RP: YSS Miharu Mission 4: The Fame and the Fury

"I can't help it," she said in reply to his question, "You just suck at describing things."

She wiped her hand idly on her jumpsuit's leg, frowning at the blotch that resulted.

Yuzuki looked down at the synthetic filth - that was synthetic fluid in a nutshell, or at least in the sprite's opinion - that stained her hands and the sleeves of her uniform lower than her elbows. She had never given cleanliness the meticulous thought that other people often gave it. What was the point of cleaning up, if five minutes later you found yourself worming your way through a bunch of maintenance tunnels cleaning carbon off of the generator ventilations? At the end of the day, even if she was dead tired she found the time. At least she could sleep clean, when she did sleep.

She stood off the armor she had been sitting on, and found her toolkit. She took a couple of rags from it, and wiped off the rest of her hands. Deep in the back of her mind she knew there was a deadline on this work, looming up in front of her - the armors had to be combat-ready for the next mission, whatever that was. Nobody had given her a time, a date, or anything like that, but she knew instinctively that this was the case. There would be a need for them. They had to be done. Period.

On the other hand, Kai had pictures of things she had never seen before. Trees. Leafy shrubbery. Furry animals. A world that turned. She wondered, briefly, how it must feel to stand on something that was constantly turning around and around.

"It will only take a couple of minutes to run for them," stated the sprite, feeling a little guilty.

Tsuya barely had time to stop before bullets began to fly again. She doubted her armor would survive this latest round of combat, as damaged as it had been by the prior explosion. So she decided at least to go out with a bang - she swung her fresh flamethrower to bear on the new enemies, firing it towards them in a sudden gout of ionized plasma. At the same time, she began to plug away steadily with her also-new gauss cannon... the nodal support bits and minimissiles could wait until things got really bad.

Nyton typed away as he observed the multifunction bay. It was not the quietest place but it allowed him to really see what he was trying to organize. In his mind he imagined how each Armor would function and what their roles would be. He studied the crew roster and paid especially close attention to the personnel files of each newly arrived member. As he worked he pondered over how the ship could support a larger compliment of Armors. Current space limitations permitted no more than what their inventory held. There would have to be some sort of modification made to the ship itself for this to become a reality.

Is Kotori planning on having the ship redesigned? Nyton wondered to himself as he finished typing up his reply to Kotori's message. After sending it off he then stood in front of the volumetric screen and idly scrolled through older messages for a moment before closing it. An uncomfortable wave washed over him for a moment as he thought back to his earlier bumping of heads with Hinoto. Did I really get so upset over that whole issue with her drawings and using me as a subject? I thought myself better composed than that. I had lost that fight from the beginning considering how little I knew myself at that moment. he wondered.

Nyton assumed his thinking pose. He had slept rather well the night before. His spirits were actually quite high after having spent time with Kotori. I wonder if grandfather would laugh at me for enjoying my time brushing a woman's hair. he inwardly chuckled. As the humor passed though his mind was swept up in other thoughts such as the feeling of Kotori's hair through his fingers. Her scent as it danced softly past his nose. The sound of her voice as they conversed. The touch of her hands and the porcelain skin of her body.

Quite unexpectedly the thoughts diverted in another direction and he began to wonder how that skin would feel against his own. Without even realizing it Nyton recalled Kotori's mention of offering her body to him in gratitude for his gift. His face drew the slightest hint of blush at the offer. At the time his concern over the torment she suffered had kept him focused. Now much later as he thought about it the ramifications of such an offer began to dawn on him. He had been caught off guard by her asking if he wanted a kiss but now it seemed as though there had been more that he missed.

How long has it been since the last time I have been with a woman? Nyton then asked himself. His internal chronological meter checked the time stamp of the memory and presented him with an answer: 3 years. With a slight nod Nyton acknowledged the results as the memory came back to him.

Before he could fully recollect it he was interrupted by a reply from Kotori. He quickly replied to it and sat down to await another reply. Once he received it he then realized that it would be some time before he could speak to Masako. She was currently running the new recruits through an armor simulation and could not be interrupted.

This brought Nyton to a point he did not often arrive at. There was nothing immediately pressing for him to do. No further orders from Kotori beyond what had just been given. He was actually surprised with himself because he was usually so busy. Can it be that I actually have some free time? he thought.

With a quick pace Nyton departed for his room and donned his gym clothes. After a few moments he headed over to the small workout area of the ship and began to exercise.

"Alright, so basically it's the classic password, user scenario. Specifically on the datacore in our ship, for example, what triggers the memory deletion? Does it run a line of code upon failure that rewrites everything with a message like "Haha, the hope of the world is now destroyed?" Or does a memory chip kill itself and make everything unacceptable? Or does a giant magnet render everything useless? Or maybe it triggers an explosion that destroys everything in the vicinity..."

Takuma hesitated for a moment. "Let's forget that last possibility."

"Reading the raw memory by disabling the datacore sounds plausible," Takuma acknowledged. "Could our computer spoof any sensors onboard the core that could detect physical damage, or would it be a fairly risky operation?"

"Well, it's a hard drive with quantum nodes in it that keeps the stored information." Miharu explained. "There's a trigger point on the hardware itself that basically goes from a value of 1 to 0 under certain circumstances. When that happens, all the nodes release the charge they held - their information, more or less - and then you end up with a bunch of rather uninformative zeroes."

"So, what does trigger it?" Junko asked.

"Well, as far as passwords go, their boot operating system based - that's even before you can really read anything from the data storage units and more within the base circuitry," Miharu answered. "Mechanically, the circuitboard keeps an active, battery-powered connection with all the data drives. The moment a set of conditions are met like perception of the quantum nodes fluctuating due to the drive being pulled out, loss of vacuum seal for the whole core and such... BAM!"

Another sprite blurted out: "How can these cores even be fixed? If they get damaged, what preserves the data?"

The AI replied: "Well, usually, that's governed by the Kessaku OS, once you're logged in. There are usually instructions which the OS can inscribe in the main circuitboard of the datacore that allows it to lower its defenses for it to be opened up and maintained. As for damage, the Kessaku OS, since it's quantum and therefore beneficiating from faster-than-light processing, can give out 'brace for impact' warnings to the circuitboard that puts it in a Safe Mode."

Miharu continued with: "Of course, the problem with that is that we return to Saito-Heisho's Catch-22: the Kessaku OS that can give out those instructions to the circuitboard itself needs the right IFF identity to log into the Kessaku OS and give out that command. If you could already do that, then the problem would already be solved since you'd have access to the data."

Miyoko groaned and leaned back into her chair. "So we can't disable it and read the data. We can't legitimately get in and read the data. Are we going to have to just leave it be for now and see if we can get our hands on a current IFF registry?"

She pondered for a few moments, then continued in a pessimistic tone. "The vacuum seal, we may be able to deal with. If we just had a vacuum chamber to do it in, it likely wouldn't detect being opened... unless they were intelligent and just filled the interior to a random pressure that's nowhere near anything likely to be found in normal atmosphere instead of using a pure vacuum. The quantum nodes, though, I'm at a loss for."

While Yukari and Kyou maneuvered out of the way of the Hail of Death, the point wasn't as lucky. Kaida fell victim to the torrent of aether and plasma coming down the corridor. Aether chewed and vaporized Durandium armor, Yarvex, and Titanium frame allowing for the plasma to get through and ignite the interior of the Mindy. It seemed while Masako kept safeties on, she let the simulated death show for everyone to note as the plasma torched corpse collapsed to the deck. Yukari would see a flashing warning of Kaida's demise on her display.

Tsuya was lucky that Kaida took the brunt of the attack, which allowed her to counter the surprise attack with only a few grazing shots to her arms and legs. The enemies rain of aether and plasma was met with a virtual stream of ionized plasma mixed liberally with railgun slugs. The Black Mindy fared well against the onslaught, it's Zesuaium plating and vest taking the brunt of the attack with little damage while the Xiulurium coating practically evaporated off. None of the Railgun slugs struck the Black Mindy as it floated off to the side to avoid them.

The Mindy II wasn't as lucky. While the Zesuaium Vest protected its core well, the Durandium was ill suited for the literal fire storm. Durandium began to melt on the Armor's limbs before it could get out of the plasma stream, but not before having its thigh plating pierced by a lucky railgun slug.

Neither target had ignited, but both were quite singed as they found shelter in the Miharu's Decontamination Chambers. After a moment of peace, both Mindies brought their respective rifles around the corner and began to fire at Tsuya in bursts.

"Sorry, Saito-Heisho... but I think the members of the Kessaku clan - the clan responsible for most of our cream-of-the-crop quantum computer systems on which all our military practically runs on - qualify as being intelligent," Miharu confided.

"What if-" A sprite started.

Junko eyed the sprite. "What if what, Suzume?"

Suzume furrowed her brow. "It sounds to me like the main circuit board is the problem. If you get rid of the circuitboard before triggering its failsafes, then couldn't we then just open the thing up and connect the drive units in the datacore inside our own computer system and access the content from there?"

"This is true." Kai admitted, to both of the things Yuzuki said, wiping his hands on his dirty uniform and standing up, looking to the doors to decide which one was closest to his room. "You gonna come with me, or do I have to bring them back?" he asked, stepping towards one of the doors and stepping out, heading off towards his room, trying to remember where he might have pictures stored.

"Remove the circuit board instead of the memory..." Takuma muttered to himself.

"I'd guess that straight removing the circuit board would cause tamper detection to release its deadly quantum node toxic to our data. We could try draining the battery in the circut board, but that could just release the seal faster. What if we created a fake and safe 2nd circuit board and swap the two before it noticed?"

"That's what I was considering," Miyoko replied to Takuma's suggestion. "Make a dummy that just does enough to keep the data from getting flushed, then hook it up before we cut away the normal one. We'd have to talk to one of the engineers to get some idea of how difficult that would actually be in practice, but it sounds easier than breaking black ops encryption."

"But, if you open the datacore without it being in maintenance mode," Junko started. "It's going to wipe itself anyway before you can even connect that dummy."

"SAINT's pretty touchy on its gear, all things considered," another sprite noted sourly.

"Scalar it," Suzume then said out of the blue.

"Eh?" Junko turned to look at Suzume.

"Signs of tampering trigger the failsafes, but the unit sustaining damage doesn't seem to, right?" Suzume said. "We can turn up the specs of a KAMI datacore to know exactly where the main circuitboard is, then use a scalar ray to take it out of commission. It won't be able to alter the charges in any quantum nodes that way."

Yukari swore at the black outline of Kaida's armor. The young Hei had not even had the opportunity to fire a shot and she was already dead. The mistake was hers, not Kaida's; she should not have put her at point.

Tsuya's flamethrower attack was effective. But the Hei was not taking cover, and Yukari knew the enemy armors would easily destroy Tsuya's damaged armor.

Yukari took enough time for one quick, huffing breath, then mimicked the enemy armors by angling around the corner while kneeling. She floated to the top of the doorway in the time it took for another breath, to give her a bit more of a target to hit.

She aimed at where she reasoned the enemy would peek out to target Tsuya's still frame. The moment she saw the top of an enemy's rifle, she fired two aimed shots from her plasma SMG.

There it was again; guilt. The equipment was not in the middle of the floor, but it was obviously there, and it was obviously being worked on, and she was just leaving it. They were going to walk away and just leave it there. That felt wrong. The sudden compulsion to organize it was so overpowering it scared her a little.

Acting quickly, she dragged the bulk of the armor she had been working on back to somewhere near the racks and placed it nicely, as if it were a resting scarecrow. The jumbled parts piles - she hadn't honestly stripped that much off of the thing - followed next, and she even managed to stack some of them within a half a minute so that it looked, first glance, like someone cared about them.

Then she was in the hallway moving at a kind of skip-walk to make up the distance and time. When she fell in behind Kai and resumed a more normal pace through the passage, she still had the nagging feeling that something behind her was unfinished, but it was more tolerable.

"How about your parents?" she asked, "Do you have pictures of them too? Or the shop?"

******


"Yeah, I've got pictures of my parents. Never really thought about the shop, though. It never occured to me to get pictures of it." Kai answered, stepping into the main passageway and ascending to the upper floor to make his way to the washroom before going through to his room. Once he arrived at the washroom, Kai took the time to wash off his hands, and even his face, which had a bit of grease on it. "Do you have any pictures of the spots of this ship that Power Armor pilots never go? I'm actually interested to see more of this ship than the obvious parts."

As he washed his hands, kai looked back at the sprite and smiled at her. Yuzuki was an amusing person, her OCD was a funny quirk as well. He had noticed her heading back to clean up the power armor bay better, and had chuckled lightly to himself when she had done so.

Tsuya let out a loud gasp over the comm as Kaida fell. She hadn't expected the sim to be so brutal, and now the smoldering corpse of her fallen friend was a reminder of her own failure to protect her teammates. She loosed a few more shots at the enemy armors before realizing that Yukari was trying to save her! She took the opportunity to get into cover, floating up and behind Kyou.

Miyoko looked between the two sprites skeptically. "It would work as long as there are no failsafes or backup systems in place... Of course, that's something that we might be able to check ourselves with the right sensors."

Out of sheer luck, Tsuya was able to avoid getting hit at all by the enemy armor. The enemy Mindy II was not so lucky as it poked it head around the corner just to be caught by Yukari. With its armor weakened by the new recruits skill with the flamethrower, the Executive Officer's plasma barrage caught it at the neck and walked up from there. The initial hit punctured through the neck guard and killed the pilot instantly while the second hit went through the Mindy's visor, making sure the pilot would stay that way.

All alone, the Black Mindy decided it would be more prudent to retreat as it pulled back from the group and headed down towards the group attacking Engineering.

"Etto..." Rin mumbled in thought as she continued to follow behind the chief engineer. "Etto..." she repeated, "how about something seafood-y?" She sounded quite unsure.

"Anyway, anything Freeman-Juni makes is special. Sono... even if I don't really pick something specific, if Freeman-Juni insists on making something special for me, it is special."

Taking the sink next to Kai, Yuzuki began to wash her hands. It took a little while, and a respectable amount of soap, but she couldn't stand the thought of leaving fingerprints on someone else's pictures - Kai was talking like they were actual physical photographs apparently, rather than digital images. The insert she had been working around had been seeping synthetic fluid. The water and soap wanted to wash right over it instead of picking it up, but she scrubbed determinedly and managed to get most of the filth off. Then she cupped her hands in the sink and splashed her face.

The water was cold. It had to be cold water; warm water would remind her of how long she had been awake. It was true that NH did not need near as much sleep as 'normal' people, but there were limits to a flesh body, no matter how augmented. There were a lot of things to do on the ship, still, to fix the battle damage. Even if she wanted to take a break, the guilt would chase her down in the end. Hell - it had found her already, and she wasn't even taking that much of a break. Yuzuki splashed a couple more times before drying off with a towel.


When she folded her towel and put it down, the smile came easily. She looked at his reflection in the mirror, considering for a moment, before she said;

"What you really mean is, show you every place on the ship you don't eat in, sleep in, or work out in?"

******

"Pretty much." Kai admitted, drying off his hands and making sure his face was okay in the mirror before heading out of the bathroom, simply expecting Yuzuki to follow. however, he stood outside the door and, when the Neko exited, He stated, simply "You look really tired. Are you sure you've gotten enough rest? I know I'm guilty of too much, but honestly, you need rest too, Neko or not." The Yamataian looked concerned, but still friendly, placing a hand on the Sprite's head and ruffling her hair for a moment before walking off towards his room, as if the exchange hadn't happened.

"If we can use the scalar to take out the board, we can read the memory freely and without worry of the quantum nodes," Takuma summed up to make sure he was following everything.

"But wouldn't frying the electric board with a scalar array just be the same as letting the battery drain? What I'm getting at is, wouldn't frying the board just release the nodes since the power's dead, or am I missing something completely obvious?"