EliteCommander

The Cradle

In this case, Rareth was glad to be wrong. Evidently, something had been examining their communications since they arrived, and it was finally getting around to translating them. Whichever language it had learned, Rareth’s translator could understand it, which meant she could respond. “We have come to investigate; to learn about this place and its inhabitants. We come from the physical world, outside this digital world. We came prepared to defend ourselves, but we have no intention to harm you. We have been inside another object like this one and have been attacked, but we would rather speak peacefully. We may be able to help each other.”

As soon as he had been able, Nirann had returned to work on the transit station. He did take a fraction of a second to further modulate the shield so that it would not block visible light coming from the outside. It allowed him to see what was happening outside, though anyone looking in would still only see blackness. If the titanic creature had it sights set on crushing their transit station, he would prefer to be able to see it ahead of time. In any case, the majority of the processing power in his frame were running analysis on two different data sets: one collected from outside the simulation, and the readings gathered inside. They were both being compared to Cradle data to identify the points at which the object’s internal language had diverged from the Cradle so he could make the necessary rewrites to the transit station’s code.

The Cradle

It was times like this that Rareth most benefited from her training. As soon as the mast was moved to safety, she left she shield to see this heat signature. She was not influenced by her amazement, nor delayed by any uncertainty or doubt. She made swift judgments based simply upon the facts available. The creature had an unknown temperament with an unknown intelligence level. It was a titanic lifeform; if it existed in reality, it would be among the largest known individual creatures. Dr. Ngata, down at the bottom of the ridge, was also dangerously close to its point of emergence. Even if the creature did not directly pay attention to him, collateral damage was a distinct risk. Its mouthparts and large, front-facing eyes were consistent with a predatory nature, which further heightened the risk. Comparing what she could observe with the known abilities and equipment of herself and her allies, she judged that the beast could potentially be of some danger.

Rareth did not hesitate to run and put some distance between herself and the transit station, though she did not move towards the creature or Ngata. Rather, she moved perpendicular to the beast, along the top of the ridge. Once she was far enough away, she stopped in place, alone at the top of the ridge and far from cover or her allies. She spoke through their comms channel to inform the others of her plan, “Dr. Ngata, you are too close to the creature. I will draw its attention to me; everyone else, stay back. Ngata, try to move away from the creature quickly, but without being noticed.”

Rareth left few opportunities to argue with her plan, as she soon began shouting up at the massive lifeform. It was not unthinkable that even such a monstrous beast could still be intelligent, so for now, she did not do anything overtly threatening. Though, she did change the firing mode on her fusion cannon to a single-fire, high-explosive plasma burst, as well as marking potential weak points as targets for micro-missiles. “Are you intelligent? Can you understand my words, or at least that I am speaking to you? We have come here peacefully, but should you attack us, I will be forced to kill you.” She shouted. Of course, Rareth highly doubted that she would get anything even resembling an answer, but that was not the point. All she needed was its attention to give Ngata a chance to get away.

The Cradle

“I think you might be right.” Rareth remarked as she looked out into the distance. Whatever the source of the light and sounds, it was far more likely than the local villagers to actually give them meaningful answers about this place. They needed to act as quickly as they could, but nothing could be done until they dealt with the problems plaguing their transit station. She had been keeping track of what the scientists had been saying inside the shield, so she knew they were not in a position to move yet.

Nirann dug in his heels and pulled against the tug of gravity to try and keep the mast up on the ridge. He had unrestricted robotic strength in the body he was inhabiting, so he was certainly able to put in his fair share. They made slow progress at first, but after a few moments, everyone holding on to the mast would suddenly find that it felt much lighter. Rareth had moved into the shield and lent her muscle towards their combined efforts. Though, in truth, it felt like she might have been able to do it on her own. In any case, she did not allow time for rest once they had dragged the equipment to safety.

“We need to prioritize getting the transit station safely operational as quickly as possible. Nirann, how long will it be?” Rareth asked directly.

Nirann stood slightly hunched over with his hands on his knees, miming as if he was out of breath despite the fact that his body neither breathed nor fatigued. “I can’t say for sure, but I’ll start running the data through my processors to see if I can close the gap between the object’s programming and what the station expects.”

Still wasting no time, Rareth immediately opened the team’s comms channel to attempt to contact the junior Human scientist. “Dr. Ngata, do you need assistance, or can you make it back up on your own?”

The Cradle

Nirann quickly got both hands onto the comms mast once the shaking started to get worse. A soldier came into the shield to help, which would hopefully be enough bodies to make sure nothing ended up broken. “Okay, yeah, let’s get this thing on the ground, gently. We can put it back up when the ground is less angry.”

Outside the shield, Rareth made it back up the hill and rejoined the others. Her neural implant had managed to fully adjust to the low-light conditions by mixing in ambient light from the non-visible spectrum, so she could see much better than at the start. Still, that did not reveal what was causing this disruption. “If they can’t run from it, I doubt we’ll escape either, unless we get the transit station up. So, we hold. Just be ready, but still don’t shoot until we know we are under attack.”

While they still had no true answers as to what was happening, the sounds Rareth heard did provide some hints. They were not natural; they were synthetic. From some electronic source, most likely. She supposed she did have to allow some uncertainty, as she did not truly know what kind of creatures might be found in a simulation, but it did imply something with more advanced technology than what these villagers had shown. It could be a genuine threat. Rareth had three firing modes to work with on her fusion cannon, plus the micro-missiles. She decided to leave it on its fully-automatic firing mode for now, as it was the most versatile.

The Cradle

Rareth shrugged her shoulders with a glance towards 595. “I think if these villagers really wanted to stab each other, they would do it with or without our knives.”

What proceeded was abrupt chaos. Between the thundering sound that echoed across the landscape and the shaking of the ground underneath them, Rareth had already drawn her fusion cannon from her back. She deployed her helmet quickly, then scanned her surroundings, both visually, and with every sensor her body possessed. Rareth started making her way up the hill back towards the others, but she did take note of how the locals behaved. “I’m beginning to think these villagers are not the biggest fish in this pond, to borrow one of your expressions. Look at how they submit themselves; they know what is coming.”

Meanwhile, inside the shield, Nirann raised up one hand and took a hold of the communications mast. Even among a veritable earthquake, his chosen body did not struggle to hold up its weight. While its main purpose was just to be a vessel for his mind, the droid was still a military model. “I got it!” Nirann shouted. “Would it really have hurt you people to make this thing more stable? Wider base? Maybe just make the whole thing a box? What if I just lay the thing down gently on its side? Does it really need to be standing straight up right now?”

The Cradle

The light was noticeably bright even to Rareth, but the locals seemed to particularly hate it. Given how dark and dreary this place was, it did not take much thought to figure out why. If they had been here long enough, they would have evolved for low-light conditions, and unlike Rareth’s ocular implants, their eyes could not block out sudden bursts of light.

In place of words, Rareth did her best to wear her emotions as openly as possible in her expression and body language. Many of those were instinctual among Rothians, so if she could not communicate ideas, she could at least communicate a feeling. She showed confusion and concern, then looked back towards the transit station and shouted back to her companions. “The locals really don’t like that light. Maybe try…modulating the shield generator to block energy in the visible spectrum? It will be a small uptick in power usage, but it shouldn’t amount to anything major.”

Rareth’s suggestion would cause the shield to become noticeably opaque, so hopefully that would indicate to the villagers that they had done something about the problem. Until then, Rareth had the knife that Memnon threw to her, and a gift like that could go a long way to convincing them their new guests’ intentions. For primitives like them, knives were common tools used in everyday life, so such a gift would likely be seen more along those lines than as a weapon. Rareth still was not completely sure who was the leader among the villagers, or if there even was one, but she recognized the one that had been most willing to approach her. She laid the knife, still in its sheath, across her palms and bowed her head and she extended her hands slowly forward to present her offering to them.

Nirann raised up his head slightly to try and peer over the ridge down towards the source of Rareth’s voice for a quick moment. “Locals? So you found intelligent life here? Exciting; let’s hope we can get this fixed quickly.” He commented to Dr. Wetherall as he started to assist with moving the equipment. “I brought diagnostic equipment, and also a mountain of data and technical manuals in my memory banks. I know I’m not your usual engineer, but I think we can handle this. I have a lot of reference data from your Cradle, as well as all the readings we’ve been taking from the outside. If we compare our readings, your readings, and the Cradle data as a reference point, we should be able to make the right adjustments to the transit station’s software.”

The Cradle

Rareth tried to enunciate her name more clearly, but she was not going to dwell on that detail for too long. It was more important that she establish her intentions than that they get her name right. Her translator was still not returning results, but at least things were not going too badly. They had staved off violence so far. It certainly helped that they seemed to be closely related enough that they could look like they were of the same species. Rareth was a giant compared to them and wearing strange armor, but her face was at least familiar to them. To the villager who reached out to touch her, she offered her hand, palm down and with her fingers curled inward so as not to present the claws on her armored hand.

After a moment, Rareth glanced back towards her Human allies, mostly to signal to the villagers that she was speaking to her own companions, rather than them. “I don’t suppose we have anything that could be given as a gift, do we? Something that isn’t a gun? I think that might help signal our intentions.”

Nirann’s appearance was met with a few seconds of signal errors on half of his sensors, along with what felt an awful lot like a headache. Fortunately, a quick reboot of his body’s systems seemed to do the trick. Seeing as he was still not terribly familiar with the Human harnesses, they decided it was best to scan a body in, rather than try to program a new one. Less could go wrong that way. He had uploaded a copy of his neural network into the processor of one of the ship’s security droids. It was essentially a more militarized version of a police bot, so it was built in the form of a Rothian, though it lacked synthetic flesh. Rather, he had an armored outer shell consisting mostly of matte white metallic plates. To give him a bit of extra processing power, he had taken the processing unit on the computer he had appropriated and essentially shoved it into the droid’s storage compartment then quickly rigged it to be accessible to the unit’s internal network. It might not have been a conventional solution, but it would work. It came with enough extra storage space as well to give him a library of knowledge on ancient Rothian civilizations and customs, as well as the technical data the Humans elected to share.

Nirann’s eyes lit up with a soft blue glow once his optics came online. Although, he found himself far from impressed when he started to look around. Even after he switched to low-light vision, the whole area still seemed dark and bleak. Regardless, he did not stay distracted long. He spoke up as soon as he noticed the Human scientists near the transit station. “Okay, I’m here and…this place is weird. By the way, don’t send anyone else back through. The one you did send back…she didn’t look so good last I saw her. Something is going wrong with the transit station, or how it's interacting with this particular simulation, and we need to fix it.”

It did not take long for Nirann to scan the area around them, and with thermal sensors, his scan immediately revealed the crowd of villagers that had descended upon Rareth. “Also, wow, that’s a lot of heat sigs nearby. Is that, uh, something I need to be worrying about?”

The Cradle

While Nirann seemed willing to try his hand at entering the simulation, Marae did not seem nearly so enthused at the idea. She reached out and grabbed at Nirann’s wrist. Her hand passed partially through his, but he did still seem to be able to “feel” the touch. “Now hold on. You know I don’t approve when you do this.”

Turning to face her, Nirann gently took both of her hands in his and stepped in closer to her. “I know, my dear. We’ve had this discussion-”

“-argument…” Marae snapped.

“Argument…many times before. I know you made my mind to be as Rothian as it possibly could be, but you also gave me far more capabilities beyond that, even ones you didn’t intend. Nothing dies when I reunite with a fragment. We just…become one.” He said softly.

Marae’s eyes narrowed. “That is very debatable, Nir. And what if a copy of you dies every time you do this? I can’t handle the thought of that.”

Nirann was silent for a moment as he leaned in closer to her. He lifted a hand up to her cheek and encouraged her to lower her head, then pressed his forehead against hers. “You know I would never do anything that I believed would hurt you. I’m only doing this because I genuinely believe it.”

A slight smile crept across Marae’s expression. “I never said you didn’t believe it…I just think you’re the smartest idiot I’ve ever met.”

Nirann laughed along with her. “I know, but I have a plan.” He said, finally pulling away from Marae and giving a quick look over to Freyr. “Here’s what we’ll do. Right about now, I’m having one of the ship’s security droids cart in the strongest Rothian computer I can get a hold of on the ship. Now, it’s no Core, but a Rothian computer still has far more processing power than the average organic brain. I’ll download a copy of my central neural network onto the computer. You can have your technician stay here in the real world; until we get that transit station set up, it’s just not safe to send any of you organic people in. Just download all of the schematics, technical manuals, any data you can think of even tangentially related to the transit stations into that computer. I’ll organize it all into an abstract service layer; think of it as a…brain outside my brain, but still in my head. It allows my to gain access to functions a normal Rothian mind would not have, without making any changes to my core mind. Long story short, if you give me all the information you have on the transit station, and anything that might possibly be affecting it, I should be able to fix it myself. Before I go in, I’ll perform a detailed scan of the copy’s mind. The only changes that should occur are in the mind’s memory center, so when my copy does come back, we’ll separate out and quarantine the memories, then I’ll meld back with my copy only if the rest of the neural network is identical to when we sent it in.”

Nirann glanced back and forth between Freyr and Marae. “Does that make everyone happy?”

---

Rareth’s eyes glanced around at the villagers surrounding her. As expected, her translator could not identify any of the words being spoken around her, which likely meant they could not understand her either. She went ahead and had her neural implant start examining their words and try to begin the translation process, though that was not a task that could be done in a short time. For the moment, she spoke back to the Humans watching over her. “Plenty of weapons, yes, but they are crossbows, spears, and farming tools. They’re primitives. If I harden my shields, they wouldn’t be able to scratch them, much less my armor. If I am attacked, I will just return back to the transit station, and we can leave without bloodshed.”

Seeing as none of the villagers had tried anything violent so far, Rareth opted to try and start establishing some degree of a rapport with them. The first, and simplest step towards that was exchanging names. Even without speaking the same language, that was something she felt they could accomplish. She kept in a passive position and did not make any sudden moves, but looking specifically at one of the envoys, she pointed to herself and said “Rareth’Jharn.” She repeated the same words, and the same motion several times to try and get the point across.

The Cradle

Nirann shrugged his shoulders as he eyed one of the harnesses. “I mean, that may be true for your AIs, but I think I’m a cut or two…hundred above them.”

Marae once again rolled her eyes, but picked up in a more serious tone. “My husband does have a point. I mentioned that our AIs could be indistinguishable from a Rothian mind, and that is Nirann, quite literally. I designed his series of AI to perfectly replicate the neural network of a Rothian brain. If you were to scan his neural pathways, you would not be able to tell them apart from a natural mind.”

“The way she build up service layers outside my core mind to expand my capabilities was a real stroke of genius, but…I can’t get into that. The point is, I think my mind should work with the harness.” Nirann remarked. “It’s not like the simulation is interacting directly with the brain. Your brain interacts with the harness, which interacts with the simulation. There’s a layer in between the object and your squishy, fleshy bits. The simulation should see my mind just the same as any Rothian.”

While she did agree with NIrann on the point he was making, she spoke more softly, and less optimistically when she interjected again. “I’m more concerned about the safety of anyone entering at all. Is she alright? I am going to assume that is not normal for exiting your Cradle.” She said, pointing to Dr. Diamini.

---

“Just stay back near the transit station and watch the other approaches. I’ll meet with them and try to see if we can communicate at all.” Rareth instructed to the Humans. The numbers that these villagers had might have seemed daunting, but at the same time, they were riding animal mounts and did not show signs of technology even close to that of modern Rothians. Or even Humans, for that matter. Though, in any case, she did not intend to let down her guard. Surprises could come from anyone.

Rareth stepped forward partially down the hill, presenting herself as the envoy for their group to meet them halfway. She supposed such customs might not have been entirely universal among early Rothian groups, but these villagers might still do the same. She kept herself in a non-threatening posture and spoke out to them once they were close enough to hear. “Greetings, my name is Rareth’Jharn. I come to you peacefully.” She said aloud. She did not actually expect any of them to be able to understand a word she said, but she figured she might as well try.

The Cradle

Marae followed Freyr to Dr. Diamini’s side, though her mind was focused on the problem at hand. Nirann had some unique circumstances to contend with, but it was still possible that they might be able to send him in. Diamini was slow to awaken, as it did seem that she had to take some time to recover and get her bearings, so Marae did have a chance to reply. “Nirann can’t move here himself. His AI core is locked pretty firmly in place.”

Nirann’s hologram appeared on the other side of the harness. “Do I really need to be there in person, though? Maybe I can puppet an artificial mind, like one we uploaded? Just one more…directly connected to me.”

---

Seeing that the transit station was up and working was encouraging to Rareth, though that did not take her focus from the crowd of villagers spreading out at the bottom of the ridge beneath them. “We have the transit station working. It shouldn’t be long before our experts join us. Still…I should acknowledge them. At least give them some indication of our intent."

Rareth moved over to the edge of the ridge, though unlike Athena, she stood clearly silhouetted at the top. She had retracted her helmet so that her head and face were clearly visible and identifiably Rothian.She hoped that their eyesight was strong enough to see her at their current distance, as she wanted to show them she was something familiar, even if she was a giant of a Rothian. She placed her fusion cannon on its magnetic holster on her back, held out her hands open-palmed for a moment, then bowed her head and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. Among Rothians, it was a distinctly non-threatening position, as it was not a position from which one could use their claws quickly. Even if these villagers were not truly Rothian, she hoped they would still recognize the more instinctual Rothian body language.