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Cybertiger

"She's been trying to wake up," El said, "but we weren't sure whether you wanted to make her wait, give her something for pain, or ..."

Ar added, "that and she's all wrapped up, she can hardly move if she wanted to."

"The legs are just deadweight right now, aren't they?" One of the Avanti's asked. The other said, "her arm twitched but it was the one that didn't get removed. Is that okay?"

Mark and the Sangers remained in the smallish recovery room with the mystery girl, as she regained consciousness. Her head would remain mostly bandaged but they found that she was breathing on her own, so the oxygen mask was removed. The bulk of her facial bandages ran as a bar across where her eyes were - nothing that the Sangers could do would have replaced her brainmatter, so they had to completely recreate parts of her brain and then attach a new visual unit that posed as eyes.

The rest of her was restive, her still-flesh shoulder and arm moved gently, but the weight of the mechanical limbs below her waist and her right arm were not moving. With a gurgle, the girl tried to say something.

"Don't speak yet," said Mark. He had a soft voice and a gentle touch - and he was reminded by the Sanger pair that he ought to be on her flesh-armed side. So that she could feel him - they weren't sure whether the rest of the software was working and she might not feel anything with the replacement.

She sighed, coughed a bit, and then weakly said something more.

The Sanger offworlders heard it clearly, their ears were sensitive. But Mark had to lean in, and the Loths and Avanti's all wanted to as well.

"Daddy," she said, "I miss my daddy..."

"I didn't think this would have been ... the way you wanted to see her," Mark said, with a faint sense of doom. His gut twisted around, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to be around when they met again. "Now, she's awake and she's... well, she's been given new limbs and eyes. It's new to her, too, so..."

"I'll try to be careful what I say," Seth said. The older rider hesitated in the room, beyond which was ... His daughter. His youngest, Renice. Her two sisters Jan and Atuara had been told, and of course Gloria her mother, that Renice had been found.

But what Seth was told was closer to the truth as they knew it. She was a runaway from Dawnlight, as had been speculated at the Eden's Gate meeting earlier. However, Renice had run away some five years before - when she was only around thirteen. For about the same reasons as her father had come into conflict with the prior government before becoming a rider, Renice just couldn't handle the way things were run.

And she'd somehow managed on her own, without anyone's help, on the mainland of Paniya all this time. Until she had decided to try and locate some of her family, friends, or whoever. A friendly face. What she found was Ripley.

She'd had a quick education as to what had been done to her, and why. She was perfectly okay with it, especially the part where she could simply jack her head into a computer port, and learn things. Not that there had been a large number of computers where she'd been wandering, but now that she was in Eden's Gate, there were.

Gnome Kiite was still giving her advice about what to do if her head began humming, or she saw static instead of images on her new eyeview, when Seth knocked gently at the door to her room. "Don't get up, I'll get it," he said with a broad grin. His grin faded only slightly when he realized that this was her dad- the striped hair gave him away totally. "She's okay. She'll need some rest, but she's all right now."

"Thank you," Seth said quietly and gulped back a sob. His daughter - his youngest girl - lay bandaged and bruised ... "What did they do to your head?" He asked, and Renice grunted out a rough laugh.

"It's okay daddy... I'm so sorry." Renice held her pale flesh hand up, and her father took it for the first time in years.

Over the next few days, Seth and Gloria visited their daughter and helped her learn to walk, and she got to go outside for some fresh air. The dragons looked at her oddly, but said nothing.

There was an odd girl following Renice around, after a while. Things inside had settled down now that Ripley had been sedated. Renice wanted him sedated permanently, but for some reason, even Triia wasn't able to bring herself to just kill the sleeping man. Image of her husband or something.

Or, perhaps, image of her true love's errant grandson. Renice couldn't understand what the hell they meant by that - but that there was time travel or distant space, or maybe immortality, involved. It didn't much concern her. What she was more concerned with was this weird girl in the corner of her vision.

Renice didn't need to turn her head to see the girl. The corner of her eyepiece was just as sensitive to movement and color as any other part and that meant that her vision was far wider than it had been before. If she'd had this wide vision, Renice absently thought while gently smoothing down her braided hair - hair which was grown for her in a petrie dish of some kind and grafted on when they covered her head back up - she wouldn't have been hurt in the first place.

"Hi," she said, and startled the girl. "Don't be afraid, I'm ... I'm not gonna hurt you. I can't hurt anybody right now..."

"... hi," said the girl. She was odd, Renice thought. When she did get a better look at her, it was immediately apparent that she wasn't entirely human. There was something queer about her face, it was more like a muzzle and she had oddly hunched legs. Maybe even fur on her heavy arms and slightly lumped back. But her big eyes were honest, open, curious.

"I was just out here watching the sunset," Renice said. "You want to watch? It's really pretty tonight... The stars are clear."

The girl thing came nearby, and glanced up, "dark, dark soon."

"My name is Renice," she said. "What's yours?"

The girl paused for a long time. Long enough for another star to shine in the evening sky. "Tilla," she finally said. "Rrreneess," she pronounced. Her mouth had large teeth, fangs. It was obviously harder for her to say certain things. Renice wondered how this creation got past Triia. It didn't look like anything new would be coming from the clone vats she'd been shown, that was certain. Not for a while, until they straightened this out.

"Cold, brr cold," Tilla said. "Metal cold? Metal arm cold?" She asked, pointing oddly at Renice's artificial arm. She'd declined to have it covered in the flesh-colored skin, prefering the clear plastic so she could see how the insides worked. It was fascinating to her. She wanted more.

"No, it's not cold, at least I don't think so," Renice commented. "If you're cold, let's go inside. It's a nice night, but you're right. It's good for the skirr, but not for us."

As they went back into the building that served to house the exiles and outcasts of Dawnlight, they spoke quietly. Renice laughed when Tilla said, "skirr... good to hunt. Good to eat."

"You like to hunt, Tilla?" Renice asked.

"Hunt good. Tilla hunt and eat." When they reached a certain intersection in the halls, Tilla stopped, and then tugged on Renice's orange-colored shirt sleeve. "Come see. See home."

Renice followed the girl. Her gait was odd, kind of lumbering but only because she was making an attempt to remain upright on two legs instead of using her hands to lope along the ground. Like some kind of animal... Like a puppy, or something. They went down another hall, which was darker than the first. Finally, Renice had to crawl behind Tilla into a kind of access vent, near the floor. That reached into a wider storage room, where Tilla apparently lived. Or perhaps she merely hid here, no one seemed very surprised to see her walking the halls.

Tilla lit the room and clambored around boxes of stuff, things which she'd clearly collected from others in the place, their discarded clothing, toys that were broken, and... Tilla held up a book.

A brightly colored alphabet book, she proudly displayed it to Renice. "Look. Look." She said.

Tilla flipped toward the back of the book. This thing had to be ... hundreds of years, perhaps even thousands of years old. It was an outdated alphabet, Renice realized that much. Perhaps from before the colonists had their own? Was this from the colony ship that the Paniyans and the rest of the local inhabitants of Alskyr came from? Since Dawnlight and the rest of the Protectorate had come through time and space, something Renice knew about because her father and his dragon helped perform, they didn't have anything like this where they were from. Their scrolls and hides didn't have anything on the durability or quality of printed paper.

Renice looked at Tilla's excited face, and then back to the pages she'd picked out. On it, there was a big "T is for TIGER", and a painted version of an extinct animal from Earth. "Look Rrenees, tiger! Tiger stripes - yougot stripes." She pulled a little of Renice's hair around to show her.

Apparently the visor-screen of Renice's new eyes didn't bother Tilla in the slightest. It did still to some people. Absently Renice looked at her hair, her father's weird ticked hair living on in her, and nodded with a grin.

"Yeah, a tiger.... A cyber tiger, now." She sighed.

There was a weird pause, and then Tilla said quietly, "sigh-burr-tiger."

Renice looked at Tilla who was rocking on her bottom, grinning madly.

"Sigh-burr-tiger," she said again.

Renice smiled truly pain-free, for the first time in weeks, and said, "let's call me Cybertiger, Tilla. Renice is gone. Cybertiger's here now."

Over the next few weeks, while Ripley was given an ultimatum of shape up or be shot dead by the powers-that-be, Cybertiger and Tilla spent time together. The beast-girl, who was a clone of someone that had come from Pern but who had apparently been exposed to some odd radiation or mutative substance before she was taken in, was energetic and often seemed less shy around Cybertiger than others. Tilla didn't know how to read much more than the alphabet book - so Renice took it upon herself to teach her how to read properly, and read Paniyan script as well.

Triia watched the girl from the sidelines, torn. She wouldn't have known the girl if not for Ripley. The girl wouldn't have been hurt, if not for Ripley. Yet... Renice, Cybertiger as she liked to be called now, was well suited to the work that was done to her by the offworld surgeons. She was thrilled to be able to walk without tiring, to stand without being bothered for hours, no discomfort came from her arm, legs or her visual aparatus.

As she taught Tilla, who had been a bit of a problem before then, Triia started to see an important pattern emerging. The girl was clearly her father's daughter - but Seth wasn't the only thing running through her blood. Gloria was a sweet tempered, but very keenly intelligent woman. That she'd never ridden a dragon was irrelevant. Cybertiger was good for dragons.

But they couldn't reach her mind now that she'd had the surgical procedures done to her. There was something in the mass of metal and brain matter that had just clicked off. Perhaps it was interferance by the electrical system. That was likely it - because the only person who could sneak up on her was Hollis or Etan. Telepaths. Then again, sneaking up on her wasn't really smart.

The one time that Triia had seen Hollis do it, he'd nearly gotten his head loped off by a swift kick rounded on him. Triia had heard Cybertiger say in a laughing tone that the telepathy he'd been trying on her was just making the colors go off a bit on her visor, she could detect a stream of signals coming from his head, but no communication.

Was that to be a disaster? Or a blessing?

And what about Tilla? She was being so good, Triia was very happy with the beast girl. They might be separated for a bit, but Triia was sure that even the half-beast clone would be able to ride or work with a dragon of her own. Perhaps a small one. Maybe male. You never know with them.

NEXT (Tamers)...
The Other Next: Bonding at Star City Dragonry! (( Formerly on cybertiger2.htm but put here 2023))

There was a strange sensation everywhere - and Cybertiger knew it as electrical impulses. There were computers everywhere here, surrounding her. And she'd been brought here, by the Sengihr guys, because they thought she might be good for a dragon.

Who ever heard of a dragon in a space station?

Who ever heard of a space station anyway? She had a lot to learn - and because of her new cybernetic units, she could learn it, in an instant, by inserting a chip filled with information right into her head jack. It was completely amazing. She loved every moment.

She learned about the old worlds, earth history, not-earth history... Dragon worlds, maps - she was exceptionally keen on learning the maps. Because that was something that dragonriders did, right? They had to memorize maps to get from one place to another?

Well this one place was among beautiful stars that weren't the old world's, and they weren't Alskyr's. This place... was great.

Filled with people of every description, and dragons that flew or glided around in the air, heedless of gravity or wind. Endless shops where you could fit yourself with a new arm, or skin, or get a halo installed.

Maybe she'd get some stripes put on her skin, in neon. That would make Tilla just drool. Of course, she'd also complain that it would make Cybertiger awfully easy to spot in the dark. And that would make their games of hide and seek rather pointless.

The hatching dragonets drew a huge crowd - and when the actual hatching started, every candidate (and there weren't all that many) was rounded up. Cybertiger shuffled out from her dorm, hoping that maybe she'd get lucky - and maybe they'd have an early dinner. There weren't enough candidates to go around, and Cybertiger's pern-based sensibility said that wasn't right.

The first hatching was a beautiful purple with spotty markings, rainbow colored wings. She went off to find food, and unbelievably, ignored the candidates. Cybertiger glanced from one to the other, and they shrugged. Maybe it would be okay - if the dragonet knew to just find food, that was okay, right?

Well the second one hatched, and was a dark blue with amazing rainbow markings on his wings. Another egg, hatching a copper, who was much bigger than the blue. Their mother made a rumbling sound, because they looked about to fight. And both of them wandered off to find food. However, one candidate stopped the copper from leaving. Finally, the other two eggs were shaking. A very bright blue dragonet spread his semi-transparent wings, and he was seemingly in awe of his surroundings.

But he ran straight for the food, like his siblings. That left Cybertiger with a weird sensation in her gut. What if she didn't pair up at all? Would she have to stay here? Not that it would be a bad thing, mind, because she liked it here immediately. But... She'd never see her family again after being reunited? No way!

But it wasn't too much longer before the last egg hatched. A lovely and amazing copper with transparent rainbow wings, not the biggest but not the smallest, came from his egg. He seemed to be stuck halfway in the goo of his shell, and Cybertiger moved over to help get it off his nose. It was clearly blocking his -

Chooopth!

He sneezed the rest of the goop from his nose, right onto Cybertiger's nice clean new eye visor. This was the most disgusting thing... Ever. Yet the little guy was so ... cute!

She had the sense to wipe off her own face before laughing, not getting any of that slop into her own mouth was a priority.

Someone yelled out, "what's his name!?"

Because apparently, they thought he'd bonded to her. "I don't know!" She said back. He was rubbing her leg with his head, that was something. And, he was thinking hard at her. Anyone who could hear dragons, heard this:

Thank you for your help!
Er... thank you....? Hello?
Hello in there?
I said hello in there!

He began nudging her toward the food, it was time to eat. She would figure it out. She had to! Cybertiger fumbled with her feet on the sand, and then they finally started walking away together.

Okay, that's it... come. this. way. now. Towards. Food... there we go... that way! Good! Don't worry, I'll find a way for you to hear me... I know you can't hear me now, but you will!

It was obviously strange, but she was faintly aware that the dragonet was trying to contact her. But the wiring replacing most of her visual cortex and parts of her brain wouldn't let any communication in. She'd learned that, Etan was a telepath and she had to concentrate on where he was, if he was to sneak up on her mentally. Cybertiger saw a faint bit of electrical energy moving around the copper's head, and she decided that she'd have to just live with it for the moment. He was too young to alter - but maybe, there was something that could be done about their unique situation?

"His name is Tchaneehath," Said Siche, having learned his name through various dragons on the sands. "And he's quite yours, you know. He adores you."

"Does he?" Cybertiger asked, "well I guess he has to," she laughed. "He's got good taste!"

(pending: 1 major or 2 moderate adjustments)

***

Tchaneehath demanded an audience with one of the cyborware vendors, but he had to do it by talking to other dragons and getting their riders to help. Cybertiger was great - he loved her and everything. That was why he needed to get these enhancements.

"But... How am I supposed to pay for this?" Cybertiger asked the vendor, who had a fist full of wires and wetware jacks and was about to start drilling. It would be made easier by the fact that Tchaneehath already had the rudamentary jacks that had been grown in his brain while he was still in the egg. No one questioned that he was a good candidate for enhancements. He just needed to get his rider jacked into his head.

"Riders," muttered the vendor. "You get this because you're signed up as a rider here. It's part of your hatching plan."

Stunned, Cybertiger stared at the man. He had some kind of eye device, kind of like her own. Clearly it made his work easier, he might be seeing everything greatly magnified or something.

"Listen," he said, "your jacks right here," he poked at the plastic and metal connection at the side of her visor, "is connected directly to your brain. You've never jacked it into anything other than a local map or something eh?"

Cybertiger admitted that she had not been used to actively playing with the jacks - but she wanted to learn how to work it.

She couldn't stand to see her dragon's head open like this... It was just the skin peeled back a bit, with microwires holding it open and exposing the faint grey wiring that had been growing inside his brain all this time. There were several ports coming out of what appeared to be completely natural bone spurs, where his 'horns' were. They made ideal jack locations, she thought. But it was still kind of icky.

When the work was done, though, Tchaneehath woke almost instantly and shook his head a bit, almost to jiggle the connections into place. There would be little healing time needed, as the microwiring meshed his skin right back down over the bones. There wasn't much muscle right there - why would it be needed?

"Try it," the man suggested. "Go ahead and take your connector," he held up the wire that the Sangers had placed into her pack before sending her off here. "Put it into your jack first." She followed his instructions carefully. The jack felt cold, but it was almost comfortably heavy. "Now, take a deep breath and let it out as you put the other end into the dragon's jack."

She did as she was instructed.

The world froze and then turned a rich color of rainbow.

There you are! I have been waiting and waiting for you to get this implant! Tchaneehath exclaimed right into Cybertiger's mind! She almost jolted backwards, but then, shaking, she felt his warm face with her flesh hand.

"You... waited for me all this time... I wish I could cry...."

You do not need to cry, my one! We are now together - you can feel through me, and I can sense everything through you! Isn't it great! This is how dragons and humans are supposed to interact! You can relay information, and I can fly according to the commands - you could give me a map and I could fly to anywhere you want!

"Tchaneehath... I didn't..." Cybertiger gasped with a sobbing laugh, "I didn't know you'd talk so damn much!"