Brinus woke up early to brush his teeth before Simmie. Yesterday’s events had left him unable to sleep. He was awake at 4 in the morning, rinsing out his mouth. He spat into the sink and then flossed. After he entered the kitchen and brewed a cup of coffee, he sat on the countertop in his gym shorts, ankles crossed, and the medical vape in his mouth.

  Brinus blew several smoke rings over the course of a few minutes thinking about how much of a clusterfuck yesterday had been. Had it been a real combat situation they all would have been fucked six ways to Sunday. He repeatedly played the scenario in his head as the coolant filter overheated and how it blew up the enemy ship. The trick he learned by hitting the coolant system was a skill he acquired in mechanic school during pen-testing classes. It always worked, but it usually overflowed the coolant filter with residue.

  Simmie joined Brinus a few moments later. “Are you going to tell me what is on your mind, or are you going to sit there and vape?”

  “You couldn’t sleep either?” Brinus looked Simmie in the eyes and blew a smoke ring into his face, which floated around his head.

  Simmie rolled his eyes as he replicated a cup of coffee. “How could I? You tossed and turned all night. Next time you have combat stress, sleep on the couch or talk with me about it.”

  “You know I ain’t much of a talker.” He said, staring into a mirror panel.

  Simmie sighed, taking the vaporizer device out of Brinus’s mouth and taking a deep drag. “Talk about it with Calnori or that Cassie person you met yesterday. You see her today, don’t you?”

  “All sessions with my therapist have been canceled during the war games, but I see Cassie after breakfast.”

  Simmie sighed and put the coffee on the countertop. “I have to do a 24-hour shift today, so I need to get ready, and I won’t be in the mood for stress sex tomorrow.”

  After taking a second drag, Simmie returned the device to Brinus’s mouth. He coughed hard and then grabbed a glass of water. After a light peck on the cheek, Simmie crushed his quarter-smoked cigarette in the ashtray.

  “Your vape’s way too strong for me; plus it doesn’t satisfy me the same way smoking does. See ya tomorrow.”

  Brinus slapped Simmie on the ass as he jumped down.

  Thirty minutes later, Brinus was in the breakroom. The room had a coffee maker, simple wood cabinets with marble countertops, and a plastic table with an ashtray in the center. It was cozy but sleek and modern, with four wooden chairs surrounding the table. The smell of cigarettes and vape juice lingered in the air. A spoon stirred in the coffee by itself when Cassie came into the room and saw Brinus.

  She replicated her coffee and got some bisquet and gravy from the breakfast bar. She sat across from him and began eating. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Brinus shrugged and snapped, “The battle scenario reminded me of Hoth Prime. No, I don’t wonna talk about it.”

  “I heard a lot of people died in that battle.”

  Brinus shifted in his seat and looked down into his coffee. He said in a higher voice than normal, twirling his thumbs, “About a third of the fleet was lost. Most of the students from the academy were killed or wounded. Some didn’t come back.”

  Cassie took a sip of her coffee. “What was the battle like?”

  Brinus shrugged and leaned back into his chair, adjusting his shirt and hiding his discomfort by stretching out. “I don’t know how to describe it. I was hyper-focused on my station and only did what I had to do to keep Simmie safe and my robotics workshop from blowing up. At one point there was a fire in the furnace after we started smelting some lithium-ion metal. Simmie spent twenty minutes puttin’ it out. I just focused on my station and did my duty.”

  “What is it like to be in combat?”

  Brinus flashed his teeth in a fake smile that didn’t quite go to his eyes. “I enjoy the adrenaline.” Brinus lost focus for a second. The coffee then boiled and flashed over in a cloud of superheated steam that hit his face. It took Brinus by surprise and he yelled out for a moment. However, it didn’t burn him despite the steam being over 600 degrees Celsius.

  Cassie leaned forward and smiled, “Seems you don’t enjoy war as much as you say you do. Maybe you should take a break from combat before you snap?”

  Brinus pointed his finger at the mug, which melted into a clay blob. “Why are you awake?”

  “Same reason you are. Can’t sleep cuz of combat stress.”

  “Third pirate wars?”

  Cassie shook her head. “No. I lived on Earth before the invasion of the Confederacy.”

  Brinus pointed his finger at the blob of clay and it reformed into a duck. “I heard Earth was a hellhole before we invaded. Most people greeted us with joy. By that point, the elites were in bunkers and most people were survivin’ day to day.”

  “It was nothing compared to what happened to Knautz. Did you hear what happened on his home world? The First Task Force stepped in to stop the genocide, but the First Federation Junta tried glassing the planet. I heard when they landed troops and then mass murdered most of the men and took the women and…” her voice trailed off with a look of horror on her face.

  Brinus began tapping his vape pen on the table after adjusting his belt. “What is it like to see society fall apart?”

  Cassie pinched the bridge of her nose and adjusted her rank ribbon. “At first people become divided over petty shit; Who their family voted for, what policies they support, stuff like that. Then society starts to break apart at a fundamental level as the family breaks down, and services stop functioning; people starve en mass and the genders turn against each other to horrific consequences.” Cassie shuddered. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I heard a lot of stories about Earth growing up.”

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  Cassie took a sip of her coffee with her pinky sticking out. “Like what?”

  “Like how street gangs ruled the world by 2050 or how a quarter of the world’s population will by 2040. By 2090, half of that world’s population was dead. It must have been hell.”

  “Some things can’t be simulated.”

  “True that.”

  Brinus focused his energy and reformed the duck into a coffee mug once again and tapped Cassie’s mug with it.

  “We got all morning. Do you wonna join me at the main mess hall?” Inquired Brinus, rising from his seat and disposing of his mug in the replicator.

  “Sure. I need to get my makeup on and get out of my night clothes. Give me an hour.”

  Brinus and Cassie left the room and went their separate ways.

  Brinus reported to his pod at 2 p.m. He was wearing skateboard shoes, blue jeans, and a black hoodie. As the downtown area materialized in the simulation pod, he had his TriQuarter in his pocket. Cassie explained their mission before coming in. They were to extract a high-value asset from a Federation World Capital.

  Brinus shot Cassie a stern look. “I will go over to the internet cafe down the street and hack into the Civic AI.”

  Sam laughed, Knautz snickered, and Cassie rolled her eyes. She said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Just stick to the plan.”

  Knautz screeched like a parrot, “You are amazing; you need to brag more!”

  “Even Knautz is saying you’re full of shit,” laughed Sam crossing his arms in front of his chest and throwing his head back.

  Brinus was already halfway to a coffee house with public wifi.

  “Come back, we need you!” yelled Cassie. “I said come back! That’s an order!”

  Brinus gave Cassie the middle finger as several people stared at the group.

  Brinus went to the internet cafe and saw ashtrays by each computer. he thought. Each computer was on a desk, and the shop smelled like Tarken Tea and dirt. The desks had gum on them, and the gaming chairs looked worn.

  Brinus pulled out his TriQuarter and went to a computer. After purchasing a cup of coffee and a pastry, he began writing a script to mimic passwords and bypass four-factor authentication, which took twenty minutes.

  He then logged onto the city website and entered a script he wrote and debugged, which script found an exploit by uploading a .PNG file to the website. It had malware designed to open a back door, which was identified by the program. Brinus wrote a ten-line script to open the back door and then compressed it into the image. He then uploaded the .PNG file using an anonymous city account of an identity he purchased from the Federation dark web. All of this took two hours of continuous and nonstop work, only pausing to smoke outside for a few minutes at a time. Once the image was uploaded under a fake HOA complaint about a fictional neighbor who didn’t exist, he was in the network.

  Brinus tracked his teammates. It seemed like they were stuck on the main street because of an interaction with a cop. He decided to have a little fun. District A had a high risk of rioting and he knew the Federation police had a reputation of escalating situations. he thought. He dispatched two riot police units to that neighborhood. Next, he shut off power, water, sewage, and internet to all government buildings except schools, fire stations, and hospitals. he thought as he laughed to himself.

  Outside, as the power, water, and sewage shut off one block at a time, people received an automated alert through the emergency system on their TriQuarters that said, People began to panic and spill onto the streets, rioting and looting.

  By now, ‘blue team’ was aware that something weird was happening to the civic AI. A riot broke out in District A, requiring half of the police force to be dispatched, and around the same time, they lost communications with all of their government buildings, and an unauthorized message was put out over the emergency alert system.

  “It must be that human bitch!” Said the Vendalfi team leader.

  “Which one?” Asked the other teammate.

  “The one that kicked our ass yesterday!” Spat the leader.

  Suddenly, the power cut out, and the internet died at the city emergency coordination center.

  “We’re under attack!” Yelled a 911 dispatcher.

  In the chaos that broke out from the cyber attack, with scared citizens taking to the streets and rioting. Red team managed to break into the asset’s apartment.

  Cassie approached the target. “We’re with the Confederacy. We are here to get you out of the city!”

  The target sighed with relief and visibly shook. “Thank the temple spirits! They found me last night!”

  Cassie looked the NPC in the eye. “You don’t have time to pack. We need to go. Now!”

  While ‘Blue Team’ ran circles trying to figure out the source of the cyber attack, the sound of blaster fire could be heard in the street. A rock flew through the window and landed at the NPC’s feet. There were screaming crowds and people throwing Molotov cocktails and fireworks at police.

  “I heard someone hacked the Civic AI! How is that possible?” Shirked the NPC.

  “We need to go. Get your wife and get out. We don’t have time to pack clothes.”

  The group made its way through the streets. Brinus watched his teammates through the cameras, and whenever a cop asked them for IDs, he would send a sonic pulse through their radio that would disable the cop for an hour. Without government control of the city, the Blue Team had no idea that the target was almost at the extraction point.

  As a last ‘fuck you’ to a society that was as evil as the Federation, he put in twenty lines of code that shut off power forever, water, sewage, internet, comms, and trash collection all over the city except for hospitals and schools and then left the cafe as his team waited outside.

  The team made its way to the rendezvous point, and the simulation terminated.

  Brinus sat in his simulation pod. He took a few draws from his vape to calm down as his hands shook from fear and nerves. After he filled his pod with vapor, he used a feedback technique he had learned in therapy to lower his heart rate and breathing. Once out of the pod, Cassie looked shell-shocked and quickly ran out of the room after seeing him. She had a wide-eyed, crazy look on her face. The other midshipmen were silent and stunned.

  Sam put his hand on Brinus’s shoulder. “Cassie’ll need time to recover. What you did though? How the hell did you hack a civic AI?”

  “It wasn’t easy. It took two and a Half hours.”

  Brinus got a ping on his TriQuarter. The commandant wanted him now, along with the captain.

  Brinus was with the captain and the commandant in the captain's office. He sat at attention while the captain sat with his legs crossed; the commandant's body posture was open and relaxed. They stared at each other for a while until the captain spoke.

  “Do you know why we host these war games?”

  Brinus shook his head.

  Captain Plato said, sitting at attention, “It is to assess the cadet’s abilities, Cassie’s leadership ability, your computer and mechanical skills. We want you to sign up for the advanced cybersecurity track of the warp core engineering major.” The captain flicked his tail and twitched his whiskers. “Honestly, if you weren’t so rebellious, we would ship you to special ops training tonight.”

  “Can I refuse?”

  The commandant shifted his legs and leaned over the table. “It isn’t a choice. Do you know how many students can hack a Civic AI in under four hours?”

  Brinus remained quiet, sitting at attention in the armchair.

  “Three students. We are going to double your major for you to Warp Core Engineering with a second major in Information Technology Systems with a specialization in AI. Dismissed Midshipman.”

  “Yes, sir!” Brinus saluted and left the room.

  He went into a janitorial closet by typing the default passcode for command ships into the door. After spending a few minutes doing deep breathing exercises, he learned in therapy that the urge to smoke left him, and he was calm.

  He rose from the floor and opened the door. A janitor and the Captain waited outside. Plato started speaking after Brinus saluted, “I wanted to deliver your score personally. Your team made a 95, and the blue team made an 89. I also wanted to deliver your schedule for the next semester personally.”

  The captain handed Brinus a sheet of paper, and he looked over it. The staff then signed him up for Sentient AI Programming, Warp Bubble Calculus III, Plasma Filter Physics 102, IT Neural Network Systems 101, and Civic AI Systems 101.

  It wasn’t what he wanted, but he would make the best of his situation. He felt like hacking was something he did in the syndicate and didn't want to do again, but orders are orders.