Crisis Squadron

Part 1

The process was nearly complete.  Dr. Corvisson inspected the readings on the scanner above the patient. How would she react after being dead for 817 years?  Would the memories from the brain-scans hold, or would the new Zoe Bonnard be a psychotic mess?  More importantly, could she save the Planetary League?  Hope always dies last, and Dr. Corvisson had been living on hope alone for far too long.  It was time to take some action, while liberty and sanity still had a chance.

It was a desperate gamble, cloning an entire sentient being was a felony with a life sentence attached to it, but these were desperate times.  The Imperial invasion fleet was only weeks from Earth, and the bloody path it cut across the galaxy showed little cause for optimism.  At least the Purification Fleet was still stationed at New Eden by all signs. . . Those poor Edenites, they had the audacity to be themselves, and fire was their reward.  Corvisson's stomach turned at the thought of the charred remains of the station.  They weren't even part of the Planetary League!  If half the things he had heard about Aldebaran 2 were true. . .

His mind reached back to the history he had absorbed through the neural inductance educator as a child.  A shared history, embedded in identical memories in the minds of all who passed through a formal education, and he felt what he was certain so many of his compatriots did.  "If we could only have back some of the old heroism from the earlier days of the League.  We need the fierce bravery of the old explorers who faced the unknown and hostile wilds of the galaxy."  A leader like Zoe Bonnard might have the power to rekindle the faded spirits of a nation on the brink of collapse.

The end of cycle indicator for the memory implant came on, and Corvisson tended to his patient.  "Did you know that modifying a neural inductance educator in order to implant false memories is a felony?", he said to nobody in particular, as he gingerly plucked electrodes from Bonnard's scalp.

Presently, Ms. Bonnard was stirring.  No doubt, she was about to awaken, and Corvisson wanted his composure for the occasion, so he turned away for a moment, took a deep breath, and swallowed one of the sereni-stim pills he had promised himself he wouldn't take.  This batch was unusually strong, but they sure took the edge off.  Another felony, but hey, who's counting?  He would rather spend a thousand lifetimes in any Planetary League prison than ever be taken alive by the Empire.   

Slowly, her eyes opened.