Well, this is unexpected. After this many strips, they are only now getting the data cartridge out of the storage slot. It's interesting that their first expectation of what has happened is an intra-party dispute.

Equally interesting, apparently they are expecting that K can hear them outside, and in fact they have spoken with K, so they can hear K's responses. But they apparently did not hear the battle, and K's final words.

Clearly, the next thing to do is to break into the "clean room" data access center, which is probably shielded against dust and other issues that would contaminate the storage drives, so that they can contaminate the storage drives, attempt to manually mount a drive without use of the robotic arms, and somehow expect that it's going to work anyways.

It's... not impossible. Some sort of manual mounting for testing/debugging, or some sort of bypass in case of robot failure isn't unheard of. And, if this is a military facility, then having a second mounting system in case the automatic system has failed makes sense - you want the data to be available, and a redundant system is not just reasonable, but should be part of any competent specification.

Right - competent specification. So it doesn't exist, then. Or is this the one place where the system is competent?

Actually, the combat portion of the base is of questionable design. The data? The scientists? Those, we have seen almost* nothing to indicate a lack of competence.

* Except, you know, the manually operated mounting crane :=)

— Keybounce