She deactivated her Ban’Shar and continued dodging instead, trying to come up with some sort of plan to purloin more of those nano machines and add them to herself.
Then she realized she didn’t necessarily have to touch Khrusos with her palms to take the technology… had she not drawn out the nano machines through her knees and toes only moments before?
She focused, concentrating on the soles of her feet as she jumped across the thorax, while still doing her best to dodge those tentacles. Every time her feet made contact, she felt the foreign nano technology below her, and she called to it. Soon, with each touch of her soles to the metal surface, nano machines flowed in droves from Khrusos, swarming up into her legs, augmenting her calves, then legs.
She jumped around, continuing to take more and more of the machines as she avoided the attacks; her upper body began to expand as well, starting with her torso, then her arms, neck and head. As she continued to grow, her utility belt broke away, along with the pistols it held. Her Ban’Shar became swallowed by her expanding hands, so that she could no longer activate them.
The artificial skin of her face stretched at first, threatening to break, but then nano machines began to supplement its microfibers, too, so that it didn’t tear away, and instead expanded along with the rest of her body. The translucent dome that enveloped her head also grew.
Growing desperate, Khrusos threw his body to the ground, and rolled over, trying to crush her.
Her bigger body was lighter and less cumbersome than it should have been thanks to the lower gravity, and Rhea was able to readily leap onto the closest leg, grabbing onto it with her hands and swinging upward so that she landed on his underbelly. When she landed, she continued the nano machine drain via her soles.
Because she was larger, and thus made a bigger target, it was becoming harder to dodge the many appendages: she was unable to move away in time when Khrusos wrapped his legs around her.
But she didn’t actually mind. He squeezed tightly, trying to crush the life out of her, but all he was accomplishing was increasing the surface area from which she could draw nano machines. She siphoned them from all sides of her body now, taking from Khrusos’ underbelly, and the underside of the legs that enwrapped her. Instead of her body caving under the pressure, it expanded.
Khrusos seemed to be growing smaller while she became bigger. At first, she thought it might be an optical illusion that came with her own increase in size, but then she realized her enemy’s head was nearly level with her own, thanks to the overall decrease in his body mass. It was physically impossible for him to maintain his previous size, considering all the nano machines she had taken…
Khrusos abruptly released her and staggered away as if he had a taken a mortal blow. He dragged his eight-legged body toward the dome.
Rhea walked toward him relentlessly. She was almost the same height as he was now.
Those tentacles shot out, trying to bash her away, but she merely caught them, tucking them under one arm. She closed the distance and wrapped her other arm around his head and put him in a headlock.
He swung his thorax and abdomen toward her, and pressed his legs against her, trying to break free. He could not.
She continued to drain nano machines from him. She released the tentacles with her other hand and reached under his thorax, wrapping her fingers around the joint where it connected to the head. Then she pulled backward with both arms, bending that shrinking head backward, ever backward… until it snapped right off.
The severed parts fell away, and the headless body capsized; the legs stretched violently into the air for a moment before crimping and spasming.
The head section remained motionless, its tentacles hanging limp on the red Martian rock.
A small, circular panel opened in the middle, and the top of a cylindrical glass tank emerged.
Is that what I think it is?
She gripped the metal tip between her thumb and forefinger and slid the tank free for further examination.
Within, a human brain floated, bathed in a translucent yellow fluid. Billions of fibers ran from the cortex to a small, annular structure at the bottom: the internal portion of the mind-machine interface. Small tubes emerged from a rectangle at the center of that ring, and connected to the brainstem, supplying it with blood.
The external portion of the mind-machine interface was accessible via the metal cap at the bottom of the tank. Several indicators flashed along its rim.
Rhea cocked her head, then pressed her finger into the metal. Her base nano machines swarmed onto the unit, drilling holes and vanishing inside, clandestinely integrating themselves with the internal circuitry. She smiled wickedly as her technology took hold.
The slave becomes the master.
She didn’t see an oxygen canister attached anywhere to the unit, so she estimated she had about ten minutes before the brain died of hypoxia.
She wrapped her large hand protectively around the cylinder, and then carried it toward the dome.
With her free hand, she climbed onto the concrete base, then clambered onto the glass itself. She was careful not to press too hard when she formed hand and footholds, as she didn’t want to puncture or otherwise shatter the glass composite; she left a series of depressions in the surface in her wake.
Inside, several police drones followed her advance, but otherwise, so far security forces hadn’t deployed any attackers into the Martian atmosphere outside the dome. She wondered if they were aware that she held the brain of the leader of the free world in her hands.
She reached the hole Khrusos had made in the dome above the palace, which was completely
