| |
They sat in the pod a long time; talking, laughing, talking some more. Hannah and Brother Anderson informed Colin about their passage out of the communications shadow. Colin was surprised that Brother Anderson had told Hannah first, but he wasn’t upset at all about it. On the contrary, he thought he caught a sly look from Brother Anderson, indicating that everything had all gone according to plan.
In a way it had, which was strange to think, given that the ship was in ruins, and they were surrounded by chaos and death. But honestly, Colin felt happy - maybe more so than he ever had - sitting here talking to Hannah.
“So? What will we tell them?” she asked, referring to the communication back to fleet command. The three all took turns looking at each other. Finally, Brother Anderson broke the silence.
“It may not be in our best interest to divulge very much information. Especially not until we can better assess the stability of the ship after the required course correction.”
Colin watched Hannah as the robot spoke. He sensed an unspoken question. Or rather, he sensed that there was something about the implications of the robot’s comment that escaped her.
“We need to make a course correction to curve around from the asteroid orbit, to an eccentric solar orbit,” he began. Of course, she knew that. Every school child learned the basics of solar and planetary navigation, though the actual geometries involved were too specialized for general consumption, and were therefore reserved for in-depth analysis relevant to chosen profession. What she may not know was the correlation between the thrust required to make the navigational correction, and the structural integrity of the ship. “Once we initiate that maneuver, there is a high risk that... well, there’s no easy way to say this... The ship might not survive the maneuver.”
Now the slight confusion on Hannah’s face was replaced by confusion and no small amount of alarm. Her jaw hung open, and her eyes darted between Colin and Brother Anderson, who decided that perhaps Colin’s explanation was lacking a certain subtlety, and that perhaps the touch of a more qualified counselor was called for.
“If I may, it’s not quite as dire as it sounds. We are very well prepared for emergency evacuation, and there is very little risk of actual harm to our persons. We will be OK, Hannah. The biggest risk is loss of cargo. Essentially though, the cargo is the primary focus of the mission, so the mission of the ship is in jeopardy. It is for that reason that caution is advised in exactly what details to communicate to Central Operations Fleet Command Center.”
“Oh. So... You are saying we should lie to them, so they don’t think we screwed up their mission and hold us responsible?”
“Well, that is somewhat of an oversimplification but it essentially does correspond to my concerns. Right now, fleet command knows nothing about the ship’s status. They have received no reports since we entered the shadow nearly a year ago.”
“So they don’t know that the crew is dead.”
“Correct. They also don’t know that there were any survivors.”
“But they will find the ship’s remains eventually,” Colin interjected, “and even if we’re not here, they’ll track the logs, and they’ll know we survived. Then they’ll come looking for us.”
“Exactly,” agreed the robot.
“Surely they can’t punish us for surviving!?” Hannah refused to believe the implication.
“Not for surviving, no. But for failing to accomplish the mission, perhaps. There is precedent for such a response. It is not public record, but there have been similar occurrences in recent years. Surviving crewmen have been held personally responsible after loss of cargo, which resulted in forfeiture of wages due to mission failure.”
Both Hannah and Colin responded in minor outrage, Hannah with “that’s ludicrous!” and Colin with “I knew it!”
“The legal grounds for these scenarios are entirely controvertible, and the previous cases were appealed of course, but these appeals merely resulted in lengthy and very expensive battle through the judicial systems. It becomes a war of attrition - a very one-sided one though, since, comparatively speaking, the opponents are not on a level playing field in terms of the ability to fund such a war.”
“Yeah, as if any private citizen has any hope of out-spending the Ventas-Calir corporation’s lawyer budget!” Colin shook his head.
“I cannot in good conscious allow either of you to be put into that position. It would be completely unethical.”
“So what then. If the cargo fails, will you tell them we died in the maneuver?”
“I was thinking it would be best to not mention your presence at all, at least until we complete the maneuver successfully.”
“How is that possible?”
“The report could be written in such a way that it states that the crew has been killed, but focuses more on the physical and operational status.”
Colin thought about that. It could work. He was no expert on the art of operational communications, but he had seen more than a few reports of the type. Mission status updates were always forwarded to all crew-members. Most didn’t bother to read them, but Colin usually scanned them at least. He liked to know the basic gist of how operations were proceeding, so that he could assist Bryce with determining preventative maintenance schedules and system repair downtimes. Such planning was actually the chief’s job, of course, not his. But Bryce valued Colin’s input on such matters. Colin had sometimes wondered if the chief had been grooming Colin for a succession plan. It seemed a bit silly to think that; surely the fleet had more mid-level management track engineers, but here on the Ventas-341 there was a large experience gap. Most of the engineering crew were young, with limited experience, and even more limited aspirations. Aside from them, there was one mid-career guy who was the laziest son of a bitch Colin had ever met. At any rate, he had read enough system reports to be able to pick out the automated ones from the handwritten. The CSO handled the majority of such reports, and they tended to read a bit dry compared to the ones written by a human crew member. Automated probably wasn’t the right word, as the CSO appeared to actually compose each report from scratch, they were all slightly different, not just a cut and paste job. But still, they tended to sound a bit “roboty” if that was a word. If a robotic CSO were left to compose the upcoming report, it would not be out of character for that report to miss certain human factors, and focus on cold, pragmatic facts. And in the case of a loss of crew, the report would obviously HAVE to be handled by the CSO.
“Brother, I think this idea of yours just might work.”