Approved Tech Carrion-Key Counter-Mechu Hardening Mk. I

[Darth Prazutis]

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• Intent: To create a Kainate exclusive counter-mechu defensive architecture for strike craft and starships that denies mechu-deru style system possession, arrests EMP/ion logic corruption, and preserves pilot authority and weapons safing during hostile machine domination attempts.
• Image Source:
  • Headers - Teresa Zambrano | Darth Pellax
• Canon Link: N/A
• Permissions: N/A
• Primary Source: N/A

• Manufacturer:
  
  • Malsheem Hypernautics and Manufacturing
• Affiliation:
  
  • The Kainate
• Market Status: Closed-Market
• Model: Carrion-Key Counter-Mechu Hardening Mk. I
• Modularity: No
• Production: Limited
• Material:
  • Bloodsteel Relay Slabs and Mounting Frames
  • Bloodpane Lip Seals and Shielded Patch Panels
  • Alchemized Sarrassian Iron Faraday Cages
  • Grimglass Opto-Isolator Arrays
  • Hexphase Ceramic Isolators
  • Bonekey Hardware Tokens and One-Way Arming Diodes
  • Sigil-Wire Control Lattices
  • Dead-Rail Mechanical Link Harnesses
  • Ashen-Seal Isolation Stub and Crowbar Switches

• Air-Gapped Ritual Relay Walls: Flight controls, throttle servos, and ordnance safing logic are routed through tiled relay walls that physically break signal paths. Commands cross the wall only through reed-style relays and opto-isolators suspended inside Bloodsteel frames and Sarrassian-iron cages. Remote possession attempts meet dry contacts and empty gate gaps, which prevents foreign instruction sets from stepping into actuator lines even when upstream computers are saturated.
• Bonekey Arming Chain: Weapons arming requires presence of Bonekey tokens that sit on cold rails beside one-way diodes. Each token carries a fixed pattern burned during consecration and cannot be rewritten in the field. Without the physical Bonekey in circuit the arming line remains blank, so spoofed packets and possessed droids cannot lift safeties or set fuses, no matter what they do to higher-level software.
• Mechu-Scrub Data Diodes: All data traffic into protected bays passes through Grimglass opto-isolators wired as true data diodes. Light crosses one direction only, which lets sensors and monitors report but forbids external control from returning down the line. Corruptive pulses and machine-speech reach the diode face and stop there, leaving downstream logic dark and obedient to the cockpit alone.
• Dead-Rail Manual Takeover: A shadow harness of mechanical cables and direct-drive linkages runs beside the protected fly-by-wire trunks. If the Familiar Core detects machine treachery, it hot-swaps selected axes to the Dead-Rails and drops power to the compromised bus. The pilot regains tactile authority over thrust weighting, bomb-bay actuation, and release consent with zero dependency on untrusted processors.
• Carrion-Mask Quarantine Nets: Small, sacrificial logic blocks sit at every network inlet to act as decoys. They imitate juicy targets and soak hostile machine-speech into looped sandboxes while the real control plane stays dark. Once triggered, nets self-immolate by crowbar and pyro-link, leaving only slag and a time-stamped event trail for crews.
• Ashen-Seal Surge Arrestors: Hexphase isolators and crowbar stages watch the protected trunks for ion and EMP rise. When thresholds trip, the arrestors shunt the wavefront into sink rails and open the path permanently with pyro-links. Downstream actuators ride clean power while the poisoned segment stays fenced behind fused metal.

• Hard Denial of Machine Possession: The protected plane is not addressable, not writable, and not reachable except through dry contacts and one-way light. Mechu-deru style influence and Nullshock-class corruption meet blank stone, cold gaps, and dead ends. Flight control and arming authority stay in Kainate hands even while upstream systems churn with ghosts.
• Sortie Preservation Under Attack: Familiar Core handoff to Dead-Rails keeps the craft flying when the bus goes hostile. Bomb doors still open, the bay still cycles, and release consent still lives at the stick. The engagement continues on the pilot's timing rather than ending in a forced abort or catastrophic self-fire incident.
• Clean Recovery Path: Carrion-Mask nets lure and burn hostile code at the perimeter while Ashen-Seal stages fence and document the hit. Post-event bring-up is orderly because the protected plane never learned the intruder's language in the first place. Crews restore power, swap the sacrificial tiles, and the craft returns to the line without haunted subroutines.

• Force Nullification: While under Force Nullification, the Sigil-Wire lattice cannot pre-bias relay timing or raise early warnings. The passive walls, diodes, and Dead-Rails still protect, but predictive finesse drops and swapovers rely on hard thresholds. The defense remains intact, yet transitions can feel less graceful until clear of the field.
• Latency and Upkeep Cost: True isolation adds a touch of command delay and demands calibration to keep contacts crisp. Worn relays, tired diodes, or neglected cable runs reduce feel and can create nuisance faults. The suite rewards disciplined maintenance and punishes lax crews with heavier workloads and occasional degraded responsiveness.

The Carrion-Key Counter-Mechu Hardening Mk. I was born of the Kainate's own success. Once Nullshock Bomb Mk. I entered the order of battle, enemy engineers would begin hunting for copies or countermeasures. Malsheem did not wait for their answers to arrive, it moved before the thoughts even came to them. Carrion-Key was built to make the bomber's heart unpalatable to foreign hands, to ensure that when hostile machine-speech comes knocking it finds only cold iron, silent light, and a pilot who still holds the razor.

At its core sit relay walls and diode gates that refuse conversation. Commands that must enter do so through opto-isolators and dry contacts seated inside Bloodsteel frames and Sarrassian cages. No memory maps live beyond those gates, no writable ports, and no return paths. Bonekey tokens ride next to one-way arming diodes so the only hand that can lift safeties is the one on the stick. If upstream systems turn traitor, the Familiar Core senses the shape of that betrayal and swings control onto Dead-Rails, mechanical linkages that carry thrust, door, and consent authority by cable and cam.

The perimeter behaves like bait. Carrion-Mask blocks sparkle to an intruder and then drown it in a sandbox while the Ashen-Seal stubs throw the breaker and record the wound. Crowbars and pyro-links end the argument with fused metal, and the rest of the craft never hears the intruder's whisper. After the fight, crews swap the sacrificial tiles, prove the contacts, and the ship returns to duty with a clean mind and a clean board.

Carrion-Key installs cleanly in the Velakorr-class, but its tiles and rails scale to larger hulls that demand the same obedience from their machines. It introduces a little weight, a little delay, and the necessity of care, yet the trade is simple. Bombers keep flying. Weapons only fire when told. Possession fails. In the Kainate, that certainty is worth every relay and every scar in the copper.

 

[MANIAC]

Darth Prazutis

As always, amazing sub.

Approved.