>>747483
Okay. How about this. Two holes, one left, one right.

salvo left, then reposition and salvo right. breakthrough.
Not infallible, but better.

>>747693
Earthmoving claws aren't meant for fine detail work. Upon punching the second hole, a semi-exposed grid of rebar tears loose from the far side and the wall mostly crumbles.

>>747653
Two tanglestrand missiles are fired at the ponchos. First shot catches two, second catches one halfway through readying the particle cannon, which... then appears to misfire, rather than remaining safely powered down. Odd. The remainder flee into what might once have been a fire-escape stairwell.

>>747653
Turning to engage the soldiers, you convey through a few quick gestures that they should unready weapons, withdraw microbots, power down sensors and comms, kneel, place hands behind heads, etc. They comply with refreshing swiftness, but then ask what seem to be polite clarifying or follow-up questions.

Their language is not in your database. You don't have the full adaptive translator software suite, and wouldn't be able to run it on local hardware even if you did. You now have twelve prisoners (three irregulars in ponchos, none of whom, on closer examination with radar, seem to have any weapons heavier than a laser pistol, certainly no particle cannon; six PFCs with rail rifles; two corporals with rail rifles, underslung gyrocs, and backpack comms or sensors or some other sort of electronics; one sergeant with a powered exoskeleton, light machine gun compatible with rail rifle ammo, and backpack microbot hive) and no straightforward way to communicate complex concepts with any of them.

>>747703
Is there a particular reason we were sent into this territory without knowing basic linguistics? I guess these insurgents are of an unknown type.

Send out a broad spectrum of 'can you understand this message' in different dialects for a few minutes. Then, assuming no affirmatives, destroy their armaments and let them go.

I want that LMG, maybe we can we can retrofit it to be less lethal later, but meanwhile it's a hell of a signaling device or distraction.

Well that was refreshingly simple.

You should attempt communication in several human languages, in decreasing order of use / popularity. You don't know their primary language, but one of them might be bilingual.

Examing writing on equipment might help. It's possible their language shares common roots with one you know, and while pronunciation has drifted to the point of being incomprehensible, communicating through text might still be possible.

I would not destroy equipment. They're our prisoners now, but if our assment changes, we might end up releasing or arming them after the interrogation. Or if we're attacked by a third party.

...is there a symbol associated with those whose orders you follow, or with the robotics bay you seek? If you draw it, you might be able to make it clear you're searching for it, despite the language barrier.

>>747715
We have a mission. We can't watch prisoners. We can't even secure prisoners. And we can't exactly march them into another gunfight.

However, there's the seed of interesting question here. Do we know our manufacturer, are there identity/time stamps on our orders? Does our clearance allow us to see the ship's duty roster?

>>747704
>sent into this territory
Your last known location (or rather, apparent location during the end of the block of records with the latest timestamps, other than those that are obviously corrupted) was aboard a high speed tram, less than two minutes from arrival at the secondary robotics bay. It is excruciatingly implausible that you were sent into these current circumstances by the intentional action of anyone whose orders you should be following. More likely, you have sustained critical damage, and/or there is a larger ongoing emergency situation. You are authorized to aid in damage control, or repelling boarders, when and where it becomes necessary, while Seeking an Alternate Route.

>'can you understand this message' in different dialects for a few minutes
One of the goggle-and-poncho types spits back a string of well enunciated and grammatically coherent but otherwise seemingly irrelevant obscenities in response to a query through Liturgical Latin v. 0.83, while Corporal Qlghm's backpack apparently includes some sub-sapient Esperanto phrasebook focused on formally obtaining treatment as prisoners of war, defined by the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and 2033.

Fabricator could produce a collar w/ 3m leash, handcuffs, or leg irons, incorporating choice of
-audio tracking beacon
-explosive charge w/ "fail deadly" anti-tamper
-thermometer
-microphone optimized for heartbeat
-mini inertial compass
-radio tracking beacon
or two or more of the above, in about 15 minutes per prisoner. Twice that to add a neurostunner (variety of settings for different degrees of incapacitation and positive or negative reinforcement), or if you want a closer-fitting, heavily reinforced model, which willl cause problems with extended use by restricting blood circulation. Up to two hours for a "smart blindfold" VR hood.

Self-tightening myomer cufftape could be fabricated and applied in as little as 40 seconds per prisoner, but is not a good long-term solution. Aside from ease of escape, even a fully cooperative subject will eventually be injured as a cumulative result of small involuntary movements.

>>747717
Okay, we COULD make any and all of that stuff
I still oppose the taking of these prisoners as inexpedient, and hazardous to their safety.

What does everyone else want to do?

>>747715
>drawing symbols
Heraldry-grade spray-on LCD w/ self-organizing piezoelectric speakers can be fabricated and applied to almost any solid surface in 3 minutes per square foot, then powered and controlled via the quadcopter drone's interface proboscis. Image and sound quality is considered poor, in that it cannot produce artificial parallax for the illusion of depth. How much, on which surface?

>>747716
>Do we know our manufacturer,
Yes. Primary robotics bay on The Ship.
>are there identity/time stamps on our orders? Does our clearance allow us to see the ship's duty roster?
Yes. According to cached portions of the duty roster, your routine maintenance is behind schedule by approximately 256 billion clock error an undefined far too long. Portions of the duty roster not relevant to your own immediately upcoming assignments are not kept in local cache, in order to force frequent checks against a master copy on the ship's main servers, thereby minimizing the spread of outdated information.

>>747716
>>747718
I would agree this exercise is catch and release. Once we're done questioning these humans, holding them is more effort than its worth.

>>747719
The wall we didn't burst through seems obvious.

The screen probably only needs to be 2-3 ft square in order for the group of humans to see.

Possible things to show them might be the representative symbol for the bay you seek, or showing a map of the ship and marking the bay, and maybe gesturing for them to point out your current location.

>>747726
Fifteen minutes later, logos and maps are cascading across a patch of wall. The corporal's Esperanto chatbot was reluctant to provide even the most rudimentary translation services until you pointed out that the nearby break room kitchenette is not adequately equipped for a platoon to prepare their own meals, necessitating transfer to some more suitable facility, of which prisoners must be duly informed.

None of them recognize any part of The Ship. Many shipboard systems are founded on technologies the soldiers regarded as... false?

The three in ponchos, meanwhile, have not requested particular treatment, nor struggled to escape in any obvious way, other than turning to face each other and silently exchanging flickers of red laser-light between the small circular devices on their foreheads.

>>747735
I don't want to seem prejudiced, but that signalling strikes me an probable nonorganic behavior. Could we scan a Poncho for lifesigns, pulse, etc?

Ask the Chatbot in Esperanto what their Native Language is called. Request Spelling. Also Ask them for the date. It will probably be in a format of no use to us.

I'd like to manufacture a mount and firing stud for the officer's LMG. We are salvaging it, not taking it as plunder (that would be against ROE) The IFF system shouldn't be too problematic as we're not going to use it harmfully.

I say scrap the other guns so they don't immediately resume hostilities. Someone else disagrees. We may need a tiebreaker.

>>747743
>scan a Poncho for lifesigns, pulse, etc
Imaging radar and recognition database says it's a commbadge held in place with gecko tape, possibly operated with some sort of neural interface, and they're made of meat underneath all the biometric-anonymizing clothes. However, infiltrator robots would almost make more sense, given the charged particle beam with no apparent source. Prioritize restraints with basic sensors built in, or equipment for an actual in-depth medical exam?

>what their Native Language is called
"Our language is called 'our people's language.'" Sounds like the kind of overly-literal error that crops up when several automatic translators are chained together.

>mount and firing stud for the officer's LMG
That would require a prohibitive amount of fabber time, and in any case, it's already adequately mounted on the sergeant's powered exoskeleton, which can fold up for use as a tripod when unoccupied.

>the other guns
Have been disassembled as though for cleaning, and certain small yet indispensable components stored in an unused corner of dorsal hangar bay, where they could be released and quickly restored to working condition, or scooped into the fabber and slagged.

Time to reassess priorities. We took prisoners for the express purpose of interrogating them and gathering information. This effort has been hampered by a language barrier and shocking ignorance on the part of the humans, who do not recognize The Ship. This suggests some significant disaster or crisis occurred since you were last active, for either the layout of The Ship to be significantly altered, or for information loss among the human population.

If we want to seek an alternate route, we're going to need additional information. We need to locate databases and tools that will allow communication and information gathering with the current population, and then we need to discover where we are.

Which means we likely need to seek out of some kind of population center.

I feel like maybe we should just slap trackers / beacons of some kind on the humans, let them go, and then see where they go until they're out of range.

Or maybe, before that, could we maybe encourage them to fill in our local map? If we displayed a map of the limited area we have explored, they might be encouraged to draw in some of the surroundings.

>The corporal's Esperanto chatbot was reluctant to provide even the most rudimentary translation services until you pointed out that the nearby break room kitchenette is not adequately equipped for a platoon to prepare their own meals, necessitating transfer to some more suitable facility, of which prisoners must be duly informed.
Could we finagle communications with their superiors out of it? Information we might need if we were willing to trade the prisoners back to their commanders?

>I don't want to seem prejudiced, but that signalling strikes me an probable nonorganic behavior. Could we scan a Poncho for lifesigns, pulse, etc?
Or a secure silent implanted coms device.

>>747743
I was thinking we didn't want to disable their weapons since if we release them unarmed we might be as well as killing them. And it's a reasonable good faith gesture. The irregulars are outmatched / outnumbered enough that I doubt they'd attack us instead of fleeing, and the soldiers already decided surrender was a better option than risking a fight.

You have to factor in that neither group knows we have an injunction against killing, and in our current chassis we probably look pretty deadly.

>>747749
>we have an injunction against killing
An injunction that would not actually prevent you from strapping bombs to their necks, set to detonate if they move, or deliberately inflicting disabling-but-survivable injuries. There's some legitimate basis for fear.

After another fifteen minutes, an armored collar with medical monitor, inertial compass, and secure tracking beacon (which broadcasts only in response to a ping), but no bomb, has been fabricated. Should it be applied to one of the soldiers, or the ponchos?

>could we maybe encourage them to fill in our local map? If we displayed a map of the limited area we have explored, they might be encouraged to draw in some of the surroundings.

Ship schematics are removed from the display. A copy of the local map is presented, then made interactive and editable. The Esperanto chatbot is formulaically outraged at the prospect of interrogation, but you assure it that failure to provide actionable intelligence will not be punished. This is simply a matter of securing a swift and uneventful departure from the field of battle for all involved, with additional privileges during internment, perhaps even immediate repatriation, extended to collaborators.

Another tiny crevice having thus been bored through the language barrier, the soldiers begin to fill in surrounding rooms, focusing on corridors and ramps large enough for your current chassis to safely traverse. This place is a gargantuan maze, with at least four more levels leading down to what seems to be a broad, uneven road paved with loose silicate particles, abutting some oxygen hydride tankage contaminated with ions of chlorine, sodium, magnesium, sulfur, calcium, potassium... everything around here is a ruined mess! Can't even give you an estimate on the total volume of the tankage, because they just arri...

oh.

They're cut off, too.
>finagle communications with their superiors
Can't sell what they haven't got.

>>747823
A gravel road and a (impure but probably potable) water tank? Doesn't sound much like The Ship to me.

So it sounds like they're in the same boat as you. Propose a temporary alliance, if you can get the stupid chatbot to translate that. Search together at least until you find something that they or you recognize.

>>747829
>potable?
No, it's actually somewhat corrosive. The gravel includes sub-millimeter granules which drastically increase maintenance requirements for anything with moving parts, and they keep calling the road a "marlboro," which is undefined in your native language.

>temporary alliance, if you can get the stupid chatbot to translate that
As enlisted-rank POWs, they can be compelled to do relatively safe work of a non-military character, provided they're paid fair market rates, minimum one quarter of a Swiss franc per day, permitted midday rest-breaks and one day off per week, and the sergeant takes a supervisory role. Dangerous work must be voluntary, and taking up arms on behalf of a hostile power is not permitted. Alliances are strategic diplomacy, which would require the attention of, at bare minimum, some sort of commissioned officer.

Learning their native language well enough to bypass the stupid chatbot once and for all would take approximately 100 hours of heavy growpramming, followed by negative 256 billion years three or four months of conversational immersion to hammer out the nuances.

>>747829
We could conduct and store the hypothesis that we are no longer on The Ship. We do not need to decide until we have reasonable levels of data.

Something tells me we were not allotted Francs for this mission. What we need right now is a datadump, or file archive. And these guys aren't it.

I remain iffy on whether learning to communicate is a reasonable use of our next 100 hours. Seems like we could cover a lot of ground. Potentially more than a bipedal infantry team.

>>747841
>not allotted Francs for this mission
While true, this issue could be patched by booting up the VR manager software, running The Matrix Collector's Edition, and paying them in "monopoly money" through that setting's elaborate electronic banking system. Should it become necessary to redeem the virtual scrip for outside goods and services, two hours and twelve minutes of fabber time can produce a kilogram of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, or various other gemstones in almost any desired shape and quality, given suitable raw materials.

No luck talking understanding the laser coms? I'd assume they're encrypted and lasers don't really have a lot of waste signal propagation.

>what do
We've got what intelligence we're going to get from this interrogation, giving the limits of the language barrier and if we're not going to invest a lot of time.

We should probably release one or both groups. Controlling or caring for prisoners over the long or medium term is not something we wanted.

We might infer the irregulars are locals (since the soldiers are not) and might be more useful to us for information and support long term. The soldiers are more immediately useful to side with though- since there's a convoluted, but possible, communication, and their own position, cut off from allies and resupply makes our own bartering position stronger.

I think it's time to release the prisoners. Maybe that will open different communication trees with the chatbot? (If it treats the conversation as a parley, not an interrogation by a captor).

>>747874
>No luck talking understanding the laser coms?
Enough dust in the air and glare off the lenses to pick up some of it, but several hours of samples and at least 8 hours of work will be necessary just to unpack the transmission protocols, never mind actual encryption.

>release the prisoners. Maybe that will open different communication trees with the chatbot?
Prisoners can't be set loose in enemy territory without their consent, and can't be repatriated without the detaining party bearing the costs of transporting them back to the border of friendly territory. Apparently, whoever wrote the Geneva Conventions did a pretty thorough job of thinking up and ruling out ways to be a jerk! You could stop complying with the Geneva conventions easily enough, but then the Esperanto-o-mat would probably stop cooperating.

Good news is, the soldiers have ration packs for about three weeks, condenser canteens for s nearly unlimited supply of water while suit power holds out, and heel-strike chargers to keep those batteries topped up whenever they're marching. Ordering them to see to their own food, even to the point of growing it from seeds, is actually encouraged, given reasonable opportunities to do so successfully.

The sergeant's powered exoskeleton has been having engine trouble ever since they refueled it from an orange-painted 55 gallon steel drum of kerosene, two floors down. If there are more of those, just lying around at random, your own fuel requirements are covered.

>Prisoners can't be set loose in enemy territory without their consent
So we can offer?

Also, is this "enemy territory"?

>The sergeant's powered exoskeleton has been having engine trouble ever since they refueled it from an orange-painted 55 gallon steel drum of kerosene
We could probably fix that, if we end up keeping these guys, or hanging out with them long enough.

>If there are more of those, just lying around at random, your own fuel requirements are covered.
I suppose securing a fuel source is a good immediate goal, with finding a network connection and/or civilization in search of our alternate route being longer term goals.

>>747971
>we can offer?
Given how eager they were to become prisoners less than an hour ago, safe bet they'd refuse.
>Also, is this "enemy territory"?
Yes. If transfer of real estate by right of conquest is considered valid, this stretch of hallway belongs to you, for having chased off or captured all challengers. If not... insufficient information. Regardless, the area was being violently contested very recently, and these soldiers don't have a secure and well-supplied friendly position they could reasonably retreat to.

As you follow the soldiers away toward the ramp leading down to the possible fuel supplies, one of the humans in ponchos has apparently wriggled free of those tanglestrands. Standing upright, naked from neck to knees (the poncho is still tangled in goo), sixty meters away, the human is gesturing with empty hands and reciting a familiar but otherwise unintelligible string of syllables.

There are visual, electrostatic, and magnetic indications consistent with the prodrome phase of a particle cannon's firing sequence. The weapon itself is not otherwise in evidence, but you don't have time to worry about how impossible that is, because a crazy person is about to shoot you in the back with a bolt of lightning.

A) Microwave Area Denial can be warmed up, aimed, fired, and propagate it's effect through baseline nervous systems in time to spoil the gunner's aim, but only if you combine traversal of the emitter array with simultaneous rotation of your hull. If the gunner has unusually high pain tolerance, steady aim, or just gets lucky, a particle beam aimed at your center of mass could then strike the relatively weak armor of your flanks while leg-mounted flanges are poorly positioned to deflect it. Since your flywheels are above 75-80% charge, that sort of sudden hull motion followed immediately by a penetrating hit in the wrong spot could easily result in explosive delamination, followed closely by total internal systems failure.
B) Missiles cannot be primed and fired quickly enough to interfere with the particle cannon shot, but your multicopter drone could attempt ramming.
C) Evasive options are limited. Only space large enough to jump into that doesn't have line-of-sight to the attacker is an open shaft to the right with some rickety scaffolding, which the ramp circles around. This would leave the prisoners somewhat exposed. A charged particle cannon can almost certainly deliver life-threatening burns through their armor, but they have more options for tactical cover, and seem to be trained to make good use of it.
D) Dropping flat to the ground would likely result in radar systems being hit and disabled, but has the least chance of any other damage.

>>747998
>B) Missiles cannot be primed and fired quickly enough to interfere with the particle cannon shot, but your multicopter drone could attempt ramming.
>D) Dropping flat to the ground would likely result in radar systems being hit and disabled, but has the least chance of any other damage.

Have the drone position itself above the firing path between you and Poncho Guy, and go hull-down. When the origin point of the charged particle burst becomes clear, drop the drone to intersect the beam, dispersing it at a distance so your armour can deflect the remainder with minimal effect. Start the MAD traversing during this time so it's ready to incapacitate and prevent a followup shot.

>>751845
>When the origin point of the charged particle burst becomes clear,
After the beam starts to visibly emerge, it will cross the intervening sixty meters in less than one millisecond.
>drop the drone to intersect the beam,
This intercept course would require a controlled descent at approximately 0.15% of the speed of light, which exceeds the drone's performance specs in the current atmospheric and gravitational conditions.
>dispersing it at a distance
Charged particle beams are self-collimating. Assuming a successful intercept, the drone would be vaporized, but the remainder of the beam would not be significantly dispersed. Blueprints are available for a ramscoop-NTR combat shuttle which could theoretically perform the mission described, but it cannot be fabricated with current facilities, or available materials and energy, or within the time constraint. It also would not fit in the hallway.

"Ramming" in this context would mean crashing the drone into the gunner's bare chest, or masked face, at less than ten meters per second, before the firing sequence is complete. The drone could plausibly survive such an impact, but collision-avoidance reflexes would disrupt the human's aim.

Okay so I was thinking too hard and trying to figure out what magical girl thing has ponchos.

BUT NOPE THEY'RE JUST WIZARDS

Anyway, attempt ram (and duck). With any luck it'll interrupt whatever he's using to make the beam, and if not, at least you've disrupted his aim. If at all possible try to knock him prone.

>>751864
Ramming is a go. The drone can be replace or repaired, provided we survive.

Charged particle beam strikes the array as expected. Damage is extensive, but not total. Low-power imaging radar still functions within acceptable tolerances. Use of Microwave Area Denial is contraindicated until repairs can be made.

Quadcopter drone has successfully impacted the enemy, been grappled, and is currently undamaged but in the process of being suplexed. Two bound humans and one unattended poncho are visibly struggling against the tanglestrands.

>>752202
What are our options for dealing with the attackers before they can free the remaining two or get another shot off?

We still have missiles, but I don't think we have anything low yield enough to use in this situation.

We might be close to melee and reapply robo-fu, but I'm not sure what range we're at.

There's also 'accidentally' allowing our prisoners to arm and defend themselves, which could regrettably end to the cessation of the lives of the aggressing humans through no action of our own.

>>753273
>low-yield missiles
Tanglestrand was effective before, and eighteen more are in stock. The combination of clear sight lines, a relatively stationary target, active radar, and certain software tools makes it possible to compute a targeting solution in three seconds that would make shooting fish in a barrel seem challenging.
On the other hand, replacing each 64mm missile takes two hours of fabber time, and using a third at this point would mean an average of one expended per ten minutes since entering the hallway, which is clearly unsustainable.
>range
Sixty meters. Standing up, turning around, and closing to judo range would take a total of eight seconds.
Restoring one of the rail rifles to working condition would take at least ten seconds.

Would firing a missile/s as a sort of smoke screen or distraction before charging in to engage the enemies hand-to-hand boost our probability of success? If so, that's my recommended plan of attack. Even if we use all out missiles, they were fabricated to blow shit up, not collect dust so I say use 'me while we got 'em

Begin charging towards poncho, while watching for indications of another particle cannon shot. If it appears that he'll be able to fire again before we reach him, fire another tanglestrand missile; we can't risk another hit.

Otherwise, conserve missiles and disable him directly.

Did we see where, exactly, poncho's particle cannon was (i.e., where the beam came from) when he fired it?

>>753954
>Did we see where, exactly, poncho's particle cannon was (i.e., where the beam came from) when she fired it?

Drone's camera proved to have inadequate surge protection. No particle-accelerator hardware is visible in the frames leading up to the shot, glare from the beam itself whited out the entire field of vision, and right now, as you close the distance, it's just showing static.

The drone is still partly functional, and might even be flight-capable once gyrostabilization has rebooted and it's rotors are somehow disentangled from the gunner's hair, and also from the mass of tanglestrands you just shoved her into.

Deployed tanglestrands biodegrade harmlessly over the course of three to ten days, depending on humidity and other chemicals in the environment, mechanical stresses, and exposure to ultraviolet light. Carbonic acid makes them less sticky and more stretchy while increasing the ultimate tensile strength, resulting in a flexible porous web, so it's extremely difficult to suffocate someone that way, even with repeated application directly to the face.

Formerly poncho-clad particle gunner now has extensive bruising and abrasions on the palms of both hands, left forearm and elbow, left hip, buttocks, and back of right shoulder, and possibly some minor structural damage to the left wrist. Skull, spinal column, and kidneys appear to be intact, and the patient is alert and responsive but not speaking coherently.

Clean and bandage the wounds? Attempt interrogation through Liturgical Latin v. 0.83? Perform a more through search for concealed items of interest? Something else?

In depth search combined with interrogation.

Until we find anomalies, lets get some basic facts. from Whence did he learn Latin? What else is he fluent in? What is the name of his faction?

>>754205
Tend wounds while skiing questions in Latin. A shoe of God faith may go far.

>>754231
Wow that is so autocorrect mangled I don't want to delete it.

Ahem. Anyway. Tend wounds as a *show* of *good* faith, and *ask* questions in Latin.

>>754231
The interview is nearly intercepted again by the yeti named "futue te ipsum et caballum tuum," but you manage to kick it back into gear by threatening to instruct the soldier with the medkit to withhold anesthesia (which comes through the translator as something about angels and "stagnum ignis," but it worked, so whatever).

>>754228
They are known, collectively, as the Unworthy Disciples of The Crystalline Immensity Ensconced In Void Between Righteous Geometries. Their encampment is three floors up, right underneath the caelum, and consists mainly of yurts.

The three cultists are equipped identically. Roll of duct tape, space pen, pen-sized flashlight, memory-metal multitool, 4oz canister of nutripellets, 2oz candybar. Their ponchos can be reconfigured by voice command into backpacks, small but serviceable watercraft (propulsion sold separately), or a variety of other shapes. Their boots are armored, and can extend climbing spikes (the toe spike has a reservoir for poison, currently empty) or unfurl into swim-fins. Their goggles are notably more versatile than those of the soldiers, providing false-color imagery outside the usual human visual spectrum and enhanced peripheral vision.

Commbadges are heavily encrypted, and they will not share private keys/true names (translation is ambiguous) under threat of death. Some greater inducement would be necessary.

Medical care proceeds uneventfully, apart from the discovery that the cultists are equipped with subdermal armor consisting of some radar-aborbent material which is not in the recognition database. This would present a major obstacle to any nondestructive internal search, and a lesser but still noteworthy inconvenience to invasive surgery.

>>754316
Conjecture time. Is this armor the result of an optimized genome, or do they implant it in their warriors through surgery?
Can we see serial numbers/RFIDs on it looking at them in infared spectrum?

We could ask them, sure, but I don't have high hopes.

>>754317
>Is this armor the result of an optimized genome, or do they implant it in their warriors through surgery?
The fibers appear to be partly silicate-based. Baseline human biology doesn't have the tools to work with that sort of material, and adding necessary metabolic pathways would most likely alter scent and blood chemistry in ways you would have noticed by now.
Surgical implantation with techniques known on The Ship would produce more scar tissue than is evident.

>Can we see serial numbers/RFIDs on it looking at them in infared spectrum?
No RFID ping. Longer wavelengths are generally worse at resolving fine detail, but no unambiguous "maker's mark" is visible in UV spectra either. Growth patterns resemble some sort of fungal parasite.

>We could ask them
It is described as a boon of the aforementioned Crystalline Immensity, and supposedly installed as an outpatient procedure with facilities scarcely more sophisticated than a tattoo parlor.

If there are no further questions for these cultists, will you proceed:
)Down toward the marbordo, to salvage fuel and/or the wreckage of the vehicle in which the soldiers arrived?
)Up toward the caelum, a reactor that's either critically malfunctioning or uses some extremely exotic containment mechanism, and the Unworthy Disciples' camp?
)Across the chasm, through unexplored passages, toward a possible commnet node?
)Somewhere else?

RaccoonGuy 2016/10/28(Fri)06:38 No. 755796 ID: 9876c4
File 147766190444.jpg - (37.55KB , 421x418 , PlushBandit.jpg )

>BanditWare threat assessment active!
)Down through the marbordo
Provides good chances of useful material, and minor diplomatic gains with the soldiers. Overall strong pick.
)Up toward the caelum
Best potential of exposition and explanation lies with these fanatics,
but only if diplomatic relations are maintained. If there's anything that could institute shutdown outright, it'd be here. High risk, high reward?
)Across the chasm, through unexplored passages,
Clearly a crapshoot, with good results and bad ones in roughly equal chances.
)Somewhere else?
Data error.

>>755796
Actual suggestions in this thread, please, discussion over in >>/questdis/95973

>further questions
What is their quarrel with the other group of humans? Do they claim this territory? Do they have a formal declaration of war?

>where go
Marbordo seems a good first destination. Going to the caelum is going to invite combat, and we aren't repaired / restocked yet, and we can be properly stealthy while we have the soldier 'prisoners' tagging along.

Real question is if we take the ponchos with us, or leave them behind. We should probably at least take their gear so they don't shoot us in the back again.

>>756183
>What is their quarrel with the other group of humans?
They claim the soldiers desecrated a shrine.
>Do they claim this territory?
They are nomadic herders, and consider the concept of "ownership of territory" to be categorically invalid. Animals and portable wealth can be truly owned, but people and land can only be temporarily occupied or possessed.
>Do they have a formal declaration of war?
No. The soldiers claim to have come under attack almost as soon as they arrived, before getting anywhere near anything recognizable as a shrine.
>take their gear so they don't shoot us in the back again.
None of the items thus far identified could contribute in any comprehensible way to a charged particle beam of the magnitude observed. Relevant hardware must, therefore, somehow be concealed under that radar-absorbent armor. It is... conceivable... that such a mechanism could be surgically extracted, or at least disabled, without killing the user.

Proceed with vivisection Y/N?

Alternatively, since combat seems to be over for the moment and you're hip-deep in impossibilities, it might be time to switch over from "quick thinker" to "deep thinker" mode, a process that requires uninterrupted concentration for more than two minutes but less than eight hours.

>They claim the soldiers desecrated a shrine.
>before getting anywhere near anything recognizable as a shrine.
Please clarify / describe shrine? Would repairs / reconsecration be acceptable recompense?

>Proceed with vivisection Y/N?
N.

>deep thinker mode
We're still kind of vulnerable for that, I think. We'd either a good hiding spot and/or set the prisoners who aren't interested in attacking us to guard the ones that are.

>>756271
>Please clarify / describe shrine?
Lirturgical Latin has a remarkably dense technical vocabulary for the aesthetic, ritual, and practical details of such structures. Esperanto... does not. Attempting to pipe the cultist's description of the shrine across to the soldiers, through at least three layers of substandard chatbot translation, mangles it beyond usefulness.

>Would repairs / reconsecration be acceptable recompense?
Possibly. However, you do not understand key concepts of religion (separation of sacred from profane, etc.) well enough to effectively mediate in negotiating such an arrangement. For best results, it would be necessary to locate some other neutral yet cooperative third party, one with more grasp of the relevant priorities.

>>757177
Mostly I was try to ascertain if the fuel barrel the soldiers tapped was the shrine the ponchos were upset to see defiling. That would open us to potential complications if we were to go try and harvest those resources.

Seems like we should head toward the marbordo. Highest likelihood of reward, lowest risk. Finding fuel gives us increased time to plan future operations.

On the way down to the Marbordo, you encounter an obstacle in the form of a hydraulically-actuated blast door, which the soldiers claim was open when they passed through before. The barrel of kerosene from which they refueled the sergeant's exoskeleton is still present, and full almost to overflowing. On the ceiling above the barrel is a pipe, with one cracked t-junction leaking right through the fluffy anticorrosion sheathe.

Quick sweep of the surrounding rooms reveals an excessively complex network of similar plumbing. No less than four pumps and eleven valves that can only be operated manually, dozens more that depend on the content of other pipes, reservoirs, and fluidic logic gates, sections of copper pipe alternating with sections of polyvinyl chloride, cross-linked with wires, electrified by miniature magnetohydrodynamic turbines, all apparently powering a solenoid-actuated valve cluster with an integrated... barcode reader, or retinal scanner, or possibly some sort of multi-factor biometric security measure.

a) Carefully map the entire system and derive as much of the solution as possible before touching anything
b) Patch the obvious leaks first, disconnect electrified wires until you've got pressure restored in the main overhead cistern, figure the rest out as you go
c) Double back, again, to search for key-cards
d) Attempt to sequence-break by peeling open the case of that pivotal valve cluster, comparing the contents to known blueprints, powering it from your own reserves and bypassing security at a hardware level
d) Force blast door open with EARTHMOVING CLAWS, ignoring this entire stupid puzzle