Recombinant by Lisa Silverthorne

SPSFC

What if you discover your life doesn't belong to you? Forced to give up your dreams and live a life you never chose. Because you and your DNA belong to the government. What if the government stole your memories? Parsed out your family and friends? How would it feel to live life in the third person? Private Peter Mitchell is one of thousands of recycled, cloned soldiers, holding the front lines of a deep space war. To save a world he's never seen before. His survival mechanism is a memory replacement chip (MRC) that parses out the horrors of war and anything hindering him from killing the enemy. Peter isn't like the other recombinants. He doesn't want to fight or kill. He wants to live. Marred by deep sensitivity and self-awareness, he is failing his training sims and endangering his entire unit. One recombinant and a training sergeant try to keep him from washing out, including the sergeant's shuttle pilot kid sister who falls for Mitchell. But the Antarans are pushing closer to home system. Because something is horribly wrong with Earth's combat tech-and its recombinant soldiers. Hardware Reclamation Specialist, Dr. Jeannette Kingston discovers a catastrophic failure in the MRCs affecting entire batches of recombinants. She's faced with a life-or-death decision: report the defect that will destroy hundreds of recombinants, including Private Mitchell, or say nothing and risk losing the war. Now, Dr. Kingston must choose between a life worth saving and the fate of her home world.

Adult • Science Fiction