Proud Mary: Rolling
Posted on 26 Mar 2023 @ 10:14pm by Lieutenant Commander S'Jath & Command Master Chief Tāne HaiRoa
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: OC Engineering Lab 37
Timeline: MD11 1220hrs
1226 words - 2.5 OF Standard Post Measure
The lab doors slid open to admit HaiRoa, the sight before him was a considerable improvement on his last visit. Three days ago, the machine had been a smoking pile of battered components, in a vaguely organized heap, sat on the floor covered in fire extinguisher foam.
Now standing in the center of the lab was an impressive combat robot. It stood over three meters tall, over two wide. His eyes ran over from the ground up, two large slab-like feet, each with three clawed toes, massive hydraulic legs, covered with heavy armored plates at shins, knees and thighs led up to a squat chunky body. The torso and chest even more heavy armored than the legs. The chest plate was angled forward to a point, in a sort of elongated rectangular pyramid shape, it looked like a weird cross between an ancient armored knight and nearly as ancient tank. O’Halloran had told him the design was called a Pike-Nose, it was a way to increase the relative thickness of armor by sloping it instead of making it physically thicker. It gave more protection for less metal and so kept the weight down. The chest mounted a bank of six phaser emitters, that could be fired individually, in rotation or all at once.
Overhanging the upper chest were shoulder plates mounted on a yoke around the robot’s neck. On the right side was an arm, like the legs, everything was heavy duty hydraulics and protected with thick plates. The arm ended in a big grasping appendage, almost a meter and half tall, it consisted of eight fingers, fours each side and each with a series of knuckles, mounted around an oval palm. According to the design, the fingers could open, close, grasp, twist, rotate. Two of them could emit mining cutting beams and they could also come together to chop, slice poke, or be closed into a fist and punch!
On the left side another arm was suspended from a dolly crane, ready to be mounted to the body. This was new, the original had been damaged when the robot had been defeated during the pirate raid on the station. The team had drawn up a design for a better, more powerful claw and the Shipyard’s Heavy Engineering Components Bay had built it.
The left arm was even more robust that the right one and ended in a three-taloned claw. The talons were two meters long, over a meter in circumference at the base they tapered down to stubby points, made of solid duralloy of the highest density the shipyard produced. The claw was designed to grasp, puncture and tear. Hopefully it would be able to defeat the armor of this black suits.
Finally, poking from the shoulder yoke was a compact head. A complex series of angled plates, dotted with an array of sensors, scanning, targeting and ranging. Multiple redundancies and like everything else armored and shielded. The head did not really have a face, but a line of three blue lit sensors gave it a kind of eyes.
The robot had originally been a grubby brown color, most of which had been hidden under soot, grime and smoke stains. Now it was in a medium gray color, crossed with a series of geometric lines in lighter and darker grays. HaiRoa was reminded of something called dazzle camouflage from old Earth Naval Warships. On the right chest in small red letters, repainted over the new gray camouflage was the name O’Halloran had given it Proud Mary.
HaiRoa grinned to himself, he had to admit the thing looked bad ass! He would not like to be the one facing that, he hoped the Pyrryx would feel the same way. He wiped the grin off his face as the Engineering Team came out of a side door.
“- need to finalize that code, then we can run a full systems test” Lieutenant Rebecca Soppy Sopwith was saying, head down over a PaDD. Ensign Kelta Vax and Petty Officer Iain O'Halloran trailed along behind her.
“Good afternoon” HaiRoa said “You’ve been busy I see”
Sopwith gave him a bright smile, though she looked tired, in fact they all did. “Hello Command Chief, yes we have rather.” She came over and patted the suspended left arm. “Heavy Components brough this over this morning, we’re just going to get it mounted”
O’Halloran gave him a nod and climbed up a ladder on the dolly to begin tinkering with the arm’s connections. Vax begin tying them into leads running from the body.
Sopwith joined HaiRoa. “We are a little ahead of schedule. We should get the arm on in a couple of hours, get it tested, then we have some code to finalize, probably tonight. Hopefully we should be able to run a full system’s test tomorrow morning”
“I appreciate your work on this Ma’am” HaiRoa told the young officer. She was certainly pulling out all the stops.
Sopwith nodded shyly and went back to join the other two at the robot.
The door opened and Lieutenant Command S’Jath entered. The Vulcan wore his customary overalls, knees patched and stained, tool belt around his waist. He joined HaiRoa.
“Sir” HaiRoa greeted him. He rather liked S’Jath, the man was a little different to most Vulcans, instead of the distant, aloof demeanor many of them possessed, this one clearly did not mind getting his hands dirty. While he still had the typical unemotional personality you could sense he just enjoyed fixing things.
“Command Master Chief” S’Jath acknowledged, looking straight at the robot, his intense gaze quickly taking in the details. “It is unfortunate I could not spare more personnel for this task, but it would seem Lieutenant Sopwith has been making considerable progress”
“Yes sir, they have indeed” HaiRoa agreed. He suspected the three of them had been working well into the night to have got this far.
S’Jath walked forward and circled the robot. “Carry on” He gestured to the three engineers to continue working “This is an unusual color scheme” he commented after his inspection.
“Ensign Vax painted it sir” Sopwith responded, “Based on an idea from PeeOh O’Halloran”
“Earth, First World War, naval disruptive pattern sir” O’Halloran confirmed
“My second Host, Liori, was an artist” Vax called out, his head buried in the robot’s left armpit “Usually scenic watercolors or pastels, this was a bit of a change”
“Quite” S’Jath agreed. “What is your current task?”
“We are preparing to mount the left arm sir” Sopwith briefed him. “Then connect up the final powerpacks”
S’Jath nodded “How can I be of assistance?”
“Could do with hand to locate and tighten the arm retaining bolts to the main body chassis sir. Once we swing it into place” O’Halloram called out. “The wrenches are on the bench, Cardassian hex-nuts, size -“
“- Fourteen point three I believe” S’Jath interrupted him and withdrew an adjustable torque wrench from his tool belt. “I came prepared”
HaiRoa hid a smile, the Vulcan Engineer was not going to miss out on the chance to help put this thing back together. He left them to it.
