The Captain's Heart CH 55 (Patreon)

Gralgiran groggily came awake to the shifting of the mattress. “Jer?” he mumbled, not reaching in time to pull him back against him. “Sorry

 Gralgiran groggily came awake to the shifting of the mattress. “Jer?” he mumbled, not reaching in time to pull him back against him.

“Sorry,” his Heart whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Just had an idea for a design, and I want to put it down before I forget it entirely.”

“Okay.” He had a thought about how odd it was for someone to just get out of bed in the middle of sleep without an emergency to drive him. There might have been more to it, but sleep called him back by then.

    *

“What was I thinking?” Jeremy mumbled, looked at his tablet as they ate.

“Hmm?” he looked at him, slurping the roll of meat coated in Harshnir in his muzzle.

“I woke up and wrote down notes for a design, but this thing’s not made for that, I had to translate the images I had into words, and on top of that, I don’t have the technical words yet for what I needed to describe, so this… is something of an incomprehensible mess.”

“What would you have needed?”

“A drafting table.” He put the tablet down to eat. “Something that lets me work entirely visually would be ideal, but in a few days I should have the Kelsirian words to get something started, then manipulate that into what I’m going for.” He glanced at the tablet, absently dipping his cube of meat—Gralgiran hadn’t paid attention to Jeremy’s selection—into the Harshnir. “Maybe once I have that, I can untangle this into something that’s going to trigger my memories.” He popped into his mouth. “Do you think the Psycholo—” he hurried for his glass. “Wow, that’s hot. Isn’t it early to burn you tongue out like that?”

“I thought you enjoyed some heat.”

“I had to plunge my hand in an active anti-matter reaction core once. It didn’t burn this bad.”

Gralgiran stared. “Why?”

Jeremy shrugged. “A team of scientist didn’t clean up after their experiment with my reactor, and the next ones’ reacted with that to cause a spiraling interaction. It was that, to shut the whole thing down, or lose half the station.”

“Don’t you have emergency personnel for that?”

He grinned. “I’m pretty much it, when it comes to my reactors…” the ‘s’ was almost not there. He sighed. “I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? The commander’s secrecy. Which reminds me. You never said why you were at the station. Thuruk said it was for a hunt, which I now have the knowledge to know is the word for a military operation. But he didn’t know what it was.”

“There have been suspicions for a while now that Earthers had more anti-matter than they declare.” With Jeremy being his Heart and on the Bane, he could tell him. Anyone accusing him or revealing hunt exclusive information could go read the Federation regulations and how they applied to Kelsirian Hearts.

“Aren’t we allowed to have however much we can make? I mean, Earth is in the process of joining the Federation, not already under its rules.”

“They are, but why lie about it unless they’re doing something illegal? And to be clear, in this case, it wouldn’t Earthers committing the crime. But whichever Federation species was selling them more Anti-matter than the regulations permit. Einstein Station was picked both because it’s the closest to Federation borders, and because it’s known for the anti-matter research it engages in.”

“And you didn’t question me about it, why?”

“Do you know about who sold it to the Earthers?”

Jeremy shook his head. “But you had me here, in your quarters even. You had to wonder if I had that information.”

“You’re a civilian.”

“So?”

“Civilians don’t get dragged into a hunt, unless they are the target.”

“Are you really telling me that if you’d suspected I knew the information you were after, that you wouldn’t have tried to get me to give it to you?”

“If I’d suspected you held vital information, your status as my Heart would have—”

“Forget it’s me then. Let’s say you thought Amanda could have told you. That she’d been the one picked to fix the reactor. You wouldn’t have quizzed her as hard as possible to get her to tell you?”

Gralgiran didn’t point out that Jeremy had said she’d left the station already. That if that hadn’t happened, it would mean that Gezbiliam hadn’t Meddled, so the reactor wouldn’t have failed. Alixianakaran wouldn’t have been hurt, and no help would have been required.

He addressed the theoretical scenario as it was. “If I’d come to suspect she, a civilian, had information vital to the hunt, I’d have had to contact the Federation Security Bureau for them to either have me stand down, or alter the parameter of the hunt to make her the target. It wouldn’t be the same if another species had been assigned to this hunt. The Taournians, for example, don’t care much for the niceties of keeping civilians uninvolved. The FSB is good about respecting each species’ protocols when it comes to those things.”

“Then why sent you? Sounds like using the Taournians would have made everything a lot easier for them.”

“If they could be trusted with something like that. And if everyone didn’t suspect them to be who sold the anti-matter to the Earthers. They’d also have to explain why they were sending a Taournian ship through Kelsirian space, especially since their territory already touches the Earthers. But they’d have to justify whatever species they wanted to send through our territory, and the FSB would rather use whoever is closest than more convenient. I think they have Reosephs handling that part. It feels like their type of practicality.”

“Okay. But what if your superior orders you to fire on a city? Thuruk said that hunters do what their told. That would result in—”

“Thuruk sel Minial is a front line hunter. He does what his beta orders, because he trusts that him, and me, the alpha, have questioned those orders until there is no doubt that those actions are the only ones that will resolve the hunt. But, before you add more complications. We aren’t soldiers. We are hunters. Kelser has its military, and they operate under different rules.”

“They don’t answer to the gods?”

He ignored the slight mirth in Jeremy’s words. “They don’t.” He didn’t understand the place the gods held for him, as one of their hunters, and for his people in general. Gralgiran expected that coming from a species without gods, he might never fully understand.

“Einstein Station has, as the last time I had to look over the numbers, two tons of anti-matter. I can’t tell you where it comes from. I know we have three factories, producing it, but I don’t know what their production rates are. And as far as I know. Copernicus and Curie would carry a similar amount, since they do the same kind of research.”

Gralgiran stared. Anti-matter basically had no weight in quantities needed to run reactors. Alixianakaran had told him that, when he’d asked his friend for clues as to what his hunters should look for as they moved about the station. It came down to containment systems. So he’d told him the types of containers to expect.

The scans had showed a lot of anti-matter related particles, as well as the canisters that would contain it. They were smaller than what Alixianakaran has showed him, but for the mass Jeremy had told him, each would have to contain much more than he’d expected base on what his friend had told him.

“You look like you weren’t expecting that.”

Gralgiran chuckled. “The scans didn’t hint at that volume. You didn’t have to tell me.”

Jeremy shrugged. “If someone’s breaking laws so we have all that anti-matter, I want them caught.”

Gralgiran smiled. Maybe Jeremy didn’t believe in the gods, or bore one of their names, but it seemed that they both thought well of the same one.

    *

“You took your time,” Alixianakaran said, glaring.

Gralgiran smiled. “I’m glad you’re doing better.”

“Then you’ll be glad I’m well enough for you to tell me the state of my reactor. Those cursed gods Meddled. That’s the only way something could have gone wrong with it. If they haven’t fixed it, I am going to make my way to the Forest and they will have to answer for the sacrilege.”

“Ah…” He hesitated. “Well…they are…”

“Out with it, Gral. Dealing with these medics,” he looked at the closest one, “who won’t tell me anything, isn’t granting me the patience I’m so known for.”

Gralgiran snorted. His friend’s patience was well known to be quite short. “They’ve sort of arranged for it to be fixed.”

“Arranged? To be fixed?” the sandy furred male’s eyes narrowed. “That’s sounding a lot like there’s some incompetent would-be Engineer touching my reactor.”

“My Heart is neither incompetent, nor a would-be Engineer. Jeremy is quite qualified.”

“Congratulation.” Alixianakaran threw the covers off him. “Now take me to engineering so I can see the mess your Heart made of my reactor.” He swung his legs off the bed and pushed himself away before the medics could react.

Gralgiran caught him before he fell to the floor.

“What have you done to my legs?” Alixianakaran yelled at the medic who helped Gralgiran place him back on the bed. “They were working fine before I ended up here.”

“That would be before you were bathed in radiations, and had most of your brain scrambled,” the Doctor said, reaching them.

“I thought those gods forsaken tubes were supposed to fix me while I slept.”

“Fix your body,” she snapped. “Your mind is immensely more complex. So you’re going to keep that ass of your in the bed until we’ve reconnected all your motor functions.”

“You are not going to—”

“Or I’m going to cut the connection to your mouth so we can get some quiet in here.”

Alixianakaran looked at Gralgiran. “She can’t do that.”

“This is her medical Bay. Unless she puts your life in danger, I can’t interfere with what she does.”

The sandy furred male glared at the ceiling. “We are going to have words. Do you hear me?” He crossed his arms and glared at the Doctor. “Fine. I’ll be quiet.” He turned the glare on Gralgiran. “I don’t care if he’s Danirag’s envoy to my bed. You tell that Heart of yours to keep his claws off my reactor. I’ll repair it once these people finally get done fixing me.”

“I’m afraid I need it repaired before you will be out of bed, Alix.”

“Then tell them to hurry the fuck up.”

“Captain,” the Doctor said. “I think it’s best if you leave. Your presence is clearly agitating my patient.”

“He’s not the one pissing me off, it’s—where are you going?”

“I’ve been ordered out,” Gralgiran replied.

“I swear Gral. The next time to show up in my office for some distraction, I am kicking you out!”

“Good thing I have my Heart to seek solace with, then,” he whispered as the doors closed behind him. Or, if Jeremy overcame what had been done in time, they could make use of the office while it was technically his.

Outline section 

No outline

Addition 

Jeremy wakes in the night to make notes on his tablet. Possibly a few days have passed. Visiting Alix. Who knows enough to demand to know how his reactor is doing.

They move to new quarters.

I am quite proud of this chapter. Mainly because looking at the two main lines of what I wasn’t to happen, I expected it to be a slog, and instead, everyone cooperated to give me some world building, and character interactions.

Alix has always had a ‘fiery’ disposition, but in draft 0, because he’s rarely there, it showed almost exclusively in reaction with his reactor. His possessiveness of it dates from all the way there.

I don’t think I’ve contradicted anything that’s taken place at this point with establishing Hunter protocols here. I see them as the ‘knights’ of Kelser. I won’t go so far as to say they are entirely honorable, since they to have covert-ops, but they have a code of conducts during hunts, and Gral, at least, holds himself and his hunters to it.

If I can think of ways other alphas might interpret the gods’ dictates, and can come up with an way to show it within the story, I certainly will.