OIC (33)
MegaZone23
Johnny stares a long time at Alt's almost lifeless body.
There is a feeble pulse. But Alt-- Alt is gone; lost in the
machine; trapped behind crystal. Lost forever. Gone.
--Never Fade Away
Deedlit was the first one out of the airlock with her
Cyclone. After all, she knew that something was going on.
She wanted to be there when it hit the fan: she didn't want
to be in on the mop-up.
She had been on the bridge talking to MegaZone, trying
to see if he could figure out what was going on. So when the
bridge crew saw the two armor units going at it, she was on
her way out.
She saw ReRob's limp, lifeless body slowly floating away
from the Wayward Son. She also found an RLAMF unit flying
away at high velocity: no matter. Shasti was magnetically
stuck to the deck: she called in a crew to destroy the
monstrosity.
She caught up with ReRob's corpse, and looked into the
faceplate. His eyes were shut, and his nose, ears and mouth
were bleeding. The suit was completely evacuated.
Almost on a lark, she opened his facebowl. There was no
more damage that could be done, none at all. Something
stirred.
ReRob spat blood at her, then silently mouthed three
words. Deedlit couldn't read them, but she was certain that
they weren't "I love you." His left arm jerked, triggering
explosive bolts on the remaining, useless RLAMF. He pulled
back for an augmented punch.
She grabbed his arm. For a hanging moment, they were at
stalemate, neither of them able to move. Then, his arm
stopped resisting.
Deedlit took the arm and went for the airlock at full
speed.
Jenna was at the other side of the airlock, already
setting up an IV unit. She and Deedlit started stripping off
pieces of CVR-3 while placing him on the stretcher.
"What the hell happened out there?"
"I don't know...he..tried to kill me."
A half hour later, in sickbay, Rob opened his eyes.
Deedlit and Jenna were almost hovering over him. He spoke.
"Is...Shasti...dead?"
"Who's Shasti? Shasti who?"
"Shasti...Vixen. A WWWA Buma...always wanted to kill
Kei and Yuri...used Vix to get to me to get to them."
"She's dead, Rob."
"Save me the body, will you, Deedlit? I want to oversee
the disassembly personally...it'll be more of a disassembly
than a dissection, knowing her stuff. Gee...my arm's gone.
"Don't worry, hon. You're a Detian, it'll grow back in
a week or two."
"No, deety...I don't ever intend to forget this.
Jenna...you still have those bio-emulatory limb mounts?
"Yeah...you mean the ones I made up for RoboSwimm?"
"Right...those. Slap one on my shoulder. And call up
my labs and get a right Chrome arm, my size.
"Chrome? You know that won't help your psych profile
any."
"Fuck my psych profile! The entire reason I'm getting
this arm is because I thought somebody had no cyber
whatsofuckingever, and she turned out to be Madame Metal. I
found out because she had jack plugs in her skull! I'm going
to get that arm cybered, and I don't care who knows it."
"In her skull? How did you find that out?" Deedlit was
confused.
"You wouldn't believe...she tried to rape me."
"Oh, god."
"Yeah...BTW, who pulled me in?"
"I did, Rob."
"Then a major apology is in order. Deety, I tried to
kill you out there."
"Accepted. But why?"
"I thought you were Shasti. I only corrected myself
when you stayed my hand. An 038 couldn't do that. Thanks
for pulling me in."
"What's a wife for?"
"That's supposed to be 'What are friends for?'"
"Well, I was your friend first. It was kind of a
prerequisite."
"How very true."
Jenna walked in with the arm and mounting frame. The
bioemulation feature was built to "convince" the Omega-2
retrovirus that the arm was real, thus keeping the wearer
from growing a new, flesh, arm.
"When I mount this, do you want local or general
anesthetic?"
"No."
"No?"
"I've been through enough pain today, and still am in
enough pain. This won't hurt nearly as much as losing the
arm...or losing the dream."