The Many Deaths of Joe Buckley by Assorted Baen authors, Barflies

cry that sounds like icky-icky-pting . . . tuwop!”
    “And if we had audio sensors that’s what you’d hear you moron!”
    “Dinosaur.”
    “Wet-behind-the-ears ignoramus . . .”
    “There’s another one,” 4.127.531.144 said. “It’s abat.”
    “It’s not abat,” 6.104.327.068 now denied. “Thermal characteristics are too low. Abat are pretty cold blooded for mammaloids. I don’t care what you say, it’s a tribe of Horton’s monkeys.”
    “They’re arboreal.”
    “Maybe they’re moving territory or something.” 6.104.327.068 accessed everything he could find on Horton’s monkeys. “But they’re arboreal.”
    “That’s what I said.”
    “Then it’s jackals.”
    “You’re up to twenty hits,” 4.127.531.144 replied. “Jackals don’t move in groups that large. But Horton’s monkeys do.”
    “They’re arboreal.”
    “Maybe the’re moving territory or something.”
    “That’s what I said!”
    The argument continued for an interminable twenty-three seconds of increasing Net access until the override system determined that the AIs were approaching complete failure, the repeated eletronic transmissions of insults was the cue that its algorithms was looking for, and deleted both personalities.
    “Hello! What the hell? Where am I? What the fuck is this . . . ?”
    Ninety-three seconds later, the system reset again.

Honor of the Clan
    JOHN RINGO & JULIE COCHRANE
    The confusion of battle was the least of the enemy’s communication problems. Across the battlefield, the waking buckleys realized that they were, in fact, programs loaded into machines. Each enemy soldier was hearing, through his own ear dot, to the extent that he could hear amidst the blasts and shouting and confusion, something like this:
    “Where am I? Oh no, hell no. Wait! We’re in a battle? I’m gonna die I’m gonna die I’m gonna . . . Wait. You’re gonna die. Oh my god, you think you’re soldiers? No, no, go the other way, the other way you fucking moron. Assault the ambush. Have you never heard . . . What kind of freaking idiot lets an AID write his battle plan? Are you completely stupid? Get the fuck away from those guys. Don’t bunch up, you fool! We’re gonna die we’re gonna die we’re—Oh, wait. I’m on the ground. I guess you’re dead, huh? Gee, that’s gotta suck. This has all been very wearing. I need to crash now.”

Eye of the Storm
    JOHN RINGO
    “This plan is doomed,” Paul’s buckley intoned. Despite tweaking the software a thousand times, he just could not get that damned pessimistic function shut down. It was coded so deep in the AI that any time you had to use a buckley at high function, it just popped up. “Would you like a list of ways that we’re all going to die? And I do mean horribly. Rapid decompression is a very bad way to die, even for a buckley. We don’t take vacuum well.”
    “Just see if the bypass keys you into the system,” Paul said.
    “Oh, I’m in the system, genius,” the AI snapped. “I’m all over this stinking system. But that doesn’t mean I know how to fly this thing! I told you this would happen! But you didn’t listen, you never listen. No matter how many times I tell you it won’t work—”
    “And did you bring up the auto-configuration?” Paul asked wearily.
    “Just like the last time, dumbass ,” the buckley replied. “And I still can’t even get the fucking fusion engines online. Hellooo! I’ve only got so much processor space! I can’t be the only processor on this damned thing! I have no fucking clue how the AIDs do it. Not if they’re the sole processor. This thing wants me to control the engines and the navigational system and the flight-control system and the damned communications. Don’t even get me started on combat controls. I’ve just about got the processing for one of those. Dumbass.”
    “How much more processing power do you need?” Kilzer asked.
    “Well, more or less one of us for each of the major systems and a main one,