Leonidas stood up, and said. "Now we make ourselves scarce."
Applause rippled across the auction hall. Whisper followed.
Ezran smiled.
The upgrade is nearly complete. In Docking Bay 17 of Durin V's orbital ring, engineers swarmed the Lion's Gaze like bees. The new Mark VII tactical AI Core had been installed, it would need time to interface with the ship's internal systems. What little funds they had left Leonidas used to improve the hull plating, the Shield Matrix would have to wait.
Standing on the gangway, Leonidas watched with a flicker of satisfaction.
"With this AI unit, the ship's computer will be smarter and faster. Making the Gaze and us a lot harder to kill," Titus said beside him.
"I am pleased to hear that," Leonidas replied. "I suspect we will be needing it's aid soon enough."
The engineers were running diagnostics, then an alert hit.
"The AI Core is exhibiting abnormal power fluctuations," one of them said.
Leonidas rushed to the cockpit, and tapped the console. "This is no fluctuation. It's a spike. Someone's trying to override the boot sequence."
Ezran's eyes widened. "That's a kill switch. How do we stop it?"
Alarms blared.
The engineers got spooked, and scattered as the Lion's Gaze 's lights flickered, then surged. The AI Core began to emit a blinding red glow - too bright, too fast
But Leonidas would not admit defeat so easily. He had expected someone to make things difficult, but not this quickly. This was clearly sabotage, one of the engineers. Yet there is no time to investigate who was the culprit behind this scheme.
Titus growled. "Shut it down. Now."
Leonidas tapped anxiously at the keys, trying to find the source of the overload. He dove into the interface, fingers flyers at mark speed.
"Shit! It's locked. Someone is running a remote override."
Titus drew his blaster. "Find the source."
"It would be in the AI chamber." Leonidas shouted.
Ezran got to the chamber with haste. Inside, the core pulsed like a heart troubled by sickness. He approached the console, scanned the code. This was no ordinary sabotage - it was a virus. Imperial signature.
"Leo, I need you flood the secondary grid. Overload the decoy node," he said. "And I'll tap into the emergency bypass and rerout power through the stabilizer."
"Ez, if you are mistaken, we could fry ship's entire system." He answered.
Ezran's voice was calm. "Just trust me."
Leonidas followed his fellow crew-mates instructions. Trusting him whole heartedly.
The lights dimmed. Then a surge. The AI core came back to life, flickered for a moment then stabilized. Ezran's plan had worked. When he hacked the code once more, the virus had burned out, and the override collapsed.
Silence returned to the Gaze. Leonidas could now breath freely, the ship he built himself was safe to fly another day.
He turned to Titus. "Too close."
Outside, Durin V's forge-lights continued to burn. As the Lion's Gaze pulled away - wounded, but stronger than ever.