[RFC][Story] Mission to Arcadia

[Dartz]

Time and Money.
Two things there're never enough of.
May 2024

-----

The compartment was shrinking around Jet Jaguar, alloy walls compressing around her. She felt compelled to crouch down over the radar control panel, her gaze focused in on the speaker set that allowed Lun to speak to the world outside her box.

After three days they found the leak that'd allowed aerosolised handwavium into the compartment. A window seal had been eaten by corrosion, allowing the handwash-spray in when it hit. In that time, things had been refined. The interface had been sealed away in its own protective housing, integrated into the cleaned-up control panel. It still wasn't perfect. The volume levels were way off. Lun forever sounded like she was shouting down the line at them just to be heard. And it occasionally needed to be slightly retuned as circuits heated up or cooled down and changed resistances and capacitances slightly.

But it worked.

It'd taken another two days to bash together an interwave hookup, using the analogue bus originally designed to handle signalling from the main targeting radar. It was still positively archaeological in capacity and capability, requiring some creative demodulation to get anything through.

But it worked.

It was a mighty mess of a system, but it was one to be proud of. It was one that earned Anika brownie points from the Underspace for even working on. It'd given Lun a chance to find her place in the world. It'd earned some quiet congratulations. It was, Jet knew, something that probably would've taken a professional hours instead of days, but it still felt like an achievement.

It was only a matter of time before 40 year old electronics finally gave up the ghost. It was only a matter of time before it all had to be removed anyway. She took a breath, taking one final moment to reconsider, before concluding that heels-first was the best option.

"I'm going to cut a long story short. We were planning on junking the whole computer. "

The cursor on screen pulsed as Lun pondered.

"I am to be shut down?"

It was just a simple question. There was no sense of panic, or anger, or fear, just a request for a fact.

"We can't do that. That'd be murder."

Her answer was firm. That was one thing she wasn't. Again, the cursor pulsed.

"So what do you plan to do with me?"

She sounded vaguely curious.

"Well, that's up to you," answered Jet. "We can't move the computer out of the ship without shutting you down. So that means we have to move you out of the computer somehow. That's doable, for someone with the right hardware." Somewhere in the back of her mind, she began to consider her options. "The question is, where do you want to go?"

Again, there was a pause. Longer this time.

"Anything I want? Why?"

She sounded tentative, a little unsure. But still curious.

"It's a duty," answered Jet. "It's the right thing to do."

Jet stood there, waiting her eyes attention focused on the speaker. She had to remind herself not to drum her fingers on the panel - Lun hated it.

"I miss the feeling of water," said Lun, calmly. "I would like to feel water on my skin once more." There was a pause. "I want to swim! "

It burst from the speaker. Jet drew in a sharp breath, taken off-guard by the sudden passion that'd energised the crackling voice. Lun was waiting for her answer, cursor pulsing ... Jet swore it was flashing faster, despite her onboard clock telling her otherwise.

"You want you own body?"

"You can do that?"

Disbelief.

"It can be done," Jet assured her, feeling herself begin to smile. It can be expensive, she thought. But if they could kludge together this mess of a system, maybe they could get some way to get her out? There were the spare parts for Anika and Shinji lying around.

It seemed possible.

"I want to be able to leave the ship," declared Lun, her voice clear and crisp from the speaker for the first time. "I want to be independent!"

"Great. I'll make the arrangements."

It seemed doable. People'd been doing it for years. And they'd had to have had a first attempt too.

-----

It was the room where Shinji Ikari had been born. It'd once been the powerplant engineer's office, with one wall given over to analogue gauges that used to report on the vital signs of the main generators. It'd lain idle for almost a decade sealed off, before being modified into something that could almost pass as a genuine mechatronics lab. Most of the equipment was second and third-hand, some of it even predating the Boskone war. But it worked.

Even if it did look just a little bit Frankenstein with the electric power hardware, the work-table with clamps and the spotlights, scanners and monitors attached to spring-balanced arms.

The three disassembled unused bodies in their storage racks completed the picture. They were nothing more than spare parts.

Jet rifled through the equipment, grabbing spare parts and data cables, gathering them in a heap on the table, following the downloaded directions as best she could. The things they didn't have, she thought she could substitute for.

There was more than a decade's worth of experience to dip into, out there on the interwave for the slurping.

And she was buzzing in a way that she hadn't in a long time, compelled by purpose, by a goal to reach for. She paced around the room, checking on the remains of the waved latex skin in the tank. It was still liquid. It filled the air with a rotten-eggs smell, mingling with the sharp tang of ozone and sweet scent of machine oil.

Anika stood in the corner, aghast at what she was seeing. It was living proof that Jet and Mackie were related on a level far more than just name.

"Okay....Okay," said Jet, thinking outloud as much as she was explaining things to her. "The basic method is that we get her running simultaneously on both processors, sort of like a distributed system." Her eyes had a glazed look in them, her mind focused on manuals and how-to's, filtering the noise from the signal as she skimmed through them. "As far as Lun's mind is concerned, they have to be part of the same system. Then steadily shut down components in the original hardware until the mind's running on the new system." She paused, stopping her pacing. An old USB cable was held in her hand, "Yeah. I think if we get both running slow enough to work with the bandwidth we can do it."

"Think?" said Anika, feeling just a little bit chilled inside.

Jet's eyes had a spark in them, shining bright. "I've never done it before, yeah. But there's enough tech manuals and papers. Everyone's got to start first time."

Even if it's with a living person, with the potential for horrific consequences if it went wrong? Anika chose to appeal to the more obvious defect instead.

"Jet. Do I float?"

Anika kept her voice mild. But to her, the flaw was obvious. Lun wanted to swim. Anika could swim about as effectively as a brick.

She saw Jet's dip in the madness place come to a screeching, clattering halt. She almost heard the crash as her train of thought rammed straight into the buffers at the end of the line, before smashing through and coming to a flaming halt in the street outside the train station

"Ah. Fuck it!" It bounced off the walls and seemed to smack her in the face. The energy drained from her body in moment as she took stock of where she was, and what she'd gathered together on the table. Anika stood there feeling just a little smug while Jet Jaguar tried to wipe a few strands of red hair off her face. A week without sleep had eaten into her in a way that just rolled of an electronic android like Anika,

Jet offered her an embarrassed smile, the last dglimmer of sparking energy draining with a sigh. "You're right." Her expression blackened as her mind finally caught up. "Ah. Bloody hell that puts us back over a month. We won't be able to fly Lun anywhere for at least that long."

"Can we move the schedule up? I mean, re-arrange a few things. Like this?"

Anika reached out to the project plan on the server, making a few quick adjustments before messaging it on to Jet. The cyber scanned through it, nodding gently. She compared it with her own schedule, grimaced when it came up as beyond a hundred percent full, and decided to bloody well do it anyway because there was no other option.

It'd fit somehow. If she could be in two places at once.

"Daryl's running training for the militia right now, she'll have to see it. She's busy this week already." She added her own suggestions on top of Anika's. " And if we're to get back on schedule you're going to have to have the spec' done on the sensors and comm's."

Anika pondered for a moment. "I could make it if we deferred the Knightwing's upgrade to next month. Good thing I don't need sleep." She giggled giddily, tapping fingers on the side of her head.

Jet gave her a tired look, her eyes half-lidded and almost looking through her. She brushed her hair off her face once more, before blowing a fatigued sigh through her lips. "With enough power I can get by. but..." she trailed off, mind still mostly focused on something outside the room. "And we still owe the Forge four grand on the last invoice."

"VF did Mackie. " Anika pointed out. "He...She'll be happy to do it on credit."

Both of them winced.

"Yeah, but we can't land at Kandor - we need somewhere we can dock the whole ship because that's two tons of computer, not a PC tower. So that leaves us two options. One who we owe money to." She raised one finger. "Or one who hates my guts." She raised another.

"Hmmmm." Anika pondered for a moment. "I'm stumped."

Jet took a step forward, eyes scanning around the room before quickly realising that none of it had any real value. It existed to fix Anika, nothing more. Anika herself sat up on the workbench.

"The comm's are on Justice money," said Jet." Maybe we can slip the bill for Lun to GJ? We can justify it that the computer system had to be removed for the mission anyway, and that was her price for letting us do it."

Anika gave her a dubious look, humming to herself. "I don't know..." she said. "When you put it like that..."

"There's nowhere else it'll come from. Ford just ordered them vulcan barrels. There's Daryl's medical bills until we get that prick before a tribunal. Kotono fitted her gym out. And your car - like thing."

Anika pursed her lips into a pout. "Zappo' was too cute to leave behind. And Ford promised to put the body on an old 911 chassis if I found one."

"I'll see what Arisia says about it beforehand. But if they say No we're going to have to come up with something to cover it all."

Somehow, despite the amount of money that went through the place, it always seemed to be at its scarcest when it as needed most. She gathered a list of things to propose.

----

Their body-armour and helmets were stained by bursts and slashed of red powder. Some had been shot in the chest. Others in the back. One'd been completely coated by a friendly blue grenade. Daryl Haur, with nothing but a borrowed helmet and goggles to go with her flight-suit, regarded them coldly.

"Alright everyone. I want a full report on how and why all of you managed to get killed, and, how if this had been a real mission, everyone on Frigga would now either be dead, dying or worse."

She waited. Within a heartbeat, the first excuse arrived from Emy, - a Nazzadi biomod who looked far scarier than she actually was personally.

"It's because Darren tripped me when I was going to shoot you and win!"

"Hey. I wanted that meal too y'know. It was a competition," he shot back at her. He was the tallest in the team.

"Did you ever think that if you all won, I'd have paid for everyone's dinner?" Daryl cut them both off. She was playing the full smoke and flame and fury act for all it was worth. "Remember. We win together. Or we lose together. There's no place for 'I' out here. This isn't KoFen. There's no room for fucking around. Everyone relies on us to keep them safe. Do you understand me?"

"Yes Ma'am!"

"We'll do laps around the range until you do. Then you'll wash the paint off your gear. Now got moving!"

She could see the look of pain in their eyes. It was the only way to make them learn. It meant running after them. That it covered her own training requirements was a neat little bonus.

"Yes Ma'am!"

They started to pick up their gear, grumbling, grousing, but getting on with it anyway. It was, after all, what being a reservist meant. Daryl waited for a moment before yanking one of them out of line.

"Hey what?" he blurted, stumbling for a moment before catching himself.

"Darren! Not you." Her tone was cold, and deadly serious. Her blue eyes had turned to ice, fuelled by cool anger. "Turn your gear in and get the hell off my range. You're out. There's no place here for buddy-fucking swine."

The man went white, his mouth falling open. "Hey, wait..."he stumbled over his own words, taken completely off-guard. His fist clenched a moment as he considered a bad option, before releasing as he realised it'd be a bad option. He thought about demanding proof, or accusing her of showing favouritism. It was just a stupid bell-test anyway...

"You betrayed a teammate for a free dinner." Her anger was cold. It hissed through her teeth as she spoke. "And don't you dare tell me it didn't count because there was nothing at stake. For people like you, the only thing that changes with the stakes is the price."

Daryl made sure her stare bored right through his skull, while making damn sure the others knew the magnitude of his fuckup. Only then did he think he really had fucked up, all for the offer of a free meal at the new cafe that someone'd opened up.

"The others failed a test of skill. You..."She drilled it into his chest with a fingertip...." failed a test of character. One of these can be corrected with practice. Go back to your supervisor, I don't want to see you here tomorrow."

She deliberately left him standing there before he could get a word in edgewise.

For the most part, the rest of the team got on with it. She'd made her point to the rest of them. The rest could learn the traditional military way. Through pain.

She decided not to tell them that five kilometres was made a little easier for her by the electro-responsive material the flight-suit was made from. She'd filed that away as a little bonus - something that made it easier to bear.

They finished up, cleaned up, then stored their gear for the next session with no further drama. She allowed her mind to switch back to normal mode while she went to get something to eat at that new cafe.

Then she checked her schedule, the proposed changes highlighted for her convenience.

That was when she got angry for the second time that day. She didn't even open a comm-line, she was going to find that cyber and yell at her in person.

A bloody week!

-----

Maybe a little excessive a response, for a local reserve anyway.

And three days seems like a fair number for someone with a decent idea what they're doing with the benefit of the interwave containing a decade or more of everyone else's experience to fill in the gaps or suggest new ideas. They might even have succeeded if Anika hadn't pointed out the obvious flaw. The one who hates Jet's guts is unnamed....

And yes. That is a Zaporozhets with a 911 engine, gearbox and running gear. And also serves as the explanation why they seem to have enough money to be short of it all the time.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?