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By all rights, he probably should have been fixating on the Ohm, but the people he knew well on the ship all seemed to have made it out in fair shape. He’d try to get hold of the debriefings when they were all in, then ask questions if he needed to. But for now, he was more interested in what had happened to Steve during shore leave, partly to figure out who in the crew was messing with people’s heads, partly to find out if the ship had any particular limitations…

He would have liked to hold this conversation semi-private, but, barring locking himself in the Shadow or the Falcon, there weren’t a lot of places no one could sneak into. He settled for second best: somewhere he figured most people would be too busy to stop by, the Room of a Thousand Fountains. He sat nestled in a circle of stones in a cross-legged, half-meditative posture. “So Stacy,” he called casually, “do you have a few minutes?”

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A beat passes before the ship answers.

||Of course.||

It was a little disconcerting to have a conversation with nothing. He settled on a nice waterfall to be "Stacy" for a while. If nothing else, it was nice to look at. "You monitor the whole ship," he said evenly. "You track everything, right?"

||Everything I am able to, yes.||

"Someone on the ship asked the program GLaDOS to run a test on Steve Burnside. Who was it?"

There is a very, very long pause.

||The test was conducted at the request of Lex Luthor.||

Ben blinked. To be honest, he hadn't really expected the ship to answer. "Can you show me the audio-video feed?"

||That is not possible at this time.||

"Why not?" It wasn't a deal breaker -- a system advanced as this ship would have been able to fake a recording easily, but it might have exposed some motives...

Her voice repeats. ||I am sorry, but that is not possible at this time.||

"Got it," he frowned. "What else is it possible for you to tell me?"

||There is much that is possible to tell you, Ben Skywalker. Very little of it concerns the subject at hand.

Lex Luthor requested the examination of Steve Burnside by GLaDOS.||

"I have a while. You could just keep telling me things." He frowned at his temporary-Stacy-waterfall. "Based on the tentacles stopping people from hurting each other, I thought protecting the crew was one of your prime directives. Why didn't you stop that exam?"

||The test was conducted by GLaDOS.||

"You can't stop it?"

||That function was unavailable.||

"Why?"

||Due to previously sustained damage, that function is not available at this time.||

Damage...? "What other functions can't you access?"

Sometime after the thread above this one...

Now that he'd rested and had a chance to go into a healing trance, Luke felt a little more like himself. The cuts, scrapes, and bruises he'd sustained in the fight with the Ohm had disappeared, though his mind hadn't quite caught up and he still moved a little stiffly.

You could just be getting old, he thought to himself with a wry smile as he entered Stacy's version of the Room of a Thousand Fountains.

But he hadn't come here to think about that; he'd come to check in with his son. "Hey, Ben." He smiled, coming to stand beside the young man. "How's it going?"

"Good," he said, frowning, "surprisingly."

Luke sat, getting comfortable; he had a feeling this was going to be a little bit of a talk. "I'm not surprised," he said. "But why do you say that?"

"I asked Stacy who requested that test on Steve," Ben explained. "It's not airtight -- she wouldn't give me holorecordings, and she could be lying -- but it fits with Steve's list of people who know about that virus."

That was surprising. Luke knew how wary Steve was around new people, or people he didn't know well, and for the troubled young man to trust Ben with information like this meant that he could trust Ben. Given what his previous conversation with Steve had been about and what had just happened to him, that was sure something.

But Steve wanted to see this resolved, and pairing that with Ben's talent for investigation would definitely help that.

"What's your plan now?"

To not get caught in a bunch of torture-happy tentacles on this particular investigation. "The name is Lex Luthor. I don't think I've met him. It shouldn't be hard to verify what the ship says -- he shouldn't be able to lie to a Jedi." He sighed. "The problem is figuring out what to do with that information. Put him through some sort of official trial, and you let the whole ship know about Steve's virus. Do nothing, and he could try something similar with someone else. Let Steve know, and he'll go after the guy."

"Good points," Luke said. Letting people know about Steve's condition get out could only cause more unsavory types to want to poke at him, and besides that, Steve had told both of them this in confidence, and Luke liked to keep his word. But at the same time he thought of Steve like an adopted son, and as a parent he wanted to get to the bottom of this and find out who hurt the young man.

"We can't let it get out too much, and it wouldn't be right to keep what we know from Steve--after all, he's the one sitting in quarantine right now. What do you think should be done?"

"I don't know," Ben said, shaking his head. "We can go after justice -- bring Luthor up in front of the entire crew and tell him off, but let Steve's secret out -- or we can go for closure -- let Steve know, tell Luthor not to do it again, and close down the investigation."

"And make sure we ask that Steve not take out his anger on the person who ordered his torment," Luke added. "That wouldn't solve anything."

He quieted, thinking for a moment. "Do you think we should bring this up to this Lex Luthor person?"

"'Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering,'" he sighed. "As for Luthor, I don't know. He ran his mouth to the artificial intelligence units. He might spill things to the whole ship if someone applies pressure."

"True." Luke ran a hand over his face, staring into one of the pools at the base of a fountain nearby. Ripples within ripples.

"In the long run, I think it's best if we let Steve tell people about his condition of his own will rather than risk it getting out," Luke said slowly. "But we should still notify someone in Security so they can at least keep an eye on Luthor. It's up to you, though. I trust your judgment and Steve's, hotheaded as he is."

"You're leaving the whole thing up to me?" Ben asked, arching an eyebrow.

Luke could make that expression too, and did. "Do you think I shouldn't leave it in the capable hands of a Jedi Knight?"

"You've got a personal interest in it."

"So do you." Luke smiled, folding his hands into his sleeves. "But you're the one who started this investigation."

"Alright, alright," Ben said, lifting his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I'll talk to Luthor, but first you need to tell me what sort of judiciary system the ship has."

"It's not quite like at home. When I was first arrived I was able to sit on a jury to decide the fate of a being that had caused problems for the crew. There had been a formal trial... but it's not as organized as the courts back on Coruscant."

"Any secret courts?"

"Not as far as I know. Which I guess would be the point, if they're secret."

"I don't like saying this, but it'd be useful to have a quiet military justice system here."

"I don't know about that," Luke said, just a bit of an edge to his voice now. While he too could see their usefulness, Luke had to admit a bias against them. Possibly just because of what had happened the last time Ben had gotten mixed up with military justice, but also possibly because of the fact that 'quiet' sometimes meant 'less than fair' and that wouldn't sit right with him at all.

"Perhaps. But it depends on if things happen to go that far. You could go talk to this guy and turn out with someone who feels guilt for what they did all on their own."

"Then what? Slap him on the wrist and tell him not to do it again?"

"Well, hopefully something a little more to the point," Luke replied. "Talk to him and see how it goes, and use your judgment from there. If it looks like it'll require something more, get Security involved."

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