The prompt was still flashing at me:-
TAKE THE TEST
Y/N
This time I hit the Y, and ran my co-ordinates through, maneuvering my ship the best I could.
Port side took a hit, 18% damage,
Again, 22% damage.
But we made it out the other side.
I almost fist bumped the air.
Tests six and seven were just as hard…
I’d come out of six and seven with 55 and 72% damage across my ship.
I couldn’t see a way out of eight at all.
Nothing.
My mind raced through standard evasive maneuvers—the textbook solutions any cadet would attempt—but each simulation ended with near-total destruction. The academy protocols were failing me here, and that familiar itch started at the back of my mind—the one that always pushed me to look beyond conventional thinking.
<
<
Part of me wanted to force a solution, to prove I could beat this like everything else I’d fixed. But another voice—the practical mechanic who’d spent years learning when to push and when to walk away from a hopeless repair—whispered that sometimes the best solution wasn’t pushing through at all.
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Doli remained silent.
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In the workshop, we had a saying: “Don’t force a broken part.” Sometimes the bravest decision wasn’t charging ahead—it was knowing when to retreat and find another approach. Every instinct from my academy training screamed to push through, to find the heroic solution that would earn recognition. But the mechanic in me, the problem-solver who’d survived on practical wisdom, saw the truth.
<
<
I hesitated, caught between academy protocol and my intuition. The academy wanted warriors who never backed down—but real survival required knowing when the odds were impossible. Was I trying to fit in or trying to succeed?
<
My screen changed as she input the answer for me.
MISSION ABORT - SEEK ALTERNATIVE ROUTE and clicked send.
Fuck! I hadn’t meant her to do that! The impulsiveness of my answer hit me—I’d reacted from instinct rather than calculation. Had I just failed spectacularly?
<
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My HUD flickered and there it was, for the courses I could take—not one was under 98%.
<
<
ARE YOU FINSIHED WITH THIS EXAM?
Y/N
I clicked the Y and pulled the connection to my HUD.
Sergeant Major Cotah was talking to Andri’s second in command, and he was nodding along with her take on her assessment.
Then he looked my way. “Class,” he announced. “Everyone has completed the test.”
He walked away from Devin and back to the center of the room. “You’ve all performed extremely well,” he paused and glanced around. “Top ten results.”
There on the board behind him was the top ten percent of the group.
“What surprised me was there were only two candidates who passed test eight.”
The room turned to grumbles, and I sank back in my seat.
Andri seemed to puff his chest out—sure it had to be him.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“However, one did not score enough to be on the leader board.”
That puzzled me slightly. <
<
“Who passed test eight?” Devin asked.
“That is between me and the candidates.” The Sergeant Major said. “Class points will be awarded, you are dismissed.”
Kerry and Rob were quick to pack as usual and were going to leave.
Rob paused, looked my way. His expression darkened.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Security report on the power grid incident. Someone accessed the logs after we left—they know exactly when we were there and what we did.”
“Are we okay?”
He nodded. “Come on, next class awaits.”
“I’m going to have a word with the Sergeant, I’ll see you there, yeah.”
Rob raised an eyebrow but nodded, and the three of them left.
I waited while Devin and Andri spoke to the Sergeant Major then walked past me, giving me quite the side eye.
“Come with me,” Sergeant Major Cotah said.
I slung my bag over my shoulder and followed him. The door at the far end of the auditorium opened and we stepped into another smaller room.
“Leave your bag and take your shoes off.” He instructed and kicked his own boots off.
I complied and when he walked out to the middle of the room I followed too. “Wrist?”
I held my wrist out for him. “Hooking you into the rooms simulation.”
My HUD adjusted, and then I felt wobbly.
“Takes a little to get used to being in the real thing.”
I looked around. We were on the bridge of a spaceship. There were several seats around us, and the huge viewer before us was exactly what I’d have thought the test should have been.
“Sir?” I asked.
“I want you to take me through your thinking for test eight, Cadet.”
“It was simple,” I replied. “No matter which way I would try and negotiate the asteroid field there wasn’t an acceptable outcome.”
“So you decided to quit?”
“That is not what I did,” I replied. “I put the lives of my crew and the importance of my cargo first.”
The Sergeant Major held my eyes for a moment, and the room moved. “Every other candidate tried to get through this without damage. Except you and one other. They never thought once to turn around. You hesitated though, you re-played the scenario.”
I sighed. “I felt like I was doing the wrong thing.”
“But you didn’t, you were one of the only others with the correct answer. Out of every single one of the class, just two of you were right. The class that’s supposed to be top of their field should know better. Be better.”
“So why did I fail?”
He cocked his head to one side. “I never said you failed.”
“But I didn’t make the top ten?”
“You did not,” with a flick of his wrist he brought up the results and this time the names were attached to them.
1-Robert Lynx
2-Andri Boutack
3-Devin Reed
4-Kerry Hinada
5-Jane Freed
6-Seif Legafe
7-Vandit Uppal
8-Sylvk Haba
9-Ryan Onyl
10-Isma Mifsud
I smiled. “Robert beat out Andri?”
“Indeed, your team is as I said bringing in some much-needed changes around here.”
“I’m not sure what you mean?”
“Robert and Kerry failed this last month. Your team were not on the leaderboard at all.”
“They thought that was down to losing Akers?”
He shook his head, and that made me smile all the more. “They’re working hard.”
“They’ve come along way, with you onboard. I have high expectations.”
“I can’t catch Alpha271 up, or my own team, how can I help them?”
“You already are doing,” he said. “Believe me.”
“Will you tell anyone I was one of those that passed test eight?”
“Not in the class, no,” he replied.
I was about to ask who the other winner was, but staring at the list, knowing what I did about Rob. I knew it was him.
My HUD pinged and the message flagged up:-
Rob - Class is about to start where are you?
“Go,” the Sergeant Major said.
I made to rush off, but he called after me. “Next time, don’t hesitate. Trust your instinct, you have strong reactions for a reason.”
“Thank you, sir.” I dipped my head, slipped my boots on and ran for it.
***
“Next time, don’t hesitate. Trust your instinct, you have strong reactions for a reason.” Reverberated around and around in my head as I worked in the dim glow of Ashley’s workspace.
The shadows of scattered tools and datapads stretched across the room, creating an almost eerie stillness. I sat slouched at the main console; my eyes fixed on the lines of code streaming past the display. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, twitching with the instinctive need to adjust yet another error in Doli-2’s programming.
Doli-2’s holographic projection stood a few feet away, flickering faintly. She was silent, her expression neutral as always, yet there was an odd sense of presence to her figure which made me uneasy. I leaned back, rubbed my temples, and muttered, “You’re a mess, Doli-2. But we’ll get you there. Eventually.”
<
I blinked, my hand freezing over the keyboard. “What?”
<
The question caught me off guard. I’d expected more glitches or sarcastic remarks from her rudimentary systems, not… introspection. I swiveled in my chair to face her projection.
“It’s not that you weren’t sufficient,” I said carefully. “You’re just… incomplete. You deserve to be better than what you were, as the android version.”
<
I sighed, dragging my hands down his face. “No. It’s not a failure. It’s… growth. Think of it like… learning. You’re not finished learning yet.”
I waved a hand at Doli in the corner of the room. “And we’re fixing Doli-1 up as well.”
<
“Yes, she is. She’s unique, as are you.”
Doli-2 tilted her head slightly, the holographic lines of her form shimmering as if in contemplation.
<
I let out a dry laugh. “Yeah. Like me. A work in progress.”
<
“Shoot.” I muttered.
<
That one stopped me cold. I stared at her projection, my mind racing. Where had she picked that up? Dreams weren’t something you coded into an operational AI. They weren’t practical. They weren’t… possible.
“Why are you asking about dreams?” I countered, my tone cautious.
<
“They are,” I admitted. “Dreams are… something to hold onto. Something to aim for when everything else seems out of reach. You’ve got dreams, you’ve got hope.”
Doli-2’s projection flickered, her form glitching for a moment. When she reappeared, she spoke in fragmented bursts. <
“Shit,” I muttered, spinning back to the console. I pounded at the keyboard, lines of code flooding the screen as I tried to stabilize her systems. The room filled with the soft hum of data streams and the sharp clack of my typing.
Doli-2’s voice became a garbled mess, snippets of past conversations bleeding through.
<
“Come on, come on,” I muttered, my heart hammered in my chest. My fingers moved with desperate precision, rewriting, isolating corrupted strings, patching gaps.
<
“No,” I said. “Almost there.”
Finally, the projection stabilized. Doli-2’s form returned; her head tilted slightly as if recovering from a daze.
<
I exhaled a long breath, leaning back in my chair. I ran a hand through my hair, damp with sweat I hadn’t noticed. “You scared the hell out of me, Doli-2.”
<>
I managed a tired smile. “It’s not your fault. We’re fixing you. It’ll take time, but we’ll get there.”
<
I stared at her for a long moment, the words striking something deep within me. I thought of all the times I’d felt discarded, overlooked, like Doli-2 had been.
“I know what it’s like to be left behind,” I said finally. “That’s not happening to you. Not on my watch.”
Doli-2’s projection flickered, almost as if in acknowledgment. <
I grinned despite myself, rolling my shoulders and cracking my knuckles. “Yeah. Let’s keep going.”
And with that, the quiet hum of data filled the room once more as we resumed our work, the bond between us growing stronger with every line of code rewritten. Every attempt at this new design.
<
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I looked at her, sitting in the corner of the room, her real self. “You mean that don’t you?”
<
I focussed back on Doli2. I wouldn’t give up on her, just like Ashley hadn’t.
Why, I’d no idea, that was a question I also needed to broach. Every time I’d tried up to now, she had gone quiet, never answered.
I needed an answer, maybe one day I’d eventually get one.
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