This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/icallshogun on 2024-11-04 12:43:52+00:00.
Conspiracy Theory
Alex carefully crept the GX8 along the flightline, right up to what he assumed was the launch marker on the ground, and brought it to a stop. Hovering there on the gravitics while waiting for the very impenetrable capital-ship class shielding that currently obstructed the shuttlebay exit to be lowered.
“That is correct, we will be taking the Masamune. No, send my shuttle along as well, better to have it should we wish to depart at different times.” Eleya had figured out the comms quickly, holding a headset up to her face with the earcup tucked partway into the fluffy triangle of her own ear, and was now getting them clearance to depart. “Keep the security detail on there as well. I have my guard, but this will be a good practice. We will take advantage of that.”
He had slightly jumped the gun. Set off a lot of alarms when he lifted off, which as it turns out was something you were supposed to ask to do first. Which he knew. It was a stupid mistake driven by excitement that he should have managed better, particularly while in command of a ship, particularly with the fucking Empress sitting behind him. Lesson learned, no harm this time.
Based on what he’d heard so far, their escort wasn’t ready, so he went ahead and landed again while they waited. Used low-ready on the landing gear since it didn’t sound like they’d be disembarking. It was a neat feature that was largely not found on modern ships, which just put the exterior doors in more convenient locations so the struts didn’t need multiple settings.
Gave him time to actually dial in the destination, too. Not like he had a line of sight on McFadden. It wasn’t even a speck, a hundred and ten million kilometers away, and he was facing the wrong direction. Navicomp said they could do it in two hours, if they pushed the envelope of the inertial dampers. It didn’t even have kinetic buffers, which now that he was sitting in the cockpit of a real GX8 that could theoretically turn him into a very fine paste if not for a host of safeties, felt like a big issue. That seemed like something Carbon would have a fix for, or at least an idea on how to improve.
“Excellent. Would you verify the speed limits on the diplomatic lanes? Yes, very good. It is quite the distance, that will make it much more tenable. This channel will be open, let me know when we have clearance to depart.” She clicked the mic off and set the headset down, brushing the fluff in her ear out.
He had a pretty pertinent question waiting for her. “Hey, uh... how many g’s are Tsla’o capable of handling?”
There was a long pause. “That translation comes through as a question about how many of the seventh letter of your alphabet we can manage. Given it is a single letter, I imagine it is quite a few.”
Got him pretty literally there. Suppose it could have been worded better. “How many gravity of acceleration?”
“Gravity, as in the gravitational constant?”
“No, a ‘gee’ is the gravity of Earth. Denoted as a lowercase ‘g’ in physics, while the constant is a capital of the same letter.”
“Of Earth. The planet I am not from and have never visited?” Eleya had gotten a little snippy about the alarms. “I would just happen to know the mass of it and thus be able to calculate the local gravity so I could compare it to the gravity of a planet I am more familiar with?”
He waved her off. “Alright, jeeze. I get it.”
She rolled her eyes as loudly as possible, a huff punctuating her annoyance. “Tell me you have some other metric to calculate acceleration rather than, what is that, a multiple of how fast something falls on your planet?”
“How about meters per second squared? Translator like that one more?”
“Is that a Human second or a Tsla’o second?” She asked, absolutely deadpan before a hint of humor curled into her words. “Those are more standard, I should be able to calculate the difference without much trouble.”
He listened to her unlock her comm and start tapping away at it. Even if they didn’t push the engines past what the dampers could manage they’d be there in plenty of time. Alex locked the controls and slid the pilot’s seat back from the ready, twisting around to look at Eleya.
She glanced up at him for a moment then returned to tapping away at a conversion calculator.
He’d been going back and forth on the idea of the intrusion package for the last few days in the few moments of free time he had. Not so much about the legality of it, as something like this was likely just as illegal as the monitoring software that the ONI had planted in his head. Just the morality of it.
Alex turned away, sitting back in the seat as he pulled his own comm out and sent her a message. They had gotten English in the system remarkably fast, a text translator becoming an optional module. The included keyboard looked nothing like the one from his phone - the key layout was based on their keyboard - that Imperial Intelligence had checked for further intrusions, but it was the exact same color scheme. He suspected that was related.
Eleya didn’t react to his message but the reply came quickly.
Where did he draw the line between what he and Carbon had lost, and the potential harm this could do to the Confederation? It was all guesswork. Yes, Eleya - The Butcher - promised that she would use it with the utmost care. Surgical information gathering, not a strategic destruction of what they all assumed was ONI.
She cleared her throat, “it seems to be about fifty meters per second squared, before you get into requiring special equipment or dampening.”
“Oh, that’s well within the envelope.” That was right around five g’s, so they could squeeze a little bit of fun in.
Eleya locked her comm unit and slipped it back into her daman, idly poking through the computer at the navigation station.
How the fuck was she doing that? Did she get a comm link implanted too? He checked who he was sending messages to, and yes, it was Eleya.
He had been heated about this, sitting there with all those interface needles laced into his head, ready to fight about who got to keep what until somebody put a gun to his head. It still rankled him, absolutely, and thinking about it rekindled the flame easily.
She laughed and continued exploring the local system map on the navicomp.
Alex didn’t react to that. He really wanted to, but he kept himself nice and orderly, save for an annoyed sigh.
He could see her scrolling through nearby systems on the HUD, none of which they could reach without a ferry if they wanted to be there in a reasonable amount of time. He typed that really hard.
“Who in the hells are you talking to?” Eleya inquired, probably covering for his sudden burst of emphatic thumbstrokes.
This was annoying because he was now sure that Carbon probably saw their relationship as some sort of betrayal of the Tsla’o and was just keeping that hidden from him. “I’m explaining to Amalu how wrong his opinions on Oceanside Quartet are.”
He tried to dial himself back a little bit, reel the emphatic typing in to ‘disagreeing with a friend’ levels. He tapped out an addendum quickly.