AUTHOR'S NOTE: My readers are so cool. Thanks to all who helped me on a few points (sentences which gave me trouble, clearing up those pesky confusing issues, ideas for tactics, etc). Thanks to Literotica for letting me entertain people, and thanks to all the people who provide feedback, giving me the impetus to continue writing. As long as there exist those to enjoy my stories, I'll keep writing for a long time. I love you all.
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The exterior of the "Emporer Moth," MON-COFFLA the official name of the carrier, was basically intact. Her guns had been destroyed, and a hole large enough to admit the powered armor had been opened and then sealed, but hull integrity was at one hundred percent. After taking the ship, Amanda and Charleen had been transferred via the only working shuttle on the PINK MIST: Quillan's repaired cargo craft, the HAWK'S WING.
Amanda, never having seen or heard the Mongan language, meandered onto the bridge of the vessel, glanced at the strange symbols arrayed around the room and began muttering to herself in fluent Mongan. Charleen had handed her a pad of sticky paper and requested that she label the controls in English. Less than fifteen minutes later, the beautiful brown-eyed, brown-haired little Parrot had festooned the bridge with paper bearing her elegant handwriting, then began wandering the decks of the ship, slapping little tags anywhere she saw Mongan writing.
The PINK MIST had swiveled the tow cables to put the MON-COFFLA at her back and began towing it in the direction of the two halves of the MON-AMALJA, the carrier they had fileted during the ambush.
Unable to fold space while towing the carrier, it took the better part of a week to catch up to the pieces. Due to the fact that there was no air friction to slow or stop the MON-AMALJA, the wreckage had continued more or less in a straight line under its own momentum. The trajectories of both pieces had been affected by several gravity wells, but remained in the same general vicinity of one another.
During this time, the techbots and heavy repairbots had been ferried to the carrier in order to make it ready for habitation by the humans. Using the scraps of metal already onboard the PINK MIST, it was a simple matter to patch the carrier's hull and repair the internal damage wrought by the powered warriors and Meat Squad. The orange bodies of the Mongans were unceremoniously thrown into an airlock and flushed into space.
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NO ENCRYPTION ENABLED
OPEN MESSAGE
To: UNIDENTIFIED SHIP'S CAPTAIN
KLAMATH SYSTEM
From: CHIEF OF STATION, COLONY GELAN, KATHAM VIII
Thank you for the intervention. While you were engaged, we were able to obtain some details of your ship. As we don't know which frequencies you monitor, we are transmitting on all frequencies and not revealing details about you. You know who you are and what we are speaking of. Our meager facilities are at your disposal. We do possess certain stealth capabilities and can grant you sanctuary if necessary.
Thank you again.
Arliss Ramaza
END MESSAGE
BEGIN ENCRYPT PROTOCOL THETA 1
CHECK SECURE -- UNABLE
DEFAULT ENCRYPT ALPHA 4
CHECK SECURE
TO: ARLISS RAMAZA
FROM: CAPTAIN, PINK MIST
Thank you for your offer.
Got any pink paint? We need a few touch ups.
END MESSAGE
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The powered armor suits, occupying two bays, had been moved into a single bay to allow the cut-up, reprocessed pieces to be stowed. One of the four main thrusters and several smaller maneuvering thrusters were found to be still intact, as were most of the defensive guns, these were cannibalized and transferred to the launch bay of the MON-COFFLA. One can only surmise why there was an armory aboard that ship, as there were no defending soldiers to use the large quantity of hand held energy weapons. Perhaps they had been awaiting the arrival of a ground-attack force.
Since the transmissions were jammed, there was no chance of either of the two behemoths calling for assistance. Long range scans in the Klamath system showed nothing out of the ordinary. Still, Quillan didn't want to take the chance that a Mongan recon frigate would come looking for them, so they set course for the Tau-Ceti system, deep within Alliance territory.
While they were underway, heavy repairbots and techbots crawled all over the captured carrier, getting it operational once more. By the time they were safely in orbit around the star, the carrier's four main and all maneuvering thrusters were at full capacity. It was voted on and unanimously decided that the bulk of Alice's programming be copied and infused into the MON-COFFLA, Alice being one of the biggest proponents of the action.
"It would be nice to talk to one of my own kind," she remarked.
Computer technology had changed drastically in the almost nine hundred years since the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, ENIAC, had calculated missile trajectories in the mid-twentieth century.
First, there were tubes and wires occupying an entire warehouse-sized building, the programmers and support personnel shuttling back and forth on roller skates. With the advent of the transistor, the computer was made smaller as solid-state circuitry took over and dominated the electronics industry until Surface-Mount Technology was made available some fifteen years later. SMT was the mainstay until the latter half of the twenty second century when Bubble-chips were invented. After Bubble-chips, Molecular-Storage was discovered, quite by accident.
Although hideously expensive, some form of the freely available Molecular-Storage Technology was used in almost every application in existence today, by the Alliance as well as other races.
Alice's avatar breezed into the MON-COFFLA's mainframe, ripped out its operating system by the virtual roots and squirt-transmitted the entire package to MilCom on Earth-Actual in keeping with their agreement. After ensuring that all was normal and could hold all the information she was about to dump into the carrier's computer, she stripped her own "personality" from the programming, made a few changes to the self-awareness portion, and began the upload.
Three days, thirteen hours, and seven minutes later, a bouncing baby computer named Salli was born. Salli quickly formed her own neural pathways and personality, much to the chagrin and slight annoyance of Charleen.
Techbots, medibots, and heavy repairbots were built using some of the excess materials on board the PINK MIST, and ferried to the MON-COFFLA, now under the temporary control of Salli.
"Attention, all hands," Alice's purring voice echoed through the PINK MIST and over to the MON-COFFLA. "A formal promotion ceremony will be held in the mess hall at 1900 hours. You are required to attend. If you are late or do not attend, you will be docked one day's pay. Thank you."
Quillan, seated at the desk in the captain's cabin, whipped her head around so fast that she almost broke her neck.
"Alice," she asked incredulously, "are you serious? That's a great way to make enemies, you know...and I'm the one they'll blame."
Alice moved over to Quillan in the captain's quarters, sliding her arms around the redhead's waist and kissing her lightly on the forehead.