Learning to navigate with that sort of omniperceptive view had been an unnerving experience, but now that she had, she loved it. For the first time, she could truly watch herself during workouts, seeing the flaws in her own moves and correcting herself without outside critiques, and being able to watch the servo mech from front, back, and both sides at once was enormously helpful. Not only could she examine any portion of it she chose, but thanks to Megarea, she could analyze its movement "by eye" in all three dimensions with the accuracy of a base depot test rig. It was a remarkable performance, whenever she paused to think about it, though she seldom did so any longer.
Indeed, she often found herself smiling as she recalled her earlier panic. To think she'd been terrified of what the alpha link might do to her! She'd been afraid it would change her, depreciate her into a mere appendage of the computer, yet it was no such thing. She'd become not less but ever so much more, for she'd acquired confidante, sister, daughter, protector, and mentor in one. Megarea was all of those, yet Alicia had given even more to the AI. She'd given it life itself, the human qualities no cyber synth AI could ever know. In every sense that mattered, she was Megarea's mother, and she and Megarea were far more than the sum of their parts.
Yet for all that, she suspected her alpha synth link wasn't what the cyberneticists and psych types had had in mind, and Megarea agreed with her. It could hardly help being … different with Tisiphone involved, she supposed. Megarea had never impressed before, and Alicia couldn't provide the information a trained alpha synth candidate would have possessed, so they couldn't be certain, but everything in Megarea's data base suggested that the fusion should have been still closer. That they should have been one personality, not two entities, however close, with the same personality.
All in all, Alicia rather thought both of them preferred what they'd gotten to a "proper" linkage. There was more room for growth and expansion in this rich, bipolar existence. Already she and her electronic offspring were developing tiny differences, delicately divergent traits, and that was good. It detracted nothing from their ability to think as one, yet it offered a synthesis. As she understood the nature of the "proper" link, human and AI should have come to a single, shared conclusion from shared data, and so she and Megarea often did. But sometimes they didn't, and she'd discovered there were advantages in having two different "right" answers, for comparing them produced a final solution better than either had devised alone far more frequently than not.
She returned the rifle to rest and shut down the servos, then turned to drag out the testing harness, but Megarea had anticipated her. A silent repair unit hovered beside her on its countergrav to extend the connectors, and she took them with a smile and began plugging into the access ports.
"Go ahead and set up for a sensor diagnostic, would you?"
"Already done," Megarea replied with a certain complacency Alicia knew was directed at Tisiphone.
"Even Achilles allowed servants to pass him his whet stone," the Fury riposted so deflatingly Alicia chuckled. Megarea opted for lordly silence.
Alicia made the last connection and stood back, monitoring the tests not with her eyes but through her link to Megarea. That was another pleasant surprise, for it was a link she ought not to have had, and its absence could have been catastrophic. She'd never received a proper alpha synth receptor, which meant her hardware lacked the tiny com link which was supposed to tie her permanently into her AI. The flight deck headset was intended for linkage to all of the ship's systems, providing direct information pathways to her brain without requiring the computer to process all data before feeding it to her. It was a systems management tool designed to spread the load, but an alpha synth pilot remained in permanent linkage with her cybernetic half. Even brief separations resulted in intense disorientation, while any lengthy loss of contact meant insanity for them both; that was the reason for the com link Alicia didn't have. It was also, she knew now, why alpha synth AIs inevitably suicided if their human halves died. And because she had no built-in link, she should have been unable to tie into Megarea without the headset, which ought to have left her perpetually confined to the flight deck. She shouldn't have been able to go even to her personal quarters, much less to the machine shop, without some cumbersome, jury-rigged unit to replace it. And, of course, no alpha synth pilot could ever move beyond com-link range of her AI.
But Alicia had something better. Tisiphone still couldn't access Megarea's personality center without the AI's permission (and, Alicia knew, Megarea watched her like a hawk whenever she was allowed inside), but she formed a sort of conduit between her and Alicia. It was, Alicia suspected, something very like telepathy, and all the more valuable because she didn't even have to ask Tisiphone to maintain the link. It was as if having once been established the immaterial connection had taken on a life of its own, as much a part of Alicia as her own hands. She rather thought it might continue even if she somehow "lost" the Fury, and she wondered if she was developing some sort of contagious ESP from association with Tisiphone.
Whatever it was, it wasn't something human science was prepared to explain just yet, for Megarea's tests had conclusively demonstrated that it operated at more than light-speed. Indeed, if the AI's conclusions were accurate, there was no transmission delay at all. They had no idea how great its range might be, but it looked as if she and Megarea would be able to communicate instantaneously over whatever range it had.
The diagnostic hardware announced completion of the test cycle with a sort of mental chirp, and Alicia nodded in satisfaction. This was the first time her armor had passed all tests, and it had taken less than five days to bring it to that state. Tisiphone had been dismayed to find it taking that long, since she'd ordered the armor prepped before it was loaded aboard the Bengal, but Alicia was more than pleased. Whoever had overseen its initial activation had done an excellent job, yet no one could have brought it to real combat readiness without having her available for fitting. Combat armor had to be carefully modified to suit its intended wearer, tailored to every little physical quirk with software customized to allow for any mental idiosyncrasy, and she'd looked forward to the task with resignation. It had been five years since she last even saw a suit of armor, and far longer than that since she'd last worked suit maintenance; considered in that light, she'd done very well indeed to finish so quickly.
"Okay, ladies, that's that," she announced, racking her tools and coiling the testing harness. "Put it back in the closet, please, Megarea."
A tractor grab lifted the empty armor from the table, then trundled back towards the storage vault, and Alicia followed to make a personal visual check as Megarea's remotes plugged in the monitoring leads. If she ever actually needed her armor, she was unlikely to have time to repair any faults which had developed since its last maintenance check. Since she didn't have a spare suit, that meant this one had to be a hundred percent at all times, and the monitors would let Megarea make certain it was.
"I am relieved to have that finished," Tisiphone remarked somewhat acidly as the vault closed. "Perhaps now we can turn to other matters?"
"Oh, horsefeathers!" Megarea snorted. "You know perfectly well that-"
"Ah, ah! None of that!" Alicia chided, stepping into the small lift. "Tisiphone's got a point, Megarea. It is time we got started."