Kenzie had forgotten about the sealed hatch… until she was back on the catwalk. “Huh… guess that confirms the whole “Pilot friendly” theory.” She mumbled to herself. “So, whatcha got for me?” She responded to Dr. Andrews, following along with him. She waved politely to the other researchers (She assumed that’s what they were doing, anyhow), and then took a moment to observe the droid.

“It’s… similar to modern models, though of course the design is different. Looks to have similar functions though…” She noted. “It…” She paused. This little droid… didn’t really belong here? He didn’t seem too interested in it, not nearly as much as Kenzie had… though this was no bubbly curiosity like the huge mech had brought out in her. She set up her communicators to pick up on any frequencies being run in the area, filtering out those she already knew to be in use by the doctor’s team, and waited as she was lead to another site…

This one was… fascinating, and more what she had expected in the first place, though with 4 mechs, instead of 1. All of them looking in very good condition, save for a layer of dust that would take a sandblaster to get off. The agent leaned on the catwalk, observing them and smiling a bit, though her expression wasn’t as exuberant as before. There was something knowing at the back of her head. “This is… amazing Doctor.” She confirmed, looking out over them. “Just… something’s bothering me. That little droid… it was a scout, or a lab assistant, or something of the like. Have you found a lab here? It seemed more like a military installation…” She pondered aloud.

The agent looked around… the mechs were either lifted in and out by crane… or they had some sort of means of propulsion to lift themselves. If they were as heavily armored as they looked, that would require some pretty impressive technology… that alone would make the Directorate happy, she mused.

“We haven't uncovered any sort of lab. As far as I can guess these machines were just being stored here. Doesn't seem as if they would need them with the other mech. Captured from other nations or others turned them over when they surrendered. I can't imagine the scope of it all, it's nothing we've picked up upon in our studies of Myers thus far.

“It seems there's a lot to learn,” he smiled eager about that just as she was about the latest discovery. “It was the latest building we began looking over. But you're right about that droid. It seems out of place here, more our age. The fact that it isn't working tells me it functions by a different sort of energy and may just need a little power. This building is big so it may have been wandering about for some time.”

With her suit she would be able to detect a small anomaly when she was adjusting the frequencies of her communications. It was slight, so slight that other field agents may not have noticed but given the energy requirements for using the gauntlets monitoring energy was fairly standard. The levels of her own had been a hair less then they should have been with the exertion she used. With the evidence of the droid it could be that something her drained power albeit very slowly without drawing too much attention. It could have been something at the other mech too but things worked fine with the mech and there had been no signs there.

She didn't know if these mechs were powered but the lights here worked just fine. Maybe just a certain type of energy? Dr. Andrews and his team hadn't noticed any changes in their equipment but they rarely had to keep a close eye on their gauges too.

“Hm. Well it is late. Perhaps we can break for the evening, grab something to eat. We can come back here in the morning without any fancy equipment or working in this particular building for sorter periods until we locate the source of that energy bleed.” He gazed at her, he knew that drawing away someone that was so enthused about machines wasn't going to be easy as he remembered himself at that age.

“We can take the droid with us. You can tinker with it in one of our labs on the surface but please do not pull an all nighter, it seems you have four mechs to look over now. Looks as if you get more time to spend with us unless you call in additional assistance. Sound good to you?”

Kenzie listened, seeming distracted yet taking in everything he said. It must have been nothing. He was right, there was still a lot of this complex they needed to uncover. They had only just now found four more mechs… FOUR more! She really needed help on this but… she was fairly certain that any help would be days away at best, and that her superior wanted her to prove herself a bit with this assignment. No pressure!

She almost didn’t notice the blip on her comms station. It was only that, a blip, and such interference was fairly common in space these days, with all the unregulated channels being used. Or it could have just been a power anomaly. More interesting for certain, given where they were, though not entirely unusual. “Well I suppose this place does have power… amazingly. It’s not impossible to think that droid would still be functioning after this time, if only in standby. I’d BET the mechs will need some sort of fuel source… unless they had sustainable sources, in which case… well my suit would have picked up any hazardous radiation, though that doesn’t mean they’re exactly SAFE.” She smiles.

This was a lot to process, and surprisingly, it didn’t take much prodding to get her to agree to a dinner break. “If you don’t mind, yeah, I’ll take the droid with me, see if I can’t figure out its function and why it’s here.” She said, already heading back towards where they had seen it…

The droid was basically a black sphere with all those retractable tools and an internal storage compartment. It was about the size of a basket ball and had some weight to it those nothing she could not manage. The trek back seemed longer only because of the latest discoveries and getting to them in due time but there was the droid to see to. They had to climb up but dealing with the droid was a sync. Either she could store it in a backpack and climb up slowly but easier had been a little tinkering with that anti-grav belt.

Pretty much she could modify it to negate it's weight after looping it around the droid with the other end in her hand or looped around it scaling the ladder was easier. Then back from the cave. Dinner was simple but much better then anything she had on the way out here.

She was shown to a lab that had all the tools she needed and left with a protocol droid that would show her around, get what she needed or show her to the guest room she would be using but it remained passive as she worked.

The probe really wasn't damaged. There was a small dent in it and it was a little dirty but other then that it was merely resupplying it with power. As a safe guard disabling the laser was simple enough. Most droids couldn't harm organics but if it were a military model as she suspected it wouldn't have such protocols in place.

Trickier was accessing the computer banks. If it were a military model it would be difficult or easy for civilian types. Easier still might be activating it and simply asking. If it was classified then she could see about hacking into it. It could probably transmit it's orders to a datapad if it lacked a vocalizer as most probes did.

She was making better time with it then she thought. It was real simple stuff and in no way did she think that it belonged to this culture. It felt too similar to other things she worked on. The energy supply was something she was use to as well. Either recharging or replacing energy cells would get it back online easy enough.

The agent borrowed a backpack to lug the droid back in, and made the modifications to the gravity belt, using it to tether the droid to her back while she climbed back up. After being shown to the lab, she unpacked the droid and went over a few safety precautions first, disabling the laser and, for now, the propulsion mechanism. The latter was a little complex though she was fairly sure it was disabled.

What bothered her was… it clearly didn’t belong to this culture. It was too modern… she’d seen parts in use like this before, and unless there was a culture out there that had somehow had incredibly advanced technology, yet not advanced enough not to be conquered by THIS culture… she wasn’t buying it.

“So… just who sent you here, little guy? You have a mission?” She asked of it, trying to access its data storage by bypassing security measures. As she waited, she’d easily rigged up a tether to run to her gauntlet’s data readout… something she’d made pretty modular in her short time in the Directorate.

The droid attempted to move but found that it couldn't and thus sat there on the table. Simultaneously it extended a sensor to get it's barrings as she asked the question. She found that the unit wasn't military grade or at least not given a classified assignment. It responded not in words but through transmitting data through that tether.

SEARCHING FOR TECH. SECONDARY ASSIGNMENT EXPLORING THE ANOMOLY THAT OCCURED.

It was simple and straight forward. She would find that it had limited AI. It followed orders but tended to inspect anything unusual as a probe did. It's sensors were good and it was able to run complex analysis of matters. The last time it was activated was about two months back when the anomaly drained the last visages of power it had causing that dent when it fell as the anti-grav unit had been cute.

Discovering it's owner was a bit complex. It seemed that it had never seen an organic master and was just deployed by other machines to gather information throughout the galaxy. Often it was released with other probes when getting to a planet then returned when it's mission had concluded whatever it had been assigned to do. In this case search for tech. It did not know the name of the settlement though so it was tough to say if that was just a general order or that it was actually searching for Myers.

In either case whoever had been searching left minus the probe which was acceptable. One did not expect every probe to come back after all. The ship had to have left the system.

The anomaly was whatever had been draining power. As a droid it worked until all power had been drained though it had discovered that the bleed seemed to be coming in the last direction it had been heading. She knew that the only thing there was the room with the mech's. She could get a rate of energy drain, an area of effect and other events the droid tested for.

It didn't seem that power would be much of an issue for small periods but half an hour was significant in draining the small droid. The area of effect had been a good portion of the building but not all of it.

Thus extra power cells and recharging equipment could be managed provided that the power cells had been left in the areas that the anomaly did not effect. While she did not find it's owner she did manage to find it's origins. It was created in the Lemur Cluster by the Hel'Corians and was modern in nature. Either a corporation or an individual from there may have been searching for tech. There was a cross breed Hel'Corian agent in the directorate so having access or getting access to general information about the reptilian creatures would be easier.

Overall it looked as if the morning would bring the answers that she searched for.

Kenzie leaned on the table as she listened to the droid spouting off its answer. She hadn’t expected it to do so, but even this little bit of information was useful. She began attempting to rig it so that it could download any data gathered directly to her armor’s display. That would probably take a bit in its damaged state, however, so she kept working on it. She was able to let it leech power off her suit in the process… it had been running on empty for some time, it seemed, and her suit recharged via kinetic collectors (just from moving around) so it didn’t pose any real threat to her.

She gathered that the probe was likely immobilized by this “Anomaly” and thought destroyed when it didn’t return. Whoever it was that had sent it out was likely nowhere near here, though she’d keep the thought in the back of her mind in case. Of more interest was the anomaly itself. Were the mechs drawing energy somehow? She couldn’t really investigate that tonight though, so she focused on the droid for now.

She sent off a “Quick” transmission to her superiors at the directorate, letting them know what had been discovered today, about the droid and its origins, and her intent for tomorrow. Even being relatively fast by human standards, the transmission likely wouldn’t arrive for a few hours, so, with little else to do she decided to sleep for the night, throwing out one of the blankets they’d provided and just sleeping in her armor for now.

It took some time for the droid to recharge though it was still unable to move due to what she did to it. That done she dispatched a message and called it a night. By morning she had a response waiting for her informing her to keep up to date with her findings. An information packet had been sent as well in the event she needed it.

The packet was all the information about the Hel'Corian probe droids. There was a nasty military model that she was fortunate not to run across as they had a habit of self destructing rather then falling into enemy hands. The Hel'Corians weren't known for their tech. They were decent enough at it but known more for their skills at warfare.

The following day allowed her to discover that the anomaly was actually being caused from one of the mech's. The others had been drained from a unit installed in one of the machines that drained power. It could be adjusted for output and once that was off the other mech's slowly began to recharge as if the anomaly was just interfering with their ability to gather power from whatever powered these things.

A revue of the new mech's revealed that they were not armed. Other systems seemed to be enhanced though. One was designed to assist with mining and had all sorts of tools for mining, enhanced sensors to detect minerals and other seismic sensors.

Another was designed to function underwater and designed to assist with underwater construction. The last she had been uncertain about. It was the one that generated the energy draining ability. It had been the only mech that had power shielded by it's own “weapon”.

Between four mech's she managed to keep herself busy. It was as she was working with the larger mech some days later that her communications went off again.

“We're (an explosion sounded among a stream of energy fire, the transmission kept fading in and out too as if something was trying to jam it but the doctor found a means around it) under attack! Droids – Help!” Then the communications ceased altogether.

The agent spent the next few days learning everything she could about the various mechs. The power draining device she finally located was… novel. There’d been attempts at such a device before but shielding it against its own effects had proved unreliable at best and explosive at worst. The Hel’Corian data sent on the probe was… interesting, though she assumed the device had long since served out its purpose and only occasionally tinkered with it at night, leaving it powered on but unable to move on its own. Of much more interest to her were the towering mecha.

After compiling preliminary reports on each she began to go into more detail in her studies. What she was most curious about was how they were getting their power. She had yet to find any external supply connected to them, though that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. Much of the hanger was still in shambles even if relatively undamaged, and the large mech was so buried that there was no telling what was around it. Even with her goggles, she couldn’t always see the cavern walls around the thing. She’d been tempted to try to turn on the behemoth’s systems enough to see if it had lighting, but decided it wasn’t worth the risk of damaging the dig site.

She’d befriended Dr. Andrews over a few shared meals (At least one on the side of a catwalk… she didn’t usually bother to return to the dining hall for meals and had the helper droid assigned to her bring her food whenever possible), but she remained distant with the rest of the crew. She wouldn’t be here forever after all… and the A.D.D. was going to want a full report soon. They’d likely…

She was startled as her comm station burst open with a panicked voice. “Dr. Andrews?!” She cried into the now empty communications channel. Dropping what she was doing (Literally… at least one tool plummeted to its likely death by the goliath’s foot), she hurried back up towards the dig site where the other researchers usually were…

This time she was on foot there had been no ride sent for her though the site fortunately had not been far. She was in a city able to see due to the goggles she wore. Prior to getting to her destination she could see smoke rising from the building and some damage had been done to the structure itself.

Taking cover she noticed the droids. They were about half her height and hovered. There arms ended in blasters and she could recognize them as security models and not military grade. From what she could recall they were effective in large numbers meant only to enforce sites against those with little or no combat training.

The AI was a military model though. It appeared to be a dark coloration and had a humanoid body with a single eye rather than a face.

It was holding the communicator of Doctor Andrew that had been marched out of that building along with the rest of his team. It asked him where the agent was but Andrews played dumb and got struck for his troubles.

NO MATTER. WE HAVE WHAT WE HAVE COME FOR, A LONE AGENT CANNOT STOP US. HAVE UNIT ONE SECURE THE SITE. CALL IN THE TECHS. UNIT TWO SEARCH FOR THE AGENT, IT DOES NOT HURT TO BE THOROUGH.

There were about half a dozen droids left after they all began to move. The AI taking apart the com and doing something with it though it seemed that half the other droids were alert to trouble and half were monitoring the prisoners closely.

Kenzie watched the scene unfold, huffing after running the entire way here, her chest puffing in and out as she hid behind the ruins of another building. They didn’t seem to concerned with her, though not so little that they were willing to ignore her entirely. Clearly they were here for the mechs… this sort of force wouldn’t be interested in anything else. That bought her time. She had been unwilling to test too much of the mechs but even so, hadn’t been able to identify movement controls in the hanger based suits, let along in the half buried giant.

Ok, she thought to herself, prioritize. She needed to rescue the team and get them… somewhere safe. They likely had a shuttle somewhere on site. If it hadn’t been destroyed in the explosions, off world might be the safest place for the moment. Then she could risk calling in help. The way it was tinkering with the communicator… she had a hunch it was trying to track her with it, so she shut her comms off for the moment. The agent armed herself with her measly energy pistol and watched… waiting to see if they would take the hostages somewhere…

About a dozen droids went off to search for her and she could conclude that their had been another dozen securing the site. That left the AI and the six droids. Watching, the AI finished the tinkering and issued orders to no droid in particular to stop the jamming.

When none of the present droids responded she had concluded that it must have been fitted with an internal comlink. Perhaps the security models had them or there was another sort of droid here. The security models could not vocalize in a typical sense. They could communicate with each other in binary code if linked together … if they had communications perhaps they could report to each other or the AI could send orders.

The security models were simple though so she could assume that they might be able to coordinate to a degree and relay progress but not the best of thinkers outside of their programming. The AI finished and it seemed that it was attempting just as she suspected but failed to track her. It ordered the jammer turned back on then had the team of scientists moved out.

There were four humans in all plus Andrews. The greatest challenge, the AI, went back into the building. As the commander on site it would not leave the site just yet she guessed. The odds shifted a bit. Five prisoners and herself meant even odds. Yet the fact that the prisoners were unarmed meant that they would be useless.

They were lead to a repulsor sled used for loading and unloading cargo. It could be pushed and there was a labor droid that did that for them. It was big but simple, probably even dumber then the security models as it was designed just to move or push things from this area to that. Basically a model that assisted with loading or unloading ships.

It easily pushed the sled until they got to the climb. Instead of climbing though the labor droid hit some controls on the sled causing it to slowly rise up. The security models hovered up with it though the labor droid paused as if contemplating the task before it. It did not hover, the solution was easy, their was the ladder right there. It had to have been ordered to use it to get down here but now it stalled considering the options that should have been clear.

Stupid. While the sled and security droids waited above for it to move the sled it was several minutes before the droid worked out to use the ladder. It was only up two or three rings were it seemed to her that the security models would not move until it moved the prisoners. So if it never got to the top reinforcements might not get down here. Further, the six droids might remain inert unless receiving orders or something happened that their programming did cover.

Kenzie surveyed the scene… she wondered how powerful the signal jammer was… if she got to the top of the site where the hostages seemed to be headed, would she then be able to get a signal out? Of course, even if that worked, the AI could also be listening by that point, and easily find them. She doubted the small security droids would be too much of a problem for her, though there were a lot of them. However, if the AI managed to coordinate them, that might be a different story. It occurred to her that even if she got a signal out… the SIGNAL wouldn’t even reach reinforcements until it was too late, let alone having the calvalry arrive in time. No, she was on her own… maybe with the researchers to help, though she didn’t really want to endanger non-combatants if she didn’t have to. She couldn’t just let them have the mechs, either.

The young agent waited for the scene to play out and then attempted to sneak over to where the labor droid had stalled out, climbing the rungs of the ladder with the pace of a snail. There were a few options available to her if she could reprogram it without being noticed. Gathering her strength, she darted out of cover, trying to get at the labor droid’s access port and use the thing’s bulk to hide herself before anyone noticed. If it worked, she’d begin to program a new routine into the droid… climb the ladder quickly, and attempt to destroy the security droids at the top. She doubted the security droids were programmed to attack the labor bot, and even if they responded to an attack, it would net her an “ally” in the fight to save the hostages.

There was a sudden realization that hit her. The AI could relay orders … meaning if these things had internal coms they were on a frequency not being jammed. That might be useful but then again it probably wouldn't help much. Using that frequency would allow the droids to listen in … but learning it she could listen in on them.

The security models were alert, and had their access ports locked. But she was not trying to access the port of one of them. Nor was she on the upper level where the droids were and thus being simple they were only paying attention to threats on their level and not looking down, not that they had “eyes” but their sensors were limited.

Basically they were mass produced junk good in large numbers where a corporation could buy them in mass. Thus she was able to get to the labor droid. It did not have have the access port locked and she could reprogram it. The labor droid was cheap and simple as most were and she had no problem with it. It was a different type of model then the security droids … It could not harm organics but droids had been another matter.

She could rig it to attack the security droids, even climb up the ladder behind it. Once it started in on the security droids they reacted on impulse countering the attack.

They were taken off guard at first then had to switch from stun to kill. The good thing about the large labor droid was that it drew attention and took several shots. It even managed to destroy the first security droid that wasn't suspecting the attack. Then as it drew fire she was able to deal with the others. By the time they took their attention from the labor droid she had managed to take out several of them then another was taken out by the labor droid before it collapsed.

Dr. Andrew and several of the others were wide eyed, amazed and realized that it was all over in less then a minute. “Well done, but we need to get going. There's a whole lot of droids in Myers.”

The agent managed to reprogram the droid fairly easily… it was fairly simple and only took a new routine being programmed in, which she managed to do by cradling herself between the ladder and droid and plugging her armor’s computer in to program quickly. It seemed to take to the new orders, proceeding up the ladder much quicker.

She followed and stayed just below, waiting for the sound of metal on metal that she knew (or at least hoped) was coming. When it finally came, the agent hopped up after the labor droid, which was already being shot apart, though was at least drawing fire. A few quick shots from her sidearm dispatched the droids… each one only weathering a blast before either falling, scrapped, to the ground, or in one case, exploding in a little electric *POP!*.

She nodded to Andrews and the others. “Is there someplace safe you can all hide? I need to stop them from getting to the mechs…” She said, thinking this through. They were clearly communicating on SOME channel so, if she needed to, she could use that to call for help. OR she could try to take out the AI first and then use standard Directorate channels to call for help. It’d be a while before it got here but it might help reinforce them against a second attack. Maybe.