Chapter 5: Outside Context Problem
Shadows
Sacred Priestess of the Benevolent Dice Gods
- Location
- USS Civilian, DDG-214
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Machina ex Machina
(or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Von Neumann)
Chapter 5: Outside Context Problem
(or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Von Neumann)
Chapter 5: Outside Context Problem
The transports came and went, picking up the survivors from the little town, and it did my now really non-existent heart good to see the care the GDI was extending their people. Robot I may be, robot I am, but I was literally built to be a heroine. If you wanna punch my and my sister's biggest button, attack civilians. Do it.
My next step was doing the obvious thing and setting up a second set of extractors, generators and production facilities. I'd discovered something in my files called a "Teleporter", so, curious, I built one both back in Phoenix and here as well. When it was finished, it lie dormant, not doing anything, and I wondered what was going wrong… until I got a message from that little internal service that seemed to know what was going on with all this stuff, helpfully informing me that I needed to link them.
Whoops.
So I did, and now I've got an instant-connection pipeline between my bases that units can travel through. Including myself. That was totally not abusable in any way, no sirree.
While I was figuring that out, I disembarked my avatar and went aboard the Kodiak, which had set itself in a clear area in the middle of the canyonland, directing the evacuation.
I entered the bridge, flanked by a pair of GDI soldiers wearing a diving-suit looking set of body armor suits, carrying pulse rifles. McNeil and his staff were there, talking to a dark-skinned man on the main display. Given his age, I could only assume his was McNeil's boss, and probably, given the collar-candy he was wearing, a general of some sort, like my Papa James.
I took a second to double-check the insignia on my own shoulders as I walked up. "One Nod base signed, sealed and delivered, Commander." I said, buffing my nails against my uniform.
"So, you're the one I have to thank for the timely rescue here." the man on the screen said. I nodded.
"Yeah, I wasn't about to let those little red jerks get away with killing innocent people." I said.
He chuckled. "General James Solomon. Pleasure to meet you, miss…?"
"Nicole Polendina." I supplied. "Though if we're going with the 'rank and title' schtick, I'm Specialist-Lieutenant Polendina, or Huntress Polendina… though there are, like, four of us, so Nicole works just fine."
"Given that you don't exactly belong in my chain of command, you may call me James, then." the General allowed.
"What is it with generals and the first name James, anyway?" I asked of no-one in particular. "My dad's a general too. Well, one of them, anyway."
"It's a popular name. Stands to reason you'd find a lot of men in a lot of high positions wearing it." Gale stated from her seat at what looked like the comms console.
"With the introductions out of the way," McNeil said, "What's our next course of action, General?"
"With Miss Polendina's successful elimination of the Nod base here, and your attack on the Nod train station, I believe it's time we really started taking the fight back to Nod's forces in North America. The craft your scouts found is of immense interest to the research community here on the station, and I think we can both agree that getting it out of Nod's hands can only be a good thing."
"Wait, whoa, hold up." I said, raising a hand. "Craft? What kinda craft?"
"That's the thing, we don't exactly know. We just got a call from our scouts telling us they've located something strange in Texas." McNeil said. "I've already vectored in some support troops - the scouts were in the middle of a firefight, it sounded like."
"I can help with that!" I announced. "Do you have anything that can airlift a twenty-ton truck-shaped… thing? If I can get a fabricator over there, I can set up a teleporter relay that'll let my forces show up in… well, force."
"I imagine I can break off a Carryall for you." McNeil said, looking at the General.
"Consider it yours, Commander. I would expect heavy resistance, however, Miss Polendina."
"Eh, can't be heavier than a thousand tonne battle-mech can handle." I said, waving my hand. "And once the teleporter's up, I bury them in tanks and droids."
"Just remember, we want to capture the craft that Nod's so interested in. Preferably intact."
"I can do that." I said, grinning. "Plus, I bet it's aliens."
"I look forward to hearing about it. Solomon, out." The feed on the main screen cut, and McNeil sighed.
"Alright, let's get moving. Chandra, fire up the engines. Gale, get on the horn to our people on the ground there, and tell 'em we're delivering an MCV within the hour. I want them to hole up in Hobbs til we arrive."
"Yes, sir."
"Nicole," he said, turning to look at me. "I'm still coming to grips with the whole 'teenaged girl is also an AI that makes EVA look like a smartwatch' thing, but you're welcome to have your avatar ride along with us."
"Don't mind if I do." I said, finding an empty seat as the big flyer's engines roared to life. "I'm still perfectly capable of performing the five thousand other subroutines from here, after all. Heck, this is just one of them."
"Right… so, where are you from, anyway? I'm gonna hazard a wild guess and say it's not Earth."
"Nah. I'm from a place called Remnant. People there are a lot less squishy… which is a good thing, because we've got these soulless monsters called Grimm running around which like to eat your average squishy meatbag." I said, then paused. "Not that there's anything wrong with squishy meatbags. My big sister's dating one."
And I want to be, but hey…
Then something popped into my head. "Say, did you tell the General about that whole 'using nanotech to nom your tech' thing?"
"As it turns out, no. Chandra made the observation that if it helps us beat Nod faster, why risk antagonizing an ally by telling the boss about something as… relatively inconsequential as that?"
"Aw, that's nice of you…" I said. "So, you won't be mad if I tell you I kinda jacked all of the data on Phoenix's computer systems, right?"
"...what."
