Tales from the Service: Aboard the Grand Azure

2848-07-14 – Tales from the Service: Aboard the Grand Azure

Lieutenant Leon Koch-Zyma frowned at the representative from Grand Azure. The spacer’s posture, darting eyes, and haphazard grooming status whispered of criminal habits in a way his fresh bleach-white tunic and spit-shined black shoes could not quite drown out. “Your vessel’s mercenary registration checks out, so we’ll let you through to but I’ll still need to see your crew manifest and search the ship.”

Checkpoint picket duty was among the least interesting things Leon had done in his brief military career; a suspiciously spit-shined ruffian with a suspiciously recently issued mercenary registration was the most exciting thing that had happened for six weeks, and he planned to make the most of it. Maybe the Grand Azure was entirely legitimate, or maybe it was one of the many vessels masquerading as mercenaries but intending only to support the black-market economy of the embattled region.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” The Azure representative, who had introduced himself as its liaison officer Gus Hadley, gave a sloppy mockery of the Confederated Navy salute, and Leon did his best not to wince. “I’ll give you the tour right now if you’re ready.”

This level of accommodation was not what Leon had expected. “Ah, yes, Mr. Hadley. That would be acceptable.”

Hadley turned around and led the way back up the docking umbilical between the cruiser Helena Brightley and the much smaller Grand Azure. Through the transparent panels along the tunnel, Leon looked at the graceful lines of the vessel he was about to board – its sweeping white hull looked more like a top-of-the-line private-military frigate than the usual rust-buckets one saw plying the space-lanes in the mercenary business, and the transit shells of dozens of light weapons emplacements studded its hull like jet cabochons on a crown. Nobody with the money to buy something like that vessel would risk it throwing it into skirmishes with Incarnation cruisers or let it be shredded by an unending swarm of Coronachs – it was as much a conversation piece to hang outside a starport boardroom window as it was a weapon.

At the same time, Grand Azure was not the sort of vessel one would expect to engage in smuggling or other black-market activities. Just because the mercenaries had more funds than brains didn’t mean they were doing anything illegal – but given the state of their liaison officer, Leon wouldn’t believe that until he had torn the ship apart hull plate by hull plate. All he needed was to spot some excuse to call in the support of a dozen techs with cutters and spanners while Hadley gave him the tour. “Seems a shame to use a ship like that on Frontier patrol duty.”

“It’s our home. If we’re going to risk getting slagged by counterhuman scumwads, might as well live in style out here.”

“Suppose so.” Leon kept his voice cool as the other man keyed a code into the lock. Without a trace of buzzing or grinding, the Grand Azure lock opened, emitting a breath of surprisingly damp air. For someone used to the super-dry conditions aboard Navy ships, it felt like a tropical breeze.

Gus Hadley gestured inside. “Lift is on your left, Lieutenant. You are free to go where you please, but can I recommend the hydroponics compartment on deck four?”

Leon scrutinized the man. Though he could tell Hadley was hiding something, he did seem genuine about the merits of a visit to the hydroponics compartment. Still, Leon was in no mood to be accomodating. “Let’s go to the command deck.” It wasn’t a military vessel, otherwise he would ask the man to take him to the bridge.

“Command.” Hadley nodded and stepped up to the lift and called it. The doors opened almost instantly. “Works for me.”

Leon stepped into the lift and waited as the man set the destination on his wrist control machine. The lift was spotless, without even so much as a dead lightstrip anywhere. “Pretty clean ship you run here.”

“Yeah, suppose it is.” Hadley scratched inside his collar. “Got a real neat freak aboard. Lucky her it’s a new ship, everything started clean.”

“Those sorts go nuts on older ships, even in the Navy.” Leon agreed diplomatically. “What’s the compliment on a ship like this?”

“The way we’ve got it outfitted, we can run it with four, though we’re hoping to hire on some extra techs and maybe another gunner if we find the right people.”

“A frigate with a crew of four?” Leon frowned.

“Yeah, there’s some custom electronics in here.” The liaison waved his hand vaguely. “I sure as all hells don’t understand it. That’s Blake’s job.”

“Your chief engineer?”

The doors opened and the small command deck and Leon stepped out first before being given an invitation. The space had seven stations, but all but one were dark. The woman at the one console, thin, pale, and about the same age as Hadley, stood up as they approached.

“Faye, this is Lieutenant Koch-Zyma from Brightley.” Hadley gestured around the space. “Faye is our best gunner and a solid backup pilot. And this is command, as you can see. Not the nicest space on the ship, but everything works.”

Leon noticed something was missing. “There’s no command chair.” There was only a circular hole where a crash-padded command chair would usually be mounted to the deck plating.

“Ah, yeah.” Hadley shrugged. “We took the thing out. More consoles here than we need anyway.”

The command chair on a vessel of war, Leon knew, was not just an extra station. It was one of two places on a ship that all the information gathered by other stations and sensors was concentrated, so the commander could make informed decisions in the heat of battle. On most ships, the chair itself and the machinery below it contained more computer equipment than a strike gunship’s entire electronic suite. “Do you run the ship from the command center, then?”

“Advanced holo-systems.” Faye stepped forward, and as she did a hundred rectangular panels appeared in the air around her, each showing a different sensor feed, chart, or monitor. “The ship can be commanded from anywhere aboard, Lieutenant. Any secondary station can be accessed remotely.”

If true, that was a toy not even Navy ships generally had. Sure, the holo-systems aboard Navy vessels could provide some of the services of the command center anywhere aboard, but full command from any compartment was still the plaything of those with more credits than sense. “I see.”

Gus Hadley let Leon wander the command deck, then led him down one deck to the wardroom and the officers’ cabins. There were eight cabins fitted for officers alone, and he began to doubt the assertion that the ship could be run with four hands. The bunkrooms for enlisted spacers would, he predicted, have space for at least fifteen more. Rather than comment on this, he continued his tour in silence.

A bulky man nearly collided with the pair as they entered the crew mess, and Hadley stopped him. “Lieutenant, this is Blake, our repair tech.”

Blake blinked slowly at the Navy officer. Unlike Gus Hadley, he was dressed in a shabby, stained tunic and loose-fitting blue slacks. “Problems, Gus?”

“No, Blake, just giving the Lieutenant the tour.” Leon noticed the man’s voice slowing down noticeably as he spoke to the big mechanic. Like Hadley himself, Blake had the posture and scars of a man familiar with the Reach’s criminal underworld, but he lacked the canny, calculating presence of the “liaison officer.”

“Oh, right. The grand tour.” Blake winked suspiciously at his compatriot, and Leon noticed Hadley rolling his eyes in exasperation. “Have fun, Gus!” With that, he ambled off toward the lift.

It has been some time since any sign of Gus, Blake, Faye, and their mysterious friend Sapphire have been heard from on this feed. Though this report is not a confirmed sighting of these persons, I have taken the liberty of replacing the (apparently false) names given to Lieutenant Koch-Zyma with the pseudonyms of those persons from their previous appearances in this space.

While I cannot confirm those identities, the presence of mushroom-like trees similar to those from prior stories and an expanded hydroponics compartment aboard Grand Azure and the descriptions of the persons matching quite closely, I feel confident that this is them.

I have looked up the records of the vessel Grand Azure and cannot guess how three middle-aged Berkant settlers could afford a vessel like it. Perhaps there is a fourth human aboard who funded the purchase, or perhaps the fourth person mentioned by Gus is Sapphire herself.

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Tales from the Service: The Padre’s Angel

2948-07-07 – Tales from the Service: The Padre’s Angel

We have met Thomas Nyilvas in this feed in the past, as chaplain of Xavior Vitali (Tales from the Service: A Pastor and a Prodigal and Tales from the Service: An Immortal's Contrition). When that vessel was sent back to the Core Worlds for a full yard refit, Thomas and most of the junior officers aboard requested transfer to other vessels in the fleet. Several, including the chaplain, were reassigned to the heavy cruiser Hugo Marge, which has just entered the Fifth Fleet after completing its shakedown cruise.

This is the first large warship replacement the fleet has received since the start of hostilities, but many hopes have been pinned on this vessel, the first of the new Daniel Callaghan class to enter the active fleet. The lead ship of the class famously suffered a deadly accident during its shakedown cruise in 2944, after which the remaining incomplete hulls were heavily modified. Marge and the other vessels in the class were also fitted with new fire control and electronic warfare suites (the same equipment attached to Arrowhawk in its post-New Rheims refit, as it turns out, for all the help it did that vessel) which further delayed their introduction into the fleet.

Hugo Marge was sent out on patrol into the outer Nye Norge almost immediately upon entering the theater, escorted by the members of the Carl Gustav Mannerheim’s battle group which survived Bodrogi. Though the group encountered no enemy warships, it did encounter a group of several small Angel vessels. Though the details of any cooperation between Navy forces and Angels following this encounter remain predictably sealed, Naval Intelligence has released Chaplain Nyilvas’s account of an Angel's visit to his ship to us for publication.

The Angel had to bend almost double to pass through a standard airlock, but despite the apparent inflexibility of its huge metal-clad limbs and torso, the motion looked fluid and effortless. Standing behind Captain Mlyarnik, Chaplain Thomas Nyilvas didn’t know whether to feel awed or terrified. The featureless bulge between the xenosapient’s broad shoulders which passed for its head seemed to see everything at once despite its apparent blindness.

The bosun piped the Angel aboard with the traditional notes of greeting for a foreign dignitary, and Captain Mlyarnik stepped forward, right hand snapping up into a crisp salute. Thomas did not follow his superior – dealings with Angels were the business of the local commander. He hung back, along with the rest of the officers present and the six-Marine honor guard, their heavy combat suits painted and polished until they very nearly glowed.

“Welcome aboard Hugo Marge.” Captain Mlyarnik dropped his hand, showing no obvious signs of nervousness in the face of the mysterious xeno.

The Angel did not salute, but it dipped its shoulders in a minute bow. “It is a great honor to board a vessel bearing the name of Colonel Marge.” Its low, gravelly voice, the obvious product of a translation computer, was carefully modulated to be clearly audible without being excessively loud.

“You are familiar with the man?” The captain seemed surprised, and Thomas didn’t blame him. The original Colonel Hugo Marge had been a war hero of the Corona Wars who gave his life to preserve the fracturing and seemingly doomed Terran Sphere. Thomas, along with the rest of the officers and crew, knew the story well, but the names of centuries-dead human martyrs seemed a strange bit of trivia for the Angels to retain.

“Affirmative. Your Navy has chosen well with this vessel’s name.”

Thomas scrutinized the creature with fresh eyes, wondering what its angle was. Angels had been known to humanity for hundreds of years, yet so little about them had been learned in that time that what lay inside their metallic exteriors remained a mystery.

After a brief pause, the skipper soldiered on. “I’ll pass your compliment along when we get back to Maribel. If you’ll come this way, we’ll discuss business in the wardroom.” He beckoned for the Angel to follow, and at his gesture the honor guard unlocked their suit joints and snapped as one from resting pose into at-ease, preparing to escort the Angel to its destination aboard their ship.

“That would be most acceptable.” The Angel barely moved as the Marines took positions around it, but Thomas got the sense it was amused by the show of protection. None of the Navy personnel thought for a second that the creature needed any help defending itself. The one thing humans and their neighbor species had learned about Angels since their appearance so many years before was that they were infinitely competent when it came to defending themselves and anything else they took a liking to.

It was just humanity’s luck that one of those things the Angels valued was Earth itself. Angels had earned their name for the way that they had once saved humanity from extermination, not from any divine origins.

As he fell in with the gaggle of officers following behind the honor guard, Thomas watched the xeno carefully. He did not expect to penetrate any centuries-old mysteries by staring, but the strange fluidity of movement in its rigid metal carapace rewarded curiosity. Little was known about about what an angel was, but much could be said about what they were not. Despite the mystery with which they cloaked themselves, the Angels were not heavenly spirits – at least, not more so than humans. Their technology was beyond human understanding, true, and their motives unknowable, but as far as Thomas was concerned, the spacers’ superstitions which grew up around Angels were simply madness.

At the lift bank, the Angel boarded one lift with Captain Mlyarnik and a lone Marine. The remaining Marines boarded the second, and the trailing officers boarded a third. As the doors closed, Thomas saw several curious crew who had been following the procession bolt for the nearest ladder shaft.

It was only a three-deck ride, but Lieutenant Diane Franco nevertheless used her position to Thomas’s left to strike up the obvious conversation. “So, Padre, what do you think?”

“I think it’s got a better armor-suit than our Marines.” Thomas replied cooly. He knew what she was asking – it was probably what half the people in the lift wanted to know. Though the naming of the Angels by humans had happened long beforehand, the Spacers’ Chapel had on its founding declared the Angels to be literal servants of God Most High, sent from Heaven to protect His people. It had taken nearly a century for the apparently annoyed Angels to disabuse the quickly-growing Chapel of this idea.

“Could it really be a seraph or a demon?” Someone else asked, now that Franco had broken the ice. The demon idea, of course, came from the cultic beliefs of the star-worshipping Sunfire Assembly. In their cosmology, the stars were the palaces for life-giving god-spirits, and the so-called Angels were a sort of Faustian devil, promising protection at the expense of stunting humanity’s progress toward greater spiritual awakening and knowledge of their astral patrons. “Looks like a machine to me. I could hear servos whirring in its joints.”

“It could be a drone.” Thomas shrugged. “Wouldn’t really blame them if it was.” If the Angels knew anything, they had to know what any good chaplain did – that the line between good and evil ran through every human heart, and every human was capable of boundless good, but also of bottomless evil. The temptation to try to take the Angel apart and learn what was inside surely pricked at many hearts aboard Hugo Marge, and the species’s imposing reputation for violent self-defense might not always protect their ambassadors.

“What about-” Fortunately for Thomas, the lift doors opened, and the question died unfinished. The officers filed out in time to see the Angel duck low and enter the wardroom, followed by two Marines. The other four stood outside the compartment, and the officers, most hoping to be summoned by the skipper to be involved in whatever arrangement was being negotiated, loitered beyond them.

Thomas, present more for the opportunity to set eyes on the xenosapient, was just about to return to his quarters to prepare his evening’s message when his earpiece chimed. “Chaplain Nyilvas to the wardroom.”

Tapping his wrist unit twice to confirm, Thomas approached the hatchway, and the Marines made no attempt to stop him from entering. Inside, Captain Mlyarnik sat at the far end of the long table, with the Angel standing stiffly in front of him. “Thank you for joining us, Padre.” The skipper waved Thomas closer. “Our friend here requested your presence.”

That the Angel had requested him set a cold feeling within Thomas’s chest. He would have expected to be nervous, but oddly, he did not. Why would an Angel request a Spacers’ Chapel priest? “Whatever I can do for our guest, sir, I’ll do my best.”

“That is all that may be asked of you.” The Angel didn’t move to face Thomas, but he knew something within its eyeless head was watching him all the same. “Information is desired about the mind of your foe, this Incarnation.”

Thomas, recalling the time he had spent ministering to a repentant Incarnation prisoner, knew why he was being asked. Though several Incarnation prisoners had been persuaded to be cooperative throughout the theater of operations, his experience working with prisoner Ayaka Rowlins – a rare case of a Confederated Worlds citizen going over to the Incarnation and then being coaxed back – had given him opportunities to examine why the average spacer fought for the enemy. “Of course.”

“In your estimation, will these Incarnation humans respect the old arrangements with our kind?”

It wasn’t the question Thomas had expected, and it wasn’t one he had a ready answer for. The old arrangements with the Angels – those which bound human spacers to guarantee free passage for their ships and the provision of active assistance for their endeavors when requested – were older than the Incarnation’s vendettas by centuries. Surely they would not take such a risk as to violate those old customs while also waging war against the vast Confederated Worlds? He shook his head slowly. “How could they gain by violating them?”

The Angel moved this time, raising one three-fingered hand above the table. “That is not the question which was asked, Thomas Nyilvas.”

Thomas stared at it for several seconds, then glanced to the skipper, who remained silent and unreadable. It wasn’t the question that was asked, true - and he recalled from his conversations with Rowlins that it was unlikely to be a question the Incarnation’s personnel would ask themselves, whether they were the ones holding the handle of the digital leash or the ones choked by it. They would judge the matter simply based on their ideas of what furthered humanity’s evolution and what hastened its extinction, and the technology of the Angels would be for them a boon to the cause of survival. “I think they would violate the old arrangements if they thought they could get ahold of your technology.” Thomas replied carefully.

The Angel remained silent for a moment, as if processing – or transmitting – this response. “Thank you, Chaplain Nyilvas.” It said simply.

Captain Mlyarnik nodded his thanks, then gestured to the hatch. “I think that’s all for now, Padre. You may go.”

Part of Thomas wanted to ask permission to stay and learn what was going on, but he knew better than to push his luck. With a salute, he turned and left the compartment, conscious of the utter silence behind him as his commander and the Angel waited for him to depart before making their plans.

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Tales from the Service: Mereena Besieged

2948-06-23 – Tales from the Service: Mereena Besieged

A while ago on this space, we featured the properly anonymized account of a feeling of dread felt by one person on one of the many FDA garrisons along the Frontier (Tales from the Service: A Rock In the Way), and the consequences for the original source for its publication (Tales from the Service: Plucked from the Ranks). While these feelings of approaching doom were hardly unique to the original source (Here known pseudonymously as Glorinda Eccleston) at the time or afterwards, Eccleston’s perspective was the one which Naval Intelligence made available to this publication.

Eccleston is also lucky in that she was incorrect in her certainty that her location was the next target for Incarnation occupation forces. She was not, however, very far off. When Incarnation ships arrived in force in the Mereena system, the unit she was attached to – the Twelfth Marines – was garrisoned on “The Rock in the Way” – within ten light-years of the suddenly-embattled system.

Rushed to Mereena in their assault transports by a scratch cruiser squadron (liberally salted with mercenary auxiliaries which happened to be at The Rock), the Twelfth made planetfall on the small Mereena III colony barely hours before the Incarnation vanguard, securing the spaceport to allow for evacuations. Unlike at Adimari Valis, the Incarnation force was far from overwhelming – reports trickling back this far indicate that there are only six to eight enemy cruisers in the system, opposed at rough parity by five Fifth Fleet ships of equivalent size and dozens of smaller warships. Neither force could contest the other’s landing, but the Marines could use the landing pads at the garrisoned spaceport.

Though this report is days old, it is one of the more detailed available of the fighting on Mereena III. Snippets of full-capture audiovisual material will be shown, where Naval Intelligence permits, on episdoes of the vidcast series in coming days.

Colonel Louis Pokorni surveyed the horizon with his combat suit’s metalens magnifier. Though she could only see the stiff back of the towering machine and none of the man inside, Lieutenant Glorinda Eccleston could tell he was tense – that meant the unexpected quiet along the perimeter wouldn’t last. 

“Hairclipper Charlie is late today.” Pokorni grumbled into his command team’s private circuit, as if explaining his unease. “First day since we landed he hasn’t given us Hell before mid-day.” 

Glorinda glanced down at her own suit’s chronometer. She had hoped Hairclipper Charlie – a heavily-shielded Incarnation aircraft armed with a brace of plasma lances with which to strafe the perimeter defenses – had run into maintenance problems after three sorties in as many days. Perhaps some fragment of the ordinance hurled up at the lumbering flying-wing menace had connected with something useful – but more likely the Colonel was right once again. Intelligence Liaison to the Twelfth Marines though she was, Glorinda found herself often playing catch-up to Pokorni’s analytical abilities. All she could really do for the grizzled colonel was sift through low-level Naval Intelligence databanks. 

“Maybe someone tipped him off about the heavy stuff we unloaded yesterday.” Captain Alexis Low, second-in-command of the Twelfth Marines, gestured back toward the spaceport pads just as a lumbering orbital ferry rumbled off the tarmac and wheezed skyward toward the Confederate side of the tense standoff beyond the atmosphere. On the way up, it would be packed full of local evacuees and wounded Marines, but it would return with more ordinance from the fleet supply ships.  

“Charlie runs the risk we find his number every time he lifts off.” Pokorni replied. “His whole job is testing to see if we have it yet.” Unfortunately, Glorinda was fairly sure none of the heavy weapons available were capable of cracking Hairclipper Charlie’s shear screens. Unlike the fragile, nimble Coronacht strike fighters the Incarnation fleet deployed in fleet engagements, their atmospheric ground attack hardware tended toward the big and tough – a blunt instrument for battering aside fixed defenses rather than a precision instrument for outmaneuvering mobile foes. 

“We’d lower our guard if he came over that hill just like yesterday and did the same thing all over again.” Low pointed down to the ruins of what had the previous morning been a thick-walled blockhouse just beyond city limits – one of only two local prisons, long since converted into a Marine bunker before Hairclipper Charlie turned his eye on it. Though only two Marines had been injured in the building’s overthrow, its loss had resulted in a night-time adjustment of the perimeter, with only a three-Marine scout picket left in the ruins. 

“It would relax our guard in one direction.” Pokorni pointed up with one massive armor-suit hand. “They want us looking up today. Waiting for Charlie. That way we’re not looking anywhere else.” 

“You think they’ll try it on the ground already? It’s only been four days.” ” Captain Low seemed dumbfounded, and Glorinda didn’t blame him. She’d walked most of the line with the Colonel – it was strong, with almost two full divisions of FDA stiffened by the Twelfth Marines. Pokorni and the local FDA general both held generous reserves behind the lines for just such a situation, and the enemy force wasn’t very much bigger than their own. 

“It'll be on the ground.” Pokorni pointed to the perimeter just west of the destroyed blockhouse, directly in front of the empty office tower whose roof they stood on. “Charlie hasn’t hit this sector once, so it’ll happen right in front of us.” 

“Nate ground forces avoid frontal attacks, Colonel.” Glorinda knew Pokorni didn’t need to be reminded – this was for Low and the rest of the command team. “Their infantry units aren’t really equipped for it. They move light.” 

“Then it won’t be a frontal assault. Captain Low, what are the two advantages a suitless grunt has over a Marine?” 

“He can go through doorways without widening them, and he can be damned quiet.” 

“Infiltration?” Glorinda looked around, though their perch was twelve stories in the air and more than a kilometer from the perimeter, as if the Incanration’s shock troops would erupt from every shadow. “In broad daylight?” 

“We’d expect it at night, and these green FDA grunts in the line might have their infrared switched off during the day. Besides, if it doesn’t work, they probably only take a few hundred casualties, and if it does-” 

Pokorni was interrupted by a flash of light ahead as something exploded. Darts of energy skittered along the perimeter ahead, and the belated rattle and buzz of railguns operating at maximum cyclic echoed to their perch a moment later. 

“Damn. Earlier than I thought.” Pokorni switched the group to the local ad-hoc network, where the confused barking of non-coms and the nervous replies of privates bounced back and forth in one chaotic snarl. “They’ve infiltrated the front line. Damned provincials are still shit sentries. Break’s over, we’re going in.” 

Bowing his knees slightly, Pokorni activated the jets built into the back of his huge suit. With a roar, nearly a ton of metal and meat lifted into the air and arced toward the melee ahead and below. Captain Low and the others followed a moment later, leaving Glorinda, still hesitant with the unfamiliar suit’s flight controls, briefly alone. Unlike the grizzled raised-from-the-ranks Marine officers, she had never gone to war in an armored combat suit before her current posting. 

Wondering if other Naval Intelligence liasons to Marine commanders were also regularly expected to rocket into close combat, Glorinda checked the status indicators on the railguns slung below each of her own suit’s forearms, took a deep breath, and activated her own jets. With a roar, the suit hurtled into the air, course a dotted arc plotted on her visor. 

Pokorni and the other marines might dismiss the quality of the FDA’s soldiers, but Glorinda had been among them before falling in with the Marines – they were inexperienced, but eager and motivated. Given reliable gear and a chance to learn, they would prove to be at least as good man for man as the too-few Confederated Marines – as long as they lived long enough to gather that experience. 

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Tales from the Service: The Dirtiest Job

2948-06-16 - Tales from the Service: The Dirtiest Job

“Skipper, we’re almost through the door. Is this section of sealed off?” 

“Affirmative, Chief. Adjoining sections have been evacuated and atmosphere withdrawn.” 

“Stand by to open the locks in this section as well.” Chief Damage Control Technician Lucian Pohl-Androv glanced down at the life support monitor readouts on his wrist display as two of his subordinates cut into the hatch with suit-mounted arc-cutters. Both men inside were still alive, but he knew there wasn’t much time left. Even if the automatic life-support functions of their uniforms extended by atmospheric canisters in their multi-utility belt packs, the pair of unfortunates were in serious danger. 

“Ready at your call, Chief.” 

“Mr. Boone, Mr. Funar. Don’t know if you can hear us in there but we’re almost through the door. Hold on.” The request fell flat even to Lucian’s own ears. There was nothing the men could do but try not to think too hard about what they were marinating in. The raw, partly digested sewage runoff of the ship’s entire compliment was only the beginning of their distress – the varieties of bioengineered extremophile microbes which were used to digest this waste material and the various odd chemicals used to keep them operating at peak performance were far more dangerous. With the microbial colonies going haywire and filling the entire compartment, there was every chance that the sewage inflow and nutrient trips would be insufficient to satisfy the microbes – if that happened, they would start trying to digest somewhat less ideal foods, such as smart-cloth, artificial polymers, and human flesh. 

Even if the microbes didn’t digest the two men from the outside in, they would colonize the two technicians – first by anchoring forests of microbial strands to their skin, and then eventually by gaining lodgment in their digestive tracts. If left submerged in the noxious bath for for too long, the men might end up with sewage-digesting microbes replicating in their blood-streams – a recipe for almost inevitable, and agonizingly protracted, death. 

“Ten seconds, Chief.” One of the men ahead at the hatch called out. “Brace yourself.” 

The two men with the cutters, wearing heavy hazardous-environment suits as they were, were prepared for the explosive release of slimy liquid when the hatch was breached, but Lucian, wearing a far lighter suit variant, quickly latched two safety lines to tie-down points on the bulkhead to avoid being washed away. “I'm ready.” All three suits and the maintenance tunnel had been coated with antimicrobial sprays but everything touched by the errant sewage microbes would still be ejected into the void of space the moment they were removed – it was cheaper for the Navy to replace than to decontaminate its equipment. Unfortunately, clumsy repair technicians were another story. 

“Three. Two. One.” At the count of one, Lucian heard metal creaking and pinging. If the junior tech said “breach complete,” the words were drowned out by a crash as the severed hatch tore inwards and a gurgling roar as a wave of gray-brown sludge erupted through the opening, washing down the corridor. 

The wave hit Lucian hard, and if it had not been for the safety lines he would have tumbled backwards down the hallway. As it subsided, the filamentous goo rose to his knees. “Find them both and let’s get out of here.” 

The two technicians in the lumbering suits didn’t need the order; they were already wading into the fouled chamber. Around their shoulders, Lucian could see stringy brown biomass hanging from the bulkheads and overhead catwalks like a wet, shaggy rug. Shuddering, he unhooked his safety lines and waded forward himself. 

Within two steps, Lucian’s foot came down on something harder than the goo, but more yielding than the deck plating. Reaching into the opaque slime, he pulled up a shaggy, microbe-strand covered figure, limp and unresponsive. “Got one out here.” He pinged the unrecognizable form with his suit radio. “It’s Funar. Unconscious but the sensors say he’s still alive.” Hurriedly, Lucian pulled a sprayer from his utility belt and began to coat the unfortunate in antimicrobial chemicals. Immediately, the strands began to break up and fall away, revealing the flimsy dome of an emergency uniform pressure helmet. The uniform had gone hermetic at some point – there was some hope he’d avoided the worst effects of exposure. 

Unfortunately, the helmet bubble was itself filled with gray-brown slime. The man was still alive, but if the microbes were inside his hermetically sealed smart-fabric uniform and were attacking his body, he was in serious trouble. 

“I’ve got Boone. Looks like he got his helmet up in time.” 

“We’re done here. Skipper, open the locks.” Lucian sighed as he hooked in his safety lines once more and attached Funar’s lines as well. If Mikhail Funar died, Boone would probably wish he had as well. The Navy would do everything possible to make an example of Boone for his lethal mistake. 

As officers on the bridge opened the airlocks, the sea of microbial soup bubbled, then rushed greedily out toward the void of space along with the fouled atmosphere. The strands too firmly anchored to surfaces to be pulled out withered and turned to powder almost as soon as their moisture had finished boiling off. 

“Situation under control, Skipper. Get that medical team in here.” 

Last week, in Tales from the Service: A Dropped Spanner, the consequences of Technician Ronan Boone's simple mistake began to take shape. In this second installment of the same story, told from the perspective of a damage control specialist on the same ship, we see the lengths the crew went to to recover Boone and his assistant, Technician Funar. The bill for the equipment contaminated beyond recovery in this rescue effort appears to have been quite extensive, but the Navy shouldered the financial cost without hesitation.

 After the two men were recovered, however, an inquiry into the cause of this expensive mishap was initiated, and to my knowledge it is still ongoing. Tech Funar did not survive (and perhaps mercifully remained unconscious until he passed), and the human toll combined with the fact that a warship was taken out of service for repairs during wartime seem to weigh more heavily on the Navy officers involved than the material cost of equipment damaged or destroyed.

I do not know whether it is just for Boone to be cashiered or incarcerated for his mistake - that is up to board of inquiry. Unfortunately, no matter what the verdict, there will probably be a family that thinks it horribly unjust.

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