“Vatueil? Captain Vatueil! I’m ordering you to reply! Vatueil; report status immediately!”
He was listening but not paying attention. He kept checking his weapons and systems each time the voice that called itself Major Q’naywa said something that made him feel bad or confused.
“Okay, we’re running out of time here and I sure as fuck am running out of patience.”
What also made him feel good was looking out through the big curved entrance to the place where he was. The place where he was, where the thing that he was in was, measured 123.3 × 61.6 × 20.5 metres and was open to vacuum through the big curved entrance which formed one of the short walls. It was cluttered with machinery and pieces of equipment that he did not recognise but which he had quickly decided were No Threat, just useful for cover if he needed it.
“We’re going to have to go in and do this the hard way.”
“Oh fuck.” (Different voice 5.)
“Beautiful. Perfect day for it.” (Different voice 6.)
“We’re going to fucking die.” (Genius.)
“Sir, can’t we wait for—?” (Different voice 2.)
“We’re not going to fucking die. We haven’t the time to wait for any other fucker. Control yourselves, all of you. We do this ourselves. Remember all that training? This is what it was for.”
“Wasn’t that much training, sir.” (Genius.)
“I’m not even in the right sort of unit. I’m supposed to be in something called an N-C-M-E. I don’t even know what that means, frankly.” (Different voice 4.)
“Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.” (Different voice 5.)
“Maneen? Shut up, son. All of you, shut up.”
“Sir.” (Different voice 5 = Maneen.)
“Gulton, that thing of yours delete this motherfucker?”
“Assuredly, sir. Thought you’d never ask, sir.” (Different voice 6 = Gulton.)
The Unknowns – Treat As Enemy he could hear talking were all on the outside of the Abandoned Space Factory. The first one who had come in through the big curved entrance to the place where he was must have been Xagao, the one who was now dead.
“Okay. We need a plan here. All of you; un-deploy back towards me until we’re LOS and we can use laser to talk without this piece of shit listening in.” (LOS meant Line Of Sight.)
Xagao had silhouetted himself against the bit of the big bright blue and white planet visible beyond the curved entrance. Vatueil had targeted the silhouetted figure within a millisecond of the initial Visual Field Anomalous Movement impulse but he hadn’t Readied To Fire until the figure, moving slowly, had swept his weapon in his direction. Then he had sent an Identification Friend/Foe burst towards the figure and simultaneously flicked it with a laser ranging pulse.
The figure had fired straight at him; small-calibre kinetic rounds. Approximately nine bullets had clanged into the Unidentified High-Solidity Object – Use As Cover he was hunkered down behind, two had hit his own Upper Weapon Nacelle 2 without significant damage and four or five flew overhead to hit the bulkhead behind him, producing more clangs he heard through his feet.
He had fired back a six-burst from his right upper Light Laser Rifle Unit, registering a direct hit on the weapon he had been targeted by and two more on the lower body of the figure, which mostly flipped backwards into cover, though one part of it, identifiable as a human armoured suit leg, had gone spinning away by itself, spraying fluid, somersaulting rapidly as it headed out towards the bright blue and white planet visible through the big curved entrance.
“Xagao get a TLF on the fucker?” (Different voice 3. TLF meant Target Location Fix.)
“Yeah. Post it when we get LOS.” (Different voice 2.)
He had felt good. Firing and hitting and removing a Threat made him feel good, and something about the spinning leg unit – the way it sailed away, its trajectory curving gradually as it went, before it eventually disappeared – made him feel good too.
“Hey, it ping Xagao fore it tanked him? Anybody know?” (Genius.)
“Hold on. Yup.” (Different voice 2.)
“Shut up and get back here. If I can hear you, so can it.”
“Sir.” (Different voice 2.)
“That’s good though. The pinging. We can use that.” (Genius.)
“IFFed him too.” (Different voice 2.)
“Really? Chirpy.” (Genius.)
He reviewed the brief engagement with Xagao and made two In-Deployment Tactical Environment Operating Behaviour Modification (Immediate Instigation) Memoranda: de-select automatic IFF challenge, de-select initial Laser Ranging Pulse.
Especially once a species or civilisation started swapping ideas and tips with its galactic peers, it became fairly easy to do this mind copying and pasting stuff. As a result, an individual – always one favoured in some way, either revered or just well-off (once the tech was safely past the developmental stage) might serially or even concurrently inhabit several or indeed many different bodies.