The Nightstar Zoo

Gosh, where have we seen headless zombies before?

I was thinking the exact same thing!

Since the obvious answer is nannies, and the next obvious answer is a zombie, and the next obvious answer is a remotely operated robot - I'm going to say that what we are seeing is a Pa'anuri meat-puppet, used by the Dark Matter Entities as a spy slash infiltrator for the annoying carbon based interlopers.

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Using Ubutnu! Go the Penguin!

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Sweet mother of chrome!

Pi, you weren't paranoid enough by half.


The "smuggled milspec nano-assembler" may The Can or the spycams. From Colonel Krum's wording, the cams seem more likely. Perhaps The Can 'primed the pump' for them?
But instead of "killbots the size of cats", you have "runt super-soldiers activated on command".

And it's entirely possible that every SBFKAG (Sentient Being Formerly Known As Gav) present on the base is one of them.

I supect that Tagon's Big Freaking Gun©®™ has a plasma cannon setting. The two weaknesses that have been mentioned for the Laz 'R' Us nannies are gravitic containment and reducing the body to ash. A plasgun on wide beam will reduce the body to ahses. We know this because Schlock often kills his enemies and then reducesw the bodies to ash and eats the ashes. Of course, reducing the body to vapor will also work, since it will (briefly) pass through the "ash" stage.

I wouldn't put it past Tagon to have a Gravy Gun in that weapon--you never know when you might need ground troops. That might not kill a runt super soldier, but being reduced to sll pieces would require reassembly, which takes time. There would certainly be time to get a gravitic containment cell from Tagii, even if she had to Fab it.

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"A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke
"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
Jack L. Chalker
"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"
Larry Niven

I guess I was the only one that saw a small gav head growing back then.

You're not, but I'm waiting to see what happens next

I am not sure if that little bit is regrowth or just a part that wasn't ripped all the way off. I am also wondering if we are witnessing what happens to people who take RED #1 instead of RED #2 (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2011-10-27)?

As many people here have suspect that The CAN that DEI uses to convert Gaav into other people looks suspiciously like tailored adaptation of Project Lazarus, I'll throw up the following hypothesis:

1. When DEI was created specifically to tackle the problem of converting Gaavs into someone else, they attracted the attention of Lazarus crew.

2. Lazarus crew, using backdoor channel supplied DEI with the know how of building The CAN, but with buried subroutine to compromised some (if not all) of the former Gaavs. The CAN is probably build using Lazarus nannie.

3. As Binnie's accident proves, once life termination event occurred, Lazarus nannie kicks in and tries to rebuild the body.

4. We're still not sure what triggering mechanism Lazarus crew have of compromising DEI's ex-Gaavs.

5. We're long pass the point of having Dr. Bunning look at DEI's nannie, and bringing in Petey to see what's going on.

Or, more likely, the UNS, when Gavcorp refused to sell Oisri started looking for a way in. When Gavcorp ordered The Can, the UNS, using its regulatory power over such devices, sent an "inspector" who added Laz 'R' Us nannies in place of the standard nannies. Short of dissecting the nannies on a molecular level and analyzing some very complex programming, it would be virtually impossible to tell them from regular nannies.

It's kind of like the Hercule Poirot story where a witness was murdered during the day, and all of the police watching the house swore that nobody had approached the house all day. It turned out that the murderer dressed as a postman. In England at that time, the Post was delivered five times a day, and people were so used to seeing the Postman that they didn't see him.

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"A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke
"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
Jack L. Chalker
"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"
Larry Niven

Actually, I'm in the 'remnants that didn't get ripped off' camp, but I tried to see where the 're-growing' comment was coming from and the details are a little disturbing. On the 25th, the neck looks definitely flesh-covered, whereas the next day it looks more like a stripped spinal column. Am I seeing wrong, or is it an art error, accelerated decay, or something even worse?

Actually it looks consistent. There really no appreciative differences between those two strips, just different perspective.

*squints* I think I see what you're getting at, but it's even less obvious than the colour difference etc.

And just so I don't feel quite as utterly unobservant, a nit: I think you meant 'appreciable' not 'appreciative'.

What can I say, I cannot type...