"Aaaaah – yeh, I getcha." That made much more sense. Minimizing casualties? She wouldn't have bought that for a second. Metal was expensive, meat was cheap. But plausible deniability? That made perfect sense to her cynical ears. "Musta been good't it t'not've 'sploded." They had to have expected that; wouldn't have invested so much in something they expected to only make one trip. Then again, just as likely that it'd be a prototype, or a proof of concept, one that clearly didn't get off the ground. They weren't making more of them, after all, not as far as Kreska knew.
"An'm jusso nice t'talk to," she agreed, though her attention had moved almost entirely to the contents of the engine room. Parts she recognized, parts she didn't. The engine itself was more familiar than the weapon systems, and the sight of it made her fingers itch. She wanted to get into it, get a better look, see what she could see.
They wouldn't let her fly it, regardless. The things she could do if they did, though.
Starrunner. Starrunner Starrunner Starrunner. She knew that name. Where'd she know that name? No visceral revulsion, not someone who wanted her dead, but she definitely knew that name. She spun on her toes again as she surveyed the room, glancing over Cady in passing.
Half-humanoid. Not a blank. Why? Retrofitting an existing chassis, maybe? Hard to tell with this sort of experimental thing what had an explanation or what had turned out to be necessary to iron out inexplicable glitches. Like how some bots couldn't seem to function right without arms, even if they had no reason to have them. Might've been one of those.
Rocket cracking a panel open drew Kreska's attention right in, and she all but slid over to take a look. "Aww yeh," she said, getting close enough to practically stick her head in the engine. She was looking for the serial numbers on the boards, trying to identify the batch number printed in the geometric angles of proprietary OmniCorp code. "Here, lemme show y'a thing," she said as she found it. "2694 means – yeh, okay, I know thissun, definitely." She turned to search for the appropriate panels between the core and the thrusters, only identifiable by location. "Ain' gonna change'r break nuthin'," she added, less reassuring than she wanted to be. "Jus' gonna see."
Ordinarily even Kreska would not deign to pretend she knew more about a ship than a mechanic or a ship's AI. This, however, was an OmniCorp engine, and that meant it had OmniCorp backdoors for manufacturer testing. No one but the spiders knew those, special codes and keys only used in the manufacturing facility when the AI was off or absent.
Organics weren't supposed to know about it either, outside of a limited number of OmniCorp engineers. Kreska was just clever, was all.
She tapped at the panels until she found two a meter apart that could play different notes, like unmarked tuning forks built into the wall. She had to stand on her toes to reach them, stretching out and widening the spine-revealing gap between her shirt and her pants. "Two-six-n– fuck." She sang it as she played it, hit a discordant note on the third. "Two-six-nine-four." It slid open, revealing another panel with a manual rolling lock twelve digits long. She giggled gleefully, switched to the other panel and did the same. "So that's–" She pointed to both the panels. "Y' gotta look under th'pilot's console, usually. Big ol' junk number pressed in th' metal, y'gotta find th'zeroes – it's four zeroes, an' then th' twelve, an' then four zeroes again. It's generated outta – actually, with th'chimichanga thing'n th' 2694 I might be able to…"
Kreska started rolling the numbers along, and when she hit the right sequence it clicked, opened to reveal three not-quite-switches. The switches themselves were missing, asymmetric star-shaped hollows in their place. "Yeah, see, same thing's under th'other one, they all gotta be switched at once. If ya ain't a big ol' spider you can rig up some pipes an' a bit of metal putty an' it'll work just the same, an' then your limiter's unlocked so you can hit the upper limits of warp. Ship this nice might be able to break warp, actually, if you set the engine on a timer to brake after ten seconds or so."
Except, of course, that breaking warp would disassemble the ship and its contents at an atomic level. And ten seconds still might be enough that they'd only reassemble outside the known universe, assuming the timer even worked at all. That kind of thing was controversial even among theoretical scientists; Kreska may have been the only one in known space suggesting practical testing.
"Anyway," she said, shutting the panels again, staying true to her word that she wouldn't break anything. "Obvs y'ain't gonna be'n any 'mergencies worth riskin't, but it's cool, yeh?" She huffed as she realized that stretching to reach everything she wanted had her borrowed pants riding dangerously low on her hips, trying and failing to pull them higher.
Starrunner.
She snapped her fingers suddenly, dropping the waist of her pants and letting them fall past her hipbones again. "Nova! Th'chick Lio's bangin', right?"
"An'm jusso nice t'talk to," she agreed, though her attention had moved almost entirely to the contents of the engine room. Parts she recognized, parts she didn't. The engine itself was more familiar than the weapon systems, and the sight of it made her fingers itch. She wanted to get into it, get a better look, see what she could see.
They wouldn't let her fly it, regardless. The things she could do if they did, though.
Starrunner. Starrunner Starrunner Starrunner. She knew that name. Where'd she know that name? No visceral revulsion, not someone who wanted her dead, but she definitely knew that name. She spun on her toes again as she surveyed the room, glancing over Cady in passing.
Half-humanoid. Not a blank. Why? Retrofitting an existing chassis, maybe? Hard to tell with this sort of experimental thing what had an explanation or what had turned out to be necessary to iron out inexplicable glitches. Like how some bots couldn't seem to function right without arms, even if they had no reason to have them. Might've been one of those.
Rocket cracking a panel open drew Kreska's attention right in, and she all but slid over to take a look. "Aww yeh," she said, getting close enough to practically stick her head in the engine. She was looking for the serial numbers on the boards, trying to identify the batch number printed in the geometric angles of proprietary OmniCorp code. "Here, lemme show y'a thing," she said as she found it. "2694 means – yeh, okay, I know thissun, definitely." She turned to search for the appropriate panels between the core and the thrusters, only identifiable by location. "Ain' gonna change'r break nuthin'," she added, less reassuring than she wanted to be. "Jus' gonna see."
Ordinarily even Kreska would not deign to pretend she knew more about a ship than a mechanic or a ship's AI. This, however, was an OmniCorp engine, and that meant it had OmniCorp backdoors for manufacturer testing. No one but the spiders knew those, special codes and keys only used in the manufacturing facility when the AI was off or absent.
Organics weren't supposed to know about it either, outside of a limited number of OmniCorp engineers. Kreska was just clever, was all.
She tapped at the panels until she found two a meter apart that could play different notes, like unmarked tuning forks built into the wall. She had to stand on her toes to reach them, stretching out and widening the spine-revealing gap between her shirt and her pants. "Two-six-n– fuck." She sang it as she played it, hit a discordant note on the third. "Two-six-nine-four." It slid open, revealing another panel with a manual rolling lock twelve digits long. She giggled gleefully, switched to the other panel and did the same. "So that's–" She pointed to both the panels. "Y' gotta look under th'pilot's console, usually. Big ol' junk number pressed in th' metal, y'gotta find th'zeroes – it's four zeroes, an' then th' twelve, an' then four zeroes again. It's generated outta – actually, with th'chimichanga thing'n th' 2694 I might be able to…"
Kreska started rolling the numbers along, and when she hit the right sequence it clicked, opened to reveal three not-quite-switches. The switches themselves were missing, asymmetric star-shaped hollows in their place. "Yeah, see, same thing's under th'other one, they all gotta be switched at once. If ya ain't a big ol' spider you can rig up some pipes an' a bit of metal putty an' it'll work just the same, an' then your limiter's unlocked so you can hit the upper limits of warp. Ship this nice might be able to break warp, actually, if you set the engine on a timer to brake after ten seconds or so."
Except, of course, that breaking warp would disassemble the ship and its contents at an atomic level. And ten seconds still might be enough that they'd only reassemble outside the known universe, assuming the timer even worked at all. That kind of thing was controversial even among theoretical scientists; Kreska may have been the only one in known space suggesting practical testing.
"Anyway," she said, shutting the panels again, staying true to her word that she wouldn't break anything. "Obvs y'ain't gonna be'n any 'mergencies worth riskin't, but it's cool, yeh?" She huffed as she realized that stretching to reach everything she wanted had her borrowed pants riding dangerously low on her hips, trying and failing to pull them higher.
Starrunner.
She snapped her fingers suddenly, dropping the waist of her pants and letting them fall past her hipbones again. "Nova! Th'chick Lio's bangin', right?"
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