Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Four - The Auxiliant

"Targets: stationary and vulnerable. Guidance locked.

Distance to target area: 12331 meters.

Bearing: twelve degrees. 

Altitude delta: negative two meters.

Firing parameters: horizon-blind. Planetary curvature calculated. Trajectory selected. Guidance activated.

Firing mode: indirect hypersonic. Stage one: self-propelled, stabilized. Stage two: ballistic, guided.

Wind: strong current detected between distance markers five and six. Offset updated.

Ballistic drop: point two meters per one thousand meters. Drag factor: three point one four. Offset updated.

Power cells: nominal.

Coils: set.

Rails: primed.

Safeties: one, unlocked. Two, unlocked. Three, unlocked.

Warheads: one, armed. Two, armed. Three, armed.

Impact timer: nine point six five seconds after primer ignition.

Mission prognosis: one hundred percent annihilation of primary target.

Side Mission prognosis; annihilation of secondary target: one hundred percent. Annihilation of tertiary target: thirty percent—mission kill.

Projected collateral: zero percent. 

Projected mission success: three hundred percent.

Status: I am battle-ready.

Please take the shot, user."

– Early precursor of the Auxiliant-class weapons platform, rudimentary shooter's support AI

 

***

 

"Yes, let's. What have you got for me?" I asked. Then I looked down at my naked boobs. Non-Quantized Tinea would probably be titillated by the Chrysaora's fluffy jiggle shelf. Because Leah was around. And non-Quantized Tinea rather liked Leah's appreciations. Beyond the reach of most hormones however, I just figured that the lack of support wasn't very suitable for combat. "And we still need to do something about the exposure, Tynea."

A black top suddenly hugged me, skintight and just, well, snug. It wasn't as abyss-black as Leah's goopsuit, but it did hide my protruding bits well enough. It came with the same crushed diamond curves as the Chrysaora, and those further helped conceal the lines of my chest in the more naughty areas, and highlighted them in the merely feminine ones. The top reminded me a little of the kind those dancing ice skaters would wear during their competitions. It also stopped the jigglies from jiggling.

"Much better."

Then thick, gray fluff added itself to the collar around my throat and neck. It plunged a little in the front to ride my cleavage. The stuff felt like the moth-based fluff on my tail and, again, I thought emotional Tinea would love it. It was like getting hugged, after all.

A display window popped up in front of my eyes, showing a rear view of myself. The top kept most of my upper back free. It copied the dip of the belt and flipped it upwards to reveal my nape and created a graceful symmetry with the skirt.

That's the undergarment for the Class II Auxiliant. It's technically rather stab-resistant, but truly just serves as a decorative accent. The Auxiliant is a Moonsinger Esoterics weapons platform that complements the Chrysaora Plenum with hi-vee offensive and kinetic defensive capabilities.

"Hi-vee?"

High velocity. Hypersonic and beyond. If the notion weren't ridiculous, I'd claim that it'll be easier to flash-boil the air with every shot than to use subsonics.

"Ah, the instant pain the Myriad was lacking?"

Yes, the Myriad, and also the Chrysaora. I'll add the functional bits to the simulation now.

My upper arms, shoulders, and part of my upper back were encased in a sleek frame of panels. The ensemble resembled one of those tiny jackets that were pure fashion statement, but with a little more…metal to the material. The high-tech jacket hooked itself into the top for a more secure attachment. The shoulders bulked out slightly, and reshaped themselves into slim pauldrons that copied my belt's crystal cube aesthetics. 

Then they reconfigured themselves once more, and in a flash, I had small gun barrels sitting on each shoulder, mounted in miniature gimbals on miniature robot arms, fed by miniature belts. I saw tiny bullets being loaded, two millimeters in diameter, backed by slightly larger cartridges. The pauldrons themselves had given most of their substance to the weapons, and left were only filigree wireframes housing newly exposed machinery ticking away as it extruded the ammunition belts. All of it glittered dimly from integrated, glimmering diodes.

These two cannonettes are part of the Auxiliant-Chrsyaora defensive combination. They will act as point defense against smaller non-metallic and non-energetic projectiles, as well as engage targets at very close ranges. They're meant to repel melee attackers.

"Oh? Like the old CIWS gatling guns the military companies use against flying aliens and snooping drones?" Although the cannonettes on my shoulders didn't have those awkward cylinder-bulges full of radar instrumentation on top. Just smooth lines and clean edges, and miniaturized sensors within the wireframe pauldrons.

Yes, just like those, but single-barreled. They'll still match the fire rate, though.

Ten plug-tanks appeared and floated in front of my face. These were small. Tiny little thimbles barely as thick as my pinkies and only half as long. Tynea highlighted a row of spots at the front of the pauldrons, close to the dip of my shoulders above the swell of my breasts. I let the little cylinders snap into their slots, where they got pulled up into the material of the pauldrons.

The Auxiliant's two largest plates covering your shoulder blades produce and teleport those spatially locking hexweaves you're familiar with to stop larger calibers. The cannonettes are incomparably cheaper to use, though, and far more versatile in their application.

The pauldrons' wireframes pulsed green in my HUD as Tynea continued to explain the Auxiliant.

The nanofabricators supply the cannonettes with cartridges. Pure kinetics and powder only; the barrels are too short to make use of railgun technology. But the pauldrons have medical ports through which you could supply bionites to be loaded into darts. Or toxins, paralytics, whatever you can think of that your body can produce.

"Bionites for healing darts? Hmm. The dosages would be quite small, wouldn't they? Might have to, uh, go full auto for it to matter. What's the guns' effective range?"

At Class I, they could kill an unarmored person at ten meters with a maximized load of gunpowder. Class II ammunition, even at this caliber, could kill well beyond a hundred, and penetrate some Class I armor. Darts would deliver their payload up to, perhaps, fifty meters—a shallow prick is enough for your bionites to enter the skin and make their way into the bloodstream. Mass and aerodynamics will greatly affect the darts' effectiveness.

"That honestly surpasses my expectations considerably, Tynea. They're not just dinky little toys, huh?"

The Auxiliant is Class II gear, after all.

"Looks very fragile, though. How tough are these?" I asked, clinking a fingernail against a shoulder gun.

Not very—they're not supposed to get hit. That's why the Auxiliant uses those teleporting carbon wafers to absorb attacks at a distance. But the machinery can repair itself and the guns from the plug-tanks. You may need to supply some particularly exotic materials, though. That would be a Class II Advanced Materials unlock, I'm afraid. Another token, which you won't have after these purchases.

"Ah, I'd better treat these delicately, then."

Yes. But they're not that fragile. As long as you don't plow into anything headfirst. At full speed.

Anyway, ready for the main element of the Auxiliant? It'll come with another AI.

"Oh! Class I, again? Can I upgrade them to Class II?"

Yes, and yes. For another token. Which you won't have until this battle concludes.

"Ah… Sure, go ahead."

A block of cuboid geometries appeared in front of me, like a bismuth geode the size of my torso. It was mostly black like obsidian, but the edges of each of the hundreds of cubes and squares had a faint rainbow shimmer to them.

Before I could reach out to touch it, gravity suddenly exerted itself against the block. Familiar twinkling LEDs kindled across the entire structure, a wave of reconfiguring puzzle-motion played across its surface, and four flat discs extended at the corners. Impellers spun up with a quiet whirr and stabilized the transforming object. It continued flattening out until it looked a little like something between a tiny, futuristic stealth bomber and a miniature spaceship, with aerodynamic lines and saw-teeth cutoffs at the edges of a pair of curving delta-wings.

The flat muzzle of a gun barrel formed the nose of the stealth-bomber-spaceship-drone-thing, and the vehicle twitched around to line itself up with the direction of my eyes. A screen at its rear with crosshairs showed where it was aiming.

Then it settled and pinged my Quanta, much like the Chrysaora had done. I accepted and the starlight diodes pulsed in time with a fresh voice.

"Greetings, dear user! I am Auxiliant, and I have activated and adjusted my default profile as instructed by your personal assistant. I am keyed to listen to your voice. If you wish to alter our method of communication or otherwise change my settings, please indicate so at your leisure. I am currently lacking a selected role and type of ammunition, and am not ready for battle. May I assume a generalist configuration and produce a basic loadout?"

Ah, that seemed mostly familiar.

"Hello, Auxiliant. Do so, please, and copy applicable settings from Chrysaora Plenum."

"Understood, dear user. One moment please."

Presumably exactly one moment later, the screen at the floating drone's back was reabsorbed into its body, replaced by a window projected into my HUD. It moved aside, and nine windows more split my vision in rows of three-by-three. Each of those showed a model of myself using a variant of the Auxiliant. 

The left column showed stubby barrels, like those of a submachine gun at the top, or a thick grenade launcher at the bottom. Notably, they did not all seem to have the same volume of mass. In fact, in the picture with the rather girthy grenade launcher, the Auxiliant's jacket had transformed itself into a harness that bore the weight of the weapon with an extra robot arm.

The right column all had very long barrels in varying calibers, and the rest of the weapon seemed configured for different situations. One showed me flying with the mass of the gun supporting itself on hover-jets—kind of like the drone-thing was doing right now, but lengthened and slimmer. I thought that might be a mobile sniping configuration. The last window of that column had me sitting on an extruded gunner's chair of some kind of Flak cannon.

And the middle column seemed to be fully automatic rifles. All of them fed through tubes or belts connected to a small backpack that clung to my upper back. These gave me the strongest soldier's vibes. The top seemed to be an assault rifle with a tube instead of a belt, and the bottom window showed a proper machine gun with a massive belt feeding it, supported on a tripod.

The central picture of the middle row expanded and replaced all the other ones. It was a battle rifle, a beefed-up version of the top row's assault rifle.

"Settings adopted, Tinea. Readying basic loadout. Please grab my handles if you prefer to handle me manually."

Oh my. How could I not accept such an invitation?

The floating drone engaged its reconfiguration routines again, and I watched as parts of it disappeared into more of those portals rimmed with violet. Its impellers shrunk and turned into smaller turbines integrated into its housing. A receiver formed, too—no visible trigger—and a forestock. I grabbed both and found myself holding a battle rifle of exactly the previously displayed model.

A tube snaked along the inside of my arm, beneath my shoulder, and a small backpack formed and attached itself to the pauldrons. It sat comfortably above the wing-arms. A small robotic limb peeked out beneath my other shoulder, and cassettes popped open from a number of round slots for more plug-tanks. Tynea had teleported them directly into the receiving wells, and so the plug-tanks popped right in without any actions on my part. The new arm pulled away and folded itself into the backpack again.

Split seconds later, I felt a pulsing stream of material flow through the tube and into the gun, and Auxiliant chimed exactly as Chrysaora had done:

"I am battle-ready!"

Non-Quantized Tinea would probably find it quite endearing. I suspected Auxiliant's default settings had been adjusted by Tynea for exactly that effect. I considered the extent of this manipulation for several seconds, but decided I saw no real threat in it. It was a continuation of the personalization of provided gear, and Class II offered new avenues beyond physical appearance.

My analytical moment attracted the attention of Sonde. I felt her scamper across my mind, towards my current thoughts, and shared my conclusions with her. She wasn't complex enough yet to grasp the full extent of my ruminations, but she eagerly integrated it all as more data. It was a huge package and she froze in place as she wove connections. 

I watched for a moment or two, and appreciated the fast development she showed. Sonde was growing very quickly and would soon become a bud. I suspected she'd begin to analyze the emotional being of hormonal Tinea, and access my amygdala before the day was over. How long it would take her to form an identity thereafter was something entirely beyond my ability to gauge. But it probably would be better measured in days and weeks, than months or years.

Auxiliant's voice broke into my thoughts.

"Would you like to test me, Tinea? I have many assets to explore and will strive to be a delight during use."

…

Default settings. Yes.

 

***