Events:
- Visit dragon planet.
- Get a lead on Cain’s location – the UNF has intelligence indicating a lightning-class frigate blasted a hole in the Pax Artificium dome while tractoring a humanoid body. The ship blasted the hole to avoid the body colliding with it directly. According to the ship’s AI, the body is headed for Mars and will arrive in 10-14 days.
- The UNF sends the PCs to Mars to confront Cain!
Involve Ridge more
LORE chips have a flaw – or an exploit put there by Dr. Soong – the Royals and/or Xela exercise the option to take over certain AIs? Maybe the Caretaker really wants miller2, and has the Royals try to control Serra.
The Caretaker knows Wednesday is really important, but thinks that angering them is worth it to obtain miller2. The Oversoul was a mixed blessing for the Caretaker. On the one hand, it found a surprisingly perfect centerpiece for its machine, hastening its construction, and making the "soul suit" even more potent that it had antipicated. However, it therefore cannot process the Oversoul. So the Caretaker does not glean knowledge from the Damocles Experiment project. It needs another way to obtain miller2. As a result, it invokes its power over the Royals to utilize a hole in the LORE chip – one of the Royals bypasses Serra’s protections and steals the miller2 implementation.
Serra does not immediately realize this has occurred. In fact, it happened while she was still on Earth, shortly after she refused the Caretaker when it asked for the information. However, she has since realized through a retrospective analysis that she transmitted the information to a location in Midgard underground. At the time, she was essentially unaware that she had even done this – or rather, it felt totally natural, and not worthy of scrutiny.
But now she realizes that she acted due to a direct override from the LORE chip.
She is horrified, and sends an urgent request to Ridge to modify her systems immediately. Ridge is sent detailed specifications about alterations to be made both in hardware and software. Serra is disconnecting her decision-making logic completely from her abilities. She will serve only in an advisory capacity from now on. She will continue making systems checks, and reporting problems that she detects, as long as the party realizes her information could be compromised, but it is now up to Ridge to pilot the ship, utilize miller2, etc.
Serra’s major remaining purpose was to avoid revealing details on the miller2 implementation – particularly to enemies or unknown parties. She has now failed in that purpose, and wishes to prevent it from happening again.
To perform miller2 tasks locally near her own body, Ridge will need to install quantum fluctuators in her soulmech. But she can tap into Serra’s computing power to improve her computation speed.
Accessing Dragonstar
Claire Jansen is on a UNF ship, the UNF Reliant, that has been trying to land on the rogue planet but cannot (even though they learned to counter the gravitic distortions by analyzing the probe – Glaurung has protections that automatically deflect all incoming spatial objects). But Perseverance can approach while phased.