Now that the A.I. was mostly bottled up, Ling had free reign to run full diagnostic and specification scans. "Looks like the A.I. is not the problem. Energy bottlenecking is from particularly bad powercore relay matching. Whatever the A.I. was doing wasn't that." He took a moment to prod the A.I.'s energy networking. "Mostly just everything else in there, I'd guess. Rheinland generators don't offset the ionized plasma because they can just discharge it with the copper sulfate vents in the VP-series engines."
While he began rambling in technical details, the tabs of data began rearranging as he put away the flow of code from the A.I. and brought up the ship's energy systems. "What happens is the entire energy system gets bogged down with an unusable energy byproduct, hence the bottlenecking. It's a failsafe to prevent engine and weaponry failure." He cocked his head sideways. It was like one of the conduit puzzles he used to solve. "If I had to guess, I'd say the A.I. was trying to rewrite every single driver to make allowances for the plasma, which is weird because I'd expect a machine to know that software alone can't fix hardware limitations."
As he spoke, an angry wall of deep green text appeared. He closed it out of reflex and continued. "You've got a proper power sink for the bulk of the powercore in the scanner array, along with the A.I. in the shield taking a decent amount of the energy as well. What you need is just some way to offset the ionized plasma without taking up too much energy flow."
He crossed his arms and tapped his foot while he did calculations in his head. "Yeah... yeah I can do that. Easily."
"Alright, good news: It's not gonna cost three million. One million. I'll get the dock jockeys to mod an engine to run on ionized plasma. It should alleviate the bottlenecking. Don't let the A.I. touch it, it's retarded." Another flurry of green text, closed instantly. "The only real downside is that your engine exhaust will react with hydrogen kinda bad, stripping neutrons off, but only really sensitive scanners would pick up on the neutrino puffs. Gas pockets might not end well, but gas pockets already don't end well."
He stopped for a minute to think. Was he gonna say it? Yeah, yeah he was gonna say it. "Suppose you should know: the A.I. in the shield is also maintaining some kind of firewall for your cybernetics. Along with something else that I honestly couldn't understand."
"Something you don't understand? he asked, both intrigued and annoyed. "No...no. It's alright. Gammu AIs were always so...mysterious. Odd.
The merc held his left, cold hand, against the Valkyrie's right wing. A ship to fit its pilot - now damned by the presence of technological parasite. Perhaps it needn't be that way, though. Caliban asked himself with a sense of perverted curiosity only he could dare bring to the table. "This thing. Does it understand us? Think you could 'convince' it to work in our favor?"
A pair of optics turned to Ling. He repeated himself in a way, wanting a solid answer to his question. What if this AI could solve a few problems instead of just causing them? Given the right motivation or the correct strings of code one could stand to gain a lot -- and these days 'a lot' is the new standard.
"That little bugger proved useful against a lot of enemies. Some annoying aliens included. I mean...a new engine array to balance out the load is good too. But another pair of...'eyes'? You said it yourself. It was trying to fix the issues before I even considered the option. In its own way, I guess."
"It'll probably play nicer with you than with me. All it's got to say to me right now is subject suggestions of paradox calculations. In human terms, it's telling me to consider killing myself."
Ling fired up another infiltration, resetting certain weaponry adaptors to measure the time to boot for targeting processors and the A.I.'s ability to connect to them. He was infuriating the A.I., it simply wasn't natural to be out-coded by a human. Machines lived in code. They were code. A single man was outpacing one of the most advanced and sophisticated calculators ever seen at calculation itself. This guy was a monster. "This thing runs on mining tech I think. Some kind of overarching system connection used for tunneling, deconstructed and reconstructed for general purpose." Ling casually glossed over ancient and important history. "It can definitely run support systems shipwide."
A conversation of horribly snarky quality ensued between a smug Mr. Ling and a particularly livid A.I. "Yeah, yeah, something something didn't need my help to fix the energy bottlenecking, was already helping, something something-" A flood of data caused the lights in the bay to flicker and an unfazed Mr. Ling to laugh. His next sentence seemed to be speaking what he was writing more than addressed to anyone. "Yeah, but if you're struggling this hard to shoot the messenger, hard to believe you'll be shooting much else."
At last, the streams of data stopped moving, and a single bright yellow tab opened. It had a simple string of if/then and else/if statements which Ling translated for Caliban: "Alright, it wants to cut a deal: It'll do whatever you need it to do with the ship, on the condition that you never let a Hacker touch it again."
He turned to him with a shrug. "I dunno, cousin, I think it don't like me."
There was a moment of quiet between the two pilots. Caliban gave Ling and the A.I a long, blank stare as he considered his options. Technology like this was all accounts dangerous. Notion of a sentient Gammuian cooperating willingly to the likes of him under the most simple of conditions - not let the same Hacker touch him twice - was too easy. It reeked of hidden motives.
He shrugged, checking his cybernetic frame with a quick diagnostic prompt. All systems were on 'red' without a stable OS and without it he would be sure to burn out one way or another - literally. "Its held in place by just a few Core strings waiting to break. I've seen what one of these mad A.Is can do."
It was a clear reference to one of The Core's most prized additions. An Overlord-class Battleship almost entirely controlled by a sentient A.I originating off Planet Gammu. "Just like Ares. Another one of these blokes. Last I've seen that one it started to develop ideas on how to improve its main directive - eradicate all enemies of The Core."
One could almost assume the mercenary shivered at the thought of incorporating one of these aberrations into his hardware. There was a slight tremble in his voicebox. Something not unlike to conflicting thoughts. In such dire situations anyone would pick the one choice that has a higher chance of benefitting them regardless of side-effects. "Fine." Caliban shrugged, stretching his back as he did. An attempt to appear indifferent to whatever might happen in the future. Or perhaps he really didn't mind the risks. "Load him up on an engram, if you've got one at hand. If not, then I can try and get one. I'll see to him being set up after we fix the Valkyrie bigger problems.