This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/KyleKKent on 2025-05-12 21:12:49+00:00.
Elsewhere, With Others
“So Torment, I’m actually asking this of all Vishanyan, but why did your people choose the naming scheme you use? It seems deliberately clunky.” Harold asks.
“No more or less than any other naming scheme. Most beings just rarely bother to translate their names. From my understanding your name is at least in part saying, Room of Arms and Armour and Son of James.”
“But do you have to translate it directly?”
“Yes.” Torment states.
“Yes, but why?” Harold asks.
“Why are you so insistent on asking these things?”
“Psychology. It may be a softer science but it’s a field that can be understood either way. And the first step to understanding things is to get as much information about is as possible, then look for patterns. After that you compare it to other similar patterns and see if you can find a match, and then you keep going on from there, but the first step is always gather information.” Harold says.
“So you’re studying us.”
“I study everything around me, constantly.” Harold corrects her.
“That does not deny my statement.”
“No, it doesn’t. But it does clarify that this isn’t special. You’re getting the same routine I give to everyone. The only reason you’re really noticing is that you’re the new thing around. Also your ship is under-armoured. You could easily fit a few more inches of plating on all the major bulkheads and angle them a little more to better deflect physical attacks and dissipate the heat from lasers and plasma.”
“That would slow the ship.”
“Not any appreciable amount. Dodging is good, never even being attacked is better. But sometimes the galaxy reminds you who’s really in charge and it’s not any of us. A little more armour rarely hurts.”
“And what do you expect us to need it for?”
“The same thing that left a dent in the portside lower armour plating on your ship. It went in a decimetre deep and was a full half meter across. I assume you hit a chunk of granite that was angled in such a way as to deflect any standard sensors. Bad luck, but it does happen.”
“... A decimetre?” The Captain of The Silent Watcher asks in a tone of horror.
“Yes, near the failure point of your plating if my estimates are correct. You need to not only fix that, but just a bit more armour on all those sides will save you a lot of headaches in the future.” Harold says. “If you don’t mind other peoples poking around, I’m sure I can get some men off the RAM to spare some time to fix things up.”
“And The RAM is?”
“One of the two modular ships that are currently docked with this larger vessel. The RAM is Repair and Maintenance. It’s opposite, The RAD is Research and Development. Or in other words The RAM brings to life what The RAD dreams up.”
“And you think I’m going to allow another people into my ship to potentially sabotage it and strip out it’s secrets?”
“... You’re refusing free repairs on your ship AFTER I pointed out damage nearing a critical state?” Harold asks.
“I will need to investigate it myself to see if it truly requires repair.”
“It’s your ship Captain.” Harold says. “Anyways speaking of ships we have reached the part of this ship where if you want to you can enter the other ships. That airlock will lead directly to The RAM if you so desire, and directly below us deck wise is the same thing for The RAD. The lift is that door that which will bring you to where you want to go. Any questions so far?”
“Why did you bring us here first?”
“I saw the damage and assumed you would want to speak with the boys on The RAM to see about undenting your ship. But if not then this is just part of the tour.” Harold says. “So, moving on. We’re approaching the rear of the ship and are near the primary engines. As any of you with engine know how will be able to spot. We have more redundancies and numerous parts of the engine are designed to disengage from the central core. This is the Cruel Space modification. Too much Axiom in areas with too much Null gets disruptive in a very violent manner.”
“How so?”
“Boom. Normally a null dispersion only shuts things down, but if there’s enough power and enough Null... then it gets a lot more exciting.” Harold explains before grinning. “Double sided mushroom cloud exciting. Sacrificial Dummy ship reduced to molecules on the low end exciting. Vision permanently damaged due to sheer amount of light if you look at it exciting.”
Someone whistles.
“Finally! I was starting to wonder if you girls had trained your personalities out! Come on!” Harold says cheerfully.
“Is he always like this?” Torment asks.
“If he’s not like this then he’s being terrifyingly efficient. He considers fighting Axiom Adepts to be entertainment and training. I’ve seen him push himself until his own body rebels and then keep fighting. He considered it a sign he needs to improve his conditioning.”
“It was! I’m working on it!” Harold calls back and proves he’s still very much in hearing range.
The engines of The Inevitable are exactly as described and far, far more. Massive, overpowered and oversized, exactly what a ship this size needs just to have any amount of acceleration, but many of the components designed for more immediate acceleration and steering have hydraulics on them and clear lines of separation between themselves and their fellow components. The very idea of engines that you can throw a switch and pull it apart is ludicrous but... if it functions while pressed together, then it’s surely a good thing right?”
“How long does it take for the engines to actually be fully activated after changing configuration?” The Captain of The Silent Watcher asks.
“About an hour for activation. Deactivation requires two parts, the first is for the big red switch there to be flipped. It immediately shuts down and vents away power from the excess engines and allows the central engine core to keep working. Then is the slow process of pulling away the other parts of the engine because the central core by itself runs hot and needs maintenance more often.”
“Sounds like a danger.”
“It can be. But considering the sheer amount of cabin fever that Cruel Space hammers into the people navigating it, it’s regarded more like a feature. The constant need for maintenance busies the mind and prevents someone from going mad. Engineering had one of the easier times travelling from Earth.”
“Is there no form of Stasis that works without Axiom?”
“None that we’ve found. From my understanding there have been leaps in Cryo-Stasis technology. But there are a lot of biological considerations, especially if we don’t have Axiom to make up any mistakes made. Things need to be tested, retested and then Axiom drawn out of the equation. But I suspect when it and if it actually works, we’ll see a surge of movement form Earth. After all, I’m sure you don’t need to be told the benefits of passengers that don’t need to be fed, given room to keep healthy or any other large number of considerations. Oxygen for example.”
“Hmm... cryo-stasis. That would be uncomfortable.”
“No doubt. It looks like it’s going to take special medicines and likely training to get in and out of it without issue. But if it can be made to work then...”
“Your species leaves the part of the galaxy effectively set aside for you.” The Captain of The Silent Watcher states.
“That sounded... bitter.”
“Do you have any idea how many species would commit truly gruesome acts to have the advantages yours does? An entire portion of the galaxy set aside for you as if by divine birthright. That you are so eager to leave it is obscene.”
Harold turns to fully regard the Vishanyan woman and tilts his head.
“Do you not consider that we have had to pay for this ‘gift’? Or that it might have already cost us far more than most would value it?” Harold asks.
“Oh? Like what?”
“Our species has been shaped, entirely, by the Null. The very physical construction of our bodies, the psychology and even when we emerged as a species. Or even had the chance to emerge at all. Is all due to Null. But if we had emerged without it. We wouldn’t be a Tret like species. Trets would be a Human like species. Can you even begin to imagine how much history, achievement and power has been lost because we were in the depths of Cruel Space? As far as I understand, there aren’t actually words that accurately describe it. But suffice to say, it would bankrupt any nation, polity or person you can care to name. Easily.”
“And what does that have to do with the value of Cruel Space?”
“That IS the value of Cruel Space, and what it cost us to achieve. More than the rest of the galaxy has. We would have potentially been one of the first emergent species without it. Likely after The Nagasha, but before the Cannidors. And that’s IF we only emerged after the Dinosaurs. If we showed up before that... then we may very well have been the first species of the galaxy.” Harold says. “So there’s the price in full. Existence and galactic dominance without needing to fire a single shot. Tell me, can anything pay that price?”
“I...”
“So yes, it’s an excellent defence and partitioned off a heft chunk of the galaxy just for us. But it’s not perfect and the cost to it all was kinda... up there.” Harold says using his hand rising up as a visualization for the price before switching to pointing straight up to emphasize things. “So yes, Cruel Space is valuable. But we’ve paid so much for it that we’re defined by it. And that’s...
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1kl46wj/oocs_into_a_wider_galaxy_part_332/