Engineer’s Log Day 212

It’s been a second since the last log so I’m making this now. I kinda planned on making this when I’d already executed the plan for drama’s sake but they’ve decided to sit up in their ship with their thinking caps on so I’m doing it now. Sarlunt’s plan was supposed to go into action whenever the inins decide to make a move and commit a secondary force to the surface which, according to the information we got from our friendly neighborhood traitor Rat, should be soon. I mean, they have an entire battleship full of meat they’re willing to throw into my blender and a distinct lack of qualms about doing so but I guess they have some level of planning skills. Not terribly surprising considering how things played out over the last few days I guess now that I think about it .Now I don’t want to say too much about our plans because I’m going to look like a certified idiot if things don’t go how I say they will and then if I don’t record the plans then I can say whatever happens was always a part of the plan but that's boring…

Ok, I guess I can talk about the initial stages and preserve the mystic for the later parts.

Mind you, a lot of this is reactive so I’ll be speaking in broad strokes because like I said earlier, we are waiting on the inins to make their grand return back to the surface. This return isn’t likely to be particularly subtle since they know that we know how they got in the first time which means that in all likelihood we won’t be caught with our pants down again. That's not to say we won’t be keeping a close eye out but now we know what to look for and there’s no chance they slide through unnoticed if only due to the fact that they’ll need to saturate our point defense so our antiaircraft weapons don’t blast them out of the sky the second they enter. This warning should give us a little bit of extra time to begin responding and executing our plans.

One nice advantage we have right now is that Glysia and I wiped out the entirety of the southern team and nobody was able to flee. This means their ship is just sitting somewhere in the forest, ripe for the taking so we’ll see if we can’t go ahead and snag it. Rat seems to think there should be a second ship somewhere to the south so it’s just a matter of finding it. Sarlunt has Glysia actually out with a squad and a few of the engineers looking for the thing right now.

My drone strike technique probably won’t hold up now that the advantage of surprise is gone. Put a little bit of buckshot into the suckers and their effectiveness will tank.

I’d like to help with that but currently there are a number of reasons I can’t. One of the big reasons, I’m working on getting the HARP equipped with some actual weapons so I can actually throw hands without having to actually use my hands. Since the HARP isn’t an unknown variable anymore, I can’t really bank on being able to get into melee range before they start pointing some heavy duty weapons at my ass. I’ve got a handful of different ideas that I could try and implement but I’ve landed on two ideas in particular. The first is that I just use an automated turret like the ones on the walls. The HARP has the power and shielding to be able to execute that plan but I’m liable to run out of ammo if I get into an extended firefight. The ones on the walls work well since they can be reloaded safely from the base’s vast stores but won’t be the case with the HARP. I’ll probably still add a turret but it’ll likely be the backup plan for if things are going wrong. For now, I’ve printed out two small turrets that I can mount.

With ammo limitations in mind, I’ve decided to revert back to the human classic of a nice railgun. I figure the HARP will be tracked to some degree or another so it’s highly unlikely that I’ll be able to get away with nearly as many shenanigans as I was initially. That said, unless they decide to send down some heavy duty vehicles, I will usually have an advantage in the amount of mass I can put downfield. That's right, I’m thinking about adding a sniper rifle to the HARP and being a dirty camper. I’ve some concerns about if we have an electric storm again but the most recent one has faded and we shouldn’t have another for a good while. Still though, I’m adding some safety measures to shut it down should one start up. Last thing I want is to have the HARP blown to pieces due to an electric storm or even worse, misfire into my allies.

As I speak, I’m working out the kinks on a few different designs. I certainly have the mass and power to launch the suckers while I’m in the HARP although my current models don’t really are one shot rounds and aren’t reusable. My current design has me replacing the barrel with each shot which is a bit less than ideal. If I’m in an extended fight, I’ll probably be able to put maybe one down range every ten or so seconds at best. Technically speaking, I can set up some automation with the HARP to shoot at about twice that speed but I’ll need to already have the ammo at hand and it takes time to grab each. It should be more or less fine at the slower rate of fire though, I just want to see if I can’t improve it a bit.

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In terms of upgrades, right now I have a few different ideas. Obviously, if I want these things to be effective at crowd control and by default they don’t blow up as much as punch through everything in a line. I’ve iterated through a few designs for ammunition but I think I’ve landed on one that I’m satisfied with. It should have a relatively small blast radius for its initial detonation but that’s not where the fun ends. What truly makes it beautiful is that, if I haven’t fucked anything up and my math is correct, I should be able to short out their armor and leave them sitting ducks. The real trick here is adjusting the strength to avoid nuking both the xythan’s gear and my own.

I’ve already verified that my designs won’t short the HARP so all thats left is to test it against the movement assist in the xythan’s gear. Best case scenario that’s left untouched and I can fiddle around with making it stronger. Frankly, even in the worst case scenario where my rounds do short out the xythans, I figure it's better xythans struggle to move and fight versus literal sitting ducks. In addition to these EMP round, I’m thinking I’ll make a few with explosive payloads and a handful of anti tank rounds. You never know when those will come in handy.

Now all of this work is a good reason for me to not go out gallivanting looking for a inin ship but there’s also a bit more of a personal reason to be hanging back. Bayfur is still missing his mom and he’s scared. While I’m going to be mobilizing with the rest of the fighting forces when the inins show, for the time being, I’m sticking around Bayfur and keeping him company. His mom is gone and if his insistence on following me is any gauge, he clearly seems to feel the most comfortable with me right now. I’ve asked around to see if anyone else knew him but it seems like most of the folks he was close with got grabbed also. I don’t feel super comfortable with him following me around while I work on weapons but I’m also not about to chase him off.

It actually broke my heart when he came looking for me last night. I was up late working on wrapping up some designs and he showed up in the workshop pillow in hand. He didn’t say anything, he just latched onto my leg and began whimpering. Actually crushed my heart. Ended up with him sleeping the night away with me. I…. Look, I’ve never had a father figure in my life. He died before I was ever born, the bastard. I joke but Ma raised me on her own and while I’d say she did a pretty bang-up job at it, there’s still that hole you know. I don’t know how to act like a super good dad in this situation. I just… I just want to be there for him right now. A good paternal figure. A dad. I’ve got to make sure this whole operation doesn’t go belly up. If only for him.

Ha... man I wonder what my dad was like. Ma always said I turned out like him. Wonder if he got into nearly as much trouble as I have?

Engineer’s Log Day 213.1

If the encrypted audio logs that I don’t have access to codes to decipher because I stole them from the xythans have been translated even vaguely correct, then big things are happening. While obviously, I don’t know the exactities of the message until Sarlunt deigns to inform me, the fact that messages are getting sent tells me what I need to know. The xythans were supposed to maintain radio silence until they found something or four days had passed, whichever came first. Judging by the early message and that its only been 3 days, I’m assuming we have something of worth. While it would be nice to have a fully functioning ship, I can probably make some real problems with just computer data. Regardless, the time being I’m going to stick to the task at hand, committing war crimes!

Ok, technically speaking it isn’t actually war crimes given this is targeted specifically at enemy combatants but it sounds funnier to phrase it that. Currently, I’m helping to dig holes for anti-personnel landmines. The xythans and I figured that since we have a bit of spare time, we might as well make the most out of it and layer our defenses further. We have copious amounts of explosives sitting around who just so happen to want to get acquainted with inin feet. They’ll have pay for every single inch they take. My current responsibilities have me digging holes and then marking the location on our maps. Once I’m done, someone else will come through and add the mine before burying it. Since I’m not working with the explosive bits of this operation, Bayfur has made the executive decision to join me today.

Engineer’s Log Day 213.2

I know I talked about it earlier today and if I could go back and slap myself silly, I would. I should have known better than to tempt fate by now but for some reason I keep doing it. The reason we got the message back from our teams in the field was because while we did find the ship, it was broken into tiny pieces. From the looks of things, the ship got bored and just self-destructed. Just pieces scattered to and fro across the forest. I was brought into the loop after this second message and brought in to question Rat about it. When told him though, he seemed to be about as surprised as we were. Our current best guesses are that they have the ships set to detonate remotely via timer or they can just hit a button on the battleship and blow the shuttle to kingdom come. I guess it kinda makes sense when you have potentially mutinous pirates away from the boss that they might get some ideas but I mean come on. Just give us a break already! We really needed one of their ships for our plan so our next engagement is going to get extra spicy as we now have extra objectives.

I have to say, hats off to fate for the pettiness on display here, like truly props.