Chapter 8

A Stud Through A Wall.

We settled our mechs into their habitations. I descended from mine, to join the others who’d been faster than me. Frankie was biting her nails and tapping her foot, watching me as I leapt down from the cockpit of my mech.

“Not a single scratch on it,” I said. “I promise.”

“Yea?” she said and a half a smile lit her face. “Better not even be a hair on that thing or I’ll rip out your mechanical parts, Cyborg.”

“You’re still on to him about nearly destroying his previous Cymech suit?” Uzik said as he removed his Cymech helmet.

“Yeap,” Frankie said. “You gotta watch this one. Might turn out to be no good.”

Dani laughed before removing her black orbed Cymech helmet and shaking her dark hair out. She grinned at Frankie with a sparkle in her eyes. “Nice to know at least someone’s got a spine on this ship,” she said.

“I make spines for mechs and Cymech suits. There’s nothing I can do for the human body.”

“I can,” I said.

Frankie was taken aback for a moment. She gaped at me, unsure what to say. The others balked.

“You can’t create a human spine,” Frankie said. “Geez, you just get dumber and dumber.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I can’t make a human spine, but I can make a spine for the human body. I have a spec that will let me improve anything in my body. Including my spine. If I wanted to, I could improve my spine. It’ll probably end up as a Cyborg component, like my eye or the scar in my hip. You might not be able to do anything for the human body, but I can.”

Frankie took a few steps back, wide eyed. I don’t think she expected for me to have a retort, but I needed to start somewhere with how she was treating me. She stammered for a good ten seconds, tripping horrendously over what she had wanted to say. The more she stammered, the more flustered she got until anger rose to color her face. Her eyes became piercing and she glared menacingly at me. Then she stormed off, leaving all of us baffled.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Uzik said. “I’ll have to tell Captain Silas you deserve a medal for being the first person to get under Frankie’s skin like that.”

“She’s punched you square in the face before, Cyborg,” Dani said. “I don’t doubt she’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

Nikola came into the habitation just then with a frown on his face. “Is Frankie alright?” he said.

“Gnath just one-upped her,” Siam said, laughing.

“You’re on a suicide mission,” Nikola said.

“Keep your Cymech helmets. Let’s go talk,” Uzik said.

My Cymech suit disassembled around me and reassembled at the foot of my mech. Everyone looked at me with a little bit of awe.

The rest of the team floated their Cymech suits off their bodies and settled each one by their mechs. Then I followed the team out of the habitation. A small headache had begun to creep into the front of my head. I ignored it as best as I could and grabbed some water. We sat together in the map room adjacent to the bridge.

Uzik set his helmet in a hole in the low table and powered it on. The helmet glowed a light blue from the mana circuits within and femtosecond lasers caged the air above the table in yellow gridlines. Uzik then performed a few gestures over his chest, where his Cymech suit would be and images began to appear among the gridlines. Images that Dani had taken when we had inspected the Solodon ship.

“Will you do the honors, Dani?” Uzik said.

Dani leaned in and performed gestures to zoom in and center on the image data. She centered five different photos over the area she’d found scratch marks.

“The engines are located near the rear, all the way over here,” she said. “Up here is the hatch for dumping fuel. Now if you move away from the rear and stop around this area, you’ll see the scratch marks I found.”

She manipulated the images, zooming in, clarifying the picture, and centering the scratch marks. Then she let us all inspect the image data.

“Let’s get Frankie in here,” Uzik said. He placed a hand on his helmet, and after a moment it glowed an even brighter sky blue. “Frankie, please come into the map room. I need your advice.”

Orion and I heard the signal in the space between our minds. Frankie’s response came quickly.

“On my way, commander,” she said.

“You want to switch seats with me?” Siam asked. “Better if you keep some distance from Frankie for a while, no?”

The others laughed and for a moment I considered the offer. Then Frankie burst in. Grease stains muddied her face. Her overalls and shirt were striped with stains of rust and grease, as though old chains had been draped over a shoulder. She came in wringing grime from her hands in a white towel.

“What can I do for you?” She said.

“Please have a seat and take a look at these images,” Uzik said.

Frankie ignored me, passing by and sat between Siam and Uzik. She leaned in and took a few moments to ask questions and take in the images.

“A ship wouldn’t make those kind of scratches,” Frankie said.

“Not even a small fuel transporter?” Dani said.

“Not even a commercial drone.”

“Any idea what could have caused this?” Uzik said.

Frankie considered things for a moment and scratched her head. She sat back, put a foot on the edge of the table and put her hands behind her head.

“It’s hard to say from a bunch of pictures. Best thing to do is to inspect them up close. I can look for impact debris, echnaged matter, and take some measurements. I’ve got a hypothesis, but I’d rather do some testing.”

“Dani, please do another recon with Frankie. Keep a video signal linked to me so I can observe while I talk to Captain Silas. I might share the link with him.”

“Awesome! Frankie said. “I get to be useful for once!”

Frankie and Dani left the map room, and the rest of us when to the bridge. Nikola asked for a moment of my time and relayed that Frye said hello. Then he performed some wellness scans and took some blood. I answered all his questions and reluctantly mentioned I had a headache.

“Drink some water. I’ll fabricate some basic medication to ease any discomfort. Have your stats changed?”

I told him that I’d leveled up and applied a spec point to IMINT. He informed me that he wanted to be there when I get to the point where IMINT reaches the Compartmentalize Initiation phase, and then to wait a week before moving onto the Third Intelligence phase.

“No problem,” I’d told him.

“Alright everyone,” Uzik said. “I’ll be talking with Captain Silas in a moment. You’ll be able to hear us but will be blocked from participating.”

“Commander Uzik,” Captain Silas said, his voice rich and clear over SIGINT.

“Captain,” said Uzik. “We’ve scouted Faktuus, The Claiming Hand. Dani and Frankie are inspecting some abnormal damage near the refinery adjacent to the engine. I’m sending you a live visual signal.”

“Received,” Captain Silas said. “Allowing Audio.”

“Right here,” Dani said over SIGINT.

I was about to don my helmet like Siam and Uzik had, but Orion stopped me.

[No need, brother] he said. [Use my eye. You can see what I see with your Cyborg eye.]

[Thanks, Orion,] I thought.

With little effort, my Cyborg eye switched vision. I no longer saw what Gnath saw. I now saw what Orion saw. There was a screen floating in his vision, in the visor of the helmet. I saw Dani pointing out scratches on the Solodon ship to Frankie, who moved in to inspect them closely.

“Hmm,” Frankie said.

I heard mechanical whirring and saw several chains rotate along the arms of her mech. Compartments opened up and dozens of items revolved in a centrifuge-like contraption. The rotating contraption stopped and a pair of goggles with mana circuits floated out and snapped over Frankie’s mech’s head.

The goggles were massive and Frankie leaned in to peer through them as she put a hand on the ship. Her rocket engines engaged and brought her even closer. IMINT brackets filled her goggles with impossible speed.

Then more chains rotated and other gadgets came flying out. Several tools I'd never seen before floated one by one into Frankie’s mech’s hands. Each tool I saw had small mana circuits inlaid into them and glowed a sky blue. She ran some tests, even with liquids and different refractometers for a few minutes, working diligently with ultra focus. I was impressed.

As her diagnostics came to an end, she hovered away from the ship and gave a big sigh, blowing her bangs back across her forehead.

“Talk to me, Frankie,” Uzik said.

“Well, Mr. Commander,” Frankie said, “My hypothesis was correct. These marks were made by tools. Instruments.”

“What kind of instruments?” Captain Silas said.

“Have you ever looked for a stud through a wall, Captain?” Frankie said. “Those kinds of tools. The tools aren’t the problem though. The problem is that someone’s been looking for something inside this ship, and now, the ship ain’t moving.