The Technician's Fight, Draft 1, CH36

The Earther before him was thinner than Jeremy remembered and seemed tired, but he smiled.

“I knew this would work. I knew that if I provided the right bait, you and your cat wouldn’t be able to stay away.” Omar Seywan looked around Jeremy. “I had given instructions to be sure you came alone, though.”

The snort let Jeremy cover some of his confusion behind anger. “Like I’d ever be around Earthers again without people to look after me.”

“I’d look out for you,” Omar Seywan said, sounding surprised.

Jeremy rolled his eyes and wished he could do ear-code so he could ensure the others didn’t intervene. So long as Omar Seywan was talkative, he might be able to figure out what was going on.

“What happened to you, Omar Seywan?”

“What do you mean?”

Jeremy motioned around them, but that didn’t seem to help. “Kidnapping and torturing Federation civilians?”

“Well,” he replied, sounding offended. “Did you think anyone would let me continue looking for you if all I told them was that I needed to bring you back? I had to give them a whole lot more after you and your cat destroyed all that equipment. Do you have any idea how many millions of dollars in research you two ruined?”

“If you mean when my Heart and my friends rescued me from your torture, no I don’t. You made sure I was utterly out of it. Where are the merchants?”

“What merchants?”

“The ones you had kidnapped. To lure me here.”

“Oh, the cats. They’re being prepared for the next batch of experiments. But don’t worry. The machine works perfectly fine on us already. I made sure the focus was on working out the bugs in it before inviting you over. This time, you won’t feel a thing.”

“What experiments?” he asked instead of addressing the real threat.

The Earther seemed to have trouble with the question for a few seconds. “Oh. Well, the experiments to have the machine work on them, of course. If we’re going to cure everyone, we need to make sure it works without fault.”

“Cure everyone of what?”

“The sickness, of course. Do you realize that every species out there has it? They all think what you have is somehow natural.” He shuddered. “Once you’re cured, you can help me with them too.”

“Are you fucking insane? You think I’m going to willingly put myself in that machine again? Let you take everything I care about from me?”

“Jeremy—”

“Don’t call me that! You lost that right when you betrayed our friendship. If there ever was one.”

“I am your friend,” the Earther replied, confused. “I’ve always been your friend. I’m the only one who’s ever really cared about you, J—”

“Don’t you fucking say my name.”

“Do you think I would have done all of this if I wasn’t the best friend you could have? All this is for you. Just for you.”

Someone moved. Someone from the special ops pack.

“Don’t,” the Earther warned. “You all stay away, or I’m giving the order to have all these people killed. All these innocent civilians killed.”

“Stay back,” Jeremy said. “Let me deal with him.”

The Earther smiled like Jeremy had agreed to go out with him.

And he realized what kind of man would do something so horrible. Even in the comedies they’d watched as a group, people doing horrible things in the name of love was popular. Although, like now, it usually turned out to be in the name of obsession.

How did he reconcile them? Those feelings he thought he had for Jeremy that ran contrary to the belief a man couldn’t love another man?

Had he really convinced himself best friend was the extent of these feelings? Still, he needed more information if they were to rescue everyone here. “I’m not saying I’m agreeing to this, but just to be clear. I go with you, and you release everyone here to my friends.”

“I can’t do that.”

“So all you talk of this just being an excuse so you could get me back is what? Bullshit?”

“No! I’d never do that to you! I care too much, but it’s not like I can get them out of those pods and send them on their ways.”

“Why not?”

The Earther sighed. “Do you have any idea how complex the mind is? Any mind? We were lucky that the machine seemed to have been designed to work with our minds, and it took decades to get reliable results. Let alone specific ones we needed? It is ludicrous the number of soldiers the military turned into insane killing machines in their quest for a perfectly controlled soldier.”

He kept the fear out of his voice through pure willpower. “What did you do to these people?”

“I told you. We’re trying to cure them. But we aren’t there yet. So their minds aren’t…well, I wouldn’t want them moving around. But don’t worry. Once we’ve perfected the process, I can undo the damage and they’ll be better than new. They will be cured.”

“And you want to put me through that thing?”

“I told you, we perfected it. And it will even make you forget all the anger the cats have directed at me. We will be best friends again. You’ll see. We are going to have the best of times together.”

“Fuck you, Omar.”

“Come on, Jeremy. No need to be crude and suggest something so unnatural.”

Jeremy laughed. “I don’t know if I need to feel sorry for you, or horrified that you have deluded yourself so much that you don’t realize you think you’re in love with me.”

“I love you like a brother. Like the best friend I remember you being.”

Jeremy read the tension on the Earther’s face, the way his fists were clenched. “So that’s how. You’re convinced someone would destroy other people’s minds for a brother? A best friend? You, Doctor Omar Seywan, are sick.”

“Please, Jeremy, come back. I promise that I’ll always be at your side. You’ll never have to worry about being alone.”

“I wouldn’t want to be with you if you were the last fucking person left in the universe.” He punched the male hard enough that he landed on the floor and didn’t get up. “Someone needs to go over the station’s records,” he said in his comm. “We need evidence this was sanctioned by the Earther government. Something on this scale is going to keep them locked in their territory for good.”

“You’re forgetting your Rank, hunter,” the special ops beta replied. “But I’m sending hunters to pull everything the servers contain.”

A look at Thur confirmed he would hear about this once the hunt was over, and he was okay with it.

“We have civilians to rescue,” his beta said, and Jeremy walked over the unconscious Earther to head further into the horror chamber that this place was, with they others at his back.

*

The two guards looking after the scientific staff were the only trouble the tired hunters encountered, but were subdued without casualty. The staff didn’t offer resistance, and the eighteen Kelsirians they’d come to rescue were whole, but sedated.

“Jer, I need you to get one of those things disconnected,” Thur instructed, indicating one of the sleeker chairs and helmets. “If that’s what was used on the people in the pods, we need to study it.”

Instead of going to one of the machines, Jeremy headed for the scientists. “Which one was used on the others.” If they’d needed to make alterations to get it to affect non-Earther minds, they wouldn’t have been willing to put an Earther in it. When no one talked, he stepped closer and unsheathed his claws. “I’m not having a good day. How about you don’t make yourself someone caught in the crossfire?”

“Any of them except seven and eight,” a woman said.

“Are they all at the same stage of modification?”

She shook her head.

That meant they’d want all of them, if only to work out the progress, but…. “Which one is the closest to the results you’re looking for?”

“Number five.”

He’d start with that one, then he or others could disconnect the rest and bring them to the Bane. It wasn’t like moving all those pods would be quick. He found tools and set to work.

By the time he was done, only eight of the eighteen merchants were conscious, the scientists had run out of Kelsirian-tested stimulants, and the hunters wouldn’t let them use Earther-rated ones. He handed the helmet to a hunter when Thur gave the orders to return to the shuttle, while he carried the hardware that made it work. The scientists were escorted, and the not yet fully awake Kelsirians helped.

Jeremy cursed when Omar wasn’t where he’d fallen.

“I should have tied him up,” he complained. “He could have told us who paid for all of this.”

“Yarika will get that from the servers. They won’t resist her.”

“I still want him to pay for this. With all these people, he wouldn’t have been able to proclaim his innocence. If he’d even try.”

“I’m sure there will be consequences from us shutting this down,” Thur said. “He will still pay.”

“It would be more satisfying if it was at my hand.”

His beta gave him a look Jeremy couldn’t interpret, then shook his head. “We have the scientists. They can pay for this before the Federation.”

“After they help us understand that thing,” someone said.

“Beta Zorfiel Frasgormilan, we are ready to head to the shuttle with the rescued and prisoners of our own. What’s the status on a path?”

“The Earthers have stopped following the sensor feeds we’re giving them,” she replied, “so we can’t keep them out of your way, but they can’t talk among each other, don’t have scents to follow, and we know where they all are. So we can guide you away from most of them.”

“Understood. We’re moving to rejoin the injured, then will head to the shuttle.”

“Tell the pilot to wait for us. We aren’t done here.”

*

With carrying the mind breaking equipment, having barely conscious civilians to help be mobile, injured hunters in similar situation, and prisoners who might attempt to escape if given the chance, returning to the docks was slow and tedious, but, fortunately, with few encounters, and no further injuries on their side.

The secured Earthers glared as the groups walked by their hatch on the way to the shuttle, and Jeremy broke Rank to hurry to the cockpit.

“I repeat, that’s a Taournian Arrakmas Dreadnought coming at you, Bane. The Engineering is somewhere under the ship. Check the records. The design is documented. This is Pilot Toomerimortoral. You have a—”

“We’re here,” Jeremy said. “It’s going to be packed. We have a lot of people, and there are even more that—”

His friend was out of the seat. “We can’t leave in this.”

“Toom, we can’t stay here. We’re going to have Earthers who will realize this is the only place we can come to.”

“Even more reason not to be here. Stop what you’re all doing,” he told the hunters who were helping the civilians into seats.

“Pilot, we need to—”

“Really, beta? You’re going to argue orders on my shuttle?”

Jeremy was surprised when that got Thur to close his muzzle.

“Here’s the situation,” Toom said. “Out there is the kind of battle ballads don’t even have to try to make epic. More ships that can be counted against a long one. We go in there, in this shuttle, and we are dead.”

“I thought you were the best pilot on the Bane,” a hunter said.

“I am, but this is an unarmed shuttle, and those are all ships with way too many weapons for anyone to want to mess with. The moment we undock, we become a target.”

“What are our options, then?” the other beta asked.

Toom smiled. “We get ourselves a different ship, of course. I believe there’s one just waiting for us a bunch of docks spin wise.”

“That’s an Earther ship,” Thur said.

“And someone Meddled to give me an Earther shuttle on which to learn.”

“Shuttles aren’t ships,” a hunter stated.

“They’re close enough, and Earthers like to make everything the same.”

“We standardized for efficiency,” Jeremy said in exasperation when the hunters looked at him. “But that means Toom is mostly right. What he learned on the shuttle should carry over.”

“But a shuttle is fine with just a pilot,” the other beta said. “Ships aren’t. They need crews.”

Jeremy smiled. “You already have an engineer, and you have a bunch of Earthers with experience flying that ship tied at its hatch.”

“Can we be sure they aren’t going to signal the other ships telling know who we are?”

Thur sighed. “If there’s one thing you can count on of Halans, regardless of the species, is their desire to survive. If any of those ships find out who is on board, they will destroy it, and them along with it.”

Toom rubbed his hands. “Good. With that settled, I have a new ship to get friendly with.”

“And with it being so much larger,” the other beta said, “doesn’t that give us the space to put all those pods in, instead of leaving them here, and hope we can come back for them?”

“We’ll split forces,” Thur said. “My pack is with the pilot. We’ll make sure the Earthers know where they stand. We’ll also see to the injured, rescued, and prisoners. Beta Grinlark Trorel Roshkirak, you and the rest of your pack bring the pods. We need speed, since we don’t know how long we have before we can’t stay here anymore. Beta Zorfiel Frasgormilan, status?”

“Still working. If we knew where the servers were, it’d be faster to pull them out and do the work once we’re back on the Bane.”

“Alterations to the hunt.” Thur gave the rundown of the changes.

“Going through inventory now,” a new voice said. “Found industrial transport hover plates and establishing a route to get them on the way to the blacked out section. You’ll be on your own for how to fit them once you get there, but at worst, you won’t have to move them as far.”

“Got it,” the beta said. “Received the route, and in motion.”

“Jer, go see to the reactor, make sure they haven’t sabotaged it,” his Beta instructed, and he hurried to the other ship.