“Ansel, cut to sub-light. I don’t want to enter this system glowing in hyperplasma.”

 

“Aye, Captain Kylak. Engaging roller coaster mode in three, two, one.”

 

“You’re a goof,” I told my AI as the ship bucked through the barrier between FTL travel and normal space.

 

“If I’m so funny, why aren’t you smiling?”

 

“We’re looking for my former body. It’s not really the day for it.”

 

The stars moved from bright streaks to points of light as we entered normal space. “Scanning,” Ansel said. “I do not see your predecessor.”

 

“It may not have survived the explosion. And keep an eye out for Kith ships.” I rubbed at my forehead, still feeling my previous death. “I don’t need a repeat performance this soon.”

 

I could remember the death with perfect clarity. My predecessor, as we clones called our former bodies, was being pursued by eight Kith raiding ships and I had lost shields. As my view screen filled with missiles, Ansel and I agreed to initiate Fatal Transfer. We both transmitted all our knowledge back to the Empire, and I disconnected my neural link with a yank. The hard disconnection overloaded my implants, frying every circuit of my brain.

The next thing I knew I was sitting up in a clone vat on Sentius III with med bots attending me; and Ansel was installing in a new ship. It was a cleaner and far less painful death than falling into Kith hands. The empire had learned that the hard way.

 

“I’ve found you.” Ansel directed our ship toward my predecessor. “You clones are so driven to recover your former bodies. Why?”

 

I shrugged my ignorance. I honestly didn’t know. We just were.

 

“Is it spiritual? As a clone, you are functionally immortal. But I’ve transported monks who would argue that at death your soul dies and each clone wakes with a new one.”

 

“I’m the same person, Ansel.”

 

“Your predecessor believed in The Three Deities. You’ve yet to go to Temple.”

 

I ignored the knot in my stomach as I monitored the local system.

 

“Kith barges approaching,” Ansel announced. “There is not enough time to retrieve your predecessor and leave the system undetected. Instructions?”

 

“The third moon of the sixth planet shows multiple unmanned satellites. We can slip into orbit there and look like another piece of space junk."

 

“I will try not to take that personally.”

 

I smiled at this, allowing a bit of normality back into my life. I parked in orbit around a dull grey moon with small motes of civilization shining in the night. Ansel hacked into the systems of the moon’s inhabitants in a standard data gather. They called themselves Clee. A naturally curious people, full of faith in the goodness of the universe around them. If they knew who was poking around their star system, they might not be so optimistic.

 

Hiding and waiting gave me time to overthink Ansel’s innocent question. When I first became a pilot, I was so excited to be able to join with a ship and have a backup body. Then I woke up in a clone vat. And then a second. And then a third. Was I still Stella Kylak? Was I even still human? Or was I now just data housed in biomimetics?

 

“Captain? Clee has Ice XI. Massive deposits line the floors of their oceans.”

 

It should have been good news. It should have been great news. But my heart dropped. Clee was about to discover they were the most important moon around.

 

And they would get all the problems that came with that.

 

I jumped over to my chair and began wiring myself in.

“Transmit everything in hypercode to Admiral Umbede. Tell him I am putting this system under the protection of the Empire,” I said.

 

I plugged in my neurotransmitter and merged with my ship. As the sensors in my flight suit activated Ansel became an extension of me; all his data flooded every one of my senses. The cockpit disappeared into wide open space with multiple tactical overlays. I moved my toes and felt my thruster gimbals respond. My fingers commanded shields and weapons. I could smell the Ice XI powering my ship and hear the chattering of the Clee satellites. “Give me a course that will let me sneak up on those barges and take them out before they can send a signal.”

 

“Are we sure?”

 

Ansel’s voice wasn’t in my ears, but in the interlink between us. Our communication flowed at the speed of thought. I knew he could feel my irritation. I needed the Kith to pay a price as badly as I needed my predecessor. I needed it with everything I was.

 

“If we destroy those barges, they will come looking for them. They will find what we’ve found. Look at what the Kith do for scraps of Ice XI. Can you imagine what they’ll do for oceans of it?”

 

I rotated to look at Clee, turning off my tactical display. There it was, a backwater moon in a backwater system, it’s population oblivious to the realities around it. The Kith would have stopped at nothing to obtain that Ice XI. The sad truth was, the Empire wouldn’t either.

 

I powered back down. “We’ll wait here until the Kith are finished.”

 

“And Clee?”

 

“Modify the message to the Admiral to reflect our decision.” The empire would come in and… negotiate… for the Ice XI. Clee’s days of optimistic curiosity were numbered.

 

“Shall we gather your predecessor?”

 

If I left my predecessor there, in the wastes of the system, the illusion of the empire’s disinterest in Clee could be maintained a little longer. Ansel knew my decision as soon as I did.

 

“The Three Deities say that we all have a path we must follow. To stay here is hers. Let’s go home.”