Mischa rose up out of his seat in his own cockpit, then kicked out violently, kicking the doors open. A part of him worried another slingshot stone would hit him, but the Harbinger only stood there.

The doors shut properly on the second try. He was able to tear off his mask and adjust everything to full power, drawing in closer to the open and dormant Victory I.

No, not dormant. She’d found a way in, without the password. Override?

It was closing up, engines firing, everything kicking into motion.

He had to adjust the targeting again. Too many times in a short span of time, but at least his muscle memory remembered some of the number sequences.

To burn her out of the cockpit.

One by one, screens glitched out, and were replaced with a nauseating moire in light blue and magenta. Without any external views, he was flying blind, barely any control or ability to adjust.

He closed his eyes, and the optical illusion patterns on the screens were only part of the why. He focused on his sense of balance and did his best to adjust orientation. It wouldn’t do to lose track of up and down.

The blue and magenta light pressing against his eyelids went dark, except for a point of light. A word on a single screen.

hi

“Hello,” he growled. This intrusion had to be—how? Everything was supposed to be segregated, airgapped, secured.

Had they infiltrated Mags’s Michael III? If they had—

He pulled out his phone, searching, praying it wouldn’t change colors too.

He saw the map of the network, the degree of intrusion.

A backdoor. Dragon had left it in these ships. She must have used that for this intrusion. Except this wasn’t Dragon.

This was worse. It was either a tinker subordinate to the A.I., which was bad, or it was a subordinate A.I., which would mean she was breeding.

He had a countermeasure. He pulled the catch on the drink holder. Beneath was a button. He hit it.

At the same time, a skewed dizzy feeling suggesting he wasn’t entirely upright anymore, but it was hard to identify ‘up’.

i’m sorry about your friend from the Michael III.
i’m losing two friends today. pretty sure.
i think i know how it feels
i hope we don’t kill you.
you made some really pretty robots

One by one, monitors went blank, or they restored function. The big red button shut off all systems, forcing nearly everything to be done manually. It forced a complete reset to default for the mandatory computer systems, and made them impossible to change.

Here and there, a screen flickered as the intruder attempted to seize hold.

The damnable display was the last thing to revive. He corrected orientation, then tracked what was happening.