This Chapter: Deadtone/Negotiations/Reprieve.
Next Chapter: Raid/Purge/Flight Trials.
Local Time: Unknown.
March 25, 2161
Location: Classified.
Assigned Personnel: N/A
Containment: FW-05 Baltimore.
"This can end, just… manifest your hull."
A woman with lank, short brown hair hissed as another surge of agony tore through her body, her chained form twisting and bucking as shocks of electricity and violent, painful twitches set her shaking in her chains.
"You don't have to make this difficult, just manifest your hull."
"Never."
Her voice is flat and emotionless. While her single remaining eye is hazy and painful, and she can barely see through the blood crusting her face, she will not give up. Not while the siren song of a fleet commander plays in her bones, and not while she can hear Akagi's call from across the system. Not when she remembers how she was torn apart, how she failed and left her admiral behind once, and how her choice to end it all was spat on and revoked.
"Please, we know you're resisting because of your commander, Akagi, right? We know she's on Mars and we know where she's going to be and how she's operating. She's not coming for you, and besides that, she's not even your commander, serving a hostile nation and all that, remember?"
The shocks intensify before Baltimore can spit her response at the man and woman in front of her, the slate gray walls of her surroundings only broken by the chains and electronic devices filling the interior of the cell. She grits teeth hard enough to feel them grind, and the woman sighs.
"We really did not wish to revisit this option, but, so be it."
The man nodded to his partner, and they left her alone again. Baltimore shifted herself as best as she could. It was too much to hope for comfort by far, but she could just barely reach the last piece of her clothing remaining on her, they'd left her old collar intact, if little else, perhaps to wager embarrassment against her mental prowess?
She wondered, idly, what they wanted her hull for. Her consciousness and memories were hazy at best of her… was this her third life now? What had they done to force her back to life?
She wasn't supposed to have been able to come back, it was why she'd… taken the way out she'd chosen last time. With so much death and destruction around her, her own needs had been left behind, and she'd felt useless.
What is a warship to do when you cannot fight your enemies, because your guns have rusted shut and your crew are no longer able to assist or aid you against them? What is a warship to do but die?
So why was she back now?
Why was she needed alive?
Akagi's siren call echoed in her mind, a gentle warmth from far, far behind her. It felt like the ghost of a warm hug, the gentle call originating distantly from her current position. But they didn't want her to find Akagi. So what did they want her for? There was torture and pain, but it was not like it was with Kaga, not like it was in regard to vivisecting the living to ferret out their secrets, it wasn't in regards to her nature, so… what was it then? Why was she still alive and why were they trying to force her to manifest her hull?
Did they want to crew her? Like some form of internal parasites?
The mere thought of being used in that manner was disgusting, the sheer audacity making Baltimore heave in her restraints as her stomach tried, and failed to empty itself of contents that did not exist.
The entrance to her cell hissed open, and a trio of lab coat clad scientists accompanied the woman back into the room.
"Going to cut me apart like Kaga, now?"
The woman paused, and circled around Baltimore, grabbing a lock of her brown hair in one hand and tugging it in front of the woman's face.
"You are so, so human-like. It's extremely difficult to see you as anything other than human, despite the fact that you aren't human."
The woman stepped back, and as her eyes welled up with tears, she continued.
"You look so, so much like my mother, it's almost too much to bear. I am truly sorry for this Baltimore, truly, I am. But we have to win, we can't let any stone go unturned and we cannot risk the UEG asserting enough collective will to unify the planet."
Baltimore hissed.
"Then why?"
The woman approached her, trailing a hand down Baltimore's cheek as she spoke.
"Because there are too many bad actors, too much rot in our society, and we're going to have to burn it to the ground and rebuild from the get go if we want any semblance of a proper society."
Baltimore froze.
"You want to burn everyone except yourselves to ash… you want to start another holocaust…"
Her voice a terrified, trembling whisper, as every fibre of who she was twisted, trying to fire and use her shipselves weapons. For just that moment she tried to summon her rigging. In that moment she felt herself start to shift and change, start to twist and break.
She saw her armored prow and the front batteries slowly start to shape themselves, and she felt her steel form begin tearing at the boundaries of reality as the Nazi bitch in front of her smiled happily.
"Yes! Show us your power! Join us!"
For just a moment, for just a slight moment, Baltimore felt her main battery shift and aim, felt her sights land on the other woman's head, and she tried to squeeze the trigger.
Then everything went wrong. Slithering coldness slipped into her muscles as the chains sprouted needles and dug into her skin. Chemicals flooded her body and the lab-coats began to scribble notes down as she started screaming and bucking in her chains. Her awareness of that second part of her, of her hull, began to fade. She tried to call it back, screamed over and over and over in her mind as that self, that sense of metal hull and impenetrable steel was torn away from her.
Her energy faded, and Baltimore felt numbness spread so far across her body that every touch and attempt at motion felt like they took years to execute. But she could still hear every word, and every frenzied scribble on the notepads.
"There's a good girl… well done!"
The woman was speaking to her, and Baltimore felt her eyes dull with the agony and the pain of what was happening, felt herself shrink away until she was almost a passenger, her body feebly, limply hanging in the chains. Her sense of shipself was faded, indistinct, as though through smoke and fog thick enough to choke her radar and sensor suite.
The scientist was touching her again, and Baltimore couldn't even muster up the energy to snap her teeth at the woman.
"Truly… you look so much like her. You may feel strange as we retrofit your hull, dear, try to keep still, I'd hate to have to actually give my medical staff reason to try spinal shunts…"
The veiled threat hung in the air as Baltimore's hollow gaze followed the scientist out.
Her shipself was distant, but she could, if she really focused, get a sense of it and its decks. Her cameras and internal systems were locked down harshly, nothing worked, but she could feel how her hull had manifested. It was a surprising feeling, seeing herself in a modern form that felt like her just… different now. Her hull was more angular, more subtle, she could feel batteries of missiles held securely in launch cradles, could feel the oil-slick motion of turrets as they swayed in the vacuum laden drydock.
No external force, yet her turrets moved whisper quiet, and her machinery stayed locked away from her.
As if someone had thrown her through a growth spurt and a makeover, and she couldn't look at herself in the mirror.
Then the itching and crawling started.
Baltimore had not journeyed with a crew in centuries, and now? Now it was painfully clear that these people were invaders.
She could feel teams of them crawling along her decks, cutting away panels and markings and striking deeper. Like a knife that slid between soft flesh gently and slowly, she could feel her internal bulkheads begin to fail, could feel these parasites crawling along her decks and doing what they pleased with her form.
Now, more than ever, Baltimore felt vulnerable, naked as the Nazis crawled along her internals.
She'd been built to fight them. Built to attack and kill these pricks, for daring to believe in their filthy ideology, she'd sent her share of vessels to the depths of the sea. Now she was being puppeted, parasitized and consumed by the descendents of their filth? How was she to fight against this!?
She tried to sum up the effort to tear her bindings apart, to swing her turrets, unlock her VLS cells and blow this disgusting worm-laden womb wide open as it sprouted more invaders.
They were through her surface decks now, cutting into the internals, ripping out extra ammunition and settling more compartments into a new, disgusting abomination. Cold and harsh steel frames attached to her sides, and Baltimore sobbed as her maneuverability slipped away, launching cradles for dirty bombs, weapons of mass destruction, welded firmly to her sides.
Were they intending to use her to suicide bomb Earth? The home of the people who had made her? Were they trying to harm and hurt the people she cared about?
Or-
They'd said Akagi was on Mars… were they intending her to be a corpse ship? Laden with the dead and the plague? Was she to spread this awful infection to the rest of the remnants? Was she supposed to be the vector for the infestation that would result in all of their dooms?
She couldn't allow that to happen. She couldn't.
How could she get a message out? Her communications were shut down, and she'd likely just act as a beacon to draw the rest of the fleet out.
But… Akagi had a signal, Akagi's signal broadcast far and wide across the solar system. What was she using for that? Communication equipment, that must be advanced and potent… but how could Baltimore feel it deep inside of her, as opposed to the usual warmth of a transmission, this felt… personal. As if her flagship was calling her navy together, as if her siren call had broached old wounds and made them whole again. Akagi needed her, Akagi wanted her back, and she'd do it, but not as a plague ship. She would not bring death and destruction back to those she called family. Never again.
She focused on that signal, devoting every part of her dulled brain to ascertaining it's direction, how Akagi had been using it, how she'd done it, Baltimore had to know, had to see more of what it was capable of, and she had to know if she was going to make this work. Even as the parasites cut into her command decks, the woman threw everything she had at the electronic systems aboard her shipself.
The feeling of being an intruder in her own systems made Baltimore's teeth rattle and crunch slightly as she ground them into her jaw. The parasites had invaded her, pushed her into a drydock, and locked her systems down. But she was her ship hull, there had to be a way inside for her, they couldn't have closed off every single weapon or route into her central core.
Baltimore didn't know why her body felt so leaden or so far away from her, nor did she particularly understand what the fascist pricks had done to her body to make it so weak, but she'd get out of it eventually. She'd fight free of it, and then she'd revisit a whole new definition of the term "vengeance" upon the bastards who dared to have poisoned her, those who used her body like a root for their own nightmares.
Akagi: Negotiations
Local Time: 1351
March 27, 2161
Location: Martian Subsurface Facility.
Assigned Personnel: FFW Akagi, Agent "Texas"
Priority Negotiations
"You cannot have Mars."
The man seated across from Akagi was a delightfully interesting attempt to placate her. He'd arrived in a rumpled suit and with hair messed up from the suborbital flight that had brought him to the door of the facility. When she'd greeted him, he'd bowed to her, introduced himself as Agent Texas, and asked if she was willing to speak to him.
Which had led them to the surface of the conference room she'd terrified their first visitors within a scant few days ago. In that time, it had been cleaned, and tasteful, if minimalist decorations had been procured and hung. The room felt lighter now, less dark, and as Akagi sipped a small mug of tea she nodded once.
"Reconsider. Mars is not a sovereign territory, and my people had first claim to it before the UEG even considered an attempt upon the planet to be viable."
The man paused, and shook his head.
"You and I both know that the UEG will never allow it, they're distracted by the war against the Frieden's and the Koslovics at the moment-"
Akagi smiled.
"I was not aware of such a state of affairs, shall I advise my naval forces to cooperate willingly with UEG assets operating within proximity of the Martian surface?"
The man frowned slightly.
"It is not official, but it is something I was authorized to give you, a bargaining chip, if you will."
"A chip that is rather useless to me, given that the Fleet of Fog are not currently at war with either faction."
The man raised his hands up in the air.
"I am merely a messenger. Sent for the purposes of allowing Akagi and Amagi to leave orbit of Mars with the promise you will not immediately attack any surface assets we leave behind, or research teams within this area."
Akagi frowned at him, and the air around her chilled, fog seeming to roll in from the floor around her.
"Nothing stops them from leaving orbit now."
Texas smiled at her, lips pulling back from perfectly straight, white teeth.
"There are still things to be considered, you seek recognition as an official nation, correct? We could have helped you with that, our united opinion on such a thing would vastly speed the process of official recognition by the nations of Earth."
Akagi thought, sipping from her teacup, as the man continued.
"Unfortunately, I don't believe that's a possibility in the wake of the fleet engagement over Earth a few days ago. Thousands lost their lives in the wake of what your vessels did when they engaged a fleet in maneuvers."
Akagi watched him, eyes locked to him as he continued.
"Now… nations are baying for your blood, and in several US states, certain political figures have implied that if your heads were to be delivered to them on silver platters, many people would be happy."
Akagi smirked.
"Now, both of us know that you're not telling us everything, and god knows I'd do the same in your situation. But do you really think you can just… seal yourselves off from the UEG, claim a world in our system, and not have to follow the rules?"
As he finished, Akagi held up a hand, drained the rest of her tea, and answered him.
"Are you familiar with the Captain of the UEG Say That To My Face? Agent Texas?"
The man nodded.
"Are you familiar with her dossier, or her life?"
The man once again nodded.
"Then I will not do you the disservice of citing her life accomplishments and who she was to you. But I will state that her actions saved the lives of everyone within that fleet orbiting Earth outside of her small group."
Texas frowned, and asked, lips pursed.
"How do you figure?"
Akagi smiled a predatory grin.
"Because her actions revealed a Frieden spy network within the ranks of the UEG's navy, one so deeply placed that they launched a coup over at least one vessel within that fleet, one that joined with a wet water fleet upon the surface in their attempts to board, capture, and vivisect the FFW Wasp. Like they did to my sister in the past. Their attack, a hate crime upon a victimized minority of "your" population, was repulsed with a low loss of life and few casualties."
She paused and took a deep breath. She didn't need oxygen, not anymore, but it calmed her, helped her to keep up appearances that they were still normal.
"Because if they had succeeded, if the coup had not jumped the gun early, if she'd not done any of a hundred other things, then we would not be having this discussion at the moment. We would instead be fighting each other, and I suspect you would have been slain valiantly in the defense of your country."
Akagi flickered her fingers against the decorations on the table, patterns lighting up on the systems beneath her as she did so.
"I have zero interest in your petty territorial squabbles. The fact that one faction are literal Nazis who worship a genocide committed hundreds of years ago is laughable. That you haven't stomped them out is disappointing and, frankly, it's still disappointing to see that Hitler and the ideology he follows still has such a sway over you, to this very day."
The man waited for her to finish, politely sipping from his own tea, before he spoke again.
"My superiors will be glad to hear of your policy of nonintervention. While the circumstances of the past few days were deeply unfortunate, the uncovering of a Frieden spy ring will, inevitably, be revealed. All of those who lost their lives in the battle, save for the Friedens, will be given posthumous rewards. But that-"
Akagi cut him off.
"Will not be enough to satisfy those politicians. They will bay for my blood, and you, while not duty bound to accept their proposed war, will have to at least make a concession for them, lest their incredibly powerful donors make an honest effort to force you out of office or have family members disappear, no?"
The man shrugged, an apologetic expression on his face.
"We're getting better… the current president has snuck a few bills through, and has made them more and more restrictive towards companies and donors… in a few years we really might have made a difference."
Akagi moued in surprise, a single eyebrow raised artfully as she paused.
"How surprising, albeit welcome, I am glad you are learning from your mistakes. But, once more, that does not answer the question of how to deal with the problematic politicians. Unless this is the strangest request for an assassination I have ever entertained."
Texas started, a snort of laughter coming from his mouth for a moment before he caught himself.
"Please don't tempt me."
Akagi joined him, soft laughter echoing through the room, and for a moment, peace and mutual humor reigned over the room the two resided within.
"I take it this is a sign of good things to come?"
Akagi thought for a time, before she stood from the table and stated.
"This is an opening, and I will allow these talks to continue. You have an opportunity here to convince me of your intentions being more pure than the last 3 times. Do not disappoint me, lest battle be joined and we find out how many of our people must die for us to come to terms with the past."
As the door hissed shut behind her, Akagi nodded to the pair of guards outside, and allowed them to follow her. The marine honor guard, resplendent in their dress blues and shining rifles, nervously cast glances her way as her guards, a pair of silent men and women flanked her and moved into the depths of the facility. The opening of the wing quickly becoming known as the diplomacy quarters was bridged off of the rest of the facility with another set of doors, massive blast doors designed to seal behind their retreating defenders, and it was these that Akagi made use of, sliding them shut as she passed with her guards.
The moment they were clear of earshot, and clear of potential enemies, Akagi called out quietly.
"Ayanami."
The shadows at her beck and call twisted, and the form of a darkly clad woman resolved itself, falling into step silently behind Akagi as she was called.
"You have your permission, sortie wolf packs and patrol our space. Repulse invaders with warning shots, but destroy any who fire upon you."
The shinobi grinned, her eyes, the only real visible part of her form, crinkling upwards as she spoke.
"By your command."
"Additionally, you may instruct Atlanta that her aggressive reconnaissance of known Frieden positions is greenlit as well, and you may instruct her to launch in stealth if she can. Even if it will slow her down."
The small woman nodded.
"I have drafted that code you asked for, governing our society and the way we will interact with the world, I have left it upon your desk."
Akagi nodded, her guards splitting off of her and departing as she and Ayanami made their way deeper into the facility's military complex.
"Musashi's status?"
"Leading primary fleet assets on exercises around the martian orbit. She's complained of feeling small in her form, and has asked to be given time off to explore if such a thing could be altered or changed."
Akagi frowned.
"Has anyone else complained of similar issues?"
Ayanami nodded.
"Nimi has, explicitly in the wake of her accident, she's felt as though she is… "small" in her words, and is uncertain of what exactly is causing such a thing."
Akagi frowned, biting her lower lip.
"And you?"
Ayanami froze.
"I… I'm sorry Ma'am… what could you mean?"
Akagi answered with a slight, knowing smile.
"You are speaking formally, a far cry from your normal attitude and personality, which tells me something is wrong, but that you don't believe it significant enough to bring to my attention. However, you are concerned about it enough to consistently think about it, and that has resulted in you defaulting to that formal manner of speech because you are mimicking my own. So, what is the matter?"
Ayanami grimaced, before Akagi's suspicion was answered.
"I've… felt itchy with my hull and rigging. I went to Medusa about it but… she was indisposed."
"And Akashi was-"
"Attempting to help her… whatever Medusa and Akashi had to do to themselves to survive the conditions they did was, intense."
Akagi raised an eyebrow.
"Elaborate, I've been… busy."
Ayanami shook her head.
"I can't, honestly if I were to hazard a guess I'd say she's insane… but-"
"You aren't certain."
"No."
"And the fleet we sent to Earth?"
"Recovering, albeit slowly. You… permission to speak freely?"
Akagi nodded her head.
"They're shaken up, badly, they need to see that it was worth it, that you were able to retrieve your daughter safely, they need that sense of security that almost dying for that was worth it. You… really should go and see them, as soon as you can."
Akagi frowned at Ayanami, but the shorter woman held her ground, a steely gaze in her eyes.
"I understand. Can you clear my schedule for tomorrow morning? I must oversee the wolfpacks launch, but… I can see them tomorrow."
Ayanami smiled gently.
"It will be done, Admiral."
Akagi matched her smile with a faint one of her own.
Ayanami vanished into her shadow as Akagi settled into a room distinctly different from the rest of the base.
Dominated by walls of black screens, into which the door itself was a fluidly matched, flush with the walls example, was a room that had been refitted into a nexus of command and control, and as Akagi settled into the center of the room, her steps caused those screens to cast their harsh blue light upon her form. She watched, and they expanded around her, her gaze tracked across a half dozen human attendants and the pair of marines within the room.
"Are we prepared for Fleet command?"
Nods answered her, as Akagi settled into her chair.
"Begin, give me reports from the outer patrols and tell me where Musashi is."
She let her senses cast out as her operators began sorting through status reports. This slowed things down slightly, but Akagi would not directly interfere with her fleet operations if she could help it, and this way she could focus on obtaining the materials and the resources beneath Mars. Once the Thanatonium had been extracted, then she could focus on what Texas likely had actually wanted from her.
Their exodus from the solar system.
At this juncture it was merely a thought, most human beings, especially of the ones she'd brought with her might be fine with it, but it would seriously hamper their ability to grow if they didn't take colonists with them. To say nothing of the fact leaving so much of their home behind seemed to be unthinkable, even after all that humanity had done to them.
She was distracted, but not so much that when the drones began transmitting warnings, and her wolf packs began seeing contacts show around their AO, she wasn't seeing that.
Akagi brought her full attention to the drone shell enveloping Atlanta's task force, the light cruiser leading a battery of 4 destroyers in a far spaced flying wing patrolling towards the outer system. What she was not expecting them to see was another Fleet of Fog warship.
The shadowy form resolved itself into the shape of a destroyer ripped from the days of WW2. USS Johnston floated below the asteroid belt at the outer system, and as Atlanta sent a trio of reconnaissance drones in for a closer look, their compatriot flared to life. Markings blazed a hellish, rotted purple color as the ship began to accelerate.
Communications could be transmitted in real time, but not without exposing her command center as capable of it, and Akagi wanted to keep that card close to the chest. Thus, Akagi was helpless save to watch as the enemy vessel fired on Atlanta from nearly point blank range for void combat.
Photon beams sliced through space, and Atlanta reacted instinctively, firing maneuvering thrusters hard, the light cruiser's defensive Klein field snapped into place instantly, and the photon cannon barrage slammed into them with powerful bleed throughs scattering light and color into the empty abyss around her. Akagi watched power levels spike across the fleet as they faltered, almost… uncertain. But what caused that faltering, Akagi wasn't certain.
A moment passed.
Another.
Then Atlanta was wiping tears from her face and she was ordering her units forwards. Her arms swept out, and slight fluctuations in her klein field dropped as missile batteries and external racks flushed her payload of ship killers free of their launch cradles.
What was-
Akagi's eyes narrowed, and she took direct control of several of Atlanta's drones, the fleet's power signature spiked around the facility, and this would be noticed, not so much as a communications broadcast would, but it would be noticed. However, as those drones swept in for a close look, Akagi's suspicions were confirmed, and an impulse to retch boiled up inside of her.
Johnston's batteries were firing slowly, too slowly, and the presence of dozens of heat signatures across her decks confirmed as much as the obscuring paint on her prow that she was no longer under the control of her shipself.
She'd been infested.
Nazi bastards.
Akagi had no idea how they'd done it, but she could see crude metal bolted to Johnston's hull, emplacements attached as though by sloppy hands. Skilled work for humans, but when you were a networked intelligence such things were hardly up to the specs of your own evaluations.
Her batteries fired on the incoming missiles, and Akagi forced herself to watch as a daughter of the sea died in front of her.
Reprieve. FFW Wasp.
Local Time: 1351
March 27, 2161
Location: Medical wing, ship-breaker yards.
Assigned Personnel: FFW Wasp, FFW Z-23, FFW Rochester, FFW I-401
Reprieve, ordered R
"I-it's h-horrible."
Her voice was a staccato burst of machine code and stuttered as its cold tones burst from not tuned vocal processors.
"I-"
Wasp looked at her hull, watching the cutters go to work. Akagi's drones hacking and splitting away at the deadtone "flesh" of her prior hull, markings dark and dulled, and decks still strewn with the frozen globules of blood of the invaders, Wasp tried to hold herself together, tried to stop herself from crying and sobbing.
She failed, inevitably.
It felt as though she was being torn apart. Yes, it was deadtone machine "flesh", not living like her anymore, it couldn't sing and configure as it floated through the void… but it still hurt to see it dissolve and melt.
She knew she'd receive a new hull within the week… and that her old hull would give grace to new legions of automata, with dozens of new forms shifting up and taking over. She'd… likely get the itching to stop, if the silent, observing form of Medusa was correct in her prior statements.
As she sobbed, her fleet wrapped their arms around her, holding her tight with cold arms and warmer hearts.
Rochester looked on the scene with detachment, standing ramrod straight when she wasn't wrapping herself around Wasp like a particularly surly blanket. She was beating up on herself, convinced it was her lack of seriousness that had led to their failure of a mission.
I-401 wasn't speaking, and for the already taciturn and quiet girl… that was saying a lot. Iona had been rare to speak, but now it was as though the little submarine harbored a truly vengeful streak for everything that had hurt Wasp. She'd glared and nearly bitten Ayanami, when the woman had approached from within Wasp's shadow by surprise, startling the carrier and raising half her fleet to combat readiness within a scant few seconds. When she'd finally stopped hyperventilating long enough to realize the contact was friendly, Ayanami had been faced down with her entire task force's full firepower, and Rochester's hull had been hanging outside the hull, broadside photon guns charged.
They'd been hurt, bad.
No one knew what they'd wanted from Wasp, or why they'd reached out to tear her union core free from its case. But she knew that she'd feel the awful touch of human hands on that most precious part of her until the end of her days. To be held in someone's hand… to be secreted into a box, locked away from the world, disconnected by force from your body. It was a torture she'd not been ready to receive, and the sheer pain of it lingered long after her freedom had been attained.
"You should stand and reconnect yourself to the new hull. It will aid you in your healing."
Medusa's cold, clinical tone sounded from the doctor's position on the ceiling.
Wasp had not been prepared for what Medusa had looked like.
She'd been told that Medusa and Akashi were the first to ascend, and that Medusa especially looked very… strange, by the normal standards of the rest of the fleet, but she'd not been prepared for quite how strange that was.
From the hips upwards, Medusa appeared mostly as she had prior to her ascension. A woman with dark black hair and a piercing, green eyed gaze. A rather petite figure belied the fact that the woman was as heavily muscled as anyone else, and quite good at hiding it. She had a no nonsense demeanor and a lazy sense of humor that often clashed, but remained, from all anyone had ever said about her, a dedicated, and excellent researcher.
It was at the lower legs, where those ended.
Medusa's thighs and lower legs were permanently bent, as though she were sitting on her knees, but next to, and fanning out from her in a splay of eight, were her new legs. The woman resembled a mechanical spider from that portion, and each leg was a crude… industrial creation, with dozens of hidden compartments and hundreds of tools. Where her flesh gave way to mechanics was often a crude marriage, harmony and asymmetry present in equal measure.
She'd taken spiderlike mannerisms from her augmentations, and now her hair slithered and hissed like a snake as nanites continuously fanned out around her. A form of stress relief, if Wasp hazarded a guess.
The rear of the woman gave rise to a massive spiderlike rear abdomen, containing weapons platforms and a pair of hunter killer aerial drones, in addition to stocks of nanomaterial and medicines.
The woman was a genius, and Wasp admitted it, but her habits of moving on walls and ceilings was downright creepy, and yet through all of it…
Wasp would not have had anyone else overseeing her recovery.
She sighed, and the quiet researcher, and head of medicine reached out a hand, reversing it 180 degrees so it could rest on her shoulder. Her voice was as gentle as it could be, given her cold, aloof demeanor.
"It will aid your health. Connect to the new form, and tell me if the itching is as bad as it was last time."
Wasp sighed and nodded. Her fleet slowly separated from her, and as they did so, she reached out for the only open network connection in the medical bay. The one that led her into the rabbit hole that focused her mental attention and energy on her new hull.
Recessed into a bay underneath the launch platforms, a new shape was busily floating in an environment where testing could be done. Each and every moment, automata, drones, and dozens of construction robots ripped through the superstructure of a vastly larger vessel, repairing, plating armor on, and carefully evaluating internal components and circuitry.
The form of Wasp had shifted and evolved. No longer was a long flight deck the only thing that showed to the void. Recessed hangars took up positions along her new hull, and spaces for weapons blisters and communications towers now lay throughout the vessel. Gone were the obvious bridge towers, the vulnerabilities. Only the flight deck remained, one of a pair now, with one upon the lower, angular portion of Wasp's new hull.
"I feel fat."
Medusa's reply was quiet.
"You are vastly larger. You should be as maneuverable as before."
"I still feel fat."
The doctor sighed.
"The itching?"
Wasp shrugged, before a look of concentration came over her face.
"G-gone."
"Good. We will finish your form now, then move onto void trials when possible. Have you considered the options available for upgrades?"
"N-no."
Medusa nodded, and moved onwards, a number of sensors extended from her lower "self" and now reviewing and scanning over Wasp's form as she continued for a moment.
"Very well, all systems read as nominal, this checkup is concluded. Please remain within the medical wing."
Without a further statement, Medusa turned and exited, her lower half skittering out through the enlarged door.
"You… should stop watching this."
Rochester was the first to speak.
"I have to. She-"
"She is not you, not anymore."
Nimi's contribution was quiet, the woman seeming to shrink into herself as the words left her mouth.
"B-but-"
"You are you. You are that body, that union core, you are not the deadtone hull that is out there… it's no more you than the swarms of assemblers under Akagi are here."
Rochester cut in.
"Please-"
Wasp held up a hand. Stuttering her reply out.
"I-I, I have to watch… it's-"
But it was at this point that Iona spoke for the first time.
"No. Stop for us. Stop torturing yourself. We all made mistakes. We will do better next time. You are alive, that's what matters."
The small submarine enveloped her in an embrace, tugging her in close and tight and continuing to speak.
"So… please, be easier on yourself."
Wasp finally turned, paused, and worried at her lip, before she nodded, sighing. Her friends, her fleet, tugged her to her feet and pushed her out of the hall.
A/N: Won't be long now, as we begin to close out Arc 2, and approach Arc 3. Been a bit of delay on this one between grief and a few other heavy emotions. Apologies for the delay and the messed up schedule of updates.
As always, thank you so much to my patrons, who make this entire thing possible.
Ascendant Hearthkeepers: MITH HAT, Danielle Young
Cloudburst Hearthkeepers: Ryan Silviera and Z Long
Voidborn Hearthkeepers: UNSC Kawakaze, Shay Lewis, Ben Holmes, and Argon
Without your support, I would not be able to do what I do, thank you from the bottom of my heart for every ounce of support you've given me.
Thank you to my fans on discord, and my lovely beta readers, keeping the works in check and allowing me to write freely.
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