Chapter Fifty-Nine - Xenocide Act II; The Eeeps And The Myriad

"When you’re looking at material science in deeper and deeper detail, eventually you stop asking ‘What is it made of?’ and start asking ‘How likely is it to be here, and not there?”

– Dr. Phunkwitch, head of R&D at the University of Once-Lost Atlanta

 

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“Eeep!” 

A buzz ran up my tail, followed by a sudden electric jolt at the tip that had me jump forward before I could catch myself.

And then it was over, leaving me with a new weight at the far end of my agile appendage. I brought it forward to get a look, studying the five new obviously non-natural fingers that had added themselves to my spinneret, alternating with my natural ones. These new fingers were considerably more massive than the natural ones, presumably to do whatever they needed to do to prepare the raw materials for use. As a side-benefit, it looked like they might shield the smaller, more fragile organs from touch, too.

Just behind the spinneret I found ten new sockets hidden within the fuzz, five of them in a line on the left, five on the right.

Slotted into them were ten round plugs, each one two centimeters across and five centimeters long. The installation of the sockets had the plugs sharply angled towards the rear, so that I couldn’t really catch my tail on anything I brushed past.

Huh. It actually looked pretty good. The otherwise plain black plugs were lit up in a pastel pink with fuel-level indicators, and a rainbow colored ring of light rotated around the connection underneath my fuzz, tinting it like a tiny lightshow.

Yup, that worked for me.

A ping against my aug told me the implant wanted to connect to it, and I opened up a new tab for it. It displayed its current condition (nominal), what materials were loaded into each plug-tank, as well as their levels.

Five tanks of ferrite, one tank of carbon—Ah, so I could make threads of varying carbon content? From pure iron, to pure monofilament graphene, hello Ripwire! Even threads of steel if I mix the two somehow?—one tank of pure oxygen, one tank of water, one tank of, holy crap, napalm, according to the description of ‘sticky flammable substance’, one tank of, concrete? And finally, one tank of copper.

Um. So. Aside from making ‘small geometries’ from steel, I could create conductive wires, uh, small walls from concrete? Pillars? Small buttressing in enclosed spaces? And I had water, too, but for what? Um. Wet silk? Oh, that might be surprisingly useful for creating a sponge real quick. Pure oxygen… Oh. Um, yes. Turn the torch into a super-hot flame-thrower with that and the napalm, why the fuck not.

Oh! And the things could friggin’ smelt tiny quantities of material at a time with the oxygen, too! Just enough to let me spin alloys! Yes, actual steel wire from raw materials was a thing! Only really thin ones though. It would need to be reinforced with silk to bear any actual tension.

I was realizing just how fucking versatile this spinneret-enhancing implant might be. I’d invested barely any points in it, and I couldn’t even grasp more than a few basic ideas, and those were already overwhelmingly useful.

Though some of that did depend on how much pressure these new spinneret fingers could withstand, didn’t it? More force, more…weapon.

I pointed at a tree ten meters away, and let the water run at maximum steam from one finger. The tip of my tail started to vibrate with an audible hum and quickly grew uncomfortably numb. Adding the other fingers reduced the vibrations as the forces counteracted each other and balanced out.

The water expelled itself as a very thin and seriously pressurized stream, but it quickly lost coherence and the spray turned into a fine mist about five meters away.

So, the implant was meant for close-up work, unlike, say, squirt guns? But it did have real pressure. Nowhere near enough to cut hard materials unless they were really thin, but I could project fluids and maybe even gasses over some distance.

I stopped the…ejaculation, heh, and the spinneret tingled like a foot that fell asleep. I massaged it carefully, and breathed with relief as the tingling receded. Tynea’s voice brought me back to focus.

I’ll table all the purchases in one go, if that’s okay?

“Yes, please. At the end of it, though.”

Understood. Next up, the harness that will hold onto your tail and provide a base for the torch and the Sentinel to attach to. Ready?

“Ready!”

Hold out your hands again, please.

I did, and Tynea teleported a mechanical contraption into my waiting palms.

Huh. I held a metal snake, metallic black with the glint of white diamond dust to it. It had two open ends, like a pipe, and looking into those I saw a meter-long sock, or rather, a tube, of some kind of stretchy soft fabric.

Ah! It was that stuff that didn’t build a static charge! That made sense, it would lay against my fuzz, after all.

Barely longer than the sock, and attached to its outside, was the…rope of hard segments. These interlocked like scales, again oriented such that I couldn’t catch my tail on anything, and felt dense, like steel.

On the outside of these scales were sets of rails, like those on a gun, but smaller and tooled a little differently. When I played with one of these, Tynea spoke.

I’ve set the torch and the Sentinel up such that they can wander along the harness. That should allow for ease of use, while keeping them out of the way when you’re weaving things.

“Neat! Let me put this on.”

I finagled my tail into the internal sock. Luckily I had no grain against which I had to move the thing, but I wiggled it around until it didn’t look like it was smushing my tail fur anymore, either. It contracted once I stopped moving it, and held on tightly. A new command registered itself with my aug with which I could tell the harness to relax itself for removal. I packed it away, adding it to the initial tab that had managed the Sleeve and other stuff like that cocoon membrane. My low priority management tab, I guess?

Waving the appendage around, I found the thing quite easy to move. It had some weight to it, and my tail was powerful enough to use it like a bludgeon, but I didn’t think it was heavy enough to be a strain over time. At least not without the weapons attached.

Speaking of which.

“Wanna get me the next item?” I said, holding out my hands once more.

The torch, and the adapted Sentinel.

Both came in glittering and metallic black housings, decently lit up in that same pastel pink the plugs used. The housings had articulated hooks on them that looked like they could hold onto the rails of the harness, and compensate for any twisting and kinking I did with the tail.

I placed the gun on the underside, so that if I curled the tail to peek out from over my shoulder or head, its barrel would be on top. The torch I clamped onto the opposite side.

I let both connect to my aug, giving each its own tab, and readied them for combat. They immediately extended just beyond my tail’s tip to prevent self-injury. The torch ignited with a blinding flame a quarter meter long, which my enhanced vision allowed me to study in rich yellow-red-blue-white rainbow colors usually invisible to the human eye. The gun disengaged its safeties, waiting for my command to fire at the crosshairs in my vision. When I looked elsewhere, a screen appeared at the bottom of my vision, showing me what the modified sensorium of the gun saw, with new reticules. Easy enough.

Stowing the armaments again, I wiggled my tail and watched how the intricate mechanics of the fastenings let the weapons ignore the shape of the sock, always pointing where my tip was.

“How tough are these links, really? I’m worried a good whack might bend something.”

The material is an alloy used in orbit-to-atmosphere vehicles. You won’t damage it.

Hmm… So I actually had a thagomizer too, now. Sort of. Minus the spikes, but with extra burny hurt.

“Okay. Last item.”

I will place it on the ground in front of you.

And she did. It landed with a slight whump, a long garment from the waist down that stood there on its own, shaped to match my hips and butt. At the rear, it plunged in a vee to fit my tail, and it was beautiful.

Metallic black with a dusting of diamond glitter, it was a flaring battle skirt. It had pastel pink lights breaking up the lines, creating panels and elegant shapes, highlighting contours without being overbearing. It wasn’t shy to show off, but it didn’t feel like it had any particular need to, either. Nice.

It split at the rear, readying itself for me to step into. 

Um. Yeah. Maybe not with soggy, soaked DIY panties?

I’d just bent over and was about to step out of my misshapen bottoms, when breaking wood to my left sent me whirling around.

Silk does not rip easily. Especially not mine. Not even against my strength. Wet silk is not weak silk. It’s just swollen, soaked fiber, as strong as ever. 

So…pulling on it with all the force of my ten thousand point body could generate just wrung out the water almost explosively, and squirted it everywhere. Like my eye.

Half-blind and spluttering, my feet got tangled up with the silk, my step to catch myself wasn’t, and I smashed face-first into the muddy grass.

More noises. My head whipped back up, and I saw a Four with a few Threes stare at me, frozen like they couldn’t compute what just happened.

I could. I didn’t want to. 

The mud and water running off my face made me blink. I’d missed the warning and timer in the visual ring that would’ve told me they were incoming.

My gun wasn’t in my hands, which were still grabbing a soggy piece of silk, which was still snarled around my legs.

The last thing I needed was Tynea barely holding back laughter, as she reminded me.

You have a tail. It has weapons. I suggest you use them.

Blood suffused my face and I blushed furiously. I whipped my tail forwards, nearly conked myself in the head with it because I wasn’t quite used to the new weight yet, and told the Sentinel in it to fire at the Four, at the same time as I realized that I’d never checked what ammunition, if any, was loaded.

It went brrrrrrt, and in an extremely fast echoing staccato, flames shot out of two or three dozen holes all over the front of the xeno. It fell to the ground, quite dead. The gun pinged empty, and the Threes charged.

“Ammo!”

On the ground! Touch the Sentinel to it!

A magazine appeared right in front of my face. I whapped the underside of my tail against it, which meant I had to twist upside down along its length. The reversal was just about at the limit of its flexibility and a bit uncomfortable, but I made it work, and the Sentinel grabbed the magazine and fed itself, just as my old had always done.

Another two-second burst, and the Threes lay dead in front of me before they got close enough to taste the cutting sizzle of a plasma torch.

All was still.

I suppose those must have slipped away from Leah before she got the lure going on her end.

“Yes. I suppose so. Hey, Tynea?”

Yes?

“If I’m not picking up a visual signal, warn me next time? Please?”

I shall. Apologies, Tinea.

“... ‘s alright. I guess it coulda gone worse.”

I got up, finally stepped out of the misshapen and mishandled piece of clothing, and kicked it into the trees.

I looked down at myself and sighed. I was dirty all over my front. And actually, my back, too. I was dirty everywhere, and not just from the spill I’d taken.

Well, I came with a shower built in now, didn’t I?

I let water spray out of all five artificial spinneret segments, and carefully modulated the pressure so it wouldn’t hurt even Leah’s less tough skin, then tested it on myself.

Oh? This worked quite well! And five streams of water, too! With good pressure! Yes, indeed, this was better than the shower in my apartment!

I removed my top, and got busy washing all the mud off of me everywhere, ignored the stimulation in certain fun places with extreme discipline and Oh god that feels amazing!, before I finally returned to the battle skirt.

It still stood there, ready for me to equip it. So I stepped into its breech and lifted it, until it closed to hug my hips and posterior very snuggly to hold itself in place. I felt amazing. And a little naughty, with the way it almost caressed my butt.

There were armor plates at my hips, like, uh, pauldrons? These were pretty thick, exaggerating my natural curves by roughly a palm’s width, and when I looked closer, segments with dozens of twenty millimeter holes in them shifted up and down. A few of them were placed at the front, too, but most were actually down the sides and back of my legs. Anywhere I couldn’t easily reach with my hands, basically.

Those are the launch batteries. They can tilt from seventy degrees down to seventy degrees up. The faulds— Faulds, huh? Not pauldrons? —also contain most of the machinery that resupplies these launchers, and the minor dimensional shunts within which finished parts are stored until use. Please take a few steps.

I walked forwards slowly, and found the battle skirt was made of alternating hard and flexible panels, allowing free movement. A series of sturdy covers suddenly snapped open along my upper thighs, at my hips near where my hands naturally hung, and even all across my butt.

I recognized the round sockets within, a few of which were already occupied. More plug-tanks. These sockets were illuminated in different colors, and each one had a label appear in my vision to tell me where what type of material should go. Gasses, liquids, solids. No further distinction, though.

I started a new tab and connected the Myriad to it. There was a battle-panel with a readout of its sensors, available missiles, a switch to toggle on autonomous battle mode to detect and eliminate threats based on thousands of settings I could configure and which Tynea was already adjusting, bless her. And there was another less combat-focused panel that gave information on manufacture, materials and their levels. I could build around a thousand high-explosive mini-missiles with what I had, but only ten nanite ones. Available designs…

Okay. That was a lot, way too much to really explore right now.

“Tynea, can I trust you to handle the administrative stuff?”

That is, indeed, my role. The need for someone, or something, to cover that in the field is a primary reason for the involvement of my kind in the Vanguard program, Tinea. Please leave it to me. I will clean up these panels and combine critical information into a more readable format for you.

I blew out some air. “Alright, thank you. I think we’re ready, then? Anything I missed?”

I looked down.

I jiggled.

I wove a silk top-sports-bra-thingy.

 

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