Things Fall Apart: Chapter 16

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Forward

Gliese-581, Shipyard and Environs

In practice, it would be megaseconds before Haraldsdottir was able to make good on her cryptic comment on the topic of good luck. To Singer's sharpening eye, it appeared the commodore was taking genuine delight in drawing out the mystery. Impatient as she was, Singer decided nevertheless to let the other woman have her fun. There was plenty to keep her and her crew occupied, and there was little enough fun to go around right now.

In fact, within five kiloseconds of her arrival on Bellerophon, Haraldsdottir's plan to get her pilots over to the garage was in train, with Alexander and Wasserman agreeing to first ferry her back to Borass Station, and then ferry two sets of pilots—a large one over to the garage, and a smaller one over to Bellerophon, to make use of the other two surviving pinnaces. Curiously, both teams were assigned to report to Singer, rather than Haraldsdottir.

If the pilots thought this in any way odd, none expressed it. Happy to be of use again, and finally able to do something other than mourn, they took on the assignment with gusto and without any qualms about whom they were assigned to. Alexander reported nothing but cooperation from even the most depressed-seeming of the bunch, including rotation in the pilot's seat to give Alexander and Wasserman a break on the reach from Borass to the garage, and again from the garage to Bellerophon.

Within 100 kiloseconds, Alexander was reporting fair luck from the garage. The AI assigned to monitor there was of an order similar to those in the disaster beacons—intelligent, vulnerable, but not a fully fleshed out personality. Lacking a full range of emotional response, and also lacking any direct control over the station's power supply or small craft in its keeping, the only damage done was its own regrettable suicide and the cores it fried to accomplish it.

However, manual overrides worked, two of the pilots took up the job of temporary monitors and flight controllers, and the rest of the pilots assigned to the task started preflighting their pinnaces and shuttles.

Singer, accordingly, briefed them, despite a light-lag of about 100 seconds. "Five of you are to take shuttles back over to Borass, so that there's some local flight capability there, again. I don't doubt that the commodore will have other tasks for you once you've got them there, but that's all she's shared with me so far.

"The rest of you to take the pinnaces out on a combination of cleanup, search, and rescue duty. Your priority, of course, are the disaster beacons. Ideally, some of them will lead us to actual intact pods with survivors. Whether or not they do, the beacons need to be decommissioned. Accept no data-link from them, no matter how insistent they appear to be—voice only. Shut them down physically with the circuit breaker and collect them into your boat's hold. Each pinnace should be able to fit eight of them, unless you also find intact pods.

"Second priority: several of the other rocks have lists of supplies they can make available, and others lists of things they need and, for whatever reason, can't replicate. These have already been matched up, and each of you will be given a list based on your assigned area for cleanup. Use your own best routing judgment for pickups and deliveries alongside your main task.

"Third priority: be safe. There aren't a lot of you, there aren't a lot of boats, and there's no prospect of more of either any time soon. If a pickup feels clearly hazardous, postpone it. If in doubt, ask, but again, I expect you to use your judgment as much as possible."

Singer did not say, "because you probably know better than me, anyway." It had taken her all of about 500 seconds to realize that she was being tested, and while she mildly resented it, she also intended to pass muster.

One of the pilots on the other side of the screen said, "Lieutenant...did you really just say, 'safety third'?"

She had, in fact, ordered her priorities precisely in hopes someone would ask that question, and get the morale-boosting laughter the group clearly needed. She was not disappointed.

When it was done, she asked, "Any questions?"

The person whose scarf identified him as senior replied, "No, ma'am. Someone's gotta pick up the trash, and doing something is better than doing nothing. We've been doing a whole lot of nothing, so this sounds good to me."

Singer allowed herself a small, controlled smile. "Excellent. Good lift, safe landing."

As a unit, they saluted. Alexander, still with them before returning with the smaller team, looked at the camera and gave Singer a smile.

So far, so good.

When the pinnace returned to Bellerophon, the smaller team of four were similarly respectful and eager to be about it. Their orders, passed down to Singer from Haraldsdottir, were different. "Sweep all the drydocks, and ascertain the status of both the dockworks and whatever they contain. All Borass has had to look with are telescopes, and the angles have been wrong to get a good look at most of them. All remote telemetry has been disabled since the Incident. The hope is that the dockworks are in similar shape to the garage—fully intact, with their AIs simply not functioning any more. Each of you has 20 to inspect. Take your time, use your judgment, be safe."

This smaller team had been in the room at the garage when she'd briefed the larger one, and chuckled again at the reference to safety's proper priority. Dismissed, they, too, saluted and went to their temporary quarters to rest a shift before starting out.

The version of the list the commodore had given Singer had given Haraldsdottir's bets on what the teams would find. "Several of those drydocks," the briefing read, "had ships under repair, rather than construction, with their AIs in residence and a skeleton crew. I do not expect to find intact ships, dockworks, or crew at those locations, though I'll be delighted to be proven wrong. The others all had ships and devices in various states of construction. I expect these to be more or less intact. I don't dare hope the same for their crews."

Despite that G-581 was a relatively small system, normal-space travel still took time, which meant that "her" pinnace pilots' missions were not going to be accomplished overnight. It was almost 200 kiloseconds before any of the pinnaces began to report more than routine flight status checks. First contact with disaster beacons all went almost identically with Bellerophon's experience with the Almaty beacon, which was not a huge surprise. They were all basically the same low-level personality template. There were minor variations, but no surprises. They were shut down, loaded up, and brought back to Borass, whose cavernous interior could easily store them until decisions could be made.

About a shift later, the first reports came back from the boats assigned to the dockyard survey. Both the first spinward and first antispinward docks had, as Haraldsdottir had guessed, been intact, their incomplete ships seemingly untouched from their last-known state. This also led to the first positive surprise for the mission: in both cases, construction workers had managed to get basic life support engaged, in the drydock's own construction offices. Communications equipment had been fried—the only obvious damage done by what was a comparatively minor tantrum before the local AI burnt its own processors out—so all they'd had was suit comms, enough to hear and be heard by the pinnaces once they were close, but not intended for more than local traffic.

The bridge downright erupted in cheers at the news. Singer was slightly more restrained, but couldn't repress a smile as she asked the skippers of the two boats, "Can they hold out in place a little longer, or should we arrange to get them somewhere? I'd tell you two to just pick them up and take them back to Borass, but I have to admit, I'm not clear on the station's current life support balance, and anyway, we need you to continue the survey."

The spinward pinnace's spokesperson, Lieutenant Xue, responded, "We already thought about that. They'd coaxed replication-and-reclamation into basic mode, so they have food and sanitation. They'd appreciate a ride out soon, but they understand it's not us unless there's a dire need. We'd planned to leave them with a portable comms array that'll get them back on the system grid while they wait."

The antispinward pilot was nodding in the other side of the split-screen. "Same here, Lieutenant Singer. Everyone's just relieved to know they're not the last people left alive in the system. They'd been able to receive some broadcasts, so they kind of knew that, but since nobody could hear them, they were starting to wonder. Now that they know cleanup and relief efforts are bootstrapping, they're willing to wait a bit longer."

All in all, Singer thought this was more reasonable than she'd had any right to expect, and made sure her voice conveyed that message as she said, "I will urge Commodore Haraldsdottir to make their relief a priority when I report to her, Lieutenants. Good work!"

Haraldsdottir thought so, too. Singer made a point of contacting her from her office, rather than the bridge. Bellerophon was now close enough to Borass Station for real-time communication without light-lag, and they took advantage of that once a day. Having no-one other than Singer to impress, and apparently having decided she did not need to put on a façade there, either, the commodore beamed at the news. "I'll send shuttle teams out within the shift to get those crews. Thank you for thinking about our ecosystem—not many non-stationers always remember how delicate a station's balance can be. Those crews already have quarters here, though, and our life support remains mostly unaffected. We wouldn't be able to accommodate thousands, but if it turns out that every one of those docks that had crews assigned, still have live crews, there's plenty of room for them to come home."

So it went, for nearly two megaseconds. Relieved of the suspense, focused on helping the commodore coordinate cleanup and relief efforts, things fell into a routine. Her various injured crew, including the three from Almaty, were now almost all able-bodied and doing what they could.

Singer retained just enough of her old ground-born roots to realize that it had already been almost half a year, as she'd once counted time, since the Incident.

Only once did Singer run into a serious issue with the commodore, and she'd guessed it would happen when she gave the order. One of the pinnaces had finally encountered an intact escape pod. Sadly, its occupants had not survived. After a moment's consideration, Singer ordered their bodies be put into cold storage, while the pod, like other inorganic detritus the pinnace had occasionally swept up, could be recycled for replication mass.

Haraldsdottir and gotten stern at that report. "Lieutenant, I've read your reports from your return trip home, of course. I know you made a similar decision for your own dead crewmembers. Under those circumstances, I probably would have made the same decision.

"However, under these circumstances, now, here in-system, I'm not sure I agree. It's true we're not short of replication mass, that's not the issue. The issue is that I'm not sure we have time or space to be storing bodies or holding funerals."

Singer, however, was not about to flinch from this one. The benefit of never having wanted command in the first place was not feeling like she had a lot to risk by standing up for something. "Permission to speak freely, Commodore?"

Haraldsdottir, to her credit, didn't hesitate. "Granted."

"In two megaseconds, with dozens of beacons recovered, and perhaps 60% of the intended search pattern covered, this is the sole intact escape pod. The chances of finding a significant trove of them in the remaining 40% are vanishingly small, and the chances of anyone being alive in them, if we do, even smaller. It's my opinion, ma'am, that we can afford to give dignity to six people who died in the dark."

That last had come out a bit more sharply than she'd originally intended, but it was done now. There was silence on the other end, for quite a long time. Singer was grateful it was a video link, or she might have thought the commodore had hung up on her. As it was, she was treated to a complicated series of emotions playing out as the commodore's professional face—which she rarely wore around Singer anyway—fell away entirely.

And then, Haraldsdottir put her face in her hands and started openly sobbing.

Singer didn't know what reaction she'd expected. But it wasn't that.

It went on for maybe 300 seconds before Haraldsdottir seemed to regain enough composure to look up. The traces of her grief were still completely visible, and she held up a hand, voicelessly asking pardon, while she took a moment to blow her nose.

When she looked at the camera again, her expression was still desperately sad, but also wry. "Do you want to know what's really stupid?" she asked candidly.

"Ma'am?" Singer replied, cautiously.

"I was envious—no, jealous. Jealous that six people out of the millions who died would get 'better' treatment. But, no..." she held up a hand, forestalling any comment, "...it doesn't have to be like that, does it. Those six are just symbolic. Whatever others we find, the same. At some point, we need...a ceremony. Something to acknowledge that it all happened, despite the hugeness of it. And now, we have...a focus. Something, someone, to make it real. Not just a huge number we'll never fully account for.

"Something to make it all...human."

Singer inwardly sighed in relief. "Yes, ma'am."

Haraldsdottir sniffed, unselfconsciously still dealing with the physical evidence of her brief breakdown, then looked at the screen with what was almost...mischief?

"I'm afraid there'll still be consequences, though," she said, finally.

Again, Singer just prompted, "Ma'am?"

"I've also seen the recording your logs included, of the ceremony you conducted for your ship's dead. It was deeply moving. I think I'm going to have to add to your workload, and ask you to plan, and possibly to lead the ceremony we've just been discussing. I'm not abdicating my own responsibility, here—as senior surviving officer in system, I know there are aspects that must fall to me. But I'll be relying on you to help me craft something meaningful, Commander."

Singer was so aghast at the magnitude of what was being placed upon her shoulders that it took her a good hundred seconds to respond, almost absently, "It's Lieutenant, ma'am."

Haraldsdottir looked at her again, no mischief at all in her startling blue eyes, but a smile on her face nonetheless. "It's Commander, Commander."