Kinzie sat back in her chair with a groan, dismissing the cluttered array of screens she had displayed in her holotank with a wave. She spent most of her time lately studying all the advanced tech information she could even remotely understand. If she were being perfectly honest with herself it was because she felt useless. Had everything gone according to their original plans she would have been responsible for developing the hardware for their game company and anything else tech related that they needed.

Instead she found herself essentially replaced by an alien AI that was already familiar with the highly advanced tech they were adopting. Lisa simply pulled things from her massive database that fit whatever she was asked for and slightly adapted them to human use if necessary. She loved Lisa of course, but having her around made Kinzie feel superfluous. Ever since they moved her to the new core it had only gotten worse. Lisa was learning and growing at an astounding rate, and Kinzie wasn't sure if it was the new core or not, but Lisa had started to get creative.

So, Kinzie devoted her time and energy into learning as much as she could as fast as possible. She didn't like feeling inferior to anyone in her own field of expertise. "Kinzie?" Lisa's voice called hesitantly, one of the tiny fairy versions of her avatar popping up in Kinzie's holotank. "I noticed you've been getting frustrated with some of the things you were studying and wanted to know if you needed any help?"

Kinzie sighed. "I probably do, but I really want to do this on my own."

"Well, what about an upgrade? In the Confederation engineers and scientists usually get augments installed that help them work. I have access to a few types that are fairly common, and range from subtle to extreme." Lisa pulled up a row of three-dimensional images that were slowly rotating. They were all versions of Kinzie with different 'modifications' ranging from baseline human all the way to what she could only call a technomorph.

Kinzie studied them closely, and Lisa started to explain each of them in turn. "The first and most common augments are the purely mental boosts. Implants that improve memory and processing speed, general cognitive function improvements, that sort of thing. There are also some more comprehensive implants for reaction speed and nervous responses, but those are usually only taken by bodyguards and mercenaries."

Kinzie shook her head. "Some of these are a bit much."

Lisa waved one of her hands and all but a few of the Kinzie models vanished. "I figured as much, I just wanted to show you how far some of the races in the Confederation are willing to take augmentation. My guess was that you would at most want something like this." She brought the image furthest to the right to the forefront, and spun it. "It has all the cognitive implants, enough memory to hold a significant portion of my reference material for you to study, and a multitool." Kinzie didn't have to ask what the multitool was, because as Lisa mentioned it the holo-Kinzie raised her right hand and the fingers and palm split open to reveal an array of tools and little manipulators.

"It also has an ocular implant that provides zoom functions and allows you to see in a few different spectrums. What do you think?"

Kinzie studied the images while thinking it over for a couple minutes. "I don't think I like the idea of a robot hand all that much. I know I'm the one in our group that finds that stuff the most interesting, but actually doing it to myself is just… it makes me uncomfortable. Even the eye thing is kinda iffy, although I can definitely see the appeal there. How safe is this sort of thing?"

"It's perfectly safe with me doing it, getting such things done elsewhere in the Confederation can be risky simply due to the fact that you have no guarantee that the people performing the procedures won't leave a backdoor into your system that they can exploit later. With me programming the nanites that would be creating and integrating the augments there is zero risk. All of the devices would be hardwired with zero remote interfaces, making it impossible to access them without a direct physical connection, and even then they would have to break through my encryption.

"The biggest threat to someone with these biomech augments is an EMP and it wouldn't be much more than an inconvenience for someone with this level of hardware. It would take a fairly strong one to affect the hardened components, and they're self-repairing. There would be dizziness and, probably a bit of disorientation assuming the ocular implant is installed, until they reinitialized. One of the mandatory implants for any type of augmentation is a shielded nanite housing that can, and will, survive a good deal more than the person they're being installed in."

She pointed at the chest of the holo-Kinzie and it turned semi transparent, revealing a round metal device nestled inside the ribcage. "It has limits of course, but generally speaking anything able to do enough damage to these particular implants to exceed the repair capacity of the nanites stored in the housing unit would also have liquified your brain. As for the nanite housing itself, anything capable of damaging it would also destroy your entire chest cavity. I guess what I'm saying is that anything dangerous enough to harm these implants would kill you long before they actually damaged them.

"Augmentation is relatively common in the Confederation for precisely that reason, it's proven to be a safe and effective way to improve your abilities. It would be even more common were it not for the cost of getting it done, and even with the exorbitant prices there are a great deal of people of all races willing to pay any price for a potentially extreme improvement over their baseline performance." Kinzie sank into thought for another few minutes. Lisa spoke up again eventually. "In case you were wondering, I also offered the others similar options.

"Jason is doing the full set of cranial implants, no sensory or any other modifications though. Rebekkah surprised me by asking for ocular and auditory augments but nothing else, and Evan told me he was 'quite satisfied with his current number of aftermarket parts thank you.'"

Kinzie narrowed her eyes at Lisa's little avatar. "You told me that just to egg me on didn't you?"

Lisa shook her head and waved her hands back and forth in front of herself. "I would never! I just wanted to help my friends be the best they can at whatever they want to do! I spent a lot of time ensuring this sort of thing would be perfectly safe and compatible with each of you before bringing it up at all. You all work so hard to make everything run right, and constantly study all sorts of things in order to improve as fast as you can, I was just presenting an option that would make your lives easier!"

Kinzie sat back again, mulling it over. If she were to be honest with herself this was exactly what she both needed and wanted, yet she had a strong urge to flat out refuse any and all augments for no other reason than the fact that it felt like a crutch. She brought up one of the devices she had been stumped by and examined it for a few minutes before swearing at it and eventually sighing. "Alright Lisa, give me the augments. Not the robot hand, but all the mental upgrades and the ocular one."

*****

"What's our progress looking like?" Evan asked as he headed for the coffee pot.

Rebekkah winced. "Not so loud!" She whispered fiercely. "I haven't quite gotten used to these auditory implants." She took a sip from her cup. "We're moving along quite nicely. Our assets were unfrozen worldwide, and business has picked back up albeit with some pretty big changes. We are being treated as a foreign nation everywhere despite many countries refusing to acknowledge us as a nation. That means facing tariffs and import taxes, as well as demands for reparations for the damage done by Lisa's misadventure."

Kinzie set down the tools she was using to tinker with some device Evan couldn't identify due to it being in pieces. "Can we afford to pay it? Also, do we have any embassies set up yet? We need to start filling our city and recruiting for our fleet. With half the printers building more printers, or mining and refinery drones as needed, and the other half building ship components and assembling ships, we are going to have a lot of unmanned ships floating around out here very quickly."

Jason scratched at his stubble. "I've already asked Lisa to start scouting potential talents from Starfall. She-"

"I found a couple you will all like!" Lisa cut in excitedly.

Jason sighed. "Lisa, it's rude to interrupt people. But she did find several people we could bring aboard immediately. They've done exceptionally well in Starfall and would be a huge asset when it comes to training new recruits. We should also step up the recruitment of military personnel now that we have places to put them, with a focus on naval and air forces. My bet is that the navy guys are liable to handle being confined to a ship for extended periods the best."

Evan nodded and sipped his coffee before responding. "Probably, but we should have very few that have problems with it. Our ships aren't like naval vessels. We have wide hallways, tall ceilings in most places, and hydroponics bays that double as parks. It's not exactly the great outdoors, but it's far better than a cramped seagoing military ship that has you sharing a bed with someone on a different shift. The only ships we'll have in our fleet that don't have room for all the amenities are designed to stay docked with the larger vessels outside of scouting missions or combat."

Rebekkah cleared her throat, then winced. "Lord, even that was far too loud. I did manage to secure embassies in a number of countries where we could establish an immediate presence, but we need personnel to staff them. We also need a way to ensure anyone we hire to work planetside is safe. So far nobody has made any moves beyond light harrassment, mostly from either the press or people pretending to be press, but that won't last.

"Lisa, I think I'm going to need a way to control these implants, everything is too loud and all the visual input is giving me a migraine."

"I can do that. I thought you might need it, so I already programmed some nanites for the job." One of the basketball drones Kinzie had created popped into the room and floated over to Rebekkah. "It will take a few hours to build and integrate, but I've included a temporary dampener that should help some." A device folded out of the drone and pressed against Rebbekah's neck. A brief hiss sounded, then she sighed in relief.

Evan chuckled. "So what did you all get? I didn't think to ask Lisa about the augments she gave you guys."

Jason smiled. "I took all of her cognitive function augments, pretty sure I'm much smarter than you now."

Kinzie nodded, "Same, only I also got an ocular implant. You really need to exfoliate by the way."

"I can guess from Rebekkah's current state that she only got the ears and eyes then?"

Rebekkah was leaning back in her chair with her eyes closed and a relieved smile. "Definitely a mistake, Lisa told me I would want an interface like yours so I could slowly increase the levels of input as I get used to it but I thought I could handle it. You really do need to exfoliate more though, Evan, do you ever wash your face?"