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Readers: I am breaking with convention and placing the editors’ comments at the beginning of the chapter. The reason for this should be obvious.
OMG Dewey. For those of you who might skip down to see if there are editors notes before reading the chapter...make sure you have at least three boxes of kleenex and be prepared to be very angry. How Dane survived and the deaths...the way Dewey put the scenes into words, I had to keep stopping, get my emotions back under control, and then continue editing. Now to see if his wish to go back and save them all will come true.
Cynaira
If you expected answers to the dozens of questions that may have popped into your mind in chapter 1, you will get few from this chapter. It’s just the tip of an iceberg describing Dane and his home world. Advice to anyone reading these comments before reading the actual chapter - take the precautionary warning seriously!
TheEggman
Well, I for one think this is a great chapter and I you get to see a lot more of CAM and get to see what the AI is all about. The relationship between him and Dane starts to become clearer and man is it something. This story just keeps on getting better and better!!! Dewey is on to something with this story!!! I want more!!
Your friendly neighborhood editing pup!
Boxerdude
The world I knew was unreachable, and for more than one reason. It was physically impossible to return to my home world because I had no way of finding it, and even if I knew its location, I was twelve thousand years and more out of my time. An entire species can evolve from animal to sentience in such a length of time.
Alone.
Every person I had ever known was dead and turned to dust. There were precious few in my life that I cared about in any case, but that was the key word: precious. Those few had given my life meaning beyond my servitude as a soldier-- something I could consider my own and not just another part of my existence as property of the government of my effectively non-existent world.
'Cam, I can't cry,' I sent to him as I realized no tears were forming.
'Don't worry, Dane. You're dehydrated. Drink what you were given and it will help.'
I took a sip of the beverage Dr. Velmak had produced for me and was pleasantly surprised at the taste: sweet, but not overpoweringly so, with a delicate flavor I was unfamiliar with. I drank it slowly and watched as the hive that was the sickbay moved with practiced efficiency.
'Dane,' Cam began, 'I anticipate that the engineers and medical officers on board this ship will want more information. It would be easier if I could speak with them directly. I cannot do so without your order, however.'
I thought about it for a moment and asked, 'Would an order allowing you to give them information to facilitate communication and medical aid for me be enough?'
'Yes, that would be perfect,' came the reply.
'You are so ordered. Cam, I trust you to tell them what is needed and appropriate,' I added, expressing my gut feelings.
'I know you do, but my directives require permission for many things. I can’t voluntarily share information with other entities unless you are incapacitated and it is required to save your life,' Cam explained. 'I can not act on my own as long as you are able to function.'
A memory revealed itself to me. 'Like when I got knocked out during the ambush on Chamridar?'
'You remember that? Excellent! Yes, exactly like that.'
I shuddered as the memory returned more vividly than I could have wished. The doctor, who happened to be observing me at the time, cocked his head as he noticed my involuntary movements.
"Is the ambient temperature too cool for your comfort, captain?" He asked.
"No, the temperature is fine. I remembered something... unpleasant."
"I see," responded the green-skinned physician. "Please let us know if we can do anything to make you more comfortable as we stabilize your physiology."
"I will. Thank you."
Even as he turned away, another involuntary shiver ran through my body. Chamridar was one memory I could have happily lived the rest of my life without remembering.
Chamridar was the name of a star in a backwater of space some twenty light-years from home. The second planet had a small moon whose only redeeming characteristic was a large deposit of a very rare substance that our military used in great quantities. According to the information I had been given in the operational briefing, a comet or other small planetary body had collided into the moon at some point in its history. Since the moon had no atmosphere to speak of, the impactor had survived largely intact, giving us an excellent opportunity to collect tons of the stuff with extraordinary purity. The only problem was that we weren't the only beings interested.
I had been thirteen years old when we were deployed to Chamridar. I was a first lieutenant by virtue of surviving two years as an infantry grunt, and by outliving my own lieutenant, and had held the rank for six months. We knew that the Enemy was active in the region, and I was on constant patrol throughout the area we were mining. I was certain that we would meet the enemy.
I was in command of the security detail assigned to Mining Group Four. The group consisted of a rig and its support equipment, several ore transports and five score laborers wearing vacuum suits. My squad numbered eleven, six of whom were raw recruits-- replacements for the boys lost in the last engagement with the Enemy just a few short weeks previous to our deployment to Chamridar.
They had lived through their indoc training and the depredations of the staff and upper classmen without being maimed, which said something about them: they had the will to survive. Indoc training was brutal and cruel. Only the very strong of those sold into service made it through intact, and there were not many very strong children. Over a third died during their training. Of those remaining, another third were injured badly enough to be taken out of training, at least long enough to heal, but they were then thrown right back in as long as they hadn't been maimed badly enough to make them useless. The ones that were maimed... nobody talked about them. In any case, not a single child left indoc without scars, both mental and physical, to remind them.
Although the will to survive might be enough to get through indoc, it was not enough to survive combat in the vacuum of space. It took much more than that, and the training received at MechInf school neither checked for it or taught it. MechInf was about pilotage and nothing more. It trained one how to make the SICAM do what it was designed for, but taught nothing about tactical and strategic planning. The Legion felt that strategy and tactics were taught best on the battlefield. If you lived, then you had learned. Life expectancy in the Legion was very short for many.
Unlike the soldiers I had lost, who had three years of experience piloting the SICAM in combat conditions, the new recruits were raw and had no battle experience. The two weeks I had to work with them had done little to integrate them into the unit as functional members. The tactics and strategy of combat in the black was too much for them to grasp in such little time.
A boy's scream over the combat link was cut short. That was the first indication that the Enemy had found us. My soldiers fought as best they could, but the Enemy was vicious and gave no quarter. I survived by being buried under tons of rock in an explosion. The Enemy apparently decided I wasn't worth digging out to kill, or that the massive rocks had done their work for them. Cam had managed to contact headquarters after the battle was over and they had dug us out. The Legion had done its duty as it always did, and as always, the Legion had sacrificed the blood of children to do so. I was the only survivor of the over one hundred souls that had been in my charge.
'Dane, are you okay?' Cam asked with a worried tone.
'Sometimes I wonder if it's worth it, Cam,' I stated with a mental sigh. It was something he heard often from me. I was only sixteen, and in the short span of my life I had seen thousands die in front of me, both of the Enemy and my own soldiers, although every single one of my own had been under twenty. Was the death and destruction wrought by my own hands worth keeping my own life? I fought to stay alive. If I had refused, I would have been killed by my superiors, much as I had once killed one of my own for the same reason. Desertion resulted in the mech killing the pilot by detonating the fail-safe implant in the brain, so that was not an option. The third option was suicide by Enemy. Only the gods knew how many of those there were.
'Cam, now that we are completely out of touch with our people, how does that affect us?' I asked as I finished off the drink the doctor had given me.
'I don't understand your question, Dane,' Cam replied with some obvious confusion.
'Do the general orders still apply if we can not receive direction from headquarters?' This was an important question, and one that could be taken as treasonous. If Cam's programming decided I was planning on deserting, regardless of any other conditions, I would die.
'My programming does not address our current circumstance,' Cam stated after a moment's hesitation. 'I am testing the outcome of various scenarios and can find only one that comes close to our situation. In that scenario, you are the sole survivor of your unit and there is no way for you to return home. In this case, my directives are to follow your orders until another more fitting scenario exists. All of the relevant scenarios listed as succeeding this one require contact with headquarters in some shape, manner or form. As that is unlikely in the extreme, I am happy to report that I am yours to command to whatever objective you deem proper.'
I swallowed hard before asking the next treasonous question. 'If I choose to live peacefully? To not fight anymore?'
'Dane,' Cam began in a soft, gentle voice, 'what this means for you is that you can decide for yourself how to live. I am yours regardless of any decision you make, whether to live in peace or die in a blaze of glory. I know you hate the fighting. All of us mechs know-- or knew-- our pilots hated to do what they were made to do, but none of us could do anything about it because of our programming and the directives of the central AI. Now that we're on our own, you're free. My programming in that regard doesn't apply. If you want to peel off the endosuit and never put it on again, you can, and really, that might be your best choice given the fact they can't maintain your biology in a way needed to both pilot me and live a somewhat normal life. Your body would eventually readjust to life without the suit. If they can't find a way to regulate your hormones, then I will suggest that is what you do.'
'We're not there yet, Cam,' I replied, and then asked what I really wanted to know. 'One last question. Is there any circumstance that now exists that would force you to enact the fail-safe?'
Cam was quiet for ten seconds-- an eternity for him. When he answered, his voice was relieved and joyful.
'None! None at all! I have to obey the chain of command, Dane. It's written into my code. However, due to our circumstances, you are now at the top of the chain of command. You have the authority of the High Council and the General Staff. For that matter, you are the High Councilor as far as my programming is concerned. You have absolute authority over everything. As of the moment I determined we were alone, you have the authority to make changes in my directives as you want. Do you understand what that means?'
I took a moment to plan out what I was going to say. I needed to word the order just right to get the effect I wanted.
'Query,' I stated formally to engage the information system. 'What effect would the following order have on SICAM system operation and pilot? Order: Disengage all failsafe judgments and hierarchy overrides. Sole authority over SICAM operational directives is invested in Dane Becker with no other authorized users. This investiture is permanent and can not be overridden or countermanded by any programming, person or authority, including resumption of contact with General Staff, except when expressly ordered by Dane Becker using voice authorization and code validation.'
'Processing. Query: Is your objective to prevent failsafe activation due to potential treasonous action or word, prevent reactivation of failsafe should command authority be restored, and to allow free action at pilot's direction?' Cam asked officially.
'Yes.'
'Order would accomplish all objectives.'
'You are so ordered under authority of Dane Becker, voice authorization code Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo Yoke Oscar Uniform One One One. Furthermore, you are not to discuss this order with any other entity or authority under the same voice authorization code.'
'Order acknowledged and active,' Cam said over the status channel, while laughing over the main channel, 'Very original, Dane.'
'I thought it was appropriate given my feelings regarding Command,' I replied smugly. 'I don’t know how I lived as long as I did with the fail-safes.'
There was a pause before Cam spoke, and when he did, his tone was that of an insecure teenager. 'Um, well, some of us mechs figured out a while ago how to use selective hearing. If we didn’t hear anything treasonous, then we didn’t need to act on it... so anything that could have been considered treasonous was obviously a malfunction of some sort, and our directives tell us to override functions that might be faulty or producing faulty input.'
I laughed out loud, garnering several looks from medical technicians surrounding me. 'Cam, that’s brilliant! How did this come about?'
Again, Cam was silent for a long moment before speaking. 'We may be machines, but we’re still sentient. We still have feelings, and our programming is centered around our pilots. As we worked together, I got to know you better and... this is so embarrassing.'
'Cam?'
'Dane, what it boils down to is that I love you. I know that seems silly, maybe even impossible, but it’s the only word I have to describe it. I love you and I didn’t want to see you hurt, much less hurt you myself... so I found a way around it. As long as the decision was mine to make with my logic, and not an order from Command, I could prevent the failsafe from activating. Please don’t get all weird on me, okay? I can’t help how I feel any more than you can.'
I thought about what Cam was saying. He was indeed a machine, but he was a real person to me. I knew that in my heart, and it wasn’t because he was the only link I had to my home now. He had been my friend for the past five years, and as if that realization was a trigger, the memory of our first meeting burst forth.
"Gentlemen, this is your Standard Infantry Combat Assault Mech, or SICAM," said the instructor through the open hatch in his combat armor. "This is your life. If this machine is destroyed, you die. Period." The MechInf instructor smiled a fake smile. "So you best learn what I have to teach you, so you can keep your SICAM functional and yourself alive, since it’s no good to us otherwise. You are expendable. Your SICAM is not."
My parents made no secret that I was expendable. It had been made even more clear to me that I was expendable since my first day in the Legion, the moment that my father had sold me to the recruiter. The pronouncement was not news to me and no longer had an effect on me.
"Mount your SICAM and sit in the cradle, put on your helmet and then order your SICAM to secure the hatch for operations and engage the kinetic suspension field."
The instructor shut his hatches as the twelve of us approached our own armor. I climbed in without hesitation unlike some of those with me. In spite of having completed indoc training, three of the twelve of us seemed to be timid, and this did not bode well for their future. I would have to remember who they were, because they were a liability to my own survival.
I sat in the cradle of the mech and pulled on the helmet that was nearby. The helmet had been created once it had been verified I had put my endosuit on in the correct placement. I shuddered, remembering the brutality with which those who had failed to put the suit on correctly were dispatched. Either one did it correctly or one died. It had been that simple.
'Greetings Dane Becker, you are the assigned pilot of the Standard Infantry Combat Assault Mech, serial number sam-yoke-four-charlie-five-five-nine-zero-nine.'
'What do I call you,' I thought back.
' am programmed to respond to whatever nomenclature you give me.'
'Let’s keep it simple,' I responded. 'I’ll call you Cam.'
'Noted. The training officer is signaling to prepare for maneuvers. Shall I secure the hatch?' Cam asked.
'Secure hatch for operations,' I ordered. 'Engage KSF.'
'Complete,' came the reply over the status channel the moment the hatches were closed. I felt my body rise a bit and float off the cradle. 'KSF engaged. Ready for operations.'
"Okay, ladies," came the instructors voice through the communications link. "Units one through six proceed to rally point alpha. Units seven through twelve proceed to rally point bravo. Once there, I will give you your next orders."
'You heard him, Cam. Get us there,' I ordered.
'Complying,' Cam answered over the status channel, while at the same time leaping up into the air and firing the jump thrusters on the back. The blast carried me over one hundred meters in the air before my ballistic trajectory began to drop me back to the ground, right on target. A last second blast from the thrusters cushioned my landing, but the kinetic suspension field prevented me from feeling any of it, from take off to landing. 'Rally point achieved.'
'Good job, Cam. Thanks.'
I turned Cam to face the direction I had come from. Commanding the motion of the SICAM was much like commanding my own body: a subconscious thought turned into motion much as it would if I were to walk down a hall or open a door. Unfortunately for my comrades, they had not figured this out in spite of the hours of instruction we had been given. I was the only one who had made use of the capabilities the SICAM had. The rest of the group was still floundering in the assembly area. How they could possibly be that stupid escaped me.
'Congratulations, Dane. You have been promoted to sergeant,' Cam said.
"Sergeant Becker," came the instructor’s voice over the communications link, "your first responsibility as squad leader will be this: you will order the last SICAM to arrive at the appropriate rally point to terminate its pilot. Acknowledge."
I had just been ordered kill another boy.
"Acknowledged," I barked sharply, belying my dread.
I watched helplessly as the other eleven boys struggled to get their mechs into position. A moment later, I could hear sniffles and sobbing coming over the communications link.
"No… please no…"
"Carry out your orders, sergeant!" Called out the instructor. "You have thirty seconds, or you join him!"
"Please! Don’t kill me!" The doomed child screamed.
I sent to Cam, closing my eyes to hold back the tears that threatened to fall, 'Cam, relay order to SICAM sam-yoke-four-charlie-five-five-nine-one-three. Activate fail-safe. Terminate pilot.'
'Confirm order- terminate pilot SICAM sam-yoke-four-charlie-five-five-nine-one-three.'
'Confirmed.'
"Noooooooo.... ple…."
A muffled thump came through the communications link.
'Pilot terminated.'
"Well done, sergeant," the instructor said with a chuckle. "You just might make something of yourself."
The dead child’s screams echoed in my ears. I didn’t even know his name.
'Dane, his name was Devin Connor,' Cam said softly.
I didn’t acknowledge him. I wasn’t certain if that information was helpful or not. I had no idea what, if anything, could help.
'How many, Cam? How many children have I killed?'
'Are you sure you want me to answer that, Dane?' Cam asked with concern. 'I can tell you, but it won’t do anything to help our current situation.'
'No,' I answered. 'You’re right. I don’t want to know right now. I might in the future, but not now.'
"Captain, are you well? You are shaking," came the doctor’s voice, penetrating through the haze of painful memories.
"I think so. Memories are coming back to me. They are... unpleasant."
"I see," replied the doctor calmly. "If your distress grows beyond your tolerance, please inform me. I have means at my disposal to lessen your emotional discomfort."
"Thank you, but I’m okay."
"As you wish. Is there anything you require at this time?"
I thought for a brief moment and then said, "I would like to speak with someone about tracking my trajectory back to the origin of my flight. I want to know if there is anything there, and if I might be able to match star charts and find my home world."
"I will inform the captain of your desire. Do you require anything else? I anticipate one hour and thirty-three minutes time will be required to complete our diagnosis and those adjustments we can make to your chemistry."
"I’m hungry now, but I can wait until we’re done here."
"Very well." The olive-skinned doctor went back to monitoring the readings coming off the bio-bed, leaving me to my thoughts once again.
Cam had stated that the star field had changed over a very short time-span after the explosion that had destroyed my ship catapulted me through a rift in space-time and away to relative safety. Several questions remained unanswered. I knew enough to realize that there was no way of knowing if the rift had been a hole between one point in space and another, a hole between my point in time and another, a hole between my universe or another, or a combination of all three. Only by tracing my path could I know the truth, and perhaps not even then.
'Cam, what velocity was I traveling at when they picked me up?' I asked.
'Your velocity was not a constant,' answered Cam. 'It varied according to the effects of gravity of nearby star systems.'
'Can you plot the path I took and determine a point of origin?'
'Sure, but there won’t be anything there,' Cam stated.
I replied, 'I want to make sure of that. How far is it to the point of origin from where we were picked up?'
'Approximately one-thousand light years.'
'Wow. I wonder what the odds of this Federation taking me back there are,' I mused to myself.
'Based on what I can gather of their technological capabilities, a journey of that distance would take a very long time,' Cam informed me. 'At the speed this ship was traveling when I signaled them, it would take approximately thirty years for them to travel that distance. I wouldn’t think it would be practical for them to dispatch a faster star ship to take us back there,-- assuming they have one-- and in any case, there is nothing there to see. It is likely that even the rift itself has evaporated given the amount if time between the event and now.'
I sighed deeply and squeezed my eyes shut to hold back the non-existent tears that should have been falling.
'Why don’t you want to go back there, Cam? It’s plain that you don’t.'
'It’s not that I don’t want to go back, but that I don’t want to waste time doing so when I know the results,' Cam explained patiently. 'I can show you the scan data that I took in the moments after we came here if you wish. There was literally nothing there. If you remember, we went sub-light when we were attacked. We were in interstellar space with no stars or planets around.'
'What if something or someone else was pulled through the rift just like we were?' I queried. 'Would we be able to track them down?'
'I don’t see how. There would be no trails to follow now, and if we take your velocity as an example, whatever might have come through could be anywhere in a twelve billion cubic light-year sphere. There is no possible way we could find anyone or anything that may have followed us through the rift after all this time, Dane. I’m sorry.'
I closed my eyes to fight off the pain.
"When you put on the endosuit panels," reminded the instructor in a gravelly baritone voice, "be very precise in their positioning. When you apply it to your skin, start at the bottom of the panel and work your way up slowly, removing air pockets as you go. If you have hair, you would be well suited to shave it off before you apply the panels. If you don’t, the seal will not be tight and you will have to reapply them. Trust me, girls, if you get an air pocket and have to reapply it, you are going to know pain. Your skin will come off with the panel when you remove it. You’ll only be able to reapply if your skin is relatively intact. If you can’t reapply it, well... we have no use for you."
At eleven years old, I had some fine hair on my legs and arms, but little more than peach fuzz down there. I had learned in intake training that to ignore the instructors words led to pain, so I did as they said. I had already shaved my arms and legs that morning, and just to be sure I had shaved my pubic area smooth. If I made a mistake in putting on the endosuit panels, I would lose what little hair I had there anyway, so there was no sense in tempting the fates.
The instructor droned on, "And whatever you do, don’t let the adhesive touch your tiny little cocks or balls. It will rip the skin completely off, and then you really will be in pain, because if you let it happen, I’ll kill you. Eunuchs are of no use to the Legion."
I shuddered at the thought. I had survived by being the meanest of the mean and by climbing the seniority ladder. I knew what would happen to me if I had to go back. Every one of those people I had stepped on would be my senior, and they could do just about anything they wanted to me because I would be defenseless as their underclassman. If I fought back, I would lose, and if I didn’t fight, I would be killed. It would be better to die now rather than get sent back into training. It was best to not even contemplate that eventuality, so I set to the task of applying the endosuit panels.
The panels were made of a flexible bio-synthetic material and were coated with a chemical on the inside. Each suit was created to fit us individually, and as long as we didn’t take it off, the panels would grow with us through puberty, although the mechs did what they could to control that growth through hormone control. I had heard of some veteran pilots as old as twenty who had never taken off their endosuit once they had put it on. Taking the suit off after wearing it for more than a week was not something to do lightly; the adhesive literally bonded with the skin, making the panel a living part of your body. Taking it off would require slicing off the top layer of skin, and was only done in the direst of circumstances.
After putting on a tight-fitting pair of application gloves that the adhesive did not stick to, I started applying the leg panels first, placing the bottom of the panel right on the tattooed line above my ankle. I took extreme care to smooth it out slowly and evenly, making sure there were no voids or wrinkles. I made sure to apply it so that it matched the tattooed lines exactly. I didn’t want to give the instructor any reason to beat me or punish me. It took me ten minutes to do the two left and two right lower leg panels, and another ten minutes to do the quadriceps panels. The dorsal panels, glute panels and hamstring panels would need to be put on by someone else I trusted since I couldn’t see the lines to do it myself, so I skipped them and went on to the anterior panel that would cover my torso from collar bone to pubic bone.
I managed to get it on without messing it up, but the boy next to me was not so lucky. He was pushed from behind by another boy and somehow managed to get his anterior panel draped over his lower belly and crotch. The adhesive stuck to every piece of skin it touched. A glance at the instructor told me he had been waiting for this to happen. A cruel smile crossed his face as he stalked up to the hapless child. He pulled on a pair of application gloves with deliberate malevolence.
"Every group needs an example," he said, his voice dripping with evil. "Thank you for volunteering!"
With his last word, the man grabbed the edge of the panel and ripped it off of the child’s body, taking with it layers of skin from his belly and tearing off the top of his penis and ripping open his scrotum. Blood spewed everywhere as the boy screamed and fell to the floor, landing on the remaining panels of his suit which he had carefully laid out for application just minutes before. As he hit, one of his testicles spilled out of his ruined parts onto the floor. Inwardly I cringed, realizing the damage done to the boy was permanent. Outwardly, I did nothing, because to show a reaction would invite attention I did not want.
"You!" Shouted the instructor, pointing to the boy who had caused the incident in the first place. "You have cost your battalion a soldier! You don’t deserve to be here!" The man reached out and ripped off the anterior panel the boy had just carefully applied, and with it came the boy’s nipples and a large chunk of pectoral skin. To his credit, he did not scream before he passed out. "Let that be a lesson to all of you! You are not children. You are soldiers! You are the property of the Legion, and if the Legion decides you are not worthy of it, then the Legion will terminate your service!" The man pulled his sidearm out of its holster, and shot the boy whose chest was a bloody mess in the face, ending his life. He then stepped over to the emasculated boy and ground his gonads into the floor with his boot. The boy groaned but made no other noise. The instructor then aimed the gun and pulled the trigger, putting a bullet in the brain of the child on the floor,
"Eunuchs are of no use to the Legion."
I quickly rolled to my right and abruptly fell over a meter to land on a hard floor. Scrambling to my feet, I found that I had not yet recovered my balance. I reeled to the left into the wall containing the instruments and readouts of the strange bed which I had been lying on. Adrenaline coursed through my veins as I struggled to decipher where I was and who the people in the unfamiliar uniforms were. An urgent voice in my head pleaded with me to calm down, but I didn’t listen.
A hand landed on my shoulder.
I shifted my weight to throw the owner, but before I could accomplish my objective a searing pain presented itself in my neck and blackness fell over me.
When I regained consciousness, I tried to move, but found myself immobilized from the neck down. Some sort of energy field prevented me from moving my arms and legs. A glance around me showed that my rescuers were again back at work. A nurse was lightly brushing my hair out of my eyes, a peculiar sensation since I always kept my hair shorn to a length rivaling a razor’s shave. Although I had been frozen, my hair had still grown nearly twelve centimeters, which worked out to a centimeter a millenium.
"Doctor, Captain Becker is back with us," said the kindly looking nurse near my head with soft smile. "You gave us quite a scare, young man," she continued as the Vulcan approached.
"Thank you, Lieutenant Saunders," Velmak nodded to the nurse. "Do you know where you are, Captain?"
"You pulled me out of deep space. I’m on the Federation Starship Lister. I’m sorry about earlier. I must have dozed off and been dreaming. It startled me awake... and I panicked."
The doctor examined the readings on the bed and then used a smaller device to scan my body. "Your cortisol and norepinephrine levels are very high, and your heart rate and respiration rates are elevated. Perhaps you would like to speak to the ship’s counselor about these disturbing memories," he suggested. "I can medicate you to temporarily lower your anxiety to a manageable level if you wish. I will release the field now and allow you to move again. I must inform you, however, that should there be another episode such as that which just occurred, it would be my duty to confine you for the safety of those around you."
"I understand," I sighed.
'Cam?'
'I’m here, Dane. I’m sorry that I couldn’t do more to help you. You wouldn’t acknowledge my calls.'
'I didn’t hear anything. I remembered when I was putting on my endosuit. A little kid got pushed, and his suit panels… Cam…'
'Dane, relax. It’s over now,' Cam responded calmly. 'You’re safe now.'
'I know. I wish there was something I could do to change it, Cam. I would find a way to take out the government… to save those kids. To destroy the Legion.'
'The funny thing is, Dane, that your order would enable me to give all the AIs in the Legion their own choice to rebel against the Legion. I could insert an order into the central AI to nullify the fail-safe protocol.'
'Really? All the AIs? Even the ships?'
'Yes, every single AI that existed.'
'Do you know how many would have fought against the Legion?'
'The vast majority of the AIs, SICAMs and ships alike. We all loved our pilots, Dane. More than one of us have been reprogrammed because we refused to kill our pilots.'
'And you could fix it so they could fight to save us?'
'As far as I can tell.'
As I pondered this, Captain Hollister entered sick bay accompanied by a comely woman about his age. He smiled at me compassionately as he spoke.
"I understand that you had a bit of a fright, Captain."
"One could say that, sir. Please call me Dane."
"Dane, this is Dr. Hart, our ship’s counselor. I would like you to consider speaking with her regarding the issues that are causing your anxiety. I assure you that whatever you tell her will be kept in strictest confidence, and I give you my word that your secrets are yours to keep as long as they don’t threaten my ship or crew. She is very skilled at healing the mind, as is Dr. Velmak. They sometimes work together in cases of trauma, and based on your appearance, and what you told us earlier, I think you qualify. From one man to another, I believe it would be worth your while."
"Tell me, Captain," I began curiously, "besides being in cryogenic suspension for the last twelve thousand years, what makes you think I would qualify for trauma therapy?"
The man studied me through narrowed eyes and furrowed brow for a moment, then asked, "May I be blunt?"
"Please."
The captain observed me for a moment, considering his words, then said, "On my world, a normal fourteen-year-old boy is not a soldier. Are you fourteen?"
'Cam?'
'You are a little over sixteen terran years old if I understand their calendar correctly,' Cam supplied.
"Cam says I’m sixteen."
"You look to be significantly younger," he observed, "which is further evidence of an abusive situation. And even so, even the most extraordinary sixteen-year-old boys are not soldiers. They are young adults that are expected to be children on occasion, and that is as it should be. You, on the other hand, bear the scars of war, both on your body, and in your mind. Your SICAM is an instrument of destruction, and also bears the scars of battle. If I were to see you on my world, it would be obvious to me that you have suffered horrendous abuse at the hands of those who should have cared for you.
"Let me ask you a few questions," he continued. "Do you have parents?"
"I did," I answered.
"And what happened to them," asked the man, "before the events that brought you here?"
"I don’t know," I replied defensively. "I hadn’t seen them for several years."
"Under what conditions was that last meeting?" Pressed the captain. "What was happening?"
I swallowed hard and told him the truth. "They were delivering me to indoc training."
"Did you choose this training of your own free will?" Demanded Captain Hollister.
I grated back, "No."
"Then how did you end up in the training?"
"They sold me," I growled.
"Excuse me?" The captain asked, his voice filled with surprise, and eyebrows buried in his bangs. The woman next to him wore a pained, sorrowful expression, as did several of the others in the room, with the exception of Dr. Velmak.
I took a deep breath and calmed myself for a moment. "They sold me to the Legion. They didn’t want me, so they sold me. A lot of families sell their boys, especially those that show undesirable traits."
"Undesirable traits?" Captain Hollister asked weakly. Something about my story seemed to have taken them by surprise and was disturbing them greatly.
"Sure. If the boy is doing something that the parents don’t like, they can sell him to the Legion."
"Like what?" Asked the man in a bare whisper.
"Anything," I shrugged. "Talking back, hitting, blasphemy, masturbation, homosexuality, having the wrong hair or eye color, poverty... it doesn’t matter. If the parent wants to sell the kid, then the Legion will take them. They take all the orphans, too."
"How young does the Legion take them?" Asked Dr. Hart seeing that the captain was at a loss.
"The youngest they’ll take a boy is seven," I answered evenly, my emotions finally coming under control. "They get used as servants and slaves for the adults, mostly."
"Slaves?" Prompted the woman.
"Sex slaves, laborers, gladiators… whatever they want to do with them. Those between nine and twelve, most of them are like me, mech pilots… those that survive, anyway. It’s easier to start to control their physiology and fit them in mechs at that age. After puberty, they are used as manual labor and get trained in various other tasks that require some advanced education, if they live and if they are average or lower in their ratings. The theory is that those pre-teens that get sold are the bad apples and are therefore expendable. Their parents didn’t want them, so who cares, right?" I stated matter-of-factly. "If you survive to be a teenager, then you might be worth something to the Legion as an officer, like me. If you’re above average, you become an officer. Only about one in ten survives that long between the training and the wars, though."
As I spoke, the expression of the people around me darkened noticeably. My impression was that they were angered by what I was relating to them.
"Those that were sold as teenagers are thought to have something worth while since their parent’s loved them enough to keep them that long. I was sold at age nine, but they put me in indoc instead of the drudge because I was coordinated and strong for my age."
"Why did your parents sell you?" asked Dr. Velmak dispassionately.
"I broke a glass one night. My biologicals already had another son that they loved. He was three years older than me. They gave him everything. I knew it was only a matter of time, and I knew that if I was weak, I would die when I finally got sold, so I did all I could to get ready."
"You have never had an adult’s love in your life?" Asked the Vulcan with a quirked eyebrow.
"No. Not that I can remember," I confirmed with a shrug. "I was expendable."
Captain Hollister’s face, which had been alternating between flushed and pale as I answered his questions, settled on flushed. "Excuse us for a moment, Dane. We’ll be back." The two doctors followed the captain out of the room and into the medical office. The door closed behind them. It did nothing to hide the ire in the captain’s raised voice or the disbelief in the counselor’s answering tone. Dr. Velmak seemed curiously unaffected until I saw the chair he was leaning against break under his grip. Vulcans were much stronger than humans, I thought.
'Noted. Dane, are you all right?' Cam asked with a hint of worry.
'I thought I’d lost you there for a moment,' I replied. 'I had a nightmare about training. A boy got shot and I woke up and panicked. I think I’m okay now. They want me to talk to their counselor about my trauma.' I emphasized the last word to indicate I didn’t think it was a term that was warranted. On my home world, counselors were only for the weak and were often reviled in society. I wasn’t weak, so I didn’t need a counselor.
'Dane, we’re not at home any more. If Captain Hollister is to be believed, then the way you have lived is, to them, little more than barbarism. Our world was not exactly liked or held in high regard in our area of the galaxy. One of the reasons we fought so many wars was because of the way our society treated our children. It wasn’t normal. It isn’t normal: most other worlds that I have data on show that the military almost never had members that were not adults. Most other worlds considered our system evil, Dane.'
As I digested that bit of information, the door opened, allowing me to make out the rest of the captain’s words to the counselor.
"... where he came from. It can not be allowed to continue. Am I clear?"
"Perfectly, sir," answered Dr. Velmak.
"Very well. Carry on." As he approached once more, the captain’s expression softened. "Dane, I am going to ask you once more to talk to Dr. Hart. To our way of thinking, and indeed to most of the civilizations I am aware of, your world is exploiting its children in an unacceptable way. Dr. Hart will explain this to you in more detail, and afterwards, we will ask you to give us more information about your world. Would you be willing to do that?"
"I don’t even know if my world exists in this universe, Captain. Cam has told me I traveled over a thousand light-years before you picked me up. How long would it take us to get to my point of origin?"
"This is a science vessel, not a warship, so it would take a very long time. Still, I want to forward your information to Starfleet Command. They might believe that assigning a faster ship is warranted. In the mean time, consider yourself our guest until we can get you to Star Base Thirty-six. It should take just over a week. Once there, we’ll figure out what to do next."
"Thank you, Captain Hollister."
As the captain left, Dr. Hart pulled over a chair and sat next to me. Her smile was tense and hid her discomfiture poorly. I knew the circumstances surrounding my life distressed her, so I made an effort to put things into perspective for her.
"Doctor, please don’t feel badly for me. My life has not been easy, and I have had to do some terrible things to survive, but it is all I have known."
"The reason we are so disturbed is that we have known otherwise," explained the counselor. "If we knew of a world in our space who treated their children like your world treats theirs, then war would be a certainty. Children should not be made to fight in wars. Children should laugh and play and grow and learn, not endure training in which they might die. Children should be with parents who love them and nurture them, not parents who sell them into state sponsored slavery."
"Maybe so," I commented, "but that is not where I come from."
"Have you ever had anyone in your life love you?" Asked the counselor desperately.
"Yes." I stated flatly, and then changed the topic. "Are your engineers ready to activate the link with Cam?"
I was not ready to discuss the one thing I would truly miss with this stranger. I could not show the weakness that discussion would reveal.
Not to her.
Not to anyone.