Proud Mary
Posted on 22 Sep 2022 @ 2:52pm by Command Master Chief Tāne HaiRoa
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: OC - Engineering Lab 37
Timeline: MD 8 10.15hrs
1620 words - 3.2 OF Standard Post Measure
The Engineering laboratory slid open as HaiRoa approached and a wisp of thing gray smoke wafted out. He knew exactly what that meant, and it was not good.
He stood in the doorway surveying the scene. More of the smoke hung in the air, the fire alarm strobes were still flashing, although somebody must have silenced the audible alarm.
Sat in the middle of the room, by a bench, surrounded by tools and work carts, was a large, armored mechanical robot.
The robot's head was covered in Fire Extinguisher foam, like some form of bizarre white powdered wig, it dripped down the bulky body and pooled on the floor.
Stood around the machine was a trio of Engineers, two males still holding fire extinguishers, the third, a woman, with a tri-corder, their uniforms, hands and faces were all smudged with soot.
"She's living up to her name then Lieutenant?" HaiRoa commented dryly.
It had taken a while to locate the robot, a couple of senior Engineering and Science Officers had initially tried to deny it was still stored on the station. Then they told him it had been partially dismantled and was under investigation. Before finally they admitted it was locked in a storage bay, when he offered to go and bring the matter to the Executive Officer and Admiral's attention.
Then they had reluctantly given him a team of just three personnel to try and get it reactivated.
"Lieutenant Sopwith, she's the best we have with robotics" The Engineer told him "She can bring a couple of her team, but that's all we can spare"
At his remark Lieutenant Rebecca Soppy Sopwith turned and looked at him. "Oh, hello Command Chief! Gosh yes, she does rather!"
She gave him a weak grin, her smile gleaming white in the middle of her sooty face. Short, mousey, a little shy, with a very strong English accent and apparently a robotics expert.
"We put it out quickly this time though, only fried one of the secondary processors" Petty Officer Iain O'Halloran added, giving the robot a last burst of foam. Older, stocky, with an Irish accent, he was the hands-on guy, good with tools and a knack for getting things working.
The third member, Ensign Kelta Vax, a joined male Trill, one of whose past hosts had been a mechanical engineer. Quiet, studious and dedicated. He gave HaiRoa a small nod.
Painted in small, neat, letters on the robot's torso, on the right side of what would have been the chest on a living creature, but on this machine was a massive, armored plate, that was mounted over the inner geared skeleton, was the name Proud Mary
O'Halloran had painted it there the evening before, after their fourth fire.
They had torn out the original control processors, not trusting them to be usable or safe, but the wiring harness was not up to the job and kept bursting into flame when they tried to activate the new systems
"Bitch just keeps burning!" O'Halloran had declared when HaiRoa had stopped around for an update yesterday. "Ar roit Proud Mary she is!"
When the rest of them looked askance at him, he hummed a tune and sang some lyrics "Proud Mary keep on burning... Rolling. rolling, rolling on the river..."
Looking around their still bewildered faces he waved his hand and announced "Aww, suit yer selves! But Proud Mary's her name, so it is!"
Now they had just had another fire. "I think we're going to have rewire the whole robot" Sopwith came over. "We just can't trust the Cardassian wiring loom to hold up" She wiped the hair back from her face, leaving a smear of soot.
HaiRoa sighed. "How long?"
"Ah, yes good question..." Sopwith consulted her tir-corder. "I've got a full scan of the whole loom, what's left of it. Have to download that into the computer, lay that out and make sure every circuit is correct. That will take at least the rest of today. Then we can redesign the loom to work with the new power packs and processors we are installing.
Should be able to finish that tomorrow, have the circuits ready for replication tomorrow night and get them installed the day after... "
She shook her head, "Sorry Command Chief, but it's an awfully long process as we don't have the original schematics. We're rather making it up as we go along and there is all the Volnak coding to decipher and rewrite..."
HaiRoa nodded, the young Engineer was right, they were trying to fix a broken mechanical mining robot that had been converted into an assault weapon, with nothing to go on but the hardware in front of them.
"Alright, anything else we can do in the meantime?" he asked
"Kalta and Iain have got the legs reassembled and attached as you can see. The one good arm can go on today, the broken one with that big claw should be ready day after tomorrow. Iain redesigned it and the Heavy Engineering Component's bay in the Shipyard is building it for us.
Then once we have it rewired, we need to go over the weapons systems and the mobility systems. Once we get those fixed it should be able to move and fight better than before" Sopwith offered
"We will need to test the targeting though" Kelta interjected. "We want it to be accurate, not the wide field blasting it was set up for before"
"And a kill switch?" HaiRoa asked
"We'er building in multiple different ways to shut old Mary down" O'Halloran added. "We're not gonna let her run amok!"
Vax held up a couple of components. "This will be a physical shut down button, we will mount in a secure location on the robot itself. The other wone will be hardwired into the main power distribution hub and then a third one that will isolate all of the processors."
"The idea is just to shut it down, not actually self-destruct it" Sopwith added "The manual one will be a simple push button, basically an on and off switch. Then the other two will be electronic, but transmissible by several different methods, direct link for a communicator, mircowave, infrared, subspace, and so on. We're going to add in as many ways to pass the signal as we can, just in case there is any kind of attempts at jamming or interference while it's in operation. "
"And I'm working on a simple verbal command code too" Vax said "So if needed we can simple order it to shut down"
HairRoa nodded, they seemed to be covering their bases.
He walked around the monster, it was not much to look at right now, in pieces, broken and in a pool of foam but reassembled and active it had the potential to take on the enemy.
There were a couple of tool and component bins scattered around the floor. HaiRoa peered into one, it contained various bits and pieces, including some small parts bagged up and labeled.
"What are these?" he asked
"Oh, those came with it" Sopwith explained "Somebody had been dismantling it and logging the pieces. At least we think they were, some of the parts are not of the same manufacture as the rest of the robot. Might have been when it was redesigned for combat...?"
Out of curiosity HaiRoa picked up one of the bags, it had a couple of fasteners and connectors in it, he turned it over and read the label. There was a date, from a couple of months ago, the code RT-gamma-14 and two initials he recognized C.Z.
So, Calliope had been working on this thing. What had she been doing with it?
He would need to ask her, but if she had taken the time to select parts and bag them up then they were important.
"I believe this was Command Zahn's work." he told Sopwith. "Which means we don't lose these!" He held up the bag and placed it back in the bin it came from. "In fact, once we're done with the rebuild and upgrades make sure we keep everything we took off it."
"Even the busted and broken stuff?" O'Halloran asked, nodding his head to the side where there was a pile of bent and buckled armor plates; burnt out wiring; chips; servos; motors, gears and various other damaged bits and pieces they had removed.
"All of it, keep everything together for now, don't dispose of anything"
HaiRoa confirmed
"We can do that Command Chief" Sopwith agreed
"Will it be able to take on our enemy?" HaiRoa asked her. He had received permission to brief Sopwith and the team on the Pyrryx threat.
They needed to be able to see what those armored suits could do in order to try to rebuild the robot to counter them. The three of them had sat through the briefing and video in silence, as shocked as most at the level of violence and power.
Sopwith nodded cautiously. "We think so, based on our calculations the hand-clamp-manipulators have the power and torque to grapple and hold one of those armored suits. Between those and the redesigned claw, it should be able to stop them, probably two at a time. If there are more it might get overwhelmed, but we're upgrading the armor to increase the durability. "
"She'll gut one like a dead fish!" O'Halloran threw in with a grin "We'll not let them ugly bastards in without a good fight now"
HaiRoa nodded, he hoped they were right and that they never had to find out.
"Keep me informed"
