Inarra joins Irin on the keyboard.  They search for a solid two minutes.

Meanwhile, Ronan starts to take apart the four-legged droid.

"Aha!" Inarra beckons Tump over.  "Found one.  It's in this room.  Row 11,245 against the south wall.  There's an observation station there for it to plug in to.  Looks like it was monitoring the systems in here for anomalies.  This little amount of data might have been beneath its capacity at the time, but they thought it important or the astromech wouldn't be in here."  She reads through the information file.  "Says it was built by a company called Industrial Automaton.  It's designation is R10-AC."

Inarra types some more and frowns.  "R10-AC still has power.  It's the reason some things are still operational in this facility.  It's still hooked to the main computer running a feedback loop on the system.  Want me to shut it down and call it over to us?"

Tump walks over and takes a look. "That's great, but what happens if we disconnect him from the system? Will the systems its monitoring start to shut down?"

Inarra furrows her brows. "Well, our generator is under our control so whatever systems we need will still be active.  Other systems will shut down and that loop will end.  I'm not sure what it's doing, but I think it has to do with all these droids."

Tump brow furrows to match Inarra's. "Hmm, that's an interesting point you make." He steps in over to a terminal next to her. "If that R10 unit is keeping a watchful eye on something, and the fact Irin said they were damn near sentient, it must have been doing it for a reason."

He runs a number of diagnostic scans cross-referencing background processes and threads to determine their intent. "What if that droid was making sure all these other droids didn't wake up and wreak havoc? Worse yet, what if it was making sure critical systems didn't fail and cause the facility to self-destruct?"


Tump makes a Use Ancient Device check of 17 (taking 10).

Irin looks about at all the droids, her eyes wide.  "Uh."

Inarra grins, though.  "I know the perfect target.  If we can still submit it."

"What did you have in mind?"

Inarra looks straight up.

"Vexember?"

She looks back at her screen. "These new droidsite don't have a designation yet.  I propose DH-V series for Demon Hunter - Vexember."

Tump laughs out loud. "That's very clever, I like that. At least they won't be wandering aimlessly blowing up this warehouse. A couple of things worth considering though. As soon as they go on about their business, they're going to pop up on someone's radar, and eventually they'll get destroyed or caught. Before we give them assignments and activate them, we'll need to do a little tidying up."

He starts typing away at the terminal. "First, well want to wipe their point of origins so they can't be traced back here by a simple, routine scan of their hardware. We don't need anyone knocking on our door. Second, before activating their primary objective, we'll want to give them a series of secondary search objectives, each one with a random location for them to search. Once all the secondary waypoints have been hit, the primary target objective will kick in." He glances over at Inarra, who seems to be glazing over. "It may seem elaborate, but it's similar to spoofing your network presence to avoid detecting point of origin. By the time anyone traces them back to this facility, we ought to be long gone."

"I like it.  I can do a randomizer pattern through the R10 so that they don't all go to the same location on the planet.  There are so many of them here that sending them all to the same location would cause it's own problems."  She types her own entries into the system and calls Tump over to look.  "No more than two or three should show up at any location at any one time.  Several might arrive at the same location but they will be separated by days, maybe even weeks.  If we enter enough locations, based on the speed rating here - which is about four times that of a human - we could delay primary target seeking for a month or more."

Tump grins. "That's perfect. Plus, I know how you like your toys, if you're feeling ambitious, you could always program in a backdoor to take control of them if necessary."

He leans over and nudges her arm. "Well done!"

Inarra smiles and winks and gets to work.  Together, the two relic hunters manage to plot out a diffusion of the DH-V droids flawlessly.  An hour later, the droids begin to wake.  First, one on the front row lights up.  It's movements are silent and there is no typical power or cybernetic sounds that usually accompany robots and droids.  It actively scans each human in the bay then starts scanning the room for an exit.  At one point it looks up.  On its back, two half-cylinders extend from a hidden compartment, flare to life with forbidden repulsor-based technology, and the droid lifts softly into the air like a reverse raindrop.  It's twin repulsors hover several stories above and to the west for a few seconds and then are gone.

Another droid wakes in exactly the same manner, and disappears through the ceiling.  Then another and another until there is a steady stream of the sleek machines making an organized launch out of the warehouse.

[+1 XPR (not just XP) for all this slicing]

During that time a droid rolls up on three wheels.  It stops when it reaches the terminals where Tump and Inarra stand looking up smugly at their work as if flies off into the undersky.

The short droid stands roughly half a meter tall, much more compact than it's predecessors.  It has a silver cylindrical body, a rotating dome head, and two primary legs.  A third leg can extend from underneath to offer stability as it rolls.  The two legs are thick and seem to be of a single piece save for the wheels embedded in the bottom.  There are multiple blinking lights, a single large EM sensor on the front as well as a few other sensors, lights, and interfaces embedded in the dome or body.

The thing looks solid, well built, and perhaps on the high end of expense for its day, though now it's value is immeasurable given it's age, individuality, and a host of other factors.

It retracts its third leg underneath and into its main chassis.  There it sits, upright, waiting for...a command?  Interaction?  Someone to tell a joke?

Tump stands there for a moment, eyes darting between the droid and Inarra. Finally he steps over and kneels down a bit. "You must be R10-AC. Thanks for keeping such a watchful eye over this place until we arrived." He smiles mischievously, "How would you like to start working on something a little more interesting?"

The droid does not respond through movement, lights, or sound.

He stare at the droid for a moment, waiting for a response. He looks over at Inarra to see if she has any ideas, but after a solid 30 seconds of silence, he looks back to the droid.

"R10, status report, please."

The droid rolls over to an interface and plugs in with its typical data rod interface.  After several rotations output rolls across the screen detailing the spread of the droids across Corellia.

It is rapid.  Far more rapid than intimidated as the droids communicate and any droid at one location counts as all droids at that location.  They communicate through an ancient communication system called the 'Holonet' which has FTL capacity.  They will attack Vexember in two days at most.

The situation is _UBAR.  Probability of death of all life on Corellia: 99.7%.

The droid retracts it's data interface and turns to face Tump unmoving.

Tump's expression drops. "What the.. they communicate like a hive mind."

He looks over at Inarra, "We need to call them back, shut them down, give them a target on another planet... something."

"R10, how do we disable them all?"
This message was last edited by the player at 15:26, Sun 26 Mar 2017.

The droid rotates it's dome once left, once right, then back to center.

Inarra gasps and turns back to her keyboard, typing furiously.  After a couple of minutes, she slams her fists down on the console.  "I can't.  I'm locked out."

"No, there's got to be a way to shut them down. No one creates a machine like that without a way to turn it off."

He starts typing away on the terminal. "Irin, have you come across in your data about these types of droids?"

"R10, are you able to communicate with them?"

Irin has been typing since the revelation.  She keeps reading and occasionally shakes her head.

The droid's dome rotates toward each of the humans present then back to Tump.  It starts rocking side to side on its legs while rotating slightly on the axis mid torso as its dome rotates constantly back and forth.  Several appendages extend from compartments and whirl about haphazardly. It's like the droid is having a seizure.