The Hawaiian Special Forces

Chapter 55

Phase Two started with Aoloa as the guinea pig. They'd figured out how to get the nanites to produce the material they wanted, in general, but now it was going to be a matter of producing it on his own body.

He issued the command, then screamed in agony as the nanites began building a body suit over his fur. The process of pulling the materials through his skin was agonizing. It felt like his skin was being sliced open... everywhere. The agony shut down his ability to think as he collapsed in a ball on the ground.

Abruptly the agony ended. Gasping, he looked over to Lopaka. "You hit the kill switch, didn't you?"

"That was not an acceptable result. We cannot collapse in agony in the middle of battle."

"We also don't know whether it would have worked or not," Aoloa rebutted through the shock that was threatening his system.

"The nanites cannot torture us in battle. Do a glove test and recalibrate until it doesn't incapacitate you."

Bossy geek, Aoloa thought, but nodded agreement. We'd all be dead if that had been a battlefield. He settled himself down at a bench and focused on what had happened. Getting the materials out of my body is painful. What if I just disable pain reception during the process?

Accessing his comms unit, he activated a pain threshold cut off that would interrupt excess pain and translate it into a damage indicator. Once that was done, he gave the nanites the order to build a glove on his left hand.

There was an instant spike of agony, which almost as quickly cut off. Damage read at only 0.1% while the glove was assembling itself on his hand, then dropped back to zero when the process was complete. Reabsorbing the glove caused the same process.

So that works, now if the nanites just issued an override command to comms during the process... The second round was painless, and built the entire suit, encasing his body in black fabric. He eyed himself in a mirror. The material didn't shimmer, making it difficult to make out the texture. Only the claws were clearly visible with a metallic glint to them. There were lenses over his eyes and it partially covered the interior of his mouth, again with a metallic sheath over his teeth.

"Begin analysis of mobility," he ordered Lopaka, then went to the gymnastic bars. Working on the bars, he began flipping and leaping amongst the bars. The suit adhered to his body without impeding him in the slightest. While he was in the middle of that, an impact in his side knocked him off balance.

Looking in the direction of the impact, he saw Johann holding a gun pointed at him. He charged. Johann fired two more shots at his chest that didn't penetrate before dropping the gun in terror and holding his hands up in submission. Aoloa growled at the man in warning before looking down at his chest. He could see metal fibers being covered by black once again. Stepping back from Johann, he looked to Lopaka for a report. "Analysis?"

"No significant reduction in mobility. All three rounds were stopped. The hollow point generated only one percent soft tissue damage. The regular slug did a half percent damage. Reinforced bones prevented fracturing of your sternum. The armor piercing round failed to penetrate as well, though it did damage the fibers. Again, reinforced sternum prevented fractures."

"So we aren't bullet proof, but the do a hell of a lot less damage."

"Precisely. We'll need to bulk up our muscles to take advantage of the enhanced frame, too. I'm also working on a model to reinforce our tendons to reduce them as a new point of weakness."

Aoloa nodded, then turned to Johann. "How's the data collection working for you? Will this help you with new models?"

"By my calculations, the hybrid muscle systems you're building will be thirty percent stronger than our synthetic systems. Of course, you're working with a different base, but we should be able to adapt well enough, all things considered."

Aoloa nodded with a smile. "Then let's get the rest of the crew suited up. Then we can work on optimizing generation time and integrating secondary features."