Big and Small (a BattleTech story... with nanites)

[Plasma Regulators]

Chapter 1 - As If a Dream

It was the dream that did it. Or at least that's what he tried to tell himself any time he looked back on that day.

Rather than a sudden or shocking change, it was a gradual transition. One moment he was dreaming of shaping worlds with finely tuned tools while powerful others watched on, and the next, one of those powerful others was talking to him.

To Rowan's sleep-addled mind, it made sense that it was simply a continuation of his dreams, rather than the unbelievable reality of the situation.

"You've caught my interest, and I have an amusing idea I want to try. How does the ability to magically alter small sections of reality sound to you?" asked the figure. There was an indistinctness about them that was disarming. It made the thrumming sense of power easier to ignore, somehow.

Rowan waved a dismissive hand. "Nah. I like sci-fi more than fantasy. How about nanites? Nano-tech is cool."

The figure drummed it's digits on a surface that hadn't been there a moment ago. "Nanites you say… What was offered will not be revoked, but a rejection changes things. It must still follow the forms, but if I can get an agreement…"

The figure trailed off, before piercing Rowan with an uncomfortably intense gaze. He was suddenly feeling less sure of himself. Still very detached, but less buoyant.

"Then this is my offer. A thousand years hence, and your nanites taken from a further thousand again. Does that meet with your… assent?"

He was sweating by now. Something about the intensity of the question was making the dream seem more and more like a nightmare. That question did not appreciate the thought of another counteroffer.

"Yes." was all that managed to make it from his suddenly parched throat.

"Very well." and then the figure was gone.

The feeling of detachment vanished with it. Some mental coping strategy or defense mechanism finally failing with the danger gone.

The uncomfortable feeling in his legs started a second later. Looking down, Rowan was horrified to watch as his legs dissolved.

He stumbled as his legs lost definition and he suddenly lost several inches of height. Pitching forward, he tried to catch himself on his arms, only for them to splash on the ground in a very disquieting manner as they too started dissolving into formless grey goo.

Rowan tried to scream, only to start a deep hacking cough that splattered more of the goo on the ground in front of him. With only a few seconds to contemplate the ever nearing ground, he got a ringing in his ears, and his vision started going blurry, only to lose his sight entirely after a scant few more seconds.

All that was left was his sense of touch, and even that was giving him decidedly odd impressions. The formerly featureless surface he was on abruptly transitioned to some sort of actual ground with bumps and divots.

While he had an acute sense of how much time had passed and how quickly it was passing, he had no idea when or where he was. As soon as his brain had turned to nanites, he could feel the clock slow to a crawl.

Partially out of shock, and partially because it was the first sense of agency he had, Rowan fumbled the mental knob that controlled his perception of time. He could drag it all the way from mental hours to pass a few seconds to the reverse, with hours passing in the blink of an eye. Whatever the conversion process had done to the rest of his mind, he could tell that he now had instincts telling him all sorts of information about his current situation.

Mentally, he started to take stock. While it was obvious by now that it was very real and very serious, he could also tell that his mind had been altered in several ways, some of which were doubtless unknown to him. For one, he didn't have the same capacity for panic. He was still worried about his situation, and he knew that it was going to be challenging, but his old tendency to get locked into a loop of panic seemed to be totally absent.

Physically, there were obviously a lot of changes. He could count a mix of at least five primary types of nanites, as well as half a dozen minor types, and he could feel the plans for thousands of specialized or customized varieties at his metaphorical fingertips. There were also small, dedicated structures in the soupy mix, though. Identification came as readily as any other self-diagnostic information he had desired so far. There were dedicated processing chips and data storage units, as well as power nodes and doped graphene supercapacitive batteries.

Rowan idly wondered to himself how this tech could be from two thousand years in the future. Yes, there was advanced technology there, but nothing like his dreams of matter transmutation or subspace communications between femto-tech bots made of smart matter. His smallest individual bots were indeed about a nanometer across, while the largest and most complex bots were a thousand times bigger, at nearly a micrometer. While that did let him fit between the wavelengths of optical light with most of his bots, the largest would still be visible as indistinct blobs to a crude optical microscope.

In fact, those largest and most complex bots seemed to form some sort of communications backbone leading back to his dedicated processors, which varied in shape and size from small peas to coins. The controller bots consumed power to form a mesh-net of tight beam communications between themselves, and then passed on the signal to the nearby nanites via two primary methods. Complex instructions were passed along via physical contact between chains of bots, which also seemed to serve as the primary method of distributing power at the individual bot scale. Simpler information like location and unique identifiers were passed along by some clever minute pulsing of the local magnetic field. It wasn't a very high bandwidth method of communication, but it did allow for data to flow between bots that were not in physical contact.

An idle thought had him turn his attention to how his bots generated power. Most bots didn't. At all. They simply relied on conducted or beamed power to operate. There were dedicated power distribution bots, but those didn't generate power either, they simply passed it efficiently along from the capacitor stacks. In fact, now that he was looking, Rowan noticed that he wasn't generating power right now. Admittedly he wasn't using very much, but it was all coming from his power banks.

Alarmed, he computed how long it would be before he ran out of power. Years, at his current rate of use, but not indefinitely. He mentally paged through the catalog of bot types available to him. There were several major types that focused on power generation, but they all relied on some external material or environmental factor. Using a temperature gradient, using solar or beamed power, using radioisotope decay, using shifting magnetic fields. Individually, there were lots of options, but none simply tapped into subspace or a dimensional gradient, or some other sufficiently advanced tech that would mean he could run without external sources.

With a concrete goal to work towards, Rowan decided to build a smattering of power production nanites to get the feel for his new situation, and to hopefully get to net-positive power.

Immediately, he ran into his first roadblock. "No feedstock available". Hardly surprising, since his nanites had only just formed. From the top, then. How did he get feedstock? Several templates popped to the forefront of his mind. They were all variations on the same idea. Break down existing matter, then sort it and package it into a convenient to consume format. Fortunately for his sanity, he already had some of these "recyclers" in his current makeup, so there wouldn't be any issues of lacking the tools to build the tools.

With the mental flick of a switch, the recyclers moved toward his surface, tearing rock and regolith apart for elements and searching for any atmosphere they could capture. A picture built up in his mind as he worked; the composition of the surface he was sitting on.

The majority was oxygen, bound to other elements that had been exposed to space for eons. Of the rest, it was a mix of Silicon, Aluminum, Calcium, Magnesium, Iron, and traces of other elements, although there wasn't any detectable atmosphere so far.

Looking back over his catalog of options, he gave a mental frown. Carbon was used in various forms for a lot of them, and he had vanishing little carbon to work with. Which meant he was on an airless moon of some sort, and didn't have an atmosphere to process. That… would complicate matters.

Narrowing down the options to those that didn't use carbon at all cut out a lot of his choices, but he did still have a few to work with. Three different types of solar collecting film were his best choices for the moment, particularly the one that mostly used silicon and aluminum, since he had an abundance of those.

With the recyclers steadily chewing into the ground, Rowan finally began the process of distributing feedstock to his other nanites. The nanite replicators themselves stayed mostly idle, since his nanites were too small to meaningfully collect most wavelengths of light unless they formed into a macro-structure of a collection grid anyway. Instead, the nanites doing most of the work were his fabricators, which were specialized at turning feedstock into macro-scale materials and technology.

Looking at what he could actually make with his fabricators caused another mental frown. He had loads of interesting materials in his databanks, and a few actual examples of technology, like the solar film he was currently making, but he didn't have any tech databases to speak of.

That was going to seriously slow things down. He didn't know how close the nearest civilization was, but he suspected that he was going to have to find them and make his way to them on his own. With no macro-tech database, he was going to have to do most of his engineering through trial and error, and if there were no humans on this moon at all he might be stuck for quite some time.

On the plus side, his solar film was already bearing fruit. As the film was brought to his upper surface and aligned, his power income slowly rose out of the negatives. He wasn't gaining much, thanks to the ongoing recycler use, but he was no longer doomed to slowly starve himself of power.

 

[Plasma Regulators]

Chapter 2 - A Chance Encounter

With power at least temporarily solved, Rowan turned his attention towards finding civilization. While individual nanites were small enough to be entirely invisible to radio wavelengths, the entire mass of nanites was sensitive enough to subtle changes in the local electromagnetic field to make a crude radio receiver even without forming dedicated structures. With a mental effort, Rowan started to listen. There was a faint source above him, but after several hours of collecting data and comparing the changes over time, Rowan was forced to conclude it was the "singing of the spheres", which is to say, cosmic background radiation. If he wanted to detect intentionally produced signals over the noise of the cosmos, he was evidently going to need more sensitive receptors.

Mentally thumbing through his catalogs, Rowan settled on a few dedicated signal processing macro-structures and a few subtle changes to his orientation that would allow for a more delicate reception of signals. He kicked his fabricators into gear, since having signal processing gear would rarely be useless in any interaction with advanced civilization.

Each processor was massive compared to his nanites, at the size of a grain of rice, and they needed to be hooked up to his power and heat distribution networks to function, but having a few dozen let him comfortably process all the signals his body was receiving. With a flex, he shifted his body through various signal boosting orientations as he swept through the electromagnetic spectrum. The strongest structured signal was right in the radio window, between 50 MHz and 1,000 MHz, which implied that the nearby planet had an atmosphere and regular broadcasts. He wasn't entirely sure how he knew that, but put it down to the new set of instincts that his new form had come with.

When he decided to try to pick a particularly strong signal to listen to, he ran face first into proof of his changed instincts.

He could expound upon the structure of the transmission and how it's strength likely corresponded to a distance roughly two-thirds that of the Lunar-Earth distance, which strongly implied he was on an alien moon. He could tell you about their data formatting, and how it was likely unencrypted but digitally processed beyond primitive radio broadcasts. If pressed, he would even be able to display the waveform of the broadcast itself, and be able to pinpoint how many channels they had, and which ones were machine to machine broadcast versus human comprehensible formats. The worrying bit, however, was what he couldn't do.

Rowan could tune into a specific channel, and determine with great certainty that it was a human broadcasting their voice, but he couldn't understand it. He could tell that it was communication, but he couldn't even tell what language family was being spoken. Tuning in to another channel let him find a music channel. He could tell that the song was running at 112 beats per minute and that the singer was using hardware that was slightly mis-tuned, since everything was a 74th of a note flat, but he couldn't understand the lyrics.

Hopefully, it was just a matter of language drift over the course of a thousand years, and Rowan would be up to speed within a few weeks of listening to broadcasts. But he had a sneaking suspicion that his new instincts and mental abilities had come at the expense of his old ones. If that was the case… learning to decrypt a foreign signal was going to be considerably easier than learning to speak a human language.

In the more immediate sense, Rowan had detected a very faint signal originating much closer than the planet he was likely orbiting. If his triangulation was correct, it was just over a hundred kilometers away, across the surface of the moon. It was intermittent and very regular, so it was probably just some automated piece of hardware rather than a small colony, but it was his best lead, so he started moving towards it.

His movement as an amorphous blob of nanites was somewhere between that of a slug and an angry bowl of pudding, so he certainly wasn't going to win any races, but it was something to do while he received and decoded signals from the planet to try to make sense of.

If his calculation about the distance and his current speed was correct, it would take him about three months to get to the source of the signal on the moon.

Setting off in the correct direction, Rowan pondered his options. If he could manage a simplistic rover body, he could manage the trip much faster. The wheels and frame would be simple enough, thanks to the abundant metals available in the surface of the moon, but the electric motors would be trickier. Not only would he have to do the design work from first principles, his lack of copper or carbon would make the project much more difficult.

Aluminum wires would make decent conductors in place of copper, but the contact points would be challenging. Iron, perhaps? He couldn't make steel thanks to the near total lack of carbon, but pure elemental iron was still decent to work with.

The magnets would be easy enough at least. Electromagnets didn't care what you made your wire out of, so long as it was sufficiently conductive. Heat build up would be an issue thanks to the lack of atmosphere though…

—
Rockwellawan system, 26 March, 3025

Jonathan made sure his uniform was straight as he made his way to the mess hall. They were on final approach for their next mission, so the Captain had summoned everyone to give her customary briefing. He knew that the League of Brass was unusual in how many "civilians" were aboard their ship, as well as the fact that even the dependents were brought in on all the full company briefings, but it had helped several times in the past, with one of the so called civilians spotting a problem that the crew had missed.

Just as he rounded the corner to the mess hall, he spotted his wife Shaahida and waved her over. Their marriage was actually unusual for their company, since they were both crewmembers. He had met the peppy vehicle mechanic shortly after he was hired on, and they had been inseparable ever since.

"Know what's going on? All I know is it's not a full campaign." He spoke quietly as they started forming ranks in the mess, waiting for everyone to show up.

Shaahida shook her head. "Nope. It must pay well for a single mission though, since the captain was willing to travel out into the ass end of the rim to make it happen."

He gave her hand a brief squeeze, but refrained from trying to talk further, as nearly the entire company was present, and having over one hundred and eighty people quietly talking in an enclosed space was quite loud.

Eventually though, he spotted the distinctive greying hair of the Captain making its way to the front of the room. With a brief hop onto the half-step stage that ran along one wall of the mess, she looked around at the assembled people and waited for quiet to settle. She didn't have to wait long.

Finally, she spoke. "Hello everyone. I'll keep this brief. We're here for a singular reason. Interstellar Agriculture Concerns has considerable presence in the system, and they recently detected what they think may be an old SLDF site on Roth, the moon of this system-"

Muttering broke out among the crowd. Star League era finds were always serious business. Helen cleared her throat and then continued when people had settled down again. "IAC did not feel that they were well enough equipped to explore the possibility of a lostech cache, so they're paying us to check it out. If everything goes well, this should be a simple in and out, since we just need to confirm that it is a Star League asset of some kind and make sure that there are no automated defenses that will pose a risk to IAC engineers when they come here next week."

She leveled a mild glare at the crowd. "That does not mean we will be taking this lightly. Lostech can be dangerous, as I'm sure you know, so this will be by the book, with Alpha Lance taking the lead. They're best suited for scouting since the airless moon means our aero pilots can't do their normal recon. Once the exterior is clear, we will be sending in Delta Squad and some of our techs in to make sure the site is secure."

Jonathan nodded along. As part of Alpha Lance, he would be one of the first to lay eyes on the facility.

Captain Taylor continued. "Now, we are being paid exceptionally well to keep our noses clean. Eyes only on the facility once it's clear, since we do not have salvage rights on this one; IAC was very clear on that. That being said, if all goes well, we will be paid for the privilege of walking around on the surface of the moon for a few hours. It'll be good vacuum practice for the ready squads and another low-G drill for everyone else. I'll let the squad leaders fill you in on the specifics, but this should be a quick run to fill our coffers. IAC is hoping that this is a big cache, but between the location and the long existing industrial presence, my bet is that it's a smaller installation for research or data gathering. If I'm wrong, we'll miss the jackpot, but if I'm right we get paid to do simple recon. Either way, we'll be at Roth in about an hour."

As the crowd broke up into rough squads, Jonathan bid his wife goodbye. She would probably be going over the environmental seals on the Chi-Ha transport with a fine toothed comb before they landed.

He got moving towards the mech bays. Their old converted Mule dropship only had two bay doors leading to the mech harnesses, but that was plenty for unloading, considering how far away the League of Brass kept their dropship from any potential battles. Hot dropping mechs into combat didn't make sense when your family was aboard the dropship.

When he got to Alpha Lance, Jonathan gave his seventy ton Guillotine GLT-4L a quick once over before heading over to where Lieutenant Carroll was standing, ready to give them more details.

The Lieutenant nodded when all three of them were standing at attention. "Alright folks. This op will be mostly on us to give the all clear so keep your eyes peeled. I know you've all got your vacuum certs, but I'm obligated to remind you that a breach is much more deadly than most weapon fire for a heavy mech company. We'll be going over our mechs with Corporal Bajwa and his techs to make absolutely sure we don't have any breaches before we even think about opening the bay doors."

She looked over the datapad that she had brought with her before continuing. "The plan is to drop down a couple dozen clicks from the target and make it there on foot, keeping our eyes peeled for sensor grids or vibrabombs. We do not anticipate that level of paranoia on this site, but it's certainly possible, and I don't want to have to explain to the rest of the company how one of my lance got sucked out of their cockpit through a hole in their mech's leg due to missing a mech mine. We know there's nobody home, so we'll be going in sensors blazing. Call out anything suspicious."

With one final check of her datapad, the Lieutenant nodded. "Alright. Start your final checks, and pay particular attention to the seals. We'll suit up and gather at Mech Bay Door 1 once we've landed. Any questions?"

With a general shaking of heads, they went about their business doing final inspections. The League of Brass had always focused on quality and building tall rather than wide, so Jonathan didn't expect any problems, but it never hurt to be diligent.

 

[Plasma Regulators]

Chapter 3 - Squish and Crash

The first sign something was coming was the electronic noise that was probably ship chatter. It wasn't very strong compared to the signals coming from the planet, but it was a lot closer, and it was drawing near rapidly.

Rowan was hopeful that he would be able to either catch their attention or hitch a ride somehow, since he was still quite a ways out from the installation he had been steadily closing on, and he didn't know how regular the traffic was out this direction. He did not fancy his chances if he had to make some form of primitive rocket from scratch.

The ship chatter eventually settled down a few hundred meters from his location and he felt the rumbling as their thrusters blasted chunks of the terrain off into the distance. No fancy anti-gravity then. While he still hadn't figured cameras out, his solar-film surface plus his new signal processors let him do a poor-man's impression of a crude camera anyway. The ship that had just landed was large, but not very impressive. It was just a squat egg shape.

Once it had settled onto the surface, some powerful mag-locks disengaged and he felt two smaller thumps through the ground. Presumably some sort of ramps had just extended.

After that, the signs were slightly more confusing. Something or somethings that were giving off a strong signal detached from the ship and started making their way towards the outpost in a line that would take them close to Rowan. Some sort of vehicle? If so, they were certainly broadcasting a strong signal. More than required for communications, certainly, and nearly as strong as the landing radar he had detected from the large spacecraft. Perhaps they were looking for something? There had to be some reason they didn't land directly at the facility.

The second thing Rowan noticed about the oncoming vehicles was the rhythmic thumping. At first he was stumped. Some sort of crude ground penetrating scanning, perhaps?

Then he noticed that the number of moving signals matched up to the patterns of thumps. These were walkers of some sort; vacuum rated mechs.

He was still pondering that revelation when his sunlight was suddenly occluded and-

"Crunch"

Rowan ramped up his perception of time massively.

"I think I was just stepped on." It was only thanks to the low gravity of the moon that he only lost a single processor and two battery stacks where they happened to be sitting in unfortunate locations between the mech tread and larger chunks of regolith below. The bulk of his nanites were fine, unaffected by the pressures being exerted, although the solar film was pretty mangled. The massive foot of the mech was still covering him, and he had to make a decision.

Ultimately, there was only really one choice; Rowan latched on to the foot of the mech. As quickly as he could manage, he flowed into the treads and towards the sides of the foot. He didn't want to lose any more bits to further steps. He largely sacrificed his solar film as he moved, preferring rapid movement over a perfectly neat and orderly breakdown of his old resources. At least the feedstock was mostly distributed amidst his swarm, so he would be able to recreate some solar film if required.

Once Rowan had successfully worked his way around the ankle joint of the mech, he was mostly safe from being crushed, although he would have issues if they decided to flex the foot to either extreme of the range of motion available to the mech.

With the immediate issues less pressing for the time being, he started searching the surface for some sort of access hatch or maintenance port.

The first port Rowan could find that was large enough to fit even his macro-components was some sort of channel for clearing detritus from the ankle joint. Moving through the opening wasn't terribly fast, particularly since he could only move some of his mass per step before the port was effectively blocked by other equipment. The movement also taught Rowan something new about his situation. When some of his mass separated from the main bulk, it was unresponsive if it didn't have at least a processor and a battery stack in it, which wasn't too surprising. The more interesting tidbit was that when he had a separate mass with all the parts necessary to run on their own, it could still think for itself. Rowan was treated to the sudden experience of having far fewer processing capabilities for a brief moment, before both parts of his mass reconnected seamlessly on the next step.

Evidently physical contact was required to maintain a cohesive sense of self. It was perhaps possible via transmissions, but that would require both dedicated hardware and time to experiment in safety.

At the moment, his primary focus was getting inside the mech. He didn't know what sorts of decontamination procedures the mech went through, but he suspected it would be a lot easier to stick around the only people he'd found so far if he wasn't stuck to the exterior like a barnacle.

Fortunately, once past the ankle joint, it wasn't that difficult. He had to physically push aside the sealing gasket where it pressed against the joint, but that was readily accomplished by making a primitive tunnel out of the nanites in his swarm designed for macroscopic physical movements, labeled "workers" in his databanks.

The lower leg itself had lots of room in it for Rowan's bulk, so once his primary concern of not getting left behind was accomplished, he took to exploring the cavernous space. Rather than pistons or actuators, the leg seemed to be powered by a tremendous sheath of electro-responsive polymers of some sort. It was difficult to get close to with most of his nanites, however, both due to the localized fields generated by the phenomenal electricity used to make the bundles contract and due to the waste heat that was given off that was well outside the comfortable acting range of most varieties of his bots.

As he explored further, Rowan was also looking through his catalog of options for dealing with extreme conditions, particularly the heat that seemed like the single largest roadblock he had come across so far.

Every design of nanites came with information about it's preferred environmental ranges. Temperature and magnetic field strength were the two that had the sharpest cut-off ranges. The magnetic field strength could shut down effective communications between his controllers and other bot types, but the temperature could actually physically damage his bots if they operated outside their preferred ranges.

Nearly all examples warned that operating below optimal temperatures would result in far slower, less efficient operation, but operating above safe temperatures would result in rapid damage to the bots themselves, as sensitive receptors and minute manetomanipulators were burned out or demagnetized entirely.

There were high temperature optimized variants of all of his major bot types, but they were usually bulkier, more costly to produce, and less effective at their jobs in exchange for their broader and higher temperature tolerances.

Perhaps it would be worth producing some, once he had the right mix of carbon, copper, and rare earth metals that he was currently lacking. Rowan decided that he would have to keep an eye out-

Oh! He had found a data line. A large, robust thing, it had quite a bit of physical and electronic shielding in various layers, but he could just barely feel the pulses corresponding to the movements of the fields in the muscle bundles below him.

Trying to avoid damage where possible, Rowan moved a sheath of his detector bots around the data cable. Once it was surrounded and isolated as much as possible from the strong fields around him, he could get a finer sense of what the data cable was doing. It was the bi-directional trunk line leading to the right foot of the mech, which carried the primary signal for controlling the foot, as well as reported on damage, status, and current orientation of the foot.

Sticking close to the cable itself, Rowan started moving up the line. Deciding that he may as well see where it led.

—
Roth, Rockwellawan system, 26 March, 3025

Johnathan was keeping his eyes peeled for trouble, with half his attention to the cockpit windows and half on his sensors. The familiar long strides of a BattleMech in low-G comfortable from long practice. He kept his trigger guards in place, since combat in the next few minutes was unlikely, but he did at least keep his weapons ready.

Hector was to his left in his Blackjack while Ozer was slightly ahead and to his right in his old Orion. Alona was following them in her Black Knight, and the lance was making good time towards the location of the outpost. So far, it was only showing as an objective marker and some faint sensor readings, but it would probably be visible soon.

As if summoned by the thought, Jonathan spotted an old radio-antenna dish partially concealed behind a rock. Thumbing his radio selector to the general channel, Jonathan spoke up. "Chopper to Homebase. I've spotted a radio-dish," he checked his rangefinder "-it's about three klicks out and partially hidden but I think we've got our base, over."

Lieutenant Wells was quick to respond. "Copy that. Mark it and proceed, over."

While Jonathan fiddled with his tac-map for a moment, Alona spoke up on the radio. "Squire to Homebase, I see it too. Looks like the dish's base is half buried. We might have to dig a bit, over."

After a few seconds, the Lieutenant was back with a response. "Copy. I just let Hotel Squad know to prep the Buffel. See if you can find the entrance, over."

Alpha Lance advanced cautiously, but there didn't seem to be any sort of exterior defenses. When they finally got close to the facility the age was obvious. A small Half buried door led to a mostly visible data-silo with a small power station and transmission dish, plus a large radio telescope pointed at the planet above them, and that was about it.

The lance started to spread out, and Alona called it in. "Squire to Homebase. The lack of salvage was the right call. Looks like a minor data silo and listening post with an old directional antenna pointed at the planet. Probably just monitoring the local space for troop movements. Unless there's some huge basement, the most valuable thing here is going to be the generator since sensors say it's still powered, over."

"Copy that. Delta Squad will be there to secure the interior in a few minutes. How accessible is the door, over?"

Squire leaned over with her Black Knight to get a better look before responding. "Bring the Buffel. Looks like the door is knee deep in regolith thanks to some recent nearby impact. Oh, and the building looks like it might have taken a micrometeoroid, so I don't think it holds atmo anymore, over."

"Copy that."

Alpha lance was doing one final perimeter check when it happened. Ozer was passing in front of the old transmission dish when his mech suddenly stopped. The abrupt movement was enough to catch Jonathan's eye and make him turn his mech.

Ozer spoke up on the lance comms. "Squire, I'm picking up something odd. My mech seems to-"

His comms suddenly cut off, only for his whole mech to lock up and slowly pitch over backwards in the low gravity, sending up a puff of lunar soil where he landed.

Squire was moving immediately, so Johnathan called it in. "Chopper to Homebase, Sci-fi just locked up and landed rough, over. His comms cut out mid word!"

Fortunately, Mikayla was on the ball. "Homebase to all points, we've just had an unexpected mech failure. I want Wayland-one headed out there immediately. I need details, and I need them now. Alpha lance, ensure nothing's moving out there and secure the site until the techs arrive. Bravo Lance, suit up, you're escorting Wayland-one out there. Charlie lance, suit up, you're in charge of securing our LZ until we can determine what happened. All crew, be prepared for emergency touchoff in the event of trouble."

Jonathan only allowed himself to relax when he moved over far enough to see that Ozer was still fine in his cockpit. "Chopper to Homebase. Sci-fi appears fine. His mech's locked up, but he's signaling no injuries through the cockpit."

Johnathan still kept his eyes sweeping the horizon, but he was less worried than he had been a moment ago. Hopefully it was just an unexpected software failure. Such a thing was practically unheard of, but not impossible. Even so, he kept careful guard until he could see the massive form of the Wayland Mobile Base clear the horizon along with Bravo Lance.

Now they just needed to figure out what had happened.

 

[Plasma Regulators]

Chapter 4 - Realizations

Rowan had managed to work his way up to the top of the leg before things got more complicated. The light sealant designed to keep water and dust out of the legs gave way to the full environmental sealant designed to keep an atmosphere in and vacuum out. Since they likely had pressure sensors that would detect the loss of atmosphere, Rowan decided to stop at the hip joint for now.

Regardless of setting, large mechs were pretty much always expensive enough that protecting them made long term economic sense, so riding around in one was actually quite safe as far as semi-permanent homes went. Until he could figure out a reliable way to communicate with people, going undetected was probably the best bet for his personal safety.

Making himself comfortable at the main hip junction wasn't that difficult, and he resolved to make his way into the torso at the nearest convenience when the mech was in atmosphere. In the meantime, he started setting up some options for data gathering and power production. He had just enough feedstock left over to make some magneto-electro generators that would siphon some power from the eddies in the magnetic field generated by the large currents passing through the power linkage at the hip. This had the secondary advantage of further isolating his more sensitive bots from those same magnetic fields, which also let him tap into the data lines without the noise from the power coupling drowning everything out.

At first, the data coming down the lines was about as expected; instructions for the precise movements of the leg going out and detailed diagnostics about the leg headed back in. There was a bit more metadata that was sort of interesting, but none of it really helped Rowan to get a clearer picture of his surroundings.

The data abruptly changed after several minutes of normal operation though. The data lines were suddenly overflowing with information that had nothing to do with the mech. He couldn't immediately identify what the data actually was, but there was enough of it to at least start figuring out the metadata and headers. Whatever it was, it was certainly in a format that was nothing like the previous commands and diagnostics.

Out of curiosity, he fed the list of metadata through his signal processors just to see what they would make of it. So far as he could tell, it was just a bunch of repetitive readings with timestamps attached. Years and years of timestamps. Somewhere along the way, the metadata started indicating that the readings were no longer being received, but they were still building up as a backlog. In fact, it might have been what caused the data dump in the first place. The oldest readings that were not acknowledged as received had started being overwritten by new data, and the buffer for new data had filled up entirely.

On its own, it wasn't a problem, but coupled with a log from a decade ago about minor damage occurring, the data buffer had started overwriting more and more of the original data, leaving only the decades of headers.

In fact, now that he had a large enough dataset, he could compare the dates and get a reasonable timeline for exactly what time he was in right now.

He finally had some years to work with. Cross referencing the full list of headers, combined with when the data had stopped being received-

Oh. Shit.

The routine observations had stopped being received in 2784, and from counting the years of headers from then until now, it was currently 3025.

Rowan recognized those years. Combined with the fact that he was currently riding around in a giant bipedal mech, it was a near certainty that he had been sent into the BattleTech setting.

On the one hand, it neatly explained why the nanotech from two thousand years in the future was so primitive, since BattleTech had always focused on scaling things up, rather than down.

On the other hand, it meant that the likelihood of his survival, particularly if knowledge of his existence became widespread, had dropped through the floor.

—
Roth, Rockwellawan system, 26 March, 3025

Badr Bajwa was sweating as he worked the bolts on the access hatch to the cockpit's main control boards. Part of it was the physical effort he needed to put into turning the bolts while in an awkward position in cramped quarters, but most of it was his worry.

He was the primary MechTech for Alpha Lance, and that meant that while others may work on the mechs, and they would certainly catch some flak if one of them had ultimately caused the problem, the buck stopped with him.

When nothing else exciting had happened to Alpha Lance, they managed to drag Sci-fi's Orion ON1-K back to the dropship to have it inspected. It had stayed locked up the entire time, only responding once they had managed to get it powered down and rebooted using the physical controls on the fusion core.

The good news is that the mech was once more capable of moving and responding to inputs like normal. The bad news is that they still had no idea what had caused the lockup, and that meant the mech was grounded until they could figure it out. Nobody would willingly take a mech into battle if it could lock up for no reason mid-maneuver.

With a final grunt of effort, the last bolt came free and Badr extracted the control panel before carefully disconnecting all the cables, checking each one as he did so.

No frayed cables. No faulty connections. No burned components. All good signs, but it also meant that they were no closer to discovering what had caused the lockup.

Shimmying backwards out from under the control panel, Badr Picked up the whole board and climbed out of the cockpit with it. He would talk with Leonard about the part numbers, see if they could drum up any answers. Fortunately, the League of Brass kept meticulous records, so they would hopefully be able to see if there was an obvious connection that wasn't visible from a physical inspection of the boards.

Badr hoped that the control board would hold the clues, because otherwise they would need to do a full teardown of the mech. What normally took days would be a weeks long endeavor, as they would need to record every single bit of the process to check for issues. He set the board down on his workstation and leaned over to the comms. "Hey Leonard. Could you bring me the records for the Doering Electronics control board we have installed on the Orion? I want to see if there's anything fishy in the chain of ownership. Any documentation we have on that board would help, as well."

A moment later, the reply came over the speakers. "I'll be right down Badr. Let me just hunt down the paperwork."

While the Sergeant was on his way, Badr was running diagnostics on the board itself. It was coming back green ever since they had done a full power cycle, but the board did register an error code that he didn't recognize. He looked up from his work just in time to see Sergeant Birdal slowly bounding his way across the mech bay in low-G.

Leonard gave a wave as he approached. "Got what I could find. The ownership paperwork is pretty extensive, but I couldn't find anything for the supporting documentation. Normally there's at least something, but this board was an odd one."

Badr nodded. "Not too surprising. I guess I'll have to ask around about the error code I got when I get a chance to talk to some external techs, but that'll be a while. In the meantime, I was hoping you could walk me through how we ended up with the board. See if we can spot any oddities."

Leonard spread the paperwork in front of them in response, and they both started looking over it.

Badr was the first to break the silence. "I see what you mean. I'm not spotting any of our normal manuals or even loose notes that came from a previous owner. Where'd we get the thing?"

Leonard ran his finger down the list of previous owners. "Says here we bought it from an asset sale from a bankrupt merc company. They got it from salvage, so that's a bit of a dead end, but the lot salesmen had some documentation on the part number. It actually checks out as an old SLDF board. From the same model of Orion, which is why we ended up with it."

Badr looked up sharply when he heard the phrase SLDF. "Wait. An old SLDF board?"

Leonard nodded. "Yup."

Badr bounced his foot slightly as he spoke through his slowly building idea. "Did we ever end up confirming that the data-silo was an SLDF site?"

Leonard looked over at him, before rubbing his chin. "I can see where you're going with this. Yeah. Some old listening post."

"-and Ozer said that he started getting odd readouts on his instrument panels when he walked by the radio dish."

Leonard was nodding along. "Not only that, we know the thing was still transmitting, despite there being nothing listening on the other end. You're thinking it dumped it's data into the mech? Why would the control board even accept the data though?"

Badr gave a slight shrug. "Dunno about that, but it's entirely possible that the data-silo thought the mech was a valid target for a data dump, and if that control board thought that the data dump was valid info? If they were expecting a small transfer, and instead it dumps two hundred plus years of crap data into the control board, I can't see the board staying functional through that. It would explain the lockup, at least."

The sergeant started collecting his paperwork. "Seems plausible enough to me. We might never know for sure, but I'll let the Captain know we have the probable cause at least. She'll probably want to replace any of our other boards that come from the SLDF just in case it happens again, but that's not that bad of an expense. We probably even have most of the spares in stock already. I'll send Kurangi by with a replacement board for this one in the meantime. Thanks for your work, Badr."

Badr gave him a big grin. "Hey, I'm just happy that it's not my fault!"

 

[Plasma Regulators]

Chapter 5 - New Plan
27 March, 3025

Rowan was currently stretched into a long cable running along the leg of the mech, trying to decide what to do. Whatever that data dump had been caused by, it certainly wasn't done intentionally, since the mech was immediately dragged back to the dropship and powered all the way down. He had several choices. He could stay holed up in the mech that had initially stepped on him, he could look for a different mech in the same company to inhabit instead, or he could try to hide out in the dropship itself. Ultimately, each had its ups and downs. For now, he crossed looking for a different mech off his list. It didn't really gain him anything in particular over his current situation. So that left the mech, or the dropship. His main concern at the moment was elemental availability.

Rowan was still strictly limited in how many of his controllers he could make, thanks to missing crucial elements. With some atmospheric CO2 available, he could now make most of his bot types, but the communications backbone required several rare earth elements that were not found in any part of the mech he had explored so far. It's possible that the fusion core in the center torso, or some of the weapons would have what he needed, but they would also be immediately noticed if they malfunctioned due to missing material. So that was one vote for at least exploring the dropship.

On the other hand, widespread detection in BattleTech 3025 would almost certainly mean death, since there were several powerful factions that would want to see such a technology suppressed, destroyed, or destructively studied. Staying hidden inside a mech until he could both figure out communications and build up some good will with the local MechWarriors would help his situation quite a bit.

On the third hand, he was not limited to a human body plan or a human's limitations anymore. There was nothing saying he couldn't simply separate and accomplish both of his main goals simultaneously.

That said, he needed better information on his ability to split into multiple separate blobs of nanites. With a concrete goal in mind, he started separating into various volumes and collections of different nanite makeups.

Results came quickly. He could technically run at normal clock-speed on as few as three processor chips, and he could run his full mind at a very limited speed on one or two. Any more than that and he gained more and more ability to run at an accelerated mental pace compared to a human, but he didn't actually get smarter in any way that he could notice, other than direct number crunching and data analysis. With his current stock of twenty five processors, he could technically split into pieces of eight, although that would leave him with uncomfortably thin margins for anything going wrong with one of his chips getting damaged.

For his own sense of security, he resolved to avoid splitting off any mass with less than five processor chips.

With all of that taken into consideration though, processor chips were not his current limitation, since he could make several more with his current stock of resources plus the atmospheric CO2. He would primarily be limited by his total mass, since that was directly proportional to how many controllers he could make, and he didn't have the materials for even a single one of those at the moment.

Goal in mind, Rowan split off about a third of his mass to go explore the dropship looking for more materials that wouldn't be missed. If and when he had enough materials or new bots to make it worth recombining, he would find his way aboard the mech again. With several successful trips, he could see about starting to infest multiple mechs, but until then, he would focus on building up his presence in the first mech that he had encountered.

His expeditionary blob poked a tiny tendril out from underneath the ankle joint and formed a small patch of solar film on the end. With such a small amount, it only worked as a light-level indicator, but that was enough to determine that it was rather dark in the mechbay, which meant that the humans were probably asleep, or at least working on other projects. Resolving to get a hold of better camera tech as soon as possible, he filtered through the small channel in the ankle joint that he had initially used to make it into the mech.

"Now. If I were a mech company, where would I keep my scrapyard of mostly broken parts…"

—
Rockwellawan system, 30 March, 3025

Captain Helen Taylor stretched her back as she sat in her favorite seat in the officer's meeting room. She nodded to Nola and Erika as they filtered in, being the last to arrive. With everyone there, she started off the informal debrief.

"So, despite the excitement with that old SLDF control board, that was a pretty successful mission all told. The IAC representative has already wired the money, and although they were a little disappointed that it wasn't a better find, they're still satisfied, since they plan to broker the data on that old server. They mentioned that they left a good word for us in our mercenary review board file. That said, we're now out in the sticks, and I don't have any future contracts lined up." She turned to her second in command. "Wells? You were on comms earlier. Any luck finding us something?"

Lieutenant Wells spoke up. "As a matter of fact, yes. I don't know which of you have been following the news, but the shakeup in the Aurigan Directorate was not exaggerated. What was false was the fact that the previous heir to the throne, Lady Kamea Arano was killed. She's alive and spoiling for a fight, and she's got money to burn, so she's been contacting every merc unit in the area with some sort of job offer."

There was some quiet murmuring at the mention of a possible leadership crisis in a multi-system state. When both sides had money to burn, those often turned out very profitable for merc units that could make it through without getting in over their heads.

Wells waited patiently until the interest had settled some. "Now, when she heard we have assault mechs, she wanted to use us as a spearpoint, but I had no urge to be fodder for someone else's war, so I negotiated with her representative for quite a while. We've now got a decent offer from her faction. Of course, the other faction is Director Espinosa, and we ended up with a standing offer from them as well. Better pay but worse conditions for salvage and support."

There were several nods from around the room. "If we decide to support Lady Arano, we'll be playing defense and support for an undisclosed strategic location once the Arano forces take it. Our job would be to provide logistics support capabilities for units cycling off the front lines, as well as providing a hardened line of defense to fall back to. It's a bit of an underdog bet, and it would piss in the Directorate's cereal, but if Arano succeeds we'll have a decent rapport with her."

She paused to take a brief drink before continuing. "On the other hand, the Directorate is willing to pay well for glorified picket duty, or a king's ransom if we can bag Lady Kamea herself. Discounting the latter, since we just don't have the forces for it, it's largely down to who we would rather establish a working relationship with. Barring some very unexpected upsets, this conflict is going to drag on for years, so it's down to which horse we'd rather bet on, if we're going to get stuck in on this conflict. Thoughts?"

After some back and forth, Leonard Birdal spoke up. "I've been following the Aurigan leadership change some. I know we don't get involved in politics, but I figured I'd at least mention that the Directorate under Espinosa is becoming considerably more hardline and expansionist. Not really our problem, other than the fact that closer ties could come back to bite us if they piss too many of their neighbors off. The Directorate is moderately sized, but if they annoy the Capellans or the Taurians too much it could mean that we end up with more than we bargained for if we're still in the area."

Helen finally spoke up, deciding to put her hand on the scales a bit. "Working for Lady Arano plays well into our strengths. We've always had far better than average support capabilities, and our relatively heavy lances are better suited to defend static targets than going on the offensive. Unless there are any objections, I say we go with the deal Wells negotiated for us with Lady Arano. If her attempt to depose Espinosa fails, we can simply avoid the rimward periphery for a decade or two until things have blown over and tempers have cooled."

As she spoke, she met the eyes of each member of the League's leadership, making sure there were no objections. With a brief nod from each, she continued. "In that case? Wells, get back in touch with her representative and let them know we're interested in the contract. See if you can manage to swing transport fees, but it's certainly no deal breaker if we have to pay our own way there, since even the far edges of Aurigan space are less than half a dozen jumps out. Hizkaias? Once we know our destination, I want you to start looking for our ticket there. We're not in a huge rush, but we don't want to take the slow-boat either. Ideally we'll be resupplied and on the ground at our destination in less than two months total. I'll start preparing a briefing for the rest of the crew to let them know the plan."

 

[Plasma Regulators]

Chapter 6 - Journeys, and Growth
31 March, 3025

The second day of careful exploration of the dropship yielded a profitable find for Rowan, and one that would serve him in good stead moving forward. The maintenance runs and wire conduits under the floor panels that crisscrossed the entire dropship weren't monitored, and were inconvenient for humans to access regularly, but the gap in the hinges for the access panels was just large enough for him to fit his macro-components through. This meant that they were essentially perfect for undetected movement around the dropship.

Rowan suspected that dropships in poor repair could have significant rodent infestations, considering the conduits were large enough for a good sized rat. Fortunately for his own sanity and the health of the crew of the ship he was on, they seemed to run a tight ship and kept anything edible out of the maintenance runs other than the occasional old block of rat poison.

Rowan was slowly building up a detailed map of the dropship's layout as he explored. So far there were lots of crew quarters and vehicle or mech transport bays, but he wasn't in a rush and wished to remain entirely undetected, so he only poked a tendril into rooms that were still to local vibrations and in the dark.

Finally though, he found a storeroom. There were people coming in and out frequently, but he managed to find an access hatch that was behind a massive, well secured stack of armor plates that blocked most of the light coming from the entrance to the storeroom. With a large mass to hide behind, Rowan could more leisurely explore the stacks of industrial shelving and robust tie-down points with various mech parts scattered around the room.

Rowan was glad for his seeming lack of any requirement for sleep as he explored the cavernous room by feel and by extremely primitive sight. It was not a fast process.

Eventually, he found a corner that seemed to be dedicated to a scrapyard of sorts. Broken bits and pieces that could still have replacement parts salvaged from them.

The most interesting find there was the large fusion core with a gaping crack in its outer casing. A crack large enough for Rowan to fit inside to look around.

Several of the superconductors and electromagnets had already been stripped off, so he didn't fear detection if a few more of them went missing, and they had an amazing variety of elements to work with. In fact, the entire control core and plasma containment manifold used nearly the perfect mix of elements for replenishing his feedstock reserves in anticipation of building more of his complex bot templates. With his recyclers happily grinding down a control node in the fusion core, he also made a discovery that would seriously help his future capabilities.

Rowan already knew that he didn't come with a macro-technology database, and he had feared that he would never have the capability to make complex structures at all, but as he broke down the control node, a model was slowly building up in his databanks of that same control node.

It wasn't a perfectly accurate model, since the recyclers were more concerned with elemental composition than metal grain patterns or molecular structure, but it was slowly building in accuracy as he continued to consume.

At a rough guess, consuming a few kilos of a specific material would allow him to very faithfully recreate that material, but the more complex the technology, the more he would need to consume in order to build up an accurate enough picture to reproduce. Electronics were going to be a bastard to get right.

Looking through his catalogs let him find a surface scanner that would help a bit, but it was doing the scanning by touch, as it were. The scanning probe bot was very accurate compared to light microscopy, but also dreadfully slow. Running the numbers, a single scanning bot would take just shy of a decade to scan a single square centimeter. Fortunately, he could use more than one at a time, but even with the maximum useful density of scanning bots, it would take ages to scan anything that had a three dimensional structure since each atom thick layer would need to be peeled back one at a time.

Ultimately, it boiled down to the fact that he would eventually be able to reproduce any technology he had several examples to break down, but it would take exponentially longer the more fiddly the details got.

In the meantime, he focused on breaking down the next control node. With his feedstock levels finally rising, he started up his replicators. The controllers would take a few minutes to finish, since they were so large compared to the replicators themselves, but he would have enough feedstock ready to start a second run by the time the first new controllers finished. He would have to seriously consider setting up a permanent outpost in the scrap-storage area of the dropship's hold. That way he would be able to continue the search for new materials for his feedstock while the blob aboard the mech had a chance to operate outside the dropship on occasion to continue to learn about the circumstances of the outside world.

To that end, he worked a tendril back down into the maintenance runs under the deck plates and started searching out a power conduit. If he was going to have an outpost, he would need a long term source of power available…

—
En Route to the Rockwellawan jump point, 31 March, 3025

When he heard the small beep from his alarm, Ozer Ansimov finished up his set of pushups and started doing his cooldown jumping jacks, glad to be underway at 1g again. While low-G and zero-G were great for sleeping in, they were terrible for keeping fit. Being a MechWarrior was a physically demanding job, and staying fit was an important part of that. With a month of zero-G ahead of them as they jumped from system to system, he was making the best of the few days of full 1g acceleration-gravity until they made it to the jump point.

Overall, he took it as a good sign that the company had managed to find another contract so soon after the last one. Idle time could be a killer in merc companies. Both because it dulled your edge and because your expenses kept piling up despite the lack of income.

That said, he hoped for a bit more combat flavored adrenaline in the next contract. Equipment failures like his previously trusty Orion locking up in hard vacuum were not the kind of excitement that he liked. He may be an adrenaline junkie, but equipment failures had a sense of helplessness about them, since there wasn't anything you could do to mitigate it on your end once they happened. Fortunately, the League of Brass was extremely diligent about maintenance compared to most mercs out there, so such failures were very rare for them. He had heard horror stories from other mercs about companies that tried to grow too fast, and ended up with whole dropships full of mechs that barely functioned, which were liable to fail just when you needed them most.

Ozer had grown up in the League of Brass, and he couldn't see himself living life any other way. When his father had died in the line of combat, Ozer had inherited the old man's mech. Technically adopted father, but they were close as blood to the end, so it hardly mattered. The League of Brass had a lot of stories like that. It was pretty much one giant extended family, since only the crew and their direct family were permanent residents on their old Mule, and they had been handing down and slowly upgrading their mechs over several generations.

With a final beeping from his alarm, Ozer wiped the sweat from his forehead before resolving to take a shower and then head over to the MechBay after lunch. He wanted to check his Orion over with his own eyes, and possibly do some brief 1g drills to make sure everything was working again with the new control board.

—
7 April, 3025

Several times over the past few days, the apparent gravity in the ship had shifted as the dropship underwent maneuvers. That probably meant that the merc company was on its way to another system already, after completing the last contract.

Knowing that he was in BattleTech did at least give Rowan more information to work with. For travel, going from system to system was broken up into zero-G time when charging for the next hyperspace jump, or under acceleration at the final hop to get to the planet itself. Since that last step took at least a week, Rowan gave himself at least a month before he would need to be ready to leave the dropship in a mech again. Once they switched from zero-G to 1g, Rowan would give himself one week to be ready, in order to be conservative.

He was interested to learn that the blob left behind in the mech had some interesting experiences while he had been off replicating. The crew evidently wanted to put the mech through its paces after the unexpected data dump, as they had run the mech just long enough to get the myomer muscle bundles hot. It was a good reminder about his own temperature tolerances, too, since hiding in the foamed metal frame near the core of the limbs still wasn't enough to fully protect from the heat once the myomer had started radiating. He had lost a few of the most sensitive bots in his swarm that way before the crew evidently decided that the mech was fully functional.

Before he arrived, Rowan wanted to have all his nanites and macro-tech in the mech replaced with higher temperature range ones. They would have a wider total operating range, and a substantially higher maximum temperature tolerance than his current "normal" bots, which were better suited to doing the environmentally sealed work on the dropship. The primary downside of the higher tolerance bots was their relative bulk, given the materials differences required. Not only would he have half the useful number of bots in any given volume, they would cost slightly more per unit of volume as well. It would be worth it though, if he could operate during mech combat without risk of constantly losing bots to mere environmental conditions.

With all of that said, Rowan had two other goals before they arrived at their new location. He wanted to have feedstock for replacing at least simple mech components with quick patches, and he wanted to have rough blueprints for the same, so that his patches would be at least combat capable, if not fully up to spec.

To that end, he was seeking out a little bit of everything from the scrapyard. Bits of torn myomer, shards of shattered armor, the wear surfaces of joints themselves, and many more. He had no expectation of being able to replace complex systems in combat any time soon, but he did want the ability to apply basic patches at least.

After all, eventual discovery was going to happen. It might be a matter of years, but he would be found by the nearby humans eventually, and if he still didn't have communications cracked by then, he wanted them to be at least positively inclined towards him, since keeping his presence a secret would significantly increase the odds of his own survival, let alone theirs.

 

[Plasma Regulators]

Chapter 7 - Leaps
12 April, 3025

Rowan was pleased with his progress. Not only had he entirely swapped over the nanites in the mech for higher temperature range ones, he had broken down enough miscellaneous scrap that he could now produce standard battlemech armor or structure on demand. Which sounded simpler than it actually was.

Standard battlemech armor was really an advanced composite. The outermost layer was a finely crystalized titanium alloyed steel. While he could produce the correct crystalline structure when required, it was rather time consuming. If he was in a hurry, he could just assemble a homogenous block of the alloy itself. Without the advanced crystallization, the armor lost at least twenty percent of its strength, but he could produce the stuff in half the time.

The middle layer was a homogenous allotrope of a boron nitride ceramic. This was actually the easiest component for Rowan to produce quickly, since despite its impressive material properties, there was nothing structurally complex about it. The only issue with in-field repairs would be the lack of materials once he used up his boron, since the armor was the only thing that used substantial amounts of it.

The inner layer was by far the most fiddly. It was a diamond fiber web embedded in a high temperature resin on a titanium alloy honeycomb support. It seemed as though it was primarily there to act as a semi-flexible support for the harder outer layers when they cracked and a shrapnel backstop for when anything punched through them. Due to its honestly ridiculous material complexity, producing a faithful replication of the inner layer took ten times as long as the crystalized outer layer. Fortunately, or perhaps in a stroke of good design sense, it was the layer least likely to get damaged by anything short of sustained fire or extremely large weaponry.

Also interesting to note was the sealant layer just inside the inner layer of armor. It was only half a centimeter thick, but it was made of a simple polymer that stayed slightly tacky even when cured, which seemed to slowly flow around minor cracks or gashes, ensuring airtightness.

The mech's skeleton was equally complex, although very different from the armor. There was a thin skin of the same crystalized titanium alloyed steel, followed by an insulating mesh of silicon-carbide fiber, and then the bulk was the most complex alloy Rowan had run across yet. It was beams of a load-bearing foamed composite aluminum alloy.

That foamed alloy is where Rowan decided to hide the bulk of his nanobots and feedstock, since there was space in the bubbles themselves. It took a tiny bit of modification to make a microscopically small network of holes between the bubbles without compromising them structurally, but it meant that he was capable of flowing up and down the skeleton without impediment, and without much danger of detection, since the inner core didn't seem to be serviceable. Any time the very core was damaged, the entire beam had to get replaced, or at least that is what Rowan had deduced from the junkyard of beams that had small fractures in an otherwise good beam.

He still hadn't entirely decided what to do about battle-damage to the mech he was riding around in, but Rowan was currently leaning towards "mysteriously patching damage". Not fixing damage, since the techs would want to do a full repair anyway, but providing a battle-ready patch that plugged the hole and helped survivability.

It would mean that he was almost guaranteed to be discovered in the next few months, but that the discovery would be both on his terms and in the least impactful way he could foresee happening. After all, a grey-goo infestation of your home was alarming, but a mech that was suspiciously good at surviving? That was something you kept quiet about in the BattleTech universe. There were loads of stories out there of phantom mechs and mysterious tech; they made for good campfire tales. But as soon as "campfire tale" turned into "credible rumor with concrete details", the unit in question tended to vanish. There was no shortage on the list of suspects, either, so it wasn't like you could simply stay away from a particular part of space.

Rowan charted out a few more hypothetical contact scenarios as he recycled some more myomer. The stuff wasn't that complex from an elemental composition perspective, but it was devilishly hard to get it right. He would estimate he was only ten percent of the way towards being able to reliably reproduce it on demand, and he had a feeling that the last ten percent was going to take a lot longer.

—
Itrom jump point, 25 April, 3025

Alona Carroll was floating in the air in front of one of the view-portals on the exterior of their dropship, eyes intent on the other dropships that were docked to the same jumpship that they were. Eventually, she turned and looked around, spotting Ozer drifting down the corridor in her direction. "Hey Ozer! Come take a look at this."

Ozer sped up a bit, grabbing the handholds on the walls more securely and launching himself in the lazy looking but deceptively fast glide that experienced spacers all learned.

"What's up?" he asked, even as she helped brace on the far wall to catch him.

She pointed vaguely out the small port. "Look at the other dropships. Notice anything?"

He looked for a brief moment, before shrugging "They're Unions? Look pretty bog standard to me."

Alona sighed. "No, their colors. Isn't that the house Espinosa heraldry? I think they're headed the same way we are."

Ozer took another, closer, look. "Hmm. You're right. Where were they picked up?"

"Corromodir, I think, which would make sense. Something's got them riled if they're all going this way though."

They shared a look, before Ozer spoke. "You want to tell the Captain or should I? Might mean nothing, but it'd be good to keep an eye on."

Alona nodded. "I will. Like you said, could be coincidence, but good to know about the potential opposition forces."

—
27 April, 3025

Rowan finally felt the energies dissipate, and he slowed his perception of time back down to normal.

Hyperspace was odd.

That was one of the only actual conclusions that he had formed so far, once he decided to pay more attention to their travel from system to system. The first jump had passed him by entirely without notice, only being marked in his memories with some notation that he didn't recognize when he tried to recall the right time period.

The second jump was what had grabbed his attention. In the BattleTech lore that he knew, which was admittedly a little spotty, the jumps themselves were rarely talked about. Great detail was used to describe the charging, and the limitations, and the edge cases like the difficulties in trying to transport an inactive drive, but the jump itself was just described as "brief".

Now he knew why. So far as humans could tell, the process happened in an instant. With his perception of time ramped all the way up, he noticed that the odd annotations on his memories were actually overlapping timestamps denoting the passing of several seconds. The odd bit was that it was only in his memories. Those missing few seconds were slippery to perception in a strange manner. When he went digging for how he could record something that he couldn't perceive in the first place, he found the explanation for why he had a few isolated atoms of germanium inside his controllers, hooked up to sensors to detect relative motion and energy flow. It seemed as though the germanium that was used to make jump-drive cores also resonated with even individual germanium atoms along for the ride. By measuring their movements, it was possible to derive how long the jump had taken, from the perspective of the drive itself, which did not line up with passage of time for any other atoms.

Very odd. Not all that useful though, other than the ability to tell exactly how many lightyears had been traversed. The fact that none of his processors could perceive it meant that he couldn't actually take advantage of the lost time somehow.

Still, something to keep an eye on in the future.

In more practical news, Rowan's continued attempts at figuring out human communications… had progressed? Okay, not really. But at least he had more data to analyze.

There was definitely something fucky going on with his ability to understand things though, because while he was making functionally zero progress on human language despite hundreds of hours of recorded interactions through the comms of the ship, he had actually discovered more about the comms themselves and their handshake protocols than the language he was trying to study.

It wasn't actually a problem yet; or at least not a life-or-death critical one, but it was another thing on the list of topics to keep an eye on as he continued to record more and more sources of human speech.

 

[Plasma Regulators]

Chapter 8 - Landings and Connections
19 May, 3025

Rowan paused his work with some scrap myomer as he felt the sub-bass howl of atmosphere on the skin of the dropship. Evidently they had arrived at their destination. He had known that they were at the final system once they had started accelerating away from the jumpship, but they were finally getting to the planet itself, it seemed.

Rowan decided to do his final checks to ensure that everything was ready in the mech for an excursion. He was quite happy with how well integrated into the mech he was, and his feedstock reserves had slowly been growing over the past few days as he put the finishing touches on his network of tunnels through the structure of the mech.

Between the two of them, he would be ready for some combat damage, and because he was in the very core of the mech, losing those nanites was relatively unlikely. Plus the fact that they were on a planet with an atmosphere meant he would be able to pull material out of thin air, so long as said atmosphere had CO2 in it.

After several treks across the floor panels of the mechbay in the past few weeks, Rowan had finally decided to just burrow a hole directly into the stall with his preferred mech in it. Half of his work had already been done by some of the access bays that ran beneath the mech, so it was mostly just a matter of boring through the last few centimeters and making a cap that wouldn't be visibly obvious when the mech wasn't standing on top of it.

Deciding to make one last delivery of some rare earth metal feedstock, Rowan pushed a tendril up through the hole and connected to a similar hole he had burrowed through the bottom of the mech's foot. His "main" body in the dropship was now several hundred meters of grey goo that stretched to all the locations he frequented. Currently that was limited to one stall in the mechbay and several access hatches in the massive storage room, but he had vague plans for burrowing underneath each stall in the mechbay.

Plus, at some point he wanted to check out the vehicles on board as well, since those used a compatible but divergent tech base to the mechs themselves.

The tendril in the mechbay spent a few seconds forming Rowan's new favorite macro-tech, a pinhole camera. It was a tiny thing, and it had rather crap resolution, but a lucky find in the scrapyard yesterday had let him finally understand basic image sensors. Any time he wanted to form a camera, it took about twenty seconds of work, provided he had the feedstock handy, but it was a huge boon to his capabilities. Just the ability to check if there were people in the immediate area was worth it on it's own.

It also meant that he would certainly stay busy in the dropship in the next few weeks, since he was slowly building up a good map of the entire dropship from the maintenance runs that crisscrossed every wall, floor, and ceiling.

—
El Colegio Spaceport, Weldry, 19 May, 3025

Ozer tested his weight as he found his way to the mess hall. Felt like… three quarter G? Not bad. He joined others in the halls on the way to the middle of the ship. Everyone aboard knew the drill by now. New planet, new contract, first full briefing happened just after touchdown.

Captain Taylor waved a hand in the air from the stage once everyone was gathered, silencing the crowd. "Alright everyone. New contract time. Welcome to Weldry. The current plan is to be here for fourteen months. First few days are the most dangerous, since this planet just changed hands, so all non-combat personnel are to stay on the ship until at least next week."

There was some very mild grumbling at this pronouncement, but not enough to stop the Captain's speech. "Planetary conditions are zero-point-seven-four gravity with a thin but breathable atmosphere and an average temperature of about five degrees this time of year. Remember your enviro-suits, people. It's cold out there."

After a brief pause to let that information settle, she continued. "The contract itself is garrison and support duty. Like I said, this planet just changed hands, from the Espinosa directorate to the Arano loyalists, and we're here to help the transition period happen smoothly. Our primary job is to act as support for the local mech and vehicle lances as they cycle in off the front until they can get more permanent support facilities online again. Our secondary duty is to act as a hardened line of defense protecting the capital city of El Colegio in general and the primary spaceport here in specific. I'll now hand the floor to Sergent Ayala."

Zahra Ayala stepped to the front. Ozer had a bit of a crush on the coffee-skinned mechanic, but he hadn't done anything about it yet, still working up his courage. Once she had the room's attention, Zahra spoke up. "Since our primary job is acting as support staff, we'll be opening mechbay door two to the Arano loyalists, as well as the light vehicle door. Two things: we'll want to consolidate our off-duty mechs to mechbay one for the duration of the contract, and I want all squad leaders to keep an eye on our guests. We'll be helping with maintenance when we're not working on our own vehicles and mechs, but there will be outside techs in our space, so I want eyes peeled. While sabotage is unlikely, I don't want parts or tools to go wandering due to inattention. To that end, we'll have checkpoints at the exterior bay doors and the interior doors as well. Delta squad? That will be your primary job during this contract. Boring but necessary. I'll let individual squad leaders fill you in more. With that, you're up Erika!"

Erika Herold made her way through the crowd and hopped up onto the stage. "Alright. Now for the combat talk. We're expected to keep the peace in El Colegio and help things smoothly transition. We're required to act as a final hardened defensive line for the spaceport, since that has been deemed a mission critical asset. Alpha and Bravo lances will be on roaming patrols and occasional troubleshooting duty. Stick together. I want to outweigh any enemy lance that decides to stick their nose in. Charlie lance? We're playing guard duty. We'll be protecting the dropship and the spaceport, with particular focus on the fuel depot. I don't like how close it is to the tree line. Echo and Foxtrot squads will be tasked with doing regular supply runs into the city. Non-combatants? If you want to go into the city to socialize or stock up, you must go with one of our infantry squads; no stragglers. This planet is not currently under hostile control, but it was as of last week, so expect lots of flare-ups as Espinosa squads realize they're stranded here. That goes for everyone; expect trouble. Espinosa wasn't all that dug in here, but they did have quite a few mobile assets, and it's always possible that they land more. We'll keep you apprised of the situation as things progress."

With a nod, Erika stepped off the stage to allow the Captain to wrap up. "Alright folks. Let's get settled in. I'll be in contact with the Arano representative tonight, so our contract officially starts tomorrow. Any last minute inspections will have to happen before then. To anyone who's going to be piloting or driving anything, remember the low-G. While it lets you move faster, that does not prevent fuck-ups from wrecking your vehicle if you roll it. Any last questions for the group? Otherwise I'll let you get to your dinner."

She was just about to step off the stage when she stopped to say one last thing. "Oh yeah, and the day-length is only sixteen hours here, so we'll be on rotating spacer time, since there's no point in trying to adapt all our schedules that far."

There was groaning from the crowd at that. Day lengths shorter than twenty hours sucked.

—
21 May, 3025

It was good to be on the move again, thought Rowan. With the higher temperature nanites, it was quite comfortable to be nestled throughout the structure of the mech as it patrolled for the first time on an alien world. He was still slowly integrating with more and more mech systems over time. The most recent one was the control signals coming from the cockpit. He had stored a few of his dedicated macro-components in the mech's cockpit and by now he had a network of controllers dotted throughout the mech acting as a nervous system so that he could sense every part of the mech as it was put through its paces.

The fine control that mechs could express was truly impressive. To Rowan's understanding, it was a combination of three primary factors. The first was that computers of BattleTech were massive and unwieldy, but surprisingly adept at specific circumstances that could be predefined. The second was the massive gyroscope in the center torso that helped even out the stride and help keep the mech stable as it performed actions that would otherwise put it off balance. The third was the neurohelmet, which allowed for a much closer pairing of pilot and machine than possible with mere joystick controls. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was an amazingly non-invasive way of pairing the human brain to computers seamlessly.

That thought gave Rowan pause. Neurohelmets allowed for machines to interface with the human brain, despite the vast gulf between them. It wasn't a solution by itself, and it would take quite a while to safely integrate, but Rowan had a feeling that the neurohelmets worn by the mechwarriors were one of the most promising leads he had for communicating with humans so far.

It likely wouldn't use language, but perhaps that was actually for the best, considering his ongoing difficulties with making direct human language work.

With some trepidation, Rowan started creating a few new signal processing macro-structures from his available feedstock, even as he started capturing atmospheric CO2 to make up for some of the lost materials. Slowly, he made some extra contacts with the control board of the mech. No sense in rushing this. If he was right, it would probably take weeks to get anything comprehensible anyway, but that was all the more reason to start now.

 

[Plasma Regulators]

Chapter 9 - Contact
25 May, 3025

Rowan was experimenting with radio-frequencies aboard the dropship. Both in the sense that he was aboard the dropship and testing out various frequencies for their potential use in connecting parts of his swarm together, and in the sense that he was experimenting with the specific transmission bands that were in use aboard the ship itself.

The former was going… adequately. He could carry a signal complex enough to let his mind bridge the gap between two unconnected bits of himself, but it currently required more hardware than he was happy with. It was actually what gave him the idea in the first place. An old radio-board from one of the company's vehicles had taken a piece of shrapnel at some point in the past, so Rowan had simply consumed the whole thing to try to get an understanding of it. The protocols themselves were dead simple. To the point that he was pretty sure he could crack secured comms now that he knew how the hardware encoding worked. The fiddly bit was making a signal that could carry enough information without making his broadcast obvious.

With direct line of sight, Rowan could just use tight-beam broadcast and interception would be practically impossible unless someone physically stuck a receiver in-between the two nodes. The problem was that he rarely had two blobs that were separate but still had line of sight.

With a generalized broadcast he ran into two issues. If he wanted to be able to detect the broadcast himself, it would be loud enough to stand out to the signal-techs aboard the dropship as well. Additionally, if he wanted to receive the broadcast, he needed to either use large radio-reception grids of nanites or piggyback off of the antenna of the mech/ship/vehicle he was aboard, which brought him back to the first issue of being detected.

It was going to require some thought. Perhaps if he could work out a burst transmission protocol, and simply deal with intermittent updates? It would be worth checking if that was even possible either way.

—
El Colegio, Weldry, 27 May, 3025

Ozer was wishing something would happen. They had already been on the ground for nearly a week and nothing had happened yet.

As if to answer his prayers, his radio squawked to life. "Homebase to Alpha/Bravo Lances, our Arano rep just informed me that we've got a former Espinosa mechwarrior turncoat inbound on a Hunchback. Charlie Lance is tied up responding to a sensor reading of a potential enemy lance, so you're on the spot. Heading three-zero-zero from your position. I'll patch the Hunchback into your lance comms, over."

"-is turncoat Hunchback. I'm coming up on your left. They've got two lances following me, over."

"Finally" Ozer muttered to himself as he turned his Orion to face the new direction.

Mid-turn, something caught his eye. "What in the world?"

He watched as a civilian personnel carrier accelerated madly in their direction. "Uh- Sci-fi to Alpha/Bravo, I think some Espinosa forces captured some civilian vees as well. I'm seeing odd behavior from an APC in front of us. Engage them?"

"Squire to Alpha/Bravo, I'm spotting a Jabberwocky engineering mech and a recovery vehicle too. I think you're right. Permission to engage if they ignore my warning shots, over." With that, Alona's Black Knight fired a medium laser in front of the still accelerating APC.

Instead of stopping or slowing, it swerved around the scorched dirt and revved it's engines, only to hit a small berm and go tumbling through the air in the low-G as if in slow motion.

Everyone turned to watch it as it managed a full roll in the air, before coming down on it's nose, smashing it's searchlight off and nearly popping it's right track off as it dug a trench in the dirt.

The distraction was evidently too much of an opportunity to pass up though, because an hostile Stalker stepped out from behind a warehouse and opened up on Alpha lance. Most of its shots missed, but the short range missiles found their mark on Hector's Blackjack. The SRM6 plus the element of surprise managing to knock the Blackjack over.

Jonathan was on the ball though, because he responded with a full complement of lasers, scoring glowing lines across the surface of the mech while Squire called it in. "We've got contacts left. Weapons hot, and I see our friend in the Hunchback as well, over."

With that, the battle was truly engaged. The friendly Hunchback opened up on the recovery vehicle that looked to be trying to ram him, just about melting it's cockpit with laser fire. Meanwhile, the Espinosa stalker was keeping it's weapons fire concentrated on Hector's recovering Blackjack, blasting most of the armor off of his right arm with a large laser.

Squire and Chopper were in fine form though. Squire managed to connect with a huge AC20 blast and several medium lasers on the Archer, blasting huge chunks off it's armor, while Chopper's Guillotine managed a lucky hit on a sprinting Assassin, wrecking the right leg and causing it to neatly impale itself on a power-pylon.

Ozer decided to focus on the telltale shape of an approaching SRM carrier though. He really did not want to be in range of the firepower that thing could bring to bear, so he opened up with his AC10s, managing to crush the front armor, but not destroying it. He was prevented from landing the killing blow when a huge detonation to his right distracted him. Evidently the Assassin had tried to stand up, but had only managed to detonate it's missile ammo with the power pole embedded in it's torso.
By the time Ozer had turned back to the SRM carrier, it was already turned around and started to flee. Not wanting to simply have to fight it again another day, Ozer focused fire, and was pleased to see it grind to a halt as one of his AC10 shots managed to punch through the armor and engine-kill the thing.

With all of that going on, the Jabberwocky had evidently decided to use the distraction to charge Squire's Black Knight, only to receive a vicious kick which managed to shear off it's right leg and send it tumbling into a building, collapsing the roof on itself as it fell into the building's basement.

Chopper then decided to pull the enemy lance's attention by running right through the middle of the battlefield, only to duck behind a building just in time for several AC2 shots, half a salvo of SRMs and some laser fire to hit the building itself.

"Bravo Lance to Alpha Lance, we're on your six. We saw another lance headed this way though, over," announced the incoming reinforcements, even as Cathryn's Grasshopper soared through the air on it's jumpjets, coming in to land on a small man-bridge, utterly flattening it.

The continuous thuds of Bravo lance's AC2 fire set the tempo for the battle, as they started engaging the incoming second lance. Ozer finally managed to destroy the turret on the immobilized SRM carrier as he kept his eyes peeled for where they were coming from. His distraction cost him though, as the SRM carrier's final volley managed to land squarely on his Orion's torso, stripping layers of armor away and making warning lights flash in his cockpit.

Ozer swore to himself, before thumbing the radio. "I've taken at least two fusion core hits over, my temp is spiking rapidly."

Most of the rest of the battle passed by in a blur, as Ozer focused on getting his heat under control; the cracked fusion plant turning the inside of his mech into a sweltering inferno.

For a minute or two, it was looking like he was going to have to punch out and let the mech melt down, since even the emergency shutdown command wasn't doing anything, but then the needle stopped rising. It was still painfully hot in the cockpit and nearing ammo ignition temperatures in the center torso of the mech, but the needle was slowly falling again.

Eventually though, the battle was over, and his Orion was barely cool enough to safely move under its own power. He called in his damages. "Sci-fi to Homebase. I'm going to need the coolant truck and mobile base. My ammunition is sitting uncomfortably close to cook-off, so I don't want to bring the mech inside the dropship, but my fusion core crash commands aren't doing anything, so we're going to need to manually shut it down."

He could practically feel the winces from his lancemates. Short of actually cooking his ammo, this was pretty much a worst-case scenario, since even getting the mech to shut down safely was going to be dangerous to the techs.

This was going to suck.

"Ow". Not to mention he was going to need some time in the med-bay to deal with these burns.

 

[Plasma Regulators]

Chapter 10 - Something Fishy
27 May, 3025

'Okay, lessons learned,' Rowan thought to himself. He had just recombined the nanites from the mech and the dropship in order to pass on important information.

'Number one. High temperature nanites are not the same as extreme heat nanites.' It turned out that his nanites on the mech had been perfectly happy with normal mech operating temperatures, but still ran into issues if the mech started significantly overheating.

'Number two. Nanites that are just outside of their maximum temperature tolerances can still operate for several seconds before they die, and even dead nanites can be consumed by recyclers to produce fresh feedstock.' Learning that had been costly, but he had been able to operate on half measures until he finally got a few extreme heat nanites up and running.

'And finally, number three. ROB is a bastard.' The one who had sent him to this universe was clearly in that category, since having his nanites destroyed hurt, which should not be possible.

Altogether he had learned some extremely valuable information from riding aboard a damaged mech, but he would need to rebuild and rethink before he could do that again.

The pain of dying nanites as he filled in the cracks in the fusion core with cubic boron-nitride had been like grabbing a hot pan and being forced to not let it go as you had to navigate a house with it. It was distracting, and painful, and there wasn't really an alternative if you wanted to get things done. He had managed to patch the core eventually, with a combination of extreme heat tolerant heat-dissipation nanites, some freshly replicated extreme heat fabricators, and a steady cycling of controllers that he didn't have time to properly replace with their extreme heat versions. It had burned out more than half of his controllers simply getting the basic patch in place, but he had, and had gained the ability to retreat to the mech's cockpit in relative safety without the mech melting down or detonating it's ammo reserves, which he counted as a win.

Moving forward, he was going to have to have a thin coat of extreme heat nanites around the mech's fusion core, and probably the other primary heat producers on the mech as well, like the weapons' heat blocks and the mech coolant system's primary exchanger. The extreme heat nanites couldn't actually operate at faster than a snail's pace under normal circumstances, but he really didn't like not having options if things started getting that hot again. Rowan got the feeling that he had been lucky that none of the ammo had cooked off this time, since that would have cost him all the nanites in the mech without the ability to pass on information about how they had died. It also bumped up the importance of being able to remote-connect to different parts of his swarm.

Idly, he consumed more of the old fusion reactor in the junkpile to produce a few extreme heat rated controller nanites. Hopefully he would be more ready for next time.

—
El Colegio, Weldry, 28 May, 3025

Badr was working on getting the replacement 300 rated fusion core bolted in place inside the splayed open Orion, when he heard his name being called and took his head out of the access hatch. "Yes?"

"Come take a look at this," came the voice of Rena, their newest full mech-tech. She had just recently graduated from being one of the League of Brass' permanent general astechs as she had proven to have a good head on her shoulders.

He wiped his hands on a rag and walked over to where Rena was examining the old fusion core. "Oh? Is it finally cool enough to examine properly?"

Rena was hesitant in answering. "Yes? But that's not… why I called you over. Look."

She was pointing to the crack in the fusion core's shielding, where she had already removed the damaged casing around it.

A crack that was visibly sealed with an off-white plug of material with a very familiar sheen. Badr shared a confused look with Rena. "Is that… ceramic armor insert? How did it manage to get in the crack?"

Rena gave a helpless shrug. "Mabe it melted and flowed in there?"

Badr was already shaking his head. "Impossible. At atmospheric pressure, it evaporates to dump heat before it melts. You can't melt it without extreme pressures."

Rena looked even more confused at his answer. "So… maybe it condensed there after evaporating?"

Their eyes were both drawn to the casing that she had already removed. "None on the casing," Badr noted. "-so either it condensed in exactly the right location without touching the casing and without penetrating the fusion chamber itself, or… what? It was constructed in place?"

Rena scratched her head. "I guess so. I can't think of any other way it got in there like that."

Badr grabbed a grease pencil out of his rear pocket before outlining the perfectly plugged crack. "Can you please cut this section out for me? If nothing else, I'd like to keep it. Nobody would ever believe us otherwise."

She nodded, already searching their racks of tools for an appropriate cutter.

Badr was still thinking though. "-at least this explains why the core started cooling down on its own. Don't know how in the hell it happened, but it explains the whys at least."

Out of morbid curiosity, he grabbed a small flashlight and peered in the other cracked casing, only to get a shimmering reflection from the bottom of the hole. "-grab this section too, will you, Rena? Looks like it got corked as well."

—
2 June, 3025

Rowan was working on decrypting some of the human radio chatter while absentmindedly applying his signal processors to reduce the background noise when he noticed that half of the noise was actually adjacent radio channels providing some crosstalk interference. It wouldn't have been as obvious, except for the fact that he was recording each channel simultaneously, and noticed an uptick in noise when multiple adjacent channels were engaged at the same time.

He was half way through the process of recreating a radio broadcast from the noise on the two adjacent channels when he realized that his idle use of excess processing power might have actually given him an idea.

Sticking to tight beam broadcasts for his testing, Rowan replayed some of the human's radio chatter from earlier, but overlaid his own data on top of the signal as quiet noise. While it barely affected the quality of the channel, he could get the majority of the additional data out of the carrier wave if he applied signal processing to the received signal on the far end.

Admittedly, it wasn't a very broad channel, so he would be strictly limited to passing messages rather than a full uplink between groups, but he would be able to pass simple messages between different blobs of nanites so long as the radio channels remained open.

It would be fairly limited in scope, and he would need to intercept the human's broadcasts at both ends in order to inject his signal, but he now had a way to keep various blobs in touch without alerting anyone to his presence.

—
El Colegio, Weldry, 3 June, 3025

Ozer knocked on the door to the meck-tech breakroom off to the side of the mechbay. He spotted Badr and walked over to him. "You wanted to see me, Badr?"

Badr looked up from the chunk of metal he was staring at. "Yeah. Just wanted to let you know that with the spare fusion core installed in your Orion, I've cleared it for operations again. We're still swapping out one last laser driver on Hector's Blackjack, but other than that, your lance is ready to go again. I've cleared you for missions with the boss, once your burns heal up."

Ozer nodded happily. "That is good news. Thanks Badr. My burns are pretty much over the worst too, so I'll let Alona know we're ready to rock and roll again. Was there anything else?"

Badr looked like he was about to dismiss him, when he had an idea. "Yes, actually. Could you keep an eye out for anything… odd with your mech? Just uh… making sure that the spare fusion core is up to scratch, you know?"

"Odd how?"

Badr looked at the piece of metal in his hands again before answering. "Just… anything out of the ordinary, like your fusion reactor cooling down on it's own towards the end of the excitement last week."

Ozer nodded. "Sure. I'll keep you posted."

"That's all I ask."