“You haven't been flying long?”
“A couple of years.”
“I'm surprised, you're really good. At first I didn't think you could hack it but you learned the ins and outs faster than I did and you listen to your navigator.”
“Thank you, and why wouldn't I?” she shrugged. “You're always calm and thinking ahead. Have you piloted the Triton before?”
“Only briefly. The profile took a lot of getting used to, it's a wide ship. I prefer navigation. I can't tell you exactly why.” His pleasant demeanour changed suddenly as he grabbed her arm in a vice like grip. Larry's eyes went wide, his pupils dilated visibly, and he began to choke.
“Captain!” Ashley called out.
He started falling out of his chair and Ashley tried to catch him, to hold him up.
Captain Valance and Alice were there an instant later. “Let him go,” Alice said calmly but firmly. They pulled him down to the floor and his body went limp.
“He's stopped breathing,” Captain Valance said as he took a medical scan. “Get that command and control unit off him. It injected him with a lethal dose of-” he took a moment to read the scan and shook his head; “something.”
Alice tried to pull it off, but the thin arm computing unit held fast. “There's an AI running on this thing. I don't know what it's doing.”
Ashley looked on helplessly as the colour started to drain out of her new found friend's face. His mouth was hanging open, his eyes stared off into nothing and she prayed the Captain could do something.
Alice got the control unit off his arm with a loud click. “Got it. The AI was holding it closed.”
Jake injected the navigator right away with his own arm unit then took out another cylinder and pressed it against the young man's throat firmly. “Cynthia! Send an order ship wide for everyone with an artificial intelligence to remove their command and control units then delete the AI.”
She took her own pair off then made the ship wide announcement.
Captain Valance did the same, pulling his large black command unit off before looking back to Larry.
The Navigator gasped, then began to vomit. Jake rolled him onto his side while Alice took another medical scan. “The nanos and chemical cocktail you gave him countered the toxins and are clearing them out.”
Ashley's eyes were locked on the scene before her. Larry curled into the fetal position as he retched and tried to breathe at the same time. Alice was comforting him, but he looked like he was in a desperate struggle to breathe between heaves. He coughed and gagged several more times, producing a brown and green sludge before the retching came to a stop. He laid there, catching his breath.
“You'll be fine. Your artificial intelligence tried to kill you.”
“It was just an organizer program with a base personality over top,” he said, still out of breath.
“There was no security installed?” Captain Valance asked.
“No, it wasn't that important.”
“Good, let's hope that we caught the problem in time. If the rest of the people who transferred AI's to their C and C units had security installed, they might get lucky.”
Captain Valance picked up his own arm unit. “Not by much, my AI was secure and it's already looking erratic,” he entered his security code and deleted it.
“If it's all the same Captain, I don't think I'll put my unit back on. Can I get another with just the base software?” Larry asked, finally catching his breath and wiping his mouth with a handkerchief from his thigh pocket.
“No problem,” Jake smiled back at him. His attention was drawn to the pile of throw up beside the young man and a sinking feeling came over him. He looked to the security station where a small, older fellow stood watch. “Shut down all the maintenance and cleaning bots. Everything that could have an AI.”
“Aye sir,” He replied. “Wait, they're already shut down.”
“Chief Grady to the Bridge. I shut them down as soon as someone down here collapsed. We lost three people.”
“I'm sorry Chief, take them to medical in case we can do something.”
“That's not likely. They were injected with hydrofluoric acid and blood thinners. It's like their AI's were networked and all came up with the same plan.”
“Do you have any recommendations Chief?”
“I'd have all the arm units with AI's tossed into recyclers. Even if they were deleted. Other than that you've done exactly what I would've.”
“Thank you Liam, I'm sorry about your men.”
“Nothing we could have done. Chief Grady out.”
Ashley Lamport
The two hours following the incident on the bridge were filled with bad news. They had lost forty seven people to attacks from the artificial intelligence programs many crewmembers trusted to help them through their every day lives. Over three hundred had been injured. The infirmary was full past brimming, and Alice had gone to help however she could. When she was an artificial intelligence herself she possessed a complete medical treatment database and a great deal of that knowledge had survived the transfer. It surprised even her how quickly it came back to her.
Morale on the ship was low, and to the crew's relief, only a minimum watch was required during hyperspace travel. Security was finally under control, and that made everything easier. If someone didn't know where they were supposed to be or got lost a soldier was always nearby to help them find their way. The unexplored sections of the ship were closed off and the entrances were all locked down or had guards standing watch.
Ashley changed into a light blue vacsuit with transparent arms and midriff after getting a new command and control unit from the materializer. She didn't have an AI installed in her last one, but it made her feel better to get a new unit anyway. Besides, the newer versions could make vacsuits look like practically anything and she was eager to give it a try. Anything to brighten her day after what she'd seen on the planet and the incident on the bridge.
Her new quarters were incredible. She looked around while putting on her gun belt. Everything was coloured a deep shade of red except the carpet, which was midnight black. There was a thickly padded seat along one wall, a two dimensional display coating the wall behind it gave the illusion of a long window. By pressing a button the floor would part and up would come the silver table with six chairs around it. A holographic projector somewhere, she hadn't found it yet, could entertain her with full height programs anywhere she wanted in her quarters whether she was sitting on the smaller seat closer to the door, in the soft queen sized bed that adjusted to the needs of her body, or in the slightly smaller space that was left unfurnished except for two end tables that had been left stacked there.
I've seen apartments I couldn't dream of that weren't this nice. I hope they didn't assign me here by mistake. These look more like Captain's quarters.
She adjusted her gun belt and took an extra data chip, small makeup kit and hair tie from a floor to ceiling trinket shelf beside the door and dropped them into a pouch on her belt. Her new vacsuit didn't have pockets, she had forgotten them until the last minute.
“Dim lights to three hundred lumens please,” she said to the computer, forgetting the artificial intelligence had been removed and they hadn't put in a new voice activated system yet. She adjusted them with the control by the door then set out.
Her quarters were less than fifty meters from the main entrance to the bridge. She wanted to move into a smaller compartment in the same berth as the deck crew, near where fighter pilots would bunk up, but Stephanie's security department assigned her to the command deck quarters. Instead of arguing she thought she'd take a look. Good thing too. If those really are my quarters I really do want to live here. I'm sure I won't be the only one, she thought to herself as she stepped into the express lift. Another crewman looked her up and down as she entered her destination. She gave him a little smile and looked back to the lift doors. His hair was tied into a ponytail, and his grey vacsuit had Triton printed over his left pectoral. It marked him as a new crew member, probably part of the gunnery team on his way back to the gunnery deck.