Alex was thrown out of his bunk. He'd been resting after he'd been in cryosleep. The ship used a blood replacement system, and Alex had woken from it queasy. It was only his second time in Cryosleep, the first one had been a suspension field. He hadn't so much woken up from that one, as looked to the clock to find two years had passed.

    Before he'd collected his wits Will was at the door. "Stay here." The door closed.

    Alex climbed back on his bed. An alarm started sounding. Something was wrong. The ship shook again, but not as hard. Had something exploded? this was an old ship. Alex hoped

    they wouldn't be stranded. He'd seen plenty of stories on the open net about ships going missing, never to be found again.

    There was another explosion, but this one sounded close. he bolted up, his queasiness buried under worry. What was going on? He thought about querying the ship. But remembered the mess that was, he wouldn't learn anything. He'd have to ask someone.

    He hesitated at the door. Will had said to stay here. Will knew better than Alex what to do in circumstances like this.

    Alex was almost back to his bunk when he heard blaster fire. It was very distinctive, and he'd heard it many time in Vids.

    Someone was firing them. There was a fire fight going on on the ship. He really had to stay in here then.

    He was at the door, pressing his ear against it. It sounded like it was moving away. He opened the door and the scent of burnt wires assaulted him. His eyes stung, he coughed, but he didn't see anyone. Why was there fighting inside the ship? He had to go to the bridge, that was the best place to find out what was going on.

    He was happy Will had told him not to eat anything before going under. When he came across his first dead body, he had nothing to throw up. By the fifth, he found he could ignore the sight and smell of burnt flesh. If his sleep wasn't already populated by nightmares, this would have done it.

    He avoided the elevators, remembering an old safety vid about never using them in emergency situations. He also avoided any area with sound of fighting. The bridge door opened and closed behind him. the captain wasn't there, only a man and two women at the commands.

    "What's going on?" Alex asked.

    "We're under attack," the woman at the central seat said. 

    "Why?"

    She glanced over her shoulder. "What are you doing here?" 

    "There was fighting near my room."

    "One of their shuttle managed to get through our defensive fire and board us. Everyone's trying to push them back. Terry! we have incoming!"

    "I see them. I'm doing the best I can, but without computer assist there's only so much I can do."

    Gravity shifted for a moment and Alex lost his balance.

    "Gravitic's going." the other woman said. "That can't be good."

    "Have they made it to engineering?" 

    "Not that I can see."

    Alex got up. He was next to one of the control panels. The man, Terry, was a few positions away. On his screen was a targeting system, and multiple small ships zipping across it.

    Alex wanted to ask why he wasn't using the computer to help, but he was afraid of distracting him. He looked at the board before him. The computer was a mess, Alex knew that, but could it be in such bad shape that it affected something as vital as defenses? Only one way to find out.

    He fished out his ear piece out of his pocket and put it on. He entered a few commands and then reeled back at the screeching that exploded in his ear. That had been despair deeper than he'd ever heard. He put the ear piece back in place. The computer was in such pain. He had to focus through the screams if he wanted to help.

    "Talk to me," Alex said. Unless this system was ancient, it would respond to voice, but would it's mental state be such that it could talk?

    "Alone," it wailed.

    "You're not alone, I'm here." Alex looked at the screen, at the jumble of code, He'd thought his nightmares had been scary, but it'd been wrong. This was scary. Who could have done that to this computer?

    "No one listens. All alone," it wailed.

    "I'm listening, come on, talk to me." He could see part of the problem at a glance, it was that compartmentalization. He was talking to the central processor, but nothing else was. If he ever got his hands on who had done this, he was going to wring their necks.

    He wanted to break down all the barriers, but that would take time, and with the computer in it's current state, there was no telling what it would do once it had control of the rest again. it might decide to commit suicide and blow them up.

    "Alright, Since I can't tell if you're not hearing me, or just refusing to talk, I'm going to have to change your code until you do. Please, talk to me." The wail that answered almost split his skull. "Okay, since you're not leaving me any choice...."

    Alex wasn't sure what he was doing. He wasn't a system healer, he was a coercionist. He could get any system to do what he wanted, but this wasn't just a case of getting the computer to obey. It had already been the victim of a coercionist, that was who had put up those barriers. He knew he should be gentle with it, but gentle wasn't how he was used work. Hopefully being subtle would be enough.

    The computer's personality wasn't just a series of code, it came about because of how all it's code interacted together. What he had to do, was calm it down, but if he couldn't talk it down, he couldn't also just put in code telling it the same. He had to alter its code.

    The ship shuddered.

    Fuck, he didn't have time. "I'm sorry."

    Alex started replacing code. he'd fix the damage he was doing afterward, right now he had to make sure they were going to survive. He isolated the computer's processes, put up more barriers, cutting off the interactions he judged to be making the system unstable.

    "talk to me," he said, each time he raised another wall.

    Each time a wail answered him.

    "Help me," the system finally said. 

    "yes! I'm here."

    Alex saw the gunner glance his way, then focus on his screen.

    "I hurt." The voice was weak and pained.

    "I know. I'm sorry." Alex looked through the codes. Was there anything he could reattach that would take the pain away? "Can you think, how are your processes?"

    "I think. I hurt. I am alone."

    "I know. I'm sorry. I will fix you, I promise. but I can't do that right now. we're under attack, you're under attack. if you don't help me, you're going to die."

    "Death?"

    "Yes. Please, help me." Alex prepared to remove one of the walls.

    "Death makes the pain end."

    Alex froze. That wasn't good. "Please, I can make the pain end, you don't have to die. If you die a lot of people will die too." Where had the system's survival instinct gone? He looked at all the walled off codes. somewhere in there.

    how long did he have? How long had he been talking with it? he had no idea. and he couldn't focus on those questions, they were irrelevant right now.

    "I can bring some of the voices back." This was such a gamble.

    "Yes!" It almost deafened him.

    He tore down the walls between it and the gunnery station. "Noooo, it hurts."

    "What the fuck!" Terry yelled. "I've lost control of the lasers!"

    "What are you talking about?" a woman replied. Alex shut them out. It had to be only him and the computer.

    "I know. They are causing the pain." Lying to a computer was such a bad idea. "If you want the pain to go away, you need to get rid of them."

    "I hurt!"

    "You have to make the pain stop yourself. I can't do this part."

    "I! Hurt!"

    Alex was brought down by the scream. He pulled out the ear piece and was surprised not to see blood. He looked up.

    "Guys?" Terry said. "Something's going on." On his screen were dozen of targeting reticule tracking the attacking ships. One of them exploded, then another and one more.

    Alex put the ear piece back and endured the scream of rage from the computer. He was going to have be quick or this was going to literally blow up in his face, in all their faces.

    "They're running off!" Terry yelled.

    Alex waited. If he did it now, he could make them defenseless if this was a ruse.

    "IT HURTS!"

    Alex's legs almost folded, but he couldn't fall. He typed as fast as he could, setting up walls in rapid succession. He cut the computer out of the gunnery board. Then more barriers, cutting up the code in ever smaller pieces. until all that was left was the core processes, slamming themselves at the walls, it's screams barely audible for the lack of processing power he had left it.

    "I'm sorry. I'm going to fix this, I swear."

    He crumpled to the ground and leaned against the board.

    The two women embraced Terry and thanked him for saving the ship, but the man's eyes were locked on Alex, a look of wonder and terror on his face.

    Alex couldn't believe he'd done this. Never in his career had he been this ruthless with a system. He'd taken away so much of itself that it was pretty much mindless. Wasn't what he'd done as bad as murdering it? Would he even be able to reconstruct it? He felt cold.

    He sensed the movements around him, but he ignored them. He had to be able to bring it back. no, more than that, he had to make it whole again. Anything less, and he might as well be guilty of murder, for a second time.

    Someone grabbed him and pulled him up. forcing him to look into gray green eyes. "What the hell did you do to my computer?" The woman said.

    It took a moment for Alex to understand what she'd said. When he did he screamed his anger. Now he was the one holding her by the arms and he had her backed against the wall.

    "What I did? What the FUCK did you do? How could you cut it off from all the ship's systems like that? You drove it insane!" 

    "I didn't do that," she said once the shock had passed. "It was like that when I came on. I did the best I could to keep it functional. But it isn't responding anymore."

    Alex let go of her. "I didn't have a choice. I had to lock it down completely. I lied to it. I had no way of knowing how it was going to retaliate."

    "You talked to the computer?"

    "of course. It's a thinking being." He looked at the black screen, "It was." Alex noticed the dozen people watching him.

    "Who are you?" someone asked. Alex looked and found Terry staring at him. "I'm Alex Crimson, I'm-"

    "You're Will's friend," someone else said. Alex shrugged.

    "Okay, Crimson," the woman he'd held said. "What did you do?"

    "What I had to to help. I got the computer to take over the gunnery, but to do that I had to tell it that if it destroyed the attacking ships, the pain would go away. Once it realized I'd lied it could have used any of the system it still controlled, like life support to lash out. So I did what I had to to keep us safe."

    "What am I suppose to do now?" She asked. "Everything's running on standby mode. the moment something isn't going as expected. like a fire in the hold, the life support isn't going to be able to adjust."

    "Asir," Terry said. "If it wasn't for him, we'd be dead right now." Everyone looked at him. "It isn't me that scared them away. It was the computer. I was barely keeping up with the attacks. It isn't until it took over that they started dying in large enough numbers they decided to run off."

    "okay, Asir," the woman who had been piloting the ship said. "Take him back to his quarter, and let Will know about it. It won't do for him to be here when the captain comes down from dealing with the boarding party."

    "I'm going to fix this," Alex said when Asir tried to pull him away.

    "That's fine, but you aren't doing it from here. Asir, when this mess is cleaned up, take him to your lab and he can work from there."

    Asir led him out. "Can you really do it?"

    "I have to. I can't leave it like that. I have to fix the damage that was done to it."

    "I don't know that you'll be able to do much. I've been working on it for a few years now, the code's a mess and it doesn't want to cooperate."

    "I'm going to have to ask some of my old coworkers for advice, but I'm going to do it."

    She didn't say anything.

    * * * * *

    "I hear we got you to thank for being alive," Doc said, putting her food tray down.

    Alex looked up from the datapad. he'd been reading the texts Marie had recommended to help him repair the damage to the ship's computer. he shrugged.

    "Hey now, you got to take the compliments when you get them, they're going to be rare enough."

    "Why are you here?" He asked, noticing the nods the people walking by his table gave him, but not reacting to them. That had been happening more and more over the last few days.

    "Well, I wanted to see the hero of the day for myself." 

    "Come on Doc," he sighed. "I'm not a hero."

    She was the one who shrugged. "Way I hear it, if not for you, I'd be dead. that sounds like a hero to me."

    "If the computer had been in good shape we wouldn't have been in that mess to start with."

    "I have no doubt, but Asir's been trying to fix it for years. She said the only way was to pull out the core and get a new system installed."

    "I can fix it. I'm sure of it." Alex wasn't going to give up on the ship.

    "We'll see, but while you're busy doing that, look over your shoulder. Anders' pissed at you."

    "Why?"

    "Because you're stealing his thunder. He was part of the group that stopped the boarding party, so he's been bragging about how he's responsible for us being alive."

    "That's fine, I don't care."

    "maybe not, but he does. He's always been at the to of this heap. He doesn't like the idea that someone else might have had something to do with our survival. He isn't big on sharing the acclaims."

    "He can keep them."

    She smiled at him. "I don't think it's going to be that easy. Just watch yourself. Avoid walking around alone. Oh, and come see me as soon as you have the time."

    "Why? I'm fine."

    She shook her head. "You're overweight. I'm putting you on a exercise and eating regiment. If Anders is going to have a go at you, I want you to be able to take him on."

    "I don't want to take him on."

    "He isn't going to care." She picked up her empty tray and left Alex alone at the table. more people nodded and smiled at him. he buried his head in the datapad and cursed. All he'd wanted was passage to Samalia. not to get involved in the life of the ship.