Testing out the New Drones

Posted on Fri Mar 6th, 2020 @ 11:58pm by Lieutenant Commander Kthaara 'Leadfoot' Taavoro & Colonel Anthony "Ironhide" Raynor & Brigadier General Jorge "Noble Six" Sinclair-Di'Tomasso

Mission: Mission 71: Orion's Hounds
Location: Various Locations - USS Roanoke
Timeline: Mar 18th 2392

Wukari walked up into the hangar bay curious as to what was going on, and naturally the first thing she saw was Abbado cussing out a fighter and throwing a wrench at it. Wukari looked at Zarloos. "So I take it these new drone fighters are not behaving well.?"

"Something along those lines... They aren't working.. at all." Zarloos sighed. "They are just too new..."

Wukari sighed and walked up to Abbado, whom had to light up a cigar for himself. "So, whats up with this thing?."

Abbado took a deep puff of his Cigar, took a moment to calm himself, then explained. "Well, Starfleet decided to give us these new drones, only problem is, the damn things don't even start up, because someone screwed up the wiring."

Wukari sighed. "So you haven't even gotten around to testing the AI yet huh."

Abbado shook his head, then replied. "But you should be able to take it to one of the simulators to test the AI out."

Wukari nodded as Noble Six and Ironhide came up.

Noble Six regarded the being who was much smaller in relation to himself. "Whats going on?" he inquired of Wukari while Ironhide settled in to listen.

Wukari looked at the drone fighter. "Eh issues with these new drones. anyway, while Abbado's team is working on getting the thing running again, we need to test out the AI itself. Zarloos, think you can get a couple of your guys to remove the AI and take it to a simulator."

Zarloos nodded. "Yeah.. Let me go round up a few guys who are standing around and make them useful." and with that he moved off.

Ironhide turned to Noble Six. "Wonderful. New tech which... never works right... They didn't the code did they?"

"Oh probably not... They hate it when we do that.." Six responded.

"Wait.. Don't we have some genius engineer on the Dreamcrusher... said to be able to debug any computer in existence... or so the rumor goes?" Ironhide said back to Six.

Wukari shrugged, "I have no idea." a few minutes later the trio moved over to the simulators and one of the engineers put the AI into the simulator and turned it on. Immediately the first problem became painfully obvious when the AI then stated. "Please state the nature of the medical Emergency."

Wukari facepalmed.

Ironhide sighed. "Yep.. Well.. the emergency is inside your ovaries."

"Very well..wait.. I do not have Ovaries." the Hologram responded. "This is a frivolous use of the Emergency medical.medical...wait...this does not compute... please state....state.." when the program suddenly cut itself off before it shut itself down.

Noble Six sighed. "Who programmed this thing?"

Wukari just stared at the simulator and sighed. "Probably a Bremer or a Jay."

"God knows there are enough of those guys around," Ironhide responded in a deadpan tone of voice, this was before he let out a sigh.

Leadfoot showed up with Hakaya and Ra'Vak, and looking at everyone's faces he deduced. "Things aren't going to well huh."

Noble Six sighed. "At this rate.. the new drone tech is going to get sent back to R&D in about two hours with a note saying. "Not worth it, bin this entire project."

Ironhide sighed as one of the Engineers tried again to activate the AI when the same problem reared its head. "Please state the nature of your medical emergency.?"

Hakaya sighed and commented. "Looks like someone did a sloppy job here, perhaps deliberately."

She then decided to use her own AI to investigate the AI matrix for the fighter. After a minute or so she commented. "Well, obviously someone tried to re-purpose the EMH program for the fighter pilot job. So far I just see a few errors on the surface, should be able to fix them without too much difficulty.

Noble Six regarded the small being. "So.. you can fix this... disaster in the making then?" he inquired

Hakaya nodded. "I can fix the obvious mistakes."

Noble Six accepted the statement in silence. "Alright... Every little bit will help." he rumbled.

Hakaya spent about 10 minutes going over the program and fixing up errors, a task that would have take most people much longer without their own AI helping them. Once Hakaya finished she started it up and the AI no longer tried to declare itself a medical hologram. It simply reported. "Fighter ready."

Wukari looked at the other two," alright well, lets see hope well these things handle themselves, go ahead and grab a few other pilots of your pick and get in the simulators."

Six nodded his head. "Alright.. Ironhide.. Let's go show these girly machines, the true meaning of manliness."

Ironhide simply shrugged. "Sure. Lets go round up a few pilots and get this started." and with that he turned and walked off.

About five minutes later. Ironhide was just getting himself set up in his simulator ashe taped the display. "Ahh units check in." and the half dozen responses he expected all came back. "Okay.. I think we're ready."

Wukaris set up a relatively simple Scenario, Ironhide, Noble Six and four other pilots would each lead three drones apiece giving them a total of 24 birds. their Job was to take out a pair of Jem'Hadar bugships and a light cruiser using these 24 birds.

Ironhide smiled. "So... Lets kill them... Six, take Rakis with you and take out that second bug ship. Munis, you and Hamster come with me., everyone else... dogpile that Light cruiser."

Wukari observed as everything seemed to go OK. the drones where able to keep with the manned birds. But the moment they got within weapons range, everything went horribly wrong. One of the Drone fighters locked onto Ironhide's fighter instead of the enemy and unloaded its entire payload on Ironhide, obliterating him in a single volley. Another drone launched its missiles but a third drone then locked onto the missiles the second one fired and opened fire. A fourth drone began attempting to evade incoming fire but crashed into a fifth in the process.

Ironhide had about a half second to process the fact that he was about to die before his screen went black. "Play me a dirge matey!" as he sat back. "That was.... fucking unbelievable." he said over the com.

Six blinked. Had he looked away for a half second, he would have missed what went wrong. "What the fuck was that?"

The rest of the drones didn't seem to make any spectacular mistakes, other than one simply not firing its weapons at all, seemingly convinced it had no more ammo even though it was running a full payload. Wukari sighed and commented. "Wow, this reminds me of the state of the wing when we first got onto this garbage hauler, yeah, clearly these drones need a little work."

Ironhide smiled despite his black mood. "Y'know skipper... I love how you talk us sometimes... y'know... you have such a gentle way of wording things.." he then chuckled softly.

Six popped his hatch. "I hate this ship.." he mumbled.

Wukari just shut off the simulation right there, then turned to Hakaya, "Yeah, this thing is a no go."

Hakaya sighed and commented. "Yeah I'll take it to R&D." She then proceeded to yank the program and with that she left the room.

Ironhide sighed as he popped the hatch on his simulator. "Well... I'm dead... again... thanks this time to a drone..." he shook his head. "I don't get the logic here..." he then shook his head. "I always die in exercises but never get shot at in missions.."

Wukari sat in her chair, looking disappointed," Ugh, and the worst part, is that if the corps is to have any hope of fulfilling it mission, we need these drones."

Leadfoot, whom had been observing the exercise, made a rather disturbing observation. "You know, its almost as if someone deliberately sabotaged these AI's in order to make sure that drone technology wouldn't get off the ground." It was just after he made that statement leadfoot realized he probably should have kept his mouth shut.

Ironhide regarded Leadfoot in silence. A black look of black rage came over his face. "Perhaps... you say..." he rumbled. "That fucking stupid cow.." as he suddenly and inexplicably lost his temper in truly volcanic style.

Leadfoot and everyone else in the room knew exactly who Ironhide was talking about.