Burnt Ice (20 page)

‘Nice that you wear glasses,
Marko. We can work with them, yes? OK, my friend. How about we do this
augmentation? Stand up, and strip to the waist. I note that you have not eaten
for some time. That will not make any difference as your stomach will be
flooded with inhibitors. Jan, can you assist please?’

‘Right, Marko. Step over here.
Ernst will configure.’

As he watched, the AI formed a
chair not dissimilar to an ejector seat. He sat down in it and both Ernst and
Jan readied themselves. Jan had changed into a surgeon’s attire, including a
sleek helmet piece with lighting systems and magnification.

She placed the new arm in a
cradle beside Ernst.

‘Talk soon, Marko.’

The unit folded itself around him
and held him tight as IVs were placed directly into his shunts. His vision
drifted and everything became a blur of activity. Things seemed to be moving
extremely quickly and he had great difficulty in focusing on any single action.
In no time his shoulder was opened up, the original ball was removed — along
with the remnants of the original muscles — with some very sharp but extremely
brief pains, then the main nerve ganglions from the armpit were lifted out and,
in a blur of motion, the new ones placed in and connected.

Suddenly, at least from Marko’s
viewpoint, the new arm was attached, and what appeared to be dozens of
minuscule manipulators on tiny multiple arms joined synthetic muscle, tendons,
cartilage, nerves and all the blood vessels from his new arm to his original
self. He tried to watch as the work continued from the centre out, with each
blood vessel and nerve tested in sequence as the large muscle groups were laid
onto the existing anchor points. Then the skin layers were jointed and locked
together on a microscopic level, with an attractive sunburst pattern of
synthetic cobalt blue merging into his own mid-tone light-brown skin.

The actions started slowing down
as his heartrate was brought back to the normal twenty-five beats per minute.
He began to feel much more clear-headed.

‘Marko, I am going to ease off
the restraints. Please do not move the arm of your own volition yet. I am now
going to test all the parameters of your arm. Please remain relaxed.’

The arm slowly lifted and, over the
next ten minutes, Ernst put it through all the normal actions.

‘OK, Marko. I am now withdrawing
my control of the arm. It works beautifully. And now we test the hand, fingers
and thumb. Jan will assist by testing your nerves and stimulation responses.’

Jan placed a probe against the
skin of the arm and asked, on each touch, if it was hot or cold, sharp or
blunt, hard or gentle. She went over every square millimetre of the arm and
hand. Marko was delighted with his new limb, but felt extremely tired.

‘Marko, I am going to induce
sleep for you now. We shall talk again in thirty-six hours. Please be very
gentle using the arm.’

‘Thanks, guys,’ was all Marko
could manage.

~ * ~

Two

When
Marko awoke he was back in his cabin. His shoulder was very sensitive to the
touch, but even as he thought about the joint, his bioware kicked in and lifted
the pain threshold. Marko activated the cabin screen and asked Lotus for an
events update while he had been sleeping.

‘Hello, Marko. How are you
feeling? Jan would like to see you for a postoperative check in medical when
you are ready. I shall brief you after you are clear. Luckily, nothing dramatic
has happened. Pleased to have you back!’

He swung out of bed, favouring
the arm. He climbed into shorts, a shirt and cabin shoes then padded off in
search of Jan.

‘So, Marko, what’s it like being
a little more cyborg?’ Jan asked when he found her.

‘Ha, not much has changed really.
Same drill?’

She nodded and he sat down in the
medical unit, putting on the proffered glasses.

For the next hour, Ernst and Jan
worked on the arm, checking through every part of its operation and interface.
The surgical nanotes were extracted from Marko’s system and his own bioware
upgraded to handle the requirements of the arm. A fresh group of nanotes was
then placed permanently into his system, assisting his kidneys and liver to
take care of any materials that leeched from the synthetics, together with an
augmentation for his intestines that would create the special sugars used by
the artificial marrow powering the arm.

‘OK, Marko. It’s a very good
design on your part. As such, it will be ready for use up to full power within
another forty-eight standard hours. May I keep the design please? It really is
very good work and would greatly benefit others who choose artificial arms. I
suppose you have worked on other parts of your system? I would be willing to
trade the nerve interface design with you for the arm. We can discuss the other
designs and purchase terms when we reach base.’

‘Most acceptable. Thanks, Ernst.
I would be happy indeed to talk terms. In fact, I am designing an ACE for
myself. Now that we may have a great deal of time up here, how about a
collaboration?’

‘Please. That would be most
interesting. Can I borrow your glasses for a day? I think that we need to be
able to communicate more freely. I shall build some additional systems into
them. The alternative would be to augment your eyes and ears, maybe?’

‘Hmm, let me have a think about
that, doc. One step at a time. Thanks for your work. I’ll transfer the files on
the arm, and other things I’m working on, to Jan. I guess you can alter your
own chronological state? There is a lot of material to absorb.’

‘Thank you, Marko. I should enjoy
that. Most of the time it is easier for me to go into hibernation mode,
otherwise I would become horribly bored. Do you have a powerful computer
yourself, or do you use the ship’s computers? If you could spare four petabytes
of space I could clone myself into your computer. But that would probably mean
a considerable degrading of your computer.’

‘I have a Magenta Sub Zero 12
Midi, Ernst. Plenty of space for a copy of you.’

‘Yeah, it’s a good machine,
Ernst; I’ve seen it many times,’ said Jan.

‘How can a sergeant afford a
Magenta SZ 12?’ said Ernst. ‘I don’t want to be rude, but they are
extraordinarily expensive, and only barely sub-AI themselves. Even this chassis
I now inhabit has only half of the SZ capability, and Jan could most certainly
not afford to buy it. It is in her terms that the Administration supplies me to
her. One day you will have to tell me a little tale maybe, Marko.’

‘Will do, Ernst. It would be fun
to combine the both of you. An AI Sub Zero Magenta unit. That would be
interesting. We’ll have to keep you a long way away from Lotus, though. She
wouldn’t like it. Right, I’d better go and get to work. Thanks to you both. I
owe you.’

He showered, which was a new
experience with a cobalt-blue arm and hand. He put on his overalls and vest,
then reported to the captain for duty. Longbow promptly sent Marko off to have
a meal. Afterwards, Marko got a pot of tea and joined the captain on the
bridge, who nodded in greeting.

‘Looked in on you a couple of
times, Marko. Actually, everyone did, mate. Kind of blue, isn’t it? Sure that
you can live with that?’

‘Yeah, I think so. Have a look at
it now.’

‘All I can see is controls ...
Oh, I see! Clever bugger you, Marko. You now have a disappearing arm! Little
bit of chameleon-ware. Nice design. So, am I to expect to see you all in blue
one day?’

‘Hell no, that’d be a bit too
freaky, sir. Now I just have to find additional uses for it.’

‘Hellish useful in a bar. Could
get us all into a lot of trouble. So, I suppose that you would like a briefing?
Have you checked your board yet?’

Marko turned to the screens,
brought up his engineering boards, then started checking through everything he
could find. The water tanks were almost full of pure water. The utility
materials stores were also slowly filling with loads of separate elements,
filtered and refined from the comet as the dirty ice was heated and processed.
He flicked across to the exterior cameras and went from stem to stern, looking
over the exterior of the frigate, which had very little space between it and
the dirty ice of the comet. He found the damaged panels had been repaired.

The captain said, ‘We are also
starting to add up some nice radioactives as well, considering the size of this
comet and the other two we’re headed towards. Check astrogation. We’re moving
at a faster pace than the original comet speed. First two days were spent
getting the nose of
Basalt
into the comet; we started right after you
lost the arm. That’s still proceeding. I would like us buried into it, with
just the main fusion nozzles protruding. The extra steam being generated from
the lasers cutting the ice is being fed aft, so we are already under way. Nice
idea from Lotus. Lots to do. We need to gain some manoeuvrability, so Harry,
Veg and Fritz are attaching small rocket motors to the outside of the comet. When
we are completely buried we’ll drill tunnels from
Basalt’s
manoeuvring
thrusters out to the surface of the comet and bring those thrusters in. Nothing
will survive long on the surface when we’re really under way.’

The captain was standing at Marko’s
shoulder, looking at the same screens. He quietly passed across a small note
with a question mark on it. Marko wrote, ‘Grade 19A2,’ and showed it to him.
The captain raised an eyebrow and then wrote, ‘Medical unit?’ To which Marko
replied, ‘AI.’ Longbow frowned deeply and wrote, ‘Oh shit!’ Marko wrote, ‘Magenta
AI fusion! Agreed. Sorted. We are not her targets.’

The captain just smiled, bent
over and combat-tapped against his wrist, saying, ‘We shall make a half-decent
operative out of you yet, Marko.’ And then he swallowed the paper.

Marko spent the rest of the day
with Jan, reworking all the water feeds and setting the engineering machining
requirements for two larger molecular crackers to break apart the water into
hydrogen and oxygen.

The captain called a conference
with all the engineering crew, including Veg, to discuss an idea to use the
oxygen by burning off the spare hydrocarbons being filtered from the comet.

‘We could dismantle our craft for
materials, Michael, if such would be of assistance,’ offered Veg.

‘Don’t think that that will be
necessary thanks, Veg. Considering the amount of carbon that we have at our
disposal, we might as well build everything we need out of that.’

‘Always wanted to build diamond
rockets, boss, and we’ll need ‘em as they will have to last for years.’

‘Yeah, I know, Harry. It’s been
done, but--can you do it out here?’

Harry grinned widely, saying, ‘Yes,
all we need is a framework to create the diamond within. First we need to build
a bigger grower tank and facilities for Marko to play with. Then Stephine, as a
master at manipulating plant forms, will need to take something like a pumpkin,
or whatever, and change its structure to a bell, with all the necessary piping
and the like. And having spent some of my off-time watching how she is
manipulating the standard hydroponics to produce all that amazing fruit and
stuff, I know that this would be easy for her and her tech. We then grow a
really big batch of engineering nanotes, place the pumpkin bell into the tank,
and flood the whole lot with single-molecule carbon, instructing the nanotes to
swap the biological out for carbon. Yup, that will work. Then we just have to
lift the rockets out, bolt them into place and we’re away. Nice, fat, very
long-lasting chemical rockets. We are going to have to be careful that the
feeds do not allow oxygen to make contact with the inner walls of the nozzles.
Don’t want our beautiful formed diamonds catching fire!’

The captain smiled before
speaking again.

‘Stephine, sorry to disturb you.
Have an interesting little project in mind. File coming across. Time frame,
Harry?’