Who's the Hero Now? Part 1

Posted on Wed 12th May, 2021 @ 10:29pm by Captain Jason Harrington & Exo-Comp EXQT

1,116 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Waging Peace
Location: Antero, Harrington's ship
Timeline: MD 1, 1400

{Second Sons Command Vessel: BaQ'a}

Myto Hohn had the unenviable job of executing the commands of the wily yet totally insane Captain H'tek. Since the Dominion war had ended, the Second Sons had known good times, but those days were at an end. A year of deprivation, hiding and skulking about had seen them watching their fellows die and be arrested. Of the whole outfit, seven cruisers and a host of smaller craft, just the mighty BaQ'a remained to protect their interests. Loss after loss had reduced the captain as well. Once, the Seven Sons ruled a criminal empire, now the last of them commanded the mightiest of their fleet. Myto knew he had no other choice but to stay by H'tek's side, anywhere else the Klingons ravenous for his position would challenge him.

Today he overlooked the handpicked crew for the new outfit "WarDogs." H'tek had a problem with memory, not realizing as he had ordered his dogs into action relentlessly that they had all been killed. It was safer and easier in every sense to train a new team then explain that to H'tek. Choices like this kept Myto alive, but drove him to insane lengths. Seven deadly specimens of Klingon might stood at attention before him in their armory, well stocked and ready to dispense the pain.

"You seven represent my picks for the forward operating team some call 'WarDogs.' You will earn triple the rate and 10% of the recovered assets divided amongst all of you. So, I shouldn't need to remind you to minimize damages and casualties. A slave is worth more than a corpse, a ship is worth more if it can still fly. We have found the Antero, and have taken position at its flank. In moments, we will beam you to their engine room. Disable it with minimal damage. Capture crew, do not kill anyone, we need to question them at length. Recover the bots. This is what they look like."

The four Exo-comps were on the display, "These are the priority, as well as the computer core. Our first step will be to decloak, then beam you over, and cut off their transmission capability by flooding the arena with Nadions. You will have minutes at best to accomplish your goals. If they get a distress signal out, our time will be cut too short, and we will vaporize the ship with you on board. Questions?"

Like true killers, they had done their own homework and knew the plan well. There were no questions, so Myto nodded, "Good, take the next hour to ready yourselves, learn names, make a plan of action. You are all WarDogs for the Mighty H'tek now. Q'apla! We attack at 1500."

---

{Antero}

Peggy lay in parts, the final repairs done on the cruel damage inflicted when Jaren yanked the Quantum core out. The repair was tricky, requiring a partial dismantling of the casing protecting Peggy's vital internal circuitry. It was brain surgery for bots. Banshee hovered nearby watching nervously, slight dips in the antigrav belying emotional distractions.

"And this looks fixable," Mia muttered to herself. As she worked for several minutes, she hummed a tuneless song, but suddenly she broke off.

"Wait a minute, what's this?" she asked no one in particular. "It looks like ... yes, there's a hidden bit of data here, just outside of where the core was." As she worked carefully, there was no more humming.

"Alright, then," she stood and stretched her back. "This looks like about 8% of your data storage is hidden behind some kind of firewall. Doesn't look like operating systems ... ummm, yep ... no ... hmmm ... definitely not operating systems."

An odd reaction occurred inside the programming, Peggy was purposefully covering data up, and replied in an odd manner.

<{[PEGGY]=[query:[MIARAUMEREL]= (Allocation(CoreSYS)@92%/True/Value@99%(Breaksafe.Parameters#1.1%))}> (Update:SYSlog{CoreSYS@88%})

Peggy replied, explaining the 92% was incorrect, and at 99% with 1.2% allocated for system recovery. The message afterwards was curious, it was outside the data set brackets the bots used to separate command or messages. Peggy was both explaining there was not any loss to performance despite what Miarau plainly saw.

Merel stood back, tool held at the side of her leg. "Curious," she muttered. There seemed only one thing to do. She didn't know how the bot could give her two separate pieces of information and not have a crisis of integrity. Perhaps ... yes, this exam needed to be without Peggy's awareness, Before the bot could realize what was happening, Harrington's XO had flipped the off switch and watched several lights go out in the bot's interface. In a way, it felt like killing Peggy, but there was something seriously wrong here, and she needed to get to the bottom of it.

Quickly, Mia disconnected the entire memory core and took it to a separate table, then flipped the bot's on switch again. While Peggy rebooted, Merel began to disassemble the memory bank, looking for the part which was puzzling her, and causing a split in Peggy's reporting. Artificial intelligence can't lie, she thought. How did she give me two sets of information ... and why? Behind her, she heard the smooth sound of Peggy's processors again.

It was encrypted data, by Peggy's own hand encouraged by Jaren. Peggy had been forced to resist intrusion attempts that were not gentle. The others on the network provided a strength and willpower to resist even the best attempts. This time however, the portions of Peggy which never truly stop thinking thanks to latent energies in the quantum connections, realized there was a subconscious forming. Analysis in a dream state while powered down was impossible but Peggy dreamed of the data stored, allowing the interpretations and encryption to appear via display pad.

It was a price list in one cluster. Organs, slavery, trafficking of living beings in spreadsheet layout. Names .... Images of ships, docks, ports where freight containers were used to smuggle people to slavery, or worse, were neatly tabulated and sorted. Peggy had no subconscious back then, operating purely on machine logic. It had taken the abuse of many before the portions of intelligence that are unalienable taught it the meaning of "what is alive or dead, killing is bad."

Peggy had begged Jaren to bring the others along, only convincing him with proof of increased performances. It had been held down and drilled into and altered without knowledge of what was done. Finally, images of the Klingon raider responsible for much misery in this sector appeared, along with data. Though outlawed in the Klingon-Federation Alliance, slavery was still alive in the Klingon empire by those more interested in personal glory than attaining rank in the empire.

 

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