Ellie looking around realized it was only midafternoon. The day’s events had felt like they lasted weeks.
“So first thing I need to do is find another grav cart.”
Looking around at the mountains of rubble Ellie shook her head.
“This could take a while.”
Despite that Ellie still felt better. She had a safe place to stay and no real need to be anywhere. Rubbing her hands together, Ellie encouraged herself.
“Alright! Let's be about it!”
Giving her biochip a command, it was only a few minutes before the sensor bots were flying towards her. Giving them detailed instructions to pair off and scan the piles of debris around her, Ellie tasked her suits onboard computer to compile the drones’ feeds and make a detail topological map of the area.
She was lucky that the military hardware was designed for just this work. That gave Ellie an idea. Entering the airlock again she wondered if she should close the hatch. After a moment’s thought she called back a pair of drones. Ellie tasked them to watch for any intruders, with one hovering near the ceiling inside the airlock and the other hiding in the rubble outside.
Satisfied with her security measure, Ellie walked down the narrow tunnel back into the fusion room. Andy was quietly, standing near the engine compartment door, and followed Ellie as she retraced her steps back to cargo bay 2.
Going to the pile of hardware she had salvaged on the trip to Cullen's Island, which felt so long ago, she picked up the mini fusion reactor. Ellie had tossed it in the grave cart when she was rushing to grab anything that could be useful.
“Now let’s see if you were worth the effort to salvage you.”
Ellie pulled out her commpad, thankful she had put it in her armored pocket before the grav cart's fire. Connecting the reactors data cable to her commpad, Ellie ran a detailed scan of the device.
“Yes!” Ellie did a small dance at finding the reactor fully functional.
Walking over to the five military data servers stacked neatly together, Ellie set both her commpad and the reactor down beside them. She then went and gathered up the tank of helium 3, an electrical distribution box, a spare fully charged battery, and six of the military commpads.
Ellie went back to the servers and sat down. Running a check on each military commpads she discarded three that weren't fully operational. Picking two of the best three that remained she copied her civilian’s commpad data to the military commpads. Ellie had hated how close she had been to losing her commpad and years of work. Her pad contained specialized programs that were only possible with the help of a sentient AI. The thought of losing it had made Ellie take the precaution of saving the data to the other two pads.
Now Ellie's data was secured in two tough military commpads and her original civilian pad. Confident now that no new calamity would destroy her valuable data Ellie looked up and saw, as expected, Andy not far from her.
“Andy take this commpad and put it in my bag and take this military one and keep it safe.” Ellie instructed.
“Andy understands the command.”
Ellie blinked as a hidden compartment opened up on his chest and Andy smoothly placed the military commpad inside. Then the bot turned and ambled off with her old pad. Nodding to herself Ellie turned back to her pile of parts.
She picked up her new military commpad and the other, slightly less capable, third military pad and transferred over a specialized fusion reactor monitoring AI. It should operate the fusion reactor at its highest energy output.
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When Ellie had been preparing for her trip she had loaded her old commpad with all the programs she could get, and a few legally gray ones form the dark sub net, that had anything to do with both nanites and ship hardware.
Connecting the mini fusion reactor to the new fusion command pad, Ellie then connected the battery and electrical distribution box to the reactor. Checking carefully that all the wires were in place and secured tightly, Ellie then connected the tank of helium 3 fuel.
Jumping up she got far away from the strung together parts.
“Don't want another panel blowing up in my face!” Ellie's yell echoed though the bay.
“Andy does not understand the question.” Laughing Ellie sent the command to power up the fusion reactor.
Holding her breath, Ellie waited as the battery provided the initial power for the fusion reactor to establish a magnetic containment field. If the battery did not provide enough power the containment field would collapse. Not dangerous, right now, without a plasma stream. Then the helium 3 was injected and they came to the most critical part, the fuel had to ignite, heated to thousands of degrees, and start to flow around the reactors magnetic containment track.
Ellie waited and waited then let out a rush of air as she could no longer hold her breath. Her pad dinged and she grinned. Her cobbled together fusion plant was stable and the AI detected no dangers or instability.
“Yes Andy it worked! And we didn't blow up!” Jumping up she hugged the big bot.
“Andy does not understand.” The bot said plaintively, Ellie doubled over in laughing.
Still giddy at her success she went back to the reactor and sat down. Picking up the top server form the pile she set it down in front of her. Ellie carefully inspected the unit for any damages then plugged it into the electrical distribution box.
Powering it up she connected her military commpad wirelessly to the device. The server had been wiped. Just to see how good the military technicians were Ellie ran her own advance data recovery program.
The processing power of the server became apparent when just over five minutes later the commpad dinged complete, the last time Ellie had ran the program on her old civilian pad it had taken hours.
“So the technicians weren't very good.” Ellie said in shock.
The program had recovered just over seventy six percent. Fascinated by this discovery she quickly ran her special AI for finding backdoors, hacks, and weak points in code. Ellie needed to make sure the unit did not send out an unauthorized access or distress single, coming to the attention of the UEN authorities would be bad.
After closing numerous backdoors, wiping all authorized users’ ids and their command codes, Ellie inserted her own id as the only authorized user. Just for fun Ellie listed herself as a full admiral.
Giggling in pleasure she tried the name out. “Admiral Ellie Eleven, Admiral Ellie, Admiral Eleven.”
She giggled again at the last one; Ellie decided she would just go by 'Admiral Ellie'. Shaking her head at that crazy thought, Ellie uploaded the new military codes to her biochip. It should come in handy with other salvaged military equipment.
Ellie quickly scanned the data file headers in the server's database.
“Hay they have detailed military ship schematics!”
Ellie scanned further and noted several interesting files; the best major find was a detailed list and location of all the military hardware that was dumped on Hemwell going back years.
“Holy Nova!”
Finished with the first server Ellie proceeded to go through the remaining four. Her data recovery program had varying successes with them. Ellie decided to review the data later. She made sure to change out all access codes with her own created codes. Finished Ellie started on the idea she had before she got distracted.
Wirelessly linking her suit to her commpad Ellie copied over the suits mapping program and the data that had been compiling form the sensor drones. After that, Ellie used her commpad to form a processing cluster linking all five servers together, then transferred the mapping program and the compiled data form her pad to the cluster.
The servers were thousands of times faster than the powered suits basic computer or the commpad's and was able organize the data in minutes, then it started to receive, organize, and fill in the topological map in real time with the data streaming in form the drones.
Ellie wished she had a holographic projector to show the map in detail. Ellie added that to the list of salvage she was compiling. Finished with her project Ellie stood up and felt a wave of fatigue hit form the days stress.
Ellie also realized she was very hungry and the blocked pain radiating form the back of her head was slowly coming back. Ellie always had been able to ignore her body’s demands when she was focused on a project. Not so much ignored, but completely oblivious to it.
Deciding enough had been accomplished today, and needing to wait for the drones to finish scanning the area, Ellie pick up an Instameal and went to find a bed.