You need some time to recover from your wounds, as does Initiate Kathrine. Interrogator MacWater is helpful in tending to you, as much as she is able to anyway. It is enough to keep you on the mend while you fill out paperwork and await the next resupply ship. You curse your fleshy lungs for failing your needs and wish you could put in for a set of good-quality augmetic lungs to replace them but you cannot afford such an extravagance at this time. To fill your time you put in for the parts needed to complete Project Stabby and delve deep into the manuals for your implants and equipment.

You find yourself growing slightly wiser as your studies progress, and in doing so you discover several useful things. One is the names and maintenance directives for your ranged weapons (your staff and knife being simple enough to care for). The second is the way in which your Electoo Inductors and Potential Coil can be used to charge other things! Simple batteries and glow-lamps prove not too much of a challenge, but you are careful not to over-stress your systems. You suppose you could re-charge one of your charge packs for you lasweapons if you had to, but it would be a non-trivial endeavor requiring at least a full minute of undisturbed work.

Initiate Kathrine soon takes over your medical treatment. She does well enough, for a meatbag with no technical training or understanding of how any of your implant systems function. It doesn't prevent your lungs from aching, nor does it prevent your occasional coughing fits. But you don't feel tired all the time, nor are you chronically short of breath.

Enforcer Havelock spends the period of enforced respite at drill. You notice that his shotgun-handling skills have improved a fair bit, but he does lament the lack of a proper firing range, and the spare ammunition for life-fire drills. The latter is at last solved when Interrogator MacWater drops a stack of requisition forms on his bunk and loudly informs him that he can go ahead and fill them out instead of moping about it. This does seem to get the message through to him, and you can almost see the glowbulb light up in his head at how the procurement system works.

Neonate Cain stays apart from the rest of the group, at least as much as your cramped quarters will let him. He seems preoccupied by a pair of slim tomes which never leave his presence. He seems to find their contents disturbing on some level, but he keeps reading them anyway. When asked, he only mutters something about needing to know the foe before changing the subject.

Two weeks pass before Initiate Kathrine and Interrogator MacWater certify everyone fit to work again. That same day, the resupply ship arrives and Interrogator MacWater meets the shuttle. She returns with several small bundles.

"Care Packages! A bit of something for everyone! Gather round!"

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

You wander over, eager to open the anti-static wrapped package marked for you. Inside are the parts you need to complete Project Stabby, as you have taken to calling your meditative aid / pet Cyber-Altered Task Unit (CAT for short). You eagerly break out your omni-tool and set to work assembling the parts, only paying some attention to the dialogue and happy sounds of your team. The cleaning unit and charging port got together swiftly enough, but the tracks are proving fiddly.

"..nsating for something with that cannon Cain?" Kathrine, in a joking tone.

"Yeah, Manzer needs to make up for Meretrix's lack of..." Cian, deadpan.

You figure the tracks out eventually. It turns out that you have to link all the tread-bits together, then roll them onto the motive units. You move onto installing the mainboard you salvaged from the servitor, but you need to modify the housing brackets a bit.

"... is bigger?" Havelock, amused.

"I think Cat had the length, but Cain has the thickness..." MacWater, with snark.

The mainboard drops into place, and you set about plugging in the needed connections and otherwise doing the needful within Stabby's housing. You are a bit dubious at your reprogramming efforts, but the lack of any command inputs should help that a bit. All Stabby has to do is go forward until it bumps into something, turn left a bit, and repeat. It also needs to return to charge periodically, and to make sure to clean all of floor in your quarters, but that's a problem for the next iteration of StabbyOS.

"...Don't get me wrong, having a long one is nice, but having two is handy sometimes." MacWater, with extra snark.

"If you can use both hands..." Cian, mostly deadpan.

"Wait... GAAAAAH! YOU GUYS!" Kathrine, in disgust.

"Took you long..." Cian, amused.

You close up Stabby's housing and find one more item in the box: a rubber knife. Confused, you check for a place to mount such an item to Stabby. You don't recall ordering it, but it did come with the rest of the parts, so it must go somewhere. Finally you locate a mounting bracket on the top of Stabby's housing, left of the optical sensor and above the lidar rangefinder. The 'knife' snaps into place and your CAT is complete and operational! With a squeal of glee, you carry Stabby and its charging port into your quarters for a test run.

"Cogboys..." Cian, deadpan.

"Agreed." Multiple voices.

The charging port attaches to a standard power outlet, though to do remind yourself not to plug anything else into the same outlet, just in case. Stabby drops into his 'home' easily enough, powers on, and begins determinedly rolling forward to vanquish the dust bunnies in the name of the Omnissiah! You feel a surge of parental pride at your achievement, before quickly quashing such a fleshy emotion as unnecessary. You do allow the satisfaction to stay, alloyed by a bit of amusement as Stabby repeatedly bumps into a corner attempting to turn around. You will need to tweak that later. For now, something like a proper planning session as going to begin, so you need to pay attention to that. You leave Stabby bumping into the walls of your quarters and return to the table.