C-Crew had just retired to observation, and D-Crew had taken over. Axy eagerly anticipated the descent cataclysmation burn. Weor, on D-Crew, had been fully trained by now, and - as a student navigator - got to be the lucky one to initiate the burn.
With a flick of the lever, a fierce maelstrom of plasma and fire erupted from the front of the ship, instantly vaporizing the protective nosecone. A “thud” shuttered through the 100-mile long ship. All the crew habitats ceased rotating, re-aimed the feet of every crew member toward their new “down”, now at the front of the ship, and the Zenith Devices each moved aft of the crew modules to counteract the deceleration G-forces. Sound dampeners struggled to counter the noise.
“G-morph satisfactory.” said another crewmember.
“Course stable, no corrections needed” came another.
“Collide, how is cooling?” asked Acting Captain Hillup.
“Plasma backflow definitely cooking off some sensors, increasing fore magneto pressure” he responded.
Everything was going normally. Minor adjustments were made to course and magneto pressure over the next several hours. Eventually, their communications officer piped up:
“Getting a ping from NuriCom. They are tracking two Jioharad Light Reapers on an intercept course with the clysmation.”
“Should I plan a blink?” offered Weor, now familiar but inexperienced with the many varied navigation maneuvers. “I could also perform a minor course adjustment that wouldn't cut more than an few hours off this burn...”
“No need. Stay on course.” said Hillup. “We will update as they get closer. If they are smart, they will have saved enough fuel to do a stop burn before they hit the clysmation.”
Axy, a little lost, buzzed Kai-Val on a private chat for intel. Through VR, they watched D-Crew as they managed the situation, paying special note to Weor's Nav-Eye display. The virtual bridge displayed a panoramic view of a generated star field, with markers showing the star Nuric, the planet Yaroryn, and other notable navigation points in the distance, as well as two markers pointing out the vessels, roughly showing their position with two orange boxes with arrows indicating their presumed headings.
“What's going on? First of all, what's a … Light Reaper?” asked Axy.
“Jioharad ships. They've got a fleet of patched-together solar collector ships they use to mine energy for their planet side operations. Cargo ships blasting a thousand miles of fusion light into space are a huge source of that, so they like to harvest as much of it as they can on our way in.” Kai-Val responded.
“Like... a line of people at a buffet...” Axy surmised.
“No,” Kai-Val corrected: “Like moths to a flame.”
Even though most people have never seen most insects in their lives, and rarely open flames, the motif was still popular enough in movies and literature that the implications were still strong.
Axy tapped in to a read-only copy of Weor's navigation display.
[IDENTIFY: Light Reaper]
Operator: Jioharad Space Fleet (This name auto-generated)
Vessel designation: "Rpr 1001-6442A”
Registry: UNREGISTERED
She probed further.
[IDENTIFY: Occupancy: Light Reaper]
[REDACTED]
“Kai, I can't get a reading on occupancy on these ships. They drones or manned?”
“It's redacted for a reason.”
“What reason, Kai?”
He gave her a distant and short side-glance, as though suggesting “We mind our own business.”
At this point, Weor had come to the same discovery: “Captain, I seem to have my access restricted to the occupancy of those Reapers...”
“You know the protocol. If you can't confirm occupancy, you...” Hillup offered Weor an open sentence.
“...protect the occupancy you can confirm” finished Weor.
“That's right. And which ship do we have confirmed occupancy on?”
“The Cinder”
“Correct. Stay the course.”
“But we could just perform a blink - wouldn't compromise the Cinder's safety at all. Why risk it? Their trajectory is way off from any risk of contacting the Cinder itself...”
“Those are our FCCs we are burning, that's our clysmation out there, and it exists to SAFELY slow the crew to our destination. We do not compromise the safety of a vessel with confirmed occupancy. This is the third time I've told you: we are staying the course.”
“Understood, captain...”
Axy studied the screen.
“Kai, a 'blink' is... when we cut the Fusion Cascade Cores, eject them, then start a new layer, right?”
“Good job remembering! Yes, we call it a blink because it can be timed to allow another vessel to pass in front of the ship without getting vaporized by the clysmation.”
“So, basically it would only cost us one volley of FCCs to make sure we don't vaporize those ships, right?”
“Hey, if they don't want their ships vaporized, they can just... not fly them into the flame. Remember, if the Cinder comes in to Nuric too fast, or off-target, just her kinetic energy alone is enough to vaporize the surface of the whole planet. That's why they don't hand command of these ships over to just anyone. Hillup has been wanting his own ship for a while now, he's gotta play his part right to get there. That means not wasting a whole volley of FCCs for the sake of a couple unregistered drones.”
“But wait - we still don't know if those ships are manned or not, though, right? We're not seriously pitting people's lives against one mans career, are we?”
“Oh you sweet suburban tween. You have so much to learn about this universe.”
Axy still considered Kai-Val a friend, so she didn't take this condescendingly, but it definitely didn't settle well in her stomach. She continued to watch.
Weor grew ever more anxious as the minutes ticked by. Eventually, he broke again:
“Captain, if we initiate a blink, now would be our last opportunity.” He pulled up a navigation command screen with the appropriate commands loaded, and ready and waiting to initiate. “They... it doesn't look like they are changing course.”
“Weor, what did I say? We follow protocol. Don't ask again.”
“Captain -” Weor mustered up a little courage, and stood to his feet. “I request an escalation.”
Every face in D-Crew and of those in C-Crew observing looked mildly shocked at this. Escalations were a very formal situation, reserved for only situations where a crew member wishes to override a direct superior and go to the next level above them in authority, such as disputes, safety concerns, etc. An escalation will ALWAYS look bad, either for the direct supervisor, or for the crew member who requested it, depending which side of the conflict the higher authority rules on.
This demonstrated Weor was willing to stake his early reputation on this matter. Hillup, unmotivated to go through with this formality, but also aware that denying the request would GUARANTEE a negative mark on his own career, sighed in compliance.
“Captain Astellia, this is Acting Captain Hillup, requesting an Escalation for my direct subordinate.”
Astellia, having been observing the whole thing with C-Crew, immediately made herself visible to the bridge crew.
“Weor, I've overheard -”
“Captain Astellia” Weor interrupted, “I am requesting occupancy identification of these two vessels.”
Astellia, frustrated, but trying to keep a calm demeanor, replied: “Weor, I have been on observation, and monitoring the whole thing. Sending a request for a data request from NuriCom will take hours, and we are just going to get the same information we already have. We stick to protocol on this ship. Do not alter trajectory. This is the end of the matter.”
The room was silent. People from both crews stared at Astellia and Weor. For a moment, the mutual defiance spanned between them like an elastic strap, almost sure of causing injury, depending on who loses their grip first.
Despite being nearly 100 miles apart on completely different ends of the ship, Astellia's presence in the virtual room was dominating.
Weor swallowed his frustration, and sat back down into his seat, and cleared the pending navigation commands. A mild sense of relief washed over the crews as the tension gently subsided, but the atmosphere was still heavy and quiet.
Soon afterword, the nav screen showed the trajectories passing the point of no return. Weor, Axy, and a few other good crewmembers watched anxiously, hoping maybe the two vessels would fire reverse thrusters at any minute. Maybe they will collect enough energy from the flare to power their engines... maybe they have escape pods... maybe they are unmanned afterall...
The vessels got closer and closer. They exhibited no changes in their trajectory.
The furious shaft of flames and light emitting from the front of the Cinder burned relentlessly, dwarfing the two small ships, that now began to glow bright as two tiny white specks, reflecting the light.
Until eventually, the two ships flew too close, and silently, instantly, vaporized into dust, and every particle of dust vaporized into pure plasma. To those watching, they saw merely a spark of light for each one of them. Their square orange markers on the screen flashed red, then disappeared. They were gone.
A deep sinking feeling overwhelmed Axy, considering the possibility of what just happened... did she just watch two crews die? Were they manned, or unmanned? How many people WOULD there be on each ship if they were manned? Two? A hundred? The computer offered no helpful information, as there was nothing left to identify.
Weor's face looked extremely anxious, as though holding back a vortex of anger, sadness, fear, and horror.
He quietly submitted permission to be excused, then disappeared for the rest of the shift.
_______________
That night, Axy turned in her bed, unable to erase the events of the day. Her thoughts turned back into the conversation about death a while back. Her brain desperately tried to position her place in the middle of all this. But there was no rulebook, no training, no ethical grid to orient oneself to.
“Turry”, Axy said into the darkness.
“Hi! I'm Turry, your in-flight -”
“TURRY” Axy interrupted. “Please... chill. I just want an exterior live feed again.”
“Sure! Tuning you in to exterior live feed now!"
If she couldn't get an ethical frame of reference, maybe she could at least start with a physical frame of reference. She knew the view outside the ship would be worth the torment of dealing with Turry for a few seconds.
She turned in her bed, which mechanically adjusted to perfectly match the curves of her body for optimal ergonomics... yet, the mental discomfort inside persisted.
She gazed into the wall, now slowly illuminating to reveal and endless starscape, static in the sky. A faint nebulaic cloud spanned the darkness... intersecting it was a fainter, dimmer one, almost perpendicular in orientation. Their galaxy was a few million years into its collision with its neighboring galaxy. Such a huge cosmic display of stellar violence frozen in time presented such a fitting backdrop for the collision of realities she was now experiencing. Wonder, awe, exploration, suddenly intersecting now with deep troubles of ethical dilemmas, uncertainty, and death.
Despite the ship still moving at a huge fraction of the speed of light, the stars were still so distant that their movement was inperceptible to the human eye.
From the bow of the ship came a faint glow - radiation from traces of plasma interfering with the camera on the outside of the ship. It's counter-intuitive to see a ship with nuclear thrust emminating from the front, but such is progress... forward momentum without control is suicide.
But does such personal survival have to be dangerous to others? Does existence itself demand rivalry and violence? Are humans eternally bound to the laws of evolution that control the behavior of animals and plants and planets? Are moments like these inescapable?
She tried to think smaller, about her duties as they entered the Nuric System. But quickly, her mind went to the ambulaspores... “moving plants” that hid among the ore shot into orbit from the planet surface. Plants that, somehow, have evolved to violently dismantle equipment, infiltrate air ducts in crew habitats, and spread vicously if left unchecked.
Can plants feel? Surely not. Surely a line has been drawn there.
But, after today, she had doubts. So far, the only violence she had witnessed with her own two eyes was committed by conscious beings. Does the violence of something non-human indicate intelligence? Can anything be violent without, itself, “feeling”? Surely, a force of nature like a tornado or whirlpool or tsunami causes incredible destruction, but rarely feels “intentional”... they are just accidents.
Yet, today, the fury of the clysmation would be counted just a force of nature, and the annihilation of those two vessels an “accident”.
Maybe justifying violence is how we lose our humanity.
Once again, she caught herself descending into these deeply philisophical thoughts that kept her awake. She tried thinking about her upcoming visit to Yaroryn, what is supposed to be an exciting first experience on the surface of a real planet.
How was she going to handle transitioning to planetside duties? What kind of conflict would she face as a Flyer meeting real Rockers for the first time? Speaking of the people she was to meet... Who was this person Kai-Val wanted her to meet?
Somewhere, far in the distance of space, the faintest flash of light caught her eye... another cargoship, likely just initiating cataclysmation on their departure burn, delivering Yaroryn's ore and materials to Stoic.
Maybe a cargo ship just like the Cinder. Maybe one with a crewmember on it just like her, enjoying the thrills of space travel for the first time like she had, just a few months ago.
She remembered the deeper reason she was on this trip - to bring material back to Nuric, to build habitats and homes for people like her. She had a mission.
“Billions”, she repeated to herself. “Billions of souls can exist and survive within the habitats we will build out of the cargo we bring home. Billions, just like me.”
She struggled to continue to convince herself of this now worn-out factoid.
“But... millions could live on Yaroryn, too, if we didn't deconstruct it” her doubts battled back.
“But surely, it must be considered selfish to hoard trillions of tons of metal beneath your feet, just for a little gravity. That's right, the Desozhiem are being selfish.” Her subconscious yet again betrayed her sympathy for them, instinctively using their sympathetic name instead of their demonizing name.
“I mean, the... Jioharad...”
The plight of intelligence is being unable to convince yourself of the lies that make existence easier.
We're not even making habitats for people who exist right now... we're making habitats for people who don't exist yet. How do you pit the lives of a few million who do exist against the lives of billions who do not yet exist?”
She considered again Versette's motherly wisdom: “...be sure you NEVER close the door on someone just because they're different than you. Eventually, you'll find yourself on the outside of it.”
She tried putting herself in the shoes of people on either side.
“Would I want my home taken away from me if it meant allowing millions more to come into existence? But... I mean, if I said that we shouldn't be doing this, I'm saying I myself shouldn't even be alive, because I owe my existence to a habitat made out of their home... but maybe that's why they select people born in habitats to go on these runs, so we are motivated to continue the cycle...”
She pondered further.
“Huh. Makes me sound like Kai-Val, off with more conspiracy theories. I mean, who ISN'T born in a habitat nowadays, anyway?... Well, people on Yaroryn, for starters. But why would they even continue living there, trying to raise children in such hellscape? It's their own fault for staying... they've been offered a better life, in every measurable way. Heck, they have REJECTED habitats built JUST FOR THEM, that replicate how Yaroryn originally existed in paradise... at this point, it is absolutely selfish - even DELUSIONAL - to reject that just to hoard the resources the rest of us need to survive!”
At every step of these thoughts, she felt like she was clawing up a slope to return to a facade of “Normalcy”.
“But...”
Her curiosity, once again, seems to have ought with such normalcy.
“I wonder what they HAVE on Yaroryn that they'd rather have than paradise? What could they have that makes life worth surviving hell?”
[Congratulations! You have achieved Maturation Level 5!]
A new tag reading “MAT5” corperately danced across her HUD for a moment, then disappeared. Welcome to adulthood, Axy.
