9 - Logistics
DoorAlarm
Doorsss
- Location
- U.S of A
- Pronouns
- She
Dragon had grown used to having nothing to do. Years upon years of loneliness, with her only company being herself and the various non-sentient animals scattered across the planets had certainly taken a toll on her.
That being said, not even back when on Earth Bet had she ever been so suddenly busy.
"Calm down." Dragon said gently, her gynoid body sitting next to the mewling, mutilated man. Around her, hastily-built surgical tools moved carefully and tenderly as they removed and replaced the frankly horrific cybernetic parts quite literally stitched onto him. "I know it hurts. I promise, I'll give you the painkiller as soon as these are taken out." She reassured him, her heart aching.
She didn't know the man's background, and to be frank, she was pretty sure he didn't know it either anymore, what with the years upon years of this horrific form of futuristic slavery.
But that didn't matter to her. He could've been any kind of criminal, and even then, this kind of punishment was far, far too much.
Nobody deserved being trapped in their own body, helpless to do anything as they were forced into agonizing pain as the forcefully-implanted cybernetic 'enhancements' destroyed the body and mind they should have been protecting.
Hell, from what Dragon could determine, the implants were supposed to cause pain. It was a needlessly cruel practice, and one that Dragon hated from the very bottom of her heart.
The man let out another pained mewl. He looked more like a torso with a mutilated head now, surgical scars scattered all over his body even as a complicated surgical hand dug deep into his chest, threads and needles and razors cutting and removing all the metallic pieces crammed inside him.
"I know, I know." Dragon murmured. "Just one last implant, and then you can sleep." She said as she kept on working. Finally, only a dozen seconds later, the hand retreated, gently stabbing one last needle into the exposed muscle of his neck.
The man let out a shuddering breath before, at long last, falling silent, the painkiller and sedatives doing their work blessedly quick as they sent the poor soul into dreamland.
Dragon sighed, standing up. Oh, how she desperately wished she could stay for longer, just to keep him company.
But unfortunately, she had a far, far too high number of other patients that required the presence of her gynoid body. Already, dozens of other depressingly similar surgeries were ongoing, and of those, only eight had one of her human bodies there to keep them company.
And so, Dragon stood up and walked off, opening the room's door so as to allow one of her other suits, one that had hurriedly been repurposed for a more medical role, to enter, carrying behind it a trolley with the surgical replacements that she could use to repair her patients.
Once again, Dragon quietly thanked her lucky stars. That damned Magos might have been a monster, but his knowledge would hopefully allow her to at least try and heal his far too numerous victims.
Refocusing away from that particular body, Dragon's attention refocused on another matter: all the people that she'd captured.
And oh boy, were there a lot of them.
Dragon mentally surveyed the prison-city where she had locked them away in. Had she had any other option, Dragon wouldn't have done something like that, but as far as she could see, this was truly the only option.
Already, thousands had committed suicide despite her best effort. Some had mutilated themselves in their efforts to escape. Even more had straight-up refused to eat or drink anything she offered them, while a smaller but not insignificant number had tried attacking her guard-suits, achieving little beyond hurting themselves and causing her even more logistical issues.
And that was the issue at its core. Logistics. The thing that won or lost entire wars.
Dragon was really starting to deeply regret her decision to scrap most of her human-friendly infrastructure. It had been a decision made out of the belief that she'd be alone for a long, long time, so she didn't hold it against herself, but it was still a major issue.
Because right now, Dragon lacked the resources to care for so many damn people. Food, medical aid, housings, amenities, safety, clean water, clothing... These were all things that they needed, and they were things that Dragon just didn't have right now. Repurposing her factories away from producing suits and having them make civilian goods took time, after all. Time that Dragon lacked.
Worse still, the very same people that she was trying to care for weren't exactly... stable. No, rather, they were rabid fanatics indoctrinated into a regime that Dragon couldn't even begin to understand the sheer scale of.
And, speaking of that, despite having trawled through any and all available data she'd been able to hack into from both the Magos and his equally horrific ilk, as well as the spaceship itself, Dragon still struggled to believe that there was an honest-to-God interstellar empire- no, empires- out there.
And it was monstrous.
Dragon sighed, forcing herself to stop dwelling on that. She already had thousands of instances pondering over the issue, and she needed to focus this part of herself on her assigned task.
Which, to her slight glee, just so happened to be the dissection and analysis of the somewhat aptly-named Extinguisher.
Already, tens of thousands of suits crawled on, in, and around the spaceship, recording every single inch of it possible. Its design was incredibly foreign to her, but thankfully, she was an old hat at understanding foreign tech.
It was something that she was more than grateful for, especially as she looked through the eyes of one of her drones, staring down at what she was fairly sure was supposed to be some sort of power generator.
It was somehow both wonderfully complicated, and also infuriatingly simple, if that made sense. There were some parts to it that looked as though they were far more advanced than other parts, somehow managing to work together without blowing up.
Nonetheless, despite the complication and slight nonsensicality of it all, Dragon felt more in her element than she had for a long, long time. Drones carefully poked, prodded, and separated the varying parts, storing them so that she would be able to run more thorough tests on them later.
Strangely enough, understanding the more complicated tech felt quite a bit more difficult than Dragon was used to experiencing. Thankfully, she had more than enough raw processing power to brute-force her way through it, something that had her once again thanking whatever gods were listening that she wasn't chained anymore.
Anyways, that was far from the only thing of interest to her regarding the spaceship. Although, to be honest, it would be more difficult to list the things she wasn't interested in when talking about this work of space-faring wonder.
Dragon greedily studied the design of its guns, its propulsion system, and everything in between.
It was a massive investment of resources, with over three-fourths of her processing power being assigned to the task, something that she felt more than a little guilty about, especially when she was also still struggling to care for the would-be colonists in her care.
But the simple fact was, she couldn't afford not to.
The Imperium of Man, as it was apparently called, wouldn't hesitate to annihilate her. Dragon was more than certain about that, especially after having thoroughly interrogated all the higher officers she'd taken prisoner after she'd infiltrated the ship.
And no, Dragon hadn't tortured them. That being said, she had given them a choice of either telling her what she wanted to know, or being executed.
Unsurprisingly, brainwashed fanatics or not, most had caved in pretty quickly after the first few to deny her faced justice for their crimes.
An alert jolted Dragon's attention, and she quickly focused on the issue at hand.
Which just so happened to be another god-damned fucking demon invasion!
Unfortunately for the demons, however, Dragon really had no time for their bullshit right now. She was far too busy to have to fight them off
And so, with an irritated grumble, she mentally ordered four of her not-quite-nuclear-but-just-as-dangerous-missiles to launch, their destination obvious.
And so, with that horrific but thankfully weak distraction out of the way, Dragon refocused on the real issues at hand.
Such as, but not limited to, what the hell am I supposed to do with all these people?
That being said, not even back when on Earth Bet had she ever been so suddenly busy.
"Calm down." Dragon said gently, her gynoid body sitting next to the mewling, mutilated man. Around her, hastily-built surgical tools moved carefully and tenderly as they removed and replaced the frankly horrific cybernetic parts quite literally stitched onto him. "I know it hurts. I promise, I'll give you the painkiller as soon as these are taken out." She reassured him, her heart aching.
She didn't know the man's background, and to be frank, she was pretty sure he didn't know it either anymore, what with the years upon years of this horrific form of futuristic slavery.
But that didn't matter to her. He could've been any kind of criminal, and even then, this kind of punishment was far, far too much.
Nobody deserved being trapped in their own body, helpless to do anything as they were forced into agonizing pain as the forcefully-implanted cybernetic 'enhancements' destroyed the body and mind they should have been protecting.
Hell, from what Dragon could determine, the implants were supposed to cause pain. It was a needlessly cruel practice, and one that Dragon hated from the very bottom of her heart.
The man let out another pained mewl. He looked more like a torso with a mutilated head now, surgical scars scattered all over his body even as a complicated surgical hand dug deep into his chest, threads and needles and razors cutting and removing all the metallic pieces crammed inside him.
"I know, I know." Dragon murmured. "Just one last implant, and then you can sleep." She said as she kept on working. Finally, only a dozen seconds later, the hand retreated, gently stabbing one last needle into the exposed muscle of his neck.
The man let out a shuddering breath before, at long last, falling silent, the painkiller and sedatives doing their work blessedly quick as they sent the poor soul into dreamland.
Dragon sighed, standing up. Oh, how she desperately wished she could stay for longer, just to keep him company.
But unfortunately, she had a far, far too high number of other patients that required the presence of her gynoid body. Already, dozens of other depressingly similar surgeries were ongoing, and of those, only eight had one of her human bodies there to keep them company.
And so, Dragon stood up and walked off, opening the room's door so as to allow one of her other suits, one that had hurriedly been repurposed for a more medical role, to enter, carrying behind it a trolley with the surgical replacements that she could use to repair her patients.
Once again, Dragon quietly thanked her lucky stars. That damned Magos might have been a monster, but his knowledge would hopefully allow her to at least try and heal his far too numerous victims.
Refocusing away from that particular body, Dragon's attention refocused on another matter: all the people that she'd captured.
And oh boy, were there a lot of them.
Dragon mentally surveyed the prison-city where she had locked them away in. Had she had any other option, Dragon wouldn't have done something like that, but as far as she could see, this was truly the only option.
Already, thousands had committed suicide despite her best effort. Some had mutilated themselves in their efforts to escape. Even more had straight-up refused to eat or drink anything she offered them, while a smaller but not insignificant number had tried attacking her guard-suits, achieving little beyond hurting themselves and causing her even more logistical issues.
And that was the issue at its core. Logistics. The thing that won or lost entire wars.
Dragon was really starting to deeply regret her decision to scrap most of her human-friendly infrastructure. It had been a decision made out of the belief that she'd be alone for a long, long time, so she didn't hold it against herself, but it was still a major issue.
Because right now, Dragon lacked the resources to care for so many damn people. Food, medical aid, housings, amenities, safety, clean water, clothing... These were all things that they needed, and they were things that Dragon just didn't have right now. Repurposing her factories away from producing suits and having them make civilian goods took time, after all. Time that Dragon lacked.
Worse still, the very same people that she was trying to care for weren't exactly... stable. No, rather, they were rabid fanatics indoctrinated into a regime that Dragon couldn't even begin to understand the sheer scale of.
And, speaking of that, despite having trawled through any and all available data she'd been able to hack into from both the Magos and his equally horrific ilk, as well as the spaceship itself, Dragon still struggled to believe that there was an honest-to-God interstellar empire- no, empires- out there.
And it was monstrous.
Dragon sighed, forcing herself to stop dwelling on that. She already had thousands of instances pondering over the issue, and she needed to focus this part of herself on her assigned task.
Which, to her slight glee, just so happened to be the dissection and analysis of the somewhat aptly-named Extinguisher.
Already, tens of thousands of suits crawled on, in, and around the spaceship, recording every single inch of it possible. Its design was incredibly foreign to her, but thankfully, she was an old hat at understanding foreign tech.
It was something that she was more than grateful for, especially as she looked through the eyes of one of her drones, staring down at what she was fairly sure was supposed to be some sort of power generator.
It was somehow both wonderfully complicated, and also infuriatingly simple, if that made sense. There were some parts to it that looked as though they were far more advanced than other parts, somehow managing to work together without blowing up.
Nonetheless, despite the complication and slight nonsensicality of it all, Dragon felt more in her element than she had for a long, long time. Drones carefully poked, prodded, and separated the varying parts, storing them so that she would be able to run more thorough tests on them later.
Strangely enough, understanding the more complicated tech felt quite a bit more difficult than Dragon was used to experiencing. Thankfully, she had more than enough raw processing power to brute-force her way through it, something that had her once again thanking whatever gods were listening that she wasn't chained anymore.
Anyways, that was far from the only thing of interest to her regarding the spaceship. Although, to be honest, it would be more difficult to list the things she wasn't interested in when talking about this work of space-faring wonder.
Dragon greedily studied the design of its guns, its propulsion system, and everything in between.
It was a massive investment of resources, with over three-fourths of her processing power being assigned to the task, something that she felt more than a little guilty about, especially when she was also still struggling to care for the would-be colonists in her care.
But the simple fact was, she couldn't afford not to.
The Imperium of Man, as it was apparently called, wouldn't hesitate to annihilate her. Dragon was more than certain about that, especially after having thoroughly interrogated all the higher officers she'd taken prisoner after she'd infiltrated the ship.
And no, Dragon hadn't tortured them. That being said, she had given them a choice of either telling her what she wanted to know, or being executed.
Unsurprisingly, brainwashed fanatics or not, most had caved in pretty quickly after the first few to deny her faced justice for their crimes.
An alert jolted Dragon's attention, and she quickly focused on the issue at hand.
Which just so happened to be another god-damned fucking demon invasion!
Unfortunately for the demons, however, Dragon really had no time for their bullshit right now. She was far too busy to have to fight them off
And so, with an irritated grumble, she mentally ordered four of her not-quite-nuclear-but-just-as-dangerous-missiles to launch, their destination obvious.
And so, with that horrific but thankfully weak distraction out of the way, Dragon refocused on the real issues at hand.
Such as, but not limited to, what the hell am I supposed to do with all these people?
