In the heat of the moment, your responses are mixed. There's no pressing reason to sacrifice a working part, and yet failing to follow through could reflect badly to your pilot, as if you aren't capable.
Unable to make a decisive choice on your own, you put a message up onscreen, intending to have the pilot help make the decision.
Recommendation: equipping more Ironside parts should help.
You pause briefly to allow your pilot to consider, but... he doesn't notice. He's too busy growling with effort to even hear your warning tones, and doesn't see the message. You even move it over from a monitor on the right, off to the left, closer to where he's leaning in to push on the control handle.
Just as you're beginning to fall back on your other plan, to put your all into the arm to follow through, your pilot shouts, “Come on!” and throws the other handle forward as well. In an odd move, he manages to tilt your entire frame sideways, getting your other arm on the door as well. You quickly divert power that way since you already drew a good deal out earlier. This time, you redistribute power from your legs to get what you need.
With both arms running at least close to redline now, the heat buildup is quickly going out of control, but you keep pushing it further anyway. When you bring your main engine up to full charge as well, the groaning doors shriek, and begin to buckle in stops and starts.
Your heatsinks can't keep up. While you remain mixed on whether sacrificing the Ironside arm is worth it, you definitely don't want to allow the heat damage into your other systems. So, bit by bit as your heat dispersal systems start to fail and the damage creeps in from your shoulder, you begin shutting down the heat transfer systems in your left arm.
More of the heat stays there, damaging the arm more quickly, but keeping the rest of you from feeling the effects. With much louder warning sounds, and messages across all monitors noting the rapid overheat damage, you finally manage to get the pilot's attention.
Even so, you're most of the way there. The metal of the door, thicker than your entire body, is crumbling like paper beneath your steaming hands.
“Just! Move! Damn it!” Your pilot is grunting. He keeps pulling back, then slamming forward repeatedly, to bash the doors.
Kriiieeeekkkcchhhh
The massive doors release a final shriek and slam open when whatever jammed mechanism apparently shatters. In the process, your half-leaned to the side posture causes you to flop down onto the ground, your pilot tumbling entirely out of his seat, to land halfway up the left hand wall of your cockpit, upside down.
He's awkwardly rolling himself upright while you plaster the cockpit with a warnings.
Emergency Cooling In Progress
Though you say that, you don't actually have a good way of bleeding off all of the electrical power like you do with the excess heat. The best you can do is spread it out. By pulling out as much as your battery can safely hold, then rebalancing the rest evenly, it leaves all of your motors at nearly three quarters charge. That isn't the best for quick cooling, but it's far better than before.
In the time it takes you to divert all of that power around, your pilot has crawled out through the still-gaping hole in the cockpit where the hatch should be. He stands a short distance away, panting and sweating profusely, even pulling off his shirt to wring it out and fan himself with it.
A few long seconds pass while the billowing steam rolls off of you. Whirring sounds start up in the surrounding storage hanger, now with the Bogatyr visible, though your view only affords you the slightest glimpse of one foot from how you landed.
What you do see is some kind of weapon, resting in a sort of storage holster built into the side of the small hanger.
Continuing to rest as your heat drops back to safe levels, you have some time to keep thinking. You take the time to get back to your considerations of whether to tell your pilot about being an AI. The responses that come back this time are... even less certain than previously. Some suggest an intent to wait for a good time to mention it, while others simply want to avoid the topic for now, until finding more information. Specifically, information about 'the hex.'
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You still don't know what it may refer to, but your pilot was extremely emphatic in his wish to destroy it, and for all you know, it may relate to you in some way.
Either way, the current consensus is to wait, and not mention anything for the time being.
Just as you are thinking that, you hear something coming, not form the small storage area, but from somewhere in the rest of the hanger, currently outside of your field of view. “The hell?” you hear your pilot ask aloud, looking off in that direction. He goes from a walk, to a quick trot, climbing back into your cockpit just in time to turn your head.
You see the overhead rails above, large clamp arms sliding directly above you as they enter your sight. Moving past, they latch onto the Bogatyr.
That's right, you told the repair bay to retrieve it from storage earlier. It must have been silently re-checking that ever since.
Alongside your belated realization, your pilot is shouting again. “Crap, crap!” He swings your controls, rolling you out of the way, just in time for the Bogatyr to be lifted off of its feet, and carried rapidly right past where you just were.
You doubt it would have been a terrible crash like your pilot seems to believe, but it was still a good move to avoid it entirely – one which Pilot Assist is very pleased and impressed by, as it was apparently a complex maneuver to achieve while lying down like this.
Sitting you up, he hangs out the open front once more, watching the Bogatyr being carried, on its way to the smallest repair bay in the middle of the hanger. Past it, you now see a sizable pile of scrap, the pieces of significantly larger size than what lies around the rest of the hanger. In it, you see a frame you recognize as the Avenger.
So, that must be the trash.
Actually... considering the position, then playing back through your own movements since you first woke up, it's pretty clear that you were in the trash too. Not particularly surprising, considering the log entry on your own frame's capabilities.
You wait a bit longer, just watching the Bogatyr as it's carried off toward the far side of the hanger, to skirt past the trash heap. You wait patiently for your pilot to properly climb back into the cockpit, but it's taking some time.
Despite cooling to safe levels for your own system integrity, you note that the air in and around you might be very hot by human standards. There's no data available on it, but your pilot is still sweating a lot, which Pilot Assist assures you means he is overheated as well.
You take the time to check over your systems, finding that, unexpectedly, you're doing better than you thought. Heat damage to most of your wiring was minimal, and internal integrity in your left arm, while certainly in poor condition, is still quite functional.
It seems the huge Ironside arm is far more durable than you initially gave it credit for. With another attention-grabbing beep, you display an alert for your pilot.
Left Arm Overheat Damage
Armor Integrity: 90% (-2%)
Internal Integrity: 52% (-25%)
Structural Integrity: 93% (-2%)
Hearing the sound, he slides back into the pilot seat to look it over with a slight wince. He hefts your left arm up, testing the range of motion to confirm you haven't lost any functionality yet.
The focus up close almost causes you to miss it.
Across the hanger, you catch sight of the Bogatyr as it is being carried by the trash heap. You see the jolt when it suddenly begins to move. Its legs swing first, feet catching against the floor just enough to destabilize the clamps holding it aloft.
When it starts to flail with more effort, you sound another loud beep to draw your pilot's attention up from your left hand. When he sees it, he stops dead, staring.
The Bogatyr's random flailing soon gives way to more controlled movements. It claws at the clamps, starting to thrash, and they soon lose hold. The huge frame comes down on the concrete with a boom that echoes off the far walls repeatedly, and causes the pilot in your cockpit to jump in his seat.
His face is covered with a look of pure terror.
Hands at the controls squeeze until his knuckles turn white. Your own fists mimic, drawing up in front of you defensively. Something about the sight of your clenching fists displayed on the monitors draws the man's eyes, at which point his expression morphs - into one of rage.
The very instant he begins to slam the controls forward, you manage to preempt him with a warbling, half-formed klaxon and blare of red across all of the monitors, getting him to pause just long enough.
If you have any ideas before he throws you at the Bogatyr, this will be your only chance...
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