Unguided, 8: Things That You Can't Ignore
12 Mar 2021Meowers
( 12.03.3307 )
( Lave )
Had to do this quick sketch, because my plans had changed. Hah, with these nine bombed stations plans of the whole Galaxy had changed a lot.
Poor bastards. I know that living in core systems will most likely get you eventually stuck in a tar pit of messy power games, because the vast majority of the jobs there are associated with them somehow, so they're probably no simple peasants. But hells, those were civilian installations. Ci-vi-li-an. There were families living there, with innocents who now paid an ultimate price for someone of their relatives serving the wrong master. What treatment other than plain hatred those NMLA folks and whoever led them deserve after this? I highly doubt anyone will try to reason with them. And yet I still have that hunch about NMLA being someone's dirty ops squad. Someone is pulling their strings, someone connected to higher politics and interested in this shocky bloody incident, yet trying to keep the face clean. Obviously, power games are the main threat for humanity, as they have been for centuries.
Godsdammit. Even I, a person who doesn't mind some guerrilla bombing of enemy installations during wars, riots, uprisings, anything else, can't get the idea of this terrorism stuff. Do you wear a uniform or some corpo badge? Be aware of the consequences, someone may be hostile to you, someone may want to shoot you without asking your name and bomb your facility to oblivion. Defend, surrender, flee or be dead. Goes good for any armed conflict when targets are definitely full of those with whom you are at war, with any civilian casualties being an accident, an unwanted collateral damage. But a deliberate attack on civilians? Sure some miserable crap. It's an act of a coward, not a warrior.
But these 'superpowers', as I've said before, obviously had it coming. Their leaders chilled in Sirius, playing this Summit debate stuff with each other, while the whole system was turned into a killzone, dangerous for everyone who was unhappy with their pompous chit-chat. That was too simple: they just threw in a gorgeous wad of cash into the bounty pot, marked unfavourable people 'wanted', thus effectively putting them into one bin with utter lowlifes and waited until half-witted trigger-happy hordes come in. What about the rest of the systems, controlled by Feds, Imps or Alliance? Major part of somehow useful are under local corporate rule, with people being squeezed dry on tedious exhausting jobs, and those authorities are having their slice of pie, gladly offering corpofarts their protection and other comfy conditions to run their business in exchange for some taxes. A protection from whom?
Go summarise it. You'll probably hear a boom. Too bad that all this already grim situation can be used to consolidate people against a 'common enemy' with the authorities enjoying their benefit of increased influence on citizens growing over-patriotic. History has its lessons about similar stuff. And I can see how people are gathering around their flags, planning on revenge.
Anyway, I'll try to help with the aftermath. If at least one of a hundred of these civilians will ponder about superpowers doing something wrong with the society, this will be a seed for the future. Maybe I'll throw them a couple of phrases along the way to give a point to think about. Heading out for the Lave system, it's the closest evacuation zone to me, and the Lave Station is some kind of an icon, as far as I know. Had to swap shield cell batteries and modules reinforcement package for the most spartan economy-class passenger cabins. Even left my main combat shield generator stored and purchased a smaller one, to gain more room for cabins. Marshmallow is neither a freighter nor a passenger vessel, but I have a great confidence in her, and with that improvised refitting I would be able to pack a small bunch of them onboard. Better than nothing. Should've done it yesterday though, but I was in no condition for flying after a dozen combat sorties.
(Into the heat)
Lave Station surely had seen better times: there were flame bursts, smoke and debris all over the place, red emergency lights, electric sparks and even melted metal. Floating jagged chunks were littering the way between the airlock and the landing pads, but evading bigger of them and clearing through smaller ones wasn't a problem for Marshmallow: hey, we're evading incoming plasma charges on regular, not to mention some flying scrap. Shields were way lower than usual, although pretty invulnerable for any present environmental threats, except heat. Well, I hadn't tested them boost-ramming the walls, something tells me that now isn't the best time to do that.
Escape pods, too. They were floating around the main flight corridor: you certainly don't want to be stuck inside one of these waiting for someone to pick you up, I guess. Vents and cooling equipment had failed, so it was damn really hot inside, I mean, not 'my hot water is stuck open' hot, but a 'deadly hell cosmic stellar scorching' hot, because it's nowhere to dissipate the heat in space with cooling machinery torn to pieces, and fires all over the place burning out what's left of oxygen. So it's heatsink drop on going inside, heatsink drop on going outside. At least they had emergency equipment working in the docking area, where all the people headed: only hanging in the flight corridor caused hull overheating, but not that critical, I had a time to dock or take off.
(Docked at the damaged station)
Their passenger lounge was turned into an evacuation terminal, a gathering place for all those who were found alive or who could get there on their own. Hundreds of civilians were huddling wherever possible, crouching in fear and pain, many of them were injured, with bloody bandages and scraps of clothings over hastily treated wounds, some even had their limbs severed off. Certainly a view that many of them will see in nightmares, again, again and again. Lave medical definitely had their hands full patching them up, but yet there's too many.
A woman in protective gear, I suppose, a fairly important person in this whole operation, called me crazy and pointed towards this gathering area. Am I crazy? I'm piloting a spaceship. Reliable and properly functioning spaceship. And she's here with her face scratched, arms tired and only this battered emergency suit between her and the flames, without my luxury of having tonnes of military-grade armour and life support. And yet she's full of determination, standing tall, with that spark still shining in her weary eyes. Damnit. Caught myself staring at her perhaps a bit longer than needed, given the circumstances. Double damnit, not now.
So, that was an inspiring sentimental part. Now I welcome everyone aboard my hitchhiker-class makeshift cruise liner and outta here at last we go.
But... Just look at this message, sent by some arrogant piece of passenger.
(Passenger demands more luxury)
Argh, I'm terribly, terribly sorry for not offering you some oysters, cigars and wine list. But the fresh conditioned air here is a bit better than smoke on the station and certainly much better than space vacuum outside. You can call the management and leave your complaint. At least I'm in here not for the money.
And a photo of rescue megaship floating nearby, 5 megametres away from station. Like 'I was there'. What scares me the most is the frightening silence on the comm panel, looks like I'm the only one here who's not from the official rescue teams. Ah, okay, I got this, Sol, Alioth and Achenar are more important.
(Rescue megaship at Lave)
I'll stay here and do the good stuff.
Update: Yup, finally saw some chat on textcomm and private ships doing rescue runs. It's not that bad now.
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Next part: #9: Independence Week
Next part: #9: Independence Week