Lacking a Title
A blog created to warehouse my work and thoughts during National Novel Writing Month
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
9928 words
Posted by: Greg @ 12:25 AM.
PreviouslyTwo days later, the collection of robotic remains had shrunk and then grown. With the help of the Majors, the Lieutenants had sorted through the remains and tossed aside all the robots which had taken too much damage to work with, as well as the extraneous parts. The roboticists had then set to work with their tools and computers to extract and analyze the programming code of the salvaged robots. But less than twelve hours later, General Kilpatrick had stopped by with news. Four of the commercial ships that had been taken by the robots had been found and recaptured, and the remains of the robots on board were going to arrive at the Directorate within the day.
The fact that the only robots to attack ships had been VeRN 83-IPs had been quickly ascertained by the roboticists, so Kiroshi had been happy to have news to tell the General when he had stopped by. She expected that by now, the SOD had grounded every ship licensed in the Core Alliance that utilized that robot model. And apparently, the cover story of an uprising in pirate activity being the cause of the loss of the commercial ships had been accepted by the public. When she had asked the General about that, she had briefly wondered what had become of the civilian passengers who had survived from the ship that she and Staley had been on board.
While Clovis and Sunnydale had been attempting to analyze the information from the robots, she and Staley had been trying to find a pattern among the ships that had been attacked. They had plotted each of the ships' paths prior to the attacks, as well as the positions of the commercial ships which had been recovered. And they had cross-referenced past ports of call. Kiroshi stared at the images of the lists and charts displayed on the surface of the tablescreen. No matter how she manipulated the information, she could not find a common thread. Leaning back from the table and tilting her head from side to side to pop her neck and stretch the tightened muscles in her shoulders, she saw Staley staring at his table screen as well. By his expression, she knew he had reached the same conclusion that she had. Nothing lined up. The only sign of any relation between the attacks remained the model of robot involved.
"Let's go see the twins," she said, eliciting a questioning grunt from Staley. She raised her voice slightly, "Cooper, come on. We know there is nothing useful in this information." With a swipe of her hand, she cleared the tablescreen and turned it off.
"I guess we're going to see VeRN, huh?" Staley asked with a sigh.
She nodded. "Unless our wonder kids have a better idea. And even if they do, I think it might be a good idea to go there anyway."
When they got to the lab where Clovis and Sunnydale had set up shop, Kiroshi and Staley found that they were both examining a wallscreen with lines upon lines of text, numbers, and symbols.
"How is it going, gentleman?" asked Kiroshi.
Turning around, the roboticists gazed at her. "Actually, we think we have found the problem," said Sunnydale.
Kiroshi started. That was certainly not the answer she had expected to receive. "What? Already? That's great work, Lieutenant."
Sunnydale grimaced, and Clovis shared the expression. "Unfortunately, it is not that impressive, ma'am. And right now, it is not very helpful either."
"Now wait a second, Lieutenant," said Staley, with a hint of confusion in his voice. "You just said that you found the problem. How isn't that helpful?"
Clovis answered. "Well, sir, once we were able to access a fully undamaged memory and programming core -- one of the ones disabled by Major Kiroshi's containment rupture, we think -- finding the coding itself, was not that hard. We just looked for code that should not be there." He motioned at Sunnydale. "Jon had done some work on the early version of these models and knew their basic code structure, so that did not take very long. But knowing where the problem is does not mean that we know what the code does, unfortunately."
"I think I understand you, Lieutenant," responded Kiroshi, hesitantly. "Does that mean you have done everything that you need to be here to do?"
"Yes ma'am," they replied.
Kiroshi smiled. "Well then, I have some good news. You'll be out of your adaptation suits soon. Major Staley and I ran into a deadend on our side, so we're all going to go pay a visit to VeRN's warehouse and laboratories. I will go see about getting us a ship. How much time will you three need to get everything you need together?"
Clovis and Sunnydale looked at each other for a second, before answering together, "Two hours, ma'am."
Staley nodded. "Should be more than enough time for me, too."
"Great, then we'll leave in three."
* * *
Five hours later, Staley had just finished stowing the gear that he had procured. Even with the limited time, he felt confident that he had secured enough material from the SOD armory and supply depot to fulfill any need that might come up. Kiroshi had asked him if he really felt like the FCP rifles and pistols, battle armor and supporting equipment was really necessary. His simple, "Yes" had brought a brief smile to her face. The two roboticists had simply nodded when they saw the equipment he had gathered. Despite their being SOD, Staley still was not comfortable with their qualifications if it came down to real combat situations. But then, he had been pleasantly surprised by the capabilities of the last person he had been unsure of, so he tried not to let his doubts bother him.
He asked the wallscreen to display the current time and the projected time for their arrival at VeRN's robotics lab and warehouse. Located in high orbit around Venus, the station rivaled Mars' smaller moon, Deimos, in size. While not necessarily the most advanced robotics company, the Venusian Robotics Network had, almost since its inception, been in partnership with the Core Alliance Fleet as the sole provider of robots for the Fleet's ships and construction yards. It had been an exceptionally lucrative partnership. But as a result of its narrow focus, several other robotics companies had secured similar partnerships with other industries. And none of the companies had gained dominance in the domestic, personal and recreational robotics markets. However, VeRN's space based lab was unrivaled by any of its competitors' labs, and was widely considered one of the aesthetic and technical wonders of the solar system. Staley rather looked forward to having the chance to see it.
As he walked out of the storeroom, he took the chance to relax in the approximately one-third earth's gravity that Kiroshi had set the ship's gravitational control at. The two Martian roboticists had been most thankful for the return to the gravity that they were used to. Reaching the common room, Staley saw that they had gone to their quarters and rid themselves of the exoskeletons that they had worn while on Earth. The lack of the oddly formed body suits revealed them both to be quite thin, but at the same time, quite muscular. Staley was still willing to bet that his shorter, but more muscular build gave him more strength than them, but increased his earlier low estimate of their overall physical abilities. He regretted that the ship was too small for a training room, or he might have asked one of them to spar with him. He figured it would be a fairly even fight. In his time undercover, he had not been able to practice his hand-to-hand fighting, so he was rusty on technique. But he had maintained a good strength and conditioning regimen.
Right now, both Sunnydale and Clovis were seated and were examining the information that they had extracted from the robots which was displayed on the tablescreen between them. He watched as their hands flew across the screen, manipulating the data and entering notes, trying their best to reverse engineer the code for the 83-IP robots. Sunnydale had said that if VeRN granted them access to their database, that it should become a trivialized problem. Staley had no doubt that VeRNs representatives would be more than accomodating to their requests when they saw the dataprint that General Kilpatrick had given Major Kiroshi that also carried the seal of the Commandant of the SOD and the seal of the Council of Three. The roboticists had also said that they wanted to do some analyses on any still active 83-IPs that VeRN might have in their warehouse. That would be the only way to determine when the robots' programming had been corrupted. And they would be able to verify their hypothesis that the corruption was viral.
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