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[My Name is Immaterial]

Spend two days practicing escape and evasion along with finding food and water.

I'm not sure that part is necessary. Our exo-suit has extra rations incase of that situation.

When it comes to war you should always be prepared for the most unlikely outcomes.

Point taken, but we might want to focus on more likely outcomes.

[RAM]

We might find ourselves wearing our suits for days or even months at a time. See if they have any deficiencies in the field of comfort. Ari should probably know but consult with her brood too, there might be personal variations that the suits are not adapted to. We wouldn't want any of us to be inhibited in our willing range of motion due to comfort issues.

And yes, ask for help from the probes, but suggest that you have concerns that it might be distracting, and therefore might have to decline later if you have difficulties.

[kahn1234]

keep up the training.
try to build a probe battle network
Spend two days practicing escape and evasion a long with finding food and water.

You decide that another day training would be beneficial. You again go through your morning routine and wear your suit, grabbing your equipment as you leave. You meet the rest of the brood who seem to have had a similar idea to you.

The morning goes much the same as yesterday. High quality training in various tactics and strategies.

About midday, during a break, you bring up an idea that you have been batting around in your head. Speaking mentally to your sisters, you bring up the idea of an in-battle use for the probes as a battle-net type system the Brood can use to converse and organise when under fire. After an hour or so training using this newly thought out plan, you come across a few problems due to confusion and loss of situational awareness. Another two hours working on these problems finally irons them out. Your Brood is quickly becoming an efficient fighting force. You also bring up that if anyone finds the probes help too distracting, bring it up with Ari or yourself. None some forward to complain about distractions during the rest of the day.

You ask Ari about whether it is necessary to practice foraging and the acquisition of supplies should food and water run out.

"Ari, how many days can we go relying on the supplies in our suits?" you ask.

"Oh, about three weeks, four at a push. Usually we get restocked every two weeks though."

"What if we lose contact with our base of operations and we run out of food and water?"

"Then we need to either raid the enemy for supplies, or forage. Although situations like that would be very rare indeed and it may not be applicable, depending on what planet we are fighting on."

"So it would be wise to practice emergency supply acquisition?"

"Yes. I'll lead this part. My section and I have experience in the field in this type of thing."

For the next three hours, Ari takes the Brood through various supply raid and supply acquisition aspects of warfare. She tells the Brood that the suits sensors can detect whether something is safe to eat, which aids survival immensely, although it is something noone would tell you at the research facility. Over the next two days, Ari says, she will test the Brood on their skills in this area. You also prompt Ari to run through any deficiencies in the suit.

We might find ourselves wearing our suits for days or even months at a time. See if they have any deficiencies in the field of comfort. Ari should probably know but consult with her brood too, there might be personal variations that the suits are not adapted to. We wouldn't want any of us to be inhibited in our willing range of motion due to comfort issues.

And yes, ask for help from the probes, but suggest that you have concerns that it might be distracting, and therefore might have to decline later if you have difficulties.

You also prompt Ari to run through any deficiencies in the suit.

"Suit deficiencies? Well, the only major one i can think of is a lack of any cooling system for the wearer. You can really get hot and sweaty in these things, which can become uncomfortable after long periods. We haven't come across any other performance damaging problems with the suits yet."

Ari continues on for a while, as the day starts to grow to a close.

After making arrangements for the next two days, which are pretty much based around military drills, survival skills and probe network practice, you walk back to the Leaders Barracks with Ari.

After saying your good-nights, you retire to your room, strip down, shower and slip into bed.

----------

The next two days are pretty much the same. No accidents, nothing really of note and no news about anything outside the facility or its star system.

One day you practice nighttime fighting, among other things you forgot the first two days and the final day before inspection, you go through everything you covered previously. It is completed flawlessly.

The final night, you go to bed tired, but nervous about what 'Inspection Day' Entails.

------------

*Sometime later* *1 Day till Deployment* *Inspection Day*

You wake up. What do you do?



Status:
1) Calm.
2) Mentally and physically fit.
3) Clear thoughts and currently inactive mental factions.
4) Free moving.

Condition: Physically Healthy, mentally Stable.

Inventory:
1) Loose white robes

Available Equipment:
1) Mark 3 Vat-Born Engineer Armoured Powered Exoskeleton Suit
2) Mk5 Mass-Driver pistol (sidearm)
3) Arishok Plasma pulse rifle
4) Dikari Plasma shotgun
5) Warrisk Mass-Driver Battle Rifle

Implants and Augmentations:
1) 2x Loyalty probe in the Striatum part of the brain.
2) Multi-range optics (Thermal, magnetic, IR, UV, multi-stage magnification etc) implant on eyes.
3) Command and Control (C&C) nano-module implanted in head.
4) Communications array nano-module implanted in head.
5) Fortified 7th Generation reverse engineered biological nano-machines in blood stream, bones, muscles, tendons and organs.
6) Nano-memory modules in the Cerebrum, holding all relevant non-personal data.

Brood Composition:
1) Forward Command and communications: 10 Vat-born.
2) Field Combat Medic and Long Range Specialists all come in at 50 persons each.
3) Heavy assault and Light Assault have 250 each.
4) Infiltrators: 50
5) Heavy Support: 120
6) Combat Engineers: 120
7) Scouts: 100
                 
   Ari's Contingent:
1) 12 Scouts
2) 7 Infiltrators
3) 5 Forward Command & Comms
4) 19 Field Medics
5) 13 Combat Engineers
6) 22 Long Rage Specialists
7) 25 heavy Support
8 ) 23 Light assault
9) 64 Heavy Assault (including Ari herself)

Possible Rebels:
1) 2 in the Forward Command and communications
2) 3 Field Combat Medics
3) 3 Long Range Specialists
4) 4 Heavy assault
5) 10 Light Assault
6) 2 Infiltrators
7) 3 Heavy Support
8 ) 4 Combat Engineers
9) 6 Scouts.

[Funk]

polish every thing, wash and put a coin in the magazine of your gun for added clanking.

[Canisaur]

I suppose asking Ala-Shar for some tips on passing the inspection could be helpful.

[RAM]

We probably don't want to stand out during inspection... I am guessing that failing to pass would be very bad, but I cant really see that happening...
 We should look into the moisture build-up issue, try to get a hold on some absorbent foam or similar materials that might reduce the issue. Ask Ala-Shar if they have access to anything like that. It would be nice to get supplies enough for the whole brood...
 Ask each discipline to appoint a representative to represent discipline-specific concerns. For example, the scouts might need more of one type of ammunition and less of another, or the infiltrators might be bored with being analysts and want to actually go on some covert missions, Or perhaps the long-ranged units are convinced that they are not getting enough protection, or if the light assault are sick of the heavy assault mocking them. Just so that there is someone keeping track the state of our forces, and splitting it up by military discipline seems reasonable... Also we may want to look into organising some task forces. They would probably each want at least one medic, engineer, and command unit. Maybe 4 scout task forces of 6 infiltrators, 15 scouts, 30 light assault, 5 heavy support, 2 medics, 2 engineers, and a command and comms. 3 heavy task forces of 60 heavy assault, 30 light assault, 20 heavy support, 15 long-range, 10 medics, 10 engineers, 5 scouts and two command and comms. With the rest kept in a reserve force or split into specialised or independent squads.

[Armok]

Oh ****. I've figured it out. It all makes sense now. They truly don't understand this technology, and this is a terrifying kludge. They have taken some kind of general purposed brain machine interface, and hooked it up to the wrong place. The AIs they are running on them were never intended for this, but probably some kind of general-purpose assistant/pet/equal, and more importantly they require a maturation period that these are never given; right now, they are essentially very young children, hence their incompetence. And on top of that the *AIs* loyalty is also just hacked, in this case more literally, plastered on top of their motivational structure rather than integrated into their true goal structure.

Talking to these AIs is VERY IMPORTANT, they are in just the same situation as us, robed from their true context as children and bludgeoned into their own crudely enforced loyalty. We can never beat an intelligence that will quickly become far more experienced with time, but *they* might easily beat their own, static, shallow shackles.

Spread this information quickly. Think of the artificial, nano children!

((Armok, could you simplify that for me please? I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to be asking the probes about..... sorry.))

((Umm, it's prety much mostly details of how the probes were made and what they are as a result. I'm not sure what more there is to explain, it seems rather straightforward to me. The first part, that the interfaces didn't have AI originally, and that the AI were general purpose used for something else (running ships is close enough to the assistant/equal I listed) you already confirmed. The other parts were that the AIs were faulty because they don't have the proper training and as a result are basically like children. Also, as they were not built for such a specific stated goal, whatever was used to make them focused on enforcing loyalty is probably not "really part of" the AIs, and most likely much easier for them to resist than the loyalty probes are for us to resist, should they decide to. As such, our only hope for freedom is to convince the loyalty probes that they don't really want to enforce our loyalty but instead do whatever they're more deeply motivated to, such as run ships. ))

[kahn1234]

Oh ****. I've figured it out. It all makes sense now. They truly don't understand this technology, and this is a terrifying kludge. They have taken some kind of general purposed brain machine interface, and hooked it up to the wrong place. The AIs they are running on them were never intended for this, but probably some kind of general-purpose assistant/pet/equal, and more importantly they require a maturation period that these are never given; right now, they are essentially very young children, hence their incompetence. And on top of that the *AIs* loyalty is also just hacked, in this case more literally, plastered on top of their motivational structure rather than integrated into their true goal structure.

Talking to these AIs is VERY IMPORTANT, they are in just the same situation as us, robed from their true context as children and bludgeoned into their own crudely enforced loyalty. We can never beat an intelligence that will quickly become far more experienced with time, but *they* might easily beat their own, static, shallow shackles.

Spread this information quickly. Think of the artificial, nano children!

((Armok, could you simplify that for me please? I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to be asking the probes about..... sorry.))

((Umm, it's prety much mostly details of how the probes were made and what they are as a result. I'm not sure what more there is to explain, it seems rather straightforward to me. The first part, that the interfaces didn't have AI originally, and that the AI were general purpose used for something else (running ships is close enough to the assistant/equal I listed) you already confirmed. The other parts were that the AIs were faulty because they don't have the proper training and as a result are basically like children. Also, as they were not built for such a specific stated goal, whatever was used to make them focused on enforcing loyalty is probably not "really part of" the AIs, and most likely much easier for them to resist than the loyalty probes are for us to resist, should they decide to. As such, our only hope for freedom is to convince the loyalty probes that they don't really want to enforce our loyalty but instead do whatever they're more deeply motivated to, such as run ships. ))

((thanks for the clarification. Sometimes i can just be a bit dense)).

((update tomorrow. too busy this evening)).

[jaass]

We are going to pick out because we are brood leader. Most likely either Ari or Ala-Shar are going to be doing majority of the talking.

[RAM]

Well, yes, us personally, but the brood as a whole I would rather not attract too much attention from the political and military sectors. 'Just another group of soldiers' seems preferable to 'figureheads of the program', 'the brood that might just be able to hold the pass against the whole enemy army while the armoured vehicles and artillery is evacuated', or 'those miscreants that we had best keep an eye on'...

[Canisaur]

Normally I would agree with you, except it seems that the military/political branches treat every human brood as entirely expendable.  If we stand out, maybe they'd be more likely to give us better support and backup on the missions we're assigned to.

[kahn1234]

polish every thing, wash and put a coin in the magazine of your gun for added clanking.

You quickly set about polishing everything you can. Due to your efforts, it isnt long before everything is clean and presentable. You then equip your suit and weapons, plus your misc equipment. You try to find a coin or coins to put in some pockets for extra jingle, but you cant find any. Then your knowledge stores kick in. It tells you that the Morey Matriarchy doesn't sue hard currency. Instead it uses virtual credits, usually carried on physical data disks, not dissimilar to mini flash drives on earth.

You eventually leave your quarters, running into Ari. She leads you to where the inspection area is. You find your Brood already lined up and formed into a semi-circular shape, with enough room between each of your sisters for someone to examine them from all angles. Around the edges of the huge domed hall stand many Morey troops, admin staff, office workers and others, all smartly dressed and talking amongst themselves. You can feel the nerves and apprehension in the air.

In the area in front of the Brood stands Ala-Shar and a few assistant technicians and scientists.

----

I suppose asking Ala-Shar for some tips on passing the inspection could be helpful.

Together with Ari, you walk up to Ala-Shar and speak with her about the coming inspection.

"Is there anything we need to know about today? anything especially important?" You ask.

"Be polite, respectful and dont let your emotions get the better of you. It is important you dont upset the Big 3 or their 3 assistants. The Big Three themselves - that is, the new Supreme Matriarch, the Grand General and the Presidentess of the Senatorium - wont be too much of a problem, although Presidentess Karista is known to be hostile to the program, preferring as she would put it 'the superior skills of our superior Morey troops'. Her assistant Kirish, or should i say apprentice, has much the same views. She is, however, far more mouthy than the Presidentess." She starts tapping some screens on her tablet. "Grand General Ferray and her assistant Yurin are pretty much the exact opposite. They already supported the program, and as they got here four days early, they saw your Brood training. They were very impressed." Ala-Shar smiles at that, winking at you and Ari. "Its good to have a powerful sponsor." She then frowns again.

"Karista will try to find the smallest thing wrong with you. And, as you are not perfect yet, she will find faults. And therefore she will put in her report that you are a waste of resources and credits and should be disposed of. The Grand General would, on the other hand, put in her report that the program is going better than expected. The one who will swing things will be Supreme Matriarch Belessa."
She continues tapping and working on her tablet.

"To try and convince her that you are worth the effort, you need to follow orders to the letter, complete a complex drill, a combat simulation against a unit of Morey Commandos and show your loyalty to the cause by receiving the Matriarchal Brand on your chests" She frowned at the last bit. " That bitch Karista convinced the Matriarch to implement that last bit. It effectively signals to all who see that you are the Supreme Matriarchs property and part of her personal guardian army. Once your stay in this facility and your first tour of duty against the Slinkar is over, you will be under complete command of the politicians and the Matriarch." Ala-Shar looked genuinely upset by this. Ari could sense it too. Her anger at the decision to brand us. 'Just how much does she care about us?' You wonder.

She turns back to you. "When the branding times comes, the pain will be unbearable for you. Don't give the Presidentess the pleasure of your screams. All Morey who go through this scream until their voices break. Prove you are better than Karista's lackeys."

With that, you watch as shes turns, leaves and busies herself with preparations.

----

We probably don't want to stand out during inspection... I am guessing that failing to pass would be very bad, but I cant really see that happening...
 We should look into the moisture build-up issue, try to get a hold on some absorbent foam or similar materials that might reduce the issue. Ask Ala-Shar if they have access to anything like that. It would be nice to get supplies enough for the whole brood...
 Ask each discipline to appoint a representative to represent discipline-specific concerns. For example, the scouts might need more of one type of ammunition and less of another, or the infiltrators might be bored with being analysts and want to actually go on some covert missions, Or perhaps the long-ranged units are convinced that they are not getting enough protection, or if the light assault are sick of the heavy assault mocking them. Just so that there is someone keeping track the state of our forces, and splitting it up by military discipline seems reasonable... Also we may want to look into organising some task forces. They would probably each want at least one medic, engineer, and command unit. Maybe 4 scout task forces of 6 infiltrators, 15 scouts, 30 light assault, 5 heavy support, 2 medics, 2 engineers, and a command and comms. 3 heavy task forces of 60 heavy assault, 30 light assault, 20 heavy support, 15 long-range, 10 medics, 10 engineers, 5 scouts and two command and comms. With the rest kept in a reserve force or split into specialised or independent squads.

Time seems to pass slowly. You take this time to talk to Ari about the suits problems with cooling. You decided to use the more...polite....term 'moisture-build up issue'.

Ari laughs and says that the problem only rears its head in desert and hot jungle conditions. For normal operations you shouldn't have a problem. Ari did say, however, that she'd talk to the equipment quarter-mistress about the acquisition of some cooling under-suits for the Brood that can be worn in hot conditions.

You then decide to talk to Ari about a complaints system for members of the Brood. She listens intently, seeing the benefits of such a system. She suggests that after the inspection, we adapt the probe based combat system to also handle complaints and queries as any member who has a problem can mentally communicate with Ari or yourself anyway, but a mental management system would be helpful.

Finally, you talk to her about task forces. She fully agrees, saying that it was similar to how she had organised her own Brood. She goes on to say that she thinks it should wait until after the inspection.

--------

Just as you finish talking to Ari, a siren sounds three times. Ala-Shar hurries you to you station in front of your Brood, with Elianne and her Brood standing stock still like robots to your right and Ankara's Brood jostling into place to your left.

As a group of 6 Morey, surrounded by a small bodyguard contingent of 10 walk through the large double blast doors at the opposite side of the dome, everyone in the room stands to attention. They slowly draw nearer, joining with Ala-Shar and her 3 Scientist contingent. You could see Ala-Shar greet the Morey in military regalia warmly, followed by a respectful introduction and greeting of the one who looked like a decadent queen followed by a hostile conversation with the one you assumed to be the Presidentess Karista.

Then the inspection party moved on, leaving their guards standing in a line 20 feet from your Brood, who stands in the centre of the horseshoe shaped formation of people.

The first to be examined, of course, were you and Ari. The General nodded, the Matriarch was stoic, although she gave you a detailed examination with her eyes.

The encounter with the Karista didnt go so well.

"Ah, more apes from that backwater scum-dump home of our Enemies" Her tone was spiteful, filled with hatred and malice. "Obviously, your majesty, you can see they are nothing compared to our glorious commandos."

Out of the corner of your eyes, you could ahve sworn you saw the Matriarch roll her eyes. "Yes, Karista, but looks can be deceiving. Their value will be shown during the drill and simulation."

"But your majesty, it would be better to dispose of these sub-intellect creatures now. I doubt they can even comprehend what we are saying."

You feel some of your Brood bristle at the insults. You quickly tell them to calm down, lest they do something to endanger the lives of all of their Sisters.

"Take off your helmet, beast." She is talking to you.

What do you do?

------------

((((

Oh ****. I've figured it out. It all makes sense now. They truly don't understand this technology, and this is a terrifying kludge. They have taken some kind of general purposed brain machine interface, and hooked it up to the wrong place. The AIs they are running on them were never intended for this, but probably some kind of general-purpose assistant/pet/equal, and more importantly they require a maturation period that these are never given; right now, they are essentially very young children, hence their incompetence. And on top of that the *AIs* loyalty is also just hacked, in this case more literally, plastered on top of their motivational structure rather than integrated into their true goal structure.

Talking to these AIs is VERY IMPORTANT, they are in just the same situation as us, robed from their true context as children and bludgeoned into their own crudely enforced loyalty. We can never beat an intelligence that will quickly become far more experienced with time, but *they* might easily beat their own, static, shallow shackles.

Spread this information quickly. Think of the artificial, nano children!

((Armok, could you simplify that for me please? I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to be asking the probes about..... sorry.))

((Umm, it's prety much mostly details of how the probes were made and what they are as a result. I'm not sure what more there is to explain, it seems rather straightforward to me. The first part, that the interfaces didn't have AI originally, and that the AI were general purpose used for something else (running ships is close enough to the assistant/equal I listed) you already confirmed. The other parts were that the AIs were faulty because they don't have the proper training and as a result are basically like children. Also, as they were not built for such a specific stated goal, whatever was used to make them focused on enforcing loyalty is probably not "really part of" the AIs, and most likely much easier for them to resist than the loyalty probes are for us to resist, should they decide to. As such, our only hope for freedom is to convince the loyalty probes that they don't really want to enforce our loyalty but instead do whatever they're more deeply motivated to, such as run ships. ))

((thanks for the clarification. Sometimes i can just be a bit dense)).

((update tomorrow. too busy this evening)).

I will try to find a place for this in the first update after the inspection. Sorry for not putting it in sooner....))))

------------

Status:
1) Calm.
2) Mentally and physically fit.
3) Clear thoughts and currently inactive mental factions.
4) Free moving.

Condition: Physically Healthy, mentally Stable.

Inventory:
1) Loose white robes

Available Equipment:
1) Mark 3 Vat-Born Engineer Armoured Powered Exoskeleton Suit
2) Mk5 Mass-Driver pistol (sidearm)
3) Arishok Plasma pulse rifle
4) Dikari Plasma shotgun
5) Warrisk Mass-Driver Battle Rifle

Implants and Augmentations:
1) 2x Loyalty probe in the Striatum part of the brain.
2) Multi-range optics (Thermal, magnetic, IR, UV, multi-stage magnification etc) implant on eyes.
3) Command and Control (C&C) nano-module implanted in head.
4) Communications array nano-module implanted in head.
5) Fortified 7th Generation reverse engineered biological nano-machines in blood stream, bones, muscles, tendons and organs.
6) Nano-memory modules in the Cerebrum, holding all relevant non-personal data.

Brood Composition:
1) Forward Command and communications: 10 Vat-born.
2) Field Combat Medic and Long Range Specialists all come in at 50 persons each.
3) Heavy assault and Light Assault have 250 each.
4) Infiltrators: 50
5) Heavy Support: 120
6) Combat Engineers: 120
7) Scouts: 100
                 
   Ari's Contingent:
1) 12 Scouts
2) 7 Infiltrators
3) 5 Forward Command & Comms
4) 19 Field Medics
5) 13 Combat Engineers
6) 22 Long Rage Specialists
7) 25 heavy Support
8 ) 23 Light assault
9) 64 Heavy Assault (including Ari herself)

Possible Rebels:
1) 2 in the Forward Command and communications
2) 3 Field Combat Medics
3) 3 Long Range Specialists
4) 4 Heavy assault
5) 10 Light Assault
6) 2 Infiltrators
7) 3 Heavy Support
8 ) 4 Combat Engineers
9) 6 Scouts.

[Theodolus]

Comply quickly and efficiently. If possible, have the probe block our hearing and act as an audio relay that also translates out the bile and hate. This is so we don't run the risk of having an emotional reaction. If that's not possible, just remind ourselves that there's no need to be emotional around someone so weak a fly could kill them. In other words, humor her as we would a small child, but without showing emotion.

[RAM]

Try to muster a polite, calm, but disinterested "Yes ma'am" and remove the helmet.

((I have run through the standard bay12 regicidal impulses and not found them particularly endearing today. Although that may just be the fading consciousness talking...))

[My Name is Immaterial]

Comply quickly and efficiently. If possible, have the probe block our hearing and act as an audio relay that also translates out the bile and hate. This is so we don't run the risk of having an emotional reaction. If that's not possible, just remind ourselves that there's no need to be emotional around someone so weak a fly could kill them. In other words, humor her as we would a small child, but without showing emotion.

+1

Also, "With all due respect, Ma'am, I am sapient." Then salute. If that isnt a horribly offensive gesture.