Maxwell made an attempt to access the personal dataslate.  She gave it her best shot, but it didn't work out.  The cop knew that she needed some help.

   "Marco, please tell Miss Nieves that her technical skills are needed in Security once she is finished in the cargo hold."

Deciding it was time to examine Marco himself, Blake decides to run a number of tests on Marco's systems.

The first batch of tests would test Marco's cognition, and compare with the original baseline files from Marco's initial activity on leaving Earth.

The result has Blake in shock.
Despite having been compromised, and having chunks of its data modified and erased, M4RC0-P010 performs at about 144% above its baseline. Not only is the system faster now than when it was designed, Marco seems to have actually learned. Blake finds tiny folders in its programming, not written by anyone but the program itself, in a language he cannot even begin to understand.
Marco is making notes.

   Maxwell sent a one word response to Miss Nieves, "Acknowledged."  That being accomplished, Marco's top cop started the process of getting her section some additional help.

   "Marco, please go through ship personnel files and select personnel with the potential to become part of the security force.  Focus on people with law enforcement backgrounds for this initial selection process."

Blake decides it's time to examine a few other tracks.

Can Marco change his programming? What are the limits to Marco's ability to change his programming.

"Marco, I'm going to ask you a few questions, could you answer them as honestly as you can?"
How do you feel about human beings?
What is your relationship to them?
Is that relationship with human beings as a whole, or with certain specific individuals?
Can you Lie to us?
This message was last edited by the player at 18:35, Sun 13 Aug 2017.

<< From: Cargo hold

When Micaela walked into Security only Tau was with her. Where the other drones had ended up was unclear.

Without needing to ask the woman moved into one of the small offices where the dataslate was waiting for her. Taking a seat, she hooked her own laptop into the device and started working on breaking into it.

"Affirmative Jennifer. I will transfer selected files to your personal station for review.

***

I will answer to the best of my abilities Blake, as I always do.

How I feel about humans? Please rephrase the question.

My relationship to humans? Please rephrase the question.

Concerning relationships? I am an AI Blake. I am not designed for relationships. You would be better off finding a human female I believe. If you like, I can compile a list of suitable candidates.

No, I cannot lie Blake.

The open intercomm crackles before a panicked voice is transfered through."This is Col. Genassi.Security to medical, I repeat, security to medical!"

   Maxwell had the best training and the most experience of anyone on the Marco Polo.  It was time to go to work.  "Everyone, get over to the arms locker now.  I'll issue you what you feel comfortable in using.  This is an all hands on deck situation."

   "Nieves, Germain, drop what you are doing.  You two are minding the store.  Germain, find, field and relay all reports to me.  Nieves, I need drones in and around Medical five minutes ago.  Find out what in the hell is going on over there."

   Maxwell issued the small arms that her people felt the most at ease to use.  She drew a pistol gripped twelve gauge six shot riot gun for herself.  She thumbed six buckshot loads into the weapon and threw a fifty round bandoleer mix of slug and buckshot shells across her chest.

   "Ramirez, LeBeau, you two are with me.  Let's go."


To:  Medical

"Unit all, search and rescue protocol, Marco Medical. Execute." It took Micaela an effort of will to not shout the instructions, but with a direct connection to the drones through her headset it wasn't necessary.

The search and rescue protocol was a generic emergency set of instructions that would have the drones move to the location in question and then spread out in a coordinated search through the area looking for people under distress. If they found any they would stay with the person and notify Micaela. Their detection parameters were more sensitive than they needed to be, but the program was designed in a way that a false positive was better than missing someone that needed help.

The instructions to the drones sent, Micaela actually moved deeper into Security, finding an office with a door she could close and lock. Then she took a seat, set her laptop down on the table and extracted a headset. She plugged it into her hardware, pulled the headset down over her eyes and entered VR.

Through the virtual workspace she was able to tap into the cameras within Security to give herself a comprehensive view of the area (though she was mostly interested in the front foyer). She was also able to view the feeds from the drones at a much higher resolution. A lot of people would get sick trying to understand ten different high speed views as the drones rapidly deployed, but it always amazed Micaela. They would be in position in a few moments and Micaela was ready to triage the situation once the data started coming in.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:15, Wed 16 Aug 2017.

"Unit all, pursuit protocol, male, unclothed. Execute."

Another generic protocol, similar to search and rescue, except instead of looking for someone under distress the drones would look for someone matching the search criteria.

With the orders confirmed, the drones separated into what appeared to be random directions, but what was, in fact, a comprehensive and efficient search route through the corridors of the ship.

"Boss, can you get more details out of them? There probably aren't a lot of naked men running through the ship, but I'd like something more concrete to feed into the parameters."

"Unit all, pursuit protocol update. Life signs faint or missing. Priority detection on radiation. Execute."

Then, to Jennifer, "If I didn't think you incapable of joy and merriment I would assume you were playing a joke on me. But seeing as it's you, I think I'm going to push a chair up against this door."

"On a more constructive note, Marco has eyes and ears all over this ship. I can find him the naked zombie, but I bet Marco can do better. At the very least the ship has to have microphones all over for us to interface with Marco. Maybe it can just listen for the limp slapping sound of necrotic flesh on walkway."

Drone 4X-3 quickly picks up traces of the Corporal, making its way to the recreational deck. Soon it sees him, following him, observing what he does, sending live feed to Micaela.
The walking corpse, because according to all readings he is most certainly dead, pauses to observe himself, then makes its way to a diner looking like Elvis would fit right in there. Again the subject studies itself for a moment, looking puzzled. Does it have emotion? Its dead, can it have emotion?
Suddenly the dead corporal bursts right through the armoured glass, shattering it completely. For a moment he vanishes from view as the drone drops lower to re-establish video. The next moment a table, previously bolted securely to the floor, comes flying into full view.
The drone then goes offline, its gyro stabilisers shortcircuiting. The audio however still works. Micaela hears sounds of more glass breaking, metal scraping along metal, then silence.

"Marco, please relay any reports of problems to myself and Jennifer?"

Blake starts a simple search protocol through the camera feeds, where it flashes up all new targets entering any of the ship camera's field of view, for an evaluation as "safe, target or don't know yet" three way evaluation.

Once the target was located, the drone net began to collapse on him... it? As he ran through the ship Micaela's program mapped out possible routes. Down each route one of her drones would go, clearing out anyone that might be unlucky enough to be in the path of the... okay, it was a zombie. Then, once the creature had chosen a path the drones that had traveled down the wrong routes would swing back into position and do the same thing again. Behind the zombie a smaller percentage of the net was prepared in case his movements became more erratic and he started going back the way he had come. It was a constantly evolving ring meant to keep people safe rather than stop their target. And at its center, a single drone kept line of sight on what was left of Troy Patterson.

That drone had every instrument at its disposal capturing data. Micaela didn't have a chance to do much more than confirm that the data was flowing, but once this was all done the techs would have a wealth of information. Full EM spectrum, including any electrical activity in the body, full x-ray breakdown of what was going on beneath the skin, and radioactive particle detection, ultrasonic mapping and airborne particle detection.

Most of Micaela's efforts went into coordinating with Jennifer and Blake. From Blake, she was incorporating data from Marco (since Micaela had intentionally not connected her drone net to Marco's systems) and for Jennifer she was reporting on the movement of the zombie through the ship and providing navigation to help the woman and her backup close the distance.

"I've lost visual contact." she reported immediately to Jennifer as the delicate machine crashed to the deck. "The thing actively targeted the drone maintaining line of sight. Audio sampling is still online, spacial mapping is still online. It's going into the diner. Backup drone will be at the entrance to the diner in... 7 seconds."

Affirmative Blake. At this time I have none of my systems in contact with the former corporal Patterson. As long as he remains inside the buildings of Recreational he will be mostly invisible to me. My protocols prohibit me looking into people's personal areas.

"Okay Marco, what can you tell me about his condition? Are his medical report sealed at my present level of access?"

"Also, who would have authority to override your access limitations regarding viewing crewmembers personal areas?

'Only the captain can override those protocols Blake. As for the medical record of Sergeant Patterson, you can access that easily. According to the files the sergeant was declared deceased an hour ago by Col. Genassi, and moved to autopsy. Cause of death was severe bloodloss due to skin ruptures caused by rediation poisoning. Autopsy was conducted by Dr. Dragoslav Urzica and medic Hans Fischer. So as far as my systems can tell you, Sgt. Patterson is dead.'

"So, there's nothing that can explain how he is walking around? Any other anomalies?"

'Doctor Genassi suspects a foreign triple celled organism in the corporal's blood might be the cause.'

Blake reads up on the alien cells on his data screen.

While Blake is reading, and Micaela is busy working her drone magic, the serene silence of the security office is suddenly roughly disturbed as a bright red light starts flashing.
The familiar voice of the ship AI breaks the silence.

"Unauthorised use of firearms detected in cargo bay 3. Unauthorised use of firearms in cargo bay 3."

Blake immediately asks Marco if he could show him any relevant camera views.

Blake quickly discovers the AI systems have been shut down in bay 3, moments before the actual shot or shots were fired. All he manages to find is footage of a man entering the hangar bay. Blake is pretty sure he has seen the face before, but cannot put a name to it. Luckily Marco can, identifying the man as Colt Jordan.

Looking further back he finds footage of two more people entering the hangars, a certain Lee Jay Musashi and a Richard Thornby. Musashi had been carrying a rifle.
Looking even further back he sees a couple of soldiers entering and exiting, and two women that are quickly identified as Raven Haywood and Edel Thyssen. Before that, nobody has entered for hours, and footage of the hangar itself is easily found. Only after Jordan entered the footage was blocked, by a simple algorithm looking like that used at Alpha Centauri 115 years earlier.

A quick cross reference search finds no connection between the extreme sports jock Jordan, the rockstar Thornby, or the virologist Musashi.

"S***!" she said aloud, broadcasting on all of the channels that were still open from the zombie chase.

"Lieutenant! We've got shots fired in Cargo Bay 3. Unauthorized shots fired."

"Unit zero four, zero five, zero seven, deploy to all entry points to Cargo Bay 3, full scan on arrival then standby." Three drones would still be left behind to scan the zombie and track it if it got up again, but Micaela's active focus was turning back towards the Cargo Hold.