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

White Lament

Akemi didn't mind the harsh treatment much. He still had his wonderful Ash, his native pals and his Sammy. His mission to let everyone know his desire to do her was complete thus he was satisfied. "Well even if you don't want my help I'll still give it because I'm not a big meanie," the Neko replied with equal calm. "Are you going to tell all your buddies not to accept it or risk ostracization or can I at least work with them if you won't work with me?"

Ace's Shipping Service
Ace looked at Smithee dumbfounded. "Coulda sworn you looked younger. Must be the adrenaline I guess."

Hearing Uso Ace retorted. "Yea yea. I'll bring over a crate." Ace walked off to the armory and loaded as much stuff as he could into a Crate which he put on one shoulder then walked back out to the hangar bay and put it in the shuttle and repeated the process until the shuttle was full. "Heading over now." The shuttle lifted off and headed for the White Lament.

White Lament

"GIRLS! YOU ARE BOTH PRETTY! WE NEED TO KILL THINGS NOW!" Uso shouted on the all hands channel, being as obnoxiously loud as possible.

"Arccos, what direction are the things on the white lament that need killing?"

"Corgan, you're coming with me, lets stick close."

"Alex, stay near us but outside of the ship. Be ready to fire through the hull if we call for it."

"Ace, Akemi, Various spacer-combat-bots, lock down this area then start spreading out, if there's something here that isn't showing up on internal sensors I want it found."

With that Uso picked a hallway, and headed down it, revenge at the ready.

White Lament

Corgan put the Finagle over his shoulder and headed for the Manufacturing Bay immediately after hearing the Lament had been boarded. He had to climb four floors worth of ladders before getting there. As he climbed the ladder he switched to the all hands channel. "I'm heading to the manufacturing bay to check out that intruder warning. As for the vote, I say we go down there and kill the asshole who just tried to kill us. Then we take his portal maker. Anyway, I heard a quote from this philosopher one time. Never do any enemy a small injury for they are like a snake which is half beaten and it will strike back the first chance it gets."

Five minutes later he reached the right floor. "Too late Uso. I'm already almost there. Akemi, leave Arccos alone." Corgan took the Finagle off his back as he walked silently down the hall. His heavy footsteps echoed down the hall despite his attempts to be sneaky. "No activity so far. I'm about thirty seconds from the manufacturing bay. Going silent until I confirm the target." He said quietly. About thirty seconds later he turned the corner into the fabrication bay with the huge rifle in firing position.

White Lament

Akemi momentarily thought about telling Corgan he'd leave him alone in a pool of his own blood and on his way to being processed into a burger patty. "I'm much prettier," he said softly. "Just check out my ass." Hopefully his psychological warfare would bear fruit even if he never gained confirmation of such. He took whatever big, impressive looking weapon he could find and began carefully scanning for any potential threats as he cautiously moved around the compartment.

White Lament

Ace landed the shuttle unceremoniously and moved the crates onto the deck before grabbing his Finnagle and starting on his way to the manufacturing bay. "Hey Corgan be careful it might be a hot chick. No way could you deal with that right?" Ace said jokingly. "Anyways I'm on way there now don't die on me."

White Lament Fabrication Bay

Truffleclub lumbered through the tunnels with a learned ease, through their progress was hampered periodically when looking behind them, making sure the new automata could navigate the twisting and elaborate three-dimensional corridor plan. A hidden undercity of broken vents and rusted walkways only the machine kin ever dared to traverse. The massive pipes lead through part of the nuclear cooling system, through part of the gravity-fed raw material delivery shaft, and ended above one of the massive fabrication arms within the mothership's vast hollow belly.

A huge, howling blue expanse awaited them, a metropolis of huge black-metal gravity generators and starship-sized manipulator arms as far as the eye could see. Big enough to fit the entire Pumpkin Eater inside. Big enough for three Queen's Slaves sideways. At the center, a massive, truly titanic azure beam, so vibrant it stained the eyes. It emanated from a large glowing portal at the aft, and was still in the process of cooling down, lazily receding from the building-sized hole where it previously exited the front of the ship. This chamber wasn't supposed to have gravity, but the weight of such a weapon's muzzle flare was such that the crew still found themselves pushed outward into the walls, at barely tolerable levels. Counter read 1.21 G outwards, allowing them to walk along the walls like an ancient centrifuge ship.

"Gravitee couner'balunce. Ar-cus firing that shears long time after... not firing..." The sandy giant remarked simply, looking downwards to observe Corgan and Ace now making their way onto the scene. Given they could manipulate gravity themselves, the creature seemed uniquely unaffected by the dimension-puncturing behemoth before them, and simply floated down to meet the half-SOL. "Dangerous, but... It pushing you away from death... is..."

In the distance, beneath the very center of the arcane swirling mass, a small trail of damaged gravity projector cells could be spotted. It looked like one of those junk-tank drones, only reinforced with much heavier armor. Some kind of oversized gattling gun. It only had three legs, and the way it was shaped suggested a large portion of the back half was missing. Not moving.

White Lament Fabrication Bay

Corgan whistled at the sight in front of him. The swirling blue mass was strangely beautiful. He scanned the room for any sign of the intruder, eventually finding one of the drones from the planet. "We've got something here, but it looks dead. It's not moving and I think only about two-thirds of the thing actually made it through. Truffleclub's here, he could probably get to it easier than me. Want me to shoot it just to be sure?" He asked, aiming the Finagle at the drone's "head".

(S+C) x (B+F)/T = V is the Formula for Best Butt:

"Thanks, Uso. You're pretty too, and should just follow Truffleclub. They'll know the way." Arccos' voice chimed over the comms, the towering white construct following along behind the group, and peering this way and that before moving to 'lock down' the area as Uso suggested. The sound of junkers clanged around in adjoining corridors following as it moved, seemingly it was acting as some sort of local controller for the junkers.

She could also definitely see through its eyes, as well. And apparently hear Akemi, since as the male Neko on board gave his little complaint about having a nicer rear; he would receive an incoming download link from the ship's network, addressed from Arccos. It would contain a detailed and thorough analysis of all butts (Minus Arccos') on board the White Lament at present: Measured in exacting criteria of shape, roundness, bounce, firmness, symmetry, and texture.

With all of the numbers brought in, the data seemed to indicate that Akemi's butt was not the nicest on board. In fact, his butt was bottom ten. Below the Junkers... Of course that would only make sense if Akemi dug into those numbers and found that his calculation was given an extra step in the formula annotated as 'The Koga Modifier'.

...Exactly why and how Arccos had all this data on hand was perhaps best left to the imagination...

"Try not to destroy its transceiver, I want to see if I can use it to get in to their drone control system." Arccos said to Corgan over the comms. "Their cyber warfare so far's just a brute force hack job, so I might be able to usurp control of their forces if I can use it as a back door..."

White Lament

"Whatever buddy," Akemi privately sent back to Arccos in text form. After taking into account his unique modifier he still wasn't satisfied with his rating. "You haven't even glimpsed the greatness of my butt. It needs to experienced firsthand to be properly assessed. I'll let you give it a try whenever you're ready for a legitimate analysis though, especially if I get to do the same to yours. Yours is nice."

"Hey whatever you are," the Neko said, turning to the towering titan of titanium and giving it a brief inspection. "My name 's Koga Akemi. What's yours?"

White Lament

"Alex, sending you positioning for the junk-tank now... if you can't get in here just be ready to shoot it through the hull. I promise I'll pay Arccos back." Uso said in a direct line to Alex, before turning her attention to the problem at hand.

"Corgan," Uso said, this time over the all hands channel, "Lets go check it out, make sure it isn't going to start moving. Everyone else keep an eye on the thing."

Uso would point off to the left, trying to Signal for Corgan to go around in one direction as she went in the other, bounding her way up into the gravity control room by bouncing off the walls as best she could. The Neko taking aim at the junk-tank and then running along the outer edges of the gravity-room toward the junk tank.

Fabrication Bay

Ace slid down the ladder rifle in hand. "Hey Corgan so what you fin-?" Ace looked at the bot. "Oh looks like the poor fella didn't make it."

Switching to Uso's channel Ace asked. "Hey I think Aries could tap into this thing and pull some info. Granted it isn't too badly damaged."

Taking up the indicated position outside the hull in case the drone inside decided that it wasn't quite dead yet, Alex was ready to fire.
He had some reservations about firing at the risk of harming his allies, but he knew that not firing would also be just as dangerous for them.

Setting his laser to a narrow, high intensity beam, Alex responded on the comma channel, "This is Alex, I'm in position. If you need me to fire, get everyone out of the way first."

Fly Like A Machine, Sting Like A Mystery

"I am a Freespacer." The shield-helm of the lumbering titan spun around to regard the lithe Yamataian newcommer. Not overly aggressive, but their imposing digital voice wasn't sugar coating anything, either. "My name is LargeGear Cloudy Truffleclub M447-8-09."

Considering what they were heading into, the automata did not fail to notice Akemi was currently without a weapon. Maybe it was a hidden method of neko-revenge, but the object they retrieved from one of the parts bins beneath the manufacturing pits was not exactly standard issue... Something like a bazooka, but with a big clip full of chubby little missiles, an antenna jutting out underneath the barrel, and four seperate buttons surrounding the pistol grip. It was labelled with long dedicated instructions on the side, meticulously written out in SI machine six-pixel code. Casing looked like neon green metal, but was tepid to the touch, more like plastic.

"Not being pressing all them at once, it." Was all the lanky robot added. "Trigger is making the first one."

Random Access Memories

Thanks to a closer examination on the part of Aries, as well as Arccos' new large utility automata, they were able ascertain that the massive enemy drone was supposed to be directly remote controlled by a larger system. Unfortunately, both the transmission system and the power plant must have been located on the ass end, which was currently missing. On the other hand, cache data contained within the tank's own navigation system did contain a rudimentary map of the underground facilities' interior!

Five main hatchways seemed to go downwards through about ninety foot of solid rock, three of which were equipped with huge freight elevators. The facility below that was insanely complicated, not just by generations of redesign and repurposing, but by the sheer amount of crushed corridors which no longer went anywhere at all. There were two large rectangular rooms the size of apartment buildings, and one huge circular dome at the center, itself the size of a sports stadium...

No specific data on room contents. They seemed to have been recently removed from memory.

White Lament

"Thanks," Akemi said as he received the weapon. It certainly looked sufficiently impressive and attention grabbing. He then briefly examined the writing on it. "Truffleclub sounds cute. I hope you can put aside the fact that I'm a Neko a little so we can have a chance to be friends. I'd like to be yours. I've got nothing against Freespacers. I think you guys are cool."

White Lament

Uso would take her time with the junk tank. Just because they were pulling data off it already didn't mean she was certain it wasn't going to try and kill them. She motioned at Corgan, and then at the creature's limbs... putting a round in the joints before going over the rest of the thing.

When she was satisfied, she'd get caught up on the information being exchanged in the all hands channel. New maps were certainly available, and it was pretty clear where the servers they needed were.

"Hey Arccos!" Uso shouted on the all hands channel, "Can you reverse the polarity on this thing and open up a gate right to their server room?"

Beating A Dead Crab

Corgan followed behind Uso just in case the thing started moving. As a Neko he figured she stood a better chance of survival if the Spacer tank opened fire. He watched her fire on the creature's joints before joining in and putting a few rounds in the tracks. "Let's see you shoot nukes at us now asshole." The Nepleslian called out to the metal carcass.

The information download popped into his armor's HUD. He studied the rough map closely with a frown. "The place is a damn maze. Could have hundreds more of those things hiding in those big rooms, even more in the dome." Corgan muttered. "If we can get to the server room maybe we can take out whoever is controlling those crab tanks. Then we'll have the run of the place unless the Spacer has some sort of a failsafe in place to blow the whole facility if someone gets to the servers. It's what I would do."

Bordering Polarities:

"Well, I can pretty much see everything on the ship, no matter how maze-like." Arccos informed over the ship's PA, "That's about the only thing aboard. We had disturbance in there just before I opened up the forward gate to swallow up the tower itself, but it looks like the Lament's systems overpowered the portal before it could just start barfing drones in there."

As all this happened, a door to the internal fabrication plant slid open. Arccos herself walking out, stepping over to the towering Codetalker, and once more re-initiating her little network with it. Apparently she had numbers to crunch.

"In theory I can't reverse the polarity without sucking you all into another dimension, and I'm not really an expert on the gates' actual operations. But the Hacker Cult did keep a lot of information on these things out there..." She said, audible eye rolling underneath the helmet of her voidwalker at Uso's use of reversal of polarity... This wasn't a magnet! "But these things are... Well I can maybe force a point to point connection between the Lament and wherever they sent that thing from. Probably into a room just full of those things. You're also going to have to go through in a shuttle or something, unless you brought that convertible and want to ramp it off the Pumpkin Eater guns-blazing or something like that..."

Linking up with her most powerful portable network, Arccos knelt down and jacked a physical connection into the White Lament. There was connections everywhere in this ship just as matter of course. A few lines of code were fast-written up as Arccos and the Codetalker unit mutually sat cross-legged, in an almost meditative position. She re-opened a small handful of the Lament's open connections, allowing this little tank to re-initiate their brute force DDoS attacks, however this time Arccos monitored the entire process.

To truly deny service through this many connections, the Freeholder had to actually make those connections in the first place, and in each tiny initial connection before Arccos' system was blasted with just that much information to handle a sliver of code was sent over in to the underground. Eventually, sliver by sliver and code by code, through hundreds, if not thousands of these connection attempts they began to compile in to little bits of viral programming. It was a classic polymorphic virus attack from the moment the whole thing took shape

Start simple, this person was brute forcing it, try finesse.

Like little lights in Arccos' network, one connection flashed from yellow to red. Uploading useful information instead of junk data, as the first of numerous systems needed to sustain this network assault fell. Then, from the inside that one system's connection in Freehold's interior network blipped, and was re-initiated in a second... As it sent the virus on to the next system to assimilate that one. Just one light after another. From the perspective of those inside, the DDoS attack would be continuing as normal, aside from just what the junk data was... But who monitored their junk data?

"Uso, I may have an in on this scrub." Arccos said, as the entire ship started to lurch back upwards, "Get the fleet to cover our ascent, and prepare for storming a portal room, I guess..."

"You are Neko?" The giant seemed to be oblivious to Akemi's statement, but soon took up a position behind Arccos that shrouded her from view. Even imitating the cross-legged pose was enough to put a wall of metal before the smaller codebreaker. Nothing personal. After all, Uso was a Nekovalkyrja too. "You honesty is remembered. Cloudee is watching these things."

Arccos herself was having more problems than former catgirls. The system they had accessed was similarly as messy as the shelter around it, a mainframe of hundreds of different nodes, if not thousands. A lot of the software shortcuts led to locations that no longer existed, with drives physically removed or relocated all over the shop. More frustratingly, the portal system just wasn't there. An operating system was sitting there in mothballs as a backup, but nothing even indicated damage logs to a hooked up system... Apparently, the operator was so pathologically obsessed with physical defenses that they had manually disconnected large parts of this system for other uses. Almost as if they knew they were an inferior software engineer...

Then, all of a sudden, poof.

SOM03-f

IT IS NOW SAFE TO TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER

The discordian ECM signals were gone, along with the power feeding that entire section of the mainframe. Somebody pulled the plug. A second system booted up almost immediately, but it was deactivating the last of the transmitters to escape the bombardment instead. Through Arccos could jab access into this one with considerable more ease, that was only because SOM03-e had inferior hardware space. Most of it was filled with anti-viral software and data logs recording the hacking attempts into the last system. It was a scapegoat.

On the desktop, a single out of place text document popped up, still in progress of typing out at the attacker reviewed it.

KNEW WHO I WAS FROM THE START, HUH
PART OF SOME BOUNTY NO DOUBT
NOT FLATTERED
KNOW YOU WANT THE COMPUTER PRINCESS HASSAN
WELL YOU ARE DOING A BEAUTIFUL JOB BOMBING IT

GO FIND MY PORTAL SYSTEM
BEFORE I ESCAPE WITH THE REST

Joining the Truffleclub

Though Akemi did mind Truffleclub scooting away from him some his beaming face didn't show it. "I get credit just for telling the truth? Awesome. Do I also get points for being honest about wanting to help Arccos a great deal because I want to engage in violent yet entirely consensual sexual intercourse with her and not just because I like Freespacers in general?"