Turn 8
>Spend yet another turn fixing my fucking limbs. Attach my left arm to my left shoulder, then my right arm to my right shoulder, then my left leg to my left hip, and then finally my right leg to my right hip. Throw as many dice as I can at OP.
[5] Fairly certain this is NOT the proper way limbs should work, you disassemble your bionics yet AGAIN and begin methodically reconnecting them. Just to be ABSOLUTELY SURE, you also
gather a spare set of limbs and clip them onto your body. You now have
four perfectly good arms and
redundant legs that you can replace with your spares as an afterthought.
Begin a trace on the source of the signal. If it's close by, interface with the damaged centipede drone and hitch a ride on it to assault the source physically. Otherwise, attempt to brute force the network security and initiate a denial of service attack, essentially cutting the strings from whatever is puppeting these drones for a time.
[2] Running your trace, you probe the airwaves, but picking up a source proves harder than you thought. After filtering out radio chatter and trying to ignore the pull of the Key's signal, all you find are possibilities: Either the signal source is far away, as in not on this battlefield; or these drones are operating on pre-set orders within their own unit network, similar to you and your companions, actually.
[5] A strange thought occurs to you, then -- if the hostile mechs are indeed after the same thing...
You spin up a netwide signal spoof with your own broadcaster, spraying the drones' local-net wirelessly with dummy signals! First seven, then twenty-three, then a hundred and eight... The already disorganized drones start having trouble telling what their actual target is, as you're cycling so many pings at them at once they can't properly lock onto even the enormous one in front of them. This causes their battle line to falter, just enough to throw off their control, but not enough to make them forget an entire fortress is shooting at them right now.
[-1 to the mechs' attack]Go deeper into the fortress and find the key thing we're looking for and grab it.
[6] MCP Protocol is clear -- with the mission objective in sight,
ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS ARE MOOT. While the guards and chief are talking, you bull straight past, knocking the frantic human aside to the wall on your way. A few angry shouts issue forth from behind you, but you ignore them all.
You break through into a security checkpoint. A long, reinforced counter forms the only furniture, aside from a couple chairs behind that. Hovering between them, a quick peek around confirms
security terminals within the counter. Red strobe alarm lights flare on the concrete walls, illuminating two doors: One dead ahead, and another to the side that is wide open. You can see
gun lockers and various small
crates strewn around.
You hear the sounds of a scuffle and gunshots coming from behind the first, immediately followed by three bodies tumbling through and knocking it open. A security guard lands on the floor, handgun discharging once before getting knocked across the floor. Two other humans in bloodstained service uniforms pin him down, faces contorted in bestial rage and growling unintelligible gibberish while beating him with their fists.
Shoot the enemy drones I want some of these bladed limbs and the best way to get them is removing them from dead bodies.
[4] Leveling your newfound weapon, you reach a targeting solution within moments and squeeze off several highly-accurate shots into the wing of the drones' formation. One collapses from the sudden loss of two legs, another from a bolt sizzling into its torso, and a third from multiple direct hits that leave it a smoking wreck.
Your actions do not go unnoticed by the enemy, however! Some of them turn to behold you and your group, and judging by the almost panicked and confused chatter you can hear from their local-net, they were NOT expecting to be fighting other AI's, without their own IFF or no.
[1] They half-heartedly return fire at you, but you see the shots coming
well in advance, side-strafing through the air while firing. You feel a surge of what might be called
pride with each one that drops, and before long, you've reached the first of the newly-downed mechs.
[3] You have to cease fire in order to properly disassemble it, of course, but thankfully your brazen assault caused enough of a disruption that the fort's defenders are able to back you up. Digging your toolset into the thing's joints, you saw out and extract both of its scythe-like blades. But the process is slower than you'd like, and you aren't able to fully integrate them just yet.
Find some more materials to build more Sakura Drones, and get started on that. I still have 5 Relays left.
"I name you Serrulata~ Please go outside now and get a view of the nearby area. Focus on if there are any wrecks nearby with computers. It will be interesting to see if they have data on where we are.."
[3 (2 + 1)] Your progress is mildly interrupted when the already-built Sakura drone hovers over, seemingly curious about what you're doing. It tries to help by assembling parts itself, seemingly trying to make tiny versions of itself out of the materials you gather -- smaller X's with precision laser-cut parts. "Toy" might be an apt word for them. They're lifeless, and aren't armed, but the live drone still beeps happily at having made something. You still manage to gather up some full-size parts, but putting together another drone is going to take longer.
As fascinating as this behavior is, you eventually decide it's not that useful, and send the newly-christened Serrulata out to survey the area. It gratefully obeys, but you notice it took one of its little creations with it. It sends back feed of the outside surroundings to you, showing... ...that something... something
very big is happening down in a valley below, and it involves your fellows, a fortress, a giant beacon, explosions, more explosions...
it casually asks if it should join battle.
Continue towards the beacon, use the scanner to get an idea of where in the fort the key is (if the beacon we saw was the scanner don’t use it again if it’s redundant)
[2] What you're able to find out for sure just from the signal is that the key is definitely inside the structure Bob Mk III just barged into. But finding more detail than that from here is harder than it looks. You don't have wall-penetrating X-ray capability, advanced radar, or other sensor suites.
[1] Frustrated, you seize hold of the panicking man that got knocked aside, and ask him red-eye to flesh-eye
WHERE IT IS. He
SCREAMS for several seconds at your cold metal frame, before suddenly seizing up, and going into cardiac arrest!
Start scavenging materials from the dead drones or from dead mechs
[3] You stay back for now, remaining near the dead bodies of the initial two drones -- one mostly intact, one reduced to slag and scrap. Despite the squawking distraction from your live and very naked bird-that-is-also-eyes, you peel off enough of the side armor of one of the scythe-drones to make a shield-like plate with, and rip off a blade to use in melee. The blade'll likely come in handy for taking things apart, too.
Metal shield & scythe blade equipped! Between the volleys of gunfire, your audio sensors filter out the curious words "Sir Astrochicken" from the human defenders.
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[1 (2 - 1)] Ongoing_Directives.bat's signal jamming utterly shatters the mechs' ability to launch a coherent assault. They fire a few token blasts at the fort, but with one of their heavy units down, and several scythers pulverized, they're already down by a sizable fraction of their force.
[6] Things don't exactly go flawlessly on the humans' side, either. One of the mortar emplacements gets
immolated by a lucky arcing shot from one of the centipede drones, this being a canister of what seems to be napalm! The crew begin dying a screaming death, which becomes instantaneous as their ammunition cooks off and the entire emplacement
explodes! [5] CIWLEAL is pummeled by stray pieces of metal shrapnel and jellied napalm, but is barely even fazed. The poor heartstopped man they're clutching also doesn't get hurt... more than he already is.
[6] Having seen the emplacement catch hell, the chief and his guard both dive for cover inside the fortified structure, and manage to evade damage as well! This puts them right on the scene when the three men crash through the now-open door inside -- the chief rolls, taking up his rifle again in the same motion, and squeezes off an accurate burst that rips through the leg of one of the crazed humans. His target crumples with a pained shout, dragging his knee along the floor.
[3] His associate is not so lucky. Caught off guard, the best he can manage is to struggle to his feet, and attempt to restart the heart of the panicking man with a hand taser he produces from his belt.
[3] It even works... barely. He shudders, letting out one last wailing cry before dropping unconscious. But at least his heart's weakly beating again.
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kittens, Ongoing_Directives.bat, and 333 are all at the
fort.CIWLEAL and Bob Mk III are
inside the fort.0cra_Tr0per, TricMagic, and Serrulata are at the
portal device.-----
ziizo (333) [Armed with Arc-Plasma Thrower]
The Canadian Kitten (kittens) [Covered in petrol-soaked bird feathers][Damaged visual sensor, bypassed with neural-grafted avian eyes (+ avian creature)][Metal shield][Scythe Blade]
Dustan Hache (Ongoing_Directives.bat) [Translator device]
King Zultan (Bob Mk III)
TricMagic (B.B.[8]) [Bionic arms, legs, chestplate & head]
NatureGirl1999 (CIWLEAL)
0cra_tr0per (dominustrex.exe) [Four powerful bionic limbs][Redundant bionic legs][Shotgun (8/8 shells)][Bolt-action rifle (broken)]
"Serrulata" (built by TricMagic)
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Author
Topic: Minimalist Robot AI Multiverse Adventures [On hiatus] (Read 11315 times)