RP: Kennewes Offensive NSS Banning

[Fay]

As Tweak wandered off to check the routers, Pavel listened in bemused silence to the stream of cheerful banter from the strange apparition that had appeared before him. She didn't look like a mechanical magician, but this Dream had reactivated an entire section of the communications array all by herself, so she couldn't be all bad. She was talking down about his ship and its AI- but Pavel was sure he'd put her right on those scores soon enough.

“Well, Miss Dream, welcome to engineering. I am Pavel, but if I see your friend Techhead, I will let you know. As much as we would all love to have ships that repair themselves, I am afraid it is just not practical. As for our AI, I am sure she is just having a bad day. It seems to be catching, yes? Anyway, let's get to work.” Pavel pointed to the open panel beside him. “I am sure you must know a bit about energy routing. These are our routers, and we are going to check them. Remember, if they are on fire, they are wrong. Next, we will take a peak at the reactor. But if the problem is there, we would likely already be dead. Still, we must keep looking.”

At that moment, the chief engineer made his entrance into the compartment. Pavel briefly pressed his hand to his temple. “Better and better,” he muttered before turning to his superior. “Truer words you have never spoken. Triple shift, and now this. But I must tell you I have no idea what is going on around here. Everything seems fine and then BAM! Complete main power failure. Diagnostics are all coming up with nothing. But with so many engineers all of a sudden, I am sure it is only a matter of time before we get to the bottom of this.”

 

[CatoTheElder]

((OOC: CORRECTION: Fay was nice enough to post for me when I couldn't get onto the site. However, a quick correction. The beginning of the last paragraph should read:

At that moment, the chief engineer made his entrance into the compartment. Pavel briefly pressed his hand to his temple. “Better and better,” he muttered before turning to his superior.

"So Pavel, what d'you find? I know you've been here long enough." Mergeo asked.

“Truer words you have never spoken. . . "

Hope this clears things up. I will try to be more careful in the future.))

 

[Della]

Dream nodded at Pavel with a smile, happy to be of any help. "Fire equals bad. Just like on our ships, then." She said, waving at Mergeo who had just arrived. "Yo, Gearhead Ray! Just in time."

"So it's a problem of power routing, hmm?" She pondered, thinking of her mothership. She had never encountered power routing problems of this magnitude, anyway.

"Well, since your ship only has one reactor and, I'd guess, linear power routing, wouldn't it be better to just start from the reactor and check the power lines from there? We deactivate all power lines for a moment, then put them back online one at a time, and, when we hit the line with zero output, we know that the problem's in that direction. We check the line along its length, and, wherever it splits, we rinse and repeat, shutting on and of the secondary power lines one at a time, and branch out until we've found the problem." She shrugged. "We'd have to take down vital systems like gravity and life support for a couple of seconds, but I don't think it's going to cause problems if it's for such a short time."

Then, she stopped in her tracks for a second. "Um. I'm sorry, I don't know your ships very well yet, so I don't know if it's feasible. This is how we deal with linear power systems in the Free State, but we use this system only with small tools and appliances... since everything shuttle-sized or larger has many small redundant energy sources. I don't know if it could work with a single, large power source like the Banning's reactor." She scratched the back of her head, chuckling to herself.

 

[CatoTheElder]

Pavel thumped his forehead in recognition. “No wonder you could repair the communication system. I've been taking that horrible anti-radiation medicine for long enough. I should have guessed you were one of those Freespacers we took on. I see you truly are a master of redundant technology. I must talk to you and whoever your other friend is about how you- but I am getting off of the track.”

“For someone who has never been in a normal engineering section, you are very quick off the bat. But still not quite right. I am not so certain about any other ships, but this ship not only has a back up power source, but also quite a bit of back up wiring as well. Some of the circuits that are powered right now are not all the same as the standard ones. This is just in case we loose bits of structure in some unpleasantness. It is also because there is a slight weakness in the routers they stuck in the Red Hill class. Usually very reliable, but if they get old or overloaded, they will sometimes have problems with feedback. This almost never happens, but it is normally not a problem anyway. Banning just reroutes power, gives me a call, I go and replace it. The end. However, if several of them fail at the same time, it can cause the main reactor to shut itself down to prevent damage. The power surges from such a failure could theoretically have also damaged our AI. Worse, even if the power plant is still fine, if we turn it back on again, it will just turn right back off, or perhaps even malfunction. All of this is unlikely, but out-of-nowhere power failure is also unlikely, so we must start with the most likely impossibility.”

“Your idea of partially disabling and re-enabling the main power grid would be possible, and have the big advantage of catching all flaws in the grid, but with switching between normal and auxiliary power and circuits, it is perhaps more complicated than you might think. Also, since Banning's AI is not doing so well right now, and I still do not quite know what is going on, I am uncertain whether we will be able to turn things back on again after we turn them off. Your idea is very good though, and we still may have to do it, because I am having difficulty thinking of anything else. Power failure like this almost never happens by accident. Usually it comes with big, giant holes in ship's hull. I really have no idea what could cause this problem. Unless. . .”

Pavel's face fell into a mask of misery. “Unless it is some sort of god-damned software problem. I hate stupid software problems! They could make the routers feed back like I told you, or cause any sort of damage you could think of, but when you repair it everything happens over again. Or the reactor could just decide to shut itself off, boom, done, and then we need team of experts to come in here and unscramble the coding for the next six weeks. Lucky us, it is almost more uncommon than hardware failure. Ship software is very simple, very straightforward, and Banning is solid Nepleslian Jane technology, probably with extra safety built in to stop this sort of thing from happening.”

Pavel snapped his cybernetic fingers with a pop as a new idea occurred to him. “You said Banning was not good enough AI, yes? Well, if you know about software, I have a new job you can do. Our communications officer is almost certainly working on the software end of all of this mess right now. If you want, you can go with me to check routers and have a look at the reactor, or you can use this console here to have a chat with Mister Valen, who, with any luck, is just as confused as I am. Unless boss Mergeo here has something else for you to do.”

 

[Fian]

Fian had just arrived at the door outside the bridge wearing his Sub-Leutenant bars. He considered returning to his quarters after the lights stepped back on but he still had a feeling that it wasn't just a technical problem. He turned to the console near the door to speak. "Banning, please tell the Captain that I wish to have a word with him." After a few moments of akward silence and inactivity, the Vel Steyr tapped the console with his index finger. "Banning? Hellooooooo?"

"It is possible but unlikely that the power outage has cause the AI and/or computer system to malfunction." Elsae whispered.

The Nepleslian gave the bridge doors a few hard knocks to alert the people inside of his predicament. He then stepped back to lean on the wall opposite the door while waiting for something new to happen. He brushed his hair aside and let out a sigh. "Thats why there are also normal people running this thing, no?"

 

[Fay]

Valen heard the knocks on the bridge door, but he wasn't sure if it was another passenger or the captain. He then called out, "One moment, sir!" He added the 'sir' just in case it was the captain. He'd rather not be chewed out again... He then sent a message down to engineering.

From: NSS Banning / Bridge / S2C Valen Sasorix
To: NSS Banning / Engineering Block / S3C Pavel Rostropovich
Priority: High
Encryption: None

I require the bridge doors open, please. As soon as possible would be preferred. Thank you.

 

[CatoTheElder]

As Pavel finished talking, the console beside him chimed.

"One moment, please. I must take a look at this. Maybe diagnostics have finally found something. Speak of the devil, its is Valen. What does he mean, open the doors? I thought I already. . . Oh, yes, I keep forgetting. Everything is broken now on this damn ship. Let me try again. . ."

From: NSS Banning / Engineering Block / S3C Pavel Rostropovich
To: NSS Banning / Bridge / S2C Valen Sasorix
Priority: High
Encryption: None

Very sorry, tried to open the doors earlier. Trying again. If they still do not open, I will come up with a power prier and have words with it.

Pavel keyed in the command for his makeshift door opening sequence and waited for a response. "That door will never be the same if it makes me come up there," he rumbled ominously.

 

[Fay]

The bridge doors opened, slowly but surely. Eventually, it was completely open for the Vel Steyr. Valen peered out and stated, "Sorry, for the wait." The S2C then noticed the Sub-Leutenant bars in the dim light and quickly saluted to his superior officer. "Sir," he said nervously, "How might I help you, sir?"

 

[Della]

Meanwhile, in the Engineering section, Dream was listening at Pavel's explanation, fascinated.

"Well, I'm not really an expert in programming. I'm just good with SIs and little more, it's one of my duties as a priestess to take care of the ship's mind and soul. But our SIs are a bit different from your AIs, so I dunno."

She passed a hand on her bright blue hair which kept falling on her face. A few of the amulets and small chains tied to her unruly mane chimed and tingled.

"Like I said, I'm no expert, but this doesn't look like a software problem. I mean, not unless the programmer of your AI was a total moron. And if it were, then your AI would've started having problems a lot of time ago."

Dream then eyed the open panel. "So these are your power routers, anyway. I can help you with those. Oh, and I promise I'll not try to "improve" anything, just try to fix them if they're broken." She added, grinning mischievously and doing the gesture of rolling up her sleeves (a futile attempt: her sleeves were far too large to be rolled).

"Well, then, I'll just follow the power lines to the next router, check it, rinse, and repeat." She then pulled a small necklace out of her dress, a single, large metallic bolt on a white string. Each side of the bolt was etched, probably with a small laser cutter, drawing an interesting abstract motif all along its surface, that vaguely resembled stars and the halo of the milky way.
Holding it by the string and spinning it around, she said to herself: "From the darkness of a dead starship your priestess calls on your blessing, Fabricator, tenth component soul of the Great Maker. Grant us the light of inspiration, that we may once again find our place among the eternal heavens."
Then, putting on her usual smile, she handed it to Pavel. "Here, Pal. Keep this for a while. It's the Starlight Bolt, a talisman consecrated to Fabricator, the god of starship engineering. It'll bring you a bit of good luck in fixing this trouble." She said. "Well, I'm off!"

And waving to Pavel, she proceeded to slowly follow the power line (which she could see thanks to the "scanner" function of her cybernetic eye) to the next router, wandering off in a random direction.

 

[Exhack]

"Later 'Spacer, it's been quite a dream to have you in our offices." Mergeo quiped, as he looked over at the energetic Druidess, as she exited Enginnering, and shot an amused glance over to Pavel. He couldn't say that having the rather attractive being in his part of the ship didn't reinforce his love of machines, or that seeing her leave was not as sweet a moment as having her in Engineering. Seemed like these 'Spacers could work some kind of magic with machines, even if it was rather self-deluded tech worship, it had it's merits.

Mmm... and if the women are anything like Dream in the Free State... I might just want to go and propagate some 'knowledge'. I better just wear something to cover my kidneys, but I figure it'll be cool... hehe. He chuckled to himself mentally.

"Hmm... while she's there, I want to check over the conduits leading to Banning's Savtech." Mergeo told Pavel, combing his hand over the right side of his long head of slick black hair. "I have a feeling that she's suffering from overreduced power supply and that it's making all of our normal repair hell. It's not the main problem, but I'm not in the mood to be working on a ship with a half-asleep AI on duty."

 

[CatoTheElder]

Pavel caught Mergeo's look and raised one bushy eyebrow skeptically. “Better luck to you, eh? What would I do with a little girl like that? Besides, I think she is calling me Pal. You know I do not do nicknames anymore.” However, he quietly pocketed the small charm Dream had given him.

He was not terribly religious, and Dreams' blessing did not sound like anything from a proper religion. Nevertheless, like many spacers, Pavel was more than a little superstitious, and the cunningly worked little bolt and its odd blessing practically radiated good luck. Besides, the way he saw it, if there was anyone who needed a god, it was certainly starship engineers.

“Anyway, I am also worried about our AI, but I will be more than happy to leave that to you. I will keep things moving here. Since we have so many good volunteers, I will soon be done with checking the routers. After that, I will look at the reactor, which should be very easy because we are not an expanding cloud of atoms yet. After that. . . Well, I will talk with you again. Dream has an idea of partial re-powering that might work. Or we could start taking the ship apart into small pieces and looking at them. Anyway, I will be seeing you soon.”

 

[Della]

Dream pranced down the dark corridor, humming a tune to herself while following the power line.

Shortly thereafter, her cybernetic eye picked a signal coming from inside the wall: the power cord was connected to a router, from which departed another power cord in the opposite direction.

"Oh, mist be one of the routers Techhead Pav was talking about." She said, turning to face the blank panel bolted to the wall.

Her eye chinked and clanked and whirred like the cumbersome, old, creaky but incredibly reliable and versatile piece of tech it was, sliding whatever was behind the panel into focus for its matter analysis scanners to check.

After about thirty seconds of intense staring, Dream concluded that all lines were intact there.

"Well, the damage's not here. Maybe it's further down along the line? Well, since the damage's so massive, it's probably somewhere near the reactor, so i'll just have to follow the line until I find it."

She pulled, out of a hidden pocket inside her enormous sleeves, a talisman of sorts: a sheet of yellowish paper about ten centimeters large and twenty tall. Over it, on one side, was painted, in bright red ink, the image of a five-pointed star, inscribed inside a ten-spoked gearwheel, flanked by two stylized wings, one on each side.

"Fabricator, tenth component soul of the Great Maker." She called on, whispering to the paper strip. "Please watch over this power router, that it may accomplish its destiny for the ages to come, to serve the crew and the ship faithfully, and please protect it from harm and from accident, from ill fate and from ill intentions and from the universe itself."

Then, she slapped the talisman on the panel (in such a way to be impossible to open the panel without tearing the paper, much like a seal), and it stuck, adhering perfectly to the smooth surface.

She sighed. "Ehh, if only I could give it a more throughout blessing. But I'm afraid that Techhead Pal and Gearhead Ray would get upset if I started re-engineering parts of the ship without them knowing."

Checking her supply of paper talismans, she strode confidently towards the next router, drawing closer to the reactor.

 

[Della]

After some four-five power routers, Dream had entered that trance-like state that some freespacers often adopt while performing boring, repetitive routines, keeping only a small fraction of the mind's computational power on the task at hand and sharing everything else to Polysentience, letting other Freespacers elsewhere use part of her own brain, maximizing the collective computational efficiency while letting her consciousness drift and play around in the virtual realms.

However, her dreamlike state was interrupted abruptly by the sixth router: something was wrong.

Dream slowly "rebooted", waking up from her stupor and reclaiming back her full mental prowess.

"...waitaminute. What's this?" Her cybernetic eye had noticed a severed power line.
With a worried look on her face, she opened the panel.
Yep, severed. A large power cord was dangling about, cut in two by something very sharp.

She took one end in hand (the one more distant from the reactor, just to be on the safe side) and examined it with more attention. Then, she looked all around, inside the router, searching for whatever could have caused that damage.

She tapped her fingers against the wall, thinking of what to do next. Then, she headed to the nearby wall-mounted console, linked up with her neural interface, and sent a message:

From: NSS Banning / Engineering Block / [no rank available] Dream Zero Zero
To: NSS Banning / Engineering Block / S3C Pavel Rostropovich
Priority: Very High
Encryption: None

I've found the damage. A severed power line in router number 47. I'll fix it immediately.
It's odd. It wasn't ripped apart by structural stress, nor was it blown apart from a short-circuit or anything like that, and the cable is brand new. Someone must have cut it, but I cannot understand why.
Not even the worst engineer in history could make such a blunder, and, anyway, he must have realized that he'd done something wrong when all the lights went out. Despite this, there are no attempts at repair visible.
Is this some sort of Nepleslian thing I wouldn't understand?

Dream sighed heavily, trying to figure out why should someone damage a ship on purpose. Oh, well. Think about that later.
She pulled out of her multi-purpose belt a small laser welder, and, while waiting for a reply from Pavel, fused together the two ends of the cable.

 

[MissingNo]

After finding nothing in Engineering except a relay that was slipping out of alignment (which she promptly fixed), Tweak went looking for Dream to see if the other 'Spacer had any luck. She paused when she found the first seal bending down to take a closer look. What was this? Looking down the corridor, Tweak saw more of them, one on every router. The neko shrugged. At least it wouldn't be hard to follow this trail of crumbs...

Finally she caught up. "Dream!" called Tweak. "Did you find anything?"

 

[CatoTheElder]

Pavel trundled back to his console in engineering, wiping a fine sweat from his brow. Usually the job didn't involve so much running around. It was definitely one of the perks of being an engineer, Pavel felt, and now he couldn't enjoy even the simple pleasure of a sedentary state. Worse, there wasn't any sign of damage at all in any of the routers he had checked. If it was a feedback problem, several of them would have had to be blown. Perhaps the diagnostics had turned something up, but he wasn't holding out much hope for anything connected to the Banning's AI.

As he had expected, the diagnostics had turned up negative, but there was a message waiting as well. While the affect was largely lost in the dull red of the emergency lighting, an observer with enhanced optics would have noticed Pavel's already ruddy face change colors as he read the message, going through an impressive number of shades of red and finally arriving at something that could only be described as purple.

It should have been a scream, but it came out as a whisper: “God damned saboteur. I hate god damned saboteurs. He hurt my god damned ship! Nobody hurts my god damned ship!”

From: NSS Banning / Engineering Block / S3C Pavel Rostropovich
To: NSS Banning / Engineering Block / [no rank available] Dream Zero Zero
Priority: High
Encryption: Terminal Specific (T-47)

Thank you for finding our little problem. If you can fix it easily, please do. However, I am afraid that it is definitely a Nepleslian thing you wouldn't understand. I will explain sometime later. Right now, I need you to find that girl in the big jacket and get her back to main engineering. Be very careful, it may not be so safe.

“. . . show him how we did things back in New Leningrad. First I will. . .”

From: NSS Banning / Engineering Block / S3C Pavel Rostropovich
To: NSS Banning / Bridge / S2C Valen Sasorix
Priority: High
Encryption: Nep 16-00-1

Valen, we have a saboteur on board. I should be able to get main power back, but we must have the AI. There are problems in the system that are messing with my diagnostics, and without diagnostics, I do not know what will happen if we turn main power back on. For all I know, who ever it was also rigged explosives to the grid. Please hurry!

~Pavel

“. . . and feed him his meddling fingers!”

“Boss!” Pavel bellowed. “I think we should have a talk! Preferably on the way to the weapons locker!”

 

[Fian]

Fian returned the salute. "At ease, soldier. Is the Captain around?" The Vel Steyr leaned a little to the side to look past Valen into the bridge, he saw nothing to suggest the Captain was present. "And if he is not, I want a status report. What caused the disruption in power, is it technical, or suspicious in nature?"

 

[Fay]

Valen shook his head as the Sub-Lieutenant looked for the captain, "No, he's not. I haven't be able to -" A beep from the communications interrupted him. He quickly excused himself and checked it.

Instead of writing back at this time, he turned to Fian. "Well, I have a status report, sir. It sounds like the power failure was caused by sabotage. I have also found hints of a virus that is attacking the AI."

He continued, "If you need the captain, it might be a good idea for you to go find the captain manually, sir. I'll work to get the AI back up and running again as soon as I can." He then went back to work at hunting that phantom virus.

 

[Della]

Dream stared up at the corridor's lights as they slowly came back alive.

"Ah, good." She smiled, closing the panel and patting on the wall like it were a well-behaved children, glancing aside on the monitor.

"...what? What sort of message- wait, encryption? But why?" She wondered.

She turned around, hearing Tweak calling for her from the other end of the corridor. "Oi! Tweak! Just fixed it!" She said to her, waving. "Someone had cut a power line." She said, simply. "Dunno why. Pal seems to have an idea, though. He said it was some kind of nepleslian thing I wouldn't understand. Neps sure are weird. I mean, why cut a power line like that? It can't be an accident, someone must have done it on purpose, but I can't understand the reason." She sighed.

"Oh, and Pal wants you back in Main Engineering. He seems worried about you." She added, slapping another seal on the router. "I'm finished here, so I'll come with you. I'm pretty curious about all this thing."

 

[Fay]

Just before the power had turned back on, Valen had cornered the virus and quarantined it... permaneantly. He made a copy of it for future analysis and then wiped out the original completely. The AI properly began to function again. The Geshrin sighed in relief as everything seemed to be turning back to normal.

 

[MissingNo]

"The line was cut? Someone must not want us to get where we're going," said Tweak. Then she nodded. "Okay, I'll head back, then." She turned and started back with Dream walking alongside her. "By the way, what were those things you were putting on the panels?" she asked. "They might be good for letting the staff know if the panels have been tampered with, but they'd have to replace them every time."