The Siege of LX-925

by J.J. Mainor

  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.