Page 7 of Salvation for the Alien Mercenary
Somewhere behind him, Covak chuckled. Hopefully he'd wander off soon. Or get fleas or something. Did Vorrtan get fleas? They should do with all the damn hair they had.
"Great," he muttered. "Just what I need… a combat-bot with a crush."
The robot made a small, indignant sound.
"I don't think it appreciated that," Jex said, and he could have sworn there was amusement in the ex-cyborg's voice.
Sighing, he crouched down to the robot's level. "Look, no offense, but I've spent enough time around advanced tech to be cautious. You understand that, right?"
The robot's optical sensors blinked once, then again.
"I'll take that as a yes," he said, straightening up. "Mira, you and Jex bring it to the secondary engineering bay. I'll move some shit around for you to work in there.”
"On it," Mira said with a nod. She carefully picked up the robot and he shook his head as it chirped and cuddled into her arms like a damn pet.
As they headed for the door, Davis caught Ryke's eye across the cargo bay. The captain's expression was unreadable, but Davis recognized the subtle nod for what it was… proceed, but if things fucked up, it was on his head.
He nodded back and followed Mira and Jex out of the cargo bay. If this was a drakeen core, they needed to be extremely careful. There were a lot of warning stories where a drakeen pilot had been finished off. Only for the empire to have the last laugh when the drakeen went on a rampage and killed all those responsible for its pilot's death.
"Davis, you coming?" Mira called from up ahead, the robot peering over her shoulder at him.
"Yeah. I'm right behind you," he answered, picking up his pace.
The last thing he needed was a mechanical murderous killing machine aboard the ship, along with all the otherbiologicalmurderous killing machines. But he was the de facto engineer aboard. Which meant this was his job.
And if that meant spending more time with Mira... well, that was just a perk of the job, wasn't it?
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The secondary engineering bay felt like a damn shoebox with Jex's Scorperio suit crammed into it. The war machine hunched over the workbench, its massive bulk forcing Davis to flatten himself against the far wall. Metal joints hummed as the suit extended precision manipulators from its gauntlets. The delicate tools looked absurdly small against the weapon of war they sprouted from.
The drakeen core sat on the bench, optical sensors clicking as they tracked every movement of those manipulators probing its connection port. One of its remaining legs twitched, adjusting position like a patient waiting for a doctor's cold hands.
Mira stood beside the bench, her head barely reaching Jex’s elbow joint. Overhead lights caught in her blonde hair, throwing shadows across her face as she leaned forward, eyes narrowed in concentration.
"Careful," she muttered when Jex's tool nudged a component that made the drakeen flinch. The little robot chirped, a sound Davis was starting to recognize as its version of gratitude.
Jex nodded and blue light spilled across the room as a holographic schematic materialized between them. Davis pushed off the wall and approached to look at the projection. He assumed it was the inside of the drakeen core. Intricate connection points, interface nodes, command pathways all laid bare in glowing blue.
"Standard operation requires a direct Latharian neural link," Jex said.
Davis's head snapped up. "Hold on. You've been in this universe, what, two weeks? How doyouknow specifics about Latharian neural links?"
The Scorperio froze and the helmet swiveled toward Davis with mechanical precision. The blank faceplate reflected the blue glow of the hologram.
"I am a Fleet-enabled MedGen. In combat scenarios, I simultaneously monitored and processed real-time biodata from thousands of deployed Zodiac units, coordinating advanced medical interventions across multiple battlefronts seamlessly."
The Scorperio's hand lifted, gesturing to the hologram. "Accessing the Lady's Dream's relatively ‘quaint’ database, cross-referencing Latharian neuro-interface schematics, and running comparative analyses while holding this conversation and diagnosing our small friend here..." He waved at the drakeen. "...is just Tuesday. A slow Tuesday. During downtime. On R&R."
Davis slid a sideways glance at Mira, catching her with a hand clamped over her mouth, shoulders shaking slightly, eyes crinkled at the corners.
The drakeen broke the silence with a rapid series of chirps, thrusting one articulated leg straight up in the air. A tiny salute from one machine to another.
Jex reached up to expand the neural interface section on the holographic schematics.
"Therefore," he continued, deadpan as ever, "bypassing this link is theoretically achievable. The architecture shares principles with Zodiac command overrides. We can likely adapt those techniques here."
Mira dropped her hand from her mouth, excitement replacing her amusement.
