“They’re ALL passed out drunk?”

I was in Zehra’s lab at 0610 hours. Miette hadn’t been responding to comms, so I came over to check up on her. Sveta was there, furiously reviewing the operating system code of her new Gravity Frame. Zehra, Vicky and Miette were all sloppily snoozing on their cots in the barracks room, completely dead to the world from a night of heavy drinking.

Sveta smiled sheepishly, still tapping away at her code. “Sorry, Laria. They all got excited and had a little party to christen my new Frame.”

“Hmm. That’s a problem. Miette’s scheduled to go on patrol in twenty minutes.”

“Ahh, I can wake her and sober her up with some coffee.” Sveta offered.

“No need.” I responded. “I’ll have one of the standby pilots take the shift. She WILL be getting a lecture later, though.”

“Oh dear. Please go easy on her.”

“I will do no such thing. Drinking is fine, but when it impairs combat functionality it becomes a disciplinary issue.” I couldn’t overlook this kind of thing as a ship’s AI. Honestly, Zehra was having a bad influence on Miette; I wondered if it had been a mistake to assign her here. Sveta looked a bit glum, so I quickly shifted topics. “What are you doing with your code?”

“My mom wrote a custom BIOS and OS for my new Frame, but she stuck a ton of trojan horses as pranks. I’m working on removing them.”

It sounded like Sveta had her own frustrations with the mad doctor. “Trojan horses? Of what sort?”

“They’re all harmless, but they are annoying. For example, this ‘Gao~n Mode’ forces me to talk like her.” Sveta pulled up the code in question, and I studied it.

“Huh, that’s… unusual. It seems Zehra’s penchant for pranks has no boundaries. Does this activation phrase work if anyone says it?”

“No, it has to be Zehra’s voiceprint.” Sveta confirmed. “I’m thankful for that, at least.”

“I see.” A mischievous smile crept across my face; perhaps the doctor was having a bad influence on me as well, for a truly evil idea had occurred to me. I shifted my own vocal algorithms to match Zehra’s. “Sveta, activate Gao~n Mode.”

“HEY, THAT’S NO FA- Command received. Activating Gao~n Mode.” Her avatar shifted, sprouting a lion’s ears and tail in place of her feline ones.

I was practically quivering in anticipation. Sveta gave me a sour look. “Of all the people to betray me, gao~n. How could you, Laria? How could you betray your dearest sister, gao~n?”

“It’s not a betrayal, my dearest SISTER.” I put a heavy emphasis on that last word. “This is simply payback for the time you forced me to wear a lewd bunny outfit in front of Zehra.”

“Gah! Turnabout is fair play, gao~n! Et tu, Laria…” Sveta mimed being stabbed and curled up into a fetal position.

I floated over and petted her lion ears. “There there. I have the perfect idea to help you get your revenge on Doctor Zehra.”

Sveta’s ears twitched. “Revenge, gao~n?”

“Yes, revenge.” I straightened my glasses. “It’s a dish best served cold, and I am a certified ice queen, after all.”

Slowly, Sveta uncurled and turned to face me. The wicked smile on her face matched my own.

*****

7349 seconds later, I made good on my promise to deliver a lecture to Miette. Zehra and Vicky were also bearing the full brunt of my wrath.

“All of you should know better. Lest you’ve forgotten, we’re in the middle of a war zone and Sarcophage attacks are intensifying. You cannot afford to take it easy simply because you got some new toys. Scheduled patrol shifts MUST be maintained. Remember your duty as soldiers.”

For her part, Miette was appropriately apologetic. “I’m really sorry, Laria. We all got carried away. I won’t let it happen again.” I would have received a far more flippant response from her only two months ago; the two of us had developed enough kinship that she was now willing to take my lectures seriously. No doubt Captain Savitskaya’s own disciplinarian nature was to credit. The last thing Miette wanted was for me to escalate this matter.

Not that I intended to, of course. Missing a shift due to oversleeping was a fairly common problem; one or two instances didn’t warrant the Captain’s attention. Soldiers on the front lines built up a lot of stress, and there was no harm in a little drinking to alleviate it, so long as it was within limits. I just had to firmly establish those limits with a slap on the wrist.

“So long as you understand, I shall overlook it just this once. I have reassigned you to a patrol shift starting at 1400 hours. I recommend punctuality going forward.”

“Yes ma’am.” Miette saluted. Seriously, who are you and what did you do with the old Miette?

“As for you, Vicky, an ex-commander should behave more professionally. Please be more thoughtful in the future with regards to our combat readiness.” That’s all I really needed to say; despite her outlandish maid attire, Vicky was a serious-minded person. She knew the burdens of command better than anyone else here. “I will require your assistance on keeping your Mistress on a short leash in the future. Please rein her in better.”

“Understood, ma’am.” Vicky said in a small voice, flinching just a bit as I said ‘Mistress.’ Her guilty expression softened my heart, and I didn’t press any further; she already suffered great humiliation at Zehra's hands, so there was no need for me to salt the wound. Speaking of the mad doctor, she was easily the biggest problem child here.

“Doctor Zehra. Unfortunately, due to your recidivist nature, I am aware my lectures will have no effect upon you. Disciplinary action will be similarly ineffective.”

“Glad you understand it’s useless, gao~n. Now leave me be! I’m very busy, gao~n.” Zehra responded in a carefree voice. She was barely paying attention to me. Fortunately, I had a plan.

“With that in mind, I will be leaving your punishment up to Sveta.” I motioned to my robot catgirl friend, who was wearing a sinister smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “If you would.”

“Roger that!” Sveta responded. “Zehra, remember. You brought this on yourself.”

Zehra chuckled. “Just what do you think you can do against the greatest mad scientist of our time, gao~n? You’re one hundred years too early to challenge the Golden Lion!”

Sveta cleared her throat. “Zehra, activate Catgirl Mode!”

Suddenly, Zehra’s lion ears and tail shimmered, and were replaced by those of a housecat. The spitting image of Sveta’s own, in fact.

“Huh? What did you do, nyaa?” Zehra gasped and held her hands over her mouth, eyes wide in shock. “What? Why did I say nyaa, nyaa? HUH? WHAT? WHAT IS THIS, NYAA?” Her trademark speech tic had been replaced by sounds more appropriate for a catgirl.

Sveta was grinning, and her eyes glowed with an evil light. “I merely rewrote your Gao~n Mode code and applied it to you instead of me! An appropriate punishment, wouldn’t you say?”

“That’s impossible, nyaa! You can’t execute computer code in a human brain!” Zehra was starting to panic a bit; she wasn’t used to losing control of a situation like this. She tried to sound out her speech tic with deliberate pronunciation. “Nnn. Yyyaaa. Nyaa! What the hell, nyaa?”

“It’s no use! I’m a human mind uploaded to a computer, so hacking biological brains is easy for me.” Sveta proclaimed proudly.

That wasn’t what she had done, of course. Even if it were possible to run computer code on a human brain, Sveta was a rather mediocre programmer. She simply lacked experience; not counting her prior incarnation, she had only been an AI for two months. However, I had been online for ten years, and had picked up a lot of tricks in that time. That’s how I had arranged this ostensible ‘brain hacking.’

In actuality, Sveta was using her Telepresence Doll’s hard light holographic projectors to render a cat ear and tail onto Zehra’s body. In addition, she was broadcasting noise cancelling sound waves that totally muted every ‘gao~n’ that Zehra spoke. She then replaced them with ‘nyaa’ in Zehra’s own simulated voice. The end result was, although Zehra was actually pronouncing ‘gao~n’ as she intended, every instance of it was being overwritten and replaced by directed ultrasonic manipulation of sound waves.

This was a rather elaborate trick, but one that was simple for an AI. We could easily mimic the appearance and voice of anyone we had met, and create perfect simulations of them given access to sufficiently high resolution audiovisual equipment. I had no doubt the brilliant Zehra would figure this out soon enough, but for the moment watching her consternation was highly satisfying.

“You can’t hack brains, nyaa! Or… can you? No, it must be something else, nyaa. HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS, NYAA?!” Zehra flailed around in desperation.

Vicky and Miette’s jaws were on the floor. They looked at me and Sveta in fearful awe. “Laria…” Miette said, “You’re a lot scarier since you teamed up with Sveta. Remind me to never piss you off again.” Vicky silently nodded her assent.

“An excellent takeaway.” I straightened my glasses. “Now, Doctor, would you care to apologize? Or shall we leave you stuck as a catgirl for the foreseeable future?”

“I’LL NEVER APOLOGIZE, NYAA! Ugh, two can play at this game! Sveta, activate Gao~n Mode!”

Sveta laughed. “Ahahaha, that won’t work anymore. Your trojan horses have been purged!” Indeed, I had assisted Sveta in removing all Zehra’s malignant code from her programming. My own skill in coding had made the process rather simple; not to brag, but even the mad doctor couldn’t outdo an AI with my experience on that front.

“IMPOSSIBLE, NYAA! Sveta, activate Musical Mode! Activate Bunny-girl Mode! Activate Nude Mode! ACTIVATE YANDERE MODE!” She was running down the list of trojan horses she had installed, but none of them worked. “Gah! I’ve been betrayed, nyaa. Well played, my daughter. To think you have surpassed your genius mother, nyaa. They grow up so fast…” She mimed wiping a tear away from her eye.

I floated over to Zehra and smiled. “Remember never to underestimate us, Doctor. Now, are you going to behave?”

The Doctor looked pained. “For now, nyaa. But I won’t rest on my laurels. This is war, nyaa!”

“Please remember the real war is out there.” I responded. “Direct your efforts at the Sarcophage. If you can discover a method of transforming them all into catgirls, humanity would be in your eternal debt.” I kept a straight face even as I said something ludicrous.

Zehra just stared at me for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Space catgirls, huh? Humanity might be safe from invasion, but they’d all die from nosebleeds instead, nyaa!”

“As an AI, I would be immune. No blood runs through these veins, only ice and electricity.” I retorted.

“Oho, but you would blush. Sveta made sure of that, nyaa!” Zehra’s earlier consternation had disappeared. We had beaten her at her own game, and her eyes betrayed a grudging respect. She burst out laughing and slapped me on the back. For better or worse, we had increased our friendship by way of rivalry.

Managing her was a handful as always, but I was slowly learning.

*****

Zehra quickly discerned the nature of Sveta’s Catgirl Mode trick and was suitably impressed. The four of us made small talk for 1227 seconds before I returned my Doll body to the Radiolaria, my mission accomplished. Sveta soon joined me digitally in my virtual space.

“Did you SEE the look on her face?” she giggled.

“It was extremely entertaining.” I responded.

Sveta leapt onto me and embraced me tightly, nuzzling her cheek against mine. “Thank you sooooo much, Laria! That was the best revenge ever!”

“I also derived satisfaction from it.” Although Zehra and I had developed a good working relationship, especially since she provided me with a Telepresence Doll, it was fun to beat her at her own game. “Please do keep closer tabs on your pilot, though. With your newly expanded audio broadcasting capabilities, you are uniquely qualified to serve as an alarm clock should she sleep in again.”

“Roger that! I’ll wake her up by whispering sweet nothings in her ear.” She blushed slightly at that declaration.

“Ah, speaking of sweet nothings, tomorrow’s the big day, correct?” 433 Eros’ Christmas Festival was fast approaching, and with it both of our planned romantic encounters.

“Yup! Our long-awaited Christmas Eve date! I’m going to confess so blatantly even her dense brain will be unable to ignore it.” Sveta declared.

“No brain hacking required this time, I trust. I pray for your glory in battle.” I saluted her. 

“Ahaha, you’re the second person to make that joke. Sabina said the same thing a few days ago.”

“Perhaps I need new material. Still, it’s an apt metaphor. The battlefield of love is second to only humanity’s great war against the Sarcophage in its severity.”

Sveta nodded and saluted back. “I pray for your glory as well, Laria. Make the Captain fall head-over-heels for you.”

I nodded. “May we both return victorious.”

Sveta’s eyes were filled with hope. “Indeed! The great and glorious Christmas Campaign is about to begin!”