The Captain's Heart CH 91

Gralgiran stormed into Counseling as the door to the Psychologist opened and she motioned a Kelsirian female out. “I’m sorry for cutting the

Gralgiran stormed into Counseling as the door to the Psychologist opened and she motioned a Kelsirian female out. “I’m sorry for cutting the session short. Tomorrow, we can spend longer talking.”

The female had stepped away by the time he reached the Psychologist.

“Captain.” She stepped aside, and he barged into her office. “Why don’t you come inside?”

He paced, barely able to contain his anger until she was on the other side of the desk. “How could you let this happen?” He threw his tablet at the desk, and she brought her hand down on it after it bounced.

She read the message Jeremy had sent him. She nodded and looked at him. “I think there’s confusion as to what you think my work is.”

He slammed both hands on the desk and snarled. “You’re supposed to help him!”

“That doesn’t mean keeping your Heart from having depressive episodes. If that is what you want, Medical has drugs that will ensure he never reaches that point. They will also ensure he never breaks out of what was done to him.”

He leaned forward. “Then what the fuck are you doing for him?”

She offered him the tablet back. “I’m here for him after, when he needs to talk through what happened. Untangle where the programing and his mind took him in that episode. To help him make sense of it, and when possible, arm him with techniques like the breathing exercises he mentioned.”

He glared at it. “They did this to him.”

“They didn’t program the depression episode. That came from his mind. His fears, he isn’t strong enough. That you won’t love him anymore because he didn’t simply beat this when he set his mind to it. Those are his, not the Earther’s programming.”

“If not for them, he wouldn’t be there.”

“True, but laying everything at their feet robs your Heart of the responsibility for how he responds to it. For working through what it does, and reinforcing himself. You’re hoping I’ll excised the programming and that Gezbiliam will come and resolve everything left behind.” She locked eyes with him. “That isn’t what I do. It isn’t how this works.”

He snatched the tablet. “So what? There’s no hope?”

She stared at him.

Then she laughed.

He stared at her. Had Gezbiliam pulled her into her bed for referring to her as she had?

She wiped at her eyes. “No hope? Really?”

Yes, it sounded like Gezbiliam was having her way with the Psychologist.

“Sit down, Captain.”

He did. If the god was around, it was best not to draw attention to himself by confronting her.

“I find it amusing,” she said, “that you aren’t seeing it.”

“Seeing what?” he asked cautiously.

She motioned to the tablet. He looked at it, then her again.

She chuckled. “Captain, in the middle of his episode, he reached out to you, not me. In spite of what the programming tells him, of how lacking hope he was in that instant, he fought against that and wrote to you, the person he’s supposed to be terrified of. I think that is impressive progress.”

Words wouldn’t come, no matter how hard he tried. Finally, he said the obvious. “But he didn’t plan on sending it to me.”

She nodded. “He had to find ways around the fear. Convincing himself this was an exercise was one of them. He went through the process needed to do that, to write to you. When only a few weeks ago, the idea you are on the ship could send him in a panic. Now, he can think around what he’d forced to feel and write this.”

He looked at the message, now seeing not the words of his depressed Heart, but of the strength needed to push through that to write them. “I wish I could reply to him.”

“I expect you can.”

“He specifically said not to reply to him.”

“Indeed.”

He looked at her expectantly.

She sighed. “Captain. You’re a hunter and an Alpha. Surely you can think of a way to reply to your Heart that also respects his wishes. And if you can’t, surely you have a beta more qualified than I to tell you how.”

    *

He went over what he wrote again. This would cause confusion, but it was the only way he could think of speaking to Jeremy without speaking to him. He’d field the civilians calls afterwards to clear up any misconceptions they’d gotten from it.

With a few claw clicks, he overrode the ship’s comm.

“This is your captain with a general update. Lodgings are still empty, an in need of being filled. I’ve been made aware of troubles behind us and ahead. Know that you are not alone through them. The ship’s infrastructure will support you, just ask. Instabilities are understood to happen and don’t represent a failure to prepare on any of you. If there is a need for space, you only need to send a request and it will be seen to. Remember all that breathing is important and that intrusions can be fought back. This is all. Rest well.”

Zorfiel would have word with him about this. About the vagueness. Possibly about making this a general broadcast, instead of one directed only to Jeremy’s apartment. But just like his Heart had had to convince himself he wasn’t going to send it to him to be able to write the letter. He needed to make it a general one to keep from making it personal and giving away who he was addressing.

He couldn’t roll back in his seat before his dedicated comm lit up, with the number of people waiting to speak to him going up.

    *

He had narrowed the list of suspect down to nine people.

There was a major flaw in his investigation, and he knew it, but without it, he had to suspect the entire civilian population of the ship, and that was too many people to have any chance to narrowing down who might be feeding the Earther broadcast information on Jeremy.

His flawed assumption was that anyone who had been on the ship when Jeremy became his Heart had formed a bond as they heard of their difficulties, heard of them overcoming them. The rescue, Jeremy becoming one of them.

Becoming family.

It was flawed in that it counted on people not betraying family. As the Ballad liked to point out, with the right cut of meat, anyone could be made to sell out those close to them.

But the issue of the bribe lent credence to his assumption. What could an Earther broadcast offer someone who’d been on the ship they couldn’t buy or print already?

So, he’d looked at who had boarded the ship after that.

Any stop led to people moving on and joining. A hunter ship, with a large part of the civilians attached to the hunters, saw lower numbers, but they still happened. Over three stops, seventeen civilians had left, nearly all of them along with the dead, to accompany them back home. Nine had joined.

His nine suspects.

He just had to narrow it down to one.

    *

The male seated across from Gralgiran wasn’t impressive. Nothing about him said that he could be bought, or that he had interests that an Earther broadcast station could fill that the ship couldn’t.

His nervousness couldn’t be attributed to any guilt. He didn’t know why he was here. But sitting across from the captain, in his office, would make even a veteran civilian nervous.

“You aren’t in whatever trouble you’re imagining,” he said, hoping to calm the male, but his eyes widened.

This was why he left the questioning of suspects to his betas trained in it.

But this wasn’t a suspect, and he hadn’t gone to his hunters to sniff him out. He’d gone to someone better in this specific situation.

He’d gone to the Quartermaster.

He hadn’t even had to play on the male’s friendship with Jeremy.

The easy agreement would come back to claw at him at some point. Gralgiran was certain of it.

But the Quartermaster had come through with more than the person responsible. He’d provided him with how he’d been paid.

He tapped the desk, and images appeared. Earther females in various poses. He’d gone over them to confirm it was all they were. He might lack the skills for covert ops, but as the alpha, he had access to the tools, so running the images and videos through the scanners in search of hidden information had been simple.

They found nothing. The images of Earther females were the bribe.

Most could have been taken from any of the Earther movies in the ship’s database, females standing, alone or in groups, some in poses and with expressions that would be alluring to an interested male, base on the reactions he’d seen in the romantic movies. And a few couldn’t be found on the ship. There had been nothing outright sexual in any of the movies. That had been confirmed when he’d discovered it had been illicitly acquired. The entire thing had been scanned for anything that could be problematic if the Federation found out the Bane had it.

While the sanctions would be minor for a ship like his, the Federation considered recordings of sex something reserved to the species engaging in it. There were no laws preventing people from engaging in inter-species sexual activities, but the distribution of such recordings was discouraged. As a species not within the Federation, such Earther media would get the person caught in trouble, and the ship’s captain holding some of the responsibility.

Some of the images and videos of females were definitely sexual.

The male’s muzzle worked, but no words came out.

“You aren’t in trouble,” he repeated. “I’m mildly annoyed that all it took for you to be willing to document my Heart’s difficulties for the Earthers was this, but you didn’t reveal anything sensitive to Kelser, and you didn’t intrude in Jeremy’s life.”

The man was part of Repair, which granted him nearly unrestricted access to the public areas of the ship. He was part of the pack that responded to the alarm when Jeremy burned his bread. Gralgiran had looked over the schedules and spoken to the Mechanic. The male had arranged to position himself in locations where he could listen in on conversations relating to his Heart.

If he didn’t plan on using him, Gralgiran would be angry.

“I…I’m not?”

He shook his head. “I’ll go further and protect you from reprisal for possession of Earther sexual recordings, on one condition.”

The inside of the male’s ears went pale before they folded back. “Wha…what condition?”

“You’re going to tell the Earther broadcast I want to speak with them.”

Outline section 

If Gral had to narrow down the most difficult part of the whole ordeal, it would likely be the vastness of his room without someone else there. Jeremy always commented on how vast the rooms felt on the ship, but it’s only after sharing one for such a long time that Gral has felt his own room was cavernous.

Gral was quick to run out of the human romances, but he was very surprised to discover there was an entire industry of kelsirian devoted to the genre. As a traditionalist, he was always more interested in reproduction of the classic epics, which actually gave him insight into the films as he noticed how they... borrowed plotlines from those classics. Gral would complain if he had someone to complain to, but instead he just sits enraptured.

###

Another day, another sweep of reports. Nothing really big. Only thing of note was the expected incoming broadcast of the human pirate radio. Gral was very interested in what they’d be saying about kidnapping during the trial, so he made sure to be on the bridge du/ring the expected hour of the broadcast.

...and then they mention Jeremy’s recovery has progressed to the point he’s back working amongst the kelsiriran’s in the engine room. Even Gral needs to check that information, and yes, Jeremy did start working in the engine room again... three days after they undocked with Multitude.

There are only a few ways Gral can think they could have gotten that information; Gral has something worse than a spy hiding amongst his crew. He has paparazzi.

    *

Three days later, Gral is in the interrogation room with the laborer. The kelsirian is in a physical labor job, so they are far from small, but they are also not a fighter. Too much “padding,” to be polite. There will be some formalities since this is a member of his crew he’s talking to, not an enemy, and then the question comes as to why they are here.

To which, Gral will play a message. A message sent by the kelsirian yesterday morning detailing the activities of Jeremy on the ship. Gral follows this up by detailing their daily activities and how they are constructed to put them in points of observation of Jeremy, including striking up a fling with one of the techs on Jeremy’s shift in engineering. Oh, and to cap it all off, the payment for this information, which is mostly pictures and videos of human women; most of those aren’t even voyeuristic... most of them.

The laborer will be ready to squeal by that point, and they are kinda desperate to not be told to stop since they have a need and not many ways to feed it with the deteriorating relationships between Earth and Kelsirian. Gral has no intention of asking the laborer to stop; in fact, with what he has planned his contact might send him a bonus.

Because that is what Gral wants. For the laborer to send his contact in the human pirate radio broadcast a message that Gral himself wants to talk to them.

Addition 

Gralgiran reads Jeremy’s message.

Gral listens to the broadcast, is taking an active interest in them. there is more details that help him narrow his suspect list.

some of this was used in previous chapters, the rest a consequence of previous chapters. and over all, more implied passage of time.

the Psychologist (she has a name, I swear) is a character I enjoy writing. all the way back in draft 0, she has a no nonsense way of dealing with Gralgiran and Jeremy not always reasonable expectations. I didn't know if she'd become friends with either of them in this draft, and now....I believe I know.