Introduction
The Damocles set sail. It seemed like a turning point, but it really wasn’t.
When they blockaded Demeter our ancestors thought, “We are the last of the human race, we must be united!”
When they rendered Canto uninhabitable we thought, “They were threatening the entire economy!”
Whey they…when I…destroyed Grove Orbital I thought, “I am ending the killing.”They gave me a medal.
And then they built the Damocles.
They built the Damocles.
Why was it only then that we realized they were monsters?-The Memoirs of “Gentleman” Jack Cartwright
8-9 June, WY603 – Whistler, Deep Space
The communication device doesn’t have a light-delay indicator on it but Prime Wheeler seems to be seeing the crew in real-time. When asked where he’s calling from, he grimaces and sighs and admits he’s calling from “about five hundred meters above where we met last time”, indicating that he’s communicating in real-time from nearly thirty light years away. Wheeler has a “rather daring” offer for the crew. He explains much of what they knew: that there were artifacts recovered by The Council from Solace. They had been stolen by Jericho and subsequently retrieved by WDF Dauntless as they were being transported on Demeter. He believes they are now secured in a lab run by BioGen on Solace.
Wheeler goes on to explain that a gravitic anomaly now surrounds the entire Solace system, preventing any ships from surfacing anywhere close. His engineers believe that Legitimate Salvage can dive deep enough to circumvent this blockade. (He also implies that he’s been keeping an eye on the ship’s comings and goings and suspects they can dive even deeper.)
In exchange, Wheeler is offering a military refit of Legitimate Salvage at the Jericho shipyards in order to help them complete the mission, as well as asylum and a guarantee the crew would all be able to retire comfortably. He also informs the crew that one of the four recovered artifacts “Quebec” was a system utilizing quantum-entangled particles to communicate instantaneously anywhere. The Council reverse-engineered the device, and Jericho had procured the science. This clearly explains how Dauntless was able to pull Hamster out of her dive and the communications log retrieved from WDF Endeavor by Felicity Randall. The technology has obviously not been declassified, but Wheeler states that the entanglement process is incredibly time-consuming and expensive, so it’s not ready for commercial use.
Wheeler says the mission isn’t particularly urgent, but he suggests that with the launch of WDF Damocles, the entirety of Council space is likely to be on fire within months. The crew tells him they will consider it. They return the device to Mr. Simms and escort him from the ship.
While near Whistler, Aiden decides he wants to share his research with Florence Abinde, and the crew prepares to double-jump to Demeter. Meanwhile:
- Dirk attempts to contact Peach but receives no reply. Their itinerary has them at Trinity Station and financial transactions reflect normal operations.
- While looking for Jack’s whereabouts, Angelica discovers that his interest in Legitimate Salvage has been placed in a trust. No one, including Harvey and Dirk, had any foreknowledge. They put in a request for the details of the trust - notably to discover who the trustees are and if they have decision rights over the ship. Those that have known Jack the longest are concerned he may be undertaking something noble and dangerous and wants to protect the business from any fallout.
With the ship’s first jump out to deep space, Aiden and Dirk decide to conduct an experiment to see how “deep” he can take the ship in a dive - which should translate into how rapidly they could traverse the single-parsec jump. Thirty minutes after the dive, Dirk, under medical supervision, attempts to alter the ship’s dive. He successfully takes the ship deeper than expected. From the incredible subspace depth, he perceives the “predator” feeling from the deep seemingly passing them by and consuming a vessel in a dive above them. Is this what happens to some ships thought lost to misjumps?
Legitimate Salvage surfaces within a few dozen AUs of her target destination three-tenths of a second after Dirk altered the course. The rest of the crew experienced incredible discomfort and even Calliope “lost consciousness” during that time. The rest of the crew is furious and accuses Aiden and Dirk of conducting dangerous experiments without their knowledge, which they admit and attempt to apologize for.
Meanwhile, Dirk has a conversation with Calliope in an attempt to understand if she shares any of the same supernatural perceptions that Dirk and Tomoe have observed. She explains that her neural net doesn’t have the same structures that Aiden has isolated - but it’s within reason that someone like Dr. Abinde might be able to develop that in a future generation AI.
The crew goes over the dive system with a fine-toothed comb over several days and find no evidence of damage.
The question comes up on how to explain this second misjump to the non-shareholding crew. Aiden decides to come clean and tell the truth. They gather all hands in the galley and begin explaining, with slides and everything. Eventually, Dirk interrupts, “We have some crazy psychic alien shit happening that allows some of us to fuck with dives.”
To which Master Chief Scoville laughs and replies, “Bullshit!”
