 
### The Siege of LX-925

Copyright 2015 by J.J. Mainor

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Author's Notes

Preview: The Vorman Insurgence

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2-2

Chapter 2-3

Chapter 2-4

Chapter 2-5

Also By J.J. Mainor

Chapter 1

A being materialized on the medical bed, human in form, with a green, scaly skin, looking more lizard than man. It opened its mouth to speak, but nothing came out. It tried to move from the bed, but found its arms and legs ending in worthless stumps. Panic set in its eyes as it explored the surroundings.

Across the room, a man turned from a control panel and approached the subject. His long, white lab coat suggested he was a doctor, while the cammies peeking from beneath, and the insignia on the collar suggested military. The creature recognized the metal pin. This man was a Major. If he was a doctor, he must have been an experienced one.

The Major leaned over his subject, studying the creature close up.

"Remarkable."

The creature looked into his face, pleading with his eyes. This was not how he remembered himself. He was supposed to have a voice. He was supposed to have arms and legs.

"I'm sorry about all that," the Major told him rather matter-of-factly as he took up a clipboard to make notes. "But the experiment doesn't require you to move or speak." He looked up from his work to the creature as if a truth just came to him. "Not that you could go anywhere if you tried to escape, or alert anyone if you tried to scream."

The Major ran his fingers across the lizard skin with fascination. The creature tried to struggle against him, so the Major backed off to get to work. He took up his scanning equipment to get a look inside his subject. Heart rate was elevated, and pulse was racing, but that was to be expected given the shock to his system.

Body temperature seemed to be dropping. Unlike the individual beneath the surface, the skin was cold-blooded. The warm-blooded organs pumped heat outward, but the scales were losing it faster. This creature's systems were not compatible with each other, but the Major was not willing to give up on it yet. He returned to the controls. Pushing a few buttons, a heat lamp materialized beside the bed.

"This should keep you alive just long enough to collect my data."

The Major continued with his work-up on the creature, taking blood samples, tissue samples, even fecal samples. All the poking and prodding did little to assuage the creature's tensions and fears, though his spirits were lifted when someone called for the Major from outside the room.

The Major gave his subject a look of annoyance, but interruptions were to be expected. He pulled his sleeve back to access a small device wrapped around his wrist. Pressing it and triggering a faint flash around him, the Major appeared to the creature to have grown translucent.

He watched his captor approach the far wall. With the push of a button, a door dematerialized, yet a wall remained in its place. Then, to destroy what reason remained in the creature's mind, the Major passed through it like it wasn't even there.

Looking back into the room, the Major spied the empty bed where his subject lay in some other dimension, out of sync with space-time as normally perceived. His secret lab had been constructed in this other dimension with its own walls, and its own equipment, and its own bed, all situated exactly where their counterparts sat in this dimension.

Light could pass one way from this dimension to the other. To the Major, having returned to normal reality by way of his wrist device, the bed in the room looked empty; but the creature in that dimension could see him, and watch his interactions with his patients so long as they were within these walls. If that creature could not figure out where he was, the activity around him would be more disconcerting than his newfound appearance.

The Major found two men waiting for him. The first was one of the new officers, Lieutenant Anders. The other man was unfamiliar, though he could guess his identity. He wore camouflaged cargo pants with a powder blue tee shirt bearing the letters "UN" on each sleeve. Certainly the medical records already forwarded to him were familiar.

"Major Sadile, this is that UN inspector. The Colonel wants a full work up before we get underway."

"Salut, Major, I'm Dr. Remy Duval." The Inspector extended his hand to the Major, and waited.

After an unsettling pause, Sadile decided to take the friendly gesture, offering phony glee in exchange. "I was just going over your file." He led the Inspector into the same exam room hiding his secret lab, and motioned for his patient to take a seat on the bed.

In the secret dimension, the creature's panic nearly induced a heart attack as he watched the new patient sit within his mutilated body. He knew Remy was there, even if Remy didn't know he shared a bed with a monster.

Sadile struck up conversation as he took the scanning equipment, those versions that existed in this reality, and began his examination.

"Tell me, Dr. Duval, how did the UN ever convince the Republic to allow an inspector aboard one of their space ships?" He cast a brief smirk to the invisible creature. He knew how frustrating it must be to be so close to help, yet unable to reach it. Sadile was the only one with access. Even if someone managed to get the device around his wrist, he was the only one who knew that other room was even there...that is except for his subject.

"You're asking the wrong person, Major. I'm an inspector, not a diplomat."

"Well then, what do you hope to find during your stay with us?"

"What I hope to find, Major, is the reason you and the other three spacefaring nations are so secretive about your programs."

The Major chuckled. The Confederation and the Eastern Imperium couldn't be trusted if the fate of the galaxy was at stake, and the Independent Union had shifting loyalties. But if there was one thing all four nations could agree on, it was secrecy against the UN. It wasn't as though the UN was irrelevant to those particular nations. The organization, after 270 years, had a very noble mission on Earth, maintaining order among hundreds of nations that felt they were being picked on by the other nations. They coordinated humanitarian efforts to civilian populations when disaster or war struck. And they made sure civility ruled on the home world.

But there was ambivalence toward the organization when it came to space matters. Only four powers had developed technology allowing travel outside the solar system. None of them felt the rest of the world had a right to the technology or the resources discovered out there. The space programs didn't involve the entire Earth, so the UN was shut out. All four nations remained tight-lipped to the happenings, their ambassadors sharing winks across the chamber floor whenever talk of their programs came up in front of the General Assembly.

Every now and then, someone would agree to allow an inspector aboard a ship. They would be given a sanitized tour, followed by cake and tea, and then sent back to the UN with no more information than they started off with. Major Sadile figured they were taking a cruise to Alpha Centauri and back. Finishing the notations on this exam, he figured it was nothing but a ruse to placate Dr. Duval. Anyway, he already had everything he needed from Remy to do his job.

"I hope I didn't violate you too much, Doctor." Sadile gave him another broad, toothy grin to keep him happy, before returning him to Lieutenant Anders and whatever activities the two of them had planned.

After the door to the medical bay was sealed and he was again alone, he returned to the exam room. Feeling for the device around his wrist, Sadile returned to his hidden lab and the creature lying terrified on the bed.

"Now we can get back to work." He took up his scanner and examined the creature. The heartbeat raced faster than before, his breathing had grown strained, and the heat lamp had been unable to slow the heat loss.

"Oh dear." Sadile recorded the last of his figures and approached the control panel on the edge of the room. "It looks like this blending was a failure. The good news, my friend, is I've learned enough to start over again."

With a flick of a switch, the creature vanished in a flash of white light. Its atoms were returned to storage. Sadile didn't bother to save its pattern into the computer.
Chapter 2

Led through the corridors of the R.S. _Freedom_ , Remy considered his liaison, Lieutenant Anders. He had been through a number of inspections back on Earth. Sometimes the military would pair him with an officer, sometimes not; but the liaison always had experience. Every government in the world under UN scrutiny wanted an experienced individual babysitting the inspectors to make sure state secrets weren't spilled or hidden facilities weren't accidentally discovered.

One time, Remy had been sent into a tiny African country. He couldn't remember the name of the country; the region had been divided and divided again too many times to keep track. Eventually there were so many nations carved out, none had the resources beneath the ground to support a fully functioning government. Many of these nations didn't even have enough land for crops. Infighting would break out within a village and the solution was always to split the village and carve out two new nations. It never worked and the wars and conflicts always intensified as the new nations scrambled for survival.

It was rumored the army indiscriminately slaughtered resistance forces to keep them from rejoining the fight later on, so the UN sent in a team of inspectors to investigate the claims. Remy remembered their army paired them with a salty old Colonel, a veteran who went back to when the dozen or so surrounding nations used to be a single entity.

The Colonel was a man who knew how to keep secrets. He knew where the skeletons were buried and was a master at diverting the inspection team. This Colonel could not be bought, he could not be threatened with international prosecution, and he could not be loosened with alcohol. He had been playing this game long before Remy was born, and he had been chosen for the duty because his loyalty to his own people was unshakable.

Anders was such a different man. He was young and inexperienced. His dossier claimed he had been commissioned only a couple months before his assignment to the Space Force. Though he had finished college before joining the Marines, he was still green as the eighteen year olds coming out of high school, and probably unaware of just how secretive this branch of the military was.

He considered the possibility that Anders' inexperience made him the ideal liaison. If he didn't know anything, he couldn't spill any secrets. No doubt, he had been briefed on what areas of the ship were off limits and what technology he was prohibited from discussing. But without a prior space deployment under his belt, he had no knowledge of or experience with anything beyond the home system.

Still, Remy remained confident he might obtain more information from a Lieutenant than he might from a major or a colonel. Anders had already been more helpful. He had been engaging in conversation, explaining all the technology he had been exposed to.

That transporter, for instance, was a foreign concept. It had been a science fiction staple for more than two hundred years, but there had been no knowledge on Earth of it being successfully developed. Yet, Remy had been taken from the military base to the R.S. _Freedom_ in an almost instantaneous flash of light. This kind of technology could have revolutionized the civilian travel industry. Hailing from Candia, he had visited the Republic to the south hundreds of times and never once saw evidence this technology was in use.

"It's called the molecular scrambler," Anders had corrected him when their journey aboard had begun. "Some of us affectionately call it the blender."

Remy imagined the kinds of horrors that must have unfolded to earn that nickname: people rematerializing incorrectly, rematerializing within a solid object, or not rematerializing at all. But Anders put his mind at ease, assuring him the scrambler had been perfected.

"The reason we haven't introduced it on Earth is because there are too many communications signals zipping through the atmosphere. The scrambler signal can't penetrate all that noise."

They reached the quarters assigned to Remy and Anders pressed a button, dematerializing the door. Remy had seen the same thing in the medical bay and wondered if this was a variation of the scrambler.

"It's the same technology." The Lieutenant pointed out the devices fixed within the door frame. "We use a Class 3 scrambler for the doors. The transportation unit is a Class 5." He led the inspector into the room, a modest yet sufficient suite with a standard bed to the back next to a private bathroom. A work station rest against the wall to the right, and a dining area rest against the left. Anders showed him the table had a scrambler plate built into the surface with a small control panel at each place setting. "That is a Class 3 at your disposal for food and drink. This one is programmed with a limited selection. Because we have to store the material for any replication, your choices are going to be pretty simple; no five star meals coming out of this thing."

The Lieutenant left Remy to settle in before he would introduce him to the Commander. The first thing the Inspector did once alone, was activate the scrambler and explore the menu. Like a kid who couldn't resist a new toy, he had to order something from the unit. Anders wasn't kidding though when he said the selections were limited. He ordered a water and received a glass with only 100 ml. His turkey sandwich looked like it had been freeze dried; the turkey was bland, the slice of lettuce was the strangest shade of green he had ever seen on a vegetable, and the scrambler wouldn't give him mayonnaise. It was as though this thing was programmed to create field rations.

He left the food on the table, and moved to the work area where he set his bag. His luggage had been sent ahead, and he was glad to see it resting by the bed. No doubt security had ruffled through everything looking for his secrets, which was why he insisted on carrying the work bag personally.

A computer was removed from the bag. Remy started it, and pushed it aside while it booted up. He couldn't help but wonder if in addition to the scrambling technology, the Space Fleet hid computers from Earth that booted in under ten minutes. No matter, it gave him time to go over the Commander's dossier one last time before meeting the man.

Colonel Freedom. The name almost smacked of arrogance that the concept of patriotism and liberty were unique to the Republic. It was common practice in some African countries for leaders to take names that evoked positive feelings such as Joyluck and Goodtimes, but at least they didn't run around accusing their neighbors of being miserable after the slightest criticism of their policies. What seemed to elevate the arrogance further was to name the ship after the Commander.

Freedom's dossier, like many he had received, were highly selective in what aspects of his military career it chose to highlight. No doubt there were accomplishments the military chose to classify, but from what he read, the man hardly had a career worth honoring with a ship's name.

In his nation, ships were usually named after places or animals. Remy still remembered visiting the _Snow Leopard_ every summer as a child. Decommissioned and turned into a museum, the _Snow Leopard_ was a look back at a time when his country took a more active role in the world order, before the rise of the Eastern Imperium and their war with the Republic. Even through his youth, Candia was a nation that believed in world peace. The _Snow Leopard_ wasn't built with fifty missile banks, or 100-gigawat phase cannons. It was a more pragmatic ship from a pragmatic nation. If Candia had ventured into the stars their ships wouldn't bear the names of their commanders, nor would he likely find the UN trying to get inspectors aboard.

Lieutenant Anders returned just as the computer finished booting. "Colonel's ready to see you." At least it would be ready to go when he got back.

Remy followed his liaison back into the hallway. "How well do you know your commander?"

"Well enough not to make fun of his name."

"Good advice," Remy thought to himself. He followed in silence, studying the ship around him. Even in space, these vessels were stark and utilitarian. Battleship Gray was a color so loved, it followed these men into space. And with no carpets, he'd have to remember not to go around barefoot. If there was one positive to the design and décor, it was that the hallways were large enough to move in, not at all tight and cramped like some of the battleships he had to tour.

Anders brought him to the Colonel's briefing room, a large, yet cozy room with a metal table bolted to the floor surrounded by fixed chairs. It seemed a wise precaution so that the furniture wasn't thrown around in heavy turbulence.

Remy sat at the end of the table observing the large screen on the wall behind the head chair, wondering if it too was some advanced form of those on Earth. Instead of a 3-D image within the screen, maybe it projected the image as a physical hologram on the center of the table.

"I plan to get one of those myself if I ever retire back to Earth."

Startled, Remy turned to find the Commander had snuck up behind him. He was a grizzled old man, his face wrinkled, yet hardened. The top of his head had been shaved as cleanly as his face. His combat fatigues hung comfortably from his trim frame. Maybe it was because of the scent that hung with him, but Remy imagined this old dog enjoyed chomping on a cigar. This was an image of a leader stolen from his textbooks.

"I'm Dr. Remy Duval." He extended his hand, then quickly wished he hadn't after the Colonel crushed it in his own grip.

"Colonel Max Freedom." He took a seat at the head of the table, fishing a tiny computer device from his vest pocket. As Remy took his seat, an image of an alien world came up on the large screen behind the Colonel. To his dismay, it didn't dance on the tabletop as he imagined.

"This is LX-925. We set up a mining operation about two years ago, and now the surface has been stripped down almost to the magma layer. The miners were supposed to be off the planet a week ago so we could trade it to the Independent Union for a world they control. However the miners refuse to leave. My orders are simply to remove those miners. My government has authorized you to observe the operation on behalf of the UN.

"You will have access to most areas of the ship, but Lieutenant Anders must accompany you at all times. My ship may seem easy to navigate, but it's even easier to get lost. You will have access to my bridge during the operation, but you must remain in the back. Things can get heated and my men don't need you in the way. Any questions you have, I am yours for the next thirty minutes. After that, if Anders can't answer something, he can find the answer."

Remy knew the game; anything damaging that his government wanted kept secret, would remain so. He expected to hear "that's classified," no less than a hundred times in the next half hour, but it wouldn't stop him from trying. Still, being new to these goings on, it was overwhelming trying to decide which questions to ask. Just a day ago, he didn't even imagine humans were mining other planets, yet the Republic was capable of stripping away the entire crust of a world in a mere two years.

And then there were the miners. What kind of habitat were they living in? Did this world have a breathable atmosphere, or were there self-contained environments? There were so many questions. Reminding himself he worked for the UN, and human rights were a prime concern, the miners' squabble seemed to be the most pressing matter.

"Tell me about the miners. Why won't they leave? What is their grievance?"

The Colonel's eyes never left Remy's face. It felt like he treated this as a game of chicken waiting for the Inspector to blink first. He was studying his opponent, looking for the twitch of an eyelid, a bead of sweat on the forehead, a tightening of the lips, anything that might betray the next move, or in this case the next question. His first was to be expected. The miners of course were the obvious starting point to discovery.

"We don't know exactly, but it's usually a ploy to squeeze more money from the government. In rare cases, they lose their minds and think the planet is theirs."

Remy distrusted this intense look from the Colonel. He knew the man wouldn't be straightforward with him, but there was something worse coming from those eyes. It reminded him intensely of that phony smile the Major gave him. Maybe he should have been more understanding of these people. This ship and this space program was their world. They had been operating outside of scrutiny for so long, he was nothing more than an intruder to them.

"Assuming they want to stay, why not let them stay and become citizens of the Union?"

"They can't. I told you the planet was mined down to the magma layer. Within a couple months the internal heat will melt the surface and that world will be a ball of molten lava. Those miners couldn't stay if they wanted."

"If the world is useless, then what does the Union want with it?"

"It's not useless. They have the technology to safely extract material from the top of the lava flows. We've been working on it ourselves, but we're not there yet. We could hold onto the world until we get that ability, but the Union is offering us a world with a high strategic value."

Remy could not escape those eyes. They had locked onto him and wouldn't let go. Though he had been the one asking questions, he felt like he was under an interrogation. In his business it wouldn't be the first for him, but it was certainly the most awkward. That planet was still on the screen behind the Colonel, providing a distraction from those eyes. The line of sight was so close, at least he wouldn't get caught looking away.

"What does removal entail? How are you going to take them off that world?"

"We use the scramblers of course. Scoop them right off the surface, put their patterns in storage, and restore them on their next job."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

Remy's chin followed his eyes to the world on the wall, and the Colonel noticed the crack in his confidence. It didn't matter if the world was falling apart, those people still had basic rights. Perhaps the Republic chose this mission for him to observe because of the moral questions involved in a forced removal. He wanted to believe Colonel Freedom respected the miners. He wanted to believe there was nothing to worry about with the lack of oversight these space programs had been operating under. But that stare from the Colonel's eyes and his frank candor left Remy with a dry, foul taste in his mouth.
Chapter 3

Remy sat at his workstation, pouring through the UN Charter, treaties, and rules to find anything that might guide him on Freedom's mission. The forced relocation didn't bother him as much as the thought of those miners being dematerialized and "stored" in the _Freedom's_ computers.

He had noted to Anders the lack of personnel aboard. Only a handful of officers had been spied around the ship, and Remy hadn't noticed a single enlisted man since he came aboard. His liaison explained that most of the crew was "stored" as the Colonel planned to do with the miners. Resources were tight aboard a ship, even though half to three quarters of the ship was used for storage of the raw materials the molecular scramblers needed. Because they needed so much room for storage, living space was also at a premium.

Nonessential crewmembers had their patterns scanned into the computers. They were dematerialized only when required. The idea left Remy with a cold knot in his stomach, imagining himself removed from reality and stored in a computer like his software. But Anders assured him everyone knew what they had signed up for when they trained for the Space Force.

Like the military, the miners signed up for the same thing. Remy understood their life patterns had been stored for the journey to their job to save space and resources during transport. The closest he could find to a conflict with UN standards was the Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners, but feeling no pain in storage, it was clearly not inhumane. Since the reality of space travel forced rationing, he doubted he could make the case that this was unusual punishment. As long Colonel Freedom kept his word that those men would be rematerialized, he didn't see the proposed solution leaving the nebulous gray area he found himself navigating.

Anders buzzed the door, and Remy went out to greet him. Before retiring to his room, Remy had asked his babysitter if they could get a beer on this ship. Though the crew was but a handful of officers, he had yet to meet a military man of any rank who could go without alcohol for long periods of time.

Anders seemed delighted by his request and divulged they had an unofficial officers' club aboard. One of the scramblers in one of the vacant quarters had been loaded with the programs for some of the crew's favorite beers. Though it was against regulations, their Commander pretended ignorance to keep up morale. After all, he had his own unauthorized vices and refused to become a hypocrite by keeping his crew from enjoying theirs.

Remy stepped into the club to find one member already at the table enjoying himself. "Who do we have here?" The officer rose from the table, pleased to find he had company.

"Dr. Duval." Remy extended his hand to the officer, who uncapped his beer and placed it in the open hand.

"I'm Lt. Pittman, your armory officer."

Remy found it comforting they expected so little trouble as to allow the armory officer to get drunk. He couldn't imagine this guy leaving here to operate a high-output energy weapon.

Pittman ordered two more beers from the console and gave one to Anders. Given these two men were almost half his age, Remy felt old and unsure how he was going to relate to them.

"I noticed there are no women aboard."

Pittman face was aglow, misunderstanding the comment. "You're looking for companionship?"

"Not for that," Remy backtracked. "Don't you let women in the Space Force?"

With a clearer head, Anders decided to field the question. "Not that we don't let them. Our traditional services are 40% female, and every recruiting class has its share of applicants, but so far we haven't had one woman complete the training." As if he could see Remy counting the equality complaints within his head, Anders went on. "95% of the men don't even make it."

"Yeah," Pittman piped up between swigs from his bottle. "We're not just the best of the best, we're the best of the best of the best."

"It's dangerous out here. We can't lower standards for the sake of diversity."

Pittman leaned in to their new comrade. "But if you're still looking for companionship, the Imperium has some female officers."

How encouraging that sounded to Remy! Though he had to wonder if a man's pattern and a woman's pattern were stored too closely in the computers, would it constitute sexual harassment? Given what he had seen so far, the entire rule book would have to be rewritten when he reported back to his bosses.

As he took a drink from his beer, Remy swore he heard a scratching at the door. It was after Anders got up to check it out that he knew he wasn't crazy. The door melted away and a bulldog ran in.

"What the heck are you doing aboard?" Anders picked up the animal as its owner raced in behind it. "Murillo, I thought pets were banned."

The new arrival spied Remy at the table and lost himself in the stranger. The dog no longer existed. Anders no longer existed. Remy felt a bit uncomfortable as the gaze lingered too long. To him, it seemed as though Murillo might have recognized him, but couldn't be sure. Yet that was silly, because like his fellow soldiers, he was too young for their paths to have crossed before. It was only when Anders snapped the young man out of his daze that Murillo broke the awkward connection.

"Please don't tell." Murillo snatched the dog and clutched it protectively in his arms. "The Colonel said he'd scramble Hedley here if I didn't get rid of him."

"Then why do you still have him?"

Murillo looked into the pet's vapid eyes. The creature's tongue panted as if nothing was wrong. "Hedley's important. I can't get rid of him. Besides, he's my friend. He keeps me company." With that, he took the dog and left their club.

Pittman described Murillo as a bit of a simpleton. If women were kept from the service because of training, there was always a man like Murillo leaving everyone to wonder how he survived the program. Either someone took pity on him and carried him through, or he completed the program out of sheer luck.

But Anders refused to dismiss him as Pittman had. He had seen too many guys like him when he was still in the Marines back on Earth. The simpleton routine was nothing but an act he put on so his superiors wouldn't look to him for anything challenging. He would do his job competently, but screw it up just enough so the Colonel would look to someone else next time. He skated by so he wouldn't get in trouble or get put in a situation that might get him in trouble.

Anders was inclined to report the dog, but in the short time he had been aboard the _Freedom_ , he noticed the guy tended not to socialize. Whenever he said "hi," Murillo would greet him back and rush away. If he couldn't rush away, he would avert his eyes as if he was in the middle of something too important. Nobody on the ship counted this guy as a friend, so Anders figured he needed the dog to keep him company.

Remy tried to keep these two officers, talking. He suggested more beer every time a bottle fell empty. He had been such a pro with alcohol, he made the mistake of trying to keep up with the younger men, forgetting no matter where he went, military men were the end all of alcoholic consumption.

It occurred to him briefly that they may have been playing him, that they were the ones getting him drunk for information, but that was ridiculous. They couldn't have been ordering nonalcoholic beers for themselves. He had taken the bottles and handed them out many times throughout the night, hadn't he? It seemed unlikely, but it was enough of a suspicion to test it out the next time they scrambled up a round.

The indifference he received when he took the bottles eased his mind. Remy wondered if the secrecy of these space programs led him to see conspiracies around every door, on every face, in every smile. He had been on enough of these inspections to know better. He knew all the secrets rest at the top of the chain of command. Wherever he went, guys like Anders and Pittman were only out to do their job. If there was secrecy among these lower ranks, it was only because they were not kept in the know.

These lieutenants, were fresh with power. Though still officers, they weren't trusted with any serious responsibility until they proved themselves and earned it. When all they had to do was monitor the power to the cannons or babysit the UN representative, the enlisted men became the targets of their authority. They were the ones running around making sure salutes were properly given. These were the officers concerned that sleeves were rolled, hats were worn or removed when they were supposed to be, and camouflage colors appropriately matched the situation.

As he ordered another round from the scrambler, Remy almost took pity on these boys. He was sure the Space Force was highly coveted, but the lack of subordinates must have been frustrating for someone that came in as an officer looking to lead.

Pittman decided he had enough. He gave his beer to Anders and stumbled from the table. Though he claimed he was off to bed, Anders smirked sheepishly as if the two shared a secret. Anders was growing tired himself, so he scrambled both beers back into storage.

"Think you can find your way back to your room?"

Remy couldn't believe his escort was trusting him to roam the hallways alone, though he was beginning to wonder if there were any secret areas to discover. He gave Anders about ten minutes to reach his quarters before scrambling his empty beer bottle and venturing out on his own.

The corridors were quiet, and eerily dark, more so than usual. Remy glanced down toward his own quarters, then turned down the other way. As he took in the nondescript doors and unremarkable corridors, he understood what the Colonel meant about getting lost. He would have to keep a map in his head because there were no distinctive landmarks by which to navigate. There weren't even names to the quarters. It was curious how the men knew where they were supposed to sleep.

He neared one door and heard scratching at the base, imagining Murillo's bulldog trying to get out. Remy thought the creature's determination to leave the room rather strange given bulldogs weren't known for their activity. He chalked it up to discomfort in space, unless its owner was miserable company.

A couple doors further along, and he heard activity. The noise was faint, but he made some of it out when he pressed his ear to the door.

"Come on baby. Come on. Give it to me."

It seemed Pittman wasn't as tired as he let on. Strange, though, the moaning from the second individual seemed to be feminine when they had said there were no women in the service. Apparently girlfriends and wives weren't held to the same high standards the servicemen were held to.

He left Pittman's quarters behind and rounded a corner into another corridor that looked identical to the one he left behind. His head spun from the alcohol. As much as he tried to tell himself he could remember his way back, Remy knew he couldn't risk losing his way. Nor could he get caught wandering around or he would lose any trust the Colonel had in him. One snafu could mean the UN never gets another inspector into space.

Remy turned back and stumbled to his own quarters. He took off his shirt to prepare for bed before realizing how cold the temperature was kept aboard the ship. Beyond food and drink, power was also rationed. That blanket on the bunk didn't look too warm, so he figured he better sleep in his clothes for the extra warmth.

As he climbed beneath the blanket and drifted toward sleep, he thought about the dog. Out of everything he had seen and experienced on the _Freedom_ , it was odd a simple animal should be the last thing on his mind at the end of the day. But it was a creature as out of place on this ship out here in the emptiness of space as any of the officers were. It was a creature typically lethargic, but loyal. Hedley should have been content with his master, unless it wanted to be scrambled as Anders warned.

Remy's last thoughts before the lights went completely out in his head was an imagination of that dog sitting on the tabletop. Taking a swig from a beer, Anders tapped the panel in front of him, and poor Hedley faded away in a slow flash of white light.
Chapter 4

Remy was shaken awake. He wished there had been windows on this ship so that he might peek out and see what was going on. Though it wasn't a wise idea given the possible reasons for the jolt, he jumped from the bed and ran out his door. Anders was already on his way down the hallway to retrieve him.

"I'm ordered to take you to the bridge."

"What was that? What's going on?"

"We're under attack."

Remy was no stranger to conflict. None of his African missions passed without him taking some sort of weapons fire. He never went into a hostile country believing the letters on his shirt would shield him from harm. Still, opposing forces rarely targeted the powder blue shirts and flak jackets intentionally.

Out here, Remy made no illusion about what dangers he could face under this attack. A hull breach and venting atmosphere didn't discriminate between uniforms. Power outages wouldn't exclude certain individuals from the plunging temperatures. He was every bit as vulnerable as Anders was.

The ship shook again as the pair stepped onto the bridge.

"We have a hull breach!"

"Where," Freedom demanded.

"Storage pod A-17."

Remy's eyes fixed on the ship in the view screen. Freedom had his own monitor beside his console, barking orders as the ship circled their own.

"Where are those inhibitors?"

Anders pointed out another old salt at the station behind Freedom's shoulder. "That's the XO, Lieutenant Colonel Fortune."

"You're kidding."

Freedom craned his neck upon hearing the newcomers. "Doctor, I'd like you to meet the Confederation."

Another quake nearly knocked Remy off his feet. He found it strange that they should be hit when there had been no weapons fire from the other ship.

"They got another primary inhibitor."

"Then get the back-ups online. And where's my armory officer? Why aren't we firing back?"

Remy looked to Pittman at his console, amazed he had a clear enough head for his job after their little party and his afterhours workout.

"I'm trying to scramble the artillery, but pod A-17 held the silver for the firing pins."

"Firing pins," Remy thought to himself. "Artillery? He must still be drunk."

Before he could finish his confusion, Anders clutched his chest and collapsed to the deck. Remy knelt down to help him. Without a pulse, he ripped his shirt open and began compressions to get his heart started.

"Man down back here," he cried out seeking help. But no one answered. He glanced up from his hands briefly, seeking assurance that someone was going to help him save Anders life. All eyes were on the consoles and the ship on the view screen continuing an unassuming attack. Fortune was the next one to grab his chest and collapse behind his station. In some way, Remy understood they had to prioritize between the injured and their ship, but he could not believe these people were so jaded by this life that their own friends didn't even earn a cursory glance. There was no amount of training in the world...or in their case the galaxy...that could shut down emotions and personal feelings for the greater good.

"I'm losing him!" Remy pleaded louder as his compressions grew stronger and faster. Surely one of them could be spared to save a life. Freedom finally rose from his chair to address the Inspector's cries. "What's happening to them, Colonel?"

Freedom brushed the hands aside so he could inspect his young officer's chest. He too felt the lack of a pulse, but more, he felt the lack of the entire heart. No amount of compressions was going to save Anders' life. He was gone, and if he had inspected the XO, he would find Fortune beyond saving as well. "They're scrambling their hearts. I want those inhibitors up yesterday!"

Freedom returned to his chair to page Sadile, leaving Remy to ponder on the deaths. Anders had shown him some of the wonders their technology could fabricate. The molecular scrambler had seemed like such a miraculous piece of technology, he never imagined it could be weaponized in such a horrendous manner. Nor did he ever expect to see the day when humans would become so desensitized to death.

Colonel Freedom continued to bark orders, and his officers announced updates as if this was normal for them; as if the officers they just lost meant nothing. Freedom didn't even give his second-in-command a second thought.

"Inhibitors are online around the bridge," one callous officer announced, to be answered by more shaking. "They got one of our generators that time."

As Remy took in the reports of this strange battle, he considered that they were all dead already as an explanation for their disinterest in the casualties. It seemed a matter of time before the Confederate ship had dematerialized the entire vessel. As he looked to the ship in the view screen to take in his would-be killers, he witnessed an explosion blasting apart one of their lower decks.

"What happened," Freedom demanded.

Pittman turned to his commander with triumph. "I scrambled their reactor casing during their last volley!"

Freedom leaned forward on the edge of his chair, excited for the first time during the engagement. "When they drop their inhibitors to contain it, scramble their bridge!"

Before he could get the words out, his panel beeped. The enemy commander signaled he wished to talk, so the Colonel obliged.

"Colonel Freedom," his counterpart greeted when the weathered face of another old veteran flashed on his monitor. "Or should I say Colonel Oppression." He erupted in laughter, joined by that of the crew off screen around him.

Freedom added his own patronizing chuckles to the din. "General Mizenov, that joke gets funnier every time you tell it. Now tell me, why did you have to attack? We both know what you want, and you know I'll give it to you."

"I'm up for a promotion. You don't get the seventh star through peace."

Remy looked up from his dead partner with disgust, wondering how these two commanders could make such jokes with each other. Freedom had two dead officers on his bridge, and who knew how many were lost in that blast on Mizenov's ship. It was no wonder the UN was kept out of their affairs when life was treated so lightly. He glanced over the Commander's shoulder to the man on his screen. Beyond the ridiculous number of stars on his collar, the man had so many service ribbons, they barely fit on his shirt. As he moved in closer behind the Colonel to get a better look, he caught the attention of the General on his screen.

"Is that the inspector," he lit up. "I heard you let the UN place one on your ship."

Freedom turned sharply around, nearly knocking Remy backwards on his rear with the look alone.

"Yes, and I'm sure you don't want him reporting this attack." Freedom worked his control panel, returning his attention to his counterpart. "Take a look at that file and tell me if your attack was worth it."

Remy closed in again as the General inspected something off screen. Then the hardened face went wide and returned to the Colonel. "I thank you my friend. This is everything I expected it to be."

The screen went dark, and Freedom turned to his crew. "Disable the inhibitors and begin repairs." He cast an angry glare to Remy, then turned to his two casualties. "Someone scramble the bodies. I'll be in my office."

As he rose from his chair and headed toward a door off the side of the compartment, Remy looked to him in disbelief before following after in his own fit of rage. He had managed to cross the threshold before Freedom rematerialized the door behind him."

"Is that what your people are worth to you?" Remy shouted. "A human being is something to be scrambled when they're broken?"

"Doctor, you have no idea what you're talking about," the Colonel warned. "Things are a lot different out here than what you're used to back on Earth."

"The only thing different I see is the weapons you use to kill each other."

Freedom cut him off. "Before you say another word, I want you to go the medical bay."

"Why? Are you trying to say there's something wrong with me? You think my outrage is a disease you can cure? Maybe that's how you do things out here; when someone disagrees with your command, you scramble their brains so they're more compliant."

Freedom took a step toward Remy and placed his nose in the man's face. "You are here as an observer. If you want a reason for our attitudes, then you get your ass to that medical bay and observe our casualties for yourself. Otherwise, you can return to your quarters and skulk; but you make sure you have all your facts straight before you start on the strongly worded letter you're planning to write to my government." The Colonel opened his door once again and stared down the Inspector until he left.

Remy made a slow procession toward the exit, looking around from officer to officer for any sign of remorse for their comrades. Instead, he witnessed a crew going about their jobs as if that battle was nothing but a light rain storm. Maybe Fortune didn't mean anything to these men. As the XO, the man could have been a complete prick for all Remy knew, and his death could have been a silent relief. But he had seen Anders with some of these guys. He and Pittman got along well; they seemed like friends when they were all drinking together just a few hours ago. Even he seemed no more concerned for Anders than the Colonel had been.

He skulked back to his quarters alone and unescorted. He didn't care about what was going on in the medical bay. No amount of humanity toward the injured would make up for their callousness toward the dead.

Remy fell back into his bed and pulled the covers over his head. Murillo's dog was gone from his thoughts, replaced by that desperate face staring up from him on the bridge. He got over the anger from the attitudes and shifted to the unexplored possibilities. With the technology aboard this ship, he couldn't help but wonder if they might have kept him alive if they could have gotten him to the medical bay the instant his heart was stolen. They already had the technology on Earth to keep his blood flowing. If they had acted, they could have put him on an artificial pump. Freedom didn't even try to save his men. That was the worst part for Remy; a young man was dead and no one cared.
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. Though 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.
Chapter 6

Freedom sat at the head of the table in his briefing room, while Anders filled him in on Murillo's inspection in one of the lower decks. Remy remained at the other end of the table, uncomfortable with his liaison's tattling, but pretending he didn't hear the conversation.

"He was near the D-block. Said he was inspecting a power conduit, but acted real strange around us."

"Don't worry about him. Murillo's harmless." Though the Colonel acted like nothing was wrong, Remy spied him jotting notes down regardless. No doubt he didn't want his subordinate feeling bad about ratting out his colleague.

As the other officers entered, including Lieutenant Colonel Fortune, Anders retreated to a seat beside Remy. Remy looked around at the brass on the collars and noted just about everyone bore lieutenant stripes. He was aware that as the militaries evolved with their governments, ranking structures were streamlined. The distinction between a First and Second Lieutenant disappeared since all lieutenants were regarded as boot (as the Marines liked to call them) regardless of the color of the bar. Remy always found it funny the military had decided to stick with the gold bar for the merged rank as if intending to perpetuate the "butterbar" slur.

Besides Anders and Pittman, Remy was introduced to the Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Drake, the Quartermaster, Lieutenant Bender (no doubt he received a lot of attention for that name over the years), and the Navigational Officer, Lieutenant Riggs. Besides Freedom and Fortune, the only officer there (and on the rest of the ship for that matter) who wasn't a lieutenant was the ship's doctor, Sadile.

Though he noticed the lower ranks had been cleaned up and streamlined since the early days of the military, it did not escape Remy the penchant for the top brass to expound on their own ranks and differentiate themselves. It had taken both hands to count all the stars on General Mizenov's collar, and no doubt he had added one more after his latest "victory." And though he was surprised Freedom retained the rank of Colonel instead of adding his own stars, Remy almost swore that bird on his collar grew bigger every time he encountered the man.

While waiting for the seats to be filled, Sadile leaned over Anders to chat with Remy. "How are you adjusting to space, Doctor?"

As he had the first time they met, Sadile had an oversized, fake smile for their passenger. It felt to Remy like, with everyone else on this ship, the doctor had a secret of his own; and he was only too happy to suggest as much to the one person not of this crew.

"Nothing to adjust to," Remy smiled back. If Sadile was fishing for a reason to get him back to the medical bay, he wasn't ready to give it to him. "It's a much smoother ride than I'm used to on the naval ships."

With the last officer seated and Sadile falling back into his chair, Freedom turned on the screen behind him. The image of LX-925.

"In a couple hours," Freedom began, "we will reach a full stop well away from the planet, so that Lt. Pittman can scramble up the arsenal in case they come at us with a ship. Once we secure the space over the planet, Col. Fortune will head down to the surface with a Class 7 scrambler programed with the patterns of our ground forces. The miners have possession of a Class 12, so we have to keep our inhibitors online. That means we can't coordinate the landing from this ship in case they've figured out what they can do with that thing.

"Fortune, your mission is to get inside the complex, secure their scrambler, and obtain the data stores. Then it will be your job to take their inhibitors offline so we can commence the removal.

"Bender, it is your job to make sure cargo pods H 1 through 3 go down there with the Colonel.

"Pittman, we're going in with inhibitors active. As soon as it's clear, you will deactivate them just long enough to make the transport. Then they must go back up. No excuses like last night."

"Yes, Sir."

"We will try to remain in synchronous orbit above the complex until it is secure. Are there any questions?"

The officers leaned forward in their chairs in preparation for the dismissal, but Remy had to raise his hand, drawing silent grumbles and frustrated glares from the group.

"Maybe I could go down there first and try to talk them down. This might not have to escalate."

The Colonel placed his hands on the edge of the table and leaned forward to stare him down. "With all due respect, Doctor, you are here as an observer, not as an ambassador."

Remy felt the coldness blasting from his eyes across the table. It told him he was not going to win the argument. He feared if he pushed, Freedom might confine him to quarters during the mission, thus ending his own in failure. He leaned back in his chair signaling resignation, allowing Freedom to ease back into his own chair and end the standoff.

"Good. If there are no further questions, you're all dismissed."

As the officers cleared out, Remy remained behind, and by extension, Anders as well. He pondered the situation on that planet and couldn't help the nagging feeling that this was wrong. He expected the miners were civilian, not military. They couldn't be held to the same rules and standards as Freedom and his crew. Nor could they be expected to defend themselves when the troops stormed through the doors.

Remy had seen these kinds of operations back on Earth. When some government wanted farmland for a public works project or a new condominium, and the existing farmers wouldn't budge, the military would go in to forcibly remove them. The soldiers always had the newest model of particle rifle or plasma cannon, while the farmers tried to stand up for themselves sometimes with pitchforks and machetes. The soldiers always went in trigger happy. After all, a shiny new water treatment plant or schoolhouse was often enough to whitewash the methods.

Every time the UN deployed him to a former war zone, Remy and his colleagues would dig up a mass grave or inspect an ash pit. When the report hit the UN floor, all nations shared in the outrage. The exterminations and genocides would sweep the media worldwide sparking cries of "Never again." The more powerful nations would band together and vow to prevent these atrocities from happening again, yet they always did. The next war that broke out, the next suspicion of war crimes and suddenly everyone in the chamber developed amnesia, denying the truth in the allegations, or waiting for what was to them sufficient proof. After that next conflict, Remy would find himself again digging up bodies wondering what happened to the vows and the moral outrage from the last time.

At some point, someone has to take a stand and do something against the abuses of nations that believe themselves above international law, above human rights guarantees, and above the moral obligations they have to their citizens. Remy always felt powerless back on Earth because his hands were tied as long as even one nation blocked UN preemptive action. But out here in space, out here on a ship called _Freedom_ with all the wonders and marvels he had seen, one man could stand up and say enough. He was sure there was a way to prevent a massacre on that planet.

Looking to his escort, Remy wasn't sure if he could trust Anders after the man reported Murillo's odd behavior to the Colonel. He made an excuse to dismiss Anders, and retreated into his quarters to study the mission briefs on the miners. When he was sure the liaison was safely away, he snuck back into the corridor.

Standing outside Murillo's room, Remy wondered if the officer was inside. With everyone busying themselves with the mission preparations, it seemed unlikely he would be in his quarters, but given the general dismissiveness that seemed to exist for this guy, it was worth checking. Sure enough, Murillo appeared when the door dematerialized.

"What are you doing here," the Lieutenant asked, almost demanded. Remy spotted Hedley waddling toward them, snatched by his master when he tried to cross the threshold to freedom.

"After running into you down below, I wanted to know what you meant when you said you weren't allowed to say where we met before."

"I didn't run into you. I don't know what you're talking about." Murillo was clearly lying to avoid the question, but the slight change in his tone and demeanor gave Remy pause. "I haven't left the engine room all day. I came straight here after my duty shift."

It would have been easy to check, unless the man didn't care if he sought proof or not. Then again, after seeing Anders walking around following his death, Remy had to concede this Murillo might not be the same Murillo they met near the storage pods either. It was probably best to drop it and focus on what he came for.

"I'm mistaken. I'm sorry." Murillo turned with his dog about to rematerialize the door, when his guest stopped him. "I wanted to ask you about your dog."

As if it was a threat, the Lieutenant returned to Remy, fearful of the question. "What about him? You're not going to report him to the Colonel, are you?"

"No, I just want to know how you got him aboard without getting caught."

"I can't tell you that." Just like below, Murillo wanted to give the silent treatment.

"This could be important, you have to tell me. I need to know if there's a way to sneak off this ship."

Murillo cocked his head curiously. Even Headley pulled in his loose tongue and focused more intently on their guest.

"There's nowhere to go. We're in the middle of space."

Remy scanned the hallway in either direction to make sure no one was watching. "Do you mind if we go inside?" Resigned to Remy's insistence, Murillo stepped aside to allow him across the threshold, rematerializing the door and returning the dog to the floor. Hedley trotted to Remy's leg and sniffed out his cargo pants. "I want to go down to that planet. I want to talk to those miners before Colonel Fortune storms in with the troops. But Anders said they can detect the scramblers. I need a way down there without being detected."

"I can't help you," Murillo told him curtly. Remy saw the sympathy in his eyes, like he wanted to help, like he believed this course was right without hearing it out. Still there was something else in his eyes. There was a frustration as though he truly believed he couldn't help. Remy sensed something beyond Colonel Freedom and his orders, as though there was something larger at work physically preventing Murillo from talking with him.

That idea was entirely ridiculous.

"You once told me," the Lieutenant continued, "about a woman you met in Sandoval. She was walking the streets dazed, bloodied, and bruised. No one seemed to notice her. No one even cared. It was as though this sight was common to these people. But you stopped to find out what happened."

Remy's face grew pale. "I never told anyone that story. How do you know?"

Murillo went on, ignoring his guest's curiosity. "That woman had been gang raped, beaten, and left for dead. Those people on that street were afraid to get involved. Many looked the other way or crossed the street just to avoid her, but you had to help her. You saw an injustice that you had to right."

"I took her to the nearest hospital and called the police."

"Yes, and after spending the day trying to make sure she was going to be all right, and that those cops were going to find her attackers, you went back to your hotel. What you don't know is that the second your back was turned, those cops dragged her from that hospital and turned her over to the same gang that raped her. They killed her and left her face down in a sewage ditch."

"No, that didn't happen." Remy shook his head in disbelief. He had never found out what happened to that woman after he left, so there was no way Murillo could say that. "You made that up."

"The point is you tried to help someone who desperately needed help. You took pity on someone when no one else would. For all your concerns, you made the situation worse. Your best intentions backfired. That is why I can't help you, and why I won't tell you anything. I made that mistake once and it made things far worse."

"That doesn't make any sense." Even the dog grew tired of his leg and retreated from him. Anders and Pittman were right about this guy. He was one of the strangest creatures he had ever met. Still, Remy couldn't take the lies Murillo was spilling, he opened the doorway and ran back into the hallway.

Remy fell against the wall opposite Murillo's quarters, his heart racing and skin shivering in an icy sweat. That poor woman couldn't be dead. There was no way for this young lieutenant to find out what happened to her when even he, a UN representative could never get those answers from the Sandoval government. "So why do I feel guilty," he asked himself.

He could sense a door within the corridor dematerialize, looking across to see if Murillo was coming out to apologize. But it wasn't his door. Further down, to his right, Remy spotted the opening to Pittman's quarters, and peeking around the frame, he spied a pair of eyeballs themselves framed in long, golden locks flowing down from a demure, young head. The woman Remy had heard in Pittman's quarters last night had come out for a look.
Chapter 7

Her name was Roxanne and she was perfect. Her hair was blond, her eyes were blue. Her lips cherry red and very full. Her breasts large, but not comically so. Her hips round, and her legs long and slender. Remy even noticed her head was just the right height to rest comfortable at the top of his chest if they were to hug. She smelled of strawberries as if, with the tight resources aboard the ship, scented shampoos or perfumes could still be had.

A woman this perfect could only come from a dream, yet here she was, not in a magazine or a movie, but on this lonely spaceship hurling through desolation without so much as a window in her quarters to gaze out upon the passing stars. Pittman was not that bad looking a man, but Remy suspected he really had to lean on his space marine shtick to convince her to take this ride.

Remy sat at the table while Roxanne closed the door and sealed them away from the rest of the crew. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm Remy's girlfriend," she said as if that by itself should answer all questions in his male mind. Yet it didn't.

"I mean, what are you doing on this ship? Why aren't you back on Earth?"

"Earth?" She looked at him as Murillo had when confronted about their prior meeting.

"Yes, Earth. Home." Her stares grew more curious as though he had ceased speaking English and babbled in some childish cooing. "Where are you from?"

"From?"

"Where were you born? Where do your parents live? Do you have family?"

She chuckled at his questions. He felt like a child asking a question he already knew the answer to. However she seemed to him to be the child, so young and naïve with no concept of Earth.

"I have no idea what you want to know. I was always here. I'm Pittman's girlfriend."

"So you've never been to Earth?" He considered she might have amnesia. Roxanne could very well have been in storage like the enlisted men on this crew. Perhaps when she was rematerialized, she suffered some sort of brain damage. "What's the very first thing you remember?"

Roxanne pressed her finger to the corner of her mouth trying to remember the long (or in her case not-so-long) forgotten memories. "I suppose the very first thing I remember was a flash of light. When it was gone, I found myself standing right over there." She pointed to a spot near the wall at the foot of the bed. Remy went to investigate, looking for the telltale surface of a scrambler plate. Though he found none, one thing was certain: she had in fact been scrambled with no memories. But the bigger question was how was she materialized in Pittman's quarters?

"Does anyone else know you're on board?"

She shook her head. "Just Pittman and you."

Remy was more delighted by her answer than he could have imagined. Somehow a lowly lieutenant was able to scramble an entire person without drawing attention. Did he beat the detectors? Did he bribe the officer on duty? He had to know.

But Roxanne was more curious about this new man. "Where do you come from?"

Though his time was short, Remy figured the best way to get his information might be to become familiar with this woman. If Pittman had the answers he sought, it would be harder to glean them from a senior officer than it would be from that kook, Murillo. Maybe through Roxanne, he might learn how to get himself to the surface.

"I come from a country called Candia, from Earth."

"What's it like," she sighed dreamily. Remy guessed Pittman didn't have much use for conversation with his girlfriend, and never bothered sharing the possibilities of a life outside this ship.

"Earth, or Candia?"

"Both."

"Well." Where to begin, Remy wondered. Earth was certainly complex, though it might be summed up easily enough to someone who had the least idea of what planets were like in general. "Earth is mostly green and wet. There's large masses of land separated by massive oceans. Parts of the planet are warm, others are cold. Candia is mostly cold, though summers aren't too bad."

"Do you like it cold?"

"I don't mind it. My job takes me all over the world, so I haven't spent much time in Candia in years. Still, I wouldn't trade it for a home anywhere else."

Roxanne hung on every word as if Remy was describing some magical or mythical world. She truly didn't know of life outside this room. How miserable it must have been for her to spend all of her known life locked in a tiny cabin with no human interaction besides a horny twentysomething. As he looked around the room, Remy didn't notice much in the way of entertainment for this woman. It began to look like Pittman might have been keeping her as a sex slave.

"Tell me something, Roxanne. Are you happy here?"

"I guess." She again put her finger to her lips as if the thought never crossed her mind before. Remy knew this was wrong and like the woman from Sandoval he had found wandering the streets, he had to get this poor girl away from this life. He couldn't stop thinking about what Murillo said though. Even if the Lieutenant was wrong about her fate, his point in this case was valid: there would be consequences if he took Roxanne away. As much as the thought tortured him, she had to remain in this servitude until he could guarantee a permanent escape. He didn't trust Freedom to handle this appropriately and didn't know Pittman well enough to guess what he would do.

Remy slipped away from Roxanne and knocked on Anders' door. "What's up," Anders greeted after dematerializing the barrier.

"Can you take me to the armory? I need to see Pittman."

Anders was skeptical to his request, but the armory had not been labeled off limits to the guest, so he shrugged and led him off. He dematerialized the hatch and signaled Remy inside a massive room at the bottom of the ship with weapons lockers along the rear wall, what looked like torpedo tubes along the side walls, and large bomb bay doors in the center. Pittman made a selection on the control panel to a scrambler, materializing a torpedo which Murillo helped him move to a pile by one of the tubes.

The sight of Murillo surprised Remy who didn't think it was that long ago that he left the Lieutenant's room. Given the dwindling time to the planet, he figured the guy must have rushed here after his visit.

More disconcerting to Remy was the explosive ordinance the pair was creating. These kinds of weapons had been phased out on Earth almost a hundred years ago as various energy type weapons gained favor. Freedom had mentioned these types of explosives when they faced the Confederation ship, but he didn't believe it until he saw it before him.

"The inhibitors," Anders explained, "disrupt most energy waves. They don't just prevent the scramblers from taking an object or a person, they also disrupt our energy weapons. Our plasma cannons, pulse rifles, lasers are all useless once the inhibitors are activated. We've had to look backwards in order to wage war. That's why out here, we use physical explosives and projectile weapons. Despite the technology at our disposal, most of our combat looks like something out of a history book."

"Barbaric," Remy thought to himself, but he hadn't come down to the armory to inspect weapons. He asked Anders if he could have some privacy as his request of Pittman was personal. The suggestion that he might secure a girl for Remy provided him the opportunity to get his information. Still, he didn't need Anders reporting Pittman's discretion to the Colonel as he had Murillo's. He took Pittman to a far corner of the armory as Anders helped Murillo move and secure the existing ordinance.

"Last night, when you asked if I was looking for a woman..." Remy played up the embarrassment hoping Pittman would pick up his fumble and run with it.

"If you changed your mind, I can get one for you," Pittman offered with a lusty smirk.

"How? There are none aboard and I didn't think we were near another world or ship."

Pittman leaned in to whisper the answer in case Anders and Murillo might have super hearing. "Some of us smuggled a few aboard in our personal files. I can scramble you up a partner."

The more Remy heard, the worse this sounded. His worst fears about that girl in Pittman's quarters were true. Sex here was something to be scrambled on demand. Women weren't the equals they were back home; they were programs in the computers to be saved and traded and activated at some lieutenant's pleasure. Though his assessment had been wrong regarding their attitude toward life, Remy had no idea how he could be wrong about what Pittman offered him.

To his own shame, Remy had to concede this was not something to deal with at this moment. He felt dirty for pushing the issue aside as if the miners were more important. They weren't more important, only more immediate.

"How do you animate someone without getting caught? I thought the scramblers were monitored."

"They are." Pittman pulled away briefly to find out if the other officers might be spying. When he noticed Anders and Murillo in a seemingly private conversation of their own, he returned his lips to Remy's ear. "I'll meet you in your quarters after this mission."

Remy's heart sank. It would be too late then, but he couldn't push it. Pittman had his duties and he would surely get suspicious if he pressed his "needs" as more important. At least he knew there was a way around the monitoring. He would ask Anders to take him back to his quarters where maybe he could find a way to discover it himself.

Back in the corridor, Anders stopped their return and confronted Remy. "I couldn't help but overhear part of your conversation." It seemed he did have super hearing! "Are you seriously looking to replicate a woman?"

From the disgusted tone, Remy was relieved to find that at least one other person on this ship found that kind of thing monstrous. Yet, he didn't seem interested in speaking up about it regarding Pittman. Maybe like himself, he saw it as a battle he wasn't ready to tackle. Still it offered hope that Anders might be someone with a heart. With time running out before they reached LX-925, he decided to ask his liaison for help.

"I'm looking for a way to use the scrambler without drawing attention."

"What are you going to do?"

"I need to get in that complex and talk with those miners. I don't care what Colonel Freedom says. I can't sit by and watch this mission turn into a massacre."

Anders was visibly troubled, but Remy noticed he wasn't quick enough with his objection. It had run through his mind as well. Anders knew something was wrong about this. Perhaps he still held onto his idealism, believing he could make a difference.

"Those miners will be fine. Their patterns are stored in the computer core so if they don't survive the siege, they can be restored like I was."

"And what if the computer is damaged? What if one of those bombs or torpedoes hits the computer by mistake? What if that data is lost before Fortune can secure the complex? There's no guarantee those men will be fine. If I can get inside and talk those miners down, there's a chance I can end this conflict. I may not be a diplomat like Freedom suggests, but I've had experience dealing with unfriendly governments and leaders during inspections on Earth. I've had to convince rogue generals to agree to ceasefires so the Red Cross could go into neighborhoods and bring medical help to civilians. I've had to deal with trigger happy sergeants who didn't think we belonged in a particular laboratory. I can help those men before it's too late. I know you want to do the right thing, Anders. Help me do the right thing on that planet."

Anders thought about it for quite a while. Remy had made his case and feared if he kept pressing, he might pressure the man back into Freedom's view. So he gave him nothing but a long, pleading stare, a look to guilt him onto the side of right.

"I'll be court-martialed for this." Anders shook his head at his own decision, but he had come around. "I'm going to take you back to your quarters. Wait for me while I get a few things."

Remy had boarded the RS _Freedom_ with few expectations of cooperation, so it was a joyous thing to see there were at least some who held onto the same standards and ideals these governments paid lip service to on the UN floor.
Chapter 8

Anders entered Remy's quarters with a single data chip.

"What's that?"

"This," Anders smiled, "is how the rest of us get contraband." The Lieutenant slipped the chip into the scrambler's console beneath the table and waited for its programming to upload into the unit. If this was anything like his computer, Remy figured it could be hours before the upload was complete. "I am going to turn your Class 3 into a Class 5."

The idea seemed simple enough. Anders installed the specifications into this scrambler so that he could create the parts necessary to upgrade the unit. The capacity of the scramblers was determined by the size or quantity of the transmitting nodes arranged on the plate, or in some cases a signaling dish. The larger the capacity, the larger a target could be scrambled. Of course the circuits would have to channel additional power in order to operate the additional nodes, but that was generally doable.

"Class 10 and up can scramble an entire ship. The facility on LX-925 uses a Class 12 to strip away entire layers of the planet surface. We're trying to develop a Class 13 that can scramble an entire moon or small planet all at once, but so far we can't channel the necessary power with existing technology."

"That sounds horrible!" All Remy could imagine were four nations destroying each other one planet at a time.

"It can be a good thing if used right. Imagine creating a green world around a lonely star. Imagine taking a barren, lifeless rock and transforming it into a wet world. Imagine creating a new Earth in minutes if our own becomes uninhabitable."

Remy had to agree the technology itself wasn't good or evil. Those sounded like noble goals for the scrambler, but so far he had seen an entirely militarized space program. A military's job is to wage war and destroy. It was rare to find a military tasked with building instead. He could only be grateful the technology didn't exist to make such horrors real.

"Tell me Anders, if the Earth is threatened, is there anyone back there you care about?"

"I have a brother, I suppose."

"Are you married? Girlfriend?"

"I had a girlfriend, but she broke it off when I transferred to the Space Force. Said she didn't want to deal with the extra-long deployments."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. That pretty much told me she'd be cheating while I was away. As I see it, I'm better off not going through that."

Remy could certainly understand. He had been married once, and it was only his second UN mission before she grew lonely enough to stray. He didn't blame her though. He could have taken her around the world with him, put her up in a hotel in some neighboring, friendly country. Their marriage didn't have to be too long distant. He often wondered if he had been the one to drive her away - if he was the one cheating on her with his work.

Fortunately they didn't have kids to divide up, and it had been long enough ago to consider it now as he would some other interesting story in his life. To say he was too old for another chance was a bit of an insult, but he had resigned himself to the idea that the UN was and always would be his life. Romance wasn't out of the question in his mind, but it had long ago been relegated to the bottom of the list in terms of importance.

Anders, like the rest of his cohorts aboard the _Freedom_ , was still young and horny. He admitted to playing the whole Space Force card back in the bars on Earth a few times before they shipped out.

"I had one Marine pissed with me because the girl he was trying to hook up with found my uniform sexier."

"Did he start a fight?"

"His Sergeant was at a table to the rear. You could tell the guy wanted to take the Section 13 over it, but there was some part of him still clinging to common sense."

The data chip finished loading, so Anders removed it from the scrambler and placed it in the computer on the desk to load up the diagrams needed to assemble the larger scrambler. He fabricated the parts and followed the instructions, expanding the existing plate on the tabletop and adding power cables beneath. Thanks to the programs Anders supplied, the thing could be used as a full transporter.

"So what made you decide to join the military anyway?"

Anders attached another node to the plate, thinking back to the day in college when the marine recruiter showed up on campus. "Those dress blues were so sharp, you couldn't help notice the women hanging around. Even the smarts one seemed to be under some hypnotic spell. That was the moment I knew what I wanted to do after graduation. Sure enough after my commissioning, I met Ivy and we started going steady. As I already said, that didn't last long because my performance scores qualified me for a move into the Space Fleet's training program. It sounded sexier, but I didn't think ahead. There aren't too many chances to meet girls out here."

"You know," Remy began, adding his own thoughts, "the military can be as rewarding a path as any. It doesn't always have to be about blowing shit up or killing as many bad guys as you can. UN peacekeeping forces are made up of military units on loan from various nations. We see military members from all over the world, some of whom were once enemies on various battlefields, but all come together to bring peace to some of the more chaotic regions. Soldiers trained to kill are placed in villages to make sure civilians have access to food and water and medical care. I was with a Confederate unit drilling wells in Africa. I worked with members of the Independent Union's military to bring to justice a couple brutal ex-dictators from some of their member states. Your own service members helped us liberate a prison camp in South America.

"I suppose I went to work with the UN because I was still a young idealist. It would be fair to say with everything I've seen, and everywhere I've been, that I still hold onto that idealism. I'd like to believe people are basically good; that they will do the right thing when it's asked of them."

Anders locked the last piece to the scrambler, and restored power to the unit. "Now you should have a Class 5 scrambler, but we should test it before you try to go down to the planet."

Remy stood at something resembling attention, but Anders shook his head.

"You're too valuable, Doctor. You'll test it on me." Remy looked at him nervously, but Anders brushed it off. "You don't have to send me anywhere. You're just going to dematerialize me, then rematerialize me right back here. If that works, the distance won't be a problem."

Remy had doubts, but Anders reassured him. After all, he was going to have to get comfortable with the process if he expected to use it. He showed the Doctor the controls for the process, then backed away so the test could commence.

Remy pushed one button and a flash of bright, white light took away the Lieutenant. After a moment of awe, he pushed another button to bring him back.

"See, that wasn't too bad," Anders assured him. "Now we know it works."

"How soon before we reach the planet?"

"Not long now, but you can't go right down there. The Colonel expects you on the bridge when this goes down. You'll have to make an appearance, go through the motions, then make an excuse to retire back here."

Remy knew he was right, but he didn't think there was much of a window to do this. He remembered Freedom wanted the inhibitors online the moment Fortune and his materials were on the surface. If he remembered the lessons, his own transport could not be made as long as those inhibitors were functioning.

"Don't you worry about that," Anders assured him. "All we need is a small hole in the field to send the signal through. I will get you down to the surface."
Chapter 9

The RS _Freedom_ glided through the star system with LX-925 forward in the view screen. The ship itself, still a tiny speck, was barely more relevant than a speck of dust hovering in a roomful of air. A network of satellites hidden throughout the system served as a detection grid for potentially hostile ships on approach. It would be amazing for anyone to spot such an insignificant object, but no doubt the miners on the planet had detected them. _Freedom's_ crew had tapped into the system themselves looking for other specks in the room; any ships that might have been replicated to hold them off.

"All quiet," Dorsey announced, inspecting the signals coming in to his station.

"Stay frosty. They could be hiding behind a moon or an asteroid."

Remy and Anders watched on nervously from the rear. Though the inhibitors were operational, Remy couldn't get the image of his heart being removed from his chest, or his lungs, or his brain, or whatever organ the miners decided to target. Desperate men were known to do desperate things, and he couldn't imagine too many men more desperate than a group of blue collar workers facing a military assault.

As Anders had briefed him on their way to this spectacle, those men were not entirely defenseless. Their scrambler gave them the ability to create small warships in the event a hostile nation decided to make a grab for the world. Their database included specs for all kinds of weapons, including small arms. It was the smaller weapons concerning Freedom the most because it gave the miners a means to drag out the conflict.

Ships and space-based weapons required materials. Being mined out, this planet could only supply enough material for two or three small ships. The RS _Freedom_ could take them out and put that threat behind them. A rifle though, required far less raw material to manufacture; the bullets even less. As they neared the planet without resistance, Colonel Freedom knew the worst of this mission would be in his XO's hands on the surface.

Riggs directed the ship into orbit. Freedom turned to his Communications Officer who confirmed the space around them was still clear.

"I'm still not detecting any ships."

"Then drop the primary inhibitors and the secondary one over the main scrambler." Freedom pushed the com button on his own control pad to signal the go ahead to his XO.

The surface of the planet was an endless field of bare, dark rock. Dust was hard to come by as was the atmosphere. Heat from below was not. Two years of mining had reduced the planet to near nothingness, and in the far distance, lay the barely visible compound responsible for this stark landscape.

Colonel Fortune materialized on the deserted plain in his armored suit. A scrambling unit appeared beside him with three massive cargo containers behind. His first order of business was replicating a series of inhibitors in a wide perimeter. Placed far enough out, they could create a protective ring while leaving the center free for scrambling. He could scramble to his heart's content without fear of the miners scrambling him.

He set to work scrambling the troops from the ship's personnel files. A hundred at a time, all within their own armored suits. There were no names or insignia distinguishing the men. The silver oak leaf on his own helmet was the only thing identifying Fortune as an individual from this group of drones. His orders were issued over the radios in the helmets: this first group was to replicate the structures, supplies, and other materials required to set up their Forward Operating Base.

The nameless, faceless army set to work erecting the huts. The FOB was nothing fancy. Fortune didn't expect he would need it for long, but he did need a place where he could study reports, resupply his troops, and deal with the casualties away from the immediate danger. The hut erected for his office already had a desk and chair for him to work from, but his attention was needed at the scrambler.

These men were too green and inexperienced to trust with the equipment. If left alone and unsupervised, there was no doubt they would begin to manufacture alcohol or games to distract them from the job at hand. He would surely step from his hut to find half his troops somehow drunk, and the other half already dead.

Beyond the immaturity, most of the plans he scrambled up were classified. The officers all had clearance, even all those lowly lieutenants back on the ship, but there were reasons beyond irresponsibility why the enlisted troops could not gain access. This was no time to reflect on the military's secrets, so Fortune began replicating the rifles they would be using to storm the facility.

Each of the armored suits they all wore contained a personal inhibitor embedded within the metal. These inhibitors, like those on the ship and around his FOB protected the wearer from energy weapons and malevolent scrambling even though their smaller size limited the protection to smaller arms; the blast from a shipborne cannon would not be disrupted enough to protect a man.

One necessity of the personal inhibitor was that its protection barely extended beyond the armor of the suit. Each of the rifles was equipped with a Class 1 scrambler that allowed each bullet to be manufactured as needed from materials in the surrounding environment. There was no need to weigh each man down with excess ammunition, nor was there any fear of running out should the battle become protracted. The narrow field of the personal inhibitors kept the tiny scrambler just outside the disruption field. Of course there was always the possibility the end of the rifle could be scrambled out of a soldier's hands, but with a force of thousands against at most a handful of scramblers, such a tactic would prove impractical in combat.

As the men finished the last touches on their base, Fortune continued scrambling more troops, still a hundred at a time, and sent them forward in formation. There had been barely fifty miners and support personnel stationed in this complex, but there was no telling how strong their forces had grown in preparation for this conflict.

He looked out across his field, his pride in this moment shielded behind the mask of his helmet. The mining facility was several kilometers away. The march would be grueling as the men got underway in their heavy armor. There would be no stops for water or food. Removing the helmets meant instant death in what remained of this thin atmosphere. There would be no rest. Out in the open, they would be sitting ducks for the miners, and depending on the type of ammunition they were using, the armor may or may not be effective. But these men were the elite of the elite. Their survival on this field of battle depended strictly on their ability to break through whatever defenses lay ahead.

Odds against them on this open plain, the men marched onward in columns ten wide. The rifles remained slung over their shoulders for the time being as they pushed forward in lockstep. Fearless and practiced, this could have been formation during boot camp. The only thing missing was the cadence.

On the bridge of the _Freedom_ , the officers watched on through Fortune's helmet camera. Remy felt near-disgust that a force this size had been deployed against a few civilians. It seemed excessive to him. His job on this ship was to watch this unfold, and he couldn't stand the sights. He needed no excuse to retreat to his quarters.

"If you'll excuse me, I'd rather monitor this in my quarters."

Fortune stopped him as he turned to the door. "Don't leave now, Doctor. Things will start to pick up in a couple hours."

The Colonel chuckled as Remy ignored him and led Anders off the bridge.

"Do we really have a couple hours before the fighting starts," Remy asked.

"Maybe longer."

In his quarters, Remy took up a suit of armor he had scrambled for himself, painted powder blue with the letters "UN" in large white print on the chest, back, and helmet. He slipped the pieces onto the appropriate parts of his body and locked them in place. It reminded him of the flak jackets and helmets he used to wear when entering the war zones back home, except this was heavier and more elaborate.

As he took up the helmet, he paused to admire the letters at the top, and the reflection of his own face in the visor.

"Don't expect those letters to protect you," Anders warned. "Whatever you think of us and our tactics, those men down there will be far worse."

Remy understood. Whatever their gripe, they were desperate; and they had a Class 12 scrambler at their disposal. There was no telling what specs they had collected in their database, or what horrors they could conjure. He only had a couple hours at most if he hoped to de-escalate the situation and prevent the universe of regrets that were sure to unfold here.

He placed the helmet over his head and locked it in place. Anders magnetically fixed a small control box to his wrist.

"That's a remote control for this scrambler so you can get back up here when you're ready. Now I can deactivate certain inhibitors so your signal can pass through, but you'll have to radio me before you transport. I can't leave the field down longer than I have to."

Anders handed him a rifle and pointed to a small button on the chest of the armor. "This is your personal inhibitor. The very first thing you do when you get down there is push the button and activate it. If you hesitate for even half a second, they could catch you with their scrambler. I promise you they won't save your life pattern before they store your atoms."

With that, Anders backed away from Remy and went to the computer at the desk. Since Remy had already networked it with the ship's computer system, all he had to do was push a few buttons to deactivate a couple select inhibitors. Without hesitation, Remy pressed the button on the remote control and vanished in a flash of light. Then as quickly as he created it, Anders pressed a few buttons to close the hole again. Remy was on his own on the surface.
Chapter 10

As the flash left his sight, Remy pressed the button on his chest to activate the inhibitor. Breathing a sigh of relief, he took in his surroundings to get his bearings when it hit him. This was his first time in outer space, yet aboard the _Freedom_ it never seemed real to him. There was artificial gravity, no windows to see the stars and vacuum outside, and the entire structure was manmade. If he didn't know he was in space, he never would have suspected it. His mind never processed the glorious adventure he had embarked upon.

Standing on the surface of LX-925, it finally hit his consciousness that this was not Earth. The sky above him was a very pale brown instead of the blue he was used to seeing. Not a single cloud dotted the sky. It was like the entire world was enveloped in a light haze.

The ground below him was solid rock, with little dust and no loose soil. Everything was flat. There were no mountains or valleys, and certainly no plant life. Even the Atacama Desert presented a more pleasing landscape to the eye. Though his suit was climate controlled, the heat below the surface was intense enough to warm his feet through the boots. It was difficult to forget the magma layer began only a few hundred meters beneath him.

He looked off toward the horizon and spied the mining complex, groaning he could not have been placed much closer, but like Fortune, he had no way of knowing how wide a net their inhibitors cast. Nor could he risk getting caught before the materialization was complete. It was a long way to the complex, and Fortune's men had a head start on him. Remy would have to run if he wanted to reach it before they did.

Remy always imagined himself to be in peak shape. His job required a lot of walking and hiking. War often destroyed roads and other infrastructure, so the only way into many zones and hotspots was on foot. Without a vehicle, it meant he often had to carry up to a hundred pounds of gear and equipment on his back. Though his suit wasn't quite that heavy, it felt much heavier. He couldn't be sure, but he thought the gravity beneath his feet was stronger than that on Earth.

With several kilometers between him and the miners, Remy tried to think of other things to distract him from the hike. That was easy. Away from the ship and all the visual reminders of his job, his thoughts flowed toward Roxanne. He couldn't get over how perfect she was, even though he was now certain she was ordered that way. Still, there was an innocence in her gaze he found attractive.

He swore to himself she found him interesting. All she knew was a life with Pittman in those quarters. She didn't know her life before materialization. She didn't know a life back on Earth. She didn't even know what life was like outside that room. Then he showed up with stories of nobility.

Roxanne hung on every word he gave her, even when he bombarded her with all kinds of questions she didn't have the answers to. Most people would have grown frustrated facing amnesia, but not Roxanne. Meeting someone new and hearing new things seemed almost like her own adventure. Those blue eyes seemed drawn to him. Even through the solid door, before she opened up and peered out, she found him.

Remy couldn't be sure, but he thought those irises opened wider when he talked of himself, and closed when he asked about her. It seemed crazy, but he thought his words were the light and dark filtering her vision. The corners of her lips were turned upward the entire visit, but they seemed to tick upward slightly more the wider those irises became.

As if hubris, Remy couldn't help wondering if she sat on the bed longing to hear more from him. Was she disappointed in her boyfriend after encountering another? Was she left unsatisfied with that boy who didn't give her a personal thought?

The situation between those two was messed up. The more he learned, the more that situation sounded like one among many cases of human trafficking that might have been going on out here. Where he was outraged that this could go on at this point in human history, Remy couldn't shake the feeling that Roxanne was meant for him and not Pittman. Something in him clung to the possibility that they were meant to be together; that karma or God or the fates placed him on this mission and her in that room simply so they could find each other.

His heart raced within his chest, and Remy tried to convince himself it was for Roxanne and not because of this trek. The rifle in his hands was imagined to be her waist, to be pulled tightly to his body and caressed. He wouldn't mind taking her for himself, but she would have to take him because she wanted it. He wanted her on her own accord, and not because she felt obligated to please him.

Something in those eyes told him, Roxanne could be his second wife. Not just that, but she could be the one to last. Roxanne's eyes could be the ones waiting for him on the neighboring pillow every morning. Her lips could be the ones meant to taste his kisses every evening when he returned from work. No, that woman could be the angel for whom he retires from the UN.

Then he noticed the mining complex was far closer than he realized. Those men were about to see their rights trampled by an overambitious military. And that military approaching was comprised of men who themselves had their rights thrown out the airlock. He might be able to walk away from the work. Maybe he could turn these files over and let the UN select another inspector to investigate, but it could be years before someone else was allowed on a ship. There was no guarantee the bureaucrats would understand the context of the reports he would write. The Republic might even use his resignation as proof that there was nothing out here worth worrying about.

Roxanne beckoned him from that pin of light overhead like a siren calling from the shore. He would rescue her from Pittman's clutches; of that he had no doubt. However he could not leave this life behind him. She would have to understand there might be other women on other ships with no other choice but to serve as release for the sexual tension. If there was truly something real between them, then she would understand he had to fight for others like her who could not fight for themselves.

Remy wasn't sure initially, but as he drew closer to the complex, he found a slight change in the landscape. A small ridgeline, only waist high, crossed his path ahead. It looked like the embankment to a trench, but how could that be given the solid rock everywhere? The walls of those trenches would surely radiate the heat of the rocks, turning them into ovens. Would it get hot enough, he wondered, to start melting the metal components of his suit?

As he grew closer still, he caught faint flashes reflecting off something resting on the peak. Somebody, or something was waiting behind those berms. Hopefully they held fire not because they had yet to see him, but because they recognized the message emblazoned across his chest and on his helmet. He had hope painting those letters on his suit was not a vain move.
Chapter 11

On the far side of the complex, far removed from Remy's position, Fortune's army closed in on the first embankment on their landscape. They too spied the reflective objects peeking over the berms, but unlike with Remy, the shots rang out and pierced the armor of those men at the front of the column. Their inhibitors taking damage, two of the bodies were swept away in flashes of white light.

The troops behind took up their rifles and fired on the berms as they charged forward. Many were cut down at the front of the charge, many others saw their armor hold against the bullets. Still, many more were swept up as the inhibitors went offline.

For anyone on the _Freedom_ who wondered how the miners planned to hold out against their army, they had their answers. The ridgeline was lined not with men, but armed drones firing indiscriminately at anything and everything moving ahead of them. Bullets sprayed from the drone positions toward the men. Tiny pieces of iron or lead or whatever other metal could be scrambled from the remaining ground were driven through the armor. Legs were destroyed. Arms were fractured. Yet even those nonfatal strikes proved fatal. Breaches in the suits exposed the men to the whisper thin air. While they lay on the ground in pain from the injuries, they shared the twin pleasures of feeling their blood boil without sufficient air pressure and their lungs convulsing for breath from the lack of oxygen. Those receiving headshots or chest wounds bringing death quickly were the lucky ones.

These enlisted men were nothing but cannon fodder. Each man took a bullet in order to buy another step forward for the man beside him. That man in turn took one for the next man. It went on and on with each death buying the army one more inch of ground. Every drop of blood spilt brought the army closer to that defensive line. The bodies were unimportant so long as someone overtook that ridge.

The first handful of men scrambled over the berm to tackle the mindless machines. One man shot a drone to pieces, another bashed one inoperative with the butt of his rifle. As the drones fell, their friends scrambled over the embankment and into the trench behind.

Back at the FOB, Colonel Fortune watched from his field desk within his sealed shelter. With each man's helmet equipped with a camera like his own, his computer took the images and merged them into a single stream. His face showed no emotion over the small victory. He knew with enough numbers the trench could be taken, but another lie ahead. They would take it in much the same way, except now they had a defensible position from which to strike.

While the miners were busy scrambling up whatever casualties they could, Fortune had a man outside his own protective field with a Class 5 scrambler trying to do the same and keep the raw material out of enemy hands. It wasn't simply that they didn't want the bodies stolen. This faceless and nameless operator was reconstituting fresh troops for the line. Their own supply of material from the cargo pods was already exhausted. As long as they could capture those which fell on the battlefield, they could replenish their troops and prevent a loss through attrition. Of course that could only go on so long as the miners failed to detect the scrambler and its operator. With luck, the battle in the trenches would keep them too distracted to find one man speckled within the endless landscape.

In his shelter, Fortune studied the terrain ahead of his army. It seemed the miners had carved a number of trenches between the two sides. No doubt it was all the work of their own scrambler rearranging the landscape to give them an advantage. If he didn't know any better, the Colonel would have believed these men were military themselves. Perhaps the data stores Freedom wanted would prove Imperium or Confederation interference. It certainly wouldn't be the first time, and would be dealt with as it had been in the past. But for now, he had to focus on the next hill.

Holding the army at the first trench was impossible. There was not enough room inside for all the living bodies. Without a word among them, as if communication was psychic, certain suits braced against the forward wall providing cover fire while the rest scrambled over them and onto the field beginning the march forward to the next line. The bodies would fall ahead with greater frequency than those that had piled up behind. Far more gun placements met them ahead, and as if the opposing scrambler operator sensed the weakness in the lines, additional units materialized to bolster the line.

Onward they pushed, with no consideration for their safety or their lives. Knowing their patterns were in storage, that they could be resurrected after their life had been spent made this army more ferocious than any seen on the home world. These forms were expendable; the blood pouring from wounds was irrelevant. Their lives did not matter on this field, only the next steps, the next hill and the next gun placements.

The first men to overrun the next trench smiled with villainous glee behind the visors. They were the youngest members in the Space Force. As their job entailed nothing but shooting things up, they were also the least experienced and the least mature. This was everything they dreamed of when they signed their names to the enlistment papers. As children and teens they would play video games, running around and shooting bad guys or zombies. They could do what they wanted in the video game world like they did here on LX-925 because they would always respawn when their avatar died in the game. To these men fortifying the newest position and readying to take the next hill, this was the epitome of video game fun.

Eventually the last line would be breached and the miners themselves would have to don suits, take up arms, and face Fortune's army themselves. It was unlikely they would respawn themselves as the soldiers did. To take a stand as they had, there was likely some moral code dictating their strategy and tactics. They were all civilians without the experience and comfort for turning their existence over to a machine. Before signing up for work in the extraterrestrial colonies, they had only known machines as something to make life easier. Some were used to save lives, but they had never encountered one that could bring back the dead. Two years in space with their outdated Earth way of thinking, it was unlikely they were prepared to take this fight as far as that scrambler could allow them.

Fortune gave his incoming video a glance of concern. He expected heavy casualties, and he didn't expect to recycle many of the bodies, but those bodies were falling faster than he hoped. There was still another kilometer of this terrain to overtake before reaching the doors to the facility. If the resistance increased as they had already seen, it was unlikely there would be enough bodies left to take on the miners.

The Commander ordered the troops to hold at the next trench and fortify their positions. They would have to play this a little smarter from here on. The armed drones had to be picked off before charging. Some of the men had to fall back and deactivate any active inhibitors from the dead and wounded for scrambling. There was the risk the bodies would be scooped up by the enemy, but the chance had to be taken so that his own numbers could be shored up faster.
Chapter 12

Remy climbed slowly over the embankment guarding the first trench. He eyed the drone guns nervously as he slid by the first pair, wondering why they didn't fire at him, though grateful they didn't. He wished to get by quickly in case they changed their mechanical minds.

Climbing from the trench and moving on across the next plain, he spied the same telltale reflections from the next ridgeline. Had the ground not been so solid, he would fear the presence of mines beneath the surface. He had no idea what would set these gun placements off. It was possible the miners themselves controlled their actions, but he couldn't hope for such fortune. Anything but extreme caution was dangerous.

The next trench was surmounted as easily as the first. Remy gazed across the next patch of rock and spied yet another ridge with yet more reflections. "So far, so good" he thought to himself until he noticed a suit of armor rise from behind the barrier. He raised his rifle, muzzle skyward as he pushed on, hoping between that and the UN markings whoever waited ahead would understand his friendly intentions.

As he approached, the individual hidden inside aimed his rifle and waved Remy forward, but slowly. The Inspector approached the ridge and handed over his rifle. Pushed onward toward the complex, Remy was a bit relieved they were willing to take him in, even if they didn't entirely trust him. He knew trust had to be built and he was prepared to do so. He also knew Fortune's men were on the other side. It was only a matter of time before they would break through and swarm the complex.

Remy was taken aback by how large the facility was. The actual habitable area looked like a typical factory, but the storage buildings went on and upward, dwarfing the employee area as a daisy in a forest of redwoods. It was doubtful anyone traversed these structures without some sort of vehicle.

The exteriors were pockmarked, likely the result of strong dust storms kicked up at some point after the surface was stripped off, but before the atmosphere was lost. Rust was everywhere, a byproduct of a wetter time.

Remy's guide pushed him through a door and into an airlock. When pressure and atmosphere were established, the other man removed his helmet prompting Remy to follow suit.

"My name's Dr. Remy Duval," he was finally able to offer his host, but the man remained silent, opening the inner door and pushing him inside and through a corridor. There were pipes going to and from everywhere: steam pipes, water pipes, even electrical conduits and ductwork. The rust inside was more pronounced as the moisture from the pipes moistened the air and hasten oxidation. Judging from the buildup in some spots, Remy had to guess repairs were frequent.

The lighting was rather dim. Even as he would later get to explore the rest of the facility, he would notice the place was kept dark. Whether they were conserving power, or didn't have it to spare, he would never find out.

The mystery man led Remy into the mess hall and sat him at a table. It was a standard cafeteria style set up with rows of tables across the room. The scramblers for the food lined a countertop along the far wall. But he was not offered food or drink. The man just stood at the door, his arms folded waiting for someone.

As Remy explored the surroundings, he was caught by the flickering light overhead. It reminded him of some old movies and fascinated him that after a century or more, out here in a high-tech space facility, the problem of flickering lights had yet to be solved.

His attention returned to the doorway as three other men entered and joined him at his table.

"I'm Dirk Cooley," the leader announced. He introduced the man to his right as Ares Booker, and the man to his left as Magnus Frost. All three were worn and tired. Though doubtful how much physical work they did with the equipment at their disposal, their faces were painted with a mixture of grease and dirt.

"Dr. Remy Duval. I'm a UN inspector."

Dirk gave obvious attention to the notation on his helmet. "What's the UN doing out here in space?"

"Your government invited me to observe this mission."

All three plus the man guarding the door returned a hearty laugh, though Remy certainly didn't find it funny.

"You came to watch the slaughter?"

"I came here to stop it."

The men laughed once more at his words. Remy was growing used to it.

"Either you take us for fools, or you yourself are the fool." Remy's confused looked told Dirk which it was. "The Republic Space Force is fighting its way through our defenses right this minute. When they break through our doors, they will kill all of us, and there is nothing you can do to stop that."

"You're wrong," Remy protested. "Their mission is to remove you from this doomed planet and take you to your next job. I understand they can kill you and rematerialize your life patterns when they get to the new world, but it doesn't have to go down that way. Tell me what you really want and I can try to strike a deal before those men burst in here."

The laughter was stronger, and frankly more spiteful than before. This wouldn't be the first time he wasn't taken seriously as a representative of the UN, but he believed in his mission. He was confident if he could only get the two sides to talk, this could be resolved without continuing this farce toward nature.

Magnus stepped forward to break his silence. "You don't understand shit, Dr. UN. Yes, they can restore us with saved patterns. In fact, they have done it before. And every time they do, we lose more than a day's worth of memories. They can do what they want with those blenders and there is not a damn thing you or the UN can do about."

"You should have never left Earth and gotten involved in this mess," Ares jumped in. "You were as screwed as we are the moment you left that world."

"I don't understand," Remy complained. "Tell me what the problem is. I promise I can help you."

"You can't promise anything," Dirk explained. "You will wait here, and we will hold off that army as long as we can. When they overrun this complex, they can deal with you however they like."

Dirk took his sidekicks back to wherever they had come from, leaving only the guard to watch over Remy. He tried to ply the man for answers, but that guard kept his mouth shut and his attention focused on nothing but keeping his prisoner inside the mess.

Remy went to the scrambler to order up something to eat. It had been a while since his last meal, and that jog across the landscape took more out of him then he wanted to admit. He looked through the menu, surprised at how varied the menu was over that in his quarters. Though he didn't expect to find poutine on order, he was a tad disappointed not to find it. The turkey sandwich he settled on was probably much healthier anyway, even if it didn't look any more appetizing than the one he ordered back on the ship.

He sat down and took a bite, looking up to the guard. The man was caught stealing increasingly frequent glances at his prisoner, and when the two caught each other's eyes, Remy tried once again to break his silence.

"I know you want to talk. If you can't talk about what's going on here, how about telling me your name."

"Eddie."

"Salut, I'm Remy. I'm from Candia." He saw from his new friend's face his nationality meant something. On Earth, his country had a reputation for pragmatism and neutrality. His people tended to make up a large chuck of peacekeeping forces because of their reputation for finding the validity in all sides of a conflict. They didn't have to agree with a warlord massacring everyone who disagreed with him, but a Candian would understand and listen to the rationale. It didn't mean they couldn't lose their cool as Remy had done throughout this mission, but their reputation for listening to all sides earned them some trust throughout the world.

Having captured this man's interest, Remy decided to press forward and keep his small victory. "So how did you end up working on a mining colony in space?"

"Same as anyone, I was lured by the money. With the living expenses covered for the duration of my contract, I was supposed to have quite a bankroll waiting for me back home."

"Is there anything else waiting for you back home? A wife, kids?"

Eddie hung his head sullenly. "We divorced a year before I took this job. The judge wouldn't let me see my kids, but she made sure I pay child support."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I suppose now they're not my kids anymore. She's not my ex-wife now. That drama isn't my problem anymore."

"What do you mean by that?" Remy noticed the tightening of Eddie's lips and realized he wasn't getting another word from the man. He finished his sandwich and returned the plate to the scrambler, amazed these men were willing to fight for whatever they wanted, yet they had already lost all hope.

Remy needed more information. He needed to get a look at what was going on around this complex to have the miners so riled up. His helmet rest on the table beside him, looking up with the answer to his dilemma. It was hard enough and heavy enough to put Eddie out so he could move free. But Eddie wasn't a soldier. He wasn't a revolutionary that Remy knew of. He was just a guy that wanted to see his kids, and didn't deserve to become a casualty of Remy's curiosity. Whatever it would be, there was another way to penetrate this complex.
Chapter 13

A man in an armored suit walked the catwalk surrounding the top of the facility. Far enough from the battle in the trenches, but not too far that his visor couldn't magnify the threat struggling to take the next trench, he spied the Republic's forces rallying for another drive. The armored suits clamored from their hole, taking bullets from the drones only a couple meters ahead. Each man hit meant another was safe until the guns repositioned to seek the next target. Many bodies had dropped before the next trench was overrun and taken in the name of the Republic. Some of those bodies had been scrambled by the opposing commander. Others had been taken by the scrambler dish at the top of the facility in order to deprive their foe of the raw materials.

It was risky dropping the inhibitors long enough to make the scramble, but figuring the enemy's scrambler was distracted with the battlefield, it seemed a risk worth taking. Still, the man in the suit on the catwalk grew concerned watching another trench fall to the military. There were only so many more trenches separating the two sides. The miners had more tricks to play should they need them, and this man saw they certainly needed one.

He retreated into the complex and removed his helmet once he was within the atmosphere. Beneath the suit was Ares who headed to the administrator's office to report the situation to Dirk.

"I suggest we use the lava before they get any closer."

Dirk chewed over the suggestion for several minutes. He removed his feet from atop the desk and rest his hands in their place.

"We don't know what that will do. It could trigger the final melting of the crust, or it could restart tectonic activity on this world."

"We knew what the risks were when we set these defenses." Dirk fell back in his chair looking up at the tin ceiling for guidance. From all the circular dents where the former administrator seemed to have taken practice with a ball, it was apparent, he wasn't the first to seek guidance from above.

He had never been an overly religious man. Sure, Dirk had a feeling most of his life that there must have been someone looking out for him. It was the only way he could explain that lifeguard pulling form the jaws of that shark when he was sixteen. And it had seemed like divine intervention played a role when the doctors told him they could save his arm.

Like some of the men, he could not imagine any god playing a role in his existence on this planet. No god would even begin to understand those soldiers outside, or the medical procedures of their doctor, or the data in the computers. Others on base saw the unholy happenings as a punishment for some violation against His laws. There were even those who wondered if this world was Hell. Given the magma layer was slowly dissolving the last bit of rock encasing it, this world certainly would resemble Hades in a matter of weeks.

Staring at the dents above, Dirk knew the Republic's Space Force wanted something or they would have just bombed the site from orbit and blended the debris. That something was the one thing keeping them alive at this point. And the only thing driving that army was the support it had from orbit. With the inhibitors online, his scrambler would have no effect up there. But if it were to come down...

"Bring me the UN guy," he instructed, returning his attention to Ares.

"Sure thing."

Ares left to carry out his directive, leaving Dirk to turn his attention to the computer at the right side of the desk. Even two years out of date, it was still faster than the one he had bought for his son for the last birthday he shared on Earth. Having no possessions accompany him to the stars, Dirk didn't even have a picture of the boy. He had to rely on his memory, shutting his eyes to imagine an image on the computer desktop of the fourteen year old with the wild, unkempt head of hair and the peach fuzz on his lip.

He promised himself if he got this job, he'd teach the boy to shave before departure, but that didn't happen. They were all taken from Earth without notice. No one was allowed to say goodbye to their loved ones. And there was no telling how much time had passed since their last known memories on Earth. Jacob would be sixteen, same age he was when that shark tried to eat him, if there was no time gap between his memories. He had no way of knowing how long his pattern was in storage on the way to this world. He didn't even know if this was the first job site he had been assigned to, or if there were others before this stint. The boy could be thirty-six or sixty-six by now.

The date was not stored in the computers, nor could they find any clue on any of the correspondences lying around the office. If there was one consolation Dirk could take from everything, it was that Jacob would not or did not grow up without a father. He would never know his dad was on a dead world fighting for dignity.

Ares returned with Remy, and left the two alone to talk.

"I'm guessing you didn't come down here if you didn't have a way back to your ship." Dirk considered his guest as he would one of the prisoners they had managed to collect from the battlefield, except the few prisoners they had were grunts; no one on that battlefield knew anything more than their orders, and those orders were no more complex than "storm the castle."

"No, I have someone waiting to bring me back up there. All you have to do is tell me what you're after and I can go back..."

Dirk cut him off, uninterested in the diplomacy. He was concerned only for the inhibitors protecting the ship. "If you want to help us, you can ask your contact to disable the inhibitors so we can erase that ship from existence."

Remy was horrified. To him, the suggestion was equally noxious as the Colonel's tactics and attitudes.

"I'm not going to do that," Remy told him calmly. He knew Dirk could be brought to the table. The fact he broke the silence and brought him to the office was a step in the right direction. "I'm here to stop a war crime, not perpetrate one."

Dirk considered the words. There was no doubt Remy meant well, but he was misguided. He lacked the experience off world to shape his views. Even if Remy remained determined to hold onto his ideals and Earthlike values, Dirk knew they would break the longer he was exposed to the interstellar truths.

He took up a helmet from a junk pile in the corner of the room and tossed it to Remy along with a can of industrial grease.

"What's this for?"

"We're going outside," Dirk explained to him. "But you need to cover over those letters. I doubt you want that army recognizing you."

Reluctantly, Remy complied and hid the letters beneath a generous layer of the black goop as Dirk dug out a suit from the pile for himself. He tested the radios in their helmets to make sure they worked. Of course they were set to a different frequency than anything the Republic used so that the enemy commander couldn't intercept their conversations. When they were ready, Dirk led his guest up and out onto the catwalk.

Remy gazed down to the battlefield, watching the armored bodies scurry out of the trenches and into the oncoming spray of projectiles. He had been witness to armies treated as expendable assets, but never with the callousness before him. He had never seen a strategy like this: throw as many bodies as you could until the enemy ran out of ammo. You wouldn't waste robots in this manner.

Dirk pointed off to the right of the battle, maybe a kilometer past the soldiers. "Focus your visor there." Remy's helmet zoomed in on a massive tripod resting over the trench. It held a drill waiting for the orders to activate. And Dirk gave them.

Somewhere inside the complex, one of his miners activated the drill remotely, sending it down into the trench. It bore through the rock disappearing from sight. As Remy wondered what its purpose was, he spied a geyser of lava thrust up from the hole. The drill and the tripod would have melted instantly as the molten rock settled and flowed into the trench. Like an artery that had been punctured, the lava poured from the drilled hole and quickly filled the trench.

Remy's eyes raced back to the battlefront, and just ahead of the flow as it began to consume the soldiers still taking cover in its path. The realization poured through the ranks, but not quickly enough to evacuate the trench. A few made it out, but most met the same fate as the drill, incinerating in an instant.

Behind his visor, Dirk smile triumphantly. Though short lived, his maneuver had crippled those forces. It would take the commander time to regroup and figure a way over the new roadblock. And with the bodies now lost in the superheated magma flow, neither side could retrieve them for the raw materials.

Remy however, froze on the catwalk, horrified these seemingly ordinary people would resort to genocide before considering his offer for mediation. He couldn't believe Dirk was so desperate as to refuse help when offered. These miners had crossed the line he feared the Republic forces would roll over.

"Don't act so appalled," Dirk told him, sensing his horror. Those aren't people; not really."

Remy turned to his partner, the angry glare so strong, no thickness of armor could hold it back. "You didn't have to do that! I could have saved you."

"The only way you can save us is to bring down the inhibitors protecting that ship."

Remy remained frozen on the individual before him. Dirk was no victim. He was just another warlord, no different than the ones burning through the jungles of Africa, or the deserts of Asia.

"Then take me back to your prison, because I will not help you kill anyone."
Chapter 14

Remy fell into his chair and buried his head in his hands. All he could think about was Roxanne up on that ship in Pittman's quarters. He might not care so much about Freedom and his dutiful lieutenants, but that girl was not part of his military. Roxanne's only crime was being a woman on a ship full of horny men, and for that alone Remy would not help Dirk destroy the _Freedom_.

It had been a mistake coming down to the planet, thinking he could resolve this dispute. The same science that gave them medical miracles left these blue collar workers as callous toward life as the soldiers paid to die. Yet sadly, the Confederate General who attacked for nothing more than a dinner recipe seemed reasonable by comparison. These men accepted their deaths and only desired to take as many Republic forces with them as they could. How did Remy think he could broker peace with these monsters?

Ares slipped by Eddie and took the seat across from Remy. "Don't judge Dirk too harshly. He's just trying to keep us alive as long as he can."

"You think declaring war on the military is the way to do that? You think if you kill enough of them, they're just going to pack up and leave you alone? Let me tell you something about armies. They are like hornet nests. You rile them up and they won't stop stinging you until you're the one out of commission. If you think they're out to kill you, they're not going to stop because you kill a few of them first. They're only going to come at you harder."

Ares look at him rather curiously. "You have no idea what's going on out here, do you? I can see you're still looking at everything around you as if you're still on Earth. Everything is so cut and dry. You're either alive or dead. Good or evil. All of us have the same rights as anyone else, and end of the day, we can all go back home with our families, play with the kids and snuggle up with our wives. Let me tell you something, it's not that simple for any of us."

"You're wrong, Ares. You still have rights. You still have your family. Just because you're not on Earth, don't think you left that behind for good. You can go back."

"No, I can't. Dirk can't. Eddie over there can't go back. I doubt even you could go back now. Tell me, do you know who you are?"

"I'm Remy Duval. I'm the UN inspector assigned to the RS _Freedom_."

"Are you sure?" Ares' question put a chill in his bones as he tried to remember how many times he had been scrambled. He inferred from his new friend that the process somehow created a unique individual. But Remy refused to believe he had given up his beliefs and his identity simply because he had transported about, taken apart and reassembled like a house made of children's blocks.

"No matter what happens to my molecules, I will always be Remy Duval. I will never stop believing in the basic tenants of human rights. And I will not believe that your life on Earth is gone."

Ares could see the guy needed a demonstration. He rose from his seat and signaled Remy to follow as they again left the mess hall. It was just a short trek down the hall to crew quarters where they held the few survivors they had managed to scramble from the battlefield. Five men in all, still in their suits. The guards refused to allow them to remove their helmets, and they had been denied medical attention.

Ares approached the first soldier and ripped his helmet off. "What is your name and serial number," he demanded.

"Private Josh Fields, SE60 292 015."

Ares threw the helmet back into the kid's hands and moved on to the next man. He ripped off the helmet revealing an identical face. Though this prisoner had a slightly confounded look in contrast to Remy's overt shock, his hair was identical, his eyebrows matched, and even his lips had the same dimples at either end.

"What is your name and serial number?"

"Private Josh Fields, SE60 292 015," he returned less sure than the first man. Ares repeated the show with the remaining three, turning up two more Private Josh Fields.

"We unmasked the corpses we pulled from the field and found the same thing," Ares shared. "We have found only four distinct individuals copied over and over again. There might be more; we didn't get a large sample."

Remy looked to the four identical faces, all looking each other over trying to grasp their doppelgangers. Apparently they didn't know any more about this duplication than Remy had. Still it was eye opening, not for the extent of abuse over the scrambler, but for the miners' attitudes towards the men they had taken arms against.

"So you justify this death because all these soldiers are copies of someone else. You think because they share DNA, that makes them less of a person?"

"They are not people!"

The disgust registered more with Remy than with those Ares just insulted. "They may be copies of one individual, but they became original beings the moment they were created. They are no different than identical twins, born of the same zygote, but earning their own memories and becoming their own people the moment they're born. That Josh is no longer the same Josh as that one, and each one has as much right to exist as the original they were copied from."

Ares slammed his fist into the wall, denting in the sheet metal. "I don't care what rights they have. We are at war."

"Then treat them as prisoners," Remy protested. "Your government signed the Geneva Convention. You have the same responsibility as that military commander outside. These men deserve food and water. They deserve medical attention."

Suddenly Ares' attitude shifted as he erupted into laughter. "Medical attention would be great if we had a doctor. But we had to put him in 'storage' just like the administrator."

Unfortunately for the bullet wounds among the prisoners, simple medical procedures with the scrambler were far more difficult a task than simply materializing someone from a saved pattern. As Ares explained from what he understood, the doctor could dematerialize the injured individual. Then he could take a previously saved healthy pattern and splice the healthy body part into the newer pattern. Like grafting skin over a burn or transplanting a failed organ, the doctor could make the repairs with a computer instead of a scalpel.

Using the scrambler for medical procedures required skill with both medical knowledge and computer skills to graft the patterns successfully. If the graft was off by one line of code, the reintegrated person would be disfigured. He could even die. To treat the prisoners' injuries, they needed the doctor.

"Why did you get rid of the doctor," Remy asked. He wanted to know what made the doctor as despised an individual as the administrator responsible for their situation.

And Ares had to think long and hard before providing the answer. The truth was far from pleasant, and he didn't know if he wanted to see it again. This inspector before him promised help. He didn't think the promise could be kept, but Remy was genuine in his concern. This battle could not be won, they all knew that when they decided to resist. If they wanted any chance of the war being won, then the truth had to leave these walls. This UN inspector was the only chance they had of spreading their gripes.

Ares waved his escort to follow. They moved through another series of corridors, bearing the stains of creeping rust and the scents of sweat and hard labor. The medical bay looked to be the only foil to the filth and grime that had overtaken this facility in its two brief years of life.

It was a much smaller, compact operation than the one Remy had visited aboard the _Freedom_. There were no private rooms off the center examination area. The only privacy patients seemed to have was a curtain that hung around each bed. He couldn't imagine surgery being performed here, but then again, it was easy to forget, as someone not accustom to life in space, that surgery had become obsolete.

Ares took up a small controller from the doctor's desk and showed it to his friend. "This button will shift us into another dimension." He paused to let Remy absorb the statement. Like himself when he first came upon the secret, Remy hardly believed this fantastical dimension. "We'll be able to see this realm, but we will be invisible to this realm. I have to warn you before I push the button that you have to be careful should you try to go there later by yourself."

Remy was willing to put his skepticism aside until he saw the evidence of this dimension for himself. A week ago, he wouldn't have believed in teleportation. He didn't believe food could be created seemingly from thin air before Anders had introduced him to the scrambler in his room. Yet, he had seen this technology used in such horrible ways, Remy would take any warnings this man had about this new dimension seriously.

"There is no atmosphere in this other dimension. Our doctor created a new room in which he could trap air, but outside that room, there is nothing. They tell me I had to learn the hard way about wearing an environmental suit if you go exploring.

"Also, you're taking a chance that you're not shifting into another object. There is equipment in this secret room; a computer, surgical trays, a bed. Since you can't see them before you cross over, you're taking the chance that you'll merge with something already over there. And when you come back, you better make sure you're standing in an open space so you don't return into a wall or another person."

"So you can pass through walls and things from this dimension?"

"Yes, and no," Ares responded almost cryptically. Physical things in this world have some presence across the dimension, so you won't go falling through floors or flying off uncontrollably through the walls, but you can pass through everything with a little effort."

Given the dangers and uncertainty in the journey Ares proposed, Remy wondered how big a secret their doctor was hiding to take on those risks. He signaled he was ready to cross over, so Ares took his hand. His guide put his finger to the button, then looked to him to give him one last chance to back out.

"Let's do this," Remy affirmed.

He took a deep breath to ready himself for the crossover. As Ares closed the gap between his fingertip and the magic button, a rush of footsteps outside the medical bay announced the arrival of Dirk and a handful of armed men.

"Put it down, Ares," he ordered. The finger was relaxed and the journey ended before it was undertaken. Remy looked upon the armed men with disbelief this secret could be that damaging to their efforts.
Chapter 15

Dirk's men shoved Remy into the chair facing the desk in that administrator's office. It was difficult to believe the administrator kept this office in such a state with discarded equipment and parts collecting in every corner. The desk was a mangled mess with dents on this side from previous visitors who must have kicked at the front. Two of its legs had been replaced with piles of books. The top had been chipped away at the center where the administrator would have worked. It should have been easy to scramble up a new desk.

Behind the administrator's chair were three filing cabinets, displaying the same level of abuse as the desk. Why they still kept hard files when Earth long ago abandoned the practice was yet another mystery on this world of horrors. Remy wondered if it wasn't some office staple the truly prestigious administrators refused to let go of. It wasn't what was in the cabinets; it was the quantity of cabinets making you look busy and important. He would have to remember this tactic if the UN ever gave him an office, so he could show any visiting dignitaries how important he was to the cause.

That would be if the guns in his face had peaceful intents. Dirk dropped into the chair on the other side of the desk, disappointed. It wasn't so much in his guest as it was his own man. This was their fight and he didn't want the kind of help Remy had offered. He made it clear before how the UN's representative could help him.

They had flooded two more trenches and divided the army outside. The gun batteries took care of the forward forces, while the chaos forced those to the rear into a brief retreat. He knew it was only a matter of time before the opposing commander had to call for more supplies, and his scrambler was ready and the operators waiting for the moment those inhibitors came down to fill that order.

"Escalation has never worked," Remy pleaded. "Even if you stop that army and destroy the _Freedom_ , they'll send more ships and more men. The only way this will end is with your annihilation unless you negotiate peace."

"Bah," Dirk dismissed the talks of peace and negotiation. "There is no negotiating with these governments. They can take whatever they want, and Ares already showed you how they don't consider us men."

"I don't understand this, Dirk! You have no plan. You're putting so much energy into fighting, but you have nothing to fight for. I don't see the endgame here."

"You don't understand? Then let me tell you something. Two months ago, a Confederation ship came by to resupply. They had some interesting programs to trade, including some new recipes. Magnus took those recipes to upload to the blenders in the mess, but one of the data discs wouldn't upload. He loaded it into a proper terminal and found the Confederates had mixed up the recipes with their recent mission logs.

"Their last stop was another Republic mining colony. They recorded interactions and trade with a number of the personnel, all of which happened to share names with members of our own crew. A few of us broke into this office while the administrator was asleep and went through his computer files. We were able to confirm that a number of colonies were manned by duplicate versions of everyone here.

"The Republic doesn't need us. They have our original patterns on file somewhere. They can start the next colony with new versions of us and they don't even need access to our computers to do it."

Remy began to understand this man's sense of hopelessness, but it didn't explain the invasion. His story didn't explain Colonel Fortune's mission. "If they don't need your patterns, then what do they want with your data stores? I sat in on the mission briefing. One of the primary objectives of this mission is to retrieve those files."

Dirk waved his hand dismissing the notion of hope Remy was fighting to hold onto. "Our doctor was running experiments. They're after his data."

After witnessing the results of their technology, Remy needed to know what kinds of experiments were so important. Though Dirk wouldn't tell him, he had gotten admission that they were conducted in the secret extra-dimensional room, troubling him further. He wondered about Dr. Sadile. The man was always overly pleasant. Remy found it a tad creepy though he had dismissed it as a personality quirk. What Dirk had just told him about their doctor invited suggestions that Sadile was conducting his own secret experiments.

His first priority was this conflict with the miners, and Dirk may have finally given him the first idea how to settle this: the data stores. If that's all the Republic leaders wanted, they might give up and go away if that data were to vanish. Remy understood the value those stores held for him as well and feared offering the suggestion to Dirk. If he could get his own hands on that data, he might have inescapable evidence of human rights violations. That data would be embarrassing enough to force a stronger UN presence among the space programs.

Remy suggested the destruction of the data, and with a bit of relief, the idea was dismissed. "Those data stores contain information valuable to us," Dirk explained. "They contain our most recent life patterns. If we lose those, we lose all the memories stored in those patterns. We lose all the knowledge we've accumulated during this siege. We lose all knowledge of the tactics that were successful against the Space Force."

So they were afraid of death! His hopes for a negotiated peace rose with every word Dirk voiced. "If you lose that lifeline," Remy reminded him, "then you are no worse off than you were before you left Earth. Back home, we don't have saved life patterns to fall back on. If we get hurt or die, we can't just reload ourselves and start over. We don't get another chance if we make mistakes or decide to waste our first life. Your government, like the other three out here, they haven't shared this technology with Earth. Their own people back home don't even know the miracles that have been discovered among the stars. They also have no idea about the abuses and horrors those miracles have unleashed."

Dirk grew silent once again showing Remy he had dug a chink in his defenses. It was a chink he had to widen somehow if he was to negotiate a peace for these people before Colonel Fortune's men broke through the defenses outside.

"Assuming that data was destroyed and the Republic left you alone, what would you do? I mean you can't stay on this planet."

Dirk didn't have to think about that answer too hard. He had an endgame to this mess after all. "We have enough raw material in storage. Our final orders were to create one last ship. We were then supposed to scramble the entire complex into the ship's storage pods. When we got to the next planet, we were to reverse the process to build the next colony.

"Our plan was always to get away on that ship, but none of us know how to overwrite the navigational preprogramming."

"So you're not looking to die after all," Remy realized. "You holding out until someone can crack it."

"And we need the data stores because they hold the plans for the ship. They have the star charts we need to navigate. They even hold the programming necessary to make the technology work once we find our new home."

Confident he had Dirk's attention, Remy nudged the rifles away from his head. Dirk nodded to the men as a signal to leave them alone.

"Let me offer Colonel Freedom a deal. You can trade those data stores for your freedom. When I go back to the ship, you copy every bit of information to data disks and hide them. That way you can hand over the data stores while keeping all the files you need."

Dirk considered the offer. How nice it felt to think he could lead his men out of this nightmare, but this notion was pure fantasy. The Republic could never allow one of their copied people to roam free in the galaxy. The risk of them returning to Earth and telling everything was too great. It was just as he tried to tell Remy from the moment he stepped into the complex: there was no way out of this for them.

However, it didn't have to end for the well-intentioned UN inspector. If he had someone aboard the Republic ship waiting to bring down the inhibitors for his transport, then it was a safe bet those military leaders didn't know he was a threat to their secrets.

"The only thing you can do for us," Dirk relented, "is to survive and get back to Earth. That is the only way people are going to know what's happening out here. If you try to mediate this conflict, you're only putting yourself in danger. Once they find out what you know, it is game over for you as well."

Remy tried to protest, but whatever door he had opened in Dirk's wall had been shut, locked, and bolted. It wouldn't be long before Fortune had regrouped his army and discovered a way over the rivers of lava.
Chapter 16

Remy stood between two of the trenches, sealed in his armored suit, with Ares by his side. "I'm ready to return," he announced in his radio to Anders overhead.

"Can you stand by for about ten minutes," his ally requested back. "Colonel Fortune requested another cargo pod. I'd like to make the transport at the same time so I don't have to bring down the inhibitors."

"Understood." Remy switched the frequency on his radio to the one Ares was using. He turned to his escort to find the man staring off into the horizon. It was a long way from the battle, so he tapped the shoulder to find out what he was looking for.

"Did you know," Ares offered wistfully, "this used to be a green world with lots of water and air? There were trees here. Entire forests of trees. No insects or predators to worry about. Viruses didn't develop here. It was almost paradise. The air might have been heavy on the hydrogen and helium and the carbon dioxide, but there was oxygen. We could breathe in a pinch. With a little tweaking, we could have made it a second Earth."

Remy looked out, imagining the hills and rolling fields that once existed here. There was so much space, Earth could have colonized this world. Overpopulation plaguing some of the nations could have been solved had such a world been nurtured instead of destroyed layer by layer.

"What about the gravity," Remy asked. With the extra work his legs had gotten since he touched down on this planet, he imagined he could now break some squat records back home.

"That could have been a problem," Ares admitted. "They say this world was 2.2 times the size of Earth. It was hard for us at first, but you adapt like anything else. Yes, it was beautiful here and we stripped away everything; the trees, the plants, the water, the air."

"What do you do with it all?"

"When the storage bays fill up, the blender creates these massive cargo ships in orbit. All the material is sent to the ships and the ships head off to some preprogramed destination. When they get there, the ships are supposedly offloaded and dematerialized. The whole thing is automated and none of us know for sure this stuff gets where it's going, but you have to wonder."

Ares trailed off as if the barren landscape around him had captured his thought and trapped it within the desolation he shared responsibility for. It was as if the profundity of his coming observation had been upstaged by this shrinking world and the angry message it had waiting for him beneath the thin crust.

Remy hoped to jumpstart his thought process by trying to complete his wonderings. "You wonder how the magma hasn't blown the thin layer of rock out into space?" It was one of those mysteries that had been in the back of his mind. Not more important than the conflict among the inhabitants that Remy ever felt the need to ask before, but he had time now. Ares had brought up their work, so he figured it was as good a chance as he was going to get to satisfy his curiosity.

"No, we don't wonder that. Like you saw us do with the trenches, we've drilled release holes across the planet. We've given the magma chamber a way to release the pressure safely. No, what I wonder...what a lot of us have been wondering is what they do with all this material. We're talking planetary scale resource allocation here. You can't just dump everything we've taken onto a single world. And no one needs this much raw material to build ships and colonies."

Ares had a point. His observations got Remy thinking. Someone said they were developing the next class of scrambler to manipulate entire worlds, but they were not there yet. The Republic couldn't have a need for an entire planet's worth of minerals. And they had more than that if Dirk was right about this going on throughout the galaxy.

"Where is it all going," he mumbled to himself, forgetting that everything coming from his mouth crossed the air waves to Ares' helmet.

"Exactly!"

Remy had begun to feel so small as a single man trying to peel away the secrets of these governments, knowing he could be erased in a single flash of white. He had a duty to report back on what he was witnessing. The more he witnessed, the more dangerous his mission became. These were a hundred men trying to stand up for themselves, and he was one. He had no back up and no one he could truly trust aboard the _Freedom_. There was more going on than a few human rights violations. As much as his sense of duty and honor pushed him forward and drove him onward to the next secret, he sensed for the first time that this mission was too much for him. He had to focus himself on getting back to the UN and reporting on this single mission. In the safety of those chambers, he could push the ambassadors and other officials to get a larger inspection force in space. Ares' musings on the bigger picture could not be his problem at this time.

Ares considered a case he had been carrying. Remy had noticed it when they left the complex, but thought nothing of it, suspecting it to be some supplies the guy might have needed or some contraption he was supposed to set up after he returned to the ship. He didn't think it had anything to do with him, until Ares handed it over.

"I believe you genuinely want to help us, but there's nothing you can do for us on this world. The military won't listen to your diplomacy. Another gun on the front line will only buy us a few more seconds."

"I can't turn my back on this," Remy protested. "Every part of my being tells me this is wrong."

"It is, but you won't make a difference staying here with us. I managed to copy our entire database onto a bunch of data chips. I want you to take them back to Earth and show everyone what they're doing to us out here. Help us by telling your UN our story."

Remy looked to the case with despair. Millions over the centuries had been needlessly slaughtered for a variety of justifiable reasons, despite the world telling itself for 270 years "never again." Like the butchers with their own actions, it was easy for the world to justify turning its own back on the injustice. It was easy to downplay a genocide when other nations had nothing at stake. When no one wanted to stick their necks out to stop the suffering of innocent people, the mantra of "never again" quickly disappeared from the public consciousness.

Remy couldn't turn his back on these miners, no matter how dangerous it might have been. But he couldn't ignore the sense in Ares' request. The sad acceptance of this job was that you couldn't save everyone, no matter how hard you tried. Sometimes, the best thing for a victim is keeping yourself alive long enough to tell their story.

And yet it wouldn't be as easy as it sounded to fulfill this last request. This data in his hands was the single, most valuable treasure in the entire universe at this time. If Colonel Freedom suspected he had it, those quarters would be stripped down to the bulkheads to search for it. Anyone who knew he had it could be tortured. Anders was already on the hook for helping him get to the complex behind his CO's back. Knowing about the data in this case would put him in a whole new realm of danger.

This was worth it, Remy decided. He had to accept he couldn't help the miners directly. Keeping this data safe and getting it back to Earth was his primary duty, and he would have to do whatever was necessary to protect it.

With Anders signaling his time on this world was finished, Remy pushed the button to bring the familiar flash of light around his being and unveiling his quarters when it let go. Anders turned from the computer to take in the mess of a man returned from below.

"I'm guessing you failed." The Lieutenant learned all he needed to know about Remy's efforts from the simple request of his XO, and from the reports coming to the bridge which he had been able to gain access to on the computer.

Remy removed his helmet and placed it on his bed. He set the case behind it, trying to be nonchalant so Anders wouldn't suspect anything about it. But Anders was more interested in the battle than his charge's personal effects.

"Geological surveys suggest the miners destabilized the entire region when they unleased the lava. The bridge has been picking up subtle tremors for the last hour. If they don't already feel them, they will soon; and they will bring that whole complex down around them if they manage to hold out against Fortune."

Remy couldn't focus on his next step. Everything he had learned on the surface was fighting for dominance in his head. There was no focusing on a starting point for Anders; even if he opened his mouth, he doubted his words would make much sense bouncing around from one thing to another. He tried to keep the case center in his thoughts, to give himself an anchor around which to wind everything else. Eventually, the whole experience had wound itself into a single, coherent statement.

"You and I are in a lot of danger."
Chapter 17

Clad in his armored suit, with the helmet firmly in his hand, Remy peered into the corridor. Finding no one, he pushed forward, leading Anders out behind him. The Lieutenant was in his own suit of armor, carrying his own helmet, though he wasn't sure why.

"I told you, your doctor may have a secret room."

"In another dimension?" Anders' continued skepticism was an encouraging sign. If he had no concept of these interdimensional spaces, then it was a safe bet he was not in the loop concerning the experiments that might be going on. He wasn't sure if Sadile was carrying out secret experiments as Ares had claimed their doctor was, but he had to check it out.

"I'm still not clear how we're supposed to go to this other dimension." Remy wasn't sure himself. His plan relied on far too many suppositions, though he only needed a few of them to be true. He had seen the device Ares was about to use on the planet. It was hoped Sadile had one lying around the medical bay somewhere. If not, then he had to have plans for one somewhere. It was expected they could be found in the medical computer and used to replicate another with Sadile's scramblers.

As they neared the end of the corridor and readied to turn the corner, Remy heard a door dematerialize behind them. To Anders it might have been one of his shipmates coming off duty or leaving for their next duty shift. But Remy's curiosity could not be contained. He stole a glimpse over his shoulder, and to his delight, spotted Roxanne's sapphire blue eyes stealing a glimpse of him.

Having been caught she returned to hiding behind the door. Remy would not let her go though. She was as much a victim as the miners on LX-925. Maybe she was more of a victim. At least the men on that world had the means to fight back against their injustice. They had scramblers and material to create weapons and defenses. They had a world to fortify around them. And they had a way to escape if they could crack their ship's programming.

Roxanne had nothing but a tiny suite shared with her captor. Her scrambler was programmed with nothing but food and beverage choices. If she decided to leave Pittman, there was nowhere for her to go. Remy wasn't sure if he could help her any more than he had Dirk's men, but it wouldn't stop him from going to her and to try.

"You go ahead," he told Anders. "I forgot something in my quarters."

Anders merely shrugged and went on. When Remy was sure he was out of sight, he went to the woman's door and signaled. Roxanne answered quickly as if she had been ready for his arrival. She swept him inside out of public scrutiny.

"I knew you'd come back," she flirted. "Pittman has been working a double shift and it's been dreadfully lonely." It was an admission that was blatantly obvious from the skimpy, frilly lingerie barely covering her nipples and lower parts. Either she had the same thoughts that were entering Remy's mind that moment, or her limited world within Pittman's quarters left her with no sense of modesty.

"Your boyfriend has an important job. He has to man the armory in case his commander wants to drop some bombs." And he wondered if his language could become more suggestive. There was definitely something about this young woman that drove him crazy, as if those legs, those breasts, that face, even her voice weren't reason enough to drive all troubles from his mind.

"And you look like you've come straight from the battle," she noted tracing her finger through the grease in an s-shaped pattern across his chest. The girl tilted her head to find his eyes, playfully sweeping her hair over her shoulder and behind her head with her clean hand.

The strawberry scent lifted from her skin and tickled Remy's nostrils. It was much stronger than during his last visit, as though she had freshened her perfume before luring him inside. It made him forget his armor was filthy with the scent of earth and sweat. Like those scents had done during his time down in that grimy complex, he hoped this more pleasant aroma from her would stick to his suit and remind him why he chose to protect this ship.

He found what looked to be a rag and wiped the grease from Roxanne's finger. "I wasn't actually in the fight. I was just talking to the people down there, to find out why they were so upset."

She took the rag from Remy before her finger was cleaned. Then she touched the finger to his forehead and playfully traced something she thought looked like war markings over his wrinkled brow.

"If you had to fight though, would you?" It was difficult to resist her touch when she flashed her eyelashes as she asked.

"The UN believes in peace. I would only fight if it was absolutely necessary. And it would have to be really necessary."

"Would you fight for me?" Her voice softened with each question, enchanting Remy with each word, each syllable. Coming from her mouth, it was like every letter of the alphabet had been designed strictly for his ears from her lips. "Would you fight for this?" When she pressed those lips to his, he melted within his own armor. They were softer and more enchanting to the touch than he had ever dreamed. It was like kissing a ream of satin dipped in honey.

She pulled away slowly, while her wide blue eyes pleaded for an answer. "Yes, I'll fight for you if you want me to."

He pulled her back for another kiss, only to realize the armor in his way. The grease all over the plating smeared across her chest, staining the delicate skin.

"I'm sorry," he quickly offered. But Roxanne only brought her slim fingers to the mess and traced out her breasts with the slick goo. With a smile, she reached out to Remy and the fastenings holding the joints of his suit together. Accepting the invitation, Remy began removing the suit, piece by piece. Only briefly did he consider this another man's room, and Roxanne another man's girlfriend. His own manhood put those thoughts from his mind, and her slippery hands prodded him onward.

"This is not right," Remy finally realized. He ceased the disrobing, considering his own feelings and what this woman was. Roxanne was not Pittman's girlfriend. He understood her to be a toy that was conjured up for a few moments of amusement. She may have been programmed to be this flirty and forthcoming; Remy had no idea how all of this worked, but he assumed there had to be some kind of mind control involved.

If this was not her original personality, then Remy would be no less guilty for her sexual abuse as Pittman was. No amount of eye batting or lip puckering kept his arousal from vanishing. And it left Roxanne confused.

"Don't you want me?"

"That's not so easy to answer. Of course I want you, but I'm not sure you really want me."

She chuckled at his uncertainty. To her, it should have been obvious how she felt. "Of course I want you."

"I'm afraid," Remy stuttered trying to be delicate around such a personal topic, "that you might have been brainwashed. These feelings and desires you have for me might not be your own."

"Of course they're my own. Whose would they be?"

"Maybe Pittman's." Roxanne's innocent amusement disappeared into all-out confusion. "Maybe he somehow programmed your mind to be more open than you were born to be. I can't do this unless I'm sure it's what you want and not what some sex-starved lieutenant wants"

"Then take me away from here. Let's go somewhere else and I'll show you how much I want you."

Remy was tempted. He wanted nothing more than to get this woman away from this situation, even if she wasn't meant to be with him. He also knew that wasn't yet possible. There was nowhere for her to go except to the surface of the planet. The middle of an impending battlefield was certainly no place for an innocent young woman. Still, her suggestion was a wonderful sign that she wanted to leave.

"I would love to get you away from here," Remy admitted to her. "But you have to understand neither of us will be safe if you leave on a whim."

"What's the problem?"

"For one, Pittman can find us both on this ship. For another, if his commanding officer finds out I've been sneaking around, he'll probably do more than cut off my privileges. Before we do anything rash, I need to make sure I can keep you safe. Do you understand?"

"I think so."

Remy started returning the missing pieces of his suit to his body. With Anders waiting for him, he couldn't stay much longer. His liaison had already been more help than he could have hoped; maybe Anders had a solution for rescuing Roxanne next.

"I'm not abandoning you," he assured her. "I'll be just down the hall if you want to see me. Right now though, I have a friend to meet."

Roxanne's pouty expression perked up once again with his promise. "Then I will see you later, and maybe you will change your mind about me."

"I hope so." He kissed her on the cheek and fled from the room. In the privacy of the corridor, Remy sighed, trying to give his mind an imaginary cold shower.
Chapter 18

Remy crept cautiously through the corridors, each step placed carefully to the floor to avoid the clanging of his metal boots on the metal floor. It was damning enough sneaking around in a combat suit when he had Anders by his side, it would be more difficult explaining why he was out in such a manner without his escort.

He felt the eyes of the ship were on him, waiting around the next corner to pounce. Colonel Freedom would pull him to the office demanding to know why he interfered with his XO's campaign. Or perhaps Pittman would take him by the neck and threaten his life for messing with his girlfriend. The evidence certainly had been left behind in his quarters for that scenario.

Instead, it was only Murillo, eyeing him suspiciously, though his hands shook with fright as they ceased their work behind another stray panel. Remy fought to remain calm himself, remembering his fellow lieutenants' assessment of this strange young man.

"Aren't you supposed to be in the engine room," Remy asked, remembering that got rid of the guy last time they caught him in their way.

"That's none of your business," he snapped back, obviously not scared off as easily this time. Remy noticed his irises twitching towards his hands in the panel, no doubt trying to figure out if he should return to his work, or turn this into a proper staring match. A compromise directed them to the grease-smeared armor hanging on his body.

"You've already been down there, haven't you?"

It was more than a shock to hear this simpleton already knew his secrets. Remy feared if Murillo had found out about his adventure on the planet, then it was already all over the ship. Still, he couldn't take the chance this strange man had found out merely by spying on them, so he decided to play it cool.

"I don't know what you're talking about. Lieutenant Anders and I were re-enacting the French Revolution."

Murillo eyed the armored suit up and down, then leaned in and hushed his voice as if the bridge was listening in. "I know everything, Dr. Duval. I know you went down to the planet. I know you have their data. And I know you're in grave danger."

"You don't know anything," Remy snapped derisively. He had convince Murillo of that to keep him from sharing his perceived knowledge with anyone else. "That's why you won't tell me anything more than some made-up stories."

"I'm not allowed to talk with you. Even if I wanted to, I can't. I'm taking a huge chance just telling you to watch your back."

"From who?"

Murillo ignored his attempt for more information. "Go meet Anders before you're caught out here in that."

Despite Remy's attempt to pry more information from the mysterious Murillo, the Lieutenant had returned to his panel ignoring him while he continued his work. Remy simply gave up and continued on his way to the medical bay.

"He doesn't know anything," Remy told himself. He figured the guy was just trying to get attention. Overhearing bits and pieces as he lurked the corridors, he could weave some tale like before to fool the simple minded into believing he was an all-seeing mystic. Even though Murillo was right about his need to be careful, Remy wasn't going to let himself believe the act.

He turned another corner to find Anders standing outside the medical bay, distraught.

"There you are! We've got a problem." Remy's mind raced to all the dark possibilities of discovery. He thought of the ways each man on the senior staff would deal with them should they be the ones to uncover this plot. He wondered what horrors the doctor had cooked up for invading his domain.

Instead, Anders scrambled the door to show him a different horror: a dead boy. Sadile was dead, lying face down in the middle of the examination room. There was no blood, and no obvious wound. According to Anders, he had been bludgeoned to death.

"It was the only way," the Lieutenant explained. "He saw me in the suit and figured what I was up to. He was about to page the bridge, so I hit him with my helmet. It was the only way to keep him quiet."

Remy shoved him into the room and materialized the door behind him. He didn't see it as the tragedy he should have since someone would simply scramble a new doctor from his saved pattern. The only concern was hiding the body before someone else found it.

"We can't scramble it with the inhibitors up," Anders explained. "What should we do?"

It was funny he should look to the UN on how to get rid of a body, as if they were the ones experienced in covering up these kinds of crimes. Then again, he had experience in finding hidden bodies, so maybe it wasn't a farfetched notion. He thought for a moment, realizing it would be discovered anywhere on the ship. Then it hit him. The secret room they were here to find would make the perfect spot.

Remy began searching Sadile's desk for the remote device. "See if he has any kind of remote control on him. We're looking for a tiny box with a single button."

Anders set the device on the desk before him. "I already did. He wore this around his wrist like a watch."

"Ah!"

Remy secured his helmet and gestured for Anders to do the same. When he had tested the radio to make sure they could communicate, he grabbed his friend's hand and told him to take the body with his other. When the three were connected, Remy pressed the button and bathed them all in a white light, similar to that of the scrambler, but a less intense and shorter burst.

"Whatever you do, Lieutenant, do not remove your helmet until we're sure we're inside the room. This other dimension has no atmosphere. It should be no different than if we went on a spacewalk."

Both men found this other dimension a little disconcerting. The floor beneath them was solid, though it was like walking in sand. Light passed through the walls and objects from their original reality with some difficulty, allowing them to see faint images behind. Remy turned to look at the private rooms, when he noticed nothing passing through the wall to Room 1.

"I think that's it!" He walked over to the door with a little struggle against the not entirely solid floor. When he felt for the door controls, it was apparent there were none in this dimension. Where the door existed outside this reality, it was a solid wall inside.

They had missed the room, but Remy was confident now. It would be a simple matter of returning to their dimension, entering Room 1, and returning to this realm. As a bonus, he figured they could leave Sadile's corpse on this side of the room since there was no need for anyone to cross over within sight of it.

When the flash took them to the secret room within Room 1, they looked around at everything within. All the objects from the room had been recreated here in the same exact space: the bed, the night stands with the addition of trays containing medical tools, and a bureau of sorts to store whatever Sadile wanted to hide. The only serious addition to this secret room, was a workstation along the wall with its own computer and scrambler dish. It looked like a Class 5, but Anders admitted it may have been a Class 6 in case the doctor needed something bigger than a person.

The sheets on the bed had been disturbed, as if there had been a patient in this room recently.

"Major Sadile was coming out of this room when I entered medical. Maybe he was working with a patient and scrambled him before confronting me."

That was an interesting thought, Remy realized. If the inhibitors couldn't disrupt the scramblers across the dimensional planes, it gave him a new way to sneak on and off the ship. Perhaps at the next port of call, he might be able to sneak Roxanne away without anyone finding out. It had to be tested first.

He fired up the computer and searched through the file directory. The scrambler patterns were easy to find, and interestingly enough, the Doctor had the dimensional button on file. Even after helping him get to the planet, and killing Sadile to cover their tracks, Remy still had doubts concerning Anders' loyalties. There was too much he found convenient with this guy, and it would be too easy to explain away the murder when no one was really dead in space. It was true these actions would earn him no less than a reprimand if they were caught, yet Remy couldn't leave things to chance in case Anders was compromised. When the Lieutenant had his back turned studying the tools in the trays, Remy replicated a second controller and slipped it into his suit's gauntlet.

At least the inhibitor theory had been confirmed. When Anders returned to check his work, Remy shut down the scrambler files and found a batch of medical logs. He opened a random log and the pair read through it together. Inside their helmets, the looks of disgust mirrored each other as a tale of genetic splicing unfolded on the screen. They read the details of an attempt to splice foreign DNA with that of a human being within a scrambler pattern, then materializing the resultant being and watching as the graft failed to take. Sadile's report documented the agony the person went through as organs failed and the individual died from their own genes; and it was all in cold, technical detail.

"They're experimenting on people!"

Remy opened another report to read a similar experiment. Report after report after report all detailing attempts at tweaking genetic grafts to merge two beings into a single genetic pattern. Thanks to the molecular scrambler, Dr. Sadile had an endless supply of test subjects. He could run the experiments indefinitely until he produced a successful blending.

It was so disturbing and disgusting, Remy wanted nothing more than to find the Doctor's own pattern within the files and delete it. He never before wished another human being dead, but the experiments conducted within these walls were so inhumane, Sadile deserved that fate more than all the monsters of history combined. It was finally clear why the miners on the planet below were so determined to take on the entire Space Force of the Republic.

Remy's own morals kept control of his actions, preventing another crime. He looked to Anders to give him some support, some confirmation that he wasn't the only one to find this room to be pure evil.

"I had no idea," was all the Lieutenant could muster. And that was enough for Remy. He shut down the computer and returned the two of them to their own dimension.

"Those miners are fighting pure evil," Remy told his partner. "How can they hold out against a government that would do this to its own people?"

Anders knew how. There was but one thing they could do. "Fight."
Chapter 19

Remy dismissed Anders before disappearing into his room. "Give me an hour to get ready before we head down," he asked. It suited the Lieutenant just fine. He figured it was a good idea to report to Colonel Freedom anyway before the old man became suspicious of their absence.

Finally alone again, Remy removed his gloves and retrieved the tiny interdimensional controller he had hidden. He darted about the room for the perfect hiding spot in case they needed to return to the ship. It was difficult to think, though, that if their defiance was discovered, there was anywhere within this room something could be hidden that the officers already weren't aware of.

As he visually inspected the room, he caught the case containing the miners' data chips. If it would be impossible to hide a tiny controller, he didn't want to think about where he was going hide something the size of a briefcase.

He looked to the desk, noticing it was metal, and wondered if the controller could be affixed to the underside of the desktop or one of the drawers. If he had a magnet to affix to the tiny box, it could be secured, only he was certain the desk would be torn apart like the rest of the furniture in this room. He looked to the metal walls, figuring his chances that the room would literally be dissected to those bulkheads behind them.

It was a plan, but even taking the plans from his computer for a simple magnet, he couldn't create one with the inhibitors up. In the other dimension he could. Then how would he get it inside the wall without cutting through? He spun the room, turning over the problem as if a brain teaser.

"A 400 pound man and his two 200 pound sons are taking a walk when they come to a river. The only way across is a rowboat with a 400 pound capacity. How do all three get across without exceeding the boat's capacity?"

Then he had it!

Remy sealed the joints on his suit once again. Then he removed the frankensteined scrambler from the table and took up both of the dimensional controllers. In the secret dimension, he worked the magic with the scrambler to create his magnet, followed by a stick of sorts and a hook. The hook was nearly flattened and jammed into the end of the stick, still curved enough to hold the spare controller, but not so much that the magnet couldn't pull it off when brought close enough to metal.

"The two sons cross the river first. The first son stays behind while the second crosses back. Then the father crosses leaving the first son behind. When he gets across, the second son goes back to retrieve his brother."

Fortunately, the room next to his was unoccupied. Remy pushed through the wall with his contraption. When he was safely inside, he reinserted the stick into the narrow space between the rooms. As expected, once he pushed the button and brought himself and his invention back to his own reality, the stick was fused within the wall, but the controller was close enough to the wall panel for the magnet to latch onto the metal and pull the controller tight to the wall. Then it was a matter of taking himself and the stick out of phase again and returning to his own room.

He spied the case still on the bed and wondered if the same thing would work for it. The case, he admitted was too big to fit between the walls, but that secret room in the medical bay had walls that existed in this secret dimension.

Remy returned to the scrambler and created a larger magnet; one strong enough to hold the weight of that case. Then he took it to the medical bay. Major Sadile's body remained where they had hid it, and Remy wondered how long it could stay there. With no atmosphere, he figured it would never decompose. Leaving it as they had might expose the murder should someone else discover this secret dimension and decide to go for a jaunt. Of course that was totally ridiculous when he played it out in his head. And if he thought somebody would find that corpse, he wouldn't think this a good spot to hide the data chips in the first place. He attached the case to the outside of Sadile's secret lab and returned to his own quarters without giving it further thought.

Back in his own reality, Remy replaced the scrambler at just the right time, for Anders had returned from the bridge.

"Freedom doesn't suspect a thing. I told him you had taken a break and we were just about to get back to work monitoring and analyzing the telemetry from the field. I also told him you were getting hungry so he'd agree to take the inhibitors around the appropriate cargo pod offline briefly."

"I thought you could do that without being noticed."

"Yes, but the more I sneak around, the more chance we have at getting caught. If I can create an excuse, there's no chance he'll suspect anything if someone happens to be monitoring at that moment."

Anders started putting his armored environmental suit back on, as Remy considered their options once they got to the planet. "Do we have a plan once we go down there?"

"I've been thinking, and I think we can get them off that world and away from here without being detected. We should be able to get them somewhere safe without Colonel Freedom figuring out how."

It was too much of a dream for Remy, as he thought once again of Roxanne. A prisoner of those quarters, there was no escaping her misdeeds covered in the grease from his suit. But never mind any punishment she should face, it tortured him to think of her as a slave to that man's lust in the first place. If Anders had a way to get everyone away from that dead world safely, then he had to free Roxanne and get her away from those horrible quarters.

"There's someone else coming with us," Remy announced to his companion. "Could you scramble up another suit while I get her?"

"Her?" Before Anders could press for an answer to his curiosity, Remy was already out in the corridor and in front of that door.

Roxanne opened once again. Her face sprung to life as a child who had feared missing her daddy on Christmas morning. "You're back! Did you change your mind about me? About us?"

"In a sense. I want you to come with me. I'm taking you away from here." Roxanne couldn't have been happier. She giggled with delight as she took her savior's hand and followed him back to his quarters. That delight was short lived when she found herself face to face with Anders.

"Who is this," Anders stuttered as if he had never seen a woman before. It didn't help she was nearly naked, and his imagination must have run wild seeing her delicate skin covered with filth.

"Her name is Roxanne. Your Lieutenant Pittman had her as a sex slave. If you can really get those miners to safety, then I want her to go with them."

Anders looked them both over pitifully. "I'm not sure this is a good idea, but if you feel that strongly about it, I doubt I'm going to change your mind." He waved to the newest suit spread out on the bed and waited while Remy helped her assemble it around her body. When everyone was sealed up, he signaled the bridge to drop the inhibitors, giving him the opportunity to scramble all of them down to the planet.
Chapter 20

When the white flash cleared, Roxanne took in the stark landscape with such wonder. It was easy to forget she had never seen the ground or the sky, or at least she couldn't remember such sights. As barren as this world looked, and as drab as the sky seemed, everything was so new and exciting to the young woman.

Even Lieutenant Anders took a moment to absorb the world around him. His first deployment, he had not yet stepped foot on an alien world since his transfer to the Space Fleet. Remy watched them both thinking it strange he of all people had been to more planets and had more experience on other worlds than either of his companions.

"Now what," Anders wondered. Remy turned toward the complex half expecting a greeting party even though the miners weren't expecting his return.

"We go up there and knock."

Remy grabbed Roxanne by the arm and dragged her onward toward the complex. Like his first trip, a single man left the structure to greet him, gesturing the group inside. As they removed their helmets, Remy recognized Ares.

"What are you doing back here," he demanded. "I thought you were going back to the UN."

"Lieutenant Anders thinks he can get you safely away from here."

The title triggered alarm in their host as he raised his rifle against the officer. "You brought one of them in here?"

Remy put himself in front of the rifle. "Relax, Anders has been helping me. We found the experiments our doctor was running and he wants to help you."

"I think I have an idea how to get you off this world safely."

Ares eyed the Lieutenant suspiciously, but Remy caught his glare to offer assurance. As he lowered the rifle, he turned his attention to the blonde in the third suit. "And who is she?"

"Her name's Roxanne," Remy introduced. "She was a prisoner aboard our ship. I want you to take her with you when you leave."

Ares extended his hand to the girl, who looked at it confused before Remy nudged her to take it. "Nice to meet you, mam."

"My name's Roxanne," she corrected innocently to the amusement of the men.

"It's a title of respect," Remy informed her. He gave her a smile to show her it was a good thing.

Ares brought everything back to Remy. "You guys have a plan to get us off this rock?"

Remy, wasn't sure himself. He had come and he committed Roxanne to this course on Anders' word. "Do we?"

"Yes," the Lieutenant proclaimed with the confidence of a Colonel. "We found the secret room in our own medical bay, and I figure if you can hide a room in this other dimension, why not a ship. We're going to scramble your ship, then use that device to shift it out of this dimension."

Hearing the plan, Ares' body sunk within his armor along with his hopes for escape. "We can't shift something that large. One of the first things we tried after getting rid of the administrator and the doctor was to shift the entire complex so you wouldn't find us. When that didn't work, we tried shifting just ourselves. The most we can take across at one time is five people. Magnus is the engineer; he could explain it to you. It's just not possible to shift large objects across the dimensional planes."

"But they got entire rooms across," Anders protested.

Remy already knew how that was done. "They took a scrambler across and constructed the rooms from within the dimension." When the Lieutenant looked at him amazed at his knowledge, Remy fessed up. "I messed with Sadile's scrambler when your back was turned. On the plus side, the inhibitors do not work across the dimensional plane. We can leave them up around this facility and still build the ship over there."

While Anders liked the idea, Ares did not. "The material we need fills an entire building. It's too much to take over at once, and it would take too long to break it down and cross it over."

"How far has Fortune's army advanced," Anders inquired. He earned some strange comments from Ares before explaining Fortune was the name of the field commander and not a description of the enemy. But before he could get the update from this miner, he received a different update from the ground beneath him.

The building shook as the floor suddenly felt like quicksand. A low bass-like hum filled the air as if a helicopter was trying to land on their heads. Remy and Anders looked up expecting something to come through the roof, when Ares pointed out the origin.

"Earthquake. They've been growing stronger for the past hour."

He reminded Anders of the reports from _Freedom's_ bridge. "You don't have much time before the magma swallows up this complex. It doesn't matter how, we have to build that ship."

He figured if Magnus was the engineer on site, it would be more useful talking to him. Ares agreed to take Roxanne to private quarters. With the lack of women in this man camp, it might have been safer, at the least more dignified, if she was out of public view.

"I'll come see you in a little bit," Remy promised, and the two pairs parted ways.

He and Anders headed upstairs where, according to Ares, Magnus' office was located. As they climbed the stairs and stepped onto a walkway overlooking the central chamber, the Lieutenant had a question.

"Why do you do this? Why do you care about these people so much?"

"Somebody has to," was the simple reply.

"Most people watch the bad things happening all over the world, but end of the day, they turn the news coverage off and expect it all works out. Most people have empathy for the unfortunate, but they can still go to work or school or the park, and they can still sleep at night without their dreams taken over by horrors like this. What inspired you to join the UN? What inspires you to put your life in jeopardy for this group of miners? What was so special about Roxanne that you had to go back for her before leaving the _Freedom_?"

Remy shrugged his shoulders searching for the easy answer his friend was looking for. "Tell me, what made you join me down here? It's not just your life, but your commission that's on the line for these people. Why are you helping me help them?"

Anders should have known it was going to be turned on him, but it was a fair turn of the tables. "I joined the Marines to protect my country from those that would harm us and our people. I know you guys in the UN think the world is a big happy place right now, but under those phony smiles and long-winded speeches on love and peace our diplomats share in those chambers, they're secretly thinking about the plots their governments have to destroy each other. There has been an arms race going on since our nations came to dominance. All four nations out here among the stars, and a couple others that haven't quite joined us, we're all stockpiling weapons and technology until one of us has a clear advantage.

"I'm serving my country to keep the people back home safe. I accepted the transfer to the Space Force because I thought the future of our defense was out here. When I saw those files in Major Sadile's computers, I had to admit I was embarrassed for my country. I didn't want to believe my own government would sanction such gruesome experiments on its own people. I don't know if those people created in his lab are really people, or if these copies down here are people, but it's an abuse on the original patterns. I joined the military to protect people like this, not people who would do this."

"Sometimes," Remy reminded him, "you have to stop looking the other way. Even if all you do is speak up to bring attention to injustice, you make a difference. As you said, people tend to think these problems are for someone else to fix. I guess when I earned my doctorate, I decided not to be one of those people, but that someone instead. And back there, up on the ship, you decided the same."

They stopped in front of a grimy door with Magnus' name across the front. Anders was confused by the door knob, but for Remy, who had only been introduced to their space-age technology a couple days ago, this was more familiar. He grabbed the knob, and let themselves in, finding their engineer working on his computer.

"Whatever you want," Magnus snapped rather curtly, "I'm busy. If I don't find a way to stabilize the ground, we're all sunk in a sea of lava."

Anders stepped forward, resting his hands on the desk and leaning across. "If you don't stop that army so you can replicate your ship and get off this planet, you're all dead anyway. All you're doing is buying seconds when you need to buy days."

"I don't know who you are, but Dirk has a plan, and I have a job to do."

"If this is Dirk's plan, then it is garbage," Anders challenged. "I didn't betray my commander to come down and watch you all flail about in your ignorance."

Remy took his companion aside to point out his confrontational tone wasn't going to help these people or convince them to accept his guidance. With an apology, he returned to the engineer to lay out a plan.

"We have to distract the scramblers while you bring down your inhibitors, scramble the ship, and transport everyone aboard. We'll need a few minutes, but Colonel Freedom can do a lot of damage in only a few seconds; and you only have enough material for one ship."

Magnus was doubtful, but willing to listen as Anders laid out his plans for the distraction. It required whatever spare material they could scrape from their stores, and then some from the already thin and dissolving surface. Parts of this plan were laughable to both of his audience, and others were downright appalling to Remy who feared they were going to become the monsters they were trying to stop. Anders assured them both, this was doable without compromising principles.

"You should have the men suit up and prepare to defend the entrance. Things are going to intensify outside once Fortune realizes what we're doing. He's letting you think you're decimating his forces and holding his men back, but he's sitting on a full cargo pod waiting for the right chance to use it."

Magnus liked the plan and left to fill Dirk in on the details. He knew their de facto leader wouldn't like it, but it was going to unfold whether he approved or not. Remy meanwhile decided to check in on Roxanne to make sure she was ready to go once the ship was finished. He imagined as well, how lonely and bored she must be in those quarters.
Chapter 21

Ares remained at the door, staring as Roxanne inspected the room. It had been so long since he had been with a woman, let alone seen one. On all the Republic ships visiting for supplies in the past two years, there had not been one among all those crews. He couldn't remember seeing any when the Confederation ships came by either. The ships from the Independent Union had a few in their ranks, but those girls were always so cold and professional. It was likely they had already been claimed by their fellow officers.

Then there were the ships of the Eastern Imperium. The landing parties never had a shortage of the fairer sex. Imperium girls were some of the most beautiful creatures he had ever encountered. Their copper skin was so smooth and flawless, their short, pitch-black hair was like strands of velvet through the fingers. They were so demure and polite, yet warm with words. He would turn off his translator at times because from their lips, the Imperium languages rivalled the most beautiful love songs.

They were a lot more open about sex than women of the Republic. Though it was prohibited, and the lesser workers like him were watched closely during visits, it was not impossible to obtain their private company. Imperium visits became more than just a release of sexual energy. These woman had a way with their hips to make you forget these were one-time flings. They weren't providing sex, they were making love; and before they were done, their partner would swear she was the right woman and vow to marry her.

Roxanne's genetic features were the exact opposite, yet she was no less beautiful. Ares couldn't stop staring at that long, golden hair. As she removed the pieces of her suit, his eyes traced downward along the outline of her curves.

Remy was too old to be with such a young woman, especially one this beautiful. Ares figured she had to belong to that officer. He struggled with his own urges not to make a move that might cost them his help. Still, this beauty might be worth damnation.

He turned to leave her before those thoughts became action, when she stopped him. "Don't go," she pleaded. "Don't you want to stay and talk?"

His tongue dropped from his mouth and all he had for an answer was a gargle. Still, he figured, the invitation was hers. He didn't want to offend the lady. Shutting the door behind him, he took one of the chairs at the table.

Roxanne shook off the last boot and sat down beside him.

"Where are you from," she asked, looking upon him as if he was a new book sitting on her shelf for inspection.

"I'm from Happy Falls."

A pleasant fascination flashed from the young woman. "Sounds wonderful," she mused as someone judging his hometown from name alone. But all was not happy.

"It's not," Ares admitted. "Kind of a shithole ever since the bottling plant closed." He told her a boring tale of a bottled water company setting up shop to capitalize on the town's name, until the local government realized they were drying up the water supply. The politicians couldn't shut them down directly, so they made it increasingly difficult for the bottler to do business. Eventually, they left and took the jobs with them.

Ares didn't believe she would find it interesting at all, but every word drew her closer and closer to him until she was just about in range for a kiss. His story increasingly relied on words that would round his lips, expecting the next to bring her into a connection. And just when he was about to close the seal, the door opened, pulling them both sharply away from each other and back into their seats.

It was Remy entering with a look of jealous anger on his brow, at least that's what Ares saw. He wasn't going to take the chance and quickly excused himself to find out what his assignment was supposed to be.

"He was a charming young man," Roxanne sighed. Charming wasn't the word that came to Remy's mind concerning Ares, or any of the men he ran into on this world. He knew it was just as dangerous bringing the girl down here among an entire group of sex starved men as it was to leave her on the _Freedom_ with one who had taken advantage of her limited memory and simple outlook on people, but this option seemed to provide the more likely path toward her freedom. Remy knew the risks in trying to free her from her cage, and he had to take the responsibility of keeping her out of harm.

The book he had tucked under his arm was just one way of helping her. He had found it in one of the crew quarters on the way here. It seemed someone on this station had a ravenous passion for books. It was one of the many ways, Remy supposed, for one to forget the animal instincts this job repressed. There was quite a library in that room and he figured one wouldn't be missed.

Remy recognized one volume as a classic Republic novel. Widow's Walk was the story of a new mother who had lost her husband in the early days of the new Republic. She decided to strike out across country looking for a new life for her and her baby daughter. He handed the book to Roxanne, thinking she might like to read about a woman who didn't rely on sex to get along in the world. He felt reading a story about a strong woman might give her the sense of self she didn't seem to have been programmed with.

"I thought you might like to read about your country back on Earth." Of course he lied about the underlying subject. As someone who wasn't accustom to deep thoughts, Roxanne would likely have been turned off if he sold it as a social novel instead of a grand adventure tale.

Watching her take the book and flip through the pages with a glint of magical wonder, Remy saw his plan to undersell the book was the right course. He could always bring up the complex social message later as an exercise.

"Can you stay with me," she pleaded sensing the book was actually a consolation for leaving her alone as Pittman often would. "I get so bored by myself."

The irony wasn't lost on Remy. He took the seat Ares had formerly occupied hoping to convince Roxanne her momentary solitude was necessary.

"I have to help them build a new ship that will take us away from this place. As soon as we're all aboard and away from here, I'll stay with you, I promise." He took her hands in his as if intimate contact would reinforce his pact; as if to reassure this girl her coming loneliness was a necessary price for her freedom from that prison Lieutenant Pittman had for her. "I'll even read with you. Maybe I can find you other books while I'm gone to ignite your imagination."

She returned his hopeful smile with a satisfied one of her own, letting him leave with the dream of a story binding his word to her bosom.

The pages splayed out to her imagination, the words travelled through her eyes and into her mind. "It was a cold November day. The leaves had long ago shifted their hues, withered and slipped from the maple in the front yard."

It sounded so beautiful to her: a tree with leaves that changed color. And a yard! This world already sounded fantastic.

"Every day the sky was just a bit grayer as the sun dropped in the sky."

And the sun moved! She already imagined what it must be like to stand on the surface of such a wondrous place and just look up at the sky as the warmth radiated across the skin. Would she too change hues, she wondered, with the changing of the seasons? Or would she wither with the passing months? If that were so, it would still be worth it to experience fresh air and warm breezes. She could hardly wait for Remy to take her away from this dreary place and show her his dynamic home. Until that day, she had this book to tease her with the experiences of a fictional woman.
Chapter 22

Remy locked his helmet in place and stepped outside onto the catwalk where he found Anders studying the army beyond the lava flows. The quakes grew more frequent and their intensity became more alarming. Each one, widened the hot rivers just a bit, decreasing Fortune's chances of crossing. They also weakened the structure and threatened the integrity of the atmosphere inside, but Remy looked to the metal surface holding their feet three stories above the ground. One solid quake was all it would take to shear the walkway from the wall.

"What's happening," Remy wondered, focusing his own visor on a tighter view of the ground force. The men had some equipment they were assembling like a set of giant Tinker Toys.

"Colonel Fortune scrambled a bridge. They're assembling it over the lava now. We don't have much time before they're on this side and coming for the doors."

Remy sensed a morose tone drifting over the radio. Only an hour ago, they were on the RS _Freedom_. Anders had pledged his service to that ship, and now he was preparing to betray his commander. "Are you going to be all right?"

Anders took a deep breath that translated into Remy's ear. "I know we're doing the right thing, but I know what betrayal feels like. The last thing my mother ever said to me was 'if your father divorces me, it's your fault.' I guess subconsciously I always knew both my parents blamed me for the problems in their marriage. They always kept me at arm's length while fawning over my younger brother.

"My father would take him out for a father-son breakfast a little more than he'd take me. In fact, I remember waking up one time, I must have been five or six at the time, just when they were leaving, begging and crying to go with him. I mean, I was just a little kid and I wanted to be with my dad. He relented and took me with them, but the whole time, he just ranted that he didn't want me there. He only wanted to spend time with my brother. Growing up, he was always proud about something my brother did; when I was dragged around over the years, that's all I would hear him go on about with his friends, was my brother.

"I never fully appreciated that my mother felt the same way until I was older. When my brother finished junior high and they held the silly graduation, he was going through that phase when kids become embarrassed by their parents. So he said he didn't want her to go. It was nothing more to him than a desire for independence, but she was pretty hurt; she stayed home crying.

"I tried to be there for her, whatever that means being a teenager myself, but she kept pulling away. The one son who wanted her, she wanted nothing to do with. Another time some years after, both of us were heading off to work, and she asked my brother if she could make him something to eat before he left, but offered me nothing. That one really stuck with me more than anything for some reason.

"I always chalked up those kinds of incidents to the usual parenting favoritism, but there was a point in college where I just gave up and shut down. From that point, all I ever heard from either of them was 'if you're unhappy, why don't you leave?' Every other day I got nonsense like that. One time I had bought cold cuts to make sandwiches for lunch the next day and when I woke up in the morning, my mother had thrown them out. I had to leave too early to replace it, and wasn't able to go out at lunchtime. I was stuck with no lunch because my own mother wanted to play games.

"She had been unhappy with the marriage for years, but never had the guts to call it quits and leave. She always made the excuses that she stayed to give us a stable home. I didn't realize until the end that she was really blaming me. She had been a younger woman taken by an older man when they first met. By the time disenchantment set in, I had already been born. If it weren't for me, she would have been free to walk from that marriage. She didn't blame my brother because she was already trapped when he was born. I was the one that trapped her. She would get no satisfaction from my father when they would fight, so she took her frustrations out on me instead.

"By the time I was in college, their marriage had crumbled. She was sure he was cheating, and she retaliated with a virtual relationship of her own. When the guy decided to take things to the next level and started calling her, she freaked out. She picked a fight with me as a distraction and dragged my father into it. It backfired. He found out what she was up to. That was when she openly blamed me for her marriage problems and confirmed everything my subconscious suspected over the years.

"Those would be her very last words to me. I had just graduated from college and left for the Marines a day after that incident. I never went back home after that. I haven't seen either of them since. The distance helped to alleviate the anger I had, but whenever I start thinking of the few good times there were, my mind always returns to those words.

"It was easy not to be disappointed in the Marines. Your commanding officers don't care about you as an individual. You're there to do a job and that's all they care about. But when I accepted a commission in the Space Force and took this posting, I kind of found Colonel Freedom to be the father I never really had. He personally toured the ship with me and introduced me to his crew. His door was always open when I had a problem. Even though it was up to the XO to drive us to further our careers, Freedom always followed up to make sure I was on track. He was there with the encouragement when I needed it. He was always understanding when I'd make mistakes while trying to find my legs on that ship. For the first time, I had someone who cared about me.

"And I just betrayed him."

When the radio fell silent, Remy noticed his friend's head hung as low as the suit would allow. He suspected that was the first time anyone had heard that story. It was an honor if that were so, but Remy wasn't sure how to respond except by keeping his focus on this plan.

"Don't forget, Lieutenant, his doctor was conducting illegal experiments. By allowing it, he put you and your friends in legal danger. At some point everyone is going to hurt you. I'm sorry your parents hurt you. I'm sorry Freedom hurt you. I can't promise I won't hurt you at some point. All you can do is stay true to who you are, and continue working for what you know is right."

Remy looked out to the invaders once again. The bridge looked to be nearly finished, and soon they would be dropping it over the lava ahead of them. These miners didn't have time for Anders to suffer a crisis of conscious. Nor could they wait to act any longer.

"If we don't get this plan rolling right now, Colonel Fortune's men will stroll over the last line of defense and come knocking on our doors. I'm sorry, Lieutenant, but it's too late now to start having doubts."

Anders looked up from his misery to study the actions across the field. Oddly, where this mission had stirred up a lot of long buried bitterness, it also gave the distraction he needed to keep it buried for a little while longer. He turned his back to the coming assault and led Remy inside to commence the first stage of his plan.
Chapter 23

Lieutenant Riggs worked his fingers across his console, monitoring the ship's position in relation to the complex on the planet's surface. Every few minutes he found himself correcting their orbit as the ship had a tendency to shift half a degree forward. It was a curious anomaly until he noticed the engines were operating ever so slightly harder than they needed to be.

He should have known it was Lieutenant Drake's fault. The young man had an insatiable lust when it came the ship's power, always driving the power harder and the engines faster than what was needed. Drake was the guy who had to drive a Mustang back home, and refused to drive it less than fifteen miles above the speed limits.

Down in the engine room, he always had to give the Colonel more than he asked for. If Freedom had asked for five times light speed, Drake had to give him 5.2. Ten times became eleven. None of the reprimands or the threats of a Section 13 corrected his urges. In the end, Colonel Freedom found it more efficient to ask for less so that Drake gave him what he intended.

Riggs called down to the engine room to get the power nudged back. It solved the drift problem, but it remained to be seen how long before Drake grew itchy with his controls again.

Across the bridge, Pittman also grew itchy. His job was to shoot things and blow things up. With the scrambler being the choice weapon in this conflict, he had spent the day monitoring power readings, identifying moments when the miners' inhibitors were down to allow use of their scrambler. When he had a window, it became a race to bring down theirs and try to scramble the dish from atop the complex. The briefest delay between their inhibitors going offline and those of the _Freedom_ matching it meant those on the ground were back up and running just in time to keep Pittman from completing a scramble. The opposing sides had to work in absolute unison. Short of guesswork and pure luck, there was simply no way for Pittman to carry out the task. Needless to say the armory officer was bored.

Lieutenant Dorsey was equally bored at the station beside his. He had one job: to monitor com chatter among the fleets and highlight the important transmissions for the Colonel. It was a job made less exciting by the fact there wasn't much com traffic to begin with. The distrust among the nations kept the ships quiet to prevent unnecessary spying. Coupled with others who would listen in, those messages not deemed urgent, yet sensitive tended to get passed along on data chips as friendly ships would meet. Dorsey enjoyed sitting at his station for hours at a time before a message would pass through his receiver.

Satisfied the navigational drift had been corrected, Riggs tilted his head back to the pair behind him. "Dorsey, Pittman, when this is over and we finally get off duty, you want to join up for a few beers?"

Dorsey thought about the duty shift waiting for him at 0600. If this mission dragged on much longer, his off time would disappear. He knew given the choice, sleep was more important for facing the next day, but he had yet to find a fellow service member who would say no to a drink.

Pittman however, expected something more pleasurable waiting for him when he got off duty. For him, the dilemma was heart wrenching: sex or beer. Sex would have won out if he didn't expect to sound alarms by refusing Riggs' suggestion. Roxanne would always be there waiting for him, he reasoned. It wasn't often all his friends were off duty at the same time.

But before either could escape their mischievous thoughts of a night out, so to speak, and return their answers, an alarm sounded on several of the consoles. Pittman detected a scrambler signal outside the ship, and Riggs detected a mess of objects ahead and coming at them fast.

The objects themselves weren't actually moving. The scramblers don't save or produce kinetic energy in the objects or people they scramble. Everything created ahead remained stationary in relative time and space, tugged downward toward the planet only after they had been fully materialize.

However, the ship was maintaining an incredible forward momentum in order to stay in orbit. Though it appeared to be sitting still in the space above the mining complex, if it were truly sitting still, the planet's gravity would take hold and pull it down. Since the ship appeared to be still in relation to the planet, from the perspective on the bridge, it seemed the objects were moving toward them.

And they were moving with incredible speed, faster than their own weapons could lob a bullet or missile. The objects had pierced the outer hull of the cargo pods and tore through before the bridge crew had even identified the danger.

The RS _Freedom_ rocked violently as several pods were torn open. Some were ripped clear from the ship, striking the neighboring pods and heaving the crew further as they broke free and escaped for a fiery death as the planet tugged them into the atmosphere.

The habitable areas of the ship survived relatively unscathed. They were tucked deep beneath the layers of unoccupied pods which themselves were heavily armored to protect from random space debris. The ship was designed thus to give the living spaces an extra layer of protection. If it came down to it, the cargo could be sacrificed and scrambled back to life during the repairs. But if the ship proper suffered a catastrophic breach leaving no one left alive to conduct the repairs or revive lost crewmen, the whole thing, including a wealth of data and technology became an easy salvage target for any of their enemies.

Colonel Freedom left the briefing room to join his crew as the worst of the attack abated.

"What was that," he demanded.

Not one idle hand remained on the bridge as fingers flew across buttons and screens to collect and process an overwhelming stream of readings and data.

"About twenty to thirty small objects materialized ahead of us."

"We've lost seven storage pods, and another twelve have been severely damaged."

"Inhibitors are down in the forward sections of the ship!"

"Get us out of here, Riggs," Freedom barked. "We need to be out of range of their scramblers, but keep us in range of the debris so we can make repairs. Dorsey, update Colonel Fortune on our situation. Warn him the miners may be after him next, and give him my apologies we won't be able to provide support. Lieutenant Drake," he called on the radio, "begin repairs immediately. I want this ship ready to fight yesterday!"

Freedom called up images of the space around the ship, uncertain what he was looking for. It seemed too late to search for more objects, so he shifted to a sensor map displaying the debris they were leaving behind in their wake as Riggs pulled them away from the planet. One by one, the dots and boxes indicating the remains of their cargo pods and their contents went dark.

"Is that us," he called out to no one in particular, but to anyone who could get him the answer. "Are we scrambling the cargo, or is that the miners?"

"It's them, Sir." As he delivered the bad news, Pittman went to work on taking down the last of their inhibitors so they could enter the race for the materials. With most of their pods damaged or lost, unable to hold the material he scrambled, Pittman entered the fray at a disadvantage. All he could do was conduct simple transports to move it away from the planet. The cargo he could capture remained floating in space, but at least he could get it out of range of the hostiles until the repairs were complete.

"Maybe we can bomb that complex into the Stone Age and end this," the armory officer eagerly offered. If he didn't get to blow something up soon, he would consider launching a few missiles at some random asteroid just to satisfy his cravings.

"Our top priority is the data in their computers, Lieutenant. All other concerns are secondary."

Freedom sat on the edge of his chair as his crew carried out the orders they were given. He had full confidence in this crew. Every one of his officers was doing the job he expected of them. But as he awaited the damage reports and Riggs' word that they were safely away from another attack, he couldn't take his mind off the unusual vibration he felt through his chair as the engines pushed them along. His ship was broken and he wouldn't be at ease until it was put back together.
Chapter 24

Colonel Fortune watched the images coming from the front line with delight. The bridge had been assembled and his forward teams were across and on their way to the complex. The reinforcements he had scrambled from the last supply drop were on their way to join them. Though the RS _Freedom's_ retreat left him disappointed that these would be the last reinforcements he could expect, his pressing concern was on his own camp and his troops. They were sure to be next on the miners' radar, but more importantly their brazen attack meant their inhibitors were offline and the scrambler dish atop the structure was vulnerable.

He had ordered the man outside his own protective field to snag it with the forward scrambler, but when the confirmation failed to arrive in his ear, Fortune grew concerned. He locked on his helmet and left his structure. Peering across the stark plain and magnifying the site in his visor, he found no sign of the lone man or his device. While he contemplated the absence, a flash of light overhead bathed the pale brown sky in a brief aura of white.

Fortune raced his gaze skyward and spotted them. A swarm of objects, maybe half the size of a cargo pod by his estimates, rocketed downward on his camp. The thin atmosphere gave them little resistance, and broadcast little warning as there was little air for them to whistle through. With as much haste as he could muster, Fortune shut down the inhibitors surrounding the camp. Then he raced for the primary scrambler and programmed it to transport him away.

As he climbed onto the platform and waited for the white light to wrap him and spirit him away, the first of the objects struck the ground. One hit his temporary office, leaving him grateful he had the foresight to get out of there when he did. Another of these objects landed near one of the inhibitors far outside the camp. Though the unit survived the initial impact, it was taken out as part of the resulting blast crater.

The light came, washing out Fortune's glimpses of the objects raining down and sweeping away his camp. Fortunately (appropriate given his name), the light dissipated and showed him scenery far closer to the complex before the attack could claim him or his scrambler.

He took his bearings and spied the first of his own men engaging the armed miners who had taken positions inside the doorways. Their small numbers suggested they were covering a retreat. His own troops pushed forward, taking bullets as the bodies piled up. But like always, each death bought another man a few more steps closer to the goal.

Fortune took a rifle from one of the bodies long abandoned, and stepped onto the bridge. The river of lava had almost widened enough to consume the structure, so he had to hurry across. The closer he moved toward his men, the further they pushed toward the complex. With the casualties on his side, he wished he still had his scrambler so he could create some light explosives. One grenade or a small rocket would remove their position without bringing down the entire building.

Yet it was not needed. The first man got his gun around the door frame and shot one of the miners before taking a bullet himself. The man behind him, capitalized and took out the second defender. The last defense had been broken and Fortune's men poured into the structure.

They fanned out, securing corridors and rooms. Resistance inside was light, limited to the occasional man laying down cover fire while his comrades fled further into the maze.

The Colonel joined his men at the door and proceeded inside. "Good job," he offered to those guarding his entry as if they would be permitted to remember their contribution once the fighting was finished. Still, he offered it as he proceeded inside.

Taking an escort, he passed up the first flight of stairs and onto the walkway circling the center chamber. Hearing only the occasional gunfire, it seemed the miners had given up the complex without much of a fight. Though it concerned him greatly as to where they were retreating, his mission objectives were clear.

Fortune found the administrator's office and sat at the desk to access the computer. When it wouldn't boot up, he examined the unit. It had been broken into. He pulled apart the casing, and found the data stores were missing. Those miners had taken the data he was meant to retrieve.

He took up his rifle from the desk, and grabbing the pair that had been guarding him, set out to find the thief. The miners had been of no more concern than the foot soldiers he led to their own deaths. But with the data stores, he could not leave their escape to his commanding officer and his broken ship.

His first stop would be the scrambler controls. Without the station's data, there would be no map of the facility. Since these places tended to be pretty standard, at least he had an idea it was nearby on this level.

Fortune set out on the gantry with his escort, checking every room, not only to map the place in his mind, but also to make sure none of the miners intended to spring a trap to buy time for their friends. The sound of gunfire continued to ring through the complex. Most of it was growing further and further off. His men were doing their jobs, yet he still heard the occasional shot from the central chamber below.

The Colonel kept his own rifle ready just in case. One of the privates opened the door to the room ahead, to be met with a bullet through his visor. Fortune grabbed him by back of the armor, holding the body up as a shield to bolster his own armor. When the stranger rushed from the room to face his opponents, Fortune braced the barrel of his rifle on the dead private's shoulder and fired into his attacker's left shoulder.

The man went down, clutching his weapon as though it were his lifeline. As he tried to get off the shot, Fortune dropped his rifle from the dead shoulder and drove another bullet into the man's head. Though their rifles scrambled armor piercing rounds, the Colonel was grateful these facilities didn't have plans for the same armored suits his men were using. It meant their bullets travelled through the thinner plating, bringing death much quicker.

Fortune peered into the room and, as he suspected, found the dead man had been guarding their scrambler. He raced inside to access the controls. His hands flew across the keys and his eyes skimmed the pages flashing across the monitor with the efficiency of someone well versed with these systems.

This was why the Republic valued their officers. These miners and his foot soldiers were all disposable. Anyone can learn a few rudimentary scrambler functions to run the mining processes. Anyone could learn to monitor the life support or operate the radio or figure out which cargo pods to place materials. The cargo ships they sent out into the galaxy required no special skills on their part.

Just like the privates who now roamed the rooms and hallways searching for their targets. They only had to know how to fire a rifle. That was more or less it. None of these peons, whether they were his or theirs, none of them learned any special skills or demonstrated any special abilities during the course of their integration that couldn't be retaught in less than a day. By reintegrating their matter into storage and losing the memories they had collected, the Republic lost nothing.

On the other hand, the officers like himself and Colonel Freedom and all the lieutenants manning their stations back on the ship all had technical skills requiring a degree of intuition. Navigation was more than simply pushing a few buttons and expecting the ship to go where you wanted. Calculations had to be made. Reasons had to be deduced should the course drift.

Communications was more than secretarial work. The officer required a knack for discerning importance from the dregs. He needed to read beneath the subtext to understand if a report on a moon was a secret call for help, or if seemingly worthless personal correspondences hid new orders.

All the jobs held by officers required a certain nuance to the performance that couldn't be taught in a five minute lecture. There was no telling how much experience was lost when he and Lieutenant Anders were killed during General Mizenov's attack. Something as innocuous as how Freedom kept his cool while his ship was being scrambled was a lesson that would help him when he eventually received a command of his own. Like the experience he picked up while putting down this rebellion, tactics and strategy were all things that could only truly be understood by living it.

As Fortune planned the meritorious medal he would submit for himself upon completion of this mission, he noticed the manifest for the station's storage buildings. Most of the material was gone. That could only mean they had scrambled the cargo ship that was meant to transport the sum of this complex. The miners were ready to run, and they had the data.
Chapter 25

The cargo vessel shared the sparse design elements of the RS _Freedom_ , though the habitable space was far smaller. It was almost a pared down version of the full-sized starship. There was nothing more than a tiny bridge with all the controls centered around the pilot's chair. A second seat remained to the side, to which command functions could be directed at the commander's discretion, if at all. Behind the bridge rest two small quarters and a room housing a class 10 scrambler. The engine room lie beyond that. That was it, simple and efficient. Meant as a temporary transport, this ship had no extra features for entertainment.

Like the _Freedom_ , this ship was laden with interlocking cargo pods: pods to either side, pods on top, pods in front. There were far more cargo pods attached to this tiny vessel than there were to the _Freedom_ , making this the larger vessel overall. They didn't plan to dematerialize the complex and take it with them as was expected by the designers, but Anders suspected they were better off with the extra cargo space than without it. If Colonel Freedom had been able to repair his key systems before they could lift off, they would need the extra protection against his weapons.

After inspecting the tiny bridge, Remy and his companion moved to the scrambler to see how Magnus was making out. Without the space to house everyone, they were resigned to scrambling everyone they could, saving their life patterns and storing their raw elements in cargo. It was difficult enough selecting a mere four individuals who were crucial to their escape; shaving that number in half seemed impossible.

Lieutenant Anders seemed necessary as someone with military tactical experience and the only one among them who had any experience with starship operations. Magnus, being the engineer, was the second most important choice. Anders may have been comfortable around these controls, but he had only the vaguest notion of how operate them harmoniously. Magnus was sure he could figure out the operations on the fly and teach his findings.

Though Dirk had no special skills helpful to an escape, he argued to be excluded as the leader of this resistance. It could be argued he had a certain leadership quality that could pull them together when combat heated up and chaos reigned. There was certainly value in having someone who could keep a cool head in crisis.

Remy also fought to stay out. He had to admit being a mere observer on the _Freedom's_ mission, he didn't have anything special to add to the crew. However, he knew what everyone was capable of and what horrors they could exact on each other when hope was lost. Remy feared for their very souls if he wasn't around to keep the primitive impulses in check.

There wasn't much time to make the final decision. Since falling back from the complex, it was only a matter of minutes before Fortune's men would take control of the complex and its scrambler. Anders had wanted to destroy the dish after they scrambled the ship, but with all the smaller scramblers tucked around the complex in the med bay, the mess hall, crew quarters, and anywhere else someone would need the technology, it seemed pointless to waste the time on one of them.

Magnus scrambled the retreating miners ten or so at a time. Should they need one individual out of the many, it would be difficult to separate the single pattern from the group file. Not impossible, but it would take someone skilled to avoid separating a partial person. Still, they didn't have time to save everyone individually.

Remy returned to one of the quarters where Roxanne sat on the bed reading her book. He had requested they wait until the last minute to place her in storage since her known life had already been so brief. It was cruel to think of her stored as a separate computer program and pile of atoms when her life began as such. He wanted her to remain free as long as he could.

Roxanne closed her book and jumped on Remy with excitement. "Are we going to Earth now?"

"Not quite. We have to get away from some bad people."

"When we do," she dreamily asked, "can we go to a place called Yellowstone Park? I want to see a geyser!"

Remy chuckled at her innocence. This book he had given her turned her into a child discovering the world for the first time and dreaming of wonders that yearned for her the moment she read of them.

"I think that can be arranged," he promised. He would promise to show her the entire world if it would keep her at ease about disappearing into the white light for the journey. He couldn't imagine the fear hiding in her mind that she might come back from that light with the same blank mind she had when Pittman pulled her from its embrace. Nor had he any desire to experience that for himself.

Anders showed up to retrieve him back to business. "Magnus is scrambling the last of the miners. Fortune's men are following right behind them, so as soon as he's done we're bringing the inhibitors online and lifting off."

Remy took Roxanne's hand to lead her off to the scrambler, but Anders stopped him. "She can wait until we're safely away. We won't be able to scramble her with the inhibitors up and Magnus doesn't want to delay our defenses any longer than we have to.

So he said goodbye to the girl and headed outside, pressing the button to raise the barrier between them. As the metal plating flashed into place, he paused, thinking back to his time aboard the _Freedom_ and trying to remember if they had scrambled the doors open and closed with the ship's inhibitors in place, online. His suspicions once again drew him to the Lieutenant. His proclamation, "I kind of found Colonel Freedom to be the father I never really had," flooded his mind like a tornado siren placed against his ear.

"What's the matter," Anders inquired.

He wouldn't voice his nagging suspicions. He couldn't voice them to his partner. If his escape from the _Freedom_ and the help provided to these miners had been staged, then his liaison was not the innocent and offended young man he seemed to be in Doctor Sadile's secret lab.

"Nothing, I was just thinking there was something I need to ask Magnus before we take off. You go ahead to the bridge and get the autopilot to lift us off."

"Okay." Anders left him for the bridge, keeping his eye over his shoulder and on the Inspector as suspiciously as Remy had viewed him.

Safely away, Remy found Magnus, shutting down the scrambler and pushing a few buttons on the control panel to activate the inhibitors. "We're ready for takeoff," he shouted down the short hallway to Anders in the bridge. With a rumble, Remy felt the ship lifting from the surface. The inertial dampening kept them both from being flattened against the floor, but there was a lag allowing him to experience a brief increase in the gravity.

"Magnus, can you explain something to me?"

"Go ahead."

"If these doors are operated by mini scramblers in the walls, how do they work when the inhibitors are online?"

Magnus pushed the button to materialize the door in the frame, then again to dematerialize it. He pulled Remy closer to inspect the tiny mechanisms within the wall.

"The inhibitors usually don't cover every inch of the ship. Most of the time you activate a series of inhibitors that only put up a shell of protection on the outer sections. The scramblers in this part of the ship will still function, but only if they don't have to draw material from the outer storage pods or park it there. Standard replication will be impossible, but these door units store the atoms within the walls so they will still function with the inhibitors in place. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to move about the ship in a crisis, or seal off breached sections."

"Huh," Remy muttered still thinking. It amazed him there was always an explanation to his suspicions, yet he couldn't shake the feelings of distrust in Anders after all the help he had been.

"Is something wrong," Magnus pressed him.

"No, I just didn't know that. It kind of spooked me when I realized we were opening doors on the _Freedom_."

"Try to put it out of your mind," Magnus suggested. "It doesn't help when all you can think about is being snatched from thin air and vaporized into oblivion. Everyone down in that facility couldn't help looking over their shoulders at some invisible curse."

Remy supposed he was right that his fears were induced by things he had learned. Anders had proved himself over and over again; it was ridiculous to think these were the lengths he went to just to trap him, or to gain access to the miners.
Chapter 26

Anders sat in the pilot's seat, or the captain's chair as he liked to think of it, surrounded by an array of controls and screens. He was thankful these cargo ships were fully automated as it gave him time to figure out the controls before they were to face the _Freedom_.

Dirk sat in the co-pilot's seat, fancying himself in control of this operation. Anders patiently answered his questions and quietly patronized his "orders," all the while glad he had the good sense not to play with the controls in front of him.

Remy and Magnus squeezed into the tight cabin looking for their own update.

"We can expect to find the _Freedom_ ," Anders warned them, "once we're free of the gravity. No doubt Colonel Fortune informed them we have the data stores. They will do whatever they have to in order to stop us."

In the mind of Anders, the stockpile of artillery he watched Pittman scramble up and stow remained to be fired. They had no such artillery to return. Their first volley from the planet had been a scramble of their own. Magnus took the pattern of the large drill heads they had used to reach the magma chamber and multiplied it within a single file, allowing them to scramble up dozens of them in a single shot. Given the pointed tips and their design for cutting, they would drive themselves further through the ship's hull than a standard missile.

The tactic would work again, except they would have to take down their inhibitors to do it. "Colonel Freedom won't blow us out of the sky, but he can still get that data if he has to scramble this ship piece by piece."

While the group waited quietly around him, the first order of business was getting access to the external sensor data. Since the ship wouldn't recognize the _Freedom_ as a hostile vessel, there would be no warning of its approach. Once he had a fix on the other ship, he searched around for weapons control. Why the ship was designed with weapons when it was meant to fly without a crew was a mystery. Maybe it was no more of a mystery than why it was designed with a bridge and crew quarters in the first place. All Anders cared about were the pulse cannons below. They would have no affect if the _Freedom's_ inhibitors had been repaired, but they were all he had to fight with.

The blip on the screen indicated the _Freedom_ was on approach. Anders turned quickly to Magnus behind him. "Get to the scrambler. If we have a hole in their inhibitor field, scramble whatever you can. Take the crew from the bridge if possible."

Remy opened his mouth to object, but Magnus was already away and down the hall. He had to settle with the belief that the man would save the patterns as he had with his own men.

Anders found what he was certain were the weapons controls and looked for navigation next. It would be nice if he could take evasive maneuvers as they fired rather than just let _Freedom's_ arsenal pick off their cargo pods.

As their ship broke free from LX-925's gravity, maneuvering thrusters fired and set the ship on a slingshot course around the planet. The _Freedom_ , still badly scarred from the first strike, altered its own course to intercept.

"Have you found the navigational controls yet," Dirk asked nervously through clenched teeth.

"Only one way to find out," Anders said as he pushed a button. The ship fluttered as the auto navigation went offline. It pulled toward the planet. Anders pushed a few more buttons trying to correct the course.

Then Magnus shouted down the hallway in a panic. "The inhibitors went down and the scrambler activated!"

Remy ran back to check it out and offer a hand if he could. He thought on a subconscious level how much he didn't want to be on the bridge after Anders suggested they scramble the _Freedom's_ bridge crew. When he turned into the scrambler's room, he caught the dissipating white light as it melted away from a stranger standing on the plate.

"Who are you," the stranger asked with great surprise.

"We're the crew of this ship," Magnus informed him. "Who the hell are you?"

He stepped from the scrambler plate and looked Magnus over. Then he approached Remy to study his features. "I'm Flash Forward. I'm the pilot of this ship."

Remy snickered at his ridiculous name. Given the highest ranking officers he had thus far met took oddly suggestive names, he wasn't surprised. "Looks like we have a name for this this ship."

"What do you mean?" The connection went over Magnus' head.

"Your government names their ships after the commanding officer. If he's the pilot, then this is the RS _Forward_."

"Don't be ridiculous," Forward snapped. "Cargo ships don't receive designations. You think the Republic wants to broadcast its shipping to the entire galaxy? Now tell me what the problem is. The computer only brings me out of storage if there is a problem. So what is it?"

Magnus began to answer when Remy cut him off. He knew if this guy was a secret tucked in the ship's programming, then he wasn't exactly on their side and probably wouldn't respond well upon learning Republic property had been hijacked.

"Confederation forces captured the RS _Freedom_ ," Remy lied. "They're pretending to be the Republic crewmen. They're trying to destroy us before we can get away to report it."

Forward raced from the scrambler room to the bridge in a panic. "Why didn't you say so," he berated Magnus and Remy towing behind him. Reaching the bridge, he practically shoved Anders from the captain's chair.

"Who are you?"

"This is Flash Forward," Remy introduced.

"This is some kind of joke," Dirk barked with disdain.

"No," Remy explained, "he's the pilot and he's going to help us get away from the Confederation forces that have taken over the _Freedom_."

Dirk looked upon Remy as a raving lunatic, but Anders recognized the deception and shooed him off the bridge before he could spoil it.

"You and Magnus need to man the scrambler before they get in range."

Forward brought up the navigation screen and with a magical touch to the controls in front of him, made the ship sway to and fro as he stabilized the roll and pitch of the craft. Anders took the other chair and asked for the weapons control.

"After you screwed up navigation, you shouldn't be trusted with a slingshot, let alone the weapons this thing bears."

"I have weapons experience," he explained.

"And how do you expect to fire an energy weapon through their inhibitors?"

"We've already inflicted heavy damage," Anders gloated. "We expect to find gaps in their protective field."

"That's something, I suppose." His derisive tone told them both he no longer thought of them as worthless idiots, although Remy couldn't speak for himself. He still didn't have much of a role beyond standing and watching. He was, however, smart enough to keep quiet when he didn't have anything to add. Better to stay out of the way, he reasoned, than to try and help and make things worse.
Chapter 27

As the _Forward_ arced around the planet, the _Freedom_ drew ever closer. The Colonel sat on the edge of his chair, watching the cargo vessel in his monitor and wondering what they were thinking. They should have known they couldn't match his speed, even with a boost from this world's gravity. It was only a matter of time before they were in range of his weapons and his scrambler, and every minute added to that inevitability gave Freedom's men another minute to complete another repair.

An alarm sounded on several of the consoles. It was a familiar alarm, heard only an hour ago.

"We have incoming!"

As their circle continued around the world, the star's light crossed the horizon and cast reflections off several large metallic objects.

"Hard to starboard," Freedom cried out. His ship turned hard away from the planet's surface, but it was not quick enough. As before, the objects were stationary in space, but his own speed gave them a ballistic nature. The ship heaved as several of them struck.

The Colonel caught a glimpse of the cameras before he slipped from his chair, and spotted what looked like a medical bed pass just behind their engines; one of the few objects they managed to avoid.

"Damage was minimal that time," Dorsey announced. "These weren't the same objects they scrambled before."

Magnus had scrambled whatever he could find programmed in the cargo ship's scrambler memory. Since it was designed to construct a new mining colony when it reached its destination, he had thrown at them objects that were more domestic in nature. Some were heavy enough to breach the cargo pods, while others merely disintegrated upon impact leaving nothing more than a few scratches.

Riggs brought the ship back around and cut closely across the planet's orbit. But reaching the backside, they saw no sign of the _Forward_ escaping. Freedom called for a sensor sweep to find the ship, but it was too late.

The slingshot maneuver had been a ruse, and the objects in their path were the distraction. The _Forward_ had broken off from the planet and circled around. Anders launched a strafing run with their cannons, watching from his own screens as the first shots dissipated on contact with the inhibitor field. Persistence found the hole and a couple of the shots landed, pounding through the cargo pods.

"Pittman," the Colonel called out, trying to hold onto his seat, "fire at will on that ship!"

"Yes, Sir!"

Pittman, having already relocated himself to the armory, taking Murillo with him for support, launched his missiles toward the hostile vessel as fast as the two of them could reload the tubes.

Flash tried to pitch the ship under the volley, but like his opponent, he wasn't fast enough to avoid the first strikes. Those first missiles struck empty cargo pods to the rear of the ship. The explosions were violent enough to force the rear of the ship downward, and the nose upward into the path of another missile.

With their pods largely empty, the _Forward_ saw them stripped away from the central mass faster than those of the _Freedom_. The loss of certain pods let disruptions in their inhibitor field, allowing the _Freedom's_ crew to take advantage. More pods were scrambled from their ship, but the heavy use of _Freedom's_ scrambler meant a vulnerability on their part.

Magnus went to work with his scrambler. He ignored the cargo pods and went directly for the living space, dissolving away outer walls to vent atmosphere where he could. He couldn't yet lock onto any people, but at least he could cut them off from each other.

Pittman and Murillo continued firing missiles on one hand, and scrambling with the other. Riggs worked furiously to try and keep the ship out of the line of fire from those phase cannons, but there was nothing he could do to avoid the disappearing act all over the ship.

Colonel Freedom accessed the communications network. Both ships were crippled and bleeding to the other. He was determined to create an advantage before one was created against him.

"Colonel Fortune," he ordered down to the planet, "find yourself five armed men and prepare for transport." This had to be ended and Freedom was confident he could get a team aboard.

Fortune and his five volunteers collected in the middle of the central chamber. When they signaled they were ready, the white flash surrounded them and spirited them into the _Forward's_ engine room. Twice as large as the rest of the habitable space on this tiny ship, it housed a massive energy reaction chamber toward the back wall, tying into the thrusters outside the ship.

The men fanned out to make sure the room was unoccupied, passing dozens of safety posters warning of the dangers of radiation poisoning and plasma burns. Fortune himself spotted the portrait of Einstein that hung in every engine room in the fleet. "Idiot," he cursed the man according to tradition. It was a constant reminder to all the engineers that the light barrier had been broken without the time dilation problem he theorized about.

Satisfied the room was secure, Fortune opened the door to the hallway and peered cautiously out. Dirk peered his own head from the scrambler room. Before he could call out in warning, Fortune put a bullet in his left eye. Magnus spied his friend fall. He shouted into the corridor as loud as his lungs could carry, taking a bullet in the throat for his efforts.

Fortune's team pushed onward, peeking into the two crew quarters. He found Roxanne, still reading her book, oblivious to the shooting and gunfire and turbulence. Being nearly naked and unarmed, Fortune decided to keep her alive, opting to knock her unconscious with the butt of his rifle instead.

On the bridge, Anders and Remy understood the shouting from behind.

"We've been boarded!" Anders raced to bring the scrambler controls to his console.

"It's over," Remy lamented, but his friend was not ready to give up.

"No, we have to get back to the _Freedom_ before they get through this door."

But Flash turned to both of them, alarmed. "What do you mean you have to get back there? I thought you said it was under Confederation control."

"I may have lied about that," Remy admitted, while Anders tried to load coordinates into the system.

"You're telling me we've been firing on our own ship and our own people all this time!" He brought the ship to a full stop and took over scrambler controls to keep Anders from leaving. "There is no way you're leaving me to answer for treason."

As Anders tried to protest and explain himself, the door dematerialized behind them. Remy threw his hands up before the guns entered. Realizing defeat, Anders and Flash followed suit.

Colonel Fortune removed his helmet and studied Remy's face closely, very closely. "Well, well, Colonel Freedom suspected you might try to interfere with this operation." Then he went nose to nose with Anders. "I'm surprised you let yourself get dragged along with him, Lieutenant."

"I found out about the experiments Major Sadile was running. I couldn't look the other way while those miners were dissolved like his test subjects."

"You can take that up with your CO." He looked to Flash with a tinge of interest. "And just who are you?"

"I'm the ship's pilot. The computer woke me when they disrupted the auto navigation. They told me you were Confederation troops in a captured ship."

"Well then, once we clean up this mess and properly decommission the facility on the planet, you can restore the auto navigation and return yourself to storage."

"Don't let them," Remy warned him. "They'll wipe your memory."

Fortune dug the butt of his rifle into Remy's stomach to quiet him.
Chapter 28

Fortune brought Remy before Colonel Freedom on the bridge in front of most of his crew. The humiliated Inspector stole glances among the faces silently judging him, looking for Anders. He had been separated from the Lieutenant and from Roxanne the instant the vanishing white flash showed them the interior of the ship they had been attacking. That he was still alive and retained all memories of this voyage gave Remy hope that he would continue to exist. While the possibility swirled in his mind that this was just a sadistic show on Freedom's part, that the Colonel wished to torment his prisoner before ending him, or that he wished to create an example for his men before those ideals of morality they had left back on Earth took hold in their consciences.

No matter what lay ahead, Remy refused to believe what he did was wrong. Never had it been wrong to stand up for one's beliefs. Speaking out for the rights of the underprivileged was something Remy was prepared to go to his grave for. What he regretted was dragging his friends down this road with him. Maybe Anders knew what he signed up for, but Roxanne didn't. Her lack of experience left her almost childlike. She followed him, not because she believed in the plight of the miners, or desired to be free of Pittman's chains. She left this ship behind out of sheer fascination for his uniqueness and the doorways to new experiences he opened for her. What little of that book she managed to read through taught her more about life and the human condition than the weeks or months she spent penned up in the crew quarters.

Fortune shoved him in the back to get him one more step closer to the CO. Freedom stood beside his chair with his feet at shoulder width apart and his hands clasped firmly behind his back. He had worn his service uniform with his rank insignia polished and shiny on the collar, and the multitude of service ribbons climbing his left breast up and over his shoulder. Just as the dress was meant to impress, it didn't escape Remy's notice that the fresh shave to his face and crown was intended to separate him as the more civilized between them.

The Colonel took a long, drawn out breath before addressing his prey. "You're a man of principle, Dr. Duval. I can respect that. But this is not your ship. Those miners are not your people. The workings of our space program are not your concern.

"You've had only two days to absorb and comprehend what most of us have been processing for months, even years. Your own organization puts more time into studying a situation back on Earth before drawing conclusions and releasing reports. You think you know what is going on out here, and you think the way we do things is wrong, but you've only seen a fraction of my world. You've seen but one side to our space program.

"My government chose this mission for you to observe because it was the safest, not just for you, but for the people like us who have to keep these secrets. There are dangers out here that make LX-925 look like a sandbox. There are horrors that would turn your hair white and torment your dreams so deeply, sleep will seem like a distant memory. We face enemies that don't give two shits about the Geneva Convention. They don't care about your human rights or your dignity. They commit atrocities toward each other that would make the Holocaust look like a church picnic. If they get the chance, they would exterminate every man, woman, and child that you and your kind stand up for back home. And they have the numbers to overrun our entire world before you could scramble a single fighter.

"The only thing keeping you and your kind safe from this galaxy is me. You may not like our tactics, but our technology and our methods are the only advantage we have. Without this way of life in our world, there would be no humanity."

Remy recognized the man who had just revealed himself. Colonel Freedom was the man who would pop up once a generation, always promising to unite disenfranchised people. The promise of security and survival was always the same. The justifications always sounded necessary whether they covered slavery or genocide or simple oppression. In only a handful of days, Remy had witnessed all three.

It was clear Freedom was nothing more than a mouthpiece for the leaders above him, but it made him no less culpable. Standing before Remy, it also made him the target for the Doctor's outrage.

"I don't care how you justify your actions. Without our principles and our respect for human life, humanity is already extinct. Those people working that colony may be copies. Those soldiers following the Lieutenant Colonel into battle may be copies. Who knows, maybe all these officers looking the other way afraid to follow their consciences are copies as well. I don't care how these people came into being, the fact is they're still people and they still have rights.

"If you're encountering races out here with different principles, how about getting them to talk before you start scrambling them into oblivion? We've been pulling people together on Earth for almost three hundred years by getting them to the table and talking through our differences."

Freedom cut him off. "And that hasn't been working out so well, has it? Just last year the UN had to send forces into the Amazon to protect a native tribe from extermination. You had to deal with a warlord trying to unite the islands in the South Pacific against those around the South China Sea. Don't talk to me, Doctor, about your peacekeeping efforts because the UN has skated by on pure luck since its inception."

"You're wrong, Colonel. Maybe we haven't been able to stamp out war completely, but we've made remarkable progress in mitigating the damage of armed conflict around the world. The only reason we still have war is because of the arrogance of people like you who refuse to accept alternatives.

"You won't be able to keep your secrets forever. One day, I will get back to Earth and I will report everything I've seen out here. Even if I'm reported dead, or you somehow brainwash me like the other inspectors we've sent out here, Earth will learn of your actions one way or another."

Remy's warning drew a hearty laugh from the Colonel. It started off as a chuckle, but as he considered it in relation to the situation, it grew louder and harder until the convulsions began to choke his airways. When Freedom regained his breathing, he pulled his right hand up beside his shoulder and snapped his finger.

All eyes on the bridge left their workstations to enjoy the coming reaction on the Candian's face, as Lieutenant Dorsey slipped a data chip into his terminal. Pressing a few of the buttons before him, he activated the view screen to display a recording.

"We received this while my XO was storming your cargo ship." Freedom didn't bother turning to see it, he had already watched it, aware of what was about to unfold. Like his men, he was deeply amused by the expected reaction.

Remy recognized the meeting room of the UN's Special Political and Decolonization Committee, more commonly known as the Fourth Committee. He didn't think they were scheduled to convene this week, so it must have been a special session. The Chairman introduced someone and sat down, the volume was too low on the recording, so he couldn't hear who, but he recognized the trim, charcoal gray suit topped with the flat, black hair and month-long stubble on the face. If he went the next twenty-seven days without shaving, Remy knew that's what his beard would look like because the person approaching the podium was him!

Freedom didn't hide his gloating smile very well. "Dorsey, why don't you turn that up? I don't think the Doctor can hear it."

The communications officer hit another button to add words to the picture.

"...I set down with the Executive Officer and we met with the miners to discuss their problems." Remy recognized his own voice, but he refused to believe it. He had seen the duplication for himself on the planet with the prisoners. He believed the miners when they complained of being copies. Remy was aware of the tricks Freedom could pull with that scrambler, but like a teenager believing himself invincible to the injuries and deaths plaguing others, he had never expected he might be a victim until he saw himself on the recording telling the committee how the Republic forces solved the miners' rebellion with grace and dignity.

This other Remy wasn't just a copy; he had been altered somehow to report to the UN exactly what the Republic wanted him to report. Somehow he had become one of those experiments in Dr. Sadile's lab having his memory altered, or having memories implanted, or having been brainwashed. He had become one of the very people he set out to free.
Chapter 29

Remy was shoved into a new set of quarters, with the door sealed behind him. The crew was too busy to clean out his old room, so they simply dumped him into another. They had repairs to carry out on two ships. When that was done, they had to finish decommissioning the mining complex so the world could be handed over to the Independent Union.

Remy studied the room to learn what amenities he had access to and what he was cut off from. The interior controls for the door were destroyed so he couldn't get out, obviously. The scrambler on his table also had the data port removed to prevent him from obtaining and uploading any unauthorized programs.

Inspecting the menu choices that were loaded, he found they left him with a rather depressing selection. As if a sign of the torture he would surely enjoy, his food selection was limited to such boring and tasteless offerings as oatmeal, chicken broth, and veggie patties. To drink, all they programmed for him was water. Scrambling up a glass, he found they went the extra step and programmed it to materialize in a paper cup so as not to give him a potential weapon.

He didn't care about that video from the UN. He didn't care about Freedom's gloating. Remy expected he would find a way off this ship. Somehow, sometime, he was going to get back to Earth and expose the violations within this space program. Given his situation, he realized he would have to tread extremely carefully. If the Colonel meant to scramble him from existence, he would have done so already.

That wasn't to say he wouldn't in the future. There was a plan for him going forward and if he wanted any hope of getting home, this game would have to be played. Remy would have to bite his lip when around Freedom to make sure that confrontation on the bridge would be his last outburst. Going forward, his plans, schemes and machinations all had to be handled delicately.

Looking around the drab room, he noticed a flaw in one of the metal panels attached to the wall. It was round, maybe a couple centimeters in diameter. It reminded him of the stick he used to hide the interdimensional controller. Remy thought about it for a moment, trying to think about the trip to these quarters, peeling away the layers of fear and dread occupying his thoughts as he was led through the corridors. Retracing those steps in his mind, he realized they had passed his old door and locked him in the neighboring room.

This was the wall he hid that controller behind. Merging the stick and the panel together in this reality must have altered that part of the wall. Remy pushed on the circular flaw, driving his thumb through the metal. Then, wrapping his finger around the edge of the hole, he pulled at the panel with all his strength until the entire sheet separated from the bulkheads behind it and gave him a clear path to his hidden treasure.

Finally, he had a mode of escape. But it wouldn't do him any good within the vacuum that lie on the other side of the dimensional plane. He looked at the panel to the adjacent room – his old room – wondering if it would give way just as easily. Testing his suspicions, Remy shoved the panel off the bulkheads and onto the floor.

More good fortune awaited him on the other side! The modified scrambler remained on his old table. He cradled the unit in his hands, thinking about everything he needed to scramble up before it was discovered, and before he was discovered.

First up was to repair the new hole in the wall so no one would see it next time he received a visitor. Remy directed the scrambler at a healthy panel so that he could add a template to the database before dematerializing the old panels and rematerializing new ones in their spots on the bulkheads.

The next order of business was creating a new protective suit so that he might travel in the other dimension unhindered. Then, suited up and crossed over, he needed a way to hide everything. The button he might be able to conceal, but there was no way he could keep the armor or the souped up scrambler without them eventually being discovered.

His inspiration came from his survival training. The first thing to look for in any situation is not food or water as one might think, but shelter. You could survive maybe a month without food, a few days without water. But if you didn't have proper shelter, you wouldn't last the night. He had to build himself a room in this dimension just like Sadile had in his medical bay.

With the patterns for the wall panels in the scrambler, it took him about an hour to grab materials from the storage pods, take them to the other side, and construct a tiny room to contain air and maintain pressure. Not only did he then have a place to hide his contraband, but he had a place to compile his intelligence and plan his escape free from discovery. Key to the case he needed to build for the UN was that case of data chips he had hidden in the medical bay.

On his first trip to the surface of LX-925, the miners gave him everything they had in their data stores. Fortune may have secured the original files when he seized control of the _Forward_ , but those secrets were still in his grasp.

As he set out across the void between the two secret rooms to retrieve his next prize, it occurred to Remy that the miners had been saving their life patterns daily as a precaution to accidental death or injury. It occurred to him that maybe they had not been erased from existence as the Republic had planned. It would also explain why they weren't too focused on the end-game until he showed up with Anders and his escape plan. Those data chips were the escape plan.

His heart sank as he approached Sadile's secret room and noticed the Doctor's corpse was missing. He and Anders always knew the man would be resurrected, but they didn't expect this body would be found. Remy's eyes darted to where he had attached the case to the outer wall, and thankfully found it still hanging where he had stuck it. As he grabbed the case and turned back toward his room, his eyes scanned the medical bay and adjacent corridors trying to discern the solidity or transparency of everyone nearby hoping no one was in this dimension to see him.

Racing back to his room, he was distracted by the sight of two people in one of the other quarters. There was a man and a woman, and his heart sank upon realizing Roxanne had been returned to Pittman. More to his horror, Pittman had the poor woman against the wall. Both were naked, and he had his pelvis rubbed against hers. For the first time, he was presented with the consequences he had brought upon those who had trusted in him and his mission to do the right thing.

Remy rushed into his old quarters and returned to his own plane to use the computer. If Roxanne was returned to slavery for her part, he burned to find out what Anders suffered, if anything. A part of him still didn't trust the Lieutenant, but a notation on his record quickly eliminated those doubts.

Anders' file had been recently updated to record a Section 13, a reprimand only one step away from a court-martial. Though it meant the Lieutenant was spared the worst of Freedom's wrath, the Section 13 also meant he would be denied any future promotions. It also likely signified a return to the Marines if and when they returned to Earth. His career was on life support, even if his life had been spared.

Remy had become intensely curious about the information on the data chips. He flipped the clasps on the case and lifted the case open to find a single data chip inside. There were supposed to be close to a dozen! Like the body, someone had indeed found his case and this single chip was left as a message. He knew it.

Without haste, he inserted the chip into the computer and brought up the file directory. There were no messages for him. There was no data from the mining operation. The chip contained nothing but a list of recipes meant for the scrambler. Okroshka, beef stroganoff, blini, shashlik, pelmeni: everything on this chip was a Confederation dish.

It may not have been Lieutenant Anders, but someone had been playing a game with him this entire trip. Remy grabbed the computer and the chip and took them to his new secret hiding place to tuck them away with the scrambler and his new suit. He returned to his quarters in his proper dimension and affixed the controller to the underside of the sink in the bathroom. Then, collapsing on his bed, Remy took in the enormity of his situation.

Without that data, he had nothing on the Republic's space program. The proof of their crimes was gone, and he would have to start from the beginning to build his case. Going forward, he would have to employ all his diplomatic skills to keep on Freedom's good side and keep himself from disappearing once and for all into one last scramble.
Author's Notes

Inspiration for the Freedom Reigns series came from two places.

The first was Star Trek. My preteen and early teen years were spent watching the Next Generation as it aired. I'm sure I wasn't alone in wondering why their transporter/replicator technology didn't have broader applications. For example, there was an episode where Worf broke his back and Dr. Crusher worries herself over the idea of performing an experimental procedure. But the thing is, why aren't they already using the replicators to create replacement body parts? When Picard needed a heart transplant in his academy days, why wasn't his transporter pattern saved so they could replicate a new heart based on his own tissue? Why couldn't Crusher just bring up Worf's old transporter pattern and replicate him a new spine without so much worry?

About the time I started focusing on a new story, I got to thinking about everything they could do with just the transporter/replicator, not just the beneficial stuff, but the horrible stuff as well. People could be duplicated so easily, Riker's double might have been the norm instead of a fluke. Tasha Yar died, why didn't they just pull up her last transporter pattern and create a new Yar? Sure she would lack the few memories between that save and her death, but it would be better than being dead.

Heck, why do they even "build" ships? They should have had a massive replicator creating ships from raw materials in mere seconds.

But the entire Trek universe was similarly limited. It was almost as if Roddenberry had too much on his plate to really think beyond the initial ideas.

In part Freedom Reigns (all six books) explores Trek technology, not to the extreme, but to the absurd.

The second inspiration came from my first science fiction book, USS Krakowski. It honestly surprised me when the book took off from day 1, but when it started selling in the UK, I had one of those Oops moments. The book had aspects to it that are unmistakably 'Merica or 'Murica (depending on which spelling you prefer). It was a United States fleet taking it upon themselves to save the rest of the world, the other nations make excuses for not helping, and toward the end I mention the ambassador telling the rest of the world to "go to hell" when the rest of the world wants to share in the spoils.

I mean I understand the US is the largest audience for ebooks, and as such they should be somewhat US-centric. However you also don't want to limit your audience, and some of the points in USS Krakowski (though they could be seen as a comment on our overall relations with the rest of the world following our invasion of Iraq) may have been alienating to a foreign audience.

So I wanted to do a story as un-'Murica as possible. The US type nation is every bit as dark and sinister as its three counterparts. Ships are plastered with names that evoke patriotism, and their commanders take on those same names as their own (after all, what is more 'Murica than a commander named Freedom?). The main character works for the UN, representing the global community, and he is French-"Candian."

Book 1 by itself, The siege of LX-925, is meant to be the introduction to this outer space realm, both for the audience and for the main character, Remy Duval. The four nations dominating interstellar travel have been keeping the galactic happenings secret from Earth, so in essence, we the audience discover this universe along with Remy. He is dazzled by the advanced technology, and through his rose colored glasses, he sees all the positive applications. Then he is horrified when he realizes what this technology could be used for.

Even worse for him, being the newcomer, he doesn't entirely understand how everything works. He doesn't fully understand what these nations are capable of or how far they're willing to go without the rest of the world watching over him. He has no problem speaking his mind. He has no problem going from observer to participant. His heart is in the right place, but he never has all the information he needs. Each time he acts he makes things worse.

There is so much more to this universe than what Remy sees on this single mission, and he unfortunately has to experience all of it before he can accept that he might be wrong. And at the risk of spoiling the series, very few of the conclusions Remy draws by the end of this book are correct. Characters aren't who they claim to be, even scenarios aren't what they were presented to be.

A lot of elements were planted in this book to hint to later revelations or scenarios. Since I don't think this is much of a spoiler since I promote it in the descriptions of the later books, I will use the alien races as an example. I think it's toward the end of the book where Colonel Freedom alludes to hostile alien races – we don't meet aliens in this book, but I let you know they're coming in later books. Other hints and revelations I'll save for the books where they're revealed or utilized.

But though there is a serialized aspect to this series, I wanted each book to be a complete adventure within that serial. One reader on Amazon took issue with the serialized aspect and with the fact that Remy Duval does not grow as an individual in this book. Both of which are valid points. Despite general warnings in the indie author community not to react to negative reviews, I did post a reply, not to tell the reviewer they were wrong, but to use it as an opportunity to create a discussion about the character. The funny thing was, as much as he hated the character, he understood the character and understood what he was supposed to be in this book.

Unlike USS Krakowski which took off immediately upon release, response to this book was tepid. Admittedly, I'm no artist and the cover isn't exactly one of the most exciting. In fact it ended up on the site lousycovers.com or something like that. And I kind of found that amusing. What was more amusing, the creator of the site admits to being a cover artist. I think he uses the site hoping to drum up more business, because he showcases his own work as examples of covers he claims aren't lousy. Admittedly, they're not, but thanks to Amazon's posted sales rankings, you can see for yourselves that his "not lousy" covers sell far fewer books than many of the "lousy" covers he pokes fun at.

Once the final book in this series was released, The Siege of LX-925 actually started to take off in Australia of all places (guess that anti-'Murica theme worked out after all). This book climbed into the 6000s in the Australian Kindle store for overall paid books before Amazon finally agreed to price match it for the free price I had set on Smashwords and other retailers.

Even on those other sites, it has garnered quite some interest, especially once the price went to free; and it has driven interest in the rest of the series. People like you have read this book and found themselves interested to learn more about this universe and learn what happens to these characters and how their way of thinking evolves over the course of the series.

If you've made it this far, then I truly thank you for sticking with my rambling. On the next page you'll find a preview of the second book in the series, The Vorman Insurgence.

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Preview

The Vorman Insurgence

Freedom Reigns Book 2
Chapter 2-1

General Mizenov's ship, the CS _Rostov_ , grew larger in the view screen.

"Have they detected us," Colonel Freedom called out.

"Negative," Lieutenant Dorsey called back.

"Lieutenant Pittman, the moment we're in range scramble their inhibitors. Then take their scramblers, every one.

Pittman responded back to his commander in the affirmative. Freedom sat against his chair back to wait for the excitement to begin. He cast a glance downward to his favorite UN inspector, Remy Duval, sitting on the floor beside him, chained by the neck to the chair. Freedom could see in his flushed cheeks he wanted to speak out some objection to the attack. Whether it was fear for what remained of his pathetic existence, or humiliation at being treated as a dog, Remy bit his lip to keep his opinion to himself.

"I have their inhibitors," Pittman called out. With another swipe at the buttons on the console in front of him, he had snagged the _Rostov's_ scramblers.

"Sir," Dorsey piped up, "Mizenov's calling to surrender."

"Ignore him." Freedom looked again to his pet, certain that violation of UN rules of war would elicit a complaint. He smiled triumphantly when Remy again chose to keep his objections inside, though he definitely noticed the tension knotting his muscles. "Pittman, get our inhibitors online. Riggs, roll the ship so our missile tubes have a clear shot, and start circling her. Pittman, as soon as you can, fire everything. Start with their cargo pods, then target crew quarters. I want you to work your way up to their bridge so the General has plenty of time to sweat this out."

"They're firing missiles," Pittman warned.

"Let them!" The ship rattled as the _Rostov's_ first volley struck their own outer cargo pods.

Lieutenant Dorsey turned again to his commander. "I'm sending Julius Caesar to your screen. Should I open a channel so you can quote to the General?"

"Julius Caesar is for you inexperienced Lieutenants. When you get to be a Colonel, you'll appreciate Henry V."

The first blast to register on the _Rostov_ corresponded with the second strike on the _Freedom_.

"Have they hit anything critical?"

"Only more cargo," Dorsey responded.

Freedom wasn't too worried about the cargo. Sure the pods held the inhibitors which protected them from the scramblers and whatever energy weapons the General had at his disposal. Having taken out the scramblers, Freedom didn't give a second thought to the energy weapons.

"Pittman, can you scramble their tubes full of iron?"

That brought an evil smile to the Armory Officer's lips. He tapped a few buttons. The next time the _Rostov_ tried to fire missiles, they detonated within the tubes. The Colonel watched on the screen as the blast fed back into their armory, creating secondary explosions tearing apart the lower two decks.

"The General wants to know why we remain silent," Dorsey called to the Commander.

"I thought our weapons were doing the talking for us," Freedom joked. He leaned forward on the edge of his chair once again. "Pittman, find their central computer and scramble it into our database. Once we have it, Dorsey, send the General's transmission to my console."

Pittman worked his controls then turned to give Dorsey a nod. The Communications Officer, in turn, pushed a few buttons of his own and General Mizenov's image appeared on the small screen in the Colonel's armrest.

"Why won't you accept my surrender," the General pleaded. "This is cruel, even for you, Colonel."

"I've been tracking you for a month," Freedom explained. "I know you incited that rebellion on our mining colony."

"I swear I had nothing to do with that," Mizenov shouted defensively.

"Don't deny it. Their logs recorded you stopped for supplies and left not thirty-six hours before the miners seized control from the administrator. Their logs also recorded your previous stop was another Republic mining colony. And you just happened to attack us on our way to put down that rebellion."

"But I had nothing to do with it." The desperation on Mizenov's face suggested sincerity in his denial. "You have my computer. Check our records. You won't find any evidence of a plot, or any records of one because we had nothing to do with that incident."

After a month of tracking down this ship for answers, Colonel Freedom considered the Confederation General was innocent. If there was a plan, it was far too obvious in its unfolding mere hours after a Confederation visit. Maybe it was nothing more than coincidence those miners became upset soon after, or maybe someone else set it up to frame the Confederation. They were close allies with the Eastern Imperium. Neither nation dared betray that alliance, yet it didn't stop either from vying to be the dominate ally. It was conceivable the Imperium had an agent aboard the _Rostov_ acting to crack the truce between the Confederation and the Republic.

Down on the floor, chained to the Commander's chair, Remy already knew General Mizenov was innocent. Thanks to his betrayal toward his host, he knew more than the Colonel was able to cull from the colony's records. Along with a treasure trove of data, those miners had let him in on the secret that the damning information indeed came from the _Rostov_.

Mizenov had paid for their supplies with some data chips, one of which was supposed to have contained recipes for the scramblers in the mess hall. Someone, however switched that data chip with one containing information that upset the miners and triggered their rebellion. But the person who made that switch was no longer aboard the _Rostov_. When he found the data chip containing the recipes had been switched for the information the miners had given him, Remy knew the man responsible had gotten aboard the _Freedom_.

Yet it was a detail he had been able to keep to himself. Part of him hoped he might track down this person himself and retrieve the missing data, while another part of him knew this knowledge was one last bargaining chip in his possession should his life depend on it. Still, there was the smug part of him remaining pent up in his brain that enjoyed watching the Colonel spin his heels on this fool's errand.

"Pittman, stand down," Freedom ordered.

"Should I take their cargo before we leave?"

"Leave them with something to survive on. It will take them days to cannibalize the scramblers from their doors and make repairs." Freedom directed his attention to his Navigational Officer and ordered a new course. The nearest Imperium station would give him some insight, and the trip would give him time to extract the Confederation database and study their logs.

He unchained his pet from the chair and dragged the man off to his briefing room. It didn't even matter if the UN inspector shared the information with him. There wasn't anything he could do about it.
Chapter 2-2

Major Sadile selected a scanner from his desk and turned to the creature convulsing on the medical bed in the center of the room. Despite the scaly skin and missing appendages, the thing was predominantly human. Dubbed Subject D-12, it was his latest attempt to merge this lizard-like DNA with that of this particular individual.

"Now, now, I know you must be confused by all this," he offered the being in the same soothing tone used with his human patients. "At the end of the day, your feelings matter to no one but yourself."

The creature opened its mouth to demand an explanation, drawing only silence. As with Subjects D-1 through 11, the vocal chords had been removed prior to creation. The Major supposed it might be interesting to hear his subject's disapproval for once, but given he had yet to solve the heat problem, the cries of pain as the being neared death weren't worth the few moments of amusement.

His goal in these particular experiments was to replace the skin of a warm-blooded creature with that of a cold-blooded one. Far too often the Space Force found itself in a ground war on a world at the front edge of the Goldilocks zone. Though their suits regulated the high temperatures, and the troops could be regenerated through the scramblers from their saved life patterns should exposure prove harmful, a nation would have a great advantage if their troops had skin adaptive to those environments. The one caveat was that the skin had to retain the body's own heat when outside these environments.

Subject D-12 looked to be another failure. Sadile could not balance the heat transfer as the skin shed the body's own heat faster than the organs produced it. Each subject before froze toward death before he ended the experiments. Like those subjects, this creature registered a decline in its body temperature.

"Damn," he muttered, leaning over to speak directly to his subject as though this abomination cared about his processes and methods. "I thought if I fused the lizard skin with your own, I might hybridize a skin that could better regulate your body temperature.

He returned to his desk. Setting the scanner back in its place, his hands moved to the controls of his molecular scrambler. With nothing more than a simple push of a button, the Major dissolved the creature in a bath of white light.

"There's always Subject D-13." Then he thought for a moment. "No, 13 is an unlucky number. I better skip to 14 just to be safe."

Before he lost track of D-12, Sadile documented his results in the computer, but his work would be interrupted.

"Doc, are you here?" The sound passed through the walls and alerted the Major that duty called. He rolled up his sleeve to find the device on his wrist that allowed him to travel to this secret lab of his. With a single motion from his finger, the Major was shifted from an unseen dimension and brought back in phase with his own.

Lieutenant Dorsey, the Communications Officer stood anxiously in the examination room of the RS _Freedom's_ medical bay. Sadile stepped from Exam Room 1 to find the young man nervously shuffling his foot.

"What is the problem, Lieutenant?"

The Lieutenant smiled sheepishly. "As you know, we're entering orbit around an Imperium world. I've been given twelve hours of shore leave, and I was wondering."

The way he beat around the bush, Sadile suspected the reason for the visit. "You want the standard STD inoculations," he smirked. Normally the young men were more embarrassed by the request than Dorsey seemed to be, but often he'd find a few who didn't care what the Doctor thought of their recreational activities. Then there were those like Dorsey who were after something completely different.

"No, Doc, I wanted you to alter my life pattern to make me...you know...bigger." He brought his arms around in front of him and struck a half-hearted most-muscular pose. Then he looked around to see if anyone could hear him, bringing his voice to a whisper anyway. "And if you could do something down there, I'm sure the Imperium babes would appreciate it."

Sadile placed his hand on the Lieutenant's shoulder with a chastising grin. Most officers learned long ago body alterations were not permitted for reasons of vanity. Still, there were those that insisted on trying when the promise of women brought competition among the men to stand out from their peers. Occasionally you could find a doctor in the fleet sympathetic to a lonely heart, but not today.

"If you wanted to get bigger, then you shouldn't have stopped going to the gym."

Dorsey gave him the frustrated "c'mon," as if the magical phrase ever convinced anyone to change their minds. When the ship's Commanding Officer showed up, it was Dorsey's mind that was changed. He slinked quickly out before the grizzled Colonel could learn of his desires. The ladies of the Eastern Imperium would have to settle for the Lieutenant's natural and unaugmented physique.

Sadile forgot all about the Lieutenant's foolishness and slipped into his phony smile upon seeing the Colonel's favorite pet accompanying him. "Dr. Duval," he called out with exaggerated excitement, "it is a pleasure to see you again! And Colonel, Sir, what brings you by today?"

"I thought since Dr. Duval has been such a good boy lately, I might take him down to the colony to stretch his legs. First things first, I need him implanted with a tracker so he doesn't get lost."

Sadile approached the molecular scrambler at the end of his desk, one of the many scramblers throughout the med bay. After all, in an emergency, there was no such thing as too many scramblers. A few commands in the unit, and a flash of white light erupted from the plate, leaving behind a new syringe as it faded away. The Major took it up and approached his patient. He hesitated as they studied each other's eyes. Remy knew about the secret lab in the next room, and Sadile knew that he knew. However, neither knew how much the other knew. The staring contest went on hoping to learn from the other until the Colonel broke it up.

"Do we have a problem?"

Sadile turned the corners of his mouth sharply upward as Remy shifted focus to the needle. "Not at all," the major assured his CO. He placed the needle against Remy's skin, pausing to deliver a warning. "This will hurt."

With a jab, he drove the needle into Remy's arm, watching the look of terror on his patient's face. His warning was a ruse of course. Upselling the discomfort always left his patients feeling relieved when the pain wasn't that bad. In some cases, like this one with Remy, he took a bit of delight in the panic ensuing at the moment of penetration.

Returning the emptied syringe to the scrambler, Sadile turned to the Colonel. "Anything I can do for you? Inoculations? Enhancements," he offered, giving a sly glance to the Colonel's crotch. It would burn Lieutenant Dorsey to learn he gave the CO what was refused to him, but such was the benefit of being the Commander.

Remy stood silently, pretending not to listen. It was probably safer not knowing what the Major meant by "enhancements." He had learned weeks ago the importance of controlling his outrage given the Colonel could very well scramble him as Sadile had done to the spent syringe. Then again, he might very well end up as one of the Major's experiments.

The Colonel wasn't exactly thinking of punishments and tortures for his troublesome companion. He had an assignment to worry about, and the looks Remy and Sadile gave each other were a distraction.

"Is there anything I can get for you down there," the Colonel graciously offered his medic.

"The recipe for their pork dumplings," the Major half-jokingly replied. It was the difference among the officers: confronted with the different culture of the Eastern Imperium and all the lieutenants thought about was the women while the Major was interested in the food. In all fairness, the base they orbited had a reputation for the best pork dumplings outside Earth. Like everything else, they were nothing more than a replication based off a saved pattern in the database, but somehow the team on this base had tweaked the recipe making it one of the most desirable dishes in the galaxy.

Still, Sadile knew they wouldn't trade the recipe for anything. He settled for a take-out bag; and who knows, maybe he could replicate the pattern without losing some of the flavor. After his patients left and he was alone again, he returned to his laboratory. Despite planning what tweaks he needed to make before creating Subject D-14, all he could think about was those dumplings.
Chapter 2-3

The Imperium administrator insisted on keeping the RS _Freedom_ in quarantine for another six hours. The idea of quarantine was laughable given their scramblers could detect any unwanted pathogens or critters and remove them, but like everything else, it was a game these leaders played to assert some level of dominance over each other. Colonel Freedom wasn't overly bothered. It gave the crew one last chance for rest before embarking on a day of debauchery for most of them. And the Colonel had a few more hours to study his mission briefings.

Remy had been sealed in his quarters to get some rest himself before going down to the planet. Since he had become a prisoner on this ship, the Colonel insisted on keeping him by his side every moment of his duty shifts. He sat on the floor beside the commander's chair whenever he was on the bridge. He sat at his right hand whenever the Commander retired to the briefing room to deal with his paperwork or conduct the daily briefings. He even sat in on every mission briefing.

But every moment he spent with the Colonel was about humiliation. The man placed a chain around his neck and led him around like a dog. He turned to Remy constantly as if he knew when his orders and instructions irritated his sensibilities. Freedom almost tried to push his buttons hoping for one more glimpse of the impetuous UN inspector who challenged his orders in those first few days aboard his ship.

As he did every day after the Colonel's duty shift, Remy retrieved a tiny controller hidden beneath the sink in his bathroom. Returning to his front room, he pressed the lone button and shifted himself into the invisible dimension and into a new room of his own creation. A contraband scrambler allowed him to create a desk for his computer and some other tools and equipment as needed.

Where the material was drawn from in this strange dimension was a mystery. Sometimes, when he decided not to tempt fate, he would create some food with the scrambler within his quarters and cross it over with him in hopes of using those atoms instead of those from the unknown stores. Other times he didn't bother, almost hoping his scrambler was stealing from the Major's lab.

He turned on his computer and waited for it to boot up. This was why he wouldn't give the Colonel the satisfaction of seeing him bothered. The logs and reports he kept in secret were the only thing he had to bring back to the UN should he ever find a means for escape. Occasionally, Freedom would turn his back for a few moments allowing Remy a chance to swipe a stray data chip or a peek into Freedom's private files. Since the Commander was overly confident in regards to the captivity, most of the time he didn't bother classifying information from his pet.

If he wasn't waiting for the computer to boot, Remy would take up his environmental suit from the corner of his hidden room and wander the ship from his invisible dimension. Part of his travel was intended to get a feel for the ship's layout, another part was to attempt to find the infiltrator.

His secret travels often took him to the other crew quarters to spy on the young officers. Specifically, he wished to check on Anders, who once endangered his career to help him. To his delight, the Lieutenant's treason seemed forgotten after the Section 13. But it remained to be seen if he would be offloaded for a return trip to Earth at the first opportunity. Remy also feared the possibility the young man might try to take his life.

Anders was so excited about his assignment in the Space Force, but since the incident on LX-925, his tone had been severely muted. Remy noticed even he seemed to put it behind him, odd given how serious a violation he racked up. The Doctor feared his stolid mood hid a certainty toward self-harm. After a month of observation, Remy had been relieved to see his fears did not play out. Still, all it would take was one moment of frustration to cause him to snap.

Then there was Roxanne, Pittman's "girlfriend." That Lieutenant gave Remy the dirtiest of dirty looks whenever they were on the bridge or in the briefing room together. No matter what his intention had been toward the welfare of the young woman, Remy noticed the man's fist would ball up when their eyes connected. No doubt he wanted to kill the Doctor if Colonel Freedom ever left his side.

Remy would often wander unconsciously into Pittman's quarters to watch the two have sex. It infuriated the Doctor watching the Lieutenant violate this woman night after night. Though she seemed willing, he knew somehow she had been programmed or brainwashed into servitude. He felt it deep down that there was some nefarious reason to explain her part in this relationship.

As the weeks wore on, and Remy insisted on continually torturing himself, he fought back his own tears as their sex grew rougher. He feared sooner or later, Pittman might take it to a violent level, and even kill her for his pleasures. Yet there was nothing he could do. Remy had to suffer in secret so as to keep his limited freedom hidden.

The lone act of rebellion he permitted himself was to bring Roxanne books during those times when the Commander's off-time corresponded with the Lieutenant's duty shifts. He had a small selection of literature in his computer that he was able to materialize with the scrambler in his secret room. And he had a couple hours to spend with the woman, reading with her and broadening her simple mind. To keep their meetings a continued secret, he insisted on taking the books back with him, leaving her alone and bored most of the time. It was the only way he could ensure the safety of their meetings.

Remy was certain though, the young woman would ask her boyfriend about some of the places from those books. Those times when he and Pittman shared the room in separate dimensions, he heard Roxanne bother him with silly notions after their act was finished and he would roll over in the bed to try to sleep. Maybe it was because he was too tired, but the guy never seemed too mad when he'd tell her to knock it off with those ideas. By the time Remy would visit again, her questions seemed to have been completely forgotten.

One blessing for Roxanne, though Remy admitted he didn't get to see the full picture of their lives, was that Pittman never raised his hand for her betrayal. The Lieutenant seemed not to blame her for leaving him. From those looks across the bridge and across the meeting table, Remy knew he received all the blame for her misdeeds.

It was probably safer for the mission ahead that he avoided those quarters during this break. Jade 5 would be his first trip off ship since LX-925, and it was the most likely place for a stowaway to jump ship. Sure it was possible to transfer to one of the handful of vessels they had encountered in the past month or so, but as a hub, Jade 5 would give someone a choice of future directions and destinations. Though Remy expected to be chained to the Colonel the entire time, he could still keep his eyes out for anyone acting suspicious or trying to get away from the Republic delegation.

The Doctor finished with his daily log and powered down his computer. Then he returned to normal space to get some rest. He couldn't afford the least bit of fatigue clouding his eyes on the planet. Before he could close his eyes for sleep, he attached a personal inhibitor to his shirt to prevent a scramble in his sleep. He had grown comfortable that the Colonel wasn't out to destroy him, still he couldn't shake the feeling that he might someday disappear in a white light the instant his brain shut off. If it weren't for this little piece of protection, Remy would never be able to relax into a sleep state.
Chapter 2-4

Remy had washed and dressed by the time Colonel Freedom opened his door to retrieve him. Normally on the way to the bridge or on a tour of the ship, the Colonel would taunt his captive with a few subtle remarks. Strangely, the old man was silent the entire trip to the scrambler.

About half the crew was assembled and ready to head down to the planet. The Quartermaster, Lieutenant Bender, was unrecognizable in a Hawaiian shirt and wide-brimmed hat. Lieutenant Dorsey planned to cruise in a simple black tank top, expecting to impress with his guns. Rounding out the group were Lieutenants Drake and Anders in nearly matching polo shirts. One thing to be said about the Republic, their citizens stood out like sore thumbs wherever they went in the galaxy.

The Colonel planned to take his crew down with their own scrambler. As he warned his men, the Imperium had the skill to remove individual memories from a single life pattern. If they were allowed to travel through an Imperium scrambler, their engineers could learn any Republic secrets floating around in their brains.

"That goes for personal contact," Freedom warned. "All it takes is for one of you to pass out or fall asleep. They can get your brain without you ever knowing."

Drake and Dorsey chuckled as they glanced to Bender.

"And speaking of passing out," the Colonel continued, "I know at least one of you will ignore this, but try to control yourselves down there. We do represent our country and our service. Don't do anything to embarrass us or you will be called to my office when you get back."

With that, Freedom activated the scrambler and transported the group to the station below.

Jade 5 was nothing like the station on LX-925. Remy found they were taken to a sort of mall. Stalls and booths surrounded a large gathering area while neon lights and flashing signs created a vibrant, market-like atmosphere. With only the passing military ships to cater too, the Imperium went all out to make their station a tourist haven.

As if directed by radar, the Lieutenants were drawn to a shop front that looked to be a bar, while Freedom led his prisoner along the promenade.

"Don't worry about getting lost," he whispered in Remy's ear. "That's why you have a tracker."

They passed by food stalls and souvenir stands. The scents of Eastern cooking lured weary travelers, though with the on-demand nature of the food, it was curious those scents were so pervasive. Like the smell of beer and sex identifying other areas of the mall, the entire atmosphere was designed to lure weak minded soldiers into the grasp of Imperium spies. It was as Freedom tried to warn his men, these people trapped their prey with hospitality.

It was not that hospitality which Freedom sought. He led Remy off the promenade and into the guest quarters. Counting the room numbers, they finally stopped at one door and sounded the tone. The door vanished and to Remy's surprise, a man with the pale skin of the Republic came out to greet them.

"Colonel, you've come!"

Remy did not once hear this man's name. He seemed to be attached to this facility in the way an ambassador on Earth was attached to a particular embassy in a foreign country. Since there was a bit of secrecy tied to his job, it was likely he didn't want his name or title spoken to prevent exposure.

"Can I come inside to talk?"

The man looked Remy over suspiciously, leading to his introduction. Though the Colonel had no qualms about sharing details of his mission to the inspector, the stranger wouldn't allow it.

"He has to wait outside."

Freedom released the chain around Remy's neck. "Go, enjoy yourself. It's not like you can escape this place."

Remy just stood watching the pair disappear into the room as the door materialized behind them. Curious as to what was suddenly so private, he pressed his ear against the door. He had to strain his hearing, but he could just barely make out the conversation inside.

"I tracked down the _Rostov_ ," the Colonel began, "and I'm certain General Mizenov had nothing to do with the rebellion. I think the Imperium might have done something to frame the Confederation."

"No," the stranger flat out told him. "Our intelligence suggests the _Rostov_ hasn't had contact with the Imperium in almost a year. That ship operates primarily in our space. No, Central Intelligence thinks we may be looking at a Twenty-Four."

The room grew awful silent after the suggestion. Remy pressed his ear tighter against the door and strained his hearing further, but could not make out any more words. It was frustrating because if this Twenty-Four was behind everything, then whoever or whatever it was had his data chips.

By the time sound returned to his ears, the talk of LX-925 was passed and the conversation turned to the next mission. But Remy didn't care about the next mission, he had to find those chips.

He left the crew quarters and returned to the promenade, trying to figure his next move. It was possible the infiltrator had snuck down to the station, but without any idea what he or she looked like, it would be impossible to guess.

He sought out the bar and the Lieutenants that had disappeared inside. All three were at a table near the door, no doubt to make sure they were the first pick any ladies had upon entering. Remy would disappoint by being the first to join them.

"I see the Commander cut you loose," Bender shouted. They had only been there a few minutes and the man slurred his words like he had had too much to drink.

A server came by with four beers for the officers, then apologized to Remy for not anticipating his arrival. He dismissed the oversight, more amazed that the Imperium exported service workers to their off world operations. By the time she left to fetch him a beer, Bender had already finished his.

Another young woman, beautiful and seductive, tapped Dorsey on the shoulder.

"I see someone came looking for more than a beer." She traced her finger down his triceps as his companions hooted his good fortune.

"And it looks like I just found her." He cast a triumphant smile to his friends as she led him away to some place private.

The server returned with two beers, having anticipated Bender's thirst.

"Can I ask you guys something," Remy put forward. It might not have been the best idea to ply Freedom's men for information, but he figured by the end of their shore leave all three would be too drunk to remember when it came time to report back. "Any of you ever hear of a Twenty-Four?"

The amused looks around the table told him the answer to that one.

"Is it the name of a beer?"

"I think you're looking for a clock."

"The Union controls a planet, BT-24," Anders offered.

"It's BT-247," Drake corrected his chagrinned friend.

"Never mind," Remy told them. It might have been a good thing they never heard the term because that meant only the Colonel would be looking for this individual. Being by the Colonel's side every moment of his shift, Remy was in a position to monitor his progress and cut off any unwanted discoveries. He sat back and enjoyed his beer, celebrating this one tiny victory.
Chapter 2-5

Dorsey was led into a set of quarters by his mistress. She introduced herself as Gao Yan, though the Lieutenant was both too drunk and too self-absorbed to care. Gao herself wasn't concerned for her life to worry about what some drunk soldier might do. She was only interested in keeping her little soldier boy happy.

She tugged at his shirt, hinting to what she wanted. Dorsey was more than interested; he had his tank top and his pants off, and was reaching for his boxer briefs before she had even raised the bottom of her shirt to her breasts. He was eager. She teased, and she already had him at full attention.

"You been in space long time," she asked in her soft, seductive voice.

"More than two years." With his last garment gone, he grew impatient and helped with her shirt.

"So you fly the ship."

The girls always went for the pilots, which in the case of these larger starships meant either the Navigational Officer or the Chief Engineer. Communications Officer wasn't so sexy, but in two years, he had experience at most of the stations anyway. If it was what kept her moist, then he'd play up those roles.

"I'm Communications Officer at the moment, but I was at Navigation for six months. I could fly you to those three moons and back if you wanted."

Yet, for its lack of sexiness, it was his current job that brought the joy to her eyes.

"Communications! So you talk to everyone."

Dorsey fumbled for her bra, but his fingers didn't want to work magic on the clasp.

"I've spoken with a few generals in the last few months."

Gao helped him with the bra, unwrapping her breasts as if the most special of Christmas presents hid inside. Dorsey's eyes were so glued to her copper flesh, he didn't notice her hands as they set the skimpy garment on the make-up counter and retrieved a syringe hidden among the brushes.

"Your eyes are so beautiful," she remarked, pulling his gaze upward into her smooth face, and away from her occupied hand. "I imagine the things they have seen as Communications Officer."

And Dorsey imagined the things he would like them to see. Before he could divert to a more desirable sight, he felt the needle enter the back of his neck. His lust faded away to confusion which faded further into emptiness. The girl and the room blacked out from his mind as he crumpled to her feet, unconscious.

Gao set the needle back on the make-up counter and pressed a small button on the side of the mirror. The reflective glass faded away uncovering a scrambler plate. Its controls were revealed when she flipped over an uncluttered portion of the counter. A few movements across the key pad and Dorsey was absorbed in the familiar flash of white light, remaining on the floor where he fell once the light had faded. His life pattern had been saved and whatever secrets Gao wanted from his brain were safely stored in the unit's memory.

Another woman in full military uniform arrived to help. In her half-dressed state, Gao stood at attention and saluted.

"Did you get it, Sergeant," the newcomer asked.

"Yes, Colonel Lung. This one is involved in communications. He should give us information on ship movements and positions."

"And the required frequencies to hack into their network. Excellent! Let's get this cleaned up and begin extracting the information."

"Cleaned up" meant a variety of things depending on the situation. In this particular case it meant moving the sleeping Lieutenant and his clothes to a neutral location. When the sedative wore off, he would have no idea what had happened. He would think only that he got too drunk to remember. The poor guy would never know his mind had been captured and the knowledge of the _Freedom's_ communications tucked away in his brain was headed for an Imperium Intelligence office.

In their own make-shift office, Colonel Freedom neared the end of his meeting with his contact. The mysterious man handed the Colonel a nondescript data chip.

"Don't forget, some of this is highly classified. Even your XO isn't cleared for everything, so go through this carefully before briefing your crew."

The two saluted each other after Freedom tucked the chip in his breast pocket. He left the quarters and made his way back to the festival atmosphere of the promenade. Spying the bar his men disappeared into, he wondered how many of them remained and how many were still conscious.

Three of his officers remained at their table, and amusingly, Remy was still with them. Freedom supposed he had been training the guy well the past few weeks; that he didn't try to run or escape. And clearly he wasn't trying to spread his UN nonsense of peace, love, and harmony to the people of the Eastern Imperium.

Drake and Anders started to rise and salute their CO. Bender was too far gone to stand, and thankfully for his dignity, Freedom told his friends to remain seated.

"I need to return to the ship," he told his officers. "Enjoy your shore leave." He looked to Remy to address him directly. "Before you let them get you too drunk, I would suggest heading to the canteen across the way. Try the pork dumplings while you can still enjoy them."

The Colonel left the men behind him, imagining the shock on the Doctor's face at being trusted unescorted on this world. But Freedom had more important things to worry about, and his mission profile was too confidential to have Remy watching over his shoulder. He retreated to an out of the way spot so his own people could easily scramble him from the Imperium complex.

His XO, Lieutenant Colonel Fortune waited by the scrambler as he materialized on the plate. "Cancelling shore leave so soon, Colonel?"

"I have a new mission profile to study. Feel free to take my place down there."

Fortune followed his Commander out of the scrambler room on the way back to the bridge. "I'm good, sir. Is there anything I can do to help?"

Freedom thought about it for a moment, keeping his contact's directive in mind. He couldn't yet show Fortune the information on the chip, but there was a way he could help.

"I need you remain in command while I assemble the brief."

"Yes, Sir."

Back in the bar, Remy decided to leave the officers and take up the Colonel's suggestion. It was impossible to believe he was being trusted by himself down here, so he figured it had to be a test of some sorts. Not wishing to ruin the secrecy and privacy he had managed to scrap together back in his quarters, he ventured across the promenade to sample these famous dumplings.

Remy passed by a mess of people sharing his enjoyment of this marketplace. The military uniforms of the Eastern Imperium stood out, but not painfully so. They served as a reminder that despite the pleasurable atmosphere inside this complex, it was still a military operation.

Many more of the inhabitants wore clothing similar to the miners he had tried to save on LX-925. The level of grime and filth told him which were coming off shift and which were about to start work. He looked across the varied faces wondering if these people had been copied or cloned to bolster the worker population. Given the Imperium had a population almost five times that of the Republic back on Earth, it seemed unlikely they had a shortage of workers, but secrecy likely meant the people around him could never be allowed back home.

Remy wanted to ask around to see if he could determine the abuses undertaken by their government, but it was too dangerous. The diplomats of all four nations out here colluded, despite their political differences, when it came to the secrecy and security of their individual space programs. Like the Republic miners, these people probably had no idea they were being used. All it would take was one loyal subject to report to the station administrator that he was asking questions, and it would get back to the _Freedom_.

Remy shoved his growing anxiety and anger down into his chest before it could explode in his head. He stepped into the canteen and took a seat at the counter. The server took his order and within minutes, returned with a plate of steaming, hot dumplings. Having spent some time in the Imperium back on Earth, Remy had tasted a more authentic dumpling, but he had to admit this was the closest approximation to Earth food he had so far sampled. If he had anything to trade, he would certainly try to trade for the scrambler recipe.
Also By J.J. Mainor

The Depot-14 Series

The Americium Shipment

Best friends Jakarta Jones and Colton Wells own and operate one of fourteen supply depots in orbit around the planet Durango. Today proves to be a bad one when an armed gang boards the depot, taking them and their clients hostage while they wait for a cargo ship carrying a valuable load of americium. To keep the hostages alive, the pair must bide their time and wait for the right opportunity to strike back. But as the cargo ship grows ever closer to the station, can they find that opportunity, or will they lose the americium?

Broken Saber

When Colton goes down for murder, it's up to Jakarta to find the evidence that will free him.

Family Vengeance

After returning home to settle the estate, Colton learns his father's death was murder. Now he must fight his own desire for revenge to avoid becoming a murderer himself.

Crash Landing

A security job turns into a fight for survival when a passenger ship crash-lands on the hostile world of Hen. While Jakarta struggles to defend the survivors, her biggest threat may not be the natives.

Revenge With a Kiss

Jakarta falls for a traveler Colton doesn't like. Are his feelings justified, or is it a case of simple jealousy?

The Freedom Reigns Series

The Siege of LX-925

In the early 23rd century, four nations dominate interstellar travel. Their programs have remained a mystery to the people of Earth, including their own people, and the UN wants to know why. Previous inspectors have yielded little insightful information. Dr. Remy Duval is the latest to venture into the unknown.

The Republic Ship Freedom has been ordered to remove a group of defiant miners from the dead world LX-925. As Remy marvels over the advanced technology at the crew's disposal, he quickly understands the horrific downside to these wonders. Risking everything, Remy schemes to bring a peaceful end to the standoff before it escalates into genocide.

The Vorman Insurgence

Broken and humiliated, Remy Duval must play the defeated prisoner to the sadistic Colonel Freedom while he plans his escape and return to Earth.

The Colonel and his crew are after answers to the uprising on LX-925 when new orders send them to TL-311, a planet recently conquered from an alien race called the Vorman. Half his lieutenants are sent down to the surface with their own teams to test their leadership. The mission: to seek out and eradicate any Vorman that remain behind.

With half the staff remaining behind, Remy expects to get his chance to take over the ship and make his escape...until Colonel Freedom sends him down to the planet with Lieutenant Anders. When things couldn't get any worse, they find out too late there are more than just a few Vorman waiting on the surface.

The introduction to Hell is over...now it's time for Remy to burn.

Subject D-20

When the Acerna threaten an Independent Union facility, the RS Freedom is called in to extract the Republic's liaison. During the mission, Remy Duval witnesses the most heinous act yet, and decides he's had enough. With a new ally by his side, he takes advantage of the growing chaos to attempt a mutiny.

Aliens get aboard, a spy runs loose, and to top it off, Major Sadile's medical experiment, Subject D-20, escapes the medical bay; the sadistic Colonel may be the least of Remy's worries. But one thing is certain: failure means the end of the road for the UN inspector.

The Fifth Fleet

With the Freedom under his control and repairs nearly complete, Remy Duval and his small crew of rebels find their plans to return to Earth placed on hold when a Vorman ship discovers their location. His old friend Sake seeks peace, but determining his true intentions will expose everyone's secrets and betrayal. However it will be the Republic's largest secret, the Fifth Fleet, that threatens all his dreams of peace.

Freedom's Wake

Remy Duval's one chance to save Earth lies in navigating the Freedom across a deadly patch of concentrated radiation known as the Crucible. His sanctuary lies in a hidden dimension while the ship travels unguided. But when a race of mechanical beings slips aboard and threatens their plans, Remy and his crew must suffer exposure to repel this new menace.

Target: Earth

The race is on! Remy Duval must rely on every trick and tactic picked up during his long ordeal if he expects to stop the Vorman attack on Earth, but first he must deal with his own demons and the nagging fear that to win the day, he must sacrifice the last bits of his own morality. In the end, he may be more like the monsters he spent his life prosecuting than he cares to admit.

The Timberlands Series

Timberlands: Blood and Prey

After witnessing his brother's death and fleeing from the killer in the woods during a camping trip, Gunner returns to the remote timberlands of Northern Maine with three friends to recover the body. He feels he's ready for the killer this time, but he's not ready for the surprises the forest hides.

Timberlands 2: Fatal Friendships

A real estate agent selling the timberlands finds eight trespassers searching for their missing friends unaware that the curse of the timberlands has transformed one of those missing friends into an angry killer.

Timberlands 3: Inferno

A team of hotshots move into the timberlands to battle a wildfire, but they march straight into a grudge match between two killers battling for dominance – and bodies!

They Knew

An ancient race called the Oegyein once ruled this galaxy, but today, very little remains of their empire. Most of what we know is the stuff of legends and myths.

When Tau Bello discovers an ancient ship floating in the cold emptiness of space, it proves to be but the first clue in a treasure hunt that promises to unravel those legends and myths. It is a hunt that attracts a lot of unwanted attention, and for some, those promises are worth killing for. Tau quickly discovers the real treasure may not be untold riches or vast scientific knowledge, but his very life!

Dione's War

A generation after the Vandals wiped out Earth's population, a tenuous peace has settled in between the Vandals and the few survivors to have escaped Armageddon. Many of the refugees have accepted Vandal rule as Loyalists while the rest have held onto some sort of independence in the Opposition Colonies.

Dione Pafford lived with her parents as Loyalists, mining their tiny and desolate moon. While on a survey mission to a previously unexplored corner of that moon, she discovers the wreckage of a long-crashed Earth warship and its lone survivor: Jack Corbitt. It is a discovery that upends the peace and finds her people once more hunted by an enemy who has grown too powerful. To survive extinction, Loyalists and Colonials alike look to Dione as the entire conflict becomes her personal war.

The Greenburg Timelines: Prisoners of Utopia

Cole Greenburg wanted nothing more than to see his father one last time before his deployment to Iraq.

Jessica Fulton was a semester away from earning her doctorate in astrophysics and attaining a promising future with NASA.

Michael Greenburg was close to completing his life's work on his theories of multiple universes when his device sent the trio out prematurely, leaving them to wander the alternate Earths aimlessly.

Their one hope to get back home and resume their normal lives lies with a world more advanced than their own.

On an alternate Earth where the Ancient Greeks still rule and Natives still dominate the western world, technology has placed society on a course for self-destruction. Their hope lies in expansion and Michael's hopper promises to open up new worlds. In exchange for access to other, uninhabited, alternate Earths, the Greeks offer a path home; but as the group realizes this advanced world is not the utopia they believed, and the people are not the altruists they presented themselves as, Cole risks everything to fix their mistakes while his father tries to open the door for them to leave before their time runs out.

USS Krakowski

Disgraced Lieutenant Jace Modeen takes a team aboard an alien drone ship for what should have been a routine mission of study and discovery. But it quickly becomes his chance to demonstrate his leadership and redeem his past mistakes when he learns the ship heralds a larger attack force with a world-shattering origin.

Are There Heroes In Hell?

The long-awaited follow-up to USS Krakowski!

Nearly 40 years before Jace Modeen and the USS Krakowski saved the Earth, the Arctic Wars dragged the world's nations into a conflict so brutal, old friends become enemies, and old enemies become monsters.

USMC Lance Corporal Jackson Freebourne served on the front lines before his position was overrun and he was captured by Canadian forces and sent to an icy prison. If the elements don't kill him, the guards might, and the only chance for survival involves keeping his head down and staying invisible. But it is hard to stay invisible when torture and death are the rules of the day.

Compared To What

Hades Garden is a small town in legal limbo. It has become a safe haven for criminals looking to start over. As long as you're in town, state and federal law can't touch you, but break the laws of Hades Garden and you're out

Dale Ridgewick comes to Hades Garden with the cops on his tail and a bagful of cash in his truck. Trying to start a new life, he buys a house, finds a girlfriend, and gets a job. But when a workplace rivalry threatens the peace he seeks, Dale harnesses his dark past to wage war, unaware his nemesis harbors his own deadly past.

Plantation

A murderous ghost stalks the guests and staff at a bed and breakfast.

