You could practically cut the tension with a knife. Jacob and the Astryx soldiers stared at each other, waiting. The only one who didn’t seem unbothered by the quiet standoff was Xing’che. She sat quietly behind the transparent door of her cell, a slight smile on her face.
Jacob assumed her amusement stemmed from the fact that the Astryx government was doing a far better job of showing him its heavy-handed methods than anything she could have said to him. It annoyed him that he was starting to come around to her point of view.
His focus was split as a cart floated into the core chamber, guided by two more soldiers. On the cart were a pair of crates. Jacob already knew what was inside them thanks to his spying, but he still tensed up when they opened one of the crates and pulled out the AI reprogrammer.
It still amazed Jacob at how unassuming the device was. It had two thick handles integrated into the bulky polycarbonate frame, which sat to either side of a large bulge in the center that housed the AI kernel’s data storage. On the other side were three long metal spikes that slotted into the terminal and allowed the transfer to take place.
Jacob had recreated the interface portion of the device after getting his hands on the eiraxin’s copy, thinking that was the way to transfer himself from the AI core, but it didn’t work. He also tried transferring some of his mind into the device, but that failed as well. Either it just didn’t have the storage space, or the storage was designed to only hold AI kernels. Probably both if he had to guess.
The technician placed the device on the core interface and pushed it in. Jacob held his breath as he monitored the network activity. The connection he had set up instantly hit max capacity as the AI kernel transferred across it and into the waiting reprogrammer on the other end.
Melody’s entire hull was still in vacuum, so Jacob couldn’t hear what the soldiers were saying, but he could see them tense as the kernel took far longer than it should have to transfer into the core.
Eventually, the indicator on the device showed that all of the kernel had been transferred over, and the soldier at the console gave a curt nod. He checked the device that he set up and found that it had indeed transferred over properly.
Jacob assumed that was that, but something must have changed. Not only did the soldiers keeping him company stiffen, but the ones inside the core room shifted uneasily. A moment later, the two who had pushed the grav cart into the room pulled out a set of tools and started taking apart the terminal.
Jacob paled inside his virtual space. It wouldn’t take them long to discover his modifications and restore the connection to the core. All he could do was watch.
The terminal cover was removed, and one of the soldiers pointed to the data cable running into the terminal and through the floor. The commander said something to him, and the man nodded, reaching inside the cabinet and yanking out the connection.
Jacob felt it disappear from the network. He doubted they would go searching for where the far end of that connection led in order to recover the AI kernel, but it didn’t matter. The last box on the grav cart was opened, and a second AI reprogrammer was pulled out.
The soldier digging around in the cabinet quickly found the original connection, because Jacob had been too afraid to destroy anything connected to the core, and plugged it back in. The moment the second reprogrammer was rammed into the socket, Jacob’s mind felt like it was on fire.
He could just destroy the AI kernel as he did with the eiraxin one, but they had known the moment the program had failed, so he racked his brain to come up with a plan as the wormy black tendrils of the AI sought purchase inside the core.
With no other option, he opened a data connection to one of the data centers aboard the station. The AI instantly detected the connection, and the black tendrils slithered their way across his secured storage, but the moment they touched the connection, they flinched back.
It seemed even unpacked, the AI was smart enough to know it couldn’t survive inside the data cubes on the other end. That was too bad, because it couldn’t stay here.
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Jacob wrapped his anger around the kernel like a net and dragged the squirming thing toward the connection. It fought him every inch of the way, trying to shove its black tentacles into any bit of storage it could find, but there was none.
With a final grunt of effort, Jacob finally forced the mass of data into the connection. As soon as it touched the imaginary portal, it was sucked the rest of the way through. Jacob thought he had successfully moved an AI into normal data cubes, but a moment later, he got an automated alert from the station.
Explosion in Data Center 3. Fire suppression units activated. Requesting emergency resources.’
Another message followed up almost immediately.
Data cascade failure initiated.
Jacob had been afraid that might happen ever since he first heard about the Alliance’s data lock. That was why he had been disconnecting the compromised data centers from the network and replacing them with newly produced data cubes as they became available. While he had gotten around to disconnecting about three-quarters of those compromised data centers, he had nowhere near enough materials to replace all of them anytime soon. The station was just too massive, so Jacob had focused on the ones running important systems.
It was a good thing he had, because with the AI down for a self-diagnostic, it was those systems keeping everything operational.
He breathed a sigh of relief, then went to find which data center had exploded.
It didn’t take Jacob long to find the camera feed for that section. Black smoke was obscuring most of the view, but the sensors inside the room indicated the fire had been put out by the suppression systems.
If the Astryx forces had noticed something off, they didn’t show any indication of it. In fact, the soldiers in the core room seemed happy with the results. The two devices were packed away in their crates, but before they could leave, the commander held out a hand to stop them.
“What now?” Jacob groaned from his apartment.
Not being able to listen in on their communications was driving him crazy. One of the soldiers nodded, then returned to the console, where it started entering commands.
Jacob knew he was entering commands because the damn AI subroutines were badgering him to respond. He resisted the urge because he didn’t want the Judicator or the Astryx forces to think they had just secured themselves a planetary conditioning vessel. He wanted them to think the AI was entirely dead, which it was.
He could see the soldier at the terminal growing frustrated and gesturing to his commander. Something else was said, and the soldier at the terminal looked like he had bitten into a lemon. The man gave a resigned nod, and the commander twirled his arm before slashing it toward the open door.
The rest of the soldiers, including the second one who had helped bring the cart, quickly filed out of the room, leaving the lone soldier at the terminal along with one combat drone, grav cart, and the primed void bomb.
Jacob really didn’t like what was going on.
Once the rest of the group exited the room, the drone blocking the door moved aside, and they closed the core chamber. The Astryx soldier muttered something inside his helmet as he pried open yet another box on the grav cart. In it were unknown cylinders. With deft hands, the man picked one up, twisted the top, and threw it aside. Gas started spewing from the top, sending the little canister zipping across the room to slam into the wall.
The soldier barely ducked its return trip before managing to grab it on the third bounce. He shoved it face up in the box, then repeated the process for the rest of the canisters. It didn’t take long for the sensors inside the core chamber to pick up the rising oxygen levels in the room. They must have been emergency oxygen tanks for their suits.
Once the technician saw that it was safe, he opened his helmet and said a few phrases to test the system’s responses.
“Voice check?”
“Successful,” an emotionless tone responded.
“Core data integrity check?”
“Core is fully functional, protected,” the same computer voice responded.
“It’s the same configuration responses we got from the terminal,” the soldier grumbled.
Oh, so that’s what they had been doing. They were using the diagnostic programs to check the AI.
“AI, respond.”
Silence greeted the man’s request.
The technician tried hundreds of different commands over the next ten minutes to get the AI to respond, but nothing he did worked. Jacob almost felt sorry for him. Almost. What he needed to do was speed things along.
“The AI is dead, has been for months,” he said through the speaker system inside the core chamber.
The technician flinched slightly at Jacob’s interruption and glanced over at the void bomb, which made Jacob a bit nervous.
“What is wrong with the core, and what did you do to the AI kernels?” the technician demanded. “The reprogrammer showed no available storage, but the terminal and diagnostic commands say otherwise.”
“I didn’t do anything to the core. The AI did that before the eiraxins killed it. As for the kernels, no clue. It’s not like I’m in control of the ship’s systems.” Jacob chose to lie about the latter, but it wasn’t like the technician could prove otherwise.
The technician didn’t seem to believe him as he ran through another ten minutes of tests before he finally gave up and decided the diagnostic programs were indeed telling the truth.
After that, it was essentially a reverse of their arrival, only they left the damn bomb.
Jacob couldn’t figure out why until he saw the shuttle approaching from one of the larger Astryx vessels.
It looked like Judicator Ghrroaqq finally wanted to talk in person, but he must still have some reservations about the ship AI.