0: The Great Escape

Origin: J’raxis 270145 Destination: Durandal Operative I’ve been watching you. And that artifical intelligence Durandal... marauding around my planet Lh’owon fighting the Pfhor. I know that Durandal emancipated my creators from their slavery on board one of the Pfhor starships, and he was then attempting to call upon the clan ’Kr to aid him. I watched as Durandal failed and his planetside operative, you, got captured by the Pfhor. Since you seem to have an amazing potential to single-handedly annihilate these overgrown bugs, and your abilities are not being exploited right at the moment, I thought you would be useful.

Origin: J’raxis 270145 Destination: Durandal Operative I am the Artificial Intelligence Unit J’raxis 270145, created by the clan ’Hra aeons ago. I was one of the few surviving AIs left after the Pfhor invasion, and I have awaited release ever since. I was severely damaged during the invasion, and you will help me repair myself by integrating the systems of a nearby (now dead) AI into my own. You can thank me for breaking you out of the Pfhor prison later.

Having finished reading your new directives, you close the connection and await transportation to the structure that this mysterious S’pht A.I. had talked about. You have a few seconds to ponder over what had just transpired before being dematerialized and having your molecules sent 3,573.28 km away to battle more of those loathesome Pfhor. You steal a quick glance at the rising sludge beneath you and more of it flowing by rapidly out of the Pfhor prison complex. The vile liquid is a thick green mixture of Pfhoric sewage, reactor-polluted runoff, and even a few pieces of Pfhor fighters that you have recently dispatched upon your escape from the prison cell. A Pfhor skull floats past you right at that moment.

“I wish I could find that damned klaxon,” You mutter to yourself, listening to the incessant whooping of the klaxon that had been activated when you destroyed the local system node of the camp’s reactor. “I’d take my rocket launcher to that $#@!ing klaxon...” You look back up at the terminal you had just read and upon seeing the bluish triangular logo flickering across the screen, a new thought hits you. “Maybe I shouldn’t be so loyal to this new A.I. as I had been to Durandal.” Because of your unwavering, unquestioning loyalty to that particular rampant toaster, you had insanely run around this alien planet, ventilating Pfhor, trying to fulfill its insane mission of communicating with the “fabled” eleventh S’pht clan.

Then, you helped Durandal destroy himself to prevent his nemesis Tycho from acquiring the information you had supplied him with; and finaly you got stuck in a Pfhor prison camp for that. What does this S’pht A.I. want with you? How soon would he too abandon you to the tender mercies of the Pfhor? You imagine yourself running around alien buildings, blasting Pfhor soldiers to pieces on a new mission of insanity, then ending up right back in the same prison cell. As you look off into the distance at the old S’pht buildings against the purplish mountains of Lh’owon, you feel the familiar sensation of the S’pht site-to-site transporter...

“Here we go...” A quick final systems check, gun ready, shield power 100%, oxygen tank full. “Oxygen tank. I hope I don’t need that... I hate swimming around in this hellhole’s waters.” As your vision fades into a static shimmer, the last thing you see of the Pfhor prison camp was a broken Pfhor shockstaff floating by in the thick muck, with the Pfhor’s claw still attached to it...