c9 decoy gems

"Hold out your hand," she ordered.

Ryouko did so, and Asaka dropped into her palm… what appeared to be several exact replicas of her soul gem. They all glowed with the same pulsing light as her own.

But… they seemed empty, somehow.

"What is this?" Ryouko asked, holding up the gems to look at them carefully.

"Kyouko sent in the specs yesterday," the girl said, handing her another handful, making six in total. "It turns out that, on basically any sensor we can design, soul gems don't look like anything but inexplicably glowing gems. Yeah, we can tell the difference, and if you get up close the sensors can't figure out what mineral they're made of, but for most purposes they serve as perfect decoys. The aliens don't know which one to target."

"Clever," Ryouko commented.

"Try it," Asaka said. "Drop them on your neck. Trust me."

She tried to do as instructed, but it wasn't really possible to "drop" something onto her neck, not when she was standing upright. She leaned back and released them, feeling awkward, convinced most would drop into the V‐shape of the cleavage of her costume, or else miss entirely and drop to the floor—she wasn't the most bosomy of girls, no matter how her friends tried to reassure her. In fact, she had a nagging suspicion her costume was designed in some aspects to hide that fact. It did seem rather assertive…

Instead of falling like rocks, the gems sprouted miniature legs and scrabbled around her body, in an experience reminiscent of the previous airlock microdrones. They settled into various positions—on top of her hands, on her forearms, in the middle of her belly, and in the middle of her back. One nestled in her hair.

They were all plausible soul gem positions, she realized.

"Does everything have to involve bug drones?" she asked. "It's a little unsettling."

Asaka shrugged.

"It's how it is. Anyway, they can't change forms as easily as actual soul gems, so if you untransform, they try to gather in a pocket or your hand or something. They're pretty intelligent. You're only supposed to wear them when fighting aliens, so you can take them off the rest of the time. But anyway…"

(To The Stars, Chapter 9)