2953-04-23 – Tales from the Service: An Infestation of Cermytes
When Clara Liang got to her duty station five minutes prior to shift start, the second shift technicians were all still there, talking to their crew chief in low tones. This was unusual – normally the only one who stuck around to brief the third shift team was the duty chief. Still, she paid them no mind, focusing instead on draining as much of the bitter coffee in her carafe as possible.
She’d slept poorly, as usual. It had been months since she’d been transferred to Janda Dunewhite and assigned to the third shift, but she doubted she’d had more than a dozen proper nights’ sleep in that time. There was no real reason this should be the case; yes, third shift was the closest thing you could get on a warship to a night shift, but that wasn’t really close at all. The crew deck for third shift, like those for the first and second shifts, was on an appropriate light-dimming schedule to encourage the belief that the second shift was “night” and the third was “morning,” so it shouldn’t have been any more difficult than adjusting to the day-night cycle of a new planet.
At first, Clara had blamed the three others who shared her cabin – she had lay awake listening to all of them breathe enough times to be able to identify each of them in the dark. Really, though, they were less trouble than her bunkmates from Sugiyama – they never talked or even read on their slates after lights out.
The medical team had offered Clara sleep medication on several occasions, but she rarely accepted them. Her father had been a Navy tech, too, and he had never slept properly after returning from the service, courtesy of a hard-to-kick dependence on the pharmaceuticals to fall asleep. She had no intention of following in his footsteps quite that closely. Not that it was too different being dependent on caffeine to function most shifts, but she’d kicked coffee twice before, and figured she could do it again.
As the rest of the small third shift crew filtered in, Clara noticed a few uneasy looks directed at her from the tight knot of second-shift technicians. Now, their presence had gone from unusual to concerning. What could they want that the usual method of briefing and handoff between crew chiefs couldn’t have handled?
At last, Chief Belluomo, Clara’s own superior, hurried in, barely sixty seconds to the shift change.He stopped short, noticing how crowded the duty station was.
At Belluomo’s appearance, the outgoing crew chief detached himself from his compatriots and hurried to meet his opposite number. The rest of the second and shift crews watched uneasily as the pair talked in low tones. Clara couldn’t hear any of what was said, but the expressions on both their faces suggested that it was bad news.
Eventually, Belluomo nodded grimly and stepped aside. The second shift chief walked to the end of the room and held up his hand for attention. It was hardly necessary; most everyone present was looking at him, expecting imminent bad news.
“A moment, please. If you don’t know me, I’m Chief Ramsey, head of the second shift for this station.” The man began.
Clara wondered if she would have known his name, were she not so sleep-deprived. Probably she would. Ramsey was too young to have been a long-serving crew chief in the peace-time Navy, but he was a tall, broad-shouldered man with the sort of square face that seemed more fitting in the Marines than in electrical maintenance work.
“Normally I let your Mr. Belluomo hand over my report from the prior shift, but today...” Ramsey sighed. “Today one of my techs spotted a cermyte in the maintenance-ways between frames thirty and thirty-four.”
A collective shudder ran through the room. Cermytes were a new hazard for Reach spacers: these Sagittarius-native pests were only too happy to colonize the out-of-the-way spaces of any starship, and they bred rapidly, They could digest most artificial polymers, and seemed to go after the cladding of high-voltage electrical cables with particular relish, even if it meant sometimes they were burnt to a cinder by shorting freshly de-cladded cables. Rumor had it that the Lost Squadrons had picked them up somewhere, and they had spread through the fleet alarmingly fast ever since.
“Are you sure?” One of the third shift technicians belatedly raised her hand. “Could it have been something else?”
“I saw it.” One of the second shift techs stepped forward. “I know what I’m talking about. I was on the Whitcomb Scourge decon team.”
Every rating in the fleet had heard of the infestation aboard the Scourge, of course. Rumor had it that it was supposed to be patient zero for the fleet’s cermyte problem. Supposedly, when the repair teams had gone aboard after the ship’s return and months in parking orbit at Sagittarius Gate, some of the vaguely beetle-like pests were more than a meter across, and it had taken plasma weaponry to clear them out.
“The one I saw was a sub-adult. Maybe about four or five centimeters. We combed the area but didn’t find any damage. It’s possible-”
“I think it’s likely we caught it early.” Ramsey nodded to the other tech he’d just interrupted. “Early enough to clear it out without a full decon. But we need to know where they are eating. That means a full sweep of every cable. But we need to keep this quiet so the rest of the crew doesn’t panic.”
“Does the captain know?” Someone asked from the back of the room.
“Not yet.” Ramsey shook his head. “I’m going to go tell him myself as soon as his shift starts. We’re days at minimum from any sort of problem.”
Days away from a problem meant little when Janda Dunewhite was weeks from any friendly port, of course. Clara sighed and put down her half-finished coffee. The fear of running into a family of skittering, cable-chewing doom-bugs would be with her every time she went into the accessways, now, and that would keep her alert far more effectively than any stimulant.
We covered the discovery of this pest (though it had not yet been named) aboard Lost Squadrons vessels some time ago on this feed. Interestingly enough, Whitcomb Scourge was the vessel featured in our account of the pests, though it is not as far as I know the first on which they were discovered.
Cermytes present a particular problem for warships, whose weapon systems require far more high-voltage cabling than would be necessary on a civilian ship.
No doubt the Incarnation has come up with a simple solution for the cermyte problem, but I am not aware anyone has determined what it is. Certainly their vessels do not seem to be overly troubled by these vermin.