Technicians and repair crews scurried aside as  the tall
blond Senshi stalked down the hallway. At her best Sailoruranus
was not one to cross. At her worst . . .  well there  might be more
painful fates. The entire  universe hadn't yet been explored.
     "Director Ras, how is the project coming?"  The  elderly  balding
     director  of  research  bowed
respectfully.   He  was one of the  few  people  in  the Imperium
that  had  no  fear  of  Sailoruranus.   She respected  competency,
whatever  the  field,  while  he shared the Senshi's fanatic loyalty
to the Imperium.
     "Oh  it is coming very well indeed. All support and
control systems have been implanted. There are no  signs of  rejection
this time.  Your suggestion that  we  tear out  the  original lymphatic
system and replace  it  was pure genius."
     Sailoruranus waved the compliment aside.  "The  fire control
     system checks out perfectly with
the secondary . . .  "
     Sailoruranus cut him off.  "And  the primary weapon? How long
     until full power
tests?"  The director frowned.
     "That will take some time. I did warn you . . .  " "Show me."
     Ras  turned to a blank wall and waved a  hand  over
it. The featureless grey dissolved and was replaced by a
scene  from  hell.   A  tiny girl was  strapped   to  an upright
cruciform. Clusters of wires, tubes and  cables sprouted from her
nude body like weeds. In front of  her face, at eye level, a cluster
of tiny colored hoops  and spheres  whirled and danced like a swarm
of  gnats.   To one  side and slightly behind her stood two women
in the garb  of Senshi. The taller, dark haired senshi monitored a
bank of screens, while the smaller, aqua-haired senshi stood by, idly
tapping  a neural whip against her thigh.
     "Please.   It  hurts. Please." The  whispered  plea
seemed to go  unnoticed as the two senshi conferred.
     "It  will stop hurting when you get it right.  Now,
put  the spheres through the hoops, without touching the edges." The
aqua-haired senshi pointed to a screen  just beyond  the  swirling
spheres. On the screen  a  colored alpha numeric series flashed past
in a blur. "The screen gives  you  your targeting priorities. Don't
miss  any, don't  get  any  out  of order and it  won't  hurt."
So saying,  she pressed the neural whip between  the  bound girls
legs  and twisted the setting to high.  The  girl screamed and arched
against her bonds. If human strength sufficed  she would have snapped
the battle steel  bands like tissue.  Human strength did not suffice.
     "Work  through  the pain." The dark  haired  senshi
commented.  "You're losing focus. You'll  never  survive activation
if you can't work through the pain."
     Sailoruranus  looked down at the bound  screaming
girl.
     "What is her progress?"  "Oh, excellent, really excellent. None
     of our other
subjects  have  made  it this far. You'll  notice,"  Ras pointed to
characters scrolling across the bottom of the window, "that despite
the pain she is accomplishing  her task  with better than sixty five
percent accuracy.  And the   pain  inflicted  by  failure  never
degrades  her performance by more than twelve percent. There is no
doubt that she will be able to maintain control of the zero-space
insertion AND still retain control enough to translate back to normal
space without being destroyed by dimensional shear.  At this rate I
expect  we can have a full power test by the end of  the year."
     "Unacceptable."   The   response   was   flat   and
implacable.  "I want a full power test by the end of the week."
     "That's  impossible. We've cut  rest  and  recovery
breaks to the minimum now and. . . "
     "Eliminate them.  You can feed her through a  tube.
Add  stims  to keep her awake." She stared down  at  the
director. "There's a war coming Ras. I know it, you know it.
The  Imperium  is  going to need  every  weapon  to survive. We need
this one, no matter the consequences.

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