You have been training me all this time. I’ve been doing well, as you said. I’m ready for missions.
“You want to fulfill your obligations to us,” Control said.
I do.
“In order to regain your body.”
I would be lying if I said that wasn’t a big part of it, I thought. Which was also true as far as it went.
“I don’t have any information for you,” Control said. “You will get a mission when we decide the time is right. It is not the right time yet.”
I understand, I thought. I am just anxious.
“Don’t be,” Control said. “You will be busy soon enough.” And then it opened up a simulation in which I was fighting three Colonial Union frigates at the same time.
It was one I had done before, with some variation. The goal wasn’t to destroy all the frigates. The goal was to make them expend as much of their firepower on me as possible so that when three other ships skipped in to attack them, they wouldn’t have the defenses to survive.
Basically I was bait in the scenario.
It wasn’t the only scenario that I’d been bait for, recently.
Let’s just say I wasn’t loving the pattern of the simulations I was seeing.
* * *
The communications window on my captain’s screen, normally dead as the famous doornail, lit up. I put the feed inside of it onto the virtual bridge’s largest monitor.
On the feed, as advertised, was Secretary Ocampo.
“Mr. Daquin, are you there?” he asked. He was looking into his PDA camera, inside what looked like a stateroom even smaller than the one he had on the Chandler.
I am, I thought.
“Okay, good,” Ocampo said. “I only have an audio feed for you. They didn’t give me a video feed for some—” He stopped here abruptly. He had just realized that the reason he didn’t have a video feed was because there wasn’t a body for him to look at, just an exposed brain in a clear box.
But I had a video feed, so I could see a flush rising through Ocampo’s features. He had at least enough grace to be ashamed of himself for forgetting what he had gotten me into.
It’s all right, I thought. I just wanted to talk anyway. If that’s all right. If you have time.
“Today is a religious observance day for the Rraey who run this outpost,” Ocampo said. “So nothing’s going on today. It’s why I’m able to speak to you at all.”
Hooray for Rraey Christmas, I thought, to Ocampo.
He smiled at this. “So, what’s on your mind?” he asked. And then I got to see another flush rise through his face as he realized just how inappropriate that particular phrase might be to me. This time, at least, he didn’t try to run from it.
“Jesus, Rafe,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
It’s all right, I assured him.
“I’m not sure why you even wanted to speak to me,” Ocampo said. “If I were in your shoes—fuck.”
Okay, if I could laugh, I would definitely be laughing right now.
“I’m glad one of us would be,” Ocampo said. “My point is I don’t know why you want to speak to me. I assumed that given what has happened to you, you would never want to speak with me again. That you would be furious.”
I was furious, I admitted, which was 100 percent true. I can’t say I’m happy even now with the situation I’m in. You know what they did to me. To my body.
“Yes.”
That’s nothing to be happy about. But I remember what you said to me the last time I saw you. Do you remember?
“Not really,” Ocampo said. “I, uh.” He paused. “There was a lot going on that day,” he said.
You said that you had to ask where your loyalties were, to the Colonial Union or to humanity. You said there was a difference between the two.
“All right. Yes. I remember that now.”
I want to know what you meant by that, I thought to him. Because while neither you nor I can change what’s happened to me, maybe there’s something you can tell me that makes sense of it all. So I don’t think I’ve lost my body and my freedom for nothing.
Ocampo was quiet at this for a moment, and I was content to let him take his time.
“You understand there is a lot that I can’t tell you,” he said, finally. “That much of what I’m doing now is classified. That my colleagues could be listening in to this conversation so that it wouldn’t be safe to share anything confidential with you, and that even if they weren’t listening in that I wouldn’t share it anyway, because that’s the nature of things.”
I understand that, I thought. Secretary Ocampo, I know what my role is. “Mine is not to ask why, mine is to do or die.”
Ocampo blinked, and then smiled. “You’re quoting Tennyson to me,” he said.
Misquoting him, more likely, but yes. What I’m saying is that I’m not asking about the tactics and strategy, sir. I’m asking about the philosophy. Surely that’s something you can talk about.
“I can,” Ocampo said, and then, jokingly, “but how much time do you have?”