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

RATING: NC-17 (eventually, this part probably an R for a few death-related elements.
CODES: Uber J/7
SUMMARY: This chapter picks up the story of Dr. Kaine Sigg (Janeway), inventor of the Softsuit and captive of the sadistic Colonel Filer. Check it out from the beginning, though!

6.

Alone in her cell, Kaine washed herself at the porcelain sink.

She dipped a soft washcloth in the cold water before wringing it out in her trembling hands. Then she scrubbed at her neck and chest and over her shoulders, stripped to her underwear. Making the skin tingle. Making it red. Trying not to cry.

She thought of Colonel Filer sitting in her office, watching her on the security feed. Drinking her dark alcohol and congratulating herself on the murder of Timon. Although she was in shock, in pain and hollow with grief, Kaine was not going to give that monster the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

She knew she was not getting out of this alive.

The Colonel was insane, that much was apparent. Anyone who could kill so cold-bloodedly and with such apparent relish had clearly lost her mind.

Her story about the Softsuit, about what it had become, was too much. Kaine could not accept it.

Again, she thought about her visit to Quintin Base and her fleshmeeting with Honn and Kidder. Nothing about that visit had seemed unusual to her, nothing at all. Nothing had hinted at any of the horrors the Colonel had revealed.

True, she hadn't seen a Softsuit or even the current schematic, but she hadn't needed to. She had worked on the flow rate of the Mainstem t-sync connecters. A tiny part, standard on many high-end body augmentations. She'd worked on lots of them; she could probably take one to pieces with her eyes closed. Giving her schematics would have been an insult.

Of course, she had wondered why Honn and Kidder had wanted the flow rate changed. Faster data transfer perhaps, but she had made sure it was optimised when she designed the Softsuit. They had probably made changes, though. Of course they had. They were the ones who had implemented her designs, who had turned the Softsuit from a prototype into a practical, usable weapon of war. They were bound to have needed changes.

She finished washing and let the sink drain, watching dismally as the water sank through the plughole and disappeared. She squeezed out the washcloth and left it to dry over the edge of the basin before drying herself on one of the towels.

She dressed again and went to sit on the bed, thankful to have suppressed the urge to cry, at least for now. She folded her cold hands and held them in her lap. She could not seem to keep warm.

Yet again, she went to check the time on her Augbrain, flicking the mental switch only to be met by a burst of black static as she did so. She kept forgetting.

How exactly would one bring back a body from the dead?

There it was, the thought of it, sitting in her mind. The thought she had been trying not to think. As desperately as she wanted to deny the things Colonel Filer had told her, she was a scientist. She had to imagine the possibility.

There were areas of Augbrain research that Tenkatech kept classified. Indeed, some of the work she had done on the Mark IV to complement the Softsuit had been done strictly need-to-know.

Perhaps someone, somewhere in a lab on one of the bases, had discovered that an Augbrain could bring a person back to life. Perhaps they had discovered it could control their bodies.

Her mind, her "remarkable brain" as the Colonel had put it, was beginning to join the dots now. If the Augbrain could somehow be modified to reanimate someone, she knew it was her invention, the Softsuit, which would control them.

She had done that part of it herself. The Softsuit was perfect in so many ways; it was the perfect machine for implemented analysis, examining data and then offering solutions. In certain situations it would go into what was called Black Mode. Then trooper inside would be shot full of adrenalin and the suit would administer its own electrical pulses to the muscles of the body, effectively moving for them, albeit in superhuman ways.

In trials, Softsuited troops had behaved remarkably in Black Mode; running at great speed, jumping enormous distances, killing with their bare hands. It had worked far more effectively than anyone on her team had anticipated.

Could it have been modified? Could this be how Honn and Kidder had reanimated the Citizen dead and used them to fight for Tenkatech?

Theoretically, it was possible. Black Mode was an extreme, but there was no reason the same augmentations couldn't be used to govern more commonplace bodily actions.

Were Tenkatech capable of it? Truthfully, she did not know. It was wartime, they lived in a sea of propaganda but they were all free-thinkers. They fought the war because it was happening; because Tenkatech military was big money and had the best facilities in the world. No one was brainwashed into believing in a cause.

The Citizens, on the other hand, they were brainwashed. They shunned reliance on the Network, shunned the wealth of information and community it provided, relying on broadcasts from their tin-pot government to keep them informed. Their military fought because they were patriotic, because they still believed in good and evil.

This worried Kaine more than anything. A righteous cause, something worth dying for. These were ideals very alien to her way of life.

She straightened her back and set her jaw. Determined. Whether or not the new Softsuit could do what the Colonel claimed, Timon was dead and Kaine was on her own.

She was the one who had to escape this. There was nothing else she could do.

No sooner had she thought this than the door unlocked and opened to the sight of three soldiers, different ones than Kaine had seen before.

Armed. She got to her feet and their guns rose as they eyed her warily. Perhaps they were worried she would try something stupid now that Timon was dead. Perhaps they thought she would be desperate and crazy.

She looked one of them, the tallest one, in the eye and asked, "Is the lab ready for me?"

He blinked. "Yes," he said uncertainly, trying to sound aggressive but failing. How much he would love to be able to see her as an enemy. Pity she looked like a small, tired forty-year-old woman.

"Is Colonel Filer there?" she asked.

"Yes," he said again, still looking unsure if he was talking out of turn.

"Good," she said firmly, and marched out of the door ahead of them.

They escorted her down the corridor, past those humming

HOST

and

GUEST

rooms and down towards the Colonel's office. Just past the hangar, there was a door marked

CLEANLAB 1
FIELD ENABLED: TRUE

which she had not noticed before. It was an electronic sign though, so perhaps it had not been there before.

The sign split neatly in half as the bio doors parted, and they went into the lab.

It was white, clean and perfect. Much more sophisticated than Kaine had imagined, and much better equipped. Everything in the room pulsed and tickled at her useless ports, emitting tantalising signals, trying to identify itself.

As the sign on the door suggested, a clean field was enabled in the room and Kaine felt it buzzing over her, sweeping through skin and hair and clothes to kill microbes and neutralise dirt. Just the way it was in her lab. In fact, this place could have been modelled on the lab she ran on base; aside from the lower ceiling and different power sources, it was identical.

In the middle, where her Network Drive usually sat, the constituent parts of a Softsuit lay on a table. She recognised them at once; twenty elegant pieces of machinery in matte black mesh and metal. She went to them, forgetting the three soldiers with guns right behind her. Curious.

Instantly, she saw the differences. Honn and Kidder had made some extensive modifications, though without her Augbrain it was difficult to analyse them exactly.

She picked up the breastplate and noticed it had been repaired. A crack across the front had been fixed with sealant.

She turned to the soldiers behind her. "Where did you get this?" she asked.

Just then the door opened and the Colonel swept in, her boots clicking smartly across the plastic floor.

"Feeling better, Doctor?" she asked merrily.

"Where's Timon?" Kaine barked, wanting to forgo the mind games.

"He's just come out of surgery. He's just had all Tenkatech's finest equipment implanted. They're bringing him down for you now."

The Colonel went to the security panel on the wall and opened it to set something manually.

"Where did you get this?" Kaine demanded.

"The Softsuit?" the Colonel responded, toying with the controls. "It was captured in battle a month ago."

That explained the damage.

"Yes, it's all a Tenkatech original," the Colonel continued. "Apart from the trooper, of course. He, unfortunately, died during the procedure to remove it."

Kaine said nothing. How was she supposed to react? Was she supposed to feel responsible for his death?

The door hissed open once more and two soldiers wheeled in a body, Timon's body, laid flat on a field operating table. Kaine swallowed, fighting down her emotions. They brought him to lie next to the Softsuit.

Kaine forced herself to look at him. He looked clean, pink, neat. Apart from the bruises on his face, he looked untouched.

She felt a strange sensation, like he was crying out to her! Then she realised they had fitted an Augbrain and its signals were tickling her ports.

She moved closer to him, hoping against hope that her Augbrain would connect and respond, but of course it didn't. It was maddening, having all the tantalising sensations of the technology in the room, but being unable to use it without physically touching it.

She looked him over, trying to see any scars, bending double to see under his neck to where they had fitted new ports, wanting to know what they had done.

She jerked up, taking a couple of steps back. His chest had moved! It was still moving, going up and down as his lungs expanded and filled with air.

"He's breathing!" she gasped.

"Yes, Doctor," agreed the Colonel. "He's very much alive."

"What did you do?!" Kaine exclaimed.

"I can't claim credit, it's the Augbrain," the Colonel told her. She picked up a comset and tossed it to Kaine. "Here, have a look for yourself."

The Citizen comset was clunky and fat in Kaine's hands, but she managed to configure it for a simple scan. She gasped at the readout.

The screen showed Timon's brain and as expected, an Augbrain. But what an Augbrain! It was at least 20% bigger than any she had seen before, and constructed completely differently.

Most Augbrains, including her own, were titanium coated and, after injection, grew into place themselves over the course of several weeks. They replaced brain tissue, gradually eroding it and taking its place while allowing the user to adapt naturally.

They were a remarkable piece of engineering. This was otherworldly.

The Augbrain in Timon's head was thin, sitting on top of his brain like a membrane. Instead of replacing his brain, it interfaced with it, boring minute channels to the nodes it stimulated.

So quickly, too; after only two hours it was fully functional.

Kaine gaped over the readouts, hardly believing what she saw. She looked at the Colonel, who was smiling in amusement at Kaine's wonder.

"Did Honn and Kidder make this?" Kaine enquired.

The Colonel shook her head. "I'm afraid this Augbrain is something of a mystery," she said ruefully.

"Did you remove it from the captured trooper too?" Kaine whispered, still marvelling at the way signals coming from it, the way it was making Timon breathe.

"Parts of it," the Colonel said mysteriously, but didn't elaborate.

At least she was more forthcoming with information now, Kaine thought. The Colonel must believe that she knew nothing of these new, secret advancements Tenkatech had made with her invention.

"It's remarkable," Kaine marvelled, forgetting she was in hostile company as the scientist in her took over. "What is it made of? Is it a plastic, a polymer of some kind?"

"It's tissue," the Colonel told her. "In fact, it identifies itself as an Orgbrain ... o-r-g. It's organic tissue, but not human. We think it must have been synthesised somehow, but we have no idea. It works just like a regular Augbrain, growing into place, taking over brain function and interfacing with other technology. We're able to clone it, but it does the rest itself."

"Remarkable," Kaine repeated, breathless. She circled Timon's prone body with the comset, watching the Orgbrain fire his synapses to make his heart beat and his lungs breathe. It was scarily advanced.

The Colonel looked at Kaine through narrowed eyes.

"Do you know how it works?" she asked.

Kaine shook her head. Biological engineering was not her field. "I don't think it can be removed, if that's what you're hoping."

"No," said the Colonel simply. "Just the Softsuit."

"The Softsuit?!" Kaine challenged, putting the comset down. "You mean you want me to put him in it and then take him out again?"

"Yes please, Doctor," said the Colonel, her politeness chilling in this white, sanitised space.

"Why? What's the point?"

"The point is to do it without killing him," the Colonel explained in that mesmerising voice of hers, stepping right into Kaine's personal space.

"It won't kill him," Kaine retorted. "It's that Orgbrain that's keeping him alive."

"They've all died," the Colonel said icily. "Everyone we've tried to take out of your Softsuit has died."

"Then you're doing something wrong."

"Try it," dared the Colonel, her dead shark eyes drilling into Kaine's.

"I will," Kaine replied, lifting her chin defiantly. She was damned if she was going to be cowed by the Colonel.

She went to the Softsuit, laid out in pieces on the table, wanting to get a more detailed look. It was very different to her prototype; thicker, heavier, more power cells. More ports. A huge space for ammunition reserves.

Nothing that surprised her. Honn and Kidder had taken her idea and adapted it for the realities of battle. If they had made her machine into a monster, it was from necessity.

Turning the pieces over, though, she noticed that there were no external interfaces now. No way for the trooper to access the systems, and no easy way for it to be taken off. This was unexpected. Surely something this big and heavy was not worn indefinitely.

With the prototype Softsuit, the trooper had climbed in and out at will. They had access to all major systems from within, both manually and through t-sync connections. None of that element remained on Honn and Kidder's version.

Why not? She was forced to conclude that it wasn't needed. Obviously the new troopers, the dead ones, had no control at all inside the Softsuit. No control, and most likely no consciousness.

She suspected their bodies were merely used as muscles to move, fingers to pull triggers, legs to run. Nothing more. As advanced as robotics had become since the war started, there was still no advantage to building a robot hand when a human one was available.

Kaine looked over to Timon lying on the table, breathing but nothing else. She felt sick. As absurd as she had thought the Colonel's claims were, there was a part of her arrogant enough to believe she would be able to raise the dead. Arrogant enough to believe she could save him.

This was only going to end one way: with a bullet in the back of her head.

Still, best to put on a show for the Colonel first. Play for some time. Who knew, she might even be rescued before it came to her execution.

"Do I get any tools?" she asked. "Or do you want me to do it all with my bare hands?"

"Whatever you need, Doctor," said the Colonel dismissively. "It's all here."

She opened a couple of instrument trays to display a variety of tools. At once their locators sprang to life, tickling Kaine's ports and trying to identify themselves to her.

Another disadvantage of having no Augbrain: not being able to find anything without physically looking for it. That would slow things down.

She collected a pin toucher from the tray closest to the Colonel and picked up the left arm of the suit. She used the comset again too, interfacing with the Softsuit in place of her Augbrain.

She tweaked a couple of the port settings on the limb. The guns had of course been removed, along with the clearly vast reserves of ammunition the Softsuit would normally be carrying. The limb would weigh less than it would be telling Timon's Orgbrain it did and she didn't want any errors.

Under the Colonel's watchful eye, Kaine laid the arm out on the table next to Timon, ready for fitting. She hunted through the trays for another couple of tools, a godwelder to seal it in place and a nanokit to check everything was synced.

She wouldn't need much, at least not for this part. Fitting a Softsuit was meant to be easy.

She lifted Timon's arm to slot it inside and his smell hit her, his comfortable, familiar smell. It was all familiar; the warmth and weight of his hand in hers, even the sound of his breathing. In the hours at the Hacienda before they had been kidnapped, this arm had held her, wrapped around her in love.

She pushed the thought out of her mind, needing a clear head. She snapped tapewire to his ports, tested the connections. Now it would be she who held him, in the embrace of her invention.

On the comset she saw the Orgbrain greet the arm, finding it and t-syncing with it automatically.

PIECE TEST

it said.

CALIBRATE

His hand moved; the knuckles tensed and the hand formed a brief fist before relaxing again. Then each finger lifted in turn, lifted and dropped.

CALIBRATED

the Orgbrain reported.

PIECE ACTIVATED

Remarkable. Kaine had never seen anything like it. This machine interfaced so perfectly with a human being, able to move muscles and limbs on command. For a moment she was mesmerised by the readings on the comset.

She was so engrossed she did not notice the Colonel approach and stand behind her left shoulder.

"Do you understand what they've done?" Filer whispered softly.

"I think so," Kaine breathed. Numbers winked by on the comset, miraculous numbers. Incredible, impossible, theoretical numbers. She gazed at them, wide-eyed.

"Good," said the Colonel. "There are thousands of them, slaves, their lives stolen and their bodies brutalised. Tenkatech have to be stopped."

Kaine had meant she was beginning to understand the science, grasp what was happening in the synergy between Augbrain and Softsuit, but clearly the Colonel had loftier goals.

The Colonel walked to the opposite side of the table where Timon lay, leaning on it with both palms pressed to its clean white surface.

"I do want you to understand, Doctor," she implored. "You're not a prisoner here because I enjoy this. I'm not a sadist. You know before the war I was a teacher. But I want you to see what Tenkatech has done. I want you to look into the eyes of the man you love and see what your invention has done to him."

Kaine put down the comset and looked Filer in the eyes. "The Softsuit didn't do this to him," she hissed in a voice of pure stone. "You did."

Rage flickered across the Colonel's face. For a second Kaine thought she was going to hit her. "I'm wasting my time with you, aren't I," she spat. "You Tenkatech people have all been brainwashed."

The Colonel took a deep breath and pushed back on her hands to pull herself up to her full height. She rounded the table between them, getting right in Kaine's face.

"Get on with it. I want that Softsuit fitted in one hour or I'll kill you myself."

Kaine gave a derisory laugh. "Is that what you used to say to your students when they didn't finish their homework?" she mocked.

"Don't push me, Doctor. Haven't you got a brother in Dathan? Unless you want to be putting him in a Softsuit this time tomorrow, I wouldn't push it."

"Oh, but you're not a sadist?" Kaine jeered.

"For you, Doctor, I'll make an exception," the Colonel threatened, snarling into Kaine's face. "Now get on with it."

She walked away, her boots clicking smartly on the spartan floor of the lab and sat back down at the desk. Kaine let out the breath she had been holding.

Under the penetrating gaze of the Colonel and her soldiers, Kaine picked up the comset and started work on the Softsuit's other arm. Tuning the ports, watching the readouts, pleased to have the science to focus on.

She fitted it and sealed it around Timon's right arm, watching as that incredible Orgbrain found it, activated it and tested it. Once again, Timon's fingers came to life, smoothly lifting and lowering one at a time.

The Orgbrain really was a complete diagnostic tool. She had no need to use the nanokit she had brought over from the instrument drawer. Timon's hands and arms were under the Orgbrain's control.

The torso was a little harder to fit; Honn and Kidder had modified it considerably. The interior held a mass of tapewires and t-sync receptors, all designed to stimulate and respond to the new banks of sensors under the mesh framework on the exterior.

At the base of the spine, they had fitted a Mirror, too, a device that would act as backup to the Orgbrain, complementing it, overriding it, making sure the needs of the Softsuit were paramount. It was an interesting addition, one she hadn't considered.

But then she'd thought there would be live, autonomous troopers in the Softsuits, capable of making these decisions themselves.

The Colonel's soldiers assisted her in turning Timon's body, hauling him onto his stomach to expose the line of ports installed on his spine.

She snapped the tapewires into place, connecting him to the Softsuit, and they turned him again so the breastplate could be fitted and godwelded into place.

At once, the Mirror came to life at the small of his back; she heard the drive whine and the cooling fans start. In her own head, faintly, she felt the two devices reach out as they detected each other; the Mirror and the Orgbrain. Fainter than whispers from across the room, but she felt it.

They were powerful devices. On the comset she saw them pair, giving each other multi-string, multi-tone passwords governing each part of Timon's body. Each muscle.

A marriage of body and mind, utterly unbreakable. Unhackable, uncrackable. Now she understood why every trooper the Citizens had tried to free from the Softsuits had died. If she took the Mirror from the Orgbrain, nothing would work. She would have what she started with; a dead body.

She fitted the legs of the Softsuit with a heavy heart. Watched them flex Timon's muscles and send test signals, asking for activation. For a trooper code. For a purpose.

The Softsuit was complete.

"It's done," Kaine said, surprised by how dead her voice sounded. She looked at Timon's face, at his closed eyes. He looked the way he did when he slept.

The Colonel got up from the desk and walked slowly over. She inspected Timon, visually and then with a comset, checking the connections. Reading the signals.

"Congratulations, Doctor," she crowed. "You've beaten our Dr. Gaddam's time by twenty minutes. And I must say your Mirror connection is twice as efficient. I'm impressed."

"Is that so," said Kaine. She really wasn't interested in being compared to a Citizen doctor.

"But that's the easy part," the Colonel bristled. "We'll see how well you do removing it."

"Not yet," Kaine shook her head. "I need time to set his program."

"I think we'll set his program, thank you. I'm really not stupid enough to let you stand here and program your own personal trooper."

"That's fine," Kaine sighed. Let the Colonel be ultra paranoid. It wasn't going to make a difference.

"I'm going to need a break, though" she insisted. "I'm tired and I've had no food since I got here." She put down her comset and looked defiantly at the Colonel.

An amused smile formed on the Colonel's lips. "We wouldn't want you to starve, Doctor," she said in a way that made Kaine believe the idea was highly exciting to her.

"I'm sure you wouldn't," Kaine played.

"And you've had a hell of a day, haven't you," she smirked.

Kaine bit back a livid response, conscious of all the guns in the room. Conscious of that threat to her brother.

"Continue in the morning," the Colonel allowed magnanimously with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I'll have clothes and food sent to your room."

Kaine said nothing, unwilling to respond to the smallest of kindnesses from her captor. Instead, she cleared away her instruments in silence. She picked up the comset and shut it down. She switched off the godwelder and tidied the lengths of tapewire she had been using.

The Colonel walked away. Kaine went to the instrument trays to return the equipment, slotting each piece back into place.

All these tools were tantalising; it would be so easy to use them on herself, make a diagnostic of her Augbrain and try to map how badly she was fried. Maybe she could have fixed something, even partially. It sickened her.

She started to roll the drawer closed when her gaze fell on the nanokit; the brand new, fully stocked nanokit. It was tiny. It would fit into the palm of her hand.

She swallowed hard. No one watched her. She had her back to everyone. Did she dare?

"Take the Doctor back to her room," she heard the Colonel say to one of her soldiers. She sounded weary. Irritated. "We'll start again at seven."

"Yes Colonel," came the clipped response.

Behind Kaine, the booted footsteps of a soldier approached. It was now or never. She grabbed the nanokit, concealed the small plastic square in the palm of her hand and closed the drawer. She crossed her arms so her hand was tucked away.

The soldier lifted his gun, indicating that she should move. She turned, head in the air, and walked past the other soldiers, past the Colonel, towards the doors.

Her heart pounded. Someone must have seen her. There must be an alarm system. She would be caught.

The doors parted and she passed through. Nothing. No sirens, no soldiers. No search. The soldier simply escorted her through the corridor and to her cell.

He unlocked the door, let her inside, and locked it behind her. She was in her cell, alone, with a nanokit.

Breathing, trembling. Aware of the surveillance panel, wanting to act normally. She sat stiffly on the bed and unfolded her arms, keeping her body between the panel and the hand that held the nanokit. Slid the hand slowly under the pillow, a centimetre at a time, and pushed the nanokit under with her fingers.

Later. In the night when she was supposed to be sleeping. Then she would begin.


NOW CONTINUED IN CHAPTER SEVEN ...


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