Simurgh tk manton 3

Defiant was plugged into the Marduk. Its sensors were his eyes, its air intake his lungs, its considerable power source his heart. Sensors tracked the movement of air along the Marduk’s exterior, and he felt it much as he would feel the wind over his own skin, where his present body still had conventional skin.

It came to him in data, each block of data represented by a three-dimensional arrangement of numbers and letters. A part of his brain that he had modified with Dragon’s help read that data, processed it.

While he was plugged in, he was the Marduk. It had been his go-to ship in the months immediately following Gold Morning, and it was his backup ship now, while the Uther was replaced by several of Dragon’s A.I.. The landscapes of then and now were not so different.

- Last 20.a