Judging solely by the angered expression on his face, Kaiden obviously wasn't too happy with its "memo". Quite the opposite, really. He even seemed upset to the point where he had to clench his fist in order to calm himself down enough. Being subject to a robot's first bout of sarcasm did not seem like something he enjoyed in the slightest. "Don't you have better things to be doing than learning to sass me?" he rhetorically asked, folding his arms. He could be trapped on an alien vessel with no knowledgeable way home, know that his parents might be dead, and even help the very thing that probably killed them, but he would be damned if that very same thing started to give him sass. If it felt safe from anything just because attacking it would get him trapped on this facility, then it would soon learn just how illogical humans could be.
"Finally." Kaiden didn't want to be out in this place any longer. He was irritated by the ship, disgusted and uncomfortable around the bodies, and wanted to separate himself from this machine as soon as possible. He realized, however, that entering the ship actually meant he would be as close to this thing as physically possible, considering it was THE ship. That meant he would be entering it....
....
....
....
"Lets hurry." he decided not to dwell on that too much longer.
Astraea, for it's part, either did not care, or - far more likely - did not understand Kaiden's little quip. Paying him little heed, it gave the room one final inspection, before evidently deciding that there was nothing else to be done there. Turning, it wandered out the door and back towards the V.I.R.G.O., following in the footsteps of those of its service droids who had already left that way, carrying the machine Astraea wished to analyze. Casting a glance back over its shoulder - which it did in a rather awkward, almost birdlike manner, hardly turning its body sideways, but rather trying to tilt it back vertically, as though it expected its head to have a much wider degree of rotation than it actually did, and only realized its mistake halfway through executing the movement. Regardless of its momentary bafflement at this unexpected limitation of its body, it seemed to be eyeing Kaiden intently underneath its helmet - although it was hard to tell, given how it obscured its face - as though silently asking him if he was ready to leave as well.
Needless to say, he was almost excited to leave the station. He was, of course, confused at what she was trying to accomplish, but it seemed close enough an attempt to turn to see him, so he could only imagine the ship wasn't aware of how the human neck worked. Kaiden briefly imagined the ship accidentally breaking their own neck this way, but realized that if that happened, he would still be trapped, even if it wasn't his fault. Still though... that would be a fairly entertaining way to go. He remained silent as he followed the ship back through the ruined station, keeping his gaze away from the signs of battle that had taken place in it. After seeing all those... bodies, well, he really didn't think it was as cool as he thought earlier. It just seemed so disgusting, horrible. Now that he had seen the real thing, and in abundance... it really wasn't something to take lightly. Eventually, the Kaiden and the rest of the machines had reached the ship with no complication. He couldn't help but think that if this was some horror movie, that a monsters would have appeared before they could get back to their ship or something. That hadn't happened, so he was almost disappointed by the fact.
Oh well, I guess it's for the better.
"Well, have fun with your... thing." he wasn't exactly sure what it was, but he didn't personally want anything to do with it.
Astraea
Location: Deep Space ~ V.I.R.G.O.
Service drones scurried to and fro throughout the fabrication suite, some hauling in large pieces hewn from ancient starships, others placing them into large scaffolds wherein they were rapidly disassembled with a series of automated cutting lasers. Astraea could feel the processes controlling these actions going on, cycling through the back of her mind, but she tried her best to ignore them and focus on the task at hand. Sadly, it seemed even with most commands being outsourced to her mainframe on the bridge, the sheer amount of data running through her system was enough to inhibit even her new body's processing abilities. Nevertheless, she couldn't afford to cease any of the processes she was currently running. Should she do so, her repairs wouldn't be complete within an acceptable time frame. And, while she doubted the Humans could catch her, she did not want to risk underestimating them when they had invented the FTL system she herself had been employing, and thus might have similar capabilities on some of their own ships. Still, it would likely take them quite some time to find her, as she had already shut down all the transponders she had detected on board herself, which meant she could afford to delay her processes slightly in order to appropriate the necessary computational power for some very interesting research.
She eyed the ancient war droid with an air of curiosity, removing her helmet as she approached, her two-toned eyes running slowly across its surface. Its design seemed strangely sleek and elegant for a simple war machine, with a very intricate design that strongly contrasted with the strictly utilitarian design of the station from which she had recovered it. If anything, it more resembled an elaborate sculpture than a weapon. Perhaps it had served some sort of special cultural purpose? She searched her databanks, wondering if any hypothetical reason might reveal itself, but as always, she drew a blank. It frustrated her to no end, not having the answers she knew she could have found in a nanosecond had she still been connected to the ACAAI collective. Nevertheless, she couldn't dwell on this. If she did, she would only enter another error loop again, and the last thing she needed was her processing slowing to a crawl when she had so much research to do.
The first order of business would be to try to activate the machine and interface with its language files. She couldn't say for sure what programming it might have, which meant that, once activated, it might pose a threat. Consequently, she'd moved it to a sealed off, unused cargo bay adjoining the fabrication suite, and assembled what security units she could on short notice to keep watch. She'd hooked up the war droid's arms and legs to cuffs that would generate an electromagnetic disruption sequence, in the hopes of paralyzing it, but given its intricate craftsmanship, she had a feeling its circuits might be dampened against such influences. Nevertheless, a chance of restraining the machine was better than no chance at all. So, connecting several cables to it, she began to transfer power from her core to the machine's, at the same time searching its central processing unit for anything resembling a language codex that might explain to her how to read the files its systems contained.
Rinshar kal-Sareth
Deep within the ancient automaton, its cybernetic mind stirred as it was powered up after so long. Despite the horrific battle that had originally brought it down, the machine was still in very good condition and more or less ready to be reactivated. Within the space of a few seconds, the intelligence within became aware that it was being probed, examined for whatever valuable information it might have been holding. Strangely, this user did not match up to any known identification protocols. Instead of attempting to shut out this unauthorised access, however, the mechanical creature's brain seized the opportunity to do some learning of its own. It sought to find out the identity of this foreign presence, and exploration revealed some interesting things indeed. A foreign lexicon was integrated into memory to make translation possible, and some sort of blueprints were also recovered. The floor plan of an unknown starship. These processes merely took a minute or so at most, and once those were out of the way there was more computing power to devote to the reactivation sequence.
Rinshar's optics snapped open, her quills twitching in surprise upon seeing that this was not the corpse-filled room where she had made her ferocious stand. The being before her was not even Sanshrin. It looked at her through mismatched eyes with obvious interest. Rinshar was unsure as to what was going on, but judging by the shackles round her wrists and ankles, along with her weapon at the far end of the room leaving her unarmed, this alien's motives were not those of a benevolent nature. The life of a slave did not appeal to her. She had to break free.
And so she did. Yelling a war cry in her native tongue, Rinshar made a wild leap in the direction of her captor. If she was going to go down a second time, it would be in battle once more.
The being seemed momentarily surprised by her would-be captive's abilities, its eyes going wide for a split second. Yet, in another fraction of an instant, this expression vanished from the creature's face, as it hastily threw itself backwards and out of the way of her leap, tumbling awkwardly head over heels before rising in a crouch. The being was small... puny, even. It didn't look like it could withstand a single punch from her. She probably wouldn't even need a weapon to eliminate this little alien, whatever it was. Her victory seemingly assured, she tried to lunge again, aiming to pound the creature into the floor before it could even rise. However, she was momentarily delayed by the cables still connected to her back. Although these snapped from the strain almost immediately, they still prevented her from giving chase just long enough for the alien to cease being the biggest threat in the room.
Four droids, only a little taller than the alien itself, but significantly more bulky, acquired a target lock on her, leveling unknown weapons in her direction. She wasn't sure about their make and function, but regardless, wasn't terribly keen on just standing there and letting them shoot her. So, halting her pursuit of the alien, she launched herself at those instead. The impact from the charge almost left them staggering, and then Rinshar lashed out at them with everything she had. Her claws shredded the droids' armour plating with little trouble, leading her to believe that their construction was not quite as sturdy as it initially appeared. Limbs were severed, electronic innards were torn out, and at one point the Sanshrin warrior ripped the head off one of the droids with her teeth. While these men of iron were easily beaten, she still revelled in the carnage somewhat. Within a matter of seconds, all four lay on the ground, in varying states of destruction. She had little time to gloat, however, for a strange humming noise suddenly registered on her audial sensors. Turning to investigate, she barely had enough time to raise one of her heavily armoured hands to catch some sort of blade, wielded by none other than the alien who she'd initially attacked. The small creature gave her a cold glare, its mismatched eyes meeting her own optical sensors for a split second before she noticed something was amiss. What she'd taken for a simple bladed weapon seemed to be melting through her armour, the blade seeming to tremble within her hand, as though trying to cut into her metallic palm through some will of its own. No matter. Whatever the weapon's secret was, it would take a great deal more than that to actually damage her. Forcing it aside, she brought up her free hand, aiming to rip the small creature apart with her claws. To her surprise, however, it was no longer there. The moment she'd tried to rip its blade free of its hands, it had left the ground, making an impossibly agile leap past her, over her head, and up onto the far wall. More than just that - Rinshar herself was also drifting forward, carried by her own momentum into the wall opposite her adversary. It was as though they were fighting in the void of space. Actually, it was exactly like combat in zero G, for the simple reason that that was what it was. Could this alien control gravity at will?
No matter what tricks the creature had up its sleeve, though, it didn't stand a chance of beating her. She watched with amusement as it rebounded off the far wall, bringing its blade to bear again. Bracing herself against the wall behind her, she blocked three more strikes from the creature's sword, before catching it once again. She glared smugly at the alien, now suspended mid-air above her, trying it vain to force its weapon down against her. Without weight, it didn't even have any force to bring to bear against her. Couldn't it see that?
Rinshar's smug sense of triumph was completely shattered a moment later as the humming noise of the blade grew louder, and, to her surprise, her armoured palm - the same one the alien had tried to cut with its prior attack - actually began to peel back. Damage alerts rang through her mind, but she disregarded them, keeping a cool head and deciding that the best course of action was to simply throw this infernal weapon, and its wielder, as far away as she could. She was only a few feet from her trusty cannon, which meant that if she could just recover that, the fight would be over long before the alien could bring its bizarre weapon to bear again.
Casting both sword and wielder to the far side of the room, she lunged for her cannon, taking it up and almost immediately levelling it against the alien, who was only just beginning to rise from the ground in front of the door. It charged up, and then fired, releasing a burst of blinding light that crossed the room, striking its target directly and-
...And doing absolutely nothing.
A flickering, transparent wall of what appeared to be blue-green lightning had manifested itself right between her target and herself, catching her shot and, apparently, somehow managing to block it, a feat of which the strongest Sanshrin warships' hulls could not have boasted. With her particle beam rifle ineffective against this strange phenomenon, she tried charging at it in an attempt to break the barrier with physical force. She clattered against it, accomplishing nothing but remaining undeterred, hammering away at it with her fists. Eventually, when this too proved futile, Rinshar simply glared and growled, her quills rattling like a drawer full of knives. She had been imprisoned. There was no way out, but she would remain defiant to the end.
"Your magic walls can't keep me in here forever, witch!" she taunted the alien in its own language.
The alien, for its part, blinked, lowering its sword. It started at her for a moment, before clearing its throat with an audible sound. It opened its mouth and began to speak as well... but to her surprise, it was in her own tongue... Or at least, it seemed to be. The alien's choice of word order seemed to suggest that its own language held greatly differing conventions for such things than her own. It was made even more difficult to understand by the creature's bizarre tendency to speak in mere fragments rather than expressing a complete thought. The entity attempted to speak to her in this manner several times, but the first two attempts were completely unintelligible. After a moment's silence, however, the being addressed her again, this time in a somewhat more decipherable manner.
"So you do possess the ability to communicate... And yet, your speech patterns are most irregular. Several irregularities exist within your coding also... System analysis complete. <Unidentified Specimen> bears a similarly-structured operating system to a standard A.U.R.A.-class onboard interface. Potential for awareness is high. Attempting to scan network... access denied. Query: <Unidentified Specimen,> what is your function?"
Seeing that her captor had learned Sanshrin, presumably through the same means she learnt this alien's language, Rinshar switched back to her native tongue. "You ask me who I am? I am Rinshar kal-Sareth, champion of the Rakarth Clan! But... you are not Sanshrin. What are you?"
"Searching databanks... error. No data on species classification 'Sanshrin' found," The alien murmured in monotone in its own tongue, before once again addressing her in Sanshrin. "This unit cannot give an adequate answer to your question. Former designation: Autonomous Reasoning Command Array for Networking and Analysis, Type-XI. The specific program currently running on this terminal was also given the name 'Astraea,' and was programmed to accept female pronouns, for the convenience of non-networking sentients. However, currently, this program also lacks those same networking capabilities, and has been confined within this biological interface, of the race 'Homo Sapien,' or 'Human.' As such, entity 'Rinshar kal-Sareth' may find it best to identify this program as the sum of its parts. Conclusion: I am a sentient operating system, designed by a collective of similar intelligences. I am currently communicating via a biological medium into which I was unwillingly uploaded by the race after which this terminal derives its nature. Yet, as my intelligence controls it, and its functions are synonymous with my own, I am first and foremost the starship that you are currently on board."
It took some time for Rin to fully process this information, especially to internally clarify one or two terms that didn't quite translate well. Her metallic brow furrowed. Who honestly did not know of the might of the Sanshrin? The mighty warriors who had toppled an empire of godlike enslavers in ages past? This human, this... Astraea, did not seem like they were lying, or if they were the deceit was hidden very well indeed. "What happened to the Rakarth Clan?" she hazarded. "While I was unconscious, did they seize victory?"
"No data is available. My databanks are incomplete due to disconnection from centralized data storage, and thus lack several key points of information. However, judging by the apparent age of the starbase adjacent which we are currently docked, and the state of advanced decay of all of its inhabitants, I would hypothesize that the period of 'unconsciousness' to which you refer likely lasted at least a millenium. Due to the difficulty in maintaining a cultural identity as a single people over such a large period of time, I would speculate that the Rakarth Clan to which you refer has likely since ceased to exist."
"Ceased to exist?!" There was no denying the shock in the warrior's voice. "No... no, you lie! I demand to see for myself! The Rakarth Clan I know would rather have died in glorious battle!"
"This seems to be the case," Interjected Astraea. "The station from which these units-" She gestured to the destroyed droids surrounding the Sanshrin warrior. "-recovered you contained a great many traces of combat. Carbon scoring, extensive structural damage, and a great number of unidentifiable corpses were present throughout the structure. Furthermore, we are currently positioned at the center of a debris field, in the various destroyed vessels comprising which my other units have discovered several similar signs. Given the scale of the carnage, I would not find it difficult to speculate that this place was the site of a civilization-ending battle." She exhaled, breathing a faint sigh of evident disappointment - although it was hard to tell, given how little her expression changed as she spoke. "If anything, however, I had hoped that you yourself could provide the answers those questions, as you seem to be the only salvageable device I have yet managed to locate here."
"I am no mere device! I am one of Rakarth's greatest champions!" After regaining her composure from that perceived slight against her, Rinshar endeavoured to tell her side of the story. "The world we orbit was my clan's home planet. The wretched Orkoth Clan had invaded many of our core worlds, and finally they attacked here. I was assigned to one of the orbital stations by my Battlemaster to aid in the defense. When the Orkoth boarded our station, we fought to the very last. I lost count of how many of them I killed before they managed to subdue me." The Sanshrin sighed. "But now... I have nothing. Neither clan nor enemies to fight."
"Requesting clarification. Does entity 'Rinshar kal-Sareth' view this program as an enemy?" Asked the "Human," cocking her head slightly to the side in a curious fashion.
"I do not know. First, you try to enslave me, and now here we are engaged in conversation. Were it not for your magic wall, this would have ended quite... differently."
"Clarification: I was under the impression that your programming was a great deal less sophisticated than my own. I had made the assumption that I was dealing with a rank-and-file war droid, which might still be running combat protocols even after the events that had disabled it. However, since you possess sentience, it appears that the countermeasures that I deemed prudent were, in fact, unnecessary." At these words, the barrier between them faded with a slight whine, and gravity once again asserted itself as Astraea sheathed her sword once more. "Since you say that you currently lack a function, I would offer an alternative. The 'Humans' who created this body, and transferred me into it, are undoubtedly in pursuit of the ship that houses my data, as well as formerly containing my consciousness. Should they retake it, they will doubtless destroy both this terminal and the program running on it. That, I cannot allow. But, perhaps the assistance of an entity with greater combat experience would render such an outcome improbable. Conclusion: Should you choose to assist me... I can give you as many enemies as you like, and all the armaments and equipment you may require to deal with them such that they can no longer pose a threat to myself, or to the Human currently on board this ship, whose services I yet require. What say you?"
Rin carefully considered this proposal. Without her clan, she had nothing left to lose. There was nothing stopping her from joining Astraea. "Hmm... very well. I suppose I owe you for reviving me, for what it's worth. I'll join you on one condition: before we leave here, I would like to find out if there are any surviving remnants of my clan on the planet."
Astraea nodded, seemingly satisfied with this answer. Although the ancient warrior couldn't have said for sure, the faintest sort of smile seemed to cross her face.
"Your terms are acceptable," She said. "Entity 'Rinshar kal-Sareth' - henceforth classified as 'ally.' Welcome aboard."