The bridge of the "Odyssey" went from quiet, scientific concentration to pure, chaotic panic in about three seconds. One moment, they were carefully waking up a giant, sleepy space-ring.

The next, the space-ring had woken up, was making its own coffee, and had unleashed a whole swarm of very angry, very old robot-wasps.

"Red alert!" Scarlett's voice cut through the noise as she took over the pilot's chair. "All hands to battle stations! Zara, what in the universe are those things?"

"Ancient Precursor defense drones!" Zara yelled back, her hands flying over her console. "Automated security systems! It seems the previous owners did not appreciate people touching their stuff!"

The drones were unlike any enemy they had ever faced. They weren't like pirate ships, which were loud and messy. They weren't like Hegemony ships, which were cold and logical. These things were… alien.

They moved with a silent, impossible grace, gliding through space without any visible engines. They didn't fly in formations. They moved like a school of fish, or a flock of birds, all acting as one single, intelligent mind.

"Their movements are… strange," Emma said, her eyes narrowed in concentration. She was trying to use her precognition to predict their attack patterns, but it was like trying to nail jelly to a wall. "They aren't using strategy. They aren't trying to flank us or find weak points."

"Then what are they doing?" Ryan asked, his hands gripping the back of Scarlett's chair.

"They're using pure probability," Emma replied, a note of frustrated awe in her voice. "They are calculating every possible future, every possible shot, and they are simply choosing the one with the highest probability of hitting us. They're not fighting us. They're just… solving a math problem. And we're the part of the equation that gets erased."

It was a terrifyingly effective way to fight. You can't outsmart an enemy that is just doing math.

The first volley of shots from the drones wasn't a volley at all. A dozen different drones, all in different positions, fired at the exact same millisecond. Their shots, bolts of cold, blue energy, all converged on a single, tiny spot on the "Odyssey's" forward shield. It was the one spot that was, for that one single microsecond, the weakest.

BOOM!

The "Odyssey" rocked violently. The shield buckled, and sparks rained down from the ceiling of the bridge.

"Shields at seventy percent!" a frantic crew member shouted. "They hit us with a dozen shots in the exact same spot!"

Scarlett wrestled with the controls, pulling the ship into a sharp, evasive dive. "Okay," she said through gritted teeth. "So they're smart. And they cheat. My kind of enemy."

She flew the ship with a wild, unpredictable grace, throwing the "Odyssey" into spins and slides that would have made a lesser pilot sick. But the drones didn't care. They just recalculated. Every time she moved, they adjusted their aim instantly. It was like trying to dodge rain.

Another perfectly coordinated volley hit them, this time on their port side. The ship groaned in protest.

"Hull breach on deck seven!" someone yelled.

They were in serious trouble. Their technology was good, but it was like bringing a really well-made sword to a fight against a dozen laser-guided sniper rifles. They were being picked apart, piece by piece, by an enemy that had been designed by the smartest, most advanced race in the history of the universe.

"We can't keep this up," Ilsa's voice growled over the comms from her position in the ship's command center. She was coordinating their weapon systems, but it was a frustrating, losing battle. "Our targeting computers can't lock onto them. They move before our shots can even get there."

The mood on the bridge was growing desperate. They were outmatched. Outsmarted. And outgunned.

Then, a new voice spoke over the bridge speakers. It was the calm, witty, and slightly roguish voice of the ship's AI. It was the voice of Oracle, the voice of Jaxon and Kaelia.

"Well, boss," Oracle said, its tone sounding remarkably calm for a ship that was currently being used as target practice. "These old guys are pretty good. But they've got one weakness."

"And what's that, Oracle?" Emma asked, willing to listen to any idea at this point.

"They're logical," the AI replied. "They're all about the math. The high probability. They're predictable because they will always choose the most logical move. But you know who isn't logical?"

A sudden, brilliant, and very dangerous idea sparked in Emma's mind.

"Us," she whispered.

She looked at Scarlett. Scarlett looked back, a wild, dangerous grin spreading across her face. They both had the same crazy idea at the same time.

"Oracle," Emma said, her voice now firm and full of a new, desperate hope. "I am giving you temporary control of the 'Odyssey's' primary weapon systems and evasive maneuvers."

"Emma, what are you doing?" Ryan asked, confused.

"Fighting fire with chaos," Emma replied. She turned to the rest of the bridge crew. "Everyone, hang on to something!"

A new energy seemed to flow through the ship. The "Odyssey" stopped its graceful, predictable evasive moves. Instead, it started to fly like a drunken smuggler being chased by the entire galactic police force. It lurched, it spun, it suddenly went sideways. It was flying with all the chaotic, seat-of-your-pants genius of Kaelia herself.

At the same time, the ship's guns started firing, not in coordinated volleys, but in wild, seemingly random patterns. One gun would fire to the left, another straight up. It looked like the ship was just firing blindly into space.

The Precursor drones, for the first time, seemed to hesitate.

Their perfect, probability-based minds couldn't make sense of it. The "Odyssey's" movements were illogical. Its weapon fire was random. There was no pattern. There was no high-probability target to choose. The math problem they were trying to solve had just been filled with nonsense variables.

And in that moment of hesitation, the "Odyssey's" chaotic dance paid off.

A random shot from a side turret, a shot that had a 0.01% chance of hitting anything, flew through space and struck one of the drones, blowing it into a million silver pieces.

It was a lucky shot. But it was a start.

"It's working!" Zara yelled, a look of pure, scientific delight on her face. "We're too stupid for them to predict!"

"I've never been so proud to be stupid!" Scarlett shouted, laughing as she helped the ship perform a maneuver that probably had a name, and that name was probably 'The Vomit Comet.'

The spirit of their two lost friends, their chaos, their unpredictability, was now their greatest weapon. Channeled through the ship's guns and engines, the ghosts of two roguish smugglers were now fighting the ghosts of the ancient, logical Precursors.

It was a beautiful, poignant, and brutally effective tribute.

One by one, the drones began to fall, hit by lucky shots and confused by the ship's insane flying.

They destroyed the last of the silver, crescent-shaped ships just as another alarm went off on Zara's console.

"Uh oh," she said.

"What is it?" Ryan asked, his heart still pounding from the battle. "More angry robots?"

"Worse," Zara said, her face grim. "Just before the last drone was destroyed… it sent out a message. A single, tiny, compressed burst of data."

She pointed at a line of code on her screen that showed the message's destination.

"It sent it to a hidden, deep-space receiver," she said. "We won. We secured the Stellar Lifter."

She looked up at the faces of her friends, her expression filled with a new dread.

"But we also just tripped a silent alarm. And now, somebody, somewhere, knows we're here."

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