by M. D. Cooper
Rika slowly drew her right bicep back to her side, and then slid it across her torso until she reached her breast. It felt different…more natural.
She slid her arm further and let out a sharp gasp. “What? Do I have nipples?” Rika’s eyes snapped open, and she pushed herself up, staring down at her chest. “Shit! I have nipples!”
Her body was still a dark matte grey, though it seemed a little smoother than before, but where her breasts used to be indistinct mounds that had held backup batteries, they now looked like natural breasts.
Complete with nipples.
Rika felt a lump form in her throat, and an involuntary sob tore its way past her lips. Almost frantically, she pushed the sheet covering her further down and looked between her legs; tears spilling from her eyes as she fell back onto the bed.
Rika was about to tell Niki that it was too much, that she wasn’t ready, but she forced those thoughts back down. She wasn’t ruled by fear on the battlefield, she wouldn’t be ruled by fear of her own body.
she asked softly in the confines of her mind.
Rika opened her eyes once more and stared down at her body. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. We’ve fallen in with the right group of people.”
As she examined her body, Rika was glad to see she still had her bio-ports. The future possibility of sex was one thing, but the thought of having to dispose of waste like a pure organic gave her the willies.
“You’re awake. Good,” a voice said, and Rika saw a medholo of a woman shimmer into view at her side. She had a kind smile, but also the vacant eyes of an NSAI. She’d come to realize that the ISF did that deliberately so it was easy to tell when you were dealing with sentient and non-sentient beings.
“Better than the alternative,” Rika said with a wry smile, not sure why she wasted humor on an NSAI.
“Than asleep?” the NSAI asked.
“No, than never waking up.”
The medholo made a tut-tut sound and shook her head. “We’d never let that happen.”
Rika rolled her eyes. “So, where are my limbs?”
“Right here,” the NSAI said, and a rack slid out from underneath the bed, holding an assortment of appendages—everything from arms and legs that looked completely organic, to left and right GNR options, to something that looked like a cross between a whip and a rocket launcher.
The thought made Rika blush, and she almost screamed as her skin from the neck down shifted from the familiar matte grey to a light pink that was almost natural in color. It even had small goosebumps.
“Easy now,” the medholo said. “You have chameleon skin; that was part of the spec you opted for. It’ll take some work to deal with, but you can change it to any color you want. Just concentrate on how you want to look, and it’ll pick up on the suggestion.”
Rika nodded silently, and imagined herself as she’d been for most of her life: a mech.
Her nipples and genitalia disappeared, and her skin took on the coarse texture she was familiar with.
“Damn…OK, gotta wrap my head around all this already,” Rika muttered before calling out. “Come in, Finaeus.”
A moment later, the lanky man entered the room and dismissed the medholo with a gesture.
“Ah, Rika, good to see that you’re experimenting with your new skin. It’s a recent invention of mine—well, more like an improvement on something Bob first made, which was an improvement on something Tanis bought on the Cho five thousand years ago….” His brow pinched into a frown. “Nevermind all that. What you now sport as an epidermis is the cream of the crop, the tippity-top of advanced biomechanical epidermi. It has all the capabilities of flow armor, stealth, kinetic impact, and light beam dissipation, but it also has more chameleonic aspects, in that it can change the shape of your body—to a degree, at least—and also change color, as well as various other ‘features’ that I can see you’ve already discovered.”
“It’s, uh…wild,” Rika said. “I really wasn’t expecting it to be so…real.”
Finaeus raised an eyebrow as he regarded her. “My dear Rika. I have built star systems. Topping what your GAF did to you is child’s play. But I’m not interested in topping them, I’m interested in making you the best you can be. Your skin is, effectively, flow armor. I call it the MK99. I first pioneered it on my niece, Sera, and she puts it through its paces, so I know it works.”
Rika propped herself up on her elbows as Finaeus walked to her side, standing next to the rack of limbs.
“Now, you’ll notice that you don’t have all those pesky mounting holes in your body anymore. Really crude stuff. Effective, but crude. I worked with your Lieutenant Carson to build a better system that gives you mechs more versatility, while still being maintainable in the field.”
Rika was amazed at how fast this man could talk and still sound like he had a slow drawl. She watched as he held up a right arm for her.
“Here, slide your arm into this.”
“I’d rather start with a gun-arm,” Rika said as she frowned at the natural-looking appendage, which had an elbow joint and looked as though it would slide almost all the way over her bicep.
“Yeah, I know you mechs like to wave the big guns around a lot, but you can’t see the mounting system as well with that, so humor me, OK? This is your body, so you need to understand how it works.”
This is my body, Rika thought as she glanced down at herself and then back at the arm Finaeus held. “OK.”
She slid her arm into the limb he held, keeping the mounting nub at the end straight until she detected a solid connection. Then the prosthetic appendage felt as though it was tightening around her bicep, and several pulses of pressure rippled through her arm.
“You see,” Finaeus grinned as he touched her bicep. “No more driving rods through your arm to hold it in place. These limbs use flowmetal to achieve the same hold, but also form a light, molecular bond with your arm to enhance the grasp. However, the one advantage your prior system had was its pure mechanical nature. No one could hack you and cause your limbs to fall off. There’s a lot of value in that.”
“You don’t say,” Rika said as she looked at the human hand on the end of the arm, moving the fingers and feeling a strange combination of elation and revulsion.
“Right, yeah. Well, it still supports a manual rod system. If you access the power lock systems in your HUD, you can expose the ports and put the rods through. However, an added advantage here is that you no longer need someone else to help you don your limbs. You’re fully self-sufficient now.”
Rika glanced up at Finaeus to see the glee on his face. She wanted to tell him that a mech was never fully self-sufficient, no matter how much tech was layered on, but she got his point, and let it slide.
“Huh…” Rika said as she flexed her hand. “My bottom three fingers move together.”
Finaeus nodded as he grasped her hand, the sensation of skin on skin—or what felt like it—eliciting a gasp from her.
“Oh, sorry,” Finaeus chuckled. “Your GAF really sucked at nervous system integrations. You will have full tactile feeling in all your limbs now—though you can attenuate it as desired. Regarding the motion in your digits: for all the things we can do, making swappable patterns in the human mind is something that is almost mindboggling in its complexity.”
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“What are you getting at?” Rika asked.
“Well, ever wonder why the GAF didn’t give you four arms?”
Rika snorted. “Because they were cheap?”
“Well, maybe, but it’s mostly because the human brain is exceptionally good at managing vast amounts of input and coordinating motion. However, your brain builds up pathways and pattern systems, dedicating neurons to specific tasks. Your brain has adjusted to only moving a thumb and two fingers. Since I expect that you’re going to keep that configuration for combat, your default digit setup is three.
“Over time, if you want to, you can rebuild the ability to move five digits, but it may have an impact on your combat effectiveness.”
Rika remembered what it had been like after her initial mechanization. For years, it had felt like her ring and pinky fingers had just been cut off. She didn’t want to go through that sort of dysphoria again.
“Makes sense,” was all she said aloud.
“So,” Finaeus said, gesturing at the rack of limbs. “If you want, you can appear to have a perfectly organic body, though none of the mechs who have gone through the process as yet have chosen to do so.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” Rika said as she continued to stare at her natural, yet unnatural hand.
“OK,” Finaeus said, with a curt nod. “Let’s get to the gun-arm.”
Rika held out her arm for Finaeus to remove it, and he gave a soft laugh.
“Rika, no one can remove your arm but you. It’s your arm.”
“Uhh…how do I do it, then?” she asked. She couldn’t even see a seam where the prosthetic limb ended and her artificial epidermis began.
“From what you said before, I suspect you haven’t activated your HUD yet. That will have all the options, but you can also just think about having your arm detach. You’ll have to concentrate on the idea, that way casual thoughts can’t cause limbs to fall off.”
Rika thought about the limb unbolting and loosening from her arm, and suddenly it did, sliding forward a few centimeters to hang loosely on her bicep.
“Magnetic catch in there to keep it from sliding all the way onto the floor,” Finaeus said as he gave a small tug and pulled her arm free, setting it back into the rack.
As he pulled out a gun-arm mount, Rika asked. “Why is it that I’m getting the personal treatment, Finaeus? Don’t you have a thousand other things to do?”
“Well,” Finaeus winked. “I do, at that, but both Tanis and Bob insisted that I work with you personally. Not that they needed to convince me. You’re the one in charge of your Marauders, so you need to know all the details.”
He held up the gun-arm, albeit without a weapon mounted on it, and Rika pushed her bicep into the appendage. It looked very similar to her old gun-arm, but there were subtle differences.
“The weapon mount looks unusual,” she noted as she turned the arm over. “And it’s a bit bulkier on the outside.”
“A touch, yes,” Finaeus agreed with a nod. “We added seven more SC batts into the mount, so you have over five hundred percent more energy for your e-beam. The mount also has a small a-grav generator in it to assist in stabilization. You can even slap a K1R chaingun on there now and hold it steady while firing.”
Rika whistled. “I’d just need another mech to carry around the ammobox.”
Finaeus gave her a conspiratorial smile. “I have some thoughts on that front. Either way, I really like the GNR line of tri-fire weapons you mechs use, but I couldn’t help but make some tweaks.
He lifted out a long-barreled weapon and set it on the mount.
“Say hello to the GNR-50. It has all the special toys you’re used to, but is lighter, can fire every round you’re normally capable of faster, reloads faster, has a better alignment system for your sabot rounds so they jam less often, and…”
He paused, a look of glee on his face.
“And…?” Rika asked as she stared at the weapon on her arm in amazement.
“It has a coilgun.”
“What? Like a railgun?” Rika asked.
“Yeah! I mean, most railguns really are coilguns, but ‘railgun’ sounds tougher, right? ‘Coilgun’ sounds like it shoots springs. No one finds that threatening.”
“Four firing modes and it weighs less?” Rika whispered as she turned the gun over. “Stars, this thing is the balls.”
Finaeus grinned. “But wait, there’s more.”
“What’s that thing?” Rika asked, pointing at the cannon-whip on the rack.
“You’re going to love that. First, let’s get you standing. We’ll break the bed if we add more hardware to you right now.”
Rika pushed herself up and sat with her leg stubs sticking out over the edge of the bed. “Help a girl out?” she asked.
Finaeus raised his hands and took a step back. “Nope. You can do this on your own now. Figure it out.”
“You’re an ass,” Rika scowled at Finaeus, but he didn’t respond.
She looked down at the legs on the rack, noting that there were two sets. The closest two were the ones that looked perfectly organic—like a beautiful set of legs that belonged to some woman who was not her.
Next to those legs were a mech’s lower limbs, and Rika pushed the barrel of her GNR against the floor and scooted her body along the mattress until she was above them. Then, very tentatively, she slid off the bed and into the legs. Both slotted into place at the same time and automatically attached themselves to her. Once they were in place, she straightened them out, rising up as the calves unfolded, bringing her up to her usual two hundred and twenty centimeters.
“They feel the same,” she said to Finaeus once she stepped over the limb rack and stood next to him. “Don’t look much different, either.”
“Well,” he shrugged. “They’re legs. Not a lot of extras you can add…unless you exclude the additional SC batteries, their ability to propel you up to three hundred kilometers per hour, the a-grav units, the various tactical countermeasures, aaaannnd the backup EMP generator for when you’re in a pinch. They’re also lighter.”
“Show-off,” Rika winked at Finaeus. “OK, so what’s that whip thing?”
Finaeus bent over and picked up the strange-looking limb. “First thing you’ll notice about your gun-arm and this ‘whip thing’, as you call it, is that they’re ambimount. You can slot them into your right or left arm, and they adjust with the correct elbow pivots. So….” He held the weapon out to her, and Rika examined it more closely before sliding her bicep into it.
It had a normal-looking elbow joint, and then came the nearly featureless cylinder of the ‘cannon’ segment of the limb. It was roughly thirty centimeters long, and tapered slightly before it terminated at a diameter of roughly fifteen centimeters.
That was where the ‘whip’ came in. It started at just over ten centimeters in thickness, and tapered down to a point over the course of four meters.
She shrugged and slid her bicep into the limb, and was suddenly overcome by a very strange sensation, like her left arm had become impossibly long. She wobbled on her feet and spread out her stance, trying to remain balanced.
“It’ll take a bit of getting used to,” Finaeus said apologetically, picking up the whip end, which felt like he was touching her forearm…a sensation she hadn’t felt in over a decade.
“Finaeus,” she said, jerking the whip limb away. “You have to stop touching me like that. I’m going to twitch and blow your head off, or something.”
The man only chuckled, and gave her a wry smile before slowly reaching for the limb again.
“I’ll do my best, but I’m a hands-on kinda guy.”
She wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but fixed him with a firm stare. “I’m already with someone, Finaeus.”
“So am I. I’m not coming on to you, Rika, it was just a joke. Granted, I could probably make it so that Cheeky could have attachments like this. I wonder what she’d think of that.”
“Cheeky?”
“My wife
.”
Somehow the thought of this peculiar man married to someone named Cheeky made sense to Rika.
“So how does this thing work?” she asked, wiggling the limb, only to find that the entire length of the whip wiggled like a snake. “OK…that’s creepy. It’s like I have a tail on my arm.”
“Welcome to flowmetal,” Finaeus grinned. “Like I mentioned before, the stuff is in all your mounting mechanisms already, but here you have a whole limb based on it. It’s a metal where a special current weakens the bonds between the atoms, and can leave them in states of strong or loose attraction. Basically a liquid metal, for all intents and purposes.”
“I kinda got that from the name,” Rika replied wryly. “But a whip doesn’t seem terribly useful. I like to kill people before they get into whipping range.”
“Right, a whip on its own, isn’t going to do much to an armored enemy, but this whip can extend to forty meters long annnnnd it’s electric. It has the same electron-volt power as your e-beam, though it does require you to be properly grounded. Also, don’t try to use it with your girly legs, it’ll probably burn the feet off.”
Rika chuckled. “My ‘girly legs’, eh? Is that the technical term?”
Finaeus joined in her laughter. “No, it’s what Bondo called them. It kinda stuck.”
“That does not surprise me in the least.”
“OK, so, because it’s flowmetal, you can form it into a hand, as well.”
Rika nodded and concentrated on the whip, trying to form it into a hand. “It’s not working.”
Finaeus grinned and pointed at the end of the whip where a hand had formed. “You might want to pull the excess material back into the cylinder.”
A moment later, Rika had managed to do just that, and the hand was sticking out of the end of the cylinder. “OK…why does this make me feel like more of a robot than ever?”
“Beats me,” he shrugged. “Maybe because your idea of a hand only has three fingers and looks like a robot’s?”
Rika realized that she’d formed her mech hand with the flowmetal—or at least, a rough approximation of one.
