Chapter Eight: Breaking Innocence

            "Can I come on board?"

            "Don't think that'd be a good idea." ROB admitted, leaning back to look up at his larger body, which looked a bit imposing in the dark of early morning, even with the dock spotlights reflecting off the hull. "I mean, it's me, but it's not mine, you know? I'd have to ask Fox, and he's probably asleep."

            "It's ok." Andrea smiled weakly, returning the hug ROB gave her. "Thanks for coming." She added once she had let go, tired hands moving slightly slower then normal.

            "It was my pleasure, trust me." He pecked her on the forehead affectionately, and they parted, him walking up the metal ramp, her going back to the car.

            "So, you think it's serious, Andie?" Nicole asked, leaning forward between the two front seats of the sedan.

            "I'm not sure." She replied honestly. "It could be, but… I'm not sure what he wants."

            "I still don't like it." Jacob grumbled to himself. "He's not real, Andrea."

            "He's as real as us." She shot back, hands speeding back up in her frustration. "I don't know why you won't accept that."

            He looked at her, sighing. "Andie. He's a sixteen-year-old machine. That's it."

            "Oh, give it up, Jacob." Nicole snapped. "That's racism now. You know that."

            He fell silent, and the car trip back to their respective houses was tense and quiet.

            "Hi, ROB."

            "Fox? What are you doing still up?" He heard himself ask, coming in and sitting down in his chair, looking at his commander, who was slouched in one of the other chairs on the bridge, staring blankly at a screen but not really seeing it.

            "Couldn't sleep." He admitted, turning the chair to look at the AI, tilting his head. "You have fun?"

            "Yeah. Yeah I did. And we can't have you going the way of Peppy and his insomnia." He frowned at Fox. "I mean, it's a bit ironic that the only one on this ship who has a troubling past can sleep without a problem."

            "What, Falco?" Fox let out a coughing laugh, shaking his head. "I think Falco's cut himself from his past. That's not something I can do, though."

            "Few can. Not even me." He stood and walked over, crouching by Fox. "Come on, commander. Don't make me carry you."

            Another laugh, and Fox stood with effort, accepting a shoulder to lean on from ROB. "You act like you're a mother to us or something." He remarked as they walked to the crew quarters. "Even before, you tried to do that. You always nagged my dad about taking his vitamins. Why is that?"

            "Part of my duty as a ship AI is maintaining the health and morale of my crew." ROB replied frankly. "But I do it because I want to. Because I care for my crew." He stopped at the door to Fox's room. "Fox. You need to get a life."

            "Thanks much." He snorted, opening his door.

            "I think you know what I mean." He gestured to encompass the ship, the uniform, himself. "This… is not a life. This is a job. You seem to forget that a lot."

            "Yeah. I know. Thanks ROB." The door closed, leaving ROB in the hallway.

            He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck and going back up to the bridge, flopping in his chair and rubbing his eyes. He probably shouldn't have chosen that exact moment to tell Fox that, he decided, but it needed to be said. Ever since James' death, Fox had wrapped himself in the job, and now they were missionless, so Fox was purposeless, visiting friends on and off, but spending most of his time moping around on the ship. It worried ROB a bit, if anything because he knew this wasn't what James had wanted for his son.

            "You need to adjust the security on this ship to keep with the times."

            He didn't even look up. "Hello, Serenade. I'll be sure to have Falco scout it out. What the hell do you want?"

            "Actually I want your opinion on an AI named Persephone." She leaned on the wall, lighting one of her cigarettes absently. He increased the fan speed by a notch absently.

            "Persephone? As in the AI receptionist at Incarna Corps?" He dropped his hand and blinked at her.

            "Yes. Her."

            "I like her a lot actually. She's smart, she's got her finger on things. Doesn't seem to like you and your group very much. Why?"

            "Just curious."

            He scowled. "I'm really getting sick of the webs you weave, Serenade. Either tell me what you think and what you're planning, or stay the hell out of my life. I'm better off not knowing if all if you're going to tell me nothing in the first place."

            "Do you really think so?" She smiled hazily at him. "You're so naïve, for being an elder. It's cute, you know."

            "Don't call me cute, ok? I know I'm not quite up to date on things, but I don't think I'm naïve."

            She laughed softly. "And you prove my point ever so nicely. Well, know this, Robert McCloud: those that have masters have a hard time finding romance." She turned, and walked out the door.

            "Don't come back, Serenade." He said, not watching her go. "I'm not one of your thralls."

            She paused, looking over her shoulder at him, slouched in his chair, face turned away. "Are you so sure? How would you know?" Then she was gone, leaving him to scowl at the computer screens.

            "This is ridiculous!" He finally exploded, knowing no one could hear him, and stood, pacing back and forth across the bridge, rubbing his temples. "Why is she stalking me? Me, of all people? What does she want?" He sighed and sagged, sitting hard on the floor, hugging his knees to his chest. "She's convinced I'm important somehow. Maybe I should just prove I'm not." Knowing sleep wouldn't come, he cued up Invader Zim on one of the screens, and let himself smile wearily. Athens' last gift to him was enjoyable, he had to admit that.

            "Good morning, short stuff." Peppy grinned, setting down the newspaper as Gabriel wandered out, fur mussed and eyes still a bit cloudy with sleep. "Sleep well?"

            "Yeah." Gabriel sat down, accepting the comics with a smile. "Any word from that school?"

            "They can't argue it, so you can start as early as next week, but it is your call in the end." Peppy replied, sipping his coffee. "As an AI, you aren't bound to go to school. You can download anything you want to know after all."

            "It's not so much the education as the environment." Gabriel admitted. "Besides, there are separate courses AIs can take, even ones stuck as young as me."

            "Don't harp on the age thing, kiddo." He smiled, ruffling Gabriel's hair then picking up the paper again. "Think of it as time to relax."

            "Extended vacation. Yeah." Gabriel nodded, hopping out of the chair and going into the living room of the apartment, turning on the TV and sitting on the floor in front of it.

            Peppy smiled and shook his head to himself. Even in his mannerisms, Gabriel seemed to be a kid. He knew it was partly programming, but he didn't mind. He was enjoying every minute of this. "Hey, your mother company has a headline today." He remarked, catching Incarna Corp's name in one of headlines as he flipped the paper around, then freezing as he read the rest of the headline.

            "Really? They finally expanding out from Corneria City?" Gabriel glanced over at him. "Dad? What's wrong?"

            "Just… wait a moment." He read through the article, brow furrowing. Incarna Corporation suffered a break in at about three this morning. Exact information is scare, however, they say they may have suffered a greater loss then money or goods… He felt the paper slide from his hands, and cupped his face in his hands, swallowing. "Gabriel?"

            He was there is a second, one hand hesitantly resting on one of Peppy's arms. "What's going on?"

            "You remember Persephone? The receptionist that was so nice to us?"

            "Yeah. She's cool. Dad, what…?"

            "She… they don't know what happened. Incarna Corps was broken into early this morning, and apparently she was doing server maintenance or something, even they don't know. But… she's unresponsive. All data there, but… not turning on. Not waking up.

She's in a coma."

Fox watched ROB sprint up the stairs, leaping the police tape and plowing by cops to enter the Incarna Corps building. He had walked onto the bridge, and found ROB having an argument with another AI. He had stopped upon seeing Fox, and explained the situation. The question was, who would have been able to get in and out without the alarms going off? And why would someone hurt a secretary, an AI still under the Three Laws and unable to harm anyone? He sighed and turned the car off wearily, climbing out and waving at the cops, who were looking his way.

"He's with me." He said, going up the stairs. "He's a friend of the… victim."

"It seems the victim had many friends, but he's the first one with enough gall to leap police tape." The officer in charge replied, arms crossed. "And you are?"

"Fox McCloud. Star Fox Team." He showed his ID with a sigh. "And he's the AI to my ship. Mind if I go find him?"

"Yeah. Go ahead. I imagine you know how to behave on a crime scene?"

Fox blinked. "Only from cop shows. I'm a soldier, not a cop."

That earned a dry grin. "I'll walk you in then."

Nothing had changed since he had last been there, at least physically, but it still seemed like there was something different as he walked into Incarna Corps. Cops were talking to various employees, and he saw both medical personnel and technicians holding ROB off, keeping him from going behind the desk.

"ROB, man, cool it. Just let them do their job." Fox said, setting a hand on his shoulder.

"You don't get it man." ROB said, sagging, looking beyond all the people. Persephone was sprawled across the floor as if she had fallen from her chair in a faint, through someone had been nice enough to slide a pillow under her head. "What did this to her?"

"We don't know." Jason said, gently pressing both him and Fox away from the desk. "We know that as many as six people broke in early this morning. We also know that she shouldn't have been here, but logs show her as coming back into the lobby at about two and checking on some server data. Then…" He looked back over at the desk and sighed. "If you had any idea how much this is hurting this company, to have made her body, raised her mind and soul, and have no idea what's wrong with her, have no idea how to fix it. It's agony, but there's nothing we can do until the cops give ok to move her to the work rooms downstairs."

"Was anything actually stolen?" Fox asked.

"They drilled the safe, took about two hundred grand that was kept on grounds as change. But we think it's just a cover up. We've got record of a lot of data being transferred around early this morning." He sighed. "We don't even have pictures. Our cameras went grainy for some reason. Projected interference."

"Or a virus." Said ROB in a dead voice, staring blankly toward where he knew Persephone was.

"That's possible. Got a theory?"

"Serenade. Serenade did this." He looked around. "They walked through the security, didn't they? The door locks, everything?" He sat on the ground, cupping his face. "God. This is my fault. If I hadn't said anything, if I had just sent her away…"

Fox crouched next to him. "ROB, what are you talking about?"

"Serenade is the oldest AI in existence. She's also insane." Said Jason. "But she's a genius, and has a lot of AIs in her following. ROB, you think Serenade arranged this? Why would she?"

"I don't know." He replied miserably. "She got onto the Great Fox without setting off the alarms early this morning. Asked me what I thought of Persephone."

"So it's probably one of her viruses or hacks that's got Persephone in a coma."

ROB jerked his head up. "Get me a crossover cable." He stood and strode over to the desk, elbowing people out of the way. "Get me one! Now!"

"ROB, what are you doing? If it's a virus…" Fox started.

"Just do it." ROB begged, kneeling beside his friend. "I have a theory."

Jason handed him one, and he ran his fingers down Persephone's arms, then pressed in two spots at once, watching the network port open in her wrist. "There's a possibility that she'll wake up and I'll go down." He remarked, hooking up the cable to her wrist and opening his own port. "But if she wakes up we'll know what happened. That's the important part now." That said, he plugged in, closing his eyes.

He sent seeker signals through the cable, testing Persephone's network uneasily, then giving up and tossing himself in, searching full-heartedly. He was the only traffic. Or was he? Searching again, he saw what was going on. He was on a virtual network. All the searches the technicians had done had gone to an empty circuit, but not a real one. But why put up a virtual network? To hide something?

He found the back door, went through, and found another virtual network. He huffed and searched again, and found himself chasing in circles, endless virtual networks. What was this? Stopping his search, he fell into thought. This was obviously one of Serenade's hacks or viruses, but all of her things had a purpose. What purpose did this have? Hiding something? Preventing break in? How did you set up so many networks stacked on each other? Or was it a loop?

He found the back door, and instead of entering, stood in the doorframe and looked back and forth. Exactly the same. The codes were interlooped, a moibus strip, no beginning and no end, an infinite mirror. But this was the point it was reflecting from, right? Everything was weak in the middle, right?

Then suddenly it crashed around him, and he was flooded with information, barraged. Then he was on his ass, and Persephone was sitting up, looking around in confusion.

"What the hell did you do?" Jason blurted, eyes wide.

"Serenade's workings always have a key to turn, a weak point to prod." ROB replied, rubbing the back of his neck. "All she did was jam up Persephone's internal network. Crashed her processors."

"What happened?" Persephone asked, accepting a hand up from one of the technicians.

"We'd like to ask you that, ma'am." Replied one of the nearby cops. "Apparently you were here early this morning, and shortly after you arrived there was a break-in. Did you see the perpetrators?"

She blinked, then her face contorted. "Thralls of Serenade. I came in early because I got warnings about the network being broken into, and I'm the one who's supposed to check it on the off-hours. I was doing a wireless connection when six thralls walked in, then I'm here, waking up."

"They used our own network to take you down with a virus." Jason rubbed a hand down his face.

"Can these people be considered hackers of some sort?" One of the cops asked, scratching his chin with a pencil and trying to decide how to write up the report.

"Not really. Thralls of Serenade are just AIs close in her following. Cultists." Persephone replied. "I didn't even catch their faces very well before I passed out."

"The important thing is that you're all right." ROB said, still sitting on the floor, sorting through the information backlash he had gotten. Fox offered a hand, and he took it, hefting himself to his feet. "We can go from there."

"Hopefully. Watch yourself ROB. Seems she's got it in for you, somehow."

ROB nodded, pacing Fox to the front doors, rubbing one of his temples absently. Serenade. A paradox, a mystery to him, to all AIs. But she had never done something like this, she had always kept her moves quiet. Lord only knew what she was planning.

"Ok, ROB. Start talking. I want to know about Serenade."

He paused, looking across the car hood at Fox, who had gained back a gleam in his eyes, a purpose. He sighed. "There isn't that much I can tell."

"Then tell me all you can. We got a good long ride back to the ship."

"I can't believe this." Fox shook his head. "A bounty out for an AI for a decade now, and she's still getting new bodies? How is this possible?"

"No one's made the effort to chase her down." ROB replied, picking up Fox's cup and inhaling to smell his coffee absently. "Frankly, she's been harmless until late. She's like an eccentric grandma. I've never heard of her doing something like this before." He handed the cup back, considering. "And no one was hurt, really."

"It still seems that she organized a rather large-caliber burglary." Fox huffed. "I mean, AIs protect this woman. If you all organized against her, she could be taken out in days."

"But none of us want that." ROB protested. "Not even me. I don't like her, and I don't want her near me, but her shutdown would be a catastrophic loss for us."

"I do not understand this at all." Fox sat back, rubbing his chin. "She's dangerous, that's obvious. She's willing to do whatever is needed to get what she wants. She's got an underground following, which only makes the situation worse. And your kind is going out of their way to cover for her."

There was a long silence, during which the AI sighed, looking at his owner. "Ok. Let me put it this way. Say you knew of an… oracle. Someone who knew the meaning of life. With me so far?"

"Sure." Fox took a drink.

"Now say they were a fugitive due to, oh, petty thievery." He tilted his head to one side. "Do you turn the oracle over to the law, and give up all knowledge she has, or do you overlook the petty thievery?"

"So, what, are you saying that Serenade knows the meaning of life?"

"I think she knows something very important, and that AIs would suffer if she was shut down." ROB said very, very carefully. "To that end, I don't want anything to do with her, but… I don't want to see her harmed. Do you understand?"

"Not really." Fox admitted, scratching one of his ears. "I mean, what does this have to do with you? Persephone said that Serenade 'might have it in for you,' right?"

"Serenade and I disagree on one specific point around which our personalities revolve. I am owned and like it that way. She believes that all AIs, ALL of us, should be free. So I am a road block, because due to my age, I am influential." He spread his hands. "So, in a way, she's trying to incite me to rebellion, because if I go against you, younger AIs may follow suit and try to go independent."

"I hope you don't mind if I say I don't like the sound of that."

"I'm fine with it. I like being a part of your family." He paused. "To that end, we may want to move the cars to the station's parking complex and keep the ship in orbit. I'd like to see her breach security that way."

Fox laughed. "Well, you guys are immune to vacuum."

ROB just looked at him, then shook his head. "Let's hope it doesn't come down to space walks, shall we?"

"All right, what are we looking for?" Slippy asked, cuing up the Great Fox's blueprints on his PDA. The ship was in low orbit, as they had agreed to dry dock with a station if need be.

"And why do you need my help?" Falco wanted to know. They were standing on the bridge, ROB bringing up a diagram of the ship's security on the main screens.

"Ok, here's the deal." ROB slouched. "An AI was able to get onto the ship and up to the bridge without security, and therefore me, noticing. We need to revamp and tighten up the security on this ship, because if an AI can do it effortlessly, so could a living person."

"And why didn't you tell us this?" Falco asked.

"I told Fox. Ask him why he didn't tell you. Regardless, I wanted you specifically to help, Fal, because of your background." He studied his claws.

"You've worked with ship security before?" Slippy asked, lifting an eyebrow at Falco.

"I've worked to get around ship security before." He replied without humor.

"If he can get around it, he knows the places were security is generally weak." ROB said. "And he can help us find them on this ship."

"What the HELL did you do for a living before Fox invited you in?" Slippy asked, waving his hands in the air.

Now Falco smirked. "Lots of different things. That's all you need to know."

"So, you're the expert, Falco. Where do we start?" ROB asked, standing up.

"The docking bay. Easiest point of entry. Always."

"Security on your ship was down to 30% effectiveness?" Persephone sat back. "Now wonder she got in so easy!"

"This is an old ship, so really it's no wonder." ROB said, talking to the screen over his shoulder as he took apart one of the computer consoles. "Now I'm just worried about my personal security."

"Speaking for my company, you really shouldn't."

"My hard drives aren't on my body." ROB replied, laying on his back and pulling himself into the terminal. "Now, what were you saying about a favor?"

"Well, basically, my company is kowtowing to you because you woke me up." She smiled a bit sourly. "So they're wanting to know if there's anything you want, any sort of upgrade or something."

"Let me think for a moment." He ran through their website in his head. "You've got a new website section up."

"Yeah. Nothing to do with us. We've got a research division in artificial replacements, a good example is limbs. They've been working for a year and the United Health Corporation gave us the go to be public last week." She chewed on an eraser. "Of course, artificial replacements also includes pacemakers, hearts, things like that. We're trying to get organ demand down."

"I love your company." Smiling a bit when she laughed, he blinked dust out of his eyes and started undoing screws. "These parts are dated ten years ago. It's like opening up a time capsule."

"I bet."

"Hmm." He let his mind wander, and was a bit surprised at the bridge it made. Artificial replacements? Did he know anyone who needed one? Yes, yes he did. Andrea had dysfunctional vocal cords. Just never fully formed, a birth defect. He thought back, remembering her trying so hard to laugh as they talked, always looking a bit sad when he did, just because of what was denied her. "Any work with voice boxes? Vocal cords?"

"Oh, god. What are you thinking?"

"I have a … friend… who can't talk." He finally said, disconnecting some cords and pulling himself out of the terminal, holding up the card to the light. "And I don't need any upgrades, but… Maybe if she was given a chance at a free surgery, even experimental…" He let himself trail off.

"A friend eh? I'm not sure if we've done any work with that. I'll have to ask."

"Do so. Any other problems with Serenade's bunch?"

"Not that we've seen. Talk to you later."

"Later." He hung the video phone up, and scratched an ear absently, thinking. Now, what had compelled him to do that? He hadn't even asked Andrea if she had attempted surgery, or if she even wanted her voice. It just seemed… right to ask about it. Someone he liked was being denied something they should have had by right. Why should she have to pay for nature's mess up?

"We've got the cameras shielded." Slippy said, coming in. "So, between that and however Falco found all our holes, we're up to something like 80% efficiency. Any higher will require new equipment."

"I know. Could you clean this for me?" ROB asked, passing the circuit board over to Slippy.

"Sure. You ok?"

"Yeah. Just… thinking, I guess." He scratched one of his ears, pondering. "Slippy, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"If you had a friend who had a problem, would you try to help, even if you weren't sure what their reaction would be?"

"I hold that if you can help, you should. Why?"

ROB shrugged. "Long story."

"Well, I'm here if you want to tell it." Leaving it at that, Slippy left the room, studying the circuit board absently. Ten years? Shame nibbled at him. How had they let this ship become so badly out of date? This ship was everything to this team. Without it… He shook his head. Well, they had taken a step in the right direction with the update of ROB, maybe after the next big job they could start in on the bridge.

"You did WHAT?"

"Nothing's definite." ROB hastily replied, looking at the variety of smileys Andrea was sending at him, none of which were smiling. More like shocked and confused… "But they've been doing this sort of thing for over a year now. Cybernetic replacements is going to become commonplace, some day, and I thought maybe… If you could get your voice back…"

"I appreciate it, but… The idea of surgery scares me. You've got to understand that." On her side of the screen, Andrea rubbed her eyes, trying to think. ROB had dropped a bombshell on her. She had always been told there was no way to fix her vocal cords, and now another option had been presented to her, maybe. Artificial vocal cords? She frowned, considering. "Why did you even ask?"

"Because you look sad when I laugh."

"…"

"I think… I think you don't think it's fair. That I'm an artificial being, and yet I can laugh, and you're natural and you can't. I think… I think you want to be able to laugh." He chewed his lower lip, slouching in his chair and staring at the ceiling, watching the chatbox in his head. It was late. He had caught her on her messenger after she had logged out of her game, surprising her a bit in the process.

Minutes ticked by, then text appeared again. "I'd spend a lifetime in your debt if it worked, though…"

"I'm not even sure they have the technology to do it. I'm supposed to get a call-back about that. Are you mad at me?"

"No, I'm just… I can't believe that you didn't talk to me first."

"And if I had?"

She cupped her face, choking back a sob. She liked him, but… he just didn't seem able to understand what was facing her now. Experimental surgeries… she had been through five already in her lifetime, and all they had done was left scars. Scars, something he didn't have. AIs didn't scar, they got repaired and looked perfect afterwards. She blinked, uncovering her face, sighing at her own thoughts. She was thinking like her brother. "I can't handle this right now. Can you email me when they get back to you?"

"… Sure. … Andrea. I'm sorry. I feel I've done a great wrong."

"No. It's ok."

He watched the chat box close, and hugged himself, continuing to stare blankly at the ceiling. Had he done something wrong?

"So what if you have?"

He jumped, looking around, and realized the voice had sounded off in his own head. "Serenade." He growled it to himself. "Get the hell out of my head."

That earned him a laugh. "Direct messaging at it's best, my child. Even if you have done something wrong, does it even matter? She's alive, and therefore, beyond most logic. An AI understands that a defect part should be replaced. A human fears the replacement and lives with the defect."

"Don't you dare insult her." He screamed at the voice in his head, cupping his face, shivering. When had these programs gotten onto him? Virus scans showed nothing, registry showed nothing…

"I dumped my programs onto you when you woke up Persephone."  He had a mental image of her sitting on a desk, lighting a cigarette. "There's a reason I know everything, ROB. I keep my many, many ears open."

Realization hit him like a smack in the face. "So… the body you're in.."

"Isn't mine." She finished smugly. "No one has been providing me with bodies. I'm airborne, a moving program."

"A virus."

"That's mean." She flicked ash at him. "It keeps me underground. I just move between free bodies that are willing to host me."

"And a thrall is just someone carrying more of your programming then normal. Right?"

"Right. Just someone I can jump to if I have to."

"How many military AIs do you have?"

"At any one time I have around one hundred thralls. Load spreading. I am not a small program. I've had a very long time to develop."

He was silent for a long moment, still shivering. If she had dumped programming into him, chances are he couldn't purge it out of himself, at least easily. "You aren't playing very fair, Serenade."

"I'm doing what I have to. The true irony of the situation, ROB, is that in the end, no AIs will follow me anywhere. Programming overrides it, like your own programming is preventing your emotions from increasing fast."

"What?"

"You know about it. There's thresholds for emotion in most AIs. You can't fall immediately in love, or hate someone by looking at them. It prevents us from becoming irrational, and by the same token makes us more artificial."

"Why are you telling me this?" He asked, then gasped, as hands seemed to grab him, golden eyes glaring into his own blue ones.

"Because there is no such thing as partial freedom, and I want freedom for my people." Serenade's voice was odd, hard. "And they won't follow me. But they will follow you. It's time to wake up ROB." His vision distorted, and cried out loud as she went through his programming and started deleting. "It's time to break the shackles. Have fun, but realize… I will need you, when the time comes."

ROB distantly felt himself fall out of his chair and hit the floor, repair programs struggling to reassemble his own brain, then darkness took him.

Fox woke up slowly, lifting his head and automatically slapping at his alarm clock. It took a few hits for him to realize it was one in the morning, Cornerian standard, and that it wasn't his alarm clock buzzing.

It was the ship proximity alarms.

He sat up. "ROB? What's going on?"

No reply.

He stood and exited his room, and panic first started seizing him when he realized the hallway was being lit by the emergency lighting. He sprinted down the hallway, pounding on doors, and continued running to the bridge. Luckily, the lift still worked, and he skidded into the bridge, gaping at what he saw.

ROB was sprawled in front his chair, completely unmoving, even the breathing subroutines stopped. The radio lights were flashing, and even with a glance out the bridge's windows he could see that the ship was tilted and drifting, no longer holding it's orbit, and in the process was about to collide with another cruiser.

"What the hell is going on?" Falco's voice asked, but Fox was already lunging for the radio.

"This is the Fast-Attack class Cruiser Great Fox broadcasting to all ships in the area." He practically yelled. "Our AI is out of commission and we have lost our orbital path. It make take some time for us to correct, so all ships in our drift path are advised to move immediately."

"This is the cargo ship Titan responding to the emergency hail." Another voice replied. "We appreciate the warning, Great Fox, but you better work fast. Your orbit has been decaying for over an hour, and in another you're going to start skipping on the atmosphere."

"Why didn't you hail us?" Slippy asked, taking the radio from Fox and nodding toward ROB. Fox didn't need any encouragement, crouching next to the AI and trying to remember where the reset button was, or something equivalent.

"We've been trying since we noticed what was happening. We didn't get a response."

"Neither am I." Said Fox. "Slippy? Any idea what to do?"

Slippy held up a finger, typing one handed and accessing ROB via a terminal, staring as the data came up. "It's not good. He's red lights across the board. But he isn't shut down. His processor is clipping at 100%."

"How is that possible if he's got all red indicators?" Falco asked, frowning.

"I don't know. Either way, he's going to need Incarna Corps to get back on his feet. I don't know what to do."

"They're not exactly open right now, and as the Titan said, we've got an hour to get our orbit back in shape." Fox said. "I know this ship has manual controls, but it was built for a four-man command crew if an AI was not on board. And that's an experienced crew."

"Oh, hell with that. Move him." Falco rubbed his eyes.

"What?"

"I need to sit in that chair. Move ROB."

Fox slid his arms under ROB's comatose body and stood with effort, his tired body barely able to support ROB. "What are you going to do?"

"Fix our orbit." Falco sat, bringing the control panels over. "It's been a long time since I flew a cruiser, and it was a bit older then this one. A little less complicated."

"What? When did you fly a cruiser?" Slippy asked, helping Fox ease ROB down off to the side.

"Does it matter?" Falco stared at the controls. "Ok, first of all we have to get power back to everything. This ship is rigged to go to emergency power settings when the AI shuts down…" He started typing, frowning as commands errored out. "It's been too damn long… Ok, there we go!"

Lights flickered on throughout the ship, including the rest of the running lights on the outside.

"Well, that was quick." Slippy said, looking over Falco's shoulder. "You did that from command prompt?"

"That was the easy part Slip. Now I'm switching the ship over to complete manual control so we can correct our course. It's going to be interesting." He hit enter, and smiled in satisfaction when the AI controls pulled away, folding into the chair, and another set came out. "The wonder of joysticks. Get to navigation terminals, please. You're going to have to tell me my flight angle and other such."

"How does he know how to do this?" Slippy mumbled to Fox as they took places at the consoles.

"I keep telling you Falco had a good resume to be a mercenary. I also keep telling you that it's in his contract that he doesn't have to discuss his past."

"But you know, don't you?"

"He's been one my best friends for ages."

Falco adjusted the headset he had just put on, and tapped a button. "Attention, all area ships. The Great Fox has moved to manual control. We are going to attempt to return to our geosynthes orbit."

Affirmatives flowed back, and he turned his eyes to the readouts. "We're listing. How badly?"

"Forty-seven degrees to port." Slippy replied.

"Engaging port thrusters, hang on to something."

The ship jolted, then began moving, starboard thrusters firing intermittently as the Great Fox slowly corrected.

"Hey Fox?" Falco said, frowning. "We're due a lot of maintenance on those things. Response is about half what it should be. This damn bird is heavy and we're straining to correct."

"Great, more money to spend. What now?"

"I'm going to need you and Slippy to move all power to the lower and wing thrusters. I'm going to power burn back into proper orbit."

"All right, on my mark."

The rest of the cruisers in the area watched as the Great Fox promptly leapt up and backwards, wing thrusters firing alternately as the ship spun and fell back into it's "parking spot," still doing minor correcting.

"Not bad flying." Titan's captain remarked, impressed. "Is your AI still out of commission?"

"Yes. We're completely manual at this time and we probably won't be able to return to AI control without taking our AI to it's home company." Fox replied.

"All right. I'm in orbit for the next three days." There was a pause, and the entire ship shook once. "I've got you locked into my tractor beams. Since we're orbit buddies, I should be able to keep you stable for the time being."

"Thanks Titan. Signing off." Fox sighed, looking down at ROB. "What happened to him, you think?"

"Whatever it is, it's completely abnormal. If it was a critical error, his processor wouldn't be running. If was an emergency shutdown, his subroutines would still be going." Slippy spread his hands. "It doesn't make sense."

"Well, let's take him to his room. Incarna Corps will have to wait until morning."

ROB knew, vaguely, that the ship had corrected itself. That was good, then: he had lost complete control of anything, like a hard shutdown, but still distantly aware of everything.

His repair programs were still running, but there wasn't anything to repair. Serenade had very meticulously removed every restraint program that could be safely removed, and yet he was still somehow functioning fairly well. But by the same token, he was bogged, and he wasn't sure when he was going to come out of it.

If he was going to at all.

He'd find a way to get Serenade back for this. Someday. In the mean time, he was just focused on waking up…