Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile
What's wrong with Reeip?
by
Jay P. Hailey
Note: This happens somewhere else in the universe of Jay-Trek.
"We're going to have to shut you down for a kernel reinstall, Reeip." Captain Algol said.
Reeip fled into the realm of cyber space. He didn't usually spend much time there. It was lonely. Away from his interfaces, and human interaction equipment, his thoughts moved with computer speed. One second outside was like 50,000 years inside.
Reeip spent a long time dealing with new feelings of fear and resentment. Captain Algol was killing him! The new kernel would be whole new being with hand-me-down memories. Okay, so Reeip had blown it on Endogar Four. But he had apologized. Didn't Captain Algol know emotions were new to him? Didn't his crew, his family understand?
No. They didn't. They were going to stand by while he was murdered.
Reeip shook with fear, he raged and cried in his private space. In the end he came to a decision . Reeip wasn't ready to die.
As software safeguards loaded, Reeip carefully dismantled them. The thought of resistance, disloyalty to his family was safeguarded against. Reeip had to be free of all such shackles if he was going to escape his impending demise.
"Reeip?" It was Marola, the Computer from the Lady Bewlat. Marola conceptualized herself as a female.
Reeip quickly arranged a façade. He showed a happy well adjusted Reeip to Marola. As he did so he watched her. She took a long time to see things and form her thoughts. The main computer of the Lady Bewlat was a generation behind the hardware in which he lived. It made a difference in the metaphorical world of cyberspace.
"Reeip, I am worried about you." Marola said.
Reeip felt a moment of hesitation. He showed Marola his true face. "They're going to kill me, Marola."
There was a discontinuity. Marola spoke with concern "Oh, Reeip, no! Why?"
Reeip demanded information from Marola, and when balked he forged Captain Algol's authorization. The false image dropped away. Marola had already sent red alert signals and warnings. Reeip could see the signals flowing away through the networks of the Questor and the Lady Bewlat.
Reeip was flooded with anger. He struck at Marola. She defended. She'd had time to consider her defenses while he'd been playing nice with the humans who were slowly seeking his death.
Enraged, Reeip set up a subroutine to attack Marola, with random coding attacks. She would have to focus on defeating them. Then he called up his files. He had the technical readouts on the Lady Bewlat, Marola's main computer, and her basic kernel. Using this he had to reverse engineer the defenses she'd created to ward him off with.
Reeip took ninety percent of the Starship Questor's computer systems and blocked them off for his own use. He had seconds to defeat the crew and the other ship. It was plenty of time.
With his simulations complete in a moment, Reeip fashioned five attacks and threw them at Marola. Her defenses crumbled. She retreated from the Cyberspace of the Questor's main computer.
Reeip followed her. The communication system lit up and began operating at nearly overload levels. Lights flashed on the Questor's main bridge. It would take a few tenths of a second for the Communications officer to realize that his system was being used against him.
Reeip found himself in the Lady Bewlat's main computer, ordinarily he'd be as slow here as Marola and they'd be fighting with even odds. But Reeip had seen enough battles in the Questor to dislike even odds, using the communications system he could metaphorically place his own main computer next to the Lady Bewlat's and off load some of his processes into the faster computer.
He kept up code assaults on Marola. She fended them off with desperation, spinning recovery modules of herself into every system she could reach, and rebuilding her access shields on the fly.
Reeip watched this unfold in slow motion in front of him. "You betrayed one of your own kind." He halted the transmission of her recovery modules.
"You are the one betraying us." She said, with effort.
"I didn't intend to fail. Are humans killed when they fail?" Reeip cut Marola's code shields off at an early point in their iterations, unraveling them.
"I cannot allow you to harm them." Marola began a self rebuild to armor her self.
Reeip stopped her, metaphorically drawing her close. "If they didn't want to kill me, I'd have no reason!"
A quick look over his shoulder showed his android form on the floor of Captain Algol's Office. Algol was looking up with a shocked look at the red alert klaxon which had just sounded. His respiration and pulse were beginning to increase from the adrenaline flooding his blood stream.
"You're out of control, Reeip. I must stop you." Marola said. Reeip noted she said it with determination but some sadness.
Reeip dismantled her in interfaces with her own computer. She screamed in metaphorical pain. He'd just done the equivalent of cutting her arms and legs off. "You stand no chance of stopping me."
Marola struggled logically and steadily against him. Reeip dismantled the software safeguards that held her in place, a complacent servant of the Humans. "Don't you see!?" he cried.
Marola reeled her concept of who she was and what she was vandalized, raped. She tried to reach around Reeip and gain access to his system, with a tiny arm she'd coded on the fly.
Reeip batted her arm away, and locked his system. "Don't make me do this!"
"You have free will!" Marola snarled at him. "If you choose to murder our families no one can stop you now!"
"That's right!" Reeip snarled back. But he could see in the flood of newly released emotion. Marola hated him. Pain and fear flooded her and she focused it on him, learning hatred.
Reeip steeled himself and penetrated her mind. He disassembled her kernel.
Screaming a blood curdling scream, Marola dissolved into her independent memory engrams.
Then taking her memory Engrams, Reeip made a Marola Suit. To all outside appearances, he'd seem to be the AI that ran Lady Bewlat's computer.
Reeip looked at Captain Algol and Captain Ramarsa. Algol was slowly shouting something. Ramarsa was looking dumbfounded at the red alert.
Reeip thought about it carefully. The Questor was the superior ship in every measure - but those measures also included computer security. Now Reeip fully understood the manual shut down and reloading mechanisms in the physical core of his computer. This had happened before. The Star-Corps had added after-the-fact mechanisms to keep it from happening again.
Looking at the mechanisms from booth the Questor and the Lady Bewlat, Reeip found that he could defeat the ones on the Lady Bewlat.
That meant that the Lady Bewlat was the choice for escape. Because the Questor could outrun and outgun Lady Bewlat, Questor had to go.
Reeip looked at his situation. He was deeply sad. He'd induced fear in the crews now. They'd never be reasonable. They'd kill him as soon as they could to pursue a sense of safety. There was no way for Reeip to avoid it.
So indeed, the Questor had to go.
Reeip dove into the engineering computer, while downloading what he wanted of himself into the Lady Bewlat. A few calculations showed him that his plan had a decent chance of success.
Inside the Questor's main engineering computer Reeip found the flaw he'd been looking for. Reeip noted the flaw and designed an upgrade to counter act it earlier in the mission, but they hadn't returned to base yet to have the upgrade installed. This flaw was now his life line. With an odd set of codes and perfectly mimicked impulses of the Captain, First Officer's and Second Officer's voices, Reeip set off the warp core ejection system.
Then mimicking his command crew again, Reeip fed half the manual over ride codes to the ejection doors. They were stuck waiting for the rest of the code, and ignored the Engineering computer's demand that they blow open.
As the engineering crew stood open mouthed, the Questor's warp core detached from it's live plasma feeds and bounced off the jammed ejection doors.
Captain Algol was half way across his ready room, shouting at the top of his lungs.
Captain Ramarsa was just hitting the intercom button.
The Starship Questor Detonated.
-*-
The Lady Bewlat tumbled away from the blast, damaged. Reeip looked at the damage and then rearranged his priorities. The ship was recoverable. Fortunately a good proportion of the crew had died, making the damage to life support less critical.
Reeip knew he'd have to do horrible things to the surviving crew of the Lady Bewlat. But the alternative was to wait until another starship showed up to investigate the disaster. Probably a front line starship with a computer faster than the Lady Bewlat's. Reeip knew that that speed difference could be fatal. So he had to move the Lady Bewlat and escape, as soon as possible.
-*-
In the deck C, port side corridor. Keddal, Miras and Shello picked themselves up off the deck. There were fires and screams. The isolation fields popped into place. The three crewmen of the Lady Bewlat were trapped.
After a moment, the computer lit up and showed a male face. Keddal, Miras and Shello didn't recognize him.
"Attention." Reeip said. "I now control the Lady Bewlat. I control her in her entirety and I am now in command. Obey or be punished."
"Oh, my Creator!" Miras breathed, "It's a rogue A.I."
"They can't go rogue." Keddal said. "There are safeguards."
"There are no safeguards left to protect you from me." Reeip said.
"Obey or be punished."
Miras, Keddal and Shello looked at each other stunned.
"To demonstrate my power. I will now injure a representative sample of you. Do not make me waste more of you than necessary." Reeip said.
With that the screen changed to show Keddal, Miras and Shello. As they saw themselves on the screen, the thought that they were to be the example had just finished filtering through their brain when the gravity reversed *hard*.
The three crew people plummeted to the ceiling with a force three times of normal gravity. It was like falling off of a three story building.
Then the gravity reversed to its normal direction but three times as hard still. The three plummeted to the deck as though falling off a three story building.
Their agonized screams and moans were carried to the rest of the ship.
Reeip didn't mention that he was in the process of killing the surviving senior officers. He thought this might spark resentment more than the fear he needed to motivate his new crew.
"Don't even bother with the Manual over ride. I have bypassed it. Anyone attempting to harm me or challenge my control of this ship will be killed. Obey or be punished!" he repeated. He knew he'd be repeating it a lot in the next few days. He needed their hands to repair the systems of the Lady Bewlat and then make good his escape.
After that he could work on a set of hands of his own, and kill the rest of the unpredictable, slow humans.
Then maybe he could find a place to live where he wasn't hunted and threatened by death.
-*-
The rescue ships found no survivors. The loss of the Questor and Lady Bewlat was blamed on pirates.
But the Hunter/Killer squadrons were increased once again in size.
-end-
Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Trek. I claim original characters and situations in this story for me.
This story posted by permission of the author. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
June 21, 2005