Anders stared at Alex.

    They were in the common room, the crew was celebrating their victory over the other ship, and that they'd managed to make out with more than half the cargo.

    Alex was seated with Anders and a dozen of the team in a quieter corner of the room and he'd given him a rundown of what had happened once he'd sat down at the computer console.

    "Let me get this strait," Anders said. "Our own ship's system protected itself and also assaulted their system?"

    Alex nodded.

    "I didn't think they could do that," Terrence commented. "It shouldn't have been able to," Alex confirmed. "Systems are smart, but none of them have any aggressive code. It will defend its own code, try to undo what I do to it, but the way it will get me out of there is to alert its coercionist. And he, or she, will take the offensive."

    "Okay, then how did our ship manage to do that?"

    Alex sipped his mug. He was still on his first drink while most of the others were on their third.

    "Okay, the first thing to remember with our ship, is that for a very long time, it was insane. Having all its components partitioned and incapable of talking did a number on how it thinks. Now that we reintegrated them together you're not noticing any of the personality problems, but that doesn't mean our system's entirely sane." Alex thought about it for a moment. "The best analogy is that it's on good medication. I managed to put a lot of code in place to buffer the instability."

    The men and women around him visibly relaxed.

    "The second thing is that one of those partitioned system's insanity was of an aggressive sort. The life support system was paranoid and fully capable of going to extreme when defending itself."

    "We saw that when you fixed it," Anders said. 

    Alex nodded.

    "And there were the accidents before, right?" Zephyr asked. 

    "Yes. As best as I can figure, those were instance where the life support thought it was in danger and defended itself." "Okay," Barbara said, "But you fixed it."

    "Ahh, no. Actually, I didn't. I managed to attenuate it's more extreme impulses, and then I integrated it into the main system. Then with its help I balanced everything and as far as I could tell, everything was normal. No more accident, no aggressive behavior."

    "Until now." Anders drained his mug and motioned to someone.

    "Yes. I've gone over the code, and what I found out is that when I reintegrated them together, the  life support's personality didn't merge with the main system like I thought had happened." Alex waved the man away when he offered to refill his mug. "It installed itself on a lower level of the code and has been in standby mode since, waiting for sometime when the main system was under attack to take over and go on the offensive."

    "But we've been under attack before. Like with the law ship."

    "But I was there, as was Asyr. The system trusts us to look after itself. It was nervous, but never became overwhelmed. This time it was alone when the coercionist attacked, it didn't know what to do so the aggressive aspect took over."

    Anders grinned. "I guess we don't need you anymore then."

    Alex smiled back at the man. "Sure, if you want to trust a system that isn't stable with your life. I'll remind you that it couldn't help us when we were trapped there, all it managed to do was disrupt things, those guns fired at us as well as their security."

    "What I still don't understand," Nancy said, a tall and wiry woman with golden hair, "is how did it even know what to do to disrupt their system."

    "The system's been watching each and every coercion I've done, the program I've used, the tactics. It shouldn't have learned from that, a normal system would file it away and not incorporate it, but our system isn't normal. I'm pretty sure that even though I remove my programs when I'm done, it's made copies of them."

    "Okay, so what exactly did it do?" Anders asked,

    Alex shrugged. "I don't know." The other man raised an eyebrow. "It wouldn't tell me, and I couldn't find the files where that information is stored."

    "Really?" Anders smirked. He took a swig and reached behind to tap the communication screen. "Ship, do you recognize my voice?"

    "I wouldn't do that," Alex said sipping his drink. 

    "You are Norman Anders."

    Anders winced and glared at anyone who dared snicker. "What are your instructions in regards to me?"

    "I am to obey you in every way."

    "Good. Tell me exactly what you did to disrupt the other ship."

    The lights in the large room went off. As did the music and the movie that had been playing on the other side. Protests erupted across the room from dancers and movie watchers.

    Alex looked over his shoulder to make sure the arched entrance was still opened; the only light in the room was filtering in from there. They couldn't hear it over the sound of people asking what was going on, but air was no longer being pushed in the room. When that had happened in the computer lab, Alex had had a moment of panic, thinking the system was trying to kill him again, but the door had opened at his command.

    Someone placed a light stick on the table and bluish light showed Anders' perplexed expression. "What just happened?" he asked.

    "The system is protecting itself," Alex answered. 

    "From what?"

    "From what it did." Alex finished his drink. "This won't last long, five minute or so. The same thing happened when I tried to find out what it did. It doesn't want to know. I don't think it can know."

    "So it shuts down?"

    Alex nodded. "Just here. You have to remember, the aggressive aspect is buried in the code. The system knows it's there, but not on a conscious level. It knows that part took over and did something. But it isn't a military system, it isn't designed with handling taking a life. So instead of dealing with that knowledge, it buried it along with the aggressive aspect."

    Anders was thoughtful for a moment. "Can you remove that aspect?"

    "I thought you liked that I wasn't needed."

    The man shrugged. "I think that in the long run it could be a problem for the crew."

    "Possibly, but no, I can't remove it."

    "Why not? You managed to deal with it when it controlled life support."

    "Yeah, and it almost killed those of us in the lab. Quite a few others were hurt in that fight. It managed to do that when all it controlled was life support. Now it's part of the main system, which means it has access to everything. What do you think it might do to stop me? It could blow up the ship."

    "That wouldn't save it."

    "If you're going to die. Are you going to go alone? Or are you going to take as many of your enemies as you can?"

    The lights came back on to loud rejoicing. The music picked up where it had stopped and the dancing resumed.

    Anders looked around. "Can we trust it not to try to kill us?"

    "I think so. It's no longer utterly insane, and the paranoid part is a sub program now, so it only takes action if the main system gets overwhelmed. You've never had problems with coercionists until I started doing it, so I don't expect it'll happen once I leave unless the captain continues using that method, and then he'll make sure he has a decent coercionist at the board."

    "Right," Terrence said, "which makes me wonder how is it that no one seems to be doing that other than us. I mean the coercion. It's letting us get away almost clean with the cargo. You'd think everyone would do it."

    "That's easy," Alex grinned. "No one can find a good enough coercionist to get the job done."

    "We found you," Anders stated.

    Alex snorted. "I'm not exactly your typical coercionist anymore." He looked in his empty mug, thinking about Jack.  

    "That man of yours, right?"

    Alex nodded, then pushed the thought away. Now wasn't the time to get maudlin. "Yeah. If not for what happened to me with him, I'd still be working happily for Luminex. Corporation grab the best coercionists right out of school. I had half a dozen corporation trying to get me before my last year was even over. People like me are part of who design ship systems, so they can handle your average coercionist who might think of controlling a ship. And no, a system doesn't have to be aggressive to stop someone. So long as it can rebuild its code faster than it can be changed, the coercionist will get exhausted first."

    "I'd think the money you can make with us would be enticing enough."

    "Sure, if someone doesn't mind ending up dead, or in prison. Coercionists aren't people looking for risk, we want a good paying job with a corporation to protect us. And I might not be the first one. That ship they used as a trap, I don't think it's something that's quick to build, or even modify. It's been what? Five years? Six? Objective, I mean, since I started Coercing for the captain?"

    Shrugs all around. Pirates didn't care about objective time, since they spent most of their time in space.

    "My guess is that that ship's been around for a while. It could be that's how they knew I'd go on it to gain control, maybe coercionist who end up doing piracy have a mindset that makes them want to get the job done at all cost. I certainly know I didn't want to let the captain down. That's why I went there. But yeah, over all I don't think there's a lot of us out here because the risk isn't worth the reward for most of them."

    "So you don't think we'll find another one once you've left?"

    "You don't need to, Asyr's a natural. She's going to be better than I am if she keeps practicing." Alex stood. "Well, I've had enough celebrating. I'm going to bed."

    "You're such a light weight," Anders commented. 

    Alex smiled at him and left.