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

Functional Misunderstanding

"Violence against Akemi... This Ar-cuss seems conzenshual with." Hard drives whirred inside of a boron monocoque skull. "Not good informashun on sextual internal-course..."

Overhead, the cascading blue rays of the weaponized portal were finally receding and slowly retreating back into the massive disk of the massive projector, even through the embers of the residual gravity field continued to push them downwards. The minutes seemed to crawl by in silence as the humanoid machine concentrated on something internally, their back still facing towards the codebreaker's more complicated meditation within strange distant networks.

"You are liking all spacers? Akemi are doing this all spacers?..." It was no good. Some thoughts were just not that easily compatible with a mind designed for technical labor. "Cloudees boots has not is ever coming off. Akemi in this action is like... a tube of... toothpaste?..."

Akemi simply kept on smiling. "Yeah, I'd be like a tube of toothpaste and Arccos would be squeezing my contents out. Friction is important too though, not just pressure. Ideally she'd be expressing a considerable amount of liquid of her own, much more than me." While the Neko spoke he assumed the same meditative pose as the two in front of him.

"As for me liking all Freespacers, yes, I like all Freespacers until they individually convince me not to like them. Arccos beat me with her gun, shot a rivet into my thigh and says she'd like me to die but I still like her. I don't want all Freespacers to squeeze my toothpaste out though. I only want the girls to. I like your toothpaste comparison. I could customize mine to be like the regular kind: good for your teeth and providing a minty aftertaste."

White Lament

Corgan paced back and forth near Arccos while she was meditating. He contemplated the situation and all of the resources at their disposal. The idea to ride in on the convertible guns blazing was appealing. Not exactly subtle, but nothing with Uso involved ever was. He was distracted by Akemi's comments about Arccos. The nerve of the man to talk about her like that. It was disgusting and disrespectful, especially after she made it clear several times his advances were unwelcome. It took a great deal of restraint not to shoot Akemi with the massive rifle he was holding.

He took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. Corgan knew until he joined Ragnarok, his attitude towards women was similar. Now he wanted a deeper connection, not something purely physical. The ship lurched suddenly and he almost fell down. "Damn space travel." He muttered. "Don't think I will ever get used to this. "

White Lament

"I'm not sure you'd know what to do if you ever saw a girl naked," Uso teased, as she got into position... or at least moved to a perch where she could see the gate and maintain at least some level of prepared to rush through.


"Alex, Assuming this gate thing works, we're going to need you to go in first."

Arccos is still there, you know?

"You realize that I'm still able to hear, right?" Arccos' voice hissed over the comms, as she tapped away at Freehold's various networks. "Stop distracting me."

Inside the system, Arccos was far more in her element, running a system trace to track them down in to the increasingly low number of active networks underground on the planet... Checking how this guy was connected, and watching the router feed to get a good look at exactly what systems they were working from. The news that this one had cannibalized everything underground to make what had been wiped out topside was a bit of a blow. What was down there had maybe been gone for years. Then again, this just meant that there was nothing to lose in this scenario now she'd nabbed the antennae...

Arccos tabbed into the text editor with one thought, routing it through the Codetalker unit so she could continue juggling the dozen or so other things she was up to.

Who you are: I got not idea
Didn't even know that you were here
Don't need a bounty
Got my face on money
But just so we're clear:

I'm not here for glory or pay
Don't care if you leave or stay
Just get the fuck out of my way
Oh, and have a nice day!

Getting acknowledgement that this person was using their portals was about all that Arccos needed to work it out, firing up the Lament's Leyline node, she started a scan for local nodes. This guy wasn't actually that great at the software limitations of anything she'd seen, as such she made a stab at the notion that they'd be using pre-existing software as a base for whatever monster they'd built down there... Everything right down to the software for send and receive coordinates. Time to respond with some brute force of her own!

Arccos was slightly worried what sort of effect this would have, then again she'd already used the Lament's systems to overpower whatever they had down there... And with an active network connection these things were so obvious that it was usually easier to try and make a completely new network than hide one gate's link to the rest of it...

Scanning about to lock on to a subspace signature, Arccos dumped more power into the portal node on the Lament. Finally standing from her meditative position alongside the Codetalker. The system starting to burrow a hole in realspace in the empty area between the mothership's double hulls. All the while trying to overpower whatever portal generator was down there to subvert its link to the leylines... It was all a roll of the dice what would happen at this point.

"Alright, this will either open a stable portal, or kill us all. But whoever's controlling this planet gave away that they're right by their portal generator right now, so we're good if works!"

Backdoor Access

The portal's router seemed to snap on and off with active connections for a while, unsure of what exactly it was linking to. Eventually it found something, but what popped open was a signal so scarce it probably couldn't link to a gate any further into orbit, even if it wanted to... More strangely, the dimly lit, fractured room that now appeared before them was distinctly not on the map that had been retrieved from the broken drone. Some kind of empty factory space, the size of a sports pitch full of naught but dust, fallen steel girders, and the occasional upset arc light. Apparently, the tunnels were such a mess that even the current occupant didn't know about certain buried sections...

Additionally, since they had shown themselves to be a poor hacker, it was also pretty probable that they were bluffing about their own portal system still being active at this point.

This new chamber was about 300 meters below the known complex, and seemed to have many tunnels branching upwards. Seeing as they didn't even know where the original ley-sever was, or indeed if the enemy was even dumb enough to put it right inside the middle of their base, it could all be quite the welcome surprise. Well, for them, anyway...

Confusion Worsens

Truffleclub really didn't seem to know how to react to Akemi's toothpaste speech. Not least because they were uncertain of what their own gender implied and what types of threats this entailed.

"Such a mod I am seeing is deadly." They just shrugged, making a deep electronic hum. More of a verbal tick than a bodily function in their case. "Freshness of blood is a quality in the dead things. The living things are most putrid. More living things grow from the putrid. Would consider the putrid to be more technicully alive?... Yet, sterilize when surgerize. Most... perturbing, is?..."

"Deadly to bacteria, sure." Akemi understood what was said but he wanted to try making some real progress instead of continuing to mess around. At least for now. "We can talk about this stuff later. What I really wanted to ask is what plans have you have for Uso's planet. The planet we were on before we entered space. Arccos doesn't want to work with me but I want to work with you. What do you want to do? One thing I want to do is grow food for people. I want to farm." The Neko figured it was best to talk about something simple sounding instead of money and business.

White Lament

"AAARGGgg...." Uso groaned, audibly, over the all hands channel, "OK LETS MAKE THIS WORK. Who wants to live forever anyways?"

Uso would move toward the edge of the portal, keeping her weapon at the ready and magnetically attaching her datapad to the side.

"Arccos, mind opening those doors for us?"

"Alex, you're up first, squeeze in there shoot anything that looks like a tank."

"Corgan, You're with me. We're going in after Alex."

"Everyone else," Uso looked at the remaining soldier-look-alikes under her command, pausing for a moment before adding, "Don't shoot me."

...

She would then open up a private line to their mercenary fighter squadron currently outside of the ship.

"Hound squadron, how precise are your flying skills?"

Joining the Portal Party

Akemi stood to leave and join Uso. "Well I'm going to go into that portal so people have another thing to remember besides my honesty. Tell me whatever you'd like to tell me when I get back if you're not coming too. Can either you or Arccos electronically send me instructions on this gun?" Finished speaking he headed off.

Now You're Thinking With Portals.

Alex maneuvered his mecha through the portal, and landed on the factory floor, cutting thrusters to avoid harming any of his compatriots. Scanning the area for any enemies, Alex prepared his laser to fire if need be, not wanting to damage any of the surrounding machinery.

Portal, Unfortunate Souls

Corgan overheard Akemi talking to Truffleclub about what he wanted to do on 188604. He didn't think the big robot actually thought that far ahead. The comment about farming piqued his interest, though. "Akemi, you plan on farming? I got 5,000 chickens and a huge crate of barley. I'll sell you the eggs if you want."

The portal opened before him like some invisible giant's open maw. Inside, the cavernous space could be mistaken for the belly of such a creature. Corgan felt mildly uneasy about entering the portal. It was the first time he'd used Leyline tech, so he had no idea what it would feel like. "Hey Alex, are you in one piece? Your insides aren't outside?" He asked hopefully. Everything seemed to be okay with the mech, and he didn't hear any screaming. He moved to stand beside Uso.

Space

"Hound 2 and 3, return to the necromancer." Hazel said, her own jet black fighter craft taking up position in front of the White Lament. The smaller craft matched speed and heading with the spacer mother ship, and then turned its nose right toward the open doors that led down into the portal-bay, her hands moving from the stick and throttle to the control displays, making careful adjustments to the fighter's anti-gravity drives while also preparing the automated collision avoidance.

She didn't have to say it, she didn't trust the rest of her squadron to be able to pull this off. They'd just get in her way.

White Lament

Uso would be next through the portal, taking up a position just behind Alex's leg and quickly looking backwards, making sure there was nothing behind or to the sides of the portal they just came through.

"Alex, make some space between us and the portal." Uso commanded, as she then took off towards the sides of the room, keeping an eye out for anything that looked like a server. Her voice coming through a bit static-y now that they were no longer being protected by the starship's own communications network.

Portal Pals

"I could always see about your eggs and chickens. Thanks for telling me." Akemi hopped on through and quickly moved in the the direction opposite of what Uso chose and looked all over for any threats.

Underground Complex

Stepping through the portal confirmed that this section was particularly empty. Even the ruined power units and inactive maintenance drones sat completely undisturbed, covered in dust. Since the recovered drone had no data about navigating this place, it was all perhaps a given.



Now all that remained is to charge ahead without getting discovered until the very last moment...

Transfer to Freehold

"Growing eggs? Not capitalist eggs?" Truffleclub considered Akemi and Corgan's interactions carefully, looking upwards through the walls at something distant. They had experience with growing things in space, but doing it on a planet had turned out to be a completely different ball game. "Cloudee is helping the young ones. Do not know if this is helping the Lament. But the planet dirt is most... wrong... Needs big, big complex, is..."

A shrug, before turning to the matter at hand.

"Warmonger Zenith weapon is unique. His instructions is in his mindware." The large robot didn't think too much about rising into the air and hovering through the arcane portal, but had their rifle raised apprehensively in one hand for rather different reasons. Perhaps some other time they would have recalled the fact that Zenith was long dead. "Let us go and talk this person. Them is not being the spacer. I am wishing to see them understand."

Other side was cold and dark. Right side exit tunnel was human sized, too small for the large automata, Alex's mecha or the Hound squadron fighter. Looks like they would have to take the route on the left, the long way around into the central complex.

Underground Complex

Uso didn't waste any time, a quick glance the map information available to them and then she was off, heading down the larger tunnel making large, rocket-assisted jumps.

The first problem, would be the collapsed tunnel.

They hadn't come all this way just to be stopped by a bunch of rocks.

"Hazel. Can you pop open this tunnel with a missile, then hold it open with your craft's shields?" Uso asked.

"Th-t co--d go v-ry bad-y." Came the response over the all hands channel. Spacer ECM static starting to crowd into the communication.

"Just do it, I'll buy you a new ship if that's what it takes."

--

The Small, jet black, fighter craft would surge forward, diving between the open doors of the White Lament and spinning in place as it entered the portal inside of the ship, its engines flaring to bring it to a stop before it hit Alex's mecha. The fighter would then turn towards the side tunnel and start moving through relatively slowly, its shields pushing away from the craft, helping center it in the hallway as it just barely avoided clipping the corners.

When it reached the larger main rail tunnel, Hazel would flip her fighter over so the cockpit was facing downward. Two missiles would then fly from the forward launchers, slamming into the rocks and exploding, followed shortly by the fighter itself.

The hope was that the missiles would help clear some of the debris, and then the fighter would shove the rest out of the way.

Hopefully, its shields would keep the entire area from collapsing again.

Underground Complex

"Awww!" Akemi cried as he flew over to Truffleclub to give one of his leg's a big hug after seeing how empty of threats the room appeared to be minus the inactive, dusty drones. He wouldn't fully drop his guard because entertainment media logic dictated they could spring to life at any moment and actually be more of a threat than currently working robots because they just so happened to be well preserved internally and thus were perfectly intact like they came fresh out of a box.

"I'm glad you came with us and we can keep chatting. Tell me all you want about helping the young ones. Do you mean you're planting things with little children? I can get you plenty of good nutrient filled dirt." The Neko figured he could keep on talking since his buddy was a robot and thus likely could keep track of everything he said easily. Plus he had a lot of learning to do. "I'd love to work with cute little kids and employ them. I want to have a zillion love me and do my bidding."

Akemi labeled Truffclub a guy in his mind because the artificial being wasn't on his sexual radar.

#MovingMountains

Walking around Hazel's fighter in a manner that belied the bulk of his craft, Alex took up a position near the rubble and began speaking over the comms.

"I can move the rubble or hold up the passage." He said, getting ready to help out.

Underground Complex

"Make it happen Alex!" Uso shouted, "We don't have a lot of time, wedge that space open and let's prop it open with the fighter."

Moving quickly, Alex began to move rubble out of the way with one hand, and holding up the tunnel with the other. Once a sufficient space had been cleared, Alex called out, "It's ready!"

The Pumpkin Eater

Aashi had taken a position above The Necromancer and comm'd in to Ulysses over their secure channel and said, "How are you holding up down there?"