Greyloch.

Location: Aboard ship, FMC Aeneas braking toward northern hemisphere of the planet designated: SX-02.

Mission: Co-ordinate search and rescue scans and drone flights over planet's surface and from orbit. Possible deployment of TASTRAS search and rescue detail to be given go-ahead from Strategic Command.

Alert: Unexplained communication blackout with planetside fireteams has ceased.
All transmission traffic and data-pulse packet routing restored.

Time: 14th July 2217, 1320 hours.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The ship coasted through the vacuum guarded from all angles by the ever watchful glare of billions of stars, and gaseous nebulae beyond the system of orbiting worlds caught in the gravity signature of the blue giant behind SX-02. The radiation from the star had been blocked by the bulk of the planet. The Aeneas approached prow-first toward the dark-side of the world.
Long and featuring geometric angled plating in raised surfaces and recesses in the bulk of her hull, the imposing craft measured in at nine kilometres. The conning towers and hardened sensor arrays across her dorsal structure, resembled hexagonal bunkers clustered from port to starboard of the ship's one kilometre width. She bristled with point defense pulse-lasers and an arsenal of assault guns geared towards planetary bombardment aswell as ship to ship fighting.
Aeneas' lower-most decks housed the hangar's and drone launch bays for ground force deployment stretching for seven hundred metres on either flank of the boxy ship.
The engines, all eight of them, flared with the micro-nuclear propulsion waves emitting from the thrust cubes, propelling the ship at low speed to close in on SX-02.

From his command chair, Captain Grey studied an overhead read-out display panel of the ready-file he received from Admiral Ford, and the staff of STRAT-COM.
He was browsing the orders to implement and designate when he was interrupted by the ship.
The ship's Mainframe computer system issued an alert, informing the command crew that most or some of the communications links had been re-established with the surface-deployed TASTRAS units.

“Aeneas, report on events leading to comms restoration.” Grey ordered the ship to show him a visual replay of the planet's surface. He leaned forward in his chair to look at a paralight sphere of the Mainframe's record.
It appeared to Grey that some form of high-strength voltage was accelerating through the atmosphere of the planet. In the aftermath, the patches of ground became clearer to see, though dark and hidden by the lack of sunlight. The cloud cover seemed to ease and visibly change hue, it was also noticeable to Grey how much the winds had changed, as if they had stopped blowing entirely. Air pressure stabilising to something close to an Earth-like front.
Grey pressed a part of the chair's touch-screen in the right arm-rest. The paralight image disappeared, and the communication broadcasting audio nodes exploded with a frantic voice.
“Regal Cell, Regal Cell this is Ultra-One-One Actual, radio check in the blind over.”
Grey oversaw and heard the communications exchange between Ensign Pedrina and Sergeant-Major Tyrone.
Some tired, but appreciative grunts sounded off in the bridge from every station. Able to receive groundside outgoing comms had been a grinding problem to solve. Grey enquired who was responsible.
The bridge fell silent, no-one spoke up, some technicians exchanged dismissive looks. Others simply shrugged.

“The planet is responsible.” Said the ship. The Aeneas brought up an image on the main display screen, the picture showed the planet from a modest distance before zooming in several frames on a piece of the day-lit side of the planet and a dark square hole in the ground, from it a huge stream of arcing energy extended into the sky and all over the planet.
Everyone and including Captain Grey, were visually stunned. Grey took a moment to consider the Ship's discovery, there was something very interesting about the world they had come to.
Grey saved a copy of the analysis for STRAT-COM to review.

Fleet Military Craft, as well as being habitat's, deployment staging vessels, weapons platforms, and hard-vacuum transit vehicles, are essentially gargantuan computer systems, built-in networked Mainframes and kilometres of nano-crystal circuits connecting sensory input structures within and outside the ship. The limited intellectual processing power of the ship is located at its central deck in the vast layers of logic stacks immersed in ponds of hydrosynthetic anti-static coolant.

Attached to these are the control rooms which collectively make up Program/Network Hubs one through ten. Overseen by the ship's compliment of technicians and cyberwarfare specialists.
Above these, and secreted behind the many corridors and walls of the Aeneas are the memory banks. Hundreds of memory banks store the pieces of the artificial personality of the ship itself, and all its fundamental properties. Accessible only by restricted personnel, the memory banks are secured for the duration of every twenty-four hour cycle.

The three-ship task force: Aeneas, Creusa and Latinus, were each an identical ship design designated 'Carriers.' The largest spacefaring craft built by human engineering.
Full displacement put each vessel at over one-and-a-half million tons.
A compliment of only two-hundred and ten crew and officers of Colonial Fleet commissions and enlisted personnel could more than adequately operate and service the Carrier and its force deployment assets such as Skyhunter strike fighter craft and Hydra drop and retrieval craft. Technical crew and system operators are sometimes drafted from civilian universities, few in number restricted to between ten or fifteen, but not more than twenty draftees or volunteer experts.

Every carrier in the Colonial Fleet is regarded as a mothership to a contingent of armed forces who are at anytime often deployed on campaigns or operations throughout Capital Space, the Colonies, or the Frontiers. Serving as multi-role mobile bases for TASTRAS, the Army, Ranger Division, and smaller detachmentments from the Fleet First Wing.
The Aeneas, organised into Task Force 616, carried a small combat corps of TASTRAS operators,
only four hundred men, thirty one vehicle sections, nineteen spacecraft, (twenty including the Hydra, callsign: Raven 6) and one hundred and twelve drones.
All armouries, prepping bays and billets for combat personnel are situated on the two decks above the hangars, and below the Program/Network Hubs.
Orienting all ship-board personnel with the layout and structure of a carrier is handled mostly by
the ship's Mainframe.

Captain Grey approached the viewport at the front of the bridge. Standing hands behind his back gazing at the night-side half of SX-02 as it gradually drew ever closer.
Some time had passed and the majority of bridge crew had been retired to general quarters for final approach in preparation for geosynchronous orbit with the planet.
Aside from three Ensigns, Grey was largely alone at the front of the sixty metre wide bridge and its viewport. He turned slowly, mounting a small set of stairs back to the command deck of the the ship; taking residence once more in the command chair suspended from the ceiling. The chair was mounted to rotation bearings and an automated rolling track running along the high steel ceiling to several control stations and systems consoles.

“Aeneas, debriefing please on causality.” Grey demanded softly. He reached over to tap a keyboard for a physics sequencer and algorithm patterning program to load.
“Error, definitive request unspecific, what is the causality pattern observed?” Came the grating machine voice from the audio nodes.
Grey, slightly annoyed responded:
“Communications Anomaly. Detected emanating from the planet. You analysed the cause, and documented the data... “
Grey waited for the ship to collect itself or load and organise details.
“Confirmed Captain, the report analysis states the cause of the communications restoration originates from the planet's suface. The grid reference is three nine degrees four minutes by eighty one degrees eleven minutes...”
Grey began to grow mildly impatient.

“Aeneas, I know that the cause comes from the planet, what I want to know is WHAT that cause IS, what made the communications disruption cease specifically?”
The Captain rubbed his eyes with one hand and balled the other in a fist inciting frustration.
“Error... No data, unable to meet request.” The Captain sighed in defeat. Losing more patience, he calmed himself with a brief moment of personal address and counting down silently from ten. Grey thought about what the Mainframe could do to assist in the acquisition of environmental and tactical intelligence.
“Aeneas, can you devote a portion of your processing power to analysing and deconstructing the
the Anomaly in question?” Grey leaned back in the chair and waited for a reply from the ship.
“Theoretically, this system is capable of performing that task, however, codifying a suitable logarithm and voltage assignment adjustment from the technical crew will be necessary.”
Grey sent the word down to the Program/Network Hubs in the midship decks. He was done.
The Aeneas, slowly decelerated to achieve a motion-lock, syncronising its movement with the rotation of SX-02. The blinking warning lamps from stem to stern of the warship formed a pattern which could be recognised by other craft in proximity. An indication the ship was in geo-sync with the planet below.
SX-02, an ebony sphere, haloed by intense, radiant blue-white light stretched from its day side.
Grey ended his conversation with the computer engineers and turned himself and the robotic command chair away from his central console.
With a flat gesture, Grey moved a hovering image from the display screen above him to float infront of him. While moving the chair over to the paralight chart, he made adjustments to the computations before flipping the image onto the chart.

He studied the colourless white-on-black overlay. A topographical interpretation of the planet's northern and southern hemispheres collected by the drone Cyclops satellites. Grey turned his attention to providing the locations of all the personnel planetside to the Commander who would deploy at a moments notice given the green-light.
He pressed a segment of the glass to bring up a system panel, he waved and gestured parts of it away, searching for the drone's transponder tracking functions, overlaying them as green flashing dots on the map. Some Fireteams were situated in the half of the planet experiencing night. Most were fortunate enough to be in daylight, appearing to converge on the rendezvous agreed upon by drop-control and Hydra pilots standing-by for imminent launch.

However, one team seemed to have been spread out over large distances in the night-side portion of the planet. None of which appeared to be moving in directions anywhere near the rendezvous. Grey had to fix this. He decided to redirect a flight of A-40's over the locations of the lost and staggered team in the black of night.
He selected six drones and had them deviate from their patrol routes. In formation flight, three were sent east, and three west to scout the terrain in infrared. Captain Grey watched the glowing orange paralight models of the drones moving over the planet.

The first watch was due in fifteen minutes. O'Rourke would report for duty soon, Grey could be relieved to pursue the coding and resource management of the Aeneas Mainframe.
Grey wasn't surprised to see Chief O'Rourke arrive five minutes earlier than scheduled.
O'Rourke saluted and fell in at ease near the paralight chart.
“Bright and early as usual Chief. How was the slumber?” Grey asked kindly.
O'Rourke yawned quickly, trying to appear unembarrassed.
“Adequate Sir. Could have been worse, still I'm ready for duty, what's the situation here?”
Grey indicated the drone search patterns on the paralight chart and the re-mapped terrain from the Orbiter satellites. He told O'Rourke which flights of ships were ready to retrieve ground teams. Total flight time from drop to re-embarking no longer than forty minutes.
Grey entrusted the acting deck officer with authority to launch the Hydra's when the go-ahead arrived from STRAT-COM.

With the pertinent details outlined, the Captain departed the bridge. A series of blast and sealing gates slid shut behind him. He marched down several brightly lit corridors to an elevator.
The ride down through the midship decks caused a shift in some of his organs.
Grey began to notice the return of sub-orbital gravity. And wondered if the planet's own gravitational pull was acting on the centrifuge of the ship. He noted to himself, to get engineering crew to take a look as soon as possible for calibrating.

As Grey approached the Program/Network Hub, the temperature fell.
Through a bulkhead and steel rampway leading up and over the cooling channels far below, Grey stopped to inspect the coolant glowing a wintery blue from the UV light ambience.
The Captain noticed bubbles in the coolant forming closer to the Capacitor columns and logic stacks. The sickly taste of ozone and electrically charged air filled the space from the bottoms of the coolant tanks, to high above in the criss-crossing maintenance cat-walks.
Coupled with the whirring thrum of electrical current passing through insulated cables from one stack to another. And all leading to the belly of the ship, where a voltage plane distributed excess electrical charge throughout the hull.

Captain Grey recalled the workings he had recited of a typical ship-board logic stack.
An octagonal hyper-conductive column consisting of individually stacked carbon-fibre surfaces.
Each layer, a platform containing nano-scopic circuit loops made of densified gold-chrome alloy.
The layers did not feature resistors, voltage distributors or switches. The columns must, for this reason be immersed in anti-static coolant and EMP shrouds, to dissipate heat built up in the circuits due to voltage, and current-generated electron friction.
This design, allows for unobstructed neural linkages to form using open-capacity for voltage surges mimicking that of neurons firing within a human brain.
The closest the Aeneas has to a cortex of rationalising and reasoning.
From these, the compiled 'thoughts' are rendered by the ship and relayed at the speed of light to the central processor conduit in the control room at the aft end of the coolant tanks and up a short elevator.

Grey disliked the dependence some crew had on the A.I, and routinely drilled them for manual system control should the ship malfunction.
Though indispensable, the Aeneas was still a computer, and prone to errors.

Grey moved to the far end of the gangway, upon approaching, was plunged into darkness...
The slow cadence of energy draining and a generator going offline made him stand in place. Confused.

Grey stared around in wonder.
Then came a blast of static from his wrist and a radio-distorted voice spoke erratically:
“Er, Captain Grey? We have a serious problem in the A.I proxy-boot...
Something has drained power and forced a non-functional event.”
Grey informed the technician to standby. He moved at double time to the aft ascension elevator.
Upon boarding the elevator and being greeted by a dishevelled civilian contractor in the control suite, Grey politely instructed the man to calm down and explain the situation.
“What's going on sir? I... I know this is going to sound crazy, but the Aeneas is powering up and down the volt-feeds for the logic stacks and causing errors within its matrices and cognitive coding... I just can't pinpoint why or what the cause is.”
A panicky and confused face turned and paddled a keypad on one side of the main interface and several red flashing domes ceased their rhythmic pulse and stayed solidly lit.

The technician shrugged and stuttered in dismay. Just as soon as he had typed commands which failed to initiate any function, the entire deck thrummed with electrical life once more. Lights warmed, the familiar whir of flowing current returned, and bubbling resumed in the coolant ponds.

The Captain stood perplexed, then leaned in to press a button on the console. He spoke cautiously:
“Aeneas, initiate self-diagnostic, report functionality result please?”
There were a few seconds of silence before the ship responded:
“Complying. System functionality optimal Captain Grey. Diagnostic result: Zero erroneous sectors, all coding lines defragmented and collating.”
Grey pressed the A.I again for more definitive answers. This time relaying the technicians noted concerns and issues with errors and power cycling in the Network Hub.

“Aeneas... Load cache filing, date stamped: today five minutes ago from now. Collate all behavioural logs. Query: Why are you cycling power on and off through the stacks?”
The ship did not respond to the question with haste but did so after loading a paralight report diagram of the power-cycling from five minutes prior:
“I am unaware of any unscheduled power-cycling Captain. You are mistaken.”
Grey froze mid-thought, clearly not at all understanding the situation any better than the Network technician. Grey wheeled on the tech and asked him if he had tested the system since the last scheduled power drain and reset. To which the shaky blond man frisked his jacket and brought up a log of the last power cycle and system analysis.
All green by Greys thinking. Except the discrepancies occurring now.

What the fuck is going on here? Grey grunted in his thought-speech.
He gave the ship one last line of enquiry about its logic stream and if there existed any damage. The ship coldly denied any damage and insisted it was operating normally.
Grey gave up, he needed the ship to co-operate, and chose direct action to ensure it would continue to function as it should.

“Isolate the system from controlling the power input, lock it out from all critical operations ship-wide. If this thing is having a melt-down, it can't be allowed to affect engines, life-support, weapons-systems and reactor function. Get me?” Grey fumed, the civilian stuttered a quick acknowledgement and sat to begin following the Captains instructions.

On his trek back up to his quarters, Grey was noticeably stressed. He passed a squad of TASTRAS in fatigues who idly saluted and asked if there was word from HQ about a retrieval mission to go ahead now that communication with ground-side assets had been restored.
Grey lethargically obliged the men some measure of assurances that contact would resume with STRAT-COM and that a plan is in the works.
As he left the TASTRAS to digest his words, he produced his access card for his cabin.
Grey swiped the keycard, but was rudely denied access, the panel simply flashed red and the Aeneas spoke in monotone: “Warning, access to the Captains cabin is off limits to personnel, designate: Crewman MacEldowney.”

“What the hell is this?! Aeneas, I am Captain Grey, this is MY access key...”
Grey felt his choler rise slightly as this situation seemed unbelievable. He had no patience for it.
“Negative, identity and secure access encoding markers show this access key belongs to Crewman MacEldowney, access denied.”
Grey turned the card over and inspected his name, his serial number and encoding sequence emblazoned on the laser-read strip. He swiped the card again through the reader.
“Access Denied.”
Grey slammed a fist into the door, enraged. He swore, backed up and swore again before gaining some composure. He tapped the wrist-pad dial and used the tiny microphone to broadcast ship-wide over the public address system.

“Attention all hands, this is the Captain speaking, CMS Aeneas cognitive system malfunction in progress. All critical staff and operational technical staff are to override ship systems to manual-only. As of the Colonial Armament Document, Article 57, the A.I will be quarantined and locked out of all systems until effective repairs can be made. Repeat, A.I functionality compromised, stand-by for system lock-out.”

With a short delay to allow his speech to sink in, Grey tapped the screen on his bracer to enable the quarantine. He applied his hand to the scanning panel of his cabin's door and was finally granted recognition. He unlocked the door and slid inside for some sleep.