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Scarcely were the words out of Nevada's mouth, however, than a thought struck him. "Admiral," he said reasonably, "if we are going to encounter compromised computers out there," he waved a hand vaguely to indicate the outer system of Collace, "we may need the most effective diagnostic security computer system any of us have ever seen." He indicated Vespasian with the other hand. "We will come back for you to investigate him afterwards."
Khundrak shrugged. "It's not that we distrust you," he said, "but we need to know how this robot did what it did, and how to prevent it happening again." Vespasian looked back at him impassively. "I am entirely happy to assist in any way that does not conflict with my core programming," he said, not unpredictably.
"Very well," agreed the Admiral. "I shall arrange access to the sensor arrays with Systems Defence. It will probably take me a day or so."
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In the following two days, Nevada spent some considerable time scouring the ship's Library, and the planetary PAN, for what was known about Hivers and their robots. The Hive Federation was on the far side of the Imperium, a vast number of parsecs away, and what was there was pretty basic and close to common knowledge.
Planning for the refitting of the corsair currently more crashed than landed on Kaldamar continued. Provisionally named the Mountain Walk, the vessel needed crew - or its' equivalent. While robot crewmen were never quite as good as sophonts, they'd done well aboard the Short and Long Walks, and Nevada placed orders for some more Naasirka gunnery and engineering robots.
A conversation with the agency of the government with whom they'd dealt before resulted in a provisional registration of the new vessel, for a fee of KCr250. This done, and confirmation of their access to the systems around Karthas receieved, the Long Walk broke orbit and headed for the outer system.
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The sensor arrays covering the outer system were controlled from an orbiting space station riding high above Karthas, the system's gas giant. Four unmanned array satellites orbited the giant planet at equidistant points high above the Sky Rigs that floated in the high atmosphere of the giant, along with othe arrays placed similarly around the satellites Kex and Kitono.
That was before the Trexalonians arrived. During the invasion, they had lasered the control station comprehensively, killing all twenty-five of its' crew and taking the arrays out of action. In the aftermath, a repair crew had been deployed there, getting the basic functions back on line fairly quickly but still working on the station itself.
A vacc tent had been set up inside the former lounge and circulation space for the repair crew, with the main quarters, power plant, computer suite and control room still open to space and pierced by ragged holes.
The commander of the eight-man repair crew, one Jefferson "Airplane" Smith, had been primed to expect them and welcomed them aboard. Their job was boring and remote, and the repair team were glad of the diversion; even more, they were delighted to be invited for dinner aboard the Long Walk. Smith requested two sittings, as he couldn't officially abandon his post, and sent four of his eight off for a good dinner, hosted by Feaysen and Emerald Mays.
Vespasian wasn't vacc-hardened, and was inserted into a vacc suit to visit the station. He wasn't programmed with zero-G skills either, and needed guiding across the decompressed station to the computer suite. There, he extended a connector from his hand and plugged into the station computer.
Information began to flow across. In fairly short order, he identified a recent upgrade that had been made to the systems, a signal optimizer delivering a 15% improved resolution and accuracy over their existing system. This had been supplied by Tavistock CLC, a local company. Within that, Vespasian had noticed an undocumented and unauthorized subroutine. As soon as he touched it, several things happened with whiplash violence.
All the lights on the station went out, and over the radio the Cats heard the unforgettable, fading, heartstopping scream of men subjected to explosive decompression. The gravity across the station suddenly ramped up to 4g, slamming those in simple vacc suits to the deck like an iron hammer. Wombat, Nevada and Feng were wearing battledress, and the strength enhancements of those suits locked the structure in place, saving them from injury. Kondraki's combat armour was unpowered, but it made his fall to the floor painful but undamaging. The station crewmen were another matter. Vespasian was unmoved.
Feng leapt into action, lurching across the deck in the massive G, reaching the two workers who'd been in the tent and were now exposed to space without suits. Lifting them, she clumped across to the airlock and put them in, cycling it from outside to pressurize and alerting Wales and Feaysen to get the casualties to sickbay as quickly as possible.
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Wombat and Nevada had collected the other two, whose suits had remained pressurized but who had multiple injuries from the 4g fall. As they neared the airlock, the station environment suddenly reverted to normal, pressure climbing and the grav plates dialling down to normal 1g. Five minutes later, Wombat was triaging the casualties and loading the worst into their robodoc. The other two he stabilized and gently put into medical Low sleep. If a less skilled physician had been on hand, some if not all of them would have died; but Wombat was not regarded as one of the Scout Service's Medical School's best trainees for nothing.
Careful examination by Vespasian discovered that the upgrades - and their lethal payload - were gone, erased by their anti-tamper after transmitting a coded microburst to the mainworld. The backups contained an inert copy, and this was carefully isolated and taken along for analysis. The robot appeared - emulated being - impressed; the malware was far more sophisticated than Collace's tech could have produced.
A message to Admiral Khundrak with an account of events and details of Tavistock produced the predictable response; "Get back here and investigate."
Tavistock CLC had two addresses on Collace, one at Shadira Downport which turned out to be a mail delivery locker, and an office in Gardshaw City.
Although one of the “lower class” ground cities of Collace, Gardshaw wass a far cry from Staerla Dark City. It was a bit shabby but reasonably well-maintained. At least on the surface, it didn’t have the same air of desperation, criminality and danger that Dark City did. This was, of course, deceptive!
In point of fact, most of Gardshaw’s crime was more structured, tending to fraud, accountancy, dodgy dealings and so on, under a surface of healthy business.
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The Cats put their APC down in a small grubby park not far from the office address, and walked over to it, five observation drones floating up to examine the windows. Some bystanders had noticed them and gathered to watch what they did; several small boys looked as if they were planning to try and steal small bits of gear if the opportunity presented itself.
The block itself looked as if it had once been fairly prestigious, but was now fallen on rather harder times. As usual for a Collacan ground city, it had pressure doors on the front, and the Cats, Kondraki and Vespasian walked up the stairs and through these. Feng remained outside, watching the streets; she felt they might get surrounded.
Inside, a receptionist attempted to prevent them entering, but was presented with a rifle barrel to look at. She pressed the button for the lift, but also a panic button. Wasting no time, Wombat, Nevada, Vespasian and Kondraki boarded the lift and rode it up to the 65th floor, wincing gently at the banal music common to all lifts.
Locating the office door, they examined it carefully, pressing the buzzer in hopes of a response that were dashed. After some debate, Nevada elbowed the door into wreckage and they entered cautiously.
Inside was a square open-plan office occupying the corner location of the 65th floor. Computer systems, memory cores and display units were everywhere, lighting up the otherwise dark office with a sepulchral blue glow. Completely expecting an ambush, Wombat and Nevada entered the office - and were not disappointed.
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Skittering noises, as of many small legs moving at considerable speed, could be heard from several directions. A tiny form was instantaneously visible as something airborne flitted between two computer units. And two humanoid robots popped out from cover and opened fire with twin linked lasers.
Nevada loosed a full automatic burst into one, and blinked in surprise as it blasted him full in the chest - denting his armour! - rather than falling over. He and Kondraki hit it again, and it went over backwards behind a desk. Wombat was rattled as similar bolts from the other one glanced off his helmet, and reacting insitinctively to dangerous robots, pulled an EMP grenade off his belt and hurled it into the room.
The grenade detonated with a burst of barely-seen and nonphysical energy, which seemed to trouble the robots not at all, but wrought utter havoc with the systems in the office. Screens erupted and computers cascaded sparks as system after system blew.
Seeing this on her telemetry, Feng realized she was covering the wrong options, and dashed out of the reception and leaped for the sky, crossing her fingers as grav flight was not one of her strong points. She soared up the side of the building as the fight continued to unfold.
The skittering was revealed as a number of tiny assassin robots scuttled out of cover and started peppering the intruders with laser fire. It would have been lethal to unarmoured targets, but proved incapable of challenging battledress. More threatening were the flying versions which turned out to be armed not only with monoblades but poison as well. Wombat stepped back out of the door into the corridor as Nevada shot futilely at one of them.
A massive explosion ripped through the office from where the first robot (Clyde) had fallen; it had been equipped with self-destruct. All the windows blew out and half the assassin drones were smashed to wreckage. A moment later, Feng soared through the window like an avenging angel, siezed Bonnie by its shoulders and heaved, planning to hurl the robot out of the window to the street 65 floors below.
This was a brilliant, spectacular idea and really should have worked, but Pete's Strength check was sadly lacking and Bonnie's very much wasn't, so sadly it didn't work.
The robot remained solidly planted. Feng was consoling herself that at least she had its' upper arms pinioned when it lifted its forearm and stabbed backwards at her with the monoblade mounted in its arm.
While Nevada and Kondraki remained in the doorway picking off assassin bots and considering whether to risk shooting Feng to get Clyde, Wombat became aware of movement behind him at neck height as the second flying assassin came through the wall and attacked him from behind. Lethal venom splashed across a noticeable groove in his armour as it lashed at him with its' monoblade. Frantically, Wombat let his rifle fall and grabbed the thing, bashing it repeatedly against the wall to little effect. Changing tack, he rammed it down on the floor - and straight through the suspended floor tile and into the concrete below. It promptly writhed free and scuttled off under the floor, leaving Wombat blasting gauss fire down through the floor at random to try and hit it.
Feng's head weaved as she dodged Bonnie's blade, and she reached to her hip and drew her arcfield sword, slashing it in a swift arc that bisected the combat bot from hip to shoulder. The robot fell apart in a shower of components - and then erupted as its self-destruct charge went off. Feng was blasted backwards, missed the window by half a metre and smacked into the wall with stunning force. Her armour held, though, and though dazed by the blast she was unwounded.
The rifle fire from the corridor stopped as Wombat directed a spy drone into the floor space to confirm the assassin was destroyed.
As they started sifting through the ruins in search of any clues, Nevada commented, "Whoever is behind this has serious money, and some very good equipment!"
Session Date: 1st May 2025 - Mayday!
Myself, I prefer July 22nd as Traveller Day, the date the game was first played in 1977. It has become popular among the community to call May 1st - Mayday - Traveller Day, after the box cover of the Classic edition.So we had to play today!