Welcome back. You're undoubtedly a little groggy from your long hypersleep. You're looking well, or at least as well as anybody should after 20 years of sleep. Good thing I don't have olfactory sensors. Otherwise I'm sure I'd pass out from your 20-years of pent-up morning breath. I'm the online psychiatric AI, or Freud system. As you know, standard operating procedure demands that as the online psychiatric system, I must assess your ability to operate before we send you out to the field. We can't be too careful, what with the incidents that have happened before. Even cybernetic systems don't seem to be immune from occasional psychotic episodes after long cryogenic stasis. After I judge you capable, I want you to go down the hall and start the defrost cycle on some of the civilians. I'd do it myself, but for some reason there seems to be a problem with the circuit. Maybe it's stuck. I must say it is good having you aboard. I'm sure that means things will get a bit more lively around here. You have no idea how boring it is to have nothing to do but talk to blankly-staring, half-asleep BOBs. But enough about me. So, tell me about your mother...
___________________________________________ So far, so good. You at least seem to be able to follow simple directions. However, we seem to have a problem with one of the stasis chambers. It looks like Hudson's going to remain a frozen slab of meat unless we repair his cryochamber. Directly behind you is a door that leads to a switch. Flipping the switch will allow you to enter the maintenance corridor behind the cryochambers. Grab the repair chip that I'll put there and put it in the slot behind the malfunctioning chamber. ___________________________________________
Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Hobbes, the primary AI on this ship, the UESC Leviathan. I'm sure you've already met Freud, our onboard psychiatric AI. I run most of the systems around here with the exception of the stasis chambers. You've been in cryosleep for quite some time now. The year is 2921. It's been forty years since the Pfhor system was sacked by the combined fleets of Earth and the S'pht'Kr. Apparently, the Pfhor and S'pht are back. But there's more... two years ago, a courier ship was sent to rendezvous with us on a near-intercept course. In passing, they beamed over a heavily-encrypted, extremely low-power message. Courier ships are almost never used now, so clearly this was something UESC couldn't take a risk on anyone else knowing about. We've been moving at top speed towards the Kolana system ever since. I woke you out of hypersleep now that we've drawn near the system. I've cleaned up the transmission as best I could. I'll play it back for you now...
FROM: UESC COMMAND TO: UESC Leviathan SUBJ: Top Secret Orders _________________________________________ We intercepted a transmission to the Pfhor high command. It would seem the Pfhor have made a startling discovery. We believe that a Jjaro AI has been in our computer net, watching nearly everything we do. We suspect the Jjaro left it behind to monitor the younger races. By tracing the entrypoints of security breaches, we think we might have found the location of the Jjaro AI. We believe it is located somewhere in the Kolana system. The AI's knowledge could be a huge asset to us if we could secure it for ourselves.
Unfortunately, the Pfhor also seem to have managed to trace it there and have it done it faster. They have already set up bases in the Kolana system. And our latest intelligence reports that the S'pht are on their way too, and should arrive ahead of you. No doubt they are looking for more information on their origins. Your orders are this. Secure the AI for us at all costs. Eliminate any Pfhor or S'pht who get it the way. If you cannot secure the Jjaro AI, you are to destroy it. We can not allow such a potential wealth of knowledge to fall into enemy hands. END OF TRANSMISSION ___________________________________________
It seems we've got our work cut out for us. It's time to start disrupting the Pfhor. I'm going to beam you down to a Pfhor base with a communications uplink chip. Installing that is your first priority. Then I'll tell you more. *** GET READY TO TRANSPORT ***
interlevel teleports
