Stowaway (Redleg in Space Book 1) Read online

  The second category of improvements Zade wanted to address were those surrounding perception. Again, based on his combat experience, Zade knew that noticing the smallest details and being able to see the enemy before the enemy could see you were two of the major contributing factors in an individual’s survivability. Knowing that hypersensitive sensory organs could also be overloaded in some situations, Zade wanted these augmentations to be scalable. First, he needed to improve his hearing, for quiet situations where he needed to notice movement. This hearing augmentation had to be controllable because, during the chaos of combat, hypersensitive ears could be overwhelmed by loud noises. Secondly, Zade wanted to improve his sense of smell. Zade explained to Jorloss that warriors needed to rely on all of their senses in combat, and not improving one would be the equivalent of intentionally handicapping oneself. The last and most ambitious augmentation had to do with his vision. Zade admittedly didn’t know how to accomplish the augmentations, but he wanted them none the less. He explained that the human eye had two different types of cells on the back of it called rods and cones. The rods were used in high visibility situations and picked up colors; the cones were used at night to gather ambient light. Since humans were primarily daytime creatures, they had all but lost their ability to see at night. He wanted some way to see better at night. Furthermore, Zade knew how useful infrared could be in low visibility situations, and he knew that some of the most successful predators on Earth had the ability to sense heat and overlay the infrared data on the visual picture obtained from the eyes. Zade’s final suggestion was infrared sensing pits, in order to help sense threats after dark.

  Jorloss sat quietly as Zade explained everything that he wanted, making a list of the improvements. After Zade had finished, Jorloss explained that Zade could complete the pain block and increase in muscle density completely on his own. Jorloss explained that all Zade needed to do, while addressing the nanites, was to explain that he wanted the ability to close off the ends of pain receptors just as they were triggered, thus shunting the associated pain. He further explained that any knowledge of human biology would help create a detailed set of instructions, and improve the success rate of the change. The same method would work for the increase in strength. The nanites would develop the process required, and, upon completion, would output a readout consisting of the macronutrients required. The readout would be displayed in Zade’s field of vision. Zade would need to ingest the required materials, and as soon as he did the nanites would begin their process.

  As for the sensory upgrades, Jorloss explained that Zade should never try any modification on his own because, if done incorrectly, it could disable him completely. The ship had state of the art medical equipment and could create the program required to accomplish the modification with no risk of failure. Jorloss continued by saying that Zade could complete the skeletal augmentation on his own, but Jorloss would have to determine what material could be used to strengthen Zade’s bones without adversely reacting with his body. For example, if nickel was used, it would seep into Zade’s blood and blind him. Jorloss finished his explanation by telling Zade that he could start on the two augmentations while he researched the best way to accomplish the rest of the changes Zade wanted. He informed Zade that as soon as he created a way, he would notify him and upload the programming to Zade’s nanites. As Jorloss moved over to a workstation, he began researching different approaches to successfully complete the procedures. Zade remained in the medical bay. With Jorloss working, Zade went into painstaking detail as he instructed his nanites on the nerve block. Satisfied with his instructions, the nanites output the materials list in Zade’s left eye. He needed to intake 400 grams of protein and 100 grams of fat.

  Looks like it’s time for a steak, Zade thought as he left the medical bay headed for the galley. As Zade was finishing the prime rib and mashed potatoes drowned in butter, sour cream, and gravy, which he had ordered from the gut truck, Samix walked in to grab a meal. As she stood, back towards him, ordering food, Zade just sat and enjoyed the view. Realizing that he had been away from women for at least nine months while he was in Afghanistan, and however long he had been on the ship. His mind wandered to Samix.

  She clearly looks like a woman. I wonder how much her body matches a human. Aw, who am I kidding? After nine months of being deployed with nothing but sweaty, smelly Joe’s, I’d low crawl naked through a mile of barbed wire and battery acid to see what’s under that uniform.

  Based on Samix’s reaction, Zade clearly had not yet mastered his new ability of telepathic communication. Samix spun on her heels and glared at Zade. With eyes shooting daggers toward him and a painfully obvious bright blue flush across her face, she stormed over and backhanded Zade out of his chair.

  “Remember, you ass, that I am still the captain of this ship,” she roared as she stomped out of the galley back toward her quarters or the command deck.

  It was hard for Zade to tell which from the floor where he was laying, stars dancing across his vision. Picking himself up off the floor, still dazed, he headed to his quarters. As he entered his room, the slight itch under his skin signaled that the nanites had started working. Not at all abashed about being put in his place, all Zade could think about was the tingling and the purpose it served.

  Why couldn’t I have thought that after the nanites finished the pain block?

  Zade wanted to grab a shower and lay down. Even after being asleep for three days, he still seemed to be tired. Forgetting that the dresser only contained uniform items, Zade headed over to find a pair of shorts to sleep in. As he neared the dresser, he noticed a small black box, no larger than a pack of cigarettes sitting on top of it. As he picked it up to examine it, a message appeared. It was from Samix. It explained that as a member of the crew, Zade was authorized to have a personal storage device aboard the ship. It was directly connected to Zade’s interface, and like all of Jorloss’s nanite technology, was encrypted with his DNA so only he could access it. As Zade looked at it, he completed a mental search of the items and signals in his room, finding it labeled “Alex Zade: Personal Storage.” Investigating the contents, Zade found that Samix had transferred all of his music off the iPod to the device, which allowed Zade to listen to it from anywhere. Now feeling guilty about what he had said to Samix—Well, thought to Samix, really—Zade made a mental note to apologize and thank her for the device. While scrolling through his music, Zade noticed that the device had an extremely large, if not unlimited capacity. Selecting one of his relaxing playlists, “Space Oddity” started playing as he searched the drawers to find they contained the same items as the last time he had looked.

  Prior to showering and sleeping, Zade decided to make some personal effects. He headed for the fabrication lab. After entering the lab, he grabbed the chair at the workstation and moved it to the center of the room. Determined to master his interface, Zade connected with the fabrication database and began queuing up the items he required. First on the list was a towel like the ones he saw in Samix’s quarters. The air dryers were novel at first, but being dried off by a harsh wind was growing old. As the small fabrication machine began to create two towels, Zade began the slightly more difficult process of creating items that were not in the database. First was a pair of shorts to sleep in. After moving into the creation portion of the fabrication program, Zade tried to isolate, in his mind, an image of silkies. Three failed attempts later, the fabrication machine began work on four pairs. Having gotten the hang of a simple creation program, Zade decided to move on to a more difficult item. The material selection of the shorts had given him enough trouble that Zade was dreading trying to create the next two items he required. The next item, to his surprise, only took one try. Maybe it was because he had understood the program better, or maybe because he had used the item since childhood making the memories clearer; he couldn’t be certain what the reason was. As he slid the chair back to its home, his toothbrush dropped out of the fabrication machine into the collection tray at the b
ottom.

  Grabbing his sundries, Zade headed back to his quarters for a much-needed shower. As he walked back to his room, he noticed that he had become desensitized to the nanite itch, which now seemed to be barely perceptible. He only noticed it when he focused on it. Curious about the nanite progress, Zade inquired and received a notification that they were already 40 percent complete. Because he wanted to get as many changes as possible complete prior to landing on the next planet, Zade instructed the nanites to notify him when they were complete. After showering Zade climbed into bed, changing his music to a sleep playlist consisting of nothing but relaxing classical music. After instructing the music to stop playing when he fell asleep, he brought up the room controls and turned out the lights.

  A soft chiming pulled Zade out of his dream. Before he even opened his eyes, he read the message that the pain block was complete. Climbing out of bed, Zade turned the lights in his room up to a soft glow. After pulling up the increased muscle density program he had developed while sitting in the medical bay, Zade checked the ships clock; it was just past midnight. Still waiting for the nutritional requirements, Zade pulled up the interior feeds and noticed that none of the crew were present. It meant that they were all in their quarters, where there were no camera feeds. As he read through the nutritional requirements a deep-seated sickness grew in the pit of his stomach. Initially, Zade thought it was cool that all he had to do was eat to change his body, but, after reading the gross amount of protein he would have to intake for this change, he considered doing the rest with IV nutrition.

  Since everyone was still asleep, Zade headed to the galley wearing only his shorts. Sitting at the table, Zade tried to figure out how he was going to ingest the amount of protein required for the nanites. As a thick-built army officer who was into weight training, Zade knew the protein content of an inordinate number of foods. Based on the requirement, he would have to eat over 100 chicken breasts or almost 300 eggs, both feats of god-like constitution that he didn’t have. Thinking about the situation, Zade decided to approach the problem from a different angle. He had built the initial code under the assumption that the only way to increase his strength was to increase his muscle density, and thus created a program to increase the number of muscle fibers he had. Trying a different approach, Zade carefully described the muscular and skeletal systems, then simply stated that he wanted to increase its working capability, leaving the nanites to compute the best way to achieve the goal. After a short while a list of nutritional requirements popped into view, this one containing a more manageable amount of food. After seeing the requirements Zade accessed the gut truck remotely and began searching for what he needed. Toward the bottom of the food list, in the miscellaneous category, he found a nutritional drink. After selecting it, Zade was required to input the nutritional values required and desired concentration, which he did. Unlike the original program which required only protein, this new program required both protein and calcium. Zade selected the maximum allowable concentration and waited for the machine to produce the drink. The drink, which Zade estimated to be just over a gallon in size, had a smell that would knock a possum over.

  Taking it from the machine, Zade steeled his will, sat down and took the first sip. The drink had the consistency of a thick milkshake, but it didn’t taste as bad as it smelled. He knew that he couldn’t hold over a gallon of liquid in his stomach, so he made one last tweak to the nanite programming, which instructed them to begin using the intake as it became available as opposed to waiting until all resource requirements were met before starting the work. He hoped that the nanites would empty his stomach as fast as he could fill it. An hour and a half later, and feeling less full than he thought he would, Zade finished his herculean task and headed back to his quarters to sleep until morning.

  Just as the ship slid into its daytime cycle, Zade’s nanite completion notification awoke him. Anxious about the outcome of a nanite defined augmentation, Zade just laid in his bed and opened the two messages that he had received while sleeping. The first was from Jorloss, who said that he had found a way to successfully complete the rest of the requested modifications. It instructed Zade to meet him in the medical bay at his leisure. The second was from Samix and was addressed to both himself and Axis. It informed them that initial scans had identified a planet that may require a landing team consisting of Axis, the security officer, and his team. The message also set a reminder for the required eleven o’clock meeting in the ready room that Samix had set up.

  I must have really gotten under her skin. She has never identified me by my position alone.

  With nothing left to use as an excuse to stay in bed, Zade gingerly swung his legs over the side of his bed and stood. Realizing that he was still capable of locomotion eased his anxiety slightly. To test the extent of his increased strength, Zade turned and grabbed the lip of his rack. The bed was firmly secured to the floor, which he had learned during a previous attempt to rearrange his quarters. Straining against the weight, Zade struggled to stand erect without losing his grip on the bed. Just as he began to worry that the nanites failed to improve his musculature, he heard and felt the bed break free from the floor. Setting the bed back down, Zade could see where the sound of metal screaming under duress came from. There was a jagged tear in the floor paneling right at the edge of the bed. Delighted that the nanites worked and terrified at what would happen if Samix found out that he had damaged her ship, Zade left the room to get his morning sloop.

  It was only seven a.m. according to the ships clock, so Zade planned to talk with Jorloss before he had to meet Samix and Axis for the briefing. Working on his second cup of sloop, he read over the specifications for the different SSILF models. A flash of movement caught his attention, and he turned his head to see Axis walk into the galley.

  “Any idea what this meeting with Samix is about?” Zade asked, as he watched the settler order his morning meal.

  “I would imagine that there is something on the planet that I need to see, and you’re coming along to make sure I make it back to the ship,” Axis said, grabbing his meal.

  Zade had noticed that Axis only occasionally ate in the galley. Most of the time, he took his meals in his lab or quarters. This morning was no different. After answering Zade’s question, the small alien headed back to his room, leaving Zade alone in the galley. Finishing his drink, Zade pulled up the medical bay video feed to make sure Jorloss was there before he walked all the way across the ship. Jorloss was in the medical bay working at his station when Samix walked into the medical bay and began talking to him. Zade wanted to hear what was going on but had not yet mastered the ability to route video and audio simultaneously through his interface. As Zade tossed his cup and headed towards the medical bay, Samix left Jorloss and headed back to the command deck.

  As he entered the medical bay, Jorloss looked at him with a broad smile. A smile from any of the other crewmembers would not have bothered Zade, but Jorloss’s amphibious features and almost comically oversized mouth made the gesture slightly unnerving. Jorloss immediately launched into his findings. Starting with the improved hearing, Jorloss explained that he could have Zade’s ear canal redesigned to better capture and magnify the sounds that made it to his eardrum. Smell was the second easiest one to correct. He explained that the highest concentration of cilia and scent receptors were in the nose. He could improve Zade’s sense of smell simply by covering the walls of his sinus cavities with the same receptors. Jorloss finished explaining the group of easy fixes by explaining that high density bundles of carbon nanotubes, formed into a mesh, could be used to reinforce Zade’s bones.

  With the easy fixes explained, Jorloss motioned for Zade to look at the display he was working on. The monitor had side by side pictures of the human eye. As Zade neared the display, he could see that the pictures were not the same. Jorloss explained that the right display was that of Zade’s current eyes, and the left was that of Zade’s eyes after improvements had been made. The most noticeable differ
ence was that the nictitating membrane, or the small pink triangle in the inside corner of the eye, had been replaced with a small pit. Jorloss explained that it was originally a clear protective third eyelid that humans could use when swimming. Because the species evolved out of using it, Jorloss planned to replace it with the heat sensing pits to give Zade infrared overlays. Impressed with Jorloss’s ingenuity and dedication to honor Zade’s wish to remain looking like a human, Zade approved of the enhancement. Jorloss zoomed into the display until Zade could see the cones and rods at the backs of the eyes; he beamed with a pride Zade had never seen from him before.

  At first look Zade could see that the left eye contained hundreds of times more rods than Zade’s current eye. One inquisitive look from Zade was all it took for Jorloss to launch into explanation. Jorloss had originally been stumped about how to make the low light visibility controllable, until he started thinking about some of the nocturnal plants that adorned his home world. These plants would close when they sensed light, and as the sun went down, they would open. Using this framework, Jorloss had designed new cells that, when in high light conditions, would act as rods and enhance daytime vision. As light levels went down these cells would open into cones thus improving low light visibility. The only drawback was that as the cells opened into cones, Zade would lose the ability to see color. Zade could not have been happier with Jorloss’s work.

  The only thing that Jorloss wasn’t able to do was improve the toughness of Zade’s skin. It was possible but it didn’t meet Zade’s requirement about not changing his appearance. Zade was excited to get the final round of changes started, but he informed Jorloss that the procedure would have to wait until after his meeting with Axis and Samix at 11. Since there was still a couple of hours until his meeting, Zade first swung by his room to grab his uniforms before heading to his new lab. To gain practice with the lab equipment, Zade began making small changes to his uniforms to make them more applicable to ground combat. After reducing their weight, and increasing their UV, tearing, and fire resistance, Zade was happy with their design. Tagging them as his uniforms in the database, Zade donned one of the new uniforms and headed to the ready room for his briefing.