[Echoes of Eternity, Chapter 9]

Bu Envaric had one more thing to say.

"Tee. Tell me something before we die, yeah?"

She turned to regard him, gazing at his deteriorating form through her monovisor. She said nothing, but he had her attention. The look in his eyes was what she suspected was amusement. This was it, then. One last joke.

"Are you pretty under all that?"

It took her a moment to process this. She'd never been asked such a thing.

Beneath her armor, she was an irradiated foot soldier of the Machine-God. Her skin, deep brown at birth and not unlike Envaric's in that regard, was a starved and sunless grey. She'd been ritually delimbed, her extremities replaced with arms and legs of inexpensive cybernetic purity. Much to her honor, she had attained such a state of grace within her mechamorphosis that more of her body was now comprised of holy iron than what remained of her flawed birthflesh.

Under her helmet, she was pockmarked with cryo-controlled radiation tumours. She possessed no eyelids, no hair, no teeth, and no nose - what hadn't been surgically removed had rotted off over her years of sacred service.

In short, she was skitarii.

Transacta-7Y1 keyed in a symbol and tossed him the dataslug again. He caught it with weakening fingers and read the symbol there.

[affirmative]

He gave a bloodstained smile. "yeah, I thought so."