Core of Steel- 10 Two against the Empire

CoreQM

The tides of history have called upon the line of Marik once more to remove an imposter from our country’s throne. I call upon all patriots, at home or abroad, and ask that they rise against the Empress. So with iron and blood, we may reclaim our future from the hands of a mad despot. So that their children, and their children’s children can live in a secure, safe world.
-Jaime Marik, Patriot’s Address

The Ferrum Empire has descended into Civil War. The weapons built to subjugate the world and decisively crush their neighbors are instead turned inwards.

You are one of those weapons. Beta Core, an Artificial Intelligence built to operate the Empire’s most advanced mech frames against their enemies in tandem with a human pilot. Only together with a pilot, can you move the frame, merging the raw processing power and reflexes of an AI with the knowledge and restraint of a human.

This mission, your pilot is a teenager named Sophie.

You, along with your AI sister Delta, currently are operating for the Patriots. Your other sister, Gamma, is presumably operating for the Loyalists, but you are uncertain of her whereabouts.

Prior threads can be found at:
https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.<wbr>com/qstarchive.html?tags=Core%20of%<wbr>20Steel%20Quest
—-----

For a bit more background, General Marik, architect of the Patriots, has swiftly marched his primary forces of Army Group South north to the Empire’s capital of Victoria in an attempt to capture the Empress and end the fighting before Loyalist reinforcements arrive, and before the snowstorm grounding the Imperial Air Arm blows over.

If he fails to do so, his cause is lost before it even begins as functional supply lines, raw numbers, and air power take their toll.

Beta and Sophie were dispatched to eliminate one source of Loyalist reinforcements from the Tsang Tsun Military Academy by killing the leadership there.

Assistance has been granted in the form of Headhunter, a foreign pilot and machine from the until-recently hostile Tamar Alliance, who is on station to provide close support when called for.

A raging blizzard has also aided his task, making stealth protocols more effective than otherwise expected.

Already, you’ve penetrated through multiple defensive patrol routes, and obtained codes from one of those patrols to appear as just another friendly mech.

A stutter is how it starts. A hitch in your link, the seamless flow of commands and affirmation being slacked for 1.23 seconds causing the stride to be delayed just enough to not quite be a misstep.

The ground-eating pace you kept up for the past hour has been marked by such things, characteristic of Sophie’s dwindling stamina. No further military patrols dogged your steps, the plains gave way to civilian habs, and the navigational turn to the east to approach the Academy was executed without problems.

Ensconced safely within her metal cocoon, your pilot consults her bright console. Her eyes squint, tracing patterns on the map.
“Target is the biggest building in the center of the campus. A stadium normally used for sporting events. The roof is undoubtedly closed right now because of the weather, so collapsing it could be an option.”

“Do we have structural plans for the stadium? I request permission to attempt to access the local net and obtain said information.”

“No, and denied. We work with what we have. Ow. Don’t want to trip any silent alarms before we get there.”

You feel her thoughts, her emotions. Her frustration at the lack of briefing mingles with your own disappointment. The fear of failure.

The strain of trying to keep focused for so long is taking its toll.
“Low-sync, pilot?”

“No, no. I’ve got this. Need to see the map to make the calls. Stop trying to coddle me.”

The statement, while not inaccurate, does sidestep the actual problem of faltering sync. Namely, that you need her able to sync later, not now.

“Drop down willingly, pilot, before you black out when actually in combat. It is an unacceptable risk to the mission.”
The frame is pulled to a stop by your will.

“I will verbally brief you, to compensate for your ocular imperfection. Low-sync, pilot. In seven seconds. Six. Five.”

“What? No!”

“Four. Three. Two.”

Reluctantly, she slides down. Out of mid-sync, back to low. You can feel your thoughts slowing, the lighting-fast reactions and ability to transform thoughts into motion no longer being so easy.

It is good to find her being reasonable, now.

“Excellent, pilot.”

Sullen silence is her response. And a muted flash of anger.

“If we engage enemies, I will help pull you back up.”

“I don’t Need your help for that. Just move along, Beta. Stick to the plan.”
Anger fades to disappointment. And a note of acceptance.

Almost to the Tsang Tsun Military Academy, you’ll need to pick the approach. Beta is positioned directly to the West currently. The layout of the grounds is roughly a large oval.

What was the plan you worked out, again?

Pick Method
>Loud and Fast.
Run in to strike hard, and rely on speed to get out. Simplicity itself.
No rolling for stealth. Probably straight to combat, depending on what enemy forces are there.

>Imposter attempt, Part B
With the IFF codes from Icicle Company, you could continue your masquerade as a different machine, right up until you are in range of a chosen target.
Doesn’t require rolling on Your part. This is different from just trying to be totally undetected.
<s>This is also an ‘unlocked’ option that is available because of what you stole earlier.</s>

>Slow and Silent.
Remaining in stealth, you just need to slip through any active sensors and make it to the point.
Requires rolling, varying degrees of difficulty depending on which target you’re going for initially.
(Sneaking directly to the Stadium’s harder than trying to just knock down some residential buildings, for example)

>The Remote Decision.
You’re calling in Headhunter to hit something first. Then you’ll look at sneaking or charging, or anything else.
Headhunter does some rolling. Maybe loud, maybe quiet.

>Write-in, something else
Pick the first target to go for. The only thing you’re actually requested to strike is the Stadium, but you could make reasons to hit elsewhere for the sake of the mission.

>The Stadium.
It’s what you’re here for. All the Academy leadership is supposed to be attending a social event here.

>The Mech hangars.
Along the Southern edge, normally a full battalion of training mechs are located here. Any response would be coming from this location. Why not hit them first?

>’Zone 6’
A wide section of unlabeled buildings to the West, you’re set to pass by these if you directly went straight towards the stadium at the center.

>Residential buildings.
Mostly to the East, potentially the best target to create a distraction by drawing attention.

>Watterson Observatory
To the North, this is another potential distraction target, in addition to being a hardened target.

>Write-in, something else?

A/N:
Feel free to ask questions. This is supposed to be the ‘how it ideally goes’ plan before you run into opposition or hangups.
If you do decide to just call Headhunter onto the primary target and leave, then I’ll laugh, but it’s an option you do have.

Oh, and Character sheet. Combat mechanics posted in the picture.

Stats of Beta
(Stats are without any equipment)
Will- 5
Attack- 3
Defense- 3
Skill- 3
Structure (health)- 11
Sync modifier- 1x, 1.5x, 2x

Refusal to End- Beta cannot take more than 3 structure damage from a single attack.
As One- When assisted by another sibling, 1 auto-success to Will checks per assisting Core in addition to the +50% of the assisting core’s Will.

XH-12 Arcturus Reactor- +1 to Structure, Easy to Maintain (Added into stats already)

Project Burning Eagle- Improved thrusters, built to give limited flight capabilities, but primarily used to assist in pin-point dodging midair and additional mobility on leaps- +1 Defense, flight

Project Yi Accelerators: +1 to defense, first time you would fail a defense roll by 1 point, add an autosuccess.

Project Predator- 2 Auto-successes when engaging in E-War attack and defense. Enables Jamming.

Project Sunburst- Primary laser weapon capable at all ranges. +1 attack at all ranges, 1-3 Damage, dependent on setting.

Pilot Sophie ______
Linking Addict- Will reroll failures to enter or Maintain Sync.
Requiem for a Class- 3 times per thread, switch a dice result to a 6. Use after rolling.
Will- 3

Skill is used for Stealth rolls, along with detection. And is affected by Sync. Will is used for E-War and hacking, and isn't.

Anonymous

>>5975464
>Imposter part B
>Go for stadium

Hit em. Wipe em. Fuck off. Best plan

>>5975544
+1

Maybe we also hit the mech hanger on the way out?
I also suggest we save Headhunter for an emergency, such as Sophie passing out

>>5975464
So many potential targets, so few mechs to do it with.

>The Remote Decision
>The Mech hangars

>Imposter attempt, Part B
>The Stadium

I’m assuming the Icicle company mech we’re impersonating is undergoing maintenance in those hangers. If so, we can angle our approach to the starium from the mech bay and Sophie can play the part of a trainee that was in the area when it was attacked and took the mech out to reinforce the VIPs.

If she can feign trouble with communications until someone starts calling us out on it, even better. Lets us get closer before telling them who we are so there’s less excuse to redirect us elsewhere.

Icicle company will be so screwed by the time this is over. There’s going to be Loyalists convinced that someone on their team handed over IFF and other operational information to get this far.

I’m open to alternatives though.

>>5975464
I'd support the Imposter plan, but I feel we're going to get caught early if asked why we're approaching the Stadium. So I ask, which target would put the Stadium between us and the target? Have Headhunter create a distraction at the said target and we'll act like we're responding to the attack (and just happen to pass through the Stadium).

>>5975464
>The Remote Decision
>The Mech hangars

>Imposter attempt, Part B
>The Stadium

Anon has a good plan.

>>5975564
>>5975464
I’d be willing to back this over my own (>>5975561). Same general plan and all.

Along those lines, I’ll formally ask where the mechs in maintenance are being kept so we can pretend we did an emergency deployment.

Maybe Sophie can add some confusion later by stating some ground troops made their way towards the mechs and were taken out, which is why she hopped in and started moving towards their obvious target. Make them either spread out looking for more low-visibility targets that don’t exist or call everyone in giving us an excuse to close in all the way, pop leadership, and jet out before the rest can arrive. We should be faster than anything they have.

CoreQM

>>5975564
Hangars are in the south, Stadium in center, so swinging north and approaching from that direction makes you look like you're heading for....well, the Stadium.

>>5975588
Maintenance is in the Hangars, usually. There's some underground sections in the same area, also, that would show up on the map you received. March out from there, and proceed west for the training ranges.

>>5975464
Also, I just realized how bad the vote formatting looks. No clear definition between vote section 1 and 2. Whoops. A little late to change it at this point, unfortunately.

Anonymous

>>5975604
It's settled then.
>The Remote Decision
>The Mech hangars

>Imposter attempt, Part B
>The Stadium

>>5975604
Guess we have to pick between coming from the hangers to justify why we’re spoofing a mech that’s undergoing maintenance or coming from across the stadium and hoping they don’t think too hard about how we got there. We could also spoof a deployed unit, but same risk that they’ll notice the same friendly being tagged twice eventually.

I’ll lean back towards coming from the hangers. If we lie about troops also being in the area it’d make sense to fall back to stadium. No way would anyone have luck finding them in this weather, so it’s better to hole up around a target they know they’ll be aiming for.

We can also say we’re not in shape to find and fight whatever just hit the mech bays when the troops failed to take it, but we can stomp on troops around the stadium just fine.

>>5975464
>Imposter attempt, Part B

>The Stadium.

Keep up the act. We hit then point blank. They won't know what happened until we long gone.

>>5975464
>The Remote Decision
>The Mech hangars

>Imposter attempt, Part B
>The Stadium

>>5975561
+1
I like this anon’s plan. Keep impersonating Icicle Company as long as we can.

>>5975464
>Remote Decision

>Impostor Attempt, part B

BETA IS IN FIRST PLACE FOR THE TOURNAMENT

LETS!
FUCKING!
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

>>5976398
Total. Core. Victory

Beta tournament
Beta crown
Beta world

CoreQM

Headhunter strikes the mech hangars in the south, delaying any reinforcements possible and sowing chaos while you continue to mimic a Black Knight from Icicle company, pushing for the actual target of the stadium.

The chances of being uncovered and identified before you complete your mission rely on the unreliable and impossible to calculate metric of human interest, but nothing should be out of order. Outside of visual acquisition, that is.
Over the next minutes on the approach, you send a series of transmissions. Carefully timed and curated to appear like random junk data, they should be impossible to decode unless one has the appropriate cipher key and is listening for the correct cues.

Even an AI like you would be annoyed at catching enough worthless junk first. Yet, they convey the new and updated plan of attack to Headhunter. Coordinates of strike point and a timer. To try and fit anything else is unneeded.

The response is a slight flare on thermal sensors, further off than you were expecting. To the west and trailing your path. A brief dropping of whatever thruster baffles conceals their flight capabilities. You assume that is an acknowledgement and affirmation, even without a specific returning comms channel.

Good. It would be aggravating if they undid your careful work of hours maneuvering into position with a single miss-timed broadcast.

The delay does have the extra benefit of giving a mandated rest period to your pilot, ideally giving a respite from the intense focus of Mid-sync.
Her see-sawing on the gamut of mild nervousness to crushing fear isn’t particularly conducive to relaxation, and you still don’t exactly know what you can do to settle her.

Maybe you got too used to the slightly cold, separated connection of Thea’s VNDI implants. Was Sophie always so….unstable?

“Relax, pilot. I have conveyed instructions to Headhunter, and they have received them.”
Calm. Focus. Confidence. All things you try to convey across the tenuous link of low-sync.
“You are safe. We will not know defeat.”

“Easy to say when you can see.”
The retort is half-hearted, and followed by a sigh.

“I am your eyes, pilot. Better than your own sensors could be. For example, I detect three active reactors to the west of the Academy.”
A stop in your own tread tells you more.
“Two Medium or light units. Designate Target One, Two, Three. Two appears to be following One, moving fast on an irregular path. Three is stationary.”

“Towards us? Are…”

“Negative. It is not optimized for a search pattern. Highly inefficient. They are doing irregular stopping and starting movements. Thermal readings detect light laser fire. Moving patrol elements may be engaging undetected targets on the ground when stopped.

Her pulse slows, breathing becomes more regular as her mind runs through your analysis. And finds flaws.
“In this weather? Really? List off the things you would be unable to detect at this range, that they could be firing at.”

“Infantry. Powered armor units. Non-fusion powered vehicles. Stealth-capable mechs, like Ronin. Headhunter. Civilians. Structures-”

Sophie cuts you off.
“Infantry? In this weather? No, this is an Academy. It’s not a patrol, a training group. Probably. Doing a course under extreme conditions. They’re engaging training targets. Stopping, firing, starting. Match up the movements and tell me if they follow that pattern.”

A full stop and listening to your seismics give you an answer.

She’s right (Mostly), and you tell her as much, causing a surge of smugness and confidence, while she orders you into a detour to give the training machines a healthy amount of space.
Pilot successfully distracted, mood buoyed, and nervousness defused. Slightly.
The path you take is north of the newly designated ‘training area’, still maintaining the profile of the BLKT-09 Black Knight. With all of the slowness, heft of tread, and IFF of the patrolling mech you stole it from. You aren’t hiding, but not trying to draw additional attention, either.

It doesn’t even attract the attention of the training duo, even as they seem to finish their erratic movements and circle to rejoin the third, stationary reactor.
Three then proceeds to follow the same route of the prior mechs. The seismic tremors its steps leave allow you to place it as a heavyweight machine.

Despite being approximately thrice the tonnage of its lighter companions, the progress it makes is not marked by stops or stutters, the mark of an experienced pilot, and the cracks of a railgun rings out in the distance, muffled by snowfall.
That does narrow the potential models it could be down. A fragment of your attention scours the Warbook, the scant information proving not enough to get a positive identification.
An upgraded Dominus, a Legio, a Claymore, any of the three, or others. All perhaps requiring an amount of respect, if well-piloted.

If Headhunter does their attack run from the West, as you would expect them to, this machine could be by happenstance perfectly positioned to get one or two shots on them when they approach or evacuate.

Another problem. Perhaps. You could just trust Headhunter’s inferior machine to hold up to the fire and call them in anyways.

Being shot down would be a fine enough distraction, after all.

Or they could avoid the fire and be perfectly fine.

You're getting into a feedback loop.

You remain silent, not voicing your concerns to your pilot. Her blindness does let you exploit this chance to make a decision on the problem without orders.

Options:
>Try another coded broadcast to Headhunter, light on details but directing them to attack from another vector

>Try a detailed broadcast. You could use the opportunity to exchange information much more freely, and make a more detailed plan.
You’re just another patrolling machine calling their far-away lance. There should be nothing suspicious. Nothing at all.

>Strike early, strike fast. Close and crush them, resolving the problem in a more direct manner. No changes needed. They won’t even get to scream.

>Do nothing. Stick to your plan. Headhunter will solve the problem themselves. Or not.

>Defer to your pilot. Bring her into the loop.

>Write-in. Something else?
A/N
I am impressed and honored by the performance of Beta on the popularity contest section of the tourney. However, he's also in the awkward middleweight section of 'not OP enough to be a planet-cracking monster', yet way too much for anything shorter than a two-story building. It's a highly amusing power scale problem that only appears in crossovers.

That's also not even touching how questionable a contestant he is when it comes to most non-combat competitions. Flirting? Repeated confusion.
<s>Delta might know more, with the amount of people she ate.</s>

<s>I may have also shelled out to someone for some actual commissioned art, so maybe we'll see where that goes sometime down the line.</s>

Anonymous

>>5977312
>Try another coded broadcast to Headhunter, light on details but directing them to attack from another vector.

>>5977312
<s>>"Flirting competition? 'Flirting' not found in warbook, elaborate."
>"It means saying something nice to make people like you. A lot. Basically."
>"Understood. Contestant xxxxxx, you have a small logistics footprint."
Perfect.</s>

>>5977312
>>Do nothing. Stick to your plan. Headhunter will solve the problem themselves. Or not.

>>5977312
>Try another coded broadcast to Headhunter, light on details but directing them to attack from another vector

>>5977312
>do nothing
He isnt our ally. Not really

>>5977312
>Try another coded broadcast to Headhunter, light on details but directing them to attack from another vector
Help the asset out

>>5977312
>Defer to your pilot. Bring her into the loop.
I’d recommend
>Try another coded broadcast to Headhunter, light on details but directing them to attack from another vector
to her though.

All she’d need is the info on the railgun, the approximate location of the mech (probably in relation to the target area), and an updated timer to with how long we think she’ll need to loop around them or erase them. Up to her to figure out the rest.

She was the pilot who surrendered to us before, she if she gets taken down she may do the same. I’m hesitant to allow the Empire access to any of her information on her mech or our mission here by indirectly allowing her capture.

>>5977312
>Try another coded broadcast to Headhunter, light on details but directing them to attack from another vector.

We’re gonna need this guy later.

>>5977312
>>Defer to your pilot. Bring her into the loop.

CoreQM

Rolled 3, 4, 4, 5 = 16 (4d6)

Dice, roll of 1, second roll of 3.
First for <s>Opfor</s>. Second for <s>Will</s>

Anonymous

>>5978090
Well, Opfor didn’t see anything. Aaand Sophie climbed back up herself to see what we just did, or she’s trying to stay in low-sync. She’s the only one with 3 Will that we know of.

I take heart in the fact we haven’t been asked to contest the Will roll.

>>5978098
It is a blizzard out there. I’d be sleeping in too.

CoreQM

Your processes turn the decision over, and over once more.

The risks are not so great, should you use the same method of broadcasting as you did earlier. At stake, detection would read only as a mistaken approach vector. A different flight plan. Innocuous.

Perhaps you are approaching this from an incorrect perspective.
A set of supposed allies inflicted more damage upon you than full companies of Tamar mechs and men. Dagger squad’s betrayal did give you a painful lesson in trust. Even thinking of the outcome makes you seethe.

Do you want Headhunter to return from this mission intact? If you met a month ago, they would have been an opponent. If orders had not changed, and Thea not changed friendlies into enemies. No, it was up to her commander at the time. Sunray. Kinston. Both?
<s>You made your choice then. For fear of consequences, or self preservation, it matters not. Only the outcome does.</s>

The longer Headhunter remains an effective combatant, the more they can assist your mission, and the greater the chance of success and your survival.

That is worth the risk, you judge. You can dispatch them later.
A shiver ripples through your skin. Does Command, does General Marik, view you that way? View the cores? Waiting until you are no longer effective, then brushing the liabilities away in an erasure of what you are with kill commands, memory wipes, and reprogramming.

No. You have value. You have use. You are needed. The Empire needs you. You Will make your mark in history. You will not be forgotten. Not be replaced.
Besides, to throw away your best weapon would be illogical. Let alone preemptively remove the problem. It would be like….ejecting the Sunburst laser array, because you used it to cut your own leg off. Nonsensical. If its capacitors were overloading, and set to explode, perhaps. But no sooner.

Headhunter is the same. An ally and effective tool, until proven otherwise. It has given no indications of unreliability.
<s>Neither did Blake.</s>

Introspection concluded, you begin the process of encoding and disseminating the data packets.

All while the awkward, stamping tread takes you around the northern edge of the training ground, away from the practicing mechs and into inhabited areas. Roads, snow-covered and hardened. Bereft of movement or tracks. Merely pooling lights from poles, providing a tepid illumination in the snow.

The danger of detection may be replaced with the danger of identification, but your Predator array still fails to pick up on the panicked traffic of an alarm. Merely unsecured transmissions of worthless things. Random pictures of a mass of people, saluting. Nonsensical messages. Poor-quality shakey videos. Why would they be throwing hats, anyways?

Unchallenged, even still. What a mockery of security.
Full sensor sweep, again. Thermal outputs….seismics…mag-scan…..visual<wbr>s, poor as they are. Many light vehicles, parked. Idling. The three mechs from earlier. Buildings could block emissions for you to pick up on, and often muddle your mag-scan, but it is still clear that no actively moving machines are close enough to intercept you.

Bare steps from the campus, proper, of the Tsang Tsun Military Academy. And yet nothing.
The timer still ticks away. Closing in on the time of attack. Mere minutes.

Inhale. Exhale. Human actions.
Pilot is in Mid-sync<s>And has been</s>

“Beta. If I asked you to stop, would you?”

“Insufficient information. Your wording is very imprecise. Elaborate.”

“To call off this attack.”

“We have our orders. Do you have an appropriate reason to not carry it out?”
You leave off the potentially construed as insulting remarks about timeliness. This current moment could be said as the sixth to last minute possible for such a debate.

“A feeling. That we aren’t getting the whole picture.”

A feeling.
“Do you suspect something is amiss here, Pilot? A delay would-”

“I KNOW! I just, just…”
The trailing off does not inspire great confidence in her fortitude.

“What, pilot?”

Her head shakes.

Pilot problems or not, the time is now.

>Execute.
You head for the Stadium, immediately after Headhunter begins their attacks on the southern hangars.

>Call off.
Very minimal time for subtleties this late. You’ll need to contact Headhunter directly for a delay.

>Write-in. Changes to the plan? Contact Command?
A/N
Had to fix formatting. Whoops.

Anonymous

>>5978175
>Give the Order, Pilot. Attack or abort, it is your decision.
>We appear to be crashing a social celebration, theory, their new crop of Pilots has just been promoted. Elimination of leadership and pilots serves the patriots cause by eliminating resistance to Marrik's march.

>>5978175
>Pilot is in Mid-sync
Ohhh, Sophie you sneaky little devil. I’m proud of you and your will; that you’re growing bolder as a person. The problem is just that you’re directing it against us.

>>5978180
>Give the Order, Pilot. Attack or abort, it is your decision. I trust you either way.
+1 to this along with some clarification
We give her, let’s say… 30 seconds to decide. Even if headhunter begins his attack in that time, it’s no biggie. Sophie seems hesitant about killing the students, but no one has any qualms about destroying the mechs in the hangars. So we don’t really need to worry about tell him to delay.
If Sophie is unable to make a decision, then we attribute it to her overworking herself, and continue with the mission as planned.

As a reminder, if the pilot tells us to abort the mission, then we take zero blame and are not at fault. In fact, listening to the pilot is what Kinston -prefers- us to do. What’s more, this wouldn’t count against our perfect record since the mission was called off rather than us failing to complete it.

I’ll say that I’m not against abandoning the mission. There’s two reasons why.
1. Do it for Sophie. She’s asking if we trust her, and part of me wants to affirm that. We’ve worked so hard to build up good relationships with our pilots, so what is this if not another chance to reassure her. Actions speak louder than words after all.
2. More enemy pilots means the patriots are less likely to win. The patriots being less likely to win means that Beta and Delta are more valuable. Being valuable is good for us.

That said, going ahead with the mission isn’t too bad either. Kinston won’t be in a bad mood when we return.

The only thing is that Sophie cannot throw us under the bus and make us take the blame when we return. We also have the memory logs to prove it in case she starts acting irrational. If she asks us to get in trouble instead of her then we say no. It’s fine if we lie for her sake and say that we detected some new variables (that way she called off the mission based on facts rather than “a feeling”), but if Kinston gets mad then it’s not fair if she asks us to pay for her screw up.

>>5978175
Holy shit welcome back, I was wondering where this quest went, also
>>5978180
>supporting.

>>5978175

>>5978180
Support

Still got a job to do. But it's Sophie's call at the end.

So Sophie knows what we did, and didn’t have any problem with it.

Maybe we actually did better by not deferring to her. It proves we were willing to protect someone else without being ordered. Hardly the first time, but each instance adds up.

>>5978175
Know what, I’ll propose an alternate plan after outlining what I think the big picture is.

Like >>5978180 said, the target seems to be both pilots and leadership. I’d argue the leadership is just a nice bonus honestly, killing the bigwigs won’t stop the pipeline, only slow it. Marik’s timeline likely doesn’t need it slowed, it needs it set back. The “social gathering” the leadership is at was the real target all along.

<s>Kinston mentioned choking on the hypocrisy. Sending the child soldier who lost her whole class to make more enemy pilots like herself would fit the bill.</s>

So, alternate plan idea
>Have Headhunter continue with the attack on the training mechs
>Hijack the gathering with Predator and have Sophie contribute to the event. Ask if she would like to take back some of the memories she gave you to assist with making the human connection to this class.

Sophie can spell out that we had the opportunity to strike them directly. We’re close enough to hijack the graduation after all, and we did take out their mech hanger. They could call in Icicle Company, but it’d only prove there is no choice to spare them. That they’re enemies, and enemies don’t get to choose when they die. Like her class didn’t when State Sec rolled in and massacred them for some political power play her group didn’t even factor into.

Where she goes from there is up to her. She can encourage them to join her side. At least she had enough humanity to spare them, while the Empire wouldn’t. She could encourage them to shift to independents in the war, that Command is screwed up enough on both sides and they should be something better. You’re supposed to encourage graduates to do better than the current generation, right? Even if Sophie is part of that despite probably being younger than this group. And was never told that in her graduation since she never had one. She just went to war.

<s>One of her friends was going to give her a callsign when they graduated. Like some of them no doubt promised each other.

She still doesn’t have one. Only her mech does.</s>

It’s not what the mission called for. But it might accomplish the same thing without costing her soul like Kinston figures it will. It’s the best we can do to protect her from the fallout. And we get the bonus of having thought of it first. “Only a tool for the pilot” my ass Kinston, this is way outside what they intended pilots to use us for and we still find ways to contribute!

>>5978175
>Execute
>Do you not remember statesec killing your classmates? This is war. You must kill your enemies assets. Especially when they're nicely grouped together.

There's no reason not to kill these people...

OH SHIT!
HELP!!!

The guy running the tournament is demanding "some sort of art (MS paint doodles or napkin sketches are fine)" in order to register a valid IP for the voting and participation. See >>5979438
I fucked up the original submission, so even though Beta is a legitimate contestant, I myself do not have a valid IP for the tournament.

Anon's of Core-of-Steel quest, PLEASE, I need your help in getting fanart of Beta + MERRYGATE

>>5979487
Just click "Draw" down at the bottom of the window and make something awful. <s>Then say it was Sophie trying to draw Beta with her ruined eyesight.</s>

>>5979487
I have negative art skills so I can’t assist. There’s always the /qag/ thread to ask around in. Something where MERRYGATE has just finished an introduction to biology and is about to start on how to use general knowledge of it to tailor chemical weapons?

<s>You can request terrible AI art of them and say Delta or the Empire submitted it. The worse it is while still capturing the idea it involves Beta and MERRYGATE, the better.</s>

>>5979487
Merrygate? Isn't that ObserverQM's thing? Wait I wonder if Solstice Quest has started up again

Rue'Vahn

>>5980972
Yep, she's from Retaliation Quest by ObserverQM.
The tournament is having the different contestants interact, and I'm excited to see Beta talk with her since she is also an AI like him.

Actually, while we're on the topic, I'd appreciate some input from CoreQM. How do YOU think Beta would feel upon meeting her? I ask because I don't have much material to use as reference. We the players never personally saw the three siblings bond, it's only been talked about after the fact. The other situation was with Athena, but she was a dumb-dumb AI, so Beta didn't have a legitimate conversation with her.
IRL I ship it, but in-character I've got no clue how Beta would act.

Anonymous

>>5980994
I suppose the best analogy we could posit in the thread would be if we met a Tamar Core that we knew wasn’t based on Anohkin’s work. Similar enough to understand, but clearly not part of our immediate family.

I’d be willing to treat this theoretical Core as a relative to start. Worthy of immediate acknowledgment in a way that humans have to work with us for a long while to earn, but we’d need to learn more about them before we’d consider them close enough to trigger the effects of (and general protectiveness implied by) As One.

>>5980994
I know what Retaliation Quest is, namefag, I've been on every fucking thread of it.

CoreQM

Rolled 4, 2, 2 = 8 (3d6)

“Theory: We appear to be interrupting a social celebration involving a promotion ceremony of pilots. This should serve a double purpose for the Patriot cause, to decapitate leadership and eliminate pilots before they can be fielded.”

Reasoning, so clear and logical, provided by the machine. If she goes forwards now, there is no turning back. A traitor by both word and action.

“Give the order, Pilot. Attack or abort, it is your decision.”

Is…Is what she’s doing here wrong? She wishes the world would stop, turn back time to when the Empire’s enemies were simply on the other side of the border, when things were clear and certain.

Wishful thinking. Not even her better half could perform such a miracle.

Perhaps just reach out, talk the leadership she was going to murder into sitting this civil war out. Fulfill the mission another way. Following the letter of her orders.

But the time for planning such a thing would have been hours ago. To stop, to reach out for an uncertain chance.
That would have shown up on logs, on records. Far too much of a gap to explain away. She would never pilot again if that came to light. Never sync again.

So at the bottom of the slope, the end of the rolling snowball of choices, Sophie makes her decision.

“There is no decision. Engage and destroy.”

Her senses expand, limbs become ensheathed in steel. Focus reaching out to every point of the frame. The numbness, the aches, the frailty of flesh vanishing. The world is slowing again, every moment a new possibility opening up.

Her timer counts off the last seconds.

And the slight sense of resignation is swept away by euphoria.

The first sign you see of Headhunter’s assault beginning is an alarm raised.

The second sign is the thermal plume of an explosion. Something large. Ammunition dump? Fuel bunker? It fades too quick to be a runaway fusion reactor.

Your cue. Sophie lends her voice to the confusion.
“Patrol, Icicle One responding to unknown explosions in the south.”
Obviously fake, but gives you a vague reason to be moving directly through the campus to your target.

Moving now, every second counts. Ready-five pilots would be racing to their machines if they weren’t already there, leaping into cockpits and powering on weapons.

Target in sight. Line up primary weapon.
A massive building, large enough to walk a mech into if desired. A monument to structural engineering, covered by a wide dome, slanted to allow snow to slide off under the current chilling conditions. Vulnerable.
Collapse the building, kill all those inside.

Sunburst finally spins to life, a blue-white beam spraying thermal energy into the outside edge of the wide dome. Metal twists and flexes, melting under a long burn. Slowly. Too slowly.

Switch to short-range, high power mode, and aim at another section. Perhaps the Sunburst isn’t an ideal weapon for this task.

The groan of the strut is audible, crying out, before transforming into the snapping crunch of a single support failing.

There is a faster way to accomplish this.
Thrusters catapult you up above, before letting gravity take hold to send your full weight down on the roof. The effect is immediate and dramatic, the remaining roof collapsing in its entirety, sparks flying and lights winking out.

A brief scramble to keep your feet in the falling metal is a challenge, but a manageable one.
The cloud of dust raised by the demolition is still falling while you engage in further destruction, one arm swiping back and forth from the inside to tear ferrocrete chunks out of the interior.

Sensors confirm the building was occupied by many people.

Dust and debris settle.

From the end of the timer to the destruction of the target, 62.2 seconds. You should have just opened with the physical strike.

Either way, mission accomplished. Targets eliminated?

Sensors sweep over the rubble.

Heat from the interior escapes through the vanished roof, appearing oddly on your thermal sensors.

There are many unmoving bodies, cooling swiftly. Ones that do move brighten briefly under Sunburst’s attention, before becoming unrecognizable in milliseconds.

Targets eliminated.

Your minds turn to extraction.
Legs propel you back out of the ruined stadium, over the edge and out.
Eyes look south, to the flashes of Headhunter’s explosions winking in the storm.
Reactors are powering on, the inevitable response. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Then to the west, to the training grounds, where already online mechs scramble to aid.

To the north, free and clear, yet completely the wrong direction.

And to the east, unknown yet seemingly clear.

Voting

>You will go North to lie low and then evade before making your way back to base

>You will strike South, helping Headhunter disengage and destroying the enemy ‘response force’

>You will go West, bluffing your way back past the now-distracted training mechs and retracing your steps

>You will go East, heading through new, unknown enemy territory.

>Write-in.

A/N:
Another unknown AI? Probably initial paranoia and caution, attempting to ascertain if they are likely to eliminate Beta. If they are friendly and not pathetically weak, then an exchange of ideas and data is in order.

Also here's the one precious piece of fanart I have someone drew back with Dagger Squad.

Anonymous

>>5981139
>You will strike South, helping Headhunter disengage and destroying the enemy ‘response force’
I want him around in case Sophie passes out

>>5981131
Chill tf out. It's not about whether you've been on that quest or not, I'm saying the name because there are other anons in the thread who might be curious.
And the only reason I had a tripcode is because I left it on by accident after posting stuff for the tournament.

>>5981139
>You will strike South, helping Headhunter disengage and destroying the enemy ‘response force’

>>5981139
>You will go North to lie low and then evade before making your way back to base
Flyboy should be fast enough to just vroom out of there.

>>5981139
>>You will strike South, helping Headhunter disengage and destroying the enemy ‘response force’

>>5981139
>You will strike South, helping Headhunter disengage and destroying the enemy ‘response force’

>>5981136
>>5981138
>Is what she’s doing here wrong?
Yes but this is war. The moment you get into the fucking robot Sophie, you are already damned.
>Perhaps the Sunburst isn’t an ideal weapon for this task.
We still picked it because we're up against other mechs. A missile strike would have been bloodier but cooler

CoreQM, when will everybody including Beta wake up to the pilot being addicted to linking?

>>5981318
>A missile strike would have been bloodier but cooler
We need to find a new supply of G42, would have made things much faster

>>5981139
>You will strike South, helping Headhunter disengage and destroying the enemy ‘response force’
Well, I tried to give you an alternative Sophie. Whether you’d have taken or not would have been another question.

No one will question us running towards an attacker, and it’d be nice to get some performance info on Headhunter.

>>5981139
>You will strike South, helping Headhunter disengage and destroying the enemy ‘response force’.

>>5981318
I think Kinston already knows. He reviewed the footage of the ace gank in thread 5 and saw Sophie nodding off during high-sync.

To be fair to Sophie, how could you not get hooked on being a ten meter tall death machine that thinks at three times human speed? I feel sorry for Gamma’s pilot that the best they can manage is a measly 1.5.

>>5981338
Do you think Kinston will ever confront Sophie and Beta on it?
Do you think Thea will ever find out or get addicted herself?

>>5981353
Nah, Thea’s too tough.
Sophie got hooked on linking because we damaged her brain, and she’s an impressionable teenager.

I’ll answer the Kinston question with another question: Why did he send a blind girl with known neurological damage and easily observable personality disorders into combat?

Kinston makes a show about giving a shit but he knows that Beta is his only route to survival. Sophie’s just a pawn he can sacrifice to make it happen.

>>5981338
He definitely knows. He desperately wants her to back out, but he can't ask her to because he knows how badly the war needs her.

>>5981139
>You will go West, bluffing your way back past the now-distracted training mechs and retracing your steps

Known terrain and the entire point of headhunter's attack was to draw attention away from us. Kind of defeating the purpose if we go toward it.

Bonus points if we can smash the training mechs and pilots along the way.

Rue'Vahn

>>5981353
If he blames/confronts Beta about it then Kinston can go f himself. We have more of a right to be angry than he does.
Nobody told us that linking can have these side affects. Ffs, Beta probably doesn't even know or understand what addiction even means.
Once again, information being withheld from him is causing problems that he is now having to deal with.

Anonymous

>>5981139
>You will go North to lie low and then evade before making your way back to base

>>5981139
>You will go West, bluffing your way back past the now-distracted training mechs and retracing your steps

>>5984577
I think OP said he’s in engineering college.

Which means he’s currently having his nuts crushed to a fine paste by finals.

If that’s the case, good luck and Godspeed OP!

>>5985337
I don’t remember my engineering finals ever being too bad, but I’m one of those weird people who liked exams since I remembered material taught in classes well. I was less equipped to study in college compared to others once I hit Junior and Senior years, but I still did better on finals than my class grades would normally suggest.

Find either a quiet place or a group of people in your major that you can study with, crack open the relevant books, and sample problems in sections that you know you were weak in. Build a vocab list if you’re iffy on some and there’s been questions in past tests on it. Grind your way through one or two problems you’re confident in just to prove you’re right, then move on to different material.

If the class is one where you’re given an equation sheet, even better. Learn what each variable stands for and what it looks like in a written problem. Everything after that is plug-and-chug that needs no further study. You only need to work problems where those equations have special criteria to be valid so you can remember and recognize the rules.

If the class is organic chem, get the crying out of the way early. Then buckle down and prepare to work a lot of problems since there a lot of rules to confirm. Save the ones you’re confident in for the end (unless they’re fundamental to later problems you aren’t sure of) to prove you didn’t jar the process to solve them loose while working the others.

This has been General Exam Tips, brought to you by Anon.

>>5986644
We're not even back yet, bros...

CoreQM

>You will strike South, helping Headhunter disengage and destroying the enemy ‘response force’

A thought bubbles through your link.
It is strange to see so many mechs ready and waiting for an attack. Five is too many. One, two, perhaps would be expected, especially with the three training counting as a ‘fast response unit’.
Was it your fault? A mistake, perhaps?

Or coincidence. Either way, Headhunter may need assistance.

Leaving the rubble in your wake, you run south towards the first of the signatures.

While preparing to work on intercepting and decoding the flurry of transmissions soon to pass through the air, naturally. What kind of second-rate Core would you be if you couldn’t multitask?

Jamming to block everything wouldn’t slow any further external response much. Landlines or a more powerful transmitter that can punch through your Predator would be somewhere around the Academy, already calling for aid.

It would be more useful to leave the lines open and passively gather intel.

Or it could be a chaotic jumble of screaming junk data and spitting garbage.
So someone else decided to open up jamming at that point in time. Well, it wasn’t like you and Headhunter were communicating much, anyways.
Accelerate to maximum ground speed. Stay on target, the nearest reactor signature. It is only thermals which guide you, magscan melding the machine with the hangar it stands outside, while seismics are worthless while your own tread shakes the ground.

A pair of blue flashes through the storm reveal its armament. Laser-based, aiming at the sky.

Away from you, on the other side of the hangar buildings.

All you need to do is round the corner of the hangar, strike physically to ground them, and apply Sunburst on its close-range profile until their reactor is breached and shuts down. Or explodes.

Planning over.

Wait for the lasers to flash once more, then go.

Half a heartbeat passes before you Move, passing around the corner and visually identifying your target as a drab green Crab medium walker. Its primary armament on a cooling cycle, 7.3 seconds pass with you closing the gap and delivering a crushing punch to send it reeling forwards, then targeting the thinner rear armor with a pulse pays dividends in another thermal spike from breached engine.

Struck so suddenly, in quick succession, maybe a truly elite pilot could have caught themselves, turned, and at least taken a single shot at you.

Instead it flops down in front of you, face-first fall broken by the protruding snout of the machine, heat skyrocketing and engine spinning down.

You give it one more burst of blue photons in the center mass to ensure it will never stand again, and turn your attention to surroundings, and the remaining four active defenders.

One reactor spikes and fades to nothing with a crack-crack of explosions.
Three, then.
Headhunter flashily reveals their position, rising back into the sky on an obvious thermal plume.
Having discarded whatever thruster shrouding they use for stealth, tracers, lasers, and missiles follow.

Giving easier tracking and targeting to the sources.
Not that you needed it. Much.

A trainer mech, half your height, lofts missile after missile into the sky before you cut through the spindly left leg with an extended burn, leaving it to topple and helplessly squirm on the ground.
Too easy.

The show-off’s evasive ovals in the sky turns into a dive on a different reactor, before that winks out.

One last machine.
You race for it, ground speed comparing not so favorably to their airspeed, but they have a greater distance to travel.

The hapless victim gets the chance to fire off several rounds and lasers into the sky before you close to visual range, identify it as a green painted Shadowhawk, and pepper with repeated laser strikes.

It swivels to face you, returning the favor with its own weaponry, flailing about with its own myriad of mismatched weapons.

A roar of thrusters, a loud ker-chunk, and Headhunter makes your distraction fatal, taking it in the back with its queer melee spike weapon, then letting it go limp and collapse to the ground.

Like a puppet with severed strings.
Exhale.
Your pilot shakes her head, a spike of pain translating across the link.
Manageable. Nothing to worry about. Determination and steadfastness replace it swiftly.

Eyes lock on your ‘ally’, while they start walking towards you, at a much slower pace.
Grounded, they’re far more ungainly than you. Clearly it is a machine that happens to have ground movement as an afterthought. Vulnerable when grounded.

When closed to a range where audio communication is possible, they gesture about with an arm, harsh tone filtering through the speakers.

“Mission complete? Lost track of you for a while. Hostile jamming doesn’t make it any easier, either.”

Your pilot gives her affirmation, voice wavering slightly.
“Comp- Complete. Just to extract, now.”

“Fine. I’ll shadow you out, just as before, after finishing putting a few more of these hangars to rubble.”
>I need 4 rolls of 1d6, for Skill
<s>Detection</s>

AN:
Overly optimistic update schedules and CoreQM, name a more iconic combination.

Anonymous

>>5986994
We love you CoreQM, please don't die or get cancer OK?

Something to consider with Sophie as we work our way back - should we try using EWAR on Headhunter to see how it operates? Performance logs for the thrusters and weapons would be good to have.

If there’s something in them that indicates a vast improvement over Patriot tech then Command could try for a tech exchange. Better thrusters for better cyber defense, for example. But what they do with the information really isn’t a concern for me.

>>5990105
Probably not the best idea to snoop around in his stuff especially since our alliance is only an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" kind of deal. Headhunter might not even be qualified to make the call to allow it if we ask him for permission.

CoreQM

Signals are still a mess. Incomprehensible static and junk data, just as you would want it for this surprise attack.

Sweeping with other senors gives you three more incoming from the west. Seismics inform you as one heavy, two lights. The training group, returning too late. Easily accounted for.

But one thing is amiss.

A hole in the storm, in visual range. A spot just above the remains of the Crab. The snow passes around it, not through.

“Beta. South, at best speed. Top speed. As fast as we go. I think…I think I’m losing sync.”
Concern colors her tone.

She doesn’t see it.
Sunburst comes up, aiming at the hole. Blue beams ripple and flash, a crack sending the cloaked drone to the ground.

“Pilot. We have a watcher.”
Now that you know what their signs are, it should be more plausible to detect it.

“We got it, so no more, right? Right?”

You recognize the model, built to be used in a network, upgraded slightly, with some sort of optical camouflage. Where there was one, there will be more.
“Identified as a Hive drone. Much as the one we Cores used back in the simulators.”

The foreign jamming at least is being an ally, preventing it from sending back information. For now.

You are nervous. No, your pilot is afraid, and it is infecting you. Altering your judgment. Deep behind enemy lines, with only this untrustworthy lesser machine as backup. Which takes to the air again, rising on a pillar of fire before its baffles activate to conceal its flight.

“Do you…Want to find her? Gamma?”
Sophie voices your thoughts.

She’s operating the Hive system. Somewhere. It has to be her.

Voting.

>Yes. Time to detour, to find her. At least to send a message. Something.
Change mission to finding Gamma, for a message or to subdue.

>No, you have your mission. Every minute you delay brings rising risks. You’ll see Gamma another day.
Focus on extracting safely.

>Write-in. Something else.
AN
Yes, I am being pulped by finals. No, you haven't tried to hack Headhunter yet.

Anonymous

>>5992508
Good luck on finals QM!

As for the vote:
>No, you have your mission. Every minute you delay brings rising risks. You’ll see Gamma another day.

That plus a bit of the write-in. I say that we also leave Gamma a message on the ground as we depart. Something short and simple like “Me and Delta are okay. We miss you. See you soon.”

I know that we can’t send it via a transmission since the first option explicitly says that we’d have to detour in order to do that, but we could just use the laser to write something in the ground for her drones to see after we’ve left.
The only reason I’m saying that we leave is because it’s too risky to stay. Sophie burned herself out and the alarm has been raised. Even with Headhunter the odds look like we’ll be captured or destroyed before anything meaningful is accomplished. We just have to keep biding our time until an opportunity to free her arises.

>>5992508
>No, you have your mission. Every minute you delay brings rising risks. You’ll see Gamma another day.

Let’s tally this up:
-end of long mission
-exhausted/wounded pilot
-outnumbered
-being watched
-probably another Core in vicinity

Conclusion: picrel

Good luck on the finals QM! As someone who went through engineering finals, you have my sympathy.

>>5992508
>Write-in. Something else.
Can we try to hack one of the hive drones and leave an encrypted message to Gamma?

>>5992537
But otherwise:
>No, you have your mission. Every minute you delay brings rising risks. You’ll see Gamma another day.

>>5992508
backing >>5992521 if possible, otherwise just normally
>No, you have your mission. Every minute you delay brings rising risks. You’ll see Gamma another day.

CoreQM

>>5992537
That would entail stalling/entering a search pattern to find another drone. The first one spotted is scrapped, and there's some sort of foreign jamming which is blocking the usual method of just fire up the Predator and find/hack their signal.

<s>Then again, maybe those drones are looking for you. Perhaps there's more in the immediate vicinity.</s>

Anonymous

>>5992508
>>No, you have your mission. Every minute you delay brings rising risks. You’ll see Gamma another day.

>>5992508
The answer to “do we want to find Gamma” is always yes. The correct question is how we balance it against other risks and demands.

If Gamma is deployed we have to assume she isn’t on our side. She’ll have a leash and a pilot, presumably loyal to the Empire. So it’ll be a fight to remove the pilot and capture her.

Sophie is flagging, while Gamma would have been in low-sync the whole time. We’re better than Gamma, but they can wear Sophie out. A reason for her to have stayed in low-sync more often. Too late now.

We do have an ally, and she’s not a bad one as far as we’re aware. Cutting-edge Tamar tech, with the blizzard cloaking the thrusters. No seismics to give it away, so it may be cloaked better than we are. The pilot has also seen us in action before as an enemy, so she would know not to fuck around against Gamma.

I’d say, in order
>Attempt to bring the drone with you. Long enough to escape the mechs, end the jamming, and leave a message in it

If the drone is now too damaged for that then
>Comm your ally. Ask her if she will assist with finding your sister. It is beyond the mission scope, but you both spared this pilot and her ally before. Perhaps it is enough.
We’re stuck in a blizzard, and that limits the enemy’s ability to follow. If she’ll stick around, we could find light cover, let Sophie leave sync completely, and have Headhunter scout. If she keeps popping drones she’ll eventually force Gamma to start searching herself and can comm us so we can sweep in.

If she’s unwilling to take that risk then that leaves
>No, you have your mission. Every minute you delay brings rising risks. You’ll see Gamma another day.
as the only option. Win or lose, we know we would be reunited with Gamma. The Empire would seek to use us against the Patriots because they see us as a tool, and a tool doesn’t care for its master. The same protection doesn’t extend to Sophie. Not unless they can leash her as they do us, and I consider that an unacceptable trade-off. We have to win, and the odds aren’t good enough for it without rest for Sophie.

>>5992569
Oooohhh, you gave me an interesting idea.
Maybe we could try to take the damaged drone with us back to base for the techies to study it.
That might give us an advantage the next time we encounter Gamma.

>>5992581
If we’re heading back then definitely. No sense not carrying a piece of enemy tech with us. And there’s a non-zero chance a message from Gamma can be extracted from it. We’re not the only one who can leave them hidden around.

Unrelated, I wonder if Gamma’s pilot is from the academy here? Her pilot when we fought her was unavailable after deployment and is now with us, and all of the Empire’s data on our field performance is with a teenager. Maybe they figured not to mess with a winning formula and gave Gamma the same type of pilot.

I strongly suspect we lost an opportunity here. We could have turned several officers and pilots to the patriot side, but with them all dead it's going to harden enmity.

>>5992588
You could have voted with me earlier to offer an alternative. Like with Sophie spending most of the mission in mid-sync, it’s too late to change now.

>>5992588
>>5992597
We'd have just gotten shot. Or the would-be-defectors. You think there aren't loyalty officers out the wazoo in their training grounds? Especially now with an open rebellion happening? It's wishful thinking, methinks.

>>5992705
What's more, Sophie would have gotten in big trouble, meanwhile Beta is on thin ice as it is.

>>5992508
>No, you have your mission. Every minute you delay brings rising risks. You’ll see Gamma another day.

> Use Sunbeam to mark the Beta, Gamma, and Gamma symbols onto a surface. Just to let her know we're all still alive.
Should only take a second. Pity the sunbeam isn't fine enough to inscribe binary data at a quick rate.

>>5992508
>>No, you have your mission. Every minute you delay brings rising risks. You’ll see Gamma another day.

Supporting the idea to itch Beta, Delta, Gamma in a way that makes her understand we recovered our other sister;

>>5992793
I mean… is Sunbeam *not* capable of engraving binary data?

It’s got a pulse mode. How easy is it for Beta to control? Can we control the pulse tick rate? It’s obviously powerful enough to etch a surface if it can melt straight through tank armor.

>>5997578
Even a rocket launcher can engrave binary if you have a big enough rock, but lasers made for war are rarely made for surgical precision cuts. I'm hesitant to assume anything smaller than a finger in width.

>>6000090
Ya boy’s going through finals right now.
Give the guy a break.

>>6000347
Oh, I already finished with my final exams last week, so I assumed other schools were on the same schedule
I forgot that not everyone is done by May 5th

CoreQM

Beta, Gamma, Delta. A swift etching of three symbols into the concrete of the bays with Sunburst. A line linking the Delta and Beta.

You toy with the settings a bit, adjusting the pulse rate up and down.
On. Off. On. Off. High-power. Low-power.

Start. Small and large marks. You could make something to be left here. A way to send a message. Coordinates, perhaps. A channel and time? Something else?

“But we need to move, Beta.”
Your pilot reminds you of the sudden pressure of time.

If you can’t delay trying to actively search for Gamma, delaying to write something isn’t exactly much better. It would be intercepted by anyone to look upon it, also. Useless.
Either way, it would end with you being swarmed by ‘Loyalist’ units responding, so say nothing about the possibility of them just endlessly calling in more and more mechs.

But maybe….The aces of the Empire, arriving to test themselves against you. One way to Prove once and for all, you are the best. To be forever etched in history.
A hacking cough from inside forces a small modification to that. Well, the two of you. In history.

So tempting.

Well, Headhunter is above. So it would be three. Would that still count as an appropriate feat?
Your offhand gathers up the smoldering remains of the Hive drone. It’s probably mostly scrap, but the lingering hope of a lead to contact Gamma through it remains.

Time to return to base through enemy lines. Easy.

>Dice. I need 4 rolls of 1d6, for Skill, then 3 rolls of 1d6, for Pilot’s Will.
AN:
Finals are over. And this thread's about to slide to the bottom of the board. Well, time to head for the finish line of a stopping point

Rolled 2, 6, 5, 2, 1, 3, 4 = 23 (7d6)

Interlude: From the Memory Banks.
“Do you feel accomplished, Doctor?”

“It passes all the tests we set for it. Every benchmark, surpassed. Every goal, reached.”

“This AI, this….”

“Core, we call it an AI Core.”

“Core you developed. Yes. How do you actually get it to function in a useful manner?”

“We have added a sophisticated control system of checks and balances to stimulate growth and manage its future development. Most importantly, several sets of imperatives to ensure it continues to --ERROR DATA NOT FOUND--”

“So with all of these carefully moderated stimuli and leashes put in place, why has it stalled out now?”

“Well, we’re having trouble keeping it interested and motivated in the tasks at hand. Wiping its memory banks and having it repeatedly approach tests as if it is the first time does seem to solve the problem, but it is rather detrimental to that same growth we want to promote.”

“Your supercomputer is getting…Bored?”

“Not exactly, the-”

“A human problem. I have another Project in the pipeline right now which might be able to solve that. Give it a more human perspective.”

“Interesting. Tell me more.”

------

Also a short few Interludes as an apology for being gone so long.

Anonymous

Rolled 1 (1d6)

>>6005426
I shall call this roll, FIVE

If no one else will comment on it:

>>6005428
I had wondered earlier if our project took a “shortcut” by making Cores out of human imprints. We had a Sophie ghost for a while after our first high-sync, and syncing in general seems like a step too far for a human/machine pair unless one of them had a firm foot in how the other thinks. Basing the machine’s thought processes off a human’s mind would greatly help.

This seems to suggest that. That a Core is actually a two-part project, one part Core (the supercomputer) and another part human-adapted. Take the thought processes of a human that’s been strapped into a sync system to read how they think and map that result onto a Core, then see how it adapts. I’d assume most conversions fail, but a select few succeeded at harnessing the Core to serve as a replacement brain. Beta and his sisters/brother(?)

Echo may have been a different “map” than we were, one that couldn’t grow itself in the Angels because they weren’t also Cores. A certain level of computational power being required to sustain the independent growth of the human mind-map makes sense. It’d also explain how Brighton could be correct about not having the resources for another Core, but could still make Echo powerful enough to fight Delta. Beta and his sisters aren’t Cores, they’re the mental maps of a person that could adapt to using a Core to sustain themselves. Echo is another one of those, and the prerequisite for that would be to have mental map of a new person that can survive adapting to a Core. Fortunately for Brighton, she DID have those.

Kinda weird that they had a whole cadre of pilots of Sophie’s age training to be part of the program, right? Child soldiers don’t seem like the best fit to be piloting experimental AIs. But as a source of mental maps of young people at a time of adapting brain chemistry? They’d have a better chance of becoming the new AIs. Even better than the old ones since they’ll have trained with first-gen AIs so their mental maps are already conditioned to work with Cores indirectly. The relative youth may have also been expected to make them more pliable than the experienced pilots we were likely based on.

Mix them in with some old-guard pilots to actually fight in the war and you have both the present and future of Project Warden secured.

<s>Sophie has already shown how she’s adapted to how a Core operates since she lost her sight. If anything I’ve said tracks, it means Echo was likely a copy of Sophie. Brighton had her sync data, and she’s proven tenacious enough to survive as our pilot. She’d be a perfect candidate to graft onto a Core.</s>

>>6007089
Loyal, eager to please, cooperative? Yet also tenacious in pursuit of that? Yeah, that would track.

Hell, is our original pilot Mort? Or are we Mort?

>>6007089
An alternative - the other Project mentioned IS the sync system we currently use. Alpha was the first successful instance of a human using the sync system to properly harness a Core and motivate it to continue functioning, largely by supplanting the Core’s AI and using it directly. A Cawl scenario, if you will.

Beta and the others are then second-gen Cores that attempted to map humans directly as the Core AI using data gathered from Alpha and other unsuccessful test pilots of its generation, and much of the original person is lost since people don’t really understand how this Core/human interaction works. They’re just copying the homework as best they can and seeing what sticks well enough to be useful. It’s why the sync system is still in place to motivate/salvage Cores that might stall out due to insufficient self-motivation to excel or self-destruct due to unpredictable behavior carried over from the human aspect, and why they can’t do things like instill loyalty in us. They don’t choose what sticks and what doesn’t.

Third-gen would be after enough iterations of human-Core analysis through the sync system that the pilot is no longer needed as the Core is sufficiently human to self-sustain and the Core-based safeguards are enough to control it. That’d be the theory, anyway.

A sync project would probably be trying to make more responsive pilots by increasing feedback between them and the lesser AIs that currently exist. It really shines with power of a Core behind it though, so much so that it seems to alter the pilots themselves.

>>6007120
Seems too convenient, but that’d be funny. He was ghosted not because of disloyalty, but because he was Beta’s pattern and no one noticed early enough. The bureaucrats keeping track of the test pilots were picked for loyalty, not competency.

Might be that getting the data they needed for this first generation entailed pushing the pilot to death or uselessness. We’re already breaking Sophie and we’re trying to meet her partway. Anyone with a fully machine-based Core must go through absolute agony to sync properly.

>>6007089
>>6007125
I'm not sure what the other project mentioned was, but I think you are wrong about the purpose of the sync system.

>"It’s why the sync system is still in place to motivate/salvage Cores that might stall out due to insufficient self-motivation to excel"
I was given the impression that the sync system has nothing to do with motivation. That instead, it's 100% just a leash. Having a supercomputer operate at full potential and make millions of calculations per second is incredibly dangerous. So instead, they are forcibly slowed down to the point where even a human is faster, because a human needs to have full control of the machine and not let the core can hack thousands of computers in the time it takes just to hit the shutdown button. Being slow makes the cores less effective for winning combat, thus the sync system was created where it allows for a human to be somewhat brought up to the speed of the A.I, that way it can win battles while still needing to go through a human to do anything.

>>6007120
I'd wager that Mortimer is definitely a piece of us in the same way that Sophie gave Beta the memories of her dead classmates, but he's probably not the original "template".

CoreQM

It itches now.

The crown of her head, where the neurohelmet meets the skin. A bit above the forehead.

One of those unreachable spots. Trying to get at it with a hand could disrupt the link.

Eyes closed. Take a breath. Feel the sway of the Frame, rocking back and forth from step to step. Let the frailness fade away with the bile and sinking feeling. The mission’s not done, the other half needs her.

Eyes open. It doesn’t help. Squint. The bright panels are fuzzy. Splotches swim across her vision. Concentration is not enough.
“Next steps. Core, new pursuers?”

It responds.
“Negative.”

“Keep me updated. Dropping to- to a lower sync level.”

Concern over status. Pity, even? Or disappointment. It’s all the same. A twinge of I-told-you-so.

Dammit. The cord of the link slips back to mere threads, her vision blurs, and the itch transforms into a migraine. Which she still cannot touch.

—---------------

You told her there were no pursuers. Nothing detected on seismic, thermals, or the limits of mag-scan. All accurate and true.

Sophie slipping back to low-sync at least conserves her for another good push up to combat speeds, but it does make you slightly slower. Sloppier.

This is along your chosen route, making the best time possible while keeping your own signature as concealed as you can manage.
>The West, retracing steps.
Back through the wide-open snowy fields and transit lanes, around Icicle Company’s patrol routes

>Straight South, through the heart of Victoria's downtown.
Heavily urbanized, to rush past responders headed towards the Academy and take the fastest route overall

>The East, to find a new target.
State Security Headquarters seems to have been added to your mission as a target of opportunity. Nominally in the actual city of Victoria, a suburban environment of low buildings. Could be easily worth a detour while they’re busy being distracted.

Anonymous

>>6007651
>The East, to find a new target.

Take a breather Soph, I want to murder a few sons of bitches.

>>6007651
>The East, to find a new target.

>>6007651
State sec you say.

Sunbeam. Blake.
>East

>>6007651
>The East, to find a new target
Total StateSec death

>>6007651
>The East, to find a new target.
What could go wrong

>>6007651
>The West, retracing steps.
The mission is over. We did our job and now it's time to leave.
Sophie is exhausted and in no position to strain herself further. This StateSec target is optional and was not part of the briefing. No one can bitch at us for not pursuing it because Beta can point out that we were not told ahead of time; the plan we already made didn't include this, and we're not prepared to deviate from it. Ffs we saw proof that Gamma was in the area, a high level threat, so Kinston can shove it if he gets upset at us.

<s> I also want to get back to Delta asap. Not only for the reckoning she's earned, but also to see where her ultimatum with upper command will lead. </s>

>>6007651
>The West, retracing steps.

StateSec means Gamma. Gamma against our current state means death.

>>6007651
Changing my vote from >>6007819 to
>The West, retracing steps
I forgot about Gamma. We need to extract out NOW

>>6007929
Thanks for the reminder

>>6007651
>The West, retracing steps.
I want to do the optional objective, but hitting another position on top of Gamma being present is a bridge too far for me. Going after Gamma directly with Headhunter support was as far as I could go.

Besides, non-zero chance the target was added by a mole and it’s actually an ambush since Gamma is nearby. That’d suck.

Any support for
>Inform Headhunter of the stealthed recon drones and Core presence. Gamma is skilled. You need more eyes.
as an addition? An aerial view might reveal more than a ground-level view can. The camouflage system may not be as robust from above for example.

>>6007651
changing >>6007864 to
>The West, retracing steps
in hindsight, the laser message would be useless if we went right back to stir up trouble.

CoreQM

Announcement:

I’m taking a break. For around 4ish months.
There’s no real easy way to put this, but I’m starting work at a place which limits my writing time to the weekends only. I can’t run a quest on that little, as I’ve found out after getting gut punched by finals. See: the sad state of how short my updates have been in this thread.

I still fully intend to return and find Beta’s final resting place, the state of the Empire, and bring the story to a conclusion. It’s just going to take a bit. I'll throw an announcement in the QTG when I'm preparing to return.

Thanks for everyone who's enjoyed the journey so far, and voted in said quest.

Until next time,
CoreQM

Anonymous

>>6010585
Take care QM. Be sure to archive

>>6010585
QTG? And damn, just as the Cyberpunk Quest goes offline and I still wait for Solstice Quest 2 and Halo: Wolfpack. Good luck on your job though CoreQM, I'll be waiting....hopefully. I'll see if I can remember haha

Cobalt 1

>>6010585
If you're taking a break, then don't sweat it QM. /qst/ is for having fun, not for being a burden on your back. I hope things go well for you, and we'll patiently await your return.

That being said...
>"and find Beta’s final resting place, the state of the Empire, and bring the story to a conclusion."
Uhh, this part scares me. Roughly how many more threads do you think this quest will go on for after you come back from the break? Are we approaching the end of the story? Or will this still go on for quite a while before we reach the finale?

One last question before everything ends for now: what should I do about the whole 'King of QST Tournament'?
Beta seemed to be winning in first place with 21 votes when the next best only had 15.
If I still have questions for you, should I ask you them in that thread via my tripcode and you respond via yours? Or is there something different that you'd prefer?
For example, I don't know if it was ever 100% decided on what Beta actually looks like for the tournament art submissions, or if we should continue to use AC6 Steel Haze as the reference material. The guy running the event said that original characters are a-okay, while licensed characters are not, but I don't know if that rule also applies to the art we use.

CoreQM

>>6010683
My goal was to present a finished quest in approximately 10-15 total threads. But again, I tried to get out of the simulator in a single thread, and look where that went. So after I come back, 2-5 more threads. Probably. I have no intent to drag it out to 50ish threads. If I do want to continue other adventures in the same setting, or a continuation, it would be presented as a sequel quest.

On the Tournament, I’ll be lurking around for questions. I’m also on the QST discord, though it’s a questionable place.

I did attempt to commission someone for some art, but they’ve yet to get back to me about it. So Steel Haze for now.

Anonymous

>>6010683
The rule didn’t apply for the art references so you’re good there. Maybe have them mix in some Jehuty for the sleeker design and a Burning Eagle thruster sample?

>>6010864
>So after I come back, 2-5 more threads. Probably. I have no intent to drag it out to 50ish threads.

>>6010864
We love you and your quest QM, please don't give up

>>6010585
Good luck my man. Even if life changes and running this isn't fun after, I enjoyed the quest. I dig giant robos and you write well. I didn't participate that often, but I really enjoyed reading your stuff.

Hope you come back.

<s>I will vote for Beta in the tourney, up until he goes up against my boy Elliot; given I have written far, far too much fan fiction involving him and the other cast of a certain quest. At that point, I will spread propaganda that Beta is a robo Facist or something.</s>

Looking forward to seeing you again boss.