Gunmetal Dark
By Angelina Vansen (angelina@gunmetaldark.com)

RATING: NC-17 overall. This one is nothing like that strong though.
CODES: J/7 uber
SUMMARY: Chapter 3 of my sci-fi uber. This one goes back to MIA 223939, the uber Seven of Nine. Catch up with what happened to her previously by checking out Chapter One.

3.

She was waiting, calmly now. Motionless and trying not to think too much.

She watched the suit's functions in the display before her eyes, adjusting things, overriding them periodically. She was settled and calmed now; accepting of her fate. Trusting the voice, mostly because she had no alternative.

It grew hot as the day moved on and the suit cooled her and hydrated her. Fed her nutrients and monitored her body.

It also continued the countdown. Intermittently, it would emit that terrible black pulse, and flood her with that number.

The last one had been

75,

though there hadn't been regular intervals between them. She wondered if it was to do with power consumption, but it was only speculation.

The voice was unconcerned though. It was only concerned that she wait.

As the sun reached its highest point, and her timestamp confirmed it was noon, the voice spoke again.

"Path 653, t-sync high enable."

It said. Then

"Power source indigo."

To her mind, this meant nothing. But the suit reacted at once; flooding one of the ports on the back of her neck with a burst of purple energy before she had a chance to question it.

The port reopened, sparking and sputtering and starting to speak. The suit sent out an enquiry, looking for a connection.

Waves came out of her, invisible strings spreading from her ports and stretching out in a sphere around her. She felt them brush against the ports of the computer she had originally been connected to, back at the base she had run from. There the suit was silent. It did not try to connect with that again.

She felt incredible, big and unfolded and powerful. She breathed and everything within her range breathed too. So much more than the suit, more than her mind. She was big as a planet, rocking with its rhythms, tasting the air and the land and the sky.

SATELLITE

The suit said.

SATELLITE.

And then details came in.

SATELLITE YIMINI
PORT 776628
DRIVE G: RECEIVING
INPUT?

The satellite asked. It was directly overhead, orbiting in space. Her port reached right up into it, touched its port and spoke again.

MIA #223939
PORT 4
NETWORK PRESENT?

It asked.

Yimini said:

CONFIRMED NETWORK PRESENT.

She was confused. What was she meant to do with a satellite? As far as she was aware, the suit couldn't fly, certainly not into space, and connecting with it seemed like the quickest way to get caught.

"Connect,"

the voice said, though.

She hesitated, unsure.

"Connect,"

it pushed insistently.

INPUT?

Yimini asked again through the port.

She looked about frantically, trying to think of an alternative. She did not want to connect to anything, every part of her warned that it was dangerous and would lead to her capture. But the voice was demanding.

The voice had guided her, made her wait here for the satellite, and it wanted her to connect. Once again, she felt bullied. What other options did she have? If she did not connect, she would only be waiting to die.

"Connect!"

the voice hissed, almost frantic.

She let go the icy mental grip she had on her port, and let the suit issue connection instructions. The thread running from her port to the satellite's started to speak, hissing and clicking the series of sounds that were her internal password.

NETWORK ACCESS GRANTED

said Yimini, and blue light flooded her, overwhelmed her. There was an uncomfortable sensation of pulling, folding and sucking, as if she was being pulled backward and up out of her own port. Her limbs hurt briefly, and then stopped existing.

At first she saw nothing, only felt. Nerves pulsed as they were connected, muscles filled and twitched, given virtual sensation to give her a spatial sense and a sense of body. She stood upright but felt nothing beneath her.

Then her eyes received something they could interpret as visual data and popped to life.

CONNECTED

appeared in front of her in white letters.

Everything else was incredible. Blue light everywhere, all around her like a sky. White discs punctuated it all the way into the distance; pulsing, turning, bulging and emitting thin strands between themselves.

These strands ran from one hub of light to another, shimmering and moving, almost organic. She looked closely at a thread that ran overhead, and saw that it contained data, pulsing along. She could see nothing but its encryption sequence.

403: FORBIDDEN

she was told.

She looked down at herself, curious to see if she had form and substance here, and was surprised to see that she did. She looked, at least to herself, fully humanoid.

She was not wearing the suit. In fact, her virtual self was quite naked, though she had no nipples or genital definition. Just white skin, smoothed off.

She stood on one of the hubs of light herself, feet almost obscured in the pearlescent brilliance of it. About its edge, the legend

SATELLITE YIMINI: HOME CONNECTION

orbited.

This place was amazing. She stood back and tried to take it all in, everything around her. It stretched into infinity in all directions. Millions of hubs, billions of data streams, everything in front of her, anywhere she wanted to connect.

It was incredible, overwhelming and vast. She felt even more lost than she had in her own body. She did not know where to begin.

"Help," she said, a small voice in a huge world, her own voice.

Instantly, something popped up in front of her, a square interface. It showed an animal, a red-furred rodent, anthropomorphised with arms and legs and standing upright, smiling broadly.

"Welcome to Tenkatech Network Help!" he cheered, holding out an arm. "Would you like support services, help topics, tutorials or troubleshooting?"

She was taken aback. She gaped at it for a few seconds.

"No, I don't think so" she asserted.

"Goodbye!" it said. It waved once, cheerily, and the interface disappeared.

Voice commands then. That was how this worked.

"Information?" she said, testing it. "Search?"

At once, a list dropped down from above her in that same white lettering. It spread and divided until it surrounded her, a wall of white text stamped on the virtual sky.

Looking closer, she saw that it was a list of ways she could search.

TRY THE THINK TANK!

the top one proclaimed.

ALL THE INFORMATION ON THE ENTIRE NETWORK ... RIGHT NOW!

Below it,

ANSWERS

claimed to be

THE DEFINITIVE SEARCHER!

They were followed by dozens more worded in a similar way.

"Think Tank," she said, just opting for the top one.

The list folded away and disappeared, and another screen, similar in dimensions to the help one she had seen earlier, popped open in front of her.

A hooded figure loomed out of the blackness of the box and materialised next to her on the Yimini hub. It held a wooden staff in one pale hand. The other hand reached out for her.

"The Think Tank welcomes you!" its booming voice bellowed.

She jumped and stepped back from it, almost right off the hub.

"Do not be alarmed!" the figure told her. "I am here to assist you in loading the Tank environment."

"What is the Tank environment?" she demanded.

"It is a data file you require to make use of the Think Tank. Would you like to load the default, or browse the Tank library?"

She hesitated. "Default?" she replied uncertainly.

The hooded figure bowed his head in assent. He held out his hand, where a shimmering ball of data-light lay. It uncurled into a long string and floated towards her. It hovered for a moment, and then went to the back of her neck where her open port was.

PROGRAM INJECTION

she was warned.

PROGRAM ttankenv00.env
ALLOW OR WALL?

"Allow," she said.

The light pushed inside her and she felt it stream into her system, hot and busy. She gasped at the unfamiliar sensation and closed her eyes momentarily as it filled her and then melted into her.

When she opened her eyes again, there was a door in front of her, tall and wooden. Nothing behind it; it floated in thin air.

"The Think Tank welcomes you!" the figure boomed once again, and shimmered out of existence.

Momentarily, she was stunned. What was the Think Tank? What was this door?

She touched the door, and was surprised to find that it felt solid. Rough like wood and heavy, too. She pushed it, and it opened, swinging on rusty iron hinges and revealing a stone room within.

The default environment. She understood now. The program the hooded figure had injected into her port was this room.

She stepped off Yimini's hub and through the door.
The room was well executed. Candlelight flickered on walls and floor of stone, and a large hearth with a fire burning inside emitted real heat.

Seven chairs were gathered around the hearth, at the edges of a tatty, worn animal skin. In the chairs sat more figures, hooded as the one outside had been.

"Welcome, traveller," one of them said. "Do you have a query?"

"Who are you?" she demanded, more than a little wary of this whole place.

"We are the Think Tank," replied another. "Seven Augbrains designed to provide quick access to the knowledge of the Network."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"It means you may ask us any question and if the information is available to the Network, we will answer or connect you to the relevant hub."

She looked at each of them in turn, uncertain. This was an environment built for amusement, and she doubted its ability to help her.

"How do I escape the suit?" she demanded, surprised to hear her voice waver and almost break. Of all the questions she had, she knew this had to be her priority. If she did not get out of the suit, all her other questions would cease to matter.

"You will have to provide the Tank with more information about your query," she was told.

She reached back into her physical self for a moment, sending a data request to the suit. Unfamiliar as this environment was to her, she surprised herself by how quickly she had been able to interact with it. It told her she could survive without the suit; it gave her hope.

"The Tenkatech Softsuit," she said a moment later. "AJ6249-9721-E. I need information about its construction and design."

The Think Tank paused momentarily, the fire spitting and crackling in front of them.

"I'm afraid the Softsuit is a weapon of war, and so information is restricted," one of them told her eventually. "All we can access is that it was created by Tenkatech Biosystems Division two years ago under Project Pirate and first utilised at the Battle of Chilwood."

They paused again.

"Eyewitness accounts suggest that the Softsuit is a weapon worn by a trooper greatly augmented by Tenkatech. They are capable of great feats of combat and are devastating weapons. Some commentators credit the judicious use of Softsuited troops as turning the war in favour of Tenkatech."

She was momentarily stunned. This was what she was. A trooper. A "greatly augmented" trooper. True, she had seen the guns inside her arms, leapt great distances and fought ferociously, but to hear it was different.

She wanted that suit off. At once.

"I need access to Tenkatech," she told them. "To that Biosystems Division."

The Tank paused again, as they always seemed to do when they were accessing. "Granted," they said. "Tenkatech Biosystems Home is now behind the door you entered from."

She turned on her heel and marched her virtual self toward the virtual door.

"Thank you for accessing the Think Tank," she heard from behind her.

She stepped out of the door and back into the cool blue world of the network. Outside, she stood on a new hub, twice as large as Yimini's, about which circled the words

TENKATECH BIOSYSTEMS
PORT 32\B

White text appeared in front of her.

TENKATECH ACCESS ID?

She felt her port push her system ID

MIA#223939

at them but fail to connect. For a moment she thought she would be unable to access them, but then more text appeared in front of her.

UNKNOWN ID.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO REGISTER?

"Yes!" she gasped. This was easier than she thought.

Suddenly, she caught herself. These were the people who created the suit. At the very least they were contracted to supply for those who had done this to her. It was very possible that trying to access their computer systems would result in her capture.

She hesitated as

STATE REQUIRED ID

appeared in front of her. She realised she hadn't heard the voice since she had been networked, and wished desperately that it would advise her.

She was trapped between the fear of a possible capture and the inevitability of her suit's termination procedure. She wanted to be cautious, but time would not allow it.

She held her breath and let her port release her system ID once more. She had to get out of the suit, or be caught trying.

mia223939

filled in underneath Tenkatech's request, and a new one appeared.

STATE REQUIRED PASSWORD

Her port gave her mouth her password and she made strange sounds through her throat, croaks and hisses and clicks of the tongue.

ACCEPTED

appeared, as well as a whole new interface screen. Once more, it featured the red-furred creature from the Help interface.

"Congratulations!" it said cheerily. "You now have a Tenkatech Systems ID! Use it to activate the following services."

A list appeared, leisure pursuits, communications, weather reports, but she wasn't interested and waved a hand at it. It disappeared. The rodent, however, did not.

"Biosystems Division," she barked at it urgently.

"Please select your environment," it said.

"Default," she replied, and once again the liquid-white of a data thread moved from the interface and into her port.

This time, she kept her eyes open as the door, a white sliding door this time, materialised before her. She stepped towards it and it opened automatically.

Her heart pounded as she went inside, although she rationalised it was only her virtual heart.

Inside was a large room with enormous windows that let in streams of sunlight. The floor was a gleaming, polished stone and her footsteps echoed as she stepped inside and came to a stop.

At the far side of the room, there was a grand staircase and a bank of elevators. In front, however, was a desk. The desk was marked

RECEPTION.

There she was, about to present herself to her enemy, still wondering if she had made a fatal error.

There was a woman behind the desk, a black haired woman who wore a dark suit and cosmetics on her face.

She approached her, noticing that she wore an identity tag that read "Zandy Tada".

"Welcome to Tenkatech Biosystems Division," said Zandy as she got close. "How may I help you?"

She stopped warily. She was unsure if this woman was another construct of the Network, or if she represented a real person, plugged into a Tenkatech terminal.

"I require information," she told Zandy, her voice small in this large room. "About the Softsuit which was developed here under Project Pirate."

Zandy smiled. "Please state your clearance code."

"My clearance code?"

"Project Pirate is classified," she said. "You require a Tenkatech Systems employee clearance code to access data."

"I need a schematic and detailed analysis of its functions and systems."

Zandy smiled again, the same automated muscles in the same automated position. "Please state your clearance code."

"I don't have a code!" she screamed in response, slamming her hands onto the polished surface of the desk. Suddenly the room didn't sound so big or mute.

Zandy did not react to her outburst, continuing to smile in that courteous but distant way. "I'm sorry. There is no information I can provide you with at this time."

"Then I require a code," she demanded. "How would I obtain one? May I ... register?"

"Clearance codes are available to Tenkatech Systems employees only, and are graded according to position," Zandy explained.

"Do you have a list of employees who possess the required clearance level?"

"It is Tenkatech Systems' company policy not to release employee details."

Frustration overcame her; this time she had to stop herself attacking Zandy. "Nothing?" she asked. "Not even names?"

"I can provide you with an employee list for Tenkatech Biosystems, but no other data is available without a clearance code."

"A list?" she queried. "Of names? Employee names?"

"Yes," said Zandy. "The list does not state titles or positions within the Division, nor any other personal information; it is merely a list we are required to produce for safety purposes."

It was better than nothing. "I will take the list," she said.

An interface instantly appeared before her. A list of names, alphabetised by surname, printed for her viewing. There were 150 of them, and as Zandy had said, that was it. No details, no photographs. Just names.

Zandy had returned to her "work", an animation that involved shuffling papers and rearranging items. After thirty seconds her actions repeated themselves, proving that she was, indeed, a simulation.

Names. One hundred and fifty names. She looked through the list three times, just letting it scroll to the bottom and instructing it to begin again. Hoping something on it would seem familiar, hoping it would induce a memory in the dull black deadness of her brain.

Nothing came to her. It was simply a list of names. Blank text that sparked nothing but disappointment.

She tried to encourage herself by thinking that now, at least, she had somewhere to begin, that she could investigate these names one at a time and find someone who could help her, but it seemed a fantasy. She did not have that much time.

"Download list," she requested, and a small, thin data thread wriggled into her port to save the list to the suit.

Suddenly

WARNING

flashed before her eyes.

IMMINENT CONNECTION LOSS:
SATELLITE YIMINI OUT OF RANGE
02:59:59

Three minutes? How long until it returned? She pushed a query back through her port to Yimini, asking for its basic orbit data.

Just as she feared, it was twenty four hours.

The countdown continued as she turned on her heel and ran towards the doors and out of the Tenkatech lobby environment.

Outside, on the hub, the Network seemed smaller. She could no longer see the threads stretching out infinitely, and there seemed to be far fewer hubs.

"Load Think Tank!" she barked. "Default environment."

For a fraction of a second, she feared that her imminent connection loss would prevent her from loading it, but then the wooden door appeared.

She leapt at it immediately, pushing it open and running into the stone room and up to the hooded figures that sat, exactly as before, in a semi-circle by the fireplace.

"Welcome traveller," one said again. "Do you have a query?"

She did not have time for this. "I require a file analysis. I wish to save the results and return to them when I connect later. Is that possible?"

"By all means," responded one of the figures. "Please select Save Session on exit."

"I require you to analyse this file and present me with data on all the subjects inside. I require information on their backgrounds, careers and current locations."

"Very well," one of them boomed. "Inject your file into the analysis port on the table, and we shall begin."

She sent an instruction to the suit, and it pulsed a copy of the Tenkatech employee list out through her port. Just as it did outside, it appeared as a liquid white thread which stretched itself from her port to the port on the table.

CONNECTION LOSS IMMINENT
00:05:59

she was told, the white letters even bigger than before. Five seconds.

"Save session!" she shouted.

SESSION SAVED

appeared before her.

She felt strange, a duality almost, two bodies in two places connected by a single mind. Then her virtual self began to lose cohesion as the connection stretching from her port to Yimini sputtered and faded.

Once more she was swept away in a wave of blue light, and when it faded, she was in her own body, out on the hills, still inside the suit.

She queried it, asking how much time she had left.

73

came back.

Claustrophobia hit her hard and she fought her own panic. She wanted the suit off, even more now she had experienced life without it. Her virtual body had felt light and organic and wonderful.

"Wait."

It was the voice again, so unexpected it made her jump as it throbbed through her head.

She intended to wait. She knew Yimini's orbit would take it back overhead in another 24 hours, and she intended to be here to connect.

She still had much to do.


CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 4 ...


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