by M. D. Cooper
Leslie slid a piece of bacon into her mouth, smirking as she chewed slowly.
“You ready for what comes next?” Scarcliff asked Rika.
Rika chuckled softly and shook her head. “No, not even a little bit. Just the thought of putting on a Nietzschean uniform makes my skin crawl. At least we found that hidden comm channel the Niets were using. Without that, we’d be blind to half of what’s going on.”
“Which it can actually do now—our skin crawling, not being blind,” Leslie grinned as she held out her arm and caused the skin to appear to ripple and flow down her arm.
“Wow,” Scarcliff raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been practicing. I can barely get mine to keep a consistent color.”
“You know there are suggestion lockout settings, right?” Rika asked. “Set a config and then lock out changes until you manually clear the lock.”
“Huh,” Scarcliff grunted. “Where?”
“In the defaults and overrides section of the MK99 configuration,” Leslie said around a mouthful of waffle.
“OK,” Scarcliff fixed Rika with a keen-eyed stare. “Subject-matter-changing aside, have you practiced?”
“Practiced what?” Rika asked. “Being a Nietzschean? I don’t think I need to. I just have to be an uptight asshole and act like I own everything around me.”
“Not what I mean,” Scarcliff shook his head. “I’m talking about walking in your girly legs.”
Leslie cocked her head to the side and eyed Scarcliff. “Out of curiosity, what do you guys call your natural-looking legs?”
Scarcliff shrugged. “ ‘Manly legs’, of course.”
“How come we have ‘girly legs’, and you have ‘manly legs’?” Rika asked, brows raised as she lifted her cup of coffee for a sip.
“Simple,” Scarcliff replied. “It’s all about syllables. ‘Womanly’ legs is three syllables long, but ‘girly’ legs is just two. Path of least resistance. For men, our two-syllable options aren’t as good. ‘Boyly’ legs sounds like we’ve got a skin condition, and ‘guyly’ legs is just dumb.”
“Guess what?” Leslie asked, her expression unreadable.
A look of worry crossed Scarcliff’s face. “Dammit.”
“You got it. We’re all going to call your natural legs ‘guyly’ now.”
Scarcliff shrugged. “There aren’t nearly as many women as men in the company, doubt we’ll even notice.”
Leslie’s tail rose up and tickled Scarcliff’s ear. “Exactly. Mechs are the only place you’re going to see a dearth of women. You sure you want to piss us off with stuff like ‘girly legs’?”
“Cut it out, Leslie,” Scarcliff batted her tail away.
“Hey! Captain! Careful with the good luck charm,” Crunch called out from two tables over.
Scarcliff rolled his eyes and muttered, “How is it that I get up to captain, and Crunch shows me even less respect?”
“Probably because he got booted up to sergeant,” Rika said, turning to shoot Crunch a quelling glare, which he pointedly ignored.
“Doesn’t matter about the women, anyway,” Scarcliff added after a moment. “They’re all angling for Shoshin.”
Leslie grinned as she glanced toward where Corporal Shoshin sat silently with his squadmates. The mech’s face still bore no mouth—just two lens-covered eyes that stared impassively at everything around him.
“Can you blame them?” she asked wistfully. “He’s so freakin’ mysterious.”
“Don’t let Barne see you eyeing Shoshin,” Scarcliff said with a soft chuckle.
“Seriously, Scars? Barne is constantly trying to dig himself out of the shithole for something he did or said. I could sleep with half the battalion and still come out higher in the balance of right and wrong.”
“You two win the award for the most complicated relationship ever,” Rika said to Leslie before finishing her coffee and rising. “But now you’ve got me all worried, Scarcliff. I’d better practice with my girly legs. I don’t want to fall on my ass when I walk out onto the docks.”
Scarcliff chuckled. “Well, you’d be doing a good impersonation of a Niet, if you did.”
Rika flicked a bacon crumb off her plate at the captain before turning and walking out of the galley, depositing her plate in the ‘cycler on the way.
A few minutes later, Rika was back in her quarters, staring at the natural limbs sitting in their rack. She’d not worn any of them since the first try-on with Finaeus.
It wasn’t that she was actively avoiding them…
OK, I’ve been actively avoiding them. Nothing for it, now.
She placed her gun-arm and mech arm in the rack and disconnected them, shaking them loose from the magnetic catches. Stepping to the left, Rika slid her arms into the natural limbs, and let them slot into place before slowly lifting them into the air.
“Shit,” she whispered. “It looks so weird…”
“Did you put him up to all that back in the galley?” Rika asked, giving her head an incredulous shake.
“I never knew you were so manipulative.”
Niki laughed.
“That is not comforting, Niki.”
“By paying off my team to coerce me?”
Niki laughed.
Rika sighed and stepped into the rack, unlocking her mech legs, and then lifted her right leg out and slid it into the corresponding natural leg, then followed with the left.
“Wha…damn, that feels weird. There’s just one joint in the leg.”
“Yeah, but this feels a lot different.”
She stepped out of the rack, and looked down at her legs, then placed her hands on her thighs and slid her fingers down them, bending over until she touched her ankles.
As Rika stared at her legs, she thought of how she looked almost like a natural woman. As the idea filtered through her mind, her skin turned a pinkish hue, matching her face perfectly, her breasts and genitals appearing.
Rika gasped and straightened, only to see that her AI had activated the cabin’s holomirror. “Niki, she tricked me. Tanis… that sneaky bitch…she tricked me.”
“I told her I didn’t want to get my natural body back…and look what she did to me.”
“Nooooo,” Rika whispered. “I was a street rat, living meal to meal.”
Rika did her best to hold back tears as she turned, looking at herself from different angles. “Niki…I don’t want to be a real woman. I’m not a real woman.”
“That’s different, Niki.”
Rika drew in a deep breath. She knew Niki was right. Looking like a human was no big deal; it was going to happen eventually. It wasn’t like she couldn’t go back to being herself again.
&nb
sp; She took a tentative step and wobbled for a moment. “Wow…feet are tiny! How do people balance on these things?”
“I…uh…I don’t have anything to wear. I have zero clothes, Niki.”
Niki laughed, and Rika got the impression her AI was shaking her head.
Rika nodded. “If you say so.”
From the neck down, her skin—including that of her prosthetic limbs—switched back to the familiar matte grey flesh that was her norm.
Rika sighed. “You’re really trying to get me to branch out here, aren’t you?”
With a slow nod, Rika converted her skin to look like a dark blue shipsuit. She looked herself over and added a white stripe down the side, so that she didn’t look like a giant blueberry. Drawing a deep breath, she walked to the door and paused.
“Why is this more frightening than going into battle?” she asked quietly.
“It was rhetorical, Niki.”
Rika palmed the door control—with an actual palm—and stepped out into the passageway, nearly running into Tex.
“Sorry…er…Colonel?”
Rika forced herself not to blush. “Yeah, First Sergeant, it’s me. Just trying on the limbs before I have to go onstation tomorrow.”
Tex smiled at her over his shoulder as he continued on his way. “Human looks good on you, Colonel.”
“Uh…thanks, Top.”
Tex flashed a grin at Rika. “You can call me ‘Top’ any day, Colonel.”
Tex just gave a jaunty wave as he continued on his way.
Rika laughed aloud.
Rika replied.
Niki sent a strong sense of disagreement.
Rika was certain that Niki couldn’t be more wrong.
<‘Oh?’> Rika asked, hoping the exclamation signaled a change in subject as she walked past The Van, who also wore human limbs, grinning like a fool as he stumbled down the corridor.
“Hey, Colonel Rika, lookin’ almost as good as me!”
Rika knew she was managing a damn sight better than The Van, but she had a lot more experience walking with partial limbs than he did.
Still, his grin was infectious, and she returned it. “Good work, you’ll be running on the ship’s track in no time.”
“Damn straight, ma’am.”
Rika paused and put a hand against the bulkhead, scrunching her toes as she did, reveling in the feeling of the tiny digits slipping over the deck plate.
“What about the ships on the dock? Can he do anything about those?”
“So we’ll have to hit those ships the old-fashioned way,” Rika surmised.
Rika let out a rueful laugh. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like what you have to say next?”
Pushing off from the bulkhead, Rika rolled her shoulders and drew in a deep breath. “Then I’d better get used to combat on my girly legs.”
INTO THE BREACH
STELLAR DATE: 09.20.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Fury Lance, Docking with Crag
REGION: Sepe System (Independent)
“OK, boys and girls,” Rika said as strode before the mechs assembled in the Fury Lance’s main docking bay, while trying to pretend she wasn’t wearing a Nietzschean uniform. “There are a lot of moving parts here, and everyone needs to be at the top of their game. We’ve trained with the new mods, I’ve even figured out how to hold a Nietzschean rifle with these freakish fingers.”
Rika held up her five fingers and wiggled them for the amusement of her battalion.
“Most of you should count yourselves lucky that you don’t have to do that. Kelly and Keli can attest to it, as well.”
“Which part?” Kelly called out from the ranks. “Fingers are easy. But touching a KZA rifle is enough to make me vomit.”
“Well, choke it down, Corporal,” Rika replied. “No spewing in a firefight. Remember. Timing is everything. Potter is managing sync for M Company, and Dredge is your go-to guy for N Company.”
“Ma’am, if I may,” Lieutenant Crudge spoke up. “Why are we ‘N Company’? What happened to ol’ A, B, and C?”
“New tradition for mechs,” Rika replied. “We start at ‘M’ and go up from there. I know, ‘N’ is for ‘Nietzschean’, but think of it as ‘Niet-Killers’, if it makes you feel better.”
Rika surveyed the mechs and the battalion leadership that was arrayed before them, wishing fervently once again that Barne was with them. Leaving him behind with Silva had been a tough choice, but it had been necessary. Silva may be a natural leader, but Barne was the one who knew how to get shit done when the chips were down.
With Barne absent, Rika considered ordering Lieutenant Colonel Alice to dismiss the troops, but she hadn’t quite fit in yet—especially since she was the only natural human in the battalion’s HQ.
“OK, mechs, enough dicking around,” Rika said, using a joke that had new meaning for the men and women before her. “You have jobs to do—go do them.”
Roughly half those present disappeared as their holopresences shut off, and the remainder broke into their platoons and squads, left the bay, and headed for their designated egress locations.
Chase laughed over the Link, and she could see his shoulders lift as he walked out of the bay.
“Itchy,” Kelly said, rolling her shoulders. “Clothing is stupid. Why do people still wear it?”
“And why do the Niets make it out of sandpaper?” Keli added.
Rika rolled her eyes at the two women, shaking her head at their eternally cavalier attitudes. “Attenuate your skin, if you can’t deal with it. Can’t have the pair of you slouching around like a couple of cadets.”
“There’s no such thing as a mech cadet,” Keli replied, an eyebrow arched.
“Exactly, Private.”
Rika turned her attention back to her surroundings. “OK, ladies, let’s move. These Nietzscheans aren’t going to kill themselves.”
Kelly snorted. “Wouldn’t that be nice? I can almost see it now.”
“No way,” Keli shook her head as they walked out into the passageway. “Where would the fun be in that?”
“Good point, what was I thinking?” Kelly asked.
For their fiction, Kelly was a lieutenant, and Keli was a gunnery sergeant. Rika wished they could wear armor out onto the dock, but it wasn’t common for Nietzschean military officers and NCOs when not in combat, so they’d have to rely on their MK99 skin to keep them safe.
What bothered Rika the most was the thought of going into hostile territory without her GNR. All she wore was a sidearm, and the same was true for Kelly. At least Keli had a rifle.
