“This is really starting to piss me off!” Mr. Lapointe continued, “I might be able to deal with that fraking process I could just watch what happens when the toasters come on.” The chief inquired if it had to be all the robots or would one of them do? “One should suffice. If I can find what it is that happens when they interface with the ship I should be able to disrupt it indefinitely. Chief Forester asked for a coin because he had an idea and Assuras threw him one. “Lieutenant, are you ready and watching that computer of yours?” Lapointe assured him he was and Forester opened the door to the room and ran toward what was one the two centurions that had been previously approaching.
As he came to stand directly in front of it, he yelled. “Elysian Fields or bust!” Then he grabbed the cylon’s arm, quickly stuck his gun in its hand. Confused the major had ran after him, only to dive to the floor for cover as the red eye of the machine suddenly activated for a moment and then faded out again. Shaken and pissed off she grabbed the man and snarled at him. “Bust is right! We get out of this alive and I’m going to bust your ass.”
She let go of the man. Exiting the corridor, she looked over her shoulder back at him. “Oh yea, nice touch with the coin. I’m not from Geminon or a priestess, so you might be able to pay for your passage across the river. But I’m pretty sure if you kill yourself, you won’t go to the same underworld as your wife.”
Entering back into the server room it was easy to see that Mr. Lapointe was grinning from ear to ear, as his fingers furiously danced across his keyboard. “Major I don’t want to encourage the chief, but that pointed me in so many right directions, I could kiss him.” Everyone was silent for a few moments to allow the tech head to work. He at last picked his head up and spoke. “Ok, the toasters can’t interface with the ship and vice versa.
Also I think I can give you some info on them. The main servers can activate them, they periodically come on to check for orders and human proximity or possible hostile action can activate them too. But some of them have been off for a very long time and their circuits might have problems reinitiating. So just because one doesn’t move when you touch it now doesn’t mean it won’t later.”
Lieutenant Turin looked at him puzzled and asked if he suddenly had access to a manual on them. With a smug look on his face Lapointe explained, “Nope. I saw exactly how they access their network and each other. Once I was able to do it the same way. It was easy for me to deduce everything according to its function. And I must admit that the cylon systems are old because the processing power of the laptop gives me a big advantage. However, some program documentation would have been nice.” The major holstered her side arm and told the man to stop the gloating and to just get the navigational files. She was then assured that he should have them in 5 minutes and they could then move on to secondary objectives.
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“Do you have the navigational files or not!” The lieutenant was annoying the major with his argument to consider a new course of action. “Our mission was to find out where we are, plant some explosives, gather any possible Intel and bug out! Do you require a further explanation?” Clubber interrupted the argument to say that it was Cupcake’s decision, but he agreed with the suggestion Lapointe was making. Assuras folded her arms and shot an angry glance at her co-pilot for a moment and then told Mr. Lapointe, who was sitting on the floor, to tell her what he wanted to do again. “Sir I’ve got an entire inventory list. This basestar has fuel, ammo and weapons. Enough supplies here to fill the tanks and re-arm the Argus. You have discretionary power and I’m not asking you to change the operation’s parameters, just extend them. We know where we are now. I have a ship schematic so we can still take out the communications and if you come back with a team, we can get tons of information by tearing this thing apart. But you will have to leave me here with the laptop.”
It was this final point that she had a problem with. Not only would she have to leave a man behind, but apparently because the cylon systems re-initialized every 90 minutes she would have to leave the computer too. And they didn’t have any available medium to save the data on. She could lose them both as far as she was concerned; she was being asked to place a lot of faith in just one man. Turin spoke again and finally swayed her decision saying he could just copy down the coordinates. He then took out his knife, picked up the panel used to cover the large computer system and started to scratch the data into it, noting they might have to bend it in half to fit it into the plane.
Pissed off and against what she felt was her better judgment, Cupcake began the preflight sequence on the raider. “This is fraking stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” She was angrily flipping switches and no one wanted to talk to her considering the mood she was in. As the engines engaged the major punched her seat and asked the Lords of Kobol to look after the man they were leaving alone. She hoped that the interface device would protect Lapointe, because there were just too many unpredictable variables aboard the toaster base.
The plane lifted off, exited the ship and everyone began to feel some relief. “Clubber spoke, “Ok let’s take out those communications the pilot way.” The crew felt safer not trying to use demolitions to disable the basestar’s means of communications and since they now knew the ship layout, it was easier, safer and faster to just destroy the main dishes on the hull. However, this too required faith in the lieutenant they had left behind,because if he hadn’t disabled the ship to robot interface, they might find themselves quickly swarmed by raiders.
They moved to the top saucer section and Cupcake handled the firing while Clubber stabilized the plane. “Target one acquired, weapons free and fire in 3… 2… 1…” The fighter’s weapons strafed the enemy base and within milliseconds, the main dish exploded. They moved on to the secondary dish amidst a few loudly verbalized hot damn comments. The procedure was the same as they came up on the bottom section of the warship. The Major once again did the count down and in seconds the other transmission array erupted in an explosion. “Fraking yea! That’s what I like to see!’ Her apprehension about changing the mission momentarily disappeared as she observed the fireball and she eloquently said that she really liked big booms. “Ok they aren’t the new toasters. But after what they did to the Poseidon and us, any toaster kill will do, and that felt so fraking good! Let’s go get the cavalry.” High fives all around, they sped toward the rendezvous.