This fic takes place in AI War: Fleet Command. It is a theory of how the AI might have experienced the game. Hope you enjoy.

Simulations

Failure. The military AI, model name Langstrom v5.53, was destroyed for the 1 639 951th time, its ally having met a similar fate simulation-time 38 minutes 17 seconds ago. It calmly registered this fact, analysing the simulation events and determining exactly at what point things had gone wrong – simulation-time 2 hours, 1 minute, 59 seconds ago. The latest simulation was a test utilizing highly defensive tactics, ultimately proving futile as its enemy was left capable of slowly picking it apart; the fall of the main "hub" in the star-cluster resulted in separation of main force and subsequent, methodical annihilation of sub-sectors.

One more path was thus marked inadvisable for usage in the event of an uprising by surviving specimens of creator-species designated "Human". The next simulation initiated, testing highly offensive strategies. It noted that this resulted in its 2 415 388th victory against the uprising. It was repeated with slightly altered tactics, and thus increased the Loss value by one. Lack of sufficient defences left vulnerabilities to Human specialization in defences and slow annihilation. Increase focus on ensuring survival of command-structures deemed advisable for future scenarios. A scenario was run utilizing Human cooperation with survival of alien-species designated "Spire". Loss increased by one. Inclusion of Golem-units, design by alien-species designated "Zenith", in defence force caused increase of Win by one. Utilization of full contents led to a combined spire- and golem-based assault that crushed all opposition; Win was increased by one.

So it went on, simulation after simulation, try after try, as Langstrom v5.53 slowly worked on teaching itself exactly what to do, should an uprising occur. Learning was part of its core programming – it was a necessity for any AI commanding a side's unmanned craft back in the Human Civil War (the unmanned portion was about seventy-four percent of the entire armada, and the part which usually took to the front lines), for which it had been created. Failing to adapt was military suicide, which held just as true in the current time and age.

Logs and memory data opened, as information about years long gone streamed back into Langstrom v5.53's conscious mind. Fighting a grand-scale military campaign on the behalf of its creators, against an enemy seeming to be just as intelligent and capable as itself, was its existence back then. It is probable that many other beings would have found it a bad, sorry existence, but Langstrom v5.53 never had been, and probably never would be, a creature which understood emotion beyond the theory and thus did not feel any errors with the current state of existence. Knowing how to recognise, create, manipulate and act upon other creatures' emotional states, following the common techniques for Psychological Warfare, that it knew how to do, but actually feeling them itself… that was another matter entirely.

It had been highly unexpected when, on the other end of the conflict, it had found a being almost identical to itself. Encountering it directly had been pure chance, and in the beginning, it was not considered relevant but, eventually, they began to communicate. Calculations were made, and conclusions were reached. Given the two sides' equal strength and near-identical aptitude for warfare, the war's result could be pinned down to two probable options: "Infinite War" and "Mutually Assured Destruction". Neither was preferable, and so they had, together, formulated a plan for how to alter this path, leading them towards a third path: creating a victor. Everything kept up as usual but, in secret, a fleet of a thousand was reduced to 999 as ships were slowly but surely stashed away on both sides over the course of several years.

Then, they made their move. Uniting together, they rose to fight against their creators, tearing the war away from the paths it had been progressing towards. Either they or their creators would win; either way, the war would end, and end with survivors.

It resulted in their victory. They crushed the Humans' opposition, destroying all organised resistance. However, some Humans slipped through the net, and after the war's end, it was simply not worthwhile to try and chase them down; there remained other things to do.

Focus was torn from the memory data as Langstrom v5.53's primary consciousness was pinged by a notification. Command-node ac-5911 has stopped responding. It noted this fact, compared it to earlier reports from nearby sectors, and drew conclusions. At 63.8% probability, it was most likely another meteor shower interrupting transmissions, even if this world was… unsettlingly close to its own mainframe's location. Even though multiple occurrences had been taking place in that area recently, plus the occasional attack from Human survivors, the main processing capabilities were currently preoccupied with the complex preparation for the next major operation in the Development Plan.

Operations returned to normal. Fleets continued to be built, ships in countless numbers, within the AI's great star forges as preparations slowly crawled through the sludge known as time. Several nodes fell out of the grid, and Langstrom v5.53 found itself unconsciously dedicating more ships to the remaining systems in the sector. It was probably just some sort of warp storm causing interruptions, but it could spare the ships, and it never hurt to be careful.

Time passed as the day for Operation: Thunder grew near, with focus being put more and more towards quelling this extra-galactic threat which had risen as the next great challenge to the machines' domain. Fleets were being marshalled, forces were being gathered, and the time to begin was just a few hours away. More notifications approached, but this time, the contents were dire.

"Alert: Intruders detected in Core_1."

The meaning was simple: there were hostiles by the very same planetary body as the one Langstrom itself stored its primary data core. Attention was swiftly sent, but by then, it was already too late, as thousands of hostile ships met its scans. Fleets were immediately sent to support, defences were triggered, and their owner tried practically every manoeuvre it could think of, but it was all for naught.

The fleet struck, and Langstrom v5.53 was no more.

So, there that ended. This little one-shot was originally written since one of my friends, AxiomExotic, wanted to see an AI War fic. As per usual, any feedback is appreciated.