Daughters of Demeter

=::= Piper's PoV; Twenty-Nine Years Ago =::=

"Babe?" I said into the commlink clutched in my left hand. "I could really use some air support right about now."

My right hand was on the grip of my carbine, while the weight of it was supported by the strap over my shoulder. I was crouched behind a couple shipping containers, and so far none of the thugs had got the bright idea of shooting through the large thin-walled boxes. On the other hand I had no idea what was inside them, maybe something too valuable to shoot. Or too dangerous.

It was a risky job from the start, and things just went from bad to worse. I showed them the goods, but instead of coming up with a strongbox full of cash they just started shooting. And there were a lot more of them than we bargained for.

All three of us had bad vibes about this job right from the start, but we took it because money was tight and we couldn't afford to pass up the kind of coin this customer was offering. We took precautions, we tried to be prepared for the inevitable double-cross.

Gabe was with the ship, he had the Demeter at a safe location off everyone's radar. Me and El came out in one of the shuttles, and she only stayed long enough for me to hop out with the goods before she dusted off. Her job was to swoop in and save my ass when things went to hell.

Unfortunately things went to hell a little harder than we expected. I'd been wounded but so far I'd been lucky, it was just a little worse than a graze on my left upper arm. My immediate problem was there were over a dozen of them against one of me, and this was their turf.

El's voice was quiet and tinny in the little sounder in the small device, but I could still picture the grim determined smile on her face as she responded. "Cavalry's inbound, fifteen seconds. Keep your head down, I don't want to damage that pretty face of yours."

I couldn't help laughing, despite how bad my situation was. "I thought you said girls like you liked scars?"

"Oh we do, but there's a limit you know?" she responded with a giggle. Then her voice became serious again, "Coming in hot."

I was a slightly better pilot than Master Sergeant Talwyn, but what she lacked in skill she more than made up for with guts and bravado. Or maybe Ellery was just nuts. Whatever it was, I loved her for it.

She was flying so low and fast the shuttle almost seemed to come out of nowhere. And it was upside-down, with the big overhead loading door wide open. I got a brief glimpse of my ex-marine girlfriend in the split-second she was overhead.

Then I hit the deck, as a half second after she'd passed the whole drop zone was briefly lit-up. She must have dropped a half dozen grenades, and they all went off within a second of each other.

As soon as it was over I was on my feet. I took a quick glance around the corner of the container I was using for cover, and counted five of the bastards were down. Two more were wounded, but someone spotted me and opened fire.

I ducked back but it seemed like they finally figured out their HVP rounds would go through the shipping container I was using for cover. The burst of automatic fire tore a row of ragged holes out the back of the metal wall, and the last one caught me in the gut.

The impact knocked the wind out of me, but a few decades of training and conditioning would keep me moving as long as I was capable.

I charged out from behind the useless cover, carbine raised to my shoulder. I could hear El's voice through the commlink in my left hand but whatever she said was lost to the sound of gunfire as I squeezed off a burst and dropped one of the crooks on the far side of the landing area.

Someone off to my left started shooting, and I heard the whine of bullets passing close to my head. I dropped to one knee as I turned, and brought him down with another careful burst.

When I struggled to get back up on my feet I knew I was in worse shape than I thought. Then I felt another bullet hit me in the chest and suddenly I found myself on the ground, staring up at the night sky overhead. I was having trouble breathing and my legs weren't moving. I knew at that point I was probably done-for.

El's voice came through the little commlink again, but I dropped it when I fell and it lay out of my reach.

It almost made me laugh, to think after all the years in the Marine Corps, after all the fighting, the skirmishes, the special-ops combat missions, I'd finally gotten myself killed by some two-bit thugs on the ass-end of an agricultural world in a lonely frontier sector.

Then again, it was bound to happen sooner or later. At age fifty-three I was definitely too old for this shit.

The sound of the shuttle caught my attention and I turned my head slightly to look. El was coming in slow and she was too high up. It was a good position for her to scope the scene but it left her way too vulnerable.

The shuttle was upright this time with the door open, and my girl was actually leaning out the side with her assault rifle. I had no idea how she was flying the damn thing at the same time, the shuttle didn't have an autopilot. Nonetheless there was my crazy-ass girlfriend, hanging out the side of the shuttle letting loose with her hardware like an avenging angel raining death from above in precise three-shot bursts.

For a second or two I thought it was going to be ok. I thought she was going to pull it off and get me out. After I was all patched up we'd laugh about the whole thing over drinks with Gabe. Then maybe I'd try once more to convince El that the two of us ought to retire, settle down together somewhere safe.

That's when I heard a roar and screech from somewhere off to my right. I knew the sound, it was a shoulder-launched missile. I barely had a chance to register the noise before I saw the bright streak of its thruster as it lanced upwards into the belly of the shuttle.

The concussion from the explosion knocked away what little breath I had, and I couldn't even call out as I watched El's shuttle spiral out of sight somewhere above me. A second or two later I felt the impact through the ground I was laying on, followed by the dull thud of a secondary explosion. The night sky lit up as the wrecked shuttle burned.

After that it was like time stopped. I'd known El for two and a half decades. We'd been through war together. We survived a shipwreck together, got rescued together. Fled the Imperium and the corps together. We'd spent the past decade on the Demeter together, working for Gabe.

I honestly couldn't imagine a life without her, but that didn't seem like it was going to be a problem for much longer. I was barely aware of the sensation as one more shot hit me in the gut.

My eyes focused briefly on the guy who was standing over me. I recognized him, he was the client's right-hand man.

He sneered at me, then crushed my dropped commlink under his boot. He picked up my carbine then took my lucky pistol from its holster, and finally tore the faded insignia off my jacket.

Apart from El, those were the last two things I had left from my time in the marines. He probably wanted them as trophies, proof that he'd killed a special-ops soldier. Then him and the other two survivors turned and walked away.

Rather than a quick merciful death I was left to slowly bleed out, in pain and without any way to call for help.

Fortunately it wasn't long before I slipped into unconsciousness. The last thing I thought about was that I'd be seeing Ellery again soon enough.

Except that wasn't how it played out.

When I regained consciousness I found myself laying on the deck in the Demeter's cargo hold, with Gabe crouched over me. He'd just hit me with a trauma shot and an extra dose of adrenaline.

I couldn't talk, my mouth was parched and I was too weak. Breathing almost felt like too much work.

All I could do was lay there and watch Gabe as he gradually used up all the supplies in the first-aid kit in a desperate attempt to keep me alive.

I could see in his eyes, he knew it was a losing battle. It was a miracle I'd lasted long enough for him to find me in the first place.

My eyes closed again as I tried to let myself drift off. There wasn't much pain, until my friend and captain hauled me up off the deck.

I outweighed him and I was five or six inches taller, but he managed to carry me into the secondary hold. Then he set me down on something soft.

My eyes fluttered open and I realized I was in that healing pod thing, the auto-doc we salvaged a year earlier. I'd almost forgotten about it, ever since we figured out the power feeds and wired it up it was just another fixture in the ship. Another random piece of junk in our hold.

Gabe gave me a hopeful look, then he reached over to where I knew the little control panel was. I closed my eyes again as the door rotated closed and sealed me into darkness.

A few seconds later my eyes opened onto a strange scene.

I found myself in a plain white room. It was about three meters square, and I couldn't see any doors or any other way in or out. There was no obvious source of light, yet the room seemed to be well-lit and I could see clearly.

Most surprising was the fact that I was standing upright. I could breath fine, there was no pain. In fact I didn't even seem to be injured anymore. When I glanced down I couldn't see any blood stains in my fatigues. I couldn't even find any holes in my clothes.

To my left was some white text, just floating in the air without any obvious source.

"Patient Briefing"
". ."

And the last notable detail was that I wasn't alone. A strange woman stood opposite me.

She was more than half a foot shorter than me, I estimated her height at about five-foot-eight. She looked somewhere in her early- to mid-thirties. She wore nondescript dark slacks and a light-grey blouse, and plain black shoes on her feet. Her hair was shoulder-length wavy blonde, and her eyes looked blue-grey. She was sort of attractive, but nothing spectacular. She appeared to be in good shape, and her body was sort of an average build.

She gave me a polite, friendly smile and said "Greetings Chief Warrant Officer Clark. I am the AI controlling this Re/Gen capsule. I'm sure you have as many questions for me as I do for you."

• • • • •

"This is impossible," I said for probably the twentieth time. "It's gotta be some kind of drug-induced dream."

The AI sighed, "I assure you it is not. I'm sorry, I truly am. I wish there was some other way to help you, but this is all I can do. Despite what you've been told, I am not an 'auto doc' or a 'healing pod'. I'm certainly not a 'self-contained hospital'. I am a field-spec Re/Gen capsule and my functionality is limited."

We'd been through this twice already, and I still couldn't believe it.

It felt like I'd been in this white room for the past hour, arguing with the woman who claimed to be a computer program. Both her and the room were part of the healing pod's software, and while I was in here with her my body was slowly dying in that big black tube in the Demeter's hold.

About the only useful medical stuff she'd been able to do for me was tell me exactly how fucked I was.

My spleen and one kidney were toast. My right lung had a hole clean through it. And my spine had been neatly severed by the shot that brought me down. She estimated I had less than an hour before I bled out internally, and even if Gabe could somehow stop the bleeding I was still fucked because of the spinal injury and all the other internal damage.

There was tech to help heal that sort of shit, but it was expensive. There was no way Gabe had that kind of money laying around, and no way he could earn it working solo. Even if I was healthy enough to help him it'd take us a solid year or more to raise that kind of coin. Which was moot anyways because I wasn't going to last another hour, let alone a year.

Unless I let this crazy healing pod do its thing. That old bastard who had us salvage it got one thing right, the pod could fix or heal damn near anything. With one huge caveat.

It would take my body apart piece by piece, then use those pieces as raw material to build me a brand-new body from scratch. The new one would be perfectly healthy, genetically enhanced, young strong and fit.

Only catch was it'd be a girl.

"I can't fucking believe this," I sighed as I paced back and forth in the small square room. "That's it? Those are my options? Die, or you'll turn me into a woman?"

The AI woman responded apologetically, "I am truly sorry. As I've explained, there's only so much I can do. I don't have access to male body files and I lack both the hardware and software to do an intake scan. The files I have are all in peak physical condition and perfect health, but they are all women."

"Can you fix me back to normal later?" I asked. "I mean, is this process reversible later on if we can find normal medical help?"

The blonde shook her head, "I'm afraid not. Once it begins your current body will be used to build the new one. The current one will not be recoverable."

"So it's a one-way trip," I stated. "If I do this, it's permanent."

She looked apologetic again, but she nodded in confirmation.

"Fuck," I sighed.

For maybe the fourth time in the past hour I wondered how I was going to explain this to El, and for the fourth time I remembered she was dead. Once again that realization took the fight out of me, and I slumped down onto the large chair the AI had created for me.

I ran a hand over my face and sighed. On the one hand I wasn't sure I wanted to go on without El, and I definitely wasn't sure I wanted what the AI had to offer. Life, but nothing like the life I was used to. On the other hand, I didn't have to wonder what El would say. She'd smack me across the back of my head and tell me to man-up and live.

The options and potential outcomes ran back and forth in my head a few more times, before I finally reached a decision.

"Ok," I stated. "Do it, get it over with before I change my mind."

She hesitated, "Do you want to look at the options? As I said, there's thirty-"

"No," I cut her off. "I said get on with it. If we drag this out any more I'm going to change my mind again."

The woman nodded, "Very well, I will select what I feel to be the best match for you. Chief Warrant Officer Clark, do you consent to the Re/Gen process?"

"Yes," I muttered, resigned to my fate.

In a soft voice the AI told me, "Please relax. In a moment you'll slip into a deep sleep. I'll be here when you wake, and we can talk again."

I'd been ignoring that floating text to one side, but I noticed it changed. A moment later everything faded to black.

"Processing"
"12:29:59"