The Captain's Heart CH 61 (Patreon)

Gralgiran hesitated, his hand over the panel to open the door. He wasn’t overstepping his bounds; he reminded himself as he exhaled. He wasn

Gralgiran hesitated, his hand over the panel to open the door.

He wasn’t overstepping his bounds; he reminded himself as he exhaled. He wasn’t here as the captain, but as a friend asking for…understanding? Compassion? To rein in his famous temper? So long as he didn’t make demands, he would be a friend, not the captain.

Alixianakaran would already be pissed. This wasn’t going to endear him any further.

He tapped the button and entered.

His sandy furred friend looked over his shoulder and returned his attention to the screen. “I already told you that I’d throw you out when you came looking for some fun.”

Gralgiran let out another slow breath. “You should still be in Medical, Alix.” Pointing out the obvious wouldn’t do any good, but it was a place to start. One where he wasn’t pleading for his Hearth.

The male snorted. “I was able to get out of there without them noticing and made it here with only that to help me.” He nodded to something that might have been a monitor’s stand, or a bed rail, but now was clearly a crutch. “So I’m perfectly fine to sit here and undo this mess that Earther you brought in did.”

“Jeremy did not—”

“He restructured my directory to this meaningless thing!” He waved at the screen. “How am I supposed to find anything when I can’t just bring up the day I created the file?”

“Alix…”

The male narrowed his eyes.

Gralgiran sighed. “He was doing what he needed to repair the reactor. He needed to find the files and—”

“No, didn’t,” Alixianakaran growled. “This is my reactor. He had no right to—”

“Alix, be reasonable. You were unconscious. I had a hunt to perform. Telling the station commander I couldn’t accept their help wasn’t possible.”

“Then you send that Earther to play with the backup!”

“Which he’d have known immediately worked fine. Look Alix, I know that you don’t like letting someone else work on your reactor, but he got it working.”

Alixianakaran was on his feet, using the back of the seat for support. “You call that working?” He motioned to engineering through the window. “He got my reactor so close to red lining I’m surprised something hasn’t melted down.”

“I’m sorry, Alix.” Anything else would just be something his friend would use to feed his outrage. “We were under constraints, and he wanted to make sure we had all the power we needed in case we were pursued. He made sure the power network was looked over by repairs before starting it.”

“But he never told them how it was going to run under his modifications.”

“He didn’t modify anything.”

His friend canted his head. “Really? That’s what he told you? Care to explain why we aren’t within safe parameters, then?”

He couldn’t be certain without Jeremy to confirm, but he was confident what might be the reason, knowing his Heart as he did. “He had to learn your design as he went. Adapt how Earthers think about anti-matter reactors to how you did things. Any alterations he made are because that’s how he thought it should go.”

“Didn’t it occur to him to look at the other panels?”

“My understanding is that none of the panels were intact. Alix, sit down.”

“I’m fine.”

He went to his friend. “You hand is trembling.”

“I’m not going back to that bed.”

“If you fall from exhaustion, I won’t have a choice.” He helped him sit.

“Why are you here, Gral?”

“Among other reasons, to see how you are. When I looked in on you yesterday, I was told a week, before they’d release you.”

Alixianakaran snorted. “They have no idea what they’re doing. It’s not like they designed me. They’re going off some other design that’s clearly not as well built.”

“You’re not your reactor, Alix. You aren’t a machine with set parameters. If they overestimate your state, the harm it can cause you—”

“I walked all the way here.”

Gralgiran glanced at the makeshift crutch. “Walked?”

“Fine, hobbled. But I made it. So my estimation of my capabilities is better than theirs. What else? You said checking in on me was one reason you’re here. What are the others? Your Heart? You’re going to tell me to take him on?”

Considering what he thought of Jeremy, Gralgiran was pleased his friend hadn’t said the word with disgust.

“I can’t do that. You’re the Engineer. This is your territory. But I’d ask that you listen to him.”

“Why? He’s got you. What does he need with this?”

“He isn’t a house tender, Alix. Jeremy is like you in that he needs to make, to build, and test his ideas.”

“So this is about letting him explain how whatever that is is better as a filing system, then. How he’s going to—”

 “No, Alix.” He closed his muzzle on the rest of his snapping. At times, his friend’s habit of seeing everyone as a threat to his work was a challenge to endure. “I’d like both of you to talk so you can look for common ground that will let him work with you.”

“Then how about you have him learn our language, instead of forcing everyone to speak his?”

“He understands it. He just can’t speak it. His voice box isn’t built for the sounds we produce.”

“What you’re saying is that you want me to get his language imprinted. I don’t have to time for the aphasia that comes with that, Gral. I have to fix—”

“You have to take it easy, Alix. Think of this as a way to enforce a rest every other day.”

“You mean waste my time sitting around not doing anything.”

Gralgiran leaned in and rubbed muzzles. “You can always call a friend over to keep you company.”

“I thought you wanted me to use that to take it easy.”

He chuckled. “I’m sure you have at least one friend who’s willing to take charge and treat you well.”

“I’m still pissed at you,” Alix protested.

“Then pick a different friend.” He rubbed muzzle again and straightened. “Jeremy isn’t your enemy, Alix. He would have come up with you at the academy if he’d been one of us.”

“You clearly have no idea what my years there were like, if you think that endear him to me.” He raised a hand. “But, I will go to the psychology department and get one of them to imprint me, and then, your Heart can come and explain himself to me.”

Alixianakaran had agreed to talk with Jeremy, so he considered this battle won. The rest of the war would be on his Heart to fight.

    *

He yawned as he stepped to the door, and it opened. He entered his apartment, stretched and paused as the mottled furred male in the seat looked him over appreciatively.

“Querik? What are you doing here?”

“Your Heart and I met for food and talk. I took him to a training center, but they aren’t to his liking. Then we came here. He wanted to give me the tour. He said he needed to check something.”

“How long ago was that?”

Querikrilgral shrugged. “Some time.”

“I’ll be right back.” He found his Heart at the first place he looked. His office, standing before his drafting table with some…contraption floating before him. “Jer?”

“Hey, Gral,” he replied without looking away. “What’s the policy for access to large-scale printers? I had this idea for a design. Oh, and I’m going to need someplace to assemble it. What’s the rules about using a room in a leisure alley? This is going to be leisure related, to me at—”

Gralgiran nuzzled his neck, wrapping his arms around Jeremy. “You have a guest.”

“Yeah,” he replied, sounding like he was pulling away from what was on the drafting table. “Querik, I thought he’d like to see our quarters.”

“And then you left him for this.”

“I’m sure he understands.”

“It isn’t courteous, Jer. You brought a friend over. You shouldn’t leave him to fend for himself.”

“I just…” he was silent, then chuckled. “I guess I’m doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Isolating myself. Omar—” he tensed, then relaxed with a few slow breaths. “He kept having to pull me from my work and remind me I had friends I should hang out with.”

“He might not have been honest with you, but he was right about this.”

Jeremy nodded and turned. “How was your day?”

“How about I tell you once we have rejoined our guest?”

He thought Jeremy might protest, but then he led the way.

“I’m sorry for disappearing on you like this. Do you want something to drink?”

“Raktoran would be good.”

Gralgiran sat in the couch, then Jeremy returned, handing a tall glass to Querikrilgral and a shorter one to him. He sipped the Lermar and appreciated the spiciness before setting it aside so Jeremy could join him and lean into him.

“And what caught your imagination so?” Querikrilgral asked.

“Oh, since you guys don’t do weight training, I figured I could build myself a set. The free weights were going to be easy, but then I thought of a way to recreate some of the other machines I used. I’m guessing I can’t get access to a human database, right?”

“I’m afraid something so broad isn’t made available to the public at this time,” Querikrilgral said. “Until a species has fully joined the Federation, most of their cultural libraries are restricted.”

Jeremy chuckled. “It’s a good thing for the human race I’m not so important that holding me against my will is going to bar them from joining.”

Gralgiran caught the shift in expression.

“What?” Jeremy asked. So he too had caught it.

Querikrilgral hesitated. “What was done to you has brought to light information your people were keeping from us.”

“Okay, but that’s not unusual, right? I doubt you tell everything about yourselves to all the other species out there.”

“We do not, you are correct.” The male sipped his drink. “But we, Kelsirians, have a set of belief about what can be done to our people. In effect, Thuruksamian made us as we are, and no one has the right to judge his work wrong and impose we be something else.”

“I’m not sure I can work out all the ramifications, but yeah, you should have the right to be who you are.”

“And so do you.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Your gods made—”

“We don’t have those,” Jeremy corrected, and Querikrilgral took a breath. “You, your people, are the way you are. However it came to be, no one has the right to judge that wrong and force you to be something else.”

“You’re talking about the ultrasonics.”

“And the medication, and the treatment they put you through as a teen.”

“Okay, I agree that’s wrong. I mean, I really do. But isn’t there something about how the Federation respects the how the individual species within it are? That why other than telling Gral what he was looking for, they didn’t tell him how to go about doing it.”

“You are correct, the Federation lets us rule ourselves as we will within our territories. Only acting to mediate between members and administer the places where territories touch. And yes, I’m aware I am simplifying, Gral.”

Gralgiran smiled and closed his muzzle.

“But species have to be shepherded into the Federation. Earth can’t scratch at its door and demand to be let in. It needs to scratch at one of ours, or more commonly, once we encounter a species, we take it upon ourselves to shepherd them in. But your people crossed a line we, Kelsirians, can’t accept.”

“You mean what they did to me?”

Querikrilgral nodded.

“But I’m just one person.”

“You aren’t the only one they have done this to. We weren’t able to get accurate numbers, but they were still large enough that it was decided we couldn’t continue shepherding Earth into the Federation.”

“What does that mean?” Jeremy asked, sounding lost.

“If they want to join, they will have to find another species to shepherd them. I expect they’ll ask the Taournians, as they also share a border.”

“And what about me? I’m human.”

“You’re my Heart.”

“And even if you weren’t,” Querikrilgral added, “the Federation has systems in place for those who don’t consider themselves safe from their own people. You wouldn’t be sent back.”

“So, Humans aren’t going to be part of the Federation?”

“Not for a very long time, possibly not within our lifetime. The shepherding process is a long one. We were slightly under fifty years through it, and there were a few more decades to go, if everything went smoothly. I’d have expected it to take another fifty years before they joined.”

Jeremy was quiet. “What if I want to visit my family?”

“I’m afraid that’s entirely at the Earther Leadership’s discretion.”

Outline section 

No outline

Addition 

Next chapter, Gral will talk with Alix about giving Alex a fair chance, which starts with him learning Earther.

Alix’s temper will be a problem, especially since he and Jeremy are planned to become friends.

The reluctant agreement to learn Earther will help, but the two of them will butt heads a good deal before they learn to respect each other.

I’m pleased with the interaction between Gral and Alix, though.

Having Queril in their apartment was a consequence of, again, the chapter not being long enouhg. The plan was simply for Jeremy to be engrossed at the drafting table. But having the ambassador there led to dropping the news that Earth is no longer being shepherded into the Federation.

If I end up splitting this book into two, this is where I’ll cut it. I like that it would end on something that isn’t relationship related since this isn’t a romance series.