on available materials. During occupation, they provide life support, interface and stasis stability. Life support means generating heat, converting elementals into useable molecules for energy and respiration, removing waste.

Interface means interpreting any movements or words and responding accordingly, sometimes even before the occupant has formulated an actual conscious thought. Stasis stability means flash-freezing the occupant, preventing ice crystallization on a cellular level, and providing extra density for resistance to damage during high g acceleration.

High g acceleration is provided by the two round objects on the chest of the suit, the micro tangle drives. These are small versions of the drives used on our ships, based around the principle of graviton emission. Gravity is extremely weak, but gravitons, being virtual particles, are infinitely cheap to produce. So the drives make a lot of them, we point the graviton stream at an object of greater mass than the object we’re trying to move, and pull our way around. Since the introduction of these drives, high-popularity and small-mass pull anchors—such as some of the larger asteroids—are starting to wander from their orbits, but there are plenty of targets out there.

When the suit detects danger, it drops the occupant into stasis, picks a nearby replenishment target and pulls to it. The assembler tank is filled with as many useful particles as the nites can eat, and the occupant is revived. Because this is a rescue suit and not an exploration suit, the nites are given a highly restrictive set of rules based on keeping the occupant alive, as opposed to, say, letting the occupant drive the fucking thing and get back home.

Testing has revealed a small flaw there.

There’s your Guardian Angel Prototype Three brochure, you green bastards. Choke on it. And if you already tried to open the confinement