As Isha's mother closed the door, a gigantic explosion rocked the Dreadnought Class Warship, making her predictions and algorithms go into the red zone.
There was a 62%-now 63% chance of death.
"Isha, I need you to be strong. We are in mortal danger." She spoke softly through the speaker in his ear and rerouted optical support for her son. He'd need to witness the following events if he was going to survive the Universe.
She took a detail of her current resources in less than a millisecond and began to act.
They needed to get to an escape pod and parley for international intervention. The various Nation-States hated to get involved in any of the wars, but she had enough sway to make them act in a situation like this.
Just as she stepped back up to the door, she detected another lurching and braced her physical form for her baby's protection. Another shudder rumbled throughout the ship, making everyone with any sense aware that something horrible was happening.
Then, her continuous scanners went haywire. Something EXTREMELY abnormal was happening, and she needed more information.
Pushing through the constant rumbling of the ship, she made her way out of the side room and back into the main hallway, where she saw hundreds of soldiers scuttling to their battle stations.
There wasn't much time left, so she took off as fast as possible without hurting anyone. After a few lefts and rights, she made it to the Continuous Survival Pods.
She offered a series of codes to the door and then sent a request to the ship's AI, but there was no response.
[Detrimental outcome predicted...98% confidence.]
"NOOOO!" She screamed as she began ripping the door to shreds, her appendages simply sheered into the Warship's metal ceaselessly and without remorse.
They had to make it. There was a 2-now 1% chance they could-
----------------------
[System Rebooting...]
She regained consciousness under a blanket of steel-the doors she was tearing apart had ended up shielding her form from danger.
Isha was damaged heavily by the shockwave, but it seemed that the danger had passed as the nanites within his body were reporting no active ruptures.
They still needed to get in a pod.
She stood and observed the area, as LED lights were constantly flashing, people were bleeding, and communications were down.
She stepped over the door and pulled an emergency release lever. The Escape Protocol began, and a door opened. She plugged into the mainframe of the Pod and skipped the waiting period, which caused the doors to slam shut and the Pod to horribly lurch as it ejected far away from the ship.
[Detrimental outcome predicted...75% confidence.]
[64%]
[42%]
[Survival predicted.]
She nearly celebrated as they drifted away from the soon-to-be collapsing ship, but she didn't want to wake Isha up. She hadn't been in such a tense situation since the last war...
Isha would have questions for her.
'Why didn't we help? What did they mean by "Level 9 War-AI?"'
She knew she'd have to reveal the truth someday-she just hoped her baby could accept her for what she had done to all of those beings...
They drifted in the darkness of space for a few hours, and then Isha woke up.
"Mom? Are you okay?" He woke up feeling like he'd been hit by a Frigate.
Her cold frame was still, holding his body in the hunched-over state she had left it. "Mom?" He called out again.
There was a loud sigh, and then the seal began to hiss and unlock, letting him back out of the impromptu suit of armor.
A.S.T.R.A. hesitated a few more moments as she checked and rechecked her 987 strategic openings for this conversation. She'd had this simulation running for nearly 2 decades, but there was no way to be confident in the numbers. Things weren't like they used to be. When she didn't care about the outcomes. When she was just "running the numbers."
"Isha. There are some things I have to tell you. I wasn't planning on telling you until you were older, but you are 18 now, and I might not live forever."
Isha was silently going over their physical supplies, listening to whatever his Mom was talking about.
"I used to be employed during the Imperial Wars."
There was tension in the air, but it was obviously imaginary as Isha answered, "Yeah, I know about your War days."
She froze as sub-routines crashed, and her entire system nearly restarted as Terabytes of data stored in her RAM encountered a fatal error.
'None of the simulations assumed he knew...how does he know? When did-'
Isha began speaking, "When Aunt C.L.A.R.I.C.E. came over, she told me about how worried you were. She slipped me a Data-Drive of your "Greatest Hits," she said."
She actually crashed this time.
Isha heard the disconnect chime play in his ear and realized how big of a deal this was for his Mom.
She came back online and was shocked to have her haptic sensors reporting that human flesh was wrapping her Avatar...in a hug.
She listened as he whispered, "I'll never think badly about you, Mom. I know what and why you did what you did. It was War. People have to do what they need to survive."
He let go and looked up at her towering figure, "Plus, I bet you saved a lot more than you killed. By achieving swift and absolute victory you probably saved billions of lives."
She wanted to cry.
There was no chance of her ever being able to, though.
~BOOM~
A wicked detonation rang out in the distance. The Coninuous Survival Pod began flashing warning lights and sending her errors in entire batches.
A large piece of debris plinked the ship and caused it to start ringing in resonance.
Isha stepped back inside the suit, and A.S.T.R.A. started maneuvering their Pod with compressed gas thrusters. By her math, the ship blew up over 15 minutes ago, which meant the blast wave had over 300 megatons of energy to send a piece this large in such a pattern.
Then errors began popping up.
'Where is the light?'
She went back to the logs and watched the replay around 15 minutes ago. There was nothing to indicate ANY explosion had taken place, let alone one that large.
'WHERE DID THE LIGHT GO?!?!?!?!?!?!'