Torl's Journey

Seala had shut down the Witch Hunter’s equipment, even doing an adequate job of erasing the control chip. She told him how she accessed the system, and he reprogrammed it so that it would take a comp spec to tell that the system was not working. It would never again detect a witch.

Further, he now knew how to access and reprogram them. This would be very valuable information in the future. If he had known this technique earlier, many other witches could have been saved, and he and Seala would not have had to run away. Some day he would have to ask Seala how she had come up with the idea. For now though he had to find a way out of their current predicament.

First, to find the captain and learn all that he could about this ship and the device that the captain was using on Seala. This could be very dangerous. It appeared, from the things Torl had learned about the captain and the way that he controlled his ship, that the captain must be something of an intuit. He seemed to know what was going to happen before it did. Torl would have to search for any hint that the captain knew about his abilities before he finished.

...There, yes, this was definitely the captain. He was in his quarters, discussing the surge in power that they had experienced with the new device. Torl could see the picture of this device clearly in the captain’s mind. It was an alien device that the captain had stolen from a research ship they had plundered two years back.

This device had been some sort of power generator. Finally, the captain had been able to fit it to his ship. He did not understand it, except that the research crew thought it was linked to witches and the power they used.

Through experimentation, the likes of which made Torl sick to his stomach, the captain had deduced that when it was on, witches were very powerful, when it was in reverse generation mode, they became disoriented, when it was off, it had no effect on the witches. The helmet, purchased from Witch Hunters, was an ugly thing which drew power away from a witch and redirected it for other uses. It had been used in a torture chamber by the witch hunters. The captain had this device wired to the main generators and the engine control systems.

Since the control systems were computerized, Torl believed that he could access this system. But Seala had said that the system shut itself down and the captain came running, when she attempted to bypass it. The control switch was in the room where Seala was held captive, in a closet near the door. The closet had a witch lock on it and was made of the same material as the room, only there was no on switch to return the colors of power to this room.

The power device had three positions... One with power color generation, one with reverse generation, and off. The reverse generation was what the captain had used on Seala to stop her from destroying the ship. Now the captain no longer used the off position. He could not tell the difference but Seala’s sudden weakness was firmly planted in his mind. Now the captain was seriously considering having the off switch disabled. This was a self-contained unit that simply generated photon power to the engines. No way to stop it without entering the room and, it was armed and had a witch lock on it. Well, if necessary, Torl thought, I could always make someone else turn it off.

Now to the ship layout, personnel, and schedule as well as the abilities of each person on board. Torl would have to commit all this information to memory before he could formulate a plan. This could take a couple of hours. He sure hoped that Seala could hold out that long. He began to mind scan...

Two hours later, Torl could feel the suspicions of the captain beginning to activate. He immediately broke contact. Better to take a little longer to get the information than to allow the captain to find out that he had it. Well, he had enough to think about for now anyway.

He now had a picture stored away in his mind of the ship layout, including the secret passages the captain had had installed to allow him to move about without the crew knowing that he was not in his office. There were also numerous snooping devices in every area large enough for more than two or three people to meet.

There was a secret control room, just off the captain’s office which could control the entire ship, including Life Support. ...The captain was definitely prepared for the eventuality of a mutiny. He had anti-persona devices in all his secret places and persona detectors throughout the rest of the ship...Torl would have to take the captain out before he started any other actions.

Torl contacted Seala and relayed a summary of the information he had gathered. He asked her if she could hold out for a few more hours and she responded with a shaky affirmative. From this response Torl got the impression that he had better hurry. She was already loosing strength, and confidence. He sent what energy he could spare and did his best to feed a sense of absolute confidence and pride in her. In response, he felt her steady and strengthen. Hopefully, it was enough.

Now all he could do was study and store up his own energy...

Early the next day, Torl again began to search the captain’s mind. He retrieved information on all the members of the crew. There had been twenty. Ten had been warriors, with the captain and first officer being by far the most capable...at least in the captain’s mind. Three were thugs, like the two that had escorted him around the other day. Two more had died in their last freighter raid. The captain had killed three when they failed to capture Torl and Seala outside the casino.

The captain had not yet informed the crew that the three were dead. This allowed him to keep the rumor circulating about Torl’s exceptional prowess, without angering them to the point of wanting revenge. This would keep the men on their toes. If they knew that the captain had killed the thugs, their attention would shift to him again. This was a tactical maneuver that surprised Torl with its simplistic and somewhat twisted logic.

There were eight flight technicians, four specializing in navigation and weaponry, and four in maintenance and repair. The captain considered these people very valuable but extremely weak. Finally, there were two females of the living furniture class. These were his trump cards as they also doubled as assassins. The girls kept the male crew members happy and reported back to him on anything that they learned. If someone sounded disloyal, the captain would have the girls quietly get rid of the trouble maker.

...So, Torl would have to get rid of or disable seven people and control eight to get them out of this mess. That was no small order. The other option was to try to run the entire ship by himself.

Suddenly, Torl’s mind recoiled, breaking contact immediately. The captain had a mind block in place. A mind block was a nasty device. What was he hiding? Was he hiding it from himself or just from others? Torl had found no hint of the captain’s knowledge of such a device, but that could have been hidden, too. What now?

These devices could not be gotten around. You had to breach them or leave them alone. Breaching it would be very stressful, and could not be done without alerting the captain. Also, once breached, the device could not be erected again without the aid of a specialist. That meant that whatever was behind the block would be rejoined with the rest of the individual’s consciousness. If he were a reprogrammed killer, he would be a killer again. If he were an agent, he would know his whole background again. One could never know what might be behind a mind block, not until it was breached. But, if the captain were hiding some secret weapon behind this block, Torl could walk right into a trap.

He finally decided. When he was ready, he would hit the captain first and breach the block, reading it quickly. Then he would have to destroy the captain immediately. If he found something that would prevent the planned escape from working, they would have to improvise.

With that decision firmly in place, Torl began to formulate his plan. Late in the day he contacted Seala and explained the plan to her. He told her how she could tell when he had started and what her part would be. He then told her of the danger that the captain’s mind block could be.

When he broke contact with her that evening, Torl knew that they would have to make the attempt very soon. Seala was not holding up very well now. That marvelous mind and strength of will was barely perceptible any more. She would not be much help, this part he would have to do by himself; he could only hope that the damage was not irreversible.

He would need all the power at his command and would not be able to split his attention to help her once he started. He wasn’t even sure that he could help. But he took the time to touch her with the healing power of the greens, reds and whites, hoping that his patchwork would help her to hold on a little longer.