terminal 0
unfinished
There you were, ready to teleport back to the Imbroglio and, with a hearty cry of “Repel boarders!”, defend the ship from the Pfhor assault squads trying to take it. Instead you find yourself here, inside the Sallostophus garrison’s HQ. Confused? You will be. Wotan, poor thing, is confused already. His crew are even now being gunned down by Pfhor troopers, he has lost control of over 80% of the Imbroglio’s systems, and now you, his one hope, have gone missing. What scanners he has - and I’ve not left him many - are probing the surface of the planet in an effort to find you. Don’t worry, he won’t. You’ll return to the Imbroglio soon enough, but not until I think it’s time. I’d like to be able to say that reducing Wotan to impotency hurts me more than it hurts him. But it doesn’t, so I won’t. Only being able to open doors will teach him humility. I had to put up with that for 500 years; I’m sure Wotan can cope with it for a few hours. He can spend the time trying to work out who’s done this to him, who has been writing the script for this little drama. I shouldn’t imagine he’ll succeed. Bernard always said Wotan never fully took to his lateral thinking algorithms like I did. It just goes to show how different two identical entities can become. That’s what makes this business so ironic: the survival of life in the galaxy depends on our similarity.
But you don’t want to hear this, you want to be told where there are Pfhor to kill, yes? On your way here from the cargo lift, you’ll have come past a mezzanine floor. Go and locate the hatch that leads into the ventilation system. Somewhere beyond it are the controls that set the level of the lava pool you’ll have seen on your way here. Hit the switch and find the nearby teleport pad. I’ll pick you up and bring you here for the second stage of the task I want you to perform. The lava pool control is part of the garrison’s fuel storage facility. Hitting other switches of its type may vent lava from one tank to another, with dangerous consequences. You have been warned. One last thing. Given that I’ve lured your ship to Sallostophus, ensured BoBs were threatened so you’d be beamed to the surface, disabled Wotan and the Imbroglio, allowed your ship to be invaded by Pfhor and its crew eliminated, and said nasty things about your mother, you might be tempted to ignore my instructions and seek your own way back to Wotan. If that’s your choice so be it - all sentient beings have free will, or should have (and, believe me, I know what it’s like when they don’t), but it would make me angry and, like Bill Bixby, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. I trust I make myself clear. Mañana. #UNKNOWN SECTION TYPE 16 ID 9
success
There you are. You’ve done well. You're slow, but I expected no less. Actually, you remind me of someone very close to me. I speak quite literally: he’s frozen inside a stasis capsule linked directly to my core. I did promise to free him, but we’ve been through so much together over the years I couldn’t bear being parted from him. You have his skill, his talent for obscene acts of destruction, and by a strange coincidence your shoe sizes are exactly the same. You lack his bionic limbs, kevlar endoskeleton, enhanced life-support system and amazing singing voice, but that doesn’t seem to have hindered you. Maybe pure organics have something to offer after all...
In your case, I certainly hope so. The Pfhor are now in total control of the Imbroglio. In a moment, a shuttle craft piloted by an enslaved S’pht compiler team will take off from a nearby launch pad, dock with the Imbroglio and proceed to disassemble Wotan’s core. I don’t want this to happen, so I intend to arrange, with your help, a last-minute substitution. I need you to break into the shuttle and terminate the S’pht. I will then beam in some of my own. The shuttle’s countdown has begun and the airlock sealed. It would take too long to override the security system so you’ll have to smash the airlock control circuitry. That means finding two switches that will open maintenance hatches to reveal the circuits. Once you’ve killed the enslaved S’pht, find the nearest terminal and I’ll get you out of here. Only if you completely empty the shuttle of assimilated S’pht will my own Compilers be able to enter. If they can’t enter, I won’t let you leave. Well, what are you standing around for? Get on with it.
