The Captain's Heart CH 106

Gralgiran watched the Earther step out of the Psychologist’s office and didn’t entirely recognize the male. The furtive wariness was gone,

Gralgiran watched the Earther step out of the Psychologist’s office and didn’t entirely recognize the male. The furtive wariness was gone, or at least not at the surface. It wasn’t entirely calm he was seeing, but there was a sense Bob the Soldier now knew the ground he walked on, the smells in the air, and the sounds among the trees.

She had contacted him, and asked that he be present.

“Captain,” she greeted him. “Bob has something to tell you.”

“I’m leaving,” Bob the Soldier stated.

Gralgiran didn’t look to the Psychologist. If she’d intended to have an input here, she would have warned him.

“Is that wise? The Psychologist can’t have resolved everything with you.”

The male snorted. “Oh, I doubt she could fix me if she spent a lifetime trying. I don’t think I ever was quite right in the head to start with. I wouldn’t have sat down in that first machine if I’d been. But while I’m not entirely sure of who I was, these last days of therapy helped put enough things in place that I have a sense of who I am. And I’m someone who’d rather be on my wreck if at all possible, with my sensors, listening to what old Earth has to say. That world was really interesting.”

Now he looked at the Psychologist. The male had just given a diagnosis on himself. He wouldn’t accept it without her opinion.

“I would prefer it if Bob stayed,” she said. “While he might be right that what’s been done to him can’t be entirely undone, continuing to work on it would lead to something more stable. But, he has taken to the exercises I have taught him, more than you Heart. Having to work against multiple programmings has given Bob a mental adaptability that is well suited to mental training. I don’t believe he will be a threat to anyone who shows up unexpectedly to his home.”

“Oh, don’t bet on that,” the Earther said, smiling. “I fully intend to defend myself if some stranger shows up without announcing himself.”

“But now, you will do so fully cognizant of the decision you are making, instead of because you are giving into an intermittent paranoid delusion,” she replied.

“Are you sure you want to go back?” he asked. “The state of your…home is…less than ideal. The first team I sent to gather the other machines detected something happening with the power. I sent my Engineer to look into it, and he has yet to return.”

“Yeah, the power’s always been acting up. But it alway settles down if I leave it alone.” He headed for the door, and Gralgiran had to follow if he wanted to continue talking. Continue trying to convince him to rejoin some form of society.

Outside of Counseling, the Earther froze as a pair of Kelsirian also stopped and stared at him. They noticed Gralgiran and resumed walking.

Instead of bolting, Bob the Soldier took breaths while closing and opening his hands. After twenty, he looked left and right.

“Okay, so how do I get off this ship?”

They weren’t so close to the hangar that he wouldn’t have the time to have him see reason.

He headed in that direction. “The Federation can offer you something better. And there are other Earthers within it. I think Tommy the Earther would even want to help you integrate within that community.”

“Who?”

“Tommy the Earther. He is part of Spreading Branch. He is the one you sent the coordinates to.”

“Didn’t know he had a name. They were always just voices from the void, sort of safe because they weren’t ‘real’ if you understand what I mean. Like my signals from old Earth, but more recent.”

“Then why did you send them information? About what Jeremy had been subjected to? The coordinates where I could find you?”

The Earther stopped and Gralgiran did the same.

“Look, you get that just because my head’s screwed on a little straighter. That doesn’t mean I can entirely make sense of how I was thinking before, right?”

Gralgiran had to guess at some of what Bob the Soldier meant, as the meaning for many of those words didn’t match the context they were said in. But it was relating to his state of mind. So he nodded.

“Okay, so the best I can tell you is that when they talked about you two, they were telling me a story. A story that pulled at my heartstrings. And because of that, I did stuff. When that story involved Jeremy being tortured, it reminded me of what I’d gone through and I share that with them. Maybe I wanted to let them know it wasn’t just a story, I don’t know. That there had been people who suffered that way for real. Maybe on some level, I did think you two were real and needed help. I really don’t know. Same with giving them the coordinates. They said you wanted my help, and I wanted to give it. If you’re going to force me to tell you why, I wouldn’t trust whatever story I end up telling you because I don’t—why are you smiling? That is a smile, right?”

“You have told why this happened.”

“I don’t think I did. Why did this happen?”

His smile broadened. “Someone Meddled.”

*

The hangar was chaotic with the arrival of a shuttle. “It’s going to be a few minutes before they disembark,” he told the Earther. “After that, they need to make sure it’s space worthy, and they’ll return you there with the hunters who are still…”

The sandy furred male fought the hand that tried to help him down the shuttle’s ramp. His friend’s fur was a mess, and when he looked in his direction, he looked exhausted. Hadn’t he slept at all there?

That was burned away by anger as Alix stormed in his direction. “You,” he snarled, “Gralgiran sel Helrarvnir, if you ever tell me to get of this ship to go look over some Earther reactor, I promise you, on both your namesakes, that I am dragging you there with me and shoving you on that little space those people call a containment chamber. Am I clear?”

He only now noticed the Earther and faced him. “And you,” he said in Earther, “just what the fuck did you think you were doing with that thing? I’ve seen failed builds that weren’t on the verge of failing as explosively as that was one. Don’t you know anything about how reactor maintenance goes?”

“Whoa there, buddy,” Bob the Soldier said, his tone hard enough Gralgiran readied to break up the fight. “First off, how about you calm down? Second, I know nothing about reactors, other than you don’t fix those with kinetic maintenance.”

Uncertainly stole some of Alix’s anger. “What kind of maintenance?”

“Kinetic, you know, kicking and hitting something until with finally works? I know better than to do that with something that’s got anti-matter in it.”

“That is…nothing gets fixed by hitting it.”

“Really? Worked with just about everything I have.”

More confusion. Then his friend’s face hardened. “As for that reactor of yours, it—”

“Not mine.”

“What?”

“Not my reactor. I mean, unless you consider the whole wreck mine, then yeah, it’s mine, but I’m not the one who put it there. That would be which every shipyard crew did that when the ship was put together. Don’t ask me who, I have no idea.”

Alix closed his muzzle. “You didn’t maintain it?”

“Shut everything I could to maximize its lifespan, since it isn’t like I was getting a new shipment of anti-matter anytime soon, and when the power acted up, I shut more stuff down until it settled, cause you know, I figured less stress on the thing was better for it.”

Alix’s ears plastered themselves to his skull. “You must please Xeniila Haran more than anyone’s ever done, if that’s all you did and you are still alive.”

“What does that mean, Alix?”

“Oh, don’t you use my short name right now, Gralgiran sel Helrarvnir. I am far too pissed at you. I just spent almost three days working on that thing, and I swear Gezbiliam was there, laughing at me the entire time, because keeping it from blowing up took her running her hands through my mind. But it’s shut down now. So we’re all safe. And since I was doing that for three days, do not talk to me for the next three. I’m off to wash, then get friends over to make me forget what I’ve been through.”

“How do I turn it back on?” Bob the Soldier asked. “I kind of live there.”

“You don’t,” Alix replied. “And if you plan on trying, wait until we’re well away from here. I don’t want to be caught in that explosion. There’s probably enough power in the reserves to last you a few weeks. We’ll be far enough by then.” Then he was storming away, the mechanics hurrying out of his way.

Bob the Soldier chuckled. “Well, looks like I’m staying, after all.”

“You are more accepting of the situation than I expected.”

He shrugged. “Something being a soldier taught me is that you can make all the plans you want, but in the end you better learn to work with what life throws at you, because it doesn’t give a shit about those plans.” He sighed. “I do have a request. I have a lot of stuff there I’d rather not lose.”

*

Gralgiran hadn’t thought it was possible for a room to be even smaller than those he’d stepped in on his previous visit on Bob the Soldier’s old ship, but he had to crouch in this one.

“Didn’t have the knowhow to move the server bank out of where they’d been built,” the Earther said, on his stomach with tools, and disassembling a panel.

Gralgiran was regretting deciding to accompany him. He’d told himself it was to step off the ship for a time, see another species’ aesthetics, maybe learn something new about Earthers this way. But a part of him had been concerned Bob the Soldier might do something…unwise. Like change his mind and attempt to restart the reactor. When he was allowed to speak with Alix again, he’d ask why he’d left the anti-matter in if there was a risk the reactor could be restarted.

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to transfer the data to your tablet?”

“Wouldn’t work. Nothing on this ship is broadcast. I mean, every ship I served on before this one was pretty strick about…. Huh. Didn’t remember I’d served on another ship before this. But yeah, on this one, they were paranoid about information. Everything’s hard-wired and getting access to something not on the public network was a pain. Although, now that I think about it. With the experiments they were running on us, makes sense they didn’t want anything easily accessible.”

“I don’t know if there’s anything on the Bane that will be compatible with the technology.”

“That’s okay. I have a system that takes them among what your crew’s taking back.” He threw the cover aside. “I didn’t do this before because the sensors feed into this, and I don’t know how to redirect those to a different system, so I come here to listen to the feed.” He motioned to a space far too small to be tolerable, and in it was what could be a bed with something he thought would go over the Earther’s head to cover his ears. “I’d transfer some of the songs to that so I could listen while I did work elsewhere, but the compression’s crap. If I’m going to be among others, I want the raw data in case I can find someone who knows how to build me a proper system so I can take what’s on there, and turn it into a format I can share with people.”

“I’ll let you work.”

It was obvious the Earther had accepted he was moving off this wreck, so he didn’t need supervision.

And Gralgiran couldn’t shake the sense the room was getting smaller. He wanted space.

He instructed a hunter to check on the Earther, then returned to the shuttle to wait for it to take him back to the Bane.

*

Gralgiran rushed to medical. The Doctor had contacted him to inform him three of his hunters were incapacitated, and that wasn’t something that could wait. There were no innocent reasons this could happen on his ship.

Three of the patients lay on beds, their arms connected to a blood cleaner. He had been attached to enough of them while he was on the frontline. Nearly each time he returned from a battle, he’d needed to have his blood cleaned.

He confirmed with a medic that the Doctor was he her office and not dealing with a situation, then went to it.

The office carried over the air of sterility from the precious room. Unlike the Psychologist, the Doctor had done nothing to make the room seem more than the office it was.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Poisoning.”

That surprised him enough, it took him longer to process than it should. “How?”

“Through something they brought back from that Earther wreck.”

“Is there a danger others have been poisoned? If someone else came in contact with it, or if it can pass from one person to—”

“No, I’m sorry, Captain. I didn’t express myself properly. They weren’t poisoned from bringing something over, but by something they brought over.” She motioned to the chair. “I had a talk with the Earther, and these three hunters did a lot of the work helping him bring back items that were meaningful to him. Now that we’re underway, he offered to celebrate with them by drinking something he made called Beer.”

“It’s an Earther drink.” Gralgiran searched his memory for the information that was attached to the word. “Something they drink socially. Leads to intoxication. Like wine does with us.”

She snorted. “And then some. But it’s one of the ingredient that goes into making it that is the problem. I was fortunate that the Earther made the drink himself, so had the ingredients that go into making them. Analyzing them and comparing that to what I found in the hunter’s blood, I traced it back to something the Earther calls Hops. The compound is similar to that found in Horsmirano extract, only much more potent. It exacerbated the intoxicating effect until they were incapacitated, which is when the Earther contacted hunters and they were brought here.”

“He waited that long?”

“It seems that he didn’t mind the way the three were treating him while intoxicated.”

“Two of them are males.”

She shrugged. “He was embarrassed when he told me, if I read the reddening of his face correctly, but it felt more like I’d asked him to describe his last time in a toilet than he hadn’t wanted what they were in the process of making happen to happen.”

His ears folded back, the memory of having to tell the family medic how he’d felt going to the toilet because he’d been sick, surfacing unbidden. He couldn’t think of many times that he’d been so embarrassed.

“So he didn’t know this would happen?”

She shook her head. “The hops are there as part of flavoring the drink. Considering his isolation, and the fact I doubt information on our physiognomy is freely circulated among Earthers, he had no way to know their behavior was anomalous. But, if I may, the drink should be destroyed. Even if he doesn’t intend to share it, its presence represents a risk I don’t think is reasonable.”

“I’ll go talk with him.” While he could send a hunter to carry the instructions, he felt he owed Bob the Soldier the courtesy of conveying it himself and reassuring him this wouldn’t be held against him.

He just had to hope the male would understand why the drink needed to be destroyed.

Outline section 

At least that is what the doctor told him. Gral dedicated it to memory, as this is one of the weapons of choice of the enemy of his heart, but actually understanding all that will take time.

Alix, meanwhile, says the device might be the closest to evil she’s run across. It’s sloppy, held together by twine, and that’s after you consider the improvised casing Bob threw on it to keep it from being damaged while in transit. In fact if anything his work was master craftsmanship compared to the construction of the actual device itself. If this was the work of the core taourian government, then they intentionally did a shoddy job just to avoid blame. Criminal.

...oh, yes, and the fact it was designed to rape mines. That too.

Eventually the decision is reached that the device, while providing some insight, isn’t a tool to cure Jeremy. Not unless they study it enough to reprogram it, and the only humans to test it on are Bob and Jeremy. Both have gone through enough.

Incorporate some of this information

When asked, Thuruk will explain the informant they picked up is a deserter from they human military. He’s been spending his time in deep space “harvesting” old broadcast signals from Earth, reconstructing their media from before the propaganda when out of control. He has sixteen satellites strewn across a five lightyear box of space, all pointed to the Sol system and waiting for when Earth would be on this side of the sun. This particular position is currently receiving broadcast from [insert number here] years ago, but he’s been at this for years so he has built up a lot of data. When he receives his cut from Xenial on the distribution of these recordings, he’ll be able to set himself up anywhere in the Federation with at least modest comfort. And that is ignoring the data disks.

Which of course raises the next question from Jeremy, what data discs?

All that done with, there is some light levity of why three of the hunters assigned to transport Bob’s position to a cargohold are laid up sick in the other room. The answer: hops. It’s a human plan, mostly used to make an alcoholic beverage they call alcoholic beverage called beer. Bob had a few planters of the stuff he’d use to make some homebrew.

This panic’s Gral slightly. This hops stuff is so poisonous to kelsirian’s just transporting made them bedridden? The answer, no. Consuming almost half of Bob’s supply of beer, with his permission, put them under. Well, they say permission, but they don’t think either them or Bob expected them to go that far. It’s just that human alcohol is much more... well alcoholic than kelsirian. So between that and the early poisoning symptoms, they lost control fast.

Gral sighs. Sometimes it really does feel like running a ship is running a Learning Center. Worse though, he’d told Bob that they’d take care of the plants until he got settled somewhere in the Federation and just ship him some rooted starters; Gral was hoping having some human produce on ship would be a good present to Jeremy. The tea in particular was described as a poor man’s coffee, so it would hopefully keep Jeremy fueled if Xenial failed to get a regular supply of coffee. If the hops are poisonous to the crew, though, it has to go... along with the beer.

Of course, this raises the question if they are just going to toss the beer.

Addition 

The reactor on the wreck was unstable, it’s why Alix needed to deal with it. It’s not shut down and the wreck isn’t abitable. So Bob needs to move, which is why he’s on the ship, along with all his stuff.

a lot of the outline had to be tossed around and out in this chapter. an Bob's 'personality' got more defined. pleased with Alix's anger and his reaction to Bob's 'maintenance' of the reactor, or rather, lack thereof.