Things Fall Apart: Chapter 11, Part 5
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Starship Bellerophon was minding its business, on a long return cruise from an exploration and mapping mission, when it suffered disaster, ripping a chunk out of the ship and leaving most of the senior officers and crew dead. Most of the ship's AIs are missing from the network, also presumed dead, with evidence pointing to a massive, internal "attack" by those AIs.
The survivors' mission, now, is simply to hold their ship and their people together; figure out what happened to them, and why; and get to a safe port! En route to the nearest relay on the time-compression network, in hopes of calling for aid, Bellerophon received *two different distress calls. The first was from the completely destroyed TCT Fleet ship Almaty, which seems to have suffered the same event as Bellerophon. The second came from a mostly intact civilian yacht, whose owner made his fortune as a pioneer of time-compression drives.
With Bellerophon's drive repaired, the ship is now making a bee-line to New Norfolk Station, having heard nothing from the expected relay network. With time running out to do so, Lieutenant Cadotte has chosen to use a dangerous technique to try to recover two of the three surviving AIs, the engineering specialists Castor and Pollux...
Singer had never used an NDI before, but Chef had calmly coached her on the basics. She'd been annoyed upon discovering that Cadotte had gone ahead with their desire to use the device, the more so because she found out only when Chef had alerted her to the fact that Cadotte was in some distress, but not sufficient for him to be willing to pull them out.
That had only been a few minutes before—Singer gathered that time inside the environment moved differently, and that the time it had taken her to come to the lab had been more than enough for Cadotte to recover.
Still, upon arrival, Cadotte was limp in a crash-couch-like structure, sweating, and generally looking unwell. She had come close to insisting that Cadotte be pulled out, and surprised when Chef balked.
"Skipper, you're the boss, and if you really insist, I'll do it. But every indicator I have from outside tells me it would be a mistake."
Singer had blown out a breath, trying to let tension go, and finally said, "Fine. Can you send me in?"
"Are you sure?"
"You just indicated Cadotte was safe..."
Once again, Singer got to marvel at how complete Chef's human-like "performance" was. She could see his chagrin. Singer did not consider Cadotte, or anyone else, expendable right now, and Chef knew it. Therefore, if it was safe enough for Cadotte to stay in, it was safe enough for Singer to go in. If it wasn't, then it wasn't, and Cadotte should be pulled out.
It was probably the first moment she had felt at odds with...anybody, since the whole crisis began. Definitely the first time with Chef. Cordé had been tense for a while, but never actually stubborn.
But she was the skipper. It was her decision.
She was going in.
When she "arrived" she found herself immediately discarding her original intent, which was to deliver a ringing scold. She immediately saw the tableau—Cadotte, looking maybe a little harried but not nearly as bad as their physical self back in the lab; and the twins, looking older, sad, but sane
Relief immediately overruled anxiety, but not so much that she did not put on a very deliberately stern face for Cadotte's benefit.
Cadotte had the good grace to look at least a little bit abashed.
Finally, Singer said, "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."
It was one of the twins who answered—Singer had never interacted with them, before or after their reset, enough to tell them apart, said, "Not really, Lieutenant Singer. Lieutenant Cadotte was making a valiant and even mostly successful attempt to help us past our guilt over not being able to do more. Your arrival is honestly timely, as we were none of us quite sure how to move the conversation forward from there."
Cadotte's face was more mobile here than in the real world, which Singer found interesting. Right now, it held wry agreement. "For two traumatized AIs and a neurodivergent cyborg, we were doing pretty well, but we had sort of reached one of those periodic silences."
Singer focused her attention on the twins. She couldn't read them, of course, the way she could read even Cadotte, but she didn't have to. Chef had told her that the VR environment did a good job of reflecting a person—even an AI person's—overall state of being. Even since she'd arrived, the twins looked...straighter. Taller, a little. Not quite at attention, but not bowed down.
So Singer felt safe asking the obvious question. "Are you two...feeling better?"
It sounded a little lame, but she received downright sunny smiles from both of them. "Skipper, I believe we are," said the one on her right. "We regret that Lieutenant Cadotte experienced some of our emotional distress, which must have alarmed Chef, whom I assume they left to guard their dive. We believe we are ready to return to work."
The twin on her left said, "Chef must be feeling a little stretched thin at this point. We would help shoulder the burden."
Singer looked to Cadotte to see if they had an opinion. If the twins were looking almost spry, Cadotte was definitely looking weary, but not unhappy. They nodded. "I'll share the diagnostic panel with you, Skipper. I know the details probably won't mean that much, but the dashboard should be clear enough."
Singer's vision suddenly had an overlay in it, which was disorienting, but after a moment, she managed to figure out how to bring it into focus, or dim it to see the world around her. Cadotte was right—the dashboard showed mostly green indicators. Both of the twins showed yellow on a couple of lines. Squinting at those brought them into focus, and showed that they were related to emotional state. So the twins were not actually happy, but they also weren't compromised. For a flesh-and-blood crewperson, work might be exactly the balm they would need right now, and perhaps it was the same here.
Singer dismissed the view, and returned her regard to the twins. Finally, she said, "All right, you two. Permission granted to return to work. But I expect you to be honest if you need breaks, or need to talk to somebody. We've all been through the wringer, and we're all still a little fragile about it. Don't be heroes if you need a shoulder."
Singer brought the diagnostic panel back long enough to see the yellows tinge slightly more green, an effect similar to what she might expect from someone she could actually read.
In unison they straightened more fully into attention, saluted, and said, "Yes, Skipper."
Turning to Cadotte, Singer said, "I assume Chef can handle the transfer back to the main network?"
"He should, yes."
"Good, then let's leave the twins to whatever preparations they need. I still need to talk to you, and I'd rather do it out in the real."
A bit of the sternness she still felt slipped into that last, and she saw Cadotte react to it. "Yes, Skipper."