Haven thought for a moment before asking, “Do I having a weight limiting or something?”
“Not right now.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Vytln assured her, giving her a look that said clearly he wasn’t going to be letting her carry anything heavy regardless.
“You won’t until the second half,” Goldie chuckled. “Anything else?”
Haven shook her head. “Is it Alred’s turning now?”
“Oh, me?” His light form perked up.
“Yeah,” Haven beamed at mini-him. “We’re planning what parts of your body are bettering off being cybernetic and which ones being fleshy.”
“I’m hoping no more than fifty to sixty percent cybernetic,” he admitted.
“I’m going back to the workroom,” Vytln said, pushing her locs back behind her ear. “I’ll see you when you two are done with that.”
Haven smiled. “Okay. I’ll being quick.”
He grunted and nodded once to Goldie, silently expressing his gratitude, before he walked out of the room. All his questions answered, for now.
“So, what parts are you thinking of keeping robotic?” Haven asked, the three of them going to the console to begin planning.
This was going to be a long process, but before they could get started, they needed at least an idea of the direction they were going. They had to plan his body. Map out the parts that had to be biologic and which parts could be technologic, and the pros and cons of the parts that could be one or the other.
Like his hands. Fully functional cybernetic hands were very expensive. Cheap ones that had limited functionality were a lot cheaper. But if they were making that decision, it might cost the same to just make his hands biologic. His feet, however, did not need to be capable of such dexterous movement, so could more economically be mechanical.
There were a lot of decisions like that to make. And Haven was surprised to find that, for as much as she didn’t really like biology, working alongside Goldie to combine their two specialties was not only fun but interesting.
These were, easily, the best days of her life. She’d wake up in Vytln’s arms, with him tending to her so sweetly, it almost hurt in her chest. She’d go over his task schedule for the day, and help him where she could. They had split duties between large and small, depending on the size of the hands best suited for the task. She did the smaller, finer tasks. She’d taken over wiring completely, since his wiring was still absolute trash. Though saying as much earned her a glare. But his wiring really was terrible. It worked, sure, but it was chaotic and messy and made repairs more difficult.
She’d work with Vytln for about half the day. Then, he’d leave and come back with her new, fortified menu. It was mostly food from his home planet, with only a few dishes from other places. Which made sense to her. If lvtl females needed more minerals for their pregnancy, it would make sense that their diet would naturally have what they needed. The other dishes just happened to meet her requirements and had been added for variety.
After eating, she’d head over to medbay. She could only have her written language imprints every few days. Her brain needed three days after an imprint for the knowledge to be solidified, and doing another imprint in that time would make retaining all the information more difficult.
So, most days, they worked on Alred’s body. They were still in the planning process. It wasn’t as easy as saying left hand – robot, right hand – real. They had to debate the benefit of every single limb, organ, and tissue in being organic vs cybernetic.And there werea lot. And it only became more complicated when they considered hybridizing organic and cybernetic components. They had to consider cost in terms of resources, the time it would take to create, and how it would integrate with the biological parts. There was also Alred’s preferences to be taken.
For example, making a cybernetic heart was easy. They even had ones that were programmed to make the ‘thumping’ sounds so that they could still have a ‘heartbeat’. However, Alred wanted his organic heart back. He wanted the real heartbeat again. The point of this wasn’t to make him an android. That would be easy if that was their only goal, they just needed a person-shaped robot. Which, while not super cheap, was readily available.
But that wasn’t the point of this. He was trying to be real. The heart, he felt, with its beat was important to that goal.
So, the decisions for what should be organic and inorganic had to be debated between all three of them for every single thing. It really slowed down the process, but it was important that they got all these details hammered out now. If they didn’t know exactly what they were working towards, this entire project would be that much harder.
But, as Alred said, this was not going to be a quick process.
However, it was a challenge, and an enjoyable one. Haven was having a great time working with the two of them.
That was the routine Haven fell into as they went about getting their delivery. The weapons, mostly explosives, were carefully loaded into main storage by Rok and Tanin. The explosives were, apparently, inert for the moment. They needed some kind of something or other to arm them. Haven was curious, but that was all she was told about their safety. There were a lot of explosives, but they were completely safe until armed in person.A signal wouldn’t be enough to arm them, so they didn’t have to worry about someone hitting a button somewhere to blow them up.
The arms company who made the weapons was totally neutral. They deliberately did not take sides in conflicts and would supply two sides of the same war equally. They were extremely careful about maintaining that. They did not form alliances or teams with anyone. That’s how they knew they were safe to take a job from, knowing that Kldyn couldn’t get to them.
So, with the cargo loaded, they started the subspace swing to their designated location. The planet they were going to was called Trenot. They were longtime Coalition members, species 81 out of 214, meaning they joined rather early. They were also locked into a planetwide war that had been ongoing for nearly just as long. Fully half the planet was destroyed because of the war, and the people were hardened and jaded because of it. They absolutely refused Coalition help, and since they didn’t let the war expand beyond their solar borders, the Coalition did not have the right to step in and halt it by force.
The Coalition was a group of members, not an overarching governing body. They couldn’t actually command peace on a planet, so long as it remained on that planet. Or within the planet’s borders, since a species was considered owner of their entire solar system.
Because of that, the war continued without interference. Warlords commanded power on the planet and operated their own individual armies. They came and went relatively frequently, and even the longest reigning warlord had only been in place for a single generation. It was an extremely unstable power structure that was constantly changing.
One of those warlords was their client. The explosives were for his army. Haven wasn’t sure she was comfortable supplying explosives for a war that had been ongoing near constantly for the entirety of a planet’s history, but it wasn’t her choice to make. It also wasn’t her place to judge.
