-You do find a terminal-
-Keyboard and monitor-
-Naturally, the monitor is blank and there isn't even a "monitor powered off" light-
edited 22nd Aug '17 3:16:01 PM by SpartyMcFly
"Seven is here too, dressed like the concept of choosing clothes that look nice together was an arcane secret far beyond their grasp."-Janes enters the room and looks at the server rack-
Janes: Nonsense! This is... I'm pretty sure this is it. This is what we came here to find.
edited 22nd Aug '17 3:28:13 PM by SpartyMcFly
"Seven is here too, dressed like the concept of choosing clothes that look nice together was an arcane secret far beyond their grasp."-Janes scratches his head-
Janes: Well... uh, that isn't the control network thing. We'd... we'd be pretty stupid if that server rack was controlling all of the robots and we didn't take an axe to it.
But I can tell you what that actually is. It's our malware storage server.
"Seven is here too, dressed like the concept of choosing clothes that look nice together was an arcane secret far beyond their grasp."Janes: The first couple Vulture expeditions into the city you're going to head into ended with heavy casualties. We knew to sneak around, use suppressed weapons, don't make waves, but the machines are machines. Very, very thorough. Stealth alone wasn't going to cut it; we needed another edge. Fortunately, we hav...
...
sorry, had... several programmers on staff, and they were able to help us out. They were able to make malware for us that gives us a few nifty little tricks, hacking into the system they have. We weren't able to just make it shut down, though. The defense network has way more computing power than we did. If we tried something brazen like a full-scale shutdown, it would probably have counterhacked and fried the entire colony, then dropped a nuke on it.
So we came up with a few nifty tricks. Nothing ballsy, just subtle stuff. Malware with specific functions; make a patrol ignore us for a few seconds, deploy some bollards to impede a vehicle... Small enough that whatever's controlling the 'bots doesn't immediately notice, but impactful enough to keep Vultures alive in situations we ought to have died in.
edited 22nd Aug '17 3:42:09 PM by SpartyMcFly
"Seven is here too, dressed like the concept of choosing clothes that look nice together was an arcane secret far beyond their grasp."-Janes begins working out how to move the server rack-
Janes: -to Lovisia- Yeah.
We came up with something pretty impactful. Probably the perfect piece of combat malware, at least, so far as we're concerned. Alarm Stopper. Spoofs "all clear" calls and jams outgoing alarm signals. In theory, it would have let us engage in as many firefights as we wanted without real repercussion. In pratice, though...
The defense network doesn't notice the hacks immediately, but when it does it's fast to patch them out. Which means silver bullets like this one we have to save for a rainy day. It takes a hell of a long time to get something as complex as a combination spoof/jam program that can infect nearby combat robotics of a specific type functional. Re-engineering it to use a different vulnerability so that it'll remain effective? Takes even longer. Which meant that most of the time, Vultures used cheaper, less effective tricks. We had to.
But as far as I'm concerned? It's a pretty damn rainy day outdoors. And if you guys are going to neutralize those robots, you're going to need that silver bullet.
edited 22nd Aug '17 3:47:10 PM by SpartyMcFly
"Seven is here too, dressed like the concept of choosing clothes that look nice together was an arcane secret far beyond their grasp."Janes: -to Lovisia- You guys have a robot or two, right?
I'm gonna get this server rack powered on. Then one of the robots can copy it to themselves and act as a "host" for it. No negative side effects for whatever's hosting the virus - we set it so it only targets specific machines for specific radio actions, so it shouldn't hurt anyone.
That, or if you guys are skittish about the prospect - understandably so - I could steal somebody's personal electronics, put it on that, and give it to you.
edited 22nd Aug '17 3:56:11 PM by SpartyMcFly
"Seven is here too, dressed like the concept of choosing clothes that look nice together was an arcane secret far beyond their grasp."

-Well, it's certainly very well intact. There's a bit of dust on it and it appears well-used, but if this is indeed what Janes is looking for, it's one of the few things in the remains of this colony that managed to survive the attack unscathed-
-That, and it looks like it's faster than most of the other computers from back home-
"Seven is here too, dressed like the concept of choosing clothes that look nice together was an arcane secret far beyond their grasp."