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Chapter 39 - Self Configuring Modular Robot[]
03:30 local time, Kowloon Annex, Triad, Tharkad, Lyran Commonwealth...
They moved with perfected stealth, their ECM equipment the best remnant technology from the Terran Hegemony. It's January of 3048, and Comstar's ruling governance, the First Circuit has rendered a ruling.
This team is here to carry it out against the least well guarded, most available of the targets. The team slips over the balcony, barely disturbing the air with their stealth suits.
The Guards, provided by Lohengrin, aren't an obstacle for these masters of stealth and intelligence-they've had profiles on all of them practically from birth, the result of generations of Archons relying on HPGs to manage an interstellar realm.
The mission is simply to secure the girl, and move her to Terra, unharmed if possible, and it's a palms-down covert move since the Royal Family has refused an offer to bring the kids to Earth as guests of the Blessed Order.
ROM has done similar missions a thousand times before, this time using equipment that would be traced to Wolf's Dragoons.
They need not have bothered.
The last guard slumps to the floor and the bedroom is entered.
The girl is thrashing in her sleep, whimpering, and moaning. Her night-terrors were in the file-a persistent problem with little-understood causes.
Four steps up with the paralysis dart, and takes aim.
The girl's eyes snap open, and she sits up, as a mechanical whirring seems to come from the walls.
The five man team suddenly find themselves surrounded by aggressive machines. Their ears assaulted by an electric scream that awakens staff and everyone in the area. The windows slam shut, armored, and a portcullis clamps down over the doorway.
Shit has just gone sideways.
"Grab the girl!!"
Three and five rush forward, and mechanical tentacles lash out from the bed-frame itself, wrapping their legs with burning pain.
Elizabeth climbs out of her bed, just out of arm's reach. "If I don't tell them to stop, they'll tear you apart." she said evenly. "Should I tell them to stop?"
"Yes, god yes, please!!" One is new, and his conditioning, apparently is flawed. Four is ashamed.
"Hm. Empty hands." she said. "All of you, on the floor. Everything."
Rat-like automatons collect dropped items.
"So...you're in my bedroom without an invitation, you darted my security guards, probably the canisters are to suggest either a lab accident, or perfidy of some kind."
the technology on display was disconcerting. "Did you-did you build all this?"
"No, Arthur built it." she said, "I've been studying accounting and fraud. Here's what's going to happen...in three more minutes, the tactical team from Her Majesty's bodyguard are going to be here, you're going to answer their questions...truthfully because Sierra's worked out a programmed algorithm, now you can use your suicide mechanisms? but guess what? Yvonne and Terry worked out a way to map Neurons in a brain, it works on dead people too, so you can answer while you're alive, or we can get the answers from your dead bodies." She reached down, and gently stroked an aggressive looking mechanical centipede two meters long, "Do you believe me?"
"That's...that's HORRIBLE!! A CRIME against humanity!!" Six blurted.
"You Broke Into My Bedroom, I doubt it was to tuck me in safely." Liz said, tugging on her night-shirt. "I think you're the last person qualified to discuss what's morally abhorrent, don't you? Play it my way, and they might let you go back to whoever sent you with a report so that I don't have to do this again. Play it stupid, and you get to be test subjects for a pack of junior grade mad scientists who happen to be experimenting with artificial intelligence mirroring biological ecosystems. I think you know where that leads, right?" the mechanical centipede coiled around her hand and flowed up, wrapping over her shoulders, and reshaping into something like armor.
"Miss Ngo, are you alright?" a Royal Guard at the portcullis door asked.
"I'm fine, Eddie. I have six unwanted guests in my home, would you be a dear and escort them to somewhere that is NOT my home, please?" The gate folded away, to admit the response team.
"One question, how did you expect us??" Six asked.
"I didn't." Elizabeth stated, "His Majesty, the husband of my Archon, Hanse Davion did, he gave Arthur the challenge to design the security system...and Arty likes me fairly well...and I don't like killing, so I've asked the nice men not to kill you in my bedroom."
The ROM team were removed, after the drug cocktail they were hit with took full effect.