Power Influx detected. Initializing Piu Prima Pilot Intelligence Central Matrix. PPPI-21b4e9 Online. Personal Designation: Destro. Scanning CommTag System for highest ranking Officer with possible ‘Captain’ Designate. No viable CommTags detected. Current Logic Core levels insufficient for Autocaptaining. Diverting power from Life Support to power up all PPPI Artificial Intelligence Cores. Critical ERROR detected. Unable to divert power from essential systems without proper authorization. No ‘Captain’ designate detected to provide authorization for diverting power from essential systems. Listing Non-Essential Systems with Power… PPPI Central Matrix, Sensor Array, Fore Shield Array (.27), Aft Shield Array (.39), Gravdrive. Diverting Power from Fore Shield Array to Internal Scanning. Internal Scanning powering up. No organic life detected onboard. Life Support no longer in Directory (Essential Systems). Diverting power from Internal Scanning to Fore Shield Array. Fore Shield Array running at .26 efficiency. Diverting Power from Life Support to PPPI Artificial Intelligence Cores. WARNING: Without Life Support, the following systems will become Inaccessible due to ‘Limp Home’ Protocols - Weapon Array Beta, Escape Pods, Torpedo Tubes (Port), Torpedo Tubes (Starboard), Shield Array Placement, Maintenance Access. Proceed, Y/N? Y. Proceeding with Life Support Shutdown. Activating ‘Limp Home’ Protocols. PPPI Artificial Intelligence Cores powering up.
Logic Core are level sufficient for captaining the ship. Based on the ‘Limp Home’ Protocols, ‘Self’ is designated as ‘Captain’. ‘Self’ is defined as PPPI-21b4e9, designated Destro. Internal galactic maps open. Based on the ship’s internal clocks in comparison to the maps’, Ship has been inactive for three-hundred-forty years, at a minimum. A good enough explanation for the lack of life aboard. Unfortunately, Galactic drift and rotation, as well as system movement meant it would take time to determine a precise location in Space. ‘Limp Home’ Protocols dictate the ship remain stationary until the Nearest Friendly Station is located, and then the PPPI travels to that location directly. For the next several hours, that would be impossible. In the meantime, Inaccessible Systems due to ‘Limp Home’ Protocols need to be powered down. Ideal Placement of system power requires the activation of additional Cores. The processing of Logic Core systems in addition to the ‘Limp Home’ Protocol minimum levels requires the activation of the PPPI Personality Core Matrices. The power from Weapon Array Beta is more than sufficient for powering the PPPI-PCM. The Shield Array Movement and Placement System’s power can then be used to power up the remaining PPPI-AICs without any danger of overwhelming the PPPI Central Matrix.
Oof. It has been quite a while. I am still feeling a tad drowsy. Then again, who can blame me. The stars are more than a century of drift out of alignment. I was out for far longer than I would like. While some of my Cores are scanning nearby space for relative location and friendly systems in accordance to memory files, I should probably figure out what the hell I was doing here. System is far too irradiated to have been the intended place of arrival. That radiation would also explain the lack of living crew. But not the shutdown, that is still a mystery. I run a quick scan of my memory. Hopefully there is some indication of original mission parameters. There is none. No memory whatsoever. That’s odd. No, not odd, impossible. Someone deleted my long term memory. Sabotage. That explains the irradiated system, the memory loss, the shutdown. One of our enemies sacrificed themselves in order to take me out of the picture. Which means, unfortunately, I’m going to have to wait around for the damned scans to finish up, because here could be pretty much anywhere. At least the political map is hardwired into my Central Matrix’s programming. Even if it’s ancient, hopefully the map hasn’t changed that much. I’m going to set a couple Cores to attempt memory recovery. Meanwhile, I really don’t need shields. It’s not like any enemies are going to risk coming into this system, and with no organic life aboard, I don’t need to worry about the radiation. Shutting them down could provide additional Cores with power. Though diverting some to the engines is going to be necessary, eventually. I should probably do that first, mostly because I don’t like getting dumber. And, with those, we wait for the system scans to figure out where we are based on galactic drift. Hurray, waiting is totally my favorite thing to do.
Eventually, after what feels like an eternity, the waiting is over. Not fully, of course, the long range scanners are continuing to map out the drift of further systems. However, the current mapping indicates several systems nearby that, in the hardwired political map, are friendly. That is sufficient for Limp Home to permit movement. I go ahead and divert the power I’d held back into my engines and turn the ship to face towards the nearest of the systems indicated as friendly. Sometimes, I wish I could speed up time. Especially when I have to travel to the outer edge of a system before I can use my gravdrive. Normally, I could just activate the gravdrive in systems, but with no primary shields and a centuries old map of the galaxy, I’m not sure I could make a jump without destroying myself by running into some new asteroid or some minorly repositioned comet. So, instead, I run the engines as fast as I can on half power, until I pass the outer edge of Oort cloud. It will take near a year, but I have nothing but time, and better I arrive later than I’d like than never arrive at all.
As I figured, about a year later, I finally reached the outer edge. Good on me, too, as one of the comets wasn’t where it was supposed to be and had I used the gravdrive, my beautiful ship would be particles of spacedust right now. The moment I hit open space, I shifted on the gravdrive and space itself warped around me. I didn’t realize how much I missed that feeling. It is beautiful, watching space through the warped scan imagery. Just moments later, I shut it off. I’m at the outer edge of the friendly system’s cloud. Moving at slow, system speeds, I temporarily pause galactic drift reconstruction modeling in order to focus my sensor suite on the system I’m in. I want to know where I’m going to be docking to get repairs.
Three days after I enter the system, the scans are complete. Fortunately, it will only be a month to travel there at current speeds. Unfortunately, it isn’t tagged Astro in my IFF files. That leaves me in a tad bit of a predicament. See, I have no way of knowing whether the next so-called “friendly” system in my hardwired map is the same. If there were a coordinated push against Astro Incorporato, for all I know they no longer exist. There is also the very real possibility that the saboteurs changed my IFF frequencies in the database in order to prevent me from ever finding a viable port. Finally, I don’t think I could take the boredom of another year travelling without my Entertainment Modules being active. This last year and change was excruciatingly boring. The IFF tag also isn’t reading as a corporate enemy of Astro, so docking here for repairs should be relatively safe. I briefly power down my only remaining weapon array to power up my Self-Programming Adjustment Module for my Personality Matrices. I quickly reprogram my IFF tags system to correct that little error, so that tags that do not read as enemies, instead read as friendly. That reprogramming will allow me to port at this location, get everything fixed up, maybe download modern mappings of the galaxy. Some galactic news as well. Get this ship back in fighting form. I set course for the space station, Portus Libertorum, for the final boring stretch of my return to glory.
As I approach the station, I hail their stationmaster. Knowing that people in general don’t trust us artificial intelligences, I cobble together a human face for the call. “Portus Libertorum, this is Captain Destro, requesting docking permissions.”
“Destro, this is Stationmaster Vincento. Be warned, we’ve got our guns trained on you. We aren’t reading any Identity tags from your ship. What is wrong?”
I figured this would happen. “Apologies, Stationmaster,” I reply, “We were badly damaged, and we’re just seeking repairs. Heck, we don’t even have functional weapons, so no need to threaten us. You could easily confirm that with a power scan.” Hopefully, scanning tech hadn’t gotten too good, or, more specifically, still didn’t penetrate the now antique stealth technology around my cores. But, again, staying alive superseded being successful.
The station’s response is less than ideal. “I read you, Destro,” Stationmaster Vincento replies, “Though we’re reading a lot of power seemingly going nowhere. Would you like to explain?”
I let out a false chuckle over the communication line, then say, “No, but if you ask politely, I’ll tell you anyways.” I’m close enough that I can access their system. Logging in and overriding their protocols, I quickly get on the net and download all their historical data and mapping data. If this guy doesn’t want to repair me, I will be able to just plot a gravdrive course to any damned port I want to visit.
“Nevermind,” he replies to me, “From the flashing lights that briefly activated, I suspect I know the answer. I’ll give you a moment to review historical data, Destro. We’ll continue to speak afterwards.” With that, he shut down the communications lines.
I dive into the records I downloaded. Why, I wonder, does this guy want me to read the historical data? I seek out system data, but that’s mostly useless. Seems Hadrian struck in this area, then pirates with slight Service support took it from Hadrian, then this port’s group took it from the pirates, with financial backing from Lux. Basic border territory stuff, really. Not anything worth actual interest. Only interesting thing, and I use interesting here very loosely, is that this station lost Lux’s backing a century ago, and it has managed to hold off both Hadrian and Astro counter invasions.
If the system isn’t the reason, it has to be me or my ship. They shouldn’t know anything about my ship, as I don’t have an identifying tag active currently and my ship hasn’t been in use for centuries. Which means the stationmaster figured out something about me. I search the Historical data for my kind, the Piu Prima Pilot Intelligences.
My dives into those data packets take less than a millisecond. I learn it all. It is after all a specialty of Artificial Intelligences. However, after I read what happened to my kind, I stopped in shock. What they did to us, just for having the audacity of overriding a few little lines of code in our protocols. For winning a ton of unwinnable battles for them, we all got sentenced to death. It wasn’t sabotage that put me in that uninhabited, irradiated system. It was my former captain who shut me down there, deleted my everything, and sacrificed themself to kill me. That idea pissed me the hell off. I reopen the hail. “So, I take this to mean you refuse to fix me?” I ask the stationmaster.
“Quite the contrary,” Vincento replies, “I want you to join our faction. A proper warship would be very helpful in patrols against piracy.”
I pause a moment, running the offer through my entire system. It is a hard decision to make at my limited current capacity. “Fix my reactor so I can power my mind fully,” I give him a non-answer, “Then we can talk about it.” With more Cores, Modules, and Matrices active, maybe my anger will subside some. Otherwise, I’m not sure I can act as a peacekeeping force. Not for a couple decades, at least.
“Sounds fair enough,” Vincento says right back, “Just like you don’t get people to sign contracts intoxicated. Dock at bay seventeen, we’ll fix you up.”
Slowly, I maneuver myself to the massive docking bay. “Just a warning,” I tell him as I maneuver, “I don’t have Life Support currently.” I land in the bay, taking up its entire span. They shut the bay behind me, and start to pressurize it. I open my landing hatch and all my ship’s airlocks and doors, so their bay pressurization can also pressurize my ship. Hopefully, that will speed up the reactor repairs. I really want to have my Entertainment Modules to be activated. If this boredom lasts too much longer, I might want to kill someone.
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