Mind to Body

by Sandra Bard

  Assumption leapt out of the docking bay, thrusters blazing and the forward defensive lasers easily taking out two small drones hovering outside. Hideki could feel his body kicking into overdrive, battle ready. He palmed the comm and punched in the Marion code. "I'm in the Palomino. Make sure your perimeter defenses know I'm a friendly."

  The station would have automatically logged his ship as friendly the moment he was allowed access, but it paid to be a little extra careful. And he was going out to war.

  THEN

  "Your new body does have a few modifications," Dr. Stevenson—Mark—said as he watched Kaishi closely through narrowed eyes. Kaishi knew the sensors fixed on him gave an accurate reading of everything going on with him, but he'd also discovered something about Mark: he liked to watch people react to unexpected situations.

  He had specifically mentioned it while he'd watched Kaishi play chess, telling him it was a game of human observation and not just calculation. "You might think you can predict every possibility and win, which is why computers still win against humans, but when you play against humans, always watch for the tell. Even the weakest of players can win by throwing their opponents off balance."

  "Are you in love with my mother?" Kaishi had asked, taking a page from Mark's book.

  Mark had sputtered and colored and proceeded to deny it vigorously—it was probably then that Dr. Stevenson had become Mark to him.

  "You just said you had a lab near Pluto," Kaishi said. They both knew Pluto was out of Earth's jurisdiction and therefore under ISF control. If Mark was caught doing human experiments on the Luna base, he would be arrested and incarcerated for life. It would have been safer for him to have remained on his base.

  "I didn't come here because your mother asked me," Mark said weakly, looking at the chess board. "Well … not really …"

  "Really?"

  "Checkmate." And that had been the end of that conversation.

  Kaishi had no idea just how true it was, but he'd watched Stevenson play elaborate and sometimes rather cruel games with his staff to watch their reactions. He had to admit it had kept him occupied while he was floating in the healing gel since he had nothing to do most of the time. It had also kept him from thinking too much of his mother, whom he'd not seen since their argument.

  His mother was a stubborn woman, and he knew she was waiting for him to apologize. But Kaishi had inherited the same stubbornness, and he wasn't going to argue over something that was clearly not his fault. Instead he closed his eyes and concentrated on the matter at hand: lifting his little finger.

  If his finger stirred, he didn't feel it. But then again, he had very little feeling in his new body.

  "I can't feel anything," he said, grateful for the subvocalizer still attached to him. It hid his emotions, making him sound more in control. He wasn't going to complain about his inability to speak when he couldn't even move a finger. Something had gone wrong with his new body transfer and he was going to wind up a paraplegic who'd be fed by straw for the rest of his life …

  "It'll take a few more days for you to feel your body," Mark said cheerfully. "I can see your finger twitch."

  "Optical illusions and wishful thinking."

  "Well, we can't all be that optimistic about everything," Mark said as he rounded the med-rig Kaishi was lying on to read something on a display. "Where's the projection when you need it? I need my old lab equipment." He turned to Kaishi. "And while you're getting a hold of your body, I thought I could interest you in—"

  "Please not another game of chess," Kaishi groaned. While he was good, Mark made him feel like someone taking it up for the first time. He'd only won a handful of matches. Some had been so short he'd barely made any moves. Or it was possible he'd lost consciousness or whatever was equivalent to it when his brain had systematically shut down during the last few matches.

  "Not to worry," Mark told him, moving briskly to a control. "No chess. Now, I'm going to put you in an upright position. It will be a little uncomfortable, especially since you will feel the blood rushing to your feet, so to speak, but you will be fine."

  In a way, Kaishi was surprised he'd actually made it to his new body. He knew there'd been some close calls. Before the transfer into his new body, there had been several incidents where he'd greyed out, lost track of time and surroundings and had once woken up with a part of his tongue missing. Mark had told him it was next to impossible since he just didn't have the muscles to control a bite with that much force.

  He closed his eyes as his body seemed to plunge a hundred feet down at two hundred miles per hour, when he was inclined at perhaps twenty-five degrees. Kaishi felt his neck give way, his head too heavy, and his line of vision shifted from the bank of monitors in front of him to a gel chamber next to him, in which there floated an indistinguishable grey blob. He stared at it, repulsed and drawn to it at the same time. The gel and the protective cover of the tank with the array of wires and tubes obscured it from view, but he couldn't remove his eyes from it.

  It looked a lot like his head. "Issssatmyed?"

  Kaishi spoke without even realizing he'd actually vocalized his thoughts. His first words in over a year, and they were to inquire about his own body parts.

  "What's left of it. So do you feel any different? Feel dizzy, feel like throwing up?"

  "But … if that's me … what am I doing here?" Even as the words formed, he could feel his body making adjustments, making his muscles move, a billion nanites in his blood stream firing nerve endings and making connections.

  "Well, what did you think we were going to do, superglue a headless body to your head?"

  "Y—yes …"

  "Well, that's not going to work. Your head was as good as dead. Too much neurological damage to have survived such a surgery even if I had attempted it. Not to mention the problems of vat-growing a headless body. We grow organs, but an entire body without a head …"

  Mark shuddered delicately and walked away. "Anyway, the transfer was a success. You're speaking on your own, and you'll have control over your body soon enough. We'll remove the catheter once you've been toilet trained again."

  "But why … how … did you?"

  "I mapped everything that was in your brain into the brain of the new body, so technically if your original brain hadn't died, you'd have had two heads, but—"

  "Died!"

  "Oh, I forgot to mention: shortly after transferring you to your body, your original brain died. Lucky we got it in time. I wonder if the transfer will work on dead people … or machines … like a computer data transfer …"

  "Wait," Kaishi said before Mark drifted off too far into possible future experiment land. "This body I was transferred into didn't … Wasn't there … someone … some consciousness here before you brain copied me?"

  "That's a good word, brain copy."

  "Well?"

  "I really don't think so. I mean, it was just a blank slate, but ... there are so many speculations, you know, 'are vat grown bodies alive?'" He looked at Kaishi and winked rakishly. "Anyway, why do you think I'm hiding on a Moon base? On Earth, I'd never have been allowed to do what I did with you."

  "That's not very reassuring."

  "Well." Mark jumped up and down a couple of times on the tips of his toes. "I'm going to visit my other patient. Want to come?"

  NOW

  The Palomino was one of the most powerful single space fighters ever designed, a small, needle-shaped craft with the engine power of a small cargo transporter, and the modification made by ISF made it extremely fast. Which made the maneuvering a tad difficult unless the pilot had enhanced reflexes. Even then, a sudden stop or a turn was next to impossible.

  "Inspector, is that you in the little needle?"

  "This little needle can punch a hole through that mech suit of yours," Hideki said calmly as he weaved through a series of protrusions near the surface of Marion. Whoever had designed the station had been a sadist with an eye for pointed sticks.

  "I'd like to see you
try." Tyler's voice sounded a lot less sullen, probably because he was out shooting things. Hideki ignored him, concentrating on rounding a series of glass bubbles attached to the side of Marion—hydroponic gardens, he assumed—when he saw what was causing the explosions. It was an old stealth fighter, larger than Assumption, with a modified iron grey armored hull that could have only come from one of the far colonies that mined that particular element, Euramiun. It was bulky, like a squashed frog, with streamlined sides that made the scanners bounce off without detecting it. Hideki knew the older design wasn't as fast or agile as Assumption, but what it lacked in speed, it made up in brute strength with the help of the armor.

  It had been the pirates' plan all along: distract the main weapons while sneaking in from the back door—a self-made back door, if needed.

  He fired before the stealth fighter could react, a series of scatter shots that had no effect on it. It would take a shot from a space cannon to shoot that monster out of the sky. The ship continued to fire at the side of Marion, slowly but surely eroding the shielding. Hideki switched to the big guns, the anti-matter missiles and the bigger flak guns, everything on him. The enemy ship—he had no idea what model it was—rocked under the barrage, but didn't cease its firing. It was either unmanned, or the pilots were suicidal, or the ship had better shielding than an ISF Warbird.

  Hideki aimed his ship at it. He'd have to save punching Tyler's mech suit for later. He'd been told that Assumption had armor strong enough to fly through a small moon. He was about to find out just how good the armor was.

  Fighters were programmed for close combat, and as a result most of the proximity alarms that were present on other spacecraft did not exist on Assumption. However, as he bore down on the attackers, a series of alarms did start to blare at him, something Hideki had not been anticipating.

  He manually switched off the alarms and clenched his fists until his fingernails bit into his palm, knowing the motion sensors in the gel would interpret it as a bid for more speed. And Assumption responded, the small ship rocking in the shockwaves generated from the explosions. Hideki would have run into the enemy ship head on if the final safety hadn't kicked in at the last minute. He swerved from the imminent collision and might have missed the intended target altogether if he hadn't course-corrected at the last moment. He brushed the enemy ship rather than ramming it head on, pushed the enemy ship back before he knocked aside .

  The collision had damaged his left engine, and all the power in the right forced the ship to corkscrew before Hideki could cut down its power. The safety lights were blaring in the cockpit, as the flight stabilizers struggled to come online. The enemy ship, heavier, sturdier, had found its footing and was rounding off at Hideki, probably realizing it was prudent to get rid of the interference before going on with the business of burning a hole into Marion.

  Hideki ducked in the cockpit as a shot cleared him by a couple of centimeters. It was Assumption's erratic movements that were keeping him safe from being hit. His flight stabilizers were all but useless and control was sluggish. Then another proximity alarm blared in his ear and he brought up the outside view. He was being pushed closer to the ring of enemy drones. He could take the hits, at least until his shields gave out, but he wasn't sure he wanted to deal with the manned aircrafts with a damaged fighter. He knew the pirates saw more action than most military and civilian pilots put together.

  He braced himself, concentrating on his shields instead of firepower. The way Assumption was turning sluggishly to the side, he was sure to hit Marion as frequently as he would the enemy ship if he were to fire.

  Still Hideki lined up with the enemy ship, bracing for the answering shot—he wasn't about to fly and shoot. The only way he could get a clear shot was if Assumption wasn't moving. He was going to get hit in return. There was no way around it. Hideki felt his heart race. He wasn't ready to die. He had people to save.

  The proximity alarms went wild.

  There was a clang and Hideki looked around the small cockpit. Nothing should have clamped onto him. There had been no drifter mines in the area and—

  The enemy ship fired, missing him by a couple of feet. Hideki looked at his controls. His engines were on idle, but the navigation screen informed him he was being moved by some outside force. Something that was putting pressure on five places of his hull, not uniformly, not enough to dent the hull …

  "Chill, Inspector." Tyler's voice came through his comm as clearly as if he were whispering in Hideki's ear. "I've got you."

  "You …" Hideki swallowed. Tyler always seemed to weaken his composure. "Your mech suit …"

  "Is going to kick some ass."

  Hideki felt Assumption jerk as the ship changed direction faster than the protective casing could keep up with. He relaxed into it, knowing the only way to break free was to fire his engines and try to break off some of the mech suit's fingers. They were in the middle of hostiles, and he was not about to start an internal fight.

  Hideki watched as the mech suit kicked the enemy ship, hard. He expected the ship to fly away; instead, it extended what appeared to be a thousand hooks and grabbed onto the foot of the mech.

  "Oh, now, isn't that nice," Tyler muttered. The foot of the mech suddenly jerked as the thrusters were fired, and the enemy ship lit up from the inside and exploded harmlessly. "Your missiles must have weakened its hull."

  Tyler started to move towards the hangar bay, holding Hideki in his grip, and Hideki settled in for the ride back. He figured it was better than waiting for the tug to come and get him as they flew through the hangar bay and waited for the pressurization.

  He stayed still as Assumption was placed on the hangar bay, frowning at the reading on his hull. Something was off. All he could see was …

  "You can come out now, Inspector, unless you need to be carried out."

  Hideki switched off the display, popped his hatch and climbed out, noting in surprise the faint pain in his knuckles. He had not been in the gel long enough for him to heal. The battle had been that short. He slid down the side of the Palomino onto the ground , adjusting to the gravity, and flexed his hand.

  "You hurt?" Tyler asked, and Hideki twisted as Tyler leaned against a chest hatch in the centre of his mech suit.

  "No, I …"

  The MAU had looked bright and gaudy in space; inside the hangar bay … it still looked gaudy, and big. Out of the space tarp, it was huge, much larger than he'd expected it to be, the harsh lines and the sharp corners unforgiving in the bright lights. There was battle damage, paint scratches, dents that looked old and an amateurish patching job on the left flank, but in all, the MAU was awe-inspiring.

  "That's the first time I've seen you show any expression on that face of yours."

  Hideki looked to ground level. Tyler had clambered down and he hadn't even noticed.

  "It is an impressive mech unit," Hideki said carefully. It was illegal for civilians of any form to own this much firepower, but he knew better than to comment on it.

  "I knew you'd see it that way." Tyler slid closer to Hideki until their shoulders were touching. "I am curious…"

  "About?" Hideki asked, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  "If you move in bed the way you move in your ship."

  THEN

  Kaishi stared at the mechanical monstrosity glaring back at them from the side of the safety glass. "I thought you couldn't transfer human brain patterns into machines."

  "Well, one of my predecessors did," Mark said. "He was the mastermind behind Alpha Mech before ISF took it over and he … oh. Oh, you mean Mr. Croinsky." He gestured towards the demonstration pit where the space pirate whom they'd managed to salvage from the accident wreckage stood, his newly modified body visible to all. "He's human, under all that metal and … and … things."

  "You don't have to tell me." Kaishi sighed, crossed his hands and then uncrossed them when he realized the shoulders of his new suit pulled uncomfortably tight. No matter what Mark said, this new body was bulkier than his
old one. "Just tell me those big guns are all for show."

  "They're not armed."

  "And this thing is in your control."

  "You know, you could go and speak to your mother instead of standing next to me, trying to look like you're enjoying yourself."

  Kaishi looked to his left, where his mother sat on the raised platform with her 'special guests', all watching the pirate walking about his enclosure like a caged bull. She had finally gotten what she'd wanted, a little late, but perhaps for the better.

  Kaishi shook his head. "No, thanks. We haven't spoken in over ten months. Speaking to her would just get in the way of her moment of glory."

  "Don't be like that. You know your mother loves you."

  "Thank you for pointing out the obvious," said Kaishi, turning his head to follow Mark's line of sight. His mother smiled at Mark, a warm, slow smile that made Kaishi pause. He looked quickly at Mark.

  Mark's mouth was slightly relaxed and he looked a lot less stern as he stared at her. Kaishi knew Mark had been in touch with his mother, updating her on Kaishi's progress and informing her about the work he was doing with the prisoner.

  "You're not sleeping with my mother, are you?"

  "Don't be crude." Mark fiddled with the feed from his display. "It's only a working relationship. And your mother is still loyal to your dead father."

  Kaishi considered Mark. He wasn't bad looking. He was old, probably as old as his mother or more, but physically fit and the low g of the Moon had been kind to him. He dressed well … or rather, he dressed well in the presence of Kaishi's mother. He'd also agreed to her requests, even if he didn't want to …

  "Please tell me you think you have a future with her," Kaishi said under his breath.