Plasma Regulators
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Certainly starting to look that way, yeah.
And BattleTech is a good setting for it.
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Big and Small (a BattleTech story... with nanites)
- Thread starter Plasma Regulators
- Start date
And BattleTech is a good setting for it.
Killroy225
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Couldn't he use his nanites in large enough quantities to write out words? Assuming he didn't want to go the machine spirit route
Plasma Regulators
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The non-spoilery answer is that he hasn't thought of it.
The spoilery answer is that he literally can't. Or at least not yet. It hasn't occurred to him because he doesn't have programming to do that (human interaction protocol not found.) Thanks to the fact that it's a human mind in charge, he'll find ways around eventually, but it won't be a simple process.
RedWard99
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Gonna be the start of another legend then. What do y'all think of the "Mech Phantom" phenomena, lol.
Chapter 9 - Contact
Plasma Regulators
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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.
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.
Last edited:
Plasma Regulators
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So, can you tell that I played this battle out on MegaMek and basically converted the battle report into a blow by blow story?
Let me know how I did.
Let me know how I did.
AckSed
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Admire the dedication, and the little details make it better. Some writing points:
Some mech names weren't capitalised. With BT, it helps keep track of things in a battle.
Apostrophes on "it's" are normally used on people and shortening of "it is"; with objects like mechs and vehicles using "its" e.g. "revved its engine", "sheared off its right leg".
Some mech names weren't capitalised. With BT, it helps keep track of things in a battle.
Apostrophes on "it's" are normally used on people and shortening of "it is"; with objects like mechs and vehicles using "its" e.g. "revved its engine", "sheared off its right leg".
I'm side-eyeing the sentence structure as that full stop before the "Announced" breaks the flow. How about:
SRM Carriers (and LRM Carriers) don't normally have a turret. Is there a variant in MegaMek that does, or is this a custom job?
Plasma Regulators
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Yup, those are just errors. I'll try to correct 'em.
I do know the rule intellectually, but my fingers don't seem to have got the memo. I often need to correct that after I've typed it out. Seems I missed a couple.
Good catch. I agree.
Heh. You're right. That was purely a result of me recording the battle in insufficient detail as it happened, added to the fact that I forgot that carriers don't use turrets. Think I'll leave it in though, since it indicates what happened better than a more technically accurate (but clunky) sentence would.
ryune
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I really liked the breakdown. Some thought need to go into making sure that you stay focused on a single point of view though. It sometimes felt like the pilot had super accurate battlefield awareness. You might want to obscure things he isn't directly looking at and have him less sure of what is actually going on or more detail about appearances. Things like the engine hit causing the gear box in the SRM carrier to grenade and obvious shredding of the engine compartment for instance. Basically, he was too sure of his conclusions without obvious signs on screen for that surety.
Plasma Regulators
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Fair enough. It's something I'll keep in mind for future combat descriptions. Probably pick one viewpoint character and try to stick with only their perspective.
Plasma Regulators
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So, just figured I'd let people know my current plans for future battle chapters:
After getting feedback on all three platforms, I've consolidated the advice and think I have a decent idea of where to go from here.
Essentially, I'll be sticking pretty close to the current idea of playing a battle in simulation and recording events to convert to story format.
The difference is that I'll be putting a bit more focus on a single viewpoint character and what they're doing/experiencing, even if that means the readers are going to miss some of the interesting bits of the battle that happen outside of the viewpoint character's awareness.
Or at least, that's the current plan. We'll re-evaluate once we've had another battle chapter.
After getting feedback on all three platforms, I've consolidated the advice and think I have a decent idea of where to go from here.
Essentially, I'll be sticking pretty close to the current idea of playing a battle in simulation and recording events to convert to story format.
The difference is that I'll be putting a bit more focus on a single viewpoint character and what they're doing/experiencing, even if that means the readers are going to miss some of the interesting bits of the battle that happen outside of the viewpoint character's awareness.
Or at least, that's the current plan. We'll re-evaluate once we've had another battle chapter.
Chapter 10 - Something Fishy
Plasma Regulators
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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."
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."
Pablofiasco
Getting out there.
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2018
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- 11
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*It Begins*
....now, to wonder what the others will make of the mechs "quirks"
....now, to wonder what the others will make of the mechs "quirks"
AckSed
I trust you know where the happy button is?
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2015
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Idle thought: I wonder if Harjel is a natural colony of self-assembling nanobots, and that is why it's confined to a single planet. Organisms evolved to grow films of metal over their colony sites isn't too far-fetched.
If and when the Clans come around, maybe he could 'meet the neighbours'.
If and when the Clans come around, maybe he could 'meet the neighbours'.
RedWard99
Know what you're doing yet?
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- Jul 2, 2021
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Mechtech: IT'S ALIIIIVE!!!
*background noises of thunder and confused screaming
Mr. Cloak
Possibly Outerwear, advocate for Blank rights.
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Loving this! When he introduces himself, are you going the whole 'transfered mind to machine' route, or will he introduce himself as ROWAN (Random Optimization Web Artificial Neural-colony)?
blueratel413
That's how I Roll
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- May 14, 2018
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Plasma Regulators
I trust you know where the happy button is?
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2015
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- 528
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State of the Union Address
So, to anyone who was getting used to the daily updates and is confused as to where the rum has gone:
As a direct consequence of Attention Deficit- "Ooh, Shiny!" my muse was thoroughly nerd-sniped by an offer of collaboration with another author who had a sweet BattleTech idea.
While this doesn't mean that I have lost interest in pursuing this story, it does mean that I've had some unfaithful thoughts.
Namely, I can not get my muse to shut up about the new idea until it was already much more nuanced and advanced than the BattleTech Nanites idea.
Oh, also, just to warn you guys: I don't actually know where I'm going with the Nanites idea.
Like; I have some future plot points mapped out still, and a few developments to the situation and how they get there, there's no overarching plan as it were.
What I'm trying to say, in this rambly way, is that this story is going on unofficial Hiatus, until my muse can be woken up from her week long blender on a new idea (and then actually work on one thing for more than a week in a row).
On the plus side (?) you have not seen the last of me, and probably have not seen the last of this idea. Although if anyone wants to take the project on, I'd be happy to share my notes and future plot developments that I still had in reserve.
-peace
So, to anyone who was getting used to the daily updates and is confused as to where the rum has gone:
As a direct consequence of Attention Deficit- "Ooh, Shiny!" my muse was thoroughly nerd-sniped by an offer of collaboration with another author who had a sweet BattleTech idea.
While this doesn't mean that I have lost interest in pursuing this story, it does mean that I've had some unfaithful thoughts.
Namely, I can not get my muse to shut up about the new idea until it was already much more nuanced and advanced than the BattleTech Nanites idea.
Oh, also, just to warn you guys: I don't actually know where I'm going with the Nanites idea.
Like; I have some future plot points mapped out still, and a few developments to the situation and how they get there, there's no overarching plan as it were.
What I'm trying to say, in this rambly way, is that this story is going on unofficial Hiatus, until my muse can be woken up from her week long blender on a new idea (and then actually work on one thing for more than a week in a row).
On the plus side (?) you have not seen the last of me, and probably have not seen the last of this idea. Although if anyone wants to take the project on, I'd be happy to share my notes and future plot developments that I still had in reserve.
-peace