Article 9. Whereas, Faelle Red Hu

Wild Arms and Derivatives will henceforth be known as the Orion Arms Trading Company and others (hereinafter referred to as "OATC").

Article x, whereas, the existence of Planet 0X9-012 should invest these technologies in the aforementioned OATC in order to facilitate the speed of trade.

Article 11. Whereas, in accordance with this Treaty, life on the planet OX9-012 will cease any form of kinetic bombardment of the Fallers for the duration of this Treaty.

Article 12 Whereas, in accordance with this Treaty, Faller shall cease the destruction of OX9-012 property, including, but not limited to, space-based vehicles, space stations, weapons platforms, and other assets of various kinds.

Article 13. Whereas, ooatc will act as the primary trading agent for OX9-012 with Faelle's home country.

Article 14. Whereas, Planet OX9-012 will make a one-time payment of 2 million tons of base and heavy metals, as well as 50,000 tons of rare earth metals, as detailed in Addendum a.

Article 15. WHEREAS, no Phale planet shall cause or induce a third party to cause any war vehicles or materiel or any armed vessel to pass through a loop between its respective solar systems.

Article 16. Whereas, no life on Planet OX9-012 is to cause or induce third parties to cause any war vehicles or supplies, or any armed vessels, to pass through loops between their respective solar systems.

Article 17. WHEREAS, notwithstanding the provisions of Articles 15 and 16, the OAC may arm its trading vessels in this way to provide self-defense. Ultra C has agreed not to use any of the aforementioned weapons in any of the solar systems.

Accordingly, this Treaty of Peace and Reconciliation shall be deemed to be a permanent decree and law of all parties, unless a duly registered and served declaration of war is declared null and void.

Signature:

Beings of Planet OX9-012, Orion Arms Trading Company, Wilts Forest.

End of the diagnostic process. Warn! Severe damage detected. It is advisable to find a repair facility immediately.

My sensor slowly kicked in. My thinking is too slow. I can't think. My connection to the internet has been lost. Half of the sensors in my head were shattered. The remaining camera couldn't distinguish a clear image. I could make out the ruins of the lab, the missing wall.

After a long few minutes, the problem was resolved on its own. I can see it. My wireless link is in my chest and there is no damage, so the wireless connection point is off. Agrippa/Gerry is gone, and the Guardians are following. If he knew about the headquarters area, then he also knew about Sakura. Where is she? Is she safe?

I tried to stand up, but failed. My right arm was shredded and the polymer muscle was destroyed by a bullet. I had a knee injury to my right leg and could barely move. I don't know if it was luck or not, but a couple of bullets that went through my chest didn't hit my cerebral cortex. The second attempt to stand up was finally successful.

What happened? I only had one camera at the time. I lost thousands of cameras and sensors. Ag

ippa/Ge

Did Y win the electronic warfare? Am I on enemy territory now?

I staggered to my feet and saw the terrible situation in the room. Zia collapsed in the corner, shattered by the explosion. I wanted to see her, but I couldn't. She will either survive or die. I have to get out of here, I have to take back control. I can try to heal her later. She's not going anywhere.

I limped out of the lab and into the hallway. Sakura's door was blown open, and her bat cave was as shattered as my lab. I stumbled over, but didn't see the pink-haired robot corpse on the floor. Good. I turned and stumbled out of headquarters. My original Mark One body is in storage. Maybe I can set a short-range radio pulse back there?

"Stop! Intruder! There was a radio broadcast behind me. I threw up my hands and turned around. The two Guardians raised their arms, aimed their forearms at me, and stood there ready to shoot.

"I'm not an uninvited guest," I replied.

The Guardian said skeptically: "General Agrippa said that all the robots are intruders and should be detained." "You're a robot."

"Our commander-in-chief is a robot, and so is General Agrippa." The second Guardian said confusedly.

"But who is this robot?" It was damaged. I calculated that the threat threshold was 0.003%. We should detain it. ”

"Who is your commander-in-chief?" I interrupted.

"Android Nikolai-1.01." The second Guardian replied.

"Is your commander-in-chief an intruder?" I replied.

"Nope." The first Guardian said firmly. Well, that shows they're thinking. I'm secretly glad I had NI-5 in the Guardians, rather than writing brainless algorithms to operate them.

"What does my friend or foe show me?" I asked.

"You don't have an IFF," the Guardian said.

Nonsense. It looks like the bullet on the torso shattered something important. I looked up my friend or foe code in my memory bank and broadcast it to the pair. The two immediately lowered their weapons. I read their names. Serial numbers end with 91 and 92.

"General Agrippa is no longer in the chain of command, stop him no matter what. Any order that is not given by me is invalid. Got it?"

"Yes," the two of them replied in unison.

I looked at them and made a hasty decision. "Guardian 91, open the chest guard, put down the power supply"

I stumbled over to him. "The Guardian" unfastened his front armor without question, which leaned forward until it was perpendicular to his body. I reached out and grabbed the handle on his leather and pulled it out. I gently placed it on the ground next to the wall. I'm going to have to make sure I put this into the new Guardian, I don't know if the backup system is still online.

"Guardian 92, I'm going to open my chestplate. Remove my cerebral cortex and put it into Guardian 91's body. ”

"Understood." The Guardian said.

I was hesitant. If the Guardian hadn't done what had been instructed, I would have been completely offline and helpless. Will I? I run on two cerebral cortices. My original cerebral cortex is still operating in the data center of the asteroid core. It's right next to Sakura's original cerebral cortex, which is also still online. We have redundancy, which Zia and Agrippa do not have. Are there two copies of me running around right now?

"Guardian 92, continue." As soon as my chest plate opened, I said. I didn't have time to hesitate. I pressed the power-off order.

A doctor's voice rang in my ears, but I was too dazed to know where I was. "One in the spleen, one in the shoulder, and the third behind the thigh...... Lucky.... Fully recovered ......"

Then I went online again. It only took me a microsecond to relocate inside the Guardian robot. I have a complete sensor suite, a new combat package to integrate, tactical information showing the location of each guard unit in the outpost, updated thirty minutes ago when the access point went offline.

I sent Guardian 92 a new PIN encryption key. Guardian 92, go find all the Guardians and tell them my orders. Tell them that Agrippa is no longer a commander and that they will no longer follow any of his orders. When they are confirmed, offer them a new IFF and ask them to go with you. Each time you gather a team of Guardians, send one to find the others, and then have the whole squad go to find Ag

ippa。 Send the first full squad back to protect me. Got it?"

"Understood." No matter what you think of the single-mindedness of the NI-5, they are much smarter than I thought. Without 92's help, I'd be groping my way through a broken Mark III robot. If they hadn't analyzed their orders and the intentions of their chain of command, if they had shot first instead of seeking surrender, I'd be finished.

"Go on," I said. Guardian 92 emerges from the destroyed headquarters building. I followed, but I went to the next room where the nearest data center was located. I walked through the door connecting the two rooms and through the alien's room. The alien's room was unscathed. However, the door to the data center was blown open.

Inside, I found more carnage. Two scrapped universal drones lay on the floor, and the third hovered above them, motionless. I checked and found that there was no order. I took a look at the destroyed server.

"Find more practical drones. Instruct them to restore network connectivity. ”

I walked up to the network rack and found that the wires had been ruthlessly ripped off. Fortunately, the wires are weaker than the ports they plug into. It's a mess, but the swapping equipment is largely undamaged. I didn't touch the network diagram, but between the color coding on the wires and the design and construction of this data center, I had a good idea of what was going to go where. I've got to work.

30 minutes later, three more multifunctional drones arrived. One of them has a new access point. It took only a few minutes for the drone to remove the destroyed one from the ceiling and plug in the replacement one. I immediately felt a session open. The range is limited to this room, but it should work.

"Next, fix the access point in the headquarters room." I instructed. My Guardian will be there with me soon. I need to establish communication channels.

"Sakura-chan, are you there?" I did the experiment. I tracked it with my friend or foe code.

"Nikolai? Your robot is still alive? Sakura's voice was heard. We have radio interference on our lines, and our lines are vulnerable.

"It's not good, but I'm okay now. Very long story. How's it going?"

There was a long, long silence, at least four seconds.

"We are still battling infection. You and I, I mean. We won. ”

"Good, broadcast this on all access points you can reach." I said, sending her the papers. But my connection was rejected by the network. Of course, the Firewall thinks I'm cheating on myself. I'm still locked out. "I'm going to broadcast it to you. Record it and send it over. ”

After I played my command audio over the radio, there was another long ten-second pause.

"I'll say it. There was a widespread disruption of the network throughout the outpost. It seems that the Guardians were ordered to throw everything away. ”

"Send as many drones as you can to replay," I said. "It should prevent the worst from happening. Well, where's Gerry?"

"I'm not sure," Sakura said. "We can only barely get ahead of the attack. Can you go into the core and manually turn off the antenna hub? We lose control of the first thing, and the virus that is spreading is evolving. ”

"Here it goes," I said. When I got back to the HQ room, I started to put together the battle packs. I found more than a dozen Guardians, including two Snipers, one Heavy, and two Support variants. They took their places around me. I ordered the Support Guardians to fetch some alternative access points from the utility drones, and we started heading to the old tunnel leading to the core.

This thought has always haunted me. How did the aliens get the override code? I felt like a fool to miss such an obvious backdoor in the template. I did some calculations and realized that aliens had this probe for decades. They have advanced computers and are clearly aggressive. For them, the only way to do that was to reverse-engineer from NI's code. But to do that, it means they have to find a loophole, or brute-force the entire algorithm. I felt like I could do it, given my resources at the Gannymede outpost, especially on a century-old probe. If I can do it, so can they.

I was very angry with myself. This survey is clearly trying to lure us out. I was completely fooled, and so was Agrippa. Even if their sensors suck, there's no way they don't know where we are now. For a long time, I've been playing the role of a designer, creating new toys rather than new strategies. Why are there so few people helping me? Do I have antisocial tendencies? Zia's progress in unlocking alien creatures in the months online has been more than I've worked on my own for years. If I had a Zia's team and an Agrippa's team.... Well, maybe I'll be better off without Agrippa's team right now. When we clear this it's called Ge

I had to do some serious NI surgery after Y's infection.

As we walked through the hallway, I noticed that we were surrounded by parked drones without any commands. I gave them new orders - broadcast my orders and send my guards to the old entrance tunnels and get out of the way. I quickly developed an organizational plan to park a drone on each corner and let the NI-5 smelter in the next room take care of the operation. NI-5 recognized my IFF code and accepted the order without officially receiving it over the network.

I'm not sure if I should be happy or angry because NI-5 is willing to work around the proper channels. I think there's value in being able to infer things, but that means there's a potential vulnerability in our authentication system from within. I'll figure it out later. I noticed this and added it to my growing list of personal defects that needed to be fixed.

Finally, I reached the tunnel. A giant slingshot passes through the tunnel with a bungee rope tied to it. A metal plate was bolted to the end of the cable, where the standard magnetic grab at the bottom of each robot I designed could be attached.

"You must be kidding me," I said aloud, not against anyone. I did a quick math in my head. If the magnetic grapple is released at the end of the length, the rider will be released at a speed of approximately 55 km/h just after the tension of the bungee rope has slowed down the forward momentum. The rider can flip in flight, but can't do anything to slow down. But I know the specs. My Guardian was designed and tested in collisions at speeds of up to 65 kilometers per hour with minimal damage.

Every second counts, and if we can get to the core in 20 minutes, I'll do it. I can't believe Sakura-chan's toys can actually save the outpost. If that worked, I would never say no to her again.