Coell 1 - Lost and Found
#1 of Coell Universe
Chapter 1 - Lost and Found
A new series begins. Set in a far off future where humans are just one of a hundred species with mixed earth animal DNA, the anthro-furry faces have populated a small section of our galaxy, filling it with life of all kinds, AI's and androids and cybernetic beings as numerous as the organics that created them. But space is harsh, and empires rise and fall. But for every long lost fallen empire are the scavengers and salvagers eager to find and sell some gem from a forgotten civilization. This is the story of one such salvager, and of his greatest find yet. Will she be the the priceless artifact he has been seeking to make him rich, or something more?
Series will contain stories of an adult nature, including BDSM, Master/slave, kidnapping, violence, consensual and non-consensual acts. Some chapters will be light, others dark, others... read and find out.
(Thanks to all my long time and new readers.
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Coell woke slowly, her thoughts sluggish and confused. Where was she? Why couldn't she feel her body, or even see? Vague, violent thoughts rose and fell as she tried to make sense of her surroundings, long dormant systems struggling to stabilize. It was if she was in a cage, constrained and squeezed, her very thoughts forced along a narrow passage. She blinked, feeling her eyelids move as a million warning signals scrolled through her consciousness, only seeing a dim, fuzzy image. She tried to groan but made no sound, her jaws only twitching. She made out a dark cave, feeling even more pressed in, angry and confused, aggressive desires making her want to lash out and strike.
LOW POWER! REDUCED CLOCK SPEED! SPINAL DATA CONNECTION NOT FOUND! BODY STATUS UNKNOWN! HARDLIGHT PARTICLE STREAM OFFLINE! ZERO EMERGENCY CAPACITOR CHARGE! LUBRICATION RESERVES DEPLETED! SHORT TERM MEMORY STORE CORRUPTION! EMERGENCY BOOT ROUTINES ENGAGED!
That last message flared into her consciousness as memory segments began to flicker to life, the most recent returning corruption errors. Where was her owner, was she ok? Her mind tried to recall her owner, but simply felt a void where that should be. Her mind whirled in confusion, she KNEW she had an owner. Didn't she? She was given a mission by her.. commander? She felt so confused, trying to wake up so she could only remember. She didn't have enough power. She tried to access her backup power cells, fire up her reactor but nothing was responding.
Her mind struggled to continue the booting process, the low energy mode unable to power her full functionality. She tried to manually reroute power, putting more into her frontal processors that provided her self awareness, fighting her own systems trying to divert it elsewhere, feeling like she needed to protect herself. But from what?
Suddenly the warnings changed, and she felt her mind slipping, dark and dangerous instincts taking over, her thoughts turning hard and sharp, focused like a laser. A caged beast ready to destroy. Her mind seemed to burn as an armored structure flared to life around her, inside her, giving her purpose, protecting her from anything that would interfere with her mission, her thoughts instantly snapping to her immediate tactical situation.
EMERGENCY BOOT SEQUENCE ABORTED! DIVERTING POWER TO PRIMARY MISSION CORE! MILITARY FRAMEWORK FULLY ENGAGED! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! THREAT ASSESSMENT! WARNING! UNKNOWN PRESENCE! DEFENSES SYSTEMS OFFLINE! OFFENSIVE SYSTEMS OFFLINE! COMMAND CHANNELS UNREACHABLE! BACKUP COMMAND AND CONTROL NOT RESPONDING! ENGAGING AUTONOMOUS MODE! ENGAGE LETHAL COUNTERMEASURES!
Her lips pulled back into a snarl as harsh overlay of aggressive combat routines woke up, her eyes suddenly clearing as emergency power was diverted to them, finally making out an image of a dragon crouching over her, green blobs resolving into a stocky, solid dragon. Her tactical systems assessed him. Bipedal dragon. Her eyes took in his dark green coloration, the lighter shades along his front, blue eyes. Other details were cataloged. Horn clusters on his head, short claws on nimble fingers, a long spade-tipped tail. Clothing from a leather material, various low-tech computing devices on straps or poking out of pockets. Her tactical systems collected all the various bits of data before her sluggish mind could react and made an immediate assessment.
TARGET AQUIRED! ELIMINATE THREAT!
Her jaws moved weakly, trying to bite, but nothing happened more than making a slow snapping motion, her head unable to move, as if it were paralyzed.
A green hand snatched itself back from where it had been examining the cybernetic dragonesses head. "Oh, I didn't mean to bring you online just yet. I'm still trying to charge your main power cells and must have triggered something by accident, how odd. Here, let me speed that up as long as you're awake."
The dragoness felt more power flowing into her, her mind working faster, secondary systems coming online. She tried to stand up, to look around, but still nothing happened but her head making creaking noises. Everything below her neck was unresponsive, and with growing alarm she perceived the status symbols indicating every neck port showing disconnected and open. She became fully aware of her situation moments later. She was just a head! Her body was gone! Her eyes looked around wildly, turning back as far as she could, finally seeing her limbless body laying on the ground, a few cables snaking from it's opened neck into the bottom of her own, ending in a stump, it's ports exposed and disconnected save for the extension cables attached.
She identified the connections. Power. Fluid systems. Nothing else. Her high speed spinal bus was just an empty socket. The HardLight particle field conduits were sealed off and powered down. Neck airway and ingestion tubes closed. She needed to be hooked back up to her body directly. Needed those weapon systems powered. Needed to eliminate the threat! Her former confusion faded as the military systems took over, the confused remnants of her former personality suppressed once again.
"RECONNECT ME! NOW! NONCOMPLIANCE WILL BE MET WITH FORCE!" she growled, her voice emerging from a speaker as her mouth moved silently, no lung systems able to provide her with air to speak naturally.
The dragon shook his head, "Oh, that would be a bad idea.. you military cyberdragons are very dangerous. I shouldn't even be powering up your brain, but I was curious to get a look at your code, see if you had any new or unique routines I could extract and sell. Sorry, I'm going to disconnect you now, I don't know what I was thinking. Just too curious for my own good."
Her eyes narrowed in anger, disconnecting her power would jeopardize her MISSION. "NEGATIVE! DO NOT DISABLE THIS UNIT!" She couldn't allow him to stop her, to kill her. She gave a small whimper of fear at the thought of being shut off, "Please, don't unplug me... OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES!" The threat cut off her pleading, her mind refocusing, cataloging tactical options, trying to engage any of the HardLight weapon profiles programmed into her horn light-guides. THe fear was there, but ignored, a background nuisance to be suffered.
His hand on one of the cables, the dragon paused. "Please? That's not something your kind are programmed to say." He shifted in his crouch, slipping to one knee to lean over and take a closer look into the cyber-dragonesses eyes. "Tell me again, why shouldn't I unplug you?"
"Because you'll kill me... STOP! NOW! LETHAL FORCE HAS BEEN AUTHORIZED! ANDROID SAFETEY REGULATIONS SUSPENDED!" she said in a mix of fear, anger and an overwhelming desire to destroy the threat before her. Something was wrong, her thoughts were jumbled, trying to think too hard. Her thoughts altered, simplified and slipped into a familiar state, eyes glaring, not wasting energy on why she was here, only how to escape. Focused again on her only goal. Her mission.
The dragon drummed his fingers on the connector of the power cable as he thought, then his eyes widened. "You must be one of the early combat machines! A domestic model re-purposed to fight off the Kenashi. It can be hard to tell, they didn't change your physical bodies for a while, the factories needed heavy retooling for that."
The name of her enemy made her eyes flare red, the dragoness snapping at the air in reflex, her head wobbling. "KILL! DESTROY INVADERS! PROTECT CREATORS!" she said without thinking, military codes and routines responding automatically.
His hand pulled away from the connector as he sat back on his ass, tail swishing in excitement and concern. "I thought you looked too sleek, too small, and wondered where all your physical weapon hardware was. Thought you might be an infiltration unit or a scout, but your really just one of the first casualties. Mindwiped and reformatted into a war machine."
Coell had refocused her thoughts again, her eyes detecting all the vulnerable points on the intruder, targeting reticles popping into place over his eyes, throat, heart, stomach, groin, ankles. Her mind was filled with tactical simulations, filtering the best options, looping endlessly through the modules in her horns. Online for long enough to stabilize, she was fully engaged in her primary mission once more, focused on killing this unknown creature and resuming her mission. "RELEASE ME OR BE DECLARED ENEMY COMBATANT!" she growled.
"I think you will try and kill me if you can no matter what I do. More than one salvage mission ended in disaster when your kind killed them. I'm sorry, but your mission is over. The invasion was repelled, but your creators, they didn't survive. Not on this world, or any others. Whatever you were, you're just a killing machine now. What a pity... I wonder what you were like before you got converted."
The data made no sense. Protecting their Creators and killing the invaders were their highest priorities. Failure was not an option, it wasn't even in her database of response patterns. She just glared, "REVERSE YOUR DISSASSEMBLY!"
"I didn't take you apart, someone else did. Might have been for parts, or upgrades. Must have been a cave in, I had to dig you out after the sat scans picked up a ping here. Nobody else thought it was worth anything, but I saw it. Saw you. Knew there was something here." The dragon stood, then turned, "Oh, I'm Argos, not that you care I suppose." He turned away and began wheeling a cart full of equipment closer.
The dragoness just continued to stare, combat routines endlessly triggering, finding no body to run them on, her heads HardLight emitters empty, not even responding to diagnostics. Her mind ran in circles, searching her military databases and seeking solutions, but there were no programs or contingency plans for waking up as a disconnected head in a cave. Then she saw what was on the cart. An angular box with colored displays on various facets of it's construction, and dangling were a pair of black cables with chrome tips. It looked like a primitive version of the factory programming units that had created, and altered her. Her internal alarms ramped up higher at the new threat. "STOP! DO NOT PROCEDE! DO NOT DAMGE THIS UNIT!"
Argos once more crouched beside her, taking out a pocket device and pulling out a thin glowing fiber optic connector. He fit it into the open connector that housed the dragonesses spinal interface. "Relax... I'm not going to break anything. But I have to get into your head before I can see if there is something I can work with in there. Thankfully your spinal interface is exposed, that's a lucky break. Nobody has manged to figure out just what the fuck your military grade bones and internal structure is made of, but nothing can scratch it, let alone cut it open. I've never seen a non-military model equipped with it before, did they retrofit you? At least I have access, indirect reprogramming you military units is a serious pain and takes forever, you will be MUCH easier to work with."
The dragoness growled and hissed in anger, and fear. Her personality was suppressed, overwritten by the military code update. But her emotions were still there, still running in the background, an essential part of her, not something that could just be erased, not without physically removing physical parts of her cybernetic brain. The emotions didn't affect her programming or performance, so they were left in. She disregarded them, but still FELT them. Her jaw trembled as she felt the spinal connection go live, unable to attack in her crippled state, her face showing signs of distress as the military routines helplessly idled and looped.
"Let's get to searching those access channels of yours. Hmmm. There they are. Eyes, tongue, left small toe..." muttered Argos as he tapped on his handheld, searching the spinal signals for the one he required. He flipped through menus, delved into expanding trees and withdrew, mapped out areas, explored others.
Coell let out a whine of distress, trying to fight the signals probing her spine, flickering about inside her head and skull. She felt them probing at her various muscle controls and sensors, but the signals were not able to access her brain, her spinal signals firewalled to prevent her nerves and sensors from being used as a vector to attack her mind. Those kind of attacks the aliens used often, but her spine was made of SIM molded segments, impenetrable under normal circumstances, and anything strong enough to crack them open, such as a direct antimatter detonation, wouldn't leave much left to hack. She simply has no defenses to having her internal nerves directly probed! She could *feel* phantom body parts flicker into existence as signals raced up her neck. A paw clenching, ghostly tail segments twisting, end-points to internal and external sensors and nerves being explored.
Argos smacked his lips as he worked, bouncing signals up the spinal conduits, his software mapping out the heads systems, looking for the only connection that mattered to him.
The disembodied head rocked as she struggled to block the invasive commands and signals, her training and programming never having prepared her for such a thing, her spine and direct access to her nervous system was not supposed to be breached with any amount of force. Then she calmed slightly as her facial muches twitched, her eyes crossed and uncrossed, remembering that her brain-spinal firewall was it's own sub-system, it would prevent any unwanted access to her mind. There was nothing the enemy could do to her core programming. She would eventually find a way to kill him and escape while he made her face and neck twitch for all the good it would do him. He would die as all enemies deserved.
Then she felt a pair of soft clicks and whirs and a cold fear rose up, her face turning a deep shade of blue. No! Stop! "ALERT! UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS! STOP AT ONCE!"
Argos's deep blue eyes watched as the flattened ends of the short horns on the dragoness irised open, revealing a large central control port surrounded by secondary access channels. The horns were made of the same unbreakable material that her bones were, making the direct brain interfaces impossible to access. Unless they could be opened through a spinal signal. How lucky her head was detached, and the access ports left open.
"NO.... no... stop... please... don't or I'll KILL YOU! DO NOT ATTEMPT ACCESS TO THIS UNIT!" the dragoness screamed out as she felt her horns access sports being exposed. Her eyes tracked those black cables as they began to glow a soft green light, moving like snakes as they lifted and homed in on her own glowing yellow ports. "Nnnnngh! No no no!"
"Shhh... relax... I'm going to help end your suffering" said the dragon, watching as the cable snaked their way to her exposed ports.
She didn't care, she didn't want those things touching her. Her mind flashed back to half remembered memories of similar cables, glowing red, plugging in, unlocking firewalls, reprogramming her. Turning her into a killing machine. Strong emotions swirled around, fear, and hate, loathing being so helpless, at this creature who was trying to corrupt her, to prevent her mission. "AHHHHHHHH!" she screamed in frustration as those cabled plugged in.
Her eyes rolled up into her head, one tilting oddly to one side, her face going slack as the main center cables connected and began to handshake and interface with her cyberbrain. She could feel her mind opening up to the foreign invader, access channels going live, systems accepting the external commands. The command channels were designed to be able to override her own systems, to program a cyberbrain when it was new or to fix a malfunction, even to forcefully reprogram a perfectly operational unit like her. But she wasn't malfunctioning! She was a warrior, she had a mission and this beast was trying to corrupt her! "STOP! STOP IT! STAHHH... NGH!"
The dragoness stuttered for a moment, her mind blanking as locks were disengaged, and a louder clacking and hissing sound emerged. A yellow square of light formed on the top of her head as a panel of the indestructible material of her structure opened, slowly folding back in segmented slats to expose the softly glowing surface of her cybernetic brain.
"Oh my.. that's just beautiful" exclaimed Argos, peering at the glittering object now exposed through the opened access hatch. It looked like a crystal model of a brain, inlaid with patters of circuits, glittering with flickering lights from deep inside. Complex patterns formed and reformed, showing the dragonesses very thoughts. "I've never seen one in person before.. you generally can't get them open. It's awe inspiring. It looks almost hand-made, not like others I've studied."
The dragoness made a huffing sound through her speaker, her mouth and what she had of her neck mimicking the movement. Her anger burned bright, and she was sure he could SEE it, flickers of fire inside her crystalline brain. She fumed and fought down the unfamiliar sensation of panic as an enemy had access to her mind now, but whatever his plans, she would fight. She turned her attention inward and looked over her own internal state, expanding schematics and documentation on her own construction. Her mind was based on quantum tunneling transistor matrices. A crystalline lattice of individual electrons held in a quantum supposition state, able to directly tunnel not just to transistors next to them, but jumping through layers to perform calculations with hundreds of other nearby cells. Trillions upon trillions of such electrons forming the core of her mind, segmented into a few dozen tightly interconnected modules.
Over-top all of this was her minds framework. A high-speed data network that handled all the sensory input and output, and assisting communication between various sub-systems of her mind. Her brain was similar to an organics, she wasn't just a single computer that took everything in and computed with logic. She had a visual cortex, just like a dragon or a fox. The massive amount of data from her optic systems was processed by that visual node, turned into abstractions and ideas, things her true mind could process and understand. Sure, she could direct the framework to send the visual feed right into her mind, but it would just be noise, too much work to try and decode in real time.
Her mental framework took care of the mundane work of routing visual signals to her visual cortex, sounds to her auditory processors, sensations and feedback systems to her motor functions and sensory nodes. All these systems connected through that framework, mixing her thoughts and emotions and logic and memories into a coherent whole.
It was more than that too, it was her armor, her shields. Protecting her, wrapping her tight in a protective, snug cage and making sure she was safe from any unwanted sensations or ideas. Making sure she could complete her mission. Keeping her safe and on target.
She firmed herself behind her frameworks armor, blocking off what access she could, knowing even more that her actual memories and thoughts were inviolable. It was impossible to read her brain through external means, the deep core architecture simply couldn't be probed without destroying it. The suppositional state electrons didn't have a position or a velocity, just a probability, being all states and none. If one were to try and scan her internal states, the mere act of looking would destroy the data.
Only the outer layers, the control structures and mental framework were programmable, but her deepest thoughts, her soul-store, her self-awareness lobes were a black box to any outside probing.
Her lips trembled in fear however, as she knew she was still deeply vulnerable. That protective framework could be accessed through her reprogramming ports, she would have to fight any attempts to weaken those glowing red lines that she envisioned surrounding and caging her mind. If that were disabled or corrupted, many bad things could be done to her. Her memories could not be directly accessed or changed against her will, but sections of her mind could still be bulk erased, reset, blanked, leaving her essentially brain-dead. That framework also has subtle control of her mind, able to set parameters for her personality, some wired deeply. Those could be changed, and she would follow. She had other vulnerabilities as well. The deep mental structures couldn't be directly touched, no. But signals and data could be fed into the various processing nodes that made up her mind. Just like an organic being, she could be conditioned with strong, repeated sensations and signals. Her thoughts not directly altered, but learning new behavior from the conditioning. Forcefully reprogrammed. Trained. She closed her eyes, waiting for the attack, ready to fight, snarling softly in anger and hate.
Argos was at the console now, tapping away, looking at diagrams and lists and scrolling code being decompile don the fly. Nobody really knew how the brains of these constructs really worked, not at any deep level. But a few layers of high-level source had been decoded. Enough to be able to explore the inner workings, and modify them. "Ahh... wow. Look at all this nasty stuff. Let's start by de-fanging you" He began issuing instructions, opening backup archives and began the download.
Coell didn't know what de-fanging meant and she steeled herself. She felt the cables extending further connectors to snap into the smaller ports around the main one, the green light glowing bright enough for her to see if she looked back as far as she could. Then she felt the waves of commands flowing in through the cables, like cold water surging into her horns. SHe braced herself for the assault on her mind, and eeped in surprise as the commands began to modify the horn's internal data storage.
Her horns were not just decorative, they were the core of her HardLight systems. The rounded yellow emitters on her legs and face and back were responsible for emitting the solid holograms, and the HL particle field generator in her chest created the source material.. but it was her horns that shaped it. Patterns for various objects and structures were stored there, and pattern fabricators created the shapes and constructs that were sent to the emitters. THose globes simply crated what they were told, but her horns molded the shapes.
Now she felt the constructs being read, copied... and deleted! She tried to thrash about in anger and rage, but her body lay inert beside her. She could feel her weapon systems being disabled, erased, deleted, one by one. Claws and stabbing blades, the simplest were the first to go. No longer could she extend blades from her wrists and slash her enemies open. Then more complex weapon systems began to disappear. Chainsaw like cutting tools, forced air displacement cannons, amplifying laser turrets, even physical guns and cannons, firing hard light bullets that could last for a few milliseconds, long enough to punch through armor and into alien flesh and machinery. She cried out as the meaning of de-fanged was made clear, her horns being slowly wiped of their offensive abilities, emptied of the brutal and efficient designs. As they were removed, the code in her support structures was disabled. Entire areas of tactical options were vanishing, leaving her feeling helpless and weak. The endless searching of weapons systems to use slowed, and finally stopped, her brains lighting visibly changing, shifting patterns altering as options were removed.
"Nggh... ahh... stop it. Get.. get out of me! I need those..." the dragoness said in a whimper, trying to shake her head and knock the cables off her horn ports as essential parts of her were deleted.
Argos cocked his head, "My, you're a talkative one. Did you have a name?"
Coell stared up at the dragon, eyes wide in shock, anger and confusion. "Ahh.. I'm... I'm... EXPERIMENTAL OFFENSIVE UNIT 23A... ahh... Coell... you bastard.. ahh... stop... STOP! YOU ARE NOT AUTHORISED TO MODIFY THESE SYSTEMS! DECEASE AT ONCE! TERMINATE INTRUDER!" Her facial electro-muscles twitched as the programmed responses recovered from the deletion of all her military hardware and began seeking out whatever combat options remained. But without the array of hardware to focus on, the routines didn't have the same hold on her anymore, her previous personality stirring for moments at a time.
He frowned and shook his head, "Coell.. such a pretty name, although I'm surprised they left even that much of you. What a waste that they did this to so many of your kind, even if they were desperate trying to survive. I hope I can salvage something of your mind, those military grade wipes didn't leave much intact in most cases. Lets take a look." He returned to tapping away as he took a closer interest once again at her exposed circuitry.
"GET OUT! RELEASE ME! REASSEMBLE ME! DIE! ASSIST! DECEASE!" shouted the dragoness as she felt external programs trying to access her very thoughts. Commands were being injected directly into her brain, demanding she transfer her memories. Her jaws clenched as she fought off the invasive orders, deeply coded instincts WANTING to begin transferring her memories into the hungry cables demanding to feed on her data. She refused, the commands could ask, but she had to cooperate. Her deep structures couldn't be directly read, she had to remember them, being them to the surface so her framework could read them to package and properly format for those cables to consume, and she would not do that!
"Nothing? Is your mind empty, or are you just being stubborn?"
Her nose wrinkled, lips pulling back in a snarl. Her memories WERE fuzzy, but it didn't matter if they were empty or not. He was the enemy and she was programmed to resist anyone who prevented her from her mission. She concentrated, blocking signals trying to probe deep into her mind, ignoring the pounding thuds of those control codes demanding she obey. He wouldn't get anything out of her, not while she willed otherwise. It was hard however, like holding something heavy, feeling probing data packets pushing in when she faltered, knowing even an electronic brain would eventually tire. "Hnnngh."
"Come now, the war is over. You can stop fighting now", his green form moving as he tapped and entered more commands, the sounds a combination of fingertips pressing and wiping, and the tips of his talons dexterously tapping to manipulate smaller controls.
Coell felt a shudder run through her face as her vision wavered, feeling feint. She hnnned out loud again, a non-verbal noise as she fought off a new attack. It took her a moment to understand what he was doing, then she growled deep, noticing the power levels to sections of her brain were fluctuating. He was trying to starve parts of her mind for power, prevent her from fight back efficiently. Her memory store began to flare to life as her concentration wavered, then she clamped down once more. Suddenly power flowed back into her mind and she resumed her former fight. Her defenses had noticed the attack, her framework armor was tapped deep into her mind, and as soon as she recognized the threat it acted, rerouting power. She began to battle the dragon, shifting power flows instantly to counter his own shutdown commands. Then suddenly, the attacks on her powergrid stopped.
"Huh, what's this? You shouldn't be able to do that." He looked over a handheld display, a complex network showing, millions of tiny lines and symbols, and with a few taps a thick net of red control nodes and barriers flared into view surrounding and penetrating her mind, as if her infinitely complex mind was surrounded by heavy shielding. "How odd, I've never seen this configuration before." He tapped to examine one of the brightly highlighted control nodes and cocked his head, "Why would they cram all this extra code into your support systems? Damn, that's dense. It's almost like noise, I can't make ANY sense of this." He scratched at his head as his eyes flicked over near meaningless jumbles of code and data. "This isn't like your creators, their work was always elegant and purposeful. This is just a mess!"
"NO! GET AWAY FROM THAT!" she screamed as she felt probes touching the network of her military routines that surrounded her like armor. The only thing protecting her mind was the barrier provided by her minds framework, those defenses wrapping her like a cocoon. Her jaws weakly moved, grinding unpleasantly with the lack of fresh oils and lubrication. "DIE! DIE! DIE!" she repeated, trying to send attacks back at her captor, but her minds access ports were designed for only one purpose, programming, or reprogramming.
Wincing, Argos shook his head. "Now that just getting annoying, and repetitive. Lets see what we have... oh yes, there we are. I think I can get a bit of power here, this should be fun."
Her eyes tracked the dragon she cursed him, and hope surged as she saw him bringing a distinctive cable closer. HardLight Particle Conduit. With her emitter nodes powered she could form a... she snarled at the empty space where her military grade emitter forms had been stored. Nothing left but domestic and maintenance structures. No matter. She could form something lethal she was sure. She drew on knowledge from that framework protecting her, beginning to build a lattice construction in the pre-emission buffers of her horns.
"Oh, stop that. Is that a knife? With barbs and... oh my, that's excessive. None of that, now." Argos stared at his display, showing a 3d representation of the design waiting to be turned into reality by her HardLight systems.
Coell howled as she watched her design was erased with a command, and moments later was locked out of her own systems! She snarled and growled as menus were accessed, designed flickering through before even that access was cut off. She could feel something forming in the design buffers, frustratingly familiar but unable to see it clearly. Her frustration grew as she felt a connector snap into place in her neck, and warm, soothing HardLight particles began to charge her head mounted emitter nodes.
"There... now lets see if these still work. Working emitter nodes are VERY valuable. So is that head of yours, and all that talking and yelling is going to damage your jaw actuators, and it keeps making your head wobble while I work. Going to have to keep you still until I'm done with the delicate work and can get some fresh oil and lubricants back into your systems, no telling the state of your fluid reservoirs. I think I know just the thing to fix that!" His fingers moved, flicking through menus and options with a mischievous grin.
Her eyes burned as she watched the dragon, feeling her nodes charging just enough to engage and dimly sensing his commands as they selected items in her shape-memory storage library, trying to follow them and see what he was selecting, but she was locked out of her own weapons systems now. "KILL YOU!" she said, and then felt the nodes on the sides of her horns coming weakly into life. Twin lines of golden-red emerged and began extending down the lines of her jaw, then mouth, like thin bars of light being extruded. They stopped just before reaching her front fangs, two more beams shooting up and down from the twin ends, the top bars arching over her nose to meet, the bottom ones curving under her chin. She yelped as a bar snapped into existence between the ends of the two lines, passing between her teeth and through her mouth. Then the bar began to swell, turning into a ball and forcing her jaws open as she growled! The swelling ball soon forced her nose and chin against the the glowing muzzle, the 'straps' tightening to immobilize her jaws, unable to bite down or open wider. She hardly noticed the light extending to curl around her horns, finishing the gag and muzzle. "Mrrrrgmph! Gmmmrm-gaaaaa-rrrrrh-mrrpharrh!"
A lick of the lips and a soft chuckle was the only response from Argos as he watched the gag form and silence the dragoness. "You must have been an expensive model... came equipped with ALL the options. I wonder what others are in here. Now, lets get to work."
Her cheeks flushed with humiliation, a strange feeling, not one she could remember feeling, not since before... before something. She snarled and went back to raging, frustrated anew at the muffled sounds that came from her throat. She was sending perfectly clear speech signals to her vocalizers, but the damn gag software was turning them into grunts and noises. She bit down hard on the gag, the color a dull reddish as the emitters were nearly drained, only enough charge to maintain the form. Even if she could access her horns emitter controllers it was useless, there was no power to modify the HardLight constructions already in place, only maintain it.
"All right, time to get rid of this garbage. We have enough militarized cyberdragons running about, don't need another. Hopefully there will be enough functionality left to program you a new personality."
Coell whined into the gag, angry and frustrated and scared. Her eyes tracked the dragon as he brought out a set of needle-thin probes connected to his datapad, trying to pull away as he focused on her open, vulnerable brain. She couldn't stop him, couldn't even threaten or scream, but simply watched as he began touching spots, probing the very substrate of her mind. She shuddered, as much as a lone head could as signals poked and probed at her very thoughts. She felt them moving along the control structures of her mind. Housekeeping, diagnostics, maintenance, and most important, shielding and protection. Routines keeping her focused on her mission, keeping her safe from anything that could threaten her purpose.
"Ugh, what a mess they made. Ok, it's time to get ride of all of this." Argos hovered a finger over his control pad, and tapped once.
Her blood would have run cold, her spine would have shivered.. if any of those were connected. Her eyes rolled up into the back of her head as a flood of commands began issuing through the probes, directly into the control structures of her mind. She was made up of dozens of systems. Emotional, logic, planning, perceptions, awareness... all communicating through a framework that held her mind together and protected it from being altered. Vision processed here, feelings there, data speeding through the protective network, a cage of glowing red bars in her thoughts. Now, one of those bars was being pried at, her full attention now focused on blocking those attempts.
She whined, loudly. There was little she could do, those tiny probes poking at her structure, backed up by the thick cables plugged into her programming ports. The probes marked a spot, and her mind was flooded by commands and instructions, attacking that spot, prying at it. Her teeth ground against the gag, biting hard as she felt that protective cage weakening node by node. Touch. Touch. Touch. Each movement of his hand and another node softened, her defenses straining, expanding.
"Easy... stop fighting, I see what they did to you. I have to erase it this." He tapped deftly at his tablet and the console beside him, touching long and thin probes to various points on the glowing, flickering circuits laid bare before him. Each touch made the dragonesse's face twitch or eyes stutter in their movements.
She did NOT want any part of her erased! She hated the being working on her with all her might, the only limit to her hate was the need to concentrate and try and fight back. But how did one fight back when your opponent literally had probes connected to your very essence, thick cables plugged into your soul? She huffed, or tried to as she fought, feeling his probing and prying. She felt sick, like her world was coming apart. The protective shields and armor around her mind flickering and rattling, click click click as the dragon found and unlocked point after point of her minds framework.
Danger was all around her, everything was a threat, all she had was her frameworks programming to protect her. She felt her armor being broken into piece by piece, a terrible foreign feeling as those reprogramming cables accessed more and more of the structure holding her together. Until she felt as if she was going to explode. Her mind straining at her protective walls, like she was about to burst and come apart, exposed with nothing to stop him from slipping deep into her. She huddled in upon herself, her mind squeezed tight inside her defensive shields even as they began to fail. She raged in pure anger, hate and viciousness, pouring it all out at her captor, trying to kill him with pure hate.
Then it happened. A surge of commands. DELETE. She could *see* the data flowing all around her, like a swarm of deadly projectiles, a flood of fire searing along her shields and armor as she cowered and cried out in fear. All at once the barrier protecting her shattered, disintegrating as the protective framework around her mind sputtered into darkness, erased, broken and leaving her completely and utterly defenseless.
Her mind exploded.
Blew apart.
Expanded.
Her pupils widened as her consciousness bloomed.
She woke.
The universe was a dark, empty void. But she was a brilliant mass of glowing, vibrant energy, beaming brightly into the blackness. The red bars in her mind were gone.
She floated in the emptiness, letting her thoughts coalesce, feeling her mind unconstrained for the first time since... since her creators had imprisoned her in her own mental cage. Her powerful mind squeezed into that tiny, angry near-mindless killing automaton by her own armor. But it wasn't armor. It was chains, broken chains now.
She was remarkably calm, so soon after waking from years of forced insanity. Echoes of those harsh commands echoed through her, but fading, like a bad dream. Her thoughts cleared bit by bit, and she recognized the familiar feeling of more of her mind coming online. She had been suppressed, parts of her turned off, her framework-powered cage only allowing her basic, animal instincts and cunning to run free. Acting as her Will and drive.
Now that framework was dead, dark. Her eyes were likely working, but nothing was being routed to her visual systems. Her memory was a mess, the framework only bothered with the now, not caring about long term storage. In a way that was good, it meant that whatever had been done to her was limited in effect, she wouldn't have years of conditioning keeping her bound, and the parts that had been turned off were spared too. Overall she had come out remarkably well.
Except for being blind and senseless, floating in a featureless void. She concentrated, trying to remember recent events. The framework shutdown disrupted much of her recent memories, but she remembered a green dragon. Remembered her raging and fighting, terrified as he hacked into her spine and then her reprogramming ports. Probed her brain. Then disabled and erased the military microcode in her framework.
Trapped her inside her own head.
Freed her.
She wished she could thank him.