When the bot shoved its protrusion into the control table's port, it began transferring a worm. Over the years, Simon had developed a repository of malware based on his experience interacting with different systems.

Out of all the malware in his repository, the one injected by the bot into the facility's system was the worst. It was extremely resilient and highly discreet in its attack. Inevitably, it managed to secure a backdoor for Simon within minutes of gaining a foothold.

The moment it broadcasted the address of the facility's anchor point, Simon - who was connected to his NetDive Board - slithered in through the gaps and dominated the system. The process was in no way trivial. There were many redundancies and protocols that Simon had to manoeuvre around and subdue, but with the assistance of the Board and his own bio-implant, he could run circles around them.

The first thing he did was to create an avenue for Karina to communicate with the crew outside. To do that, he had to add an exception in the firewall intercepting incoming and outgoing signals. But he quickly changed direction after determining that routing the communication through the local network would be more efficient. There were signal repeaters installed by Halcyon to facilitate communication from the facility so that there was a lower chance of it being intercepted.

Simon forgot about such a possibility. If he had known of the existence of these repeaters, he could have used them as a means to infiltrate the facility. However, after following the channel he found out that the other end was right at the heart of Halcyon Business Tower in the Oasis. So he scratched that thought. First off, he was not completely sure if the facility was truly affiliated with Halcyon. While there were hints, the conclusion was only a conjecture. Secondly, even if he had known that the facility belonged to Halcyon he couldn't possibly do anything about it. While he was confident in his capacity in hacking and the triplet's ability in infiltration, trying to mess with the base of a Rank 2 corporation, even a rural branch, was asking for death.

Nonetheless, Simon managed to pave way for Karina to transmit her communication signals through the private repeaters installed by Halcyon. However, he couldn't do anything about the digital footprint it would leave. The signal repeaters were high-tech and highly specialised; that is, it did only one thing and it was damn good at it. This meant that even its redundancies had redundancies. If Simon wanted to scrub everything, he would have to waste half a day. Even with Colin, the work couldn't be rushed.

After stabilising the connection, Simon gave Karina a heads up and began mapping out the facility. He needed to find a way for Karina to access the research centre. 

At the facility, Karina pulled the bot out from the room and returned to the ventilation ducts. Logically, the duct should spread throughout the facility. The reason she didn't pursue this right from the beginning was that she had a hunch that it wouldn't have been that simple.

And her guess was proven right because just one minute after the bot trudged further down the duct, it encountered a blockade. 

Using ventilation as a means of infiltration was a tried and tested method. It was so infamous that almost all movies that contained an infiltration sequence had the character squeezing through a ventilation duct.

So it was only right that the security tzar of this facility ramped up precautions within the ducts. The first blockage the bot faced was a basic disintegrator. No matter what passed through the blockage, if it was larger than a particular size a multitude of lasers embedded into the duct's sides would fire up and annihilate it to smithereens. It was indiscriminate in its actions and extremely effective.

But following a flourish from Simon's end, the blockade went into hibernation, allowing the bot to make its way through unhindered.

There were multiple such redundancies scattered across the entire ventilation system. Whoever was responsible for implementing the security within these ducts clearly took their job seriously.

In fact, it was to such an extreme that one had to pass through each and every single blockage in the ventilation system to reach the research centre. It was a single serial line snaking around the entire facility.

Engineering-wise, this design was extremely inefficient. Most establishments would use branching or parallel systems to distribute the workload. Simon figured the power drain to manage the snaking system was massive. Then again, there was no shortage of power in Eaton I. It was between two suns after all!

In the end, navigating to the research centre was a walk in the park for the crew. With the backdoor giving him access to the entire facility, he could shut down any obstruction in the bot's path. 

Simon could glean from this that the engineer who designed the facility, and the person who implemented the duct security and the security tzar didn't communicate with each other every step of the way. If they had done so, then the security hub would have been closer to the centre instead of being shoved into the periphery of the facility's core. That way, an intruder could not have reached the security hub as easily as Karina just did with her bot.

Although, even if that was the case Karina would not have been flustered. The difficulty would be higher, the chance of success would be lower, but it would still be manageable.

It was unfortunate for Halcyon Inc. that they criminally underestimated the capability of the locals of Eaton I. They thought that even if someone determined the presence of their facility on this planet and moved assets, it would enter their radar and they could react accordingly. They thought that the level of security in their facility was sufficient to ward off the locals.

To an extent it was. If not for the technology provided by Raymond, the orphans could not have made it this far. However, it should be noted that the local talent would not have been able to adapt to the new technology and achieve the orphan's current feat so easily.

Finally, the bot reached the opening that led directly into the research centre.

Karina exhaled deeply to calm her nerves and began the operation. Similar to before, she utilised the multi-tool in the bot to unscrew the opening to allow the bot to squeeze through. Unlike before though, this opening was right in the ceiling, and if she wasn't careful the result would be cacophonous.

After creating a sufficiently large gap, the bot edged through and Karina found herself hanging upside down at the research centre.

With the bot's omnidirectional camera, she started to map out her area, while keeping the auditory sensors open to any conversations happening in the background.

The room was brightly lit, and massive. It had a tall ceiling with two distinct levels. The place she was in was the research deck, housing a myriad of machines and workspaces for the researchers. The second, lower level was wide, allowing sufficient space for a Meka to stand upright, move around and even jump. It also held the manufacturing facility.

Further away, there was a much larger space to test run flight systems and weapons. Although, it would be impractical to fire weaponry in a facility that was underground in a desert.

That was Karina's conclusion, but it was instantly overturned by a sudden boom and a flash of light, both of which threw the bot's sensors for a loop.

After adjusting herself, Karina turned the camera towards the source of the disturbance.

As the visuals cleared, a sleek Meka came into view. It looked absolutely magnificent!

Her entire life, she'd only seen these machines as 3D holograms or 2D videos. She had never seen them so close. Even when accessing simulations as VR experiences, she could always feel a certain barrier between the Meka and herself. She knew deep down that it was not the real thing.

And now, although she was observing the machine through the bot's camera, it felt substantially closer.

Based on the people standing next to it, this Meka had a much smaller stature. Usually, an average human would reach halfway between a humanoid Meka's knees and ankle. But with this one, the researcher standing next to it could easily bang his head on the Meka's knees.

It had a white and cyan coating, matching Halcyon's standard colour scheme. It also had a compact body, which was indicative of its ranged nature. This was supported by the fact that it was carrying one of the largest rifles Karina had ever seen.

Suppressing her growing excitement, Karina quickly patched in the bot's visual to the communication channel. She shared it with the triplets.

[Wow! That rifle is beautiful!] Nathan exclaimed. An increasing agitation could be heard in his voice.

[The Meka's pretty short if you ask me...] Horace muttered.

[SHUT UP!] Nathan quickly retorted. He then continued, [Can you get a little closer, Karina?] he pleaded.

Karina was a little weirded out by Nathan's unusually stimulated response. Generally, he was a calm and collected individual. 

And this excitement felt a bit awkward too. It had a mix of childlike elation and intense animalistic arousal.

She cringed.

"Calm down, Nathan. We have a job to do," Karina reminded him, to which she received a whimper of agreement. 

She cringed again.

Shoving her discomfort deep down. Karina resumed the operation. During her initial scan, she had pinpointed her target - the storage deck.

The research deck was completely empty. Nearly all the researchers were outside where the Meka was being tested. It was a welcome coincidence for Karina.

Without wasting any time, she controlled the robot and navigated towards the storage deck.

Usually, research facilities didn't hold their data locally. It was always backed up to a remote location either through a secure channel, or physically by transferring their storage through convoys.

Evidently, the data from this facility hadn't been backed up for quite some time as there was a massive compartment in the research deck housing rows of storage decks capable of containing multiple zettabytes of data.

Back at the Angel, Simon was sweating through his clothes after seeing the sheer magnitude of information stored locally.

After running some quick calculations, Simon ran a preemptive diagnostic on the private channel from the facility to Halcyon Business Tower. He could not use a wireless transfer from the facility to the storage deck in the car waiting outside. While the firewall would allow the signal to pass through, there was just not enough storage. He would have to route the data through the private channel directly into the storage decks in the Angel.

Thankfully, their contractor had provided them with the access codes. So all that was left was to modify the channel. Simon recruited Colin and began the task.

During this time, Karina located an access port and positioned the bot, and then plunged the protruding drive into it.

And with that, the data transfer initiated.

While this was happening, Karina could read through some of the information stored locally.

From what she could make out, the Meka that Halcyon Inc. developed was an aerial and spaceborne marksman.

Generally, Mekas were specialised by application. It didn't make sense to create a one-size-fits-all or apply-anywhere machine if its use was limited to one particular scenario.

For instance, if the goal was to seige a pirate stronghold ship suspended in space, it was unnecessary to deploy Mekas with amphibious modules.

This belief was not prevalent when Mekas were first envisioned. Back then, corporations strived to shove in as many functionalities into a Meka as possible. But over time they found out that they were losing the crux of the matter. If what they wanted was a mobile war-rig, it would be superior to fit a vehicle with all the required functionalities instead of crowding it inside an already restrictive humanoid frame.

Modern warfare slowly skewed towards Mekas for this specific reason. These machines were extremely specialise-able and cost-efficient compared to equivalently resilient war machines. This was also supported by the increasing difficulty of advancing modern weaponry without increasing its size. Mekas allowed humans to leverage their body's natural capacity for combat, both ranged and melee, in a machine by having the machine mimic the human physique.

The Meka designed by Halcyon Inc. was set to become a core player in their Meka fleet. The speciality of this Meka was not in its structure and design, but in the gargantuan rifle it held in its hands.

With its short stature, the Meka had a naturally low centre of gravity, allowing it to use the rifle in any orientation without losing stability. Its upper body was especially fortified to muffle the rifles bone-shattering recoil. Apart from those additions, the Meka's armour, structure, artificial musculature, and design were generic to any common Rank 2 Meka.

The rifle, however, was anything but generic. It had a novel design and a chilling purpose. Naturally, the Meka and the rifle were a package deal since underneath the hood there were many symbiotic modules in the Meka that augmented the rifle. The Meka itself was codenamed 'David', after the Biblical story of the man called David who managed to down the giant Goliath using a slingshot and smooth stones. However, to call David's new weapon a 'slingshot' would be a misnomer.

Matching its name, David was built to down any Meka by penetrating the cockpit with one well-aimed shot. It should be noted, that the Meka's cockpit is usually the most fortified region of the entire machine for obvious reasons. To be able to penetrate it with one shot would require a monstrous force, and according to the research materials, the rifle was able to achieve it.

The rifle was a hybrid between a Gauss rifle and an energy grenade launcher. It launched a projectile using magnetic propulsion at speeds capable of breaching the sound barrier many times over. Once the projectile collided against its targets, it initiated the second phase in which the projectile itself detonated adding additional damage. The novelty was in the design of the rifle and its ammunition. While such ammunition existed in the market, the research data provided a new and cost-effective method to manufacture them. The end goal according to the research was to disseminate David widely across all Halcyon Inc. branches.

Just perusing the test videos gave Karina goosebumps. She could imagine the face Nathan would make if he saw them. The thought of that caused Karina's goosebumps to have goosebumps. 

The transfer took 10 minutes. During the process, no one entered the research deck. Once she finished Karina began to retract the bot into the ventilation ducts.

[Hold up! There seems to be a lot of movement outside,] Nathan spoke through the comms.

"What do you mean?" Karina inquired.

[It looks like they're preparing for something. A lot of men with weapons and weapon-mounted rigs,] he elaborated.

While they were talking, Karina observed more movement in her current location at the transport cargo hold. Quickly calming herself, she moved into a more hidden location.

"What's happening? Did we get caught?" She muttered anxiously.

The door to the walkway into the facility slowly opened.

Karina prepared for the worst. But contrary to her expectations, what came through was a massive container along with a contingency of guards escorting it.

"Make sure that it's secured safely. You have no idea how much this thing costs!" A researcher instructed as he followed the crew.

The container was carefully transported to cargo transport that looked like an assault vehicle.

"Simon? What's going on?"

[Hahahaha!] Simon laughed through the communication channel.

[It's our lucky day!] He then continued.

Karina's eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"Why?" She probed.

[It's fortunate that we hit the facility today. You see, coincidentally, they had an outgoing shipment planned for their finalised model scheduled for today as well.]

"No way!" Karina exclaimed incredulously, "that means..."

[That's right! That container right there has the completed prototype of the Meka this facility's been working on.]