[@Azereiah]

"Yeah, I'll get in touch shortly. Have to report in to the boss" Stryker let the disdain drip from his words, not hiding the fact that he still sort of hated everything about this job, especially his position as the captain. He headed off on his way, stopping briefly to chat with SAL over a task he needed done. Up in his quarters, Stryker sat at the terminal and established a Long-Range Transmission Channel. He rattled off the facts of the mission as well as an update on their current location, as per the Alliance's mandate. He also included a pair of footnotes mentioning the extra hands that had been brought aboard. Satisfied with the message, Stryker hit send and waited around to monitor it. Long-Range Transmissions were notorious in their potential delivery fail rate. If that happened, Stryker would have to act quick to salvage his nearly 10 minute long message or risk having to record it again. As he waited, he checked in on the ship's trajectory from his datapad. They were about 4 hours out from Minos Station at current speed. As much as he didn't want to admit it, the pilot had some skills, and he deserved a rest after the hell he'd just led them through. He wouldn't bother with ordering Tibulus to increase their speed to reduce the travel time. They were in no rush for the moment.

[@Tickout]

"I can assist in this matter" SAL said, taking the small medical droid from Maxi "Scanning. Damage incremental. I estimate that repairs will take about 2.5 hours. Find me then"

The robot stomped off. Before the team meeting, SAL noted that Grayson had left the door to the armory open. Wasn't like him to be so absent minded. He filed that information away as a topic of discussion for later, and proceeded inside to secure a selection of tools for the repair. He paused for a moment, noticing Amy's damaged armor on the workbench. A quick ocular scan revealed a handful of issues that Grayson's (mostly) human eyes might miss. Again, he filed the information away for later and headed out, deciding to use the tech lab downstairs as his office for the repair. Stryker stopped him on the stairs and asked if he would deal with retrieving the memory core from the Federation droid. SAL agreed to it and went on his way. Both the Federation droid and the lone remaining Alliance drone had been brought to the tech lab ahead of time.

[@BKburke]

In the tech lab, SAL established a list of priority. The memory core had a direct tie to the mission, so that came first. He set Maxi's medi-bot aside and settled in by a workbench along the rear wall, where both mangled military droids sat. Retrieving the core was a simple enough task, locating it was a much more immediate concern. SAL was unfamiliar with the makeup of most Federation tech, and having no prior experience with these Hunter class weapons, had no idea where to start.

He started by plugging the droid into the Mainframe, a computer drive that was unconnected to the rest of the ship's systems, for interacting with AI elements and the like. The Droid has been (forcibly) placed in a low-power state, but within the Mainframe, it's mind was abuzz with activity. An idea hit SAL. He used the systems within the Mainframe to simply copy all the data contained within this droid's head to a blank data-disc. He'd sort through it later and flag anything listed within the directory as belonging to the memory core. Easy as Pi.

Though not directly related to the mission, SAL felt a strange sense of obligation to check in on the Alliance Drone. He felt a sense of kinship to the robot, despite it being technically just a tool of the Alliance. He plugged it into the Mainframe and attempted to communicate. Never one to get emotional, SAL was... surprised to say the least when he interpreted and translated the ultralight communication dialogue AP-772 was transmitting. In English, the drone would have been saying this simple sentence over and over:

"Please help me"

That was quite sad. SAL honestly felt (his closest approximation) to sadness. In that moment, he resolved to do something quite drastic. It was an uncommon practice, but many programmers felt that by combining a pair of corrupt AI programs with a base model, like what the Mainframe provided, the corruptions would cancel each other other out to form a new, cohesive AI unit. It was this very process he was about to attempt by taking what remained of 772 and merging it into the Federation Droid. He patched in some basic AI routines to help bridge the two, and began to repair Maxi's bot as he waited to see if the melding would take. In the back of his head, SAL began to run some calculations on the best possible result of this experiment, and devised a blueprint of a new body for this AI program, one that would use parts of both the Alliance and Federation robots. A fighting machine that would far surpass either entities pitiful military bots... if Stryker approved of it he supposed. The timer he'd been keeping reached zero, and SAL connected himself back to the Mainframe to attempt a contact with the merged AI.

"Hello?" He transmitted "Can you hear me?"