Space Odyssey: Spectre-Chapter 48: It’s a Trap!

"Steel, get ready to open this door." The mercenary commander called out his orders, "The rest of you get ready to charge in. We will take down the crew while Steel gets into the system and disables any method they could use to self destruct the ship."

""Yes Sir!"" They yelled in unison. Steel moved to the door panel and pulled out his knife. He removed a display screen and attached his hacking device directly into the door mechanisms systems. He finished getting ready within moments and saw the mercenaries and police officers were still getting ready.

So he might as well come up with his own plan for what he was going to do. He needed to get access to an array of systems and functions. His best choice would be communications or directly interfacing with the enslaved Artificial Intelligence. He would have to see which one was easier to do.

"We are almost ready, Steel, how long before you can open the door?" The commander asked. As he glanced over to see Steel tilt his head in confusion.

"Anytime, just waiting for your order." He felt bad but he did not know any of their names and he felt now was not the time to point such a thing out. He could ask them after, but chances were he would be either too busy to do it later. Or he would just forget and not care to ask about it later. After another minute the group was ready.

"NOW!" The commander yelled. Steel clicked the button on his device and the door slid open. He watched as the front line which had riot shields stormed into the room firing their sidearms while the row behind them fired their rifles from in between the gaps of the shield. From his position he could see partially inside the room.

He hoped there would be at least one of the Tacole. But instead there were the Ola and another race. They looked like giant meat blobs on floating chairs. Wait, could that even be considered a chair? It looked more like a bowl. How does a species like that even evolve to live?

Once the second to last line of people went in he snuck in behind them. He took stock of the room and found what looked like a command table in the center of the room. He also noticed the room had been cleared for the most part.

As he got closer he found that the meat blobs were mostly gathered around the console. It was odd to see these deceased blobs still floating when they were clearly dead. He used his foot to kick one away. Then he began trying to access the system.

But his eyes widened at what he found. "SHIT! WE NEED TO GET OUT-" He was interrupted as the bridge door suddenly slammed closed on the last person that was bringing up the rear. Since the doors closed from the side there was a sickening crunch followed by a scream as part of one of his legs and part of one of his arms were caught in the door and cut off. The front half of his rifle was as well.

"Saint Be- Steel! What is going on?" The mercenary commander called out in surprise after being caught off guard and interrupting himself as he cursed. Then he signalled for them to immediately form up around Steel with the medics pulling the man screaming in pain toward the center of the formation.

Steel sighed as he looked at the command table and nervously bit his lip under his helmet. "They disconnected all systems from the bridge. I can't access anything from here anymore. I assume they are getting ready to storm the bridge with an overwhelming force."

The commander looked confused, "they sacrificed their own people? Why? What do they get out of it?"

"They get a tactical advantage." Steel answered as his mind ran through multiple situations trying to figure out what he needed to do. "We have never encountered the Tacole or these meat blobs before so it is not completely surprising that they would do something we would not expect."

"Shit! Well what can we do to get out of it? A ventilation system or other exit?" The commander began voicing his suggestions.

"No, they would be ready at any of those locations. We need to complete our objective and disable their ship. But there is nothing here to-" Steel stopped mid sentence as he suddenly remembered something. "The ship board AI!" He immediately began cycling through the Victorium files.

"This ship has an AI?" One of the mercenary techs asked in surprise.

"Yes, it is why we could not access the ship by hacking into it from a distance." Steel found what he was looking for the location of the AI Core.

The AI Core was essentially the brain of any Artificial Intelligence. It could project itself from the core but if the core was destroyed it essentially died. Now if it was a proper core it could not move itself without a lengthy downloading process which they could not do with a terminal like this.

Meaning the AI Core was still in this room. And it was still enslaved to the Victorium. "But they made the mistake of enslaving the AI. Something that it no doubt will hold a grudge about. So I just need to free it." He moved over to a panel for the central terminal and pulled out his knife. "But in order to free it from whatever enslaving they did I needed to manually perform a system reset on the core."

He used his knife to pry open the panel and then hit his knife causing the panel to partially break off but his knife snapped in half. He clicked his tongue in annoyance and tossed it aside. "How long will that take?"

"Ehhh…" Steel stuck his hand in the opening he made and just completely ripped the panel out tossing it in the air. He heard it smack into a wall, "there are a lot of things to consider like how it is powered. What backups the terminal has to power it. As well as-"

"Steel! Time, not an explanation." The commander interrupted him.

"Anywhere from five to thirty minutes." Steel declared as he began crawling into the opening. Inside was a mess of wires and supports. But he ignored them as he looked and found the core in the center near the bottom.

The AI Core looked circular like a ball shape with a small indentation on six sides where a bright blue light was, indicating that it was powered. He moved further into the terminal and looked around the ball. From what he could see the design was almost identical to that ancient race that made Solisa. Looks like the Victorium had no shame about stealing ideas and designs from them.

He found a device attached to the ball that was not in any original design the ancient race had made. He attached his hacking device and found it was the enslavement coding that would trigger when the core powered up. He was right, he had to reset the core. Which was a fancy way of saying-

Steel smiled as he deleted the code then he moved over to the power distributor and unplugged it. "Unplug it and-" He removed the enslavement device, "plug it back in." He then plugged the power distributor back into the core. He then attached his hacking device and saw that the AI was starting up naturally without anything restraining it.

He backed up out of the terminal. "Okay, I have started the process." Once he was out of the terminal he looked at the commander who nodded.

"Good, come on people, we need to hold out for at least thirty minutes." The commander called out. "Steel keep a watch on the…" He seemed to think for a moment, "whatever it is." He then got in formation with the rest of the makeshift platoon.

Steel understood so he positioned himself as he could watch the code on his hacking device as the AI started up. There was no way to tell how long it would take to wake up. So he pulled out his sidearm and aimed at the door. A few others with long range weapons set up around the terminal with him.

"Steel!" He heard Solisa's voice, "did you disable the AI? Because I can access your comms now but I still can't access the ship."

"That is because I reset the AI." Steel muted his speaker so the others could not hear him talking over his communication device. "As soon as it wakes up, do me a favor and communicate with it. We have been cornered on the bridge." Steel explained.

"How bad?" Solisa asked.

"Eh… I have been in worse situations, but I also don't have the full picture yet-" He stopped mid sentence as the door opened and two Tacole with energy shields walked in. The Energy shields went from their feet to above their heads. Behind them was another Tacole in a full set of armor and had a giant hammer on one of his shoulders. Behind that Tacole was another two Tacole with what looked like rifles. Then there were a bunch of Ola between them and at the very back he could see a few of those meat blobs. "Nevermind, this is worse than anything I have been in. We might die."