LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 87: A Little Heavy
As we slowly but surely set out more and more comms buoys, the end of the workday had quickly come back into sight. The ‘night’-shift arrived to take over and the crew that was manning the bridge with us all left to go and grab some food. As for me, I was feeling incredibly tired. It was obvious that my couple of sick days had taken quite the toll on my energy level. Pretty much standing up all day didn’t really help with that fact either.
I was just wiping the sand out of my eyes; right outside of the bulkhead that led to the bridge, when Luna started to support me by wrapping my arm around herself.
“I think I can walk by myself, Luna.”
“You say that but your knees were wobbling.” She commented.
“Were they?”
“They were, Commander.” Ellie spoke over the local intercom.
“Ah shit… Okay, I should probably head to bed immediately after we visited you, Ellie.”
“If you want, you can come tomorrow.” This time Ellie spoke to me through my earpiece. “It is not that urgent.”
I shook my head. “No, I want to see what you are up to in there. Besides, I might be sick tomorrow again.”
“Is there nothing she can sit on in that room, Ellie?”
“I can make something happen.” She replied.
“Okay, then we will make our way there now. Before Lauren’s legs give out completely.”
“Understood.”
Luna supported me while we walked towards Ellie’s core. Luckily it wasn’t a very long walk.
When we arrived Ellie opened the door for us and we just walked on in encountering Eva who had already gotten to the room.
“I told you that you aren’t 100% yet.” Eva sighed as she beckoned us over. Next to here were a collection of little maintenance bots taking up a formation so they looked like a chair.
“Wait, Ellie, are you sure I can sit on them?”
“They are rather sturdy, Commander.” Ellie replied.
“I feel a bit guilty though…” I said as Luna guided me over, softly lowering me down on them. The relatively silent whirring of the maintenance bots’ servos made me feel even worse that I had to sit on them.
“Don’t worry, Commander. They are more than happy to support your weight.”
One of the little maintenance robots, which I remembered from its color to be Wowo, whistled at me using its servo motors. “You are a little cheeky, aren’t you?”
Luna giggled as Wowo made its servos whir twice in a short high pitch, making it sound like a little ‘hehe’.
“Have you thought about installing some voice mods in them?” I asked.
“Believe me, Commander. You don’t want them to have those. There’s a lot of personality in those little artificial bodies.”
“Hmmm.”
“Besides, they don’t really want them either.”
“Fair enough.” I patted Wowo on its top and then looked around the room. “Anyway, where is this little project you have been working on?” My eyes then landed on the opposite corner of the room where an object stood with a white blanket covering it. “... Was the white blanket truly necessary?”
“I asked the same.” Eva chuckled. “Apparently Eliie has developed quite a flair for the dramatic.
“Do you want me to reveal it now?” Ellie asked.
“Of course, Ellie, that’s why we are asking.”
“Then I will wait no longer.”
“Bobo, if you would.” Another maintenance droid rolled from underneath Ellie’s core and made its way to the blanketed object in the corner. It’s little arm extending to the top of the blanket and grabbing hold of it. “Behold, my stuff.” The little droid made an enthusiastic whirring sound while its siblings I was seated on did the same. It then drove back pulling the blanket off and it revealed… A heavily modified combat droid. Modified in a way to look very much like an adult woman, although she was still clearly mechanical.
“Ah, so this is what you did with that droid you wanted.”
Ellie didn’t reply. Instead, the droid in the corner of the room stood up and walked over to us. From up close the curves of the droid looked very impressive. In all honesty, if I didn’t know that Ellie had borrowed one of the combat droids, I would have a hard time recognizing it like this.
“Somehow it feels like I’m looking at something I shouldn’t…” Luna commented, putting her hands in front of her eyes.
“What’s the matter, Lieutenant-Commander?” Ellie’s voice came out of the droid. It actually sounded really natural even though the lips of the droid didn’t move.
“I think the matter is that the droid looks rather naked without clothes on, Ellie.” Eva replied. “It’s rather curvy with a smooth surface. It pretty much only does not have genitals and nipples…”
“Oh…” Ellie replied as the bot looked down at itself. “I hadn’t really thought about that.”
“I have to say that the musculature is rather impressive.” I said, admiring the droid’s body in front of me while I took off my vest. “Although I would like to ask you to put on my vest for at least a moment so you don’t intimidate my girlfriend too much.” I offered my vest by letting it hang from my index finger.
Ellie’s bot nodded and accepted my vest, dressing herself with it. Luckily I was a bit taller than her so it hid most of the elements that were embarrassing Luna. “Thank you, Commander. I wanted to blend in a little with the other marines when it comes to posture.”
“You might want to work a bit on the complexion in that case.” Eva smiled. “The metallic sheen is going to give you away rather quickly.”
“It’s still a bit of a work in progress, but I can already do this.” Eva pointed at her face to which it suddenly discolored, looking very much like human skin, although it did keep the reflective nature of the metal.
“Oh wow, how do you do that?” Luna asked, she had stopped hiding behind her hands and was now looking very closely at the bot’s skin.
“I’m sending a current through the upper layer of metallic skin which turns it invisible, projecting a different color underneath. It’s the result of me trying to experiment with active camouflage.” The fact that now a rather lifelike face didn’t move at all, did look a lot stranger than before though.
“Active camouflage? On such a small scale?”
“I thought that I should spend this opportunity not only to help myself but also to help the other ground troops and the ship at large. I think I have the basics down now but I need to refine it further so it’ll be able to be used by a soldier on the field. Right now it's not sustainable without a large power source. It needs to be able to be worn without the use of an exoskeleton after all.”
“How much does it weigh right now?” I asked, looking up and down Ellie’s body.
“A unmodified combat droid weighs about 450 kilograms. Modified I did actually manage to bring that down to 250 kilograms. But with an upgraded power core and the materials necessary for the active camouflage, that shot back up to 700 kilograms. Meaning this droid is also not really that mobile.”
“700 KG’s, damn.” I whistled. “I would never expect it to weigh that much just by looking at it. That would indeed not be very practical to carry around on your person. And that’s just for the surface area of a normal-sized person, right?”
Ellie nodded. “Although it doesn’t go up exponentially, we still gain a lot of efficiency with scale.”
“Do you need any more resources to develop this technology further? Just name it and you’ll have it.” Having active camouflage like this would be an immense tactical advantage to have in the field. This little project of Ellie definitely turned out a lot more important than what I could ever have imagined.
“Right now I don’t really need more resources, at least not any resources you can give me, Commander. I have to break my head on how to increase the efficiency and maybe if we can find some new materials out in the deep reaches of space that could help us… Apart from that extra steel would not really help much.”
“The supercomputer needs to break her head on things…” Eva crossed her arms and sighed. “I’m starting to feel really obsolete talking with you, Ellie.”
“Don’t worry, Doctor. Nothing can ever replace human ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking.”
“So we are important because of our creativity…” I replied. “Well, at least we still have a spot as painting monkeys when Ellie’s new world order gets introduced.”
“It’ll never go that far, Commander. At most I will see you as bio-trophies under the rule of mandatory pampering.”
“... That isn’t much better, Ellie.”
“Resistance is futile!” Ellie made her both laugh maniacally. It was very unsettling. But she swiftly switched to a more serious tone afterwards. “I am joking, of course.”
“Maybe you should leave the humor to us too, Ellie…” Eva shook her head with a chuckle.