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⬅️ Previous capture (2022-04-28)
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Story continuing from Chapter 2 - The Dream.
Introducing a new character in this post, as Captain Leonard McKnight tries to keep Kendra alive.
Leonard McKnight sat bolt upright in his bed, his voice echoing throughout his quarters. The captain's body was covered with a cold sweat, as all the memories of his past, of his youth, came back to him, assaulting him, along with the pain of loss. He fought the pain and sorrow. He furiously blinked back the tears that threatened to spill from his eyes.
Then, the captain's thoughts jumped into motion.
He initiated a number of programs to intercept the signals that had gone out of his quarters, those sensors that had recorded his dreams and his emotional outburst upon waking. Those feelings were not supposed to be possible among crew, especially among those in command, as all strong emotions were regulated by the tech that was injected, integrated, with the neural systems of the human body.
Except his tech was different, modified, changed by the captain himself.
Hacked.
The captain would not lose himself to the technology the way he had seen so many other people's personalities get crushed.
Captain McKnight scanned the ship's systems, ensuring that there would be nothing left, no trace of his emotional outburst, of his strong, so life-like dreams. He left his thoughts adrift among the ship's systems, surfing on the Song, a combination of the flows of computer signals and the thoughts and dreams of his shipmates, along those of the colonists, his perception gliding around familiar algorithms, code that he himself had written, assembled, manipulated. He let pieces of his consciousness glide along those streams, cleaning up the mess left by his dreams. Yet even now he turned the main part of his mind away, pivoting to other matters.
The captain could not let his moments of weakness from the past take an innocent life. Not another one. He could not, would not, allow another person's life be ruined, or to die, because he was too slow to act.
There were few people in his crew that he could trust with this task, and no one that he could involve at this stage without raising suspicion. Instead, he turned to more algorithms he had written, bypassing all of the security systems of the ship, until he was able to open a channel of communication, completely secure and unobserved, to another spacecraft, one that was on the further edge of communication range, that usually followed along the tail end of the fleet. In a much higher orbit, much closer to that of the larger of the two moons, the spacecraft was barely in range to take the call.
After a few moments, a video image in Captain McKnight's mind came to life. In it, he saw that of a middle-aged man, one completely unlike those of the other colonists. His hair was long, blonde and shaggy, falling about and far below his shoulders. His blonde beard, with a bit of grey mixed in with age, was long and bushy, hanging down to his chest. He was a large man, as tall and as powerful as the captain himself, but with a crazed, energetic look within his eyes.
Right now the man's eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a sleeping outfit, one of dark black and purple colors, something that fit his persona, the image he projected of himself. And though he was tired, there was an intensity to him, as those eyes stared into the camera aboard his own ship, to the screen where the mental image of the captain stared back at him.
This man he faced looked like everything the Cardinal Embassy feared, everything they fought against in their culture. He was beyond their control, uncontrollable, a free spirit. He was a brave man, a moral man, tough as leather, a survivor. He was a man that Captain McKnight trusted, especially for those missions that needed to be off the books, completely beyond the Song, beyond the Grid.
"Hello Marcus," Captain McKnight addressed his old friend.
"Hey there, Captain," Marcus' voice was deep and gruff. "What can I do for you? It must be important for you to be contacting me in the middle of the night. Not that there really is night out here in space, but you get my meaning."
"I have a job for you, Sargent," the captain addressed Marcus using his old rank, not that he had been an official part of the military for many years, having refused the integration of the tech.
The captain continued. "Do you think you could keep someone alive, someone who seems determined to get herself killed?"
The person on the other side of the video feed grimaced, and a deep growl slipped into his voice.
"Someone like yerself, then," Marcus declared. "Fill me in, Captain. What do I need to break? Tell me there is something to break, and I'll take the job."
Captain McKnight smiled. To bring Marcus in, he could find something that needed breaking.
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