"I cannot identify any AI within your armor Merner." DomeEval answered
"Figures. Guess were doing it the other way." Varn send Yanim a message.
[QUOTE]Need help with something, can I use your workshop?[/QUOTE]
[quote=Yanim]Abs-s-solutely. L-L-Lab is large enough, b-but dirty. I will c-clear space f-f-for you.[/quote]
Yanim sent the reply, wondering when her normal speaking ability would return. She cleared off a work table and moved the debris to her own side, opening up some space for Varn.
As Lion waited for Jeremy to return, he sat down at his desk and used all of his focus to locate the signal. He entered a virtual world of bright colors and numbers, data circulating onboard the station.
The feed was a massive web of information and Lion could see it all. As he continued looking, he found it. The signal was different. It didn't look nor feel like the rest of the data.
Lion accessed the signal. It was mobile. Military hardware. Old. Bitter.
He paused for a moment. Bitter? Data knows no emotions.
It struck him as a lightning. The signal was a person! He rushed up and grabbed his rifle before he went down to the hangar and down the ramp.
Lion readied his weapon and begun jogging towards the maintenance level: the hunt was on.
Jeremy and a group of HarkArk soldiers along with Major Greene hurried to the scene, desperate to find out what was this signal. They spotted Lion afar on the ramp. "Lion, what's going on?"
Pippin headed to the armory and grabbed his gear and brought it with him to engineering. He started looking for different tools he might be able to use (What type of tools are there?)
Lion was halfway between the ramp and the maintenance door when Jeremy, Major Greene and a group of soldiers arrived. He stopped and turned to face them.
"I breached the signal, it's a person. I am currently tracking its location inside the maintenance area."
Kira narrowed her eyebrows and just had her day turned upside down. She cocked her pulse magnum pistol, facing straight at Lion. "Lead the way Senior Enforcer."
"Never thought you'd ask, Ma'am." Lion resumed his jogging towards the door leading into the maintenance section.
[liberalllama, I think you can decide what tools are there.]
Varn picked up the helmet and chest piece of the armor and placed them in a case. He went to Yanim's workshop in engineering, passing and giving a friendly wave to pippin on the way. He went inside the workshop.
"Thanks for letting me use your tools Yanim. What we have down in the armory wouldn't cut it." He opened up a small lid connecting the helmet and the back of the chest piece. "Turns out this armor has an AI in it. Meant to help the user in case they get knocked out or worse." He started looking for what tools he needed. "DomeEval couldn't identify it, so that send an alarm bell in my head." He started working around the area he opened. "Unless, you can give me any other advice, I'm planing to extract the core. Should leave me without a guardian angel in the field, but we wont deal with an AI, controlling power armor strong enough to withstand a Anti-materiel shot from 500 meters. Or a direct hit from a kanad artillery barrage. But enough about me, how are you doing?"
"Does it c-come with a m-manual?" she asked. Varn initially thought she was joking, but quickly realized her concern. "AI is t-t-tricky, usually c-come with s-safeguards against t-tampering. I s-see non-detection as b-bad sign."
Varn reached inside his pocket and pulled out a small PDA. He handed it to Yanim. "That's the armor manual. There should be an AI section." The manual was the standard manual any big corporate company would release. Any useful information was coupled with an overabundance of add's for HarkAkr products. "There is also the message I received from the head engineer." He pointed to the message icon.
After digging through some shelves, Pippin found some painting supplies. He put them on a table by his armor and started thinking about what might look decent.
Lion held his rifle at the ready as he approached a small door labeled "Maintenance - D3". He signaled for Jeremy, Major Greene and the soldiers to halt.
"I'm detecing one vital sign from the room. Human. Male." He turned to the rest of the group. "I'll go in first, watch my back."
As they nodded, Lion cautiously opened up the door.
He slipped in without a sound and took cover behind a small stack of boxes in HarkArk colors. The room was very small, much of it was filled with boxes, pipes and a large locker. From his position he spotted the unknown man in the room.
The man was sitting in a chair at the center of the room. His eyes were closed and he looked very relaxed.
Everything looked normal untill Lion spotted the giant antenna coming out from his head. "What the hell?"
He slowly left his position from behind the boxes and approached the man, holding his rifle ready.
As Lion closed in one the man, he noted a faint humming sound coming from him. Almost like that of a computer. On closer inspection, the man had several black seams across his face. "You have to be kidding me."
And just like that, Lion tore off the synthetic skin and revealed a robotic face.
He looked back at the door. "Clear!" Yelled Lion.
Jeremy and Kira along with her team went in immediately, securing the area for hostiles, only for them to discover what Lion found out. "What? What is this?" Jeremy asked
Yanim placed the PDA on a work surface to sync it with the console. With a swipe, she moved the information from the device onto the large display, which automatically translated the instructions into Kanad script. She handed the PDA back to Varn while scanning the directions, looking for any red flags or warnings. After only finding the usual precautions about preventing data corruption, she nodded.
"Ah, d-design is redundant p-power circuit t-t-type. Whole thing should c-come out in one p-piece."
"There shouldn't be any trouble," Varn said as he picked up the necessary tools. As he positioned them inside the chest of the armor, he mumbled some thoughts aloud. "All I need to do is disconnect the battery line... unscrew [I]this[/I], pop the main bus, and..."
As intended, the unit came out in one piece, still powered by a backup battery to prevent data loss. Varn handed it over to Yanim, who found herself intrigued by the intricacy of the design. "I may b-be able to repair," she said. "It may t-take some t-t-time. Other things g-going on here t-too."
"You can do what you want with it; it's not a rush. I've done alright so far not even knowing it was there," he said with a smile.
Yanim nodded stiltedly with a grin.
Sledge had spent most of the last two weeks working out and wolfing down on as much protein as humanly possible. He wanted gains, but they just weren't coming quickly enough.
He'd always taken pride in being 100% All-Natural Beef, no augmentations to speak of, but the blow to his ego during training a couple of weeks ago had left a bad taste in his mouth. Whatever time he hadn't spent in training he had spent looking up what people could do with their crazy cybernetic bullshit. There were dudes lifting old cars and tearing them apart with their bare hands. There were guys who could reprogram and control a machine while walking past it. There was one dick who could run like the wind and leap like a freak.
All of these made Sledge pretty pissed over them having something he couldn't ever obtain. No doctor would come in fifty feet of his brain with a microchip, after the head trauma he'd suffered being a brawler. Trying to cram a computer in there was just asking to be the world's meatiest vegetable. There had to be a way to get superpowers without resorting to robot brain bullshit.
Finally, after two weeks of agonizing over the problem, Sledge resolved to take the plunge. He pulled out one of those communicator things and typed a message to Arthur.
[quote]Hey, brother, can you science me up some jumbo-large beef? I wanna be swoler faster but I can't be a robot. Head problems. Like it would be fine but these wimp-ass doctors don't wanna touch my brain. You know how it is. Let me know if you can do this? Thanks.
Your buddy,
Derrick[/quote]
Perfect.
Iska returned from the bar with two BMS in on hand and a bottle of kanady gryys (a non-alcoholic, sort of like carbonated water) in the other. As she entered the workshop she saw Varn looking across Yanims shoulder whilst they were talking.
"Is Iska interrupting something?" she said with a playful tone.
She walked over to the bench, put the gryys next to Yanim whilst opening her own BMS and offering Varn the other.
She had intended to drink both herself, but seeing as a guest had appeared in her humble workshop she figured she would offer him something.
[QUOTE=doomevil;47870625]Jeremy and Kira along with her team went in immediately, securing the area for hostiles, only for them to discover what Lion found out. "What? What is this?" Jeremy asked[/QUOTE]
Lion tapped the robot on the head. "The signal. It's Human, yet it's not." He turned around. "It's a cyborg."
"Where did it come from? How the hell did it managed to breach this base." Kira stared at the cyborg. She simply demanded an answer.
Lion grabbed the antenna and twisted it off. He smiled. "The signal is gone now, looks like he was preparing to send some data hidden in your monthly report to HQ."
Lion then grabbed a box and sat down infront of the cyborg. "It's hollow. There's no personality. If it used to be a man it wasn't recently."
He looked at the Major and Jeremy. "Mind keeping an eye on him while I breach his head?"
"Don't worry, if it moves a muscle I'll be sure to make my shot count." Kira insisted, tightening her grip around her handgun as Lion turned. Jeremy nodded as he prepared his Hawk.
Varn took the BMS Iska offered. "Thank you. Were just working on something here. Apparently HarkArk's new AI is busted. Had to take it out." He sat down on a chair next to him. "Either we will get the lead engineers there mad at us, or they will shower us with praise. I honestly can't tell which I'm more indifferent to."
"The humans just k-keep leaving their faulty hardware with us, sekadera," Yanim joked. She thanked Iska for the drink and sighed. "We can always use ways to k-kill time. Hope we g-get out of here soon."
Lion nodded and procceeded with his virtual breach of the cyborgs mind. The mind was relatively empty, devoid of most memories and thoughts.
There were sporadic thoughts, very primitive and basic. Full of emotions, Lion had found his way in.
He found a name. Gavin Inster. Born on Luna. Engineer. Joined HarkArk a few years ago. A happy man. Proud.
Wait.
There was something else as well. Lion focused all of his powers in finding it. Anger. Lots of anger. Hatred towards the Sol Government.
Gavin used to be a member of the Lunar Children. Terrorists. A link to HarkArk. He hates HarkArk as well.
HarkArk weapons at the hands of SDF soldiers. Murderers.
Fight them from the inside. He and his partner. Mission delayed. Partner sent to Gadon. Missing in action.
Gavin had to finish his mission. Relay the data back to his ship.
Suddenly Gavin's mind sprung to life. Intruder.
Lion managed to lean backwards just in time as Gavin opened his eyes and made an attempt to punch him in the face.
Lion was quicker though, and knocked him out with the stock of his rifle. He turned to Jeremy and the Major.
"Well, that sure was interesting. Meet Gavin Inster, a member of the Lunar Children; they're a bunch of radicals."
Lion inspected the unconscious man. "He was sent here alongside his partner to gather data regarding HarkArk, because they appareantly hate you guys as much as they hate the Sol government."
He paused and looked up. "His partner was sent to Gadon and was one of the HarkArk personnel stationed there when the Divinity Creed attacked. He panicked and used up all his power to try and relay the data back to his ship."
Lion stood up. "Already sent you the coordinates to his ship, Major." Lion then shrugged. "I guess I'm done here, see you guys later."
He said as he left the room and went back to the ship.
As the days went and gone, it all didn't matter to Viper after leaving the medical room and isolating within the Sanghvi"s personal quarters. Nothing could dive Viper's mind off of the threat that Viper posed to the the crew, the very thing Viper was sent to protect. No amount of work on personal projects and miscellaneous duties was enough to help cope with the memories of war and killing that paged Viper mind.
Two guards were station to check on Viper every 6 hours, their helmets wired to cameras around the Sanghvi's room. Keeping there eyes on the troubled Viper as per security's orders. Watching to see if the Sanghvi was still an threat to them or itself as the rest of the crew continued their combat training for the days ahead.
All requests by medical and non-medical personnel to visit to Viper have been denied. Viper's stubbornness to outside help was providing to out stress the already tired mind as time droned on, unable to get over the fact that most of the crew saw Viper little more then a liability or at worse an threat to the rest of the crew. The thoughts that haunt the worn out Sanghvi the most was that of Viper's encounter with Iska on Gadon.
The feel of Iska neck in Viper's cold metals claws, her kicks and punches against the metallic shell as the soft carbon struggles for dear life as Viper's iron grip nearly take's Iska in life in an flash. Begin overwhelming Viper, causing Viper to fall into an pile of parts and objects cultured around the floor of the room in shock.
The two security officers rushed into the room, seeing an disable Viper laying in pile of scraps. Twitching as the security officers called out to the downed Sanghvi.
"Ah,dammit." Jack said as he stumble into the room to see the state the Sanghvi was in. "Jenette, call the doc will ya?" Jack said as he walked over to Viper with in an med kit in hand.
"Th..There's no need.." Viper said before being helped up by Jack to get back on it's feet. "I'm f..fine." Viper said as the two soft-carbons walked over to examine the Sanghvi's body further.
In between Varn's sessions, Jeb went to the gym in an attempt to get into shape. He managed to channel his younger self in the obstacle course, but in his mind, he knew it was a fluke. Furthermore, with his development in the memory he had, maybe he woud have a chance to go racing again. That would have to wait, though, since Varn discussed his problems with Jeb. Jeb knew it wasn't going to be easy for Varn, but with his help, Varn would improve. In the meantime, Jeb became almost obsessed with the workouts. How else would he achieve [URL="http://i.imgur.com/PO9JgjW.jpg"]this[/URL] level of ripped?
Kira nodded took a closer look at this synthetic body. "We'll secure this body and trace the coordinates to his ship. Right now we need to make sure it isn't giving out our location." Kira gestured her soldiers to grab the body and take it over to the top floor of the base. She turned to Jeremy, wishing to say something. "Be sure to check in with me in 30 mins, I've received news for you and your crew. Looks like you might be able to get off this rock." The Major said. She walked out of the room as well as her forces.
"Went better than expected to be honest." He muttered to himself before realizing the need to demote someone on this ship ever since his incompetency. He went up to the closest intercom and pressed a small button. "Would Chief Engineer Kr'fernir please come see me at the bridge in five minutes. Thank you."
Lion took a detour and managed to find the Major's office. The room itself felt very spartan, it was well-organized and he could tell that the Major was a military at heart.
He sat down in one of the chairs infront of her desk. The whole room reminded him of his time with the SDF, the thought of the good old days made him feel relaxed.
"Amen to the faulty human hardware part. If I had credit, for every time a human-made gun jammed on me, I could have retired at the ripe old age of 15." Varn took a sip from the drink. "We should be heading out soon, I doubt the major is happy baby-sitting us."
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