by S. Walker
"For the moment, although I will be on light duty for the next week or so." He rubbed below the pressure cuff and flexed absently. "Also, before you ask: I checked Environmental earlier and the results are not encouraging."
Jamet jolted to life. "Are the recyclers offline?" That would be horrible. Slowly dying to carbon monoxide buildup was high on her list of personal fears. "Do we need to switch to living in the skinsuits?"
"Not quite that bad." Paul's atonal voice was hard to read. "There are two out of eight units still working for the forward ship area."
"Two out of eight is 'not that bad'? Regulations are to set up the emergency shelters when half the-" she blinked as the obvious suddenly occurred. "Oh. There's no crew."
Paul pointed at her and nodded. "Exactly. That." Then he smiled wanly to take a little sting out of the words. "We will be fine for the foreseeable future, unless we suddenly acquire several hundred passengers."
"That might be something to discuss." Siers took a long pull from his drink, then refilled entirely from his hip flask. At this point Jamet was pretty sure the contents were more alcohol than caf; it was strong enough she could smell it without getting close. It was flagrantly in violation, but no one seemed concerned at all. "It seems we might need to mount a rescue attempt, but we don't know how large a group we might be looking at. Lieutenant?"
Jamet jerked away from thoughts of drinking on duty. "Sir?"
"How many people are on a facility that size?" He motioned broadly toward the bulkhead and, presumably, the torus somewhere ahead of them.
"Oh. If it was operating at full capacity? Millions, I think."
Janson turned and looked down at her in disbelief. "That's a lot of people, ma'am. Are you sure?"
She blinked, then looked slightly upwards in recollection. "Absolutely sure: That's a specialized resource extraction facility, made for a gas giant. It's basically a hollow tube constructed in a giant circle. Over twenty-six miles in diameter, four decks tall, nearly a quarter mile wide on the inside. That's easily a million workers." Jamet put her mug on the table, then made a big circle around it with her arms. "It's built around a processing plant in the middle, like this. The facility is a cube something like eleven miles on a side, uses a singularity generator to drag gas up from the planet and condense exotic elements. Probably two hundred thousand workers each shift, maybe?"
She looked up to see the entire table watching her with varying shades of surprise. Paul's eyebrows in particular couldn't climb any higher. "Do you know every Corporate facility, lieutenant?"
Jamet blushed. "No, that's imposs- ahem. Not likely. I just happened to know this system's because I spent some time-" rage screaming at fact sheets between failing manual navigation courses "-looking through infrastructure contracts." She levelled a finger at Paul. "And I do not have a verbal tic."
Paul glanced at Janson. "Told her, did you?" The big engineer just laughed.
Siers was frowning. "But the facility is gone," he pointed out, then reached over and took the caf mug to demonstrate. "What happened to it?"
"Didn't catch that, captain?" Emilia ran a finger under her visor, rubbing hard. "It was a singularity processing facility. Our friend out there doesn't like Krepsfield devices, probably rammed it." She made an explosion noise, fingers flying apart. "That had to be a terrible day."
Everyone thought about that and winced. "So when the processing plant in the middle got smashed, do you think that took out the habitation ring as well?" Jamet felt ill thinking about it.
"Why, Princess? Worried about how much it cost?"
"I was wondering how many survived, actually."
"Oh." Emilia lifted her head slightly to look at the lieutenant. "Really? Sorry, then."
Jamet chose not to mention she'd already run the estimated cost of losing the entire station. "It's alright. But that was months and months ago. What have they been doing since then?"
"Depends, I suppose. How many haulers do you think were docked? Could they have loaded up and took off, evacuated?" Paul seemed hopeful. "The torus itself probably took heavy debris damage. It cannot be livable."
Janson pointed out the obvious. "Ah think we passed them all on the way in. Remember all th' derelicts? If I had to guess that's them. Poor bastards."
That was a sobering thought. Everyone took a moment to work through the implications of how big the debris field around the system entry point was. If every broken ship in that enormous cloud was packed with evacuees when their attacker caught it...
A shiver passed around the table, unaffected by hot drinks or caffeine stimulation. Captain Siers tipped more out of his flask.
"Wait," Paul frowned. "There are two gas giants and both have a facility. Do we need to mount a double rescue?"
"Unfortunately, no." Jamet paused, thinking that over. She was so tired word choices were coming out strange. "Fortunately? Nevermind-- the other facility lost orbit, they're sinking into the planet. Even if we had the Krepsfield online we couldn't risk docking there. Maybe a lifeboat pickup, but the station itself wouldn't be possible."
"That is awful." He drank slowly, eyes staring into the distance.
"I'm trying not to think about it, honestly."
"Alright, so how many are left?" Siers refocused the group. "If it's a million then this isn't workable no matter how we look at it. In fact with the Kipper so damaged we'd have difficulty with even a thousand."
Emilia shook her head slightly without lifting it off the table. "Doubt it's that many, sir. Our reception is weak all the way out here, but if there were over a thousand survivors then we'd be picking up all kinds of stray signals." Emilia held her hand out, palm flat over the dirty table. "But it's nothing. Barely registering. If there are more than fifty transmission sources I'd be really surprised."
The captain looked like a man trying very hard not to think about a near-total fatality percentage. "Alright, we can handle that many. But the other problem is getting there. Engineer?"
Janson settled in, propping both elbows on the table to rest his chin on. "Well, we're slowin' down some. An' the drones are getting more retros online right now. At full burn we'll be just under a mile per second when we cross w' the station."
"How about the Krepsfield?" Jamet matched the engineer's pose, resting her arms and head. Everything hurt. "With our friend heading for the next Corporate system over we can use it to brake or maneuver without getting attention."
"Yup. Already prioritizing that. Got two of the power relays taken apart already, the third is comin' out soon. When they're all apart ah can replace 'em. It'll be sometime late tomorrow if nothin' goes wrong. Plenty of time."
"Workable." Siers nodded. He wasn't even using the mug anymore; he was taking straight pulls from the flask as he talked. "Alright, so we have probably less than a thousand survivors. Environmental is stable," he glanced at Paul and received a confirmation. "Our drive is getting repaired and we won't have workable communications until we get much closer." Emilia gave a thumbs up. "I think that calls it, then: Sleep cycle, everyone. I'll take bridge watch in case anything happens."
Jamet eyed him, then glanced at the flask. He caught the look. "Lieutenant? Something to add?"
"No, sir. Wait," this was probably going to be suicide. "Yes. Should you be drinking right now? Isn't that a bad idea?"
The break room went still, everyone slowly giving her a look that was hard to read. There was hostility there, but also a weird undercurrent of embarrassment. She stared back, refusing to back down.
"You're right, of course." Siers put the flask away, then set his empty mug on the table. "You'll have to believe me when I say it won't be a problem. Is that better?"
No, it wasn't. "Yes, sir."
"Alright, then. I'll be on the bridge, everyone else to quarters for the next six hours. If you have drones or repairs queued up," he nodded to Janson and Paul. "Give final instructions and then go offline. No half-sleep or background tasks; it's been hell the last day and a half. Don't w
orry about missing anything, if something happens I'll set off every alarm that ever existed." He looked at Jamet. "Lieutenant?"
Here it came. She braced for incoming threats. "Sir."
"Switch with me on the bridge when you wake up. Until then, everyone." He eyed them all one at a time (ignoring Jamet's relieved look) then departed with a swish of displaced air.
There was a long pause where she thought about how to ask the obvious question regarding the captain's fitness for duty while under the influence. The other three filled the awkward moment with a hostile silence. Jamet opened her mouth, reconsidered, then asked the question she'd been dying to get an answer to since arriving on the Kipper.
"Why, exactly," she pointed around the dirty break room. Used mugs and plates were everywhere, stacked on every horizontal surface. The food prep unit looked like a culinary-related bomb went off and then encrusted on every surface. "Is this place so filthy?"
The sense of impeding fight dissolved into weak laughter. It wasn't much, but it felt genuine and Jamet took the chance to fall into it while she could. It was a new experience. She'd laughed before, of course, but never so carefree like this in a social setting. It just wasn't possible around the Management scene and it got worse near promotion season. Even at the best of times she never just went out with friends; who knew when one of them would be secretly recording blackmail for later use? It was safer to treat every outing as a battle to be fought. Guard up. Eyes watchful. Every remark and comment sifted for implied meaning or threat.
This was the exactly the opposite of her entire previous life. No one here seemed to care about promotions, or getting ahead. It was weird, unsettling and... and she liked it.
Janson wiped tears out of his eyes. "All you, Paul. Go 'head."
The gangly Medical expert protested. "Why me? Emilia started it!"
"That's a rotten lie!"
"Well it certainly was not me."
"Is anyone going to explain?" Jamet threw both hands in the air. "Come on, what's the big secret?"
"Fine! I'll do it." A colored visor aimed towards Jamet. "So there's this stupid tradition I fell into a long time ago, back when I was in Corporate. It's dumb. But we all had a big communal room like this, and it was usually trashed 'cause nobody wanted to spend time cleaning without getting paid for it."
That made far too much sense to Jamet. "Ah. But then...?"
"But then we got an audit. An' one of the 'findings'-" she made adorable air quotes with both hands. Jamet fought to keep a straight face. "Was how sanitary conditions were costing Corporate money in productivity time. Or something like that. Whatever. But an Upper got sanctioned over the whole thing so it was a big deal."
"So someone was hired to clean?" That seemed like a good outcome.
All three stared at her and then broke into tired, hysterical laughter.
"Oh. Oh no. Hell, no." Emilia was hiccupping. "Nope! They came down and put big notices on the wall. They said the room was for everyone, so it was everybody's responsibility. So if someone complained about the room then obviously everybody would be required to clean it."
The light dawned. "And nobody ever complained again." That was brilliant and horrible at the same time. And Jamet had to admit... extremely Corporate.
Emilia pointed both index fingers her way. "You got it, Prin- lieutenant."
"But... why here, then?" She waved around the room.
Everyone shrugged at once. Then Paul slowly grinned. "Well, now that someone said something..."
Jamet blinked, then started laughing. "Maybe after we sleep. Captain's orders and all."
Janson winked at her. "An' the tradition continues."
Chapter 17
Fiscal Preservation
Something went terribly wrong in Port Dock Juliet.
It started with a standard ship warning, automated, announcing arrival in yet another system. Which system? It didn't matter. The FES Redline never stopped, never slowed down and transits between stars were more common than laundry cycles. Knowing the details of which particular planetary investment happened to draw the ire of Fiscal Enforcement Services didn't impact daily life for the crew in any meaningful way. Even self-inspections were rare; the Redline was bigger than most stationary facilities, with a crew well over a hundred thousand. Management couldn't be everywhere. That's what workers were for.
Then battle station alarms went off with a whooping call of the damned.
Across docking area Juliet thousands of cargo and lift operators hesitated in surprise, then abandoned machinery in place and fled for assigned shelters. In some cases it was a hell of a run: The cargo deck was nearly a half mile square, terraced on the inward side into three levels for storage. The outbound area sported three enormous ship docks, two hundred square feet each and festooned with dozens of cranes and gravity assist lifters. But all the shelters were on the interior sides, behind emergency bulkheads designed to withstand explosion decompression if the entire dock blew.
Workers in colored jumpsuits ran hard, weaving through fixed machinery in panic. From above they looked like rainbow colored trails of movement, all headed for the edge of the dock. Worry clouded the air, jumping from person to person between the strident calls of the siren. But they weren't panicked, not yet. Battle stations happened. It was rare, but occasionally the Redline needed to enact a write-off on an entire system. In those cases everyone got a free break for a few hours, then scrambled to catch up on missed work when it was over. No big deal.
Then Cormorents began launching.
Port side Weapons resided directly below J dock, launch tubes sharing hull space in the area beneath their feet. When the tubes began firing every worker could feel the thrum of each screaming torpedo through their boots. Sense the vibrations whipping from the cargo terrace toward the outward docking area. Hear the singing tension of mechanical assists hurling packages of death into the void. Those closest to the massive docking bays could even see the growing negative space through the open doors as singularities ate starlight and streaked off.
The whoop-whoop of battle sirens abruptly switched to the higher scree-scree of collision warnings. Amber lights flashed on every visible surface, screaming the command to get down get down get down.
Urgent running became panicked sprints, faster workers pushing slower people down in haste. Orderly lines of motion turned into thrashing chaos as everyone fought for another inch of ground towards safety. Emergency hatches filled up and jammed, too full of people to let the desperate inside. Dock supervisors fought the mob, jerking stuck people aside, desperate to clear space and get the throng moving again.
And through it all the deck vibrated with launch after launch after launch. More and more, accelerating at a frantic pace until vibrations merged into an intense, rolling growl so loud the collision sirens couldn't be heard any more. A howl of danger so bass they could feel it shake in every bone.
The entire docking area smashed inward with cataclysmic force, half a mile of heavily reinforced bulkhead bending like paper before impossible forces. Local gravity generators screamed with lifesaving effort, straining to cancel out hellish amounts of kinetic energy seeking to turn anything biological into paste. The fields held just long enough for the collision to pass, then blew as power relays melted under duress.
Juliet Dock explosively breached.
Everything not fixed in place blasted outwards as the three enormous docking windows merged into a gigantic hole in the hull. Explosive decompression snatched equipment and crew alike, sending debris mixed with screaming personnel hurtling into the void. Every emergency bulkhead smashed shut with titanic force, preserving those lucky enough to escape while sentencing everyone else to vacuum.
All that was left behind were corridors of screaming survivors, shrieking sirens and a heavy, thick smoke that settled unnaturally on everything.