you,” Stephens replied, his voice a low rasp as he turned to Keris. “Either you walk, sweetheart, or I’ll put you over my goddamn shoulder and carry you. I’ll probably put my back out, but one way or another, you are going to that printer.”
The AI didn’t reply. She simply looked around the small group. With a sigh, she gave in to the inevitable.
“I will go… I don’t think it’s a good idea, but I will go.”
“Halle-fucking-lujah,” Indra said, already walking out of the room and turning to head toward Sector Four.
They reached it in silence, the small group clustered around the airport-like gate of the printer.
“Okay… does anyone know how this works?” Indra asked.
“I think I can figure it out,” Seren replied, a frown on his face as he stood at the control console. His hands moved over the screen in front of him. “I’ve triggered the settings for an expedition-variant female. It’s the last code in the system,” he explained, looking up at them. “It should be the swiftest to print and mature.”
Keris nodded, her metal feet clunking softly against the deck as she walked across toward another area with loungers set in a semi-circle. She sat in the first one, the furniture groaning under her weight.
“Once the body is printed, I can download directly into the neural net, leaving this metal skin. I should awaken in the new body,” she said, her robotic voice ringing with nerves and excitement. She stopped and looked at Stephens. “I may be… diminished,” she said softly.
Indra and the rest turned away to give them some privacy as the big marine knelt down in front of the AI, their soft voices barely on the edge of hearing. She had no idea what the deal was with the pair of them but, fuck it, everyone deserved a chance at happiness.
“Do it,” she nodded to Seren and watched as he set the machine in motion.
The lights on the “gate” brightened until they were almost blinding. With the sound of mechanisms moving under the deck beneath their feet and a clunk, a circular hatch opened at the bottom of the gate. A large cylinder like those in the bio-tubes slid up and into place. It began to fill with fluid, viscous, sticky fluid, burbling from the bottom. Rapidly the level rose until the tube was full.
“Whoa…”
She wasn’t sure who said it, but a sense of awe filled the room as the gate split in two. The separate sections began to rotate, opposite to each other. They crisscrossed, the lights on the inside of the “blades” lighting consecutively, from bottom to top, over and over. The lights increased speed at the same time as the blades until they drew lines on the side of the tube and… something… began to form.
Indra’s mouth dropped open as a rough pair of feet appeared, a little more each time the blades passed by. Millimeter by millimeter a humanoid form began to take shape—a form that would soon house Keris. It wasn’t identifiable as female, or even human, at the moment. It was merely a hunk of flesh and bone, like an organic sculpture awaiting the finishing touches. The face was flat and unformed with depressions where the eyes would eventually be and the slight ridge of a nose.
But… it was beautiful. Like she was watching life form right there in front of her.
She tore her eyes away to look over to the couches. Keris had lain down now, some kind of apparatus over her head. Stephens hadn’t left her, sitting by her thigh and his hand on hers as he watched the body form in the tube.
“Blasphemy!”
The snarl came from behind them. Indra looked over her shoulder and sighed. Nyek stood in the doorway, a furious expression on his face.
“Fuck off and take your outdated beliefs with you,” she hissed, turning her back on him. This was happening, whether he liked it or not, and there was nothing he could do about it. “You’re not welcome here.”
“Oh, I am absolutely positive about that.”
Something about the way he spoke, some minute quality in his voice, made Indra turn. She watched as he walked toward them, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.
“You’re not Nyek. Who are you?”
He chuckled, dark eyes alight with amusement. The smirk that on Nyek sent heat shimmering through her blood left her cold on this man’s face. “I had been told human females were dull little things, barely intelligent. But I see now my information was incorrect.”
He came