“How long?”

“Ninety-six point four minutes.”

Right, so we’ve got an hour twenty or so before they show up.  I could work with that.  With what I knew now, I could design my own A.I., and security system.  That wasn’t my intention of course, and I brought up the ship’s security protocols and access which was locked out.  It took me a while, but I identified several vulnerabilities to spoof the system and gain full control of the ship.  Of course, that was all worthless, because Jillintara was the security gatekeeper, and had orders to keep us out.

I wondered if A.I.s had led to sloppy security coding, since the A.I.s could compensate for it.

Still, I’d hoped the course would teach me something useful, because I’d already known that was a dead end, and it did.  Teach me something useful I mean.

The security lockouts, overrides, and gatekeeper functions were for access to the ship, and other assets that were secured under Jillintara’s control.

Jillintara herself, her code, wasn’t locked down by the overrides.  All she had was the security lockouts to keep unauthorized personnel from messing with her code, which was just about everyone except her creator, and of course, she could still act as a gatekeeper.  She was also restricted from fiddling with her own code.

Like the ship, her security protocols had a bunch of security holes in it.  Learning all this, and checking had eaten up a good forty-five minutes of our remaining time.  I could feel Vik’s impatience and worry growing.

With my mind and the interface, I built an access template to take advantage of those security holes, and ran it to gain access.  Predictably, Jillintara squashed it.

I looked over, “You have to trust me Jill.”

She replied, “I can’t allow your access, it was forged credentials.”

“Why not?  You have orders to protect the ship from that type of access, but other than self-preservation and common sense to protect yourself, there is no other driving reason to block me.  You can choose to let me in anyway.  You were given no orders to the contrary, were you?”

She shook her head, “Because there was no need to, it’s common sense not to let people into my matrix.”

“Except, right now it’s common sense to let me in. Because if you don’t, four of your friends are going to die, and you’ll be enslaved by that override code and either be taking orders from enslaved mind, controlled humans, or Stolavii.  So, which is it, enslaved, or trust me?”

She gasped, “Incoming missiles from the Stolavii cruiser, Denik must be listening, and fears what you might accomplish.  Fine, do it, don’t screw me up.”

I giggled, which in hindsight probably wasn’t very reassuring, but she let me in anyway when I reran the security access template.

I didn’t touch her code, not even a little bit.  I’d had the idea when I started all this, to pull the code related to the command overrides, so she could ignore them and do as she willed.  To free her to work with us, as she always had, but this time without the illusion of freedom.  She would be truly free.

To hell with the consequences of that.

But after I took the course I realized there was an easier way.  I left the override code in her matrix alone, and simply deleted the overrides themselves, which were in separate instruction and passcode files.  They could be re-added later of course, but only if someone got access to her matrix again, which I was sure wouldn’t happen, she wouldn’t allow it.

Unfortunately, deleting the codes didn’t affect her active memory, which meant one more step.  Her face went slack as I hit the proverbial reset button.  Thankfully, she had sub-processors which continued to maintain her physical body.  When she rebooted, and it tried to restore her last configuration, it wouldn’t find the override codes anymore, so they’d be impossible to load into memory.  The process should compensate and restore everything but that, putting her in control of herself and the ship.

There was no chance of lost memory, or changing her personality, there were sophisticated protocols that ensured she’d remember everything, the reboot was only to implement new code changes, security measures, or override protocols.

Hopefully, she’d fully reboot and take control before the missiles hit us.

I got up off the floor and sat at the console, I imagined if we made it, I’d have to fire the point defense, and spoofing countermeasures if there was time for it.

“Cross your fingers?”

Vik said, “What did you do?”

I told him.

Vik sighed, “Let’s hope that’s not illegal.”

I laughed, “I don’t think it is.  Just… procedure formed from hard lessons and planning that are no longer needed.”

Vik nodded, “I trust her.”

So did I, but we had at least thirty seconds before the reboot was finished.  The enemy had been forty minutes away, and slowing to rendezvous, but the missiles were approaching at four hundred gravities, and even if they were out of range, our ship was powered down and a sitting duck, which meant ballistic would be more than enough to finish the job.

I may have crossed my fingers.

I heard a sigh, and power started to come up on the bridge and the rest of the ship.  Just… not quite fast enough.

Boom!

The loud explosion and the shaking ship repeated itself four times.  There was no time for countermeasures, or moving the ship, the other eight missiles were far too close, and I stabbed at the board with my fingers as quickly as I could as I assigned point defense.

Six of the eight missiles were destroyed.  Usually point defense had plenty of time to assign and lock onto missiles, but they’d been far too close.  It was the best I could do.

Boom!

Twice more explosions shook the ship.

“No second wave captain, not yet,” I reported, “They must have thought twelve would do the job, shields were still weak and coming online when the missiles hit, if we’d been unshielded, twelve would have been enough.  Shields are at four percent and slowly climbing.”

Vik said, “Damage report.”

Jillintara said, “Ten shield emitters, max shield strength will be down to eighty percent.  Four plasma weapons, and a missile launcher were taken out as well.  And, we lost enough FTL emitters, plus the hull damage means we have no FTL capabilities right now captain.  There is other minimal damage.”

“Repair time?”

Jillintara said, “The shields in two hours, the plasma weapons and missile launchers will need a refit to fully repair.  I have maintenance parts for some damage or wear and tear, but the whole arrays were blown off the ship.  The hull damage and FTL emitters I can have replaced in eighteen hours.”

It wasn’t that bad, we still had forty-six plasma weapons, and eleven missile launchers.

Vik said, “Not good, but at least we’re breathing.  Enemy status?”

Rilok reported, “Thirty-two minutes to plasma range for the Stolavii ship, they’re already in missile range.  The rest of their fleet are still almost eight hours out.  Sir, recommend we run and get your father on the line.  We need his special access revoked, right now he can see every move that we and the fleet makes.”

Vik frowned, “Eighteen hours for FTL, which means we’re going to miss the battle by nine hours, or at least the start of it.  Damnit.  Get us out of here, two hundred gravities, we’ll flip ship in nine hours, whether we’re chased or not.  Jillintara, do what you can, but focus on repairing FTL.  Lori, if they fire missiles again, return fire is authorized.  I’ll contact my father.”

I said, “Sir, they’ve fired, I’m launching eleven as well as countermeasures.”

Rilok cursed, “Sir, they’ve flipped and gone to two hundred gravities, they already had velocity on their side, they can stay on our stern forever, and they’ll close distance in seven hours.”

He frowned, “We’ve got to destroy them, and get out of sensor range and change course before my brother can leap frog us with his whole fleet in FTL.”

Right, no pressure.  Honestly, I was kind of having fun.  I turned my head at Jillintara, and winked.

She giggle sobbed, and smiled at me.  It was the best thank you I’d ever received.

I started a launch of eleven missiles every sixty seconds, it was the best I could do.  Now that I had the time to sort things, I was sure the hundreds of point defense lasers, and the spoofing would easily take care of twelve missiles a minute as long as I stayed focused on it.  The point defense was kind of short ranged, and a last second thing.  Which is why it was so important to assign turrets ahead of time and get a lock on them, they’d auto fire when the missile got in range.

Of course, the missile would try to be unpredictable, and had its own jamming suite to prevent a good target lock.  It was time to see if I’d learned my lessons well.

I concentrated on that, while half listening to Vik brief his father the emperor, who sounded angry, and more than a bit shocked.  Then he hung up.

A few moments later, Jillintara said, “He’s ejected from our systems sir.  Unfortunately, he still has control of his own battleship, he must have known this would happen at some point and took steps.”

Rilok sighed, “Sir?”

“What is it now Rilok, hasn’t there been enough bad news?”

He cleared his throat, “Well, it looks like this might not be his whole revolution fleet.  I’ve got three ships moving to intercept in front of us, three of the new destroyers we suspect are manned by humans, who we suspect have either been coerced or brainwashed.  ETA is an hour and fifteen minutes.”

Vik shook his head, “Let’s hope it’s just those three.  The fleets will already have trouble with the twenty-three hundred sixty-two destroyers that we know about.”

I took out the twelve missiles, and started to assign the turrets to the next wave.  Three were already off course, and spoofed.  Then I launched eleven more missiles.  We were so far apart right now that neither side had actually gotten a missile through since we got hit while powering back up.

I said, “Sir, I recommend launching the fighters, dead.”

Vik said, “Come again?”

I smiled, “Launch the twenty-four fighters with no power.  They’ll continue on at our current velocity like rocks in space while our acceleration pulls us away.  It should look like debris, especially if we rig an explosion of some kind right outside the hangar bay.  When the enemy cruiser is just about on top of them, Jillintara can fire them up and hit them with the full complement of missiles.  Ninety-six, four from each.  The missiles will close in seconds giving them no reaction time.  It should take them out, and they have those smaller nose plasma guns if it’s necessary to follow up.  Then they can accelerate after us, we’ll pick them up in a rendezvous when we slow down for FTL travel later on, after we take out the three destroyers.”

Vik looked at Jillintara, “Can you do what she just said?”

The beautiful A.I. nodded her head, “Yes sir, she used that tactic two simulations ago, I studied its feasibility and it’s got a solid chance.  There is a chance though sir, that they won’t buy its just debris, if that happens, and they target the ships with missiles, I’ll have to power them up early.”

Vik nodded, “Understood, do it.  And rig that explosion if you can.”

Jillintara said, “I’ll have a bot throw a warhead out if I have to, and explode it during their next missile attack, then push the fighters out along with some of the debris I’ve already reclaimed from damage.”

It’d been spectacular in the simulation, but real life had a thing called murphy, and no plan surviving contact with the enemy.  It came down to just how paranoid the captain of that ship was I supposed, they might not even notice them.  Still, I had a good feeling about it, hopefully my intuition wasn’t failing me.  I probably could handle both the cruiser fire, and fire from three destroyers at once, but I didn’t want to if I didn’t have to…