A dead skeleton and the tomb-like stillness of the MBV's interior, did not, ownership make. Kovacs felt like the other shoe was going to drop soon, and he needed to be ready for that. And in the yellow zone, a gun in your hands was maybe the most essential element of being ready. He cautiously stepped over the skeletal corpse and began exploring the rest of the MBV with the hopes of finding himself a weapon.
It was quickly apparent that the place had been ransacked. Each room was a mess of empty containers, destroyed appliances and storage cabinets, upturned furniture, and unexplainable but obviously-useless-at-a-glance detritus. One disheartening exception was the room that had surely been the armory. Its walls were empty, its shelves bare and open.
Bright side? It was the cleanest room on the bottom floor. Hurray…
The second cleanest room, blessing of blessings, was the engine room at the front of the MBV. In fact, it looked mostly untouched- and thanks to the defensive shutters being down, entirely free of dust. Even now, the steel shutters rattled with the gusts of the collapse storm outside.
Kovacs wandered around and found a surprising number of tools still in their hatches and containers. That was mildly surprising, but perhaps whoever ransacked the place didn't need the tools or want their weight? Most of this stuff was heavy and pretty common and not very valuable, even amongst varjagers.
Either way, having tools on hand was a massive win. Kovacs picked up a hammer. He was now armed. Sort of.
And it looked like, conceivably, the collapse engine was still in a workable condition? But that was something to check after he'd explored the rest of the MBV and confirmed he was the only thing alive inside it.
Kovacs swept his flashlight upwards. The engine compartment was a vertical room with access to every level, a sensible design for operation- if not for security. But an MBV was not intended as a combat platform, anyway.
The room stretched upwards to a hatch at the top that was likely a shortcut to the MBV's bridge. Kovacs krept up the switch-back steel-grate staircase to get to the top. A staircase and not a ladder? Luxurious.
He pushed at the ceiling hatch and found it locked. A quick examination with his fingers and eyes found no discernable way to open the thing. So, it only opened from the bridge's side, which did make a bit of sense for operational security. Even if enemies inside the MBV was unthinkable, you would want to limit access to the operations center of the vehicle. You know: to keep out the nefarious, the foolish, and the stupid. Kovacs descended back to the second level hatch, opening it cautiously, and shined his light into the darkness.
A ransacked room of electronics and detritus greeted him, the same as the floor below. But the walls were lined with person-sized shelves, and even from the hatchway, Kovacs could see the vague human-shaped depressions in the shelves that were pulled open and empty. They were T-Doll storage and maintenance bays, and there were a lot of them.
Straining his ears, Kovacs heard no sounds. It seemed the second level was as abandoned as the first. He stepped into the mess.
This was the second largest room he'd seen so far, and it was obviously the T-doll… stable, for lack of a better word. The walls contained a dozen T-doll shelves, three on each side bow and stern, and three on each side port and starboard. All were clearly empty and most were in varying states of being ajar.
The center of the room was an upright maintenance chair, complete with a draining sink- so it doubled as a cleaning chair. That was somewhat odd, as clothing generally made T-Doll cleaning a simple matter of occasionally wiping the doll down with cleaning wipes- or the T-Doll simply did it itself. Why a draining sink?
The next room provided the answer: garishly red carpet stretched out to a small stage, complete with a dancing pole and mirror walls. Leather chairs clustered around the stage and were obviously for people who were watching the performance. Kovacs recognized the configuration because he had been in similar places himself: this was a brothel. A mobile T-doll brothel. And it was backed down a box canyon in the middle of nowhere.
Why? A secluded party? An off-season? A very horny man enjoying his own collection? It was a mystery.
The stage room was in good condition, but Kovacs now hesitated on using the word 'clean' to describe anything in this place. He moved on. There was a plushly carpeted stairway upwards, which perhaps was a VIP room? Or maybe owning degenerate's master bedroom? And there was another hatch to the rear of the MBV.
Kovacs generally thought systematically, so he decided to finish exploring the second level before heading up the stairs. Behind the far hatch, he found six rooms with beds in them, all done up in the red motif and with mirrors on the ceilings. Fantastic.
Kovacs withdrew and headed up the carpeted stairway, following it around as it doubled back up to the top floor. More bedrooms to the back, six to match the six below for a total of twelve, which in turn matched the T-doll capacity of the maintenance bay below. Well, whoever designed this place had a clear vision, Kovacs would give them that. A gross vision, but likely a profitable one.
His curiosity satisfied by the rear of the MBV, he glanced inside the main double doors and found it to be what he'd expected: a sort of master bedroom or master suite. The bed was larger than all the others and this one still looked slept-in. Kovac's flashlight caught a flash of a pale-colored something on the mattress and he did a double take.
There was a foot on the bed! A fully fleshed and normal looking foot, with the promise of a leg hidden under the sheets, and the outline of a body.
Kovacs' adrenaline went up as he wondered if he'd found the sleeping owner of this place, but after a few seconds, it became obvious that whatever was in the bed, it was not alive- pristine looking skin notwithstanding. He advanced to the bed and tore off the covers, expecting to find another corpse.
It was a face-down human-shaped body, but it was not a corpse. And it was an amply fleshed, entirely naked female body at that. Pale, almost milky skin ran from the foot up enticingly proportioned legs, to an ample and entirely anatomically correct rump, to a lean and attractive back, to an open and exposed neural core compartment.
This was obviously one of the pleasure T-dolls of this derelict brothel, but instead of taking it away entirely, someone had only removed its neural core. Without it, this T-doll was just a lifeless and soulless object, as limp as the long strands of the silky, silvery artificial hair on its head. An exceptionally well made object, however.
Kovacs swept his flashlight over the rest of the bedroom and checked all the furniture but found nothing of value or interest. Well, other than the lack of the neural core, the T-doll seemed in good shape- unless there was damage on its front that he couldn't see with it being face down. He ran his flashlight over the body again. There was a stain on the sheets just between the doll's legs and Kovacs decided he didn't want to think about that right now. He left the bedroom as he'd found it.
The last hatch could only be the bridge, so he headed for that. It was locked. Fuck.
That was a problem. If he was going to do anything with this MBV, he had to be able to get into the operation controls. He slammed his fist softly on the locked door. As if in a real world echo of his current frustration, a particularly powerful gust of wind swirled around the MBV, giving off the sound of mildly rumbling metal sheets.
Well- at least he was out of the storm.
Conceivably, there was a backup key or access code to the bridge hidden somewhere in this place, but did he have enough time to deeply search it all? With his food and water supplies of… nothing? No, he did not. And food and water!? That was another thing he hadn't found in the MBV! Damn!
What did he have? The tools in the engine room. The installed equipment in the T-doll maintenance room. And one inoperable T-doll. So… not much to go off of- or to protect himself from Grusser and…
Kovacs blinked as the thought of Grusser reminded him of the reason those rival varjagers were after him in the first place. He reached into the vest pocket where he'd placed his spoils from the convoy and took out the prize apparently worth his life and the lives of his squad: an elite military grade T-doll neural core.
And he, somewhat miraculously, was now in possession of a neural-core-less T-doll. How about that!
He had a T-doll that could conceivably have some localized memory of where things were on this MBV- like perhaps a hidden spare key. And he had a military-grade neural core that could turn said T-doll into a better weapon than any rifle. Kovacs regarded himself as a pretty shit shot, but a military T-doll defending him? Now, that would be something!
Kovacs half-ran back to the master suite to where the naked T-doll lay prone and inert. It was a pleasure T-doll yes, but most recently manufactured dolls used the same chassis. Pleasure dolls just came equipped with realistic anatomy that most other varieties had no need for. Theoretically, the neural core he had could work in this T-doll!
Assuming the thing had any power. Assuming the maintenance room downstairs had any power- or at least some sort of handheld display. Kovacs had spent most of his time as a mechanic with the varjagers working on older T-dolls, droids, and other legged, semi-autonomous platforms. He was relatively confident he could get this T-doll working again if he could find just a few key things!
Kovacs hopped onto the bed next to the T-doll and couldn't help but notice how the flesh of its bare ass jostled realistically. Man, this was a high quality doll. Then, he focused his attention on the interior compartment of the doll's torso. The neural core slot was empty, of course, but it appeared undamaged. Kovacs ripped off his gloves and gently reached in to push a tiny button he knew to be inside.
Come on, come on, come on. Button pressed. Three yellow bars appeared. Yes! The T-doll had about half its battery life remaining! That was about a month and half of operation time! Yes!
Now: did the maintenance bay have a battery as a sort of emergency backup power supply? It was conceivable, as T-dolls would be regarded as an imperative function of a MBV, so the T-doll maintenance bay should have been considered a critical component when considering redundant systems. But Kovacs would need to get this doll down to the bay to find out. He closed the doll's back compartment in preparation to move it.
Kovacs placed his hands on the doll's shoulder and was surprised by how realistic the skin felt- it was smooth and lifelike, if a bit cold. He turned the body over and found it not only undamaged but, to his evaluation, as perfect in appearance as a sleeping goddess:
The doll possessed a beautifully proportioned face, an elegant neck, a beautiful collar, and two surprisingly large breasts which jostled back and forth as the limp body settled again. Damn, whoever designed this doll liked curvy women'. This T-doll was the epitome of the 'hourglass' figure. It almost didn't look real.
But well, this T-doll had been specifically and intentionally designed to trigger a man's sexual fantasy, so the extremes of the figure did make sense in that context.
Disinterested in the movements of faux female flesh, Kovacs grabbed the T-doll under the shoulders and dragged it from the bed and across the carpet. The stairs proved a bit of a challenge, but in a relatively short time, a sweating and grunting Kovacs successfully dragged the limp T-doll into the maintenance bay downstairs- and with a few fumbles and some cursing, he got the doll upright into the leaning support of the maintenance chair.
After a few seconds catching his breath, Kovacs explored the compartment under the chair and discovered a pull-out computer console.
He pushed the power button with hope in his heart. Nothing. Fuck.
Wait. Could not T-doll's passively power a terminal? That was a built in feature for just this sort of situation: a way to reboot a T-doll in the field.
Kovacs carefully extracted the fiber optic cable and moved behind the T-doll. The back of the leaning chair had a gap which allowed easy access to the doll's neural core compartment. He pressed his fingers into certain points on the doll's back and the compartment reopened. Kovacs connected the cable to the appropriate spot.
The terminal screen did not light up. What? He'd already established there was power in the doll… and plenty of it!
Kovacs put his hands on his hips and pursed his lips. Was the T-doll broken after all? Broken in some way internally that he could not see?
Oh. It's because it didn't have an installed neural core. Duh, Kovacs. Way to forget the fucking basics.
He again took out the stolen neural core. He regarded the little cube of advanced ceramics and cybernetics with mild regret. He'd hoped to sell this thing and live the good life for a few years… ah well, if he even hoped to live a few more days, he needed to put this treasure to use.
Kovacs carefully opened the core's protective case and gently inserted it into the back of the T-doll. The little battery lights inside the T-doll's compartment lit up immediately, and a few seconds later, the terminal flashed on.
Yes! Kovacs moved to the front of the doll and waited a few seconds for it to open its eyes. It did not. The T-doll's beautiful face remained as if it were in deep sleep.
That was odd. Or was it? Kovacs had never cold-booted a brand new core inside a T-doll before. There was probably more to it, now that he thought about it. He remained in front of the doll and pulled the maintenance console around to him so he could read it and watch the doll's face at the same time.
The terminal screen showed a progress bar. It was about 10% filled. Oh. Well… there was a bit of time to kill, then.
Kovac's eyes traveled the T-doll's voluptuous female form again, and they settled, somewhat absent-mindedly, on the T-doll's groin area. He suddenly remembered the stain on the bed sheets and felt mild dismay. Maybe he should clean the doll while he was waiting, if he could find something to clean it with. Maybe it wasn't a person, but when the neural core activated and it woke up- well… no-body and no-thing in this universe should awaken to the world… already… defiled. The idea of it just didn't sit well in Kovac's mind.
He searched about and found that the cleaning sink in the maintenance bay did not have any water pressure. Not a surprise, what with the MBV being inactive. But in a cabinet and way in the back, he found a package of sanitary wipes. He took them out, looked at the package, looked at the T-doll's groin, looked back at the package.
Well, this was hardly ideal, but it was just an inactive T-doll. It was not a woman. No matter how it appeared to be a human woman on the outside, it was just a faux-flesh-wrapped chassis. That was not real flesh. That was not a real orifice. It was synthetic flesh designed to look and feel like a real orifice. At the end of the day, it was just synthetic material.
That's what Kovacs kept telling himself over and over while he cleaned the T-doll, inside and out, everywhere he could reach- and while gently using a cleaning apparatus that seemed specifically designed to reach the places he could not reach himself. It was a decidedly weird and psychologically disturbing act, but when it was over, he could at least be satisfied that the T-doll's body was clean of any… foreign biological matter, regardless how old or decayed it might have been.
Had the owner/employees of this brothel been entirely jaded to the cleaning of their T-dolls after each customer use? Gross. Gross and weird. Kovacs grimaced and resolved to never go to a T-doll brothel again- he'd never thought about this part of the operation before.
Meanwhile, the terminal quietly beeped. He went back to it and found it had text he could not read. Shit. The firmware was in a different language.
ご愛顧ありがとうございます!
新しい妻の初期設定を完了してください.
What the hell language was this? Portuguese? Kovacs tapped his fingers randomly on the screen to try and advance the menu. He would just have to pick whatever and try to get the T-Doll installation past the initial firmware stage.
ご希望の性格プロファイルを選択してください。
デレデレ
ツンデレ
ヤンデレ
クーデレ
ダンデレ
Kovacs realized he was being asked to pick something, but he had no idea what each option was. Randomly, he decided on the middle option and pressed his finger down on option three. The screen changed again.
素晴らしい選択です!今こそ、あなたの新しい愛する妻に自己紹介する時です!
警告: この最後のステップは、あなたの妻の愛情の焦点をロックします。部屋に他の人がいるときは、このステップを実行しないでください。
始める
The last line was obviously a button to be pressed, so Kovacs pushed it. A second later, the T-dolls eyes opened. Stunningly green eyes locked onto Kovacs, and for that brief time, he was captivated.
Suddenly, it was not an it. It was a her. And she was looking right at him. And she was beautiful.
Then her eyes closed and it was a T-doll again. Kovacs swallowed. His heart was thumping slightly harder in his chest. Damn. This was some kind of fancy pleasure doll! Those eyes!
セットアップ完了!
新しい奥様と幸せな生活が送れることを心から願っております!
選択した「ニューラル コア」のインストールがまもなく開始されます。
The terminal went blank briefly, it flashed a few times, and then english text began appearing on the screen. Finally! The doll's main installation process was starting and he could read the damn text. Whatever he'd just set up on the doll, he hoped it wouldn't interfere with the neural core, but there was nothing to do about it anyway. Kovacs quickly pushed the buttons that needed pressing and the process was underway.
Initializing Doll Neural Cloud: HK416
Estimated time till completion: seven hours and twenty-three minutes.
This doll's neural cloud name was HK416? Wasn't that also a type of rifle? Not a very imaginative name.
Kovacs, lacking anything else to do, wandered around the MBV in the hopes of finding the key to the bridge. After nearly two hours, he'd found nothing. And no food or water, either. Exhausted, hungry, and thirsty, Kovacs returned to the T-doll bay and checked on the installation progress. It was progressing, all right.
He sat down on the ground, put his back against the bulkhead, and fell asleep.
"Well look who it fucking is!"
Kovac's eyes shot open. The sneering, scarred face of Egil Grusser was smirking at him, and the man's bulky muscular frame filled the hatch door of the T-doll maintenance bay.
How the-?! Icy fear flowed through Kovac's veins. Fuck! He'd forgot to fucking lock the MBV hatch behind him! Grusser had just walked right in just like Kovacs himself had!
Before Kovacs could get to his feet, Grusser moved forward with alarming speed and kicked Kovacs squarely in the chest. Kovacs slammed back into the wall and fell into a sitting position against the wall. Grusser's massive muddy boot settled on his chest, keeping him down.
"Please," grinned Grusser. "Don't get up on my account, Kovacs."
Grusser's four soldiers filled into the room behind him, their eyes first on Kovacs, and then on the inactive T-doll on the maintenance chair. The first two men momentarily paused, stunned by the T-doll's appearance, and then they were shoved into the room by the men behind- who then paused, stunned by the T-doll themselves.
"Holy shit, take a look at this fucking T-doll!"
"Fuck, she's hot."
"Fucking great tits."
A hand reached out and groped one of the T-dolls breasts. "Shit, feels great. It's even warm!"
Kovac's strained to see the terminal screen, but Grussar's leg blocked his view of it. What time was it? Was the installation done? That was his only hope now.
"Tryna' get one last look at your new girl before you die, Kovacs?" said Grusser. "Oh no, did we find you before you had your end-of-the-world fuck? What do you think, boys? Should we let Kovacs fuck his girl before we kill him?"
"Fuck no!" said one man.
"Make him watch me fuck her," said another. "Then kill him."
"Who says you are going first? I don't want your dick juice in my fuck doll."
"Your fuck doll?!"
The varjagers began shoving each other. Grussar's attention turned towards them. "Knock it off. I'm going first anyway. I like the idea of making Kovacs here watch though. Sound fun."
Grussar turned his attention back to Kovacs, helpless under the weight of the man's boot. "But first: where's the fucking thing you took from the convoy? I know you took something and I know it's something good. Where is it!? Tell me and I'll kill you quick."
Behind the big man, the T-doll's eyes opened. They flickered around the room quickly and then their green gaze settled on Kovacs. Their eyes connected, her in the chair and he on the ground and literally under the heel of Egil Grusser. She was his one chance!
"Threats!" shouted Kovacs, drawing the surprised attention of all varjagers in the room.
The soldier closest to the T-doll still had a hand on her breast. Her arms and hands clapped together on the man's skull and there was a surprisingly loud, squishy, popping sound. The man's body went limp instantly.
As he collapsed, the T-doll snatched the man's rifle from where it hung on his shoulder. A thumb clicked the weapon's safety, and as the rest of the varjagers were reeling in shock at the instantaneous death of their first comrade, the T-doll opened fire.
She raked the room with a long stream of automatic fire. Grusser and his remaining men jerked and fell under the impact of several rounds, the weight of Grusser's boot left Kovac's chest. Meanwhile, the T-doll hopped off the maintenance chair, landing with a fleshy thump, her bare breasts and thighs jiggling slightly.
Kovacs could only watch in awe as the beautiful woman stepped towards the next nearest man, writhing in pain on the floor before her. She lifted one leg and stopped down on the man's head.
Crunch. Red blood and grey fleshy matter splashed up on the doll's pale skin, red against white. She then bent over, took that man's weapon, and turned it on the next man.
"Wait! No!" said the varjager, lifting a hand as if it could stop the threat of bullets from the rifle.
She emptied half the clip into the man's outstretched hand, the flesh melting away in a hail of metal, and half the man's skull shared the same fate. She then turned to Grusser himself, who was trying to crawl away from herl with a grimace on his face. He wasn't the kind of man to beg, but his vaguely proud defiance transformed into a ruin of meat, bone, and brain as the T-doll emptied the rest of the gun's magazine into his head at close range.
Grusser's body twitched once and then went still. The pale, naked woman stood amidst a slaughterhouse.
Kovac's ears were ringing from all the gunfire in the small room. His heart was thumping in his chest as the T-doll turned towards him next. Her voluptuous form was splattered with blood, a rivulet of it running down her perfect thigh to her perfect calf. Her green eyes were focused on him.
She dropped the spent rifle and smiled at him warmly. She stepped over the corpses and knelt before Kovacs, extending a tender, blood-stained hand to his cheek. The T-doll caressed him lovingly.
"Hello, commander," she said, her voice soft and warm, her eyes gleaming. "I am all you need."
