Things Fall Apart: Chapter 12, Part 1
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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 trip back to their base at Gliese 581—New Norfolk—has tested the survivors, requiring nearly everyone to stretch well beyond what they'd ever signed up for. Now, the crew and the rescued passengers of the Grand Despot of Mauritania are cleaning up the last details before the ship surfaces on the outskirts of "home". Many questions remain unanswered, and some may not be answered before the crew themselves have to answer for their conduct.
Singer woke from the soundest sleep she'd had in...she couldn't remember how long, actually. She was not feeling precisely refreshed by it, but she felt a lot better than she had when she'd gone to bed. She could only imagine how Cadotte was feeling, having had much more prolonged exposure to the NDI environment.
As she finished putting herself together to head out into the ship to catch a bite and a cup of coffee before checking in to the bridge, she added to her already too long mental TODO list a need to read up more on what she'd just experienced. Virtual worlds were nothing new, but she had never heard that spending time in virtuality could drain a person so much as this had.
Heading out into the corridor, lost in thought, she did not see when Chief Kasel caught up with her, and thus was startled when he said, "Skipper, a word."
After she was done being startled, she realized that Kasel was...angry. At her. This is new.
She didn't let the insight show as she answered, "Sorry, Chief, I was lost in thought. What's up?"
"Perhaps not here in the corridor."
Definitely angry. I do believe I'm about to come in for a scolding of my own, she thought, and she replied, "Meet me in my office? I need breakfast." She may well have earned a scolding, but she was not quite prepared to be bullied out of breakfast for it.
"That will work," he said, as they drew up to the doors to Main Dining. He continued forward to her office.
She sighed. She had hoped to actually enjoy breakfast in the dining hall with the crew, but that was not going to happen this morning. Sometime soon, they would be surfacing from time compression at the outskirts of Gliese 581—the system that included New Norfolk and all its support operations and shipyards. If she was going to let the chief vent his spleen, it had to be before that.
So instead, she put on her, "Sorry, I'm on a mission" face, made her way to a replicator, asked for yogurt with raspberries and coffee in a covered mug, picked them up, and went back out the door.
Arriving in her office, she saw Kasel was not waiting alone. Alexander was also there. Singer wondered if she was due for a double-barreled scold.
But no. Sitting down and glancing at them, Kasel deferred with a tilt of his head to Alexander, who said, "Just a quick report, Skipper, then I'll leave you and the Chief to your business. We're about 8,000 seconds out from G-581. Most of what we hoped to have accomplished, including most of the senior staff's reports for Command, are ready to go. Unfortunately—or maybe not—I have not had any time to examine the transmission we captured and isolated from Almaty's disaster beacon. At this point, I'm hoping we can hand it off to a software virologist at Norfolk. This is probably a job for a specialist, anyway."
Singer was not really disappointed. Enough risks at this late stage had been taken with their much-reduced crew. "That sounds fine, Lieutenant, and I agree. Isn't there an entire institute on the subject at New Norfolk?"
"An outpost of one, yes, ma'am. The main institute is actually at New Anaheim."
Singer looked puzzled. "Isn't that outside the Tau Ceti Treaty network?"
"Yes, Skipper. But there's a lot of exchange, especially at the academic level, with non-Treaty systems. There are occasional mutters about spinning off the campus at New Norfolk from the main Institute, but the faculty themselves won't have it."
Singer at this point could tell Kasel was becoming impatient, and had to admit to herself that she was stalling. "Alright, Lieutenant. Who has the watch?"
"Cordé, ma'am, at least for a little while. I assumed you'd want to be in the hotseat when we surface."
"You assumed correctly, and I'll want Cordé at comms if she's not overdue for a break."
"She has expressed a strong desire to be on comms for emergence, ma'am."
"Sounds like it's arranged, then! See you in a bit."
Not the most formal dismissal, but formality had mostly gone out the window megaseconds ago. Alexander nodded to Singer, then to Kasel, and saw zirself out.
The door closed. Kasel and Singer both counted to six. Finally, Singer said, "Permission to speak freely, granted."
Kasel graced that with a chuckle. "That obvious, am I?"
"I don't even have to be an empath to tell you have as Riot Act to read me."
"No worse than the one I'm told you read Cadotte, and for no less a reason. Skipper, you risked yourself unnecessarily, in an environment with which you have no experience. NDIs are safe, to a point, but you had no real idea what was going on in there or what you were getting into, or even if your neural net was compatible. There are reports of empaths getting fried just tapping into the things! Everything could have been both hunky and dory and you still could have been killed on the threshold of who-knows-what we're about to find at New Norfolk. As the closest thing to a medical officer currently on board, I protest."
He paused for breath, thought for a moment, then decided he was done.
Singer responded, "Is that an official protest?"
"No, ma'am, it is not."
Singer blinked.
"Why...not?"
"Because in 8 kiloseconds or so we're all going to have more than enough to debrief and justify and possibly get court-martialed for without you also having to answer for a formal protest from your ersatz CMO. None of which changes the fact that what you did was dumb."
Well. She had given him permission to speak freely. Now she knew what "freely" was worth with him, which was valuable. And...he was not wrong.
"All right, chief. Your point is taken, without argument. The prudent thing to do would have been to let Chef's report of the proceedings, indirect as they were, stand as the answer to my concerns. I let my anxiety for Cadotte's safety overrule my sense of self-preservation. I can't tell you it won't happen again, ever. I will tell you that it if it does, feel free to make your protest next time official."
Again, Kasel chuckled. "I'm going to hold you to that, Skip."
"You should, bosun. It's part of your job, both your jobs."
"I hadn't even considered that half of it."
"Well, you haven't been a bosun all that long."
"And probably won't be for much longer. Who knows what'll happen to this crew once we arrive."
Singer breathed deep and let it out as a sigh. "Thanks, I was really trying not to think much about that."
"I kinda have to. Mental health of the crew is also part of my job right now. There's a lot of anxiety about it. That was what I was originally hoping to talk to you about this morning, before I found out about your NDI-dive. I'm not sure there's time to do much about it, even if I knew what to do, but I thought you should know: this crew has been through a lot together. There is a deep resistance to the idea that we might all get scattered to new assignments."
Singer nodded slowly, digesting that. "Thank you, Chief. You're right, I'm not sure what to do, and there's not much time to do anything, but it's still good to know. Is there else?"
"No, Skipper. I think my spleen is sufficiently vented. You eat your breakfast and go sit in the Big Chair so you're ready for breakout."
Singer saluted him by toasting with her coffee cup in one hand and spoon in the other. Much like Alexander, Kasel took that as enough of a dismissal, and left her to her breakfast, and her thoughts.