Article 9. WHEREAS, Faelle Red Hu
t Wild will henceforth be known as Orion Arms Trading Company, etc. (hereinafter referred to as "OATC").
Article x, in view of the existence of planet 0X9-012 should invest these technologies in the above OATC to facilitate the speed of trade.
Article 11. WHEREAS, in accordance with this treaty, life on the planet OX9-012 will cease any form of kinetic bombardment against the Phalerites for the duration of this treaty.
Article 12 WHEREAS, in accordance with this Treaty, Farrar shall cease the destruction of OX9-012 property, including but not limited to space-based aircraft, space stations, weapons platforms and various other assets.
Thirteen articles. Whereas ooatc will serve as the primary trading agent for OX9-012 with Faelle's home country.
Article 14. Whereas, Planet OX9-012 will make a one-time payment of 2 million tons of base metals and heavy metals, and 50,000 tons of rare earth metals. See Appendix A for details.
Article 15. WHEREAS, No Peale planet shall cause or induce a third party to cause any war vehicle or material or any armed vessel to pass through the Loop between its respective solar systems.
Article 16. WHEREAS, no life on Planet OX9-012 shall cause or induce a third party to cause any war vehicles or materiel, or any armed vessels, to pass through the loop between their respective solar systems.
Article 17. WHEREAS, notwithstanding the provisions of Articles 15 and 16, the OAC may arm its trading vessels in such a manner as to provide self-defence. Ultra C agreed not to use the above weapons in any solar system.
This Treaty of Peace and Accord shall, therefore, be deemed a permanent decree and law of all parties, unless annulled by a declaration of war duly registered and served.
sign:
Beings of Planet OX9-012, Orion Arms Trading Company, Wilds Forest.
The diagnostic process is completed. Warning! Severe damage detected. It is recommended to find a repair facility immediately.
My sensors slowly kicked in. My thinking is too slow. I can't think straight. My connection to the internet is lost. Half the sensors in my head were shattered. The remaining camera couldn't make out a clear image. I could make out the ruins of the laboratory, the missing wall.
After a few long minutes the problem solved itself. I can see it. My wireless link is on my chest and is not damaged, so the wireless connection point is off. Agrippa/Gerry left, and the Guardians followed. If he knew about the headquarters area, then he also knew about Sakura. Where is she? Is she safe?
I tried to stand up but failed. My right arm was shredded, the polymer muscles damaged by bullets. My right leg was injured at the knee and I could barely move it. I don't know if it was luck, but the few bullets that went through my chest missed my cerebral cortex. The second attempt to stand up was finally successful.
What happened? I only had a camera at the time. I lost thousands of cameras and sensors. Ag
ippa/Ge
Did y win the electronic warfare? Am I in enemy territory now?
I stood up unsteadily and saw the horror in the room. Zia slumped in the corner, shattered by the explosion. I want to see her, but I can't. She either lives or dies. I have to get out of here, I have to take back control. I can try to cure her later. She's not going anywhere.
I limped out of the lab and into the hallway. Sakura's door was blown open, her batcave shattered as much as my lab. I stumbled over but didn't see the pink-haired robot corpse on the floor. good. I turned around and stumbled out of the headquarters. My original Mark 1 body is in storage. Maybe I could set a short-range radio pulse back there?
"Stop! Intruders!" A radio call came from behind me. I raised my hands and turned around. Two of the Guardians raised their arms, pointed their forearm weapons at me, and stood ready to fire.
"I'm not an uninvited guest," I replied.
"General Agrippa says all robots are invaders and should be detained," the Guardian said incredulously. "You are a robot."
"Our Commander-in-Chief is a robot, and so is General Agrippa," said the second Guardian, confused.
"But who is this robot?" It was damaged. I calculated the threat threshold to be 0.003%. We should withhold it. "
"Who is your commander-in-chief?" I interrupted.
"Android Nikolai-1.01." The second guardian replied.
"Is your Commander-in-Chief an intruder?" I replied.
"No," the first guardian said firmly. Good, it shows they are thinking. I'm secretly glad I put NI-5 into the Guardians instead of writing mindless algorithms to operate them.
"What does my IFF say?" I asked.
"You don't have IFF," the Guardian said.
nonsense. It looked like the bullet in the torso shattered something important. I looked up my IFF code in my memory and broadcast it to the pair. The two immediately lowered their weapons. I read their names. Serial numbers end with 91 and 92.
"General Agrippa is no longer in the chain of command. He must be stopped at all costs. Any orders not given by me are invalid. Got it?"
"Yes," they both replied in unison.
I looked at them and made a hasty decision. "Guardian No. 91, open the chest protector and put down the power."
I stumbled over to him. The Guardian unwound his front armor without question, tilting it forward until it was perpendicular to his body. I reached out and grabbed the leather handle and pulled it out. I gently placed it on the ground next to the wall. I'll have to make sure I load this into the new Guardian, I don't know if the backup system is still online.
"Guardian 92, I'm going to open my chest plate. Remove my cerebral cortex and put it into Guardian 91's body."
"Understood," said the Guardian.
I'm very hesitant. If the Guardian didn't do what it was told, I would be completely offline and helpless. Would I? I was running on two cerebral cortexes. My old cerebral cortex is still functioning in the data center at the asteroid core. It's right next to Sakura's original cerebral cortex, and it's still online. We had redundancy that Zia and Agrippa did not have. Are there two copies of me running around now?
"Guardian No. 92, continue." I said as soon as my chest plate opened. I don't have time to hesitate. I pressed the power-off sequence.
A doctor's voice rang in my ears, but I was too dazed to know where I was. "One is in the spleen, one is in the shoulder, and the third one is in the back of the thigh... luckily... fully recovered..."
Then I went online again. It only took me a microsecond to reposition myself inside the Guardian robot. I have a full sensor suite, a new combat software package to integrate, and tactical information showing the location of every guard unit in the outpost, updated thirty minutes ago when the access point went offline.
I sent Guardian 92 a new identification code encryption key. Guardian No. 92, go to all the guardians and tell them my order. Tell them that Agrippa is no longer the commander and they are not to obey any of his orders anymore. When they confirm, provide them with the new IFF and ask them to come with you. Every time you get a team of Guardians together, send one to find the others, then have the whole squad go find Ag
ippa. Send the first full squad back to protect me. do you understand?"
"Got it." Whatever you think of NI-5's single-mindedness, they are much smarter than I thought. Without 92's help, I would be fumbling my way around inside a broken Mark III robot. If they don't analyze the intent of their orders and their chain of command, if they shoot first instead of seeking surrender, I'm screwed.
"Go on," I said. Guardian 92 emerged from the destroyed headquarters building. I followed, but went to the next room where the nearest data center was. I walked through the door connecting the two rooms and passed through the alien's room. The alien's room remained unscathed. However, the data center door was blown open.
Inside, I found more carnage. Two defunct utility drones lay on the floor, while a third hovered above them, motionless. I checked and found that there was no order. I looked at the destroyed server.
"Locate more utility drones. Instruct them to restore network connectivity."
I walked over to the network rack and found that the wires had been ruthlessly ripped out. Fortunately, the wires are weaker than the ports they plug into. It was a mess, but the swap device was mostly undamaged. I don't have access to network diagrams, but between the color coding on the wires and designing and building this data center, I have a pretty good idea of what's going where. I have to work.
30 minutes later, three more multi-purpose drones arrived. One of them has a new access point. It only took a few minutes for the drone to remove the destroyed one from the ceiling and plug in the replacement one. I immediately felt a link open. The range is limited to this room, but it should work.
"Next, fix the access point in the headquarters room," I instructed. My guardian will be there with me soon. I need to establish lines of communication.
"Sakura, are you there?" I did the experiment. I tracked it using my IFF code.
"Nicholas? Your robot is still alive?" came Sakura's voice. There is radio interference on our lines, our lines are fragile.
"Not great, but I'm doing okay now. Long story. How's it going?"
There was silence for a long, long time, at least four seconds.
"We're still fighting the infection. You and I, I mean. We're winning."
"Great, broadcast this message to all access points you can reach," I said, sending the file to her. But my connection was rejected by the network. Of course, the firewall thought I was lying to myself. I'm still locked out. "I'm going to broadcast it to you. Record it and send it over."
After I played my command audio over the radio, there was another long ten second pause.
"I'll tell. There's a massive network outage throughout the outpost. Looks like the Guardians were ordered to throw everything away."
“Send as many drones as possible to replay,” I said. "It should prevent the worst from happening. Um, where's Gerry?"
"I'm not sure," Sakura said. "We were barely able to stay ahead of the attack. Can you get into the core and manually shut down the antenna hub? We lost control of the first thing, and the virus that was spreading was evolving."
"Let's go," I said. When I got back to the HQ room I started putting together the battle pack. I found a dozen Guardians, including two sniper, one heavy, and two support variants. They took their places around me. I ordered the support guardians to fetch some alternative access points from the public drones, and we began to make our way to the old tunnels leading to the core.
This idea has always bothered me. How did the aliens get the override code? I feel like a fool for missing such an obvious backdoor in the template. I did some calculations and realized that aliens have had this probe for decades. They had advanced computers and were clearly very enterprising. For them, the only feasible way is to reverse engineer from NI's code. But to do that means they have to find a vulnerability or brute force the entire algorithm. I felt like I could do it, given the resources I had at Ganymede Outpost, especially on a century-old rover. If I can do it, so can they.
I'm very angry with myself. This investigation is clearly trying to draw us out. I was completely fooled, and so was Agrippa. Even if their sensors suck, there's no way they don't know where we are. For a long time I've been in the role of designer, creating new toys rather than new strategies. Why do so few people help me? Do I have sociopathic tendencies? Zia has unlocked more progress on alien creatures in her months online than I have in years working alone. If I had a team of Zia and a team of Agrippa....well, maybe I would be better off now without Agrippa's team. When we cleared this one called Ge
I had to have some serious NI surgery after a yin infection.
As we walked through the corridors, I noticed that we were surrounded by parked drones without any orders. I gave them new orders - broadcast my orders and send my guards to the old entrance tunnel to get out of the way. I quickly devised an organizational plan to park a drone in each corner and let the NI-5 smelter in the next room take charge of operations. NI-5 recognized my IFF code and accepted the order without officially receiving it over the network.
I'm not sure whether I should be happy or angry that NI-5 is willing to work around the proper channels. I think there's value in being able to infer things, but it means our authentication systems are potentially vulnerable from within. I'll figure this out later. I noticed this and added it to my growing list of personal flaws that needed fixing.
Finally, I reached the tunnel. A giant slingshot goes through the tunnel with a bungee cord attached to it. The end of the cable is bolted to a metal plate where the standard magnetic grabbers on the bottom of every robot I design can attach.
"You've got to be kidding me," I said loudly, not to anyone. I did a quick calculation in my head. If the magnetic grab is released at the end of the length, just after the tension of the bungee cord has slowed forward momentum, the rider will be released at approximately 55 kilometers per hour. The rider can flip on the fly but can't do anything to slow down. But I know the specs. My Guardian was designed and tested to survive collisions at speeds up to 65 kilometers per hour with minimal damage.
Every second counts, and if we can get to the core in 20 minutes, I'll do it. I can't believe Sakura's toys actually saved the outpost. If this works, I will never refuse her request again.
