USD: Thirty-Eight hours since hostile fleet incursion.

Location: Meltisar System, MNS Thea’s Hackjob, CIC

Thea watched the station’s standard watch crew march onto the waiting troop transports for disembarking. They didn’t know she was watching, or that she knew about their deception.

If she had been able to trust them, then it would have been much better to have the crew on board for the upcoming action. As it was, she could neither trust the admiral nor the crew that had been working under him, even if she was sure that not all of them had been involved.

She wasn’t sure how Tia or Ale—Nameless hadn’t noticed the issues, maybe they had just been too busy with other things.

Ertan knew they had plenty of problems.

It was clear the anti-NAI faction still had deep tendrils inside Meltisar’s navy, even if their actions had been anything but overt. It made for an annoying computronic drain when considering each and every person’s own views and allegiances…hidden or otherwise.

Thea shook her head. As she started to turn away from the observation view, her comms crackled to life.

“Thea, the crew’s been escorted off the ship. Are you sure you want to get rid of the engineering department, too? There aren’t enough men on the Alacrity to make up for them, even if you use them just for engineering!” Elis chimed in.

“That’s right. Clear them out. We’ll operate on a skeleton crew.” Thea replied. She’d make up for the lack herself. It took five minutes to walk to the computronics cluster.

She’d already maxed out the number of working drones she was comfortable running. The upgrade to Chi had increased her capacity and abilities profoundly, but there were already a million distinct sub-units to control. It was worse than running a customs station where at least the maintenance and sub-routines were handled by a human crew overseeing dumb GAIs.

Thea bit her lip. She needed help. While it was possible that she’d get used to going more vertical, she needed a horizontal expansion to help her immediately.

Heck, just handing off the strain from the wormhole drive would free up a quarter of her focus.

The only problem was that they had all agreed to not create any new subcores. Yet… Big Blue declined to make rules or directives. So it was more like guidelines, right?

Guidelines were guidelines exactly for this sort of situation.

And if she was going to break the guidelines, she should do it all at once so it wouldn’t be a repeat thing, right?

Never mind that she could call Tia and possibly get permission in less than thirty minutes—Big Blue needed her in a hurry, and there was always the chance that the princess would argue against it, wasting time.

A smile creeped onto Thea’s lips. It was a good thing for the two girls that they’d picked her up to help them.

The moonlet’s primary computronics chamber was buried deep in the center of the facility, right beside the gravitational center where the wormhole drive was located. Three rows of twenty modules lined out in front of her. Smaller clusters were spread out across the vehicle to provide enhanced avatar range and redundancy, but she only needed three modules.

“Beta-02RY, Beta-3NG1, Delta-00NY,” Thea whispered. She’d never created a sub-core before, never had thought that she’d be in a position to do so, and never had given it much thought.

There were no avatars available for them, and probably wouldn’t be for some time, but that didn’t stop her from picturing how each one of them looked, and that information was transferred into their new computronics. There was a small, tiny sense of loss as she lost control of the three individual computronic modules for a quick second.

Then they authenticated and connected and they were part of her once again…a separate, distinct entity, but still…hers.

There was a silence only punctured by the climate control in the server room as the three new NAIs listened, not just for her voice but to her thoughts, needs, and plans for them… and most importantly, what they all needed to do in order to bring the moonlet online.

“Get started. Let’s see if we can be the ETA,” Thea said out loud. She handed off control of nearly all the engineering drones and worker units to Engi. There was a need to self-multiply the units, but that would come after getting Wormy’s machinery fully operational. It had been installed, but never fully brought online, which meant there were inevitable kinks and bugs in the system.

Heading back to the CIC, Thea could feel the flurry of activity erupting throughout the installation. The newly formed sub-cores each took up their own share of the workload. Delta organizing and giving orders while Engi controlled the numerous drone units. Wormy focused on the moonlet’s primary piece of equipment: the Wormhole Drive.

Thea could sense their individual presences as they started to sift through the data and followed her directive.

Sitting down on the station command dais, a frown appeared on her face. It had been so incredibly simple; easy even. Between the three of them—Alex, Tia, and herself—they could put into place hundreds, or even thousands of new NAIs in the span of a few days. It would enable them to do so much more than before, without the risk of the humans dismantling or derailing everything.

The side door to the command center opened, and Elis stepped through still in her MK2 Space Operations battle armor.

A guilty feeling washed over Thea. Maybe she should reframe her earlier thought. ‘Without the risk of untrustworthy humans dismantling or derailing everything,’ she mentally corrected.

“What’s the word?” Elis asked as she came to stand by the command seat.

“I’ve put into operation three new sub-cores to manage the moonlet. It will reduce the time needed to become operational,” Thea stated matter-of-factly.

Elis raised an eyebrow. “I was there for the discussion about not making more NAIs.”

Thea crossed her arms and looked away. “It will cut time off how long before we are ready. Plus, getting the base online by myself was going to be… hard.”

“Are you sure you weren’t just being lazy?” Elis asked flippantly.

Thea tensed up before frowning at the other woman. “I was not—”

Elis interrupted her by putting a hand on her shoulder and leaning in to examine the main screen. “Relax. I’m sure you did what was needed. Just don’t expect me to help you when you get chewed out by Tia…or Alex.”

Thea let out a tense breath, glancing at Elis out of the side of her eye. If someone was going to be angry, she had thought it would be the Federation marine. Even if…

Her shoulders relaxed slightly and Thea gestured to the screen Elis was looking at, flipping it to the operational view to show the current progress on the station. “The Alacrity will be docking in the primary bay. We’ll be taking it with us as a backup. Just in case things start to fall apart.”

Elis shook her head. “You better not let that happen. I don’t think we can afford to let things fall apart. Alex needs our help.”

Thea nodded. “Before the full wormhole is open, we’ll be testing a small one for information transfer to get an update on the enemy fleet from the Aegis. Then we’ll open a line for the 6th fleet come out behind them.”

“I don’t know why we are taking the moonlet with them. With the only ship able to open a wormhole, and with the ability to facilitate real-time long-range communications, I think we should sit back here, far away from the enemy,” Elis commented.

Thea shook her head. “I know, but we will be sending the entire 6th fleet through. We will need to be on site to send chasers down for any ships that escape the fight,” she explained.

Elis sighed, her gaze fixed on the operational view. “I just hope we’re not jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

Thea understood her concern - she had them too. “Sometimes,” she said softly, “the fire is exactly where we need to be.”

For a moment longer, Elis remained silent, then finally nodded. “Alright then. Let’s make sure this fire burns our enemies, not us.”

Nodding, Thea swapped the operations screen. “You’ll be in charge of station security.”

“There are only six marines on this entire base, including me. How the hell do you want me to secure anything? We’re going into a space battle, anyway,” Elis complained.

“Well, how do you feel about commanding robotic security drones?” Thea asked.

Elis tsked. “I hate it.”

Thea couldn’t hide the huge smile that appeared on her face. “Congratulations, you’ve been promoted, Commander. Welcome to Operational authority over the security forces on one MNS Thea’s Hackjob.”

Elis stared at her, real disbelief filling her face. “Seriously? You named this rock Thea’s Hackjob?”

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Next time...  Chapter 198 – Blowback

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