Automated Defences

[Eternal.Journey]

Jacob prowled the Depot corridors, hearing the arrival of the latest transport ships over the station’s intercom. One left turn, down two flights of stairs, another left. What had him so focused on it was the contents of the hauler: an Artificial Intelligence unit, seemingly inert, yet not visibly damaged. An agreement had been struck for the purchase of said unit, somewhere in the range of six figures. Of course, financial decisions fell to him, but the “books” would wince with that expense.

Walking by the warehouses, a bustle of activity as the multitudes of crates were moved around, each one being labelled for distribution to whichever facility or department aboard needed it most. One of the more recently delivered Super Alloy crates was on its side, the contents spilled over a walkway as three people frantically examined each unit of alloy for damages. He made a mental note to go through the weekly report later. For now though, he needed to see the purchase.

One more right turn, and the corridor opened up into a large hangar. Shuttles were ferrying cargo pods from the three Border worlds transports, some of which bore the Insignia of the Arthouse Collective in the borders between Rheinland and Kusari. One container was marked differently. It was marked instead with "Dangerous Materials", was not listed on the manifest itself and had a physical booklet that was handed to him as soon as one of the crewmen noticed him.

"This just arrived for you, sir."
"I trust this is the package you contacted me about?"
"It is. That Rhino over there scooted it over from Zeta. Says it was a 'High Priority' contract and to be delivered as soon as possible."
"Good. I'll have a look in a moment, just need to doublecheck the supplies can be offloaded before they replace the cargo with our relic reserves"

As the crewman wandered off to continue his tasks, Jacob pulled out his datapad and perused the most recent cargo manifests. Ten thousand eight hundred relics, bound for Sigma space. Cryocubes, super alloy and high temperature alloys, each of three thousand six hundred units being delivered in exchange. Perfect. On schedule, too. The extra hands down at the manufacturing department had mentioned they were getting short of testing materials for the next build projects. Now he could focus on the special cargo.

A flick through the manual told him that in the container was a semi-mangled Artificial Intelligence drone. Internal circuitry had been hacked and locked down as a safety precaution. Of course, tinkering with the wiring of one of these was a delicate process and there was no need to risk the thing turning the station's internals into a teabag. Further reading into the specifics of the vessel's capabilities gave Jacob the idea of using the drone as a personal defence drone, partnered with one of the other acquisitions that had been made several weeks prior. Remnants of Gammu technology in most other cases had shown to have not actually been under complete Core control. Yet the one he had gotten his hands on had remained loyal and Core-aligned.

Marching over to the station's intercom, he pressed his palm against the biometrics panel and requested to be put through to the Research and Development team within the ship maintenance and construction bay. One of the new modules that had been added, in a bid to expand the facility's services through component and ship manufacturing. A project that had turned out to be quite lucrative as a business opening already in the last six months alone.

"Clearance code: Three Eff Emm Seven One Three"
"Clearance code confirmed, boss. What do you need?"
”Package arrived. Its all yours to work on for the next eight weeks. After that I hope you'll have it functional and able to be deployed as a defensive asset for the depot, possibly even as an escort for transporters if needed."
"Sending a team over now to bring it down. Should be ready by then, providing my estimates aren't off."
"I'll leave it in your capable hands then."

A quiet crackle as the line closed. It was time to expand the station's defences beyond the regular and increase the sectors protection. If all went according to plan, Grootegeluk depot would have one of the few remaining Core-controlled Artificial defence units in the fleet.

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