Both of the men grew silent after the medicae’s comment, and Jada took a deep breath as she did her best to relax her body. They all stood in silence for a moment, before the young woman spoke.
“Vorhold. I spent months underground, fighting every hostile we could find, and eventually, I was captured by something we called the Stalker. The man I was going to marry died during my rescue, his name was George Tuck,” said Jada, an edge of steel creeping into her voice as she noticed the next canister of serum beginning to glow while the Rack spun up for another cycle. “Then I was on Gedra Prime, earning my coins. How long was I under? Felt like weeks.”
“No, Jada,” said Marius as he depressed the action on the Rack, causing the hypodermic needles from the serum and the nutrient cocktail to pierce the young woman’s flesh again, and as they began pumping her full of fluids once more, he added, “One night cycle.”
“How many more?” asked Jada in a strained voice as her body began to react violently to the serum.
Marius stood up to leave, looking at Poe for a moment before he turned and left. The warrior walked over to Jada and placed his hand in hers. She involuntarily gripped his hand, squeezing it so hard because of the spasms that even with his enhanced flesh, the man grimaced with pain.
“This will be the next six weeks of your life,” answered Poe with a look of sincere concern in his eyes, “And if you die, know that it would have been an honor fighting at your side. Your deeds on Gedra Prime were beyond impressive, and as you return to Vorhold, please know that every man and woman among us is pulling for you.”
Jada was unable to answer, as her lips had pulled back across her teeth from seizures in her face. Her body strained against the bindings of the Rack and Poe looked at her for a moment longer before leaving.
The former marine lost sight of Poe and in his place stood the Stalker in the Dark.
It continued like that for what seemed to Jada’s individual perspective as years, so long and excruciating was her ordeal that over and over she had to summon up every last scrap of willpower she possessed just to stay sane. The pain was her anchor, and soon, she began to use that pain as a weapon against her hallucinations, continuously bringing herself back to the intense suffering of reality.
It was a natural reaction of the mind to retreat from full awareness of the body during acute trauma. Jada began to understand that it was this mental mastery of her body’s instinctual reactions that the others had been encouraging her to strive for.
She had no idea when it happened, but as the most recent serum injection’s effects peaked, Jada realized that she was so effortlessly focused on the pain that she suffered no hallucinations at all. In spite of her body’s desire to retreat into fantasy and unconsciousness, she held herself in a conscious and focused state.
The former marine flexed different muscles in her body, and though she was still bound to the table, she could feel the very power within them, how much more muscular she was than when she first lay upon the table.
The scents and sounds of the simple room positively assaulted her awareness, and she had to work to filter out the noise and to focus upon what she chose. For hours she worked at it, and eventually managed to reach a point where she could consciously affect how much raw input she was receiving from the plainly furnished chamber. Perhaps that was part of why they put so little in the room with her, thought Jada once she was been able to harness this newfound perceptive prowess.
After the next serum treatment, she found that managing the pain was second nature and pushing the pain aside took only a small portion of her attention. With her pain internally managed, she was able to delve deeply into her new senses.
She discovered that Marius had moved several items around, nothing important, just a few bits of rubbish, his datapad, and a few of the potted plants that were kept on board ship to keep the air somewhat more filtered. He had been testing her, she realized, just to see how much attention to detail she was capable of handling while also managing her pain.
Finally, without warning, Marius entered the room with Poe, who seemed rather excited to see her.
“Jada,” said Marius, his usually impassive face revealing a thin smile of satisfaction, “You have completed the full battery of injections and the first stage of your gene therapy is complete.”
“What’s the second stage?” asked Jada, not wishing to make small talk, “More injections?”
“You’re all done with that,” Poe replied, beaming as he helped Marius unfasten Jada’s bonds and help the woman shakily to her feet. “Now comes the fun part, combat training.”
“Your body is nothing like you remember, and given the fact that you spent your entire life in your former body, this new one will require some getting used to,” stated Marius as Jada leaned on him slightly so that she could regain her balance after so many weeks of laying prone. “Please see for yourself.”
Jada allowed Marius and Poe to help her walk to a full-body mirror, and she saw herself for the first time in weeks.
The former marine had kept her mocha-colored skin and jet black hair, even her yellow-tinged eyes, the result of living so close to a sulphurite refinery back on Baen 6, but as she looked closer, she could see that she was positively rippling with tightly corded muscles, so much so that she was straining the surface tension of her jumpsuit. For a moment, she experienced a tinge of modesty at how fully displayed her anatomy was as it pushed against the fabric.
It was then that she realized that she now stood an inch or so taller than Poe, who weeks before had looked down at her, even without his armor.
Jada started to realize that it wasn’t so much that they had changed who she was, more that they had used their technology to make her more of what she already was.
Without her honed soldier’s body as a starting point, the therapy would have torn a civilian to pieces. Without years of experience with the horrors of war, her mind would have unraveled completely and she’d have been left a comatose shell. No wonder civilians, even the rich ones, were not flocking to this double-edged miracle of science and technology, thought Jada, as she marveled at herself.
The former marine knew that she had been turned into a living weapon, and the thought of that was both terribly exciting and somehow melancholy, as now there was absolutely no returning to civilian life. Not that she’d ever had any intention of doing so; she had been intent on being a Reaper for life, even after falling in love with Tuck. The only difference now, after the fighting on Gedra Prime, was that she could pursue a higher form of warfare as a member of the Merchants Militant.
“I don’t think my hand will really fit the old Grotto combat rifle anymore,” breathed Jada as she pushed gently away from the two men to stand on her own, before holding her hand up to her face to clench it into a fist while she looked sideways at Poe. “Time to get some bigger guns.”
Poe smiled at Jada and saluted her in the Dire Sword way by pressing his fist to his opposite shoulder before saying, “The arms and armor of the recent slain, by tradition, are passed to the newest recruits. Guns you will have, Jada, welcome to the Dire Swords.”
2. BIGGER GUNS AND BETTER PAY
The pain never went away. It stayed with a Dire Sword for the rest of their lives, even for veteran mercs who survived long enough to retire and had long since stopped taking the routine booster treatments.
In order to thrive in her modified body, Jada had to make peace with that pain and learn to manage it through meditation and breathing exercises.
For weeks after the treatments ended, she was confined to living quarters adjacent to the med bay. Poe insisted it was rather small and threadbare compared to the private quarters she would enjoy once fully initiated into the mercenary company. Jada found that the small chamber suited her just fine for the time being.