Things Fall Apart: Chapter 22

Aboard the inspection boat Alice's Restaurant Massacree

While they had been talking, Borass Station had sent up a second boat, a specialty craft, they'd retrieved from the garage. This boat was waiting in the boat bay when they all trooped back after the meeting. It looked like a pretty typical pinnace on the outside, but boarding it showed the key difference: the passenger section's walls were all display surfaces. "This is an inspection boat. The original version actually had this whole section hulled in transparent steel, but the Mark One Eyeball, while good for some things, is not as good at others. So gradually, the inner surface came to be augmented with display capabilities, and eventually, they just took a standard pinnace and re-dressed this section. The boat's also got a lot more sensors, of higher resolution, than most pinnaces carry. "

Singer was glad for the unprompted explanation. She was certain at least some of her officers already knew what this was for—Alexander, for example, looked like ze was already familiar with it and was already moving to strap in to an acceleration chair near a console with a kind of dreamy expression on zir face. Haraldsdottir noticed this and just quirked a tolerant smile at Singer, who returned it.

Singer and the others began to follow Alexander's example, finding seats and familiarizing themselves with the control layouts. Singer chose a chair to Alexander's right, wanting the benefit of zir insight. Singer had thought Haraldsdottir might take the seat to her own right, but Espinoza did, instead, and Singer decided that was fine, given his prior involvement in elements of the project.

If the commodore had any issue with this, she didn't show it. She found her own seat to Espinoza's right. As soon as everyone had clicked in to their couches, she touched a stud and said, "Pilot, if you please?"

"Yes'm!" came the response, a female voice Singer thought. People around her were bringing up various views, currently just of the ship's interior, to get used to the controls. Singer followed suit, but she had one view in particular she wanted just now: their departure angle.

Singer had complex feelings just now. Until recently, she had never really consciously thought of Bellerophon as "home" so much as "where I am". She didn't have the emotional attachment many career sailors get to her ships, and, ironically given the AI personalities that inhabited them, she didn't anthropomorphize either. Singer did tend to use the feminine pronoun out of habit, but she didn't really think of the ship as a person, a spirit, a soul.

Being her skipper hadn't changed most of that, but fighting to keep the ship and her crew alive had changed one aspect for certain. Bellerophon had become "home", emotionally. And now, while she was probably still coming back to it before the formal transfer to Zephyr, she was starting the process of leaving it behind. She felt she owed the ship, somehow, to actually see her, holed and damaged and imperfect as she was.

Part of her rationalized it would help her appreciate the shiny newness of Zephyr more. That wasn't really it. She just felt like she should stand witness one last time, pay silent tribute to the ship that had gotten them this far.

Almost, as they left the boat bay and the cameras shifted to take the ship into better view on her display, almost she thought she'd made a mistake. The boat's course was not a straight line to the rear, but turned in such a way that the view was now of Bellerophon's most damaged side. She had to fight the urge to unstrap, stand, and salute.

Suddenly, she was aware of gasps around her, and that she was not the only one who had chosen this exact view. In fact, every wall-panel except Haraldsdottir's was trained on it; even Espinoza's. Looking past him, Singer saw that the commodore was not unaware or unmoved, but had chosen what appeared to be a forward view for her own panel.

Well and good. The commodore, Singer thought, was firmly focused on the future. She knew that; they'd talked about it at length. Singer, though, needed a moment or two more to pay tribute to the past before she could relish the thought of the uncertain future.

Finally, the pinnace had moved far enough that even the excellent cameras aboard her were no longer providing a very clear image. It was then, with Bellerophon physically receding behind them, that Singer could change her own view to match Haraldsdottir's. Singer took a moment to crane her neck, curious to see what others were doing now. Several had also switched forward. Several were playing with the controls, bringing up various different views, including different sensor overlays.

Cordé, who had been silent all through the briefing, was still staring at the increasingly unrecognizable blob of Bellerophon in the distance. Increasingly, Singer wondered if Cordé would actually choose to join them, when they finally left the system. The ensign hadn't said anything about leaving the crew, and thus, Singer had not yet made any provision for finding a more senior communication officer to take over the department. While Cordé was still a bit young yet, both in age and in service time, for a promotion, she had already been getting close before the Incident. As such, Singer had planned to have her remain as senior comms officer, and fill the department with two of the midshipmen they would be keeping, and possibly offer warrant status to a couple of the ratings who had been filling and shown aptitude.

One more thing to worry about.

The trip over in the pinnace was scheduled for nearly three ship-days, which was actually short as such trips went, and made possible only by having had Bellerophon shift her own orbit to be a bit more convenient. Configured as it was, the pinnace had little room for privacy. Calling up the layout on her console, Singer saw that the usual second-deck facilities were available: a mess hall, two meeting rooms, and bunks for those who preferred not to sleep at their consoles—not enough for everyone at once, but enough to hot-bunk without too much contention. Ultimately, it was not too different from flying in-system on any other pinnace; just that the compartment she was currently in would usually be arranged in more conventional rows of acceleration seats, or for cargo, or something in between.

Singer realized about 10 kilosecs into the trip that she was not cut out to stare into space, literally, for the next 240 kilos. With the boat cruising pretty smoothly, she unstrapped herself. "I'm going to go get a snack and start reading up in more detail on Zephyr."

Others of the crew seemed to snap out of their various reveries—even Cordé. Alexander seemed content; Cadotte had their display panel off and their eyes closed, which could mean they were napping, or could mean they had synced their implants up with the ship's sensorium and was experiencing the trip on a completely different level. Haraldsdottir's screen was still forward space, but her attention was on the more mundane console in front of her—she glanced up and smiled, tacit dismissal. Only Kasel followed her immediate lead, however. "A snack sounds good to me, if you don't mind company."

"Only if you don't mind me reading instead of chatting."

"Not at all! I've got some of my own to do!"

And so, they companionably headed aft, to the ladder that led down to the second deck.

Twenty kiloseconds later found Singer having a second snack, still seated at a table in the mess, where she and Kasel had each read in comfortable silence. She was vaguely aware that others had drifted in and out again, some back upstairs, some to the bunks, but everyone had respected her clear focus on her datapad.

She had done a similar deep dive after things had stabilized on Bellerophon. In that case, she'd needed to know not just details of her ship's design and capabilities that she'd never really had to pay attention to before, but also the operational details, the "ship's books", like personnel records, and how much replication mass was typically spent and recovered, similar stats for reaction mass, and so on. In an earlier age, it would have included monetary expenses incurred and ship's pay, at least. In that regard, modern operation was much simpler. TCTF crew were paid, but little of the ship's day to day involved money in any other sense.

Zephyr had very little operational detail to go over, yet, except in the abstract—how much mass she was expected to go through, and recover, for example, through her newer, more efficient systems. It was the details of those systems Singer allowed herself to get lost in, periodically making side-trips to cram in at least a layman's understanding of areas she just had never had to think about.

Like ship's defenses. She'd ignored that even when she took command of Bellerophon. If, by some vanishingly tiny probability, anyone had attacked Bellerophon in the state she was in, she could have put up very little defense, not least of which because no survivor had any experience at all with operating the relevant systems. Only now, well after the fact, did Singer allow herself a small shudder at what might have happened had that come to pass.

Going forward though, she had no idea what to expect. If TCTF ships had blown up at their docks, had rammed their ships, as had happened here at G-581, they—any particular they, and all of them at once—would have every reason to be in a mood to shoot first and ask questions of the survivors. Singer had no intention of allowing it to be that easy if it came to that pass, and still very much hoped it didn't. But she had to know what her ship would be capable of.

I need to consider sleep-learning how to fight. Sleep learning was fast, but not always reliable. But she did not have the luxury of going back to the Academy, assuming it still existed, and Haraldsdottir had already made it clear she had no one trained in the art available. Actual battles were so very rare, once-in-a-generational things that hardly anyone was. Most ships had one or two tactical specialists, and it wasn't their primary job.

A thought occurred to her then, and she realized that if her hunch was right, she could just query the boat's system and check.

Sure enough, that's what Cadotte was doing, even now, with their nap upstairs: sleep learning the exact programs Singer had begun queuing up.

Well. Didn't mean Singer shouldn't, too.

Singer was just about to finally set her pad aside, in response to the massive yawn that snuck up on her, when she looked around and saw Cordé sitting at the other table, facing her, apparently waiting patiently.

She looked over at where Kasel had been, and realized she had actually missed his exit entirely. Idly, she wondered if he'd simply left on his own to get some rest, or if he'd taken Cordé's expectant presence as a cue to quietly leave.

"Ensign?"

"Commander, may I speak to you, privately?"

Singer considered putting her off, tired and a bit bleary as she was. She didn't need to alter her shielding, however, to realize that the ensign's need was...if not quite immediate, then nearly so. It had taken all the other woman's patience to allow her CO the space she'd implicitly asked for to deep-dive. Now that she had Singer's attention, Singer saw at once it would be the wrong answer entirely to put her off.

So instead, she nodded. "Let's see if one of the meeting rooms is open."

Neither one was in use, which was not much surprise, but denied Singer any opportunity to put this conversation off by so much as an extra 100 seconds while negotiating for their use.

Instead, Singer chose a seat, waved to another one, and said, "What's on your mind, Ensign?"

"Resignation, ma'am."

Singer, tired as she was, recognized there were several levels to that word. This was not uncommon when two communications officers conversed. They were, all of them, trained linguists, proficient at the use of language as a tool in many senses. It was not precisely true that they all spoke in code to each other, but their conversation tended to be...denser.

She was, however, tired. Rather than trying to parse it, and not wanting to err, she said, "Unpack it for me, please."

Cordé nodded, not seeming at all disappointed. "Ma'am...I'm just...I'm not sure what we can do! It's all so...big! You and I both know, I think, that the chances are high that what happened here happened everywhere in our spaces. Every ship. Every station. Every world that's dependent on AI that runs the same kind of code. Dozens of systems. Billions of people."

Well, Singer had asked for it. She fought not to wince as Cordé laid out in explicit terms the scope of the catastrophe they'd all been avoiding talking about.

Singer had no counterargument. She was not moving forward the way she was because she knew how to fix it all. Honestly the opposite: she was doing what she was doing now because she had no idea at all how to fix it all, and her response was, as had almost become cliché lately, that she'd rather be doing something than nothing.

Instead, she asked as gently as she could, "What would you like to be doing, Marina?"

She had rarely addressed her junior, even when they were just two comms officers together, by name. Doing so, she implicitly invited candor.

Cordé wrung her hands, the most overt sign of distress Singer had seen from her in megs. "That's part of the problem, ma'am. I don't have any idea. I guess on one level I'd love to figure out some way to get to New Pittsburgh. Find out if any of my people survived. On another? I'd love to go to Newer York, like we're doing anyway, but stay there. Someplace completely outside the TCTO, outside the blast radius. Bury my head. Forget. I feel awful about that, but...ma'am, I'm simply overwhelmed."

Singer took a chance. "Tell you a secret?" Again, she deliberately cast it as if they were on friendlier terms than they'd been. Cordé didn't actually need her CO right now; she needed a friend.

Cordé looked startled, however. Then, Singer realized it was not at the relaxed tone of the question. It was that she had guessed the answer.

Correctly as it happened: "You, too?"

Singer nodded.

"You don't show it, ma'am. Not even a little bit. Can I tell you a secret, without offense?"

"I'm happy to hear your secret. I will try not to be offended." Precision was called for, right now.

"I've been a little resentful, ma'am. You haven't earned it but I have. Here I am, falling apart, and you've looked this whole time like you've been holding everything and everyone together. I don't know how you're doing it. I don't know why you're doing it. If we're right about the scope...ma'am, neither one of us has a commission, any more. There's no fleet, no service, no...authority. You heard the commodore: just stepping aboard Zephyr is actually an act of piracy!"

Singer ventured a small, conspiratorial smile. "Ensign, if there's nobody in charge any more, then it's not piracy. It's salvage."

Cordé blinked. That had clearly not occurred to her. Which was fair. Singer had literally only just thought of it, herself, and she was pretty sure it had not occurred to Haraldsdottir, yet, either.

After a moment, Cordé said, "Is that what we are, now, ma'am. We went out into the black to reach out to the scattered diaspora, try to at least learn how to talk to them again, if not bring them into the fold. Are we...salvagers, now?"

Singer considered. "Right now, our mission isn't that different than what it was. Only now, instead of the scattered diaspora, it's the shattered membership. It's not our job, right now, to fix everything. It's not really our job, much as we might feel the urge to, to fix anything at all. Our job is to find out what state things are in so we can figure out what even needs fixing!"

"And if it is...everything? Or so much that it might as well be everything?"

"Then, we'll see. The 'can do' attitude my aunt instilled in me tells me we fix one thing at a time, and if we fix enough things maybe someone else can pitch in and then we can fix two things at a time, and we let that snowball. Or maybe, when we really see the butcher's bill, I'll agree with you that it's all too much, and we find somewhere else to be useful. Either way, there's one thing I absolutely intend to find out, and do something about."

Without hesitation, Cordé said, "Who did it."

"And why. And how. I'm not a violent person by nature, not even a little bit. But I intend to find out to whose account to charge that butcher's bill."

Singer was a little surprised by the determination in her own voice. When she was having trouble sleeping, she had dwelled on the notion. This was probably the first time she'd voiced it.

She wanted...justice? Revenge? Balance? Acknowledgement? Something. She wanted to look the person or people who did this in the face.

Cordé nodded slowly, processing the thought, and Singer took the opportunity to say, "Marina, if you really want to step away, I'll talk with the commodore and figure out how to make that work. I'm not interested in reviving the concept of the press gang, and we're going to be too small a community, under too much stress, to have someone with us that really doesn't want to be there. But you are good at your job. We are going to need good communicators as much as any other specialty I can think of, going forward. I want you with me."

She saw the other woman actually relax, at that, and Singer realized she had never conveyed that clearly until now. Was Cordé harboring a sense of rejection on top of things? Maybe.

In an almost bemused voice, Cordé said, "I would really like to be there, if we find them..."

She came out of her musing, and looked Singer in the eye. "I'm with you, Captain." Singer realized then that it was the first time Cordé had called her that.

And then, she said, "Thank you."

"No," Singer responded. "Thank you." She didn't say out loud: for trusting me enough to tell me where your head was at. For trusting me enough to go forward with me, even knowing I don't have any special insight into the answers to the larger problems.

She knew Cordé got it anyway. "You're welcome, ma'am."