And now some actual story
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Quote:Nene was already seated at her own console on Starbug, rifling through reports of the ongoing incident on Frigga.________________________________
“Frigga’s either closed their network off or it’s crashed. Their last message said they needed it clear for emergency use. People are spamming it pretty hard to get updates anyway. Anything I’m getting comes from fans with their own private nodes.”
“What’re they saying?” Jeph asked, mind more focused on not skipping the important parts of Starbug’s startup sequence. It was moments like this that the universe’s fine sense of irony lived for. It didn’t look like Jeph would be getting his manhood back any time
“A lot of it’s conflicting. Some people are saying there’re injuries, while another says there’s been no casualties so far. Then I’ve got an emergency team from Asuka being despatched at Alert 1, prepped for a mass-casualty accident.”
She scanned through the information far faster than any human ever could..
“Someone claims to have overheard a radio broadcast between the emergency crews that said it’d awakened and was going on a full-blown rampage. I’ve got a post from a popular blogger that thinks it might just be a stuck throttle but that doesn’t explain why they can’t just shut it down.”
“Tell me they sound like they’re getting the situation contained.”
“I can’t tell. There was an evacuation, but a lot of people are still watching anyway. I think they’re going to try and mount a rescue using Tachikoma and a Batmobile. Kohran Li’s involved.” Nene rubbed at both of her eyes Her lips were shaking, a few stray tears finding their way down her cheeks as she swallowed that persistent lump rising up her throat.
Shimmering eyes looked pleadingly at Jeph.
“I cant believe Mackie would wave something like that. It’s like, deliberately waking up a Largo or a Galatea or something.”
Jeph placed a soft hand on her shoulder. “We’ll be there within the hour. You can let him know just how you feel when you get there.”
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“Hurry. We’ve only got fifteen seconds.”
“You shouldn’t have stopped to warn those people.”
“It seemed like the right thing to do.”
“The right thing to do is complete our mission.”
“But our mission is to save lives this time.”
“By stopping the car before it reaches them we save more lives in the future than getting held up to save a few people now.”
“But someone told me a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?”
“What does that even mean anyway?”
“That it’s better to have something certain now, than to potentially have two of the same thing later because you may end up with none. What if we fail?”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“But in combat, sometimes the needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few. Otherwise you lose an army to save a squad.”
“This isn’t combat.”
“It’s a rescue. But it is reasonably similar. Our actions and decisions right now will ultimately decide who gets to live and who gets to die, which is no different from actions and decisions made on the battlefield.”
“But our objective here is solely to save lives while in combat the ultimate aim is to achieve some more important objective.”
“But isn’t the objective of combat ultimately to save lives in the long run by achieving objectives that prevent death in the long run?”
“So you’re saying that the situations are analogous and the same rules apply. “
“And we may achieve a greater good by stopping the runaway car and killing it’s occupant than by allowing it to continue and kill many people in the future?”
“Jaguar won’t be happy. She’ll be angry with us.”
“Why? If we fulfilled the mission?”
“Because the occupant of the vehicle is important to her. So to her the needs of this one therefore outweigh the needs of the many.”
“How illogical.”
“She may claim to be cybernetic, but she’s only human.”
“Sigh.”
A light sparked in the tunnel ahead. Dozens of camera-eyes wirled around to lock on in a second. Sensors scanned and analysed, producing a three-dimensional model that could be compared against the recognition database. A ping from the comm-circuit confirmed it a microsecond later.
“That’s DuPree.”
“We haven’t arrived yet!”
“We’ll be late!”
“Just a few seconds!”
The ride got off the throttle moments after becoming aware of their presence. All three hugged the walls of the tunnel to give him room to pass, reacting with a speed beyond human.
Headlights blazed in the tunnel, rounding the corner ahead riding a roar they immediately identified as a jet turbine at full throttle.
They spun to a halt inside the refuge
“Made it!”
“Tachikoma Unit. In Position Charlie 10”
They marked it proudly on the map. With an estimated 5421 milliseconds to spare.
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Lebia monitored through the think-tanks visual feeds.
“Lebia to all. Now!”
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Mackie saw them in the headlights, three abreast in the centre of the tunnel. The parted around him, making a whole just narrow enough for him to drive through.
“Tachikoma.....”
He felt something hit the car, and braced for the final crunch.
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Coordinating with themselves and Lebia the Three Tachikoma chose six points on the car’s bodywork.Targeting with pinpoint accuracy, they fired their wires as one, latching on to their individual target points.
The plan was simple on paper.
They would use their own mass to decelerate the car, paying out line at just enough of a rate so that the tension on the line accelerating them was just below breaking strain. Newton’s laws would do the rest.
Once they’d reach parity with the car and reeled themselves in, they would then apply their brakes, further decelerating the car to the point where the Tumbler could be latched on
The hard part was doing it without inadvertently crashing the car in the process. The slightest imbalance in forces would be catastrophic.
Data raced through their minds, miniscule adjustments made every millisecond as they danced along the razors edge above disaster. Flooded with data, they allowed the overflow to divert through Lebia. Corrections were processed near-instantaneously before being relayed back. Corrections were made in the blink of an eye, saving the driver from certain death before he was even aware of it.
Their brakes were already passing their usual maximum temperatures as they dragged the car down below 400kph. The regenerative circuits were already overloading. But it would be an easy fix.
Secure and stable, they activated their sensor arrays. Using technologies developed to find weakpoints in ship’s hulls they reached through the car’s fiberglass skin.
“Commencing structural analysis.”
It was steel - a proper spraceframe with enough redundancy to take the stresses. They calculated the loads imposed through various members, trading information and clustering themselves as they worked. They simulated three potential hookup points - each simulation ending in the catastrophic destruction of the car as it flipped up and the airflow caught under it.
Their third choice kept the car on the ground.
“Analysis complete!”
The information flashed back to the node on the Tumbler. Lebia confirmed it before sending the important parts on to Jet.
“Jet. Attach to these points on the car’s chassis.”
“That low?”
“The alternatives risk flipping the car.”
“Got it.”
She grabbed the first of the Tumbler’s three cables and pulled it with her as she swooped down low over the road.
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Jet Jaguar was - first and foremost - built to fly.
Instinct kept her in the air as she grabbed the first of the tow cables in one hand. Experience compensated for the drag of the cable on her hand and the shift in the centre of gravity. Sheer bloody nerve allowed her to skim over the surface of the road, riding ground-effect at 400kph with her chest centimetres from the surface as she closed on the rear of the Griffon.
If the cable clipped the road, it could drag her down under the wheels of the Tumbler. An pin-point balancing act kept it taught behind her.
To add emphasis, her foot skinned the surface with a shock that resonated through her frame and threw a shower of sparks back towards the Tumbler. That was going to be a pain to get fixed.
“Diffuser’s giving me some turbulence.”
Radiotelepathy was always a little uncomfortable, but she could handle it. So long as the data-rate was kept down below the headache-limit.
“Pull back and try again,” Lebia suggested
“No, I’ve got this.”
She inched forwards towards the the rear diffuser, keeping below the stream of scalding jet eflux being left by the Griffon’s engine. It tore the air above her head. She reached for the point marked on her HUD. The cable pulled back.
She tugged on the cable. “A little more,”
“How much?”
“As I pull...”
Jet’s visor popped open to allow her to get a better look with her natural eyesight. She was staring right down the throat of the diffuser, aiming for a frame bar right above it. The heat was beginning to soak through her armour, tingling inside the core of her body.
She rode the turbulence, making instinctive corrections as she reached for the target. Jet passed the cable around it, before hooking it tightly back over itself. It latched into place with a hefty clank. She tested it with a quick tug to make sure it was secure.
“That’s one!”
Now for the second.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?