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| Plant 142 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Reserved and shy, with trouble forming emotional connections with humans. She has worked through some issues thanks to therapy allowing her to express a more determined and decisive part of her personality as well as allowed her to overcome enough anxiety to be inquisitive again. Her experiences with the MSAI of the STV Celestial Odyssey have also increased her confidence in herself and her abilities. She has developed a deep bond with him.
Special Skills
- Starship Combat Experience
- Piloting Experience
- Basic Engineering / Maintenance
Special Ability
- Radiotroph - Plant is able to capture radiation within its cells through the use of extremely complex melanin like chemical. The end result is a substance within its body that contains extremely high energy levels. The substance is stored in cells similar to those of human fat cells. Through this Plant is able to recover energy lost to keep living and power devices and vehicles. This ability makes it immune to the effects of radiation.
- Neural Network - Plant has a brain in each of its nine arms as well as a central brain in its head. Owing to the unique way cephalopod nervous systems develop and the fact that Plant had a neural jack installed in its head from the moment it was created it is able to handle multiple tasks literally all at once with competence.
Containment Suit
- The VCS 114 is the latest in Viser containment suit technology. It is lined on the inside with a flexible form of a special compound found commonly in rocky planets orbiting the galaxy core. The compound was named Induranium and had the properties of being able to resist extremely high temperatures and pressures as well as reflect back all forms short wavelength radiation and absorb the rest. Since the reflecting surfaces were pointed inwardly it could successfully contain within itself the immense energy stored in a bio-power core. Apart from that the suit has built in servos, nanobots for emergency self repair and a slew of sensors all accessible via a data connection wired directly into Plant’s brain. The last function is of great use to FSR navy ships. Plant can connect to a ship’s systems and the ship AI can offload tasks to Plant to relieve stress on the main system.
Background
Plant was manufactured by the Viser Power Systems Corporation the former main manufacturer of bio-power cores in the galaxy. He was created in one of the several thousand space stations Viser had that orbited the supermassive black hole in the center of the milky way galaxy. The gamma bursts released as stars were ripped apart by a black hole would be fed into the station and formed into a Artificial Sapient Vita Elekron. By this time Viser had perfected the process and around 90 percent of the energy of the burst was able to be incorporated into the organism. After Plant was made it was also sealed within the environment suit that would for all intents and purposes act as its body. Some scientists hypothesize given the mix of genes used to make Artificial Vita Elekron it was possible that the body plan was closer to a squid or octopus than to a humanoid. However no one knows for certain and the research notes about how the genes express themselves were lost during the Great Interstellar War. The template was the same for all of them but the amount of power in each one varied by around plus or minus 1%. Plant was given the serial number 14256430294039 though most humans would refer to it as Plant 142.
The nickname was common for most cognizant bio-power cores like Plant. It refers to the inspiration for bio-power cores, a plant like organism found on the planet REP-129279 orbiting the galactic center. Without a star to orbit around the planet had insufficient light for any earth like ecosystem but volcanic activity gave rise to life regardless. Eventually a form of life became adapted to the cyclical bombardment of gamma radiation on the surface and evolved a method of storing vast amount of energy within for when radiation was scarce. Plant and all members of its kind are a modified version of that organism though it is unknown if they have the same energy capturing properties. These same properties inspired the scientific name of Vita Elekron and the colloquial name of space plant.
Plant 142 was originally bought by Orion Transportation and used to power the light freighter The Sonder. It stayed in service of the Sonder for 34 years. Most of the early jobs performed by the Sonder were to transport people from the Earth to nearby solar systems. At the time lots of types of FTL drives were being developed and The Sonder had a Alcubierre Warp Drive. Plant was able to mitigate the large downside which was tremendous power consumption, so much so that the standard fusion power cores could not provide enough energy. Even with this hurdle overcome the drive required a slowdown period before arriving at the target system lest the built up energy be released all at once causing an explosion that could destroy the stellar system. Wormhole technology on the other hand allowed for instant travel but had the caveat of requiring even greater amounts of energy for the initial wormhole creation and stabilization though was cheaper to maintain. The initial power cost meant that it was only used for traveling distances greater than 5000 light years.
As wormhole technology was improved this was no longer needed and the Sonder was modified to serve as a tourist ship by Orion as it was starting to lose its profitability. Plant was auctioned off to the government of the Sol system the Federal Sol Republic. The FSR controlled the rest of the galaxy through military, cultural and economic force. Consequently Plant was installed into a new ship called The Londinium, a frigate of the FSR navy. Plant served in that ship for most of the remained of its time in its universe. The first mission for the Londinium was for it to patrol the Orion-Cygnus arm of the milky way as part of 14th fleet in a task unit called Sigma 5. The task unit experienced no major engagements for 20 years. It was decided that with the latest generation of naval ships being commissioned the older ships should be sent to the further territories with less population density since it was cheaper to keep them there than to decommission or upgrade them. Sigma five was sent to the Vela-Cepheus spiral arm to reinforce the 23rd Fleet.
Currently tension was brewing in the local colonial governments about the forced dependance that the FSR had on them. This tension started to manifest as support for an independence movement. Eventually one arose known as the Vela Autonomous Front. It was a loose coalition of protesters and political opponents of the FSR but the Sol Navy brutally repressed such dissidents and forced them into a more extreme position. The remnants of the VAF formed into the Vela Army of Interstellar Liberation. VAIL started amassing outdated FSR navy ships and private vessels fitted with armaments. Their scheming was not unnoticed and the Federal Intelligence and Data Agency had started to uncover their plot. This was to late however as a few weeks later the VAIL revealed themselves to the galaxy by attacking and defeating the 23rd fleet capturing a third of the ships, destroying half of the ships and forcing the retreat of the rest. The Londinium was among the ships forced to retreat. This attack would start what would later be called the Great Interstellar War.
The FSR mobilized its many manufacturing systems and quickly rebuilt the 23rd fleet and made the 31st and 32nd fleets as well. They planned to send all three to take back the VC spiral arm when many systems in the other three spiral arms started to also rebel. The 32nd fleet was broken apart and sent to reinforce policing actions in the rest of the galaxy. The 23rd and 31st fleets were tasked with destroying the rebel fleet and subjugating the VC colonies. By then the VAIL had commandeered many commercial ships and retrofitted armaments on them creating a secondary fleet and reinforcing the one defencing their spiral arm. The newly created Bull fleet was sent to the galactic core in order to capture the bio-powercore factories and to take control of the wormhole stations present. The immense gravitational phenomena surrounding the supermassive black hole allowed wormholes to be easily created to the rest of the galaxy facilitating humanity’s expansion. While the Sol system had created its own interstellar highway of wormholes the older highway still existed as a backup. Since the source was in the galactic core it cannot be closed from earth and is a perfect vector of attack.
The FSR recognized this and had nationalized Viser and other corporations operating in the core region. The dissatisfaction of this move created enough dissidents within what remained of the companies that the rebels were able to use to take control relatively quickly. The FSR diverges emergency forces to the core regions and intense battles ensued. Both in the VC spiral arm and the core the fighting was brutal. At the core the Londinium along with Sigma 5 faced countless battles and became elite veteran ships. As such those ships were recalled from time to time to upgrade and retrofit the Londinium. With every upgrade the Londinium grew in reputation and the FSR forces at the core were able to retake the lost territory and drive the VAIL back to their home spiral arm. Exhausted from decades of war the FSR recognized the independence of the former VAIL now the Independent Systems Union. Of course hardliners on both sides still advocated war and both countries started rebuilding their militaries.
The original Londinium was scrapped and a new one commissioned to be what the FSR stated was a ‘hero ship’. It was something of a small flagship meant for allowing high command to be freed up from micro managing their fleets. The Federal Navy had restructured its command structure to better counteract the threat posed by the very decentralized Union Navy. On the fortieth anniversary of the VAF massacre the Federal Navy moved against the Union Navy. The FSR had sent an ultimatum with a ridiculously short expiration as a justification of war. The Union Navy had responded with force in just a few days however and once again the offensive ground to a halt. The Union forces did not have very many updated ships and vehicles but the Federal forces did not replenish their ships and vehicles fast enough. Currently the main FSR manufacturing was busy creating a Dyson swarm around Sol to alleviate the overpopulation problem that had plagued the system. Since valuable resources were being redirected they could not replace their losses.
The Londinium had been at the spearpoint of the initial assault and with low reinforcement numbers the Union counter attack proved decisive. Neither side lost very many ships but the Federal Navy was taken by surprise and forced to retreat. During the chaos a few Union ships targeted the infamous Londinium and were able to bring against it more firepower than it was able to endure. The ship took heavy damage and had begun to break apart. Standard emergency procedure stated that the first thing to be jettisoned was the black box recorder along with a bio-power core. As such Plant was jettisoned from the Londinium moments before it completely broke apart from the incoming fire. It would be drifting in space when it was spliced into the Schatten System.
A few years after splicing in she was recruited into the Aquarius Initiative and given her own starship to command owing to her experience around starships already. Initially she was assigned to explore and document regions of unknown space. She mapped out various star systems and documented a few notable non sapient alien organisms. A year later she was given her first trans-universal assignment. It was more of the same, scanning stars and planets and documenting any anomalies. Most of the dangers she faced were environmental dangers and the MSAI of her ship Halcyon helped her tremendously. She completely trusts Hal's advice and through his guidance has really come to her own as a starship captain.
Sometime after he splice Plant had to have an emergency procedure to save her life. Going a long time without her stored energy being siphoned lead to severe health problems and cellular degeneration. Only with an emergency siphoning of the majority of her stored energy was she able to be stabilized. Another upside is she is no longer a walking thermonuclear explosive. Currently she only now has enough stored energy to equal an energy cell for powered armor.