The trip was uneventful, though the station they pull into was somewhat different that what they'd seen before. A yellow line marked a small area around the exit of the hovercar on the platform, and pylons bristling with lethal-looking barrels were situated in the four corners.

"Well, I think that answers that," Melaran tepped dryly, standing to take a look through the window and considering it.

"Yep," Tarna replied, her mental voice dripping with not-surprise. "They definitely want to defend this place, eh."

"What, not going to leap out without a care?" Melaran tepped teasingly, though definitely watchful in the event that she did do something like that. She was nothing if not a surprise to him at times.

"Now, now. I'm adventurous, not suicidal. Is there any indication of whether or not they'll shoot at us of we do? Some warning or something somewhere?" She peered about for a sign or something.

"Nothing immediately apparent," Melaran replied, adding his own eyes to the task. "Whether they have some sort of automated system to warn is another question entirely... though I'd think that yellow line would indicate there has to be something that would wait before opening fire. I hope. Provided it's not defective, broken, or otherwise murderous."

"Feel like throwing a hat over across at them and seeing if they vaporize it?" Tarna commented jokingly.

"Not particularly," Melaran replied dryly, "Since that might be seen as a hostile action which would void little things like otherwise safe zones." He hmmed thoughtfully, considering the problem, then shrugged and went to open the door. "Only one way to find out, though I think I'll move nice and slow so as not to startle anything."

Tarna climbed out as well cautiously, looking nervously toward the weaponry a bit. "Right, we're just sweet and innocent little visitors, yes... Nothing worth shooting at... uh-huh..."

Melaran chuckled softly at her, though not without a bit of nervous attention directed toward the pylons as he stopped well beyond the boundary of the line. The barrels quested in their direction, but were otherwise quiet. A voice familiar to Tarna chuckled with quiet humor over the speakers that would normally demand identification and provide the mechanical means to confirm it.

"Welcome to the command center, Tarna Tanson," came the light female voice of the Bolo. "As I expected you to seek out the communication medium I mentioned before, I have entered you and your companion in the Outpost computer system with a security clearance appropriate for gaining access to that facility. Do not fear the automated systems. They will not turn hostile so long as you remain within acceptable areas to that clearance."

Tarna relaxed somewhat at that and said, "Ah, thank you, I did not fancy too much getting shot at again."

"No worries," Victorious replied genially. "It would not have been sensible to relay that information and not provide the means to attain it. All is clear and calm at the moment, however, and I will leave you to your explorations." The voice fell silent, and while the guns continued to track their movements they didn't show any inclination to fire just now.

"I'd feel somewhat guilty about that," Melaran tepped softly, glancing upward at the source of the voice for a moment, then shaking his head as he stepped across the yellow line without incident.

"Why?" Tarna replied, heading in that way with him.

"It certainly seems to be helpful and accommodating," Melaran replied, crossing the chamber to the single door that led out from it to a long hall beyond, "and here we are working for someone that hated its creators, and ultimately looking for a way to neutralize it. That's..." he trailed off and sighed.

"Well, it's hardly its fault its creators were assholes," Tarna sent back, sighing a bit. "Let's see what we can see without getting shot at shall we?"

"Yeah..." Melaran replied, wondering when the hell the universe had decided to make the machines of this place more likeable than the people who made them, for the most part.

There were no side passages, and they passed through a number of security checkpoints without a slip or hesitation, Victorious clearly having been good to her word on that. They came to the command center after a bit, the temperature considerably cooler in here as air conditioning hummed quietly in the background, interspersed with the occasional ding and chirp of the consoles and other machines that lined the walls.

"Hmm,"' Tarna hmmed mentally, looking around the place tentatively. "Well, I'd say it looks like a control center... Imagine that, eh?"

"You're the human expert," Melaran prodded, grinning. "So make with the all-seeing, all-encompassing wisdom of your race to figure out what we need to look at here."

At the time of the Outpost's construction, the days of separate sections for the various command interfaces were obsolete. Communications, logistics, command... all of them could be handled from nearly any terminal, with minor exceptions. That one exception would be a bank of computers that was set against the far wall with a secure terminal nestled into its side. The material that the cases are made of looked remarkably like the blued metal of the Bolo...

"Hmm, interesting," Tarna mused. "What do you suppose..."

"What exactly did our guardian give you permission to do?" Melaran asked. "Precisely. We're talking about a machine, there may be a way to circumvent any complaints that might arise, or stumble across pitfalls without recognizing them."

She telepathically sent him the exact conversation which they had. "Still, machine or no, I feel like that's something more than a mere machine..."

Looking back over the conversation, Melaran made a face and nodded. "Agreed, and it was pretty damned vague about what could be done, especially with the unspecified rank we were assigned just to access this place. I think that machine's thinking waaaay outside what its creators might have originally intended."

"So... I suppose we should just see what we can see, eh? At least, hell, we can damned well rightly plead ignorance if it matters, eh?"

"And human curiosity." Melaran chuckled, his own curiosity drawn by the oddity of the terminal at the far end of the room but not willing to tempt fate quite that far yet. He crossed to sit at one of the normal duty terminals and started to take a look at what might be found.

Tarna picked one close to him and likewise started poking around. "Since we are, of course, just harmless visitors with absolutely no ulterior motive... and it's not like the humans in this galaxy are likely to come back anytime soon anyway..."

Tarna found a bit more than she might have bargained for as she poked around, the system logs having recorded a vast amount of data over the millennia and skimming past the routine brought her to an interestingly busy period. Scanning over them, she found that indeed the war the Eldest had spoken of occurred and had gotten progressively more bitter and bloody with the passage of time.

Messages became more scarce and scattered by location and timestamp, the apparent name of the Hegemony changing several times throughout and different broadcasters proclaiming command. A flurry of traffic ensues in the wake of a transmission initiating something titled Project Ragnarok, though they were ever more garbled and scattered still with the passage of time until... silence.

Her inspection also revealed something else, that the Outpost database was supposedly separate and secure from the mainframe that acted as a failsafe for the Bolo in event that it were to go rogue, which suggested a few things to her... First, it was quite likely that the machine knew nothing of events that have transpired, though it might have guessed from its own lack of communication with outside authority. The second point was a bit more puzzling, and might seem to contradict the first to a degree... if the two were truly separated, how did they gain access to this center?

"Hmm..." Tarna hmmed, reading over the data. "Curiouser and curiouser..." She relayed that over to Melaran and asked, "What're you getting over there?"

"Nothing nearly so interesting," Melaran replied. "Mostly digging through ages of protocols, history, etc. Even a reference to something that could be used to disable the Bolo..." that was edged with uncertainty and a hint of distaste, but he continued, "There's something called a TSORP, Total Systems Override Protocol, also called the Omega Worm. Apparently it could melt its core, and the means to do it is here," he finished quietly.

"I wouldn't really want to do that except as a last resort..." Tarna replied. "There must be some alternative, right?"

"I'd like to think so," Melaran replied. "Though what it is I can't even begin to guess at the moment." He sighed and returned to the task at hand, though showed a bit of interest as he ran across a subdirectory. "Here now, what's this?" Activating one of the files within at random, the main screen lit up and began replaying archived footage from the Elorai'isin/Hegemony war. "To edit?" he looked at it oddly.

"Edit? What?" Tarna wondered, not getting his meaning, looking over at it and raising an eyebrow.

The footage was extremely dramatic, apparently a battle between one of the Elorai'isin titans and a group of Bolos, most likely recorded by one of them. Bolos rained fire from their main cannons on the titan, but between its shields and armor it seemed to have little effect and it swept through them like a scythe through wheat. That changed as the Bolos adapted their tactics, however, focusing all fire on one spot simultaneously. It wasn't instantaneous but the mites dragged down the behemoth through their actions, yet clearly not without price as there was a brilliant flash from the crumbling titan and the recording ended suddenly in a flurry of static.

"What in the world..." Melaran blinked, checking the other files and finding that they contained similarly dramatic battles with various alien species.

Tarna watched, frowning, making a quiet mental commentary upon humans' lust for warfare. Perhaps they had perceived it necessary, but more likely she thought the humans were merely attempting to assert themselves over the galaxy violently.

Melaran's reaction wasn't nearly so judgmental, having arisen in a society that was dedicated to the necessities of survival at any cost... but the question ever remained what that price meant when the dark hours of that society fell upon it. Was it truly worth it in the end? Or was it merely more footage for a damned museum? He shook his head, closing out the directory and the screen returned to blank.

Tarna sighed softly and stared off. "I don't know. Maybe I'm just fortunate, having grown up somewhere pretty peaceful, even if it was a sort of enforced peace... But even the Elkandu's wars were generally brief and with little collateral damage..."

While Elkandu generally didn't care much for the lives of mensch, most generally didn't go out of their way to kill them, instead preferring to target specifically their enemies.

"It looks like the humans here weren't too concerned about that at the end, or even before then," Melaran replied disdainfully, pushing away from the terminal and standing.

The Eldar might be a violent and unforgiving race, but to stoop so low as the slaughter of worlds with no reason? Insanity beyond the reaches of Chaos! He turned to pacing to burn off the heat of anger that rose at the train of thought.

"Alright," he continued, "Back to more practical matters. We know that this Bolo... Victorious, is acting outside normal parameters. There's no way that a society who would make something like the Omega Worm standard would allow anywhere near that kind of adaptability or initiative. What does that leave us with?"

"I would guess that it's acting beyond its normal limitations and is very likely borderline rogue after ten thousand years of isolation here without any updates... I wonder if it really knows what happened out there, some way or another..."

"Considering what you found in the computer, and the supposed separation of the systems..." Melaran shrugged. "Either it knows and shut it off to preserve stability, or it very deliberately avoided anything beyond what was needed to achieve the goal it had set for itself. I could see it going either way, especially considering we're the first humans it's seen in a really long time."

"I have to wonder what sort of safeguards they might have put in in the event that they all died or something and the place was left abandoned... but knowing humans they may well have been so arrogant as to never consider the possibility, or just set it all to self-destruct or something lame like that."

"No," Melaran replied thoughtfully, looking over at the odd terminal. "That's a very good question. I can't believe that they never had a single Bolo that wasn't lost in all the time they'd used them. What happens when their commander is killed and command authority is unavailable? These humans would have accounted for that, somehow, but how and what?"

"Well, we can suffice it to say that this place could very likely kill us very quickly if we screw up too badly, but that was a given. There has to be something..."

"We could ask it... her," Melaran replied quietly, mind turning the details of what they already knew and had experienced since arriving in this sector. "Even if she refuses to answer, she can't exactly blame us for looking into the computer that she'd given us access to and finding what happened. Not that there isn't a danger in that, if she already knows and is unstable..."

"Well, we can only hope that it's a friendly, easily impressionable, likely to do what we want and not kill us sort of unstable..."

"Therein lies the potential danger," Melaran replied with a grim chuckle. "Though perhaps less so than trying our hand at the shiny armored terminal over there and being determined as hostile for it."

"Fair enough," Tarna admitted, sighing softly. "It's the closest thing we have to a lead around here anyhow, really..."

Melaran returned to the terminal he'd been at and dug through to find the files regarding TSORP again. "Wouldn't be wise to do it without a backup plan. The directions and protocols are simple enough, I'll set it up and get it ready... just in case."

"Assuming it can't somehow notice that and think that's a hostile action, too," Tarna commented, ever paranoid and pessimistic.

"All it requires at this point is a single keystroke," Melaran replied quietly, "I will execute her if it's needed. It's not like you don't have a better take on the best way to approach the female mind on this sort of thing, right?"

Tarna sighed, staring at the ground. "If it proves necessary..."

Melaran offered gentle emotional support, then gently prodded, "There's not much reason to put it off, m'lady. May as well communicate and see what can be done."

Tarna replied, "I guess..." She said aloud nervously, "Er, hello? Can you hear me, Victorious?"

"Of course, Tarna Tanson," came the immediate reply, "I have been monitoring your well-being with a subroutine since returning to active patrol. How may I be of assistance?"

"What do you know of what has happened outside this sphere since you were stationed here?" Tarna asked.

"I have received no reports of activities beyond this station since my assignment," Victorious replied. "Nor any opportunity to file a VSR with my commanding officer or other authority. Normally this would not be too highly unusual, but the substantial time which has passed has left me cause for concern."

"Yeah, about that..." Tarna said with a sigh. "I don't really think you're going to get one, either, honestly..."

"Please clarify," Victorious replied. "All channels of communication have been unresponsive, including the Dinochrome Brigade network. I have hypothesized scenarios to account for this and assigned probabilities to them, but confirmation would be most helpful."

Tarna sighed again and slowly explained all she knew of what happened outside in the intervening period.

"It is unfortunate that my highest ranking probability, on the order of niner six point two two seven proved to be the correct outcome," Victorious replied, though there's a strange hint of melancholy that the bland words did nothing to dispel. "I thank you for the updated situation report, Tarna Tanson, and regret only that I will have failed in my duty in returning you to safety beyond this facility."

"What would be the usual method for leaving this facility under normal circumstances?" Tarna asked.

"A craft would be dispatched from Control Central, located on the world orbiting this facility's star," Victorious replied. "Unfortunately, that channel of communication is also unavailable at this time."

"And what would this craft do?" Tarna wondered. "There must be some sort of teleportation system, damaged or not..."

"Control Central has access to a gateway which allows passage through the flux fields which are otherwise locked into the maintenance and usage of this sphere's operational needs," Victorious replied. "The theory surrounding the recently acquired technology is still... was still quite vague at my assignment here."

Tarna pondered thoughtfully. "So if I understand correctly, the sphere is maintained directly utilizing energy from the Ethereal Plane?"

"Cross-referencing the term to ancient and often disregarded texts," Victorious replied, "that would be an appropriate description of the basic system specifications."

"Hmm..." Tarna mused. "You may yet be able to help us, I think..."

"As the last remaining members of humanity aboard this sphere," Victorious replied softly, "and likely within a radius of several hundred lightyears, I will gladly do whatever I may to assist you so long as it does not contradict the Hegemony Central Command orders I received when stationed here."

"What were those?" Tarna wondered.

"To hold until relieved," Victorious replied simply, adding no further explanation as none was required from her perspective. The Dinochrome Brigade had taken great pride throughout the ages in obeying its orders to the last, the ancient Terran saying of 'Death before dishonor' was meaningless to them... how could it be any other way?

"...well, that's not going to happen. So you're just going to stay here indefinitely then?"

"It is nearly impossible to exterminate a spacefaring race, Tarna Tanson, even at their own hands," Victorious replied quietly. "If I must wait until my fusion core decays to see their rise once more, then I shall do so. To do anything less would dishonor the Brigade."

"Well, there might not be many around here, but there were sure plenty still where I came from... It was... another universe, effectively, another dimension, another timeline, where different things happened. There was the same Earth, that humans set out from over ten thousand years ago and colonized other planets..."

"To see once more the fire of the human race, to marvel at their ingenuity and baffle at their mistakes..." Victorious replied. "This would be a truly worthy sight to behold, yet without a countermanding order from my designated commander the last compels my diligence at this station. It is unlikely that a commander will be designated, as the means to do so are held solely within my duty station's interface. That interface may only be accessed by said commander, or the designated commander of this station with the codes encrypted to their eyes only."

A great deal more information than was required, something perhaps to give pause for thought...

"So I take it they never took into account the possibility of something like this happening," Tarna mused aloud.

"Contingencies were laid," Victorious countered. "If not for this situation specifically, but they entail human intervention and discretion to resolve."

"Like what?" Tarna wondered, attempting to inquire further in some hopes of finding a way to resolve this.

"Wait..."' Melaran tepped. "Think Eldar for a moment, m'lady. I think yon machine just gave us the keys if she did what I think she did. Let me look at the personnel rosters... Oh that sly, tricky little thing, I'd give her an edge against any Farseer when it comes to slippery logic. Tarna, in order for her to get us in here, we had to be placed on the list as official personnel and have sufficient authority to get in here. With no one else around to gainsay her, she made you the senior officer of this base, which means..." He trailed off and dug through the files some more, looking for something the machine had mentioned.

"I am not authorized to reveal contingencies emplaced by the commanding authority of the Dinochrome Brigade," Victorious replied primly.

Tarna looked over Melaran's shoulder, raising an eyebrow at what he's mentioning. "Do you suppose...?"

Melaran just grinned and poked a finger in the direction of the secured terminal, "I'll give you the access codes. They're all right here, I should have guessed when I found that damned worm so readily."

Tarna grinned faintly. "Good job. Let's see what we can manage, then?"

"Better than any other alternative by a long shot," Melaran agreed readily, meaning that even more now than before after seeing the 'machine' in action himself. Oh, how he'd hate to play a game of strategy against her. He chuckled quietly, scrolling through to find the exact sections that were relevant to what they needed to do.

Tarna rocked on her heels and watched and waited for him to find that, and likewise reminded herself never to play chess against this Bolo. Never mind the fact that she was terrible at chess anyway.

Melaran grinned over at her. "We have all that we need, go ahead and I'll read off the code to you. Once you've gain access to that system and are identified, there are verbal passwords to connect directly to Victorious herself."

He waited till she was ready at the secure terminal to relay the necessary code. Tarna nodded and goes over and proceeded to do as he instructed, mildly nervous about the entire business but considerably more relaxed about it all than when they came in here at least.

Identification verified with the terminal, Melaran proceeded to relay the next and final portion of the sequence to Tarna. "Apparently, the access code and unit signifier is 'Vicky',' he teps, 'And the password is... 'Prometheus'. She should acknowledge the signifier verbally, and the password will complete the circuit."

Tarna was highly amused at that, but restrained herself from laughing aloud, simply doing so without further comment.

"Yes, Tarna Tanson?" Victorious replied instantly as soon as she was addressed as Vicky, a low-lying note of anticipation in her tone. That note becomes brighter as the password was spoken, and she continued, "What are your orders, Commander?"

Tarna leaned over and gave Melaran a kiss, then said, "What is the overall status of this facility?"

Melaran just grinned, reaching around her waist to give a hug before returning to studying at the terminal.

Vicky replied promptly, "The Outpost is operating within niner eight point three six seven percent optimal range of specified parameters. Sector commands report that the captured Enemy nodes have gone offline, however, which is a potentially dangerous situation if they are no longer maintaining the flux fields. Control Central remains within acceptable parameters as well, as far as remote sensor data has been able to detect, although I regret that I am unable to compute a probability of specific functionality with this limited data. D.O.G.M.A. is apparently disabled, and has been since nine point one three five standard years following establishment of this facility."

"'D.O.G.M.A.'? What's that?" Tarna wondered, mentally rolling her eyes in Melaran's direction at humans' insistence at making long acronyms that spell actual words.

"The Digital Oversight and General Management Assembly," Vicky replied, "a computer constructed to act as a multi-tasking entity in order to manage the various aspects of this sphere and the sub-nodes dedicated to preserving its integrity. Its basic architecture is similar to that used in the creation of the Bolo psychotronic systems, though without the hyper-heuristic capabilities necessary for Battle Reflex status."

"And I'll presume you were talking about the Elorai'isin nodes, correct?" Tarna asked.

"Correct," Vicky replied. "The nodes were captured from similar spheres in the Elorai'isin/Human war, their central processing matrices, and were placed as part of this installation which was found abandoned two point seven five eight centuries into the conflict."

Tarna pondered pensively, and said, "Hmm..."

"My apologies, Commander," Vicky said, "But I have detected multiple signatures appearing within the space of this sphere, the massive power signatures and numbers inconsistent with any known alien race and I would suggest a probability of less than six point zero zero five percent that this is not a hostile force. The leading edge of their fleet will arrive here in thirty point niner niner two minutes. What are your orders?"