While Max welcomed various freighters to the docks, Nico was busy in the research labs, preparing herself for the inevitable day that her mother would come to inquire again about the possibility of grandchildren.
This time she would not be unprepared, and she would have a whole stack of research documents prepared to put before Mary Tarith, so the woman would finally have a satisfactory answer. Nico was sure that her plan would drive her father insane, as Mary's baby fever would only increase in intensity, but some sacrifices had to be made for the greater good.
Well, her greater good anyhow.
The results were looking promising, and with the System's help, she was quite certain that she now qualified to be called a proper new species of living metal life form. Her scans indicated that the nanobots had finished integrating her metallic body with her organic body, which only consisted of her brain. Even that had been highly modified now, integrated with the metallic structure to improve the durability, shock resistance and neural capacity.
Even if her child was unable to inherit the nanobots or had poor compatibility with the system, she should have something close to the Innu capacity for technology, as well as a portion of Nico's increased cognitive speed.
Combined with the superhuman body, and the child should have a bright future in front of her. Or possibly him. Nico was still uncertain if she was willing to leave anything up to chance, or if the first attempt should be completely custom.
"You're thinking too deeply about it, Commander. The random genetic selection is part of the experience of having children, if you select everything about them, you'll miss out on all the surprises as they grow, and you get to see which genes express themselves most efficiently." Her research team leader informed Nico as she stared at the screen.
"Perhaps you're right. Mother will be overjoyed just seeing the data indicating that it is possible, there is no need to rush into actually hatching one for her." Nico replied with a sigh.
The team leader patted her on the back, well aware of Nico's personality, and then returned to her work, reconfiguring the Archangel Exoskeletons for increased speed and energy efficiency.
Their performance in the last battle was very impressive, but it also highlighted a few areas where they were lacking, and the team was hoping to smooth out the limitations. If they could increase the speed and agility to a point just slightly greater than the user's capabilities, without costing them additional energy in a limited capacity system, it would meet all the requirements that they had for the mobile scout units.
As it was, the Valkia felt that they could have performed better with just their wings, but the armour was essential to their mission. The data said that the suits were much faster, but possibly less agile, and it was the lack of manoeuvrability that the Valkia were struggling to adapt to.
The suits didn't work the same as a regular wing, they used gravity control and thrusters, not the ingrained instinct for feather control that the Valkia usually relied upon to precisely control their position in the air.
The problem was that it was all subconscious action, and without a conscious input, the neural link only picked up the intentions, not the feather control, so it couldn't react with the same precision. That was what they were hoping to fix today.
They had a number of volunteers aboard Absolution now, and they all had recent experience in combat with the exoskeleton, so there was no need to worry about inexperience. But there were still questions about if it was actually possible to record the subconscious muscle control without making an entirely new system exclusive to the Valkia.
That would take a lot of programming, as they would need to fully map the subconscious neural net of the species, along with their nervous system and the usual conscious inputs. All of that data should be known and available in the healing databases, but that didn't make it any less daunting of a task to make it all respond perfectly when combined with the control systems of the Exoskeleton.
"Wings. She would be cute with wings." Nico suggested to her team leader.
"You just want to send a weaponized flying cyborg to your mother to wreak havoc in her house."
She had a point. That was actually exactly what Nico had been plotting, and it would be hilarious to see. Just the thought of the little winged cherub making her mother chase it all around the house, with its high ceilings and all the formal dining and guest rooms, was enough to put a smile on her face.
"Alright, I will focus on the more immediate tasks, instead of ways to prank my mother. How are we coming with the neural link upgrades?" Nico asked.
"I think we've actually reached a dead end. This is as far as we can take this current technology without a full revamp of the control software. Did you want to start on that right away, or should we keep trying to find a way around the issue?" The lead researcher asked.
"Let's start on the new software. It's a better option in the end, and it will be much more flexible when the Valkia are using it. We can always keep the original software for other users and make this one a military exclusive control program. You know how they like knowing that they've got the advantage." Nico agreed.
"Marvellous. I will go break the news to the rest of the team and the research volunteers. This will take a lot of careful measuring, but if the end result is good enough, I don't think that they will object to the extra work."
The team certainly wouldn't complain about calling one task complete and starting on something that was totally new and unique, it was just their suckers in the volunteer force that might object to the hundreds of hours of poking, prodding and precision tests that were going to be necessary to make this new program work as well as they needed it to.
