Rubato Tales 3: Grunweld-Doc gets boned!

Rubato Tales STELLARDATE 110408: Doc gets boned!

Once again I begin this tale with a deletion. All files related to our recent discoveries on Grunweld and what we discovered during our investigation there regarding the cybertake named Dr. Travis Clark. But I am getting ahead of myself.
When we first arrived on Grunweld Maggie informed us that she would be seeing to some negotiations upcountry privately and we were to take on two tasks. The first, arranging for some contracts for rare hardwoods and furniture made from them, which were fairly common on Grunweld, and hunt for the criminal cybertake named Dr. Travis Clark who was hiding out on the planet.
After numerous, and hilarious, attempts to get the local clothing put on properly we made our way to Customs. While the locals may want to keep things low tech on the rest of the planet the scanning stations were rather up to date and they made sure to keep the number of weapons and technology we were permitted to carry onto the rest of the planet fitted in with their laws. While Jacques chaffed about this, Maria, Jackson, Doc, and I had no problems. In hindsight the high technology station should have been our first clue about what was going on here but so it goes.
The train ride to the city took an hour and was quite enjoyable. Scenes of idyllic life and apparently contented and happy villagers passed us by. Quaint carriages, well laid out fields and plentiful woods and trees dotted the landscape. It was very relaxing and scenic. We were all quite lured into stupidity and underestimating the locals as a result of this trip, cunning these Grunweldians.
Once at the city of Grunweld we decided to enjoy the local fare, the food was delicious and the local brew quite potent and delicious. Much tastier than the processed FoodTM stuff we typically eat to much these days.
Appropriately lubricated and feed we asked some questions and found out that Mansfield and Associated were an excellent source for hardwood furniture. We made our way over to their factory and were all quite impressed with their work, I used my business skills and we negotiated an equitable contract for hardwood and furniture. We contacted Maggie and she was pleased by our negociations as well but was having more difficulties on here end. We decided to take the night off and enjoy the local scene by drinking, eating and singing with locals. What a night!
The next day we took on the task of finding the nefarious Dr Clark!
Little did we know what this would result in.
Especially Doc.
Poor guy.
He got better.
We decided to split up into pairs for safety.
Maggie went to look up local police and criminal information while Doc and Jacques and Jackson apparently went out to examine local steam technology and do more drinking, again, and the Doc and I went off to the University.
At the University the Doc was throughly disgusted by what he saw. He offered to write a paper on the procedures that they were apparently quite proud of. He saw enough there that it intrigued the rest of us and we decided to check it out the next dayThe Doc arranged for us to watch a local surgery and talked with the head of the Medical Staff who looked familiar but much older that Dr. Clark, which made me suspicious. I was stymied by some of the local technology and I could not see how it could work but detected no nanomanipulation. We contacted Maggie again that night and she was still “in the midst of negotiations” and did not need any help. Good enough for us.
It was that night that the Doc decided to go back to the University Library by himself. When we work up he had not returned.
That got us all curious and we made our way to the Library while Jacques went back to the ship to get some bigger firepower.
At the Library it took us some time to find out where the Doc had been and using my enhanced sense of smell I was able to track him to a stairwell and then downstairs.
This lead us to a door in the basement marked NO ENTRANCE at the bottom of the emergency exit stairwell. Unable to hack or open the door I tried to us nanomanipulation to get it open, this caused a great deal of alarms to go off. That was a surprise, how could a steamtech society even detect such attempts. Curious I manifested a Remote on the other side of the door and looked around, a hallway with a a half dozen doors on either side lead to some pipes at the other end of the room that traced back to a security room. I was able to see that all the fire alarms were going off and that at least was a good thing. I sent to eye downstairs to check out the rooms and found what looked like a morgue. The rooms had 20 plus sliding beds that I was able to get a look inside before time ran out on the Remote.
What I saw was a huge surprise.
The beds were not a morgue but instead were very up-to-date, very high technological,very advanced nanomanipulation based organ farms.
These were patently illegal by local laws.
The facility was patently large enough that many, many local people had to be in on it.
Some of those would have to be the Dean, local police and government officials.
When Maria asked what I found I simply replied “We are in so much trouble!”
We made our way back to the rooms to collect our stuff and found that Jacques had returned and found the Doc sleeping in his bed. He had NOT been there before.
We collected him and rapidly returned to the safety of the ship.
Once there we discussed what to do next. Jacque was all in favor of loading up on the weapons and head in shooting. Maria wanted to bring the criminal to justice and Doc wanted to know what had happened to him. He apparently found some sort of implant in his head and was quite understandable upset by it. Right as he returned I stated that while we could go in with guns blazing and assuming the local police would be on our side but might want to have a backup plan like we give what we had found and then delete our information and Dr. Clark takes the chip our of Doc's head and call it even, Thats when Doc said, in a tone of voice not quite his own “Agreed, but you have to give me copies of, and then delete the data on the Ogres from the ship as well”
“Hello Dr. Clark” I said and the rest of the crew looked confused so I explained that the Doc was a puppet for Dr. Clark now due to the chip. Doc was even less pleased by this but really what choice did we have. Apparently Dr. Clark did not want to get too much attention brought to his little, and obviously profitable, enterprise. We made the exchange later that day via electronics and Doc confirmed that the chip had been burned out. Maggie returned that day and with her up to date we left Grunweld behind.