We went back and talked to the bureaucrat and eventually convinced him to help us. He gave us a lift pass and told us the location of the upstairs security override, next to a kitchen. Skrood made a shaped charge and blew a way in through the kitchen wall. There was a lot of smoke and clouds of dust, but once they cleared enough to see through we could see a laser grid and another hovering security-bot. Everyone opened fire on it, and Gav eventually finished it off with the last round from the material rifle, with sensor input from STD-01.
We tried deflecting the beams with one of our faithful mirror-on-a-sticks, but it burnt a hole in the mirror. We figured the security bot must have had some mechanism to stop the lasers from harming it so I lassoed the dead security bot and we managed to pull it out of the laser room without doing too much damage to it, though its casing did take some damage from the laser grid. STD-01 had a look at the bot carcass to try and figure out what it had used. He found a few radio emitters that connected to the casing of the bot, a lot more than usual, but couldn’t figure out which of the mangled parts was the transmitter. We also had a look to see if we could remove its rocket launcher, but the mechanism was trashed. The warheads were still intact in the magazine, but they were pretty high-tech so we would need the right method to arm and detonate them.
Boomeron decided to try throwing water over the computers, but the lasers evaporated both the water and the bucket he threw before they got there. Then he decided to try throwing things in and ripped out the kitchen sink! We figured throwing everything we could move from the kitchen in there might deflect enough lasers so we could make it in to the room. Quold was pretty useless at this and just ended up piling a load of stuff up just inside the doorway. Fortunately I managed to smash it all out of the way by throwing a few cabinets through it. They were blocking the laser beams to a certain extent, but slowly melting.
Boomeron then decided that the best thing to do would be to blow up some of the kitchen appliances. He started fiddling with the settings on his under-barrel grenade launcher, so I decided I’d better go take cover with Quold at the back of the kitchen. Everyone else took cover too, and Boomeron eventually fired a grenade and leapt out of the doorway. He must have set the fuse to a timer instead of an impact trigger as the grenade only went off a few seconds later. Loads of smoke and dust billowed out of the room and we couldn’t see much for ages. Boomeron started coughing as he was the only one without any kind of breathing apparatus.
After a while we could see into the room a bit. The closest computer stack was looking pretty fucked up. STD-01 decided to head into the room to try and interface with it. He climbed out of his tracks and crawled over the rubble which took ages, burning himself on some red-hot shards of the sink Boomeron threw into the room earlier. He eventually made it to the stack and started saying something about how the computer was photonic rather than electronic, which I later found out means it uses light instead of electricity. STD-01 said it would be pretty hard to interface with but he would give it a go. He didn’t have much luck with that, so instead he tried bashing in the computer casing so the laser beam missed its receiver. We’d hoped that the beam would cut through all the computer stacks in its path, but it cut out a few milliseconds after it missed the edge.
It was around this point I realised what STD-01 had meant when he said that the computer was photonic. Photonic computers are powered by celestial light, so they’re an extension of the celestial itself. Now I don’t really believe in all that stuff anyways, since everything I experience comes from inside my own head, but even without all the religious stuff I wouldn’t want to fuck with a celestial computer. STD-01 was talking about plugging it into his head, which definitely wouldn’t be good for him. I decided I’d better not say anything about that and hopefully that nasty little shit will fry his own brain. Unfortunately he was too cautious to plug straight in and decided to go through the security bot instead. He spent a while poking around inside it and definitely broke a few bits, but he got it to boot up into some kind of admin mode in the end.
He said he was going in to the computer and a few seconds later most of the security bot’s systems shut down. We couldn’t tell what was going on but later on he said he’d fed back the computer’s signals through redundant circuits in his cyberware and attached a carrier wave, which enabled him to bypass the security and jump straight in to the main AI core. Apparently he then had a battle with the red computer and its security programs, though he just twitched for a bit as far as we could see. After a while his eyes and ears started bleeding and then the lasers shut down. He came to after that and seemed rather pleased with himself, though he looked absolutely terrible.
The house computer came back online shortly after that. It seemed pretty grateful to STD-01 and directed him to medical for an upgrade. Before we headed over there, we asked it about the Captain’s table. It said that the Captain’s Table was of the highest technology our race has ever encountered, and had been gifted to the Praetor of the ship. It is an entirely discrete unit that the central administration Plex tower is built around, and it has technology that the computer does not fully understand. Hopefully that means it won’t have been infected by the blood writing.
We all headed to the medical area of the house and it said we had to sleep before it could operate, we’d already had one artificial regeneration induced this cycle. It bandaged our wounds and gave us a few shots then sent us off to rest. We settled in to the dormitory and a servitor monkey in a butler’s uniform showed up with some refreshments. It stood there holding the drinks tray. I haven’t seen a monkey before so I went over to it and started stroking its head. The drinks tray shook a bit when I started, but then it seemed to calm down and go into some kind of trance. I guess it really liked me!
After we’d had a rest it took us to the dining hall where we had the best meal I’ve ever seen, served by loads of robot butlers. The food was amazing and there seemed to be endless amounts of fine alcohol. I got chatting with Quold about bureaucracy and it was actually kinda interesting. I might have to go into sewer management if things ever get back to normal round here. We sat around digesting for a while and then the computer directed us back to medlab.
It offered us a load of cyber enhancements and stuff. I wasn’t really sure about that kind of thing but the computer was pretty insistent that I get a strength implant. Then I remembered that bureaucrat with the laser hands whose hands I tried to cut off. I asked it for laser fingers like that guy had. It didn’t have laser fingers as good as he had, but it did build a laser into my hand instead. More of a laser knuckle than a laser finger, but I like the sound of laser finger better. It said it should be as effective as my high-penetration laser rifle, but could only fire six shots before it would have to recharge. Apparently it recharges off my body’s own bioelectric energy or something, so once I’ve used it I just have to sit around for a bit and it’ll recharge. Sounds like it mightn’t be too good for my hand though, the barrel doesn’t exactly stick out of my knuckles at all and those high-penetration laser beams are bloody hot. At least they modified my EVA suit and my sewer armour so I can fire it without having to take my gloves off first.
No comments:
Post a Comment