Read Plague Planet (The Wandering Engineer) for Free Online

what are you?” Hank demanded eyes
wide, ears flat. Most of the bar had returned to normal conversation when
they'd relaxed but Hank's distressed voice cut through the chatter like a
knife. Silence reigned once more.  The otters looked over the edge of the
neighboring seat, eyes wide, noses and whiskers twitching in shock. One even
had his mouth hanging open.
    Irons snorted softly, sending a mental command to turn his
implants silver. He could feel his arm, legs, and face changing. They wouldn't
be able to see his legs of course, nor his shoulder and chest, but the others
would be enough to make his point. “I'd think that was obvious, I'm a cyborg
too,” he said as Proteus went to work.
    It only took a moment to get around the damage to the UART port
and into the prosthesis computer system. The power supply was corrupted, the
internal batteries well past their impedance. The wiring to the UART was
broken, and the UART itself was corrupted. Irons felt the AI make the repairs
and then begin assessing the system. Sprite leaped into the central processor
and started digging through the files.
    “What the hell is that?” Nohar asked feeling the intrusion in his
mind.
    “My AI. Hold still,” Irons said as the tiger flinched.
    “His audio processor has been repaired,” Proteus replied as Nohar
swayed. “There may be some discomfort as his body adjusts,” he stated.
    “A little warning next time,” Nohar growled, good eye tightly
closed. Playing around with his inner ear sucked. He felt nausea and fought it
down with reflexive training.
    “Sorry, Proteus tends to dig right in and get things done,” Irons
replied.
    “You mean you got in?” Hank asked.
    Irons nodded. The implants were crude, they lacked the ability to
be self-powered by thermal exchange with the user's body or even draw power
from his central nervous system. He felt like tisking. They couldn't even rig a
calorie exchange engine? What is this the stone age? He thought. “And fixed a
few things. His batteries need to be changed. Hank, can I call you Hank?” Irons
asked, turning his head to look at the Neo lion. The lion nodded. “Do you have
a replicator? Or access to one?”
    Hank snorted softly. “I wish.”
    “I'll get you one then. A small one,” Irons replied absently
turning back to the Tiger as he watched the AI work up a list and then tick
down it. “That way you can help Nohar here and any others like him.”
    “I...”
    “Think of it as veteran's affairs. I expect a healthy discount for
them,” Irons said, still concentrating on the list of repairs Proteus was
performing. Sprite put up a dossier, Nohar yellow tiger, former Army Ranger
Sergeant of the 501st, medically discharged near the end of the war due to lack
of facilities and a mental aberration to being transported by ship. He had a
relatively clean record but his implants were substandard. Nohar like many had
overwhelmed the surviving medics. Instead of putting them in stasis and working
through them they had processed them and shipped them off to a crude hospital
to recover making room for the next batch of injured. Irons could understand
that, he'd lived it too. Nohar had apparently been put into stasis and had been
on his way to a medical facility when his ship had been destroyed and he'd
somehow been dumped in orbit of this world. Sheer luck most likely, Irons
thought. Sixty years ago he'd been picked up and brought ground side where he'd
worked as a servant until his eventual freedom.
    Nohar stared at his arm as the admiral's arm cleaned and repaired
the exterior. It was starting to look new.
    Proteus handed off the software repairs to Sprite. Sprite brought
up the firmware, compared it to the latest patch in her files and then wrote a
patch program. “Close your eyes,” Sprite ordered the tiger through his
implants.
    Nohar flinched again. “Who was that?”
    “My AI. They are about to work on your visual implants sergeant,”
Irons replied. Nohar sighed, and closed