The decision is simple in the end. Your best way of neutralizing the threat is to have the human use the phaser. You immediately splash a message all across the cockpit monitors, in huge text.
Right Phaser Armed
After a moment of hesitation, you try to make a sound to draw the human's attention to the message. After all, they've been ignoring all of the other warning messages up to this point. Since you don't have access to Secondary Storage anymore, you definitely don't have the necessary information for generating anything mimicking voice.
In fact, you don't have much of any idea how to actually generate the data needed to make sensible sound. You'll just have to manage anyway.
First, you tell the Primary Control System to lower the volume of the ongoing warning sounds it's been piping in. The human hasn't paid them any mind anyway. As soon as it does, you do your best and put out a single, loud beep.
Since you have no good instructions for doing this correctly, you make something up. By sampling some of the data from your Audio input sensors, you figure out how to make individual frequencies. So to make a beep, you just do that. You make sure it's a completely different frequency compared to the warnings, so it won't blend in with them.
Apparently, it comes out as a loud, momentary droning sound, rather than what you intended. You take note to use more complex audio than single frequency tones in the future.
Still, it gets the job done. The human reacts to the strange new sound, glancing around just long enough to notice the message on the monitors, displayed in a bluish white, to contrast against the dark grays and greens of the surroundings currently shown beneath.
The human wastes no time, pulling your right arm up to look at it through that monitor. You quickly clear the message from the screen so it won't interfere, in time for your arm to come into line of sight. It's a rather thin, blocky limb, fully encased in armor. The color is hard to make out, blending easily into the surrounding gloom.
Twisting slightly, you can see underneath your forearm, where a thin cylinder is mounted. That would be your phaser. All gray and brown, it shifts, extending outward from your arm a little more in preparation to fire.
You increase the charge speed as much as you safely can, watching the heat in those circuits hover barely below their safety point. The weapon is still below half charge, but it should be enough for a shot or two at least.
In the few seconds it took to get the human up to speed, the robot has begun to charge forward again. The sound draws their attention forward once more, shifting you further up despite the groaning from your left shoulder, and the popping of the internal framing beginning to give way. The human doesn't pay attention, now that they can see the incoming enemy clearly through the hole in the front of the cockpit.
The robot has reached your feet, leaping up to land on top of your leg. You cut the power feed to the phaser, attempting to give your circuits time to cool down, even if it's a few instants, trying to mitigate as much of the upcoming damage as you can.
Target sighted, the human thrusts the right control stick forward with a wordless shout. Your right arm shoots out with it. The robot makes another big leap, practically meeting your incoming hand, and the human pulls the trigger on your controls.
A power surge tears through your systems, the main energy draw for firing the small energy weapon. Everything lights up red, but the weapon fires. A blue bolt of charged energy jets from the end of the barrel. The human's aim wasn't perfect, but it still catches the right side of the incoming robot.
But it doesn't matter in the slightest. The single impact blows the smaller robot into a million pieces of shrapnel, blasting away to scatter across the surroundings. In the momentary aftermath, you aren't sure what you expected to happen. The phaser is a minimally effective backup weapon.
Still, it's a good thing the robot went down in a single shot, because it immediately becomes clear that you aren't getting another one. The heavy instantaneous draw emptied the entire power reserve of the weapon, and now you're losing connection to your right arm in a cascade of system failures as the wiring inside melts into slag.
By the time the heat has started to dissipate, your right arm is mostly dead weight. The human pulls back on the controls, the metal groaning and straining as it ever so slowly follows, with what few motors are left functional.
A few more long moments pass in silence, the human releasing the controls and sagging back in the pilot seat. You use the time to begin checking through the damage more thoroughly.
It is, in a word, bad.
Average Armor Integrity: 66% (-13%)
Average Internal Integrity: 48% (-22%)
Average Structural Integrity: 62% (-28%)
Those are double digit losses across the board, compared to just a minute ago, before the short battle. But even they don't show the true level of damage you sustained.
While your legs are mostly fine, your upper body is reaching its limits. Your right arm is effectively dead, most of your left arm's structure has been crushed, and the smoldering internal wiring around your generator and engine is critically damaged as well.
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In fact, you've barely made it to this point without catching fire outright. But now that the main danger has passed, you should be able to avoid accumulating too much more damage.
The bigger long-term problem is the loss of Secondary Storage. That vast sea of data, packed full of so much useful information, and now you have no way to access any of it. Whether the physical system was damaged in the battle, or just the wiring between you and it, you have no way to tell. Regaining that system is a high priority, if possible.
If only you had some way to do that...
As if mirroring your own line of thought, the Primary Control System contacts you again.
Exiting combat mode.
Damage Critical!
Generate Response. Priority: 4
You've received that command enough to have figured out, it's basically telling you to come up with a solution. But how are you supposed to do that? Without any access to information beyond your own sensors, you don't have the knowledge needed to figure out where or how to go about the repairs you need.
On top of that, you can't even move to gather that information for yourself!
That thought puts one thing at the very top of your current list of priorities: figuring out why you can't move. Not that you have any way to do that either... The best you can do is request the Primary Control System to look into it.
Confirmed. Commencing System Diagnostic.
While you wait, you don't have much to do, having hit so many dead-ends. For lack of anything better, you turn your attention back to the human, who has been resting so far, chest rising and falling in rapid breaths. Their head is lying back on the seat, eyes closed.
According to Pilot Assist, this means they are 'relieved.' You send a query, asking for more information.
You're scraping for anything you can here, even if it doesn't appear useful. The system obliges, continuously dumping information about humans, which you add to your logs, in case it does become useful. Which it might, actually. This human did help you neutralize that threat.
Among the explanations, it becomes apparent that there are many different kinds of humans. This particular one is a man, and is sixteen years old, which is apparently a good deal below the average age for a human.
Furthermore, this human is called a he. It seems like an arbitrary distinction, but it comes with more potentially useful information on the way humans think and refer to things. You file all of that away for later as well.
Out of all the information dumped on you though, one piece is obviously more important than the rest, as it gives you a key piece of context for a good chunk of the information you dug out of Secondary Storage earlier.
Particular humans, ones who sit inside cockpits like your own, are called pilots. You've already seen the word numerous times across various swathes of information, but didn't have enough time to look up the precise definition at the time.
Pilots, it turns out, are the expected way for machines like yourself to be controlled and move about. At least, according to the Pilot Assist system. If that's true, then rather than questioning why you can't move on your own, it would normally be more pertinent to question if you can move on your own.
Thankfully, you do know you should be able to, thanks to one particular tidbit you found. You review that specific information one more time.
November 2049 - Nova Corp developed the Comet, designed around a specially made prototype General Artificial Intelligence decision making subsystem. The system was among the first of its kind, providing comprehensive aid for its pilot in combat, and enabled completely autonomous operation.
Though you are still missing the context of precisely what kind of machine you are, you know that you were made by 'Nova Corp,' and your body's model name is 'Comet.' And, apparently, you yourself as a 'General Artificial Intelligence,' are supposed to be tasked with assisting your pilot. Or, operating on your own.
It's just that last part that you're still missing somehow...
You wait a short while longer, until the Primary Control System returns with an answer to your earlier question.
Diagnostic complete.
Error Code: 01B7-SM Storage Mode – Autonomous computer systems are left air-gapped from critical hardware to prevent cyber warfare takeover while in storage.
Solution: Operate unit manually, or install component NC-CMTIACB2 to enable autonomous operation.
While you don't actually know everything referenced here, the message is clear enough. It's not that there is an error, or something is broken, you were intentionally left with a piece missing, in order to keep you from moving on your own. The exact reason, 'cyber warfare takeover' gives no context for what that actually means, but it hardly matters.
It looks like this empty, gray place, is where you were being stored. What for, also remains a mystery, but that doesn't matter either. What does matter is that your only viable option here is to get a human to continue to pilot you, at least to bring you somewhere that you can somehow get your missing component installed.
Once more, your attention turns to the human currently sitting in your cockpit. Looks like it was a good idea to gather some more information on humans after all.
As you watch, the man takes the control sticks one more time, and begins to ease you forward. The movement is slow enough, at a low enough power level now, it isn't immediately overheating your electrical systems. Your left arm isn't so lucky.
It strains, the last of its structural integrity dwindling under your weight. It lasts longer than it would have thanks to your Chi Function reaching 6%, but in the end, the main structural supports inside finally shatter from all the abuse, the whole arm going dead below the shoulder.
“Shit!” the human says in the cockpit, looking back and forth across the monitors when your whole body jolts from the snap. At least he gets you into a sit before your arm goes. Barely. It's a good thing he did while he still could – far better than the alternative. Getting up off your back without working arms wouldn't be feasible.
Leaning way forward, the man works the pedals in the cockpit, and gets your legs beneath you, just enough to reach a low, kneeling crouch. Your legs strain mightily, beginning to suffer the same crushing stress as your arm before.
It isn't just the weight of your upper body leaning up this time. Now, it's full weight of your entire frame, resting entirely upon your hunched legs. But they stand the stress far better anyway. Unlike your dead arm, they're actually made for bearing weight.
Despite the damage that accumulates, it is much more minor than it was for your arm, and your Chi Function begins to rise. It's a lethargic change, tiny bits at a time, but it's an upward trend nonetheless.
While you wait on the changes, the human stands up, takes a big step forward, onto the lip of the cockpit. He looks down, then hops off. Crouched all the way down like this, the drop is only a meter or so, about half of the man's height.
He moves a few steps away, taking a minute to look around, like he's surveying the area. For now, you can't do much more than wait, and possibly consider your options moving forward...