BRAYDEN
A pinprick of pain welcomed me into wakefulness, though I tried to sleep past it, attempting to rollover and ignore the discomfort and return to blessed oblivion.
Why was I so tired? The last time I had been this exhausted I had been in major surgery.
A much sharper and deeper pain coming from my arm roused me to full wakefulness.
Oh. Surgery. My arm. Right.
Memories of recent events began to flood back to me and I let out a groan.
“Oh good, You're finally awake.” A voice said, my brain mentally mapping over a norwegian accent from an ancient half remembered game before I fully recovered my wits.
I blinked my eyes open and looked around the room, which was thankfully the medical bay I had made... It felt like months but really was at most two weeks? Ago.
“Where... no I know where. What happened?” I asked.
“You were shot Captain.” Came the lightning fast reply from my left.
I turned my head to see who it was and saw Doctor Smith washing his hands in a sink that had just... emerged from the wall of the medical bay.
I hadn't even known it was there.
“That's obvious Doctor Smith, I mean after.” I asked, not as quick with the wit as I normally was. I'd get better.
“Well your crewman Carolina brought you down here, then the ship lifted off, and I am pretty sure we are being chased by a bounty hunter sent from my planetary government, or whatever is masquerading as it.” Doctor Smith said offhandedly, like he was talking about the weather.
I sat bolt upright, or tried to. I was apparently clamped down. My right arm twinged.
I looked down.
At first I didn't understand what I was seeing. My arm looked like it was slotted into some kind of long tube, some kind of scanner or MRI? It was pretty small though, was it JUST for arms and small limbs? Seems wasteful for an MRI.
I traced the design of the scanner down, wondering if my fingers would be sticking out the other side, and instead found a cybernetic hand that looked straight out of terminator on the end of the tube.
I blinked as things clicked in my head, and my hand twitched.
And so did the robot fingers that were now attached to me.
I screamed.
“What the fuck happened to me?” I shouted. And jerked away from the new arm instinctively. The restraints on me held most of me in place but the metal around the new... arm, warped and bent.
Doctor Smith looked up.
“And this, dear Hook, is why you always always ALWAYS restrain patients after emergency cybernetic augmentation. Reactions like that can and have resulted in injury and death to both the patients and medical personnel.” Doctor Smith noted in a lecturing tone while looking upward
“Heard and noted doctor, I apologize for my protest.” Hook's new voice came over the PA.
In my head Hook said. “Are you alright Captain?”
I paused before replying.
“Freaked out. I really didn't want to get augmented Hook.”I said through my implants back to them.
“Why not Captain?” Hook asked.
“Because my brain chemistry is weird and I am worried that anything that ties into my nervous system is going to mess me up.” I could feel my face scrunch up in a scowl.
“The doctor is monitoring that, and has installed a special regulator in your limb to prevent excessive sensory feedback to your nervous system. You can even adjust it yourself here if it proves to cause you issues.” Hook replied, popping up a window in my H.U.D. With a bunch of controls and settings I really didn't want to look at right now.
I took a deep breath and let it out.
“Conversing with your AI captain?” Doctor Smith asked, turning towards me.
“Hook insists they are not an AI.”
Doctor smith laughed.
“They always do.” Doctor Smith said.
I looked at him curiously.
“You've interacted with ship intelligence's before?”
“I did a surgical rotation on Yav1n, learned all about augmentation surgery from the C.O.G. Techno-wizards there, and spent a lot of time conversing with machine intelligence's.”
I blinked.
“For some reason I got it in my head that civilians didn't go in and out of the different faction spaces very much.” I said.
Doctor Smith shrugged.
“Depends on the person, and the planet, Hou Ji had a rather robust program where it would send it's young people out to other planets to work and learn, covering at least some of the expenses, as long as they would return and teach. Then the new administration came in and instead of 'teach' it became 'serve' and everyone in the program was forced into either civil service or the military, at least the reserves in my case.” He explained.
Ooof
I had seen similar changes back in my time, entire countries pivoting to more authoritarian ways from a single change in leadership. Sounds similar to what happened to Hou Ji.
Maybe I should have let them burn.
No no, the regular people were probably not TOO guilty.
Doctor Smith noticed my deep thoughts, or maybe he just thought I was drifting off.
“Regardless, with you awake we should go through some diagnostics to make sure your limb is functional and everything attached properly.” Doctor Smith said.
“Excuse me doctor, there are pressing issues the Captain needs to deal with.” Hook interrupted over the PA.
This of course made my heart jump in my throat, when I had last looked we had been boarded and I was trying to get us to take off, were we grounded? Had we been captured?
“As far as I know we are almost at the jump point, we are being chased by a bounty hunter but Baron Hannity has sufficiently threatened them into holding fire, and once we are IN jump space there is not much said Bounty Hunter can do.” Doctor Smith argued with my ship. It was weird seeing someone else be so aggressive with Hook.
I let out a sigh of relief. We hadn't been grounded, and it sounds like the boarding party was... if not neutralized, hadn't taken the ship.
“That is all true Doctor...” Hook said.
“Then it can wait until AFTER I have performed the tests necessary to ensure your Captain is adapting to his new cyberware safely before any issues can develop and cause PERMANENT damage, understood.” Doctor Smith continued.
“I have already performed numerous diagnostics through for both the limb and on the Captain's implants and internal neural network, everything showed as fine Doctor.” Hook stated.
“Not everything shows up on software diagnostics ship, I've seen it often enough to know that you need physical testing to catch everything that may go wrong, and when you are talking about someones body, you want to catch EVERYTHING.” Doctor Smith lectured at Hook.
“Understood doctor.” Hook replied.
I was impressed, Hook was notoriously stubborn, I was surprised that Doctor Smith was able to get him to back down.
Oh right, this was New Hook, who was still learning an developing their new personality.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
After I had been forced to delete the old one.
Ah, there's the despair.
“So what do we do?” I asked, pushing my emotions aside.
“Well, let's start easy for now.” Doctor smith came over to my side to inspect my new arm, though he didn't yet release it from the warped steel restraints holding it.
“First, I need you to form a fist.” I did so, or I thought I did, as the index and middle fingers curled inward
The metal pinky and ring finger did not.
“And this is why we do testing. Let's see what's going on...” Doctor Smith sighed.
Doctor Smith paused and pushed some buttons on the side of the bed as I looked down at my new arm.
It was not a solid piece of metal, , the fingers and arm were currently rather skeletal looking, though I couldn't see any cables or wires so they had to be all internal. It looked like I had a steel skeleton arm extending out from my elbow, like someone had melted the skin off my bones and dipped it into liquid metal, and then added a bunch of greebles out of a cyberpunk setting for good measure.
I contemplated the arm, closing my index and middle fingers into a fist. I focused, and I could see the bottom two fingers trembling.
“Whatever you are doing stop, I'm trying to adjust things to your neural output and you are CHANGING them!” Doctor Smith said.
I stopped, wondering what he was talking about.
He sighed, then entered in a final few things into the panel in front of him.
“Okay, NOW try to make a fist.” I tried, and the arm responded perfectly, with a slight tremble.
“Oh, that's better, but why did you get me to stop? I felt like I could have made the arm make a fist if I kept trying at it.”
Doctor Smith looked down a the readings.
“From what I am seeing here I am sure you could. Your neuroplasticity is remarkable, you were altering your neurons to control the limb as I was adjusting it to your previous neural output. I got you to stop because I wasn't sure what side effects it would have on you.” Doctor Smith said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, I figure from what changes you did cause you are at the very least going to have similar vertigo to when you get out of full synchronization when you get up now.” Doctor Smith continued.
I blinked.
“Ah. So it's related to that.”I said lamely.
“Yes, your extreme neuroplasticity seems to let you adapt to cybernetics as quickly as you adapt to full synchronization with the ship. Likely with the same side effects. It makes sense, from what I understand, Synchronizing with a ship is essentially like attaching a very big and complicated cybernetic prosthesis, only without the surgery.”
That... actually explained a lot with how I interacted with the ship. I always thought it felt like my own body, and if the doctor was explaining things properly that was because my brain thought it was.
“Not to mention that as you changed to adapt to the way your limb was responding in the old way, I doubt the new way I just adjusted it to would work, undoing everything I just did.” Doctor smith said, giving me a wry grin.
“So I'm good now?” I asked.
After which Doctor Smith had me run through a gamut of tests that reminded me of something a physical therapist would do for a damaged limb, a torn muscle or ripped tendons, only with an arm of steel and circuits.
We had finally reached the point where Doctor Smith was comfortable removing my arm from the restrains when Hook spoke to me through my implants.
“Captain, we are about to make the jump at the transit point.” Hook said.
“Do you need my final permission?” I asked.
“No, you already gave it when you put us on course, but I wanted to inform you. Also we are still being chased.” Hook informed me.
I sighed.
“Do you think there is any chance of them breaking off without chasing us to the other side?” I asked.
“Doubtful Captain. The system in the other side has significant relations with the trader's union, and is known to have a strong bounty hunter presence. It is very likely our pursuer will follow us into the system and send out a call for assistance, at which point we will likely be facing an entire fleet.” Hook stated dispassionately.
“Fuck... we can't fight a fleet all on our own.” I said.
“No we can't Captain.” Hook agreed.
“What's the ship's status?” I asked.
Vessel Name:Hook
Propulsion:
1 CFD-111 Fusion Reactor(FUEL: 32%)
2 CFT-10 Fusion Torch Drive
14 CFT-97 Fusion Torch Maneuver Thrusters
4 CMDCGAMT-4 Auxillary Cold Gas Thrusters
Primary Armament:
1 CPL-77 triple barrel tracking plasma projector
1 CPL-66 double barrel tracking plasma projector(damaged, must be taken offline for repairs)
Secondary Armament:
2 CSL-3 Missile Launchers1
Current warhead count:63(max 108) Heavy MIRV shaped plasma warheads
1 Missile Auto-fabricator(current production loadout: Heavy MIRV shaped plasma warheads)
Current missile fabrication limits:0(RAW MATERIALS SHORTAGE)
1 CDL-2 Drone Bays:
Current drone count:12 CCD-14 plasma drones(max bandwidth limit's to 2 drones per bay)
Defensive equipment:
1x CEWJ-90 Radar Jammer
1x CEWD Laser Dazzler
1x CEWODJ Omni-directional Radio Jammer(damaged, must be taken offline for repairs)
1x CEWCM Countermeasure Launcher
Current Ordnance Count:
Chaff: 8
IR: 4
Active: 2
4 CPP Plasma Particle Shotgun Point Defense System(1 damaged, must be taken offline for repairs)
2 CPP Guided Plasma Munition Point Defense System
Utility equipment:
Autonomous repair drones(98/108, PLEASE TASK DRONE PRINTER FOR REPLENISHMENT )
Autonomous repair drone printer
1 CML 2 MINING BEAM
1x CTU Medical Unit
C.O.G. REPAIR MATRIX: 4 OF 4 NODES ONLINE.
CURRENT STATUS: REPAIRING OUTER HULL, RESTORING ARMOR, BRINGING ALL DRIVES ONLINE
4 CDS-SWR Radar Panels,
2 CDS-LWR Radar Antennae
1 CDS-RTR Radar
HULL INTEGRITY: MULTIPLE BREACHES DETECTED, SEALED, ESTIMATED TIME TO TOTAL HULL REPAIR 4 HOURS 4 MINUTES.
“I guess we'll be able to take most of that offline during transit... fuck I don't want to have to deal with a fight right as we exit.” I said.
“We should be able to avoid a fight until the hunter after us gets through and transmits the bounty, no other ship has left the system yet, so no news of said bounty will travel until the bounty hunter transmits it.” Hook replied.
I paused.
And blinked.
“So... if that Bounty Hunter never made it, no one on the other side would not hear about it correct?”I asked.
“Correct Captain, however we are at thirty seconds to transit, do you wish to engage here at the transit point? The anomalies due to spatial folding will make targeting problematic at best.”
“We'll come back to that, sounds like a useful place to hide if we have to, but no, I have a different idea. Do we still have that missile we modified on board?”
