“What is this? A torture table?”

  “Nope, just a medical AI that does not like it's patients to squirm when it's trying to save them.”

  Said medical AI was already bombarding me with information.

  “Huh, you DO have a bit of a concussion.”

  She stopped squirming.

  “But my head doesen't hurt, it's just a bit tender.”

  “I'm looking at the swelling right here.” I said, and had the little repair drone scramble up the side of the bed onto her shoulder, and prodded the area just above her left temple.

  “Ow, like I said it's tender.”

  “And concussed... oh wow you have a few things going wrong. Did you know you have an infection?”

  “I've been feeling a bit off for the last few days.”

  “Also cancer.”

  “WHAT?” Carolina exclaimed.

  “Yeah, looks like... Lung cancer? You a smoker?”

  “What? No! Smoking is not allowed aboard ship!”

  “Ever do some noxious work without a mask?” I said, knowing engineers and mechanics and the second most likely cause for lung cancer in my time.

  She looked away sheepishly and muttered something.

  “What was that?” I asked, my eyes unfocused as I read through the all the messages the medical bay, the auto-doc really, was sending me on her condition.

  “I said the masks hurt my ears... and mess up my hair.” She griped.

  “Uh-huh” I commiserated

  “Well, some good news, we can drug you up for the concussion to reduce the swelling and we can kill the infection pretty well. The cancer...” I trailed off as I read more into what we had available. We were limited in the complexity of the drugs we could manufacture aboard ship apparently. “We have a front line treatment for the cancer to keep it from growing, hopefully, till you can get some cyberlungs to replace the set that's currently trying to kill you.”

  I realised that I was being much snarkier than I had been before I woke up in this century, maybe it was a coping mechanism.

  Carolina313 said in a shocked, and upset voice. “But... But... Cybertech is illegal! If I get any implants I'll be executed!”

  I mentally blinked.

  “But... this is life or death, surely there are exceptions.” I replied

  She shook her head back and forth.

  “No, no exceptions, nobles get cloned organs, or take them from the crew, but the rest of us...” She trailed off, tears were now freely flowing from her eyes, and she was starting to snot up. Not a pretty crier that one.

  I paused.

  “So... how often do clones like you get cloned organs.”

  She sniffled.

  “We don't.”

  I paused.

  “Just what distinguishes a clone from her captain? From what I've heard captain's crew their ship strictly with clones of themselves correct?”

  a snot bubble was forming under her nose, and I released her arms from the chair so she could wipe her face.

  “Mmm. Captain's have a signet, and they normally keep a series of passwords in their logs so they can identify themselves to another noble.”

  A plan was forming in my head.

  “So... if you were to get your hands on the captain's signet... and maybe logbook... you could get yourself some cloned organs from... well I guess all the sources of your cloned organs are other clones and I guess they are all dead.”

  “Captain's sometimes use a flash-clone system if they need organs now.... or they have them in stock... but I could never get access to something like that as a clone.”

  “And what if you had the captain's signet and logs? Enough to pass as your captain who survived the tragic crashing of her ship.”

  “Um... if that were to happen, I could claim to be her and receive... a lot at any of her family installations. But.... But we're already away from the wreck, and you said those things that attacked us were acting strangely, we shouldn't move around too much in the void or they'll find us like they found my old ship.”

  “Actually that brings me to a question I wanted to ask. What you guys were doing in the void that could have attracted those things in the first place? First though... the book and the signet ring, do they look like... hold on.” I took a moment to position the little repair drone on her chest, and aimed at the opposite wall. Thankfully someone had already thought of doing this, and the code for it was right there when I searched the ships database for it.

  “This.” I said, and projected an image on the wall using the little bots tools to emit light in a very specific manner. The image was a wireframe design of the ring I had collected, and the logbook, getting as much detail as I could.

  “That's them! Though the signet seems.... damaged.”

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  “I took a trip to the ships bridge, and found the captain's ready room. I also found what remained of the captain.... it was not pretty. I assume the rest of this signet... ring, it's more like a gauntlet but jeweler y in my opinion, was torn up with the body. Also there appears to be a weapon built into it.”

  She blinked at what I showed her.

  “That... that looks like all I would need to...” Her face suddenly went blank.

  “My duty is to the captain and the ship, nothing more. Should the captain die the crew must go down with the ship.” She said in a monotone voice.

  A blinking alert appeared on my screen.

  It was from the medical bed she was still sitting on, still monitoring her vitals.

  Something weird was up with her limbic system, it was dumping a lot of... something into her bloodstream.

  I frame-jacked myself up to a high speed, or at least I tried to, and the implants in my body tried, but I could barely slow my perception of time at all without the ship directly connected to me.

  Maybe I should consider some upgrades.

  “Hook, what is this?”

  “This is likely part of the indoctrination that is used to keep slaves compliant in the empire... Each Noble Captain favors their own flavor of it as it were, this seems to be a combination of several, it looks like a hypnotic suggestions triggered by thoughts of.... well I don't know what thoughts could have triggered it from the scan, but from what you were saying likely thoughts of mutiny.”

  “Is this mutiny?”

  “It's taking over the captain's identity, which would include ownership of all of her assets including her ship so... yes?”

  “You said a combination?”

  “Yes, it looks like certain parts of her brain have been overstimulated, with the hypnosis, and probably as part of her sleep training, whenever she has thoughts of doing any of the aforementioned acts, her body dumps a bunch of... well a cocktail of hormones and neurotransmitters into her that make her compliant. Also it appears to have severely reduced her anxiety levels.”

  “You almost make it sound like she is high.”

  “She is, from a certain point of view.” Hook said in a cadence that reminded me of a now over five hundred year old sci-fi film.

  “God I hate that line. Is there anything we can do to stop that, prevent it, or break the conditioning?”

  “Maybe. I have some thoughts. For now you should probably focus on getting her situated and getting the medication into her.”

  I frame-jacked down to normal speed, realizing that Carolina313 appeared to be perfectly at ease laying in the medical bed.

  “I'm going to administer the medication now Carolina.”

  She just nodded, staring off into the distance.

  To Hook I asked. “This looks a lot like a trauma response, disassociating.”

  “The neurological state appears similar.” Hook responded.

  I began looking up treatments for dissociation.

  Putting together a basic treatment in my head, opened a channel to the medical bay.

  “Carolina, could you please describe the room to me?”

  She looked around vaguely.

  “It looks veiny, bulgy. Like a tensed arm with the veins standing out.”

  I looked through the lists on the medical bay, and deployed a straw near her face.

  “Please drink from this.”

  She put her lips on the straw and sucked, and instantly her face sucked in on itself and she turned away.

  “Sour.”

  I retracted the straw full of lemon juice from her.

  I scuttled the little repair bot down to the palm of her hand.

  “Could you please squeeze the bot.”

  She gave it a lighthearted squeeze.

  Referring back to my notes I squirted a little bit of coolant onto her hand.

  She immediately jumped and blinked down at the bot in her hand.

  “What... I'm sorry I must have blanked out or something, what were you saying?” Carolina asked, the first few words were slow, almost slurred, but by the end of the sentence she sounded fairly normal.

  “Just that we are going to be giving you some medication to help with the concussion.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  I initiated the medical bet and it inserted an IV into her arm and began administering fluids, nutrients, and the medications recommended.

  “You should go to sleep for now.”

  I could already see her eyes beginning to close, and within moments she was out.

  “Probably adrenaline crash. So first things first... do we have a room for her?”

  “We do have a brig, which is where captured enemy combatants are supposed to go... but mostly we capture them in their escape pods, so it's really just an empty cargo area where we stash the pods and hook them up to life support and power until we offload them.”

  “Any guest quarters.”

  “Yes, actually, Captain Bait prepared one for you and several others when she began excavating the Ark.”

  “And you didn't eat them during the rebuild?”

  “I 'ate' All but one.”

  “Oh... that works then. So what are your thoughts on breaking her conditioning.”

  “Well...”