The Grox War

"I don't know, depends on their style, but you can come if you want to" said Naboo9

"Sure I'll take a look." Fravini said

'okay, lets go then" said Naboo9, heading to the training area

As a general rule, Ink liked traveling by capital-ship. It was quicker, easier and more comfortable than using the rather clunky FTL drive on his personal craft. When it was so easy to stow away aboard hulking vessels like this, at times he wondered why he'd even bothered to have the blasted thing installed.

Nevertheless Ink, sat watching the crew disposing of the remaining debris in the hangar, was becoming restless. Finding nothing better to do, he returned to the cafeteria and ordered a salad.

There were a few more people seated around the tables now, the last of the shift finishing up their lunch-break no doubt, and Ink found himself seated opposite Nai'vares, the hulking Gradolian zealot.


After a few moments awkward silence, in which Ink painfully recalled a particular tazer-blade in the back he had received recently, he attempted to strike up a conversation:

"I don't think we've been properly introduced..."

"not we have not, I belive I need to tell you my name, correct?" said Nai'vares

"Indeed," Ink smiled dryly. It was rare that people observed social niceties in his presence. Mostly he was used to people attempting to shoot him on sight.

" I am Nai'vares, and your probaly wondering about two things, what Naboo9 ment about He knew which grox related people to trust,and why my voice is kind of... mattalic?"

"Your friend the Captain certainly seems... adamant about his judgment of character. I had assumed it to merely be a result of arrogance- the same as any other high-ranking Dark Leech I've ever met." He completely neglected to mention that said meetings, very few as they were, had usually been... short.

" no... Naboo9's not like that, shortest temper ever though, and the to my questions answer is this" said that pointing to a peice of Grox tech on his neck "Naboo's right eye was taken out bye the grox and replased as well"

ACU-X-1 entered the cafeteria and approached Ink, standing behind him, awaiting an end to the conversation he was having with Nai'Vares.

Ink was genuinely intrigued: the personnel dossier he'd read hadn't gone into much detail here... Or if it had, the badly-timed patrol he had encountered while obtaining the dossier had prevented him from getting that far.

"So you're saying the cybernetics give him some kind of... ability to tell friend from foe...?"


...The skin on the back of his neck suddenly crawled, a primal warning sign- Ink whipped round, surprised, drawing his knife in the face of ACU without thinking.

Fortunately, it was the cheap plastic knife that he had been herding his salad with. It snapped rather pathetically on meeting the AI's casing.

"kind of, althogh we are mostly immune to the grox's partial hivemind, we can still hear it around grox afflicted beings, if we can hear it, we don't trust them, if we both can't hear it in them, we trust them" said Nai'vares

Ink, hastily putting down the stump of his utensil, stopped to regain his composure and addressed ACU:

"Riiiiight... As I recall, the nearest terminal is on the edge of the training area. There was one in the south access corridor, but it's... out of order. We'll hook you up over there and take a look at what the Grox have been up to in your head..."


He turned back to Nai'vares, stood up and extended a hand to shake.

"Nice meeting you." His salad remained virtually untouched.

"Are we there yet?!" Fravini asked Naboo. "We've been walking for more than 10 minutes!"

Nai'vares shook, "same here" he said, than he left, takeing out his pocket version of Spode's Holy Word and became, as many times in the past, engrossed in the text

--------
at the enteranice to the training area...

"we just got here" replied Naboo9, getting his pass card out, then Naboo9 saw ACU and Ink, "Hi" he said, slideing his pass card through the register, than three steel Blast doors opened to show the massive room.

"Wow... Impressive arena..." Fravini said in amazement.

"indeed" said Naboo9 "and before you ask, three blast doors were nessisary" pointing twored some Dark Leech praticeing with rocket lunchers

ACU-X-1 looked at Ink. "This unit is prepared for data connection." A panel on the back of ACU-X-1's head opened and a small wire popped out. "Please attach this unit's cable to the correct port on the terminal."

Ink had the strangest feeling that he'd just met the one person on the Eliminator who wouldn't put a blade to him given half a chance... even though Nai'vares was the only one who had.

...A small electricity burn on his hip was testament to that.

((Hope you don't mind if I expand a bit on the environment. I'll remove it if you want.))

The arrangement in the training area was impressive: there was little in the way of loose equipment, but faint lines spider-webbing across the floor suggested any variety of obstacle courses, dueling cages or sports fields could be brought into existence at the touch of a button and the re-arrangement of some of the floor panels.

Currently a large section of the room was, as Fravini had said, an arena: some kind of cross between an obstacle course and dueling stage- a series of platforms of various shapes and sizes suspended at least ten meters in the air.

Even with the safety nets, it looked dangerous.


Ink quickly connected ACU to the terminal, and turned to watch Naboo and Fravini while the upload began.

After a few minutes and much silence on the part of ACU-X-1, a loud beep signified the completion of the upload. ACU-X-1's cable automatically receded back into its head. "Upload of all unblocked data and programming code is now complete."

Naboo9 walked over to a sandy area near the back were some Dark leech were chatting, "attention" Naboo9 said multiple times, but the new recrutes were talking so loud they didn't hear him, than Naboo9 took a wistel out of one of his packs and blew into it, creating a loud, high-pitched sound that got their attention

"New recruits must be chatty.." Fravini said after observing.

Ink's familiar paranoia had been twigged by something in what the automaton had said:

"All unblocked data? You mean there's-" The piercing note of the whistle sounded, derailing his train of thought momentarily.

...He decided to shelve his investigations into this new arrival's nature, resolving that this was neither the place nor the time to get bogged down in technical mumbo-jumbo.


Instead, he saved the data to an external drive, logged out of the terminal and settled down to watch the events in the training area.

((That might be all I can manage for today. ))

ACU-X-1 stated plainly, "This unit has physically coded blocks that prevent it from accessing certain functions. The code programming these blocks is also blocked by the primary code which cannot be extracted without irreversible damage to the unit."