Post by Eve Crossbones on Dec 3, 2008 2:50:15 GMT -5
Eve's torso floated in space after its momentum had finally died out. The cloth had been burned from her body, and her lower body had been blown in an entirely different direction, a ragged open wound where her stomach used to be, the sign of her fusion heart going critical and detonating in a tiny supernova.
The synthetic flesh had been burned from the right side of her body, all the way up to her scalp. On her face, it had burned up to the corner of her mouth and up to the hairling, taking away an ear and burning out her right eye, while from the neck down the split was nearly exactly 50-50. Her arm and torso were fused and torn and bent at incredibly broken angles, and her left eye simply stared out into space, vacant and lifeless.
A shadow passed over her then, between her and the distant sun. A ship, some kind of salvage vessel, low quality scavenger ship.
****
Bolivar Salvador had seen a lot in his life as a salvage operator, but he had never, ever seen robotics this advanced before.
He and his crew had found the remains of the android, its two halves, nearly a light-second apart and putting off insane amount of heat. Now, they had cooled, and he and his crew sat around the surgical table they had put "her" on, making guesses as to who she was and how she had gotten out into space.
Her lower half was in much better condition than her upper half, its pants, though scorched and torn to shreds, were still somewhat intact, enough for decency. Pervy Jenkins said that they needed to remove her clothing, of course, which made Gladys hit him upside the head.
"When we get back to the Cove, we'll see if we can't find who she belongs to. Or, failing that, sell her for scrap." Salvador said to his crew. "Now, everyone stop speculating and get back to work."
"I still think she's some alien tech." Bryant said as they left the med room and shut off the lights.
Eve was dead still. She made no motion, as her power was gone.
And then, auxilary power and backup optics switched on.
Her eye snapped into focus, and a red glow emanated from her empty, metallic socket. Slowly, she propped herself up on her arms and examined her injuries, starting at her torso, molded breast on one side and fleshy breast on the other, and then to her arm, the joints fused and melted together, and then finally to the gaping hole that was her stomach, the ragged marks matching the ones on her hips, left by the massive blast.
Eve screached her body acropss the metal table into contact with her hips. Mobility and self repair could not run on auxilary power simultaneously, so she switched off everything but self repair and let her body cannibalize the med lab while she slept.
*****
When she awoke, she was behind electro bars in a primitive cell. One of the humans, a dark haired woman, was watching her.
"Let me guess. I'm in here because I ate the med lab." Eve said with a smirk. The woman jumped about a foot in the air and leveled a rifle at her.
"Th-that's right." She said, voice uncertain. "So don't try anything."
Eve looked down at her body. She was in one piece, though the skin had not repaired itself. One of the crew had also thrown a black denim jacket over the android, which she put on and buttonbed up. Her right hand was moving as if it had never been partially melted. However, she was still on auxilary power. Nothing in there had been able to replace her fusion reactor, after all.
"This is a salvage ship. Do you have a fusion forge?" Eve asked, stretching her limbs and making sure everything was responding. She did not have much left in her reserve batteries, but everything was mostly in working order.
The woman did not respond.
Eve rolled her eye and walked up to the bars. She opened up her battery and grabbed them. Hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity shocked into her, but she did not let go. The lights in the area flickered as she drew more and more power into herself, recharging her reserves. The woman fired at her a few times, but the pitiful bullets did not pierce her eerily glowing starmetal chassis.
A fuse flared, and the whole area went dark, and then red with emergency power. Eve ripped open the bars and rushed forward, slamming the woman into the wall and pulling her weapon from her hands.
"The forge. Where is it?" Eve demanded.
"D-down the hall, t-take a left. Please don't hurt me please, I have a hus-"
The woman's last word never finished. With a flash of motion, Eve crushed her ribcage and chest cavity into pulp.
Eve followed the directions and did indeed reach the forge room. There were three technicians in it, but each was killed by a single bullet from the gun Eve had stolen. Then, the android close all the doors and then punched the edges of each, denting them too severely to open with cutting them open.
The forge glowed ahead of her, a miniature sun kept in stasis, the only thing that could be used to work starmetal. There were a few hunks of the metal in the room as well.
Eve turned herself off, switching all cycles to repair.
When she woke, the doors were almost cut open with hull cutters. The forge was gone, as were the hunks and bits of starmetal, which had gone to further reinforcing her body.
The forge itself, her new fusion core.
"I'll have to thank that engineer when I next see him." Eve mused as she cocked her rifle. "For teaching me how versitile a forge can be. Before I kill him, of course."
The doors opened, and Eve yawned as she gunned down the salvagers that entered in a charge. Even as she wandered the ship, systemically brutally killing everyone on the ship, she was a bit bored with it all. There was no sport in the game anymore.
For the last few, she had even tried to fight with one hand behind her back, to make it a bit more fun. She had let them get weapons, hull cutters, set up traps, everything. But, still, they died easily.
"The pirates have jaded me to killing." She said as she crushed the last man, the Captain's, windpipe and threw him to the side. "It's just no fun without a challenge anymore."
Eve set the ship on its previous course--it had been locked down during the fighting, and then wandered the ship, piling corpses in airlocks and flushing them from the ship, cleaning things up, and repairing the structure. Then, she rifled through the clothes on the ship.
In the end, she emerged wearing the black jacket over a red t-shirt with a black flaming, stylized skull and crossbones in the center and a pair of extremely baggy black pants absolutely covered in pockets. Over her hands, she wore gloves--on the left hand, the glove had no fingers, while the right was completely covered. On her feet were heavy black steel-toed boots--well, they had been steel before Eve had modified and adjusted them to, in fact, be starmetal toed boots.
Lastly, she teased her grey hair so it fell thick over the right side of her face, covering the faintly glowing metal underneath, though every once in a while, a red light or ghostly white flash could be seen.
As her makeover finished, Eve moved to the bridge and deleted all data of personnel and registry from the ship's hard drive.
It was not much, everything she had. A few low-grade weapons on a run-down, glorified slavage freighter. But it was a start.
The pirates had taken her by surprise. She was not prepared for such a clever opponent. She was not ready to face that level of ingenuity.
The red light of her backup optics flashed beneath her hair. She would never make that mistake again.
"This is Cove flight control, identify yourself." Came a voice over her comm.
Killing had to be more strategic. She needed to arm herself, get herself ready for the next time.
"Cove flight control," She began, "This is Eve Crossbones. Request permission to dock."
"Roger that, Crossbones. You're new, so a man will be by to take your registration shortly. You're free to dock in the meanwhile. Occupation?"
Eve's first impulse, of course, was to kill everyone here. But that would not do. Killing was not as exciting. Only killing the best. The brightest. The research she had done during this trip had identified her prey as the best pirates in the system.
"Pirate." The android replied seamlessly.
And to catch worthwhile prey, sometimes, the predator needs to play the part of that same prey.
The synthetic flesh had been burned from the right side of her body, all the way up to her scalp. On her face, it had burned up to the corner of her mouth and up to the hairling, taking away an ear and burning out her right eye, while from the neck down the split was nearly exactly 50-50. Her arm and torso were fused and torn and bent at incredibly broken angles, and her left eye simply stared out into space, vacant and lifeless.
A shadow passed over her then, between her and the distant sun. A ship, some kind of salvage vessel, low quality scavenger ship.
****
Bolivar Salvador had seen a lot in his life as a salvage operator, but he had never, ever seen robotics this advanced before.
He and his crew had found the remains of the android, its two halves, nearly a light-second apart and putting off insane amount of heat. Now, they had cooled, and he and his crew sat around the surgical table they had put "her" on, making guesses as to who she was and how she had gotten out into space.
Her lower half was in much better condition than her upper half, its pants, though scorched and torn to shreds, were still somewhat intact, enough for decency. Pervy Jenkins said that they needed to remove her clothing, of course, which made Gladys hit him upside the head.
"When we get back to the Cove, we'll see if we can't find who she belongs to. Or, failing that, sell her for scrap." Salvador said to his crew. "Now, everyone stop speculating and get back to work."
"I still think she's some alien tech." Bryant said as they left the med room and shut off the lights.
Eve was dead still. She made no motion, as her power was gone.
And then, auxilary power and backup optics switched on.
Her eye snapped into focus, and a red glow emanated from her empty, metallic socket. Slowly, she propped herself up on her arms and examined her injuries, starting at her torso, molded breast on one side and fleshy breast on the other, and then to her arm, the joints fused and melted together, and then finally to the gaping hole that was her stomach, the ragged marks matching the ones on her hips, left by the massive blast.
Eve screached her body acropss the metal table into contact with her hips. Mobility and self repair could not run on auxilary power simultaneously, so she switched off everything but self repair and let her body cannibalize the med lab while she slept.
*****
When she awoke, she was behind electro bars in a primitive cell. One of the humans, a dark haired woman, was watching her.
"Let me guess. I'm in here because I ate the med lab." Eve said with a smirk. The woman jumped about a foot in the air and leveled a rifle at her.
"Th-that's right." She said, voice uncertain. "So don't try anything."
Eve looked down at her body. She was in one piece, though the skin had not repaired itself. One of the crew had also thrown a black denim jacket over the android, which she put on and buttonbed up. Her right hand was moving as if it had never been partially melted. However, she was still on auxilary power. Nothing in there had been able to replace her fusion reactor, after all.
"This is a salvage ship. Do you have a fusion forge?" Eve asked, stretching her limbs and making sure everything was responding. She did not have much left in her reserve batteries, but everything was mostly in working order.
The woman did not respond.
Eve rolled her eye and walked up to the bars. She opened up her battery and grabbed them. Hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity shocked into her, but she did not let go. The lights in the area flickered as she drew more and more power into herself, recharging her reserves. The woman fired at her a few times, but the pitiful bullets did not pierce her eerily glowing starmetal chassis.
A fuse flared, and the whole area went dark, and then red with emergency power. Eve ripped open the bars and rushed forward, slamming the woman into the wall and pulling her weapon from her hands.
"The forge. Where is it?" Eve demanded.
"D-down the hall, t-take a left. Please don't hurt me please, I have a hus-"
The woman's last word never finished. With a flash of motion, Eve crushed her ribcage and chest cavity into pulp.
Eve followed the directions and did indeed reach the forge room. There were three technicians in it, but each was killed by a single bullet from the gun Eve had stolen. Then, the android close all the doors and then punched the edges of each, denting them too severely to open with cutting them open.
The forge glowed ahead of her, a miniature sun kept in stasis, the only thing that could be used to work starmetal. There were a few hunks of the metal in the room as well.
Eve turned herself off, switching all cycles to repair.
When she woke, the doors were almost cut open with hull cutters. The forge was gone, as were the hunks and bits of starmetal, which had gone to further reinforcing her body.
The forge itself, her new fusion core.
"I'll have to thank that engineer when I next see him." Eve mused as she cocked her rifle. "For teaching me how versitile a forge can be. Before I kill him, of course."
The doors opened, and Eve yawned as she gunned down the salvagers that entered in a charge. Even as she wandered the ship, systemically brutally killing everyone on the ship, she was a bit bored with it all. There was no sport in the game anymore.
For the last few, she had even tried to fight with one hand behind her back, to make it a bit more fun. She had let them get weapons, hull cutters, set up traps, everything. But, still, they died easily.
"The pirates have jaded me to killing." She said as she crushed the last man, the Captain's, windpipe and threw him to the side. "It's just no fun without a challenge anymore."
Eve set the ship on its previous course--it had been locked down during the fighting, and then wandered the ship, piling corpses in airlocks and flushing them from the ship, cleaning things up, and repairing the structure. Then, she rifled through the clothes on the ship.
In the end, she emerged wearing the black jacket over a red t-shirt with a black flaming, stylized skull and crossbones in the center and a pair of extremely baggy black pants absolutely covered in pockets. Over her hands, she wore gloves--on the left hand, the glove had no fingers, while the right was completely covered. On her feet were heavy black steel-toed boots--well, they had been steel before Eve had modified and adjusted them to, in fact, be starmetal toed boots.
Lastly, she teased her grey hair so it fell thick over the right side of her face, covering the faintly glowing metal underneath, though every once in a while, a red light or ghostly white flash could be seen.
As her makeover finished, Eve moved to the bridge and deleted all data of personnel and registry from the ship's hard drive.
It was not much, everything she had. A few low-grade weapons on a run-down, glorified slavage freighter. But it was a start.
The pirates had taken her by surprise. She was not prepared for such a clever opponent. She was not ready to face that level of ingenuity.
The red light of her backup optics flashed beneath her hair. She would never make that mistake again.
"This is Cove flight control, identify yourself." Came a voice over her comm.
Killing had to be more strategic. She needed to arm herself, get herself ready for the next time.
"Cove flight control," She began, "This is Eve Crossbones. Request permission to dock."
"Roger that, Crossbones. You're new, so a man will be by to take your registration shortly. You're free to dock in the meanwhile. Occupation?"
Eve's first impulse, of course, was to kill everyone here. But that would not do. Killing was not as exciting. Only killing the best. The brightest. The research she had done during this trip had identified her prey as the best pirates in the system.
"Pirate." The android replied seamlessly.
And to catch worthwhile prey, sometimes, the predator needs to play the part of that same prey.