Thankfully, for her and her sanity, she had no awareness of the first steps. Set on a conveyer, she traveled to a thawing tank. Immersed in aquamarine liquid, her frozen limbs and torso grew supple. The analyzers attached to her beeped at the right moment and a lifter set her on a new conveyer, where she received a shock of life. Her entire body jerked so hard that she tore several muscles, a minor but not unnoticed matter to the monitoring AI. With an agonizing wheeze, Osadar took her first new breath and her eyelids fluttered. A fine mist rained upon her, killing all bacteria and other biological infestations. In that instant, she awoke to excruciating pain. The torn muscles brought her up sooner than anticipated. Somewhere an alarm rang. At this phase of transformation, her awareness was an unwanted anomaly.
Despite the pain, Osadar felt a great lethargy. Then it came to her that the robotic-looking man who had slain Technician Geller had shoved a needle into her. How long had she been out? She moved her head to the side, and screamed. Staring at her wide-eyed like a deader was the commander of IH-49. Others lay beyond him and they moved on an assembly line. Horror screwed up her face. She bit back a second scream, knowing that her worst fears had all along been right. Life was a rigged crapshoot meant to shaft you in the end no matter what you did.
Osadar tried to move her limbs, but they were so sluggish, and the torn muscles sent mind-rending pain messages to her brain.
Then emergency hypos shot her full of drugs and numbed her nervous system.
“No,” she whispered, struggling to rise before she slumped back into unconsciousness. A few moments later she entered the choppers, as the technicians there called them. In actuality, tiny vibroblades sliced the top-most layer of her skin, which was peeled away and discarded into a burner.
The entire process proved grim in the extreme. Director Enkov’s bodyguard had in many ways been rebuilt. But compared to what they did to Osadar Di he had merely had his toenails trimmed. They tore her down, removing her heart, lungs and kidneys. Finally, her brain was detached from her spinal column and placed into pink programming gel. The combination entered an accelerated life situation computer. Her brain along with others was electronically force-fed millions of pieces of new data. It was mostly tactical military information and how to use what would soon be her new cyborg body. The program then ran her through thousands of simulated situations:
She dropped Earthward in an attack pod. The pod peeled away and she floated on chutes. Two hundred meters above the ground the lines detached and she plummeted and landed in a crouch. Experiencing events within the simulator as if they were reality, she bounded in hundred meter leaps at the enemy, her thermonuclear slug-thrower chugging in controlled bursts. Within the simulator she target-practiced with dart guns, lasers, regular carbines, knives, spears; hurled grenades at super tanks, manned a laser battery and more. The events played until they became second nature. Within those events command words, obedience conditioning, how to use inner nanonics and other sundry cyborg functions were drilled into her.
At last, the data processing ended. Her brain emerged very different from when it had entered. Something of the old Osadar Di remained, but it lay submerged in the new cyborg personality, or the lack of it.
The reattachment of her brain to a new and improved spinal column was a delicate operation. The scientists and technicians on the secret Neptune habitat had learned to marry genetic human material to machinery like seamless cloth. An armored brainpan was only the beginning of it. She now had power-graphite bones, artificial muscles, millions of micro-nanonics in her bloodstream, an armor-plated body and eyes that could never be mistaken for human. Little was left of the old Osadar Di. And to make sure that that little part could never rebel, obedience chips were liberally sprinkled throughout her nervous system. A tiny powerful governing computer was linked to her brain and embedded within the central mass.
The process from Suspend-dead human to cyborg took two weeks. Training her to use her new body would take another three. Then Cyborg Osadar Di— better known as OD12—would enter the first ultra-stealth pod to make the many-months long journey from Neptune to Earth.
Then maybe Social Unity could finally regain the initiative against the Highborn.
Part III
Soldier
1.
Emergency military conference, Day Two of the Invasion of Japan Sector: 1.19 P.M.
Participants: Enkov, Hawthorne, Kitamura (Field Marshal, Japan Sector) Ulrich (Air Marshal, Strategic Command East), O’Connor (Admiral, Pacific Fleet) Green (Colonel-General, Replacement Army East).
Enkov: You misjudged them again.
Hawthorne: I don’t think that’s the correct analysis, Director. Strategically this invasion makes no sense. From Australia, they launched the Papua/New Guinea Campaign, which, I might add, has bogged down in the treacherous mountain terrain.
Green: Even Highborn have their limits, it seems.
Hawthorne: Exactly. But to address your question, Director, let me point out that they’ve captured twenty percent of the small Pacific Islands from Japan to the Hawaiian Islands to Australia. It seemed clear until two days ago that they planned to build a Pacific Basin Stronghold. Now their supply lines from Australia to Japan stretches past Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan.
O’Connor: Over four thousand kilometers.
Hawthorne: Granted they rush supplies and troops in well-armed convoys, but our ability to intercept and destroy them has now—what are those numbers again?
O’Connor: Their transports are thousand-ton Vickers Hovercraft, a rugged prefab design that we believe is already in mass production, with Destroyer Class Hovers serving as escort. Fast V-Boats range as perimeter guards, while VTOL Hover Carriers provide fighters, bombers and their dreaded HK-Leopards. Those search out our submersibles with uncanny accuracy.
Hawthorne: Yes, thank you, Admiral. But what are the improved odds regarding our ability to sink them along this four thousand kilometer route?
O’Connor: A sixty-percent increase.
Enkov: I’m delighted to hear it. As will be the other directors. How much tonnage have you destroyed since the Japanese Invasion?
O’Connor: Ah… none yet, Director. It’s still early in the invasion and we have only a few boats along the route. But we believe a pattern has emerged, one that indicates—
Enkov: Here we go again. It’s always about holding back to study their pattern, to make sense of these swift moves that seems to paralyze my military men. Yet you just said, General Hawthorne, that attacking Japan lacked strategic sense. What you really mean is that the Highborn have upset your precious pattern concerning their intended behavior.
Hawthorne: They are unpredictable.
Enkov: Or perhaps they are simply more subtle that you, General.
Hawthorne: I take that as a given, Director. Yet I believe they’ve finally overstepped themselves.
Enkov: Not in terms of sea-borne supply, it seems.
O’Connor: It takes time to reposition our fleets, Director. The bulk of our submarine squadrons lie in Java Strait and the South China Sea, in the southern region off Malaysia. It was anticipated that the Indonesian Islands were their next target. We could have bloodied them well there. The surprises we had in store for them…. Well, it’s moot now. Presently, the Highborn supply-line from Australia to Japan brushes near the extreme west of the Philippine Sea but not quite over the Mariana Trench.