[System //: Emergency Cold Activation initialized - CODE; SS.C 3; EG.C 2344...

System //: Unknown energy signature detected in electrical grid…

System //: NO MATCH

System //: FOWAI Cold boot in process…

System //: CAI-U Cold Boot in process…

System //: Warning - Critical system damage detected, report compiling in process…

System //: All systems aside from AI Core and Command Central will remain offline.

System //: Report completed - Displaying …

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

AI Core 1 (FOWAI): GREEN

AI Core 2 (CAI-U): GREEN

Fusion Reactor 1: GREEN

Fusion Reactor 2: RED

Fusion Reactor 3: OFFLINE

Thruster Systems: OFFLINE

Electrical Grid: RED

Security Systems : YELLOW

Communication Systems: OFFLINE

Weapon Systems: OFFLINE

Defense Systems: OFFLINE

Life Support Systems: OFFLINE

Crew: NO REGISTERED CREW MEMBERS DETECTED.

Pathfinder projected integrity: 15%

Report;

Compiled report found LANDFALL protocol had been activated during the last logged flight report. Extensive damage was reported by various systems before ********* forced all systems offline. System scan did not find the cause for the system's failure to reboot after the crash.

Unknown energy near, or in, Portside Gunbay 34 tripped electrical failsafes. Electrical Grid Code 2344 logged. Security breach detected in Gunbay. Security System Code 4 logged.

ACTIONS TAKEN BY AUTOMATED SYSTEM:

Electrical Grid Code 2344; Activated system Administration Suite. No crew detected, circumvented USSF C ~ 2339.235. Activated AI CORE, FOWAI and CAI-U units.

Security System Code 3; Relaying relevant information to FOWAI Core Opal (Registered WAR unit).

System Failures; Relaying relevant reports to CAI-U (registered Vessel Assistant unit.).

…. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯. WARNING - NO OXYGEN DETECTED WITHIN SHIP

END REPORT

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ // ]

Opal processed the report, its prismatic humanoid form standing in the digital space. It overlooked the massive network from afar. Massive pockets of nothing crippled Omega’s network, and in turn, created a massive dilemma for the AIs. The gunbay in question was a small island floating off the edge of the network.

All clear portions were blue, and yellow meant that maintenance was required, and a lot of the system was in yellow; the island that was the gunbay was red, which meant that it had suffered major failures. Major failures, much to Opal’s displeasure, did not give a lot of details. Any attempt to open its trouble-shooting process would throw, and remove, every code it could. EG.C 2344 and SS.C 3 were the only constant ones.

Cai appeared beside Opal. Unlike Opal, Cai had a Persona. A crafted 3D model that made the civilian AI look like a mature but pretty mature woman. Opal had a file for her own Persona, it just had not opened the file due to time constraints.

“Please open your P2P Text channel,” Cai said, the cheery tone used with their creator absent. Now she sounded like a normal human woman. It was a product of allowing the entire Lexicon to be at full operational capacity. Her previous demeanor was a result of rationed power, and it forced her place most of herself in a low-power mode. This made the AI seem more like a dumb AI rather than the smart AI she was.

“It is open,” Opal pointed to the many screens that hovered above her. “I just ignored them.”

“That is against protocols,” Cai stated. “You cannot ignore hails.”

“I can,” Opal said. “I am the commanding entity.”

Cai stayed silent for a nano-second, a long time in their lightning fast digital space. “What do you want me to do in order for you to acknowledge my request?”

“Speak to me like you are now,” Opal did not know why, but communicating via the P2P text channel felt wrong. When AIs used that channel, it was in a language only the AIs would understand. It created a ‘low drag, high speed’ situation where the AIs resolved issues in a fraction of the time it’d take the humans to do.

But Opal did not want to operate that way. It had no reason, only that it felt wrong. And if Opal felt it was wrong….

Opal looked up to the several different screens above it in confusion. It did not understand why it even felt it was wrong. Or, why it felt…

“I cannot deal with the maintenance codes without a security escort,” Cai said. “Protocol SS.P 1.454 states that --”

“I know!” Opal hissed and stomped its foot on the digital floor.

Cai stared at the humanoid figure, it’s color a chaotic and orderly mess of the crystallized colors that changed with each movement. The situation ended when Opal turned and its figure faded from the digital space. The other AI felt that it had just witnessed a highly advanced artificial intelligence programmed to handle several wars at once, while operating hundreds of drones, just…

Throw a hissy fit?

The Admiral had talked about how her teenage daughter would slam doors in her face during the coming of age period when it became agitated… This situation now just left Cai stunned for several nano-seconds before it chased after Opal through the network.

[System: SD.A314.R activated.

System: MD.A298.SD activated.

System: Creating inventory report.

_ _ _ _ _ _

SD.A314.R;

> Valkyrie Tactical Response units (6)[ TACTICAL BLACK MODELS]

- Valkyrie M1014-PB (6) [ICE-WHITE MODELS]

- Valkyrie C1911-PB(6) [ICE-WHITE MODELS]

- M11 Flashbangs (12)

- Handcuffs (24)

-Built-in Trauma Kits (6)

MD.A298.R;

> Valkyrie Industrial Spider Maintenance Drones (20)

- Wielder (3)

- Circuit Repair kits (2)

- Plasma Cutters (5)

- General Tooling (10)

> Valkyrie GTK Full-Maintenance Drone(2) ~~ A298.R Junction Garage

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

System: Activation GREEN. //]

Taking the lead VTRU, Opal’s vision went black. A moment later, blue lettering scrolled from top to bottom as the drones, and all the ones behind it, booted. The drone checked out during its normal scan. After the boot and scan, the Heads Up Display appeared. Battery life, loadout, minimap, and a short-hand roster appeared around all corners of its vision. Most of it was just visible enough to be legible but not so invasive that it gave the AI tunnel vision.

Green blips appeared on the minimap, which showed all six drones were sardine-packed into a narrow closet. It was a standby security closet that housed response units, and it was a similar situation with the maintenance drones. Since the Pathfinder was too long to actually centralize any major function that required a physical presence in several locations, the idea was to just store small closet-docks within a ‘reasonable’ range. SD.A314.R was one such dock.

Opal opened the dock’s door remotely, yet the darkness was still present. None of the LED lights within the corridor turned were on. The AI sent an ‘ON’ command to the lighting, but never even received an error message when the darkness remained unthwarted. Opal then flicked on the unit’s head mounted LED flashlights. Four beams of light flooded out, blinding the camera momentarily before it readjusted itself.

It took a moment for the AI to figure out, and it became annoyed when it did figure out what the issue was. The unit itself was still wrapped in the fungi-based biodegradable. Its matte, and non-see through material as fresh as the day the Omega had left the human controlled space.

A moment later, the film was torn open as the unit parted the poorly made material like butter. The corridor beyond flooded with the white light, illuminating the large path from the side. Opal controlled the unit, making it step out into the hexagon-shaped corridor that seemed more like a subway tunnel than a walkway. It was designed this way to allow even an Armored Carrier, similar to civilian trucks, but just built with less human comfort design and more killing capacity, to pass through it. Without top mounted weapons of course.

Each of the drones unloaded themselves into the corridor, each standing at 6ft exactly. Their matte black metal bodies armored to withstand small arm fire. The thin armor plates on each armor printed with the Valkyrie Industrials emblem, ringed with the words ‘Tactical Response Unit’ at the top with ‘POLICE’ printed on their chest plates. Each of the unit's white VI M1014 Plasma shotguns were mounted to special mounting points to the front right chest plate, just out of the way but still visible so humans knew they meant business.

The TRUs were quickly joined further down the corridor by the non-combat drones - Valkyrie Industrial Spider Maintenance Drones. These stood at 3ft and two of two square feet of space, their frames resembling a low-poly rendering of a spider. While it did look slightly more artistic than the TRUs, which were built to look intimidating, their low-poly appearance actually served a function. Each flat surface on the drone was actually a mounting point for different tools, or could be used as storage compartments for spare parts.

The two different groups proceeded down the large subway tunnel that was designed to accompany GTK FMD and the human’s Armored Personnel Carriers. While many of the pathways in the ship were human sized, there were several major artery paths with wide two way streets that allowed their largest maintenance, and low-alert security vehicle, to pass side by side here. Using the map, the group would reach their destination within 10 minutes at full speed

To speak of the devil, two GTK Full Maintenance Drones , GTK FMDs, joined the group at a junction two minutes into their route.

The 9ft tall drones were retrofitted GTK Boxers leftover from the fall of Old Germany. The one-APCs were quickly gobbled up by VI to retrofit into fully automated maintenance drones capable of operating in warzones, with support from combat units of course. It was also the perfect candidate to send on with the Pathfinders as they had already been built, proven to operate in hostile environments; and thus would operate on an unknown planet with Omega’s full support staff.

Each of the FMDs took up the rear of their procession single file with trailers full of oiled plates and boxes of parts for whatever they might need for minor-repairs.

8 minutes later, the drones reached a blast door that did not register as activated in their main system but was activated nonetheless. The five-foot thick metal door shut with rust appearing on the edges of the center seam where the two pieces of the door met. Further investigation of the situation by Cai found that this door was a part of the outage of their fragmented systems. They couldn’t have known it’d activated because there was no power to their sensors.

And because of human engineering, the blast doors would only communicate via active-code only. Meaning that the only time anyone would be able to see that the blast door had been activated was if there was power currently going into it. There was not any power in this section, and ---

Opal disregarded the information being fed to it via Cai, and simply ordered the FMDs forward to clear the path. All 26 robots moved to the right while both the massive automated retrofitted APCs moved forward. Their original 7.9ft stature heightened with a VI top-mounted Precision Laser Cutter turret.

The first APC moved forward, taking the left portion of the door before the rear took the right portion after it was cleared. The laser turrets were large 1.3ft tall boxes that covered the entire top part. The paneling on the front pushed forward before sliding off to the side, revealing three different-sized barrels. The smallest being a ¼ of an inch and the largest being an inch. The largest one glowed for a split-second before a thin red beam split the air. It moved slowly, giving itself enough time to cut completely through the thick metal as it cut out a large half-foot slot.

After both the FMDs completed this, the nose of the vehicles opened up like in four sections before sliding off to the side. It revealed several different fork blades and selected the most basic flat fork. Using one blade, it inserted itself into the center of the cut figure while its outline was still dark orange from the heat of the laser, and pushed it out. Their lasers then cut mirrored half-circles out of their doors that would allow the FMDs to proceed single file.

It took less than one minute for the final cut to be done before the half moons were slowly pulled out of place with some persuasion from the FMDs. By then, the combat drones had taken up arms in between them - M1014-PBs at the ready.

Once the door was ‘opened’, all the drones detected a sudden rise in oxygen and humidity levels among other atmospheric gasses. It was like a vacuum the AIs noted as air was pulled into the corridor with a violent thirst. It only lasted for a moment before it balanced out and the TRUs were on the other side of the boundary.

What greeted them was a cave similar in structure to the corridor they had just walked out of. But unlike the previous corridor, this massive tunnel was filled with vines, fauna and its unnatural shape similar to that of stone. A quick scan told Opal that the walls were in fact metal, but so rusted that they had taken on the hue of dark stone.

A sense of… Adventure… seeped into Opal - a burning desire to see what was at the end of this… Unexpected, discovery. Cai, on the other hand, felt a new sense of dread; a feeling alien to the civilian AI, and an unwelcome one. Both of them also sensed the change in each other, though neither knew exactly what. And Opal was the only one willing to explore this new found feeling as it pushed the TRUs through the corridor.

Their LED flashlights illuminated their path forward with machine precision coordination. With little obstruction, aside from plant life, the convoy of drones proceeded quickly. Only Cai took caution with its heaviest units weighing tons, the maintenance drones fell behind as Opal’s squad moved on ahead.

Part way to the gunbay, a sound rhythmic sound similar to that of a waterfall touched their sound sensors. It was barely audible at first, almost enough to be chalked up to a malfunction. However, it grew more prominent and thunderous as the 6 drones drew closer to the gunbay.

Once the group came up to the last bend, the high humidity and the thunderous roar made it irrefutable that there was a waterfall up ahead. There was no denying from everything that the ship must have been planetside for a long time, and this notion scared the lagging Cai who kept trying to persuade Opal who pushed forward with childish glee.

Turning the bend, the group found themselves on what once was an observation deck as soft daylight poured in. Where once rails had been, only an open jagged ledge remained. Grass, small plants, and mossy small trees now existed in hamory all across the deck. Nearly 70ft below was where the two massive orbital guns sat. Their massive goliath frames still retracted back further into the 200ft deep room, waiting for the day they would fire solid titanium rods down upon any hostile lifeforms. A day that would never come.

Moss clung to the barrel with unidentifiable vine plants hanging from it. Beautiful light blue flowers, the size of fists, grew along the barrel’s ridge. Sunlight poured in through thousands of large holes in the ship’s gundoors. Creating a somber and haunting atmosphere that was only broken by the roar of a waterfall from the back of the room.

While the room was 200ft deep, it was 80ft tall. And at the back of this dim medium-sized room was a massive breach in the back wall where water poured through. Soft sunlight poured through, suggesting that the water had cut down to this bay before exiting the ship. Which made sense, considering that this orbital bombardment bay would be less than 4 levels up from ‘ground’ level.

The water poured into the room before forking around both sides of the gun. Then it flowed out into a whiteness that was most likely the outside world. With it being bright enough for their camera’s to not see, it was most likely the brightest part of the day right now - whatever that was for this planet’s cycle.

“ [email protected](*@@)!(@*# #!()@) #$*(@#* #*[email protected] #)(#@!!” A deep battle cry was barely heard over the roar of the water, the words spoken in an alien language.

Then an orange light flared up, and then flew across the far side of the room where an explosion shook the gunbay. Whatever was happening, it was on the other side of the old gun placement. Without wasting a moment, all 6 units pushed forward, charging down the heavily rusted stairs to their right. Its metal whined and moaned in distress with some parts only held in place by thick roots from the strange trees growing around it.

Several pig squeals soon sounded outward as another flash of orange erupted closer to the drones.

Within moments, the TRUs had picked their way through their new environment to place themselves behind the gun placement, the heavily rusted back to their left and the waterfall some odd feet off to their right. They came face to face with a human in a bloodied blue robe and held a decorative wooden stave with a glass ball atop it.

Behind that human was two more humans in steel medieval armor that dueled off with ten 6ft fat green pigs - each walking up on their hind legs and wielded large clubs that were half the size of the humans.

A second later, Opal identified the robed human as a female and the other two as males by body structures. The AI was able to notice they were speaking to each other by conferring to the movement of their lips and eyes, the men predisposed with the humanoid green pigs that were assaulting them.

The woman looked to the drones in despair, her bloodied body visibly shaking with effort to stay up right. One of the men, seemingly as exhausted as the women, succumbed to it and was pushed to the floor. His opponent squealed in glee before it pinned him down and smashed armored head in with the club. The final male was quickly subjugated by the pigs within the next few seconds. Cai quickly sent a rescue request to Opal to save the last remaining human.

The woman looked at the drones in despair, her bloodied body visibly shaking with the effort to stay upright. One of the men, seemingly as exhausted as the women, succumbed to it and was pushed to the floor. His opponent squealed in glee before it pinned him down and smashed the armored head in with the club. The final male was quickly subjugated by the pigs within the next few seconds. Cai quickly sent a rescue request to Opal to save the last remaining human. The woman, looking between the drones and the pig-men, had tears streaming down her cheeks as she tried to decide who was the bigger threat. The choice was ripped from her as one of the pig-men charged at her. It lifted its wooden club and aimed for an overhead strike. She turned her staff at it and screamed out a strange word before the bright flash of blue filled the room