The Captain's Heart CH 104

Gralgiran sat at an unoccupied medical station, trying to focus on the information on his tablet. He’d tried to work, but when word reached

Gralgiran sat at an unoccupied medical station, trying to focus on the information on his tablet. He’d tried to work, but when word reached him the Psychologist had joined the Doctor while they looked over Bob, he’d had to come and find out why. Of course, he hadn’t learned anything. The room was locked and his authority ended on this side of it. So he’d sat and did what he could not to think about what had brought the Psychologist in.

The door opened, and she stepped out, looking exhausted. She had her hand up before he was standing.

“Don’t start with the questions,” she growled.

“I need to know—”

She glared. “Do you have any idea what it’s like dealing with a fractured mind? What was done to Jeremy Bradshaw is easier to deal with, because it was the only thing that was done, and you interrupted it. It’s an insistent voice hiding among his thought.” She pointed to the door. “That’s two different people fighting over which one of them is real.”

“And which one is?”

“Neither!” She forcefully calmed herself under the stare of the medics. “They are both creation of something external. I don’t know if there is anything left of who Bob was before the first time this was done to him, but what I heard was more constructs than person.”

“Can you help him?”

She closed her muzzle on the protest. “Let’s continue this outside so we don’t disturb the medics.” Outside, she didn’t make it to the first intersection before rounding on him. “What are you after, Captain? The information to save your Heart? The identity of those behind this technology? What?”

It said much of her state that she didn’t get the answer herself, but he still answered her as honestly as he knew how. He wasn’t as impartial as he’d want.

“If that information is there, all of it. But,” he cut her off. “He is a victim, not an aggressor. I don’t want that at his expense. So, can you help him? Can you get him back to who he was?”

She leaned against the wall, rubbing her temple. “I don’t know. A lot of who he is was incorporated into what was done to him. I’ll need more time with him to know if it can be untangled, or if what I’ll be doing is helping him learn how to manage the two aspects of who he is.”

Gralgiran nodded, satisfied.

“I can give you some information,” she continued. “Based on what he remembers, and read afterward. What was done to him was to make him a ‘better soldier;’ one who obeyed. Who followed orders and didn’t have to deal with remorse.”

“He said the soldiers revolted.”

“That happed after the latest and last process. He knows less about what this one was for, but I could see how that went against the previous treatments. Made him, and any who had undergone it, both aware they had been tampered with, and able to act against them. The reactions must have been based on some of the core personalities of those involved. Being soldiers, violence was the immediate reaction of enough they couldn’t be contained. Bob didn’t see much of that, but he survived to witness the end result and the crash.”

“Wasn’t he also a soldier? Why didn’t become violent?”

“Just like, while all hunters are taught to fight and will see the front lines, some of them will be more suited for other areas, such as investigation, information gathering, fabrication, teaching.”

“I understand. He received the same training, but his aptitudes lent themselves to him being less prone to violence.”

“Yes. I’ll do my best to help Bob while he’s here, and afterward it will be up to him to continue the work.”

“Does being a mentalist lead to you forming friendship easier?”

She stared at him.

“You’re already using his short name.”

She shook her head tiredly. “He’s an Earther. It’s easier to deal with him on his own terms, but it’s not a shortening of his name. It’s the only name he knows. It can be a shortening of Robert, but he doesn’t think that it’s the case.”

He didn’t ask how that name shortened to the other. “Alright, thank you for indulging me.”

She snorted. “It was this or having you hound me until I did.” She tilted an ear as he opened his muzzle to protest. “But I’m sure Bob will be willing to talk with you if you have questions. Just don’t be surprised if not all the answers make sense. They made a mess of his mind.”

“Once he too has had time to rest, I’ll see if he wants to talk.”

“The Doctor was finishing when I left. She’ll be able to tell you how Bob is physically.”

“Thank you.”

She left, and he returned to the medical bay. The Doctor glared at him, but didn’t order him out.

“How is…your patient?” Just as with Terry the Earther, Gralgiran couldn’t get himself to refer to him by just that short of a name, and Bob the Earther didn’t seem to want to work.

“He’s resting. Considering the conditions he lived under, he is in surprisingly good health. At least compared to the few references I have access to. Kelser removed the files I had on Earthers. When I asked, I was told I wasn’t authorized to know. When I pushed, I was told there are reasons to doubt the validity of the information provided. I have no idea if they were shoving shit up my nostrils or not, but I’ve only found a few medical experts on Federation stations who have treated Earthers, so your Heart is where most of my data comes from. My patient suffers from a narrow band of vitamin deficiencies mostly relating to a need for external processes to generate them. Earther need exposure to specific radiation range that he didn’t get.”

“Jer?”

“He’s been issued supplements to compensate. Once his current situation is resolved, you can install a sun-light in your apartments. That covers the range he’ll need. Once he’s rested, the patient will be able to move about. I’ll see him daily to establish a baseline.”

“Thank you.”

Halfway to his apartment, he received a message from Beta Zorfiel.

You are going to want to see this.

*

The usually tidy office Zorfiel occupied now had equipment on every surface, along with three other hunters, each with expertize with electronics, but he’d only interacted with Atarikna Drogdromar before.

“These were most intact versions we were able to find,” the beta announced.

Gralgiran tilted an ear as he looked over the rather damaged items.

“Some people didn’t like these things,” she offered as an explanation.

“They went through basically what Jer has gone through, more than once,” he said. “I’d be angry too.”

“Me too. Ata, how about you explain what you worked out?”

Atarikna Drogdromar took the most intact looking one and turned it over, exposing the inside. “My first thought, looking at this, was that we’re dealing with a previous version from what was used on your Heart.”

“A few generations before,” one of the hunter said, not looking up from the work he was doing.

“And that’s probably still true, because what the scans of that machine show us is more refined than this. But the really interesting parts are these.” She tapped parts of the insides.

“In what way?”

She motioned to the rest of the insides. “All this, that’s Earther tech.”

“You can tell by how small it all is,” the other hunter said, studying a component under a scanner.

“Not just that, but it’s close enough to the scans we can match them. But these? These are Taournian technology.”

“What is Taournian technology doing inside an Earther machine?” He leaned in, trying to tell them apart.

“You should be asking how they can work together,” the hunter at the scanner said. “Taournian tech’s like its people, crazy.”

“Just because they don’t do tech the way we do, doesn’t make it crazy,” Atarikna Drogdromar replied. “But it is impressive how the Earthers got the two kinds of techs to work together.”

“Where did they get the technology?” he asked.

Zorfiel shrugged. “The Earther and Taournians share contested territories. Make sense they talk, and, you know. Trade.”

“Or steal from each other,” the hunter said, still not looking up from his work.

“Or that,” the beta said. “But that’s not the really interesting part.”

“And what is?” he asked when they remained silent.

“We think the whole thing was Taournian tech.”

“How can that be? Why would the Taournian have something like this? Are you sure?”

“The how and why, we can’t answer. It’s the Taournians, so maybe they stole the original designs from another species. There’s an entire border they refuse to talk about, who knows what and who’s there. As for the if we’re sure? As sure as it’s possible to get.” she motioned to the hunter and Atarikna Drogdromar turned the device so Gralgiran could see the inside better.

“This,” she tapped one of the parts that was Taournian, “is vital for the working of this thing. The other two can be worked around.”

“Maybe,” a hunter said.

“But this one? No. I take this out, and this thing becomes useless. We think that either somewhere on that wreck, or in a lab in Earther territory, there is a version of this that contains no Earther tech at all. That this is somewhere along the process of recreating what their tech does, but only with Earther tech.”

“Why would they use this on their soldiers?”

They exchanged looks.

The hunter finally looked up from the work he was doing. “How else are they going to learn if what their changes to it do what they want them to?”

“It created a revolt,” he pointed out.

“Then this probably wasn’t what they wanted.”

Or, base on the Psychologist’s assessment, because the soldiers had already undergone a mind programming process. Why the Earther did that? Bob the Soldier had said something about being a good soldier. If they were willing to use processes like the Ultrasonics to make Jer not react to his attraction to males, using such methods to ensure their soldiers obeyed wasn’t that farfetched.

What bothered him was the connections to the Taournians. Them, with a form of mind-altering technology, was not something he considered good.

“How much of the ship can be searched?”

“How long can we stay?” Zorfiel replied.

“Not indefinitely. We need to be back to patrolling the line so we can meet up with Junrogror’s Injury as scheduled.”

“Then only so much as that’s going to allow.”

There had been no beacons or signals being sent out, so only they knew where the ship was. They could return.

“Focus the search for anything linking this to the Taournians. We’ll need as much evidence as we can when we bring it to the Federation.”

“They aren’t going to do anything about it,” Zorfiel said. “What people do within their territories isn’t the Federation’s business, is what they’ll say.”

“This isn’t within their territories.”

“But the Earthers are the ones with it.”

“And how did they get it, if it’s not supposed to leave Taournian territories?”

“The Earthers snuck in and stole it off one of their ships?” one of the hunter offered hesitatingly.

“Even I’m not willing to give them that,” Zorfiel said. “And after what they did to the Alpha’s Heart, I’m willing to give them a lot. But Taournians, victim of piracy? They invented the act. The only way I’m willing to accept the Earthers getting their hands on this is if they came across it on a dead ship within their disputed territories. Or they traded for it.”

“Both things are problematic,” Gralgiran said.

“Trading isn’t prohibited,” a hunter pointed out.

“But we show this was full Taournian tech,” Zorfiel said, “and this isn’t just trade, it’s one species trading tech designed to alter how people think to a species that has already demonstrated a willingness to do so. I think the Federation will have issues with that.”

Hopefully, Gralgiran thought. The Federation’s hands off approach could be extreme. But if they decided to let this go unchecked, it wouldn’t be because he hadn’t brought them enough evidence.

“Make it happen. We’ll stay as long as we can. Once Alix is back, he’ll be able to tell me how much speed we can get out of the reactor.”

“Better clear the entire section first,” Zorfiel said. “Once the Engineer starts screaming at you, he can send everyone to medical with burst eardrums.”

Outline section 

Gral sits in the same observation room he used weeks ago when Jeremy was first being examined by a mentalist back when they were docked at Multitude. This time it’s not because Gral it’s less for the patient’s nerves, and more so he doesn’t interrupt Leiha’s work. Bob never had the leisure of seeing a mentalist to work through his two brainwashing incidents. He just escaped custody and then took decades to play the two competing set of mental compulsions against each other in order to regain control of his own thoughts. It worked, but it also left his mind in a state Leiha described as a mental battlefield littered with live munitions. Interacting with other people will be difficult for him wherever he goes, even with the assistance of a mentalist.

But yes... two competing forms of brainwashing... that’s the entire reason Bob even managed to realize anything had been done to him by his own government, as he ran across an enemy who wielded the similar technology. Bob and his company were sent to investigate a station that had gone dark in human territory, and what they discovered were taournian pirates who had assaulted the station and subjected the crew to brainwashing.

The crew lured the soldiers in with false stories of freak micrometeor damage, and while in the middle of confirming these stories the taourian’s started stealing away and subjecting the soldiers to the same brainwashing. What they didn’t know is each human soldier was given loyalty treatment midway through their bootcamp... of course even the human soldiers didn’t know this, and under the stress of the conflicting loyalties they started going violent.

Despite going into this for Jeremy, it was the details of the taourians was the reason Gral was taking so much time. Piracy was always the excuse with taourian government. And most real pirates had a large mix of both taourian and kelsirians... given time humans look like they’ll be competing in that demographic as well... but pure taourian’s crew always made Gral second guess the pirate angle.

So Gral had Bob, with Leiha’s help, reconstruct as many details of the attack on the station as he could manage. What he got was inconclusive. And given there wasn’t any sign taourian’s were out there brainwashing other species, likely not something he’d get a conclusion on anytime soon. Still, it was always going to be in the back of his mind...

Eventually having heard enough, Gral will tell Leiha over the comms that he’s done, and for her to thank Bob for his time once she’s withdrawn from his mind. Then he’ll go and check on the other result of this hunt.

###

The device Bob managed to escape with of taourian design, not human. Still, comparing it to the scans of the device used on Jeremy showed that while more primitive it did function on the same basic principle. To be exact they were both set up work on human brains. If they could be configured to work on other species was a scary thought. There were some radically different biochemistries throughout the federation, but those were where bipedal and organic has a very strong baseline similarity on the building blocks of their brain even if the higher architecture differed.

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.

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.

Things more or less follow the outline. I made changes in that this is no longer the result of an attack, but ‘research’. Not entirely sure at this point why this feels ‘better’ possibly because an attack by Taournians this deep within human territory would be a problem that would have to be addressed.

I’ll see how the rest can be massaged and what my coscripters, and you, have to say about it.