Incursion Vector

032

[▲] INS Robert A Heinlein, Caminha Waypoint

Cooper stared at the man perched with one foot up on his stool. "What do you mean, 'it won't switch off'?"

Still tugging on his earlobe in time with his heartbeat Cole Winston leaned into his holographic screens, then shook his head at Cooper. "Shepherd failsafe. Didn't confirm pilot alive or dead, can't confirm where pilot is, so stays on and waits for true false. Can't get confirmation because of wireless restrictions during Alpha lockdown. It's worried."

"A worried VTI," grunted Yaya. "Who's brilliant idea was that one?"

"I made it?" Cole stared at her for a moment, then shook his head and waived towards the fighter. "Or we made it. As a safeguard, so that wouldn't happen again. It's still guilty about Aries. We're still guilty about Aries."

"What happened to Aries was all of our faults, not just yours," said Kilmore with a grim scowl. "But you can't go introducing that stuff into the system! The only reason we even have that thing in there is because we gave Wills our guarantee it'd never be out of the box without a pilot in the damn seat. Your 'failsafe' lets it bypass the killswitch protocols!"

"I'm still here. I'm the pilot."

The propulsion specialist chuffed at the man's statement. "You don't count if you can't switch the damn thing off."

Hopping off his stool with a furious gleam in his brown eyes Cole lunged at the larger man. "I do count! It's my head!"

Cooper pushed himself between the two before Cole's temper caused him to do anything more stupid than try and land a punch on the university boxing champion. "Calm down, people. We can fix this." He pushed the impulsive man back towards his stool. "Once it knows the little MacNamara's all right, what will it do?"

"Shepherd failsafe rescind conditions satisfied," replied Cole in a cold and robotic fashion. "Resume idle cycles."

"All right. Can't you just tell it she's fine?"

He stared open-mouthed at Cooper as if he had just said something remarkably asinine. "It needs empirical evidence. It doesn't trust us anymore. We told it Aries would be safe. We lied and he died. It won't take our word."

"So now it's a VTI with trust issues." Kilmore glared at their project leader. "Putting that thing in an armed boat was a stupid decision."

"That thing is the only reason the fighter can jump," said Cooper. "Unless you've another way to wring out the processing power needed to figure the math fast enough to still be viable. We've X amount of space and an infinite list of data that needs to get in." He stared the man down. "Well?"

"There's a bloody good reason shit like this is outlawed in warships!" the man shouted. "This is one of them! What if that thing gets an idea, primes the cannons, and blows a big bloody hole straight out of here because it's pissed about not having its precious pilot? You were at Dunkirk! You know what happens when you start screwing around with higher—"

Cole clawed his way around Cooper's shoulder and tried to grab hold of Kilmore at the collar, an act the man easily sidestepped when the project lead hooked him around the middle and halted his lunge. "It won't do that!"

"And just how do you know that?" retorted Kilmore with a snarl.

"Because it's me!" he screamed back at the man at the top of his lungs. The painful shriek was enough to jostle even Xia awake, and she jumped to her feet and ran over to put her arms around Cole before he could break down into hysterics.