EiS Log 8

Exile in Syberia
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Unit Log, VeeMech TDR-1-74-01107C-J
Date 3018-07-16 12:21:34, Log Entry 8
The first order of business for Operation "What the Hell Am I Doing?" was to continue digging out Firebase 74 Alpha, the outpost I'd been found in. The AutoBoPs had barely begun to explore the outpost when they'd found me, and had only made limited strides since. I hadn't been hard to find, practically left just past the entryway, at the end of a short alcove or passage that you went through before you entered the base proper.
It turns out that it was a combination of dumb luck and Glyph's single-minded determination that my little bunker had even been discovered. Glyph had, a century ago, discovered mention of this outpost in the shipping manifests stored on a computer at another, larger facility, with only the vaguest mention of its location. It'd taken her this long to find the outer doors, which were semi-recessed into a hillside and disguised.
Part of the problem, I suspected, was that this whole "Firebase 74 Alpha" seemed like it had been kludged together, and as a result had deteriorated over the past couple centuries. This wasn't one of those classic Star League bases or caches you hear about, where everything's pristine and perfect. Well, I shouldn't say that - I bet some of the Castles Brian in the Terran Hegemony ended up a little beat up, too, after the Amaris Coup and the First Succession War.
So far, my fellow AutoMechs hadn't needed to do much in the way of digging. The room, really closer to a small hangar, I'd been found in was completely clear, and a small storage area off of it where my old chassis was had only been partially obscured. One of the other storage areas had been the source of my terminal, where I was reminded once again at how rusty my UNIX skills are. Trying to get more information about the layout of the base's network made me want to disembowel myself with a rusty chipmunk. The good news is somehow I'd managed to figure out how to activate the base wireless network, and get it to connect to my HUD, which was good, and meant I didn't have to be connected via hardline all the time. The bad news is I hadn't managed to get much farther than that. I could tell there were other sections of the base but, for some reason, I was still locked out of them.
Beyond the small section we'd managed to uncover, though, Firebase 74 Alpha was a train wreck of collapsed ceilings and walls that led into the rest of the base. 'Mech hands are decent enough for combat engineering work and clearing some debris, but more specialized tools were needed, which we didn't have. So Glyph had called in some help: a ConstructionMech named Ripley.
Yeah, believe it or not.
Ripley was a lot like Glyph: no-nonsense and, evidently, another archaeologist. She appeared to be some variation of the CON-series Carbine ConstructionMech, driven by a fusion reactor instead of an ICE engine. Unlike the rest of us, she couldn't transform, but I don't think she really cared. She was intensely focused on three things:
1. Digging out the collapsed passageways to the rest of the base to find out what was on the other side.
2. Not collapsing the ceiling down on top of us while she did this.
3. Finding out everything she could about the Terran Hegemony operations on Syberia.
Also like Glyph, I suspect that I was a great disappointment to Ripley. In addition to my general ineptitude and my failures to get much out of the base computer, I remembered plenty about the Terran Hegemony, just not about the Hegemony here, which is what Glyph and Ripley were mainly concerned about. Whatever I learned in my previous incarnation was gone, or locked away, and the book I remember from my universe just didn't go that in-depth, and what I did know about the Hegemony wasn't terribly useful. I mean, here's an example:
Me: "...so after Simon Cameron died, his son Richard was still a child, and too young to take the throne, so the Council appointed General Kerensky as his regent, to represent his interests, and prepare him for the throne until he was old enough."
Glyph: "What do you mean by too young?"
Me: "Well, he was a child. He didn't have the life experience to rule yet, and wasn't considered old enough to make decisions for himself, let alone the Star League. I mean, he was seven when his dad died. He had another eleven years before he'd even be considered an adult. That's why General Kerensky was appointed his regent."
Ripley: "If General Kerensky was competent to rule in his stead, why did they not simply make General Kerensky the new Director-General and First Lord?"
Me: "Because they were technically hereditary titles, even if they were approved of by the Hegemony's High Council."
Ripley: "But they approved Stefan Amaris as...Emperor, correct?"
Me: "Well, yeah, but that's not First Lord or Director-General, and they didn't want to be shot."
Glyph: "This is completely illogical."
So, yeah, as far as the Archaeological Duo were concerned, I knew everything about nothing, but nothing about anything important.
The good news is we're close, though. Ripley expects she'll break through today, at least enough for us to be able to see past the blockage, even if we can't get through yet. Glyph is out patrolling, and keeping an eye out for another Beetle-class AutoMech by the name of Manx, who's supposed to help guard this outpost. Meanwhile, I'm taking a break from tilting at UNIX windmills, hanging out near the door, and hoping Ripley breaks through soon, because it would be a hell of a lot better than tangling with those damned computers again. Nearly anything would be better than trying that again.
I shouldn't have said that. Should not have said that.
I just heard this on my short-range UHF from Glyph: {"Groundwave, Spanner, deploy immediately. Manx was spotted, and is being pursued."}
See what I mean?
[End Log Entry 8]
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