Ellie came awake abruptly. One moment she was unconscious and then she was fully awake. Seating up she gasped for air and looked around.
The regan tank was empty and Steve stood ever vigilant by the door.
“Systems online and operating within designated perimeters” Blinking Ellie looked around. “Who said that?”
“You have been unconscious for 10 years 5 months 2 weeks 1 day 15 hours 36 minutes and 40 seconds.” The voice continued uninterrupted.
“What!” Ellie couldn't believe that! The DNA recombination should have taken six months, a year tops.
“Primary objective were to seek out the best cure for rapid DNA destabilization and to improve the physical body of patient Ellie Eleven.” Blinking Ellie was beginning to realize the voice was in her head was the AI she had spent months carefully building.
“One billion five million three hundred and one simulations where used to project possible solutions. Of the solutions twelve thousand four hundred and fifty six were carried out.”
Ellie mouth dropped opened, Holy Nova!
“Of the applied solutions unforeseen complications negatively affected the patient's body.”
“What!” Ellie scream louder. What had this renegade AI done to her?
“Patients neurons started to rapidly dissolve, unregulated growth in patients left arm and leg increased muscle mass by 312%, patients right side rapidly begin to deevolved. Tumors expanded rapidly throughout the patient’s body.”
By this time Ellie's head rested on her knees and she was breathing rapidly, trying not to faint.
“Patients survivability declining and primary objective not complete patient Ellie Eleven was placed in suspended animation with almost one hundred percent cell activity halted.”
Ellie wanted to throw up. She sat up and frantically looked at her arms, legs, and patted her body. Everything seemed normal. Taking a deep breath she tried to steady her racing heart.
“On farther review of patient’s condition, viability of biological body deemed untenable.”
Ellie really wanted to tell the blasted AI to shut up but she needed to know what that crazy ass piece of code had done to her.
“Accessing all available data form the net and gaining access to restricted data form corporate databases a new physical body was constructed.”
Okay Okay aside from the danger of accessing corporations data that didn't seem too bad.
“The new skeletal structure mimics your former biological skeletal structure replacing bones with an alloy composed of titanium, osmium, tungsten, and beryllium.”
Damn that meant her bones were virtually indestructible. Even a hit form a heavy rail gun rifle would have trouble getting through.
“Your organs and vascular system are composed of a new polymer. A special bioorganic plastic DNA was sequenced form trees in the Midway system. Planet wide continuous lighting storms developed organic life that uses the electricity in lighting to propagate. Combined with research in different superconducting medians, and Somoko Industries prototype capacitors, designated Polymer N76 was developed.”
Ellie really wanted to see the research the AI had hacked. That stuff could be sold on the black marked for millions, also a quick way for a massive bounty to be placed for her head. For her literal head! Corporation did not like their data stolen.
“Polymer N76 can grow naturally, self repair, and store massive amounts of energy. At human level of activities the stored energy can last for five years.”
First, that was an awesome polymer worth millions of credits alone, second what the hell did it mean normal levels of activity!
“A detailed analysis was conducted on the benefits of Polymer N76 as opposed to carbon fiber for the patient’s musculature structure. The benefits of strength and speed provided by carbon fiber muscle weighted against the benefits of polymer N76 self repair and energy storage determined a better survival rating when carbon fiber musculature was inputted.”
Say what? It seemed that her organs where now made of this new polymer and her muscles where made of carbon fiber. Also while Ellie liked to survive, just what did that piece of crap code mean by better survival odds? Against what or who?
“Polymer N76 provides enough energy to sustain dense carbon fiber muscle at normal human level usage. Exceeding these perimeters and stored energy will be rapidly depleted. To counter this development a backup micro fusion reactor was place in the patient’s sternum.”
Ellie mind was reeling from these revelations. She was a cyborg! But when she felt herself it seemed like she had real biological skin. The AI went on to answer her unasked question.
“The skin of the patient’s new body is cloned tissue form a simplified and recombinant DNA strand taken form the patient’s former biological body. Synthetic blood carrying forty percent more oxygen and nutrients sustains the patient's epidermis.”
That was incredible. She never heard of full cybernetics limbs being able to support real skin. Skins were very life like and people could feel form it but real actual skin?
“The patient’s brain is a cloned and enhanced copy of the patients former biological brain with a new bio computer theorized in Biosystems Limited research and development department with an integrated quantum component.”
Ellie was breathless. Her brain had an integrated biocomputer! Not just a implanted cyberchip. Two integrated computers! One biological and one cyber.
Biocomputers could self repair and you could even grow a new computer form the harvested cells. It was also impervious to electromagnetic pulse weapons. Cyberware on the other port was based on hardware. It could not self repair or grow new parts and EMP's could destroy it.
Ellie wondered just how many companies the AI had hacked? Ellie herself had hacked numerous companies but only low level nets. Shipping manifests mostly, had to know where good salvage was being dumped and where military camps were located to avoid.
The AI had gone way beyond low level hacking. Hopefully her extremely low powered encrypted repeater stations that accessed her satellite linkups couldn't be traced back to her. If it had been ten years through, hopefully she was in the clear.
“Okay so just how strong am I?”
“Projections show you should have an even chance against a power armor suited soldier.”
She blinked at that. Going hand to hand against one of those metal encased giants was nuts. Most soldiers had advance DNA upgrades that made them extremely deadly. Add to that soldiers usually went for bio or cyber upgrades to further enhance their speed, strength and stamina and encase one in a walking tank made taking one on by hand nuts. Absolutely nuts.
Hopping out of the regen tank Ellie landed lightly almost daintily on her feet. Blinking down at her feet in confusion Ellie jumped up and promptly slammed her head against the bulkhead ten feet above her. It didn't hurt and she again landed lightly on her feet.
Ellie looked up at the bulkhead in astonishment. “Umm so that happened.”
“Patient is advised to take time accumulating to the new physical body increased strength and speed.”
Ellie growled. “Shut up you reject AI! I may have designed you but that won't stop me from deleting sections of your core code!”
A mostly empty threat as AI's were grown more than coded. That was what took her so much time to develop the AI. She had to slowing feed new information into the basic AI she had programmed and wait while it digested the new information. Flooding it with data would have destabilized the core AI.
“Patient is exhibiting extremely hostile behavior. Psychological profile form before immersion did not note such behavior.”
Ellie growled louder.
“Further elevation is needed.”
“I'll show you were you can stick your elevation! I will upload you to the vacuum cleaner, no the environmental system! You can then elevate raw sewage!”
The AI didn't respond. Snorting in trump, though she suspected that damn AI won this round, she went to her computer system. She didn't want to sit down in her old wheelchair. Now that she was healthy and whole, if not wholly human, she never wanted to see that chair again.
Pulling up another chair that was a levitating a few feet off the ground she sunk into its soft embrace and the chair auto conformed to her.
“Arty please highlight the most important news starting with today and working backwards to the time I was immersed.” Reading the first few headlines Ellie started to feel unnerved.
“Please track my eye focus and scroll.”
“Noted” Arty respond.
She had installed a concise and brief AI profile for her work station. No long words or chatty personality profile for it. At her desk she was working and did not like distractions.
Reading faster and faster Ellie become absorbed in the data and did not notice the data was scrolling at thousand percent faster than a normal person should be able to read and comprehend it.
An hour later she leaned back, closed her eyes, and exhaled a long breath.
“Holy Nova!”
Her decade long slumber bypassed truly grim news. The UEN was fighting for it life. Hemwell was a active war zone with over five stellar powers fighting for domination, and most shocking of all, there were no more nanites! Gone, life saving Tier 2 nanites, Class five industrial replicators that could manufacturer anything, all gone. Two years after she went into the regen tank the Earth Coalition for Freedom (grand sounding name for a group of terrorists) had kidnapped the president of the subcommittee for domestic security. Ironic that.
John Treadwell the third had been vacationing on Blackwell, the greatest hive of villainy in the galaxy renowned for sex slaves, drugs, and any despicable act you could imagine, just the place an upstanding gentlemen in the senate to vacation. After the ECF grabbed one of the most powerful senators of the council they disappeared and spent days interrogating and torturing him, extracting his personal AI and hacking it. How long he held out was unknown but now it known galactic wide that the terrorists got their hands on the self destruct codes for all nanites everywhere. The Earth Coalition for Freedom without hesitation activated the kill codes for all replicators in the galaxy!
“This is bad! Very very bad!” Ellie jump up and promptly smashed against the overhead bulkhead again. “Graviton!” Ellie was again able to land lightly on her feet.
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“Patient is having a difficult time adjusting to her new physical body.”
“Shut up you damn pile of chips!” Ellie started pacing.
The United Earth Nation were the hardest hit without nanites. They shot themselves in the head with a noving laser cannon bullying and stealing form everyone else. Talk about sweet sweet poetic justice.
Worlds not wanting to pay the exuberant taxes on replicated parts instead started factories and automatic manufacturing to reduce the cost paid to the UEN. The UEN senate on the other thruster gave themselves and the manufacturing plants they owned free access to replicated parts, so the UEN relied exclusively on nanites.
Though there were parts that could only be produced form nanites, miniature fusion reactors, special alloys, thousands of specialized electronics, those parts now where worth a fortune and that's what Ellie had to deal with now.
The greatest collection of now priceless parts were all around her, Hemwell.
“Graviton!”
The centuries of corporate greed and laziness form not recycling and destroying the planet with junk was now the greatest boon to mankind. Everyone and their cat wanted a piece of it.
“Graviton! Nova! Noving UEN!” Ellie swear again.
Words could not expresses how mad she was right now. Ellie always planned to get off the bloody mudball that was Hemwell and now there were 2 major powers, 3 minor powers, hundreds of Hemwell corporations, smugglers, and pirates all having a bloody free for all on and around Hemwell.
Everyone was trying not to get their ships shot up with the needed parts for repair no longer easily available, so everyone was skirmishing with no decisive battles. The hardest battles were around UEN bases.
The UEN, even a eight years later, were unable to reproduce nanite replicators. What the UEN did have were the largest prenanite economy in space, ridiculously large stock piles of supplies in planned preparation for invading their neighbors before losing their nanite replicators, a massive navy fleet, and the largest warships in the galaxy. Not even the next major power could afford the massive dreadnoughts of the UEN.
Reading between the lines the UEN were slowly losing. Not helpful to her right now. Ellie had to somehow get off Hemwell with her hoard of salvaged parts.
She had known she needed credits off world to pay for regen healing and live comfortably. That was before she found the Tier 1 nanites. She had slowly filled a bulk carrier to the bulkheads in five years she had been in the junkyard with the help of her bots.
When she found the bulk carrier under a massive pile of trash, the bulk carrier's whole electric grid had been fried, the environmental units shot, the fusion reactor barely adequate for the size of the vessel but still in good condition, the harmonic drive a pile of scrape form a rail gun hit, and six of the eight engines destroyed.
For all that the hull was in surprising good condition. She had named the large vessel Fatty. It had taken her years to repair the ship and that was primary thanks to Steve and the boys working twenty-four seven.
The environmental system had been the easiest. Ellie had salvaged the environmental plant form a two thousand passenger ship, more than enough for Fatty. Ellie had found a heavy cruiser that was mostly melted scrap form a fierce battle but somehow the six massive engines escaped with minor damage.
Moving them, on the other hand, had been a major pain in the nova. First she needed to move them at night, camouflaged by hologram projectors, slowly moving so not to attract satellite surveillance. On top of that she had to avoid gangs, soldiers, and pirates.
The junkyard was a dangerous place and that was without fearing the junk may explode form leftover fuel, still active fusion reactors, missiles, tons of other junked military hardware, and still operational security measures. Ellie had spent three weeks salvaging the engines.
Each engine had taken days to cut out, lift onto her anti grav transport, then slowly float to her ship. The engines were massively overpowered for the bulk freighter. Each engine was half again as large as the civilian engines.
It had taken a lot of work cutting out bulkheads, wielding support beams, and rewiring the fuel and electric grid to fit them in. It had been worth it. Military engines were built extremely sturdy and Ellie had fun modifying them to produce even more thrust. As for the fusion reactor she got an awesome replacement.
One of the UEN dreadnoughts had stopped at Hemwell to replace its four fusion reactors. Each one, at the time, had only been ten years old and supplied enough energy to power a large metropolis.
It had taken her and her bots three months to reconfigure Fatty's engine room to handle one of these reactors.
The complete structural enhancements to Fatty had taken an additional two years. Ellie had added three more structural ribs between each of the old ribs of the ship and cross beams every five feet. Just because she could and because there were a lot of scrap ships around, Ellie had also added a diagonal beam between each crossbeam to form a repeating triangle, the most solid weight bearing design in structural engineering.
She had wielded anther keel on either side of Fatty's top and bottom keel to make a very solid foundation. All total the ship was more solid then a battle cruiser.
She had been able to take apart the other three reactors and stack them in two of Fatty's holds. Any colony would pay dearly for those giant reactors. Knowing the dangers of pirates and so called privateers, Ellie had also got her bots to strip the flimsy hull off Fatty and install the armored plates form a battle cruiser.
The battle cruiser had been a burned out wreck that somehow hadn't exploded. With an armored Fatty Ellie then moved onto weapons. There were thousands of weapons systems up for grabs in the junkyard.
Ellie had even found a surface to space rail gun in the junkyard that was way too heavy to install on a ship. The rounds alone weighed five tons, way too heavy, through Ellie had really tried to figure out a way to install it.
Gaviton, that weapon could have hurt a dreadnought. Mounting capital ship weapons on the hull of Fatty caused a major problem for her because Ellie did not want to be mistaken for a pirate and shot at.
No one hurt her Fatty!
On the other thruster, installing them inside the ship meant Ellie needed to turn the whole ship to aim. It would be going back to the old days of wooden ships and broadsides. Most modern weapons used armored torrents. Ellie considered pop up torrents but that would weaken the structural frame she had work so hard to strengthen.
In the end she made low profile armored boxes, shaped to look like part of the hull, which enclosed the entire weapon system. When not moving and in their standby position a enemy would have to visually inspect the ship to find that the boxes were not part of the ship.
Each box housed a heavy cruiser railgun with a auto loader system and ammo underneath. On either side of the rail gun were heavy cruiser laser cannons. After the rail gun fired, the two laser cannons could fire four times before the railgun recharged and reloaded, about two and half seconds.
Ellie had been able to pack in twelve hundred rounds of ammo in each box. Ellie had gone a little nova and installed thirty enclosures on top of the ship, fifteen on each side, spaced evenly down the full length of Fatty. She had wanted to install weapon systems on the bottom of Fatty but the ship landed and settled flat to the ground.
If she installed them on the bottom Fatty's weight would crush the weapons. Ellie could never land the ship safely. Along the center line of Fatty, inside the armored hull, Ellie had installed four battle cruiser size rail guns.
Ellie would have to move the ship to aim but four rounds hitting a light cruiser would destroy it and a heavy cruiser would be severely damaged. The battle cruiser rounds weighed six hundred pounds, triple the weight of heavy cruiser rounds. Missiles were another matter entirely. They could be fired form any position and steered toward the enemy. Ellie had found a crashed military supply ship with a hold filled with boxed missile launchers.
The launchers were loaded with eight fire and forget missiles. The launchers were usually mounted on grav trucks to take out enemy drop ships. The launchers could not be reloaded and needed replacement after fired. Ellie installed the boxes on top of the cargo holds right above the cargo bay doors. Fifty evenly spaced boxes split down each side of Fatty were concealed by a simple holographic projection.
To further conceal the launchers Ellie had the bots spray on radar absorbing paint. The missiles could take out the ramshackle vessels pirates used and that's what Ellie wanted. Any bloody pirate tried to take her Fatty would eat a swarm of missiles.
Not useful for capital ship to ship fighting but Ellie had no plans to be that stupid. Fatty had more weapons then a heavy cruiser. Ellie could have added a lot more weapon systems; the reactor could easily handle triple the weapons Ellie had installed.
Ellie didn't because she had no plans to be a warship or fighting. She did go a little nova on point defense systems and sensors but if it saved Ellie and Fatty it would be well worth the extra data lines she had ran. The only thing she hadn't found were a battle cruiser or bigger Harmonic Drive intact. Ellie had only been able to salvage a heavy cruisers drive.
A heavy cruiser sized harmonic drive could get Ellie into dimension three with a small safety margin. If she really pushed it she could slip into dimension four. That would be incredibly dangerous. With a battle cruiser Harmonic Drive Ellie would have felt a great deal safer pushing the hardware. The deeper you transitioned into the sub dimensions the shorter your travels.
The only problem with the drives was the massive power requirements needed to charge the Harmonic drive capacitors, through Fatty had a lot of extra power now.
The drive was simple in concept. Everything in the universe vibrated on the same subatomic frequency, form cosmic dust to stars. The sub dimensions also had their own vibrational frequency. A Harmonic Drive first pushed out a counter frequency to cancel out the universes frequency and the ships, then overlaid the subdimensions frequency, causing the ship to transition.
The Harmonic Drive worked on mass not weight. A condensed mass would need far more power than the same mass spread out. A more condensed mass vibrated louder. It was like trying to tune into a specific radio frequency when someone was jamming the airways. It was possible if you had enough power.
The subdimensions themselves were vast black voids with nothing in them, not even dust. The lowest subdimensions any one had reached was dimension six and that was using specialized drones no longer than a foot in length.
Each dimension needed exponential more power to enter. You also needed to enter form the regular prime universe. While you could go from one subdimension to anther it took four times the power. The Harmonic Drive needed to counter the ships vibrational frequency, the frequency of the dimension it was in, and then overlay the frequency of the subdimension you wanted to transition to.
It cost vastly more power than jumping to the prime universe then transitioning to anther subdimension. A bulk carrier of Fatty's size would usually be relegated to dimension one. Dimension two and dimension three were the main dimension used for median freighters. Dimension four was for fast small freighters loaded with high valued cargo and rich passengers. Dimension five was only used by very specialized vassals and communication drones.
So after Ellie finally cured herself, despite that blasted AI, Fatty was ready to fly. Through now Ellie needed to fight her way off Hemwell.
Wait Ellie realized she had overlook something very important.
“Nanites!”
“Don't panic. Don't Panic.” Ellie took a deep breath, tried again. It wasn't working.
“AI can you reproduce Tier 1 medical nanites used at the start of my operation and can you produce Class 1 manufacturing nanites form them?” Ellie asked in a voice trembling in fear.
She did not know if she wanted the answer to be yes or no.
“Yes Tier 1 and Class 1 nanites can be replicated. The nanites in question are a substandard version of the nanites developed during the operation to repair and upgrade your physical body. The improved nanites are sixty-one point three zero one percent more efficient than the original nanites.”
Ellie did not hear the rest of the AI prattle after it confirmed it could make more nanites. She was too busy trying not to have a panic attack. Ellie had just become a galactic target.
After ten minute she calmed down enough to think through the problem.
“Well they don't know I have the nanites. If I can get off this rock I can disappear in the rim. Far far away from the UEN.”
Ellie had gotten in the habit of talking to herself. It helped her think through a problem and focus her mind.
“AI” she really needed to give that AI a name. It may not have been one of the sentient AIs but it was intelligent.
“Jarvis, that is now your name, you pain in the nova.”
“Confirmed.”
“All right, now what do you need to produce Tier 1 and Class 1 nanite replicators? Also can you encrypt the basic AI so not even a UEN sentient AIs can crack it?”
Tier 1 nanites were needed to create all Tiers of medical nanites while Class 1 nanites were needed to produce all classes of manufacturing nanites.
“Confirmed. Replicating Tier 1 and Class 1 nanite replicators can be completed by placing the proper resources into the regeneration tank. Strong encryption is possible. Breaking the encryption with advanced AIs is impossible to calculate without more data. Tier 1 nanite replicators will be uploaded with the current medical data stored in systems database. The database for the Class 1 replicators will be empty. Please choose replicator nanites, original nanites used in patients operation or the nanites developed during the operation?”
Ellie had to think for a moment. For the medical database she had amassed an impressively large collection of medical knowledge. That was what took Jarvis so long to develop. The database containing all of humanities knowledge on the human body, ailments, and DNA structure and multiplication could fill Fatty a hundred times over if printed out.
Add in whatever Jarvis had hacked form the corporations and the Tier 1 medical database was as full as Ellie could get it. The Class 1 replicator database was a little harder. Transferring even very old free templates would draw UEN attention faster than traveling in dimension six. She would have to start form the very beginning and have the nanites deconstruct everything possible to develop a manufacturing database, form bolts, to structural beams, to advance electrics.
Ellie would even need to feed in tools for the replicator to deconstruct and make templates for, even a basic spanner.
She then remembered Jarvis saying something about improving the nanites.
“Jarvis did you say you improved the nanites?”
“Confirmed.”
Ellie took a depth breath.
‘Must not upload a virus into the AI. Must not upload a virus into the AI.’
After relaxing she asked for Jarvis to explain.
“To fulfill the directive of repairing your ailing organic structure and make improvements deficiencies in the nanites were apparent on the first scan and improvements were initiated. Improvements made increased efficiency by six-one point three zero one percent.”
Ellie took a moment to absorb that. Nanites slowly degraded form use; just the electricity they needed to operate slowing wore out the small machines, that also determined the Tier or Class of the nanites. Class 5 manufacturing nanites were big, relatively speaking, slow, and degraded faster than Class 1 nanites. Improving them by more than fifty percent meant even Class 5 rated manufacturing replicators lasted longer, worked faster, and produced more. For Tier 1 medical nanites they would repair injuries faster, which could save someone’s life that the old nanite versions were to slow to save.