The Siege of LX-925 Page 5

  Chapter 5

  Remy sat at the table and ordered a vegetable omelet from the scrambler. Picking up the fork and poking at it, he wondered how much of it was made up of Anders. It seemed a ridiculous thought, but once it was in his head, he swore the thing tasted like human. Even if that wasn’t the case, it certainly didn’t taste like vegetables or eggs. He couldn’t stomach the thing, so it was returned to the scrambler.

  Technically the indifference shown on the bridge during the night wasn’t in violation of any treaty or UN convention. However, Remy was not going to apologize to Freedom for his outburst. Instead, he planned to write a condolence letter to Anders’ family. As he took up a pen and piece of paper, he found he had no idea who to address the letter to. His first day aboard the Freedom, he had been busy with understanding their ways and this conflict with the miners. He had not yet grown comfortable enough with his liaison to start talking about family.

  He had no idea if Anders was married with kids. Did he have a girlfriend? Were his parents still alive? Remy’s life was spent making sure people all over the world were treated with dignity and respect. Yet somehow he had lost track of who these people were. Anders was more than an officer. Somewhere he had a life off the Freedom, and friends back on Earth who weren’t bound to the military. More than the Colonel, Remy hated himself for the way he treated the young Lieutenant.

  A tone indicated someone was at the door. He rose to answer wondering who had been assigned to him now. Given the attitude he gave the Colonel, it was probably the coldest, toughest bastard aboard. He was likely to get someone who would treat him as a Drill Instructor would treat the new recruits on the first day. Remy couldn’t imagine the rest of this mission being pleasant. Nor could he imagine the surprise waiting for him when he dematerialized the door.

  “Ready to go?” It was Lieutenant Anders! Alive and healthy. No sign of pain or weakness as he stood at the door with his hands behind his back. Whatever magic they used to replace his heart and restart his system, left him no worse off than he had been when they went to the makeshift officer’s club.

  “How are you alive?”

  The Lieutenant took his question quizzically, as if even a school child should have known the answer. He got over the surprise, when he remembered their technological miracles remained largely a mystery to his charge.

  “Every day at the end of our duty shifts, we’re required to save our life patterns in medical. In case something happens, the doctor can use those patterns as a template to repair any damage. Even if we’re killed, that pattern can be used as a backup. We lose all memories accumulated since the last pattern was saved, but we live.”

  It seemed so obvious, Remy hit himself for not considering it. It certainly explained the lack of concern on the bridge. Freedom didn’t care if Anders or Fortune had died because they could be brought back. Their comrades ignored his cries because death was no longer a consequence for these men.

  But the whole thing raised an interesting question for Remy. As with cloning more than a century past, the new individual would be a different person. Without the missing memories of last night, without those memories he and Anders shared over their beers, without his compassion toward Murillo and his bulldog, and without the experience he had picked up in that one combat situation, was this Anders really the same Lieutenant Anders who had served as his liaison yesterday?

  The whole thing didn’t seem to bother the Lieutenant, though. Living in this system, those questions had likely already been addressed and brushed aside during their training. Anders explained a part of that training involved being dematerialized and stored for a few days before being rematerialized, just so they could get used to the feeling of missing time. For him, having been restored in the medical bay after last night’s battle, it would have felt as if he had just finished scanning and storing his life pattern after the last duty shift. His mind would have to reconcile the reality that combat had just ensued and that he had been killed. According to Anders, nearly a third of all candidates for the Space Force drop out because their minds couldn’t handle those gaps.

  “Last night you told me there were no women in the service.”

  “If you say so,” Anders gave him casually, as another reminder that the person escorting him today was a different person. Whatever camaraderie he had forged with the Lieutenant over those beers was gone and he’d have to start from zero. He wasn’t sure how uncomfortable Anders would be if he started bringing up personal matters, so it might have been better to keep their conversation professional for now.

  “What about wives and girlfriends? Are they allowed to come aboard?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Is there any way you could sneak someone aboard? I thought I heard a woman in Pittman’s quarters last night. And Murillo’s dog; how do they get aboard?”

  “I don’t know. Someone notices whenever a scrambler larger than a Class 4 is used. And you can’t transport people with anything smaller than a Class 5. Depending on how small Murillo’s dog is, he might be able to sneak it aboard by hacking the scrambler in his quarters, but Pittman couldn’t get a girl into his quarters without anyone finding out.”

  Remy thought hard about it. He was sure that was a woman on the other side of the door, though he had to admit it could have been another man. With the time they spent in space, he wouldn’t be surprised if some of the crew found release in each other. Still, he understood even that would get someone in trouble, and he felt it a wise idea to change the subject before Anders got the idea.

  “So that attack last night, what was that about? I mean, the Confederation attacks us, and all they want is a computer program?”

  “That’s about it.”

  Anders laid out the history of the relationships between the four nations. Access to space created a planetary land grab, and there were more than enough planets and other bodies to keep the four nations busy. As time went on and the resources on these worlds had been exploited, all four wanted for nothing. Precious and base metals were in overabundance, fuel was plentiful, and there was no shortage of oxygen, water, or food. Though space aboard ships was limited and resources were tight during travel, there existed no shortage of resupply points.

  The individual commanders had no reason to mistrust each other. As Remy had seen, even enemies remained on good terms. However the leadership back on Earth could never shake the old hostilities. Proxy wars were waged in space regardless, and the commanders used their battles as a cover for exchanging something they couldn’t necessarily find on the supply depots: computer programs.

  The scramblers could create anything the troops wanted from food to clothing to decorative objects. The only restriction was the programming within the individual units. They still needed the patterns in order to create specific things. Since the Space Forces and their comforts weren’t given much consideration, the ships were given programs only for necessities. The “extras” had to be obtained in other ways. Since trips back to Earth were infrequent, a crew had to increase their library through trade.

  Apparently, the Confederate General had heard of a new program Freedom had obtained. Anders speculated it was probably some new recipes. As even recipes and food choices are coveted, Mizenov undoubtedly attacked as a pretense to expand his own culinary library.

  As they trekked through the corridors, the pair came upon Lieutenant Murillo fiddling inside an access panel.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in the engine room,” Anders asked, startling the nervous Murillo. Like last night, his eyes locked onto Remy, though his stuttering responses were directed at Anders.

  “I was inspecting the power conduits. Some of them were damaged in the attack. I was just making sure they had been repaired and the power was flowing properly to the cargo pods.”

  The whole thing made sense to Anders. That was probably enough for Murillo since Anders wasn’t exactly a high ranking officer. Th
ough they shared rank, their time in service likely favored Murillo as the senior officer. But Remy recognized the young man’s nervous twitches, especially the creepy look he continued to receive. Something else was going on with this guy. He wasn’t inspecting a power conduit, and his interest in the Inspector was too much.

  “Have you never seen a Candian,” Remy joked hoping to break the tension between them.

  “I know you,” Murillo stuttered, then pulled back his words as if he said something wrong. Remy certainly didn’t know him, but given the range of his work, it was conceivable Murillo recognized him from a previous mission.

  “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t remember you. I meet a lot of people in my job. Where did we meet?”

  “I can’t tell you. I’m not allowed to tell you.” The more time he spent around this man, the stranger he proved to be. No matter how much he pried, Remy could not get any more information.

  Anders finally had enough of the silliness and dragged Remy away.

  “Has Colonel Freedom issued a gag order to the rest of the crew,” Remy asked when they were safely away from curious ears and eyes.

  “Not to my knowledge. But I wouldn’t put much stock in what Murillo has to say. He’s kind of the ship’s fool, though if you ask me, I think he only pretends to be odd so we don’t expect much out of him.”

  Remy remembered the assessment from the night before, and hoped these scrambled resurrections weren’t all that common, because he wasn’t sure if he’d ever get over the repeated conversations and discussions.