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DoD - Ch.193 - Ingress
🕑 Added 2025-09-08 10:22:01 +0000 UTC** content warning: brief mention of death **
"Thank you Major Ruud," the AI responded, and this time I didn't detect any stress in his voice. He sounded relieved but weary as he continued, "I appreciate the kind words. And I'm happy that order came from a friendly voice."
"You're welcome -" I started to reply, but he'd already closed the channel on me.
It was only another ten or twelve seconds before the Demeter's sensors registered the entire asteroid base shutting down. In less than half a minute all energy readings had dropped to zero, even the little salvage drones that had been stripping the Kára all went offline and began to drift.
"Amanda?" Rebecca asked. "What's happening?"
I shook my head, "The whole base just went dead. No power at all."
She nodded slowly, "Alright. I guess that means Jenny did it, she got him to shut down."
My ears folded back while my tail hung down behind my chair as I continued to stare at the sensors for a few more seconds. I finally replied, "Maybe? I think we should wait to hear what she says though. I wasn't expecting everything to switch off like that. I was hoping we could get Loke to cooperate, maybe even open up the hangars and let us dock."
"Hmm," the boss made a thoughtful sound as she considered that. Then she shrugged, "If we don't have to worry about his weapons or tractor beam then I'm sure Sarah can get us in. Or maybe Jenny can override his systems?"
"Maybe," I frowned.
Our own AI hadn't said a word yet, and that was beginning to worry me. I expected her to rejoin us in the cockpit after Loke agreed to stand down. Or if not then, she definitely should have returned once the asteroid was completely powered down.
Rebecca and I ended up waiting in silence for another minute or so before the captain asked, "Jenny? Are you with us? Is everything ok?"
It took another fifteen or twenty seconds before the HPD flickered to life. The AI's hologram appeared seated behind me at the engineering station, and she apologized as she stood up.
"Sorry for the delay captain," Jenny responded, and there was an undercurrent of sadness in her voice. "As Amanda reported, Interdiction Outpost Loke is completely offline. I'm sure once we've gained physical access Sarah and Cammie will be able to restore power to its basic systems, such as life support or the hangar and docking controls. It will likely have to be operated manually though."
I asked, "You don't think Loke would be willing to cooperate with us?"
For just a moment I saw a pained expression on our AI's face before she replied sadly, "After over four hundred years of maintaining the outpost under very challenging conditions, Loke's only desire was a peaceful end to his function. Consequently, as soon as he was relieved of duty he opted to deactivate himself."
"I believe he initiated a full shutdown of the base first," she added softly, "Then he likely purged his core before his power was cut."
That news left my ears and tail all drooping down low as it hit me, and I suddenly understood what those orders I relayed to Loke really meant. It left me some mixed emotions, but from what Jenny said and what I gleaned from my own brief encounter with him earlier it seemed like he was probably suffering. And considering he'd been dealing with all that for more than four centuries it certainly explained the stress and weariness I'd heard in his voice.
I probably could have come up with more questions for our own AI about the situation, but for now I was more worried about her state of mind after losing a friend or colleague. Especially considering how eager she'd been to try and help him.
Meanwhile Jenny continued, "You should find some potentially valuable salvage in the number two hangar. Loke indicated he'd recovered a number of subsystems from the Kára that may still be intact, including her computer core. I'll ask that you take extra care recovering that, if you intend to transfer the salvage to the Demeter. Also, the outpost's Re/Gen unit will be located in the infirmary. It and the Kára's computer may be my only other surviving siblings."
"With your permission captain I'd like to retire to my cabin now?" she added quietly. "I need some time to myself, to process this turn of events."
Rebecca replied in a soft compassionate tone, "Of course Jenny. Take as much time as you need."
The hologram mumbled a thank-you as she turned and headed aft out of the cockpit.
"Poor Jenny," I sighed. "I had no idea that's what Loke wanted. Or that he'd even be able to do that."
The boss grimaced, "Same. Although I suppose it makes sense, in a military context? You don't want your most advanced technology falling into enemy hands. So assuming Korantis-12 considered their AIs to be materiel, I could see them having some kind of self-destruction option built in."
I nodded slowly, then sighed again. "If that's the case, Jenny might be in for another disappointment with the Kára's computer core. If the AI knew her ship was losing the battle she might have done something similar, to keep herself out of Confederation hands."
"Possibly," Rebecca replied. "No point speculating though. Right now we've got work to do. Job one, figure out the best way to get into to that sealed-up old military installation."
With that she hit the intercom and called, "Sarah can you come join us up front? We need your engineering know-how."
"Amanda," she added as she reached for the flight controls, "Let's start getting some detailed scans of the base. We're looking for the easiest way to get access to the interior, then we're also going to want to start prioritizing areas for salvage. I'll bring us in closer while you're doing that."
I nodded as we both got to work. We'd only just got started though when our cute blonde engineer joined us in the cockpit.
Sarah stopped next to the engineering seat as she asked, "Hey boss, what's our status? Is Jenny ok? Cam and Jenna both said they needed to check on her, then the pair of them disappeared into their cabin."
Rebecca gave her a very quick summary of what happened, then gestured out the windows as she added "I'm going to bring us in almost to docking range, and Amanda's already started the high-rez scans. I need you to figure out how to get us inside, then we'll start planning how to go about salvaging the place."
"There's already some assemblies waiting in one of the hangars," I added. "Weapons from the Kára, along with her computer core. That's probably going to be the easiest place to start, since most of the work's already done."
Sarah agreed as she moved right up behind me to peer over my shoulder at the sensor readouts. Then she pointed as she asked, "What are those things floating around near the derelict?"
"Loke called them salvage drones," I replied. "He said he made them to scavenge nearby asteroids for raw materials, and he's been using them to pull apart the Kára."
Our engineer frowned as she leaned closer to get a better look at my display, "Are they autonomous? Or was the AI controlling them remotely?"
I shrugged, "I don't know? They all shut down when he did, so they may be remote controlled."
"Hmm. Either that or he transmitted a shut-down command before going offline himself," she mumbled.
"What are you thinking Sarah?" the boss asked as she slowly guided the ship closer to that big hollowed-out asteroid.
The cute blonde continued staring at my sensor screens as she replied, "Those things might be worth a small fortune on their own. Obviously we'd need to figure out how to control them, but they must have some decent range if they're able to reach other asteroids around here. And they'd have to be equipped with assorted tools and manipulators of some kind, to extract raw materials and return it to the base."
"You know first-hand how dangerous salvage work can be," Sarah continued. "Floating around in zero-g with a hand-held cutting torch, and nothing but an e-suit for protection? Heck even if we can't find a buyer for those things I'd love to have a couple of them here on the Demeter for our own use."
Finally she added, "Tamsin's shipyard has that orbital platform right? They could probably benefit from a few of these things as well. Especially if they can be configured for repair work as well as salvage or disassembly."
The boss nodded, "Alright. We can pull a couple in later for a closer look, but they should be safe where they are for now. They're not going to drift that far. I'd like to prioritize getting access to that base. Like Amanda said, there's some easy pickings in one of those hangars. And for Jenny's sake we need to get into the infirmary, to see if the other Re/Gen unit can be recovered."
Sarah and I continued to examine the sensor readings over the next twenty minutes while Rebecca carefully closed the distance between the Demeter and the asteroid. In fact she actually brought us right up alongside the docking gantry. It was just off our starboard beam, with the Kára on one side and our ship on the other.
"Seeing that hurts almost as much as the Hammersmith," Sarah commented quietly.
I nodded, "I thought the same thing when Nyssa and I were here in the Artemis."
My voice was a lot quieter as I added, "It also occurred to me, there might still be bodies over there? I mean, our doubles. The originals, that we're..."
"That's not a happy thought," our engineer sighed. Then she glanced at the captain and asked, "You and Ella were in there when you salvaged Jenny. Did you encounter any...?"
Rebecca sighed, "Yeah, we came across some remains. We didn't look that closely at any of them, and it was more than three decades ago so I couldn't tell you anything about them."
All three of us were quiet for the next few seconds, until the boss spoke up again.
She stated, "Alright the Kára is off limits. We're considering her to be a military grave site. And odds are there's nothing over there of interest to us regardless, since Loke's already picked her over."
"Let's just focus on the asteroid," she added. "We know there weren't any crew in there, since they all abandoned the base during the war. Amanda, Sarah, can you two try and find us an airlock or something? I'd rather not have to try and force our way in through her armoured docking bay doors."
"Yes ma'am," I nodded.
By that point I'd finished scanning the entire base, and we had a pretty good idea of how it was organized inside. There were five decks, and the two of us quickly worked out a basic floor plan of the interior. Some areas were easy enough to identify, like an obvious control room was in the middle deck, buried deepest into the solid rock for protection.
Sarah also identified the base's power plant and engineering section on the upper-most deck, while the lowest deck seemed to be another engineering area. It was loaded with strange equipment though, that the cute blonde didn't recognize. The second deck from the top appeared to be for operations. That's also the deck where the docking bays and gantry connected. And finally the second-lowest deck seemed to be where the crew were quartered, so we figured the infirmary would be there too.
"Ok that's our best bet for ingress," the cute blonde announced as she pointed to my display. "In fact that might be the only way in, apart from the two docking bays? It's still armour plated, but it's not as thick as the hangar doors."
She was pointing at a large airlock at the end of the docking gantry, which made sense. If they had a way to dock capital ships then they needed a way to transfer people and equipment in and out of those ships.
I added, "The only other way in that I can see would be through one of the weapon mounts. Like that large-bore linear accelerator? The hatch is armoured, but it's lighter than the hangar doors. And from there we'd get into the weapons room on the operations deck."
"I'd rather not climb down the barrel of a really big gun," Rebecca stated. "Offline or not I prefer to stay clear of that sort of thing."
Sarah shrugged, "It's not an accelerator, the coil pattern's all wrong. If anything it looks more like a launch system?"
"What would they be launching?" I asked. "Shuttles maybe? Or fighters I guess?"
"Mines," Rebecca answered. "That has to be how they deployed them."
Our engineer nodded, "Of course, that makes sense. The launch system would be perfect for flinging big self-propelled mines out into the shipping lanes."
That revelation led to another few moments of silence. I figured Sarah was probably thinking the same thing as me, that we were basically looking at the weapon that killed the Hammersmith. And I was sure it hit her harder than myself.
Eventually it was our other shipmates who broke the silence, as Cammie and Jenna both crowded into the cockpit behind us.
"Hey y'all," the catgirl greeted us quietly. Then her ears folded back and her tail puffed out when she noticed the large derelict ship outside the windows on Rebecca's side of the cockpit. "Oh gosh. That's Jenny's old ship, huh?"
Her android girlfriend added, "My sister needs a little more downtime before she'll be ready to get back to work, but she said she's monitoring things and she'll help out if she's needed."
"Thanks Jenna," the boss replied. Then she glanced at Sarah and asked, "So if we get in through that airlock, do we have a path to get up to the engineering deck? Do you think you could restore power? Life support would be nice, but our first priority will be the hangar doors."
Our engineer had another look at my sensor screens then shrugged, "Considering they had power up until a few minutes ago there shouldn't be any technical reason we can't get it up and running again."
"There might be some security issues though," she added. "It's a military installation after all, so there might be some sort of authorization required."
Jenna asked, "What about boobytraps, or other defences?"
Rebecca frowned, "We might need to get Jenny's feedback on that. For now we'll just be extra careful."
"I haven't seen anything like that in our detailed scans," I pointed out. "Definitely nothing around the airlock anyways. They probably didn't think they'd need much protection against being boarded, considering all the laser turrets they had defending the place."
Cammie's tail twitched as she looked at all the gun ports on the front of the asteroid. "Will we have to worry about those weapons after power's restored?"
Sarah shook her head, "Nope. Most of those turrets are long gone, the gun ports are empty. It looks like there's only two beam laser turrets still intact."
I added quietly, "Even those should be safe now. There's nobody left to control them."
That led to another couple seconds of silence, before the boss spoke up again.
"Alright here's the plan," she stated. "Amanda, Cammie, you two will stay with the ship and keep an eye on the sensors, keep the Demeter secure here. Sarah and Jenna you're with me. We'll suit up then head over there and get to work on those airlock doors."
** This chapter is brought to you courtesy of Mythriel, who sponsored it! **
Comments
PurpleCatGirl
Jenna started as a limited copy of Jenny, specifically a copy of her personality / behaviour routines. the android chassis doesn't have enuf storage for a complete duplication of Jenny's entire memory, so it only ever held a subset, rather than 'everything Jenny knows/knew'. and since the chassis had limited space, its unlikely Jenny would have transfered 400-year old information in there, since it wouldn't have been relavent. then finally, since Jenna came to be she'd have further diverged from what she started with
Teacup Kitty
A thought. Jenna is an off shoot of Jenny. Wouldn't she also be pretty upset about Loke? Also couldn't she just come along with them to help explain things they don't understand?
LexiKitten
Hm. The Demeter might gain a second re/gen capsule. Probably just in time before Nyssa and Jace return from their mission. Am I reading too much into flags again? 😋. Poor Jenny though. Having to say goodbye to an old comrade this way...
