coming in. They were to extract a high-value asset from Federation Capital.
Brinus Looked at Cassie. “I will go over to the coffee shop down the street and hack into the Civic AI.”
Sam laughed, Knautz snickered, and Cassie rolled her eyes. She said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Just stick to the plan.”
Knautz screeched like a parrot, “You are amazing; you need to brag more.”
“Even Knautz is saying you’re full of shit,” laughed Sam
Brinus went over to the coffee shop. He would show them. Cassie and the other teammates looked at each other. “All we can do is wait for the asset. Let’s hope Brinus sticks to the plan.”
Brinus pulled out his tricorder when he went to the coffee shop. After purchasing a cup of coffee and a pastry, he began writing a script to mimic passwords and bypass four-factor authentication. It took twenty minutes.
He then logged onto the city website and entered the code. After some hacker magic using his program, he managed to gain access to the website server. He jumped from the website server using a secondary TTRP 18 port using a 411-10 security protocol. Then, he found his way into the civic AI code by using the admin password password1234. All of this took an hour.
He reached for his medical vape, but the cashier shook her head. “No smoking. This is the Federation, not the Confederacy.”
Brinus had already gone an hour and twenty minutes without his medication, so he was a bit edgy. Whatever. He decided to have a little fun if he couldn’t smoke. The first thing he noticed looking at the code was that District A had a high risk of rioting. He knew federation police escalated situations. Sure. Why not? He dispatched two riot police units to that neighborhood. Next, he shut off power, water, sewage, and internet to all government buildings except schools, fire stations, and hospitals. He wasn’t a total asshole.
By now, blue team was aware that something weird was going on with the civic AI. A riot broke out in District A, requiring half of the police force to be dispatched, and around the same time, they lost communications with all of their government buildings.
The blue team leader looked at his teammate. “What the fuck is going on?”
“It must be that human bitch!”
“Which one?”
“The one that kicked our ass yesterday!”
Suddenly, the power cut out, and the internet died at the city emergency coordination center.
“We’re under attack!!!”
In the chaos that broke out from the cyber attack with scared citizens taking to the streets and rioting. Red team managed to break into the asset’s apartment.
“We’re with the Confederacy. We are here to get you out of the city!”
“Thank the temple spirits! They found me last night!”
Cassie looked the NPC in the eye. “You don’t have time to pack. We need to go. Now!”
While Blue Team ran circles trying to figure out the source of the cyber attack, the sound of blaster fire could be heard in the street. A rock flew through the window and landed at the NPC’s feet. There were screaming crowds and people throwing Molotov cocktails and fireworks at police.
“I heard someone hacked the Civic AI! How is that possible?”
“We need to go. Get your wife and get out. We don’t have time to pack clothes.”
The group made their way through the streets. Brinus watched his team through the cameras, and whenever a cop asked them for IDs, he would send a sonic pulse through their radio that would leave them disabled for an hour. Without government control of the city, Blue Team had no idea that the target was almost at the extraction point.
As a last fuck you to a society that was as evil as the Federation, he put in twenty lines of code that shut off power, water, sewage, internet, comms, and trash collection all over the city except for hospitals and schools and then left the cafe as his team made it close.
The team made its way to the rendezvous point, and the simulation terminated.
Brinus sat in his simulation pod. He took a few draws from his vape in order to calm down as his hands shook. After filling his pod with vapor he used a feedback technique he learned in therapy to lower his heart rate. Coming out of the pod, Cassie looked shell-shocked and quickly ran out of the room after seeing him. She had a wide-eyed, crazy look on her face. The other midshipmen were silent and stunned.
Sam put his hand on Brinus’s shoulder. “Cassie will need time to recover. What you did though? How the hell did you hack a civic AI?”
“It wasn’t easy. It took an hour and a Half.”
Brinus got a ping on his tirquarter. The commandant wanted him now with the captain.
***
Brinus was with the captain and the commandant. They stared at each other for a while, until the captain spoke.
“Do you know why we host these war games?”
Brinus shook his head.
Captain Plato said, sitting at attention, “It is to assess the cadet’s abilities—Cassie’s leadership ability, your computer and mechanical skills—and we want you to sign up for the advanced cyber security track of the warp core engineering major.” The captain flicked his tail and twitched his whiskers. “Honestly, if you weren’t so rebellious, we would ship you to special ops training tonight.”
“Can I refuse?”
The commandant shifted his legs and leaned over the table. “It isn’t a choice. Do you know how many students can hack a Civic AI in under two hours?”
Brinus remained quiet, standing at attention.
“Three students. We are going to change your major for you. Dismissed Midshipman.”
“Yes, sir!” Brinus saluted and left the room.
He went into a janitorial closet by typing the default passcode for command ships into the door. After spending a few minutes doing deep breathing exercises, he learned in therapy the urge to smoke left him. He got up from the floor and opened the door. And a janitor was waiting outside.
Captain Plato was also outside the closet. “I wanted to deliver your score personally. Your team made a 95, and the blue team made an 89. I also wanted to deliver your schedule for the next semester personally.”
The captain handed Brinus a sheet of paper. He looked over the document. He was signed up for Sentient AI Programming, Warp Bubble Calculus III, IT Neural Network Systems 101, and Civic AI Systems 101.
Well, it wasn’t what he wanted, but he would make the best of his situation.