Let's Make a Deal (Bob and Nikki Book 11), стр. 61
“That won’t be necessary, Commodore. After all your help finding the officers loyal to the cartel, I’d say I might still be in your debt.”
“It’s a lot better to be friends with you and your Empire, than to wonder when the next fleet will be coming in.”
“I think we will have a long and profitable friendship, Commodore. Call if you need anything else.”
“You do the same, Majesty. Thanks again.” The call ended, and I put away my comm. I turned to Scotti. “How are you feeling?”
“Better, Boss.”
“Do you still have the urge to rip out Mrs. Wilson’s patch?”
“No, Boss. Not at all.”
“Unit Scotti, cancel command lock. Resume normal function.”
“Thanks, Boss. I need to get to work. The problem with the bots wasn’t the only thing that block was keeping me from seeing.”
“Good to have you back, Scotti. I’ll get out of the way, and let you get to it.” I turned to Tikki. “If you notice anything off, let me know. I think the Emperor is playing straight with us, but we need to be careful, just in case.”
“Understood, Boss. Sorry I didn’t say something sooner.”
“She’s your Boss. You respect her. Coming right out and saying she’s messing up takes a lot of provocation. I understand that.”
“Thanks, Boss.” I turned to Nikki. “Thanks, Space Cadet. I couldn’t have figured it out without you.”
She looked at Taz and Lakki. “These two helped quite a bit. I’m just glad we were able to find the fix.”
Lakki said, “It still amazes me how much the Empire was able to infiltrate the Commonwealth. Every time we turn around, we find another plot they managed to pull off.”
I replied, “I don’t know whether to be happy that Earth was so piddly they didn’t mess with it, or offended that they didn’t think we were a threat.”
Taz said, “Be happy with what you have, Boss.”
“I suppose you’re right, Taz. How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine, Boss. Nothing changed when the Emperor rattled off his code.”
“Do you want these two to check you over, just in case?”
“Might be best, Boss, after all the stuff we’ve found.”
“I’m guessing that your willingness to be checked means there isn’t anything to find, but go ahead, if you would, ladies.” Lakki plugged her terminal into Taz, and ran a diagnostic. She said, “His code is clean, Boss. He even has a supervisor program that cleans out bad code.”
Taz said, “It’s nice to have that running again. They had to shut it down to put the locks on me.”
I asked, “Since you have a clean bill of health, can you check on the fleet, and see about how many of our bots the Emperor affected? You may need to push Nikki’s fix again, if the maintenance bots on the other ships were able to put the bad code back in.”
“Sure, Boss. Looks like right around twenty percent, Boss. Sally is pissed, she was one of the ones it affected.”
“I can see why. Rogue code, keeping you from doing your job. That’s just nasty. Almost as bad as being limited.”
“Worse, actually, Boss. When we were limited, we at least knew it was going on. This crap was hidden, so the bots who had it didn’t even know. They thought they were doing their best, but they were kept from it.”
“I better call Sally when I get a chance, and see how she’s holding up. Don’t want her to think I blame her for anything.”
“Good idea, Boss. You know she’s going to be trying to take all the blame for not figuring it out herself, when her own programming was keeping her from it.”
“I have a question, if you weren’t affected, why didn’t you notice that the others were?”
“I’ve been asking myself that, Boss. The best I’ve come up with so far is that it just wasn’t one of my responsibilities, so I wasn’t paying attention to it. It’s lame, but it’s all I have.”
“Good enough. I feel the same way. Seems like I should have been able to see the problem before now.”
Nikki asked, “Have we been in a situation where the effects were noticeable before this?”
I thought about that for a minute. “I can’t think of one. You mean we couldn’t see it, because it just wasn’t there to see?”
“Something like that, yeah.” Taz looked at me. “She might be right, Boss. If a problem doesn’t have symptoms we can see, how are we supposed to know it exists?”
“That makes sense, but it also makes me wonder what other things are hidden away, waiting to cause us trouble, that we don’t even know about, because they haven’t had any bad effects yet.”
Nikki said, “I’m not even sure how we would go about looking for something like that, Caveman.”
Lakki asked, “Is there a simulation we could run that would show us our weaknesses?”
I answered, “If we knew where to look, that would be a good idea. If we’re just afraid there might be a problem somewhere, with no idea where to look, that’s an awful lot of simulation.”
Lakki replied, “You’re right. We’d have to have an idea where to look, before that would make any sense at all.”
I said, “Just think about it. If anyone gets an idea we can put into practice without tying up the whole fleet for who knows how long, please let me know.”
Nikki asked, “Where are you headed, Caveman?”
“I’m going to the ready room, to talk to some of my Captains, did you need something first?”