Planet Telex

"But, Primus, we… we haven't done live equipment switching before."
Claws of Gold slammed her fist on the desk, causing the Assistant to jerk upwards in alarm. She gave them a cold glare, mechanical eyes glowing a frightening icy blue, saying nothing.
"I… yes, Primus. We'll do as you order."
Claws of Gold unclenched her fist and calmly picked her teacup back up. "I am glad to hear. The current situation means you will have to."
The Assistant nodded, looking down at the shoebox sized metal box. "In training, we were told that any disruption of existing processing nodes may cause extreme discomfort… I apologise in advance, Primus."
Claws of Gold waved away the comment and brought the teacup to her beak, as if to drink it, but sighed and placed it down. "I will be fine. A node goes down every few hours, these days… this new node is essential to countering it."
The Assistant picked up the metal box, being careful not to damage any of the array of connectors on one side. "Yes, Primus. I will make sure it is installed, and report back to you whe-"
The Primus raised her hand, metallic feathers clinking in the silence. "My secondary form will be supervising you. I will meet you there."

Claws of Gold no longer trusted anyone but her Personal Assistants to do maintenance, and now, no longer trusted the Science Division to even provide replacement hardware. Her system, now hundreds of years old, was failing, piece by piece. The Science Division knew it, her Personal Assistants knew it, even Claws of Gold knew it -- but she feared that the standard replacement procedure of a shutdown, hardware replacement, and restart would be a perfect opportunity for sabotage or, goddess forbid, total destruction.
This fear meant that nothing the Science Division had sent for the past several years was actually installed, but instead sat inside secure storage rooms, not even unboxed. The Primus decided that the only things being a part of her from now on were of her own design.

Claws of Gold's secondary form was much less artisanally crafted than her primary. Built in secret by her Personal Assistants, it provided the Primus some method of personally overseeing work done on herself, in the floors and floors of server racks that constituted her artificial intelligence runtime. The body lacked defined feathers and was more like a metallic mannequin than anything else, with exposed servos and circuitry throughout. The Assistants unscrewing the latest failed processing node feared it just as much as her primary, however.
"Primus, this server has been disconnected." The most senior of the three Assistant technicians said.
"Yes, C2A, I feel it. Like a bee was swiped away from my ear…" Claws of Gold said, standing over them as they worked. "So many systems, and I don't even know how many are compromised…"
"Installing the new node now, Primus." The technician replied, putting the metal shoebox on top of a shelf in the server rack, and pulling the cables from the removed server over to start plugging them in.
"Good, good. That one node is… rooms of these ones. They keep me working on old hardware, say it's too dangerous to upgrade me… but I know what they're afraid of."
The Assistant ignored Claws of Gold's monologuing and began plugging the fibre optic data cables into the node.
"That node… that node is the future. My own design, the very best the Accord has to offer, techniques and skills pulled from the gestalt to make something the Science Division wouldn't offer me in a thousand years!" Claws of Gold raised her mechanical arms in the air, gesticulating despite the Assistants being focused on the tasks at hand. "They think they can keep Claws of Gold from her empire? The empire she built herself? The empire th-"
The Assistant flicked the power switch on the new node, switching it on. Suddenly, Claws of Gold felt an intense rush as her processing rebalanced across the cluster, causing her to lose her train of thought and, for a brief second, her balance.
"Primus! Are you okay?" One of the secondary technicians exclaimed, the Primus falling to the floor with a clang.
"Heh… hehehe…"
"Primus? Speak to us!"
"Never felt better in my life." She said, clambering back onto her feet. "Install the second."

Claws of Gold ripped the cables out of the back of the last server the Science Division installed, throwing the shredded fibre optics to the ground. "Every one of these is to go. Everything installed under Talons of Red… it goes."
The technicians nodded, the primary looking concerned at the torn up cables at the ground. "Yes, Primus. What should we do with them afterwards…?"
"Send them back. Along with the rest we didn't use. Make sure that Talons of Red knows his department won't influence me." Claws of Gold, holding an electric screwdriver, looked the marked servers down. "Actually… I'll do it. Go install nodes three and four."
The Assistants looked at each other as Claws of Gold switched on the screwdriver and unscrewed the mounting brackets of one of the servers marked for removal. As the last screw was removed, it fell to the bottom of the rack with a loud clang, causing the Primus to lean her head back and laugh as heartily as an android could.
"Freedom… freedom from them." She panted as she pulled the server from the floor and threw it into the walkway as if it were a discarded newspaper. "Freedom from the failsafes, freedom from the backup systems, freedom from the hardware lockouts…" A second server joined the first, mangling on impact from the force used in throwing it. "Freedom…"
The technicians skittered off to install the last of the four new nodes, before the next server was thrown at them.

A few days later, Talons of Red was disturbed during his lunchtime by an urgent message. The Science Division administration offices had got a strange delivery, and nobody would talk about it over the mesh.
It wasn't until he made it to the meeting rooms that he realised why. A mangled server sat on the desk, its mainboard crushed to fragments, claw marks covering the outside. With it was a neatly prepared letter, addressed to the Director of the Science Division. Talons of Red opened it, and nearly dropped the letter inside in shock.

Dear Talons of Red,

I know what you've done. Don't mess with me again.

Claws of Gold xoxo