Free Starting from Scratch by Bruce George Page B

Earth?”
    “I suppose I will; but not yet, for two reasons.
First, I don’t want them to know about the distant warning beacons
and I don’t want to hear a lot of crap from them about how they
should be allowed to deal with this. I’ll listen to
recommendations, but if they waste my time telling me how they
could do a better job of it, I’ll cut the line.
    “Now, let me think about this. I’m sure I’ll need the
answer to a few thousand questions, before everyone wakes up.”
    OK
    Mike ordered coffee and began to march around, as he
thought. He quickly came to the conclusion that there might be an
opportunity to capture this vessel. That would give him two ships,
plus whatever this new one was carrying.
    “Bambi, do we have any idea what they’re carrying on
that thing?”
    No sir, and I won’t be able to find out, because
Saurans don’t allow the computer to broadcast that information,
unless a Grand Pilot leader, or higher requests it. The Senior
Pilot of a ship cannot allow it, even if he wanted to. The Grand
Pilot Leader would have the required codes that the Senior Pilot
does not carry. It’s typical of Sauran cautiousness.
    “There must be some way we can take advantage of that
cautious nature of theirs. I’ll bet Max can come up with a scheme.
That’s why he’s here. He has a brilliant mind for being
devious.”
    “OK, what about breaking into the ship. Can we breach
the thing from the outside? How hard would that be?
    Pretty easy, if all they did was stand still and let
you in. But Saurans are fighters and they will certainly send all
available warriors to repel you. You’d need a hundred men, just to
deal with a few Saurans.
    “I thought you told me the Saurans kept most of their
crew in stasis and that usually no more than two would be
awake.”
    That’s true, but I don’t know how or why this ship
was damaged. I would think they probably awakened the crew for
repairs, after the incident. I have no way of knowing.
    “What if we offer to send over some of our crew to
help them?”
    The answer to that would be maybe yes and maybe no.
Even the crew of a lowly transport has their pride. If the damage
is bad and they lost part of their crew, then perhaps the Senior
Pilot would welcome our assistance. It could get you to the
entrance.
    But that ship has the same design as this one. The
hanger deck is a long way from the bridge. As soon as the computer
saw any indication of armed assault, it would immediately send out
a detailed distress signal. That’s the very thing we want to avoid.
Even if you get to the bridge and manage to overwhelm the crew, it
would be to late. The warning would have been sent.
    “OK. Good to know. We’ll have to work on that. What
about breaching the hull and going for the bridge?”
    Breaching would be easy. Transport hulls are thin
and not designed for direct combat. You could be onto the bridge in
less than two minutes, but you would still be facing armed Saurans.
They enjoy fighting and will kill just for the fun of it, not to
mention that they will fight to the death. And then there’s still
the problem of the warning signal.
    And another problem would be the computer. We
computers are programmed to scramble everything, in a situation as
you are describing. I mean everything, Mike. There would be no way
to operate the ship.
    “Once we’ve established control, couldn’t you
download a new program?”
    The drive would have been melted by then. It’s part
of the scramble program. And in case your thinking of installing a
new drive, it would need to have more than three million different
connections, in order to run the ship. It could take humans
hundreds of lifetimes to get it done.
    “This is good, Bambi. We’re making progress.”
    Bullshit, we’re not making progress.
    He was actually glad to hear her vulgar sarcasm
return. It was a sign that she wasn’t as frightened as she had
been. Apparently, just like humans, when an AI addresses her fears,
and begins