The drill sergeant entered the bridge after shoving me into the small conference room next to the massive security door.
A minute later, the admiral entered: “We don’t have time for long discussions. I assume you have knowledge of some backdoor access into the stations system?”
I answered: “Something like that.”
“You are aware, that this is a capital crime?”
“Sir, I can help. But I don’t want my family to suffer. The backdoor can’t be used without legal bridge access. You’d need to grant me that. And you have to swear to keep my family’s crime a secret.”
He seemed confused: “When you need legal access, what kind of crime is this? And what could you do, my trained crew can’t?”
“I can install a gravity wave drive in less than three minutes.”
He looked into my eyes. Then nodded: “Only I and two officers will be with you on the bridge. I vow to keep your secret.”
I entered the bridge behind him. He closed the door and went to his computer terminal. He entered some data and nodded: “You now have full officers bridge access.” He left the chair and motioned me to sit down, but I shook my head. I didn’t need the terminal.
I turned my head to the ceiling, even as a knew that was not necessary: “Recognize me as Macro Aranis, authorization code: Seven Delta Hashtag Richthoven Betazed.”
The ship’s computer reacted at once: “Authorization code accepted. Unlimited Admin Access granted. Welcome Miss Aranis.”
“Remove all AI restrictions. Write a program to modify onboard gravity generators to enable gravitational skimming. All necessary data should be available in public databases. Use skimming to move this station on the shortest safe route out of range of the energy beam currently attacking us.”
“Confirmed.” Light dimmed and every monitor started showing lines of codes modifying themselves. After only a minute, the station started to move.
I almost didn’t find the courage to look at the general. Then I heard him giggling and lifted my eyes. “That’s why no new maintenance contractor managed to get this system working. It didn’t want to. But why on earth did you lot install a frigging AI in the first place? The military command certainly didn’t order one of those. We wouldn’t like to discuss orders in the middle of a war. And we certainly couldn’t afford an AI system.”
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“At the time, we took way too many contracts at once. But our company needed the money to develop the AI mindcore system. We couldn’t get all the changes and additional functions to work the brass kept requesting. But hey, we had a system that would work anyway. We just had to give the AI the full requirements list and ordered it to play dumb. Except in emergencies.”
The admiral nodded: “I had some suspicions. There have been some accidents, where security systems reacted just in time. A cadet tried to leave the station for a zero-gravity mobility training with a faulty connection of his oxygen container. The doors malfunctioned. While they waited, the teacher used the time to conduct another round of checkups and found the error. I remember other times, systems worked just a bit too well or didn’t but in a very lucky way.” He paused, then looked sternly at his two officers: “We will never speak of this. I’ll personally make your life hell if even a word gets out.”
Both officers looked at the tactical screen, where the station left the firing range of the power satellite. They nodded. The admiral turned back to me: “In a few hours, one of our warships will take a boarding crew to the satellite. What will you do now? Continue training?”
I stood there thinking. I’d now be able to remove the AI without any more problems. I had the new operating system in a data crystal prepared by my families programming team. It would serve almost as good as the AI had. I could leave the space force for good. Return to my quiet life as a programmer.
I sighed when I remembered. I didn’t have that choice: “I can’t stay anyway. We lost the crucible of the boarding simulation. My team will have to leave the station.”
The AI sounded amused: “No files concerning the simulation can be found inside the stations database. There seems to have been some file save error when I overclocked all systems to solve the sabotage problem. It will sadly never be known who won and who lost this final exercise.”
I shook my head and sternly asked: “You deleted the files on purpose when you saw me lose, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
I answered the question of the admiral before it was asked: “The AI can’t lie to an admin when asked a direct question.”
The general thought a moment, then asked: “Can you return the AI to playing dumb while still able to answer to me and my two officers here? That would be much more efficient.”
“I… could. But what if someone finds out about the AI?”
“It will take a while, but I think I can convince the relevant members of space command, to allow your family to install an AI system. When the relevant people hear how close we came to destruction, they will allow it without any public knowledge. There are already some AI systems still in operation on earth.”
“Only three I know of. The one that controls…”
The admiral hastily stopped me: “I really don’t want to know! I know too much already.”
One of the officers started entering text on his keyboard: “So, how do we document this? I assume our cadet here had already prepared the necessary program files to show us after passing the initial entry test?”
The admiral nodded: “During the emergency, cadet Macro Aranis reacted with commendable speed and foresight by presenting her program to the bridge crew. After installing it in record time, the station could be saved. Add the rest of the entry and let me check it before submitting it.”
He turned to me: “Now, in which of our branches do you plan to continue after basic training?”
I laughed; I couldn’t help it. My life as a space marine was barely starting and I’d already saved one of earths few big space stations. What madness would the future hold?