Evaluate the sensors

From a quick check, it appeared that many of the sensors in the waste processing section on level six had either stopped reporting or were only sending fragmented messages which in turn was causing intermittent data to be collected for that section of the Starpoint. You asked of one of the Grey engineers to take a look at what you were seeing.

"Due to the effects from some of the hazardous materials, sensor failures are prone to occur in that section. However, I don't recall ever seeing this many fail at once. We can send a team down there tomorrow to repair them," replied the Grey.

"What if something dangerous caused them to fail? Shouldn't this get checked immediately?" you asked.

"The waste processing section is a non-critical area. It is fully shielded and only machines work there," he answered and then moved back to working at another panel.

The "only machines" comment irked you. Apparently, the Greys considered machines to be of less importance, but what about sentient machines? 6T9 was there in the waste processing facility, potentially being exposed to something extremely hazardous, but nobody seemed to care. On the other hand, maybe her design made her immune to whatever potential dangers existed there. However, you'd rather confirm that than just assume it.

"MPAD-24, can you establish a communication link with 6T9?"

"Affirmative," it responded. After a few seconds, it added, "Please wait. Something is interfering with the signal."

You looked back toward the triplets and saw they'd discovered a way to display a separate zoomed three dimensional view showing one of the Cuni quarters, and at this scale, the dots were now replaced by animated figures. In the room, a pair of Cunis were in a sixty-nine position, clearly pleasuring each other's pussies with their fingers and tongues. As the triplets watched, they were getting horny, rubbing their breasts, crotches and each other. Hopefully, watching the Cuni-on-Cuni sex might keep them from craving your cock for a bit longer. Otherwise, in their currently aroused state, you'd have a very difficult time fending them off.

"Communication established," interrupted MPAD-24. "Only audio is available. Quality may be poor."

"Hello, 6T9, this is Sky. Can you hear this?" you opened.

"...ello Sky. Your mes...break... Why are you..." she replied with the audio chopping.

"There's interference, possibly due to something in waste processing. Are you OK?" you continued.

"Two ro... Not sure... Sys...not detect... Temper...but, other...OK," she responded.

"Can you repeat that?" you asked. That sounded like she said 'temperature', but you couldn't be sure. As you spoke, you began trying to configure the filters to display thermal scans from the sensors to possibly find something out of the ordinary.

"Sky, I can't under... What did..." she replied.

The degraded signal was too much of a hindrance to understand each other. "Can you exit the shielded area for a moment?" you added.

"Shielded area to prot...dange...clean..most done," she responded.

The communication was too garbled for her to understand your request. You tried repeating it, but the static seemed to be getting worse. As it did, you noticed an area in the room that seemed to suddenly shift in temperature. Something was radiating heat in a very irregular pattern. You vaguely recalled seeing something like that during your training back on earth which was associated a certain form of radiation. It also played havoc with most Earth-based tech, and it was conceivably the cause of the sensor failures. To get a better look, you quickly adjusted the filter to only display thermal variations and 6T9's dot vanished in response. Based on the sudden surges, it looked highly unstable, possibly even approaching a thermal runaway. You grabbed the nearby Grey to show him your reconfigured scan, and he rapidly went from being annoyed at the disruption to being mildly surprised at your recalibration to being quite perplexed by the scans.

"We've got to get 6T9 out of there now! Can we send an alarm or recall signal that she might understand?" you pleaded.

The grey touched some controls on an panel and said, "Sending an evacuation alert to level 6." Hopefully she'd see that.

Suddenly, the projected view of the waste processing area flashed a few times and then disappeared entirely from the view. The remaining sensors were dead.