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.