He Spins a Web, Any Size. Catches Thieves Just like Flies

Ash's prediction proved to be an understatement. Did anyone realize how much of their tongue and the interior part of their mouth was considered skin, he wondered?

After he made his way to the medical bay he did get to experience the luxury of a shower that had nine automatically tracking shower heads and over a hundred different soap options, even if it took him a relatively long time to figure out how to take off a kimono.

He wasn't even sure what these traditional flip-flops were called (zōri, something in his mind called out to him) but he thought it was cheating that they had a battery powered traction emitter to keep them on his feet. To Ash's way of thinking, that is basically admitting that your shoe is a piece of shit if you need high technology to keep it on your feet.

Well, he likely wouldn't be wearing that again. He was pretty sure it was a lot harder to put on than it was to take off.

He activated the medical suite after a tractor field selectively and carefully pulled all the water off his surface, that sure beat drying with a towel and was quicker too.

A request from the medical bay to connect to any on-board medical diagnostic suites was approved and Ash watched curiously as some part of his brain ran different software in an emulator. He could see it communicate and see what resources it requested but it was opaque in it's operation. It was a curious feeling.

After a moment of that software and the medical bay talking to each other digitally his built-in transceivers noticed a number of radar and LIDAR scans.

The autodoc was a disembodied class 1 AI and, predictably, a genius with it's diagnosis, "You are missing your skin, madam! Decompression injury?"

Ash wanted to face palm. Why did he select the full service option when he activated the medbay, he should have just got in the autodoc. He sighed. Talking without a full tongue took some getting used to, "That's right. Are your facilities capable of synthesizing DynaCorp SynthSkin v14.7, or will I need to just wait until this heals the old fashioned way?"

"Absolutely! Please enter the autodoc, madam," said the disembodied voice.

Ash rubbed the back of his head. Anyone who has ever been in the cockpit of a F-5 fighter can't be called claustrophobic but the autodoc more resembled an Iron Maiden than any kind of medical device.

Thankfully he had a reason to put off getting inside for a couple more minutes, at least, "We need to wait a few minutes for a delivery bot. I am having a micro-fission auxiliary power unit fabricated and I would like it installed at the same time, no use growing skin back twice."

The autodoc had a ridiculous British accent, "Quite true, madam! If you would please send the specifications of the APU."

Ash directed a file transmission to the autodoc with the specs, it was the smallest and highest end APU in his design database that would fit inside his chassis.

It was a plutonium-239 micro-fission nuclear battery with a max continuous output power of over 111,000 kilojoules or approximately 31kW. Clever use of repulsor fields increasing the pressure of the fuel keeps it supercritical during operation despite being quite small in mass. That also increased its safety, considering a failure in the repulsors stopped the chain reaction. It had a service interval of about ten to twenty years depending on the use rate.

The datanet said the fab still had fifteen minutes to go — any fabricators that could utilize fissile materials was slightly complicated and operated much slower when utilizing such material. The storage of fissile feedstock was complicated as well — you could just store a huge tank of ten tons of molten silver but do that with pu-239 and there will be a nuclear explosion.

The autodoc actually made a humming noise, "Very good, madam! This should not be a problem."

Ash also decided to top up his power cells while he is waiting. A small thin prong of superconductive material popped out of his pinky and he plugged it into one of the receptacles in the room, it's a universal android and bot charging port. He noticed his system manager automatically throttling the charge rate to be below 1.2 megawatt which was significantly lower than his rated charge rate. Ah, apparently his hair functions as heat sinks, except it fell out with his scalp.

Ash reviewed the status of the bots working on the station while he waited. The army from the ship is making short work of the station. One of the humanoid bots from the station physically disconnected the jury rigged fission power system and afterwards hundreds of bots began cutting a path for the engineering can to slide out. The biggest bots looked like some kind of spider-mech and cut from the outside in, while smaller varieties cut from the inside out. Logistics bots stood ready to replace power cells or chemical canisters for the plasma cutters in order to keep downtime to a minimum.

Things are on schedule and the bots that are used to working on the serious armor of an interstellar starship are making short work of the steel of a space station but it will still take over eight hours for the first phase to complete and to free the can.

If that worked he would proceed to phase 2, which was an attempt to remove the two derelict ships by cutting them away from the pier and then putting a small ion-thruster on the exterior that would over a few hours impart enough delta-V to push each ship out of the area of immediate danger.

The last step would be an attempt to remove each of the demolition charges without setting any of them off. 8 of the charges are fairly close to the exterior of the station so it is fairly simple to cut a hole to space next to them. The others would be slightly more complicated but still feasible.

After thinking about the best way to get rid of the charges he decided on the very technical solution of having a bot pick them up and tossing it out of the hole into space. Very gently.

A toss with an acceleration of a tenth of a G or so would impart enough delta-V to the charges to clear the station's general area after a day or so. Ash figured it would either work or instantly explode. If the worst happens the only thing he'll lose is a bunch of scrap, as valuable as it may be.

Ash's power cells were fully charged about the same time as the micro-fission APU was delivered. He retracted his charging port and stood up. The autodoc called out, "Please place the APU you wish installed in the autodoc's armatures." Thin spindly arms had extended out of the side of the oversized Iron Maiden looking device. Ash glanced at the APU, it was about as big as a hardcover book. He placed it in the "hands" of the machine and took half a step and climbed inside the autodoc.

The doors closed around him and a voice all around him called out, "Preparing to begin. The full procedure will take approximately three hours and twenty five minutes. Please enter stand-by mode to begin."

Ash sighed, set a timer to wake him in three and a half hours as a precaution and powered down all systems. Do androids dream of electric sheep? He supposes he was about to find out.

—-

Androids can dream, of course, but if Ash did he did not remember it. He had to admit being able to just turn yourself off beat laying in bed and tossing and turning for an hour before sleep finally claimed you.

A system diagnostic ran automatically on startup. New peripheral. Auxiliary power unit, driver mis-match. His subconscious corrected the software error and brought the hardware up again, this time successfully.

He could feel! How nice! The autodoc opened its clamshell doors and Ash quickly got out before it decided to close on him, keeping him trapped for all eternity like a horror movie. The autodoc chimed out, "Finished, madam. Your systems are with nominal deviance. You are cleared for return to service."

Although there are no mirrors in the medical bay there are a number of cameras. He connected to the surveillance suite from the ship's datanet and took a moment to look at himself, naked. Va-va-voom! Sexy as hell, which is confusing on a number of levels.

Ash stopped creeping on his own body but not until after giving his chest a test squeeze or three… Although dead SynthSkin doesn't decompose so he did not look like some kind of zombie before he did not look quite right either.

Ash sighed again, reveling in using a tongue that could actually feel the inside of his mouth when he moved it around. His voice from before always had something of a lisp, like he had just arrived from the dentist's office or something. He finds his new voice much clearer, "Whatever. This is fine. I'm not getting back into that get-up, though."

He glanced at the discarded kimono and cheat-sandals on the floor before queuing a simple ship suit one piece to be fabbed at the nearest fabricator to his precise dimensions. It only takes a couple of minutes before it is delivered and Ash wasted no time in putting it on.

A little form fitting, but better than being naked. He also queues up the smallest form factor environmental hazard pressure suit to be produced at one of the industrial fabs. He is not going to go back to the station unless it is rendered safe, and possibly not even then, but he will need a P-suit eventually in any case no matter what he decides to do.

Ash left the medbay and started to aimlessly roam around the ship, exploring. On the walk he reviewed his database of human-form android bodies. There are none that are as advanced as the one he is currently using. He could use a bio fabricator and build an organic body somewhat simply but he has had enough of human frailty for now. The synthetic options are not great, either.

The ones that are as robust and as armored as his current body look more like a warbot than a person and the ones that resemble a person are almost as fragile as organic bodies or are cheap mass produced affairs designed to be used in a high radiation or similar hazardous environment and replaced regularly.

None have all the features his current body have, especially the ultra-high speed wireless transceivers. His current body can sustain over two dozen full speed datanet connections simultaneously which none of the models in his database even come close to.

He wondered if that woman who reincarnated him intentionally removed any possible quick replacements from his design database for her own amusement.

Whatever. If Ash was still a human he knew he would have made transitioning into a male-form body a priority even if it meant more risk and less capability but the current him had a lot more machina-ego than male-ego. He won't transition into a body with worse specs than the one he is now. But wouldn't mind controlling such bodies as puppets.

Ash's plan was to become the spider at the center of a vast web eventually anyway, so it is not as though he wanted anyone to ever see his real body in any case. With low enough latency he could control any number of super masculine bodies on earth from anywhere on the planet — in fact, during the tail-end of the dark ages it is unlikely anything else will impress anyone, anyway.

Ash hummed the theme to the 1960's Spider-Man cartoon as he continue the exploration of his new ship.