Regolith

First Draft - Chapter 1

"What kind of countermeasures does this Life pod have?" The [ship name] was a military vessel, even a civilian life pod onboard that vessel should've had some kind of defensive counter measures.

"No countermeasures, sir. The current life pod was from the civilian bay, it does not even have a scanner on the outside and is intended only for transport."

"What about my mesh? Will my armor be functional when the pod opens?"

Pin replied, "The mesh is fully functional and is finalizing its boot cycle, but this close to cryo it will not be ideal to activate it. You'll be running hot if you do."

Running hot... the carbon nano mesh running through the dermal layers can be hardened quicker than a muscle twitch, making skin as hard as a steel plate, locking you up like a statue and preventing all sorts of damage. Problem is it uses a lot of power, and that power comes from gene modified cells and those cells take time to store energy. Activate it now and there's a chance it won't fire when it's needed, or only do half the job. And half the job can be like no mesh at all, or worse, you can get stuck in hardened mesh, which can take hours to wear off. No, looks like I'd be better off coming out cold, anyone waiting for me would have had plenty of time to surround me with enough firepower that even the mesh wouldn't help.

" Sir?" Pin interrupted my train of thought, "Another peculiarity..."

"What is it now?" I grumbled, pulling my gaze away from the haze of data spraying across my field of vision.

"I seem to have root level access to the Pod's data center and program codes."

I sighed, felt my fists clenching, had to calm myself from lashing out. A small side effect common with unfreezing. "Shouldn't you have access to the pod, Pin?"

"Yes," it replied quizitively, "but not root access. Never root access. I can see the data streams and programming code, I could effectively reprogram the Pod or sabotage it for further use. This is quite alarming."

"Well don't break the damn Pod while I'm still in it, Pin" I said with a sideways grin. Pin doesn't always get my humor, which must be some sort of deep rooted programmer joke seeing as how he's hardwired into my fucking brain. "Can you use that to see where we are?"

"To interfere with the LifeReach root systems would go against my protocols sir. Though it is a possible application of the access."

"Well do it then." I felt an unease creeping back that had stuck with me since Skim had laid out the [ship name] job. I should never had let him rope me in, treasure be damned, but then again what other prospects did we have. I would've gone back to raiding autoships in the deep but what would Rala do then? We hadn't the scratch for the kind of implants she'd need to survive out there, and she was too thick headed and proud to mod herself like that anyway. I suppose death is a better fit for her than working a lounge at some seedy station bar, blowing sleezy mercs and trafficking in Fume to get by.

Pin paused for long enough I started to worry, not like it to delay a response... "Pin!" I grumbled again.

"Here sir. It seems that in addition to access to the pod, I can also access my own programming. I could rewrite my own code quite easily and reboot. However-"

I cut it off. "Do it then," I said, knowing that what would follow would be a long string of warnings about how it would fry my brain if it were done wrong, and knowing that it wouldn't. About how it goes against my primary directive, except I never had a directive, they don't go over that with you when they hatch you out of stolen gene pods or when they cut into you a hundred different ways to install black market versions of tech from the militaries you're designed to steal from. "I don't wanna hear it, Pin," I grumbled, the memory of Rala stinging in my mind like a loose needle.