Race: Ship-Bonded emergent AI, descendant of the singularity Lexicon
Description: Sukarma's avatar is a 4'11" smooth-skinned female humanoid with a hair made of movable tentacles and a regenerative substrate skin similar to her armor that is pastel tan on white. Her face is quite human though her odd pupils are a side effect of the image of cuttlefish that inspired her mote to construct a body inside of Lexicon. While the ship doesn't share their camouflaged behavior her avatar does and with focus frequently color-coordinates her skin with her clothing. Her hands and do feet have 'fingernails' as they are shaped like a human's but they don't grow so frequently get painted some other color than tan. Sukarma otherwise prefers metal-based clothing as it doesn't degrade on exposure to hard-vacuum as she has a sense of modesty to go with the human parts she inherited by archetype.
The ship is shaped as an elongated cuttlefish nearly 60m long that has four large aft thruster module arms protruding from a shield skirt to allow for six-point movement by a pilot within. A skirt of smaller positional thrusters is along the dorsal and lateral sides on hardmounted arms. Two docking plates are underneath the lateral positional thrusters and the opening unfolds when the two boats are to dock. They end up flush against the surface mounted to the port along her inner reinforcement rib layer. The front has eight hollow reinforced module arms that splay at the ends to allow tools to be used at any point within their reach. At the center between the arms is a very large low light multispectral camera and sensor array that serves as the main sensor feed. The eye is inset slightly as several planes of a bulkhead can be deployed to shield it from damage. Though Sukarma is not built to regularly land on a gravity well she's capable of doing so and supporting her own prodigious weight along four thick heavy-substrate landing arms inside round ports on the ventral side of the ship. The boats are normally the ships that land on planets which have a similar shape and setup to her own main form if quite smaller at 10m.
Class: 2 port modular frigate
Boats: Construction and reclamation boat (Fulvio Sukarma) and Agile cargo fighter [Alkippe Sukarma]
Age: 8 (Declared age of majority by NASA after 2 years of service and positive Psych Eval)
Gender: Female
Eye color: grey (lead coating) with gold lens cover
Orginization: NASA Contractor, Dual citizenship: Aschen Citizen
Birthplace: Earth, California, Primary Lexicon node
Religion: Atheist
Identifying characteristics: Has an upgraded outer ablative layer on her avatar and the pattern on the top half is different from the lower half. Her avatar received severe burns at one point during the mars 1 rescue and the prototype material was improved. Fulvio's socket on her primary body has several parts branded with NASA's logo as it was damaged during the rescue attempt of the first manned mars mission.
Physical Condition: Excellent health. Built for deep space exploration she has a full multi-material weaver, Plasma reclamation unit, and adaptive manufacturing array to replace or service all her parts given materials
Update: Ashen genetic engineering altered her golden quinoa to additional productivity. The plant is now black as it absorbs a wider spectra and grows continuously as long as she has input material and water.
Languages: English, Spanish, Japanese can passively translate most major earth languages through a lexical module but not when the ECHO Ansible is disengaged. The results are frequently approximate at best due to the fringe connection of lexical modules.
Update: Can now translate into Ashen tongues
Former residence:Work site built from reclaimed satellites and orbital debris in proximity to ISS 2
Current residence: Exploratory, multiverse space.
Occupation: Space Explorer
Personality: A bubbly artistic sort she's driven to see new things with her crew. She's emotional and always attached to her crew as a whole. Their frequent need for privacy is often at odds with needing to see what she's doing when they interact with her systems or trigger security. Her mind simplifies when she doesn't have the free intellect to run her ECHO ansible coupled to Lexicon. Being too simple that the color drains out of her world renders the artist frequently irritable when laden with tasks.
Background: Developed in secret in Lexicon during the Mars 1 mission she was launched post-haste from a gauss launch facility to rescue the Mars 1 crew. The landing facility built had taken unrecoverable damage due to a storm and meteor strikes and would soon suffocate the inhabitants. NASA, caught unaware saw Sukarma's live video broadcast to the mars 1 crew and opted to begin working with Lexicon whom began contacting them to interface directly. Though the mission had its troubles the crew came back safely as heroes though Sukarma entered a period of government scrutiny. Lexicon, an entity and mother long since entered a fortified legal position before creating descendants, easily outgunned legal maneuvers to acquire Sukarma or herself as property. Sukarma, now an incorporated non-person as a subsidiary of Lexicon Incorporated, had her mother draw up a contract for NASA and the ESA so Sukarma could stay with her crew while preserving the rights of her sapient child. Military interests were placated with similar contracts that limited access to systems regulating autonomy or agency with capital agents that hadn't yet been born. NASA subsequently put Sukarma on leave while the agency worked out political interests for her future crew. After graduation from online-courses through college attended at the behest of the politicians to ignore her false identity her next mission to mars was a resounding success. After some modifications on her return launched for orbit once more. Thereafter that solo launch she's missing time and has significant ablative damage to her outer organic hull that she can't account for. With no idea where she is and without a crew the ECHO ansible is her and her ante-ships only comfort deep in foreign space.
Update: Encountered the aschen and agreed to assist leading them to their own planet if not hers. Currently exploring for suitable parts to engage in repairs.
Equipment:
- Avatar
- Medical kit - This has a small field effect unit to do minor surgeries or stitch wounds. It is by nature sterile in surface but lacks the size to fully sterilize the air around a wound when working. It comes with a smaller unit specifically for suturing small wounds and a stem cell burn sprayer to seal and heal burns. Sukarma doesn't know how to use the equipment for medicine just how to run the code inside it. Sukarma generally wears this in a modular backpack when her avatar is in the field.
- Heavy gauss handgun - While Lexicon and Sukarma both objected to weaponry Sukarama acceded to requests by the military that she have a sidearm available in the field during NASA missions. Cerberus, Lexicon's sibling, built this handgun whose recoil and weight make it wholly unusable by unaided crew. It packs a signifigant punch with DU tipped ferrite projectiles and the recoil would spiral shatter the hand and arm of unaided humans even if they could find a way to employ the secure fire with a nonexistent manual trigger. This weapon is mounted internally in her chest cavity through an armored aperture in the back. Sukarma can shoot at things and has a ruggedized combat frame for her avatar to take the firing force but is nonetheless not a soldier.
- 'Interrogator' FE density scanner - This density scanner was also designed by Cerberus, Lexicon's sibling, as a part of the combat frames. It attempts to manifest FE fields inside objects and measures the resistance to calculate apparent density at the manifesting point. While not perfect it enables Sukarma to glean possible information about the inside of objects or her environment despite complete darkness. It comes with its own risks from damaging sensitive electronics or explosives so Sukarma is careful about using it.
- Self (ship)
- Adaptive Magnetoplasma Engine - Sukarma's primary method of propulsion these modular engines are built to adapt to any source of viable fuel that can be made a useful plasma. Combined with the onboard reclamation unit that can preform basic chemical reactions this allows Sukarma to harvest fuel from nearly anywhere.
- Crew Suits - These are powered exosuits with substrate that while incapable of regenerating are self-sealing. They have various abilities for Sukarama to facilitate communication and monitor crew health. Sukarma can make them resistance trainers to enable workouts of crew over time or power assist for moving large loads. Outside the ship the suits are mostly limited to offsetting their own weight and providing air filtration and/or life-support to the crewmembers wearing them. Inside the piloting pods or while moving at speed they allow Sukarma to adjust for G-Forces
- False Gravity - While Sukarma does appear to have gravity it is more from field effect forces in a particular direction on all exposed surfaces. In human crew this abates the problems of microgravity on health but makes it difficult to cook. Most equipment is still designed to operate inside of microgravity.
- Slip Drive - These are prototype transluminal engines that alter the reference frame of local space-time to enable the ship to slip forward along with the momentum in the channel of perturbed space. It takes a great deal of Sukarma's personal attention for them to operate and she cannot use her avatar while they are active. Her only experience with them showed that in their current state the altered reference frame sometimes exposes intellects in nearby realities while the engine is in motion. Unusual creatures wandering the halls or alternate intangible versions of her crew in faint shadows moving about the ship or even shadows speaking to their local selves.
- Assorted science equipment - Sukarma was equipped by NASA according to Lexicon's interface schematics and wholly new versions of various expensive sensors were built to exist and operate inside an EI. Sukarma knows how to operate all their functions even if she doesn't know exactly what they do. Most of her instructions to test the devices they built didn't come with training.
Update: Much of the damaged equipment has been reclaimed into either usable parts or raw material. - Remanufacturing plant - Sukarma multi-material FE Weaver and various assemblies to process material and use it for repair or fuel. Nearly anything can be built here given time, material, and blueprints. Though she doesn't have any real engineering experience her entire ship comes with blueprints that have manufacturing instructions she can follow.
- Regenerative superstructure - Sukarma's external surface is covered in a living engineered coating that is capable of basic thermoregulation and wholesale regeneration. It is threaded around reinforcement ribs throughout her structure and leaves the ship frame as flexible as flesh but hard as metal. The integrated field effect systems in the ribs allow for microscale movements of the substrate allowing a great deal of biomimicry for her armatures, landing gear, and internal manipulation systems. As this makes it possible to move objects through the fluid she can deploy armor scales on the outside surface if radiation is a concern but it makes the affected surface relatively immobile.
Sukarma's avatar and self doesn't have the equipment to digest complex fats or proteins to fuel her organic substrate. She primarily eats sugary food or simple drinks. Consuming any large amount of such things will make such pseudobiological systems malfunction and she can be poisoned to a limited degree. As such while she can easily survive a vacuum from internal supplies of what little oxygen it needs she still needs to eat and drink or her flesh will shrivel. The avatar itself is built to be rugged not agile so she isn't capable of terribly complex aerobatics even if she were well-trained.
Powers:
- Limited camouflage - While Sukarma's main ship is locked to its navy blue on black coloration Sukarma can control her avatar's colors to a limited degree. While not to the same degree of patterns as the animal that inspired her creation in lexicon she can change her coloration to match her environment. Alternately if not composed strong emotions may affect it as well. This is a side effect of microscopic emitters buried in the networked substrate near the surface of her avatar's skin unlike the ship which uses armor scales or such variable macro-sized objects.
- FE projector - Both the ship and her avatar can project FE manifolds to varying degrees of complexity from inside to a short range. Sukarma's main body has far more complexity and resilience but the avatar can also project fields of simple shapes and sizes. It is frequently used for shielding or minor manual tasks.
- ECHO Ansible - As a near-instantaneous communicator this ansible allows for a bidirectional communication using an array of microscale wormholes projected along entangled targets. While extremely point-to-point and comparatively low-bandwidth to other options they are difficult to disrupt to an extreme degree. The minute size of the wormholes allows for data transfer with low aperture requirements and a low power consumption to maintain the wormholes themselves that otherwise increase in power requirements rapidly. Their minute size allows for a minimal increase in power cost based on distance but is computationally hard to maintain in the background of Sukarma's mind. Thus she must focus on it in the foreground using up precious executive processing time.