Completing Conversion

Posted on Sun May 3, 2020 @ 9:06am by Master Chief Petty Officer Thomas Barnes & Captain Madelina Weisz & Ensign Autumn Rivers

Mission: The Nanjing
Location: Engineering Lab
Timeline: MD 2 || 0030 hours

As promised, the journey to the Engineering Lab was uneventful. Between the turbolift ride, and the trek along the corridor revealed not a single crewmember. Tom had taken the opportunity to continue testing his occular implants along the way. His red eyes were still active the moment they entered the Engineering lab. He stopped just past the doors' sensors, allowing them to close and keep the wonder of the room to the newly arrived occupants.

He'd left this room as a Starfleet lab nearly four hours ago. In its present condition, it was unrecognizable. Four tables awaited occupants for conversion. Vats of nanites were ready for deployment, and raw materials were stacked neatly in the corner.

"Rivers?" Tom asked aloud, not seeing the Lagashi woman anywhere.

Autumn came up from behind a table, her Starfleet uniform ripped in four places on the back in the shape of nearly perfect holes. Her eyes were black with red centers now and she scanned both of them through several spectrums before she nodded. "Enter quickly."

Tom stepped forward, gently guiding Maddy with his own arms. His steps had become rather heavy since the Nanjing had begun weighing down his feet, and he swore he could feel his muscles tearing under the pressure. He also surmised that Maddy's stomach was due to turn any minute as it begun to reject the stomach acids and reform the stomach lining.

"The process is slow," he told Autumn simply as the door behind them closed. "The Nanjing are constructing a transceiver in my head based off the medical implant, but it will still be a half hour before it is ready. And they cannot complete the overall conversion fast enough."

Maddy groaned, sweat beginning to form on her brow. This was worse than anything she'd ever dealt with before, and she was doing her best to control it. However, that wasn't her choice to make as the Nanjing began to reconstruct her stomach. She gagged once, then twice before finally allowing what contents were in her stomach to come out. She felt weak, pained. The Captain fell to her knees and closed her eyes, before vomiting again.

"I see the process is still inefficient," Autumn observed dryly as she watched the Executive Officer throw up. "And messy." Then she stopped and did a double take. "Wait...that is the Executive Officer, is it not?" she asked Tom, making no move to clean up the technicolor yawn or assist the woman.

"Not just the Executive Officer," Tom said, kneeling beside her, not caring what his socked foot and knee just dipped into. "She will be my Queen." Looking up to Autumn, Tom added, "You have the benefit of pre-existing hardware. The Nanjing are having to build everything from scratch. And, since I see tentacles growing out of your back, I assume they are still working on my visual implants."

"Your Queen?" Autumn laughed as she analyzed the woman with a disinterested look. The Nanjing had been more than happy to strip the Starfleet protocols from her programming. "She's a good choice. Or will be. Put her on the first bed, please."

Captain Madelina Weisz was not a weak woman, but in this particular instance, she felt that way. Still, despite the immense pain and incredible nausea, the redhead forced herself to her feet, using Tom as in aid. Her eyes went to Autumn, and it was clear just how unimpressed she was with her. Everything hurt, even talking, but that wasn't going to stop her. "Watch yourself," was all she said before she began to stagger toward the bed.

"The tentacles are actually the current solid form of the nanites in my system," Autumn said as she watched the redhead go to the bed. "And retract back in when I no longer need them. The conversion beds I made are immersive and will fully cover our host bodies to accelerate the phases of conversion. Just put them in it, sink them down and let the Nanjing do the work."

She pointed at the supplies and other materials laid out on another table. "I have micro fusion generators for eight people currently and have my own. These will need to be implanted in your bodies and linked with the Nanjing."

"Excellent," Tom said as he helped Maddy onto her bed. He was certainly impressed with what Autumn had accomplished. It was quite a feat, especially compared with his Nanjing's limited progress. Then again, Autumn had benefited from already possessing augmented technology. For both Tom and Maddy, they were one hundred percent scratch builds. "Will we be awake the whole time? What can we expect of the process?"

"You'll be aware, but in a sort of stasis to prevent you from doing injury to yourself," Autumn said as she checked the conversion bed and the monitors over it. "It will take roughly two hours for a full conversion once a host has been selected and immersed. Longer if more materials are needed. I recommend converting someone from Operations to bring in more of the Borg debris. It will preserve the raw materials on the ship and allow us to avoid detection sixty-three percent longer."

"In order to convert more personnel," Tom said, trying to pull himself up onto the bed. His tired muscles had a hard time moving his heavier bones now. What strength he had gained, he seemed to have lost, at least for now. "We need to be in a stronger position to do that. Our current bodies are ill-prepared for the task."

She felt like she was going to be sick again, but did her best to fight it. "The more who are converted, the more likely we are to be discovered," Maddy said as she settled on the bed. "We need to be strategic in our choices."

Tom already had a list for several targets forming in his head. "Not if we select the right people. Lieutenant Zekori, Ensign sh'Paveress, and a few others come to mind. We will need protection as well. Do we have access to any Marines?"

Maddy nodded. "I do. The Acting Executive Officer, and Commodore's brother, to be exact," she said just as realization dawned on her. "Whose son is currently alone in our quarters. I... I need to get back there. Long enough to contact them so they can get the boy."

"And tell them what?" Tom countered. "That we left the child so we could move forward on the next step of the evolutionary scale? Let the child sleep, and we can retrieve him in the morning and drop him off before the ship. That way, the illusion is maintained and our cover is not blown."

The Nanjing that filled the bed on the table parted like liquid mercury and began to cover the redhead's body. In under a minute, they had covered everything but her face.

"Any famous last words, Captain?" Autumn asked as she extruded her mechanical tentacles and gave Tom a boost onto the table without looking his way.

Tom was grateful for the assist. He was able to position himself easily on the bed. Up until now, he hadn't removed his uniform save for just his boots. He didn't care. He supposed the Nanjing would find its composition useful, especially when it came to reinforcing his skin. He laid on the table, noticing the clank that came from his duranium-reinforced skull as metal met metal. He looked to his left to see his fiery, red-headed mate prepare for immersion. If he could reach to her and hold her hand, he would.

With her face still exposed, the redhead offered Autumn a smile. It wasn't your average smile, either. No, this one was rather twisted. "You'll learn soon."

"Right," Autumn said as she reached to press her hand on Maddy's face to submerge it.

It seemed Autumn would be learning sooner than expected, or, perhaps a minor lesson in respect. If it didn't help, then much harder lessons would be taking place eventually. Maddy opened her mouth and took part of one of Autumn's fingers between her teeth, then bit down until she felt the satisfying crunch of enamel going through bone. Her face began to sink beneath the surface, but not before she spit the offending digit back at its owner.

The Lagashi woman howled in pain as she tried to jerk her hand back, then saw blood spurting from the missing top of her middle finger. "You bitch!" she howled again when the missing part hit her face, then landed on the table again. She grabbed it and cursed several more times, then headed for a medkit.

"Ladies!" Tom hissed at both of them. Most of his body had already been covered by the nanites, but his face was still exposed, albeit for just a few more seconds. "Save your bickering, unless we sentence ourselves before we begin!" Tom wasn't sure what he was saying, other than trying to express his displeasure for their lack of cooperation.

Tag if any

Leaving Autumn to her repairs, Tom surrendered himself to the table. Instantly, the Nanjing swarmed his body as if he was being coated with liquid mercury. The sensation was unlike anything he’d felt previously, and that had included having his insides modified without his knowledge. Every micron of his surface was covered, including Nanjing that danced across his eyes, fingertips, and every strand of hair.

Tom felt no pain, but he felt everything. The Nanjing already in his body welcomed their siblings with ease and gratefulness. All of them went to work immediately; many sacrificing themselves in order to be reformed into implants while others synchronized themselves with the plans Tom’s Nanjing had been formulating.

Millions of Nanjing attached themselves to every muscle, overlaying themselves over the existing tissue and strengthening it to mobilize the hardening skeleton. Within five minutes, not a single inch of bone remained uncovered, save for select access points for his body to still take advantage of the marrow. Tom noticed that his chest had stopped moving while his lungs were torn apart and rebuilt, each with the ability to withstand a variety of conditions, as well as store oxygen for a timed release should he be exposed to vacuum.

Just a few minutes into the process, Tom’s mind had gone from operating in near silence to becoming a megaphone for millions of voices. Through it all, he could hear Autumn’s displeasure for the queen he had chosen. “Hello,” he whispered to her with his thoughts, realizing that his transceiver had been completed.

Tom’s skin was left unchanged as to enable him to continue life on board the ship until the need to blend in had been fulfilled. His hearing changed as well, now being able to hear every movement between the liquified Nanjing to the exasperated crewman in the outermost sections of the ship.

The Nanjing now turned to a need of their own the new organs and strengthened muscles required power to operate, and that was not something Tom’s body could provide. Tom felt his abodmen open up, Nanjing-controlled armatures brought in three externally constructed apparatuses, placing two micro fusion generators into his hip, one above each leg socket, along with a life-support control module that would occupy the space previously held by half of his small intestine. Many of his major organs by this point had been adapted to service the needs to the Nanjing. Even with the aid of a table, it would take Tom’s body more than a week to totally become dependent on these devices and systems, especially on an organic level.

A week was a small price to pay for moving up the evolutionary ladder.

Before long, the Nanjing retracted themselves, allowing Tom to sit up on the table. He wondered for a moment how long he’d been under the surgeon’s knife, but before he could glance to a clock, a voice in his head informed him that only 22.4 minutes had passed.

Excellent, he thought, forgetting that such speech could easily be heard by others with a transceiver.

Having fixed her finger damage as much as she could, Autumn looked over as Tom reached out to her with his transceiver. I hear you she thought.

Tom smiled. He looked in her direction even though it was not required. The Nanjing took the opportunity to transfer several gigaquads of information from Tom’s mind to Autumn’s, providing her with templates, diagnostic information and other relevant data to adapt for future conversions.

He then looked down, discovering that he was still in his uniform, though it had very obviously been torn by the conversion process. This wouldn’t do. He felt the fabric between his fingers, recalling the care he’d put into designing the unique fabric, and quickly deciding that it was inefficient. The problem solver in him immediately went to work, analyzing different compounds, setting on an enhanced graphene formula.

Tom didn’t have to touch the fabric. Instead he remotely commanded the Nanjing to go to work. Like before, the liquid Nanjing enveloped him, consuming the uniform and reforming it into a black bodysuit. Parts of it were harder than others, but it was form fitting and cling tightly to his skin. Looking over to Autumn as he slipped off the table, he smiled, almost as if verbally asking, “What do you think?”

She paused as he transferred the information to him and took a few nanoseconds to analyze it with her AI. She nodded and sent back a few gigaquads of data from her own analysis and work with suggestions for upgrades for the hardware and software. "You look like a Borg. We need to blend in."

It took all of fifteen seconds for Tom’s uniform to change into a standard Starfleet uniform, complete with chevrons, combadge and boots. “Is this acceptable?” He asked.

"Yes," Autumn said as she made more notes and entered information directly into the computer controlling the tables. "Armored uniforms taken to the next level. I am impressed."

Tom allowed his eyes to go red in order to scan his body and see several of the upgrades for himself. “What’s impressive are these fusion reactors. And the biomonitor is a nice touch. It should prevent us from tripping the Triumphant’s sensors. In fact...”

He put his transceiver to use. Tom turned left to one of the remaining Starfleet consoles and established a connection. With seconds, he had ensured that the sensors in this section weren’t just disabled, but sending false information. “No matter what we do, we will not be protected for long. The Nanjing must have Triumphant, but it will take days. We must seek further upgrades to achieve this.”

"We will have it," Autumn said as she sent out a signal and two drones came out of one of the beds. "These are designed to target and assimilate hosts with basic orders to come here to the lab for conversion." Each drone had thirteen assimilation tentacles and one sensor tentacle and hovered above the bed waiting for orders. "Each of you can take one or send it out to where you wish."

Tom looked at and analyzed the drones. More information about them was transmitted to his mind, and it took him only a few moments to survey and understand the schematics and their capabilities. "They will be effective, but using them now is premature. Once our numbers are greater, we can loose these on the ship."

He looked over to the table where Maddy was still undergoing her transformation. She had at least an hour left in that process, and until she was ready, there was little point in him venturing out. He began to search Triumphant's database for other items, policies, and crew that might be helpful.

"We will need more than materials," he announced. "Both the Intelligence and the Marine departments have equipment that will be useful. The schematics are encrypted, and I cannot break that encryption without raising alarms. My queen will be able to infiltrate their complex and take what we need." Tom then looked back to Autumn. "To do this, we will need to hasten the initial conversion. The Nanjing took four hours to complete the initial deployment and control modules within Maddy. That is a long time for someone to think and act on their own will. The process needs to take minutes, if not seconds."

"We're already at one hundred and fifty percent on materials and are limited short of taking down the wall into the next lab and assimilating that lab as well to set up more tables. We need to take most of Engineering to be effective in sending out an army to take the ship," Autumn said as each of her four tentacles did something different.

"All in good time," Tom replied. He switched to his heat sensors and surveyed the room. Engineering was close, and the tricore was certainly a large blip on his eyeballs at the moment. He could make out the individuals on the deck, counting well over forty. "We'll have to work slowly. Maybe we can draw some to the lab one at a time. We will need laborers for the remodel while you work on furthering our capabilities. These forms will need additional modifications in order to be successful."

Tom reached out and pointed in a direction. "There. Two engineers are working maintenance nearby." He smiled, turning to Autumn with his glowing eyes. "They will make excellent laborers."

Autumn gave a creepy smile and her tentacles writhed in excitement. "I'll see to them," she said as two of the drones became active and hovered in the air before she headed out of the converted lab for the others he had spotted.

Left alone in the lab, Tom turned his attention to preparing the next phase of the plan. "Soon, my queen," he whispered to Maddy. "Soon."