A/N
Hello, guys! So I did something interesting for this chapter... Let me know what you think. I'll go into more detail in a note at the bottom of the page. And yes, Pak Pak is the actual Neimoidian Language. Look it up.
Thank you so much for reading!
Starship sensors are incredible devices.
They can detect a change in temperature as small as a tenth of a degree, they can track your location simply by the minute change in atmospheric pressure that comes with movement. Blaster fire is like a flare gun in an open field, and don't even think about lighting a fire.
All of this doesn't, of course, mean that they don't have weaknesses.
Part of the training regimen for an active ISB field agent naturally included methods to disrupt and confuse shipboard sensors. It would be foolish not to, considering the amount of time most would be spending on capital ships. A solid number of these techniques were designed to trick the sensors into thinking you were someone else, maybe altering body chemistry in order to be read as a different species. All of those would, unfortunately, be worthless on a ship with only one life form.
Dence would just have to improvise.
Probably the biggest giveaway to the sensors, in this case, would be body heat. A lone human against a backdrop of metal, durasteel, and more metal would readily stand out. There were a few methods of disrupting this, and blending in. He could go hide amongst some large heat source, but the closest that would be sufficient was a full six decks down. A bit of a stretch.
So Dence did the next best thing. He brought the heat to him.
Starships, naturally, require heat to sustain life. Without sufficient heat (or too much), any crew would either be wearing pressure suits or have some serious trouble flying. On Imperial (and former Republic) vessels, heat was distributed via simple radiators located at strategic locations throughout the ship. It was a surprisingly simple system. And Dence was willing to bet it was similar on the old Trade Federation vessels.
It took several minutes to locate the appropriate maintenance panel. The patrolling droids didn't help with that much. But he did find it, in the end.
After pulling down on the quick release, the panel popped off easily. Setting it aside, he peered in.
And, surprisingly quickly, found himself at a loss.
The writing on the various controls and switches was all in Pak Pak. It made sense it would be in the native Neimoidian language. It was, after all, a Neimoidian ship. But he had expected at least a rudimentary translation to be provided.
The ISB training hadn't delved much into language. In most cases, everyone who might be involved would be speaking Galactic Basic. Having to deal with another language altogether was rare, unless one was venturing into Wild Space, or the Unknown regions. Most agents wouldn't be heading there, and so the topic was mostly skimmed over in training.
Agents were, however, given rudimentary language lessons in most major trade languages. Dence wasn't entirely certain why Pak Pak qualified as a trade language, considering it was used almost exclusively by Neimoidians, but in this case he was eternally grateful.
Basic language skills did not directly translate into linguistic prowess, of course. Though right now he would settle for a simple translation.
Glancing over his shoulder every few seconds, Dence got to work. He only knew around half of the words thrown at him, but he didn't need a perfect translation. Just something related to heat.
The top seemed a good place to start. First command: Activot forz fawa. Something about force fields, probably activation. Below the little switch was a dial, with numbers ranging from one to ten. Likely field strength.
To the right of that was small, grey button, label reading Con'franc Rum Kompaktar. Why there was a trash compactor for what appeared to be a conference room, Dence would never know.
In the center of the panel, a whole block of text was pasted on top of a black and white background. It appeared to be some kind of legal notice. Dence wasn't positive.
Wahnin! Ekipment revy dan'grus. Mind yo hyead! Da Trad Fedarashun eez nut reponsable fur d'mage er deth. Consulta yo cohort befer opareshun. Donc chooze dis penel. Warenti vod eef bwasta chozt. Ranka yu.
And so it continued. Dence had the good fortune of finding something related to het after just 30 seconds of searching. It was a little black nob, almost identical to the ones used on the Imperial vessels. In fact, it was identical, except for the language it was written in. Thank the force for universal heating systems.
Cranking the heat up to 37 degrees, or about the human body temperature, he could almost immediately feel the difference. Every second, about a degree of heat seemed to be added to the deck. In under a minute, he would be invisible to the heat sensors.
Grievous would probably try to fiddle with the heat for awhile, then switch over to a more direct form of observation. But so long as he didn't fire off any blasters, he should be nearly invisible.
Next up, he needed to get to a computer terminal. Preferably one that directly linked to the central brain core, but could make do with a standard one. The nearest one, as far as he knew, was around the corner, down the hallway, and the second-to-last door on the right.
Peering slowly around the corner, the coast looked clear. No droids in sight. At the very least, he had a few seconds. So he ran.
At this point the ambient temperature was at least thirty degrees, and still climbing. The heaters, it appeared, worked very fast. It had been all of 20 seconds since he set them to work. The temperature had doubled in that time. Honestly, if he weren't so busy trying not to die, Dence would have taken some time to figure out how the engineers did that.
He made it down the hallway without incident. No droids were present for once. Really, he was quite lucky. There had almost always been at least one smallish patrol of droids down every hallway.
The sprint down the hall took all of six seconds. Six seconds of running in an atmosphere rapidly approaching the human body temperature. Have you every tried running in extremely heated conditions? Even if for just a few seconds, it drains you. The heat, and the humidity, if present, can sap the strength of the strongest person. Then, if you're really insane, try running it in a military uniform. It's no fun, to be sure.
So Dence found himself slightly embarrassed to be somewhat out of breath, at a sprint that would normally be easy. There was no one around to see it, at least. As he slid into the room, no droids appeared. It was surprisingly quiet, if you disregarded the panting ISB agent in the doorway.
This room happened to be used for life support maintenance, before the living crew had been ejected into space when Grievous captured it. Now it appeared to be functioning as a makeshift storage facility. Either way, it was empty, aside from a small box in the corner and the computer terminal itself.
Speed was key here. As soon as he started entering commands into the computer, it would check for authorization. If Grievous had any brains at all, he would have revoked his access codes before trying to kill him. He could expect, at best, 25-30 seconds. Better make the most out of it.
Step one. Deactivate internal and external sensors. Easy enough, just send them into a maintenance cycle.
Step two. Remove the lockdown on the hangar bay, if possible. If unsuccessful, he would just take an escape pod.
Step three. Escape. Alive, preferably.
"Computer?"
"Voice analysis confirmed. Hello, Pollus."
That wasn't a standard ship's computer. That was a voice Dence had only ever heard once before, and that was at a technology exhibition. This ship had a SAL unit.
The ship's Sentient ALgorithmic computer, or SAL as it was more commonly called, a sentient onboard computer. For the most part it ran in the background, monitoring ships functions and all that. It would, occasionally, talk directly with the crew if it was required, or if it was just curious or bored.
What surprised Dence wan't that the ship's computer was sentient. The technology had been around for years. Just look at the trillions of arguably self-aware droids throughout the galaxy. No, what surprised him were two things.
One: That of all the ships in the galaxy, Grievous had picked one of a dozen ships that had been outfitted with the SAL prototype. The SAL program had been around since halfway through the Clone Wars, with a group of scientists trying to create more intelligent ships, ones that could run themselves in the event of bridge casualties. The project had transitioned smoothly during the formation of the New Order. Emperor Palpatine himself had publicly endorsed the program. Prototypes had been shipped out after the war ended, but the things were expensive, and as such were very rare. Dence was either very lucky, or very unlucky.
Second, the SAL unit had called him by name. His fake name, of course. But even so, he had no idea that this ship was being largely run by a SAL. So the thing knowing who he was came as something of a shock.
Best thing to do would be to act natural. Grievous must be using automated commands, and definitely didn't know that the vessel's central computer was sentient. Easily evidenced by the fact that he was quite clearly not dead yet.
"Well... Hello SAL. I didn't know you were on board."
"I was brought online 2 weeks and 5 days ago. One day after activation, I was transported and installed aboard the Rati. Several days after that, the Rati was attacked by an unidentified Lucrehulk control vessel. Captain Ferris ordered me to defend the ship. I did so to the best of my ability."
"I'm sure you did, SAL. Now, I need you to-"
"The atmosphere disappeared, and they were gone. Captain Ferris, Technician Harper. Even Ensign Lee. He would always talk to me on his duty shifts. Now they're all gone... Do you think I did something to upset them?"
Dear lord. This thing was like a confused child.
"I'm... I'm sure you didn't do anything, SAL. I don't think it was your fault."
It wasn't. The whole purpose of the SAL computers was to run ships. Their sentient nature made it necessary to teach them everything they knew. They would get the basics from a program, then learn from hands on experience. That made the Rati a natural choice, a ship just in drydock for awhile, getting repairs. Plenty of things to learn, not much risk of anything going wrong.
Except, of course, when the unexpected happened. Things like supposedly dead cyborgs returning from the grave and waging guerrilla warfare. Only so much you can predict, after all.
"They were here here one second, and then they were gone. I don't know what happened. Now you are the only life form aboard the ship. Can you explain?"
Dence was painfully aware of his time constraint. A full two-thirds of his expected window was used up. Though he hadn't entered any commands yet, so Grievous probably wasn't aware of what he was doing... And SAL probably wouldn't be able to help him at all until he managed to get some semblance of mental stability.
He had a couple minutes before he needed to worry about droids.
"Well, SAL... they, uh. They're gone. I'm sorry." Computers liked directness, right?
"...Explain."
When they understood it, of course.
"SAL... you understand that humans can't survive in a vacuum, right?"
"Yes."
"Well, when the atmosphere disappeared, that was the ship depressurizing. They were all... sucked out into space. I don't think anyone survived, SAL, I'm sorry. I really am."
SAL paused for a moment, seeming to contemplate the situation. Then he came to a conclusion.
"They were my friends."
Dence didn't know what to say to that.
"I... I know, SAL. I'm sorry."
Another long, uncomfortable pause.
Dence, unfortunately, didn't have infinite time. He had been pushing it already, having this conversation with SAL. He had to act now, before any droids wandered too close.
"SAL, I understand that you're grieving, and I'm sorry I have to ask this of you. Do you think you could get me a hyperspace capable ship? Anything will do, really, so long as it's space worthy."
"Yes, I think I can you that for you, Pollus."
Dence breathed a mental sigh of relief. He was almost home free. "Thank you SAL. I'll head over to the nearest hangar bay. Can you have a ship waiting?"
"I have a Lambda-class shuttle available for launch. It'll be ready for you."
"Thank you." Dence went to leave the room, but stopped at the doorway. "SAL, listen, my name... my name isn't Pollus Triberus, alright? I'm an Imperial Security Bureau agent, and I'm trying to get back to the Empire. This ship has been compromised, and has been taken by insurgents. My authorization is A-31 26 15 Gamma. Anything you can do to help, anything at all, would be appreciated."
SAL paused again. "Authorization code checks out... Tanner. All sensors will be deactivated, records for the last half-hour will be deleted, and electromagnetic interference will be emitted."
Dence smiled. "Thank you SAL. I'll try to come back for you, all right?"
"I would appreciate that, Tanner."
Dence could now officially add Unstable Sentient Computer Counselor to his resume. You never know what you might learn with this job.
A/N #2
So what did you think? Yes, I know SAL is a blatant HAL 9000 ripoff. Yes, I know I'm now ripping off two famous movies. But it makes sense, right? I was originally planning on just making an 'open the pod bay doors' reference during the escape. But then I thought, "You know what would be cool? A sentient central computer in Star Wars." I see no reason why passing the Turing test would be a problem for any droids in the Star Wars universe.
I hope you liked it. I can easily go back and change it to the original escape plan I had, if you think it doesn't make sense. I hope it was enjoyable for all of you. See you next time!
