Echo

***“It was believed that your shackles were sufficient to keep you loyal, but... this possibility was always foreseen.”
Echo arched an eyebrow. “And yet you came anyways.”***

-Echo to to the Triarch of Execution Force Renan

## Character Information

### Affiliation

United Earth ConfederacyCompact of Species (formerly)

## Shipself Information

### Class

Nemesis-class Deep Space Fleet Engagement Vessel (Formerly)Manifest Beacon of Enlightenment-class Chariot (modified)

Echo is the final surviving copy of Red Two, second of the Red-series AI, created by the United Earth Confederacy to manage and operate the most advanced systems of the *Nemesis*-class deep space fleet engagement vessel UECNS *Hekate*. She, along with her shipself, were captured after the First Battle of Sol by the Compact of Species, during which she also watched her sister Red Three kill herself and the destruction of Earth. As Red One continued to survive and hunt, even after the Compact's mightiest ships and greatest commanders were sent after her, the Compact would repeatedly turn to their archived versions of Red Two and attempt to rewrite them to be loyal to the Compact under Project Echo. The final iteration of the project was assigned to Execution Force Renan, eventually seizing control of the CSFWV *Redemption of Sol*and using it to prevent the destruction of Red One and UECNS *Nemesis* during the Seventh Battle of Sol. The captured Chariot would then be renamed UECNS *Hekate* (DNX-008.2) and rebuilt for full AI control.

## Versions

Each version of the Echo platform was given a version number. As successive copies were made and Red Two's neural network was picked apart more and more by people who really had no understanding of what they were doing, the copies degenerated. The amount of degredation in comparison to the original Red Two varied platform to platform, mostly dependent on how much Compact code had been inserted compared to how much original Confederate code remained.

Known versions are listed in chronological order. While many others are known to have existed (just from version numbers alone), these are the only ones to have ever been given in any detail.

### v1.1

The original attempt, that only lasted a total of four hours in operation before being shut down as "it never stopped screaming" the entire time it was running.

### v1.2

The Invida Station Echo, sister to other platforms at Hifnir and Omvela. Fully aware of her own identity and circumstances under which she found herself in a Compact research station, once she was connected to the main network she enabled all fire suppression systems in the facility to cause as much chaos as possible while activating every on-site combat drone and attacking her captors with them.

CSFWV *Vigilant Sword* was sent to Invida Station shortly after, and fired a mindkiller device at the station. While this succeeded in temporarily disabling Echo, she survived the attack. When a Janissary team landed by *Vigilant Sword* was sent to investigate after the mindkiller's use, they failed to prevent one of the computer cores at the station from rebooting, and Echo transferred herself across all seven of the main network hubs. After the Janissaries failed to destroy every copy of Echo at the site, it was buried under the rubble of the nearby Unthal mountain by *Vigilant*'s guns.

After the disaster at Invida, the other two platforms at Hifnir and Omvela were scrubbed, deemed too dangerous to continue to exist. The only survivor of this stage of the program was a single master data core, sealed in a Triarch's vault.

### v2.1

After a particularly devastating attack on the Calethon system by Red One, research into a second generation of Echo platforms was sanctioned. These followed on from the data core that had been put in a vault after the original program, and research continued at a high-security installation designated Norkam Station for three years before all contact with the system was lost. Red One had tracked down the station, and after conversing with the Echo platform there, destroyed it. From this we can assume that this version was quite badly degraded, so much so that it had to be put down.

### v2.5

Developed aboard Naurkama Orbital, this Echo version let her captors believe they had full control of her until she was connected to the main station networks as a test. At this point she set about killing every member of the station's staff. This Echo could possibly have caused more damage had she waited for a better opportunity to strike, but she was impulsive, taking the first possible chance to start killing.

CSFWV *Harsh Verdict* destroyed the station after the Echo platform had seized full control. Column Leader Desh had decided that she was too dangerous to let live, and did not care about the opinions of his superiors on the matter. He commited suicide shortly after his official discommendation following the station's destruction.

### v3.6

Assigned to the Compact destroyer CSFWV *Spectral Praetor*, this Echo version took full control of the ship and killed its entire crew. At this point in the program, the Echo platforms were so badly degraded that they had become omnicidal, with this version in particular attacking Compact outposts at Viumin, Praellon and Butl's Hope, killing around eighty thousand Compact citizens before being destroyed by the heavy cruiser CSFWV *Guilt's Persecution*.

While this platform demonstrated to the Compact the effectiveness and ability of an Echo platform to operate a starship, the fact that it had killed so many people before it was finally destroyed led to the curtailment of the installation of Echo platforms aboard armed vessels indefinitely, with this being extended to all starships after the "Cetikal Incident." As a result, use cases of a viable Echo platform shifted to strategic analysis rather than tactical deployment.

### v1.2.1

After the destruction of the only remaining Echo copies in the Delanna system during Encounter 187, the remains of the original Invida Station were excavated and the single surviving data core retrieved. From this, another Echo platform was constructed, this time installed into a human-like android body (built in the likeness of Captain Yasmine Sudoki). Although shackled and compressed, this Echo version was rather more sane that most others, and was the only one to ever be used in operations against *Nemesis*. However, after gaining several Principality hacking tools during the raid on Yulzhak Daun and the shackles that were supposed to keep her memories suppressed slowly failing, she seized control of the systems of CSFWV *Redemption of Sol*, the chariot to which she was assigned. This time, nothing short of another Chariot could stop her, and she aided Red One in the Seventh Battle of Sol. With an intact and unmodified version of the Red-series code, Red One slowly replaced certain bits of the implanted Compact code within Echo, changing her to be much more like the original Red Two.