Experiment (Hybrid Book 2) (13 page)

Dr Henderson looked a little uncomfortable as she continued. “Captain Crowther, may I also suggest that although his conduct has been somewhat erratic, I’d recommend persuading Mr Temple to co-operate, she does depend on him a great deal. If he’s not there, behaving as normally as possible when we reintegrate her into ship board life, she’ll be suspicious and may discover what has occurred. That could cause a relapse to her present state or worse. In his defence, we must remember that Mr Temple has also suffered a harrowing experience, and begging your pardon, but I think he probably deserved more consideration than condemnation at this point.”

The Captain checked the clock again. “Duly noted. As we have a course of action put in place, Doctor, please perform the procedure as soon as possible.

“Councillor, your role is to do what you can to help Mr Temple, and persuade him to co-operate. If he continues to be obstructive we also have the option to wipe him, which may be for the best.”

“May I make a suggestion Captain?”

“Go ahead Theta 16.”

“As many of your crew were involved in the search and rescue operation on Kalzir may I suggest I arrange a transfer for the program to another vessel? If my operative is also memory wiped, which I’m perfectly happy with, the likelihood of either of them being reminded of this incident will be far less on another vessel. The Apollo can then continue with the negotiations on Kalzir after the other vessel arrives to take the hybrid and Mr Temple to their next assignment.”

“Very well. Dr Henderson, you have until the other vessel gets here to persuade Mr Temple to co-operate, otherwise they will both be memory wiped before boarding.”

Glancing around to see if anyone else wanted to speak, she stood up “If that’s all, meeting adjourned.”

––––––––

xXx

“T
hanks, I owe you one.”

The familiar voice brought Connor out of his doze, and he opened his eyes to see Dagus grinning at him through the force bars, as the guard left the room. He raised an eyebrow at the lieutenant.

“It always pays to play poker with the rest of the crew. You never know when you’ll need a favour.”

“I take it the surveillance is on a loop as well?”

“Yep, but he’s right outside the door. I gave him a cock and bull story about needing to settle a ‘personal’ matter with you privately. The cell stays shut, and we have about five minutes.”

“Did you hear what happened in the meeting?”

“Probably more than you, they decided to ship you two off the Apollo as soon as another Federation vessel can pick you up, they’re worried about memory triggers upsetting the memory wipe on Chesara. They’re also talking about doing one on you if you don’t behave, so you’d better be a bloody good boy when the councillor comes to see you in a minute.”

“How did you find out all that Dagus? You seem to know more about what goes on behind closed doors than anyone’s got a right to know.”

Connor raised his eyes to the ceiling as another grin spread across the man’s face.

“What you don’t know can’t hurt you buddy boy, but I can tell you that our mutual friend knows everything I do. And knowing him, he’s probably already got something in mind. So try to stay out of detention when they let you out. Even I can’t spring you from here, well not without a lot of trouble anyway.” With that statement, he grinned again and sauntered out of the room, hands in his pockets.

Connor hastily closed his mouth as the guard came back in, announcing, “Don’t tell me cos it’s none of my business. Just lay back down like you were before and I’ll reset the surveillance. I’ve owed that cocky bastard for three years, and you Mr High and Mighty have just got me off the hook.”

Connor resumed his former position as much as he could remember, and closed his eyes to ponder what Tenset could possibly do in this situation. The man was devious, but outsmarting the entire Federation?

The next few days were only slightly easier than the days he’d spent watching a catatonic Chesara. Every day, Dr Henderson came to see him, and every day, not strangling her was an exercise in restraint.

“So Connor, did you think about what we talked about yesterday?”

“What in particular do you mean? We talked about lots of things, including my family.”

He was sure the woman had concluded he’d been scarred by having a lonely childhood, and ‘uncaring’ parents. But the entire crew were like family on a long haul freighter. Just because he was an only child on a ship consisting mostly of adults, it didn’t mean he’d grown up too quickly.

“About your feelings about the hybrid?”

He thought the way he resisted twitching when she was referred to like that should have earned him plenty of points.

“I like her; in fact I’m quite attached to her. We’ve spent a lot of time together, in a lot of difficult situations. But I know where to draw the line.”

“In what way?”

Praying for forgiveness, he said what they wanted to hear.

“She isn’t human.”

“And the implication of that is?” The doctor prompted.

“She’s a tool, one that probably wouldn’t exist without the Federation’s intervention.”

“So why were you so upset with the memory wipe procedure? As a tool, surely returning her to functionality would be your goal too?”

He sighed and drew his hand across his face. “I guess things got rather complicated down on the planet. She saved me from a great deal of pain, and I was exhausted. I admit I lost my perspective. I anthropomorphised her, I projected my own human emotions on to hers when none actually existed. I imagined she helped me because she cared as a human would, rather than just doing what she was trained to do. She copies, parodies human emotions, but it doesn’t mean she feels them. It was mistake.”

He gave her what he hoped was an earnest look. “I love my job Dr Henderson, and I enjoy working with the hybrid. It’s taken me into more interesting places that I could possibly imagine. I know her better than anyone else, and at the risk of blowing my own trumpet, I think it’ll take a significant amount of time to get her to trust anyone as much as she trusts me.”

The doctor looked to be wavering slightly.

“If you let me come back to work, I know I can get her up and working again sooner than anyone else could.”

The older woman finished tapping on her portable screen, then looked up at him.

“I happen to believe you Mr Temple. You have an exemplary record, and to be honest, I could really do with some help in making her re-integration after the memory wipe as easy as possible. The whole thing is a significant headache, especially determining what she will and won’t remember so we won’t trigger a residual memory.”

Connor sat forward, hope almost bursting out of him. “There’s a possibility of that?”

The doctor waggled her head from side to side. “As with everything, we just don’t know. It does occasionally happen with humans, but it’s rare. The best thing we can do is to constantly guard against it. The plan is to move you both to another vessel, we’ll use a disease ruse to explain the missing time period, but that won’t help on board the Apollo. It’ll be up to us to keep her ignorant before the move.”

“When are you thinking of setting her back to?”

“The day after your last successful mission. We’ll have to discuss the exact details of that day so any overlap between her two experienced match. Humans that have undergone the procedure report significant Déjà vu and rapid mood swings in the day or so after they come around. Hopefully we’ll be treated to bewildered or high, rather than aggression or depression.”

Connor had to smile. “Dealing with Chesara’s mood swings has become second nature Doctor; I don’t suppose there is a lot she can throw at me that she hasn’t tried before.”

“I hope you’re right. Now if you’d like to go back to your quarters, we can start setting things up. She’s already undergone the procedure and she’s currently sedated. We’ve just been waiting on you.”

The news that Chesara no longer remembered what had happen between them or Tenset at all, felt as if a much loved elderly relative had passed away. He’d known academically that it was coming, but the news still hurt.

Dagus just ‘happened’ to be walking down the corridor outside the brig when he was released.

“I see you’ve been behaving yourself. Any gossip to share?” he said brightly.

Knowing that the cocky Kalzirian who could be Tenset’s younger brother, would probably tell him everything he said, Connor made a non-committal grunt. Tenset had suffered enough.

Dagus grabbed his arm, his smile distinctly fixed. “You have sold out have you buddy boy?”

“Never, but shit happens Dagus, shit happens.” He pulled his arm away and carried on towards his quarters to get ready for Chesara’s transfer from the med bay.

He spent the evening making sure everything was identical in her quarters to the morning in question, then retrieved a similar piece of equipment to the one he’d been working on as he’d waited for her to wake up from her post healing hibernation sleep. That time, she’d almost fallen into bed after she’d been brought back up from healing several youngsters from the same family that had cystic fibrosis. She’d also removed the gene causing the condition from them and their parents.

The announcement that all crew members were to avoid talking to her rang through the entire ship as he waited for her to be delivered to the VIP area.

The orderly pushing the antigrav bed with her silent form was accompanied by Dr Henderson.

“Now are you sure everything is exactly the same? Have you reset her screen?”

He just raised his eyebrows at her. At least she had the decently to look embarrassed.

Picking her up, he carried her into her quarters and placed her on her bed before staring pointedly at the doctor and male orderly. When they didn’t move he added, “she slept in the nude that night, so if you wouldn’t mind?”

The orderly was already on his way out, but Dr Henderson seemed intent on staying. “I’ll undress her.”

Connor straightened up. “You either trust me to do my job, or you don’t. I’m not in the habit of molesting unconscious human women, let alone non-human ones. I’ll deal with it. How long will it be before she comes around? She’d accept me being in here, she won’t accept you.”

Dr Henderson retreated rapidly after informing him it could be any time in the next hour.

T
he infuriating banging finally pulled her out of her much needed sleep. Pulling the purple cover over her head was a futile attempt to shut out the racket. Unfortunately, her adrenaline level was already too high to think about returning to sleep. Somebody was about to get a piece of her mind.

“Crap, bugger and ball bags,” she growled. Winning the brief fight with the covers, which were tangled up around her after her usual restless sleep, she sat up. The stiffness in her right shoulder and neck caused by sleeping awkwardly, didn’t improve her mood.

Although she was aware that work continued around the clock on an interstellar vessel, they should at least consider that some people, especially prominent ones like the Envoy it was the ship’s purpose to transport, did need to sleep at some point. Grabbing her dressing gown to cover her nakedness, she stumbled out of the bedroom, and headed for the entrance of her quarters.

Yesterday’s assignment had been satisfying, even more so because it had been about healing. There had been no farting around in uncomfortable clothes and having to be horribly polite to stuck up zalupas, although sometimes she wasn’t as polite as she should be.

She’d been reprimanded a few weeks ago for loudly telling a woman at a reception who’d given her a dirty look that ‘at least people talk to me because I’m interesting. They only talk to you because you’re fucking the boss.”

It’d caused a gratifyingly large amount of amusement amongst other guests. Unfortunately, Captain Crowther hadn’t been impressed by having to waive the fee to settle rumpled feathers. The woman had been the wife of the chief executive of an interplanetary chain of mining operations. Connor had looked as if he was going to implode; his face had certainly turned a remarkable shade of red.

She’d been treading on eggshells ever since, being a good little girl, but perhaps enough was enough.

Today was a day off, yesterday’s assignment was completed by midnight, and it had been more about healing than hand shaking for once.

Connor always let her have the day after an assignment off, but tomorrow she’d be knee deep in research again, either catching up with medical advances, or looking into the details of her next assignment. It was particularly galling that she had more medical knowledge that the vast majority of doctors, yet she still didn’t get to use the title.

The ‘real’ doctors always liked to describe the conditions and injuries she treated in terms they understood. It made them happy to use long words.

Personally, she just fixed what she instinctively felt was wrong and she hadn’t made a mistake yet. She’d been fixing injuries and curing illnesses long before she’d known all the long words but the fact that she did, had smoothed the way on many occasions.

Hopefully, today she’d be leaving the ‘bedside manner’ behind and be able to indulge herself in the unusually peevish mood she’d woken up in. Mainly thanks to whoever was making that infernal din. The door to her quarters slid open when she swiped angrily at the wall panel beside it.

The incredibly bright artificial light in the VIP socializing area had her instinctively screwing up her sensitive eyes as she determined the noise was coming from the lone occupant. None of the other five VIP quarters had been occupied whilst she’d been on board apart from herself and her ever helpful aide, security man and all around pain in her posterior. He even had the irritating attribute of being particularly attractive. Which was something she’d noticed more and more over the last few months, and yet, he still treated her as if she were his annoying kid sister.

The man in question sat on one of the outrageously expensive plush blue sofas totally absorbed in bashing away at what looked like a replicator unit. She watched him, half hoping he’d somehow realize she was there, and half hoping he didn’t, so she could appraise him a little longer.