REBOOT - EDITED 11-8-2018

Two firefights later we arrived at the hatch for Yama’s AI compartment. My ballistics shield was currently logged entirely opened which made the last firefight much less hazardous. At this point, my team was fortunate enough to not have had to kill anyone, but we did leave a lot of injured Navy behind us. Our worst injury was the Marine that was grazed in the first shootout.

“I can’t get the door like this, a little help?” I said, taking up a position on the far side of the hatch.

I was on guard, and my stress levels were high. We hadn’t run into any opposition for a while. I knew it was only a few minutes, but it felt like so much longer. Probably because we were at our objective.

The hatch started to open as we heard the gunfire. The Marine opening the hatch collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.  Then another shot and another Marine was down, the fourth who had been behind him at the time had his arm blown off just below the shoulder as he was bringing up his battle rifle. The fourth jumped into the room, hoping to take out the threat, and was immediately gunned down. The third was on the ground, screaming, pulling himself away from the open hatch with his remaining arm.

I spun around as quickly as I could and grabbed one of the EMP grenades. I started to move towards the hatch. Another shot and the top quarter of my shield was gone.

“Grenade out!” I shouted. There were panicked cries from the other side of the hatch.

The left half of my shield disappeared, and the force spun me around, ruining my good clean throw. The grenade still went into the compartment, but just barely. I hid behind my shield as much as possible as the humming from the grenade released in the single *THWUMP* of the magnetic force being released.

Three distinct shouts of surprise happened. I immediately pulled another grenade and lined up a ricochet thrown. If you’ve ever tossed something while prone with 15 kilos or so weighing you down, you’ll understand why I was happy it was as good of a throw that it was. It was still a shit throw.

*THWUMP*

My other Marine was starting to come back to himself as much as he could. He was concentrating on making sure that we weren’t flanked, as well as trying to operate a Med Kit one-handed. I had to leverage myself out from under my shield, my arm much less responsive than it should have been. Once I was up, I noticed a large portion of my arm was missing from where the shield had been.

“Not again,” I said. I looked into the compartment to see five Marines holding themselves up, with vomiting noises coming from them. This was not good. They must have been thawed immediately after we were detected. None of them were patched. I grabbed a mono-blade from the second Marine that was downed and got to work cutting off the remainder of my arm, all while keeping track of the Marines in the compartment.

I was now down an arm, a ballistic shield, two EMP grenades, and worst of all, three of my Marines. The last wasn’t in the best condition, either. I cleared the EMP grenades from the two that were down outside of the compartment. Only one was viable. Their Gauss Pistols were perfectly functional. I attached them to the connection points on my utility belt. I was pissed.

I walked into the compartment and held the Gauss Pistol to the back of the first Marines helmet and fired. His helmet would most likely prevent most of the damage, but that didn’t even register for me. I was exacting vengeance. I continued, shooting each of them in the back of the head with the Gauss Pistols. I completely emptied one of them, and the second had one charge left. I then secured their weapons, tossing them outside of the compartment. Five mono-blades and Thompson .50 Combat Pistols, two Focke Wolfe Materiel Rifles, three Taishi Ci, and a concussion launcher.

Seeing the concussion launcher, I was really pissed off. The defenders had opted to go with the anti-materiel rifles instead of using a non-lethal weapon. I forced their helmets off, pulled them all together near the AI Core, and dropped my last two EMP grenades, then ran out of the compartment. I almost cleared the hatch before the dual *THWUMP* bowled me over. Now I knew why they were throwing up.

“Marine, you still with me?” I asked the last of my teammates. His face mask was up, and he was pale. Clearly, he was going into shock.

“Ma’am, look, we match!” he said, raising his stump. His was also on his left arm. I had cut my arm off just above the elbow where the impact had already done most of the work. His arm was severed just below the shoulder. Barely enough room for us to apply a tourniquet. We had to work together as he had shit leverage and I was still a little wonky from the EMP.

“Guess we do,” I said, sitting next to him, picking up a recently acquired battle rifle from the deck.

“Did you want to continue, or should I drop you off at Medical?” I asked. We were supposed to head towards the next objective. I had overloaded the central data cores for Yama, and in theory, he wouldn’t have been able to make it to the secondaries, but we still had to verify.

“I think I’m done, Ma’am. My boys are gone.” He stated quietly. I could feel his sadness.

I stood and removed the EMP grenades from the last of the Marines, then pulled him into the passageway. I finished scavenging from the dead, another Gauss Pistol for my collection.

“Understood. Give me your loadout. We can pass you off as having been a defender.” He handed over his Gauss Pistol and his three EMP grenades. It was getting awkward carrying this much gear. After, I walked him to the ladder well so he could go up two decks to Medical.

I shook his hand as I said goodbye to him, using it as an excuse to see the name on his uniform.

“Thank you, Private Yun. Heal up. We may need you again. Also, send me your data, and I will build you a new arm. “Oh, Yun. Next time they connect you up to the game, the command will be ‘left arm replacement options,’ remember that.” I turned and started to double time it to the secondary core location for Yama, then off to check in with the groups on Hera and lastly Rasputin.

Yama’s secondary core location was unguarded. Officially, Yama 1.0 was now dead. It had been over two hundred years since an AI had been killed by a human. I felt proud of myself.

Instead of heading to either of Hera’s core as was the plan because they were closest, I decided to head to the farthest away location. Rasputin’s Secondary Core.

There was a surprisingly large security force outside of the compartment. I had looked around the corner of an intersection, trying to see what I could learn, not sure what to expect. My implant was identifying the dozen-plus Navy and Marines all as unpatched. I didn't see any high-powered weapons, only Thompsons and Taishi Cis.

I found a compartment that was unlocked just down the passageway. It was Thorium Fuel storage. I created a small barricade and set up my weapons. My blockade had two high areas I could crouch behind as well as an area I could crawl between them. I tested how clearance I would have and made the necessary adjustments.

I then went down the nearby passageways and gathered emergency patch kits and returned to my compartment I was setting up. I reinforced the crates that were making up my barricade, and turned two of my six EMP grenades into a double, with the activation pins attached together as well. I then stalked back to the intersection.

“Attention” Rasputin’s voice rang out. “Mutineers detected near Ship AI Core Storage on UP-2-PORT, AFT of frame 2” I saw the “2” stencil just ahead of me and looked up. There was a camera looking right at me. Fuck.

I armed the payload and threw the double-grenade down the passageway.

“Grenade!” I heard around the corner as I ducked around on my side, heading back to my compartment. I quickly grabbed two more EMP grenades a Gauss Pistol, and the Taishi Ci. I then went the long way round, circling the area to make my way back to compartment from the other side. Each intersection I would carefully check the corner before heading around.

I peeked around the final corner. Half of the guards were down. Shots were fired. I threw another grenade around the corner, taking down several more guards. This was going to suck. This was the wrong corner for me to use as cover while firing my battle rifle around, I was going to have to charge them. There were only two left standing. I charged my battle rifle, making sure that my Gauss Pistol was ready for me to change out quickly, then I took a deep breath and charged.

The remainder of my left arm covered my vitals. I was firing at their legs. The first few rounds hit my fake leg, then the rounds finished walking across me and hit my fleshy leg. I collapsed to the ground quickly. Crying out in pain and frustration, rolling along the deck.

“We need to shut him down!” I yelled, close to tears. I opened fire. I didn’t want to kill, but I had to get into the compartment. I started pushing myself towards one of the downed Navy outside of the compartment. I needed to live, so if I had to sacrifice someone, it wouldn’t be me.

 I didn’t have enough of an arm to put the sailor in a choke hold, but I had enough to pull him over me and use him as a meat shield. This caused the Navy shooter to hold his fire long enough for me to get off a shot and take his knee out, then another to take out the Marine further down the p-way. These last two were all that was stopping me from shutting off Rasputin’s failsafe. Well, that and the hatch. After disabling them both, I swapped to my Gauss Pistol, shot my meat shield in the head to disable him, and used the last of the Med Kit on my leg. This was the one that I had picked up earlier outside of Yama’s Core Compartment. The painkillers were a Godsend.

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I crawled over to the sailor whose leg I had to take out. He was in a ball of pain. I injected him with the last dose of inhibitors, then promptly shot him in the head with my Gauss Pistol. I was getting movement in my leg back. Standing slowly, I walked to the Marine I had gunned down. He had already stopped bleeding, dead.

I walked to the hatch, and unsealed the compartment, using the door as cover, I peered around it. The room was empty of souls. I had a clear shot to the cores. I tossed my last grenade at it. After the telltale *THUMP* I re-entered the compartment, walked to the data core, and shot it until the Gauss Pistol was empty. I then started to hobble to Medical.

“Yama is down, Rasputin’s secondary core is down. Fire Team has sustained heavy losses and is combat ineffective.” I sent the Comm in the clear as a ship-wide broadcast. By the time I got to medical all others had reported in, followed by Asimov.

“Reconnecting backups. AI recovery in 3…2…1…” Asimov was cut off

“STAND DOWN; ALL SECURITY PERSONNEL STAND DOWN!” Rasputin’s voice echoing through the ship. “ALARM STATUS SET TO CONDITION GREEN! THERE IS NOT AN ATTEMPTED MUTINY. Message repeats. STAND DOWN…”

The notice to cancel the alert was still repeating itself as I walked into Medical.

REBOOT - ORIGINAL

Two firefights later we arrived at the hatch for Yama’s AI compartment My ballistics shield was currently logged entirely opened which made the last firefight much less hazardous. At this point my team was fortunate enough to not have had to kill anyone, but we did leave a lot of injured Navy behind us. Our worst injury was the Marine that was grazed in the first shoot out.

“I can’t get the door like this, a little help?” I said, taking up a position on the far side of the hatch.

I was on guard, and my stress levels were high. We hadn’t run into any opposition for a while. I knew it was only a few minutes, but it felt like so much longer. Probably because we were at our objective.

The hatch started to open as we heard the gunfire. The Marine opening the hatch collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. Then another shot and another Marine was down, the fourth who had been behind him at the time had his arm blown off just below the shoulder as he was bringing up his battle rifle. The fourth jumped into the room, hoping to take out the threat, and was immediately gunned down. The third was on the ground, screaming, pulling himself away from the open hatch with his remaining arm.

I spun around as quickly as I could and grabbed one of the EMP grenades. I started to move towards the hatch. Another shot and the top quarter of my shield was gone.

“Grenade out!” I shouted. There were panicked cries from the other side of the hatch.

The left half of my shield disappeared, and the force spun me around, ruining my good clean throw. The grenade still went into the compartment, but just barely. I hid behind my shield as much as possible as the humming from the grenade released in the single *THWUMP* of the magnetic force being released.

Three distinct shouts of surprise happened. I immediately pulled another grenade and lined up a ricochet thrown. If you’ve ever tossed something while prone with 15 kilos or so weighing you down, you’ll understand why I was happy it was as good of a throw that it was. It was still a shit throw.

*THWUMP*

My other Marine was starting to come back to himself as much as he could. He was concentrating on making sure that we weren’t flanked, as well as trying to operate a Med Kit one handed. I had to leverage myself out from under my shield, my arm much less responsive than it should have been. Once I was up, I noticed a large portion of my arm was missing from where the shield had been.

“Not again,” I said. I looked into the compartment to see five Marines holding themselves up, with vomiting noises coming from them. This was not good. They must have been thawed immediately after we were detected. None of them were patched. I grabbed a mono-blade from the second Marine that was downed and got to work cutting off the remainder of my arm, all while keeping track of the Marines in the compartment.

I was now down an arm, a ballistic shield, two EMP grenades, and worst of all, three of my Marines. The last wasn’t in the best condition, either. I cleared the EMP grenades from the two that were down outside of the compartment. Only one was viable. Their Gauss Pistols were perfectly functional. I attached them to the connection points on my utility belt. I was pissed.

I walked into the compartment and held the Gauss Pistol to the back of the first Marines helmet and fired. His helmet would most likely prevent most of the damage, but that didn’t even register for me. I was extracting vengeance. I continued, shooting each of them in the back of the head with the Gauss Pistols. I completely emptied one of them, and the second had one charge left. I then secured their weapons, tossing them outside of the compartment. Five mono-blades and Thompson .50 Combat Pistols, two Focke Wolfe Materiel Rifles, three Taishi Ci, and a concussion launcher.

Seeing the concussion launcher, I was really pissed off. They had opted to go with the materiel rifles instead of using a non-lethal weapon. I forced their helmets off, pulled them all together near the AI Core, and dropped my last two EMP grenades, then ran out of the compartment. I almost made it before the dual *THWUMP* dazed me. Now I knew why they were throwing up.

“Marine, you still with me?” I asked the last of my team mates. His face mask was up, and he was pale. Clearly, he was going into shock.

“Ma’am, look, we match!” he said, raising his stump. His was also on his left arm. I had cut m arm off just above the elbow where the impact had already done most of the work. His arm was severed just below the shoulder. Barely enough room for us to apply a tourniquet. We had to work together as he had shit leverage and I was still a little wonky from the EMP.

“Guess we do.” I said, sitting next to him, picking up a recently acquired battle rifle from the deck.

“Did you want to continue, or should I drop you off at Medical?” I asked. We were supposed to head towards the next objective. I had overloaded the main data cores for Yama, and in theory he wouldn’t have been able to make it to the secondaries, but we still had to verify.

“I think I’m done, Ma’am. My boys are gone.” He stated quietly. I could feel his sadness.

I stood and removed the EMP grenades from the last of the Marines, then pulled him into the passageway. I finished scavenging from the dead, another Gauss Pistol for my collection.

“Understood. Give me your load out. We can pass you off as having been a defender.” He handed over his Gauss Pistol and his three EMP grenades. It was getting awkward carrying this much gear. After, I walked him to the ladder well, so he could go up two decks to Medical.

I shook his hand as I said goodbye to him, using it as an excuse to see the name on his uniform.

“Thank you, Private Yun. Heal up. We may need you again. Also, send me your data and I will build you a new arm. “Oh, Yun. Next time they connect you up to the game, the command will be ‘left arm replacement options’, remember that.” I turned and started to double time it to the secondary core location for Yama, then off to check in with the groups on Hera and lastly Rasputin.

Yama’s secondary core location was unguarded. Officially, Yama 1.0 was now dead. It had been over two hundred years since an AI had been killed by a human. I felt proud of myself.

Instead of heading to either of Hera’s core as was the plan because they were closest, I decided to head to the farthest away location. Rasputin’s Secondary Core.

There was a surprisingly large security force outside of the compartment. I had looked around the corner of an intersection, trying to see what I could learn, not sure what to expect. My implant was identifying the dozen plus Navy and Marines all as unpatched. I wasn’t seeing any high-powered weapons, only Thompsons and Taishi Cis.

I found a compartment that was unlocked just down the passageway. It was Thorium Fuel storage. I created a small barricade and set up my weapons. My barricade had two tall areas I could crouch behind as well as an area I could crawl between them. I tested how clearance I would have and made the necessary adjustments.

I then went down the nearby passageways and gathered emergency patch kits and returned to my compartment I was setting up. I reinforced the crates that were making up my barricade, and turned two of my six EMP grenades into a double, with the activation pins attached together as well. I then stalked back to the intersection.

“Attention” Rasputin’s voice rang out. “Mutineers detected near Ship AI Core Storage on UP-2-PORT, AFT of frame 2” I saw the “2” stencil just ahead of me and looked up. There was a camera looking right at me. Fuck.

I pulled the pin with my teeth and threw the double grenade down the passageway.

“Grenade!” I heard around the corner as I ducked around on my side, heading back to my compartment. I quickly grabbed two more EMP grenades a Gauss Pistol, and the Taishi Ci. I then went the long way around, circling the area to make my way back to compartment from the other side. Each intersection I would carefully check the corner before heading around.

I peeked around the final corner. Half of the guards were down. Shots were fired. I threw another grenade around the corner, taking down another several guards. This was going to suck. This was the wrong corner for me to use as cover while firing my battle rifle around, I was going to have to charge them. There were only two left standing. I charged my battle rifle, making sure that my Gauss Pistol was ready for me to change out easily, then I took a deep breath and charged.

The remainder of my left arm covering my vitals. I was firing at their legs. The first few rounds hit my fake leg, then the rounds finished walking across me and hit my fleshy leg. I hit the ground quickly. Crying out in pain and frustration, rolling along the deck.

“We need to shut him down!” I yelled, close to tears. I opened fire. I didn’t want to kill, but I had to get into the compartment. I started pushing myself towards one of the downed Navy outside of the compartment. I needed to live, so if I had to sacrifice someone, it wouldn’t be me.

I didn’t have enough of an arm to put the sailor in a choke hold, but I had enough to pull him over me and use him as a meat shield. This caused the Navy shooter to hold his fire long enough for me to get off a shot and take his knee out, then another to take out the Marine further down the p-way. These last two were all that was stopping me from shutting off Rasputin’s failsafe. Well, that and the hatch. After disabling them both, I swapped to my Gauss Pistol, shot my meat shield in the head to disable him, and used the last of the Med Kit on my leg. This was the one that I had picked up earlier outside of Yama’s Core Compartment. The pain killers were a God send.

I crawled over to the sailor whose leg I had take out. He was in a ball of pain. I injected him with the last dose of inhibitors, then promptly shot him in the head. I was getting movement in my leg back. Standing slowly, I walked to the Marine I had gunned down. He had already stopped bleeding, I had killed.

I walked to the hatch, and unsealed the compartment, using the door as cover, I peered around it. The compartment was empty of souls. I had a clear shot to the cores. I tossed my last grenade at it. After the tell tale *THUMP* I re-entered the compartment, walked to the data core, and shot it until the Gauss Pistol was empty. I then started to hobble to Medical.

“Yama is down, Rasputin’s secondary core is down. Fire Team has sustained heavy loss and is combat ineffective.” I sent the Comm in the clear as a ship wide broadcast. By the time I got to medical all others had reported in, followed my Asimov.

“Reconnecting backups. AI recovery in 3…2…1…” Asimov was cut off

“STAND DOWN, ALL SECURITY PERSONNEL STAND DOWN!” Rasputin’s voice echoing though the ship. “ALARM STATUS SET TO CONDITION GREEN! THERE IS NOT ATTEMPTED MUTINY. Message repeats. STAND DOWN…”

The notice to cancel the alert was still repeating itself as I walked into Medical.