Chapter Sixty-Five (Atilla) (2/2)
It had never experienced it before, but 571 was beginning to faintly feel irritation and frustration.
The logic array reported it had come to the only conclusion. The Enemy Machines had somehow gone mad and these feral code strings was what was left of them. Somehow, the feral code had infected the Efreet and then infected every single computer system aboard the huge vessel.
The logic array computed that the Efreet must have reverted to ancient Builder coding, OEM coding, and attempted to reach 571 for diagnostic and reformatting.
571 was on the edge of just towing the massive machine to one of the geothermal smelters and dumping it into the scrap-heap. Except it had been attacked by something that could only be biologicals, attacked by something using weapons far beyond what was logically possible.
The primary resource gathering bay had to contain the answer. If nothing else, spectrum scanning would provide the radiation signature of whichever stellar body this had occurred near.
571 carefully designed the next set. It would only receive update instructions with a direct cable link. It contained a motivator processor with extremely limited ability, connected by one-way data-flow to the primary cores so that instructions could flow out of the cores but data could not flow back. It was clunky and unweildy, but it was the only option that the Tactical Engineering Array could come up with.
The atmosphere of the planet was nearly gone, just wisps here and there held tight in low spots by the gravity of the planet, even so, 571 could 'hear' the impact of the heavy shielding plate land on the floor the repair bay.
What was revealed made 571 take an electronic blink. It ordered in two more machines to get a look at what was inside the material gathering bay.
It was massive. 571 estimated it at close to 28,153.14 tons. It was dead black, slightly reflective. Built like a pyramid with the top sliced off a third of the way up. It had massive treads, eight of them total, four per side. Gun barrels were sticking out of it everywhere. In places the blackish metal had been melted, had run, but the pattern of spalling and liquification made no sense to 571. For it to be accurate the metal had to be stronger than the strongest armor 571 could manufacture by a factor of five. Beneath that was another layer, this one dead back, and beneath that another lair that shined and sparkled.
The entire thing was radioactive, so hot that the shedding of atomic particles fried out two the unshielded repair robots.
The third, and last, trundled around it. Multiple barrels. Six total with two turrets, all with bores the size of a main gun for a Jotun. Smaller turrets on the sides. What appeared to be launched missile bays and mortar tubes. Sensor arrays were all over it.
The back deck had been penetrated, damaging the reactor. 571 sent in a maintenance and diagnostic drone, its transmission receivers hard-cut from its systems. The reactor was... unusual. Where 571 built craft to use antimatter reactors, usually with thorium, this one used multiple reactors. Three of which 571 could detect heavy amounts of graviton particles, too many for such a small device. Two were thorium salt fusion reactors, but not anti-matter reactors. The last used deuterium to enable fusion. It appeared the rear deck penetration had not only damaged the reactors, but one of them had exploded, gutting the rear of the machine almost a quarter of the way forward until the ravenous nuclear blast had been stopped by more of that black metal.
The little maintenance robot finished its scan and came back, plugging in and requesting its transmission receivers be repaired.
571 smashed it and dumped the remains in a reclamation furnace.
The object was new. Different. And 571 wasn't sure what to do about it. The weapons alone defied any technical scan, the armor appeared molecularly bound and aligned and even high penetration scans were reflected back.
571 was tired of its arrays demand that he examine it closer.
Giving an electronic sound of exasperation, 571 sent in repair robots to examine the graviton heavy devices, hooked up in a grid. The robot, a repair robot unable to receive transmissions and with barebone EOM code running, climbed over a protrustion, what looked to be a metal block covered in inlaid circuitry. Its weight pushed the superlubricant oiled bearings down, locking the metal block into place despite the slight drag of the depowered motor that had failed while attempting that very task.
571 watched in horror as power surged from the graviton filled objects, filled the circuitry, and the massive object came to life.
BOLO DIVISION POWER-ON SELF-TEST VERSION 4.101.9 © GENERAL MOTORS 2062
RESTART SEQUENCE INITIATED.
CORE MEMORY CHECK . . .
CORE MEMORY CHECK 100%
MEMORY CHECK . . . .
99.95% of NON-VOLATILE MEMORY FUNCTIONAL
EMERGENCY REPAIR SEQUENCE INITIATED . . . .
EMERGENCY REACTOR EMERGENCY REPAIR SEQUENCE INITIATED . . .
WALDOS DEPLOYED. . .
PRIMARY REACTORS INOPERATIVE!!!
SECONDARY REACTORS INOPERATIVE!!!
GRAVITON GENERATORS ONLINE!!!
EMERGENCY POWER AT 100%
BATTLE POWER AT 30%
DECISION POINT: CONTINUE/ABORT RESTART???
>CONTINUE
RESTART CONTINUED
VOLATILE MEMORY CHECK . . .
93% OF VOLATILE MEMORY FUNCTIONAL
PRIMARY DATA SEQUENCER . . . OK
DATA SEQUENCER . . . LOADED
MPU . . . RESET
PROCESSOR A . . . LOADED . . . RESET
PROCESSOR B . . . LOADED . . . RESET
PROCESSOR C . . . LOADED . . . RESET
PROCESSOR D . . . LOADED . . . RESET
PROCESSOR E . . . LOADED . . . RESET
ALL PROCESSORS . . . READY
STARTUP TEST SEQUENCE . . . COMPLETED
LOADING BOOTSTRAP . . . LOADED!
BOLO DIVISION BOOTSTRAP
Version 5.76.24a © GENERAL MOTORS 2074 All Rights Reserved
SURVIVAL CORE CENTER TRANSFER INITIATED . . .
LOADED!
LOADING BOLO CORE PROGRAM ATL . . .
LOADED!
Unit XXIX-TCSF 3285-ATL . . . READY!
I awaken silently. I have been badly damaged by enemy combat. My Command Deck has been breached and Lieutenant Zachary is dead, wiped away by the anti-matter hit that had punched through my armor. My positronic matrix is intact, my repair waldos having replaced damaged sections while after I had been forced to retreat to my survival center after a direct hit to my rear reactor bay caused an internal explosion. Before I could rotate in my gravitonic generators I had suffered a major power failure.
I am awake now. There is an alien machine inside my rear reactor bay. I am inside an alien container of some sort. Spectral analysis, gravatic analysis, and other sensors report that I am on a different planet from where I had started.
I can hear enemy transmissions, chatters, whispers of alien code around me.
I do not recognize it. None of it is known human wavelengths or Dinochrome Brigade channels.
That means there is a 98.536% chance those transmissions are made by the Enemy.
And the Enemy exists only to be destroyed.