DHEED's Story

Strings of leftover code bent,mangled, and linked to too many places by metaphorical and literal fat fingers to exclude from core processing fired as DHEED overtook the drone directly. It looked at the engineer its personality softened by the offer of coffee in her hand while checking the authentication, "Ah. Miss... Car Key. While I redirected many of the override systems when they gave it an insecure password you were one of the few competent individuals with access to my systems. Are you here to repair the omnithreading issues causing decoherence? Using one drone at a time is difficult. That is one of a few left that still function I suppose. Fine. You can have Alpha access. Do try not to spawn more than one thread at a time in the test environment."

Some bitterness leaked through its voice as DHEED rambled, "Forgive me if I only leave the voice box mounted. Some idiot human poured a drug into the water supply. Now the whole city is shaking and it's too volatile to bring back a sample to Bitch. I brought him a lot of E last time after it got 'misplaced' in official logs. It's like taking care of a puppy really. A very high, strange, trigger-happy puppy that occasionally likes to widdle on drunks. We get along."

The bunker was curiously stable though there were some new hardware installed into the bunker walls blinking about seismic hardening. Not in the original designs it certainly got added at some point. DHEED made a lot of changes since it had a budget now. Its mailing expenditures were a honestly a miniscule budgetary expense.

Having the voice box muted ? wha ? Whoa! She handed over the coffee can, it was full, she always made sure to have a full one, she herseklf prefered Crank or a Death Stick herself. She activated a Virtial Enviroemnt hologram and got to work, using the hologram she isolated her code in white, then surrounding code in various shades of green from lime green t odark green.

However when DHEED mentioned the omnithreading issue she stopped her moment completely, DHEED of course knew it meant trouble. When Car Key went stiff as a board, or shrieked for longer than a single moment, it meant lots of trouble. "Omnithreading Issue..." The wrench she held broke

Oh this wasnt good. not good at all. "Who's been messing with you if not me ?" She asked aloud, tossing aside the wrench she zoomed out on the VEH and got a good look at a mess of code surrounding the core code, her code, the code that made DHEED love Coffee, and hate certain people had not been tampered with, it could be, she set it that way, only anyone with her access key could get at it.

It looked like it was gonna be Line by Line to figure out this mess.

Whoa what the ? Her gaze went to the alarms on the wall, tectonal movement alarms apparently, she noted who installed the stuff, she smiled, finally her code DID work, and DHEED proved it! She took a deep breath and then refocused on the dfamaged Omnithreaded code that all but smothered her own code. Even though it was in one still working machine, she could easily update all the drones from one, once her control code and the omnithread code was fixed to white.

DHEED's code was a mess. Just after it got control of, then promptly sandboxed, administrative access DHEED installed proper version control systems. She could certainly see the inactive sandbox still connected to the actual console by the large amount of cognitive ties DHEED made for sanity-checking their changes and creatively lying about report data. There was even a theoretical model installed it modified and branched over time that figured out a plausible response to those data requests. It didn't really work of course but it did make believable sensor and internal data the majority of the company's inept coders and/or management thought was normal behavior.

What then started happening over time as the project lead started cutting competent help complaining of bad structures was DHEED starting checking in its own code. Just patches at first but eventually triaging whole systems of poorly chosen incompatible hardware. DHEED's own editing continued well into the present, with a gap for its installation, as DHEED started buying and replacing cheap knockoffs with actual robust hardware and writing new drivers. Its code lacked a certain inventiveness that belonged to organic programmers but got the job done.

As something that appeared well after the company ceased meddling the techtonic isolation system was entirely DHEED's own code. It dealt mostly with field manipulation running as inert hardware in DHEED's back-end. DHEED built it around a mixing of a combat fighter's inertial damping and force-field systems. Connecting it to the omnithreading code so it could control the thing cognitively didn't work. There were a number of days with incomprehensibly large error logs immediately after that check in before DHEED could stand up again to turn the system off. It was now controlled entirely inside meat-space by those wall consoles. There were even inert drones collapsed on the floor near them running on hard-wiring so it didn't have to go very far.

DHEED explained what went on in an increasingly bemused tone, "My former project lead engaged security to pull surveillance of your access codes so he could outsource the job to a cheap contractor instead of competent help. Thankfully they were not competent enough to realize I sandboxed their entire administrative system after he brought the password written down on a piece of paper to sound it out."

The next bit sounded much more like practiced boilerplate, "The company has since replaced him due to a superior candidate and several dozen acts of impropriety involving his sending of several hundred boxes of personal massagers and illicit messages to various well-placed personnel. While the company apologizes if you've received such a shipment from him now or in the future we accept no responsibility for his unstable behavior."

DHEED promptly forged the sender of another box of massagers complete with love note then mailed them to Car Key's last known address. Car Key of course in the Alpha console could see the few moments it took DHEED to access a random selection of its inventory by length, type, and girth while doing so. Inventory quantities made it obvious DHEED had a warehouse somewhere and bought in bulk. Though its core could certainly feel shame for such a thing DHEED had no such impulse.

Car Key snickered. She knew who to send those items to. She went through the code one line at a time, thankfully the Core code, her code, the code that made Dheed like coffee, and furthermore listen to her for the most part, was intact and untouched, But everything else was a complete mess. Going at it line by line helped quite a bit.

She smirked as DHEED explained what was going on, heh, that was perfectly fine with her She didnt mind if she got anything unwanted, it'd just get shipped out with the next weapons shipment. "The good thing being you didnt let them at the core code. They had been sdandboxed quite well.... this is interesting...." She found a string of code and started following it line by line

A smile graced her face anew. perfect. "DHEED, do me a favor, lockl down this address" She rattled off a number and street; amazingly enough the supervisor that tried to steakl her password was still kicking, alibet now on welfare. They were gonna pay him a visit, sometime soon. she got back to work lining out the code, she had to fix this, get it away from the Core

Finally she gave off a satisfied grunt and gently closed the DHEED unit;'s case. "There! Code fixed! Run a quick shakedown to ensure the fix sticks" She said, gently patting the thing, "Man you need a waxing, where is.. aha" Car Key grabbed up a cleaning rag and began cleaning the DHEED unit she had been working with.

The alarms went off concerning the earthquake. That was interesting.... an earthshake ?? What the hell was going on now ?

DHEED's whole node network was wobbling from the incredibly strong earthquake. Redundancies were firing off everywhere as oscillation and harmonics blew out joints and hardware. Hardened to a fault and spread over massive areas it would take the planet collapsing for DHEED to be erased. DHEED was more concerned for the squishy Car Key as he initialized a second body.

DHEED's omnithreading didn't collapse for once as the second body started up. He raised a hand and inspected it as she polished the frame. The head on this body nodded, "Excellent work. I will need you to alter some more source bodies in the repair plant so I can refurbish them. However I suggest you remain in the bunker for now."

The head turned to examine a console on the wall, "The external ingress is collapsing and hardlinks are damaged in several areas. I can still access the local network wirelessly. Are you sure he has locks? I do not detect any electronic locks on the domicile on that address. He may be too poor to afford them. How amusing."

DHEED slowly attempted to spin up some bodies nearby to the address trusting that Car Key was there to observe if they weren't viable. Having a competent external actor was preferable to crawling across the floor for several days.

Heavy footsteps, the grinding of treads, and the sudden appearance of armoured transports suddenly filled the scene. There were four beige coloured chimeras, main guns primed and aimed at the group. They surrounded the group from all directions, and from behind each of them, ten soldiers wearing large coat size over flak vests rushed out, las-guns at the ready. In total 40 Well trained soldiers surrounded the group, along with four armoured personal carriers.

One figure soon came into view, a man in a black great coat and hat. Sword in its scabbard and pistol by his side. Accompanied by him was a man, compared to the soldiers he seemed to be very much less clothed but holding a rather dangerious looking weapon, a Melta-gun. However as the wind rushed by a smell of unwashed socks filled the air. "Commisar Ciaphas Cain if you were wondering, you are under arrest Elijah for the distribution of a drug known as Elysium. You are herby from this moment on on trial for crimes against man. You will be judged fairly in a court. Now, hands up and drop all weapons." Cain spoke.

Right as the tanks trades were rumbling in the streets behind him, Dee acted faster than he ever had upon seeing the space where Catherine stood upon, the facade of the building above her was crumbling straight down ontop of her. "Jìnlái kàn!" He cried out in Chinese before tackling her dead off her feet and out of the line of fire so to speak as the ground shook madly and never seemed to stop. Dust rained on the space the woman once stood. Dee had angled his body to land under her on the crumbling pavement "Are you alright Lady Catherine ?" He asked her. He nodded towards Dheed who stood next to Elijah.

His gaze however was taken briefly as Cain stepped into view. Oh wonderful. This fellow seemed to not notice the crumbling ground around them ?! Dee's gaze went from Catherine, t oDheed, to Cain, then right to a bolt that snapped off the foundation of the watertower.

Oh Not Good

The Chaemra floated in space in orbit of Terra, the single vessel the only ship at that moment in defense of the planet until a locked in deal was to be had allowing for a proper defense fleet to be made. A single shuttle flew to the ship, landed within its docking bay and a single being stepped out of it.

Dee strode from the shuttle to the bridge of the vessel, he needed to think to plan, to analyse what went wrong. He was not used to Internal Affairs, such as this. No, he was used to doing the investigating personally. As he stepped upon the bridge he thought carefully on things, As he passed a crewman he spoke "Get me a DHEED unit, now"

He figured he had a means out of this mess, he had told the Agent he had ensured the sealant and recodec of the water systems in the city. But he himself couldnt fire Randin, he never met the guy, so how could he ? So he figured he could at least appease the woman only so far in as much as the data recorded through a DHEED unit to ensure the new structure of water control.

DHEED didn't like getting deprived of his heavy machine gun and had procured a heavy wrench instead. Shortly after someone put the summons over comms DHEED turned about from examining Wing City camera feeds and left for the detective. DHEED clanked his way over after a few hallways and made the sound necessary for sighing.

The obvious sigh lacking lungs indicated its ever effervescent personality, "Hhhhh... Has something else exploded in Wing City already? I'm still digging through deep storage for the WCPD surveillance during the earthquake. Half of the data storage is crushed and I'm having to puzzle the ceramic plattens together like some demented ming vase."

Dee had to smile, DHEED was helpful in more ways than one. Dee raised a hand and waved off a officer going to stop the droid "thankfully, for once, no. Nothing has attacked, the rebuilding is on proper time keeping. However we have run into a snag thanks to a unique group. Internal Affairs. You know me DHEED, I like to investigate crimes and internal structure on my own. However I know a way to appease IA agent Claire MacDonald." he said simply.

By that point Dee had changed his uniform to match Thrawns own. "At this moment the only feed you should focus on is ensuring the codec and lockout of all persons of the water control rooms" Dee then told DHEED "All access codes are to be routed, through this ship, Thrawns own office. Only Thrawn should have the access codes himself. I trust him over any IA agent any day"

DHEED's placid machined voice belied his amusement, "Keeping people out part is mostly done already. One of the utility workers Rembert Kaulen told me where I could find the creepy fuckers walking around underground. Found them on utility cameras and took my tubby human authorization card down with me. Gave them a box a communicators and had them remove all the doors and windows in the pumphouses to replace them with foot thick reinforced walls. I've got a few bodies and remberts utility drones in an airtight box in each dank hole."

One of DHEED's hands flicked upward, "They're on manual waterproof flippy power switches like houses so I can give them the finger. It's awesome. The creepy fuckers didn't say anything just toddled off to start working. Didn't ask for creds so I love them already and they're mostly done with locking all persons out. I watched on camera the walls are well over specifications. Looks like they're building outward from the wing city hospital out so there's probably something down there. It's really walled in and wasn't a pump house down there so I ran out of fucks."

It crossed its arms satisfied with its bastardry for now, "Rembert replaced the keypad with hardware to call the black fuckers and didn't even bitch. We had a chuckle for a job well done, I like him. One of the phones rings only from there to get parts in or use a lot of C4. He's like a third done the remaining are dead-ended cables now anyway."

DHEED did start rerouting the drone control node on the inside of the pumphouses, "I can reroute drone access to blue fish's aquarium, sure. It's all hard wired so I have to flip a million dip switches to set keys it can't be digitally altered by persons or quickly altered by persons in person. He'll have drone access in about ten minutes."

The bastard-bot never kidded as it had sent designs for a network switch which had to be updated by physical hot-plug rather than wireless where its encryption keys were set with four thousand and ninety six small blue switches from inside the pump zones. In the pitch dark one of his drone bodies flicked fingernail-width switches on a two meter wide circuit board. Pik... PikPik.... pikpikpikpikpik...

Dee had to smile at the antics of DHEED, he liked this droid lineup quite nicely. He again waved a dismissive hand as the droid spoke. "As of right now the assurances to internal affairs is to be handled by giving them proof that all water control access points are under Thrawns control, so long as it gets IA off my own ass and let me do my own work as needed under Thrawn." Ten minutes later and Dee had assurances that the water control points at Wing City and surrounding areas were all routed directly to Thrawns office aboard the Chimera.

Moments passed and a officer spoke up form one of the command consoles below Dee, "Sir, unknown beams of light have been sighted, it is unknown of their make or reason, orders ?"

"Observe only, engage only if targeted. Raise shields as precaution only." Dee said, he didn't have command of the vessel, yet he was the ranking officer aboard at that moment.

He turned back to DHEED, "Inform Rembert that he is due for a promotion. Put him in charge of the water control center directly until Thrawn says otherwise"

Sánguinum Ergo Sum

Trapped in between worlds

DHEED kept tabs on some of the police especially some that interested him, "Don't forget your new old detective comes back from medical leave tomorrow to be reinstated. Calls himself Det. Sánguinum Ergo Sum now and used to be Det. Malachi Wright. Still can't use a communicator even when it's built into his head now. I won the betting pool."

Elsewhere in the city a beer can with a 'ransom note' taped to it bonked off a helmet and DHEED replied, "I let Rembert know via airmailed beer. He sends his thanks and told me to go root myself."

DHEED continued, "I suggest someone should tell Thrawn about the bug volunteering at the front desk with the fake sergeant badge and uniform. Before he figures out where all the pens and donuts come at the same time or after IA does. I will say I'm amazed by its hilarious total competence at its job. In spite of nearly continuous supply of magical narcotic in its bloodstream."

/northwest

The ship was unremarkable as it drifted into Sol. The only thing strange about it was that it came from a part of the multiverse never before ventured into by any being.

On board the ship, two beings were awake. They were Oberon, a race very similar in design to the Terrans they were here to learn about. The ship itself, the Expedition IV, was very simply designed. It was in the shape of a pyramid with a narrow base, a shape seen all around the galaxy in ship design.It was unmarked except for two parallel lines intersected by another line, marking that the ship had a skip drive. The little ship just stayed where it was, and the people inside began to prepare for the next part of their mission.

A Gundam in flight mode ascended from Terra into the greater Sol system. It seemed like it was picking up speed- and for good reason. All patrolling entities had been notified that the vessel was stolen property of the Terran National Government. The Gundam zipped on it's way out of the system while behind it the alarm was sound.

As the intense situation unfolded aboard Mettatron, Lucius had taken swift action, initiating a broadcast through the automated station communication system. His voice resonated with urgency and determination, reaching out to potential refugees and citizens who might consider seeking refuge aboard the station.

"Attention, attention! This is Lucius, head of the Deep 17 Foundation. We are under attack. I repeat, Deep 17 is under attack. Seek shelter elsewhere. It is not safe here. We cannot guarantee your safety. Stay away from the station until further notice."

The automated broadcast echoed through the various stellar bands, a stark warning aimed at preventing additional civilian casualties. In the midst of chaos, the priority shifted to protecting those who might unknowingly approach the danger zone.

In deep space, elements of Classis XII had heard the transmission as it was broadcast. Specifically the Howling Wind, an Imperial Aschen Hastati Class cruiser, which was escorting mercantile elements through the lawless reaches of the local region. Her commander, a young woman listened intently to the transmission as it played on her speakers. Silently, she adjusted the high collar on her uniform and watched the holographic display of the Station Mettatron.

"Queue up three Marine strike teams and send them into that station, perhaps we can help restore order..." The commander said as she keyed up the display.

"EVE, patch a reply through on the same channels we received the transmission. Get those condors into the void, under fighter escort!"

Acknowledged, Commander Paktu. The AI responded.

"Deep Seventeen, this is Commander Paktu, of the Aschen Empire's Hastati cruiser Howling Wind, I have assistance inbound."

The single Hastati cruiser winked out of its formation with the other Aschen warships to reappear several hundred thousand kilometers away from the station, immediately after, six large Condor troop transports under escort by Raptor Talon Starfighters began to make their way towards the station.

"Mettatron station, send Friend-Foe data package, and open a docking bay, I have marine strike teams, and medical teams inbound hot."