Secured on board of an armory transport en route to the home planet of the latest council seat, P-T226B399M made use of its time re-running through the Central Intelligence's catalogues of all that was known: Once again went the history of the Tabaan War, once again the controversial Tharrok's uplifting was examined finely for any - albeit impossibly - missed details, then once again came the history prior to - and the current policy recognized by the Paragon Council regarding - the Nos- System, it's governing planet, Nos-Dun, and specifically the global capitol of Porapor. Finally, the most up-to-date information to re-assess was of this latest addition to the council, the Epria; a bipedal race that averaged a height of one-hundred and eighty-seven centimetres for its males and one-hundred and seventy-five for its females. Their height would not be an issue, for as an artificial intelligence, P-T226B399M was not bound to any specific sets of armor or equipment and would easily synchronize to the needs of its assigned person. What was more interesting, in a sense, was the assignment process itself: P-T-399M, like the others, had no preassignment to any individual and would be issued sequentially along to its future, establishing itself and its person as one complete identity of "Paragon". As for what its person would look like, from what of five major civilizations on the home planet they would come from, and of what it would learn of the Epria as a whole and of their individual cultures was for the moment left to calculations and computations.
To say that P-T-399M was excited would be both a misinterpretation of its programming and capabilities, but not wholly wrong; P-T226B399M was the most up-to-date of the Council's sciences, seen fit to have some finite elements of curiosity and sentience for the sake of aiding in the Paragon Mission Statement of old: "To Find, To Learn, To Know And To Do". While the moral duties of the individual Paragon reside heavily upon the person, the AI has the means and is expected to act as a moral compass. Meanwhile, curiosity would be limited to recorded observations and suggestions that did not hinder or go against the Council's universal model of morality and action - the paragon standard that the Council of some one-hundred and sixty-eight, and growing, races set to aspire to.
The homeworld would soon be reached, and P-T226B399M would go on to aid the Eprian graduate of the Paragon's Academy in serving nations, planet, and most of all, people. There was no beaming within P-T-399M's limited conscience, just a programmed focus on doing what was right with a sentient being who had vowed to do the same. Still, it would have been understandable to feel a sense of pride in looking at the bright blue light emanating from P-T226B399M and the rest of the AIs on board.
The planet had not just grown to a sizable bright dot on the captain's monitor when a blinding bolt shot past the transporter from seemingly nowhere, barely missing direct contact but causing a disruption in the ship's systems. In the brief seconds wherein the ship's primary lighting was gone and the screens went fuzzy, a massive object had entered immediate space: The Kauggar - Tharrokian equivalent to a term like "juggernaut", but more dire, the warship of the intergalactic pirate Drogg. All the available precautions meant nothing now, not that they were intended to ward off such a threat in the first place, but intel prior had placed Drogg in a far corner of the galaxy and seemingly without any shred of information to the mission at hand. Alone in the presence of certain desolation, the only option was to return all assets to the heart of Paragon space by means of faster-than-light travel.
The shot back home would mean using all available energy on board to get there, but to keep the armory out of Drogg's hands and to make the inevitable sacrifices of the escort ships mean anything, it had to be done. As the smaller escort ships worked to mitigate and distract from the transporter, the commanding officer had the emergency warp systems online and with bursts of overall energy output going into shooting crew and equipment between brief intervals. Two sets of evacuated crew and one set of returned equipment had been made before the power again went out as it did with the first bolt, but with this time the transporter's shielding could no longer hold up. A glancing blow to the ship's hull made the proceeding evacuation more tremorous, letting the crew know that their time was running up.
The Kauggar was steadily encroaching upon the diminutive transporter, keeping its battering calmly paced. It had been noticed that from the transpoter large outputs of energy were being sent forth towards the general direction of Paragon space. Primarily, the destabilizer bolts were used to destroy shields and affect internal systems, but wanting to insult his sworn enemies further, Drogg had made the command to fire more destabilizer bolts, hypothetically interfering with the evacuations at hand: albeit the lives of the crew had been forfite since Drogg had the raid in mind, the Paragon equipment was prized bounty, assets that even Drogg had difficulty finding on his own and of second-rate knock-offs he'd enough with. Amid the attack, the transporter had been successfully and forcefully hailed. In his native tongue, Drogg ordered the remaining crew to have all of their assets made ready for retrieval, and in what everyone knew to be a lie, promised captivity for those that remained. Without a response, the transporter's crew saw to carrying on.
P-T226B399M, like the others, knew full-well what was going on and had gone through all general and specific information the Central Intelligence had on Drogg and his warship. Fruitless, however, for there was nothing that, even with their combined power, could be done. Though incapable of fear, P-T226B399M recognized the outcome of the attack with an understanding of mission failure, something of a sense of disappointment.
Finally, the crew had gotten to P-T-399M, securing its "conscience" - its computer - along with the equipment nearby. Secured and ready to go, P-T226B399M processed the following events as such: the crew was observed through a headpiece travelling with itself setting up for the FTL ejection, working as efficiently as they could under their current conditions, then there was the last face of the prespired and exhausted Seni crewmember who launched the ejection. What happened next was unexpected of the trip, for what was recorded by the Central Intelligence of FTL travel was a brief, all-encompassing white light, then the destination of choice before you. Instead, P-T226B399M observed just the slightest glimpse of that all-encompassing whiteness before the lights present were more yellow, orange, and purple. As well, the travel, though still considerably brief, was just that much longer than expected. When the lights dissipated, P-T226B399M noted that the stars and systems known to Paragon space were no longer there, save for one or two which were far farther away than they should have been. P-T226B399M then observed that not all of the equipment it had been sent with was present, and what was had seen damage. Finally, and more fantastic, was the reality that P-T226B399M was on its way towards an unfamiliar planet within an unfamiliar system at a decreasing rate of velocity instead of the more controlled rate standard of exiting FTL travel.
P-T226B399M saw the yellow sun of this system eclipsed by the planet it was on its way to, seeing the night of this world and the glowing veins of civilizations not-yet known to the Council and the Central Intelligence. Though the recognition of mission failure was still prevalent in its figurative mind, that familiar procession of the unknown and that tinge of curiosity had come back to primary consideration.
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Drogg's final destabilizer shot had untinentionally missed the direct hit it was intended for, instead cutting past the transmitter at just the right time to intercept the quantified bolt leaving the transporter. Though incredibly difficult to observe, the destabilizer bolt had carried the FTL ejection with it for a miniscule - but extraordinary - second before bursting into a strange mess of lights. Drogg had seen much in his long life, but this was something new. However, he cared little for it for only so long, discarding the spectacle as just another useless thing faster than the bolt's misadventure itself. He readied his boarding party, then onboard proceeded to punish the transporter's crew for having done their duty. With only the deaths of his enemies, Drogg counted the day a small but satisfying accomplishment.
