A resounding cackle echoed from Vezkig’s diminutive form as he reached for another canister of restorative solution. “That the only side effect?” he asked half-jokingly as he cracked the top open and kicked it back like a shot. The VI now responded completely seriously, returning to its previously cheerful demeanor with “Frequent usage may lead to the formation of a semi-permanent internal nanite swarm, the effects of which may include but are not limited to a minor increase in tissue durability, destructive rejection of unidentified foreign objects, and the development of semi-synthetic organ substitutes, especially during the healing of major bodily damage.”

Another cackle. “And you’d just sell that on the street? Humans never cease to amaze me.”

“Negative,” the VI piped up. “This product was to be put through eight rounds of medical testing during colonization of this world, which as you have likely noticed is on hiatus. Being the designated medical expert in a state of emergency, your judgment is presumed to be sufficient.”

“Uh-huh…” Vezkig mumbled in response, redirecting the remainder of his focus back to the bioforge’s console. A silence fell over the room for a few moments before the Word-bearer finally broke the silence. “So what now?” he quizzed, looking up at Armless for an answer.

Weakened and damaged as he was, the human was still in his right mind, and he began to speak his plan out loud as it took shape in his head. “I think… I should get plugged into Amalgam, take the opportunity to get it to the surface,” he began, before going silent for a moment. He lifted his head to the medical homunculus and questioned out loud, “VI, are there PDAs in any of the storage lockers? I need something that can store and project a three-dimensional map.”

The homunculus stood and stared for a moment before responding. One could almost hear the cogs turning in its head. “Affirmative!” it chirped, and one of the smaller lockers near to the door slid open. There were a number of sleek, tablet-like devices inside, in addition to a few small columns of credit chits.

“Bring me one with a hololens, please.”

“Affirmative!”

The homunculus walked to the locker, retrieved one of the smaller PDAs, and brought it to Armless, as he had asked. Red-eye’s lilac eye remained fixated on the man-shaped thing all throughout, as did the Word-bearer’s gaze, up until the point when Armless finally reached for the PDA and took hold of it. It woke up to a screen displaying a bootup message, followed by an error stating lack of connection to the greater network, before the device finally booted to a plain desktop with a pastel-blue background and no apparent icons. He mentally connected to the device and searched for mapping software, which he quickly found, opened, and uploaded his full mental map of the ship’s interior to, markers included.

Afterwards, he created an icon that would open the program on the desktop, and set the device to manual operation so the others could use it as well, before he handed it over to Red-eye.

“There. While I recover, I want you to try to find the cargo bay and if possible secure it. Don’t put yourselves in any more danger than necessary, if worst comes to worst we can always assemble a bigger party.”

Red-eye took a few moments to examine the PDA itself as well as the section of map it was projecting before he looked back to the human to ask his question.

“Who do you want me to take?”

“Whoever you trust is well-suited to combatting voidtech security proxies.”

“So nobody blessed…” the gunman ruminated. As he looked around the room in thought, he briefly glanced at the Word-bearer, but the toad-man quickly shook his head in refusal, even though he was confident he wouldn’t be asked to come. He soon piped up again, hollering at Vezkig “How long do you think it’ll take for the Marksman to be combat-capable?!”

Before Vezkig could actually answer, the VI cut in. “Anatomy scans suggest a negligible recuperation period after the procedure is complete.”

“Negligible? Last time you said several days!” Vezkig yelled, poking his head from behind the corner. “Affirmative,” the homunculus replied, “standard operation for predicting complications when provided with lackluster data is to assume a suboptimal outcome and operate with the appropriate caution. The subject’s anatomy has already been seeded with void energy and a partial nervous system conversion has been achieved, as such much less drastic modifications than initially predicted need to be made.”

“...So the tubes are already there, sorta.”

“Affirmative.”

“How long for the procedure itself?” Red-eye questioned.

“Unknown,” the homunculus answered, “but expected to be several hours.”

The gunslinger huffed. “So she’s out of the roster… Gonna have to ask some of the deserters for help. Maybe Nesgon will agree to come along.”

“Sure hope he does, he’s bound to be a beast in combat since he ain’t crippled anymore,” Vezkig chimed in, pride in his voice shining through his voice.

Armless decided they wouldn’t get anywhere if he just continued listening to the back-and-forth banter between his companions, and so willed his body to move.

Muscles tensed, joint motors whined, and Red-eye slowly stood up as he supported part of the human’s weight.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

As he struggled to his feet, he also spoke out to command the VI again. “Get me another case of that restorative solution, please. The nanite-enriched version,” he said, and the homunculus obliged, soon enough handing the case over to Red-eye.

At a slow but steady pace, they began walking out of the medbay, and bid farewell to the engineer as they did so.

Left. Right. Left. Right.

Left. Right. Left. Right.

Through the ship’s outer airlock they walked, but where they expected a clear path between Amalgam’s legs, the walker knelt facing the door, its head alight as if it were active - and it was. It pinged Armless with a comms request, and the moment he accepted he felt its thunderous voice resound in his mind. Unlike the Armorer or his machine-self, it still sounded quite robotic. Despite this, it still managed to convey some sort of strange concern, as if it had known he was hurt the moment it happened.

“Burnout detected,” it thundered, “short-term internment in cockpit recommended.”

Instead of saying anything he just sent a confirmation ping, and the cockpit hatch slid open when he did, a familiar metallic cable with a loop on the end falling out. Red-eye helped him reach it and secure his foot in the loop, handed him the case of restorative solution canisters, then let go of him. While the human was weak, the grippers of his right arm still had more than enough strength to hold onto the cable as he commanded the walker to retract it and yank him into the cockpit.

He didn’t have the strength to orient himself properly however, and landed in the cockpit upside-down. Thankfully, when he willed the walker to plug him in, the myriad datacables were strong enough to lift his entire body and re-orient him into the appropriate position. Once in position, he willed his plug slots to expose themselves and the cables to connect. As before, the last plug to go in was one five centimeters across into the slot on the back of his neck, and with its entry the cockpit faded out of focus as the walker’s sensor suite supplanted his own. As the process went on he made sure to send a command to keep the cockpit hatch open and split focus between his own and the walker’s sensors more evenly, in effect reducing the level of sensory melding in favor of the pilot’s awareness of their own body.

Amalgam still wouldn’t move when he willed it to, but he felt the connection forming much faster than it had the last time - which, when he thought about it, was days ago, before his fight against the Ecclesiarch, before he even invoked the Right of Heresy. In the span of only a few seconds he felt the walker’s systems intertwining with his own, and through some of the thicker cables, the great machine’s own self-repair solution began pumping into his body. His body rapidly expelled what burned-out nanites still remained, resulting in a small pile of black sand piling up around his feet. With each passing second he felt the damage fading and his strength returning, bit by bit, fibre by fibre, cell by cell, nanite by nanite. “I should be able to make it walk in a few minutes this time,” he thought. At first he wasn’t going to say it, but his voicebox didn’t feel damaged anymore, and when he decided to try repeating that thought out loud, his voice rang out clear and strong.

Red-eye simply nodded in affirmation, his posture relaxed, and he settled into calmly looking about as he waited. The Word-bearer remarked that “As miraculous as human technology is, I can’t help but wonder why some of these connections take so long to form when others are nearly instant.”

Armless gave it some thought and answered as best as he could with “I assume it’s something to do with the difference in complexity, or it might just require a greater level of synchronization between user and machine. I can control the walker like it’s my own body once I get plugged in, after all.”

“Fair point,” the Word-bearer conceded.

Silence fell over them, and they waited. Whilst this went on, Armless chose to find out some more about his present condition, and so sent Amalgam a status report request.

“Affirmative. Status report: Pilot structural integrity a twenty-three percent, currently diverting resources to pilot self-repair system, performance will be reduced below combat capability levels. Firmware update successful. Optimization of third-party upper limb module ‘Aegis’ complete, void field projector sub-module online. Optimization of prototype upper limb module ‘Apeiron’ in progress.”

“Void field projector?” he asked in his mind.

“Affirmative,” Amalgam confirmed, and an image of his left arm flashed in his head, the dragon-like skull on its shoulder highlighted in green. “A newly-formed sub-module was detected and brought online as part of a firmware update. Simulating functionality, now…”

Lilac light flashed in the skull’s eye-sockets, and with a shudder, it wrenched its maw wide open, exposing a small, black, elongated pyramid. Lilac hieroglyphs glowed across its surface, and a vaguely oval-shaped energy field manifested over the upper half of the arm. A simulated projectile came flying at the shield from out of view, and bounced away on impact. The simulation faded, and Amalgam’s voice spoke to him again. “Performance specifications such as the shape and maximum size of the shield are as of yet to be determined due to a lack of model identification.”

“Good. End status report.”

Amalgam sent a confirmation ping, and once more, his world faded into the silence of the cave. A few more moments passed with him trying to move the walker’s fingers to test the waters every few seconds, and soon enough, its hand did close into a fist. He tried to stand up, and the walker did. “Good to go?” Red-eye queried.

“Yeah.”

“Say, you want to ride along in the cockpit so I don’t have to walk slowly?”

Red-eye looked up into the cockpit, squinted, rubbed his chin, and nodded. He turned to the Word-bearer, and without so much as a word, the Thinker nodded as well. The cable dropped twice more, and twice more someone rode it up into the cockpit. “Way less cramped without all the screens,” the Word-bearer remarked as the great machine stirred to motion and stood up before turning to walk up through the tunnel.

Left. Right. Left. Right.

Left. Right. Left. Right.

Left. Right. Left. Right.

It was somewhat strange that the greater tunnel was pretty much completely deserted, but they supposed the town guards didn’t exactly have the manpower to guard the topside and the underground simultaneously. They probably didn’t want to spend their days in a place that had once been the site of relentless slavery either.

Once they reached the cargo lift, Red-eye and the Word-bearer disembarked using the cable and pulled the levers to stir the great mechanism into motion, then got back in the cockpit. The ride was as slow as usual, and passed in silence.

What they hadn’t anticipated was the crowd that gathered as a result of the noise that the cargo lift generated, which attracted curious townsfolk, who saw Amalgam on the platform, and thus gathered a larger crowd made up of the pious and the curious, from the most unremarkable Builder to the Deserter Chaplains themselves and even Nesgon himself.

Amalgam’s form rose, the town came into view, the sun fell upon their faces, and a tremendous noise erupted before them before Nesgon and the Chaplains could quiet down the townsfolk. The Old Dragon looked up at the walker with a questioning look in his eyes.

“The walkers?” he queried, his ancient voice reverberating stronger than ever.

Armless nodded - as well as the cables would let him - and replied with “A thousand of them, ready for pilots.”