Things Fall Apart: Chapter 21
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Aboard Bellerophon
Lieutenant Cadotte was not good at reading people. Not good at people in general, really. People were a problem, more often than not.
So Cadotte thought that it said something for the commodore's mood that even they could tell that Haraldsdottir was practically floating off the shuttle, and not because of a gravity malfunction. One thing that had become apparent in the last several megs was that the commodore was irrepressible when it came to shenanigans. Witness the announcements of the ship-day before, at least two of which had clearly come as a surprise to Singer, much to Haraldsdottir's delight.
Cadotte had begun filing away the technique for later consideration. While they had no expectation of ever having an independent command, they had been acting as a department head now for quite some time. That appeared now to be permanent, although Singer was still working through the roster.
Morale, Cadotte thought, was one of the pillars of good performance. The depth of a tragedy did not change that equation. Singer had made morale a priority, albeit usually in more subtle ways than the commodore, during their long trip home, and witness the results!
Morale, by itself, couldn't substitute for skill, will, and daring; but poor morale could sabotage all of those things, easily.
Haraldsdottir was accompanied by a full lieutenant, whose name bar read, "Terranova, J", with an operations badge. His assignment patch was for Borass Station, which Singer made a show of noticing and saying, "You're out of uniform, sailor!" with mock severity.
"It seemed premature, ma'am," the lieutenant said.
Haraldsdottir was not the only person present with shenanigans afoot, then. Singer sighed dramatically, "I suppose, Lieutenant. Let's all adjourn to the briefing room so we can straighten some things out and get this show on the road. I hear a rumor that there's a new ship for us to tour, and I, for one, am eager to get to the whole 'new ship smell' part of the shift."
There were chuckles and smiles all around. More morale work.
The group ambled over to the lock, and through it to the corridor and then the briefing room, settling around the table in roughly the order already established, with the exception of the new lieutenant, who took a seat near the commodore. If Cadotte had any question that this was expected, the fact that there was an extra chair for him to sit in dispelled it.
Further reinforcement that things were afoot came when Singer motioned to Haraldsdottir to step aside with her for a moment. Haraldsdottir said, "Everyone please take a moment to provide yourselves with refreshments. The captain and I have a couple things to talk about before we begin!"
They were perhaps five minutes in more private conference, while everyone queued up at the replicator. The new lieutenant got in a few slightly awkward introductions while this was going on. Cadotte hung back for the moment and observed, and saw the commodore hand two small boxes to Singer, not even trying to disguise a grin, which Singer answered.
The two moved to the replicator themselves, then, obtained drinks of choice, and then took their places.
The commodore waved to Singer to indicate that, for the moment, it was Singer's meeting. She began, "The last couple of megs have been very busy. We have not actually all been together in one room in quite some time. Our chief engineer," she nodded toward Espinoza, "in particular has been busy on the dockyard survey, and Lieutenant Alexander has only just been able to rejoin us a half-meg ago, in anticipation of both yesterday's ceremony and today's business. There's some things we're overdue to take care of. Originally, I thought they were going to happen yesterday, but something else happened instead," this was said with a wry expression. "The upside to that is, now I get to do this next part. Attention to orders!"
Another promotion! Cadotte thought. Had to be Alexander. Otherwise, there was a problem, what with Espinoza being a full lieutenant, and Terranova, whom Cadotte was already guessing was going to be their new operations officer, also being a full lieutenant, and Alexander—the XO—currently being only a junior grade.
"Lieutenant, Junior Grade Robin Alexander, step forward."
Cadotte saw that Alexander had been expecting this, or at least, was not entirely caught out by it.
Singer continued, "I, Commander Elyah Singer, on authority bestowed upon me by the Tau Ceti Treaty Fleet Code of Regulations, Section 36, have placed special trust and confidence in the integrity and abilities of Lieutenant, Junior Grade Robin Alexander. In view of these special qualities and zir demonstrated potential, Lieutenant, Junior Grade Alexander is hereby promoted to the grade of Lieutenant Commander."
Alexander had not been expecting that, however. Cadotte had, though. They couldn't have said exactly why, except perhaps that the XO billet was usually a lieutenant commander. Either way, they joined in the hoots and hollers and general lack of decorum that followed the announcement, as Singer pinned the new bar on Alexander's uniform.
And then, Singer said, "Lieutenant, Junior Grade Wayra Cadotte, step forward."
Cadotte had not been expecting this at all, and blinked, temporarily frozen, until Espinoza, standing next to them, nudged them and stage-whispered, "That's you."
Cadotte made a face at him, then stood forward.
"I, Commander Elyah Singer, on authority bestowed upon me by the Tau Ceti Treaty Fleet Code of Regulations, Section 36, have placed special trust and confidence in the integrity and abilities of Lieutenant, Junior Grade Wayra Cadotte. In view of these special qualities and their demonstrated potential, Lieutenant, Junior Grade Cadotte is hereby promoted to the grade of Lieutenant."
There was a gratifyingly similar lack of decorum in the reaction to this news, as Cadotte stood for the pinning of the badge. Cadotte was still human enough to wonder why they didn't get the same double-bump, for a moment, but, no. They were younger, for one thing, both in actual time and in experience, three whole classes behind Alexander. That alone would have made it hard to justify.
"We will have a more public acknowledgement of these promotions in a ship-day or two, but the commodore and I agreed that they couldn't wait for the next chance at a full assembly, and this ship-day will be taken up, for us, entirely by getting briefed on, and then getting to tour, our new ship. In the meantime, three cheers for Lieutenant Commander Alexander and Lieutenant Cadotte!"
When the din settled down and they were dismissed to their seats, Singer resumed. "This also seems like a good moment to introduce you all to Lieutenant Jason Terranova. Jason will be joining us as Operations Officer, a role we really haven't had formally filled since the Incident. Jason was involved in the Zephyr project for a while, and as fate would have it, he rotated here off of Almaty some megs ago, so he's already acquainted with our adoptees from that ship. There'll be some time after the briefing, before we go over to Zephyr, for a meet-and-greet over lunch."
There were murmurs of welcome in Terranova's direction, and chuckles when he ostentatiously peeled the assignment patch off his uniform, took a different one out of a pocket, and placed it where it belonged, making him actually the first of them to wear the patch for Zephyr.
"Now, let's get on to the briefing. Commodore, the floor is yours?"
Haraldsdottir smiled and stood, as Singer sat down. She touched a control, and the holoprojectors sprang up with a wireframe of Zephyr. Everyone's data pads also made faint notification chimes. "I've just released to each of you the details of your new ship. There's a lot to absorb there, and obviously I have no expectation we're going to cover it all in this meeting, particularly when I'm sure we're all eager to get over there and see her in person. For the record, we'll be bringing a remote so that Chef, Castor, and Pollux can participate in the tour. They've all got access to the files, and while there'll be a bit of a light-lag, I would like them with us while we're touring the ship. It's not quite ready for them to transfer over, and in the meantime, Bellerophon still requires their attention, but the ship is going to be their home as much as it will be yours."
Everyone nodded, this making sense, but Chief Kasel raised his hand. "Yes, Chief?" the commodore acknowledged.
"Begging the commodore's pardon, and the captain's too, but it seems to me there are other personnel matters we need to address if we're going back out into the black. In particular, we really need at least one doctor onboard, and I'd feel more comfortable with two, and several more nurses. I've managed this long, but..."
There was no false modesty in his statement. Singer knew this was coming, and
had planned to bring it up herself with Haraldsdottir soon anyway. "You're
right, Chief. Zephyr will need at least that many. What we're trying to
figure out, still, is if we have any to send with you, without leaving our own coverage dangerously thin. The census of the surviving habitats is nearly complete, however, so I should be able to figure something out in at most another megasecond. Much sooner, I hope, but there's a lot going on."
Kasel did not look happy with that answer, but nodded and said, "I understand, ma'am. I apologize for the interruption."
Haraldsdottir looked at him as if she wanted to say more, but she just said, "You're welcome, Chief. I'm sorry I don't have a better answer for you right now."
Haraldsdottir paused and surveyed the room, opening the floor for any other questions, but there were none, so she continued.
"So, Zephyr. This project has been secret—well, as secret as anything ever is—for some time. The primary reason for that is the new time compression system I alluded to, yesterday. For reasons best known to politicians, the Treaty Council felt an urge to keep it under wraps. I think they liked the sense that we had some advantage.
"To complicate matters, the Council then decided that we had a budget problem, of all things, and stalled the project out when it was nearly 90% complete. We were ordered to lay down tools on the ship until further notice."
Cadotte was the first to raise their hand at this. "Budget problem, ma'am? I mean, I know we're not a completely non-monetary economy, but what kind of budget problem could get them to mothball a project with this kind of potential?"
"The most complicated kind, Lieutenant: people. Even before the Incident, we've been having trouble finding enough people to fill billets. Recruiting for the Academy, and for skilled ratings, has been trending downward for a few decades, now. Newer ships like this one," she indicated the wireframe of Zephyr, "are being designed with smaller crews in mind. They're smaller ships to start with, but also, they're more advanced. But there's also been a reluctance to retire older ships, like Bellerophon. Even before Zephyr, this ship's full complement could have crewed two successor-ships based on the designs we've been working on, if only the admiralty would have allowed it.
"Meanwhile, Zephyr seemed to some on the Council like an extravagance. 'Yes, all well and good to have a faster way to get places, but is it really all that important?'" This last was spoken in a pompous tone, with perhaps a bit of a fake posh accent. There were titters all around the room at that. "Trust me, I had to be physically restrained by Admiral Mantooth during the Council session where someone asked that in all seriousness.
"Worse, the argument prevailed, at least temporarily. It was due for review...well, about now. But that review hadn't happened yet. Every reg I've stretched in the last few megaseconds, I can document and justify according to regulations. Sending you all out on Zephyr? If someone wants to make a real point of it, it's piracy, and I'll be pleasantly surprised if there isn't at least one surviving politician who will want my head on a spike for it."
"Now, before we dwell too much on that unpleasant image, I'd like to ask Mr. Chief Engineer Espinoza to talk about his new toy."
Cadotte saw Singer shoot Espinoza a look they interpreted as, "Oh, really?", which in turn caused Espinoza to murmur in the commodore's direction, "Told you so."
Espinoza stood and began, "About 1.5 gigaseconds ago, my grandfather stumbled upon the key to what we now call the time compression drive. This works on a completely different principle from Jump, which many polities still use. Hyperphysics is heady stuff, and we just don't have time for it right now, but the patent is part of the documentation you all received.
"The original was limited to about 200:1 above an arbitrary 'safe' real-space velocity. More recently, of course, it's been common to be able to cruise at 1,000:1. 200 megs ago, a team I was working with finally figured out what was keeping us from achieving the next level the math said we should be able to get to. The result is a system that should allow us to cruise at 7,000:1, with bursts up to 10,000:1. This is, of course, the first generation of this technology. I very much hope we can make 10,000:1 our stable cruising factor. But even at 7,000:1, it will only take about a megasecond to get to David's Star. Once our business at David's Star is concluded, it will only take about another megasecond to get to Tau Ceti.
"My grandfather, by the way, spent an hour cursing when I showed him the breakthrough equation. He'd toyed with something very like it, and discarded it as impractical, back when I was still in diapers."
There was laughter at this—the first real reaction to his lecture so far. Not that his tale or his telling of it was boring, but simply that they were all focused.
"Zephyr is the third vessel, after two pathfinder vessels, built with this technology. Since she was not completed, she has not actually flown, yet, which means that we will need to squeeze a shakedown into our schedule. The current thinking is that our need to stop periodically to drop buoys will give some extra time to test things out and to work out some kinks if they arise.
"Any questions?"
Cadotte raised their hand, but then shook their head. "I've got a dozen, but we don't have time here for them. I'll corner you later!"
Espinoza smiled, "I look forward to it!"
Haraldsdottir took up the thread from there. "Somewhat more prosaically, Zephyr also has the most up to date fusion plants, with significant efficiency improvements, and is a much lighter vessel than Bellerophon, taking advantage of advances in material science. This means that, even in normal space, she'll be one of the nimblest ships afloat that we're aware of. If circumstances require you to go downwell in a deeper system, it'll still be a slog, but it will be somewhat less of one. That said, Captain, the orders I'll be cutting you will formally stress that you should not go down a deep gravity well if you can avoid it. Zephyr's primary mission is going to be starting to re-establish contact and find out how things stand, not giving taxi rides to stranded brass or ferrying cargo up- or downwell or anything mundane like that. You're the one starship we've got. You need to be out where you can get between stars as much as possible.
"As part of that, as Lieutenant Espinoza alluded, you'll be seeding new chains of relay buoys. This will slow you down, a bit, of course, but I consider it vital to the overall task. Those buoys will mean you don't have to come back to give us news, and will also hopefully open us up, through crossroad systems like David's Star, to the non-Treaty systems as well. Always assuming their networks have not also been disrupted.
"With respect to David's Star, your mission there is heavily diplomatic. We do have ambassador there, of course, but she's almost certainly in the dark, and probably quite stressed out about it, since the DSR government, and press, and public, will all be clamoring for answers she doesn't have. Re-establish contact, try to get permission to seed a new relay buoy that will also give us that wider connectivity, make it clear that we're still assessing the scope of this thing. Try to get access to the AI institute there and get them involved. You'll have all the evidence you already collected to bring with, plus what little we've scraped up separately, here. We want to know how this happened, and we want to start trying to figure out who might be responsible.
"After that, you'll go to Tau Ceti. I'm not going to lie to any of you: the fact that we have not yet heard from them, doing the same thing we're trying to do, bodes very ill. Most of Tau Ceti's space infrastructure were artificial habitats, not rocks. Cherryh's World is terraformed and inhabitable without artificial support at this point. Honestly, I have no idea if power facilities or other possible sources of on-world damage were AI controlled and susceptible to this event. The system would have been full of ships of all kinds, and many of those would have been vulnerable. We've all been trying very hard not to think about just how much more horrible this tragedy could be, but that is going to be part of your job, to find out."
There was silence as everyone digested this, before Singer said, "And after Tau Ceti?"
Haraldsdottir took a moment to respond, as if she was trying to figure out how to phrase it. "I don't know, honestly. I have several possibilities in mind. If there's still any command structure at Tau Ceti, they may have ideas of their own, and if even one outranks me, their ideas trump mine by definition. If you're successful seeding new relays, we'll be able to have that conversation, one way or the other,
and go from there."
Singer nodded, and said, "Understood, Commodore."
Silence, then, until finally Haraldsdottir said, "Well, on that cheery note, let's have lunch, and then go actually see your new ship, shall we?"