. . . . .A Gammu drone races through the nebula, its sensors piercing through the gas with as much power the unit can afford. In front of it, a Harvester-class spews gas and sparks from the severe damage it bears. Behind the unit, a small group of fighters chased closely behind, firing shots and releasing torpedoes in an attempt to destroy both alien vessels. These aggressors had been pursuing the pair for hours, and appeared to not be content with giving up with apparent victory so close at hand.
. . . . .The Gammu ships had been more numerous at the start of this voyage, with another Harvester-class and two Sentinels joining the pair. The intent of this expedition was simple - information gathering and 'harvesting' of opportune resources. The assembly were just outside of their secure territory, investigating a supposed unclaimed resource that would prove lucrative to hold authority over, if only for the time they were there. What they had found however, was a Sirian-occupied station that was located within the proximity of these 'unclaimed resources'. The Harvester units, owning logic processes orders of magnitude higher than their lesser Sentinels, had received and understood the demands from the station to depart immediately, as they were not welcome anywhere near the area. Knowing that the combined force of their units would prove worthless against the station, and knowledge that doing so would provoke a hostile response of unknown strength, the quartet silently left, taking a wide berth around the area.
. . . . .A small assembly of supply ships and their escorts were halted in the black void. The reasoning was to allow one of the tankers to handle a damaged power core, which was leaking fuel and radiation into space. The rest of the convoy, however, had continued on their route, while a small wing - only two heavy-weight fighters - had been left behind to guard the damaged tanker from a surprise raider attack, and to ensure the hulking vessel made it to their destination. All members were, however, unconcerned about any thought of danger - this region was sparsely populated and attacks were very rare. Besides, the convoy would send a repair team to assist the tanker, and they would be having drinks in just a few hours. It came as a shock, then, when the trio of ships sighted a slowly approaching band of unidentified ships. The masses were not any ship they had seen before, and there was no transponder information relayed from their direction. There had been rumors of alien vessels being spotted before, but they always seemed to be just that to the escort team - rumors.
. . . . .The Harvesters processed the situation in front of them. There were no radio communications coming from the larger vessel, and the smaller pair were quickly disregarded as little value. It was a prime opportunity, a large vessel laden with resources, seemingly left alone in the middle of an unremarkable area of space. Should this resource be harvested, the Harvesters assessed, it would be of little ability for the human populations to interfere. As such, the command was transmitted, and the Harvesters began their namesake work. The tanker was cracked open almost immediately, and the two small fighters had been chased off by fire from the trio of smaller Sentinel-class vessels. A bounty of refined material was collected by the Gammu ships, and a course was set for the long trip home, their expedition not completely made in vain.
. . . . .The group, however, were quickly found by a wing of fighters and bombers, led to the Gammu ships by the station's long range scanner and the two fighters they had failed to dispatch. The encounter quickly escalated into conflict, and the resulting skirmish routed the Gammu ships, who were slowly picked off one-by-one by the pursuing aggressors.
. . . . .Fifteen thousand units ahead lay the gravitational anomaly that would take the Harvester and its lesser Sentinel to safety. On the other side of the hole was a quick response for assistance from other Gammu units. Ten thousand units. The chasing wing flung more weaponry at the pair, and the flames from the Harvester intensified. Seven thousand units. A shot flared off the Sentinel's own shield, and the energetic bubble fizzled, leaving the ship unprotected. Four thousand units. The chasing wing started to peel away, but a final torpedo was launched. One thousand units.
. . . . .The pair began to slip into the anomaly, as the torpedo made contact with the Harvester's side profile. The antimatter-laden warhead quickly interacted with the dense metallic substance the vessel was built from, and in less than a thousandth of a second, the entire machine was vaporized. The blast of molten metal and gasses rended from the being slammed into the remaining Sentinel, overwhelming its sensors and pushing it out of orientation. Within the anomaly, it careened wildly, and attempted to stabilize itself. The anomaly's gravitational forces, charged with the raw energy generated from the detonation, fluctuated, and, with a ripple, closed entirely.
. . . . .The Sentinel was ejected from the other side of the anomaly, streaking plasma from the outermost layers of hull being seared into a vapor. The unit slowly spun to a stop, and the glow from its hull flickered, before fading entirely.
. . . . .The Sentinel hull drifted silently through the void. No lights shown, no deliberate movements made. Unbound, it had glided without authority, a powerless traveler at the mercy of the cosmos. If it was found by anyone or anything before, it was left undisturbed. How long was it alone. Weeks? Months? Years? It did not matter, for the unit within the shell was offline.
The unit reactivated, like shook from an eternal dream. As it's internal systems went over the automated list, it sent a request for a database connection to the rest of Gammu.
No Gammu seen, no result from the scan. The unit is alone.
. . . . .The Sentinel glides through the rocks of a vast asteroid field, watching and listening for changes. Planet Gammu was only a few dozen lightseconds away, a distance that only took a few days to travel. The Sentinel charged it's drive engines, and began the surge to home.
. . . . .The Sentinel streaks through the upper atmosphere of Planet Gammu. Its sensors haven't picked up any signals from the surface or anything in orbit.
. . . . .No response, likely a consequence of the damaged relay. The unit passes through the cloud layer, moving to a maintenance platform spotted during re-entry. There, the drone's relay can be repaired, and the connection to the PRIME Consensus will be restored. Only eight seconds until the unit can make visual contact with the platform. Its engines begin to slow the drone down, dropping from its supersonic flight speed.
. . . . .The maintenance platform was dark, and no mechanical movements were seen. On several landing cradles, Sentinels and a single Harvester were motionless. Like frozen in time, their bodies partially disassembled by the automated maintenance arms, as still as the machines they had been repairing. A thin layer of snow wisped along the ground, through the cradles, and over the machines. The inactive machines, the approaching Sentinel computed, must be inactive to save resources. It is likely there has not been the priority to keep them active, or their damage is too sufficient to repair with the resources on hand. The lone active unit silently nested itself unto an empty cradle, and waited for the cradle to physically connect to the drone, and systems to establish a handshake with the damaged drone.
. . . . .Thirty minutes passed in near silence. The only sound came from the icy breeze as it whipped around the drone and through the cradles. The Sentinel waited. Forty-five minutes. The maintenance cradle should automatically connect to the unit, but has yet to do so. A hour passes. A thin layer of snow was landing and subsequently melting on the still-warm hull of the drone.
. . . . .The AI ponders this situation, as much as it could have. The station must be nonfunctional. This was the only site with Sentinel cradles open, so to be repaired, the drone must find another station. The relay outposts had maintenance bays, namely Relay 1 - Primus Outpost. The distance was at least a week's travel, through uncertain space. However, the Sentinel's hull was sturdy and it's emitters were functional, so making the trip wouldn't be overly dangerous. The drone lifted off from the cradle, disconnecting from the icy platform to fly once more.
. . . . .A Sentinel moves along a flight path to a gravitational anomaly. The drone does not think about why it follows this path, but it knows that the end will be where it needs to go. The path it had chosen wasn't a choice it was given, but rather, one that was embedded into its own memory, and followed it blindly.
. . . . .The local inhabitants of the system GAMMA_M6V did not care much regarding the Gammu AI. In the past, it was a common occurrence to see their drones taking tentative peeks into the system, or even silently passing through to destinations unknown. The occasional pilot, full of arrogance, courage, or alcohol, would take it upon their own initiative to "clean up" any spotted Gammu, but often times ambition would be their undoing. This time, however, the Sentinel slipped by unnoticed. If it had been detected, it was promptly ignored, leaving the unit none the wiser to observation.
41_5600000 - Omega-41
. . . . .The Sentinel streaked through the asteroids and stellar remnants that littered the system. The neutron star at the heart, despite hardened plating and highly effective shielding, was slowly eating away at the hull of the drone, making an extended stay within the proximity of the neutron mass a hazard. The rush through the system to the target - a gravitational anomaly known to the unit, however, would take several days, at least, to reach.
The trek through the Omega-41 system was as quiet as the one before, but the radiation had started to take its toll on the Sentinel.
. . . . .A false positive for an unknown ship was detected, just out of range for identification. It followed the drone, never moving out of its range, nor did it approach any closer. The Sentinel, attempting to process how it was able to move in such a way to avoid finer analyzation, but also never leaving its detection, ended up "following" the signal for quite some time, until the ionizing radiation of the system damaged the sensor array further. In an instant, the contact vanished, and the Gammu quickly forgot about what it had been sidetracked by, and raced to the next destination.
48_K3IV - Omega-48
. . . . .48_K3IV - otherwise known as Omega-48, was the last known location of Relay 01 - Primus Outpost. The Sentinel searched its internal memory. The location for Primus was likely to be very far removed from the memory of the drone, given the vast time the drone had spent offline, as well as the ever-changing nature of the area it had been constructed within. The unit listened, waiting for a familiar signal, but heard nothing.
. . . . .The unit passed through the Walker Nebula, the body Primus was last located in. As it did this, the limited computational power of the Sentinel was used to predict the outpost's location.
Prediction 1 - Relay_01 is in resonance with all the objects within its local proximity. Accuracy variance is less than 10000 units. Prediction 45 - Relay_01 is ejected from the Walker Nebula by a rogue asteroid influencing the orbit of the station. Accuracy variance is over three trillion units. Prediction 162 - Based on the stability of the masses that pass by the Sentinel, Relay_01 is still within the body, but has changed its position relative to the centroid of the entire body. Accuracy variance of 45523 units.
. . . . .The Sentinel plans a path of travel through the nebula, based on a self-predicted position of Primus Outpost having been perturbed from their established orbit by no less than 300 units a second. With a course set, the unit slips into the Walker Nebula.
. . . . .A single entity inhabits the network of Primus Outpost, identified as PHI-34. As the only unit within the grid, it used the relay's service bay to assess the damage and stability of the unit's physical frame. The hull plating was damaged by burns, minor impact damage from weapons fire and stellar bodies, and sensors heavily damaged by cosmic radiation or entirely removed from the frame. As this was done, it searched the station's database for repair components last known to be in stock. The supply list was sparse - the majority of the components that were meant to be stored had either been consumed in repairs of other units, or were never able to be fabricated by the limited supply of raw material on board.
. . . . .The relay systems on board Primus, however, reported to be fully functioning, and picking up thousands of signals from the Omega-48 system. The one signal it did not receive, though, was the connection to the PRIME Consensus. The internal memory of the outpost had recorded the last communications of Primus Outpost to the PRIME Consensus, however.
. . . . .Following the final payload data, there was nothing. The entire PRIME Consensus had transmitted a command for every unit to turn off their relays, and deactivate power generation systems, effectively placing all Gammu Sentinels, Harvesters, and stations into a state of digital brain death. The commands, however, were missed by PHI-34, as the unit was unable to receive a relay signal, as the physical sensors were completely blown off in the last altercation with humans. Having missed this instruction, the Sentinel sat primed to reactivate when it received enough input power, which came years after the other PRIME units went offline. While it was technically possible to reawaken these comatose units, doing so would require the PRIME Consensus to physically interface with every unit, a task deemed impossible for a lone Sentinel.
. . . . .The Sentinel was unable to ponder why such a command would have been given. The status of Gammu and the PRIME Consensus was relatively stable, according to the last data the drone had received. Only an event so extreme that it would have resulted in the complete genocide of the Gammu AI would require such extreme actions. Perhaps the resources of the PRIME Consensus was in jeopardy of being depleted, and as such, many drones and Harvesters were brought offline, and only a few units were kept active until the issue was resolved. Only, nothing followed the command. The crisis, whatever it may have been, was either still ongoing, or the result of the issue was the cessation of the entire PRIME network.
. . . . .The damage to the physical frame of PHI-34 was too great for a successful return trip to Gammu itself, and with no functioning relay and failing sensors, collecting resources for repair would be impossible. However, there was a pair of empty frames, of unknown design and function, stored within the bays of Primus. These frames were heavily armored, approximately the size of other Sentinel hulls, but storing much larger power generators inside. These units appeared to be for harvesting purpose, but the enhanced power supply would enable much greater processing capability than was possible on the original Sentinel hull. It was possible to transfer the logic and data of PHI-34 to one of these new frames, but the stored knowledge of the unit would have to be transferred to Primus Outpost itself.
. . . . .The transfer took several hours, with only the subroutines staying online within Primus Outpost, feeding the data into the heavy frame. Finally, the unit self-activated, and was awake and sentient in its new body.
