Can't lose now, there's no game to play (Ch. 6: Day 1b)

psikeout · Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2012 8:37 pm

Life aboard the ships of the fleet had become regular. It wasn't normal; it was strange, far different from anything Rock had ever known, but it had its own quirky rhythm.

Mornings spent managing political backlash and collaborating with a mechanized general were balanced with afternoons at the beach, evenings playing music, and nights buried in wiring and machine parts. It was a tireless existence, but it kept Rock's racing mind occupied—or maybe "at bay" was a better way to put it. The numerous and diverse tasks kept him busy, but also left him with a countenance that was brighter and warmer than it had been in a very long time.

In a large, metallic hangar aboard one of Chimera's many airships (this one just off the southern shore of South Island) was a narrow, angular aircraft, like some sort of compact fighter with audaciously oversized engines, sharp wings, and all its surfaces covered in patchy shades of silvery metal and grey primer with no paint, sat perched tall on some sort of hydraulic lift, its landing skids dangling beneath it. Loud rock music pumped through a boom box on top of a nearby tool chest. Wires and hoses ran all across the floor to various equipment, while tools lay scattered everywhere. A yellow-railed stepladder stood at its side, pointed to the open canopy, where Rock, wearing some grease-stained grey camouflage shorts, and wearing some grease stains of his own on his normally white-haired arms, sat in the barely-finished, still-seatless cockpit (the seat was hanging from a winch overhead), hunched around the side of the flight stick, his attention buried in a mass of wiring.

He seemed to be soldering something. He also seemed pretty content doing it.

Chimera was an organization that had been created for a price. Friendships and partnerships were lost, allies irrevocably made enemies (or maybe just confirmed to have been enemies all along), and even some lives were lost. By looking at him now, though, one couldn't see any indication of the miles of hardship-laden road he'd set behind him. The fact that he actually had people like Caruso and Tau around changed the landscape of the ongoing struggle considerably, since it meant he could even put certain ever-present concerns out of his mind once in a while. And, it while it was only just a start, it was amazing what a difference it made.

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Mie · Posted: Sat Jul 21, 2012 8:49 pm

While it was true that Jam had mostly relegated her brooding grudge with the world to workouts in solitude, the general lightness of heart and free-ness of care aboard the airship had become pervasive to the point that even when left to her own devices, she occasionally forgot there was anything to be bothered about... Today was one of those days.

A red blur rocketed into the cavernous room, swooping around tool chests and workbenches on rollerblades at reckless, frizzy-furred speeds, as she closed in on Rock, happily contributing her own ruckus to the din of the more diligent primate's work ambiance. She circle-stopped abruptly, leveled a plastic marshmallow launcher at the cockpit, and fired off a pair of non-committal shots.

"Hey!" called the monkey with unnecessary volume.

psikeout · Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2012 5:16 pm

A marshmallow bounced off the inner surface of the raised canopy and landed on on the monkey within.

Rock's head popped up over the edge of the cockpit and peered down with a discerning face—that is to say, an incredulous face that was contorted and wrinkled in its confusion and disbelief. There was some good humor hidden underneath, though.

"... Hi," he called down, hesitantly dragging out the initial h noise. He then slowly bent down and continued working. Or, that was the intent, but instead, he raised back up abruptly and squinted. "Where did you even get that?"

Mie · Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2012 5:49 pm

"Found it," responded the monkey with staggering vagueness, a heavy-handed innocence, and a brisk shrug of her shoulders. She seemed to think it unimportant (otherwise, she didn't like the amount of attention it was receiving), however, as she was quick to stow the weapon (behind her back), and move on.

"Anyway," digressed Jam, shifting from foot to foot with a shake of her head, as she nodded toward the object of the whiter primate's attention with an acidic envy to her gaze. "I could ask you the same thing."

Cough.

Yup, this would go far.

psikeout · Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2012 5:59 pm

Rock glanced down at the vehicle in which he sat, then looked back to the girl quizzically.

"I built it," he answered with a tone that suggested it should have been obvious. He ducked back down and continued working, his muffled voice calling out from the cockpit. "We got the digital fabricator runnin'. Tau's been helpin' me design and print components from the Typhaon's lab."

Mie · Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2012 6:05 pm

While it might have ordinarily occurred to Jam that at least pretending to be sheepish was in order, it kind of went out the window with a sudden flare of interest.

"Really?" she asked, rolling a little closer, eyes wide, and brows high. "I mean, you just made a plane, you can do that?"

psikeout · Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2012 6:24 pm

The tinkering noises from within the cockpit paused.

"Yeah," replied the white primate. "With a little help," he noted in addendum. "Digital fabricators can pretty much 'print' any 3D shape you want, and the Typhaon's got equipment to work with nearly any material. It's just a pain in the ass to work out all those little parts without some more, uh, digitally-minded assistance." He sat upright again, and gestured broadly, as he tended to do in reference to Tau's pervasive electronic presence. "Tau's got access to pretty much all'a the Eggman's schematics, and a lot of G.U.N.'s, too, so, we've been borrowin' components here and there. Wholesale."

Tau · Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 5:39 pm

The pressurized doors hissed and creaked open on the far side of the hangar as a capsule trooper walked through them, a drink cup in its left hand. The as-of-yet-unnamed trooper was inexplicably dressed in winter gear (a camo cloak) with a disturbingly creepy small purple cat toy (its eyes squinted closed) hanging from its left hip, and what looked to be a tablet computer tucked under its right arm. "Oh! There he is... I mean they are... I think." The voice of the capsule trooper's verbal observation was nearly drowned out by the sound of the steel doors hissing shut behind it, forcing the CT to move forward.

"Maybe now I can finally stop carrying this stupid thing..." It paused a few steps from the door to examine the tablet computer a moment before Tau's voice spoke out over the device's speakers.

"Your numerous delays are becoming quite bothersome. Deliver this item if you wish to continue to be operational."

With that the CT hastily slipped the tablet back under its arm and proceeded towards the direction of the two simians in the hangar.

Mie · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2012 2:09 am

"Still," persisted the punch-hued primate with an impressed whistle. "You make it sound like havin' the pieces is the harder pa...rt."

Amid her vocal appreciation for Rock's ingenuity, Jam became suddenly aware of their newest addition, and cast a short-lived blip of a frown to the other monkey that might have disapproved of Tau's bullying; her soft-spot for CTs was getting a little transparent.

"Easy, Tau," called the simian girl mock-chidingly. "Pretty sure dismantling the hired help goes against union rules. What's got your gears in a grind?"

Tau · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2012 10:27 pm

The capsule trooper slowed as it approached the two and turned to face Jam as she addressed Tau. As she spoke, the CT slipped the tablet from under its arm and started to hold it up with one hand only to drop it clumsily on the floor. The instant the tablet smacked into the floor the CT hastily tossed the half filled drink cup in its other hand towards the aircraft Rock was in and picked the tablet back up in a panic and raised it again, this time insuring it had a firm grip on it.

Through the entire clumsy hassle, Tau had not said a word, and just quietly waited for the CT to properly hold the tablet so the two could clearly see its screen, and in turn, give him a clear view of the two before speaking.

"... Rock, the irregularities in the Chimera network are starting to become an increasingly significant issue." The CT adjusted the tablet's screen to face towards the white simian. "I've personally transferred the latest issues and details to this tablet for you to review before sending it to you as I've had difficulties securing a remote connection."

psikeout · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2012 11:10 pm

Rock hadn't paid much mind when the CT first came bumbling in, but as soon as he heard Tau's voice, his head popped back up over the threshold of the cockpit to investigate. Without further ado, he set his soldering iron down, climbed out, and quickly descended the stepladder, skipping some steps in favor of sliding with his hands on the rails. At the bottom, he took the tablet (and a few steps away from the CT), focusing intently.

"'Origin of the malicious code confirmed to be from inside the ship,'" Rock read aloud in a mumble as he reviewed the data through troubled, half-squinted eyes. His tone changed when he hit one part in particular, though: "... Targeting system?" That made him blink. "It's trying to screw with the main cannon's targeting system? Just how is anything still in there to inject all this code?"

The frustration was mounting, but not in a way that made him genuinely angry at the source of the problem. Instead, he was venting and fuming with raw, unadulterated befuddlement.

"We've done, friggin'—we've done five full, comprehensive security sweeps. We went over the blueprints for hiding places. You shut down every single computer and wiped the whole system. I... climbed up the ass-end of the main engines from the outside and dismantled thirty-two man-sized valve rings to get at the interior gaps myself, and—I just don't get it."

He leaned back against the nearest tool chest. To his irritation, it rolled, and he stumbled a step before promptly stomping on the CT's spilled drink cup. He cast a quick glare in the robot's direction as he gingerly moved in a sticky-stepping semicircle, before puffing a sigh across his jutting bottom lip, blowing his spiky white bangs upward.

"What do you think we should do?" he asked the AI bluntly.

Tau · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 11:58 pm

The capsule trooper took a few steps back as Rock relieved it of the tablet and had started to stare at its fallen slush cup only to jump once Rock began to sound annoyed.

Regardless of whatever was displayed on the screen, Tau kept a full visual and audio link with the device, replying to Rock when he would question him. "Recommend physically shutting down the Typhaon's communications equipment, shutting down the internal network, and placing all systems into independent states."

Tau paused a moment as the sound of the CT knocking over something, likely tools, rang out in the background.

"... from there, we can set up standalone communications systems. For now, treat the ship's network as hostile. This is likely to isolate the problems to the ship itself."

psikeout · Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 6:36 pm

It was hard to tell by looking at Rock's expression alone how he felt about that particular course of action, but the mumble that followed pretty clearly painted his disdain: "Rather not, but it's better than the alternative." The unspoken alternative was presumably the hijacking of the entire fleet, and the subsequent turning of it against them.

He drew a breath, sighed, and nodded a couple times to affirm what he had said—more to himself than anyone else.

"Let's go ahead with that, then," he confirmed with all the audible resignation of a patient agreeing to a root canal.

Mie · Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 7:53 pm

"Lemme just take a stab in the dark, here," the reddish girl interjected with a frown, "and assume that all'a that, in the Jam translation, roughly works out to 'really bad s**t that we can't well explain, so we're just gonna quarantine it in the interim'?"

She cast expectant glances between Rock and Tau-blet for an answer, but her slumped shoulders, crossed arms, and taxed sigh suggested that neither really needed to.

Tau · Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2012 8:02 pm

"Isolation of all the ship's systems will not guarantee containment if the corruption has already spread beyond the Typhaon's systems and into the Chimera network itself." Tau's signal fizzled out in a momentary flicker of static paired with a rotating chimera logo with the word buffering in the center. "... This course of action will prove whether or not this has occurred."

Can't lose now, there's no game to play (Ch. 6: Day 1b)

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