RP: 188604 [Star Wasp] 7: The Hate Machine

Crab Tunnel North West

Returning back the way that they had come seemed silly to Alex, so he began to maneuver his mecha into the glowing blue chamber. He kept on the lookout for enemies, but switched to his laser, for fear of damaging something important.

Crab Tunnel South East

Seeing the shining blue light up ahead Akemi figured he'd launch another drone to head straight for it and circle it and anything else bright and important or mysterious looking. The other he left to scan just ahead of wherever Arccos was heading. While his drones did their thing he kept his eyes peeled for any Spacer traps like trip wires, trap doors, living walls or crawling ceiling defenses as well as anything that might somehow end up behind them. "So, do you want to go ahead and go near the blue thing first Arccos?" he asked.

Portal Room

Ace ran off towards the sounds of fighting. "Hey I'm here where do you need me?"

Syntelligence Complex

What greeted the invaders at the center of the labyrinth was a room big enough to seem like a city within a city. A hexagonal dome more than three hundred foot across, filled with large black towers which went straight up into the distant black ceiling. The blue glow was more intense the further one looked into mass of structures, all of it covered in bundles of huge pipes and wires thick as tree trunks. They continued on right underneath Alex's mechanized feet, tangled and slippery like intertwined roots.

Arccos would recognize the system by it's famous siblings. The Strategic Operations Mainframes were one of the Independent World League's greatest assets, gigantic server systems designed to coordinate huge amounts of combined 'Spacer, Nepleslian and Gargarten forces during the very height of the stand-off with Yamatai. Some missing, modified, and recently adapted components said this might well have been the upgraded remains of the legendary missing number three.

There was atmosphere. Something was pumping it out into the surrounding empty space, audible as massive fans churned behind the backdrop of rainforest-like fields of rolling computer chirping.

Something else was moving inside of the towering server stacks. Big with four legs. They enemy hadn't flown the coop just yet.

Syntelligence Complex

Alex scanned the room with his sensors, but the ECM was washing out any fix he could get.
Alex was tired of fighting. Why do we need this so badly that we can't just ask for it? He thought. Why do we have to rip up someone else's life to get what we want?

Alex sent out a broadcast on an open channel using his mindware,

Whoever is directing all this, I'm the one in the Syntelligence complex. I was told to help invade your home, but now that I've seen what we're doing to this place, I don't see the point. I'm exiting my mecha as a sign of good faith. Would you willing to talk this out?

Click to expand...

Alex opened the cockpit and stepped out onto the hand of his mecha, closing it before Uso could object to his plan. He was still linked to the sensor array of his mecha however, and ready to jump back inside if things got violent.

Syntelligence Complex
♫AC3 - Free Verse♫

Several small clusters of infra-red beams flickered somewhere in the black, too dense to have been connected to any single tank... But still probably capable of guiding such ordinance second-hand. It was possible they knew that there was still another Nekovalkyrja within the Gekido cockpit and was suspicious of a trap.

Upon the side of one of the great black towers, a massive volumetric display lit up and began projecting a dull monochrome image, blue on black. The viewport showed only the silhouetted form of a single organic humanoid, their back turned to the camera, backlit only by the dozens of small flickering monitors crowded around them. What looked like a chair was actually cyborg tank legs upon closer inspection, grafted directly onto where their lower torso ceased to be. The right arm was a machinegun, leaving only the left to hand-type a plethora of scrolling code lines into the screens before them.

Just as when they had been first contacted, the line seemed to just remain voiceless for a moment, as the cyborg carefully aligned their words.

"Embrace me as friend and kin..." A small voice ruminated on Arccos' original offer, through the formidable speakers turned it into a loud grating buzz. "And yet here you are. Words are such fickle things, aren't they?"

More typing. There was a definite feeling like they were using Alex's pause to desperately try and finish something... But what?

"Some of the nuclear missile launchers made it down here, you know. It wouldn't be too hard for me to turn this place into one very large grave." The tone was morose, but made almost malignant by just how bored they seemed with the idea of committing suicide and killing everyone in the process. "Of course I have no idea how you got in, either. Oh well. Maybe it's time to just start pushing... buttons..."

Syntelligence Complex

Uso was yelling something at Alex as he left. Certainly none of it should be repeated in polite conversation... or to anyone, ever.

Syntelligence Complex

"Can we at least see what you look like before you kill us?" Akemi asked, moving forward a bit so as to be seen easily. He knew he might be risking being obliterated by some hidden gun turrets somewhere but he figured he might as well try the diplomatic option too like he'd wanted to from the start. "We just wanna take the Lighthouse to put it to active use and make a new place for Freespacers buddy. We got another planet ready. You could come with us. If you could see and hear us earlier you'd know I wanted to talk instead of fighting."

Lair Of The Anti-Spacer

A sideways glance. Long braids swung in the gloom.

"..."

"Only two of you have mindware? You're not proper freespacers?" Female, portly, with thick ginger eyebrows and an accusing green glare. The fact this was through a screen made it a little difficult to tell who it was even directed at. Didn't last long through, and the attention quickly went back to typing on the computer. The way their codebreaker had talked before made it obvious who their leader was, and what their most likely intentions were. "Defectors from all over. I see now..."

Suddenly, the clattering of keys stopped and they abruptly turned around, finger hovering before the enter button.

"See, the problem is, I have no intention of rejoining the Free State. That kinda philosophy is all good and well for the people who write it, but for my kind..." The tankish thing was short, certainly, but their death glare was real. Metal, servos, pipes and tubes all over. If it were not for those lurid low-class tones, one might mistake the humanoid parts as an afterthought on their diminutive, boxy form. "It's the worst heap of shit a person could call a life."

Finger was still hovering. They were mulling over something very carefully.

"I'm out of nukes. You probably already figured out it was a bluff." Still the same boredly bellicose tone. "But I can always delete all of the software, and have the fabrication facilities purge their contents... Includes my brain, but..."

"Well, maybe you'd like to give me a better option by getting the fuck out of my house?"

Syntelligence Complex

"Aww, come on buddy," Akemi said, clamping his cool goop gun to a spot on his Impulse to spread out his arms and upturns both palms. "We can leave your house and you could come with us and carry it with you like an adorable little hermit crab with a giant shell. My pals super want this place and I super don't want you to die. We're not planning to go to spacer central. The planet is in the middle of nowhere, is mostly desert and has mostly baseline humans. You can have plenty of solitude or as much interaction as you want."

In the Syntelligence complex, Arccos gives villain monologues:

A spiderlike, six-fingered hand came to rest on the helmet of Akemi's armor, as the Codetalker unit spoke with its flat voice, "Leave it to people who know what they're talking about..."

Stepping up to speak, pushing Akemi lightly and letting the armored Neko go, the lanky machine holstered its weapon. Reaching to the metallic cylinder it had been toting around clipped to its belt, twisting the top to open it up as some sort of container. Reaching in with one hand it extracted what could only be described as Arccos' head; severed cleanly from her body. There was a little mechanical hiss as the Codetalker's featureless faceplate released, and the machine plucked off its own head; underneath which was only an amber orb laced through with crimson circuitry. The severed synthetic head of the one who was supposedly controlling it was then fastened on over it. Like it was wearing Arccos' face like a helmet.

"I gave you three facts. Only the first of which was that I would like to see you and I embrace as friends and kin." It said, the face fully animated like Arccos was really there, just... Bigger and weirder. "The Second was that circumstances conspired to make us meet as enemies."

"And no. Most of us ain't Freespacers. In reality, there's about four people with mindware, and only two of us who can claim to be Deoradh." The Codetalker-Arccos curled her fingers beneath her chin, it even moved like her. Might have been doing so all along. "But just as much as the Free State is bullshit, it's also dead. Whatever is still claiming to be the Free State is just a bunch of puppets willing to let Nepleslia get elbow-deep for the sake of protection from Yamatai... The same Yamatai who was so scared of the implications of this machine right here that they killed every living soul on this planet."

Arccos' face grinned, taking a few steps forward. Looking up at the mainframe like it was a masterpiece of tremendous beauty.

"We can get out of your house, but your house also contains the industrial capacity to make, processing power to control, and means of transport for... What? Millions of war machines? Billions? Without the tower, you might not be able to control it far beyond a Leyline node, but that's still sufficient for crushing every major Freespacer hold in the sector. Which it sounds like you're about willing to do..." The spider-like machine cracked a grin, showing rows of needle-like teeth set in her metallic jaw. It definitely wasn't Arccos' original face it was wearing, at least. "I mean, I hope that's not what you're planning on doing with all this... It's such a waste for what you could change with this."

Syntelligence Complex; Talking Machines

The lanky form of Truffleclub was taken aback by this new form that resembled Arccos. Through they were a machine themselves, it had always regarded the type three's organic form with a great deal of warmth. Was this still just an empty remote controlled drone, or something else? Weren't they both standing in the same room just moments ago?... It made them wonder what exactly their dear friend Codebreaker was trying to become.

Upon the screens that rose above them, the mechanized figure went wide eyed for a moment, then immediately retreated back under a visage of malcontentedness.

"Are... You really so sure you are ready to defend it?" Their rounded facial features were caught inside a rollcage of metal, still skewing their dollish expressions with lines of shade. "This place is twice as close to Yamatai as it is to Null and Void. The lighthouse is full of pirates and mercenaries. Not to mention the Locksmiths have wanted a piece of it, ever since they found out what was really down here..."

The last part managed to gain a small smirk, followed by a shallow sigh and a cough. Screwing over the Locksmiths's progress might well have been their original objective after all, but empty years and idol hands had undoubtedly created a couple of new pet projects. Not exactly things that one would be willing to divulge to complete strangers. If it was reminding anyone of Invalid and his relay moon, that might not have been a coincidence, either.

"My name is Steelrender Lycosidae Nine-Two. If you are willing to transport these facilities away on mass onto a different planetoid or space station, I would consider helping you fabricate this new network." Face and tone was unchanging. This was a pragmatic choice, but they were still highly suspicious. "I am an engineer, you see. But the one thing I have not been able to fabricate is a more strategically advantageous location."

Out of the sprawling shadows cast by the huge towers, two of the heavy gun-tanks approached, slowly, cautiously...

Syntelligence Complex; Alex the Peacemaker

Alex wasn't really sure what Steelrender and Arccos were talking about, but he knew that he had managed to stop the fighting, at least for the moment. Hearing that they were concerned about defending it after relocation, Alex spoke up.

I won't pretend to know much about what you're talking about, but if what I understand is correct, you want to move this complex to a safer place right? I think that since we wrecked your home, the least we can do is help you find a new one. I think that I might be able to help move some stuff.

Click to expand...

After he had finished talking, Alex began to cough as the effects of radiation took hold.

Syntelligence Complex

"You're not just an engineer. You're a cute engineer. Any chance you'd have some medication to help this guy with radiation exposure?" Akemi asked as he raised a fist and pointed to Alex with a thumb. "If not could you chop his head off and make him a tank person so he doesn't die?"

"He's got mindware, but he's not a Freespacer? And yet he's standing around without a suit, just the same?" Lyco remarked dimly, as if the situation had reinforced her annoyance to have been defeated by such folks. "These bloody Nepleslians... No, I don't have any anti-radiation meds. I wasn't exactly expecting visitors."

Unexpectedly, Truffleclub began to move once more, crunching a few wires under their feet. The two approaching tanks halted defensively, but found the lanky one-armed giant moving towards Alex instead. The orange machine picked up the pale boy pilot and placed them onto their bulky hip container, then faced back towards the massive screens.

"Circuit boards, yes? Made in clean rooms?" It spoke up, buzzing voice seeming to hold just a spark of concern. "Cloudee has meds. Cloudee doctoor and engineer."

"I guess..." The tankish girl was not enthusiastic. "It's in the habitation section east of here."

"You are meeting me to show, is." The machine responded sternly.

A shrug. Lyco turned the monitors off.

In the distance, one could see the short diminutive queen of tank world pop out of a hatch, vaguely waving the tall robot (and their passenger) over towards the half-abandoned housing block already marked on the drone map. If anything, their two remaining junk-tanks just stood around looking confused.

Maybe Steelrender secretly liked the flirting. Who knew.

As Truffleclub went off with the tank woman Akemi decided to try to follow figuring there was still conversing to do and it wasn't going to stop entirely merely to direct his robo-buddy somewhere. When he stepped forward to pass the two guard tanks he moved cautiously gauging their responses, ready to retreat if they refused to let him follow.

"Oh awesome! I didn't know you were a doctor. Are you gonna replace parts of him with machinery to fix him?" The Neko doubted that was the metal man's intention but he had to ask since he mentioned circuit boards and being an engineer. Akemi figured he was probably just going to patch himself up but it was fun to attempt to worry Alex.

"Oh, oh! Do you have medication you could hand me right now for our other buddy?" Uso still needed to be treated after all. The raven haired space kitten was worried asking would potentially cause Lyocosidae to eventually become interested in the other Neko but he figured he better ask because he didn't know how bad off she was. He really wanted to take off his helmet to show the Spacer what he looked like and to tell her his name but he continued to resist the urge.

Syntelligence Complex

Corgan followed the rest of the group into the room. It seemed like the plan had suddenly changed to diplomacy, which wasn't exactly his strong suit. Akemi started flirting with the weird tank girl right on cue. The only woman he and Akemi could agree on was Arccos. He was alarmed by the new Arccos head with shark teeth, but not quite as alarmed as he was at Akemi's suggestion of cutting off Alex's head to save him. "Uh, yeah let's save cutting his head off as a last resort. You even have the medical equipment necessary around here for that?" He asked, figuring Alex would appreciate keeping his body.

Now that conflict seemed to have ended Corgan wasn't sure what he could do. He walked up to the thing wearing Arccos's head. "So are we all friends now or are you just keeping us busy while you get some tanks down here to kill us?" Corgan called out to the tank girl. "If we're friends, I gotta ask. Do you have a bathroom I can use down here? A drink would be nice too, if it's not irradiated."

Syntelligence Complex: Get DatBoi some Medicine

Alex tried to protest, but was now coughing too hard to utter a single word. He was barely able to signal for his mecha to follow him before a particularly harsh bout of coughing struck, and he passed out.

Syntelligence Complex; Trufflecare / Clearing Out Freehold

Truffleclub turned their head around in order to respond to Akemi's qualms, but found that Alex's mecha was trudging along behind them, carrying Uso along in the process.

"Not sure Nekuvalra radiation deadliness, is... Best put them in clean room also, you is." The machine answered finally, still walking forwards. They still didn't know how to pronounce the species name correctly. "Swallowing pills good, but, bad dust everywhere, problem..."

Lycosidae looked a lot smaller in person, halted beside a large airlock door. Thoroughly makeshift but built out of the heaviest metal components. The tank-shaped person looked like they hadn't slept in weeks, even ignoring the rather harrowed look of being defeated. One crab tank followed them, whilst the other kept an eye specifically on Arccos.

A big hand jutted out. Truffleclub didn't want anyone unnecessary to follow them inside, causing a new huff of annoyance from the landlord. Once within the pressurized zone, they simply plopped Alex's limp form onto a shelf and yanked their clothes off, spraying everything with a decontaminating compound that came out of a hose their handy hip-box contained. It also dispensed DTPA, Radiogardase, and Potassium Iodide. Last step was to find a cleaned voidwalker suit which hadn't already been cut off at the arms and legs by Lyco.

The tank girl didn't see what the big deal was. They had lost most of their body and probably was well versed in the benefits.

"I have some organic fabrication tanks, but I wasn't using them for medical stuff like that." A gruff voice responded to Corgan plainly. "Not least for baseline human body parts..."

Any calls for food and bathrooms went unanswered. Considering this was the habitation section and there was a thick layer of lead dust clotting the floor, one could only assume the toilets and the food store rooms were exactly the same. There were industrial contaminants everywhere. Lyco was messy even for a Freespacer.

"Just give me a new planet, and we can be friends, sure..."

///

Evacuating the industrial equipment was easy enough once the elevators were working again. From that point, the Lament could just suck the components up using their leyline gate and place it away, along with the duplicate great lighthouse. Lyco very much had the expression of a teenager being forced to clean up their room during the entire thing, but didn't resist any further, even going as far as using her "death crawler" tanks to move the heavy equipment out personally.

By the time they were ready to vacate the location completely, the former occupant left only a single small computer unit behind, a tiny console in the center of the massive and now empty syntellignece complex.

Contained a list of swear words directed at their locksmith pursuers, no doubt.

///

((HATE MACHINE: END))