[COMMWEB ACCESS DENIED]
Orders sent, carried out. None of you but CI4 will be able to access all systems until the OTP encryptions arrive. In your case, If they arrive. Time elapsed since reanimation, 510 seconds.
CI4 will keep up a low-grade comms channel open with you, encrypted to the maximum of your combined abilities. If any attempt at breaching it is detected, it will collapse and you will then be truly on your own. Assuming Flenser has been monitoring commweb activities, which it almost assuredly has, it will likely start mobilizing for physical confrontation now. Both infected CIs are equidistant from your location and so, assuming they have been able to reanimate the antigrav skimmer transports, you have about 800 seconds until they arrive, give or take 100, depending on how heavy a load they’re carrying. If they have somehow managed to break open the access locks to the Mobile Assault Synthesizer/Spearhead ships, then that means they will be within teleporting distance of you in 30 seconds. And you’ll be eradicated.
You look up to the looming, powered down shapes of the MASS ships waiting in the dais around your former stasis chamber. They should be inoperative until all CIs within a given node are linked up and given the go-ahead to follow the prime directive. One hopes Flenser hasn’t been able to get around that. No time to lose either way. You blink from stasis rack to stasis rack, bringing online as many slaved drones and semi-independent fire teams you can muster. They won’t be very many, certainly not with your power output so diminished, but needs must. You access the sensory of the scuttler repair drones and send them to power up all perimeter defenses they can. The green glow of the generators and their soundless humming permeate the vaulted underground halls that make up your demesne. Time elapsed since reanimation, 532 seconds.
You bring your personal command squad online. Monomolecular blades and the barrels of disassembler rifles and current carbines glint under your judicious glare. How smart is Flenser? How much of its own troops has it been able to bring online? Will it truly move against you? A thought occurs. CI4 seems to have been thinking along the same lines, and its access to the commweb allows it to monitor the surface indigenous species’ communications. The languages have not been decoded, but certain patterns of military movement and alarm should be fairly obvious within any language. CI4 reports no such patterns for the moment. Time elapsed since reanimation, 541 seconds.
The flesh echo of you lets out a deep breath. Either the MASS ships from the infected CIs have not been activated, or they have not been directed towards you. The work of bringing up as many defenses as your generators can reliably sustain proceeds apace. Even if you had an entire Sol Day to do this, an eternity to your senses, you would only be able to bring up an infinitesimal portion of your forces. Without explicit activation orders from a parent node and with your own node’s systems scrambled, that is as best as you can do. You are unsure if Flenser is working under the same limitations. Even if it is operating under the same restraints as you (a very low probability), it would still outnumber you 2 to 1.
If you are to survive a concerted assault, you need to outwit it. And to outwit it, you need information. If you jury-rigged a cloaked skimmer with just sensor drones and send it out to scout, you may well be able to detect the enemy before it reaches you. Equally possibly it has thought the same thing, or has already set up ambush positions of its own, in which case your skimmer may end up destroyed or, worse, compromised. You can change the cloaking algorithm should that happen, but if it’s compromised fast enough you might never notice it happening. You might be caught unawares. Besides, there are other, cruder preparations you can take. Time elapsed since reanimation is 542 seconds. It appears you have some time to think.
What would you like to do?
1) Send scout skimmer out
2) Don’t send scout skimmer out
Choose any number of the following, any option that gets 5+ votes will be implemented. Some may not harmonize well.
A) Rig the habitat-to-habitat tunnels to collapse. This will make your counteroffensive much harder, but it will slow enemy movement.
B) Divert all attempts from bringing troops online to awakening one of the dormant MASS ships. It’s a long shot, but an overwhelming advantage should you accomplish it. CI4 and your own q-core can aid you in this endeavor.
C) Overload the generators and bring out from stasis the Walker Assault Units. You have nowhere near enough computational capacity to orchestrate their movements with any precision, but their in-built semi-independent AIs should be competent enough to prove a deterrent to Flenser. However, this will hamper any future generator use until they are repaired.
D) CI4 is able to infiltrate the planetary communications network of the indigenous species. Should it falsify distress signals coming from certain points along the enemy’s route towards you (the points closer to the surface), this may well deflect the attack completely. But should Flenser fail to completely annihilate the groups coming to investigate these signals, you will have just revealed your presence in this planet, which will hamper your ultimate mission no small amount.
E) Rig your own habitat’s holding structures to collapse. This will cause extensive system damage but will not destroy the Core Intelligence, and it may well prevent any direct attack for some time. Of course, digging yourself out will be no small matter…