Koban: Rise of the Kobani (72 page)

Dillon summed it up pragmatically. “Regardless of how the suit’s power source works, it’s a gift horse we don’t want to look in the mouth. Accept it as it is.”

Sarge looked at him strangely. “What the hell does that mean about horses? You sound like Maggi spouting one of her old lame brain sayings.” He’d forgotten who was in the room.

“Any more smart assed comments out of you Garland Reynolds,” Maggi said in a warning tone, using the first name Sarge disliked, “and you will learn a number of other old sayings, of which I’m sure you’d rather remain blissfully ignorant.”

Chuckling, Sarge started, “Sticks and stones…,” but Maggi suddenly stepped close and grasped his hand, interrupting
his
old expression.

“Sarge,” her small figure leaning over him managed somehow to look menacing. “You are physically connected to that med lab right now, so I’d think you’d do well to recall that its original purpose was to heal
injuries,
not install gene changes. Let me be the first to help you with your new Mind Tap exercises.” She displayed her most dangerous sweet smile as she squeezed his hand in a painfully powerful grip.

“Open your mind to the pictures I’ll send you with this list of old expression, as you lay there immobilized, remembering that you are completely helpless:
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Roll with the punches. The bigger they are the harder they fall. Don't play with fire and you won't be burned. The female of the species is more deadly than the male,
and
dynamite comes in small packages.
Do you sense a common thread in the mental pictures linking
those
old sayings, dear Garland?”

Sarge shivered briefly, his eyes widening as each illustrating mental image arrived with each old saying. “Why yes indeed I do,” he announced, with a fresh sense of enlightenment. “Thank you greatly my Lady. The fountain of your wisdom has poured forth, and I have learned from you. I shall now lie here quietly and think on your words, and contemplate my own navel before it unscrews and my butt falls off.”

She nodded, patting his hand, wearing the same sweet sinister smile. “A wise decision.”

“You are becoming a smart man,” Dillon agreed with a grin, speaking from hard-learned experience.

A youthful physiology had clearly not mellowed Maggi’s feisty temperament, or altered her combative nature. Some outside observers would probably say her new ability to rip an arm off a gorilla
might
have emboldened her. Although, anyone that knew her would note she had never needed a physical advantage to win her previous battles.

Her tongue and wit were her primary weapons, with minor retaliatory physical acts as a
fun
means of interaction with her friends. The definition of a “minor” retaliation depended on whether you delivered or received said
fun
retaliation. Dillon had once received a nerve jangling, paralyzing Jazzer shot to his groin, after he pushed an embarrassing witticism too far with Maggi. The retaliation was quite funny to her and others. Not so much for him at the time.

Mirikami lay there quietly, offering no wisecracks of his own. Aside from wanting these upgrades to complete as quickly as possible for the upcoming combat missions, he had a new personal motivation to be tolerant of Maggi’s jokes. He had been a bit sore with a pulled back muscle when he had climbed into the med lab last month. The dinner with Maggi had been more
educational
than anticipated.

This younger version of Maggi had recovered appetites
other
than food. The ninety- one-year-old Mirikami, with mere clone mods, couldn’t easily keep up with the “dessert” an enthusiastic revitalized TG2 offered him, along with her home cooked dinner.

The two had shared affection for one another for years, and had conspired in private frequently, usually concerning matters regarding the future of the two domed cities of people they were determined to keep alive on Koban. However, their ages, responsibilities, and the tiring high gravity had conspired to keep their personal relations entirely platonic. Maggi was the first to experience this new lease on life that her Prada longevity and age regression mods had delivered, and she knew that Tet would receive them when he returned. She had placed other people’s needs first for long enough.

She made her feelings known to Tet at dinner, offering him a marriage contract. He promptly accepted, it being only the second such contract he had entered into in his life, the first since leaving New Honshu as a young man. Thus, that agreement led to a late night celebration, which led to his pulled muscles and his subsequent insistence that he start with the new mods the
first thing
the next morning. At least as close to the “first thing” as Maggi would allow, and even then not until after a ten AM final breakfast “treat.” He was definitely going to need his youth back.

Rafe stepped into the room to check on the progress of his “older” clients. “Gentle Men, how are you feeling now that you are awake? Any uncomfortable lumps I can add to your beds?” he asked jovially.

The med labs were designed to be as comfortable as they could be, and they shifted an unconscious body and moved pressure points to prevent bedsores. However, after a month of lying there, the body’s support points grew tender no matter how often they were changed.

“You can damn well move the huge lump that you put under my left hip.” Thad griped.

“Well, good news friends. The month of immobilization, which I did for you four has proven more beneficial than I expected. Maggi, when she did the first Koban mods, was allowed to get up once a day for a real meal, and then returned to the med lab after an hour or two. She experienced some bouts of pain and discomfort when up and awake, and her movements seem to have retarded the work the nanites were doing when she got out, stretched and ate real food.

“You four have made faster progress, despite receiving more mods at once. I can let you step out after a few checks on your vital signs, provided you return to sleep here for eight hours per day for another week. The age reversal process needs more time to access every living cell, and to regrow youthful tissues. The Prada mod will hold you at whatever physical age you have when we stop your regression. Maggi took off another five years the first week you went into the tanks.”

Sarge said, “Damn. Bring me a mirror. I want to see how young and good looking I am now.”

Aldry had walked in while Rafe was talking. “Alas, Sarge, there are some miracles that even modern medicine and nanites can’t perform. Unfortunately, you still look seventy- five.”

“Hey! I was forty-nine when I entered your damned torture chamber.”

“Oh, really? That is truly tragic. I must have inserted an IV needle backwards.” That elicited general laughter and confirming, but false, observational comments of Aldry’s assertion. Reynolds looked like a young recruit.

“Very funny. When do you and Rafe take your turns in these tubs? I want a chance to annoy
you
.”

“We won’t go in until we complete all of the upgrades on the TGs that are going on the first missions against the Krall. They don’t need age regression, and they already have TG mods. We only need an hour to start them on the TG2 MEEN enhancements, which is what the TG1’s are now calling them.”

Before anyone could ask, she explained. “MEEN stands for Mind, Eyes, Ears, and Nose mods, from the Koban derived genes. They wait a couple of weeks for those to complete while they walk around. They won’t receive the Prada age prevention mod until they reach twenty-five years of age.”

“Well, I want to see how close to twenty-five I am now.” Reynolds persisted.

Maggi sniped at him. “You definitely look more infantile, or perhaps that’s only due to how you sound. Rafe just told you that you could get up in a few minutes. Be patient, or I’ll shove you outside naked and let you sunburn. If you haven’t noticed, the replaced, younger skin is pink, and your tans are gone.”

Rafe had manually verified Dillon had proper vital signs, and was detaching some of the devices that had kept him fed, healthy, and his muscles toned while he slept. “The sunburn remark is valid, Gentle Men. After you wash away the dead cells, apply a cream I’ll give you to induce rapid melanogenesis, to protect and darken your skin. It won’t leave you as dark as your tan was before, but it will protect your skin from sunburn until natural exposure completes the job.”

Rafe cleared each of the other three men to exit their med labs, handing each a tube of the melanin inducing cream. Mirikami lowered the side of his case to swing his legs out, wearing only a pair of white shorts. He looked at his legs, which were slightly darker than Dillon’s pasty legs only because he was naturally darker by birth. Nevertheless, he looked more pallid than he had even as a Spacer, who spent little time under the suns along the routes he flew.

One pleasant surprise was seeing the flat stomach, and shorts that formerly stayed snugly in place about to slide off his hips. He might not have physically regressed all the way to his mid-twenties, but he was at the weight he held when he was in his late twenties.

He felt very light on his feet. “Why did you lower the gravity in here, Rafe?” They were on the Flight of Fancy, and he assumed the gravity was reduced in this expanded infirmary and rejuvenation ward for some medical reason.

“What do you mean?” Rafe looked puzzled. “We didn’t adjust the gravity.”

Maggi knew what he meant. “It’s the new you, Tet. You didn’t experience the carbon fiber muscle growth as it gradually infused your clone mod muscles. This is the first time you’ve felt the Koban carbon fibers at work. After you spend some time Mind Tapping with those of us that also have the ripper frilling genes, your thought processes will greatly speed up. For now, focus on your enhanced senses, such as hearing or sense of smell. They‘ll be working now, and you can sense things you never noticed before. You hear that high pitched thrum?”

“Yes. I assumed it was my tinnitus, which I sometimes experience due to an explosion and depressurization injury, which slightly damaged my inner ears in the Navy, many years ago.”

“It’s actually something causing a high frequency throb in the air handling system. I showed Chief Haveram the area where I thought it came from, since it’s annoying as hell and in the ultrasonic range. He couldn’t hear it, but he’s in a med lab in the next room, and when he gets out, I’m going to push him to find the damn cause and make it stop. I can hardly sleep on the ship anymore because of that constant thrum. That is a gift of your new wolfbat hearing.”

He raised his nose. “Another air processing issue is the smell. What
is
that?”

She laughed. “That’s you, my dear man.
It’s also the three smelly brutes that emerged from cocoons when you did. The med labs remove your waste products, but you haven’t bathed as the old skin was replaced. You wouldn’t have noticed the sound or mild odor before you had a predator’s senses. A group shower for all of you. NOW!”

As the four men meekly headed for the connecting shower room, Mirikami asked another question. “Rafe, Aldry, I have ripper vision enhancements, right? Why don't I see better now? It seems ordinary to me.”

Aldry, still standing by the door, waved her hand over a wall sensor and the overhead light panels went out, leaving the only visible light source coming from the small readouts and telltale lights inside the four med labs. To Mirikami and the other three men, it grew dark for less than a second, when suddenly the room appeared bright again, with less intense colors, but everything and everyone easily visible. The ends of the med lab casings looked brighter now, a glowing shade of yellow versus the silver gray before the lights went off. He realized it must be from the warmth of their power supplies heating the outer shell.

When he looked back at Maggi and the others, he saw they also had faint yellow to red glows on their bodies, with shades of green to blue on their clothing and shoes. He knew they were in a darker area of the room, where his infrared senses must be picking them out. Above the med labs the internal small lights, as dim as they were, provided his light sensitive vision with enough photons to see clearly the fine-lined patterns in the cool ceiling panels.

The lights came back up, and his vision quickly returned to normal, without his being blinded by the returning glare. “The transition is faster than I’d expect,” he noted.

Rafe answered the unasked question. “The superconducting links to your brain operate far faster than before, Tet. It’s still possible to flash blind you for a moment, or to put you briefly into total darkness, but the TG2’s we’ve tested say it lasts only a second at most.”

Nodding, Mirikami was about to enter the shower room when Maggi, a mischievous look on her now youthful, pretty pixie face,
innocently
asked, “Want me to come in and scrub you down again, dear, just like before you went into that box?”

He glanced back quickly but didn’t answer, and with a pained red-faced expression, turned and stepped through the doorway. Maggi naturally found a way to help her future contract husband get over his embarrassment. “Wow, we can see that blush all the way down to your butt, lover. Better put on a lot of that tanning cream.”

****