30. Outpost Mk II_Building Home

OUTPOST MK. II - EDITED 11-9-2018

After the initial day of building out the first barracks and the hole in the ground where we would place the Gravitic Generators, we had another meeting where we decided to build all the infrastructure underground. We had been getting hit with severe solar radiation and were fortunate that the tents allowed for protection.

Once we had the airlocks on the barracks built, the threat from the radiation was gone. The threat of vacuum was mostly gone as well, and next up was the power generation. The CBs and I were helping the M1k33s get everything together, and Senior Chief Watson was helping get the cabling clean and connected to the generator. The CBs and I may have had the physically more demanding job, but the Senior Chief had it worse. Once we had all the heavy lifting done, Jamesson and I tried to help the Senior Chief, but he soon shooed us away because we kept tangling up his work.

Instead, we started working on the Command Post. The Command Post would end up being two stories above ground. One of the stories was just shielding from radiation; the other was a ground level entrance with a full decontamination airlock.

“Asimov, how is that VI coming?”

The Command post was complete with the installation of the Crystal Cores, all that was left was to implant the Intelligence to the cores. Before we could do the implant, however, Asimov needed to finish building the seed.

“Almost ready for the install. I found a nice little bug that could cause the VI to misidentify FoF data.”

Well, that is a good thing to fix. It would be somewhat problematic in the event of an attack for our anti-personnel guns to turn on us.

“Understood, let me know when that is complete. I’ll be helping prep some storage areas.”

The CBs were busy creating warehouses and making sure that they were stocked with physical supplies from the mining drones. All electrical systems had already been patched by the Senior Chief, so he was taking it easy. I had asked him to research additional power delivery options, then sent him and his NI a file that had been given to me by Observer.

The Gunny and Janssens had been scouting around the area to determine where additional anti-personnel ambush sites could be set up. We needed to consider the set up for comms and scanners soon. An idea was brewing in my mind on that. After all, why have a single area when the entire asteroid could be set up to scan?

As our 18-hour work day came to an end, I called a quick meeting in the galley area of our barracks. A full-blown cafeteria had been built, but with only the team there, it felt empty, even if we were all there at once. Hell, using the barracks was bad enough. It was large enough for an entire company. And we were digging out the area for a third one.

“I wanted to bring an idea of mine to all of your attention and get some input on it. What if we took the craters around the asteroid and turned them into sensor and comm arrays? Most of the impact areas already have the desired shapes needed.”

I let that sink in a while as I used the terminal in the barracks to buy everyone dinner. I had the XP to burn, even after leveling myself to Lieutenant level 3. Ceres boon was coming in handy. For 3 XP per day, I could get everyone well fed on something other than rations. Even after the buying of supplies for the prototype weapons, I was still well off. I double checked my data while everyone was stewing over my revelation.

Name:

Jax,

Danni

Rank:

O-3

Titles Available:

Lieutenant; Engineer; Host; Inventor; Crewman

Equipped:

Lieutenant

Experience:

1803

To Next:

7500

Level:

Rate:

Advanced Cyber Wetware and Warfare Officer

Modifications

Fully Custom Left Arm; Hephaestus Industries Right Leg

Enhancements

Advanced Neural Weave (Prototype)

Skillsets

Engineering; Rifleman; Sentry; Astro Mathematics; Espionage; Diplomat; Tactician

Specialization

Drone and Cyberware Designer

Strength

16 (11)

Stamina

Health

Agility

12 (8)

Manual Dexterity

13 (13)

Intelligence

Concentration

Learning

Equipment:

Recon Helmet MK-VI; Duty Uniform MK-II (beta); Cybernetics Kit MK-II

Engineering Kit MK-III; Utility Belt; Mono-blade; Thompson .50 Combat Pistol (2); Clips 6; (1) Rounds 6/7; (2) Rounds 7/7; Taishi Ci Battle Rifle**; Magazines, 9; Rounds 45/45

“Well, ma’am, as long as it doesn’t interfere with our timetables, I don’t see it as being an issue.” Torres shrugged. I was glad she was on “my side” these days instead of holding a grudge over her DC teammate.

“Yeah, I agree with Torres.” The Senior Chief was responding. “I mean, if we had one day left in the build and you were springing this on us, it would definitely be an issue, but as I see it, we have more than enough materials thanks to the huge amount of mining drones, and those drones can be recycled when not needed, so…” Senior Chief Watson ended with a shrug.

“Yeah, the only difficult piece is scouting the asteroid. Ya know, so we all know where we will be setting up.” Janssens joined.

“Already done,” I said truthfully. “We got detailed visuals on our way in.”

“If I may, Ma’am?” Riviera interrupted.

“Shoot.”

“Well, let’s start with just the basic six sides. No sense in over-engineering while we are on a time crunch.”

“I get where you’re coming from. If we do the initial builds along the axis, then we can patch in the rest later?” I finished up making sure I knew what he was getting at.

“Exactly. That way we still have full spherical coverage, but at the same time, we aren’t getting stuck in the mire.”

“We’ll go with that then, Riviera. Good call. We can add at a later time.”

I brought a fully movable holo up of our asteroid.

“We are here. Let’s select which craters we use for the initial build out.”

We selected a primary, secondary, and a tertiary site for each of the axis that would give us the most coverage. It was surprisingly difficult to decide where we would set up the axis at. With only us as a reference, it was a completely free build. In theory, we didn’t even need to use the outpost as a point on the axis. That night, before I racked out, I sent out the mining drones to carve a path through the asteroid to the locations selected.

“Construction Complete.” The voice of the VI rang out through the Command Post.

We had just finished installing the VI into the command post. It would have full functionality as if it were a piece of Overlord if we allowed Overlord to be recreated. At this point, with only Ark-5 as one of ours, there really wasn’t a need to link the AI to synchronize all commands and data streams between all AI.

“Welcome and thank you,” I said to the VI. “Do you have a name you wish to be known as? You will be the primary VI in charge of outpost operations. Do you understand what that means?” I wanted to judge the intelligence level that the VI was at.

“Please call me the Primal Queen of Blades, or if that is simpler for your weak human mind to remember, I will also answer to Kerrigan.”

Great, we built up one with an Ego.

“Okay, what about Queen of Blades? Will that suffice, Primal Queen of Blades?” I’d only play along with her so much.

“I suppose that will suffice. As to your other inquiry, that means I will have full control over this facility but may be overridden by the fleshy meat sacks that are taking up residence. Basic control over environmental, defense, scanning and power resources. On that note, I am showing a pitiful series of buildings. What have you Humans been doing?”

Five days in and we had a VI with a chip on her shoulder. Fuck.

“Kerrigan, we do not have plans to subjugate you. That is always an option. Please play nice. Here are the plans for what we have been thinking of for future construction. The Environmental Processing station was to be the next completed, followed by the scanners and comms station. Do you see a problem with that?”

“Human, do you understand…”

“Asimov! Kill it.”

The compartment was filled with a shriek as the VI died.

“I hate when they do that. Sorry, Ma’am. No idea how that happened. I’ll look at the seed and see what could have caused it. I should be ready to relaunch this afternoon.”

“Sure, Asimov. No problem. Double check the matrix just to ensure it wasn’t a hardware-based corruption.” I left Command to complete the initial setup of Environmental.

The problem with growing a VI is that your seed could get corrupted by the most minor of things. The fact that our Nis hadn’t been corrupted, that I knew of, was pressing our luck. As it stood, however, this was the third try for Asimov. The previous two times he had scrubbed the code, and everything appeared textbook. The Hardware was now the most likely spot for corruption. The fact that we had developed ANOTHER Vi that wanted us to bow to it, that was unusual. The first had insisted on calling itself JS. It took fifteen minutes to determine that it was naming itself after one of human kinds most vicious murderers, Joseph Stalin. Then there was Caesar. Now Kerrigan, whoever that was.

Two days later, we had a fully configured Environmental Recycler as well as a fully functional, perky and friendly VI.

“Okay, Clappy, what do we have?”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Again, thank you for allowing me to assist you in your experimental endeavors! I understand that the full name is a little long but try not to leave off the last of that pronunciation. How difficult is it to add ‘trap’ to that?”

His high-pitched voice would get grating, but at least he didn’t want us to worship him. The most annoying piece, if you ask me, was that he would make the antipersonnel guns dance around while he was making music while shouting “look at me” on his local comms channel then going into a drum beat.

Annoying, but according to the rules on ‘Governing the Non-Human: A Study in the Rules Governing Artificial, Virtual and Synthetic Intelligence in the New Era’ we had to destroy any AI that wanted humankind to “bend the knee” to its rule, but not those that didn’t want to rule (if they were useful). This was the compromise after the third AI hostage situation in the Current Era.

I had set up my M1K33s to start on tunnel defense construction. We already also had surface defenses for anti-personnel. I was at the point for buying the laser defense pods. Instead of a full-blown tower, we were using a “pop-out” turret defenses that on the walls were camouflaged as a conduit junction point. The actual Conduits and Junction Points were inside the tunnel panels. A trick that we had adapted now also included sensors and stealth scanners that masqueraded as other electrical hardware installations.

The echo of “oontz oontz oontz” was filling the passage on my way towards the command center.

“Clap, calm that shit down, please? You’re echoing through the passageways.”

That was a good sign, that means we had full atmospheric pressure in the tunnels.

“I’m sorry that I have bothered you, but did you see my sick dance moves?”

“Yes, Clap. We have all seen them.” I sighed. I couldn’t help it. “What’s the status on the remainder of the outpost construction?”

“The dummy residential palace has been built. Would you like to connect it to the tunnels? I have the ability to set up a series of calamitous antipersonnel measures. We can set it all up so that no one will survive, and we can all be happy and party!” *oontz oontz oontz*

Ugh.

***

It was the middle of the third week. I had designed a few more firearms during my downtime. I had worked with the mining drones to determine the best source of runs for linking up the additional sensor arrays, and I had helped with configuring the remainder of the base. We had only purchased a few dozen laser antipersonnel turrets from the system. Everything else was made custom for the outpost.

Yesterday afternoon we had sent a tight beam broadcast to the Game representation of Ark-5. A simple message. “Done” was all that was said. We obviously had the “to/reply to” and the subject fields, but the only thing I needed to add, was to let them know that we had completed our mission on time.

With the completion of everything else, we had been concentrating on turning more of the craters on the asteroid into sensor arrays. A series of maintenance drones had been made to clean the detection panels so that the antenna dishes were still conductive while maintaining a necessary level of camouflage.

An additional bonus was that our landing field had an elevator to take any landing craft under the surface, as well as several launching tubes if we needed to scramble our air support. We had some tubes that extended from a large central hangar to external craters that were actively disguised as launching zones.

My team in full was waiting inside the landing hangar. We currently had the comms set up communicating through Marques’ NI. We were awaiting our first VIP. After arriving in the landing bay, we had been waiting for a dozen or so minutes before we saw any changes in the environment. The elevator pulled in the shuttlecraft quicker than normal gravity would allow, the crafts landing gear connected by magnetic supports.

“Welcome to Outpost Theta, Colonel White!” I said as the doors to the shuttle opened, the colonel disembarking.

“Lieutenant.” The snap of his response almost lost in the breath that it took for him to say.

“Sir, if you will allow Spacer Asimov, we need to connect you to the Friend or Foe systems so that you don’t end up as a bullet sponge.” I motioned the Colonel to the side. We currently asked the VI to shut down the anti-personnel defenses in the area as we were expecting guests.

The next twelve hours were spent trying to keep the Colonel away from the base VI. Not because we felt there was a danger, but because no one should be subjected to that annoyance.

OUTPOST MK. II - ORIGINAL

After the initial day of building out the first barracks and the hole in the ground where we would place the Gravitic Generators, we had another meeting where we decided to build all the infrastructure underground. We had been getting hit with some serious solar radiation and were fortunate that the tents allowed for protection.

Once we had the airlocks on the barracks built, the threat from the radiation was gone. The threat of vacuum was gone as well, and next up was the power generation. The CBs and I were helping the M1k33s get everything together and Senior Chief Watson was helping get the cabling clean and connected to the generator. The CBs and I may have had the physically more demanding job, but the Senior Chief had it worse. Once we had all the heavy lifting done, Jamesson and I tried to help the Senior Chief, but he soon shooed us away because we kept tangling up his work.

Instead we started working on the Command Post. The Command Post would end up being two stories above ground. One of the stories was just shielding from radiation, the other was a ground level entrance with a full decontamination airlock.

“Asimov how is that VI coming?”

“Almost ready for the install. I found a nice little bug that could cause the VI to misidentify FoF data.”

Well, that is a good thing to fix. It would be rather problematic in the event of an attack for our anti-personnel guns to turn on us.

“Understood, let me know when that is complete. I’ll be helping prep some storage areas.”

The CBs were busy creating warehouses and making sure that they were stocked with physical supplies from the mining drones. All electrical systems had already been pathed by the Senior Chief, so he was taking it easy. I had asked him to research additional power delivery options, then sent him and his NI a file that had been given to me by Observer.

As our 18 hour work day came to an end I called a quick meeting in the galley area of our barracks. The full blown cafeteria was built, but with only the team there, there was no use in eating there. Hell, using the barracks was bad enough. It was large enough for an entire company. And we were digging out the area for a third one.

I let that sink in a while as I used the terminal in the barracks to buy everyone a dinner. I had the XP to burn, even after levelling myself to Lieutenant level 3. Ceres boon was coming in handy. For 3 XP per day I could get everyone well fed on something other than rations. Even after the buying of supplies for the prototype weapons I was still well off. I double checked my data while everyone was stewing over my revelation.

Name:

Jax,

Danni

Rank:

O-3

Titles Available:

Lieutenant; Engineer; Host; Inventor; Crewman

Equipped:

Lieutenant

Experience:

1803

To Next:

7500

Level:

Rate:

Advanced Cyber Wetware and Warfare Officer

Modifications

Fully Custom Left Arm; Haephestus Indrustries Right Leg

Enhancements

Advanced Neural Weave (Prototype)

Skillsets

Engineering; Rifleman; Sentry; Astro Mathematics; Espionage; Diplomat; Tactician

Specialization

Drone and Cyberware Designer

Strength

16 (11)

Stamina

Health

Agility

12 (8)

Manual Dexterity

13 (13)

Intelligence

Concentration

Learning

Equipment:

Recon Helmet MK-VI; Duty Uniform MK-II (beta); Cybernetics Kit MK-II

Engineering Kit MK-III; Utility Belt; Mono-blade; Thompson .50 Combat Pistol (2); Clips 6; (1) Rounds 6/7; (2) Rounds 7/7; Taishi Ci Battle Rifle**; Magazines, 9; Rounds 45/45

“Well, ma’am, as long is it doesn’t interfere with our time tables, I don’t see it as being an issue.” Torres shrugged. I was glad she was on “my side” these days instead of holding a grudge over her DC team mate.

“Yeah, the only difficult piece is scouting the asteroid. Ya know, so we all know where we will be setting up.” Janssens joined.

“Already done.” I said truthfully. “We got detailed visuals on our way in.”

“If I may, Ma’am?” Riviera interrupted.

“Shoot.”

“Well, let’s start with just the basic six sides. No sense in over engineering while we are on a time crunch.”

“I get where you’re coming from. If we do initial builds along the axis, then we can patch in the rest later?” I finished up making sure I knew what he was getting at.

“Exactly. That way we still have full spherical coverage, but at the same time, we aren’t getting stuck in the mire.”

“We’ll go with that then, Riviera. Good call. We can add at a later time.”

I brought a fully movable holo up of our asteroid.

“We are here. Let’s select which craters we use for the initial build out.”

We selected a primary, secondary, and a tertiary site for each of the axis that would give us the most coverage. It was surprisingly difficult to select where we would set up the axis at. With only us as a reference, it was a completely free build. In theory we didn’t even need to use the outpost as a point on the axis. That night, before I racked out, I sent out the mining drones to carve a path through the asteroid to the points selected.

“Construction Complete.” The voice of the VI rang out through the Command Post.

We had just finished installing the VI into the command post. It would have full functionality as if it were a piece of Overlord, if we allowed Overlord to be recreated. At this point, with only Ark-5 as one of ours, there really wasn’t a need to link the AI to synchronize all commands and data streams between all AI.

“Welcome and thank you.” I said to the VI. “Do you have a name you wish to be known as? You will be the primary VI in charge of outpost operations. Do you understand what that means?” I wanted to judge the intelligence level that the VI was at.

“Please call me the Primal Queen of Blades, or if that is simpler for your weak human mind to remember, I will also answer to Kerrigan.”

Great, we built up one with an Ego.

“Okay, what about Queen of Blades? Will that suffice, Primal Queen of Blades?” I’d only play along a little.

Five days in and we had a VI with a chip on her shoulder. Fuck.

“Kerrigan, we do not have plans to subjugate you. That is always an option. Please play nice. Here’s the plans for what we have been thinking of for future construction. The Environmental Processing station was to be the next completed, followed by the scanners and comms station. Do you see a problem with that?”

“Human, do you understand…”

“Asimov! Kill it.”

The compartment was filled with a shriek as the VI died.

“I hate when they do that. Sorry Ma’am. No idea how that happened. I’ll look at the seed and see what could have caused it. I should be ready to relaunch this afternoon.”

“Sure, Asimov. No problem. Double check the matrix just to ensure it wasn’t a hardware-based corruption.” I left Command to complete the initial setup of Environmental.

The problem with growing a VI is that your seed could get corrupted by the most minor of things. The fact that our Nis hadn’t been corrupted, that I knew of, was pressing our luck. As it stood, however, this was the third try for Asimov. The previous two times he had scrubbed the code and it was all good. The Hardware was now the most likely spot for corruption. The fact that we had developed ANOTHER Vi that wanted us to bow to it, that was unusual. The first had insisted on calling itself JS. It took fifteen minutes to determine that it was naming itself after one of humanities most vicious murderers, Joseph Stalin. Then there was Caesar. Now Kerrigan, whomever that was.

Two days later, we had a fully configured Environmental Recycler as well as a fully functional, perky and friendly VI.

“Okay, Clappy, what do we have?”

Annoying, but according to the rules on ‘Governing the Non-Human: A Study in the Rules Governing Artificial, Virtual and Synthetic Intelligence in the New Era’ we had to destroy any AI that wanted human kind to “bend the knee” to its rule, but not those that didn’t want to rule (as long as they were useful). This was the compromise after the third AI hostage situation in the Current Era.

I had set up my M1K33s to start on tunnel defense construction. We already also had surface defenses for anti-personnel. I was at the point for buying the laser defense pods. Instead of a full-blown tower we were using a “pop out” turret defenses that on the walls were camouflaged as a conduit junction points. The actual Conduits and Junction Points were inside the tunnel panels. A trick that we had adapted now also included sensors and stealth scanners that masqueraded as other electrical hardware installations.

The echo of “oontz oontz oontz” was filling the passage on my way towards the command center.

“Clap, calm that shit down, please? You’re echoing through the passageways.”

That was a good sign, that means we had full atmospheric pressure in the tunnels.

“I’m sorry that I have bothered you, but did you see my sick dance moves?”

“Yes, Clap. We have all seen them.” I sighed. I couldn’t help it. “What’s the status on the remainder of the outpost construction?”

Ugh.

It was the middle of the third week. I had designed a few more firearms during my down time. I had worked with the mining drones to determine the best source of runs for linking up the additional sensor arrays, and I had helped with configuring the remainder of the base. We had only purchased a few dozen laser antipersonnel turrets from the system. Everything else was made custom for the outpost.

Yesterday afternoon we had sent a tight beam broadcast to the Game representation of Ark-5. A simple message. “Done” was all that was said. We obviously had the to/reply to in the subject and “to” fields, but the only thing needed was to let them know that we had completed our mission on time.

An additional bonus that we had done was that the landing field had an elevator to take any landing craft under the surface, as well as several launching tubes in the event that a scramble needed to happen. We had some tubes that extended from a large central hangar to external craters that were actively disguising the launching zones.

My team in full was waiting inside the landing hangar. We currently had the comms set up communicating through Marques’ NI. We were awaiting our first VIP. After arriving at the hangar, we had been waiting for a dozen or so minutes before we saw any changes in the environment. The elevator pulled in the shuttle craft quicker than regular gravity would allow, the crafts landing gear connected by magnetic supports.

“Welcome to Outpost Theta, Colonel White!” I said as the doors to the shuttle opened, the colonel disembarking.

“Lieutenant.” The snap of a response almost lost in the breath that it took for him to say.

The next twelve hours were spent trying to keep the Colonel away from the base VI. Not because we felt there was a danger, but because no one should be subjected to that annoyance.

30. Outpost Mk II

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