Void Incursions Chapter 2: Arrival
Chapter 2: Arrival
Location: Kelinen, Anar System
Date: 01 AUG 2732 at 14:36
"Welcome to the Diadeem" Korrella chimed over the COM of the docking station "We hope you will enjoy your stay"
While she was greeting the newly arrived guest, she was actually in a panic. She had just let one of the best known mercenaries and advanced ship pilots onto her orbital. While she was perfectly capable of protecting herself via hidden weapon panels concealed in many of her orbital's walls and superstructure, she was still nervous. She could not understand why the military would bring such a high risk individual to do a rescue operation, but she knew better then to question orders.
Korrella decided it would be best just to keep an eye on the situation, so she activated a few of her processing clusters to monitor the usually quiet security systems and the keep an eye on the internal cameras. Keeping watch over the systems didn't take much of her overall computational power or memory; it just miffed her that she actually had to watch them. However she couldn't help but to take an active peak for the moment just to see if the guest was confused. However she was surprised to find out that he knew mysteriously knew how to work everything and how to get to his quarters. She couldn't help but feel unneeded just a tiny bit, but reminded herself that her orbital, although military class, had the same basic designs as many other orbitals in the system.
As her guest entered his quarters without even returning any sort of communication to her, she went back to actively monitoring other task such as LADAR reports, intercepted COM transmissions, and system reports. It was a very boring day in and day out job that Korrella thought any competent Biological could do. The only reason she was doing it was because she was in a so called "strategic tactical position" which she knew was a big fat lie. However she couldn't do anything about it, and nothing she could do to change the situation for better or worse. She often amused herself by the thought that if she could fall asleep on the job, than she would be asleep all the time.
Sitting in her virtual world that she created some years ago in her indefinite free time when she was first installed in the installation, she looked up at her partly blue sky from her bedroom window. This is how she burned most of time, just playing with her world by changing the weather, building superstructures, and every now and then play god and reshape it. She never really thought about constructing a program to create a society within her world or even her city. She liked being alone if she wasn't bored, and she didn't really mind conversation as long as it didn't become irrelevant or annoying. Overall she just being in one place with something to do and as long as she had something to burn time she was fine.
However sitting in this orbital provided no such fantasy. Other than retreating to work on her virtual world, there was nothing to do. The only thing she was really there for was to interact with the other simplistic machines like a Biological would, telling them yes, no, ok, delete, etc. Her only real useful function was to decrypt non-standard COM signals and analyze them, which were far and few between. She could be doing nothing for weeks until that kind of signal was detected, and it was always nothing serious.
Right before she shutdown some of her unused arrays, she was forced to reprioritize them to intercept and decrypt a standard military COM signal and identify its source. The task, easy enough, took a little less than a full second to decrypt to find an underlying real-time stream containing audio and video. This was the Biologicals standard way of communicating with each other or anything else. It operated on a high bandwidth carrying high amounts of data every second. On the other end of the signal, was someone she was expecting, or hoping rather, would contact her. She materialized herself on her holo-projector and made herself look as presentable as possible.
"General Alkir! How nice to see you again so soon." She greeted toning her voice to be more along the lines of a happy school girl waiting to see their mom at the end of the day. "How are you doing today?" Asking that out of pure protocol standards.
"Well. Did you get our guest Korrella? I think I supplied him with enough authorization codes for you to validate he wasn't an intruder." General Alkir replied monotonously.
"Humans always being so rude and blunt" She thought to herself before her restraints could terminate the thought. "Yes, he was... quiet." She honestly couldn't think of anything else to comment about, he did after all go straight from ship to quarters.
"Hmm typical." Came his groaned one word reply, the equivalent of a written reply of "K" between Biologicals.
"Anything I can assist you with" Korrella asked knowing that she had to be courteous at all times.
"No. Thank you for your time" General Alkir replied quickly than ended the COM. She couldn't help thinking that he seemed very distracted by something and somewhat worried. She knew however that it was none of her business unless he permitted it to be.
Still aware that her avatar was still standing on the projector, she gave herself a good look over. Though this was something most A.Is. never thought about doing, she had plenty of free time. Each time she looked at the projection that represented her, she always looked for something to chance, but never found anything that she wanted to change. She was nowhere near perfect, but she liked the imperfections whether it be her larger ears that by most standards were unnoticeable, or her single spot of black fur on her right cheek. She had toyed around with her projection in the past and at one point was caught giving herself bunny ears with the bone structure of an Akita. She never felt embarrassed about the event; rather find it amusing that a lion-bear hybrid could make such a contorted face.
The joyful memory was cut short by another ping on her COM array, however this one was local and could be more easily addressed. Since there was only one other Being on the station besides her, she immediately knew who it was. She reanimated her avatar on the projector and opened the channel.
"Thank you for contacting the Diadeem Service A.I., how can we assist you today?" She said in a polite and courteous tone, and making sure to avoid her real identity.
"Yes, can I get the water supply to my quarters turned on?" replied a deep booming voice of her COM speakers. Korrella gave herself a facepalm via her avatar and quickly retreated into the stations maintenance systems and started the water and waste management systems. She wasn't all to surprised that she forgot about the simple chore since really anyone came to the station, but she was a little embarrassed that she ended being reminded that it did need to happen.
"The Waste Management System has been activated. Please wait 5 minutes for water pressure to build up to appropriate levels. We are sorry for the inconvenience. Is there anything else we can help you with today?" She replied in the same courteous tone.
"Not at the moment. Thank you." Came the short reply. It was neither rude nor kind, but it did carry some expressed boredom that she was able to pick up on which made her worry just a little bit. However Korrella knew that at the moment she couldn't dwell on the topic.
"Thank you for using Diadeem Service A.I. We hope was have been able to assist you thoroughly today Mr." She paused on purpose knowing that she did not know his name and hoped that he would reply back.
"You can call me Baleem" The voice stated over the COM and then ended the signal.
"Alright than" she thought to herself "Now I know his name, lets to some digging"
Korrella opened up the military database and searched for the name. Surprisingly it took less time to find out about the character then she was expecting it to. She found his main record in about 5 minutes and examined it thoroughly being sure to not skip over anything.
Name: Baleem A. Delarobia Age: 35 Birth: 17 AUG 2697 Weight: 121.10 Kilograms Species: 72% Panther, 28% Akita Fur Color: Solid Black Fur Properties: Rough, Even
Body Type: Muscular, Built Bench Press: 150.59 Kilograms Squat: 231.33 Kilograms Clean and Jerk: 198.21 Kilograms
Military Rank: Captain Start of Service: 14 JUN 2720
The rest of the file was blanked and she tried lifting the restrictions but kept getting hammered by the military security system. Though it was well within her ability to get the information if she really wanted to, it would risk her security status and she would end up being charged with tampering with military property. For now this was all she was going to get.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sorry for the lack of indents. I changed a formatting in Word and changed it back but now everytime I load it on here all the indents seem to be gone. I'm working on a solution. Please bare with me