by Viola Grace
He chuckled. “You are aware of that?”
“Lucky is very informative. She likes to make sure that folks understand the details and regulations of the programs she writes. When Alphy picked you, Lucky played to your strengths.”
Cracker swayed, but she straightened as familiar landmarks began to appear. They were nearly there.
She staggered and fell against him.
Hammer picked her up and got on the com, speaking quickly and changing their direction.
“Where are we going?”
“You didn’t get the med check that the rest of us got. I am guessing that you have something wrong with you.”
She was too tired to fight. She muttered to him before she passed out. “I think my nanite controller stopped working.”
Everything went dark.
Waking up in a med bed was not her favourite way to wake up, seeing the drawn and pale faces of Alphy, Stitch, and Lucky. They were sitting at a small table nearby, and they all got to their feet when she woke up.
She was surrounded, and there were hands patting her head, her legs, and her hands.
“What happened?”
Hammer spoke from the corner. “You died. The equipment had to keep you alive while Stitch did a surgery to remove the faulty nanite unit and replace it with a working one, as well as about three pounds of nanites.”
She turned her head toward him. “Why aren’t they talking?”
“They start crying when they do. They thought getting you here would make you safe, but now, they realize that the generator that you were given was designed to fail if you left the arena. We have done a sweep on some older units and some newer ones. Yours was the only one tampered with.”
She nodded. “So, I was bleeding out.”
Alphy shook her head. “No, you bled out. All of your blood was in your abdomen.”
Cracker tried to sit up, but they held her down.
Stitch murmured, “You need three more hours of rest.”
Lucky nodded. “The nanites are working on the gene therapy that we have started, but it is still going to take a while before your body is out of shock.”
Cracker looked down. “Aw, you took my tether.”
Alphy snorted. “I know you are planning to do somebody mods. The tether was in the way.”
Stitch nodded. “We couldn’t get the suspension in the healing unit for restarting your heart with the tether flopping around.”
“Dang. I wanted to take it off by myself.”
Lucky smirked. “You can always stick it back on and take it off again. By the way, you had a lot of... stuff in the end of that thing.”
Cracker wrinkled her nose. “I was busy.”
Her friends laughed.
Stitch was smiling. “I knew you had a blood disorder, but I had no idea it was something so treatable. Why didn’t your family get it done?”
“Religious reasons. I was born this way, I had to die this way.”
Alphy was wry. “Your parents will be happy. You did.”
She sighed and leaned back. “Fuck.”
Lucky grinned. “Oh, and by the way. Happy Birthday!”
Cracker leaned back. “You are kidding me.”
“Nope. Pardon us for not throwing a party, but I believe we are over that.” Lucky winked.
Stitch chuckled. “But you are still getting presents.”
Alphy patted her arm. “Unwrapped.”
Lucky snorted, and Cracker started laughing. When Lucky gave her a dark look, she said, “Too soon?”
They joined in laughter for a minute, and when the giggles had subsided, Cracker said, “Do you have any lines on Windy and Lacey?”
“We do. They have been tracked, and the men we sent are working on extraction.”
Cracker exhaled slowly. “Good. I want everyone here having crappy birthdays together again.”
They laughed, but soon, their work called, and they had to leave her on her own, one by one.
Hammer moved to pull up a chair next to her bed. “Well, you broke my protocol.”
She sighed. “It was nice while it lasted. What do you think you are going to do with your time?”
“I have thought about taking up tennis.” He gave her a dark look. “Why didn’t you mention that you weren’t feeling well?”
“I didn’t realize it. I was so excited to be here. To be safe and to be able to do my work properly instead of carving the men up like sides of beef.”
He took her hand. The small act surprised her. “You did a good job with them. The vast majority of men at the arena were very happy with your work as their medic. They hated the lines, but they understood that if they could just make it inside, they would be walking out again.”
She sighed. “I did try.”
“No one there faulted you for not being able to do more. The old-timers were delighted that you used anaesthetic. The old medic didn’t.”
She lifted her left leg. “I recall that.”
He cursed. “He cut off good tissue?”
“Oh, yeah. It was a basic break that I had a walking boot for. He hacked it off and jammed in the tether while General Thorn watched.”
“I am almost wishing that you hadn’t killed him, so I could.”
She squeezed his hand. “I deserved my moment.”
“You did. It was terrifyingly impressive. Several of the first arrivals were stunned that you had been able to do that the whole time, but you waited until a rescue was available.”
She chuckled. “Good. They needed to figure out that the fight wasn’t over just because they weren’t at the battle line.”
“Do you always consider morale?”
“No. It is just an excuse for the fact that since I am a woman, I am used to waiting out situations that aren’t in my best interests. I only move when it is safe to do so.” She smiled. “Explaining that to men who are fighting because they are bored is a difficult thing.”
He paused. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Most men wouldn’t. This is a strange situation, but our little admin and adaptation team processed hundreds of men into their first adaptation. We made sure that everything worked and operated according to spec. The guys we worked on took it as appropriate that we took care of them and got them back into the field. I don’t know if they ever put it together with the mother-sister-carer thing.”
She frowned at the way she was babbling. “Do they have me on pain control?”
He grinned. “A little.”
She groaned. “I hate that stuff.”
“Stitch said that you were not a fan, but they had to put quite a bit of power through you once they had gotten the nanites into your veins, just to get your heart beating again. In order to take the stress off your system, they put you on pain control.”
She nodded. “I understand the necessity, but I don’t like how chatty it makes me.”
She looked from the left to the right. “Where did they put my file?”
“They took it with them. You can see it when you can bring it up on your own console.”
She groaned tragically and lay back, thumping her head against the pillow. “I hate not having input.”
“Input?”
“Mental stimulation.”
He paused, nodded, and said, “I am going to be right back.”
Cracker lay there, eyes closed, and started counting. It gave her something to do.
She had counted to four hundred seventy-eight when something long and flat settled on her lap.
“You can open your eyes now.”
She opened her eyes and blinked at the bright light.
Hammer adjusted her bed, and she slowly sat up. “Let the mechanism do the work.”
She looked at her lap, and the black and silver board caught her by surprise. “Where did you get this?”
“Alphy had it in storage. It was kept with me when they put me in stasis.”
She touched one of the narrow rectangles, and the note hung in the air.
“Cracker, Kerida, today, I would like to offer you piano lessons.”
She giggled, and she was still giggling when he walked around to line himself up, and he placed her hands in the first position.
She was there, and time flew past as she learned to play music by ear. Her hands ached, and she looked at him. “Can you play something for me?”
He grinned and reached past her, taking the piano off her lap, and he sat next to her. His hand flexed over the keys, and then, he began to entertain her with classics, contemporary music, and a rendition of the birthday song that brought tears to her eyes.
Stitch appeared an hour later when Hammer was carefully working his way through all of the beginner music he wanted her to learn. Cracker was scanned, and the new nanite generator that she had was working in a soft idle. No major output was needed to keep Cracker alive.
“Okay, go back to your quarters and rest. Really rest. Your catering unit can send you stuff from the commissary, just don’t wait until you are starving.”
“Delivery chutes?”
“Everywhere in this place. If you want it, you can just summon it.”
Hammer nodded and set the piano on Cracker’s lap before he picked her up. “I will make sure that she monitors her health.”
Cracker smiled and waved at Stitch. “I am off to give myself a tail.”
Stitch covered her face and shook her head. Cracker chuckled, and Hammer sighed.
It was time to get back to work. Resting was for those who didn’t have something better to do.
Chapter Eleven
“This is bizarre.” Hammer walked behind her, and he touched the connection point.
“Watch those fingers, Hammer.” She looked back over her shoulder.
“I thought you were going for another link in the leg, only smaller.”
“Nope. That was interesting, but it was awkward, kept me from having free movement and was way too heavy to conceal easily.”
“You can hide these?”
She grinned and turned to face him. As she did, the narrow metal-coiled hoses flattened and wrapped around her hips then wound between her thighs and around each one. The silver stripes were all that was left when the bladed ends tucked into the tops of her boots.
She put her hands on her hips, tugged her shirt down and smiled. “There we go. I can move, get dressed, get undressed, and shower.” She pressed her hand to his chest. “I can learn the piano.”
His eyes heated. “Well, they do look more comfortable than the previous tether.”
“And I can pick up a patient and move them around if I need to.”
“And you can subdue anyone unruly.”
She blinked. “I didn’t think to try that.”
He smiled. They were in her workroom, and they were alone. “I volunteer to see if you can subdue me.”
She smiled. “How thoughtful.” Her new whips loosened and unwrapped in under two seconds. They lashed around his arms and constricted.
He was surprised, and he flexed his arms against her grip. She held him and then lifted him off his feet. The reinforcement that she had run down her legs gave her the angle and pivot points to move while holding him out at a safe distance, so he couldn’t kick at her. She walked him over to the work table, and she picked up the hypo.
That was when he began to thrash, and she felt the full force of his adapted arm pushing against her whips.
She pressed the hypo to his arm and counted to five. “You would be out by now.”
He relaxed, and she moved the whips, returning them to their place wrapped around her thighs.
Hammer asked, “Okay, how did you do that? There is no way that you should have been able to lift me, let alone walk with me.”
“The plates that I had inserted in my back, thighs, and calves. They lock and pivot to let me carry additional weight. It is based on the wing base of the Alguth.”
He nodded. “And now they are asleep again.”
She chuckled. “They are.”
Cracker ran her hands over them, and they were lying so flat that she could barely feel them. “I didn’t even think to ask, but is this a problem for you?”
He sat up on the bed and swung his legs down, pulling her close to him. “If it makes you secure and makes you feel better while I can’t be with you, I am all for it. Frankly, knowing that you have a potentially deadly weapon with you at all times is a bit of a turn-on.”
She didn’t squeak as he lifted her up to be face to face. He had taken to doing it just to get her attention when she was suffering fatigue.
“Nothing you can do to yourself or to others will ever shake my attraction and affection for you.”
She reached out and cupped his cheeks. “That is so sweet.”
She went in for a kiss, and he met her halfway, simply by pulling her in.
An alarm sounded, and Hammer pulled back. “Did you have that installed as well?”
She smacked him, and when he set her on the floor, she ran to her com terminal. “Alphy, what is it?”
“We have found a dead Splice ship. The Splice have evacuated, and there are life signs that are fading fast.”
“I am on my way.”
Hammer asked, “Can I be of any use?”
“Yes, get your ass here, suit up, and prepare to face booby traps. The Splice are getting sneaky.”
Hammer nodded, and Cracker was on her feet. Together, they sprinted to the launch bay where Stitch, Alphy, and Lucky were getting equipment ready.
Cracker didn’t have to ask, she got an inventory list in front of her, set a calibration unit, and got her machining equipment into the lineup. Anyone surviving the Splice ship was going to be in dire need of the best treatment possible.
Stitch brought out a box of primer nanite units.
Cracker asked, “Primers?”
“The Alguth need them, and we have run into two humans without them. Better to have them and not use them than need them and not have them.”
“Excellent.” Cracker was nervous. She knew that Hammer was a fighter, but she wasn’t sure how he was in a rescue situation.
Waiting for them to come back was going to be agony.
Alphy’s head came up. “They have tripped a self-destruct. I am stalling the countdown. Sorry, ladies. I have to keep this up.”
Cracker and Stitch nodded and shifted to take up the extra space. Lucky moved forward, and they were ready for the first shuttle.
When the first ship came back, they were ready to go. Stitch charged into the shuttle, and Cracker was on her heels with a machine taking measurements and ordering the parts for delivery to her station.
Stitch called out, “I need more primers. Why the fuck do they all need primers?”
Cracker looked at one of the slumped figures, and she met the stunned and numb gaze of the person on the floor. “Civilians! We have civilians here. Primers all around.”
Lucky came back. “Acknowledge. Primer packs coming in. How do you know they are civilians?”
“I have two teenagers in front of me.”
“Oh, my god. Okay, primers coming in.”
Cracker kept up her analysis, and Stitch went quiet as she worked. There were thirty wounded on this first shuttle, and there had been over three hundred life signs on that Splice ship.
Once they were done with triage, they started offloading the wounded onto gurneys.
There were two men who had three limbs missing each, and they were pushed to the front of the line.
“No explosives in either body cavity. They are clean.” Stitch’s voice was hard.
“The adaptations are at my station. I can line them up and load them into the machines as they are assembled.”
Stitch blinked. “You don’t need help?”
“Nope. I am good. You do your thing, and I will keep them coming.”
Cracker pushed the first gurney into her station and double-checked the measurements on the limbs. She sedated her patient and recorded the dosag
e on his file then went in and removed the remaining tail ends of the joints. The Splice cut across the bone, and that was always a problem. It made it hard to get a good connection for the new adaptation. The result was that she had to remove the stubs left behind. It wasn’t a great job, but it was where she had gotten her name.
Once the new implants were lined up, she moved his gurney over to the grafting machine and slid him into it, using her new whips. The bones and feet were lined up, and then, she sealed the machine and turned him over to Stitch.
Stitch was staring at her new whips. “Okay, those are cool.”
“Handy too.” She nodded and returned to her station, where the next one was already in position.
With a shot of sedative and a grunt, she got to work.
Her custom-design machines were whirring for the young women that she had seen in the shuttle. Getting limbs that small had been an issue for her and for Stitch. Having an arm that fit was a true gift.
She worked on the men in the worst shape and then got the girls their arms. Coaxing their bodies into growing new tissue was the job of the nanites. That was outside of Cracker’s job description.
When the next shuttle came in, Cracker was up to her elbows in gore, so the regular cyborg medics went in and divided the wounded into immediate and stable.
Hours passed, and she simply worked on one after the other, getting the best fit, and seeing a total of a dozen teens in the mix. They were all in complete shock.
Now was not the time to quiz them. There was time for that once they weren’t sitting and staring.
When there was time for her to take a break, she flexed her arms and scrubbed up before eating a cheese-based set of noodles. Nothing with a red sauce on a surgical day.
She drank plenty of water, had some juice, checked her blood sugars, and got back into the mess of it.
Her whips were saving lives and keeping the other medics on more important matters. She could lift, move, and position her patients without having to constantly call someone.
Stitch passed her at one point and muttered, “Just like the battle of the Kabar Belt.”
Cracker started giggling, and it kept going. The day that the wounded from the Kabar Belt had come through, they had been roused in the middle of the night. Cracker was wearing a tank top and no bra. She was sprayed with blood at one point, and it was the equivalent of being red and naked for the rest of the day.
