Day One. Officially, anyway. Up until now, Tinaya has been wearing full
dress uniform, which is usually reserved for ceremonies, and other formal
events, such as her Commissioning Ceremony last week. But she has not been
allowed to take it off throughout the entire transitional period.
Traditionally, this week has not been part of the program for shift changes,
but this is what the council decided on some years ago, and it’s the first
time they’ve had the opportunity to see it through. In a weird twist on
these procedures, Tinaya even has to sleep in these damn things, which have
not been very comfortable, and she doesn’t really understand why they forced
it upon her. Lataran didn’t have to do that, though she has her own
problems. They had her Advancement Ceremony yesterday, where she was awarded
the rank of Admiral. She will now become Tinaya’s primary advisor, and she’s
struggling with it in ways that she has yet to clarify for Tinaya. If Soto
Tamm were still alive, and hadn’t been stripped of his rank, he would be
serving in this capacity as well. One day. One day, when Tinaya advances as
well, there will finally be two Admirals at once.
It’s different for her, though. She is not the same kind of captain as Halan
Yenant, Kaiora Leithe, Soto Tamm, or Lataran Keen. She’s only here to act as
a bridge between Lataran and whoever ends up getting the job next. They
still don’t know who that’s going to be, but they have about ten years to
find them. They will become a normal captain for the next twenty-four years,
and all will be right with the world. Tinaya is just here to make sure that
happens. She had to lobby for the title of Interim Captain, instead of a
regular Captain. What does this do? Very little right now, but once her
shift is over, she’ll be promoted to Vice Admiral, instead of Full Admiral,
and that distinction is quite important. It’s not just symbolic, but even if
it were, that would be enough. She doesn’t want this to be seen as a
dynasty, as she explained to the council before accepting this position. The
people need to know that she’s not a power-hungry monster; that she is only
here to help. She’s humble; one of the people.
Everyone knows her already, of course. She’s been working alongside the crew
since the beginning of the year, and she was famous before this anyway. But
still, now that the transition period is over, she wants to address the
crew. Literally the entire crew. Thistle—the not-so-artificial
intelligence—is handling every single one of the ship’s systems. Obviously,
he could always be doing this, even if he weren’t pretending to not be a
real boy, but they’re not going to cancel hundreds of jobs just because of
the logic. People want to work, they want to contribute. And one way that
Tinaya contributes is by making them feel valued and welcome. And
comfortable. She’s standing on stage. Lataran is at her flank, smiling
widely, and ready to add her two cents if she’s called to. Arqut is to
Tinaya’s other side. He’s no longer the Superintendent, having stepped down
at the same time Tinaya stepped up. There is no one in the position right
now, but if he’s still alive when the need arises again, he’ll get back to
it...unless someone asks him not to, in which case he’ll have a decision to
make.
Tinaya is thinking about all this, stuck in her own head again. Lataran
clears her throat suggestively. “Yes, thank you, Admiral Keen,” Tinaya says
into the microphone for all to hear. “I wasn’t asleep. I wanted to wait one
more minute for any stragglers.”
“Everyone’s here,” Athan says from the steps of the stage, where it does
seem like he’s been keeping a close eye on the crowd. “I counted.” He was
Lataran’s First Lieutenant, but his shift is over now too. Tinaya has yet to
replace him, or the Second Lieutenant. He has some ideas for her, but she
hasn’t taken the time to look them over. He’s widely considered to be the
hardest working man on the ship, having served as Tamm’s Second Lieutenant
before this, and just generally being known to go above and beyond with his
duties. He’s probably exhausted, but he’s probably right about who Tinaya
should choose as her lieutenants.
“Thank you, Lieutenant Velitchkov,” Tinaya says, into the mic again.
“Uh, it’s Mister Velitchkov,” he corrects.
“Not until you stop helping me, and start focusing more on self-care,
Lieutenant,” she says affectionately, triggering the audience’s laughter.
She starts to raise her voice, which likely forces the sound engineer to
lower the volume on the speakers. “Now that we’ve confirmed our headcount,
we’ll begin. I won’t keep you too long, I know that you all have very
important things to get to. It is my hope that you will consider this to be
a nice, relaxing break, rather than a dreadfully annoying inconvenience. I
know that transitions can be difficult, and I want to thank you all for
being so patient and helpful to me during my first week. I’m warning you now
that I will continue to need your help as we push forward to our objective.
I won’t talk about that, though; that none of us will be alive to see the
Extremus planet. Every leader who has ever given you a speech has mentioned
how brave you are for that. You already know that you are. Instead, I’ll
remind you that I have a lot of experience in helping people make their
respective departments and jobs better. I didn’t succeed in that alone, and
I won’t succeed in this new job alone either. I need you. Therefore...I need
you to be comfortable.
“I had my security briefing earlier this morning, where I was informed that
the majority of you have been operating under PREPCON Three. I have worn the
armor module myself before. I know how heavy and cumbersome it can be,
especially after long periods of one-g. They also informed me that some of
you have lowered the gravity in your sections to help with this. I’m not
going to get you in trouble for that, but I would like it to stop. It places
undue strain on our power systems, and risks the integrity of propulsion.
The preparedness conditions were created by a group of smart Earthans who
knew nothing of temporal manipulation. In particular, they didn’t know about
teleportation. I am not at liberty to downgrade our condition to PREPCON
Four. That is a military decision that I cannot overrule unless I want to
instigate martial law, which I know none of us wants me to do. However, it
is well within my rights to alter the mandate for my people. The military
can do whatever they want. They are seeing a threat, whether it is there or
not, but if it’s there, it will be their job to handle it; not yours. I am
creating a new condition between Four and Three. I dunno, let’s call it
Three-point-Five.
“You will wear your base modules, and your response modules over them, along
with your glove liners, just like you would if you were in PREPCON Four. In
addition, you will place your armor modules in active support mode, and each
and every one of you will know where it is at all times, and maintain a
spatial tether to it for your safety. It doesn’t have to be nearby, but you
can’t sever the tether for any reason. At the first sign of danger, you will
apport your armor module to your exact location, and be automatically inside
of it. This is something that the models we use on the Extremus have always
been capable of. We just needed to switch the feature on shipwide. Please
note that this compromise applies to the general population of the crew
unless given other orders. There will be times when your duties demand that
you be wearing the armor module regardless, or even the PRU and helmet. I’m
certainly not going to let you go on a spacewalk without these things. Also
note that I have the power to change this at any point, for anyone and
everyone. I could push you all to PREPCON One if I wanted to. It’s a moving
target, as it always has been. Does this all sound fair?”
The crew seems rather responsive to this modification to the rules. Some
seem extremely relieved by it. The Exin Empire is a constant threat to them,
but as long as the ship stays in intergalactic space, there shouldn’t be any
territorial disagreements. They could always come up and attack them
unprovoked just because they’re assholes, but no one has given Tinaya a
reason to believe that this will actually happen. The security briefing
reported wide open spaces from here to the Extremus planet. The fact that
they are at PREPCON Three is more of a precaution, based on a sense of
paranoia that will hopefully lessen over time. She doesn’t want everyone to
live in fear. If they’re going to do that, they may as well turn right back
around and return to Gatewood.
Tinaya goes over a few more things. She welcomes others who have started
their own shifts this week, and preemptively thanks those whose shifts will
be ending soon. When the meeting is over, she sends them all back, either to
active duty, or their downtime. Having heard that it was over, Thistle pings
her to ask for a private meeting. She obliges, but takes Lataran and Athan
with her. They teleport to the captain’s ready room, which Lataran
apparently only ever used once. There are plenty of other secret meeting
places on the ship, and she was always partial to a literally invisible room
right next to the portal that led to the Bridger Section.
Thistle appears as a hologram. “I didn’t ask for them to be here.”
“Anything you can say to—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” Thistle demands. “You have any idea how many
times I’ve heard every cliché in the book? At any rate, this involves the
two of them. I’m not sure how you’ll want to proceed after I tell you what
I’ve discovered after I was given access to the navigational data.”
“Oh,” Lataran says. “You’re talking about the recourse jumps. Oh my God, I
totally forgot about those.”
“Me too,” Athan agrees.
“I’ve not forgotten,” Tinaya says, “because I don’t know what they are.”
Thistle glares at Lataran in case she wants to answer instead.
She does. “Sixty-two years ago, then-Captain Yenant made a major course
correction to save the ship from collision with a planet that was placed in
its path to destroy the passengers. It would have resulted in the death of
our ancestors, the prevention of all of our births, and the end of the
mission forever. He went into hock for it, and died disgraced.” She is
reluctant to continue, but musters the courage. “Olindse Belo was
subsequently assigned to replace him as interim Captain, before Kaiora
Leithe took over the position for a full shift. Before the transition, the
two of them got together, and came up with a plan. They didn’t want to be in
the void. That’s not where we’re going. We’re not trying to get tens of
thousands of light years from where we started. We’re trying to get to the
other side of a galaxy. In order to reclaim this objective, they started
making new course corrections. Tiny ones. Tiny, imperceptible ones, thanks
to the ship’s emergency teleporter.”
Tinaya stuffs her face in both of her palms, and incidentally moistens them
up with a deep exhale. She pulls her eyes out from under her fingers, but
keeps her nose and mouth still trapped. “Are you trying to tell me that this
ship has been turning for sixty years, and no one noticed!”
“Yes,” Athan replies.
“We’re all complicit,” Tinaya laments. “We’re all complicit in a crime.
Halan Yenant is considered to be the greatest Captain this ship has ever
seen, and they still threw him in hock for it. You think they won’t do the
same to us when they find out?”
“As I said,” Lataran goes on, “they’re tiny jumps. They’re within tolerable
margins. They’re not illegal at all.”
Tinaya exhales again, but is now looking straight up, trying to gradually
blind herself with the ceiling light. “Those margins are there to account
for course deviations that occur during minor gravitational disturbances
through space while traveling at reframe speeds. That’s what I was just
talking about with the crew; blaming them for messing up our vector to feel
a little more comfortable in their suits. Now I’m finding out that them
adjusting the internal gravity of a few work areas hasn’t had any effect at
all, and our problems with propulsion are actually the result of a
systematic plan to undermine the rule of law on this ship, which has been
going on since I was born. That is unacceptable Lataran. How can you be so
calm?”
“Well, I found out about it myself more than two decades ago.”
“Well, to be fair,” Athan interjects, “you weren’t upset about it like she
is.”
Lataran ignores this remark, and redirects her attention to Tinaya. “I’ve
told you, captains keep secrets. You’ll do it too. You’ll even keep this
one.”
“Oh, will I?”
“Yes, because if you don’t, we’re screwed!” she cries.
“We’re already screwed!” Tinaya cries back. “The whole reason Halan made
that sacrifice is to protect us from the Exins, who want us to stay away
from their beautiful little hellscape paradise. We’re in the void to
survive, and the closer we get back to the galaxy, the more danger we’re
in.”
“That’s another benefit of it being little by little,” Lataran reasons. “By
the time we get back to it, we’ll be far beyond their region of space.
There’s no way that they’ve taken over the whole galaxy.”
“They’re time travelers, Lataran! All they have is time. Yes, they may have
taken over the whole galaxy. They may have done it four billion years ago!”
Lataran scoffs. “That’s not what the intelligence reports determine.”
“Maybe not,” Tinaya agrees, “but this is still a breach of trust. I ran my
campaign for First Chair on a platform of transparency, and I erased my own
job to actually make that work. I didn’t want to take this position because
of how secretive it is, and I hoped to change that. But on my first full
day, I learn that there is something I can’t change, because not only will
it ruin the reputation of my aunt, but put my best friend in hock for the
rest of her life. Either I get on board, and run the risk of the same
outcome for all of us eventually, or I do the right thing now, and end up
being the only one left unscathed, if that. Arqut was Superintendent, did he
know?”
“Doubtful,” Athan responds.
“I never told him,” Lataran adds.
Tinaya frowns, and tries to figure out what she’s going to do about this.
She’s damned if she does, and damned if she doesn’t. But if she comes clean,
it’s worse for everyone. At least there’s hope that everything turns out
okay if she just keeps lying, as Lataran predicted. So that’s the clincher.
“Thistle, erase all knowledge of this from your memory. We’re covering this
up. Goddammit.”
