BECMI Chapter 126 – Hearts at Ease

I watched the cyborgs turn as one and march right on past me out of the bridge, heading to a nearby charging station where they would wait for proper orders to serve. I reflected I could probably give those orders to them, but it would have to wait for now.

It was time for Captain Emeril to get his treatment.

and were a massively powerful combined treatment for what was ailing him. The former would eliminate all psychoses, mental disorders, insanities, neuroses, and psychological problems and instabilities, returning his mind to its most advanced and strongest state.

would deal with the emotional issues, the equivalent of mentally digesting and working through traumatic emotional problems over days, weeks, and months, leaning on the power of sympathetic minds from the akasha or other resonant sources, letting him know he was not alone, others had faced similar devastation, and he could and would recover from it.

That he’d lost the trust of his crew was a given, but that did not mean he could not earn it back with the right combination of moves and orders.

It would all return to him, and he could face it with , both of which I whispered into the spells as I applied them to him.

It was very un-goth of me, but I was in disguise at the moment.

I pulled out my datapad, pulled up the shipwide voice system, and accessed it with a brutal speed that would have had any programmers still watching wondering what was going on… if they knew my command codes were invented and only input just minutes ago, which they would not without some deep research I wasn’t going to give them time to perform.

The PA system winked on, attached to my coms, even though lock-down probably didn’t include communication systems. Still, as a nice accompaniment to Magevoice, I said firmly, “This is a public service announcement to the crew of the For benefit of your continued sanity and peace of mind, the Lady Edge blesses you with , and .”

Might have spent an IX Valence to get the Words to carry through the artificial atmosphere, just in case.

The people around me, already unconscious as unscrewed their brainwashing, twitched and jerked and relaxed as and fortified them against what they were going through, giving them the courage to overcome what was done, and the will to believe things were going to turn out for the better.

It also completely knocked cold every single member of the crew, and it rang out in the hearts, minds, and souls of the members still in stasis, too.

Speaking of which…

Whistling a haunting melody, since I absolutely knew there was nobody conscious out there who was going to stop me, I strolled out of the bridge as I began to delve into the ship’s computerized systems.

Hey, there were a lot of people still held in stasis, basically prisoners who would never be let out and likely die that way unless something was done by someone who had a black and red flowers and skulls theme.

If I was correct, almost all of them had died in the Ruin of Darkmoor, gone to sleep and never waking up, slaughtered without any chances whatsoever.

This timeline was going to be different. We just had to figure where we were going to put everybody… and Aru knew, too much population was not something we were going to have a problem with.

The Kingdom of Darkmoor on this world was going to be something special, indeed!

I got that process underway with satisfaction, at the same time extending stasis fields to every single specimen they’d collected from any planets they’d found, and priming purging routines in said chambers if they were somehow released. My gaze lingered on several things that I was pretty sure had become random monsters in the future, specifically the bloodflowers and the stumpjaws, shaking my head at the sheer irresponsibility of those who thought superior technology triumphed catastrophe and the laughter of gods wanting some thrills and excitement.

Well, it was what it was.

The process of mass revival of the crew underway, I was about to close my datapad and figure out something to do when a beeping alert sign caught my attention. Highly moral person that I was, I was looking out while everyone snoozed, while Cirru and Duum outside were input into the fire control systems of the security programming as friendlies. I even ran out an identity torc for them to put on that would paint them as friendlies for the defense systems, allowing them to fly up to the top of the ship and perch up there liked they owned the world, to the utter envy of the dragons circling in the distance who dared not do the same thing.

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Some internal security displays popped up on my screen, showing a group of some tall four-armed humanoids in rough robes bearing over-long swords and what were obviously stolen laser pistols moving through one of the outer modules, having somehow opened up an airlock. Their flesh looked odd, as if they were made of dirt or earth as it cycled from a jade-like green to slate gray, with the largest and most adorned member of the bunch actually approaching black. I cycled through my internal monster guides, trying to find a match, and could not, although a vague resemblance to the Green Martians of John Carter was definitely apparent.

I absolutely locked down all further egress from that section of the ship, and all doorways into or out of the main hallway, while also jamming the Loop connection there. After a moment of thought, I also sealed off the ventilation ducts, just in case they were form-changers of any kind.

A flicker through access records indicated they had input an access code that overrode standard lockdown procedures, one of a spread of them stuck into the system as a backdoor by crewmen who wanted to be able to come and go.

Like, Computer Technician Third Class Benjamin Horst. I rolled my eyes at that name coming up, then proceeded to change all those access codes and their file locations, while inputting new coding that would cut and replace any further attempts to put in the same things while notifying me of the addition.

“Hey, you eight chuckleheads. Yeah, you, with the four arms and stolen gear,” I said to them with Magevoice in , and they all froze, looking around wildly for the speaker. “First of all, I know you are sneaking in here. Second of all, I’ve locked down that part of the ship, and you aren’t getting in anywhere besides the public corridors you’re already in.

“I am debating sending down some of the D-bots, the big black metal knights, to come down there, violently incapacitate you, and figure out where you come from, who sent you, and go there and obliterate them in a rather violent display of pyrotechnics, very bright lights, explosions, zum-zum sounds, and pieces of four-armed fools flying in all directions.” I brought up the ship’s records on them, noting they were called the Sand Folk, and they were supposed to have some sort of agreement with the ship. “Well, well, Chief Hruvalk. You seem to be in violation of our territorial accords, and by the looks of things, busily stealing from us and ready to engage in violence against our crew. I guess those raids by despised members of the tribes was just a lot of hot air, like our accord? Most excellent.

“Your tribe seems to be based out of a series of caves in the valley center there, with other members of your people wandering about freely and ducking the dragons.

“You know, we had some use for you as a distraction and buffer there, as long as we could trust you to keep your hands to yourselves. We certainly weren’t impinging on your hunting rights and anything, and you’ve profited greatly off scavenging the monsters you’ve lured and driven into our defenses.

“It seems that you didn’t think that was enough. Very well, I am revoking the agreement you are ignoring.

“In five minutes, five D-bots are going to walk into that corridor where you are standing. If they don’t see every single item of technology you’ve filched on the ground, they are going to follow you back to your tribe, with some support drones, and they are going to massacre you and every member of your tribe.

“You probably have noticed that they can move much, much faster than you can. I would start dropping your tech now.

“I will be following you with a sensor drone as you return to your tribe and vacate this area with all haste. In one hour, that D-bot force is going to sweep into your former living area. If they don’t find every single technological item you’ve filched, which that drone will be able to sense, they are going to follow you, cut you all down, and retrieve said items from your corpses. If they do find those stolen items, they will retrieve them, and then they are going to collapse those caves and render them completely uninhabitable.

“You and your fellow tribes are going to be shot on sight thereafter. I would stop trying to lure dragons into range of our defenses, because they will shoot you first, than the dragons.

“In the future, you might consider abiding by the agreements you enter into in good faith.

“I can see that you understood all this. I suggest you divest yourselves of your spoils and start running. Or, you can remain where you are, fight, be slaughtered, and we will move on to eradicate your tribe.

“The clock begins now.”

There was no hesitation in the eyes of the tall, black-skinned quad-armed native. He hurriedly crouched, hissing instructions to his fellows, and coms, lights, pistols, grenades, stims, and other general-issue gear all began to clatter to the floor of the corridor with haste and purpose. I watched impassively as they hurriedly got rid of all their looted spoils, then turned around and raced for the exit airlock.

They were not happy to see the sensor drone hovering thirty feet above them outside, nor a half-dozen turrets aimed in their direction, and four D-bots standing right there with weapons trained on them.

It appeared they had managed to infiltrate using a tunnel dug under and through a rock outcropping that had disrupted the smooth line of the security perimeter to the west. The boulders had concealed their approach from any visual view if they were careful, and the tunnel itself seemed to be lined with a stone that interfered with sensors and thermal detection. Added to the fact that the notes seemed to indicate that they were a silicon-based lifeform, and yeah, they’d been able to creep up on the ship without being spotted with some cunning and difficulty.

Where they’d gotten the access code wasn’t hard to discern, either. Cross-referencing other video records was enough to see that Technician Horst had used the code several times to leave and re-enter the ship without detection, and at least one of those times he punched in the code had been while under observation from a tribesman not sixty feet away.

Buttons that glowed when punched were not a good security feature, and it seemed the Sand Folk were natural thieves, memorizing the code after witnessing it only once.

Also, Horst was an overconfident idiot. I idly brought up his personnel files, finding out that he was brilliant, extremely entitled, egotistical, didn’t work well with others, and had the social skills of a fruit fly.

I couldn’t fault him for rebelling against an insane captain, but he had long been identified as a sociopath, everything was a problem someone else caused, he was never to blame. I couldn’t hold him responsible for the things his lich-self did in the other timeline, but nothing said I couldn’t make that impossible in this timeline…