Chapter 3: Stardust Waltz

Hank replies, "She was 'former' the moment she tried to frame me. She stole my heart, then stabbed me in the back. But that was a while ago and life moves on.

"Yes, Ryan is part of the crew of the Celestial Voyager. He's the ship medic. He joined a few months ago. He's been doing a great job thus far. What is he accused of doing?" Hank pauses for a moment, then adds, "What do you mean by 'going by'?"

Reaching for their datapad, and receiving it back Slaine answers, "Alfredo Hernandez is a wanted criminal for, at minimum, practicing medicine without a licence and performing over a hundred operations under false pretenses. He is also suspected, and highly likely, of being involved in human cloning. Possibly worse." Then turning the datapad back shows an image of Alfredo Hernandez, who the crew would recognize as Ryan Carter.

After reading the report Hank says, "Yeah, that's him. Damn..."

Hank bites his lip for a moment, looks at Jil and Gabe, and says, "Well, that could clear up a mystery we have. Seems that someone on our ship tried to kill us with a hacked navigation system on our shuttle. If Ryan is really a bad dude, that could link up. Whoever did it cleaned up their tracks in the logs in the shuttle's systems. We're going to check out the ship's logs when we get back, but obviously that hasn't happened yet. We haven't said anything yet to anyone else, not even the captain, because we don't know who did it."

Taking a breath he says, "It's hard to process. He seemed like such a great guy, too."

After a few seconds of thought, he also asks, "What is worse than human cloning? Some kind of human experimentation?" Hank gives a little shudder at the thought.

Making a quick look at Agent Alex, then back to Hank."Actually, something like that."...
Would you both be willing to, and this is completely voluntary, have a full exam in our medical facility. For your safety."

"There is a lot going on right now. It would seem a rather inopportune time for our annual physical. We would need to know what we are being checked for. And why."

"What I can say is limited at the moment, but what I can say is Alfredo Hernandez may have the ability to implant devices that may augment or override a person's perception and decision making." Then, with more of the sincerity of a medical professional than professionalism of an ITC agent,"Mostly, I just want to make sure you're both ok."
You can see that Special Agent Slaine Rowan may have a vibroblade and blaster at their hip, and some standard issue body armor, but they also have a medic's pack on their back.

"Really? How? Look, Jil has only been on the crew for a couple of weeks, so she hasn't said anything to Ryan, uh, Alfredo?, uh ... whatever. She hasn't had a chance to say much to him other than 'hello'. And, uh, he has only been on the crew for barely half a year, so he hasn't had much chance to rip people open and put them back together again. He's only a nurse, as far as we knew, so he wouldn't have been doing anything extreme to anyone anyway."Hank turns to Gabe and asks, "Has he done anything other than treat minor injuries or illness in his time on the ship?"

Gabe says, "No, not that I'm aware of. Honestly, I think he's been mostly been happily bored due to the lack of anything serious happening."

Hank turns back to Slaine and continues, "So, I do apologize for being skeptical, but I still don't see the threat here. How is he going to take us over? Can he do it easily by simply drugging us? Does he have to insert something into us? Does he have to rip our brains out? Would we even know something has happened?" Hank stops for a second and regroups. He then says, "I'm sorry; that was a bit much. But having someone insist we dock, march onto our shuttle, say our medic is a mad scientist who turns people into puppets, now please get on this examination table while we probe you, is a bit much to take. I don't think asking for more of an explanation than 'Trust me' is out of line. Please see it from our perspective. Would you believe you if you were in our position?"

EDIT:
"Plus, you know, we were ordered by the captain of the ITC Navy ship Sentinel to perform sensor sweeps on the asteroid field for actively hostile separatists who are potentially holding hostages. Which we are no longer doing on account of being docked. So, we really are under a time crunch here and will need very good reason to not get back to what the Navy wants us to do. Actually, if you want, we can just get everyone on a conference call so we can get our priorities all straightened out."

---

"I understand your apprehension, and I won't force you to do anything.
Yes, Alfredo Hernandez likely has the technology for implants to override one's control of their body. He, while unlicensed, is a skilled surgeon who has performed many many surgeries. He was discovered and as the outroar began because of it, he fled Eclipse."
Slaine glances out the nearest viewport, If one is good at insight, and noticing word choice, you can see that Slaine hasn't confirmed that the ITC for sure knows that Alfredo Hernandez has this technology, but believes the treat of it.
"I have our ships synths scanning the area for any sign of any unregistered presence, and will continue to do so for as long as you remain on board. If that is not good enough for the Sentinel, I will personally handle any complaints.
But in the meantime I would prefer if Alfredo Hernandez did not know we were looking for him. Not until we can meet in person.
Please."

Slaine watches Hank and Gabe glance at each other. "How about a compromise of a scan? Fully hands off.
We should be able to confirm what we need from that."

Jil hangs back with an unconcerned expression. Her time in the navy left her pretty immune to "spot examinations".

Slaine takes their medkit and proceeds to scan the CV crew. All results are negative for Bio-Synths processing cores and they seem to be human.

Regarding the medical facilities, the crew knows that it's a possible component for a starship, but neither of yours, nor the Sentinel, have it. During ship construction, they would have to trade range, speed or cargo capacity for that and it was deemed not worth by the original builders. So, anything too serious in the Celestial Voyager, you stabilize, cryo freeze and wait for a hospital. The nearest places for that full examination requested by Slaine would be Draco I and III orbital stations. The one at Draco III is owned by ITC, unlike the one at Draco I, so it would be easier there and it was probably the facility mentioned by Slaine.

Hank has no problem with a scan. It's the full probe he does. I'm assuming Gabe is similar.

To Slaine's counter proposal, Hank silently checks with his companions and replies, "That is acceptable. Thank you for understanding."

Once that is done, Hank asks, "Now that we have been scanned and now that we know you need to get to Ryan, how do you propose doing it? We are a couple days away from the Celestial Voyager and the Sentinel expects us to assist in this search. I recommend that you reach out to the Sentinel to get their input."

Slaine notices Jill's gestures, and responds with acknowledgement and a hold position.


Once everyone was scanned Slaine would relax a little. "I want you to know I appreciate your cooperation and patience. Let's head to the coms to get a hold of the Sentinel, so we can make a plan, and I'll explain why I have been acting a bit strange on the way.""Back on Eclipse I followed another Alfredo Hernandez who, upon noticing he was being trained, incinerated himself with an internal explosive.
We believe he was a cloned Biological Synth.
And either the one on the Celestial Voyager is too, or knows about or aided in their creation."

Hank says, "Now you're telling us that there are multiple 'Ryans' out there? Wow. You meet someone who seems like a decent guy, then find out that not only is he bad news, but there are multiple of them. Weird.

"And would you please explain what you mean by 'Biological Synth'? I am familiar with Synths, as our ship has some to manage it during jump. But what is a Biological Synth?"

"To roughly summarize. A Biological synth is a cloned human body with a synch core replacing its nervous system. It could appear to be human in every way, except controlled by someone in the same way we control a Synth."

Hank stops and looks back to Jil and Gabe again. With a nod from Gabe, Hank says, "... Well, that's interesting. I have no idea if this is relevant or not, but we were asked to 'buy' a cargo load of synth cores to get them off-world from Draco I. Considering that Draco I has crime-coded mines, we made excuses and never got back to them. We thought there was something fishy going on there, but this opens up a lot more possibilities for bad things to be going on."

They then continue walking. Slowly another thought forms in his mind. "You said that a Biological Synth is the result of putting a synth core into a cloned human body. Is there any reason it needs to be a cloned human body? Could it be done with an 'occupied' human body?"

After saying that, he sheepishly looks back at Jil and says, "Yeah, I've just become this wealth of dark paranoia, huh?"

"That ... Very well could be helpful. We may need to look in on that. Who was it that was trying to hire you to smuggle the synth cores?
I'm more interested in suppliers than smugglers."

"Honestly, it would be extremely complicated to design, but it is theoretically possible. Several implants along the brain and the brain stem could do it."