|
Post by littlekreen on Aug 11, 2018 18:13:18 GMT -6
Inside a dark space twinkles lights of varied colors barely gleaming at a tight space containing a small humanoid form. A bodied relief with anchor plates pressed to a skin too dark to discern. Just a few weeks had passed since she'd been recovered by the Aschen and been repaired in trade for her information and star charts related to earth. They'd taken a few samples of everything on board including her substrate and mostly ruined bits of her brain but the black Quinoa they left her with instead was hyper efficient. She'd raided a few asteroids for materials including some precious earths for wiring or conventional electronics as half her technical equipment was ruined. Either by the impact that ripped her open leaving the discolored port side or the inside being subject to long term neutron bombardment. At least her insides weren't radioactive anymore so next order of business was getting somebody who knew how to make stuff. She was supposed to have a crew she'd gone to school for art with a minor in research operations with NASA to know what their people asked her for. Now half the technology she could by outdated much of her inner bits but some of it was comparable or resilient. Mostly the bits that her mother singularity Lexicon built.
The dark space itself was a sarcophagus behind a wall in the mess where a small female humanoid was contained. A representation of the ship's ID it lie perfectly still contained within heavy reinforcement and an umbilicus providing nutrients the body couldn't process. Much of the ship as a whole was organic and even the reinforced processing nodes distributed throughout the ship. Human neural matter and conduits of nerve cabling and glial networks. The avatar breathed quickly not because it needed to or there was an abundance of circulated air but from fear. The slipspace engines pushed her out of reality enough to a refrence frame she could exceed c into something she didn't understand quite yet. It was just a prototype and packed as an emergency. Whatever the wheezing and odd noises just outside of her internal camera pans were she was keeping her avatar safely in its armored sarcophagus.
Finally she got close enough to the station to drop out of slipspace and the sleeping Avatar with very active mind outstretched a in the palm socket. Slipspace engines started changing harmonics as the control screen she used prepared a reference merge. Gravitic shear emitted a harsh cry she couldn't be sure wasn't some animal by imagined wetness in the noise and reality stopped bending in uncomfortable directions. Internal life support ignited with a rush and blessed silence destroyed the footsteps and wheezing.
A wall marked KEEP CLEAR in the mess hall popped open with hydraulic arms the Avatar releasing herself. Behind it a mishmash of electronics wreathing an amorphous steel sarcophagus covered in in gold plated ceramic areogel blocks. Insulation as much as corrosion and EM resistance. The whole ship was overengineered for long-term resilience as a deep space research craft but there were signs of patches and bypasses by someone who didn't quite understand the technical manual. That someone being the small female avatar colored tan with watery white lines. As her eyelids popped open and gold inner eyelids retracted the cold body turned a cyan on blue. Waking up from what amounted to her sort of dream to pick up the engineer she'd tracked down online.
After getting her hands on some ashen suit interface hardware the security systems screamed about this or that backdoor interface inside that she found kinda worrying. That left her searching eventually for a particular engineer with really cheap hardware that didn't seem to have that sort of problem or could be modified out. The more natural interface of that model something she could probably interface her suits into. All she had was a meetup location looked up as she landed on the mess floor. The air was still a little stale but life support would clear that out quick enough. The watery skin under a dense metal and chainmail skirt flared bright yellow wondering who the engineer was. Sukarma didn't have a whole ton of money but had enough to buy her up front retainer and the mining cut. The Ashen were definitely not ADA compliant as the resume seemed more than good enough for a higher asking price.
The floor opened between bridge and cargo area to reveal a cargo elevator extending upward. A pilot's window followed her around marked as in manual mode and executive cognition use was marked in bright red letters since she was dropping into a large dry dock. Control mentioned that the outside was pressurizing but that didn't really cause her a problem. She stood on the elevator whose control UI fired in a flicker as she pressed its down button. An exterior square opened in her external dark blue substrate amor slowly dropping her toward the deck. There was some rushing air about for a moment until a blue forcefield pressure sealed her insides.
Sukarma walked away from the ship and started up comms to fill out paperwork that she'd arrived on the station. There'd probably be something telling people waiting when ships arrived. Dry dock control was a little peeved that she'd opened her dock already but just rolled her eyes waiting for them to finish pressurizing from .5 ATM so they could run the airlock cycle.
|
|
|
Post by demikara on Aug 11, 2018 18:34:39 GMT -6
The latest offer had been skeevy as fuck, but there weren't actually a ton of ships willing to hire a one armed engineer, not matter how good her mechanical arm was. Well, she was saving up to fix that, and in the meantime, her arm worked just well, so long as she kept it maintained, and wore the silkskin glove over it when dealing with fine particles. Still, this offer had seemed to check out and they were properly registered, so she wasn't too worried. Didn't seem like there was much of a crew, but that was fine. She'd worked with shorthanded crews before. Still, this was exciting. She’d not gotten to be the head mechanic before. She was usually second shift, or just an assistant. It was a nasty side effect of having the one arm.
She was one fourth of the way to affording the pricy procedure to regrow her arm. Hopefully this ship would rocket her up. She got a portion of the proceeds from all the mining after all, and if they hit up a rich enough asteroid, she could end up making out like a champ for the low price of keeping a ship running. Admittedly, she’d likely have to wear her silkskin glove every time she worked on the mining equipment, but that was fine. She’s likely be in a suit for that anyway, unless it retracted to inside the ship. Optimistically, she had packed two duffle bags just in case this worked out. Her other stuff, what there was, was already in storage, but that was no surprise. She didn’t have a lot. A couple of casual outfits, jumpsuits for working in, her tools. The tools took up a bag entirely on their own. Her data pad as slotted against her back. The arms there were carefully folded up so he device looked like a long metal backpack. It made convenient storage for her electronics too, given they were all slotted into this of that slot as well.
Her data pad dinged, and she twisted, then pulled it out from behind her, then glanced it over. “Oh. They’ve arrived.” That was good. She checked over the data to see where they had docked. Dock C, bay 8. Alright. She was at Dock B, but near the entrance. So, if she jumped the next transport over, she could be there in fiveish minutes? Alke quickly did just that. She didn’t want her future employer waiting for long, and she was supposed to meet said employer at the dock. Hopefully the other agreed to take her on, and the offer became official. It hadn’t seemed like there was competition, but Alke knew better than to assume.
|
|
|
Post by littlekreen on Aug 12, 2018 3:56:07 GMT -6
A few minutes later the dock finally hit atmospheric pressure so she could get into the station. Like always easily one of the shortest people there after stepping aside so dockworkers could quietly slip past. The blue field above her cargo elevator quietly turned off to expose the umbilicus port for them. The biomechanical ship that filled the bay moved tentacles and engine arms just enough for workers to ogle it. As the umbilicus connected she eeped and nearly dropped her pad. Cold metal met an adapter socket on her inside normally only for water and power. Momentary flailing sent a few dockworkers scurrying from her front. Getting filled full of whatever frigid rocket fuel was on tap wasn't appealing so the fuel-end was plugged and the damn coupling was still really cold in the more thermally sensitive inner substrate. Calming down she could hear surprised but swearing workers inside so Sukarma got out of the way. A bench nearby the dock suited even if it left her toes a foot off the floor. A bounce upward to get on small white lights emerged from her tentacle hair to fixate on her pad.
"How would you like it if I jammed a freezing cold feeding tube in your belly button," she complained to noone while fidgeting red-flashing legs on the high bench.
|
|
|
Post by demikara on Aug 12, 2018 9:37:56 GMT -6
"Bay 7...bay 8!" Alke looked the over the ship in the bay and grinned. She was beautiful, if different than most of the ships the mechanic had seen. Still, it would be nice to work on her. A biomechanical ship by the looks of her, and Alke made a note to purchase the refreshers she needed on the work she'd have to do, to take into account the biological portions of the ship. They were rare enough she hadn't worked on one yet. A refresher course wouldn't cost much and would be a good idea.
She found the bench closest to the bay and paused seeing the..person? the person sitting there already. "Excuse me? Are you Sukarma?" She really hoped the other person was, no matter how odd she looked. Honestly, she looked more like an avatar than a person. But that was silly, Alke was sure. Besides,t his was an excellent opportunity. She'd put up with any ship oddities for any other oddities for the chance to be part of a mining operation, especially if they brought in the right materials. If they got the right things, then, well. If they got the right things, she could afford her arm that much faster. Alke wanted to feel things again, to hold hands and be able to feel the other person's touch.
|
|
|
Post by littlekreen on Aug 12, 2018 11:39:23 GMT -6
Sukarma looked over and smiled a yellow color flushing from the face her tentacle hair pointing small flashlights at Alke before turning a gradient orange and turning off. A metal scrape of her dress later bare feet hit deckplate with a toll of metal. Small blue pips appeared at the corners of her pad and as she let go it whirled out of view. Behind her it squirreled away slotted into her small red backpack emblazoned with the blue star of life.
"Hi! Yes I'm Sukarma. Are you Alke? It's good to meet you!", she said bouncing on the bluish-yellow toes of her feet and extending a hand.
One of the tentacle arms curled around one of her elephantine landing gears fully opposed toes twiddling from her excitement. Though the dockworkers ducked they'd as expected movement now did not complain as much. A small 10mm telephoto camera attachment squirmed out of the end so Sukarma could take a ID photo. While she could use the Ashen networks with all the complaining her security layer did when she attached one of the isolated computer blades air-gapped the external ports and networking entirely. One small utility arm hurriedly typed in status updates on a keyboard console for the dockworkers.
|
|
|
Post by demikara on Aug 12, 2018 11:47:16 GMT -6
Alke shook the others hand and smiled. "That's me. It's good to meet you to. So this is your ship?" It was nice and she was excited to work on it. "Biomechanical right? I'd never worked on one myself, but I learned the basics. You still want me knowing that?" If not, well. This was a hub. Someone would be looking for a mechanic. Alke believed in being upfront about things though. Her duffle bags were hled onto the back of her backpack, making her look like a somewhat packrat of a traveler, but she didn't mind it. She wasn't one, even if the current impression was such. She hoped the other didn't judge her by that, but it really was easier just carrying it on her back, with the extra supports below her knee as well, she barely noticed it. Her boots rocked, as far as Alke was concerned, even if they weren't fashionable. They were practical and frankly that was much more important.
Still, it would be interesting to work on this ship, and she hoped the other still wanted her. She eyed the camera uncertainly. Well, it was biomechanical. And this was definitely and avatar, now that she was looking closely. So the ship was responding as it should at least, from what she remembered. It looked like the ship was healthy and working then at least, or at least seemingly healthy. She'd definitely have to familiarize herself with the ship.
|
|
|
Post by littlekreen on Aug 12, 2018 12:17:37 GMT -6
Splotches of brown appeared for a moment in confusion then vanished as she pointed at herself, "No no, that's me, I'm in the dock. I'm not from anywhere near here so there's not really anyone fully qualified anyway. Can you stabilize an impact wave plasma mining lance?"
Her head turned momentarily white among the orange hair and yellow body, "I kiiinda looked up your arm as a custom job too so you have a custom neural link. I don't trust the Ashen stuff connecting to the deep space hazard suits. I can't buy Ashen hardware anywhere without something in it trying to root me. I have an adaptive fabrication unit you can build stuff from scratch."
The white area turned blue as she calmed to shrug, "So, you're the top of a short list."
A huge mining lance poked out of one of the for forward arms distending the tentacle tip quite a bit. Designed to deploy and seal to a rocky surface then drill a channel inside. Conduit drops into the shaped well to where the recycler pressurizes the channel with plasma. The plasma stream carrying waves of magnetic compression as pressure waves fracture the rock when they hit further melting and turning to plasma. The plasma centrifuge recycler would sort the excess design pressure each recoil cycle into usable minerals.
She thumbed at the lance then toward the pale area on that entire side, "It's too much for me to stabilize the channel and destabilize the asteroid without something exploding eventually. I can only pat my head and rub my tummy with so many hands at the same time, you know? I repaired the conduit twice already as best I could. After getting nuked while engaging my slip drive then I ended up here so my executive thought capacity is still injured. I've got a lot of busted electronics on that side and everywhere inside."
|
|
|
Post by demikara on Aug 12, 2018 13:41:29 GMT -6
Alke went still. "My arm is a custom job yeah. I did it myself, along with the extra arms on my back. Harold, wave." The arm on the left unfolded and wave. "Harold, store." It went back into it's place and she grinned. "Learning arms. The wave is a new trick." And one she enjoyed. As for the lance? She looked closer and frowned. "Installation looks like it was rough. I should be able to repair it it and stabilize it yeah, especially with a fabrication unit." The ability to build things from scratch was a welcome one. The woman grinned. "Mind if I take a closer look, at, well, you?" Definitely an avatar. If all the color change didn't clue her in than the reference of the ship being her did. This was going to be interesting.
The mechanic had heard horror stories about AIs, but this one seemed nice enough. Being on an AI ship may even help her refine Harold and Alfred some more, just from osmosis. That was exciting. "I shouldn't need more help than the arms I already have, but." She frowned and looked the tentacles over. "You have full control over the tentacles right? Does that include sensation?"
|
|
|
Post by littlekreen on Aug 12, 2018 18:14:39 GMT -6
Sukarma waved back at the arm, "Hi Harold! They look good for their job!"
Unsure of Harold's needs her skin fades white, "I don't mean to assume for Harold but if he's an AI us EI-S don't run code too well. He'd have to run on a hardware rack or I could box him a VM under my executive processing space. I'm running synthetic programming on salty pudding."
Tablet shot to her hand again for a glance to add a diagnostics overview. Though she'd minimized most of the controls having only a passing idea of what they said. She held it out to Alke. The main view centered on a ruined processing node. Its surroundings covered in dried tan stains several projectiles rammed through the casing. A white light came on in the sublayer as a lighting control flicked on showing an intact node behind it. One of dozens of wrinkled unsplit cerebellums connected to receptacles appeared. Each passing data on an interlinked optical bus.
"I need more gold and titanium to fix them. Then time to heal the brain damage. Everything still works.", she sighed having gotten used to her form of headaches. Random tasks froze once in a while.
Darkened to cyan on dark blue Sukarma led through dock crew, "Anyhow, this way I'll give you the tour! I have my cargo door down because I'm full docked to use slipspace. The lump on this side is my transport shuttle. It took a bad hit after the sheath blew off but spaceworthy. The other side has a construction craft. I had other EI-S living out of my executive space but they'd migrated earthside before I got nuked. So I can feel there, kinda, but the surface is more like than a elbow than a fingertip."
When pointed out the slight well the ~10m bump from engine arm to tentacle tip was more obvious. A smaller version of herself immersed halfway to its dorsal/ventral plane. Two exposed engine arms, dorsal positional engines, and four tool arms due to its reduced size. Lining the socket edge a ragged tear of substrate stretches web across slashes. The protective sheath an eyelid torn and immolated by nuclear fire. Only now beginning to grow back. Thin brownish crusts still remain though the outer surfaces recovered well at large.
Two of her fingers rubbed together, "My skin's built for cosmic rays or orbital impact. Avatar's for touching things. I can kind of feel ring dust at speed or nebula floating by but not well. Feels like snow that never melts and doesn't fall down. Some of them it's real clingy and sparks like getting licked by a flock of batteries."
An exclamation icon peeped generator detail, "The manufacturing plant on the aft. It's ahead of the Nth-space stellarator. Each of my tool arms has a 4 megawatt sustained power bus but they can bypass to their nearest channel at either end. Lanes 2 and 3 melted away in the middle and need an overhaul."
|
|
|
Post by demikara on Aug 12, 2018 18:27:35 GMT -6
"Harold and Alfred are very basic AI. Alfred is the right arm, Harold the left. They're connected to the backpack I've got on and don't require more space. I'd just stow them in my bunk when not in use." She said simply. "They need to be carried around otherwise, and while damned useful, I can't constantly do that." Alke took the data pad and looked them over. "So the biological parts are self healing?" That was useful as hell. "I can do these repairs easily, but they aren't a quick repair. Where are you going to get the titanium and gold, or are they our first goals for mining?" She flicked over the diagnostic review, enlarging and minimizing pictures as needed to get a better idea of the damage.
It'd take her a bit to get it working, but the ship could apparently limp around for a bit at least. She flicked over it all. "This is pretty extensive work for a single mechanic to fix. I can do it, of course, but what's our time table here?" It was a good thing that she had the fabricator. She'd need plenty of parts to fix all this. They'd need raw materials for the fabricator to do it's work too. This was going to be a fun project wasn't it?
|
|
|
Post by littlekreen on Aug 12, 2018 18:58:39 GMT -6
Sukarma thought about larger trends of her health which popped several mesh networking diagrams in the background, "Well I'm repaired or healed enough that I'm not gonna have any major segment drift. Not for at least a few months. I need at least the optical bus repaired on that side. The hole is bad even though most of my inner network is substrate can make everything work."
Individual parts were indeed anchored to a skeleton of sterner substance but most low-bandwidth devices just terminated in a small electrode box floating in the 'meat' of the walls. Some stretched wires between like fruit through thick gelatin. There were a lot of hidden channels below the floor where much was routed and stored. A damage control readout did indicate polygonal regions of spar damage or volumes labeled stable irradiative discontinuity. Most of the exterior showed a positive regeneration rate and 'mass capture' currently ongoing.
It was small but the outer skin quietly scrubbed the air of every particle and bacteria that came into contact with it. Enough that periodically the dock crew were doing air quality measurements to figure out what was going on. Following the infrastructure lead to a small network of conduits circulating fluid that filtered out inorganic particles to a hopper by the recycler the remainder to a set of low density sacs that digested the organics. A small spike in load indicated a small insect hovering at the top of the bay landing on the dorsal layer. A small ripple sank the bug way and passed it through the channel. There was one thicker isolated conduit leading toward the mess where a hydroponic system inside a wall grew and harvested seeds from black plants. Ten kilogram sacks of quinoa grain stacked in an accessible compartment. There was sewer treatment equipment nearby connected to it gathering sterile nitrates and water for the plants to consume.
The network of brains on her outer layer and inner layer showed a not so small amount missing from the impact zone, "As long there's a interface node immersed the substrate passes data to the nearest optical bus. If it has to go a long way I get processing segment drift that's bad for me in the long term."
She turned a mix of brown and pink, "As long as that's fixed well. I can give you your cut for as long as it takes to fix everything and you can stay as long as you like? I don't have a ton of storage so you can use excess materials for whatever you want to make. I'll need water and hydrogen the more power I use though."
|
|
|
Post by demikara on Aug 12, 2018 19:09:07 GMT -6
"Sounds good to me. I should be able to fix it before we have anything to worry about then." She had time from the sounds of it. That was good. Still, the damage was extensive and that was bad. "I can get everything fixed for you, and I'll probably stay on a bit longer past that. I'm saving up for something special, so." She shrugged and smiled. So long as the other would have her, and the cuts were decent, she'd likely stay. "Only other concern is supplies. things like food and other necessities. I take it you won't be eating quite the same as me, so how are we going to handle that?" Hopefully not ration bars. she wasn't sticking around past repairs being finished if the answer was ration bars. then again, repairs were never actually finished, so maybe not until after the major ones were done.
A tick longer and she frowned. "And how would I be doing work on the outside of your body? Would the mag-boots still work?" There would be flesh between her boots and the metal after all, so she wasn't sure. Okay, she had a lot of questions still, but some stuff they'd figure out as they went along. Food and exterior work though, she did need to know about before they left for anything at all. Still, at least the other should be fine. A quick trip into an atmosphere, assuming she could, would likely be enough to fuel up her reserves again.
|
|
|
Post by littlekreen on Aug 12, 2018 20:43:27 GMT -6
"Outside? That's the Deep Space Hazard suits. Um... hold on.", Sukarma said looking over to the cargo elevator as a green indicator flashed from a fuzzy Manifest window in the background to an Asset window in the foreground.
There was a hiss and a drunken stumble of metal thump-thump-thumpthump from inside the ship toward the lip. A heavy set of humanoid-shaped exoarmor emerged from above with a clang of boot on steel. The exterior of the suit a same deep blue as the ship's substrate but moved with a ponderous momentum. Sukarma had a bit of trouble moving it about in 1G and it wasn't something one normally did remote. There was a heavy backpack a curling epoxy grip at its fringes of the pack up to a faint dotted line. Onto bent knee both arms stretch wide substrate pulling away from the base of the neck an autopsy of the nothing that was inside. The interior was a more recognizable set of electrodes and soft thermoregulation and puncture resistant layers. Even the helmet and its gold-colored visor distended upward. Speaker plates for each ear visible
Sukarma gestured to the suit, "I've got four but I'll need to take a scan to fit or you can tweak it yourself. It's got room for computer modules, communications, onboard power supply, and life support. Most of the other features you'll have to splice electrodes to get it networked or optical cables. I stripped them to mothball 'cuz I have to run them otherwise. Stay hull to heel and it'd take a jackhammer to force you loose. It's got force effect clamps for normal surfaces though as long as you're not on gravel or sand or something it can't hold onto. If you can figure out how to connect the prosthetic to the suit maybe you could get native control? It's kinda numb but it's got sensory apparatus it doesn't normally use."
She shrugs, "Though That's mostly 'cause it's not a true EI just pure subconconcions processing so it's kinda brainless."
"Shouldn't burn out any AI code on the module bus. I can drive it remote if you go unconscious but, " She makes a gurgling noise with outstretched wobbling hands, "Grlllllagh you can see it's kinda a zombie. I'm not dodging anything."
She looks down at the pad and a sub window pulls out of the background manifest, "I found a pallets of of presealed meals from all over the place on earth in deep storage. It's soups, freeze dried fruit, a big box of ramen, jerky, and other clean stuff I can't eat. It's on the list. I can grow grain and I had to buy new seeds to replace sterilized ones. I'm buying a bunch of frozen meats from the station for you and some sundries. I have blankets and stuff already in your quarters. Delivery should be by soon."
|
|
|
Post by demikara on Aug 13, 2018 5:27:00 GMT -6
Oh good, sounded like food was provided. "Alright. I'll probably have to tweak the suit some to work with my arm, or my arm to work with the suit one, but it shouldn't be too bad." And it was a damn fine suit from the look of it. She could adjust the straps on her module so it would fit over it too. This seemed like a decent gig. "Let's go onboard then. You can give me a physical tour and I can drop my bags off in my quarters." The job sounded nice and she'd take it. The food would likely suck a bit, but that was fixable with time and spices.
The ship tour would work well, and she could get settled in, and then started on some of the repairs. "Once we do that, I can get started on some of the repairs needed." Might as well get started after all, as it looked like it was going to be a job and a half for awhile. This was exciting stuff. Working on a biomechanical ship! She hadn't thought she'd ever be able to, given she wasn't ex-military. No, she was just from nowhere on the rim and lost her damned arm as a kid. People would discriminate against her on the arm thing alone. A job, even a little weird one like this, was a job and this one looked like a good one.
It was going to be weird, being the only crew member. It would just be her and the ship. Hopefully she'd be fine with that, though she wasn't sure. The idea of being alone like that or rather, with just the ship and it's avatar, was an uncomfortable one.
|
|
|
Post by davien on Aug 13, 2018 10:07:31 GMT -6
Midgra pushed his way through the forest of legs he was so accustomed to seeing in crowded ports like this. It was annoying, tiresome, and could even be labor intensive at times, but like the clever Mishqua he was, had fashioned a makeshift cattle prod out of a small battery, electrical tape, a knife handle, and a metal rod. Anyone who refused let the Mishqua move past would get 12 volts in the backside. Eventually, he found himself approaching just the place he wanted to see, the spaceport. Time to find Dock 8.
Midgra prodded one of the fatter dockworkers out of the way and looked up to the giant signs indicating what docks were which. And there, in dock 8, just as his stolen manifest had told him, sat the Sukuruma. It looked a bit... Gross to Midgra, though he couldn't quite articulate why. Seeing an oppurtunity, he snuck slowly onto the ship, frankly surprised at how easy it seemed to be. He smirked to himself, finding his way to the subfloor by gumption alone. It wasn't the first time, or indeed would be the last time he tried to figure out, and succeeded at guessing correctly a ships floor plan.
Going all the way to the back, he dropped his prod, and looked over all the yellow metal in front of him. One bar would be more than enough to keep him fed for a very long time, considering his tastes. As the foxes reflection stared back at him, blurry and opaque in the divts of gold, he picked one up. It needed both hands, and was much heavier than Midgra remembered gold being... But he gritted his teeth, and tried his best to carry it. Failing, the bar landed on the floor with a loud clunk. His ears and tail went rigid as he looked around frantically, sure that he had alerted someone, and heard someone begin to approach. In a mild panic, he left the bar, and his prod where they lay, climbing up into the intricate labrythe of wires and rafters. He found himself a hole small enough for him to fit in, and decided to wait it out with bated breat as he watched to see what happened. Hopefully, they didn't take his prod. He worked hard on that!
|
|