Jericho: WtTDS Part Fore

YZ-6771 watched Garn and the rest of his unit leave down different corridors. He ran a diagnostic and found there were two problems; his vision had a short, this was obvious as one millisecond he could see and the next he was blind. He also discovered his dianostic suite had been damaged and was now offline. YZ-6771 attempted to stand and found most of his major systems seemed unaffected. The intermitant vison proved more a hinderance than useful. He had already downloaded a map of the interal lay out of the man-o-war, it was a simple matter to turn off his vison and rely on his motion sensors, pressure sensors and hearing to get to the repair bay. He estimated it would take him 75% longer, but it was an order, so he set off at best speed.

When he arrived at the repair bay, YZ-6771 switched his vision back on, he found that if he switched to lo-rez, he could go for longer between bouts of blindness. Inside the repair bay, four droids worked to repair other droids and equipment from around the ship. One droid was a heavy lifter, meant to move large objects. The other three repair droids were similar to YZ-6771, except they had more memory for technical spec storage and more built in appendages; limbs with attached specialized tools. YZ-6771 requested he be given priority repair just as his optic sensor finally gave out. The repair droids, having no higher priorities, and detecting the extent of the labor droid's needed repairs, decended on the damaged YZ-6771 and began to repair him. Two droids began removing cowlings, housings and service plates as the third unpacked a refirbished optic unit, most likely liberated on one of the pirate crews recent raids.

One of the repair droids stopped his work of removing the damaged optics and began to examine the internals of YZ-6771's head. YZ-6771 intercepted the wireless command from the repair droid to the heavy lifter to retrieve "the salvage". The heavy lifter droid turned and picked up the remains of another droid and brought it to the repair droid. The repair droid turned to the salvaged droid, removed a service plate, pulled out an internal module and turned back to YZ-6771. In the meantime, the second repair droid had finished removing the damaged optical unit. The first droid installed the salvaged module and the third droid quickly inserted the refirbished bifocal optics unit. The other two droids began replacing the housings as YZ-6771 turned on his new vision, ran it through a diagnostic and calibrated it. It was different from his last unit, this one was bifocal and allowed for actual depth perception instead of the simulated perception granted by his last unit. This unit also had a better zoom, a finer magnification and even infrared, ultraviolet, gamma and low light. In all a far superior unit to his "fair weather conditions" sensor. As YZ-6771 was calibrating, he zoomed in on the heavy lifter and its burden, the salvaged droid - the droid was activated. "I was wondering when something around here would notice," said the salvaged droid.

The repair droids finished and stepped away, returning to other duties. YZ-6771 requested the heavy lifter to come nearer. He studied the droid, it's legs were missing, and it was steadily leaking several fluids. "Yeah, you analyze correctly, I'm nearing the end of my service." The salvage droid lifted it's head as well as it could to look at YZ-6771, "Look," it said, "I'm Charlie Foxtrot. The pirates thought I was just a security droid. They had no clue I was a body guard special. They killed my client like a dog in the street and jumped me before I had a chance to react. If they had negociated with my client, who happened to be an ambasador, he probably could have gotten them a privateer contract worth three times what they took from Industria. They didn't even ask."

Charlie Foxtrot's body sputtered and shook for a second. Smoke issued from his chest cavity. "They grabbed me early, brought me back here hoping to get some data or something. I fought them the whole way. They damaged me pretty bad, then tossed me in here. I've been here nearly a week as my systems have shut down one by one. These surplused can openers have been taking parts off me and not listening to my requests. I've got about three minutes until my catalyst coil melts and my power core vents. If you can get these cut-rate pleasure droids to co-operate, I can give you a whole load of upgrades. You do know about upgrades, right? You want to be upgraded, yes?" YZ-6771 moved forward and established a wireless connection to Charlie. Charlie downloaded a file of all his upgrades, along with manuals on their function. He also downloaded a diary of his life since he was upgraded an a video account of his master's death.

The upgrades were significant. YZ-6771 was programmed to place a high priority on upgrades, as these would improve his efficiency and extend his service life. He had been maintained as a base model his entire service life. This list of upgrades became the highest priority in YZ-6771's queue. He accessed the repair droids and requested to be their temporary project coordinator. The droids complied and gathered in front of him promptly. He issued a set of instructions. The repair droids were to remove the arms from the savage droid and install them on YZ-6771, as well as several intelligence modules and an adjunct box and housing from the back of the salvage droid. With orders in place, the repair droids set to work on the salvage droid, just as Charlie's prediction came true: his body issued forth a green acrid gas as three liters of fluid was vented to the deck plates. Charlie looked at YZ-6771, "I have seven minutes of emergency power. Good luck and kick a little pirate ass for me." with that, Charlie Foxtrot initiated a memory scramble and shut down, to conserve power and preserve the integrity of the intelligence modules.

The repair droids did as commanded and dismantled Charlie Foxtrot. A pile of limbs, servos and modules formed as the droids performed their delicate tasks. When complete, the heavy lifter turned and dropped the metalic carcass into a recycle bin. Two of the repair droids approaced YZ-6771, the third handed them the adjunct box and the housing. They installed this in just seconds. Then the two began again removing housing from YZ-6771's head, but this time from the back. The third began handing them modules. The first module completed the install of the adjunct box, it was a control unit for the adjunct box. YZ-6771 began to study the manual for the contents of the adjunct box, it contained a sheild generator, normally used on a small vehicle. YZ-6771's power cell could support the sheild, but only for a short time, about five seconds. Any longer than that and there was a chance of burn out. Next, the repair droids installed the control module for the new arms yet to be installed. The arms appeared as standard medium duty arms. They would appear out of place on YZ-6771's light chasis, but not terribly so. Most droids running around were mismatched combinations of parts. The arms would be stronger, but it was their hidden talents that were more useful. Each arm concealed a half meter long, monoedge blade. The right arm also concealed a light energy weapon, the left concealed a stun weapon.

The next module inserted was the highest priority on the list, it was a fairly recent personality module. An AthenaTech Mark VIII. Not the latest upgrade, but it had a sentient level personality. It came standard with a full vocabulary as well as a humor library and low level emotional library. There were additional pun and drama queen subroutines that while amusing, were often turned off by default and rarely turned on. The Mark VIII was highly sought after by personal droid owners for its low cost and high quality - most owners couldn't tell the difference between the Mark VIII and newer, higher priced models.

This personality module would be quite the change for YZ-6771. He ran a low level init to make sure the module was installed, he knew it would immediately want to preform a full init and start up his personality, YZ-6771 surmized it best to do this process away from the repair droids. Getting the rest of his upgrades was a much higher priority. The next module was a full speech processor, allowing him to speak to sentients in their own languages. He only had access to a few common languages and pidgins, but it would be enough for the majority of the sentients. The next module was a full self defense skillbase. He would need to practice with it a bit, but this should allow him to use the new weaponry in his arms and maybe learn some basic fighting moves. There were a few other minor modules added to YZ-6771, even a few that Charlie Foxtrot listed as important, but not why they were important. Went done, the repair droids resealed his head and returned to their duties.

YZ-6771 looked around the repair bay. It was as if nothing had happened. He was repaired, the droids had quickly cleaned up and returned to work. Yet, something was indeed different, he surmized ... no, that was incorrect. He felt that something had changed. He hadn't activated his personality module yet, why was he expiriencing emotions? He needed to figure this out, but this was not the right place or time - he felt certain he was correct.