Two hours later, she finished reexamining the Egg's salvage data. The conversation with the Protodevilin wasn't enough of a catalyst for a eureka moment. The technology was frustratingly confusing, with extensive signs of higher-order exotic particles decaying. And she didn't even recognize the decayed products either.
Which meant that Lindy was left with nothing much to do until Galaxy was ready to go talk to the Vajra. Well, she could try to make new breakthroughs in the two-hundreds tiers of exotic particle physics, but that was going to be mostly brute force and a lot of luck.
Well, setting it up would chew up some time, at least.
Two hours later, and a horde of modified Cellars, loaded with particle synthesizers and just enough computational capacity to run the experiment, vanished from the network into accelerated time. Maybe she'd get one of the particles used in the Egg's construction. Two would be too much to hope for.
Another project that she could take care of would be improved expert systems for variable fighter combat.
She would need a Valkyrie design for that. Fortunately, the humans had dozens of designs for that which she shamelessly borrowed from.
She set up a few arenas for physical testing, then set up a framework for moves that the bots could perform, and then started running matches.
The results, after a few dozen cycles of seeing what the ES was doing and making sure the proposed code changes weren't going beyond their bounds, was some interesting additions to the Reaper program designed around the transformation mechanism.
She tried several VFs against a few Scimitars in a brawl a few times during the process. The VFs did tend to score a bit better than the mobile-suit based mecha, but that came at a cost. All that extra joint volume cut into functional components like shield emitters, sensors, drive components, and weaponry.
She tried a larger arena and set up another set of brawls.
This time, with the space to use their acceleration, the Scimitars were able to dictate engagements and take the high score in thirty out of thirty-two matches. Despite the impressive effort, it didn't seem to be worth it. A translocator could help by allowing a VF to instantly close to any target, but there wasn't enough space in a VF's frame for it.
Actually, wait. One of the proposals for project Evolution had a mission pod mounted between the legs of the fighter. The only finalized pods were missile boxes, along with a halfway-functioning beam cannon module, but she could fit a translocator inside the frame.
Upscaling it to stand 20 meters in batroid mode gave her even more room, and if she accepted bad accuracy past ten lighthours (needing a 1km clear zone at the destination for each target) and horrendous accuracy past a lightyear (no orientation or rotation control, and with a position error of about half the distance traveled), she could get the cycle time down to 2.2 seconds.
The Reaper program didn't have any ability to deal with translocation, so she was going to have to rework the entire thing to add that capability. She had time to spend.
Once the Cellars finished their experimental run, Lindy had that data to look at. It wasn't that useful, unfortunately. An exponential growth function, when compared to the constant boost of time acceleration, would win once the power started getting high enough. And since particle synthesis interactions gained exponentially more interactions the more layers away from the fundamentals, the time-accelerated setups hadn't managed to crack any of the precursor particles.
Wait. Lindy returned to the data, and looked at the synthesis and decay paths again. There were partial matches. She compared the missing particles, and checked if any of them had notable interactions. There were plenty, but those should have produced their own distinct decay products. When she checked for those, there was only one match.
So all this effort might have gotten her one of the particles used in the construction of the Egg. On the other hand, that particle could have been a decay product from the actual materials of the Egg.
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"Do you think the fire was deliberate?" Dervish asked, as the fire chief, Marcus Coriolis, collapsed into a chair in the meeting room hard enough that it nearly tipped over.
"I don't know." Coriolis said. "I've never had to run an arson investigation before. This is... " He rubbed his soot-stained face. "But considering I've never had to run an arson investigation I think the answer is yes."
"That's going to slow down reconstruction efforts a lot." Dervish said. "How long do you think it would take?"
"I remember that most of the evidence from an arson will be gone in six months, so that long." Coriolis said, after leaning back and staring at the ceiling for a moment.
"Are you serious?" President Kulmuni said. "We already had a homelessness crisis, and now you want to keep several apartment blocks out of commission?"
"And if we can't catch whoever did this, then they'll likely do this again." Dervish said.
"Not just that." Kulmuni added. "We're going to get a scapegoating problem if we can't the real culprit soon enough."
"Yeah, some of my men probably aren't adverse to a lynch mob themselves. But if we move too quickly and grab the wrong person, it'll just make the scapegoating problem even worse the next time they burn something down." Coriolis groaned.
"We could ask Lindy if she knows any arson investigators." Kulmuni brought up.
"I hate having to rely on her, but it's worth a shot." Dervish muttered.
"I'll make the call." Samuel Walters, the chief of staff, said.
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Walters waited patiently as the communications device buzzed.
"Hello, Samuel." Lindy's voice came from the device itself, seemingly. As it was just a featureless white puck, he wasn't sure how it worked.
"Hello, Commander Ezros." Walters said. "Would you happen to know any arson investigators? We seem to have a bit of a problem that could be solved by them."
"No." Lindy stated flatly. "I do, however, have the list of the perpetrators and their co-conspirators based on the logs from the sensor platforms monitoring the system. I believe they will be suitable for use in court, although they will need to be redacted to prevent the entire population having their privacy violated."
"Are you saying that you have been tracking our entire population everywhere?" Walters said, glancing around the room.
"Yes." Lindy said. "I only informed you because it was relevant to solving your problems quickly and efficiently. Are you going to use it or not?"
"Could you... maybe not?" Walters asked.
"No." Lindy's voice had been flat and level this entire time.
"Why not?" Walters asked.
"Because maintaining such reconnaissance systems is vital to prevent repeat disasters, and even avert many of them. Because such things are needed in my line of work." Lindy said. "Privacy is politeness, not a right. Do you want the intel or not?"
Walters considered his options. He couldn't stop the Exiles from monitoring them, could he? No, the leverage was firmly against Galaxy. He didn't have a clue how to work at her ethics. He didn't have any clue if she did have ethics.
"I accept." He said, slamming his palm on the desk, his teeth gritted.
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"I have a request." Lindy stated, handing over the drive with the evidence for the arson case.
"Yes?" Admiral Dervish said, raising an eyebrow.
"This requires some context." Lindy said.
Dervish stifled a groan.
"As you are aware, a3x.exe was attempted to use the vajra as a threat against humanity. The vajra remains riled up from the provocation..." Lindy started to explain.
Dervish's face got more tense as Lindy kept explaining.
"... so I need your cooperation with a program to sing to the vajra." Lindy finished.
Dervish groaned, leaned back in her chair far enough to balance it on the back wheels, then pushed back, causing the seat to slam against the ground.
"And this is my job because?" Dervish muttered.
"Because the only ships I trust to protect the children if something goes wrong are the military ones." Lindy replied.
"And why can't you handle it yourself?" Dervish asked, pulling herself out the fallen office chair.
"Because I am physically unable to do it, and because I would also give the wrong impression to the Vajra." Lindy replied simply.
"That... doesn't answer the question." Dervish said, settling into her chair again. "How are you physically unable to? And what do you mean the 'wrong impression?'"
"Simple. As far as my research has determined, the Vajra communicates via using the interface between the Fold Cell and Normal-space Cell as a conduit for psychic reverberations. I am unable to efficiently interact with that interface because of the nature of my soul. Even if I could create a signal, it would be completely different to that of a human singer." Lindy said.
Dervish stared at Lindy for several more seconds. "Why do I have the feeling that every question is going to make me hate this entire mess more, but also make me feel more trapped?"
"Pattern recognition." Lindy said.
"You'll have your singers. Now get out." Dervish said, pointing and slamming her other hand on the desk.
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Fortunately, it only took two weeks for the "concert" to come together. As suspected, the Vajra eventually figured out it was in communication with multiple different people, and left to ponder its life choices. Fortunately a battle did not break out in the middle of the idol competition.
That left the Galaxy fleet to settle on the Vajra's previous home, assuring their long-term viability.
Lindy considered her action list. Potential Vajra conflict, avoided. Old Protoculture mind-control devices, destroyed. Roving Zentradi and Supervision fleets, sabotaged and relatively defanged. The NUN and their allies could probably handle that, but they weren't the only ones the rogue fleets could kill. In addition, humanity had shown a willingness to try and convert them to a peaceful lifestyle, which Lindy would respect.
Which meant that she didn't have anything else to do in this world. Besides, she wanted to know what <Mother> thought about her operations.
-A/N:--------------------------------------------
Likebombers noticed are
@ImpossiBurd,
@VoidofEyes, and
@Domar7431.
