by M. D. Cooper
“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.”
“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?” Rika 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 a
dd…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.
“Well, that’s what my hand looks like.” Rika shrugged as she flexed the flowmetal fingers.
“Oh, by the way, I also altered the GNR mount. Its barrel can slide back so that you don’t have to pull the barrel off to get into tight spaces.”
Rika chuckled. “Like half the places squishies normally sit.”
He chuckled. “OK, I think you’ve got the hang of things. You and your mechs have this entire wing of the hospital right now, so feel free to head out and talk to your people. Most of them are doing just fine with the upgrades, though some are having a few issues. Your psych team is working with ours to help them. You’ve got a lot of other internal upgrades, but I’ll let you sort through those yourself. The changes will be apparent on your HUD. Ping me if you have any questions.”
Rika nodded silently as Finaeus left the room, and she thought about how all of her people would be going through a similar process as she was.
The thought crossed her mind that she could surprise Chase with her ‘girly’ legs. The idea made her laugh, and she shook her head, setting the whip arm into the rack, and triggering the disconnect. She slid on her standard left mech arm, noting that it had a small kinetic rifle built into the forearm.
“You know,” she said aloud to Niki. “Swapping limbs like that used to take another person to help, and at least a few minutes.”
“Yeah,” Rika chuckled, remembering the time the mounts had slipped, and her GNR had fallen on Barne’s foot, breaking his bones in three places. “A lot of cursing.”
* * * * *
For the next several hours, Rika visited with the mechs of her company. She did everything from dance with Heather, who was ecstatic to have her ‘lady parts’ back, to hold The Van as he broke down in tears while trying to manipulate his new fingers, continually tearing the bedsheets as he tried to fold them.
Rika stayed with him for an hour until Shoshin showed up—still without a face, though he had also opted for the flow armor skin. The AM-3, now turned RR-4, congratulated The Van on his first good fold, and gestured for Rika to leave, telling her over the Link that she needed to circulate amongst the troops.
He was right. She got back to it.
So far, a third of the mechs had completed their changes in the Mechtubes, and a few of the humans in her crew had spent time in them as well, coming out somewhere in between.
“What do you think?” Barne’s gruff voice came from behind Rika as she walked into the corridor after visiting with Vargo Klen, who’d gotten his wish and was now an RR-4.
She turned to see her first sergeant behind her, his skin replaced with Finaeus’s new MK99 epidermis, and his right arm, a three-fingered mech limb. What was more surprising was that his left arm now sported a GNR-50. His legs looked normal, maybe a little bit more muscled, but ended in the claw-like appendages of a mech.
“Holy crap, Barne, I didn’t know you were going into the tubes!”
Barne shrugged. “I figure if these people can turn me into a mech in a couple of days and turn me back later, I should see what it’s like.”
“You’ve given mechs so much shit over the years, I was still getting over you signing up for M Company. Now you’ve gone and thrown this curveball.”
“Really, Rika? You think that little of me?” Barne shook his head as he regarded her with solemn eyes. “You made me a true believer that night you killed Cheri. Far as I’m concerned, mechs are the best of the best of the best.”
“You got that right, Top,” Crunch said a
s he ambled past, and Barne turned and whacked the newly minted FR-4 on the back of the head with his GNR’s barrel.
“Who the fuck said you could call me ‘Top’, Crunch? You know, the Nietzschean ships have a fun type of algae growing on the hulls, and I need someone to scrub it off. You got a fuckin’ squeegee attachment handy? You’re gonna need it.”
“Ha!” Crunch grinned as Barne hit him again. “That doesn’t even hurt!”
“Why, you little…” Barne turned and stormed after Crunch, who took off running.
“Boys!” Rika called after them. “We’re in a fucking hospital, here!”
“Now you know why they gave us the whole wing,” Leslie said from behind Rika, and she turned to smile at her friend and leader of First Platoon.
Rika snorted. “Yeah, good thing they didn’t charge the extra SC batts or give us ammo. These goons would have turned the mess hall into a firing range.”
“I know I’m itching to try out my new toys,” Leslie said with a predatory grin.
“You?” Rika looked Leslie up and down.
The lithe woman’s skin was still jet black, her eyes still yellow, and she still had her tail. Then Rika realized what was different.
“You got the skin job, too!”
Leslie’s body shimmered and then disappeared from view—even her hair. “Damn straight I did. Do you really think there was any chance I’d pass up getting stealth skin? Seriously?”
Rika laughed and shook her head, a grin splitting her lips wide. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Leslie reappeared on top of an equipment cart nearby, her grin just as large as Rika’s, while her tail whipped back and forth behind her.
“LT,” PFC Kim said as she sauntered past and touched Leslie’s tail. “Glad you kept the ‘toon’s good luck charm.”
“I’ll be buried with it, Private,” Leslie replied as she hopped down, strolling back to Rika. “But that’s not the best part…well, maybe it is, it’s hard to say.”
Leslie held up her hand, and Rika realized the woman’s fingernails were now sharp claws. Leslie flexed her fingers, and the claws extended over three centimeters from each finger.
