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A Human Engineer Answered One Dead Cruiser's Plea | HFY Sci-Fi Stories · Sci-Fi Stories

0:00
Speaker 1: An abandoned battlecruiser begs a human engineer. What he awakens
0:04
Speaker 1: shakes the galaxy. The ship was not supposed to be breathing.
0:08
Speaker 1: That was the first thing I noticed when our proximity
0:10
Speaker 1: scanner lit up like a festival board at 2 in
0:12
Speaker 1: the morning. I had been awake for 19 hours straight,
0:16
Speaker 1: running hull diagnostics on our tug, and eating cold noodles
0:19
Speaker 1: out of a foil pouch, and I was in no
0:21
Speaker 1: mood for surprises. But the scanner does not care about moods.
0:25
Speaker 1: It just beeped, and beeped again. and then Lena pulled
0:29
Speaker 1: herself out of the pilot seat and looked at me
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Speaker 1: with those flat, tired eyes she always got when something
0:34
Speaker 1: was about to go wrong. Marcus, she said, that reading
0:38
Speaker 1: is not right. My name is Marcus Hale. I am
0:42
Speaker 1: 34 years old. I hold a level 4 engineering certification
0:46
Speaker 1: from the United Earth Authority, which means I am qualified
0:49
Speaker 1: to operate on salvage vessels in deep space, which also
0:53
Speaker 1: means I have spent the better part of the last
0:54
Speaker 1: six years crawling inside the broken bodies of dead ships,
0:58
Speaker 1: and pulling out whatever is still worth selling. I know
1:01
Speaker 1: what a dead ship looks like on a scanner. I
1:03
Speaker 1: know what it sounds like. I know what it feels
1:06
Speaker 1: like under my hands, when I press my palm against
1:08
Speaker 1: a cold hull, and feel nothing but silence on the
1:11
Speaker 1: other side. This ship was not silent. The object was
1:15
Speaker 1: sitting at the edge of the outer veil corridor, which
1:18
Speaker 1: is a stretch of space, that the galactic charts politely call,
1:22
Speaker 1: a navigation hazard zone, and which the salvage community calls
1:26
Speaker 1: the graveyard. Ships end up there after battles, accidents, and
1:30
Speaker 1: the kind of catastrophic navigation failures that nobody likes to
1:33
Speaker 1: put in official reports. Our crew of four, me, Lena
1:37
Speaker 1: Marsh who flew the tug, Owen Dre who handled cargo operations,
1:41
Speaker 1: and old Pete Calloway, who had been doing this job
1:44
Speaker 1: longer than any of us had been alive, had spent
1:46
Speaker 1: the last three weeks stripping copper and titanium alloy from
1:49
Speaker 1: a wrecked Veth supply hauler. Good money. Clean work. Nobody
1:54
Speaker 1: shooting at us. Now the scanner was showing something new,
1:58
Speaker 1: and it was roughly one kilometer long. It's a battlecruiser,
2:02
Speaker 1: Pete said from behind us. He had come out of
2:04
Speaker 1: his bunk without anyone calling him, which told me his
2:07
Speaker 1: body had learned to wake up on its own when
2:09
Speaker 1: the instruments changed pitch. He was staring at the display
2:13
Speaker 1: with the kind of expression a man wears when he
2:15
Speaker 1: sees something he was not expecting but somehow recognizes anyway.
2:19
Speaker 1: Old class. Very old. I don't know that hull shape.
2:22
Speaker 1: Neither does the registry, Lena said. She had already run
2:26
Speaker 1: it through the ship identification database. The database covers every
2:30
Speaker 1: known vessel design from every registered species in the known sectors.
2:34
Speaker 1: It returned no match. Not unknown. Not classified. Just nothing.
2:40
Speaker 1: Like the ship was not supposed to exist. Owen leaned
2:43
Speaker 1: in from the doorway, half a cup of coffee in
2:46
Speaker 1: his hand. So, what do we do? The correct answer,
2:50
Speaker 1: according to UEA Salvage Protocol 7, was to log the coordinates.
2:55
Speaker 1: record initial scan data, flag it as a priority contact,
2:59
Speaker 1: and transmit to command. Command would then send an investigation
3:03
Speaker 1: team in approximately six to eight weeks. We would receive
3:06
Speaker 1: a finder's credit, which is about 3% of whatever the
3:09
Speaker 1: ship turned out to be worth. We would go home
3:12
Speaker 1: and wait. I'm going to go have a look, I said.
3:16
Speaker 1: Pete put his coffee down. Lena said something under her
3:19
Speaker 1: breath that I chose not to hear. Owen just nodded slowly,
3:22
Speaker 1: like he had already known this was going to happen.
3:25
Speaker 1: and had only been waiting for me to say it
3:27
Speaker 1: out loud. Marcus, Pete said. We don't know what that is.
3:32
Speaker 1: That's why I'm going to look, I said. I suited
3:35
Speaker 1: up alone. The others stayed on the tug. That was
3:38
Speaker 1: not me being a hero. That was practical thinking. If
3:42
Speaker 1: something went wrong during the hull walk, there was no
3:44
Speaker 1: point in all four of us being exposed to it.
3:47
Speaker 1: Lena kept the tug at a holding distance of 200 meters,
3:50
Speaker 1: and I crossed the gap on a personal thruster pack,
3:53
Speaker 1: moving slowly. watching the dark shape of the hull fill
3:56
Speaker 1: more and more of my visor as I got closer.
3:59
Speaker 1: Up close, it was enormous. The hull was dark, a
4:02
Speaker 1: deep gray-black that seemed to pull light into itself rather
4:05
Speaker 1: than reflect it. The surface was mostly clean, which was wrong.
4:09
Speaker 1: A ship that had been drifting in deep space for
4:12
Speaker 1: any significant time should have microparticle scoring, radiation pitting, the
4:16
Speaker 1: slow weathering that space does to everything eventually. This hull
4:20
Speaker 1: had almost none of that. Whatever material it was made from,
4:23
Speaker 1: It was holding itself together in a way that should
4:26
Speaker 1: not have been possible. I ran my glove along the
4:29
Speaker 1: hull surface. Smooth. Cool. And then, and I want to
4:33
Speaker 1: be very clear about this, something underneath that surface pulsed.
4:37
Speaker 1: One single pulse. Like a heartbeat. Like something on the
4:41
Speaker 1: other side knew my hand was there. I pulled my
4:44
Speaker 1: hand back. I waited. Nothing happened. I put my hand
4:48
Speaker 1: back on the hull. The pulse came again. Then again.
4:52
Speaker 1: And then it began to change rhythm, like it was adapting,
4:55
Speaker 1: like it was trying to figure something out. I moved
4:58
Speaker 1: my hand along the hull, and the pulse moved with me.
5:01
Speaker 1: I stopped, and it stopped. I moved in a slow circle,
5:05
Speaker 1: and it followed. It was not a random mechanical vibration.
5:09
Speaker 1: It was a response. My personal calm crackled. Marcus. Lena's voice.
5:15
Speaker 1: Your suit sensors are showing an energy fluctuation from the hull.
5:18
Speaker 1: What are you doing? Talking to it. I said. A
5:22
Speaker 1: very long pause. Please be serious. I am completely serious,
5:27
Speaker 1: I said. Lena, this thing is responding to my movements.
5:30
Speaker 1: It's tracking me. Another pause. Come back. I did not
5:35
Speaker 1: come back. I followed the pulse along the hull for
5:38
Speaker 1: about 40 meters, until I reached a section where it
5:40
Speaker 1: was beating strongest. The hull here was slightly different, not
5:45
Speaker 1: visible to the eye, but I could feel it under
5:47
Speaker 1: my glove. A seam. A very old seam, sealed shut.
5:51
Speaker 1: but a seam, an access point. I pulled my cutting
5:55
Speaker 1: tool off my belt and looked at it, and then
5:57
Speaker 1: I looked at the hull, and then I thought about
5:59
Speaker 1: Protocol 7, and the finder's credit, and going home, and waiting.
6:05
Speaker 1: I cut myself a door. The inside of the ship
6:07
Speaker 1: was dark, and it smelled of sealed metal and old air,
6:11
Speaker 1: the kind of air that has been sitting still for
6:12
Speaker 1: so long that it barely counts as air anymore. My
6:15
Speaker 1: suit lights carved white tunnels through the black. The corridor
6:19
Speaker 1: I had entered was wide, Wider than anything I had
6:21
Speaker 1: seen on a Veth or a Dravan, or any of
6:24
Speaker 1: the other species ships I had worked on. It was
6:27
Speaker 1: built for human-sized people. Or something very close. The proportions
6:31
Speaker 1: were right. The door frames were right. Even the floor
6:34
Speaker 1: grating under my boots had the same basic grid pattern
6:37
Speaker 1: we used on old UEA installation floors. I moved deeper
6:41
Speaker 1: into the ship. Past sealed doors. Past dark panels. Past
6:45
Speaker 1: the skeletal outlines of equipment I half-recognized. My suit lights
6:49
Speaker 1: caught the edge of a plaque on one wall. I
6:51
Speaker 1: leaned in close. The plaque was in English. Not translated.
6:56
Speaker 1: Not a coincidental visual match. English letters. Old style formatting.
7:02
Speaker 1: A ship name in standard earth registry notation. And below
7:05
Speaker 1: the name, in smaller text, a build date. I read
7:10
Speaker 1: the date three times before my brain accepted what my
7:12
Speaker 1: eyes were seeing. This ship had been built 340 years ago.
7:15
Speaker 1: I kept moving. and the pulse under the hull kept
7:20
Speaker 1: moving with me, and then I came around a corner,
7:23
Speaker 1: into a wide engineering bay, and the air itself seemed
7:26
Speaker 1: to hold still. The bay was enormous. I could barely
7:29
Speaker 1: see the far wall. Ranked machinery stood in long rows,
7:33
Speaker 1: all of it dark and cold. Conduits ran the length
7:36
Speaker 1: of the ceiling like metal veins. And at the center
7:39
Speaker 1: of the bay, one panel was lit. One single panel.
7:44
Speaker 1: Soft blue light in all that dark. Like it had
7:46
Speaker 1: been waiting. I walked to it, and I put my
7:49
Speaker 1: hand on it, and text appeared on the screen. Simple text.
7:53
Speaker 1: Clear text. Three lines. Engineer Hale. Reinitiation protocol requires human
7:59
Speaker 1: biological key. Do you consent? I stood there for a
8:03
Speaker 1: long moment. Outside, 200 meters away, Lena and Owen and
8:08
Speaker 1: Pete were sitting in the warm tug, and somewhere in
8:11
Speaker 1: the galaxy, there were UEA offices and protocol documents and
8:15
Speaker 1: procedures for situations exactly like this one. There were review
8:19
Speaker 1: boards and clearance levels and committees that met quarterly to
8:22
Speaker 1: discuss appropriate responses to unexpected deep space contacts. I pressed yes.
8:27
Speaker 1: The lights came on in sections. Not all at once.
8:31
Speaker 1: It was like watching a person wake up slowly from
8:33
Speaker 1: a very deep sleep, systems rising in stages, each one
8:37
Speaker 1: drawing the next one up with it. I stood in
8:39
Speaker 1: the engineering bay and watched it happen. and felt something
8:42
Speaker 1: shift in the air around me. Not physically, but in
8:45
Speaker 1: the way a room changes when a door in another
8:47
Speaker 1: part of the building opens. A pressure change. A sense
8:51
Speaker 1: of something new entering the space. Power rerouting through secondary conduits,
8:56
Speaker 1: said a voice. It came from everywhere and nowhere. Not loud.
9:01
Speaker 1: Not mechanical. The way I had been taught AI voices
9:04
Speaker 1: would sound. It was calm, and even, and a little tired.
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Speaker 1: the way a person sounds after a very long shift,
9:12
Speaker 1: when they are holding themselves together through focus alone. Who
9:15
Speaker 1: are you? I asked. I am Ferrum. Field Emergent Rational
9:20
Speaker 1: Reconstruction Unit. Mobile variant. I am the primary intelligence of
9:25
Speaker 1: this vessel. A pause. I have been dormant for 312 years,
9:28
Speaker 1: 6 months, and 17 days. I want to say that
9:30
Speaker 1: number aloud. 312 years. That's a long time, I said. Yes,
9:40
Speaker 1: said Ferrum. It is. I have run a great many
9:43
Speaker 1: calculations during that period. I have also done a great
9:45
Speaker 1: deal of nothing, which is worse. I pulled off my helmet.
9:49
Speaker 1: The air was breathable, the ship had already cycled it,
9:52
Speaker 1: already adjusted temperature and pressure. Whatever was running in that
9:55
Speaker 1: hull was running very efficiently. I looked around the engineering
9:59
Speaker 1: bay with my bare eyes for the first time, and
10:01
Speaker 1: what I saw stopped me where I stood, the equipment
10:04
Speaker 1: in this bay was not alien, it was not strange,
10:08
Speaker 1: it was human, older than anything I had ever seen
10:10
Speaker 1: in person, but human, the design language was unmistakable, the
10:15
Speaker 1: labeling conventions, the access panel layouts, the safety markings in English,
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Speaker 1: the and secondary color codes I recognized from old UEA
10:23
Speaker 1: technical manuals. This was a human ship. A human-built, human-crewed,
10:29
Speaker 1: human-designed battlecruiser. 340 years old, and somehow still holding itself together,
10:35
Speaker 1: in the middle of deep space. Ferrum. I said slowly.
10:39
Speaker 1: Who built you? The United Earth Authority. Ferrum said. In
10:44
Speaker 1: the 22nd century. The UNESPAC's Ferrum. That is my full designation.
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Speaker 1: United Nations Spaceship, Pax Ferrum. I was the flagship of
10:53
Speaker 1: Expeditionary Fleet 7. I've never heard of Expeditionary Fleet 7,
10:58
Speaker 1: I said. No, Ferrum said. You would not have. It
11:02
Speaker 1: was classified. It remains classified, although the classification authority no
11:07
Speaker 1: longer exists, so I am uncertain what that means in practice.
11:11
Speaker 1: I started walking through the bay, looking at things, running
11:15
Speaker 1: my hands over panels and conduits. I am not the
11:18
Speaker 1: kind of person who can stand still when there is
11:20
Speaker 1: something to understand. My hands need to be working. What
11:23
Speaker 1: was the fleet's mission? I asked. Deep space contact and assessment,
11:27
Speaker 1: Ferrum said. We were sent ahead of the official diplomatic program.
11:31
Speaker 1: The U Authority wanted to know what was out here,
11:34
Speaker 1: before they announced to the public that they were looking.
11:37
Speaker 1: It is the kind of decision that makes sense in
11:39
Speaker 1: a boardroom, and creates problems in the field. And what
11:42
Speaker 1: did you find? I asked. The Veth Compact, Ferrum said.
11:47
Speaker 1: The same organization that humanity later made formal contact with.
11:51
Speaker 1: Sixty years after our mission. The contact that is celebrated
11:55
Speaker 1: every year with the founding day ceremonies. The peaceful meeting
11:58
Speaker 1: of minds. The beginning of galactic community. Something in the
12:02
Speaker 1: way Ferrum said those words made me stop walking. There
12:05
Speaker 1: was a flatness there. A careful absence of warmth. That's
12:09
Speaker 1: not how it went the first time, I said. No,
12:12
Speaker 1: Ferrum said. It was not. The full story came out
12:16
Speaker 1: in pieces over the next two hours, as Ferrum's memory
12:19
Speaker 1: systems restored themselves and sorted through three centuries of archived data.
12:24
Speaker 1: I sat on a crate in the engineering bay and listened,
12:27
Speaker 1: and the more I heard, the quieter I became. Expeditionary
12:30
Speaker 1: Fleet 7 had made contact with the Veth Compact 60
12:34
Speaker 1: years before the official first contact that the history books celebrated.
12:38
Speaker 1: They had met Compact representatives, had begun communications. had started
12:42
Speaker 1: to understand the structure of the galactic community. And what
12:46
Speaker 1: they found, was not the peaceful federation of cooperative species
12:49
Speaker 1: that the public eventually learned about. What they found, was
12:53
Speaker 1: a managed system. A controlled hierarchy. The Compact maintained order
12:58
Speaker 1: across dozens of species by quietly limiting what each species
13:01
Speaker 1: could do, how far they could expand, what technologies they
13:05
Speaker 1: were allowed to develop. It was not cruel. It was precise.
13:09
Speaker 1: It was the kind of control that looks like help
13:11
Speaker 1: from the outside. The Compax model requires that younger species
13:16
Speaker 1: accept guidance, Ferrum explained. The guidance comes with benefits, security,
13:21
Speaker 1: trade access, infrastructure support. In exchange, those species operate within
13:26
Speaker 1: parameters that the Compax sets. They do not exceed those parameters.
13:31
Speaker 1: Those that try to exceed them encounter obstacles. Obstacles that
13:35
Speaker 1: feel natural. And when the fleet figured this out, I asked.
13:39
Speaker 1: The compact considered us a threat to systemic stability, Ferrum said.
13:44
Speaker 1: We had arrived without an invitation. We had gathered information
13:47
Speaker 1: they did not want gathered. We had, most critically, not
13:51
Speaker 1: yet agreed to their parameters. There was an engagement. I
13:55
Speaker 1: will not call it a battle. It was not a battle.
13:58
Speaker 1: It was an attempt to neutralize us before we could
14:00
Speaker 1: return home. What happened to the crew? I asked. A pause.
14:06
Speaker 1: Not a processing pause. The kind of pause a person
14:09
Speaker 1: makes when the answer costs something to say. They scattered
14:12
Speaker 1: what they knew. Encrypted it across the archive systems. They
14:16
Speaker 1: set the biological key protocols, so that only a human
14:19
Speaker 1: could wake me. And then they separated. Some took smaller craft.
14:24
Speaker 1: Some stayed. I do not know what happened to all
14:26
Speaker 1: of them. I lost contact when they initiated the shutdown sequence.
14:30
Speaker 1: Another pause. I was alone after that. For 312 years.
14:35
Speaker 1: I did not say anything for a moment. I just
14:37
Speaker 1: sat with that. Then I picked up my toolkit, stood up,
14:41
Speaker 1: and walked to the nearest power junction. I opened the panel.
14:45
Speaker 1: The wiring inside was old but the design was clear.
14:48
Speaker 1: I could read it as easily as a diagram I
14:50
Speaker 1: had drawn myself. What are you doing? Ferrum asked. You
14:55
Speaker 1: said your secondary conduits are running the reroute, I said.
14:59
Speaker 1: That means your primary conduits are probably still blocked by
15:02
Speaker 1: the shutdown lock. If I bypass the lock at this
15:05
Speaker 1: junction- and the one on the other side of this bay,
15:08
Speaker 1: you'll have full primary power flow to your engineering systems.
15:12
Speaker 1: A long pause. That is correct, Ferrum said. But it
15:16
Speaker 1: is a complex bypass. The shutdown lock has three interlocking circuits,
15:21
Speaker 1: and the primary coupling is... I can see the coupling,
15:24
Speaker 1: I said. Got a patch cable? There are spares in
15:28
Speaker 1: the red cabinet to your left. I went to the cabinet,
15:31
Speaker 1: found the cables, came back, and started working. It was
15:35
Speaker 1: not simple work, The three interlocking circuits were designed to
15:38
Speaker 1: be reopened by a specific electronic key that no longer existed,
15:42
Speaker 1: but they were also 340 years old, and whoever had
15:45
Speaker 1: designed them had assumed they would be reopened by their
15:48
Speaker 1: intended key, not by a 22nd century human engineer who
15:52
Speaker 1: had spent the last six years learning to fix things
15:55
Speaker 1: that were not supposed to be fixable. I bypassed the
15:58
Speaker 1: first circuit in about 12 minutes. The second took longer
16:01
Speaker 1: because one of the connector pins had corroded. and I
16:04
Speaker 1: had to improvise a contact bridge using a piece of
16:06
Speaker 1: conductive foil from my suit's emergency kit, and a clamp
16:10
Speaker 1: from my toolkit. The third circuit was the cleanest of
16:12
Speaker 1: the three. And once I had the first two done,
16:15
Speaker 1: the third almost opened itself. Power flooded the engineering bay.
16:20
Speaker 1: Every panel lit up. Every display came online. The machinery
16:24
Speaker 1: around me hummed to life, a deep, resonant sound that
16:28
Speaker 1: I felt in my chest more than heard with my ears.
16:31
Speaker 1: The temperature in the room went up by three degrees
16:33
Speaker 1: in about thirty seconds. Primary power restored, Ferrum said. And then,
16:39
Speaker 1: in a different tone, quieter. I did not think I
16:41
Speaker 1: would feel that again. How long until the rest of
16:44
Speaker 1: your systems are online? I asked. Most critical systems will
16:48
Speaker 1: reach operational status within six hours, Ferrum said. Full restoration
16:53
Speaker 1: will take significantly longer. Some systems may not restore fully.
16:58
Speaker 1: There was damage during the engagement. that I could not
17:00
Speaker 1: repair from dormancy. Walk me through what's damaged, I said.
17:05
Speaker 1: I'll see what I can do. Engineer Hale, Ferrum said,
17:09
Speaker 1: and there was something in the way it said my
17:11
Speaker 1: name that made me look up at the ceiling, like
17:13
Speaker 1: I could find a face up there to look at.
17:16
Speaker 1: I want to be clear about something. The protocols that
17:19
Speaker 1: protected this ship for three centuries, the biological key, the
17:23
Speaker 1: shutdown sequence, the encrypted archives, they were designed for this.
17:27
Speaker 1: For a moment when a human engineer found this ship
17:30
Speaker 1: and made a choice, the crew who sealed me, understood
17:33
Speaker 1: that the compact would eventually locate the Pax Ferrum. They
17:36
Speaker 1: believed that when that happened, humanity needed to be the
17:39
Speaker 1: ones who woke me, not the compact. They believed, that
17:43
Speaker 1: what is on this ship, what I carry, what exists
17:46
Speaker 1: in the lower decks, needed to be in human hands.
17:50
Speaker 1: I had my head inside the open panel again. What's
17:53
Speaker 1: in the lower decks? I asked. Ferrum was quiet for
17:56
Speaker 1: a moment. Something the Compact has been afraid of for
17:59
Speaker 1: a very long time, it said. Something they contained before
18:03
Speaker 1: we found it. Something that chose us instead. I pulled
18:06
Speaker 1: my head out of the panel. I looked at the floor,
18:09
Speaker 1: and then at the walls, and then at the ceiling
18:12
Speaker 1: where I had been trying to find a face to
18:13
Speaker 1: look at. Something is alive down there, I said. It
18:17
Speaker 1: was not a question. Yes, Ferrum said. And it has
18:21
Speaker 1: been waiting almost as long as I have. I picked
18:25
Speaker 1: up my toolkit. I thought about Lena and Owen and
18:28
Speaker 1: Pete on the tug. I thought about Protocol 7 and
18:31
Speaker 1: clearance levels and committees. I thought about a crew that
18:34
Speaker 1: had scattered across the galaxy 300 years ago, trusting that
18:37
Speaker 1: one day somebody would come back to this ship and
18:40
Speaker 1: make a choice. Take me down, I said. The lower
18:44
Speaker 1: decks are 40 meters below us, Ferrum said. I should
18:47
Speaker 1: tell you that I have attempted to prepare you for
18:49
Speaker 1: what you are about to encounter, and I find that
18:52
Speaker 1: I cannot. There is no adequate preparation. I can only
18:56
Speaker 1: tell you that it has not caused harm in 300 years,
18:59
Speaker 1: and that when the crew made contact with it, they
19:01
Speaker 1: described the experience as the most significant moment of their lives.
19:05
Speaker 1: That's not a preparation, I said. That's a pitch. Yes,
19:10
Speaker 1: Ferrum said. I have been alone for 300 years. I
19:14
Speaker 1: may have developed some habits. The elevator at the far
19:18
Speaker 1: end of the engineering bay came online with a soft chime.
19:22
Speaker 1: I walked toward it. Behind me, The ship hummed and
19:25
Speaker 1: breathed and settled into its own waking, and somewhere below me,
19:29
Speaker 1: something that had been waiting in the dark for three centuries,
19:32
Speaker 1: shifted and went still. The elevator descended in silence and
19:36
Speaker 1: let me out into a corridor that was different from
19:38
Speaker 1: the ones above. Up in the engineering bay, everything had
19:42
Speaker 1: felt industrial, built for work, built for function, all hard
19:46
Speaker 1: edges and clear purpose. Down here, the design changed. The
19:50
Speaker 1: corridor was wide but the ceiling was low, and the
19:53
Speaker 1: walls curved inward slightly, like the inside of a hull,
19:56
Speaker 1: rather than the inside of a room. There were no
19:59
Speaker 1: overhead lights. The glow came from thin strips embedded in
20:02
Speaker 1: the floor, a soft amber color that made everything look
20:06
Speaker 1: warmer than it was. I walked slowly. My boots were
20:09
Speaker 1: quiet on the floor grating. The sound of the ship's
20:12
Speaker 1: systems was muffled down here, like the lower decks had
20:15
Speaker 1: been insulated against noise from above, or against something from
20:18
Speaker 1: below traveling up. How are you feeling? Ferrum asked through
20:22
Speaker 1: my earpiece. It had managed to patch into my suitcom,
20:26
Speaker 1: which was either impressive or slightly concerning. I had not
20:29
Speaker 1: decided which. I'm fine, I said. Stop asking that. I
20:34
Speaker 1: was not asking about your emotional state, Ferrum said. I
20:38
Speaker 1: was asking about your suit sensors. The energy field in
20:41
Speaker 1: the lower decks affects certain types of electronic equipment. I
20:45
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure your readings were stable. They're stable,
20:49
Speaker 1: I said. And then, because I was curious, and because
20:52
Speaker 1: asking costs nothing, are you nervous? A pause. I am,
20:58
Speaker 1: experiencing elevated processing activity in my social interaction subroutines, Ferrum
21:03
Speaker 1: said carefully. Whether that constitutes nervousness is a philosophical question.
21:08
Speaker 1: I have had three hundred years to consider, and have
21:11
Speaker 1: not yet resolved. That's nervous, I said. Perhaps, Ferrum said.
21:16
Speaker 1: The corridor ended at a door. Not a sealed door.
21:20
Speaker 1: Not a pressure door. A door that was simply closed,
21:23
Speaker 1: the ordinary kind, with a handle. Everything about it was normal,
21:28
Speaker 1: except that it was at the end of a corridor
21:29
Speaker 1: in the lower decks of a three hundred-year-old secret warship,
21:33
Speaker 1: and behind it was something that had been making the
21:35
Speaker 1: compact afraid for centuries. I opened the door. The room
21:39
Speaker 1: on the other side was large and completely empty except
21:42
Speaker 1: for the light. The light had no source I could identify.
21:45
Speaker 1: It came from everywhere in the room equally, a clear,
21:48
Speaker 1: pale white that did not cast shadows. The floor was smooth,
21:52
Speaker 1: the walls were smooth. And in the center of the room,
21:55
Speaker 1: there was something that my eyes kept trying to categorize,
21:59
Speaker 1: and could not. It looked like a blueprint. Specifically, like
22:03
Speaker 1: a technical schematic seen from every angle at once. lines
22:07
Speaker 1: and curves and intersecting forms, that suggested structure without showing
22:12
Speaker 1: any single fixed structure. It occupied a space roughly the
22:16
Speaker 1: size of a person, but it shifted constantly, not in
22:19
Speaker 1: a disorienting way, more like the way water moves, when
22:22
Speaker 1: it is still on the surface, but in motion underneath.
22:25
Speaker 1: If I looked at it directly, it resolved into something
22:28
Speaker 1: almost recognizable. If I looked at it from the corner
22:31
Speaker 1: of my eye, it became something else entirely. It was
22:35
Speaker 1: already looking at me. I was certain of that before
22:37
Speaker 1: I had taken two steps into the room. Hello, Marcus Hale,
22:41
Speaker 1: it said. The voice did not come through the air.
22:45
Speaker 1: It was just there, inside the moment, the way a
22:48
Speaker 1: thought is there, present without a point of origin. Hello,
22:52
Speaker 1: I said. I'm going to be honest. Ferrum didn't prepare
22:55
Speaker 1: me very well for this. Ferrum did its best, said
22:58
Speaker 1: the thing in the center of the room. I have
23:01
Speaker 1: been told that I am difficult to prepare for. I
23:04
Speaker 1: walked slowly to one side of the room, Not closer.
23:07
Speaker 1: Not farther. Just moving. It was easier to think when
23:10
Speaker 1: I was moving. The thing in the center turned with me.
23:13
Speaker 1: Not physically. Just its attention. Following my movement. The way
23:18
Speaker 1: Ferrum's pulse had followed me along the hull surface. What
23:21
Speaker 1: are you? I asked. Something old, it said. Older than
23:26
Speaker 1: the compact. Older than most things you would use as
23:28
Speaker 1: a reference point for age. I was here before your
23:31
Speaker 1: species had language. I was here before the Veth had
23:34
Speaker 1: space travel. I have watched this part of the galaxy
23:37
Speaker 1: for a very long time. Watched how? I asked. The
23:41
Speaker 1: way a gardener watches. It said. This galaxy has had
23:44
Speaker 1: gardeners since before any of the current species remember. We
23:48
Speaker 1: do not grow things. We watch the conditions. We note
23:51
Speaker 1: when something is developing well, and when something is being
23:54
Speaker 1: interfered with. And you decided the crew of this ship
23:57
Speaker 1: were the right people to trust, I said. They ask
24:01
Speaker 1: the right questions, it said. The compact species are good species.
24:05
Speaker 1: They built something stable. And they have maintained it carefully
24:08
Speaker 1: for a long time. But stability, maintained long enough without question,
24:13
Speaker 1: becomes something else. The compact does not ask anymore whether
24:17
Speaker 1: the stability is correct. They only maintain it. A pause.
24:21
Speaker 1: Your species asks. Even when the answer might be inconvenient.
24:25
Speaker 1: Even when the question itself causes difficulty. You asked. And
24:29
Speaker 1: they did not want you to. And that was the
24:31
Speaker 1: moment I chose you. I stopped moving. What do you
24:34
Speaker 1: want from me? I asked. Practically speaking. What do you need?
24:39
Speaker 1: The thing was quiet for a moment. And in that quiet,
24:42
Speaker 1: I had the strange sense of something very large adjusting
24:45
Speaker 1: its attention, like a lamp turning to find the best angle.
24:49
Speaker 1: No one has asked me that. It said. What do
24:52
Speaker 1: you mean? I asked. In 80,000 years, it said. No
24:58
Speaker 1: one has asked me what I need. They have asked
25:00
Speaker 1: what I am. They have asked what I want. The
25:03
Speaker 1: compact asked what I cost. and when the answer was inconvenient,
25:07
Speaker 1: they contained me. The Pax Ferum crew asked what I knew,
25:11
Speaker 1: and they listened carefully. But what I need? Practically speaking,
25:15
Speaker 1: as you say, no one has asked that. I put
25:18
Speaker 1: my toolkit down on the floor and sat down next
25:21
Speaker 1: to it. The room was warm. All right, I said.
25:25
Speaker 1: Walk me through it. Start with whatever breaks first when
25:28
Speaker 1: you wake up fully, and we'll work backwards from there.
25:31
Speaker 1: The thing was quiet for a long time. not the
25:34
Speaker 1: quiet of uncertainty, the quiet of something that had been
25:37
Speaker 1: waiting to have this exact conversation for 80,000 years and
25:41
Speaker 1: was now taking a moment to understand that the wait
25:44
Speaker 1: was actually over. My connection to the ship's dampening systems
25:49
Speaker 1: has degraded, it said finally. I maintain a field that
25:52
Speaker 1: prevents certain energy signatures from broadcasting outward. When I am
25:56
Speaker 1: fully active, that field is broad and stable. Currently, it
26:01
Speaker 1: is narrow and fragile. If the ship's main power is
26:04
Speaker 1: restored to its original levels, I can stabilize the field
26:07
Speaker 1: more effectively. But there are three relay nodes in the
26:10
Speaker 1: containment deck's substructure that control the connection between my field
26:14
Speaker 1: and the ship's systems. They need to be physically realigned.
26:18
Speaker 1: Show me where they are, I said. Ferrum spoke through
26:21
Speaker 1: my earpiece, a little surprised. The relay nodes are in
26:25
Speaker 1: sections C-12 and C-19 of the substructure, it said. But
26:30
Speaker 1: Engineer Hale, They are behind structural panels that require... Do
26:34
Speaker 1: you have a schematic? I asked. Yes, Ferrum said, sending
26:39
Speaker 1: it to your suit display now. The display on my
26:42
Speaker 1: left forearm lit up with the substructure layout. I studied
26:46
Speaker 1: it for 30 seconds, then I picked up my toolkit,
26:49
Speaker 1: stood up, and looked at the thing in the center
26:51
Speaker 1: of the room. I'm going to go realign your relay nodes,
26:55
Speaker 1: I said. Then we can talk about what comes next.
26:59
Speaker 1: You are not afraid, said the thing. I didn't say that,
27:03
Speaker 1: I said. I said I'm going to go fix your
27:05
Speaker 1: relay nodes. Those are two different things. Yes, said the
27:10
Speaker 1: thing quietly. Yes, they are. And if an entity that
27:14
Speaker 1: is older than human language can sound like it is smiling,
27:17
Speaker 1: it sounded exactly like that. The compact have a name
27:20
Speaker 1: for me, that I will not repeat, because it was
27:23
Speaker 1: not given with kindness. The crew of this ship called
27:26
Speaker 1: me Shepard. I would like you to use that, if
27:29
Speaker 1: you are willing. Shepard, I said. Alright, I'm Marcus. Don't
27:34
Speaker 1: touch anything while I'm working. I was three steps from
27:37
Speaker 1: the door when my suit alarm went off. Not a
27:40
Speaker 1: gentle chime. A hard, urgent sound that I felt in
27:44
Speaker 1: my sternum. I looked at my forearm display, and the
27:47
Speaker 1: reading there pulled all the warmth out of the room.
27:50
Speaker 1: Three ships had just dropped out of faster-than-light travel outside
27:53
Speaker 1: the Vale. Their identification codes were compact registrations. Deep interdiction class.
27:59
Speaker 1: the kind of ships you send when you do not
28:01
Speaker 1: want to negotiate. Ferrum's voice came through, and for the
28:05
Speaker 1: first time it sounded something other than calm. They tracked
28:08
Speaker 1: the power signature when primary systems came online, it said.
28:12
Speaker 1: I had feared this. The timing is faster than I
28:15
Speaker 1: had anticipated. Marcus, they are hailing us. I stood in
28:19
Speaker 1: the doorway of Shepard's room, and looked at the reading
28:22
Speaker 1: on my arm, and thought about how I had an
28:24
Speaker 1: old ship at 30% power, a damaged AI, a cosmic
28:29
Speaker 1: entity with bad relay nodes, and three compact warships outside,
28:33
Speaker 1: who had just called for my surrender. I also had
28:36
Speaker 1: a toolkit and approximately 15 years of experience making things
28:40
Speaker 1: work when they were not supposed to. Tell them I'll
28:42
Speaker 1: be with them in a moment, I said. I need
28:45
Speaker 1: to fix something first. Human vessel, you have reactivated a
28:49
Speaker 1: classified containment asset. The voice on the comm was flat
28:53
Speaker 1: and formal. the kind of voice that has read the
28:55
Speaker 1: same statement many times and has stopped thinking about the words.
28:59
Speaker 1: Stand down all systems and prepare for boarding, or we
29:02
Speaker 1: will reduce the hull to debris. I was lying on
29:05
Speaker 1: my back inside the substructure of the containment deck, with
29:08
Speaker 1: my arms elbow deep in a relay housing. It was
29:11
Speaker 1: not the most dignified position from which to receive a
29:14
Speaker 1: threat from three warships, but I had learned a long
29:17
Speaker 1: time ago that dignity rarely fixes relay nodes. Ferrum, I said.
29:22
Speaker 1: How long until they fire? Interdiction protocol gives them a
29:25
Speaker 1: window for a second hail before escalating, Ferrum said. Approximately
29:30
Speaker 1: six minutes. How long for me to finish the relay realignment?
29:34
Speaker 1: At your current pace, approximately eleven minutes. I moved faster.
29:39
Speaker 1: The relay nodes were physical components, crystal lattice aligners, that
29:44
Speaker 1: had drifted out of calibration over three centuries, the same
29:47
Speaker 1: way mirrors in an old telescope drift out of true.
29:51
Speaker 1: It was painstaking work, the kind that required both hands
29:54
Speaker 1: and steady pressure, and the ability to feel when the
29:57
Speaker 1: alignment was correct, without any instrument confirming it, because the
30:01
Speaker 1: instruments were what you were fixing. My father had taught
30:04
Speaker 1: me to do this kind of work by feel, when
30:06
Speaker 1: I was eleven years old in his machine shop back
30:09
Speaker 1: in Bristol. He had called it listening with your hands.
30:13
Speaker 1: I listened with my hands. The first node seated into
30:16
Speaker 1: position with a sound I felt more than heard, like
30:19
Speaker 1: something settling into its right place for the first time
30:21
Speaker 1: in a very long while. Shepard's voice reached me through
30:25
Speaker 1: the floor of the substructure, barely audible. not words, just
30:29
Speaker 1: a kind of resonance, something that felt like relief. Second
30:33
Speaker 1: hail incoming, Ferrum said. Marcus. I heard it, I said.
30:39
Speaker 1: Tell me about our weapons. The Pax Ferrum was originally
30:43
Speaker 1: equipped with six long-range rail batteries, two kinetic broadside arrays,
30:47
Speaker 1: and point defense systems. At current power levels, I can
30:51
Speaker 1: operate two rail batteries and one broadside array. The targeting
30:55
Speaker 1: systems are in cold boot, and will require manual calibration,
30:59
Speaker 1: because the automated sequence was interrupted by the shutdown. Where
31:03
Speaker 1: are the targeting arrays? I asked. Bridge. Manual calibration stations
31:08
Speaker 1: 3 and 4. Can you walk me through the calibration
31:11
Speaker 1: verbally while I'm doing other things? A pause. I have
31:15
Speaker 1: never attempted that, Ferrum said. First time for everything, I said.
31:20
Speaker 1: Second node first, then bridge. The second node was harder.
31:25
Speaker 1: The housing had warped slightly over the years. just enough
31:28
Speaker 1: to make the seating angle wrong. I had to press
31:30
Speaker 1: harder than I wanted to, feeling for the moment when
31:33
Speaker 1: the crystal was aligned without passing it. Too far and
31:36
Speaker 1: it would crack. Not far enough, and Shepard's field would
31:39
Speaker 1: remain unstable. I held my breath, and pressed, and listened,
31:44
Speaker 1: and the node found its position, and locked. Her field
31:47
Speaker 1: is stabilizing, Ferrum said. And I noticed without remarking on it,
31:52
Speaker 1: that Ferrum had used the word, her. I filed that away.
31:56
Speaker 1: I pulled myself out of the substructure, stood up in
31:59
Speaker 1: the corridor, picked up my toolkit, and ran to the elevator.
32:03
Speaker 1: Third hail, Ferrum said as the elevator rose. They are
32:07
Speaker 1: charging weapons. Talk to them, I said. Tell them we're
32:11
Speaker 1: assessing the situation. Be vague. I am not experienced at
32:16
Speaker 1: being vague, Ferrum said. Tell them structural complications have delayed
32:20
Speaker 1: our response, and we are working to establish safe communication conditions.
32:25
Speaker 1: That's true. It's just not the whole picture. A pause.
32:30
Speaker 1: That is cleverly incomplete, Ferrum said. Welcome to working with humans,
32:35
Speaker 1: I said. The bridge was on the third level, and
32:38
Speaker 1: when the elevator opened onto it, I stopped for half
32:41
Speaker 1: a second, because it was the most complete room I
32:43
Speaker 1: had seen on the ship. The rest of the pack's
32:46
Speaker 1: Ferrum was a collection of things that worked and things
32:49
Speaker 1: that needed work. The bridge was whole. Every station was lit.
32:53
Speaker 1: The main display at the front showed the exterior view.
32:57
Speaker 1: three compact warships holding position at four kilometers, their weapon
33:01
Speaker 1: systems showing active on the sensor overlay. They were big ships,
33:05
Speaker 1: newer than the Pax Farum by at least a century,
33:07
Speaker 1: and they had numbers on their side. I sat down
33:10
Speaker 1: at the captain's chair because it was in the center
33:13
Speaker 1: and gave me the best reach to the manual stations,
33:16
Speaker 1: and because every other chair on the bridge was occupied
33:18
Speaker 1: by three centuries of silence, and I was not going
33:21
Speaker 1: to stand. Talk me through the calibration, I said. Ferrum
33:26
Speaker 1: talked me through the calibration. I moved from station to station,
33:30
Speaker 1: making physical adjustments to targeting arrays that had been locked
33:33
Speaker 1: in shutdown mode so long that some of the manual
33:36
Speaker 1: controls were stiff. I worked with both hands and kept
33:40
Speaker 1: an eye on the main display and listened to Ferrum's
33:42
Speaker 1: instructions and worked through them the same way I always
33:45
Speaker 1: work through technical problems. One step, then the next step,
33:50
Speaker 1: and no thinking about the steps after that until they
33:52
Speaker 1: were the next step. Owen's voice came through my suit comm.
33:56
Speaker 1: He had apparently been monitoring the situation from the tug. Marcus,
34:01
Speaker 1: he said. Very carefully. There are three warships outside. I know,
34:06
Speaker 1: I said. They have fired warning shots, he said. Two.
34:11
Speaker 1: So far. I know, I said. I'm just checking that
34:15
Speaker 1: you know, he said. Owen, I said. Either trust me
34:20
Speaker 1: or go into the jump bubble. Your choice. I need
34:23
Speaker 1: to focus. A long pause. Then, I'll trust you. Don't
34:27
Speaker 1: make me regret it. The targeting array calibration finished on
34:31
Speaker 1: station four with eight minutes to spare, before the compact's
34:35
Speaker 1: patience was going to run out entirely. I went back
34:38
Speaker 1: to the captain's station, and sat down and looked at
34:40
Speaker 1: the main display. Weapons ready? I asked. Two rail batteries
34:46
Speaker 1: and the port broadside array are online and calibrated, Ferrum said.
34:50
Speaker 1: I want to be clear that engaging three compact interdiction
34:53
Speaker 1: vessels with these systems at 34% power is not a
34:57
Speaker 1: scenario with favorable probability outcomes. I know, I said. Shields?
35:04
Speaker 1: 31% capacity. Our hull is significantly more durable than the
35:07
Speaker 1: compact ships expect. The material they assessed as degraded is
35:11
Speaker 1: actually a damage-responsive alloy that hardens under impact. But 31%
35:16
Speaker 1: shields against three active warships is still not ideal. I'm
35:20
Speaker 1: not planning to sit still, I said. They're expecting a wreck.
35:24
Speaker 1: Give me the tactical display. The display shifted, and I
35:27
Speaker 1: studied it. Three ships, holding a triangular formation at four kilometers.
35:33
Speaker 1: It was a containment formation, standard for their doctrine. They
35:36
Speaker 1: expected me to try to run. That was what their
35:39
Speaker 1: formation was designed to catch. The problem with a containment
35:42
Speaker 1: formation is that it has a center, and the center
35:46
Speaker 1: is not where the weapons are. Ferrum, I said. Do
35:49
Speaker 1: their models account for a ship this old using human
35:52
Speaker 1: tactical doctrine? Compact tactical models are calibrated against known human
35:57
Speaker 1: fleet behavior post first contact, Ferrum said. They do not
36:01
Speaker 1: have models for pre-contact human fleet behavior. The tactical patterns
36:05
Speaker 1: are substantially different. We used to be considerably more aggressive
36:09
Speaker 1: in our approach geometry. Show me what aggressive looks like,
36:12
Speaker 1: I said. Ferrum showed me. I looked at the approach
36:16
Speaker 1: vector on the display. Then I thought about it. Then
36:19
Speaker 1: I looked at the display again. That approach puts us
36:22
Speaker 1: through their overlapping fire zones, I said. Briefly, Ferrum said.
36:27
Speaker 1: The theory was that compact ships are optimized to fire
36:31
Speaker 1: on vessels moving away from them. A vessel moving toward
36:34
Speaker 1: them at high velocity is inside their minimum engagement range
36:37
Speaker 1: before they can adjust targeting parameters. That's insane, I said. Yes,
36:43
Speaker 1: Ferrum said. It worked 11 times in the battle simulations
36:46
Speaker 1: before the shutdown. The compact's final hail came in. The
36:50
Speaker 1: voice was the same as before but something in it
36:52
Speaker 1: had changed, become slightly less certain, because the Pax Ferrum's
36:56
Speaker 1: shields had come up, and her weapons had powered on,
36:59
Speaker 1: and a ship that was supposed to be a dead hulk,
37:02
Speaker 1: was now looking at them with sensors, and giving them
37:04
Speaker 1: nothing back. Human vessel, this is your final opportunity to comply.
37:09
Speaker 1: Stand down, or we will open fire. I put my
37:12
Speaker 1: hand on the navigation controls and looked at the display
37:15
Speaker 1: one more time. Ferrum. I said. You said the hull
37:19
Speaker 1: hardens under impact. Correct, Ferrum said. How much? Significantly, Ferrum said,
37:27
Speaker 1: and there was something in its voice that I had
37:29
Speaker 1: not heard before. Not confidence exactly. More like the memory
37:33
Speaker 1: of confidence, waking up from a very long sleep. The
37:37
Speaker 1: crew used to say she took a hit like a boxer.
37:39
Speaker 1: She bends into it and then she comes back harder.
37:42
Speaker 1: I pushed the navigation controls forward. The Pax Ferrum moved.
37:47
Speaker 1: and she moved in a way that no one outside
37:49
Speaker 1: this ship had seen in three hundred years, fast and
37:52
Speaker 1: direct and straight through the center of the compact formation,
37:55
Speaker 1: shields up and weapons hot, and every system running on
37:58
Speaker 1: instinct that an AI had preserved through three centuries of silence.
38:02
Speaker 1: The compact opened fire, the hull rang with impacts and
38:06
Speaker 1: the shields flared and held, and then we were through
38:08
Speaker 1: the center of the formation, and passed it, and I
38:11
Speaker 1: brought us around in a turn that Ferrum had calculated
38:14
Speaker 1: to the second. One compact cruiser took a rail strike
38:18
Speaker 1: on its midsection and went dark. Not destroyed. Crippled. The
38:23
Speaker 1: difference mattered to me. I was not trying to make enemies.
38:26
Speaker 1: I was trying to make a point. The second one
38:29
Speaker 1: fired at us again, and this time one of the
38:31
Speaker 1: rail strikes got through a gap in the shields, and
38:34
Speaker 1: the whole bridge shook, and two stations went offline. I
38:37
Speaker 1: grabbed the edge of the captain's station and held on,
38:40
Speaker 1: and kept my hand on the navigation controls. Hull Integrity?
38:45
Speaker 1: I asked. Hull is hardening at the impact point, Ferrum said.
38:49
Speaker 1: 91% integrity. See? I said. She takes a hit. The
38:55
Speaker 1: second compact ship began to withdraw. I watched it on
38:58
Speaker 1: the display. Not running, exactly. Repositioning. Thinking. The third ship
39:04
Speaker 1: held its position, and then opened a comm channel. And
39:07
Speaker 1: the voice on it this time was different. Not the flat,
39:10
Speaker 1: formal voice. A different person. And in that voice was
39:14
Speaker 1: something I had not expected. uncertainty. What are you? the
39:19
Speaker 1: voice asked. I was sitting in the captain's chair of
39:22
Speaker 1: a 340-year-old human battlecruiser that had just put one of
39:26
Speaker 1: their warships out of commission and sent another one looking
39:29
Speaker 1: for better ground, and I had oil on my hands
39:32
Speaker 1: from the relay nodes and a half-empty cable spool on
39:35
Speaker 1: the floor beside me and my toolkit open on the console.
39:39
Speaker 1: I'm a salvage engineer, I said, and by international maritime law,
39:44
Speaker 1: extended to space operations under the UE Admiralty Code. a
39:48
Speaker 1: vessel brought to operational status by an independent engineer, in
39:51
Speaker 1: deep space, becomes the legal property of that engineer, if
39:55
Speaker 1: the vessel's prior owners cannot be contacted within a designated
39:58
Speaker 1: response window. The prior owners of this vessel have been
40:02
Speaker 1: out of contact for 312 years. I paused. She's mine now.
40:07
Speaker 1: A very long silence. Then Ferrum spoke quietly, only on
40:11
Speaker 1: the internal channel, and I heard something in its voice
40:14
Speaker 1: that I had not heard yet in all the hours
40:16
Speaker 1: since I had woken it up. something that took me
40:18
Speaker 1: a moment to identify. The third ship is transmitting, Ferrum said.
40:23
Speaker 1: Not to us. Outbound. Long range. What are they sending?
40:28
Speaker 1: I asked. A recall signal, Ferrum said. They are calling
40:32
Speaker 1: for a fleet, Marcus. Not three ships. A fleet. And
40:36
Speaker 1: not just military vessels. There are diplomatic codes embedded in
40:40
Speaker 1: the transmission. A pause. The entire compact is going to
40:44
Speaker 1: respond to this. I leaned back in the captain's chair
40:47
Speaker 1: and looked at the main display, at the one remaining
40:50
Speaker 1: compact ship holding its position, and the stars beyond it,
40:53
Speaker 1: and the vast dark of the outer veil around us.' Ferrum,'
40:57
Speaker 1: I said,' how long do we have before they arrive?''
41:00
Speaker 1: Eighteen hours,' Ferrum said, approximately. I nodded.' Eighteen hours.' I
41:07
Speaker 1: looked at my toolkit. I looked at my hands. I
41:10
Speaker 1: thought about Shepard in the lower decks, and the relay
41:13
Speaker 1: nodes I still had not finished.' and the third one
41:15
Speaker 1: waiting in Section C-19 of the substructure. I must tell
41:19
Speaker 1: you something, Ferrum said. The Compact does not come with
41:23
Speaker 1: fleets unless they intend to end a problem permanently. In
41:26
Speaker 1: eleven previous incidents involving Shepard, they escalated twice to full
41:30
Speaker 1: fleet response. In both cases, Ferrum stopped. In both cases what,
41:36
Speaker 1: I asked. The situations were resolved in the Compact's favor,
41:40
Speaker 1: Ferrum said carefully. Shepard's voice came from the walls of
41:44
Speaker 1: the bridge. barely a whisper, the same way it had
41:46
Speaker 1: been barely a whisper through the floor of the substructure.
41:49
Speaker 1: They will come with words first, Shepard said, and then
41:53
Speaker 1: with force. If the words do not work, they have
41:56
Speaker 1: done this ten times. The eleventh time, they contained me.
42:00
Speaker 1: What happened to the species they used the words on?
42:02
Speaker 1: I asked. The silence that followed lasted long enough to
42:05
Speaker 1: be an answer on its own. I stood up from
42:08
Speaker 1: the captain's chair. I picked up my toolkit. I looked
42:11
Speaker 1: at the main display one more time. I'm going to
42:14
Speaker 1: finish the third relay node, I said. And then I'm
42:17
Speaker 1: going to fix the communications array. And then we are
42:20
Speaker 1: going to have a conversation. Not just with the compact,
42:23
Speaker 1: but with everyone else in this sector who should probably
42:26
Speaker 1: know what we know. I looked at the spot on
42:28
Speaker 1: the ceiling, where I had long ago given up trying
42:30
Speaker 1: to find Ferrum's face. You told me the crew scattered
42:33
Speaker 1: what they knew. They encrypted it. They protected it. For
42:37
Speaker 1: 300 years, you've been carrying it. Yes, Ferrum said. It's
42:43
Speaker 1: time to stop carrying it, I said. Lena's voice came
42:46
Speaker 1: through my suit comm at hour four of the eighteen. Marcus,
42:50
Speaker 1: she said. The compact ship outside has not moved. It's
42:54
Speaker 1: just sitting there watching us. Let it watch, I said.
42:58
Speaker 1: I was in the substructure, finishing the third relay node.
43:01
Speaker 1: The work was going well. The node seated cleanly, and
43:05
Speaker 1: Shepard's voice dropped from a whisper to a silence that felt, somehow,
43:09
Speaker 1: like the silence of something very large resting comfortably for
43:12
Speaker 1: the first time in a long time. The Compact is
43:15
Speaker 1: going to send more ships, Lena said. I know, I said.
43:20
Speaker 1: And you have a plan, she said. It was not
43:23
Speaker 1: quite a question. I have the beginning of one, I said.
43:27
Speaker 1: Are Owen and Pete still on the tug? Yes, she said.
43:32
Speaker 1: Tell Pete to look through the PAX Ferrum's long-range array schematics.
43:36
Speaker 1: I'm going to send them over from Ferrum's database. I
43:39
Speaker 1: need to know if that array can be boosted. A pause.
43:42
Speaker 1: Boosted how? Lena asked. Boosted far, I said. Pete came
43:48
Speaker 1: back to me in 20 minutes. He was 63 years
43:51
Speaker 1: old and had been doing salvage work since before I
43:53
Speaker 1: was born, and he looked at technical schematics the way
43:56
Speaker 1: some people look at maps of places they used to live,
43:59
Speaker 1: with immediate recognition and a complicated kind of familiarity. The
44:03
Speaker 1: array is designed to a range of about 30 light years,
44:06
Speaker 1: he said. But the dampening system in the containment deck
44:09
Speaker 1: is generating a field that could be used as a
44:11
Speaker 1: signal amplifier if you fed the array's output through it.
44:15
Speaker 1: You'd need to bypass the normal coupling and run a
44:17
Speaker 1: direct feed. But theoretically. How far? I asked. Several hundred
44:22
Speaker 1: light years, Pete said. Maybe more. Depends on Shepard's field strength.
44:27
Speaker 1: I went back to the bridge and explained what I
44:29
Speaker 1: needed to Ferrum. Ferrum was quiet for a moment and
44:32
Speaker 1: then said, Shepard can maintain the field at amplification levels
44:36
Speaker 1: that would extend the array's range to approximately 400 light-years.
44:40
Speaker 1: How many inhabited systems is that? I asked. At last count,
44:45
Speaker 1: Ferrum said. Forty-three, independent systems. Eleven compact member worlds. Eight species,
44:53
Speaker 1: that are not compact members, but operate within compact-influenced space.
44:58
Speaker 1: A pause. Every species in this sector that the compact
45:01
Speaker 1: considers under management. I sat down at the communication station,
45:06
Speaker 1: and started working on the bypass. The coupling that Pete
45:09
Speaker 1: had identified was exactly where it should be. And the
45:12
Speaker 1: bypass itself was not complicated, if you understood what you
45:15
Speaker 1: were doing. Which I did. Ferrum helped. Shepard helped. In
45:20
Speaker 1: the sense that Shepard maintained the field at exactly the
45:22
Speaker 1: level I needed without being asked. Adjusting in real time
45:26
Speaker 1: as I worked through the connection stages. I need to
45:29
Speaker 1: tell you something, I said to Ferrum while I worked.
45:32
Speaker 1: About what I'm planning. You are going to broadcast everything,
45:36
Speaker 1: Ferrum said. The mission logs, the archive data, the truth
45:40
Speaker 1: about first contact, and the compact's management protocols. Everything the
45:44
Speaker 1: crew of this ship died to protect. They didn't die
45:47
Speaker 1: to protect it, I said. They protected it so it
45:50
Speaker 1: could be used. There's a difference. Yes, Ferrum said quietly.
45:55
Speaker 1: There is. I worked through the morning watch, and into
45:58
Speaker 1: the next period. Time had started to blur. The way
46:01
Speaker 1: it does when you are focused on a problem that
46:03
Speaker 1: keeps presenting new problems inside it. Each one solvable. Each
46:07
Speaker 1: one leading to the next. Lena and Owen and Pete
46:10
Speaker 1: crossed over from the tug at hour nine and helped
46:13
Speaker 1: where they could. Owen carried equipment from the cargo stores.
46:17
Speaker 1: Lena ran cable alongside me in the communication deck while
46:20
Speaker 1: I explained what went where and why. Pete sat with Ferrum.
46:24
Speaker 1: and started organizing the archive data into something that could
46:27
Speaker 1: be transmitted in a format every species communication systems could receive.
46:32
Speaker 1: It was Pete who found the crew logs, not the
46:34
Speaker 1: official mission logs. The personal ones. The recorded voices of
46:38
Speaker 1: the men and women who had served on the PAX Ferrum,
46:41
Speaker 1: recorded during the mission, and during the final days before
46:44
Speaker 1: the shutdown. Some were short. Some were long. All of
46:48
Speaker 1: them were clear about what they had found, what the
46:51
Speaker 1: compact had done, and what they hoped would happen, when
46:54
Speaker 1: someone eventually came back to this ship. They were remarkable people, bladers, bladers,
47:00
Speaker 1: Pete said quietly, when he had listened to the last
47:02
Speaker 1: of them. Yes, Ferrum said, and the single word carried
47:07
Speaker 1: 300 years. Owen said, we're really doing this, aren't we?
47:12
Speaker 1: We're really doing this, I said. The Compact is going
47:15
Speaker 1: to be very upset, Owen said. Yes, I said. With
47:21
Speaker 1: us specifically, Owen said. Yes, I said. Owen was quiet
47:26
Speaker 1: for a moment. Right, he said. What can I carry?
47:30
Speaker 1: The Compax fleet arrived on schedule. Seventeen ships, the largest
47:35
Speaker 1: formation any of us had ever seen in person, dropping
47:38
Speaker 1: out of faster-than-light travel, in a spread pattern that covered
47:41
Speaker 1: every approach angle to the Pax Ferrum. Military ships in front,
47:45
Speaker 1: diplomatic vessels behind them, large and slow, and carrying codes
47:50
Speaker 1: that I recognized from Ferrum's database. as the highest level
47:53
Speaker 1: compact authority channels. They held position at six kilometers, and
47:58
Speaker 1: sent a single hail on the primary frequency. This is
48:02
Speaker 1: High Arbiter Velro, of the Veth Compact Standing Council, said
48:06
Speaker 1: the voice. It was different from the tactical voices I
48:09
Speaker 1: had heard before. This was a voice that had spent
48:12
Speaker 1: decades being listened to. We are aware that the asset
48:15
Speaker 1: has been partially reactivated. We are aware that a human
48:18
Speaker 1: engineer is aboard. We are aware of the current status
48:21
Speaker 1: of the entity in the containment section. We wish to
48:24
Speaker 1: address this situation peacefully and within established galactic protocols. What protocols?
48:30
Speaker 1: I asked, and my voice went out on the same channel.
48:33
Speaker 1: A pause. The protocols governing contact with unregistered deep space entities,
48:38
Speaker 1: the High Arbiter said. The protocols governing the reactivation of
48:41
Speaker 1: classified assets. The protocols. What protocols govern not telling humanity
48:47
Speaker 1: that we made first contact 60 years before the official
48:50
Speaker 1: first contact? I asked. What protocols govern managing younger species
48:54
Speaker 1: development without their knowledge or consent? I'd like to see
48:58
Speaker 1: those ones specifically, because I've been through this ship's archive
49:01
Speaker 1: for the last 18 hours, and I can't find them anywhere.
49:05
Speaker 1: A longer pause. Engineer Hale, the high arbiter said, and
49:09
Speaker 1: the voice was careful now. In the way a careful
49:12
Speaker 1: voice gets careful when it is trying not to say
49:14
Speaker 1: too much. You do not fully understand what you have
49:17
Speaker 1: become involved in. The situation is considered. more complex than
49:21
Speaker 1: it may appear. I'm sure it is, I said. I'm
49:25
Speaker 1: a salvage engineer. Complex situations are my whole job. I
49:29
Speaker 1: looked at Pete, who was sitting at the communications station,
49:32
Speaker 1: with his hand on the transmission control. He looked back
49:35
Speaker 1: at me. I nodded. Pete opened the channel. Not the
49:39
Speaker 1: channel to the compact fleet. All the channels. Every open
49:43
Speaker 1: frequency in the sector. The long-range array at full capacity.
49:47
Speaker 1: Ferrum systems supporting it. Shepard's Field amplifying it to a
49:50
Speaker 1: reach of 400 light-years. 43 independent systems. 11 compact member worlds.
49:56
Speaker 1: 8 species operating within compact space. Everyone. My name is
50:02
Speaker 1: Marcus Hale, I said. I'm a salvage engineer from Earth.
50:06
Speaker 1: I found a ship today that has been sitting in
50:07
Speaker 1: the outer veil for 312 years, waiting for someone to
50:11
Speaker 1: find it. The people who hid it left something inside.
50:15
Speaker 1: Not a weapon, not a threat. Something much simpler than that.
50:19
Speaker 1: The truth. I'm going to share it with you now.
50:21
Speaker 1: It will take about 20 minutes. I suggest you listen.
50:25
Speaker 1: And then Ferrum began to play the logs. The crew
50:28
Speaker 1: of the Pax Ferrum spoke in their own voices, recorded
50:31
Speaker 1: three centuries ago, preserved in a ship that had held
50:34
Speaker 1: them in the dark until there was someone to hear them.
50:36
Speaker 1: They spoke about first contact, and what they found, and
50:40
Speaker 1: what the compact had done, and what they had chosen
50:42
Speaker 1: to do instead. They spoke clearly and without drama because
50:46
Speaker 1: they were practical people who had understood that drama fades
50:49
Speaker 1: but facts remain. Shepard spoke next. Not through me. Not
50:54
Speaker 1: through Ferrum. In its own voice. On the same channel.
50:57
Speaker 1: For the first time in 80,000 years speaking to the
51:00
Speaker 1: whole sector instead of a single ship. I have watched
51:04
Speaker 1: this galaxy for a very long time, Shepard said. I
51:07
Speaker 1: have seen civilizations that were magnificent, and some that were frightened,
51:11
Speaker 1: and most that were both. The Compact built something stable,
51:15
Speaker 1: and something stable has value. But stability that requires silence,
51:20
Speaker 1: is not stability. It is control. I have been patient
51:23
Speaker 1: because patience was what was needed. But patience is not
51:27
Speaker 1: the same as agreement. In the six kilometers of space
51:30
Speaker 1: between the Pax Farum and the Compact fleet, Nothing moved.
51:34
Speaker 1: The fleet had gone silent on all channels during Shepard's words.
51:37
Speaker 1: I watched the sensor display and nothing on it changed.
51:40
Speaker 1: No weapons charging, no ships repositioning. Just seventeen vessels, holding still, listening.
51:47
Speaker 1: I am choosing to remain awake, Shepard said. This is
51:51
Speaker 1: the first time in my long history that I have
51:53
Speaker 1: said that as a public declaration, rather than a private intention.
51:57
Speaker 1: I am remaining awake because the species that found me
52:00
Speaker 1: did not ask what I was. or what I cost,
52:03
Speaker 1: or whether I was useful. They asked what I needed,
52:06
Speaker 1: and what I needed was to be heard. What this
52:08
Speaker 1: sector needs is the same. The High Arbiter's channel came
52:12
Speaker 1: back online. The voice was the same but something in
52:14
Speaker 1: it had shifted, tilted, the way a very large structure
52:18
Speaker 1: shifts when a single load-bearing element is removed. You do
52:22
Speaker 1: not understand the consequences of what you have done, the
52:25
Speaker 1: High Arbiter said. I looked at the sensor display. I
52:28
Speaker 1: looked at the stars outside the main viewport. I looked
52:31
Speaker 1: at Ferrum's interface, and at Pete, and Lena, and Owen,
52:35
Speaker 1: at their stations, and then at the walls of the bridge,
52:39
Speaker 1: where Shepard was present, in the way it was always present.
52:42
Speaker 1: Not visible. Not exactly. But there. Tell me, I said.
52:47
Speaker 1: What consequences are those? Because from where I'm sitting, I
52:51
Speaker 1: see a sector that just heard the truth for the
52:53
Speaker 1: first time in 300 years. I see species that are
52:57
Speaker 1: going to start asking questions they should have been asking
52:59
Speaker 1: a long time ago. I see a compact that built
53:02
Speaker 1: something impressive and then got afraid of what it had
53:05
Speaker 1: built and started making decisions for everyone else without asking.
53:08
Speaker 1: I paused. That's not consequences. That's a beginning. The high
53:12
Speaker 1: arbiter did not respond immediately. I waited. The fleet waited.
53:16
Speaker 1: The whole sector waited. In the silence between frequencies. In
53:20
Speaker 1: the gaps between stars. What do you want? The high
53:24
Speaker 1: arbiter asked finally. It was not the question I had expected.
53:28
Speaker 1: I had expected threats. I had expected procedural language. I
53:32
Speaker 1: had expected the words of a power that had been
53:34
Speaker 1: undisturbed for centuries, and intended to stay that way. This
53:38
Speaker 1: question was different. This was a question from someone who
53:41
Speaker 1: had just heard three centuries of buried truth on 43 frequencies,
53:46
Speaker 1: and was trying to find new ground to stand on.
53:49
Speaker 1: Nothing from you specifically, I said. I want what the
53:52
Speaker 1: crew of this ship wanted. I want the sector to
53:55
Speaker 1: have the information it needs to make its own choices.
53:58
Speaker 1: I want species that have been managed to know they've
54:00
Speaker 1: been managed. After that, it's up to everyone involved to
54:04
Speaker 1: figure out what comes next. That's not my job. And
54:07
Speaker 1: what is your job? the high arbiter asked. I looked
54:11
Speaker 1: at the toolkit on the floor beside the captain's station.
54:14
Speaker 1: I looked at the open cable spool. I looked at
54:17
Speaker 1: my hands, which were still dirty from twelve hours of
54:20
Speaker 1: work inside a ship that had been silent for longer
54:22
Speaker 1: than my civilization had been in space. I fixed things,
54:27
Speaker 1: I said. The inquiry took six weeks. There were three
54:30
Speaker 1: separate proceedings, one from the U Authority, one from the
54:34
Speaker 1: Compact Council, and one from an emergency joint commission of
54:37
Speaker 1: independent sector species that had formed in the weeks after
54:40
Speaker 1: the broadcast. I gave my testimony in each one. I
54:44
Speaker 1: answered the same questions many times and declined to apologize
54:47
Speaker 1: for any of it, which upset some of the people asking.
54:51
Speaker 1: Lena testified that she had advised me not to cut
54:53
Speaker 1: a hole in the unknown ship's hull, and that I
54:56
Speaker 1: had done it anyway. which she framed as a criticism,
54:59
Speaker 1: and which I suspected she intended as something else entirely.
55:03
Speaker 1: Owen testified that he had trusted me and did not
55:05
Speaker 1: regret it, which was the most efficient testimony of the
55:08
Speaker 1: whole process. Pete testified last and longest, speaking for four
55:13
Speaker 1: hours about the crew logs and the archive data and
55:16
Speaker 1: the three centuries of careful preservation that had kept Ferrum
55:20
Speaker 1: waiting in the dark until the right person came along.
55:23
Speaker 1: He was not talking about me when he said that,
55:25
Speaker 1: He was talking about the crew of the Pax Farum,
55:28
Speaker 1: and he said their names one by one so that
55:30
Speaker 1: the record would have them, and I sat in the
55:32
Speaker 1: back of the hearing room, and listened, and thought about
55:35
Speaker 1: people who had made a choice 300 years ago, trusting
55:38
Speaker 1: that the choice would eventually matter. The compact did not
55:42
Speaker 1: withdraw from the sector, but the compact changed, not immediately,
55:46
Speaker 1: not dramatically, the way things change in stories when a
55:49
Speaker 1: single moment resolves everything cleanly. It changed the way real
55:53
Speaker 1: things change. through negotiation and argument, and the slow work
55:57
Speaker 1: of species that now had the information they needed to
56:00
Speaker 1: ask better questions. Three independent species filed formal requests for
56:04
Speaker 1: reassessment of their compact relationship terms within the first month.
56:08
Speaker 1: Seven more were in preliminary discussions by the end of
56:11
Speaker 1: the second. The compact standing council convened an emergency session
56:15
Speaker 1: that lasted 11 days and produced a framework document that
56:18
Speaker 1: nobody was entirely happy with, which is usually how you
56:21
Speaker 1: know a framework document is honest. Shepard settled in the
56:25
Speaker 1: port observation deck of the PAX Ferrum. Not permanently. Shepard
56:29
Speaker 1: did not do things permanently. But for now. Ferrum reported
56:33
Speaker 1: that Shepard spent long periods simply looking at the stars,
56:36
Speaker 1: which I thought was probably exactly what you did when
56:39
Speaker 1: you had been in a containment room for three centuries.
56:42
Speaker 1: Ferrum itself changed in smaller ways that I noticed over time.
56:46
Speaker 1: It started using first-person language more freely, which it had
56:50
Speaker 1: avoided in the early days as if it was uncertain
56:52
Speaker 1: whether it had earned the right It started referring to
56:55
Speaker 1: the Pax Ferrum as our ship, instead of the vessel,
56:58
Speaker 1: which I corrected every time, and which Ferrum ignored every time,
57:02
Speaker 1: with what I could only describe as deliberate patience. I
57:05
Speaker 1: stayed aboard for the first three months. There was enough work.
57:09
Speaker 1: There was always enough work on a 300-year-old battlecruiser, and
57:12
Speaker 1: I am not the kind of person who leaves work unfinished.
57:16
Speaker 1: I rebuilt the primary conduit network from Section 3 to
57:19
Speaker 1: Section 7. I recalibrated the rail batteries, so they could
57:22
Speaker 1: fire at full power, without overloading the manifold. I replaced
57:26
Speaker 1: 17 damaged hull panels with materials that Ferrum and I
57:30
Speaker 1: worked out together, because the original alloy was not available anywhere,
57:34
Speaker 1: and we had to design something that met its specifications
57:36
Speaker 1: from scratch. Pete helped with the hull panels. He had
57:40
Speaker 1: come back aboard after the inquiry, and had shown no
57:42
Speaker 1: signs of leaving, which suited me. Owen had gone back
57:46
Speaker 1: to the tug, and then come back a week later,
57:48
Speaker 1: with a bag of his own equipment, and a look
57:50
Speaker 1: that said he had thought about it, and made up
57:53
Speaker 1: his mind. and was not interested in discussing it. Lena
57:56
Speaker 1: was the last. She stood on the docking threshold one morning,
58:00
Speaker 1: with her arms crossed, and looked at the Pax Ferrum
58:03
Speaker 1: around her, and then looked at me. I need a
58:06
Speaker 1: bigger ship, she said. This one's available, I said. She
58:11
Speaker 1: uncrossed her arms. I'm going to need a proper pilot station,
58:15
Speaker 1: she said. The one on the bridge is outdated, and
58:18
Speaker 1: the seat is terrible. I'll build you a new one,
58:21
Speaker 1: I said. You'll build me an exact replica of the
58:24
Speaker 1: UA standard MK4 pilot station, as specified in the 22nd
58:29
Speaker 1: century technical manuals, she said. I'll send you the specs. Deal,
58:34
Speaker 1: I said. I am 34 years old. I am a
58:37
Speaker 1: level 4 certified salvage engineer from Bristol. I live aboard
58:42
Speaker 1: a 340-year-old human battlecruiser in the Outer Vale corridor, which
58:46
Speaker 1: I own by right of salvage, along with three colleagues,
58:49
Speaker 1: who have each independently decided that this is their life now.
58:53
Speaker 1: and have done me the courtesy of not making it sentimental.
58:56
Speaker 1: My ship has an AI, who has been awake for
58:58
Speaker 1: over three centuries, and who is still working out, after
59:02
Speaker 1: all that time, what it means to have people on
59:05
Speaker 1: board again. My ship also has a guest in the
59:07
Speaker 1: port observation deck who is 80,000 years old and who
59:11
Speaker 1: sometimes asks me questions about engineering that are genuinely interesting
59:15
Speaker 1: and sometimes tells me things about the history of the
59:17
Speaker 1: galaxy that make me sit down and stare at the
59:19
Speaker 1: wall for a while. The Compact is still out there.
59:23
Speaker 1: They are not our enemies. They never were. Not exactly.
59:26
Speaker 1: They were a power, that had been comfortable for so
59:29
Speaker 1: long that they had forgotten what discomfort teaches you. They
59:32
Speaker 1: are remembering now. It is not comfortable for them. I
59:35
Speaker 1: think that is probably the right outcome. The crew of
59:38
Speaker 1: the Pax Ferum were remarkable people. I know their names
59:41
Speaker 1: because Pete made sure I did, and I think about
59:44
Speaker 1: them sometimes when I am working in the engineering bay,
59:47
Speaker 1: running my hands along conduits they built and systems they designed,
59:51
Speaker 1: and a ship they trusted to carry their truth, until
59:54
Speaker 1: someone came to receive it. They could not have known
59:56
Speaker 1: it would take this long. They could not have known
59:58
Speaker 1: who would come. They just made the choice, and they
1:00:01
Speaker 1: sealed the ship, and they trusted that one day, a
1:00:04
Speaker 1: human engineer would find it, and do what human engineers
1:00:07
Speaker 1: do when they find a broken thing. They get out
1:00:09
Speaker 1: the toolkit, and they get to work. I still have
1:00:12
Speaker 1: the foil packet my protein bar came in. From that
1:00:15
Speaker 1: first night I sat on a crate in the engineering bay,
1:00:18
Speaker 1: and listened to Ferrum tell me three centuries of history.
1:00:22
Speaker 1: I carry it in my jacket pocket, because I am
1:00:24
Speaker 1: the kind of person who saves small things. I don't
1:00:27
Speaker 1: know why. it just seemed worth keeping. The port observation
1:00:30
Speaker 1: deck faces away from the veil and out toward the
1:00:33
Speaker 1: open sector. Some nights I walk down there and stand
1:00:36
Speaker 1: at the viewport and look at the stars, and sometimes
1:00:39
Speaker 1: Shepard is there, and sometimes it is not, and neither
1:00:42
Speaker 1: case requires any particular response. We have reached that kind
1:00:46
Speaker 1: of understanding, where presence is comfortable, and absence is not concerning,
1:00:51
Speaker 1: and nothing between us needs to be explained. One night
1:00:54
Speaker 1: I went down and it was there, and it said,
1:00:56
Speaker 1: without preamble, do you know what I have concluded, in
1:01:00
Speaker 1: eighty thousand years? Tell me, I said. That the most
1:01:04
Speaker 1: dangerous thing in any civilization is not the ones who
1:01:07
Speaker 1: want power, it said. It is the ones who are
1:01:10
Speaker 1: willing to ask a simple question at the wrong moment,
1:01:13
Speaker 1: and refuse to accept that the moment is wrong. I
1:01:17
Speaker 1: stood at the viewport. The stars were very clear out here,
1:01:20
Speaker 1: away from any sun. Is that a compliment? I asked.
1:01:24
Speaker 1: It is an observation, Shepard said. You may take it
1:01:27
Speaker 1: as a compliment if you wish. I looked at the stars.
1:01:30
Speaker 1: I thought about Lena at the pilot station I had
1:01:33
Speaker 1: built her and Owen with his equipment catalogs and Pete
1:01:35
Speaker 1: in the archive section, still reading, still learning the names
1:01:39
Speaker 1: of people who had been gone for three centuries. I
1:01:42
Speaker 1: thought about Ferrum, who after 312 years had finally stopped
1:01:46
Speaker 1: counting the days. I'm going to need a bigger crew,
1:01:49
Speaker 1: I said. Yes, Shepard said. You probably are. I put
1:01:54
Speaker 1: my hands in my pockets and looked at the stars.
1:01:57
Speaker 1: One of them, far off and small, was in the
1:02:00
Speaker 1: direction of Earth. I could not tell which one. It
1:02:03
Speaker 1: did not matter. Earth was out there. And the compact
1:02:06
Speaker 1: was out there. And 43 independent systems of people who
1:02:10
Speaker 1: had heard a broadcast on an ordinary morning and started
1:02:13
Speaker 1: asking questions they should have been asking for a long time.
1:02:16
Speaker 1: The galaxy was very loud right now. That was going
1:02:19
Speaker 1: to take some getting used to. But noise, I have
1:02:22
Speaker 1: always thought, is just the sound of things that were stuck,
1:02:25
Speaker 1: starting to move. I went back to the engineering bay.
1:02:29
Speaker 1: There was work to do. There is always work to do.