Quoted By:
“So this time, my companion holds against strain. She does not break.
The bridge display provides a window into her progress. Polymorphic subroutines evade intrusion/counter programs written to suppress earlier iterations of her splicing toolkit, tearing through the station’s management core to embed themselves into supervisory/control nodes. A flashing network map assembles itself as successive layers of station infrastructure are compromised and subverted.
Data trickles back to the RAIN, reporting comprehensive control over life support, navigation, and sensors - even the station’s sizable complement of anti-shipping missiles, their seekers ripe for IFF reprogramming.
MERRYGATE pushes the attack further. A specially written icebreaker bends local magnetic flux to implant itself into air-gapped comm transmissions. For a moment, the station opens like a door – and MERRYGATE seizes something that was very much meant to be hidden.
The RAIN’s optical feed focuses on the eastern edge of MIZAR-III’s moon, towards a sun-shaded area where the local geography is unnaturally flat. Electric flux spikes. Powdered regolith ejects skyward as a massive ring of camouflaged hatches tilt upward to expose reflective metal. Mammoth servo motors strain against inertia to bring half-kilometer long accelerator barrels in line with the dust-obscured lunar horizon.
MERRYGATE gestures.
Slowly, the railgun battery begins to rotate, overriding inbuilt safety locks to direct their monastic gaze back towards their erstwhile creators. Capacitor banks charge. Targeting lasers peer into the airless lunar night."
- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 13th, PERSONAL JOURNAL//VOICE DICTATION
>CRUISERS x2. Target two of the six cruisers guarding the planet. At this range – and with all six of the railguns providing bracketing fire – destruction of both targets is guaranteed.
>STAT-L1. Target the defensive station orbiting the L1 Lunar/Planet stable point. At this range – and with all six of the railguns providing bracketing fire – destruction of the station is guaranteed.
[MERRYGATE notes that the nuclear scuttle charge built into the railgun battery will likely be triggered by the on-station crew before you have a chance to fire another volley. However, there is always a chance…]
>ROLL 1d20, best of 3. DC: 16, 18
