Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (23 page)

- - - Crewmember GJW4 had affected architectural adjustments to the cabins assigned to crewmembers HZPJ [Zeegon], G-M-D-(A) [Decay], CTTETPhys [Contro] and JW001 [Janus] + environmental and climatic changes causing acute discomfort + periodic bulkhead retraction and collapse with disruptive intent - - -

- - - Result + cabins rendered temporarily unliveable + repairs scheduled + official crew habitat floor-plan updated + vengeance [swift and decisive] solemnly undertaken as an action point - - -

- - - Report ends - - -

- - - Gethsemane to Seven Widdershins + 3 weeks shipboard + total duration from The Warm 15 weeks shipboard + incident report - - -

- - - Crewmembers HZPJ [Zeegon], G-M-D-(A) [Decay] and JW001 [Janus] formed cooperative effort + affected architectural adjustments to cabins previously detailed in incident report + ventilation system was contaminated with yeast-based foodstuff known to have an odour crewmember GJW4 [Waffa] finds distasteful - - -

- - - Result + adjoining amalgamated quarters assigned to GJW4 rendered temporarily unliveable due to odour + sanitisation efforts initiated + GJW4 temporarily relocated to workstation sleeping niche in engine room due to odour spread + crewmembers HZPJ, G-M-D-(A) and JW001 formally apologised to crewmember CTTETPhys [Contro] whose newly-assigned cabin was in the middle of the disputed area + CTTETPhys accepted apology on the basis of “ha ha ha, I never even went in there anyway, I kept forgetting it was mine! Funny old world!” - - -

- - - Report ends - - -

- - - Gethsemane to Seven Widdershins + 3 weeks shipboard + total duration from The Warm 15 weeks shipboard + incident report - - -

- - - Pursuant to “Operation Payback”, crewmember GJW4 [Waffa] affected architectural adjustments to cabins previously detailed in incident reports, specifically the plumbing arrangements + human and Blaran waste was redirected from recycling plant + minor explosive and waste damage occurred + unsanitary conditions created - - -

- - - Result + larger-scale sanitisation and repair efforts initiated, crewmembers GJW4, HZPJ [Zeegon], G-M-D-(A) [Decay] and JW001 [Janus] assigned to repair teams following official cut-it-out notice from Commander XOZLC [Z-Lin] + protest statements issued by crewmembers HZPJ and G-M-D-(A) + protest statements summarily overturned by Commander XOZLC - - -

- - - Report ends - - -

- - - Gethsemane to Seven Widdershins + 3 weeks shipboard + total duration from The Warm 15 weeks shipboard + incident report - - -

- - - HLCF + MAE + OOF + EJDI - - -

- - - 3 eejits [designations omitted] undertook to affect architectural adjustments to eejit storage area + eejits [designations omitted] were acting on their own recognisance but in accordance with known principles observed during “Operation Payback” previously detailed in incident reports + repair and construction equipment misappropriated from maintenance teams [designations omitted] - - -

- - - 3 eejits [designations omitted] used cutting equipment with intent of opening and expanding storage area + minor hull breach occurred + 3 eejits [designations omitted] were exposed to fatal vacuum + 2 eejit bodies recovered [deceased, explosive decompression] + 1 eejit body ejected to space - - -

- - - Result + brief all-stop + emergency bulkhead and hull repairs + official reprimands given to all crewmembers involved in “Operation Payback” previously detailed in incident reports + Commander XOZLC [Z-Lin] calls for restraint and forethought in crewmembers + announced that further damage and loss of life / wetware due to wilful negligence and misconduct will result in full AstroCorps-to-civilian criminal hearing and possible charges of sabotage + additional / replacement fabrication on hold pending arrival at Þursheim and possible repair of plant + current need not classified as urgent - - -

- - - Report ends - - -

Operation Payback, and indeed the entire burgeoning prank war, ended in an ashamed and penitent peace accord and a concerted crew effort to get the new hull plating in place over the breach, swiftly and professionally. It had only been a tiny slice in the hull – just big enough to feed a shredded eejit through while his would-be co-pranksters decompressed – and the chamber they had been attempting to expand into what turned out to be soft-space had fortunately been a small side-habitat which had immediately sealed off with emergency doors.

While a hull breach at relative speed was theoretically quite safe – there was neither air
nor vacuum
in soft-space, so on paper at least the environment might be survivable – the problem was that the relative field cut so close to the ship’s hull. The moment a breach occurred, the cutting tool and hull fragments and the very air molecules themselves had escaped the field and re-entered the real universe at potentially dangerous superluminal speeds. In fact, the
Tramp
had for a split-second become a sort of crude relative railgun of the sort employed by the big AstroCorp warships, but with none of the power or design to actually control such a weapon.

This was fantastically risky for the ship’s relative drive, so of course emergency protocols dropped them out of soft-space. This, in turn, exposed the breached hull area to vacuum, and vacuum while travelling at maximum subluminal cruising velocity. While that didn’t make any measurable difference to the violence of the decompression – vacuum was vacuum was vacuum – the transition from relative speed to normal space was considerably more explosive than a mere decompression caused by a hull breach into vacuum. Explosive enough to churn the nearest eejit into pulp and spray all but a few scraps of his body into space, but only decompress the other two as the cutting tool’s power pack lodged in the slice.

Although they hadn’t been at relative speed the
last
time they had lost the majority of an eejit overboard, the similarities between the cases were sobering – and this time, as Waffa himself said,
they
were to blame, not some nutty synth.

Bruce didn’t hold it against him.

The crewmembers involved, especially Decay and Waffa, were repentant and unwilling to show their faces for the rest of that leg, having disgraced themselves in front of Thord and her companions, if not the rest of their crewmates. It wasn’t a true
fatality
, of course, but Bruce understood that wetware loss was a different category to hardware damage. Bruce itself often wrestled with the conundrum of where
software
such as itself fitted into the spectrum. It understood the idea of the eejits’ deaths being viscerally close to a loss of an organic crewmember, even if it didn’t have viscera itself except in the most analogous of ways. The organic crewmembers were more affected by what had happened, and by their part in it. Even Doctor Cratch had an uncharacteristically stern
tsk
about the sad affair, and nobody blasted his hands and feet off.

They had been very lucky not to damage the field toruses themselves with such a sudden disruption to their flight – the only damage done had been to the hull, and they were able to slow down to a safe all-stop in about half an hour, perform the makeshift repairs that were all they could handle in three, and then accelerate back towards maximum cruising velocity, ready to resume their journey. An unpleasant object lesson learned about playing games in the presence of easily suggestible eejits, they patched up as best they could in the wake of the Hardware Misuse Causing Fatality incident and limped on towards their next stop. Within five hours they were back on their way, the dismal silence filling the ship even more noticeable to Bruce’s widespread senses.

When they arrived at Seven Widdershins it was a pleasant surprise to get an immediate nod from an AstroCorps beacon, and this went a long way towards cheering up the crew again. The settlement was, for all its issues, very much alive.

Seven Widdershins was another old and fairly small-scale place, a cluster of exchange-fitted asteroids – seven of them, hence the name – with a small artificial fusion-compound sun in the middle providing warmth and energy. The asteroids themselves weren’t exactly Worldship-scale engineering, but they were ambitious within modest boundaries, unlike Wynstone’s Attic. As they approached, Bruce noted an unusual amount of space-borne wreckage and repair craft, and a proportionally unusual
lack
of AstroCorps traffic, but it was in a position to gather information far more swiftly than the crew managed through their clumsy communication efforts.

The asteroid cluster had, Bruce learned, actually been host to a pair of Worldships, the rather famous New Fleet Separatist ships
Tomis Etta
and
Lelhbron
, less than two months ago. They’d delivered a whole mess of modulars – almost a Chrysanthemum’s worth – and components including fabricator plants, before cruising back out of the system for parts unknown. The existence of the Fleet Separatists did not necessarily mean the
Fleet
was still around, but it was a good sign. This, however, was the ‘good news’ side of the coin.

A group of – in Clue’s own heated words, once she learned the details – fucking morons going by the name The Bloody Hands had attacked the orbital shipyard warehouses and destroyed the whole lot, plunging Seven Widdershins into what would probably have looked like total chaos if the crew of the
Tramp
hadn’t seen The Warm. This had only been about a week ago, and the emergency services were still repairing damage.

This meant that their fleeting hope of getting a replacement fabrication plant before reaching Þursheim was dashed almost before it had a chance to flower, but at least they knew the attack had been domestic in origin, even though it had been baffling and tragic beyond measure.

Karlists, though. Bruce heard the mutters about that – and more than just mutters. The crew talked about it quite openly in conversation, while the
Tramp
approached the settlement and entered the slightly-more-complex-than-usual docking and clearance process. The Karlists were in league with the Cancer every step of the way. Did it make a difference whether it was Damorakind itself that had performed the attack, or their cultists among the Six Species?

Bruce couldn’t help but wonder. The attack had wiped out the only able fabrication technology Seven Widdershins had possessed, not to mention the other machinery included in the modulars. Seven Widdershins itself was as low-tech as Wynstone’s Attic, its population simple and traditional and happily isolated. And
after
the attack, the rest of the AstroCorps ships had departed too. Seven Widdershins had been neatly reduced to a simple yet self-sufficient level of technology in a single stroke, and although it had caused numerous deaths the toll was actually about as minimal as Bruce could tweak its simulations to replicate. If there was anything to the developing theory of the unknown attackers leaving the little people alone, then Seven Widdershins had been
protected
by the attack, not harmed.

And then there was the Corps response. Seven Widdershins
had
had a reasonable AstroCorps presence, which explained the delivery of parts and ships. In the wake of the warehouse and shipyard attack, however, they’d shipped out.

All of them. All the ones left alive after the attack, anyway.

This was highly unorthodox, especially considering the attack itself. Bruce would have expected a security detachment and a full-scale ongoing investigation, but the only procedures that seemed active were purely civilian in nature. The AstroCorps orders and statements, which Bruce read even if it technically wasn’t authorised to view them, didn’t make allowances for the attack so much as mention it in passing as a sort of extenuating circumstance. The three warships and eight modulars of the standing Seven Widdershins AstroCorps force had just up and left, with very little Bruce could see in the way of justification.

It
looked
as though the eleven Captains had visited the Worldships and discussed something there, and had then held
another
conference among themselves following the alleged Karlist attack, and then just decided to mobilise. The conferences had taken place painstakingly offline, however, so not even Bruce was privy to what had been discussed, and neither had the synthetic intelligence presence aboard the three warships been at the time. And the Worldships
Tomis Etta
and
Lelhbron
, although possessed of synths themselves, had not logged any sort of connection to the Seven Widdershins computers so there was nothing to see.

Why, Bruce thought, it was almost as if they hadn’t wanted the
synth
to know what they were doing. Which was stupid, because whatever they were trying to do, they would screw it up royally without the synth’s help. Nothing was more certain.

Still, Bruce was able to filter a bit of information out of the masses of mundane comms and logs stored in the painfully thick Seven Widdershins computer. It was like trying to get an account of an important conversation from somebody who had been in the next room, when all that person had been paying attention to was how many times the lights had been switched on and off.

Yes. The Molren had brought news of attacks, or a gathering, a regroup or a counter-strike, and had delivered hardware to significantly boost the AstroCorps profile around Seven Widdershins. Then the
Tomis Etta
and the
Lelhbron
had taken off, then somebody had destroyed the extra ships and equipment, and
then
the remaining AstroCorps group had headed out for the aforementioned gathering / regroup / counter-strike.

It hadn’t gone
exactly
like that, though, had it? There was always some measure of autonomy and adjustment for interpretation among AstroCorps crews, as exemplified by AstroCorps Captains. There had to be – in a military body where even relative speed communications could take months or years, orders had to take into account the probability that those giving them simply were not in possession of all the facts.