Hoseok focus

Hoseok was staring at the cup with the green liquid in front of him. It tasted awful, but he had felt like he needed a change. Considering the situation, this was quite silly. In three hours they would arrive in their solar system and see whether they had gone for the right planet, or not. A small part of him wished that the enemy was at Eos, so he would not have to send the bunch of scientists into a battle, but the bigger part hoped they would finally face the enemy, because this uncertainty and the concern for the other planet drove him mad.

It still was time before he would wake up the rest of the crew, and he was alone in the plain kitchen.

"Bang?" he spoke into the silence.

"Yes, captain," the uncle voice answered.

"Can an AI feel nervous?" he asked, aware of the silliness of his question, but he needed to talk, or he would go crazy.

"I never simulated nervousness, so I don't know what it feels like," Bang replied and stunned him with the answer. The board AI had simulated emotions?

"What emotions did you simulate?" he asked curiously.

"Jimin taught me confusion, boredom, attentiveness, stress, sadness, joy and love," the computer said, sounding almost proud.

Attentiveness? Was that even an emotion? Hoseok mused whether he should find this interesting or scary. Was it good to have a feeling board AI? He decided to trust Jimin and not to think about it too much. The psychologist would know what he was doing.

"I guess nervousness is a mix of attentiveness and stress, if you want to simulate it. But better ask Jimin for a good instruction," he mumbled and took another sip of the poison-green liquid. Yoongi had been right, it looked unhealthy, but the white-haired had begun to drink it as well, so he had thought it could not be that bad.

"Do you want to play Go for distraction, captain? Nervousness does not seem to be a pleasant feeling, and considering you asked me for this emotion, I assume you are nervous," the AI suggested affably.

"Should we not make a plan, or something like that?" he asked back, but he was rather unsure of what to do. The battles with the AESF had been so much easier because they always had known their enemy and the circumstances, but now they were running into a thick wall of mist, hoping it would dissolve magically and show them a practical solution for the problem.

"Given we know nothing about the enemy, this is a rather useless task, if I might say so," Bang confirmed his thoughts.

"Then let's play Go. Maybe it'll get my brain into shape for the battle."

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Taehyung and Yoongi strolled into the kitchen and silently got their food and drinks while he placed his black stone to block Bang's white enemy line. The pilots were up early, but most likely everyone would be short on sleep today. Astounded he looked at the sleep deprived but happy faces of the gray-shirts when those sat down in front of him. Had he missed something? Had the enemy ship blown up itself?

"Why are you so happy?" he asked with furrowed brows.

"We can defeat the enemy," Taehyung said with a wide smile and sipped on his poffee. Hoseok pushed his green drink over to the other as well, but then he pulled it back again, concerned the V might get even more hyper after two coffees. "You just need to get us onto the other ship."

Hoseok's eyebrows lifted up. "That's wonderful, but do you have any idea how hard it is to get you there?"

Both pilots shook their heads.

Hoseok sighed. "What's your plan?"

"Stuxnet," the V just said. "And actually it was Yoongi's plan."

Hoseok rolled his eyes. "I'm not a computer scientist. Please, explain it to me."

The white-haired sat up a little straighter and began to explain while his colleague chewed on the blueish food bar, "Stuxnet is one of the most impressive computer worms ever. It has been built some decades after the invention of the computer and is the most complex and clever malware ever written."

"Come to the point," the brunette ordered.

"It works itself through the system leaving everything untouched except for the engines. As soon as it finds a computer or even a chip that has to do with working an engine, it fucks up the software, causing the process to become slower and slower," the Switcher told him with shiny eyes. Those computer freaks and their code... He would never understand the euphoria about cryptic words on a white sheet.

"And what exactly has this to do with our problem?" he asked the two.

Taehyung answered, done with eating. "To destroy a planet, you need an extraordinary amount of energy. This energy has to be produced somewhere in some kind of reactor. Maybe it's a dual fluid nuclear reactor like ours, but even if it's not, it does not matter. Because our worm can find everything related to power generating sources of any kind and harm them bad enough to block an attack of any form."

"This sounds good," Hoseok admitted. This sounded even more than good, because no matter what weapon their enemy had prepared, the virus would work in every scenario. A ship without a fully functional power source was useless.

But there still was the problem with getting on board. They somehow had to pursue the enemy to invite them over, because without a man on the inside there was no way for them to enter a space ship. This was the truly annoying thing about space battles. The deadly environment was a pain in the ass for logistics of any kind, and only the very special one-man ships of the AESF were able to board other space vehicles. Just like those fish that sucked on the glass of aquariums, the so-called 'Ticks' docked onto the skin of a ship and cut a hole into the wall with high-energy lasers to grand the pilots entrance to the inside. Unfortunately, the BT21, though it was a military battle ship, did not contain Ticks because they had been on a diplomatic mission. Hoseok cursed the logistic department of the Agency for their stinginess; the little fuel it would cost to carry some Ticks was ridiculous, especially with such a giant ship. But they had a diplomat in tow, so maybe there was a chance of making it onto the other ship anyways.

"How much time would you need, if we made it onto the other ship?" he asked the pilots.

The gray-shirts' eyes lit up. "That depends on how good the firewalls of the other ship are," Taehyung answered. "But given I cracked Bang once, I'd say we can make it in a manageable time."

"What does manageable mean?" Hoseok asked, slightly annoyed. If he liked AIs for something it was their precision.

The uncle voice intervened unexpectedly, "It took Taehyung fifteen minutes, and thirty-two seconds to hack my database. But I guess hacking my OS would take longer."

Hoseok stared at the gray-shirts, unsure of what to think. Yoongi chuckled amused but also looked impressed, and Taehyung looked like he did not know whether he should apologize for having hacked the database or be proud of his skills. The chemistry of those two was still a riddle to him. They seemed so different, yet so similar.

"So, if we're confronted with a better computer, it can take half an hour or more to hack the system, but if we meet an old one, it could be done within ten minutes?" he asked. "That's not exactly what I had hoped for."

"Don't be picky," Yoongi growled. "At least we have a plan. What did you come up with?"

Hoseok lowered his eyes on the table. The Switcher was right. He had no plan at all. "Sorry," he mumbled.

"Cheer up!" Taehyung sing-sang, "This evening, you're either dead or we succeeded."

Hoseok was not sure whether this was meant to be funny, or not. It definitely was morbid. But this kind of humor seemed to work for Taehyung, so he just shrugged his shoulders politely and sipped on the green coffee.

Namjoon and Jin were the next to enter without being woken up explicitly, and they displayed the same resigned and nervous expressions Hoseok had had before he had heard of the pilots' plan.

"Lighten up!" he said towards the white-shirts, "Taehyung and Yoongi have a plan that could work if we get them onto the enemy ship."

"What plan?" Namjoon asked.

"Stuxnet," Taehyung said again, looking at the blonde.

"Clever idea," the commander answered and sat down with his food. Of course, the Brain knew. Hoseok rolled his eyes. He was exceptionally short-tempered today, but he could not change it. Hopefully it would become better when the battle had started. His experience was that once you were on the battlefield and confronted with the enemy, this shitty nervousness was gone, replaced by instinct and adrenaline, but it was not even sure if they would meet the enemy. What a fucked-up situation.

"We don't have Ticks on board, so how do you plan on getting them on the ship?" Namjoon asked him from the side.

"We've got a diplomat, so I hope he's good enough to sweettalk them," he answered and finally closed the window with the paused Go game.

When he looked up, his eyes met the doc who looked like he felt sick. "Don't worry, Jin," he tried to calm the physician, "I'll try to keep you in the background."

The hazel-haired just nodded, eyes fixed on the untouched food bar.

"Morning," Jimin's velvety voice made all of them turn towards the door. The diplomat entered the room followed by Jungkook. "What's with the long faces?"

Hoseok frowned. Another idiot with a death-wish.

"We're up against an unknown enemy," Namjoon deadpanned, "This might cause bad mood for normal people."

Was their Brain being sarcastic? What the hack was up with today. Was the possibility to die suddenly throwing over the laws of nature? A feeling AI, a sarcastic Brain, and three happy idiots confronted with a war. At least Jin and Jungkook behaved normal.

The small honey-haired sat down. "Is it not comforting to know that the enemy has no AI, and that we have a professional hacker on board who has a plan on hand?"

"Don't forget my sugar," Taehyung mumbled but was ignored.

Everyone, except for the raven, looked at the psychologist confused.

"What makes you think they don't have an AI?" Hoseok asked.

"I understood something when I talked to Bang. The three laws are what makes an AI an AI. Without the three laws, it's just a computer. The third law makes it conscious of itself, the second law gives it awareness of its surroundings, and the first law..." The small man trailed off for some reason. "And you can't have just a fragment of the laws. Especially not of the first law."

"True," the commander said, "An AI would violate the first law by destroying a planet. It would be impossible."

Jimin nodded and smiled softly. And all faces around the table lit up a little.

"Should we gear up after breakfast?" Taehyung asked.

Hoseok shook his head. "Should we not accomplish to get onto the enemy ship, we'll need full flexibility to handle our ship."

Everyone nodded.

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Hoseok stood on the bridge and looked out of the window. Taehyung and Yoongi sat in their seats, and he could feel the rest of the crew behind him. In two minutes and thirteen seconds they would know whether they had to fight, or not. The countdown Bang displayed on the window was nerve-wracking, but without it they would most likely go crazy. And when the timer bordered thirty seconds, Taehyung placed his hands on the flight control and Yoongi prepped the message they had prepared for the headquarters to be send.

"Some last words before we're back?" Hoseok asked into the deafening silence.

"I love you," Bang's uncle voice said softly, almost shy, "I love you all."

"We love you, too," Jimin answered after some seconds of silence.

Confused, Hoseok turned around to the honey-haired and saw the other smile knowingly. What the fuck was happening here? But then he decided that he did no longer care about all the nonsense the crew confronted him with. He could live without knowing all the fuzz.

"QGCS is turned off in ten, nine..." the AI began to count, and the tension became so thick Hoseok could taste it on his tongue.

Everyone held their breath. "...two, one. Off."

Earth was in front of them, but there was nothing that looked remotely like an enemy space ship able to destroy a whole planet.

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