Chương 45: Chapter Forty - Eye Opening

Alexis woke with a start, arms flailing wildly through the air for a moment before her sudden movement, combined with the narrowness of her plank-bed, meant that she had a sudden and rather violent meeting with the floor.

"Oof." Alexis remained on the floor for a few moments, just breathing in the floor dust before she rolled over onto her back, then stared up at the ceiling for a while. That much, at least, was familiar. Her body didn't feel like her own for a moment. It wasn't crippling, but she didn't feel like her. Her lower waist felt squished, and there was a definite buzzing nothingness where her legs ought to have been. She shifted her feet and toes, only to feel that motion as more of a sensation that was... clean?

It was neither cold nor warm. Her chest felt a little chilly beneath the thin Mechanicus robes, though usually it was worse than that. The small space she'd called home for a while now was usually terribly cold, and the new robes did a good job of shielding her. She brought her flesh hand up and rubbed her nose. It was a bit runny. Sighing, Alexis turned around, then stood up before brushing her hands on her lap. She couldn't complain, so she wouldn't.

She did her morning stretches and discovered that her usual limberness was replaced by... well, limbs that could move all the way around. It was awkward to only stretch her back and one arm, though, so she went through the full routine anyway. Maintenance was important, even maintenance of the weak flesh. Once that was done, she let her arms drop and then just stood there. Usually, she had a long list of things to get to, but today... well, she wasn't sure.

Yawning until her jaw cracked, Alexis looked over to her friends. All three of them were in standby mode. K84-321 was moved up onto one of her workbenches, the usual tools and trinkets on it shifted to the side. KYS and CS-3-2/11 were both standing next to the door. KYS had one of her ocular systems come on for a moment to scan Alexis, but it shut down soon after. Servitors weren't machines. Not just machines. They had fundamentally human parts, and those needed rest.

Muscles would tire and their brains, lobotomized and adjusted as they were, would function best with sleep. Standby mode was the solution. A fixed six to nine hours a day where the servitor's function was reduced to nearly nothing.

"Okay! Good feels only today! We have a lot of work ahead of us, right, Machine Spirit Vyper?"

"Indeed. Good early watch, Alexis. You have received your daily 10 Point allowance. Otherwise, I have no pressing news for you."

"Sounds good!" Alexis said.

"Ah, I think... hmm, I should grab something to eat at some point, but I'm not particularly hungry. So, maybe work first?"

"If that's what you wish?"

"Uh... yeah! How many points do I have?" Point Total: 745 That was so much, and yet at the same time, so little.

"I think... okay, I have a lot of work ahead of me today. I think it wouldn't hurt to invest in a few small upgrades for myself? Maybe some mechadendrites?" She'd always wanted a few of those.

"I'm certain I can find something suitable."

"Great! And... I need a better way to take care of the data part of my job. The MIU is great, but I'd like to be able to see what I'm working on. Though I think that an auspex might be too much?"

"I see. In that case, I might suggest something that goes over your eye? In-eye augs are quite popular among some human populations."

"Really? I've never heard of something like that."

"I'm mostly referring to non-Imperial humanity, where technology has been guided along different paths."

"Oh." Well, in for a throne and all that. She was pretty sure that one couldn't be double-executed for heresy. Besides, this sounded subtle.

"Alright, I think that's a good start. Maybe we keep things cheap? I was thinking about how I want to upgrade CS-3-2/11 and K84-321 and both ideas sound kind of expensive. I might have to see if we can save some points by leaving some parts out? Maybe only equip them with partial weapons setups instead of the full thing?"

"Let's try that, first, and the mechadendrites. Are they expensive? Wait... how much can I customize things?" As it turned out, the answer was 'a lot.' Vyper didn't have an easy way to show Alexis what she was in for, so Alexis first purchased the eye-based MIU-connected device. New Purchase: Type 64 Earth-style over-eye AUG New Point Total: 735 That was surprisingly cheap!

The purchase came in a small rectangular box which, when she opened it, revealed two lenses that were very obviously shaped to fit over her eyes. As in, pressed right up into them. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Alexis touched one of them, and it stuck to her finger. It took her a solid twenty minutes to get the first one in, most of that spent psyching herself up to touch her eye.

Her hand kept trembling until she switched to her mechanical one, and then she just couldn't do it, not at first. When the second one went in, she blinked, then focused all over as text appeared over her vision and quickly faded away.

"System installed." Alexis looked around, then grinned. The system was connected to her MIU already, and that meant that she now had a bunch of new prompts to play with. There was an option to see the details on her new limbs, and when she looked at her friends, she could see a rather clear readout on their state, their weapons' ammo counts, and their relative positions, tiredness, and an estimation on their physical state. It... left something to be desired. Next was the mechadendrites.

This time, Vyper could show Alexis what she was going to purchase, using a sort of fake holoprojection in the air before Alexis. Alexis asked to see all of the options, and was quickly overwhelmed. Vyper showed her a mechadendrite system with sixteen slim tentacles fixed to a back-worn plate, with a scroll-like bar on the side for her to switch past. On a whim, Alexis started to switch, and kept going, faster and faster and faster, until the options were flying by as a blur.

"How, ah, many options are there?"

"For mechadendrites, which I have filtered down to 'body-mounted tentacle-like mechanical system designed to hold objects or weapons' there are sixteen thousand pre-made options in my database available to your current catalogues."

"Pre-made?" Alexis asked.

"I could generate a few million permutations on these options given several seconds."

"And in my catalogues?" Alexis asked.

"Yes. There are tens of thousands of catalogues. Several thousand of these have options that aren't currently available to you. For example, without a Modular Physics Manipulation Catalogue, a mechadendrite-system designed to be used for gravitronics won't be available to you."

"Uh-huh," Alexis said. She wasted a happy hour finding something suitable, but when she did, she was happy with the result. Also, she now appreciated Vyper's assistance in finding a good fit a lot more. The item she chose was a back-fit pack, with a magnetic connector that would hold it in place against her lower waist and a gorget-like piece of thick fabric over her upper chest and around her neck.

The mechadendrite system itself was fitted along her spine and had several ports that would allow her to upgrade and replace the arms as time went on. For now, she chose two arms, both of them tipped with clawed 'hands' that could grab onto tools with relative ease. Not the best she could get, but pretty good overall, and only 55 points! New Purchase: Type 47B Mechanical Tool Arms New Point Total: 680 Then she bought lunch.

New Purchase: Field Ration Pack New Point Total: 678 After having what might have been the best, most filling meal of her life, Alexis got to work. She mostly wanted to fix up her friends and finally get around to upgrading them. She decided that 250 points each would probably bring them up to a standard that was acceptable, keeping them alive until the end of her next conflict. That wouldn't be enough to be good exactly.

After looking over the options with Vyper, she realized that she'd either have to buy things that were a little cheaper, or buy incomplete, or combine the two somehow. She went with the latter option. K84-321 was first, and Alexis--after undressing and then redressing with her new, very intuitive mechadendrites on--lifted him up on her workbench, then she picked up some tools and started to remove the servitor's fleshy body from the cradle he had been resting in for several years. The plan was simple.

He was going to become a Castellax Class Battle Servitor. Minus the heavy bolter, because she couldn't afford that just yet. And maybe without some of the nice sensors that she saw Vyper had available. Instead she'd be using a mix of cheaper options and stuff she had lying around. Ah, and he was keeping his original pneumatic arms. Those could serve for a bit until they either broke or she had another point-windfall. And...

maybe he'd be just a pinch short for a Castellax, which meant he'd only be eight and a half feet tall and four wide. She could live with that.