Outsider

[Laowai]

The small Android stood imobile as Ben linked its sytems to his own computer system.
He had removed the android from The "machine" planet in omicron Kappu, and while he was aware there was a growing sentience there, he was also aware that this sentience was not master of all machine lifeforms... not yet.

He entered the command into his data pad and wiped the pre existing programming within the machine. It had been programmed initially for deep space mineral retrieval and thus its programming was simple enough to override. This type of machine was never in danger of achieving any kind of sentience, its systems were too limited and the physical restraints exhibited by its hardware meant that this small, pod like machine would be nothing more than a tool.

After fastening his cargo within its frame he went about programming it a simple set of commands, guarded by an encryption that could never be broken, for the encryption relied on a series of random commands that only he could know, and only he could activate.
The machine would leave Cretan space via a barely traveled route, and then enter cruise speed and proceed to where he had told it to go, he fixed the machine with standard jamming, evasion and covert protocols and then set it to standby. It would launch a few hours after he had left his hangar.
Walking down the stairway he approached the blast ridden hull of the Xibanya Nuren. She stood supported by scaffolding and wire frames supporting various electronic feeds. Having the vessel in the spacecraft version of "intensive care" was something that he was beginning to get used to. After the outcast raid above Crete her crew had ejected and landed safely planetside, but her vacated hull had needed to be retrieved by salvage vessel. The outcasts had thoroughly hammered several of the capital class ships that had stood on patrol above Crete not long before, and as he stood there, watching the technicians and their automated helpers clamber over his ship, he considered wider issues.

The Corsairs stood alone their only allies; the Gaians, farmers alliance, the Order and the Kusari Hogosha while lending valuable financial and intelligence aid, were for all intents and purposes inefective in any military sense... and the Zoners? It struck him as bad tidings indeed that the Outcasts had massed first in Omicron Theta before they had moved into Corsair space...
The Nuren's targeting systems had completly failed during the battle with the outcasts, and he knew that he would have to take time to figure out why. For now, he just needed to get her airworthy again.


He ran his hands through his grey hair... so many Corsairs were still bickering about petty matters while their enemies wasted no time on such pursuits, they just arrived calm, organised and intending death.


"Contact me after you have finished the estimate on her hull" he called out to a Corsair technitian who was laboring over a scanner atop the Nuren's Hull.

He gathered the few possessions he had brought with him into capital city after his hiatus in the wilderness and turned to leave the Hangar, intending to return to the isolated cabin from which he had so recently returned.

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