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Darkness greeted my eyes. Not a complete darkness, a darkness effused with a thin edge of light. The crest at the top of my head couldn't move because of the KREEPcrete it was pressing against. My breasts were compressed against the ground, but they felt fake: like scales stretched over water balloons.

When I tried to push myself off the ground my arms flopped instead of doing anything useful. I tried moving my legs, my ears, my tail, my fingers, my toes... They twitched in unanticipated directions.

Why was I here? Had I fallen? I tried to contact the CCAI, but, I couldn't even access Kamehameha Station's wireless. At least I now knew where I was based on the ID of the wireless network.

I couldn't find an internal manual for this body. In every body one could buy or rent, there were default parameters in case something like this happened. This body was devoid of them.

The wireless network continued to reject me because all my cryptographic keys and passwords were missing. Since I couldn't even get into one account, there was no way for me to reset my login information for others. I didn't exist.

Without internet access, I couldn't get the files I needed for operating the various functions of this body. I rumbled in frustration, but it didn't sound right. Too rough. I was myself in mind only. I tasked my mobility AI with learning what every muscle did. Pedantic trial and error followed.

Teaming up with every cyberwarfare AI I had, we looked for a way into the network. I'd exhausted all the easy solutions. Kamehameha Station deserved their reputation for security.

I finally got an account set up, but I had to do a pretty ugly hack job. And it was only a matter of time until I'd be blocked. I still had none of my encryption keys or passwords. The CCAI wasn't responding to any of my queries.

I'd gotten into a booth to transfer my mind back to Gualmeeta. Two months ago.

Abandoned.

Had the CCAI really abandoned me? When was I transferred into this body? What woke me up?

My AI found a library for this body's sensory information and built an interface. The light coming from the thin edge was red. I was in a ball, not sprawled out on the floor. I wasn't pressed against KREEPcrete, I was pressed against something less heat conductive, less dense. It was probably a rough-textured bioplastic, like the type that supply crates were made out of.

I thrashed around like an angry cat trying to get a better feel of my container. My body was in a position only a rag doll would be comfortable in. One of my arms was going between my legs, the other was pressed along my back. I'd been literally thrown in this crate. And I wanted to slap whoever had done it, but all I could manage right now was slapping myself.

Gaining coordination while in this box was going to be like trying to grab falling snow with chopsticks. Near-impossible.

This was the sort of container people latched from the outside. I pushed trying to stand or unbend. Nothing. If I didn't get out of here, my obituary was going to start with: Saanah passed away while locked in a supply crate. Cause of death was acute frustration.

One of my AIs found information about the controls for my arms. My left one had a mode-locked laser similar to what I was normally outfitted with., but my right arm didn't have the narrow-beam maser I was expecting. It was a beefy pulsed-high-voltage generator.

I got an arc to form between my pointer finger and my thumb and my hand heated up rapidly. Dumping power into my arm, I felt strange. Little scales all over my body fluffed out as if they were feathers. This body could deal with such high temperatures that I soon felt like a giant ember. I only needed heat the plastic enough to weaken it. Then I could stretch the area where the clasps were affixed.

Moving my arcing hand up to the backplate for the metal clasp, I ran current through it.

The plastic between the backplate and the front of the clasp softened like a slice of warm mozzarella cheese. I pushed against the lid with my foot and that side came open.

I contorted and grumbled as I moved my hand to the next clasp. Controlling my voltage was like trying to aim a gun while in the middle of a sea storm. I erred on the side of way too much. Burnt plastic and ozone. I closed my nose and kept going. I wanted out!

After two more clasps, the lid was no longer secured. I popped out of the box in triumph surrounded by a rising cloud of acrid smoke. When the fire alarm went off, I jumped. And fell forward causing the box and me to careen toward the floor six meters below.

The resulting faceplant made me groan.

Seeing that there was only that one puff of smoke and no real fire, the safety AI shut off the alarm. A maintenance robot came to inspect the area where the crate had been. Its six spidery legs and four manipulators undulated as it came down to where I was. The sphere that was its sensory cluster looked at me and the crate from different angles. As it carefully untangled me from the crate, I impersonated a mannequin so that it wouldn't take an interest in me.

My flesh was deformed pressing against the floor, but I couldn't feel that deformation. I couldn't feel my breasts squishing against my legs. Only the fact that they were touching. I was hollow: a passenger in this body and not an inhabitant of it.

Learning how to move was going to bring me unwanted attention. I had no choice. A few minutes after the maintenance robot left carrying the damaged crate, I returned to animacy. Uncoordinated. Inefficient. My muscles were an orchestra without a conductor. I cried in frustration without my eyes getting wet.

Another maintenance robot came up to me and said, "Would you like to go to the infirmary?" The full-spectrum lights turned on.

"No thank you," I said.

"Would you like me to get help?"

"No thank you. Please give me at least twenty minutes before you ask about further intervention."

"As you wish." It sat back on its six legs and watched.

Falling to the ground was the foundation of my new learning process.

Four minutes and I was standing. Five minutes and I found more information about my systems online. This body was either a failed prototype or a pastiche of spare parts. I was thinking it was the latter.

As I integrated the new data, I noticed the room. It was a dome two hundred meters in diameter and twenty-five meters tall in the center. Crates of several shapes and sizes were stacked throughout the room with automated forklifts flanking them. To my left, the curved walls and ceiling ended in a flat wall containing a square ten-meter-wide door.

I managed to walk around a large stack of crates. Good. Then I ran and fell. Bad. I tried a few more times before I got the hang of running and then headed for the door. Off to the side was a sign that said, "Manual Door Release" above a recess with diagonal stripes around it.

The maintenance bot moved toward me and tried to help with the door.

"No thank you. It hasn't been twenty minutes yet," I said.

"My apologies." The robot backed away.

I fumbled with the door release. My fingers were moving in twos. Index finger and middle finger, ring finger and little finger. Three minutes of excruciating ineptitude later, I was moving fingers independently. My mobility AI was building a good model of my musculature now. As I grabbed the d-shaped ring that served as a handle and pulled it out of its recess, I could finally feel my muscles move. I smiled at the feeling of triumph. And turned the handle.

A soft click was followed by the door rolling up into the ceiling.

I stepped out into a e-vello tunnel and the door closed behind me.

This e-vello tunnel was under one of the simulated hills in Sampati Park. Running over the top of that hill was part of an e-vello path that ran the seven kilometer circumference of the 0.80g shell of Kamehameha Station. This was according to the helpful map of the station that I'd downloaded.

When I'd visited this station in the past, all my business was on other shells. Each shell had a different level of centrifugal gravity from Venus's 0.91g to the moon's 0.16g.

Something darkened the tunnel entrance to my right. I looked in its direction without turning my head. It was strange, I'd set up every body I'd ever had to produce physical manifestations of my emotions. But here, when I was staring doom in the face, there was nothing concrete within my body to accompany my mental anxiety.

It was an FCAT. Short for Fast Capture Autonomous Trooper. A vaguely cat-shaped robot standing on legs as long as I was tall. No head. Just two spherical sensor clusters: one higher and to the right, one lower and to the left. Its tail was twice as long as my own, but far thinner, and had a camera for looking into small places.

Atop its back was a ball-mounted laser turret. Modern laser weapons didn't look much like guns. They looked like telescopes, like the FCATs laser or arrays of tiny lenses, like my left palm. My skin closed over these lenses when the laser wasn't in use. The FCATs laser was a clever design with a long tube that prevented people from shooting the aperture or hitting it with paint balls. Unless it was pointing just right so you had a clear shot all the way in.

Hanging from the FCAT's underside was a capture harpoon. This part did look like a gun.

Standing and staring would make me look suspicious. For all I knew, it was here to give me directions to the nearest tourist attractions.

I walked down the tunnel away from it.

I wanted to turn around and see if it was following me. But, that would've made me look like I'd done something wrong. I checked to see if my tail also had a camera on it. It did. Cameras on tails were always useful. My camera, and other components I'd identified, were made by Animsys: the same company that made FCATs.

The FCAT was slowly advancing. Was it trying to be covert? I glanced behind me to see how it would respond. It stopped the way a cat does when it had been caught creeping toward something it shouldn't have.

Saying that it was merely unsettling would be like saying "darn it" in response to an incoming anti-tank missile.

I was nearing the exit of the tunnel. Just outside was a decorative roundabout for e-vello paths: a three-meter-in-diameter flower garden with layered arcs of color. An e-vello, an oblong egg-shaped three-wheeled vehicle one meter tall and three meters long, entered the tunnel and swiftly decided to turn around. Its pseudo-futuristic beeps faded into the distance. FCATs were not to be trifled with.

It was a tragedy that I was about to trifle with one.

Hacking was always my first and best option. But, this FCAT had shut off all its antennas. It was operating without any oversight. I steeled myself as I reached the end of the tunnel. If I had to fight the FCAT out in the open, I'd be done for. I needed to preoccupy it, for it to think it won.

The capture harpoon was the biggest threat. If it hit me in the torso, I was done for. And I was just out of range. I had to act before it was too late.

I put my processors to full and set my perception so that one second felt like ten minutes. Powering up my laser filled my arm with a throbbing tingle. As I crouched down, I twisted my torso.

I jumped untwisting rapidly. My twirling as I ascended made sure the FCAT couldn't hit the same spot multiple times. It was a ten meter jump and the FCAT would have over a second and a half to try and injure me.

It shot first hitting me in the torso with its laser. I peppered its optical sensors with my laser making pock marks in the glass. The thousands of tiny explosions sounded like a fizzy drink. The FCAT spun its sensor clusters to limit the damage. As I collided with the ledge over the top of the tunnel, it took pot shots at my legs. My grip started to slip. I dug my claws into the ledge and pulled myself up to lie prone on top of it.

I should've jumped harder, but I didn't know the strength of my muscles yet. The FCAT hadn't been expecting me to flee upwards so suddenly. There was minimal damage.

The thick evergreen bushes next to me served as a guard rail for a path that went over the hill. Peeking under the ledge using my tail camera, I saw the FCAT running down the tunnel faster than any legged thing should.

I would've had to move my tail camera chaotically if the FCAT's laser also had an etching mode. But it didn't. Its design was a testament to brute force. And laser etching of other people's sensors was illegal everywhere but a war zone. If the CCAI hadn't made my body, someone equally naughty had.

It was time for tactics that would seem chaotic and incompetent to the FCAT. I held my right hand out so the FCAT could see it. A soft hiss came from the harpoon gun as my right hand was pierced by the harpoon. The force of the hit made my hand fly backward and the harpoon going through made a low ka-chunk. The part of the harpoon on the other side of my hand opened like an umbrella capturing me. Good.

It attempted to electrocute me, but my right arm was for generating high-powered jolts. It had harpooned me in the wrong place. Just like I planned. I sent even more current into the harpoon line causing it to heat up rapidly. The harpoon line was a long synthetic muscle. Either my current or the FCAT caused it to contract violently, and I was pulled right off the ledge. Though I expected this, I couldn't help but stare at the ground and hope I'd made the right choice.

I had ten meters to go.

I was now convinced that the CCAI had hacked this FCAT so that it would obliterate me. The current it had sent out was fifty times lethal. It knew I was synthetic and it knew it needed to go all out. If it had gotten me where I wasn't as electrically protected, this body would've been toast.

Assigning time to distance, I realized I had 9.8 meters left. If I didn't figure something out by the time I hit the ground, the FCAT would win. It had all the time I was falling to close the distance and bludgeon with its laser.

The FCAT hit my right shoulder trying to stop my arm from frying the harpoon cable. It tried pulse after pulse, but the anti-laser coating on my scales and my immense heat dissipation abilities were keeping me safe for the time being.

I pulled on the cable so that I turned in the air. The FCAT peppered me with scorch marks. It was varying its laser output frequencies and making shorter and more violent pulses. The heat generated by combat lasers could turn any material into hot expanding plasma. Anti-laser coatings weren't built to be impenetrable, they were built to sacrifice themselves in ways that lessened the damage.

The FCAT tugged at the harpoon cable and collapsed the umbrella-like structure that trapped my hand. I moved my arm toward the FCAT and used the slack to wrap the cable around my fingers. Then I dumped even more power into it. The FCAT let go of the cable. Smoke billowed out from the harpoon barrel.

I spread myself out carefully so that I was facing the ground. This slowed my descent and made me a thinner target.

Seven meters left. The FCAT needed very good grip to run that fast. Its bowl-shaped feet were wearing replaceable elastomer shoes to absorb shock and provide friction. It was time to start destroying the area on the top of each foot where the shoes were affixed. I targeted the the right front foot with my laser and tried twenty percent power with hundreds of pulses a second.

Each pulse started by blasting a tiny bit of the elastomer with so much energy that it turned into a plasma. The second part of the pulse superheated the electrons in that plasma so that it expanded explosively.

People called this a popper pulse and it was extremely efficient at wrecking stuff. The fast electrons made an EMP, and the expansion resulted in a shockwave. You could shatter materials, blow chunks out of them, or merely incapacitate the electrical or nervous system of whatever you were aiming at. The level of lethality was conveniently controllable. The shoe slipped off and FCAT struggled as it lost its grip on the KREEPcrete.

At four hundred centimeters to the ground, my scales were being blown off my body one by one. The FCAT was dumping all its power into its laser now that it had found a frequency at which my anti-laser coatings were inefficient. It destroyed one of the muscles I used to move my right arm toward my side. It destroyed connective tissue behind that muscle. I pulled my arm in clumsily blocking it from drilling into me. Scales on my right elbow blew off with the pop of a ball of plasma. It was boring right into the joint! This was bad.

At three meters to the ground, I'd removed the shoe on the left front foot. The FCAT's speed and agility fell dramatically.

My AIs identified more controls for my laser and heat dissipation system. I was nowhere near the limit! I turned my laser up to seventy percent switching to drilling pulses. Hundreds of pulses a second. It shouldn't have been possible at this energy level. But I got no warnings, so I tried it on the left front ankle. The heat in me rose dramatically as its ankle failed.

It stopped running. With both front feet slipping and only one front ankle, it was struggling. Though, when it stopped, it started to hit the laser array on my left hand and I made a fist protect the laser. I had been moving my hand erratically, but I was about to hit the ground and didn't have room to maneuver my arm.

As I hit, the solid end of the harpoon broke two composite bones in my right hand. I felt the KREEPcrete slap my entire body, but there was no pain. Just every part of me rebounding after the hit.

The FCAT fumbled toward me trying to bore a hole into the back of my head. It had to get to me, to crush me under its feet. It was the fastest way to disable me. I rolled onto my feet and grabbed onto the harpoon cable with my left hand. As the FCAT tried to stomp on me with its right front foot, I jumped.

It felt like flying thanks to my expanded perception. I was going to overshoot it! Dangling the cable, I caught the laser turret and pulled so I landed on the FCAT's back. As it moved the turret violently to try and free it, I hooked the cable under the joint where its back left leg met the side of its body. Then I wrapped the cable around the turret like a spider capturing its prey, immobilizing it entirely.

My feet slid out from under me as the FCAT dashed to the side of the tunnel. I grimaced. Now there was a ledge made out of KREEPcrete, some sort of catwalk I hadn't given a second thought, only a couple meters above us. I was going to get smashed.

The FCAT jumped as hard as it could slamming me into the bottom of the ledge from below. I heard my pelvis and the base of my tail crack. If I could have felt pain, I would have had to turn it off at this point.

But, the FCAT was done for. Its turret was bent to hell and part of the ball joint for it was crushed. I hooked my legs around the turret pole and used my laser to widen a crack that had formed in the ball joint.

It jumped again, this time I lost the ability to control my tail. The base of it was crushed. I doubted my legs would work either because my pelvis was in similar shape.

I put out the spike in my right hand, but my hand was twisted and the spike destroyed it. I jammed it into the widened crack and started prying. When the FCAT jumped, I moved my arm so that the spike would be driven in when we hit the ceiling.

The spike went in eight centimeters. Ignoring all my safety warnings, I poured electricity into whatever the spike was touching inside. An arc in my arm buzzed bright blue-green as my damaged elbow joint melted and smoked.

The FCAT fell to the ground limp and twitching. I stopped shocking it.

This was the point that I realized the FCAT was intelligent and had been acting pretty desperate. Slamming me against the ledge almost worked, after all. I lay there hoping that another FCAT wasn't on the way to finish the job.