The Prologue: Part 06
WyrmofFrost
One whose Muse delights in being coy
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
[X] Mobile Factory
[X] Power Armor
[X] Naval Squadron Quartermaster
[X] Groundside Quartermaster
[X] House Taranis Nobles
[X] Check equipment to ensure it's fully functional
[X] Train Weapon Skill
[X] Train Ballistic Skill
[X] Power Armor
[X] Naval Squadron Quartermaster
[X] Groundside Quartermaster
[X] House Taranis Nobles
[X] Check equipment to ensure it's fully functional
[X] Train Weapon Skill
[X] Train Ballistic Skill
A̷͖̝̟H̬͖͚͎̮́A͉̺̜̥͜Ḥ̥̤̻͍A̷̞̮̘̹̜H͇̀A͈̭͚̝̳̯̬A͠H̞͓͙̦̣̺͇AḨ̙͕̲͇A͇̝͙̳͜H͇̕
Like any good Mechanicum member you worked hard to grow the body of Knowledge known by the whole. This means in small part having a well equipped workshop and laboratory to work out of. However such facilities do not just exist in the physical, the neurosphere added an entirely new dimension to the forgeworld and any other facility with such capacity. A nearly seamless weaving of the informational world where perception is all.
One such example was your own work with what you had gained unexpectedly from that first meeting, your latest assignment now weighing on you. Looking through the splicer code you begin to see the intricacies involved in it. While you would not be able to reuse it as is, you are starting to build your own independent foundation with the methods you found. It will only work on a martian derived neurosphere network with a great deal of built up server history, quite limiting but.... It is a piece of beauty from the most unlikely of chance encounters. The program code was spiraling around you in a 3-d visual formation, a celestial river of golden dust in fractal form. Was aesthetics part of how this was made? Did such a methodology actually have a cause and effect relation or was it simply an unrelated correlation? You thank the Motive Force and the Machine God for such an act of benevolent occurrence as you tear through the source code to learn more. While heavily limited you could perhaps make something of this. Now to the next set of concerns you had.
Deciding to on your own file a request for a mobile forge module seems to work. After some administrative cycles and copious amounts of forms you receive an implant form nanite forge. Frankly you were stunned by such a device being granted to you, the documentation seems legitimate though and you could backtrack the device to its origin. Frankly this is a grand outcome for you that you would not as the saying goes look a gift horse in the mouth. You have received quite a bit of material overall for yourself at the very least from this expedition, makes up for the fact that you are not getting paid beyond your upkeep and a set experiment budget.
Of course you would be a foe to not be busy maintaining and gaining familiarity with your equipment. An unfamiliar piece of kit can get one killed in a battle, you know this from experience. Looking through the items you received you realize rather just what sort of problems could have come up. The first and most dramatic is the nano forge,specifically the reason you managed to gain an otherwise precious nanite forge. Though it seemed just another of a series of beneficial occurrences this seemed a little too suspicious for your taste. Your analysis of the machine itself indeed confirms your suspicions.
While not your area of expertise you still managed to find issue with the device. It is a 'refurbished' model, one that has not been tested extensively after all the attempts at repairs on it. Backtracking a few of the reports that you 'acquired' on this specific model tells you that it was the attempted repair job of an intraining technician, one that obviously failed somewhat but was not revealed. Working through the actual machine and performing simulations you find out the extent of the changes to it. Here you could use your knowledge of nanoscale energy transmissions to diagnose a few problems and the solutions to them, the new scanner also helped. That implant was much more trustworthy for your use, you had it swiftly installed after checking for any defects.
But back to the nanite forge. As long as you 'keep' to the exact tolerances then it will work fine, for a very limited lifetime. Frankly the amount of maintenance it would require would rapidly outstretch the usefulness of such a device. Thus you work to lock down the more advanced options within and otherwise gutting the operating system. It is hard work but you whip up your own program to force the machine to be safe to use. This consists of ripping the original CAD database and program to use hardcoded Standard Template Constructor blueprints of what you already have. This means nothing larger than a meter in diameter, you could create smaller individual parts of a larger whole for assembly though this would be both wasteful and time consuming.
The real prize of the entire debacle was that you managed to save the proprietary CAD database and program rather then have it be deleted by the anti-tampering measures. In a burst of ability that even you did not know was in you you managed to first isolate the needed code and then extract it safely onto a virtual archive. Rather than hardcoded STC blueprints you had a lite model STC library capable of taking STC designs and rearranging them on the fly. Now you have access to the data that this nanite forge had before and anything it was ever used on, and this was an old and well used implant.
A wealth of knowledge you know you should not have as it breaks so many different NDAs and restrictions on things like arms to restricted and prohibited goods. This could burn you deeply, but you have to keep it. It was yours fair and square to tinker with and you refuse to let such information be taken from you. Perhaps those old theologians back on Mars would disdain you as would their barristers, no their barristers would be gleeful at such an open and shut case. Regardless you were keeping this to yourself for sure.
The next few issues somewhat fed into each other. First was the power armour request you put out for requisition, that was rather firmly rejected on the grounds of safety and ill required need. Something that truly shows the somewhat automatic nature of the requisition system considering they gave you a military grade set of volkite weapons with power armour attachments just earlier. Which is an issue as without said power armour you cannot safely use the weapons as is, part of their militarized nature being a significant degree of thermal radiation directly next to the user. There are lesser suits of armour that can allow you to use the weapons but none you have except the civilian armour. That you at least tried to use and technically it was a success, but its a civilian armour set and is thus not configured. Your almost drunken attempts at shooting tell you that using weapons is not a good idea as is right now. Not much you could do to fix it as its a fundamental problem of the joints in the set of armour and other such issues.
After those ups and downs you were rather pleased to be able to go out for what is... not it is simpler to just plainly say it. You took the transport for a spin at a set of proving grounds and had fun. It was a blast to drive the transport around the rough terrain at rapid speeds. The tread lined limbs were surprisingly maneuverable and capable of many a grand trick. Doughnuts had nothing on what you managed to accomplish. Of course normally there would be a larger crew on the transport when it would deploy but your neural uplinked control alongside a few synthetics for automatic systems let you experience a much more personal degree of control. You could almost feel the vehicle, its cogitator systems giving you a great deal of feedback as you pushed the limits in it. While quite a joy you still had to eventually stop and so went back to your quarters to further relax by checking over the more familiar of your equipment. A soothing exercise rather then the more physical you had just completed, you were already familiar with everything and so did not need to seriously worry about it.
You have often been called married to your work and you admit there is a great deal of truth to it, but you have your own little hobbies to keep your sanity together. Even if your intellectual successes have been good that does not mean you have not been feeling frustrated on other ends. Sadly as you would soon learn, this was the easy part of your work.
AN: Congratulations on getting your first few crits that are not critical failures. Sadly.... well that would be a spoiler to continue that line of thought. Lets just say I had fun with and already laid out most of the next update.
Misc Vote
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