- Location
- Minesota, USA
Is the BattleTech setting limited to one galaxy, or does the lack of advanced life extend indefinitely?
Big and Small (a BattleTech story... with nanites)
- Thread starter PlateGlassArmour
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
- Location
- Ontario, Canada, Earth
Limited to one corner of the Milky Way.
The authors were one of the few sci-fi nerds who realized how damn big a galaxy is.
- Location
- Minesota, USA
I can see two options other than make friends who will keep him hidden:
1. Pretend to be an Alien Von Newman probe like the Goo was in the game Grey Goo (replace human origin with alien)
2. Pull a Necron, find some rock in the middle of nowhere, and set an alarm clock to wake you when the big powers are collapsing.
- Location
- Ontario, Canada, Earth
There's a reason I'm going with the make smart friends option.
The other two, while valid, would not make for an interesting story.
Chapter 6 - Journeys, and Growth
- Location
- Ontario, Canada, Earth
Chapter 6 - Journeys, and Growth
31 March, 3025
The second day of careful exploration of the dropship yielded a profitable find for Rowan, and one that would serve him in good stead moving forward. The maintenance runs and wire conduits under the floor panels that crisscrossed the entire dropship weren't monitored, and were inconvenient for humans to access regularly, but the gap in the hinges for the access panels was just large enough for him to fit his macro-components through. This meant that they were essentially perfect for undetected movement around the dropship.
Rowan suspected that dropships in poor repair could have significant rodent infestations, considering the conduits were large enough for a good sized rat. Fortunately for his own sanity and the health of the crew of the ship he was on, they seemed to run a tight ship and kept anything edible out of the maintenance runs other than the occasional old block of rat poison.
Rowan was slowly building up a detailed map of the dropship's layout as he explored. So far there were lots of crew quarters and vehicle or mech transport bays, but he wasn't in a rush and wished to remain entirely undetected, so he only poked a tendril into rooms that were still to local vibrations and in the dark.
Finally though, he found a storeroom. There were people coming in and out frequently, but he managed to find an access hatch that was behind a massive, well secured stack of armor plates that blocked most of the light coming from the entrance to the storeroom. With a large mass to hide behind, Rowan could more leisurely explore the stacks of industrial shelving and robust tie-down points with various mech parts scattered around the room.
Rowan was glad for his seeming lack of any requirement for sleep as he explored the cavernous room by feel and by extremely primitive sight. It was not a fast process.
Eventually, he found a corner that seemed to be dedicated to a scrapyard of sorts. Broken bits and pieces that could still have replacement parts salvaged from them.
The most interesting find there was the large fusion core with a gaping crack in its outer casing. A crack large enough for Rowan to fit inside to look around.
Several of the superconductors and electromagnets had already been stripped off, so he didn't fear detection if a few more of them went missing, and they had an amazing variety of elements to work with. In fact, the entire control core and plasma containment manifold used nearly the perfect mix of elements for replenishing his feedstock reserves in anticipation of building more of his complex bot templates. With his recyclers happily grinding down a control node in the fusion core, he also made a discovery that would seriously help his future capabilities.
Rowan already knew that he didn't come with a macro-technology database, and he had feared that he would never have the capability to make complex structures at all, but as he broke down the control node, a model was slowly building up in his databanks of that same control node.
It wasn't a perfectly accurate model, since the recyclers were more concerned with elemental composition than metal grain patterns or molecular structure, but it was slowly building in accuracy as he continued to consume.
At a rough guess, consuming a few kilos of a specific material would allow him to very faithfully recreate that material, but the more complex the technology, the more he would need to consume in order to build up an accurate enough picture to reproduce. Electronics were going to be a bastard to get right.
Looking through his catalogs let him find a surface scanner that would help a bit, but it was doing the scanning by touch, as it were. The scanning probe bot was very accurate compared to light microscopy, but also dreadfully slow. Running the numbers, a single scanning bot would take just shy of a decade to scan a single square centimeter. Fortunately, he could use more than one at a time, but even with the maximum useful density of scanning bots, it would take ages to scan anything that had a three dimensional structure since each atom thick layer would need to be peeled back one at a time.
Ultimately, it boiled down to the fact that he would eventually be able to reproduce any technology he had several examples to break down, but it would take exponentially longer the more fiddly the details got.
In the meantime, he focused on breaking down the next control node. With his feedstock levels finally rising, he started up his replicators. The controllers would take a few minutes to finish, since they were so large compared to the replicators themselves, but he would have enough feedstock ready to start a second run by the time the first new controllers finished. He would have to seriously consider setting up a permanent outpost in the scrap-storage area of the dropship's hold. That way he would be able to continue the search for new materials for his feedstock while the blob aboard the mech had a chance to operate outside the dropship on occasion to continue to learn about the circumstances of the outside world.
To that end, he worked a tendril back down into the maintenance runs under the deck plates and started searching out a power conduit. If he was going to have an outpost, he would need a long term source of power available…
—
En Route to the Rockwellawan jump point, 31 March, 3025
When he heard the small beep from his alarm, Ozer Ansimov finished up his set of pushups and started doing his cooldown jumping jacks, glad to be underway at 1g again. While low-G and zero-G were great for sleeping in, they were terrible for keeping fit. Being a MechWarrior was a physically demanding job, and staying fit was an important part of that. With a month of zero-G ahead of them as they jumped from system to system, he was making the best of the few days of full 1g acceleration-gravity until they made it to the jump point.
Overall, he took it as a good sign that the company had managed to find another contract so soon after the last one. Idle time could be a killer in merc companies. Both because it dulled your edge and because your expenses kept piling up despite the lack of income.
That said, he hoped for a bit more combat flavored adrenaline in the next contract. Equipment failures like his previously trusty Orion locking up in hard vacuum were not the kind of excitement that he liked. He may be an adrenaline junkie, but equipment failures had a sense of helplessness about them, since there wasn't anything you could do to mitigate it on your end once they happened. Fortunately, the League of Brass was extremely diligent about maintenance compared to most mercs out there, so such failures were very rare for them. He had heard horror stories from other mercs about companies that tried to grow too fast, and ended up with whole dropships full of mechs that barely functioned, which were liable to fail just when you needed them most.
Ozer had grown up in the League of Brass, and he couldn't see himself living life any other way. When his father had died in the line of combat, Ozer had inherited the old man's mech. Technically adopted father, but they were close as blood to the end, so it hardly mattered. The League of Brass had a lot of stories like that. It was pretty much one giant extended family, since only the crew and their direct family were permanent residents on their old Mule, and they had been handing down and slowly upgrading their mechs over several generations.
With a final beeping from his alarm, Ozer wiped the sweat from his forehead before resolving to take a shower and then head over to the MechBay after lunch. He wanted to check his Orion over with his own eyes, and possibly do some brief 1g drills to make sure everything was working again with the new control board.
—
7 April, 3025
Several times over the past few days, the apparent gravity in the ship had shifted as the dropship underwent maneuvers. That probably meant that the merc company was on its way to another system already, after completing the last contract.
Knowing that he was in BattleTech did at least give Rowan more information to work with. For travel, going from system to system was broken up into zero-G time when charging for the next hyperspace jump, or under acceleration at the final hop to get to the planet itself. Since that last step took at least a week, Rowan gave himself at least a month before he would need to be ready to leave the dropship in a mech again. Once they switched from zero-G to 1g, Rowan would give himself one week to be ready, in order to be conservative.
He was interested to learn that the blob left behind in the mech had some interesting experiences while he had been off replicating. The crew evidently wanted to put the mech through its paces after the unexpected data dump, as they had run the mech just long enough to get the myomer muscle bundles hot. It was a good reminder about his own temperature tolerances, too, since hiding in the foamed metal frame near the core of the limbs still wasn't enough to fully protect from the heat once the myomer had started radiating. He had lost a few of the most sensitive bots in his swarm that way before the crew evidently decided that the mech was fully functional.
Before he arrived, Rowan wanted to have all his nanites and macro-tech in the mech replaced with higher temperature range ones. They would have a wider total operating range, and a substantially higher maximum temperature tolerance than his current "normal" bots, which were better suited to doing the environmentally sealed work on the dropship. The primary downside of the higher tolerance bots was their relative bulk, given the materials differences required. Not only would he have half the useful number of bots in any given volume, they would cost slightly more per unit of volume as well. It would be worth it though, if he could operate during mech combat without risk of constantly losing bots to mere environmental conditions.
With all of that said, Rowan had two other goals before they arrived at their new location. He wanted to have feedstock for replacing at least simple mech components with quick patches, and he wanted to have rough blueprints for the same, so that his patches would be at least combat capable, if not fully up to spec.
To that end, he was seeking out a little bit of everything from the scrapyard. Bits of torn myomer, shards of shattered armor, the wear surfaces of joints themselves, and many more. He had no expectation of being able to replace complex systems in combat any time soon, but he did want the ability to apply basic patches at least.
After all, eventual discovery was going to happen. It might be a matter of years, but he would be found by the nearby humans eventually, and if he still didn't have communications cracked by then, he wanted them to be at least positively inclined towards him, since keeping his presence a secret would significantly increase the odds of his own survival, let alone theirs.
31 March, 3025
The second day of careful exploration of the dropship yielded a profitable find for Rowan, and one that would serve him in good stead moving forward. The maintenance runs and wire conduits under the floor panels that crisscrossed the entire dropship weren't monitored, and were inconvenient for humans to access regularly, but the gap in the hinges for the access panels was just large enough for him to fit his macro-components through. This meant that they were essentially perfect for undetected movement around the dropship.
Rowan suspected that dropships in poor repair could have significant rodent infestations, considering the conduits were large enough for a good sized rat. Fortunately for his own sanity and the health of the crew of the ship he was on, they seemed to run a tight ship and kept anything edible out of the maintenance runs other than the occasional old block of rat poison.
Rowan was slowly building up a detailed map of the dropship's layout as he explored. So far there were lots of crew quarters and vehicle or mech transport bays, but he wasn't in a rush and wished to remain entirely undetected, so he only poked a tendril into rooms that were still to local vibrations and in the dark.
Finally though, he found a storeroom. There were people coming in and out frequently, but he managed to find an access hatch that was behind a massive, well secured stack of armor plates that blocked most of the light coming from the entrance to the storeroom. With a large mass to hide behind, Rowan could more leisurely explore the stacks of industrial shelving and robust tie-down points with various mech parts scattered around the room.
Rowan was glad for his seeming lack of any requirement for sleep as he explored the cavernous room by feel and by extremely primitive sight. It was not a fast process.
Eventually, he found a corner that seemed to be dedicated to a scrapyard of sorts. Broken bits and pieces that could still have replacement parts salvaged from them.
The most interesting find there was the large fusion core with a gaping crack in its outer casing. A crack large enough for Rowan to fit inside to look around.
Several of the superconductors and electromagnets had already been stripped off, so he didn't fear detection if a few more of them went missing, and they had an amazing variety of elements to work with. In fact, the entire control core and plasma containment manifold used nearly the perfect mix of elements for replenishing his feedstock reserves in anticipation of building more of his complex bot templates. With his recyclers happily grinding down a control node in the fusion core, he also made a discovery that would seriously help his future capabilities.
Rowan already knew that he didn't come with a macro-technology database, and he had feared that he would never have the capability to make complex structures at all, but as he broke down the control node, a model was slowly building up in his databanks of that same control node.
It wasn't a perfectly accurate model, since the recyclers were more concerned with elemental composition than metal grain patterns or molecular structure, but it was slowly building in accuracy as he continued to consume.
At a rough guess, consuming a few kilos of a specific material would allow him to very faithfully recreate that material, but the more complex the technology, the more he would need to consume in order to build up an accurate enough picture to reproduce. Electronics were going to be a bastard to get right.
Looking through his catalogs let him find a surface scanner that would help a bit, but it was doing the scanning by touch, as it were. The scanning probe bot was very accurate compared to light microscopy, but also dreadfully slow. Running the numbers, a single scanning bot would take just shy of a decade to scan a single square centimeter. Fortunately, he could use more than one at a time, but even with the maximum useful density of scanning bots, it would take ages to scan anything that had a three dimensional structure since each atom thick layer would need to be peeled back one at a time.
Ultimately, it boiled down to the fact that he would eventually be able to reproduce any technology he had several examples to break down, but it would take exponentially longer the more fiddly the details got.
In the meantime, he focused on breaking down the next control node. With his feedstock levels finally rising, he started up his replicators. The controllers would take a few minutes to finish, since they were so large compared to the replicators themselves, but he would have enough feedstock ready to start a second run by the time the first new controllers finished. He would have to seriously consider setting up a permanent outpost in the scrap-storage area of the dropship's hold. That way he would be able to continue the search for new materials for his feedstock while the blob aboard the mech had a chance to operate outside the dropship on occasion to continue to learn about the circumstances of the outside world.
To that end, he worked a tendril back down into the maintenance runs under the deck plates and started searching out a power conduit. If he was going to have an outpost, he would need a long term source of power available…
—
En Route to the Rockwellawan jump point, 31 March, 3025
When he heard the small beep from his alarm, Ozer Ansimov finished up his set of pushups and started doing his cooldown jumping jacks, glad to be underway at 1g again. While low-G and zero-G were great for sleeping in, they were terrible for keeping fit. Being a MechWarrior was a physically demanding job, and staying fit was an important part of that. With a month of zero-G ahead of them as they jumped from system to system, he was making the best of the few days of full 1g acceleration-gravity until they made it to the jump point.
Overall, he took it as a good sign that the company had managed to find another contract so soon after the last one. Idle time could be a killer in merc companies. Both because it dulled your edge and because your expenses kept piling up despite the lack of income.
That said, he hoped for a bit more combat flavored adrenaline in the next contract. Equipment failures like his previously trusty Orion locking up in hard vacuum were not the kind of excitement that he liked. He may be an adrenaline junkie, but equipment failures had a sense of helplessness about them, since there wasn't anything you could do to mitigate it on your end once they happened. Fortunately, the League of Brass was extremely diligent about maintenance compared to most mercs out there, so such failures were very rare for them. He had heard horror stories from other mercs about companies that tried to grow too fast, and ended up with whole dropships full of mechs that barely functioned, which were liable to fail just when you needed them most.
Ozer had grown up in the League of Brass, and he couldn't see himself living life any other way. When his father had died in the line of combat, Ozer had inherited the old man's mech. Technically adopted father, but they were close as blood to the end, so it hardly mattered. The League of Brass had a lot of stories like that. It was pretty much one giant extended family, since only the crew and their direct family were permanent residents on their old Mule, and they had been handing down and slowly upgrading their mechs over several generations.
With a final beeping from his alarm, Ozer wiped the sweat from his forehead before resolving to take a shower and then head over to the MechBay after lunch. He wanted to check his Orion over with his own eyes, and possibly do some brief 1g drills to make sure everything was working again with the new control board.
—
7 April, 3025
Several times over the past few days, the apparent gravity in the ship had shifted as the dropship underwent maneuvers. That probably meant that the merc company was on its way to another system already, after completing the last contract.
Knowing that he was in BattleTech did at least give Rowan more information to work with. For travel, going from system to system was broken up into zero-G time when charging for the next hyperspace jump, or under acceleration at the final hop to get to the planet itself. Since that last step took at least a week, Rowan gave himself at least a month before he would need to be ready to leave the dropship in a mech again. Once they switched from zero-G to 1g, Rowan would give himself one week to be ready, in order to be conservative.
He was interested to learn that the blob left behind in the mech had some interesting experiences while he had been off replicating. The crew evidently wanted to put the mech through its paces after the unexpected data dump, as they had run the mech just long enough to get the myomer muscle bundles hot. It was a good reminder about his own temperature tolerances, too, since hiding in the foamed metal frame near the core of the limbs still wasn't enough to fully protect from the heat once the myomer had started radiating. He had lost a few of the most sensitive bots in his swarm that way before the crew evidently decided that the mech was fully functional.
Before he arrived, Rowan wanted to have all his nanites and macro-tech in the mech replaced with higher temperature range ones. They would have a wider total operating range, and a substantially higher maximum temperature tolerance than his current "normal" bots, which were better suited to doing the environmentally sealed work on the dropship. The primary downside of the higher tolerance bots was their relative bulk, given the materials differences required. Not only would he have half the useful number of bots in any given volume, they would cost slightly more per unit of volume as well. It would be worth it though, if he could operate during mech combat without risk of constantly losing bots to mere environmental conditions.
With all of that said, Rowan had two other goals before they arrived at their new location. He wanted to have feedstock for replacing at least simple mech components with quick patches, and he wanted to have rough blueprints for the same, so that his patches would be at least combat capable, if not fully up to spec.
To that end, he was seeking out a little bit of everything from the scrapyard. Bits of torn myomer, shards of shattered armor, the wear surfaces of joints themselves, and many more. He had no expectation of being able to replace complex systems in combat any time soon, but he did want the ability to apply basic patches at least.
After all, eventual discovery was going to happen. It might be a matter of years, but he would be found by the nearby humans eventually, and if he still didn't have communications cracked by then, he wanted them to be at least positively inclined towards him, since keeping his presence a secret would significantly increase the odds of his own survival, let alone theirs.
Kellcat
Occasional Ex-Lurker
- Location
- Texas
Huh. Interesting. Can't communicate (yet if ever), knows about Battletech, but not about BATTLETECH, and is about to get stuck in. It'll be a long time before he's particularly capable of any sort of large scale short term workings, sounds like, so I'm guessing for a while he'll be pulling something of a reverse Solid Snake. Nice.
Ehhhh kinda sorta not really, but as far as anyone knows yes. That is, there's this one story where a misjumped JumpShip ends up finding sapient alien life, but since they misjumped and their jumper is toast, they're not going anywhere. They're also implied to be really far away (which may or may not be the same galaxy). So there are aliens out there, but Humanity has no actual evidence of aliens and has never met them, and never will meet them, and the only reason we know that aliens exist is they never de-canon-ized that one story. (Far Country is stated to be canon only because there will explicitly never be aliens again.) Yeah, just a pointless Battletech trivia tidbit, this.
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- Pronouns
- God
Thanks for sharing your BT FIC with a twist.
Happy Hampster
This is a Multipost
- Location
- Perth, Western Australia
I can't help but think that he could speed up the analysis using the tactile scanners by setting up a snail tongue where alternating rows of Disassemblers and tactile scanners could be made so that each row of disassemblers takes off the atomic layer that was just scanned then moves forwards while behind it the next row of tactile scanners scans the exposed strata repeat ad nauseam, that way instead of having pads of scanners that have to move out of the way for the disassemblers the scanner moves ahead and behind of the disassembling zone allowing maximum efficiency and each scanner disasembler pair can scan 19.0234622701 micrometer square per minute (yes i'm a nerdy nerd that did the math)and then you are just limited by how long you are willing to make the tongue.
- Location
- Ontario, Canada, Earth
Well, you're in good company.
I couldn't find any actual numbers on how fast Scanning Probe Microscopes actually scanned, so I calculated it manually.
I watched this video of someone scanning a surface of a known size (they mention it in the video) in a known time (they do it live at 1x speed), and calculated the rate of scanning in square microns per minute.
Turns out you can scan about 400 square microns per minute with a single modern scanner head, although the scan resolution is worse than the scanner bots in my story, since technology marches on.
Happy Hampster
This is a Multipost
- Location
- Perth, Western Australia
I wonder what his O2 usage is and if he is making a noticeable impact on the carbon reclamation systems. also we have a terrible lack of scale I get the controllers are dry rice sized but how big are the components he's taking apart to make them?
- Pronouns
- God
My head cannon has a few micron thick C3, grey goo lines running through every part of the Dropship, along the edge of welds on every joint in the crawl spaces. With data storage and sensors and detectors watching the crew.
- Location
- United States
No John, you are the Nanomachines.
Chapter 7 - Leaps
- Location
- Ontario, Canada, Earth
Chapter 7 - Leaps
12 April, 3025
Rowan was pleased with his progress. Not only had he entirely swapped over the nanites in the mech for higher temperature range ones, he had broken down enough miscellaneous scrap that he could now produce standard battlemech armor or structure on demand. Which sounded simpler than it actually was.
Standard battlemech armor was really an advanced composite. The outermost layer was a finely crystalized titanium alloyed steel. While he could produce the correct crystalline structure when required, it was rather time consuming. If he was in a hurry, he could just assemble a homogenous block of the alloy itself. Without the advanced crystallization, the armor lost at least twenty percent of its strength, but he could produce the stuff in half the time.
The middle layer was a homogenous allotrope of a boron nitride ceramic. This was actually the easiest component for Rowan to produce quickly, since despite its impressive material properties, there was nothing structurally complex about it. The only issue with in-field repairs would be the lack of materials once he used up his boron, since the armor was the only thing that used substantial amounts of it.
The inner layer was by far the most fiddly. It was a diamond fiber web embedded in a high temperature resin on a titanium alloy honeycomb support. It seemed as though it was primarily there to act as a semi-flexible support for the harder outer layers when they cracked and a shrapnel backstop for when anything punched through them. Due to its honestly ridiculous material complexity, producing a faithful replication of the inner layer took ten times as long as the crystalized outer layer. Fortunately, or perhaps in a stroke of good design sense, it was the layer least likely to get damaged by anything short of sustained fire or extremely large weaponry.
Also interesting to note was the sealant layer just inside the inner layer of armor. It was only half a centimeter thick, but it was made of a simple polymer that stayed slightly tacky even when cured, which seemed to slowly flow around minor cracks or gashes, ensuring airtightness.
The mech's skeleton was equally complex, although very different from the armor. There was a thin skin of the same crystalized titanium alloyed steel, followed by an insulating mesh of silicon-carbide fiber, and then the bulk was the most complex alloy Rowan had run across yet. It was beams of a load-bearing foamed composite aluminum alloy.
That foamed alloy is where Rowan decided to hide the bulk of his nanobots and feedstock, since there was space in the bubbles themselves. It took a tiny bit of modification to make a microscopically small network of holes between the bubbles without compromising them structurally, but it meant that he was capable of flowing up and down the skeleton without impediment, and without much danger of detection, since the inner core didn't seem to be serviceable. Any time the very core was damaged, the entire beam had to get replaced, or at least that is what Rowan had deduced from the junkyard of beams that had small fractures in an otherwise good beam.
He still hadn't entirely decided what to do about battle-damage to the mech he was riding around in, but Rowan was currently leaning towards "mysteriously patching damage". Not fixing damage, since the techs would want to do a full repair anyway, but providing a battle-ready patch that plugged the hole and helped survivability.
It would mean that he was almost guaranteed to be discovered in the next few months, but that the discovery would be both on his terms and in the least impactful way he could foresee happening. After all, a grey-goo infestation of your home was alarming, but a mech that was suspiciously good at surviving? That was something you kept quiet about in the BattleTech universe. There were loads of stories out there of phantom mechs and mysterious tech; they made for good campfire tales. But as soon as "campfire tale" turned into "credible rumor with concrete details", the unit in question tended to vanish. There was no shortage on the list of suspects, either, so it wasn't like you could simply stay away from a particular part of space.
Rowan charted out a few more hypothetical contact scenarios as he recycled some more myomer. The stuff wasn't that complex from an elemental composition perspective, but it was devilishly hard to get it right. He would estimate he was only ten percent of the way towards being able to reliably reproduce it on demand, and he had a feeling that the last ten percent was going to take a lot longer.
—
Itrom jump point, 25 April, 3025
Alona Carroll was floating in the air in front of one of the view-portals on the exterior of their dropship, eyes intent on the other dropships that were docked to the same jumpship that they were. Eventually, she turned and looked around, spotting Ozer drifting down the corridor in her direction. "Hey Ozer! Come take a look at this."
Ozer sped up a bit, grabbing the handholds on the walls more securely and launching himself in the lazy looking but deceptively fast glide that experienced spacers all learned.
"What's up?" he asked, even as she helped brace on the far wall to catch him.
She pointed vaguely out the small port. "Look at the other dropships. Notice anything?"
He looked for a brief moment, before shrugging "They're Unions? Look pretty bog standard to me."
Alona sighed. "No, their colors. Isn't that the house Espinosa heraldry? I think they're headed the same way we are."
Ozer took another, closer, look. "Hmm. You're right. Where were they picked up?"
"Corromodir, I think, which would make sense. Something's got them riled if they're all going this way though."
They shared a look, before Ozer spoke. "You want to tell the Captain or should I? Might mean nothing, but it'd be good to keep an eye on."
Alona nodded. "I will. Like you said, could be coincidence, but good to know about the potential opposition forces."
—
27 April, 3025
Rowan finally felt the energies dissipate, and he slowed his perception of time back down to normal.
Hyperspace was odd.
That was one of the only actual conclusions that he had formed so far, once he decided to pay more attention to their travel from system to system. The first jump had passed him by entirely without notice, only being marked in his memories with some notation that he didn't recognize when he tried to recall the right time period.
The second jump was what had grabbed his attention. In the BattleTech lore that he knew, which was admittedly a little spotty, the jumps themselves were rarely talked about. Great detail was used to describe the charging, and the limitations, and the edge cases like the difficulties in trying to transport an inactive drive, but the jump itself was just described as "brief".
Now he knew why. So far as humans could tell, the process happened in an instant. With his perception of time ramped all the way up, he noticed that the odd annotations on his memories were actually overlapping timestamps denoting the passing of several seconds. The odd bit was that it was only in his memories. Those missing few seconds were slippery to perception in a strange manner. When he went digging for how he could record something that he couldn't perceive in the first place, he found the explanation for why he had a few isolated atoms of germanium inside his controllers, hooked up to sensors to detect relative motion and energy flow. It seemed as though the germanium that was used to make jump-drive cores also resonated with even individual germanium atoms along for the ride. By measuring their movements, it was possible to derive how long the jump had taken, from the perspective of the drive itself, which did not line up with passage of time for any other atoms.
Very odd. Not all that useful though, other than the ability to tell exactly how many lightyears had been traversed. The fact that none of his processors could perceive it meant that he couldn't actually take advantage of the lost time somehow.
Still, something to keep an eye on in the future.
In more practical news, Rowan's continued attempts at figuring out human communications… had progressed? Okay, not really. But at least he had more data to analyze.
There was definitely something fucky going on with his ability to understand things though, because while he was making functionally zero progress on human language despite hundreds of hours of recorded interactions through the comms of the ship, he had actually discovered more about the comms themselves and their handshake protocols than the language he was trying to study.
It wasn't actually a problem yet; or at least not a life-or-death critical one, but it was another thing on the list of topics to keep an eye on as he continued to record more and more sources of human speech.
12 April, 3025
Rowan was pleased with his progress. Not only had he entirely swapped over the nanites in the mech for higher temperature range ones, he had broken down enough miscellaneous scrap that he could now produce standard battlemech armor or structure on demand. Which sounded simpler than it actually was.
Standard battlemech armor was really an advanced composite. The outermost layer was a finely crystalized titanium alloyed steel. While he could produce the correct crystalline structure when required, it was rather time consuming. If he was in a hurry, he could just assemble a homogenous block of the alloy itself. Without the advanced crystallization, the armor lost at least twenty percent of its strength, but he could produce the stuff in half the time.
The middle layer was a homogenous allotrope of a boron nitride ceramic. This was actually the easiest component for Rowan to produce quickly, since despite its impressive material properties, there was nothing structurally complex about it. The only issue with in-field repairs would be the lack of materials once he used up his boron, since the armor was the only thing that used substantial amounts of it.
The inner layer was by far the most fiddly. It was a diamond fiber web embedded in a high temperature resin on a titanium alloy honeycomb support. It seemed as though it was primarily there to act as a semi-flexible support for the harder outer layers when they cracked and a shrapnel backstop for when anything punched through them. Due to its honestly ridiculous material complexity, producing a faithful replication of the inner layer took ten times as long as the crystalized outer layer. Fortunately, or perhaps in a stroke of good design sense, it was the layer least likely to get damaged by anything short of sustained fire or extremely large weaponry.
Also interesting to note was the sealant layer just inside the inner layer of armor. It was only half a centimeter thick, but it was made of a simple polymer that stayed slightly tacky even when cured, which seemed to slowly flow around minor cracks or gashes, ensuring airtightness.
The mech's skeleton was equally complex, although very different from the armor. There was a thin skin of the same crystalized titanium alloyed steel, followed by an insulating mesh of silicon-carbide fiber, and then the bulk was the most complex alloy Rowan had run across yet. It was beams of a load-bearing foamed composite aluminum alloy.
That foamed alloy is where Rowan decided to hide the bulk of his nanobots and feedstock, since there was space in the bubbles themselves. It took a tiny bit of modification to make a microscopically small network of holes between the bubbles without compromising them structurally, but it meant that he was capable of flowing up and down the skeleton without impediment, and without much danger of detection, since the inner core didn't seem to be serviceable. Any time the very core was damaged, the entire beam had to get replaced, or at least that is what Rowan had deduced from the junkyard of beams that had small fractures in an otherwise good beam.
He still hadn't entirely decided what to do about battle-damage to the mech he was riding around in, but Rowan was currently leaning towards "mysteriously patching damage". Not fixing damage, since the techs would want to do a full repair anyway, but providing a battle-ready patch that plugged the hole and helped survivability.
It would mean that he was almost guaranteed to be discovered in the next few months, but that the discovery would be both on his terms and in the least impactful way he could foresee happening. After all, a grey-goo infestation of your home was alarming, but a mech that was suspiciously good at surviving? That was something you kept quiet about in the BattleTech universe. There were loads of stories out there of phantom mechs and mysterious tech; they made for good campfire tales. But as soon as "campfire tale" turned into "credible rumor with concrete details", the unit in question tended to vanish. There was no shortage on the list of suspects, either, so it wasn't like you could simply stay away from a particular part of space.
Rowan charted out a few more hypothetical contact scenarios as he recycled some more myomer. The stuff wasn't that complex from an elemental composition perspective, but it was devilishly hard to get it right. He would estimate he was only ten percent of the way towards being able to reliably reproduce it on demand, and he had a feeling that the last ten percent was going to take a lot longer.
—
Itrom jump point, 25 April, 3025
Alona Carroll was floating in the air in front of one of the view-portals on the exterior of their dropship, eyes intent on the other dropships that were docked to the same jumpship that they were. Eventually, she turned and looked around, spotting Ozer drifting down the corridor in her direction. "Hey Ozer! Come take a look at this."
Ozer sped up a bit, grabbing the handholds on the walls more securely and launching himself in the lazy looking but deceptively fast glide that experienced spacers all learned.
"What's up?" he asked, even as she helped brace on the far wall to catch him.
She pointed vaguely out the small port. "Look at the other dropships. Notice anything?"
He looked for a brief moment, before shrugging "They're Unions? Look pretty bog standard to me."
Alona sighed. "No, their colors. Isn't that the house Espinosa heraldry? I think they're headed the same way we are."
Ozer took another, closer, look. "Hmm. You're right. Where were they picked up?"
"Corromodir, I think, which would make sense. Something's got them riled if they're all going this way though."
They shared a look, before Ozer spoke. "You want to tell the Captain or should I? Might mean nothing, but it'd be good to keep an eye on."
Alona nodded. "I will. Like you said, could be coincidence, but good to know about the potential opposition forces."
—
27 April, 3025
Rowan finally felt the energies dissipate, and he slowed his perception of time back down to normal.
Hyperspace was odd.
That was one of the only actual conclusions that he had formed so far, once he decided to pay more attention to their travel from system to system. The first jump had passed him by entirely without notice, only being marked in his memories with some notation that he didn't recognize when he tried to recall the right time period.
The second jump was what had grabbed his attention. In the BattleTech lore that he knew, which was admittedly a little spotty, the jumps themselves were rarely talked about. Great detail was used to describe the charging, and the limitations, and the edge cases like the difficulties in trying to transport an inactive drive, but the jump itself was just described as "brief".
Now he knew why. So far as humans could tell, the process happened in an instant. With his perception of time ramped all the way up, he noticed that the odd annotations on his memories were actually overlapping timestamps denoting the passing of several seconds. The odd bit was that it was only in his memories. Those missing few seconds were slippery to perception in a strange manner. When he went digging for how he could record something that he couldn't perceive in the first place, he found the explanation for why he had a few isolated atoms of germanium inside his controllers, hooked up to sensors to detect relative motion and energy flow. It seemed as though the germanium that was used to make jump-drive cores also resonated with even individual germanium atoms along for the ride. By measuring their movements, it was possible to derive how long the jump had taken, from the perspective of the drive itself, which did not line up with passage of time for any other atoms.
Very odd. Not all that useful though, other than the ability to tell exactly how many lightyears had been traversed. The fact that none of his processors could perceive it meant that he couldn't actually take advantage of the lost time somehow.
Still, something to keep an eye on in the future.
In more practical news, Rowan's continued attempts at figuring out human communications… had progressed? Okay, not really. But at least he had more data to analyze.
There was definitely something fucky going on with his ability to understand things though, because while he was making functionally zero progress on human language despite hundreds of hours of recorded interactions through the comms of the ship, he had actually discovered more about the comms themselves and their handshake protocols than the language he was trying to study.
It wasn't actually a problem yet; or at least not a life-or-death critical one, but it was another thing on the list of topics to keep an eye on as he continued to record more and more sources of human speech.
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Lincolnator
canon and cannons both sink ships
That is a question of mine. Not recognizing sound the same way humans do, leading to a lack of understanding of spoken language is one thing, but having his ability to read writing removed is not just a 'translation error.' He can see shapes, or at least feel them. Does this mean ROB just screwed him out of spite?interesting that he can pick up some mineral from traveling in hyperspace
wonder if the rob did something to make communication more difficult since simple text msg on there screens should be easy to do ?
YuffieK
(Verified Ninja Princess)
ROB: "I like to think of it as giving Rowan an interesting challenge to overcome. Can't have things being BORING after all."
Happy Hampster
This is a Multipost
- Location
- Perth, Western Australia
No the germanium is in a sensor to detect time passage in hyperspace he didn't gain it it was already there.interesting that he can pick up some mineral from traveling in hyperspace
Chapter 8 - Landings and Connections
- Location
- Ontario, Canada, Earth
Chapter 8 - Landings and Connections
19 May, 3025
Rowan paused his work with some scrap myomer as he felt the sub-bass howl of atmosphere on the skin of the dropship. Evidently they had arrived at their destination. He had known that they were at the final system once they had started accelerating away from the jumpship, but they were finally getting to the planet itself, it seemed.
Rowan decided to do his final checks to ensure that everything was ready in the mech for an excursion. He was quite happy with how well integrated into the mech he was, and his feedstock reserves had slowly been growing over the past few days as he put the finishing touches on his network of tunnels through the structure of the mech.
Between the two of them, he would be ready for some combat damage, and because he was in the very core of the mech, losing those nanites was relatively unlikely. Plus the fact that they were on a planet with an atmosphere meant he would be able to pull material out of thin air, so long as said atmosphere had CO2 in it.
After several treks across the floor panels of the mechbay in the past few weeks, Rowan had finally decided to just burrow a hole directly into the stall with his preferred mech in it. Half of his work had already been done by some of the access bays that ran beneath the mech, so it was mostly just a matter of boring through the last few centimeters and making a cap that wouldn't be visibly obvious when the mech wasn't standing on top of it.
Deciding to make one last delivery of some rare earth metal feedstock, Rowan pushed a tendril up through the hole and connected to a similar hole he had burrowed through the bottom of the mech's foot. His "main" body in the dropship was now several hundred meters of grey goo that stretched to all the locations he frequented. Currently that was limited to one stall in the mechbay and several access hatches in the massive storage room, but he had vague plans for burrowing underneath each stall in the mechbay.
Plus, at some point he wanted to check out the vehicles on board as well, since those used a compatible but divergent tech base to the mechs themselves.
The tendril in the mechbay spent a few seconds forming Rowan's new favorite macro-tech, a pinhole camera. It was a tiny thing, and it had rather crap resolution, but a lucky find in the scrapyard yesterday had let him finally understand basic image sensors. Any time he wanted to form a camera, it took about twenty seconds of work, provided he had the feedstock handy, but it was a huge boon to his capabilities. Just the ability to check if there were people in the immediate area was worth it on it's own.
It also meant that he would certainly stay busy in the dropship in the next few weeks, since he was slowly building up a good map of the entire dropship from the maintenance runs that crisscrossed every wall, floor, and ceiling.
—
El Colegio Spaceport, Weldry, 19 May, 3025
Ozer tested his weight as he found his way to the mess hall. Felt like… three quarter G? Not bad. He joined others in the halls on the way to the middle of the ship. Everyone aboard knew the drill by now. New planet, new contract, first full briefing happened just after touchdown.
Captain Taylor waved a hand in the air from the stage once everyone was gathered, silencing the crowd. "Alright everyone. New contract time. Welcome to Weldry. The current plan is to be here for fourteen months. First few days are the most dangerous, since this planet just changed hands, so all non-combat personnel are to stay on the ship until at least next week."
There was some very mild grumbling at this pronouncement, but not enough to stop the Captain's speech. "Planetary conditions are zero-point-seven-four gravity with a thin but breathable atmosphere and an average temperature of about five degrees this time of year. Remember your enviro-suits, people. It's cold out there."
After a brief pause to let that information settle, she continued. "The contract itself is garrison and support duty. Like I said, this planet just changed hands, from the Espinosa directorate to the Arano loyalists, and we're here to help the transition period happen smoothly. Our primary job is to act as support for the local mech and vehicle lances as they cycle in off the front until they can get more permanent support facilities online again. Our secondary duty is to act as a hardened line of defense protecting the capital city of El Colegio in general and the primary spaceport here in specific. I'll now hand the floor to Sergent Ayala."
Zahra Ayala stepped to the front. Ozer had a bit of a crush on the coffee-skinned mechanic, but he hadn't done anything about it yet, still working up his courage. Once she had the room's attention, Zahra spoke up. "Since our primary job is acting as support staff, we'll be opening mechbay door two to the Arano loyalists, as well as the light vehicle door. Two things: we'll want to consolidate our off-duty mechs to mechbay one for the duration of the contract, and I want all squad leaders to keep an eye on our guests. We'll be helping with maintenance when we're not working on our own vehicles and mechs, but there will be outside techs in our space, so I want eyes peeled. While sabotage is unlikely, I don't want parts or tools to go wandering due to inattention. To that end, we'll have checkpoints at the exterior bay doors and the interior doors as well. Delta squad? That will be your primary job during this contract. Boring but necessary. I'll let individual squad leaders fill you in more. With that, you're up Erika!"
Erika Herold made her way through the crowd and hopped up onto the stage. "Alright. Now for the combat talk. We're expected to keep the peace in El Colegio and help things smoothly transition. We're required to act as a final hardened defensive line for the spaceport, since that has been deemed a mission critical asset. Alpha and Bravo lances will be on roaming patrols and occasional troubleshooting duty. Stick together. I want to outweigh any enemy lance that decides to stick their nose in. Charlie lance? We're playing guard duty. We'll be protecting the dropship and the spaceport, with particular focus on the fuel depot. I don't like how close it is to the tree line. Echo and Foxtrot squads will be tasked with doing regular supply runs into the city. Non-combatants? If you want to go into the city to socialize or stock up, you must go with one of our infantry squads; no stragglers. This planet is not currently under hostile control, but it was as of last week, so expect lots of flare-ups as Espinosa squads realize they're stranded here. That goes for everyone; expect trouble. Espinosa wasn't all that dug in here, but they did have quite a few mobile assets, and it's always possible that they land more. We'll keep you apprised of the situation as things progress."
With a nod, Erika stepped off the stage to allow the Captain to wrap up. "Alright folks. Let's get settled in. I'll be in contact with the Arano representative tonight, so our contract officially starts tomorrow. Any last minute inspections will have to happen before then. To anyone who's going to be piloting or driving anything, remember the low-G. While it lets you move faster, that does not prevent fuck-ups from wrecking your vehicle if you roll it. Any last questions for the group? Otherwise I'll let you get to your dinner."
She was just about to step off the stage when she stopped to say one last thing. "Oh yeah, and the day-length is only sixteen hours here, so we'll be on rotating spacer time, since there's no point in trying to adapt all our schedules that far."
There was groaning from the crowd at that. Day lengths shorter than twenty hours sucked.
—
21 May, 3025
It was good to be on the move again, thought Rowan. With the higher temperature nanites, it was quite comfortable to be nestled throughout the structure of the mech as it patrolled for the first time on an alien world. He was still slowly integrating with more and more mech systems over time. The most recent one was the control signals coming from the cockpit. He had stored a few of his dedicated macro-components in the mech's cockpit and by now he had a network of controllers dotted throughout the mech acting as a nervous system so that he could sense every part of the mech as it was put through its paces.
The fine control that mechs could express was truly impressive. To Rowan's understanding, it was a combination of three primary factors. The first was that computers of BattleTech were massive and unwieldy, but surprisingly adept at specific circumstances that could be predefined. The second was the massive gyroscope in the center torso that helped even out the stride and help keep the mech stable as it performed actions that would otherwise put it off balance. The third was the neurohelmet, which allowed for a much closer pairing of pilot and machine than possible with mere joystick controls. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was an amazingly non-invasive way of pairing the human brain to computers seamlessly.
That thought gave Rowan pause. Neurohelmets allowed for machines to interface with the human brain, despite the vast gulf between them. It wasn't a solution by itself, and it would take quite a while to safely integrate, but Rowan had a feeling that the neurohelmets worn by the mechwarriors were one of the most promising leads he had for communicating with humans so far.
It likely wouldn't use language, but perhaps that was actually for the best, considering his ongoing difficulties with making direct human language work.
With some trepidation, Rowan started creating a few new signal processing macro-structures from his available feedstock, even as he started capturing atmospheric CO2 to make up for some of the lost materials. Slowly, he made some extra contacts with the control board of the mech. No sense in rushing this. If he was right, it would probably take weeks to get anything comprehensible anyway, but that was all the more reason to start now.
19 May, 3025
Rowan paused his work with some scrap myomer as he felt the sub-bass howl of atmosphere on the skin of the dropship. Evidently they had arrived at their destination. He had known that they were at the final system once they had started accelerating away from the jumpship, but they were finally getting to the planet itself, it seemed.
Rowan decided to do his final checks to ensure that everything was ready in the mech for an excursion. He was quite happy with how well integrated into the mech he was, and his feedstock reserves had slowly been growing over the past few days as he put the finishing touches on his network of tunnels through the structure of the mech.
Between the two of them, he would be ready for some combat damage, and because he was in the very core of the mech, losing those nanites was relatively unlikely. Plus the fact that they were on a planet with an atmosphere meant he would be able to pull material out of thin air, so long as said atmosphere had CO2 in it.
After several treks across the floor panels of the mechbay in the past few weeks, Rowan had finally decided to just burrow a hole directly into the stall with his preferred mech in it. Half of his work had already been done by some of the access bays that ran beneath the mech, so it was mostly just a matter of boring through the last few centimeters and making a cap that wouldn't be visibly obvious when the mech wasn't standing on top of it.
Deciding to make one last delivery of some rare earth metal feedstock, Rowan pushed a tendril up through the hole and connected to a similar hole he had burrowed through the bottom of the mech's foot. His "main" body in the dropship was now several hundred meters of grey goo that stretched to all the locations he frequented. Currently that was limited to one stall in the mechbay and several access hatches in the massive storage room, but he had vague plans for burrowing underneath each stall in the mechbay.
Plus, at some point he wanted to check out the vehicles on board as well, since those used a compatible but divergent tech base to the mechs themselves.
The tendril in the mechbay spent a few seconds forming Rowan's new favorite macro-tech, a pinhole camera. It was a tiny thing, and it had rather crap resolution, but a lucky find in the scrapyard yesterday had let him finally understand basic image sensors. Any time he wanted to form a camera, it took about twenty seconds of work, provided he had the feedstock handy, but it was a huge boon to his capabilities. Just the ability to check if there were people in the immediate area was worth it on it's own.
It also meant that he would certainly stay busy in the dropship in the next few weeks, since he was slowly building up a good map of the entire dropship from the maintenance runs that crisscrossed every wall, floor, and ceiling.
—
El Colegio Spaceport, Weldry, 19 May, 3025
Ozer tested his weight as he found his way to the mess hall. Felt like… three quarter G? Not bad. He joined others in the halls on the way to the middle of the ship. Everyone aboard knew the drill by now. New planet, new contract, first full briefing happened just after touchdown.
Captain Taylor waved a hand in the air from the stage once everyone was gathered, silencing the crowd. "Alright everyone. New contract time. Welcome to Weldry. The current plan is to be here for fourteen months. First few days are the most dangerous, since this planet just changed hands, so all non-combat personnel are to stay on the ship until at least next week."
There was some very mild grumbling at this pronouncement, but not enough to stop the Captain's speech. "Planetary conditions are zero-point-seven-four gravity with a thin but breathable atmosphere and an average temperature of about five degrees this time of year. Remember your enviro-suits, people. It's cold out there."
After a brief pause to let that information settle, she continued. "The contract itself is garrison and support duty. Like I said, this planet just changed hands, from the Espinosa directorate to the Arano loyalists, and we're here to help the transition period happen smoothly. Our primary job is to act as support for the local mech and vehicle lances as they cycle in off the front until they can get more permanent support facilities online again. Our secondary duty is to act as a hardened line of defense protecting the capital city of El Colegio in general and the primary spaceport here in specific. I'll now hand the floor to Sergent Ayala."
Zahra Ayala stepped to the front. Ozer had a bit of a crush on the coffee-skinned mechanic, but he hadn't done anything about it yet, still working up his courage. Once she had the room's attention, Zahra spoke up. "Since our primary job is acting as support staff, we'll be opening mechbay door two to the Arano loyalists, as well as the light vehicle door. Two things: we'll want to consolidate our off-duty mechs to mechbay one for the duration of the contract, and I want all squad leaders to keep an eye on our guests. We'll be helping with maintenance when we're not working on our own vehicles and mechs, but there will be outside techs in our space, so I want eyes peeled. While sabotage is unlikely, I don't want parts or tools to go wandering due to inattention. To that end, we'll have checkpoints at the exterior bay doors and the interior doors as well. Delta squad? That will be your primary job during this contract. Boring but necessary. I'll let individual squad leaders fill you in more. With that, you're up Erika!"
Erika Herold made her way through the crowd and hopped up onto the stage. "Alright. Now for the combat talk. We're expected to keep the peace in El Colegio and help things smoothly transition. We're required to act as a final hardened defensive line for the spaceport, since that has been deemed a mission critical asset. Alpha and Bravo lances will be on roaming patrols and occasional troubleshooting duty. Stick together. I want to outweigh any enemy lance that decides to stick their nose in. Charlie lance? We're playing guard duty. We'll be protecting the dropship and the spaceport, with particular focus on the fuel depot. I don't like how close it is to the tree line. Echo and Foxtrot squads will be tasked with doing regular supply runs into the city. Non-combatants? If you want to go into the city to socialize or stock up, you must go with one of our infantry squads; no stragglers. This planet is not currently under hostile control, but it was as of last week, so expect lots of flare-ups as Espinosa squads realize they're stranded here. That goes for everyone; expect trouble. Espinosa wasn't all that dug in here, but they did have quite a few mobile assets, and it's always possible that they land more. We'll keep you apprised of the situation as things progress."
With a nod, Erika stepped off the stage to allow the Captain to wrap up. "Alright folks. Let's get settled in. I'll be in contact with the Arano representative tonight, so our contract officially starts tomorrow. Any last minute inspections will have to happen before then. To anyone who's going to be piloting or driving anything, remember the low-G. While it lets you move faster, that does not prevent fuck-ups from wrecking your vehicle if you roll it. Any last questions for the group? Otherwise I'll let you get to your dinner."
She was just about to step off the stage when she stopped to say one last thing. "Oh yeah, and the day-length is only sixteen hours here, so we'll be on rotating spacer time, since there's no point in trying to adapt all our schedules that far."
There was groaning from the crowd at that. Day lengths shorter than twenty hours sucked.
—
21 May, 3025
It was good to be on the move again, thought Rowan. With the higher temperature nanites, it was quite comfortable to be nestled throughout the structure of the mech as it patrolled for the first time on an alien world. He was still slowly integrating with more and more mech systems over time. The most recent one was the control signals coming from the cockpit. He had stored a few of his dedicated macro-components in the mech's cockpit and by now he had a network of controllers dotted throughout the mech acting as a nervous system so that he could sense every part of the mech as it was put through its paces.
The fine control that mechs could express was truly impressive. To Rowan's understanding, it was a combination of three primary factors. The first was that computers of BattleTech were massive and unwieldy, but surprisingly adept at specific circumstances that could be predefined. The second was the massive gyroscope in the center torso that helped even out the stride and help keep the mech stable as it performed actions that would otherwise put it off balance. The third was the neurohelmet, which allowed for a much closer pairing of pilot and machine than possible with mere joystick controls. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was an amazingly non-invasive way of pairing the human brain to computers seamlessly.
That thought gave Rowan pause. Neurohelmets allowed for machines to interface with the human brain, despite the vast gulf between them. It wasn't a solution by itself, and it would take quite a while to safely integrate, but Rowan had a feeling that the neurohelmets worn by the mechwarriors were one of the most promising leads he had for communicating with humans so far.
It likely wouldn't use language, but perhaps that was actually for the best, considering his ongoing difficulties with making direct human language work.
With some trepidation, Rowan started creating a few new signal processing macro-structures from his available feedstock, even as he started capturing atmospheric CO2 to make up for some of the lost materials. Slowly, he made some extra contacts with the control board of the mech. No sense in rushing this. If he was right, it would probably take weeks to get anything comprehensible anyway, but that was all the more reason to start now.
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Chapter 9 - Contact
- Location
- Ontario, Canada, Earth
Chapter 9 - Contact
25 May, 3025
Rowan was experimenting with radio-frequencies aboard the dropship. Both in the sense that he was aboard the dropship and testing out various frequencies for their potential use in connecting parts of his swarm together, and in the sense that he was experimenting with the specific transmission bands that were in use aboard the ship itself.
The former was going… adequately. He could carry a signal complex enough to let his mind bridge the gap between two unconnected bits of himself, but it currently required more hardware than he was happy with. It was actually what gave him the idea in the first place. An old radio-board from one of the company's vehicles had taken a piece of shrapnel at some point in the past, so Rowan had simply consumed the whole thing to try to get an understanding of it. The protocols themselves were dead simple. To the point that he was pretty sure he could crack secured comms now that he knew how the hardware encoding worked. The fiddly bit was making a signal that could carry enough information without making his broadcast obvious.
With direct line of sight, Rowan could just use tight-beam broadcast and interception would be practically impossible unless someone physically stuck a receiver in-between the two nodes. The problem was that he rarely had two blobs that were separate but still had line of sight.
With a generalized broadcast he ran into two issues. If he wanted to be able to detect the broadcast himself, it would be loud enough to stand out to the signal-techs aboard the dropship as well. Additionally, if he wanted to receive the broadcast, he needed to either use large radio-reception grids of nanites or piggyback off of the antenna of the mech/ship/vehicle he was aboard, which brought him back to the first issue of being detected.
It was going to require some thought. Perhaps if he could work out a burst transmission protocol, and simply deal with intermittent updates? It would be worth checking if that was even possible either way.
—
El Colegio, Weldry, 27 May, 3025
Ozer was wishing something would happen. They had already been on the ground for nearly a week and nothing had happened yet.
As if to answer his prayers, his radio squawked to life. "Homebase to Alpha/Bravo Lances, our Arano rep just informed me that we've got a former Espinosa mechwarrior turncoat inbound on a Hunchback. Charlie Lance is tied up responding to a sensor reading of a potential enemy lance, so you're on the spot. Heading three-zero-zero from your position. I'll patch the Hunchback into your lance comms, over."
"-is turncoat Hunchback. I'm coming up on your left. They've got two lances following me, over."
"Finally" Ozer muttered to himself as he turned his Orion to face the new direction.
Mid-turn, something caught his eye. "What in the world?"
He watched as a civilian personnel carrier accelerated madly in their direction. "Uh- Sci-fi to Alpha/Bravo, I think some Espinosa forces captured some civilian vees as well. I'm seeing odd behavior from an APC in front of us. Engage them?"
"Squire to Alpha/Bravo, I'm spotting a Jabberwocky engineering mech and a recovery vehicle too. I think you're right. Permission to engage if they ignore my warning shots, over." With that, Alona's Black Knight fired a medium laser in front of the still accelerating APC.
Instead of stopping or slowing, it swerved around the scorched dirt and revved it's engines, only to hit a small berm and go tumbling through the air in the low-G as if in slow motion.
Everyone turned to watch it as it managed a full roll in the air, before coming down on it's nose, smashing it's searchlight off and nearly popping it's right track off as it dug a trench in the dirt.
The distraction was evidently too much of an opportunity to pass up though, because an hostile Stalker stepped out from behind a warehouse and opened up on Alpha lance. Most of its shots missed, but the short range missiles found their mark on Hector's Blackjack. The SRM6 plus the element of surprise managing to knock the Blackjack over.
Jonathan was on the ball though, because he responded with a full complement of lasers, scoring glowing lines across the surface of the mech while Squire called it in. "We've got contacts left. Weapons hot, and I see our friend in the Hunchback as well, over."
With that, the battle was truly engaged. The friendly Hunchback opened up on the recovery vehicle that looked to be trying to ram him, just about melting it's cockpit with laser fire. Meanwhile, the Espinosa stalker was keeping it's weapons fire concentrated on Hector's recovering Blackjack, blasting most of the armor off of his right arm with a large laser.
Squire and Chopper were in fine form though. Squire managed to connect with a huge AC20 blast and several medium lasers on the Archer, blasting huge chunks off it's armor, while Chopper's Guillotine managed a lucky hit on a sprinting Assassin, wrecking the right leg and causing it to neatly impale itself on a power-pylon.
Ozer decided to focus on the telltale shape of an approaching SRM carrier though. He really did not want to be in range of the firepower that thing could bring to bear, so he opened up with his AC10s, managing to crush the front armor, but not destroying it. He was prevented from landing the killing blow when a huge detonation to his right distracted him. Evidently the Assassin had tried to stand up, but had only managed to detonate it's missile ammo with the power pole embedded in it's torso.
By the time Ozer had turned back to the SRM carrier, it was already turned around and started to flee. Not wanting to simply have to fight it again another day, Ozer focused fire, and was pleased to see it grind to a halt as one of his AC10 shots managed to punch through the armor and engine-kill the thing.
With all of that going on, the Jabberwocky had evidently decided to use the distraction to charge Squire's Black Knight, only to receive a vicious kick which managed to shear off it's right leg and send it tumbling into a building, collapsing the roof on itself as it fell into the building's basement.
Chopper then decided to pull the enemy lance's attention by running right through the middle of the battlefield, only to duck behind a building just in time for several AC2 shots, half a salvo of SRMs and some laser fire to hit the building itself.
"Bravo Lance to Alpha Lance, we're on your six. We saw another lance headed this way though, over," announced the incoming reinforcements, even as Cathryn's Grasshopper soared through the air on it's jumpjets, coming in to land on a small man-bridge, utterly flattening it.
The continuous thuds of Bravo lance's AC2 fire set the tempo for the battle, as they started engaging the incoming second lance. Ozer finally managed to destroy the turret on the immobilized SRM carrier as he kept his eyes peeled for where they were coming from. His distraction cost him though, as the SRM carrier's final volley managed to land squarely on his Orion's torso, stripping layers of armor away and making warning lights flash in his cockpit.
Ozer swore to himself, before thumbing the radio. "I've taken at least two fusion core hits over, my temp is spiking rapidly."
Most of the rest of the battle passed by in a blur, as Ozer focused on getting his heat under control; the cracked fusion plant turning the inside of his mech into a sweltering inferno.
For a minute or two, it was looking like he was going to have to punch out and let the mech melt down, since even the emergency shutdown command wasn't doing anything, but then the needle stopped rising. It was still painfully hot in the cockpit and nearing ammo ignition temperatures in the center torso of the mech, but the needle was slowly falling again.
Eventually though, the battle was over, and his Orion was barely cool enough to safely move under its own power. He called in his damages. "Sci-fi to Homebase. I'm going to need the coolant truck and mobile base. My ammunition is sitting uncomfortably close to cook-off, so I don't want to bring the mech inside the dropship, but my fusion core crash commands aren't doing anything, so we're going to need to manually shut it down."
He could practically feel the winces from his lancemates. Short of actually cooking his ammo, this was pretty much a worst-case scenario, since even getting the mech to shut down safely was going to be dangerous to the techs.
This was going to suck.
"Ow". Not to mention he was going to need some time in the med-bay to deal with these burns.
25 May, 3025
Rowan was experimenting with radio-frequencies aboard the dropship. Both in the sense that he was aboard the dropship and testing out various frequencies for their potential use in connecting parts of his swarm together, and in the sense that he was experimenting with the specific transmission bands that were in use aboard the ship itself.
The former was going… adequately. He could carry a signal complex enough to let his mind bridge the gap between two unconnected bits of himself, but it currently required more hardware than he was happy with. It was actually what gave him the idea in the first place. An old radio-board from one of the company's vehicles had taken a piece of shrapnel at some point in the past, so Rowan had simply consumed the whole thing to try to get an understanding of it. The protocols themselves were dead simple. To the point that he was pretty sure he could crack secured comms now that he knew how the hardware encoding worked. The fiddly bit was making a signal that could carry enough information without making his broadcast obvious.
With direct line of sight, Rowan could just use tight-beam broadcast and interception would be practically impossible unless someone physically stuck a receiver in-between the two nodes. The problem was that he rarely had two blobs that were separate but still had line of sight.
With a generalized broadcast he ran into two issues. If he wanted to be able to detect the broadcast himself, it would be loud enough to stand out to the signal-techs aboard the dropship as well. Additionally, if he wanted to receive the broadcast, he needed to either use large radio-reception grids of nanites or piggyback off of the antenna of the mech/ship/vehicle he was aboard, which brought him back to the first issue of being detected.
It was going to require some thought. Perhaps if he could work out a burst transmission protocol, and simply deal with intermittent updates? It would be worth checking if that was even possible either way.
—
El Colegio, Weldry, 27 May, 3025
Ozer was wishing something would happen. They had already been on the ground for nearly a week and nothing had happened yet.
As if to answer his prayers, his radio squawked to life. "Homebase to Alpha/Bravo Lances, our Arano rep just informed me that we've got a former Espinosa mechwarrior turncoat inbound on a Hunchback. Charlie Lance is tied up responding to a sensor reading of a potential enemy lance, so you're on the spot. Heading three-zero-zero from your position. I'll patch the Hunchback into your lance comms, over."
"-is turncoat Hunchback. I'm coming up on your left. They've got two lances following me, over."
"Finally" Ozer muttered to himself as he turned his Orion to face the new direction.
Mid-turn, something caught his eye. "What in the world?"
He watched as a civilian personnel carrier accelerated madly in their direction. "Uh- Sci-fi to Alpha/Bravo, I think some Espinosa forces captured some civilian vees as well. I'm seeing odd behavior from an APC in front of us. Engage them?"
"Squire to Alpha/Bravo, I'm spotting a Jabberwocky engineering mech and a recovery vehicle too. I think you're right. Permission to engage if they ignore my warning shots, over." With that, Alona's Black Knight fired a medium laser in front of the still accelerating APC.
Instead of stopping or slowing, it swerved around the scorched dirt and revved it's engines, only to hit a small berm and go tumbling through the air in the low-G as if in slow motion.
Everyone turned to watch it as it managed a full roll in the air, before coming down on it's nose, smashing it's searchlight off and nearly popping it's right track off as it dug a trench in the dirt.
The distraction was evidently too much of an opportunity to pass up though, because an hostile Stalker stepped out from behind a warehouse and opened up on Alpha lance. Most of its shots missed, but the short range missiles found their mark on Hector's Blackjack. The SRM6 plus the element of surprise managing to knock the Blackjack over.
Jonathan was on the ball though, because he responded with a full complement of lasers, scoring glowing lines across the surface of the mech while Squire called it in. "We've got contacts left. Weapons hot, and I see our friend in the Hunchback as well, over."
With that, the battle was truly engaged. The friendly Hunchback opened up on the recovery vehicle that looked to be trying to ram him, just about melting it's cockpit with laser fire. Meanwhile, the Espinosa stalker was keeping it's weapons fire concentrated on Hector's recovering Blackjack, blasting most of the armor off of his right arm with a large laser.
Squire and Chopper were in fine form though. Squire managed to connect with a huge AC20 blast and several medium lasers on the Archer, blasting huge chunks off it's armor, while Chopper's Guillotine managed a lucky hit on a sprinting Assassin, wrecking the right leg and causing it to neatly impale itself on a power-pylon.
Ozer decided to focus on the telltale shape of an approaching SRM carrier though. He really did not want to be in range of the firepower that thing could bring to bear, so he opened up with his AC10s, managing to crush the front armor, but not destroying it. He was prevented from landing the killing blow when a huge detonation to his right distracted him. Evidently the Assassin had tried to stand up, but had only managed to detonate it's missile ammo with the power pole embedded in it's torso.
By the time Ozer had turned back to the SRM carrier, it was already turned around and started to flee. Not wanting to simply have to fight it again another day, Ozer focused fire, and was pleased to see it grind to a halt as one of his AC10 shots managed to punch through the armor and engine-kill the thing.
With all of that going on, the Jabberwocky had evidently decided to use the distraction to charge Squire's Black Knight, only to receive a vicious kick which managed to shear off it's right leg and send it tumbling into a building, collapsing the roof on itself as it fell into the building's basement.
Chopper then decided to pull the enemy lance's attention by running right through the middle of the battlefield, only to duck behind a building just in time for several AC2 shots, half a salvo of SRMs and some laser fire to hit the building itself.
"Bravo Lance to Alpha Lance, we're on your six. We saw another lance headed this way though, over," announced the incoming reinforcements, even as Cathryn's Grasshopper soared through the air on it's jumpjets, coming in to land on a small man-bridge, utterly flattening it.
The continuous thuds of Bravo lance's AC2 fire set the tempo for the battle, as they started engaging the incoming second lance. Ozer finally managed to destroy the turret on the immobilized SRM carrier as he kept his eyes peeled for where they were coming from. His distraction cost him though, as the SRM carrier's final volley managed to land squarely on his Orion's torso, stripping layers of armor away and making warning lights flash in his cockpit.
Ozer swore to himself, before thumbing the radio. "I've taken at least two fusion core hits over, my temp is spiking rapidly."
Most of the rest of the battle passed by in a blur, as Ozer focused on getting his heat under control; the cracked fusion plant turning the inside of his mech into a sweltering inferno.
For a minute or two, it was looking like he was going to have to punch out and let the mech melt down, since even the emergency shutdown command wasn't doing anything, but then the needle stopped rising. It was still painfully hot in the cockpit and nearing ammo ignition temperatures in the center torso of the mech, but the needle was slowly falling again.
Eventually though, the battle was over, and his Orion was barely cool enough to safely move under its own power. He called in his damages. "Sci-fi to Homebase. I'm going to need the coolant truck and mobile base. My ammunition is sitting uncomfortably close to cook-off, so I don't want to bring the mech inside the dropship, but my fusion core crash commands aren't doing anything, so we're going to need to manually shut it down."
He could practically feel the winces from his lancemates. Short of actually cooking his ammo, this was pretty much a worst-case scenario, since even getting the mech to shut down safely was going to be dangerous to the techs.
This was going to suck.
"Ow". Not to mention he was going to need some time in the med-bay to deal with these burns.
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- Location
- Ontario, Canada, Earth
So, can you tell that I played this battle out on MegaMek and basically converted the battle report into a blow by blow story?
Let me know how I did.
Let me know how I did.
Happy Hampster
This is a Multipost
- Location
- Perth, Western Australia
well seems he upgraded to high temp function just in time just as well. I think you did very well describing the events as they happened in a surprisingly cogent manner that was easy to follow; for a battle with a lot of moving parts that can be very hard but I felt like I always knew what was happening.
- Location
- Ontario, Canada, Earth
So, just figured I'd let people know my current plans for future battle chapters:
After getting feedback on all three platforms, I've consolidated the advice and think I have a decent idea of where to go from here.
Essentially, I'll be sticking pretty close to the current idea of playing a battle in simulation and recording events to convert to story format.
The difference is that I'll be putting a bit more focus on a single viewpoint character and what they're doing/experiencing, even if that means the readers are going to miss some of the interesting bits of the battle that happen outside of the viewpoint character's awareness.
Or at least, that's the current plan. We'll re-evaluate once we've had another battle chapter.
After getting feedback on all three platforms, I've consolidated the advice and think I have a decent idea of where to go from here.
Essentially, I'll be sticking pretty close to the current idea of playing a battle in simulation and recording events to convert to story format.
The difference is that I'll be putting a bit more focus on a single viewpoint character and what they're doing/experiencing, even if that means the readers are going to miss some of the interesting bits of the battle that happen outside of the viewpoint character's awareness.
Or at least, that's the current plan. We'll re-evaluate once we've had another battle chapter.