P: Worst Case

After he completed the connection, Brendan gazed at the same list of documents that had filled the screens in his own ship earlier. He wondered uneasily how the same data could be accessed if the core system that was pulling it up were actually as different as Adrian claimed. Could the system really be trusted?

"Even though I am willing to wait for a while, I hope that you will make recovering my pilot a priority," the ship told him with apparent concern.

Perhaps it had the same doubts about him, Brendan realized as Adrian informed him with a roll of his eyes, "It said that it will wait for an entire century."

"For a century? And then what?" Brendan asked a little sharply.

"I would normally send all of my data back to the system that authorized me, but I have not succeeded in acquiring authorization," the ship's core system complained.

There was another way to secure part of the system's loyalty then. "I'll authorize you," Brendan announced.