† 009 [31 july, shortly after fitz's post]

[klutziness]

[even though the feed is garbled, rikkus' frustration and something akin to fear are clear in her voice]

Don't be ▒▓▒▓ing idiots. Get to medbay or somewhere not en▒▓neering! Trust me, you don't want a▒▓ of what's here.

[there's a short pause]

I need my engineering cr▒▓ on deck though. Stay together, stay safe. Find Fitz, stick with him. He'll ▒▓▓▒▒▒

[the feed abruptly cuts to white noise]

Comments

aint nobody got time for anon for once, voice

[lostsoldier]

Anybody got odds on survival if we do it? Ballpark figures? Risks? Anything?

[ Where my smart science people at. ]

[voice]

[sorrycharles]

The Tranquility’s mission was to find habit▒▓▓▒ ▒lanets.

Now ▒▓n Rijn wants to help us find our homes.

Given the disparity in ▓▓▒▒▒olog▒cal advances, in the event of surrender, I project a zero ▓▒▒cent chance of survival for planet earth in 197▓.

Back to you.

[lostsoldier]

I'm not arguing with you there.

voice

[knackered]

We're running out of munitions and by the sound of it alone, the ship has taken serious damage. It didn't look good either while I was out there. [Space ships, air ships, water ships; they all needed a certain amount of structural integrity. Arthur is by no means an expert but it doesn't take an expert to use their eyes and ears to gauge serious damage to any vessel.]

The risk is death, but that goes without saying now. Anything we do will have a high chance of mortality--near certainty, if we keep trying to fight them and do nothing else.

If nothing is done, we will be captured, and-or killed. We don't need numbers to tell us that.

[although he wouldn't mind if someone had a more sciencey take on it.]

[kutte]

We're in bad fucking shape. I'll second that, we can't keep this up for much longer.

[ no science, just the view from the gunnery deck to back this up. ]

[knackered]

[with arthur's experience in warfare a firsthand update is science enough]

It's up to us if we want to surrender to the people with more guns who want to kill us, or attempt a risky escape on a very likely crippled ship. No option is a good option but I'm trying not to think on it too much.

[kutte]

Better to risk it than the turn ourselves over. I'm betting whatever happens to us once they've got ahold of us isn't going to be pretty.

[dogbane]

biological liquefaction following the physics of jump failure don't sound pretty either.

incidentally, this process is instantaneous and poorly understood.

the process of experimentation, building manticores or whatever the fuck-- we have insight into that. we've seen it takes time. say what you want about how sinister that sounds, but nothing's actionable when you're fucking dead.

[knackered]

Nothing is actionable if you're locked up and sustaining torture.

It won't fail if enough of us put force behind it. The connection to the ship has to serve a purpose for better or worse and we ought to use it to our advantage, especially when it's our ONLY advantage.

[kutte]

So what, you wanna suffer and let them turn you into a fucking monster or die while they try? Hell of a cop-out when we got at least one play left. I'll take a quick death over that shit.

voice

[lostsoldier]

Plenty of things can kill you. I'll take a shot in the dark over what's out there any day, but we're gonna need more than me and you to do this.

[ And passionate but vague speeches aren't going to convince everybody. So: numbers. ]

voice

[knackered]

[he'd have been more specific but space-age technology is about 70 years in his future. he's just been doing an incredible amount of reading since he arrived months and months ago.

basically: he agrees wholeheartedly.]

We're going to need everyone. Or as many people as we can possibly enlist.

--So, right. Everyone.

pardon me im going to delete lower-down comments to reduce redundancy and move em around

[dogbane]

there are families on this fucking ship.

families who can't get off at this point because we've blown our wad on fucking shuttle fuel.

if you are telling me you'll give these kids an immeasurable-to-1% chance of survival based on incomprehensible physics, unseen technology, and the psychic abilities of amoral demons we have zero goddamn control over, instead of opting to fight the local military and their scary petri dishes, then you are an asshole.

[EVEN IF YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE WITH A NICE BUTT ON EITHER SIDE OF IT.]

[forgodssake]

we have been fighting them and we are losing

"scary petri dishes" are yo
u out of your fucking mind?

[dogbane]

when is the last time you won a fight against exploding in a giant fireball plus or minus imploding vacuum of space using technology you didn't know shit about?

can you tell me how you managed

because that would make any of your fucking arguments sound actually sane

short of that.

video

[knackered]

[this is england. this is england being stern, and not shouty. this is england looking like england and not some 20-year-old english brat.]

William.

I never would have suggested this if I thought there was any way we could avoid it. If there is slim hope then we ought to take that road, but we have more control over this than if we surrender our control to them.

Do you want those families to suffer under a government who doesn't give a bloody fuck about us?

This is our best option and we ought to prepare for it whether it happens or not.

voice.

[navigational]

Tell me how to quantify our ability to control forces we don't understand in opposition to an entity of unknown origin, power, and motive, and I'll run some numbers for you.

voice.

[knackered]

If you come up with the odds, I'll place a bet.

voice.

[navigational]

From the sound of it, you already have.

voice.

[knackered]

Not to anyone who will pay up anytime soon, I'm afraid. Unlikely options are sometimes the better ones, based on personal experience.

Still, if you can run unknown variables to give us unobtainable numbers maybe that would tilt things in our favour. [he's trying not to be a snarky asshole so his tone is 'grim humour' instead of 'spiteful sarcasm']

voice.

[navigational]

[ How about some exhausted pessimism. ]

Point two.

voice.

[lostsoldier]

Mostly I'm wondering how likely it is we'll blind-jump into the middle of a sun. If we can't control this thing, I can estimate a snowball's chance in hell well enough on my own.

voice.

[navigational]

My universe was approximately four percent matter. The likelihood of random jump coordinates placing us somewhere that matter was consolidated enough to cause problems would have been significantly smaller.

[ He could probably do that math more accurately but please don't ask me to pleaaaase. ]

But that was my universe.

voice.

[lostsoldier]

Well, we don't exactly have time to survey this one, so I'll take it.

And hey, those odds aren't even half bad.

voice.

[navigational]

There's also the possibility that the jump coordinates wouldn't be entirely random and that the entity of unknown power and so on would nudge us into a sun out of spite.