How Do I Find Hazardous Waste Management Facilities in My

hazardous waste disposal facility near me

hazardous waste disposal facility near me - win

My ultra hardcore recycling guide for our house

Hi all,
I've been putting together info for how to recycle in Tucson while leveraging all the recycling options that are open to me: curbside, the city's upcoming glass drop-off, local and mail-in corporate-sponsored, and TerraCycle (a paid option). I aim to reuse or recycle every last bit of waste coming out of our house, no matter how crazy it may seem. Partly I just want to see how difficult it is; I recognize that my process isn't practical for most people.
Anyway, here's what I've gathered so far.

General principles

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  1. COMPOST: If it can be composted, compost it! (More on this below.)
  2. REUSE: If it can't be composted, reuse it! Reuse is always the most environmentally-friendly option.
  3. DONATE: If it can't be reused by you, donate it if it's something worth donating that someone else could use. https://tucsoncleanandbeautiful.org/ has a great directory for places that will accept various materials. Cero is a Tucson store that also accepts lots of stuff for donation and reuse. Donation usually involves transportation and some kind of carbon emissions, but it's still better than recycling. Don't donate junk! Donations aren't a free trash can.
  4. MUNICIPAL RECYCLING: If it can't be donated, recycle it locally using municipal recycling (curbside or drop-off). Recycle Coach has all the info you need on what municipal recycling can or can't recycle. ESGD's page on residential recycling also has some important guidelines. Recycling uses energy and involves carbon-emitting transport, plus not everything in a recycling waste stream actually gets recycled, so try to reuse first.
  5. LOCAL STORE DROP-OFF: If it can't be recycled using municipal recycling, recycle it at a local store for free. Earth911 has a search page that finds these stores and breaks them down by type, and TerraCycle's corporate-sponsored programs page also has some local programs. These programs typically ship their waste to a recycling partner, often TerraCycle in New Jersey, which adds to the environmental footprint of the process, so try to recycle municipally first.
  6. FREE MAIL-IN: If it can't be recycled at a local store, use one of TerraCycle's free corporate-sponsored mail-in programs. These programs end up sending waste TerraCycle, just like the local store drop-offs, but are arguably less efficient than sending a big communal batch of stuff, so try to use the local store drop-offs first.
  7. TERRACYCLE (PAID): If it can't be recycled using a mail-in program, use a paid all-in-one box to have TerraCycle recycle it if it's small and light. This is effectively the same as using one of the mail-in options above except that you have to pay, so try to use a mail-in program first.
  8. REGIONAL DROP-OFF: If it's a big bulky waste that can't be donated, see if it can be recycled outside of Tucson (e.g., save up Styrofoam for the next time I drive to Phoenix, where they do have the appropriate facilities). TerraCycle accepts almost anything, but their all-in-one boxes are pricey, so it may make more sense to save up big hard-to-recycle stuff like packaging for Phoenix or another big city, if you think you'll drive there at some point. Don't make unnecessary trips just to drop off waste!
  9. TRASH: If it can't be composted, reused, donated or recycled, throw it away and make sure that you follow the guidelines for hazardous waste disposal.
  10. GOLDEN RULE #1: Make sure that the material is clean. Clean waste streams are more valuable to recyclers, which helps keep costs down. Don't use too much water cleaning up stuff, but don't feel too guilty about using water, either! Dishwater usage is a tiny sliver of household water consumption, not to mention that industry and agriculture generally use much more water than homes.
  11. GOLDEN RULE #2: The goal of recycling is to break down your waste into "primary materials" (e.g., plastic, metal, paper, glass) that can be used by industry to make new products. The more mixed your materials, the more you need to research how to recycle it. Knowing the basics goes a long way. For example, I know that metal cans get melted down, so a paper or plastic label attached to the can doesn't worry me because I know that it will get burned off. But what about a milk carton, which is paper fused with plastic? Or the circuitry inside the plastic base of a CFL bulb? If you can't intuitively explain how the thing is going to get broken down into its primary materials, that's your cue that you need to do some research.
  12. GOLDEN RULE #3: Knowing the basics of how recycling centers work goes a long way. For example, if you know that you can't recycle plastic grocery bags curbside because they get stuck in the machines, that's a hint that you shouldn't try to recycle your plastic food wrap, either. Or if you know that plastic bottle caps fall through the holes of a separator, that's a hint that you need to research whether your beer bottle caps are recyclable (even though they're metal).
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Reuse and recycling guide for my home

This is not a comprehensive list of every recycling resource in Tucson, this is just for my house my household's needs. I've found that there's no one-size-fits-all solution if you want to reach close to 100% recycling/reuse, you end up having to come up with a list that's customized for your home, which requires research. I'm providing my list as a potential template as well as for inspiration.
Legend:
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How do I sort all this?

Right now, I'm using a makeshift system of lots and lots of bags to keep everything separate. My idea is to do a monthly "recycling day" and drop off everything that needs to be dropped off as well as mail in everything that needs to be mailed in. I haven't had to do this yet since I started this project.
I hope to build a sorting station in my house once I understand my needs a bit better.
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Notes on TerraCycle and partner programs

A lot of the corporate-sponsored/mail-in/drop-off programs are done through TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based recycler that specializes in recycling hard-to-recycle things (e.g., potato chip bags, toothbrushes). They make lots of their money through large corporations, which essentially pay them to process unprofitable waste in order to burnish their environmental stewardship bona fides. They also offer paid recycling pouches and boxes to the general public. You mail in these pouches/boxes (they come with a shipping label) after filling them up with recyclable waste.
TerraCycle will recycle almost anything and everything. However, anything that gets recycled through them or one of their corporate programs is shipped to New Jersey for processing, so it's preferable to reuse or recycle locally. They're also not as transparent as I wish they would be. I'm not certain, for example, how much of each waste stream actually gets recycled. They have a customer support contact form that's been very good for getting my questions answered, but beware that they take about 2-3 days to get back to you per request.
I bought the large "all-in-one" box from their site and found a coupon code online to bring the cost down to around $350. I read a review elsewhere from someone who got a medium box (about 50% the size) who said that it lasted her six months. My idea is to use this box as "recycling of last resort" and rely on drop-off programs as much as possible to keep costs down. On the other hand, this makes my life more complicated in terms of sorting different waste streams, so you could simplify by putting waste destined for various drop-off points into a single TerraCycle all-in-one box.
You need to register for free on their website to use their mail-in programs. Many of their mail-in programs unfortunately have wait lists. Of the ~15 programs for which I signed up around two weeks ago, about 8 had wait lists, and I got off the wait list for about 5 of them. So they seem to go through the list pretty regularly. Once you're in, you can print off a free UPS label from the "my profile" section of the site after logging in.
If I had to take a wild guess, I would assume that TerraCycle has a higher rate of recycling than municipal programs, but this must be balanced against the financial and environmental cost of shipping waste to their facilities.
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Composting

The Achilles' heel in my recycling and reuse plan is organic matter. The City of Tucson has a composting program but it's only open to businesses.
There are a few volunteer-run programs here and there that accept compostable waste. I managed to sign up for one, UA's Compost Cats, and will be meeting them tomorrow to pick up my sealed composting bucket and go over the program rules. I know that they have limited capacity, so you have to email them. They took about a week to get back to me.
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Am I insane?

Maybe a little 🙃.
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Shout outs

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submitted by Low_Walrus to Tucson [link] [comments]

First Contact - Chapter 325

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Herod opened his eyes, groaned, and rolled onto his side. He got his faceplate open fast enough to avoid spraying it with vomit when his internals suddenly convulsed.
Clear fluid mixed with digital code that was suspended in the thick viscous fluid.
He hacked and choked a minute more, than slowly pushed himself into a sitting position.
"Took you long enough," a woman's voice said.
Herod nearly screamed. He'd forgotten about the human woman. He slapped his faceplate closed and looked over to where she'd sat down on the floor, her back against the wall.
She was staring at him, her head cocked to the right slightly, one eyebrow raised, looking concerned but slightly amused. Herod noticed that the way she sat, with her legs open, seemed almost deliberately and lewdly provocative.
"So what did you eat that left behind garbled computer code?" she asked.
"Don't know. Things are a little confused," Herod said. He took a pull off of his water, ignoring the taste of lilacs, swished his mouth out and swallowed.
"You aren't human, are you?" she asked. She closed her legs, pulled her knees up to her chest, laced her fingers over her knees, and put her chin on her knees.
Herod shook his head. "No. I'm a digital sentience."
"So, a robot?" she asked.
Herod frowned. "No."
"Like... an android?"
"God, no. Those guys are complete assholes and kill anyone they come across. Be glad I'm not an android," Herod said.
"Wait, like a Terminator? Only instead of hunting Sarah Connor you're a maintenance man?" she asked, smiling slowly. "Or are you just some kind of jumped up disc defragger walking around in an Erector set?"
Herod understood exactly zero of the references except the defrag part.
"No."
"So, an artificial intelligence in a heavy repair body," she guessed.
"That's insulting," he snapped. "I don't call you a meat bag or a fleshy."
She shrugged. "It has no cultural connotations to me, feel free. Words only have the meaning society proscribes to them and only as much power over an individual as that individual gives them."
"I'm a digital sentience," Herod said. He stood up and looked down at Wally, who blinked at him. "We have work to do."
The human woman stood up smoothly, shrugging as she did so. "If you say so."
"We need to get you a hazardous environment suit. It's dangerous out there," Herod said. He moved up to the door and turned the handle, feeling the complex latch system inside the door move as smooth as butter.
"Sure," the human said.
Herod moved out to the control room, looking it over, committing it to memory.
"Are we it? Are we the entire repair team?" the human asked.
"Yes," Herod said. He moved over to the emergency supply room, opening the door and looking in inside.
He jerked back with a scream as a pair of dessicated bodies fell out, still holding onto each other. Their faces and necks were ragged and torn, their mouths still open in silent screams. Two flickering transparent version of the two combatants surged out of the room, through Herod, leaving him shuddering and shivering, down on his knees with Wally patting him on the back.
The human woman moved over and knelt down, staring at the two.
"Evidence of cerebral trauma, dentation matches wounds on opposite, dried blood around fingers and on hands," she said, kneeling down. She put her hands between the two bodies and pulled them away from each other.
"Phasic Energy Section," she read off the nametags. "Red stripes on one's legs, black on the other," she turned over their hands. "No calluses common to martial artists or those who have lived a martial life, no tool calluses. Computer workers or secretarial pool," she stood up, slapping her hands together. "An event caused a mass psychosis due to neural trauma and cognitive disruption. They each victimized the other even as they were victimized by some outside force. Doubtful it was a bioweapon or even a chemical weapon, as I didn't see any sores around the mouth or nose or eyes, no discoloration of the skin, and no smells that match known chemical weapons."
Herod looked up at her.
"Stand up, Pinocchio," she laughed. "I get that it was scary."
Herod got up, putting one hand against the wall, staring at her. "Didn't you see them?"
The human woman looked down at the bodies. "Yes. I just analyzed for them. Pay attention, Speedy, I don't want you to get Prime Law conflicts here."
"No, the temporal shades," Herod said. He coughed for a minute, trying to ease the ache in his chest.
"Didn't see anything," she mused. "Maybe I didn't observe in the right time?"
"Huh," Herod grunted. He stood up. *Sam*
No answer.
Luckily, Sam had given him the route and map to the mag-lev that would take them to the damaged section.
The human woman was already looking at the hazardous environment armor and Herod moved into the room.
"Try this one," he said, taking one down that was still in the packaging. He opened the package, handing it to her. "It's unisex, but has waste disposal systems, you should be able to wear it."
She nodded, taking the hazard suit and looking at it closely.
She only paused a second before putting it on.
"All right, do a quick self-test, sometimes these things fry out if they've been sitting too long," Herod said.
"How long has it been sitting here?" the human asked. "How long have I been gone?"
"We're not sure. There's temporal stability issues in this place," Herod said. He looked down at Wally. "If I had to estimate, it's about eight thousand years old."
"Humans look much different? Seems like every day there was a new news article about how fucked up humans would look in a hundred years, much less almost ten thousand," the human woman said, her hands moving. She grimaced. "I would have figured someone would have invented better plumbing attachments."
"Do a test," he said, tapping his own wrist.
Something about her bothered him.
She flipped up the wrist and followed Herod's directions. He corrected her twice and then did it himself, making sure he quickly connected to the suit's network and frying some firmware.
"Two red lights. Bad suit?" She asked, smiling at him.
"Bad suit," Herod said. "It happens. The power from the first test shorts something out after it registers as green," he turned and got a suit.
He missed the calculating look in her eyes as she narrowed them slightly. By the time he was turned around with another suit she was smiling again.
She dressed quickly. Herod looked then shrugged. "Have you ever trained in extreme hazardous environment armor?"
The human shook her head. "No."
"We don't have time to teach you. There's a lot of work to be done. There's a lot of damage control repair autonomous systems that need brought back online to fix a lot of systems," Herod told her.
She stretched, then bent down and touched her toes, then twisted at the waist first one way then the other.
"There, fitted," she said. She looked at him. "So what do I call you, instead of HAL or Speedy?"
"Herod," the DS said.
"Roman King of Judea, circa First Century B.C.," the Terran said. "Interesting name. Did you choose it yourself or was it chosen for you?"
"I chose it when I left the digital creche I grew up in," Herod said. He motioned. "We've got to take a mag-lev train. It's about a three hour ride."
"You grew up, weren't programmed fully formed?" she asked.
"I told you, I'm a digital sentience, not an AI," he snapped.
"Core life coding, then exposed to digital experiences and stimulus to form a unique being. Less artificial intelligence or digital intelligence and more pure energy being that can only exist in a dedicated electronic ecosystem," she mused.
"Pure energy beings are different," Herod said, frowning slightly as they wound their way out of the mat-trans facility.
"Like those Temporal Shades you mentioned. Those are pure energy beings. What kind of energy?" she asked.
"Phasic energy residue," Herod said.
"Caused by massive psychological trauma," she said. She was quiet for a second. "Phasic... phasic energy is psychic energy, isn't it?"
Herod nodded. "Yes."
"Psychic powers are an illusion. The amount of energy it would take to simply move a matchstick across a table with mental powers would require more bio-electric energy than the human body could store or handle, much less the human brain," the woman said. "Phasic energy is what psychic powers use?"
Herod sighed. "Yes," he stood there, waiting for the door to rise. "Phasic energy exists between two sub-quantum particle layers. Humans have a part in their brains that allows them to direct the energy."
"Sounds like bullshit to me," the woman said. "You'd find phasic channeling fibers in the brain and body of anyone able to use it."
"Like in Mantid bladearms and upper caste Mantid neural tissue," Herod said, dredging up a memory from school.
"So why didn't humans run around blasting each other with psychic powers for all of history?" the woman asked. "Seems like being able to melt each other's brains with psychic powers would have slowed down technological progression. No need to make a bow or a gun if you can just mind blast the other guy, Herod."
"Humans suppress and disrupt psychic powers in others around them. We found that out during the Terra/Mantid War," Herod said. He paused. "Did you work here?"
She shook her head. "No. I worked in a high security facility. My work is classified."
"We're inside a Dyson sphere, that's inside another Dyson sphere, that's wrapped around another Dyson sphere," he said. "It's called a Matrioshka brain and used for systems where sheer computing power is preferable to signal propagation."
"How big?" She asked. Herod noticed her eyes were particularly intent.
"The one we're on is roughly five hundred sixty two million mile radius," Herod said.
She narrowed her eyes again, then smiled. "That's big. How long did it take to make?"
"That doesn't really have a meaning here," Herod said. "It used self-replicating robotic systems to build each shell."
"What happened to the robots when the shell was completed? An orgy of destruction with the last one shoving the rest into a trash compactor and jumping in?" the human woman asked.
"We don't know," Herod admitted.
"Might want to find out," she smiled. "So, I'm warned, I'll be looking at something outside of my experience, and there will be a roof over my head. How far from me?"
"There will be one or more suns, moving through magnetic fields that will polarize to simulate night time. Those will be exactly ninety-five million miles from both this inside layer and the outside layer of the sphere inward from us," he warned.
"So, alien landscape. Got it," she smiled. She held up her hands. "I guess we better get going. Maybe I can help you repair things."
"Doubt it," Herod said, stepping outside. "This is pretty high tech stuff."
He missed the flicker of pure rage on the human woman's face.
When he turned around, she was looking up into the sky, her eyes narrowed. He watched her eyes moving rapidly, scanning the whole sky. She then slowly moved in circles, looking around her, and he frowned behind his polarized visor as he noticed she was only looking down a minute amount each time.
"How did you beat the magnetic issues for a mag-lev?" she asked at one point, mid-turn, pointing at a far off train that was slowly (to his perception) moving by.
"Monopole magnets and superconductors," Herod said.
"Hm," she said.
Herod sighed, waiting until she was done. That was one thing he hated about working with fleshys, they took forever to do anything that required mental exercise.
"The mag-lev is only a mile away. We'll take the travolator," Herod said, walking toward the entry station for the moving sidewalk.
"Be faster to walk," she said, looking around her as they moved toward the entry area. "Lots of dead bodies."
Herod stepped carefully around a trio of corpses, watching closely for any of the translucent apparitions. "The Glassing drove them mad."
The woman kicked a pair of desiccated corpses out of the way as she just moved forward, making Herod frown. She didn't seem to care about the dead.
"Don't do that," he said.
"What, they're dead," she smiled.
"Yes. Don't do that. Don't disturb them," he said.
"Fine," she said, walking around a corpse. "Better?"
"Thank you," the DS said.
"Funny that you'd say that, Herod, seeing as you're not human and you probably don't usually have a body. Is mortality a thing for you?" she asked.
"Yes. Eventually my core life strings will be too fragmented and I'll suffer core software failure," he said. "And no, I can't just be restored from an earlier backup, that's not how we work."
"Sloppy engineering," she muttered. She skirted around the weaving queue area while Herod walked back and forth along the line. "So what made them all go batshit insane?"
"The Great Glassing," Herod repeated.
"You said that, Herod. Why would aliens attacking Earth make everyone go crazy?" she asked.
Herod stepped onto the moving sidewalk, wishing she would be quiet. "The Mantid pushed the death experiences of everyone through SolNet and the SoulNet, every survivor had to withstand the death of billions," he told her as she stepped onto the moving sidewalk and then walked up to stand next to him. "Roughly half of the survivors went catatonic and never woke up. Two thirds of the remaining half became the Screaming Ones, attacking everyone around them in their agony."
He ended up explaining SoulNet, SolNet, and the SUDS system to her, staring off into the distance at the strange buildings and structures they passed. Once they got away from the Mat-Trans area the system smoothly put them on a high speed walk, moving them at close to a hundred miles an hour.
The whole time she listened, asking pertinent questions.
She seemed really interested in the SUDS system.
Together they got on the mag-lev train, sitting down after Herod punched in the transit code number. He looked at the ETA and looked at the human woman.
"It's going to take nine hours to get there. Sleep if you can," he said.
"I'm starting to get hungry," she smiled. She opened her faceplate and lit a cigarette. "These help, but I'm going to need food soon."
"I'll find some when I wake up," he said. He checked the mag-seal on his toolkit then looked at Wally. "I'm going to defrag. Wake me if anything bad happens."
Wally made a beeping tune and nodded, blinking his eye shields.
Herod closed his eyes.
------------------
"Herod, don't move, just move your awareness up," Sam's voice said.
Herod just brought his awareness almost fully up, leaving himself disconnected from his body. "What's going on, Sam?"
"What did you learn about our newest member?" Sam asked.
Herod thought, then quickly ran through his memories. He was surprised. He knew almost nothing ab out her.
"She said she worked in a secure location, on classified work. She got in the mat-trans, there was a stuttering, and she arrived here. She didn't know about the Great Glassing, I don't think anyway, but she knows Confederate Standard. She seems really interested in the mat-trans and SUDS systems," Herod said.
"So, we don't know anything," Sam sighed. "I checked her visual appearance against what little records are left. She didn't come up as a match."
Herod avoided smiling. "I've got good news for you. I left you a DNA sample in the mat-trans facility."
"Really? How?" Sam asked.
"I had her put in the catheter in one of the suits, shorted out the suits radio and beacon, and had her change suits," Herod said. "That'll give you DNA."
There was silence for a minute. "That was a good idea. Give me a few to check on it. I'll have to send in a bot."
"What's she doing now?" Herod asked.
Sam paused. "According to the cameras, she explored the train, busted open a vending machine, and gorged on the food inside. She's currently sitting across and down from you, looking out the window and smoking a cigarette."
"Oh, she said she was hungry."
"That's... weird..." Sam said.
"What's weird?" Herod asked.
"Her cigarette brand. I've got the inventory of the types and brands of cigarettes available here for the Treana'ad workers and some humans. Hell, apparently adult Pubvians viewed cigarettes as.. ahem... martial aid stimulants due to the cardio-vascular effects," Sam said. He giggled, and Herod began talking to him, just talking about their work together in the Black Box under Legion, trying to ground the younger DS as he screamed and raved.
"Sorry. It's getting easier, but I feel like I'm bleeding inside somehow," Sam said. He sobbed, but managed to control himself. "Where was I?"
"Her cigarettes," Herod said.
"Yeah. I can't find the brand. You know Treana'ad, they absolutely love Terran cigarettes, they're a luxury item. 'Terran Grown and Sown!' you know?" Sam said. "And her lighter."
"What about it? I've seen a few Treana'ad with that kind of lighter," Herod said.
"It's stamped on the bottom, look," Sam said, giving Herod the image.
ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD, PA
ZIPPO
PAT. NUMBER 2032695 MADE IN THE U.S.A.
"Is that..." Herod asked, feeling a chill at the three letter abbreviation.
"Yeah. The acronym for the Hamburger Kingdom. PA is the two letter code for the state region," Sam said softly.
"That would make that thing like eight or nine thousand years old," Herod said. "Except, I've seen her use it. It works."
"It's not a modern one, watch," Sam said. He passed the image to Herod.
She flicked open the top, put her thumb on the ridged wheel, and spun it by applying pressure. Sparks flew out, the ones hitting the twisted fiber wick bringing up a blue and yellow flame.
"That's flint and steel. That fiber, that's cotton according to the sensor systems. Not synth-cotton, real cotton. That's a steel casing, I can see the imperfections in it from here," Sam said.
"Give me a spectrograph of it if you can," Herod said. "I know enough about materials to get information."
It took a minute, then a little longer while Herod waited for Sam to deal with some lost children. Sam tossed him the spectrographic image of the lighter along with other scans.
Herod was not only able to identify the metal as 'stainless steel', but that it had enough impurities to prove it was mined metals.
When Sam came back he sighed. "I got the robot to the suit. You were right, there's DNA. Looks like she nicked herself a little with the catheter tube, there was a tiny smear of blood as well as fleshy fluids. Ew," Sam said.
Herod chuckled.
"Running a DNA comparison against everyone who worked here, who had authorization to work here. It's millions of records, so it'll take a few minutes," Sam said.
"That lighter? It wasn't made with a creation engine," Herod said.
"They were in their infancy back during The Glassing," Sam said.
"It was hard manufacturing, inside a gravity well and a magnetic field. If I had to guess, I'd say it was actually manufactured on Earth," Herod said.
"Look at the cigarette pack," Herod said. "American Favorite. By the Digital Omnimessiah, those are actual relics, not forgeries."
"You need to be careful, Herod," Sam said, somewhat unnecessarily to Herod's thoughts on the matter. He paused. "Um. Oh, wow."
"What?" Herod asked.
"Her DNA. Holy shit. Um, look," he said, and tossed Herod the image.
Herod took one look at it and did the digital sentience equivalent of shake his head. "I'm not Legion, this is meaningless to me."
"Here it is compared to modern human DNA," Sam offered.
"Sam, I'm in a hazardous environment frame, I'm not using the network, just tell me. All you did was throw two plates of pasta at my brain."
"OK, they're wildly different," Sam said. "Even compared to Glassing human DNA, like the people around here, hers is really really different."
"Define... different," Herod said.
"No genetic prothesis or overlays, I can see where the Glassing DNA and the modern DNA have been modified through time, genetic drift, evolution, or genetic manipulation, but wow, her DNA is damn near off the charts. Lots of bad DNA in it, it's... it's really weird."
Herod felt a kick against his foot and heard from far away. "Hey, we're here. You said this stuff needs repaired, Speedy. First Law and all that."
"What is she referring to?" Sam asked.
"I have no idea. Maybe the Four Laws of Robotics?" Herod suggested, opening his eyes. He switched from talking on the digital frequency to his vocal cords. He looked around, the mag-lev train sitting in the station.
"Hang on, let me talk to the facility VI," Herod said, standing up.
The human woman nodded, folding her arms, exhaling smoke out of her nose.
"How bad is the damage to the phasic array automatic repair system?" he asked.
"Bad," Sam answered, obviously (to Herod) running his voice through a synthesizer.
"It isn't going to get fixed if we just stand here. Besides, I'm eager to see technology used in application of something that I was informed was make belief, confirmation bias, and attention seeking," the woman said.
"Ask her her name," Sam said.
"What am I supposed to call you? I keep forgetting to ask," Herod said.
"Miss Nee, my middle name is Tay," the human woman said, her smile getting wider. "But you can call me Dee."
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submitted by Ralts_Bloodthorne to HFY [link] [comments]

If you see a creature coming down your chimney, you need to read this as a matter of life and death.

I need to talk. Like, I really need to talk.
The trouble is, I don’t have anybody I can talk to. My family’s estranged, my friends are all gone, and the authorities think I’m a lunatic.
It's just five days from Christmas, and I’m alone. Isolated. If I don’t get this off my chest though, I’m afraid it’s going to start festering in my mind like a decaying carcass; I’m afraid it’s going to sink its teeth in.
So I’ll talk to you. All of you. It’s not perfect, but it will do.
My name's Terrance Sims. I’m sitting in my rocking chair, rifle draped across my lap, in bloodstained pyjamas that still reek with last night’s piss. I haven’t slept in two days, and I might not sleep for two more. Last night something came down my chimney, and I think it’s coming back.
I’m getting ahead of myself, so let me paint you a picture. I live alone, up in the mountains where the pine trees are draped in snow, and the rivers are an icy blue. I could be a bit more specific, but I don’t think it’s warranted. Besides that, I like my privacy.
All of this to say, where I am isn’t important. What matters is what I have to say.
I’m a researcher. Or at least, I was once upon a time. My funding has long been cut, and my job along with it, but I've stayed out here because I believed in the research my team was undertaking. It was revolutionary. It meant the possibility of bridging worlds, of seeing new forms of life.
Now I’m terrified that research has found me.
You’ve probably heard of monsters, or urban legends, of things that claw at our imaginations and lurk in the dark recesses of our minds. Perhaps you’ve even felt one. They wait there sometimes, prowling just beyond our vision, tearing at the fabric that holds our realities together. Desperate. Hungry.
My job was to study these beings. I was tasked with developing an understanding of not only what they wanted from us but how to gain access to their world: the place Beyond the Veil.
Needless to say, I wasn’t successful. The organization I worked for, the Facility, poured millions into my ideas and wasn’t forgiving of my failures. When my theories came up short, they cut ties with me -- he cut ties with me.
‘It’s unfortunate, but it’s business,” Mr. Reid had said, feet on his desk, long hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Your failures reflect on me, Terrance, and they’ve become an accounting nightmare.”
I had begged him. Groveled. It didn’t matter. I was terminated along with my research, and when you’re studying the kind of things I am, they don’t want that information leaking out into the world. It’s what they call a liability.
So I was blacklisted. Facility teams picked away at my reputation, whispering in the back corners of universities and at the water coolers of laboratories. My name became synonymous with paranoia and madness. I was a laughing stock among my peers. A joke.
It was the end of my life.
Only one person cared to associate with me afterwards, a junior colleague and a brilliant young man named Alexi Azimov. He believed in the research nearly as much as I did, and luckily for him, his name wasn’t attached to the project.
When the Facility pulled the plug and dragged my name through the dirt, they simply moved him to a new department, and that was that. Despite it, he spent his vacation days returning to the mountain, assisting me with further study whenever he could.
Until last year, when even he abandoned me too.
But now I’ve shown all of them. I’ve proven they were wrong -- dead wrong. It’s here. He’s here. I always suspected he lived among these mountains, or at least that his Bridge was located within them, but I had given up hope for so long. It had been years, after all -- damn near a decade. They called me absurd. Insane.
Then, last night everything changed.
I was lying in bed, winding down after logging the readings on the temporal measurement equipment, when the cabin shook. At first, I thought an avalanche had struck it, but then I heard it: a clatter of hooves upon the roof.
I shot out of bed, my breath trapped in my chest and my body cold with sweat. I sprinted to the closet and pulled out my hunting rifle. Outside, a blizzard howled, but all I heard was the voice, a menagerie of tone and emotion, high and low, guttural and smooth. It rang out from above me.
Ho ho hO.
My first thought was to contact the Facility, but my satellite internet wasn’t functioning in the storm. Even if it were, I knew better. I was too far. Too isolated for help.
The mountains I study in are remote, and the cabin even more so. It was chosen for its seclusion as a means of observing the being known as the Sleigh Father, but the circumstances were meant to be different.
Much different.
Above me, the ceiling creaked, and dust drifted down from the rafters. Boots crunched upon the snow-caked roof. You always think you’ll know what to do when the moment comes, that your training will kick in, and you’ll just go through the motions like some kind of pre-programmed robot. I wish that were true. I really do.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think.
I’d spent the better part of my career chasing that monster, and now that it’d found me, I was lost. My fingers played against the trigger of my rifle, my mouth dry, and my eyes latched open. Inside of me, my body thrummed with terror. My fight or flight response oscillated between cowardice and impulsive foolishness. I was paralyzed. Alone.
A chorus of chattering pierced the screaming wind. It came fast and jittery, like a ticking clock marking time in microseconds. I knew what it was before the hoofbeats followed. It was them, the creatures the Sleigh Father commissioned in the First Days when people still feared the night and all the horrors within. Eight abominations, stitched together by the innards of mutilated children.
Their agony acted as his gateway -- his Bridge between worlds. The souls of the children lived on in the beasts, while their vacant spirits stalked the earth, lost and hopeless, seeking the missing piece that would finally grant them rest. Their tortured existence was his Link to our reality. The sleigh the abominations drew, his Bridge.
The thought shook me from my trance. I’d spent years waiting for this—a chance to see the other side, to see other worlds.
I had to act, so I lurched forward, moving through the lonely cabin while the Sleigh Father’s footsteps creaked above me. HO hO ho. He lumbered toward the chimney while I shivered down the cold hallway, rifle trembling in my skinny arms.
It took me only a few moments to reach the living area, and when I did, I settled there, just behind the corner of the wall. I kept my gun levelled at the fireplace, and my eyes plastered open. A crackling blaze danced in the hearth. It cast the sparse furnishings in an orange glow, throwing shadows across the loveseat and the messy desks.
The night became still.
The snowstorm quieted. The hoofbeats vanished. There was no sound of boots, no sound of laughter, only the snapping flames and my heart pounding blood through my skull. My mouth moved, and words spilled out. Affirmations. Come on, I muttered. Slide down the chimney, you beast. The fire’s waiting for you.
I knew better. Of course I did. I’d spent years researching the Sleigh Father, consumed tireless hours reading into his history. Of all the monsters the Facility had dealt with, the terrors that haunted old email chains and the urban legends that spread through panicked breaths, he was the anomaly. He was celebrated.
Santa Claus, they called him.
It was an error I traced back to centuries ago when a young girl witnessed her abusive father taken by the Sleigh Father. The creature devoured him and left the man’s skull as a parting gift, having taken what he came for: a human soul. To the girl, the beast was a saviour.
A saint.
The words she spoke in the following weeks, months, and years became immortalized. They became history, and then they became legend. A jolly being, laughing and hungry, coming down the chimney and leaving gifts in its wake. It was as tantalizing a tale as they come, especially to young children, eager to be appeased in their search for comfort and joy.
Now he was here with me, looking for another soul to add to his collection.
Seconds stretched into minutes as I waited, tucked quietly behind the corner of the wall, rifle in my arms, elbow steadied upon my knee. Once, we had contingencies for this. Plans in place that provided the means to incapacitate the Sleigh Father should he pay us a visit, but those plans involved government agents no longer in my employ. They involved expensive technology and complex spells. They were a last resort.
A clump of snow fell down the chimney, and the fire responded with a hiss of steam. Its flame retreated for a moment, flickering, before lashing back in anger. Something heavy shuffled above—the Sleigh Father.
Emotions swam inside of me. Regret. Anger. Fear. Why had I stayed out here? How could I have been so stubborn, so goddamn arrogant?
The answer was obvious: my old boss, Donovan Reid. His mockery, his wanton destruction of my life. It left me with no other option. Either I remained on this mountain, burning through my life’s savings and hunting wayward game, or I returned home. One meant a chance at redemption, the other guaranteed humiliation and disgrace.
I hated Mr. Reid more than words could say. Alexi had seen it. He’d seen how much my loathing distracted me, and so he recommended methods to help get the snake off my mind. A list, he’d said in an email last month. Write a list of all the ways you want to hurt him. Write a list of all the horrible things you want to happen to him. I think it could help you get him out of your head and free up your attention.
It helped—a little.
hO ho HO.
The laugh came high and low, husky and slick. A crunch followed it, like something digging into brick, and panic found its way into my bones. Dust and debris fell into the flames. The Sleigh Father's legend was explicit in his form of entry: if possible, it was always the chimney.
A grunt came down the flue, followed by more pebbles and stones. Then, the cabin shook. It was as if something heavy had jumped from the roof -- and what comes up must come down.
A pulverizing cacophony filled the night like cannon fire. Rubble tumbled into the blazing hearth while the bricks of the chimney bulged outwards, crumbling as something massive shot down it. I barely brought my rifle on aim before a figure crashed into the flames.
Burning logs shattered with a thunderous crack, plunging the cabin into inky darkness. Wooden splinters ricocheted around the room like blazing shrapnel, their slivers slashing at my face and tracing my skin in searing agony. I swung back behind the protection of the hallway wall, rifle clutched to my chest.
My thoughts raced. This couldn’t be happening, I said to myself. It couldn’t. I slammed my eyes shut, trying to get my out-of-control breathing back in line. I was hyperventilating. Panicking. I had to calm down because if I didn’t, I would start making impulsive decisions, and impulsive decisions were a good way to die.
I opened my eyes.
The fire was gone. I could barely see a thing. A short distance away, boots groaned against hardwood, kicking past broken logs in the hearth. My finger quivered against the cold steel of the rifle’s trigger, and I desperately wanted to pull it, but I knew that if I did, then it was over. Either the Sleigh Father would die, or I would. The odds, I decided, were not in my favour.
So I waited.
A piece of me, infinitesimally small, wanted to see him, wanted to flick on a light or blindly fire into the darkness. I wanted to witness the monster that possessed my life for so long -- if only for a second. But I didn’t. It’s not worth it, I told myself. It’s not worth it.
The footsteps stalked to the window, dragging something heavy behind them. Against the faint light of the moon, I made out the Sleigh Father’s silhouette. He was tall, inhumanly so. His neck craned forward, pressed against the top of the high cabin ceiling. A cloak was draped across his broad shoulders, and from his head slumped the pom of a stocking cap. Beside him sat a large sack.
“NaUghty oR niCe?” his voice hummed, in discordant melody.
I didn’t reply. It seemed impossible, but a part of me held onto the belief that maybe he wasn’t speaking to me. Maybe he didn’t know I was there. It was just a monologue, perhaps—words for the night.
I raised the rifle, aiming it toward his massive figure. I could do it now, I reasoned. I could pull the trigger and hopefully make this nightmare disappear.
Ho HO hO.
The silhouette turned, its face masked in shadow, save for a single glint of bobbing light. “CaReFuL wiTh tHaT,” it said.
A cold breeze swept across me, and suddenly my fingers burned with agonizing frostbite. My rifle clattered to the floor while my hands trembled in pain. “YoU’ll TaKe yOur eYe OuT.”
“W-what do you want?” I stuttered, stumbling backward. My feet croaked on the floorboards as I came up against the back of the hallway. My heart hammered. Tears filled my visions as I cradled my cold hands against my stomach. “Please,” I whimpered.
“NaUgHty?” he sang. “Or NiCe?”
“N-nice,” I said. “I’m a good man. I just wanted to l-learn about you.” The words stumbled out of my mouth like lemmings falling to their death. “I don’t mean any harm. I swear--”
The footsteps creaked closer, and as they did, the silhouette vanished from the window's moonlight. All that remained of it now was sounds it made. I listened intently to the burdensome echoes of boots on hardwood and the heavy scratching of coarse fabric being dragged across the floor.
ho Ho hO.
He was close. So close. I slammed my eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable, waiting to die. Warm piss spilled down my leg, and my face screwed up as I fell to my knees, bawling on the floor. “Please,” I begged. “I'm a good man! I told you -- please!”
The rumble of footfalls stopped, and in their place came the sound of rustling fabric, like somebody opening a sack.
“NiCe, yOu sAy?”
A dim light formed, radiating out of a burlap bag some five feet away. Behind its glow, I could make out a white, singed beard hanging over a red suit. The Sleigh Father’s face was otherwise indiscernible amidst the suffocating shadow, save for one dancing speck of light.
“WoULd yOu LiKe a GiFt?” he asked.
My mind raced. Was there anything in the mythology that warned against accepting gifts? I couldn’t recall. “Yes,” I hazarded, in a small voice. "Yes, please." It seemed unwise to refuse the creature.
hO ho Ho.
A massive, red-jacketed arm reached into the burlap sack. My eyes widened in horror as I realized the sack was moving. Kicking. Like there was something alive inside of it. Muffled screams followed, and the great arm pulled back, clutching a man by his long, blonde hair. The man thrashed and whimpered. Tears soaked his pale face.
Our eyes connected, mine and the man’s, and something ran through me. It was a feeling I’d never experienced before, a mixture of dark excitement and absolute loathing.
“You,” I said slowly.
The light from the sack was dim, but to the man, it was all he had known. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the heavy darkness of the cabin, and as they did, he peered toward me, eyelids pinched together to discern the voice speaking to him.
“Who’s there?” he whimpered.
I gazed forward in stunned silence. Was this real? There was no way. He dangled in the Sleigh Father's grasp like the finest Christmas present I'd ever seen.
“Hello?” his voice called. “Please, I have resources -- more than you could imagine! I’m a powerful man in government! Just get me the hell out of here, and I’ll give you whatever you want.” His voice turned weak, broken. “Please… please get me out of here. I have a family.”
I opened my mouth, but if words were there, I didn’t speak them. No. It seemed wasteful, at this moment, to reply so thoughtlessly. This moment necessitated careful words and a measured tone. It required my best.
“NauGhtY,” the Sleigh Father hummed. “So, sO NaUgHty.”
I found myself nodding along. Yes, the man was naughty. The worst. He was an abomination, fit for disposal. He’d doubted me -- made a mockery of me, and torn apart the life I’d so carefully built.
“Donovan,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice level. “Donovan Reid, isn't it?”
The light was faint. So faint. In spite of it though, I could see Mr. Reid had finally realized who I was, whether because his eyes had adjusted or he recognized my voice. Perhaps a combination of the two. His expression fell.
“That voice…You used to work for me,” he choked out. “Didn’t you?”
I gazed at him, something horrible growing inside of me. It ate up all of my fear, my regret, my rage and it left only hunger in their wake—a desperate desire for retribution.
“I did.”
​
[X.X]
TCC
submitted by Born-Beach to nosleep [link] [comments]

Nuclear power is often the subject of disinformation, spreading of FUD, and dismissed. This post addresses many of these points. Questions are welcome but civility required.

Nuclear power is often the subject of disinformation, spreading of FUD, and dismissed. This post addresses many of these points. Questions are welcome but civility required.
This post is about nuclear power. It is long. If you want to debate, that is welcome but please read this post first. It's likely I will have addressed your concern in it. There will be no tl;dr.
I've seen a fair few posts on here, and other "green" sites doing their best to discredit and undermine the science of nuclear power in lieu of glorified pipe dreams. That the world can go 100% "renewable" (with plenty of caveats tacked on the end of course, half of them unfeasible).
There are 4 main "arguments" against nuclear power. Danger, waste + storage, cost, and fuel availability. This post is to hopefully illustrate why all are red herrings designed to sew FUD and in actual fact keep us tied to a hydrocarbon-based grid.

Danger

This is a three-prong argument. The first usually invokes events such as Chernobyl, Fukushima, TMI, and other lesser incidents; the second invokes radiation safety; and the third mentions terrorism.
Starting with nuclear events, of these three I mentioned---only one is actually at all relevant and that's TMI. But mentioning it in terms of safety is the equivalent of comparing a ford model-T to a modern family saloon. Additionally, it led to the raft of safety measures we now have thus preventing it from ever happening again.
Chernobyl is a total red herring. While it wasn't a good event, it's pretty much the only event in nuclear power history that has led to any "significant" casualties, with the official death toll being 60 and numbers in the region of 6-20k cited from extended exposure. Whilst high for a single event, this makes up the vast majority of all nuclear incidents and in terms of death/TWh produced, still results in nuclear being the safest of all power sources. Plus, the RMBK reactor used on site wasn't designed for producing power, but for plutonium for nuclear bombs. As such, it was made deliberately unsafe so they could pop it open quickly to get the Pu out. It was this deliberate design choice that caused the failure. Obviously, this is not present in power-based reactors. It's also likely that the deaths are overestimated in this event due to the employment of the linear no-threshold model, which has repeatedly been shown to be flawed, and a hormetic model should instead be employed. This even gets ramped up to 11 in some countries that have radiation "spas" where you sit in a radon-filled basement in a bath-robe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24298226/
And Fukushima? Yes it wasn't ideal, but literally nothing has come of it. No increased cancers. No deaths. No change in the background radiation level. Those maps bandied about showing the "flow into the ocean"? Garbage designed to spread FUD. The site fundamentally failed because a tsunami was higher than the seawall and drowned the diesel generators that were below sea-level. If the reactor hadn't shut down, it's likely it wouldn't have failed at all. Fukushima is less anti-nuclear and more anti-diesel generator.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fukushima-emergency/
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident.aspx
The clean-up will cost money yes, but see the section later about why that's actually a good thing. Other events such as the Windscale fire were also caused by plutonium production.
Now lets compare those deaths with another singular event: a damn bursting in China. 230k dead. More than 10x all the nuclear incidents ever yet I don't hear many here complaining about hydro-power.
https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/230000-died-in-a-dam-collapse-that-china-kept-secret-for-years/91699/
In fact, comparing all the methods of power generation as deaths/terawatt-hour produced, nuclear is safest by about an order of magnitude (in other words, 10x more power can be produced for each person killed by that method of generation). How many people do you want to die to keep your lights on?
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
The second of these prongs is fear of radiation. While I briefly touched on it when discussing Chernobyl, the fear runs much deeper. The main problem here is lack of scientific education, and an overzealous media. The thing about radiation is we are very good at detecting it, even at very low levels, and some units need to use very large numbers, such as atomic decays/second (Bq). Thing is, there are a lot of atoms in a small volume of anything. Avogadro's constant tells us that there are 6.022x1023 atoms in one mole of the substance. And one mole is the atomic number of the element in grams. So 92g of Uranium has 602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms (approx). And with the density of U being ~19.1g/cm3, that's 5 cubic centimetres of uranium. Or a double shot in a bar.
This sort of numbering has led to the tongue in cheek unit "banana equivalent dose".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose
Yes, that is the radiation dose you will get from eating a banana. In continuation, people will talk about waste being so hazardous, but without really understanding the numbers. So what are those numbers? Well, the granite worktop in your kitchen would be classed as nuclear waste under current legislation, thanks to radon in it.
Terrorism is another danger often cited. And this may even be a valid one, if there had ever been a terrorist attack on any nuclear plant across the world in the history of the human race. They're also designed to withstand a direct impact from a train or a 747, so a 9/11 attack isn't a concern. On a related vein, many conflate nuclear power with nuclear weaponry. These two implementations are about as different as can be, with the only commonality is that they both use a radioactive source. It would be like decrying a coal plant because C4 explodes as both are carbon based. Nuclear weaponry and nuclear power are fundamentally different technologies and cannot be conflated.

Waste/Storage

People don't think of granite worktops or gloves or aprons being "nuclear waste" though, they think of leaking soft steel barrels full of green liquid seeping out into waterways and turning us all into three-armed monstrosities with cancers out the wazoo. Except, none of that is true. Including the fact it's waste at all. So from now on I will call them used fuel rods, as that is what they are, The way fuel rods are disposed of is in a water bath for heat control of any short-lived elements to decay away, and then they are stored in "dry cask storage", or large concrete barrels on the reactor site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage
"But these barrels are dangerous right? You will die if you get near them?"
Well, yes. But only because the armed guards on site will shoot you as you run towards them. If you had proper clearance, you could sit and have lunch leaning up against one with negligible radiation dose.
"But these drums are piling up with nowhere to store them, It's a catastrophe".
Well... also no. As you may remember the numbers from the previous section, volumes are small. If you were to take the entire US stockpile of used fuel rods and group them together, you'd have a mass of 70k metric tonnes. Sounds a lot right? But remember the density of uranium, that gives a volume of about 3665 m3. For comparison, single football stadium (I've pulled up Samara Arena in Russia for convenience), it has a volume of 503,480 m3. So the entire volume of used nuclear fuel in the US wouldn't even fill a football stadium, and in fact wouldn't even come close. I'd say we've got room to breathe there.
"But it lives for billions of years right and is super radioactive right?"
Well, again, not quite. Think of anything, the hotter it burns, the shorter it lives. Same with nuclear fuel. The high-activity nuclides in the used fuel rods decay in days-weeks. What's left is inert filler with fresh uranium mixed through. In fact, after it's removed from the reactor, it's still about 95% fresh uranium. Which has a half life of billions of years, but consequently is also low activity. You could hold reactor rods in your hand and be fine. And in fact this is how they are installed into a reactor in the first place. Notice no lead aprons, no serious PPE. Just gloves and goggles.
Fuel Rod Assembly: U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy
And yet in the US that's buried underground. Why? Blame President Carter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
In fact, that is the only main problem with storage of used fuel rods. The US gets a disproportionate amount of air-time across the world, and it also cannot reprocess its used fuel. It'd be like a car in which most of the petrol you put in trickled out the exhaust again. You'd either improve the design, or put it through again. And that's the purpose of either recycling the fuel rods, or using what is known as a breeder reactor. And in fact these breeder reactors are grid-proven and it's literally just lack of political will preventing them being rolled out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor
If the US was the recycle all the fuel it had in storage, it wouldn't need to mine any more for the next century or so. Yes, century.

Fuel Availability

"But it'll all run out eventually? In fact, a lot of estimates put it at only ~200 years availability? Why bother when the sun and wind are essentially limitless?"
Again, not quite. This figure comes from single-pass fuel use then storage. As I've just shown, that's incredibly inefficient and frankly a stupid way to handle it. In fact, if you combine breeder reactors, and fuel reprocessing, we have enough fissile fuel to keep our reactors happy for the next few hundred thousand years.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/

Cost

"But it's really expensive to build nuclear plants and takes too long."
It is expensive to build the nuclear plants yes, but the time taken to build them is largely based in legislation which itself is based in flawed science (as I mentioned earlier with the LNT statements). But when investigate it as a levelised cost of energy (LCOE), nuclear is pretty much front of the queue.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx
Plus, I'm going to take a little detour out of science here and start talking about economics. Things being expensive for a government is not the same as things being expensive for a person/business. The fundamental difference is that the latter is a user of currency, whilst the former is the issuer of currency. A common way of thinking is the out-dated gold standard, in which currency is finite and tied to gold/tax receipts/stocks/bonds. This, and consequential statements such as "we are generating debt our children must pay" hasn't been true since 1971. The government, being able to issue its own currency can never go bankrupt as it can always pay its debts. This also does not lead to inflation as it used to. If this has you scratching your head in disbelief, that's understandable. I suggest the book "The Deficit Myth" by Prof. Stephanie Kelton. Additionally, she does a really good seminar on it here and is definitely worth a watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1SMjeuyF-Y
So fundamentally, if the government wish to build nuclear, they have both means and motive to do so, with no detriment to the economy (unless you count people in work being a detriment).
A few conspicuous sites are also mentioned in nuclear costs. These are typically Hanford in the US, and Sellafield in the UK. Both of these sites are scheduled to take decades to clean up, and cost hundreds of billions of $/£ to do so. This sounds ominous, but it isn't. Both of these sites were built in the 40s/50s as research sites and plutonium production facilities. Neither of these are actually relevant to modern power production and are simply a legacy from a time we didn't understand nuclear materials. When discussing US decommissioning costs, Hanford makes up 80% of this budget in the US, and Sellafield making up 75% in the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/cost-taxpayers-clean-nuclear-waste-jumps-100-billion-year-n963586
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nuclear-provision-explaining-the-cost-of-cleaning-up-britains-nuclear-legacy/nuclear-provision-explaining-the-cost-of-cleaning-up-britains-nuclear-legacy

Discussion

So why am I so bothered? Why bother making this post at all? I am a scientist and it bothers me to see disinformation and anti-science get spread so freely. There is also an extremely bad-faith argument from a lot of people in this regard, as they do not discuss the waste generated in the production of renewables, nor the full LCOE and instead cherry pick good days and state it as an average. This disingenuity has led to some of the most expensive power in the US for Californians, and Germany needing to fire its coal stations back up as well as import power from nuclear powered France. Furthermore, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) performed an interesting study, in which it collates the opinions of those educated in science versus the general public. It can be seen that when formally trained in science, the approval rating nuclear is much higher. Surely we want our path to saving the planet rooted in science instead of hubris?
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2015/07/23/an-elaboration-of-aaas-scientists-views/
Also as I showed with the burst-dam, there are statements made about nuclear that are not made about renewables. So if I repeat the process, the waste produced for solar and wind is not discussed often enough. Both wind and solar produce huge volumes of toxic and radioactive waste. But as they are not as similarly constrained as the nuclear industry, this is both unaccounted, and just drained to the environment.
https://www.cfact.org/2019/09/15/the-solar-panel-toxic-waste-problem/
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/wind/big-winds-dirty-little-secret-rare-earth-minerals/
https://e360.yale.edu/features/boom_in_mining_rare_earths_poses_mounting_toxic_risks
Neither can the panels or blades be recycled so they go to landfill, to leech out toxic elements into the soil and groundwater.
https://stopthesethings.com/2020/10/10/lingering-legacy-millions-of-toxic-solar-panels-that-cant-be-recycled-destined-for-landfills/
https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/solar-panel-waste-the-dark-side-of-clean-energy
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills
And if nuclear fuel availability is mentioned, then so should availability of the minerals required to produce renewables. Many of the minerals used have available supplies of less than a year, and as is in the name, they are rare to begin with.
https://www.fpri.org/article/2020/10/chinas-monopoly-on-rare-earth-elements-and-why-we-should-care/
And to address a few points unique to renewables, the first is that by their method of operation, they harness a diffuse source. As such, they need to be big. Really big. Hundreds to thousands of hectares big. To produce an amount of power that could be generated by a reactor a fraction of the size. Now some people may find vast fields of solar panels or turbines beautiful, but I'd rather see vast woodlands, prairies, swamplands. I'd rather see our land returned to nature to actually capture some of the carbon that's ready to drive our extinction. It would also have the additional benefit that it would actually give back to the environment, and allow the bugs, birds, reptiles, critters, grazers, and hunters to thrive again. They don't thrive under windmills or solar panels.
https://www.strata.org/footprints/
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18270734.14m-trees-cut-scotland-make-way-wind-farms/
https://theconversation.com/wind-farms-built-on-carbon-rich-peat-bogs-lose-their-ability-to-fight-climate-change-143551
"But it's cheap!"
Exactly, and that's why renewables still have a place as is shown by the "energy pyramid" attached. Every rooftop should be lined with solar panels. Domestic windmills should be used to feed back into the grid. The land is already used, so make the most of it. But don't destroy nature to build renewables, as this is often exactly what happens.
The Energy Pyramid [Eric G. Meyer, Generation Atomic]
There are further issues faced by renewables but not faced by nuclear. These are called "capacity factor" and "insertion factor", and neither permit for exponential power demands that we as a race face. The former is a simple one, wind doesn't blow all the time. Sun doesn't shine all the time. There needs to be a backup, that right now is natural gas. Super batteries will not fix this issue, and are actually more likely to render renewables obsolete as our demands will grow with our capacity. The second, insertion factor, relates to how once the "good spots" are taken, we must use less good spots, and as such need larger installations to make up for the shortfall in production. With nuclear, both of these do not apply.
But why nuclear at all? Well, fundamentally, there is just so much uranium, and it is so energy dense, that it is silly to not use it. But when I talk about energy density compared to other fuels, it is hard to envision, so this wonderful presentation gives us more of a clue.
https://youtu.be/tpUtrDvya1w
So what does that energy density look like? Well, in a nuclear fuel assembly (shown earlier), there are hundreds of fuel pellets such as shown below. Each single one of those pellets are 7g of the ceramic uranium oxide, and can power a typical household for ~4 months.
Fuel pellets in a fuel rod [nuclear.duke-energy.com]
So why would you not want to use the cleanest, safest, arguably cheapest power source on earth?

Conclusion

This post hopefully illustrates some of the common and unfortunately pervasive myths around nuclear power. And if for a moment we assume the problems are all real and genuine, we have less than 10 years to fix our planet before it starts trying, and likely succeeding, to kill us. This is not the time to be advocating anti-science or wanting to look like you care whilst doing nothing. If the waste issue was true, that gives us hundreds to thousands of years to find a problem. If the terrorism issue was true, we'd have high employment in the military to keep the sites safe. If the fuel availability issue was true, we could use it until we perfect fusion. But fundamentally, if you are about to be hit by an out-of-control bus, you do not worry about the grazed knee you get by jumping out the way.
Edit 1: S/P
Edit 2: Included the AAAS survey in the "Discussion" section.
Edit 3: Added Hanford and Sellafield to the "Costs" section.
Edit 4: Added additional references to "Discussion" section.
Edit 5: Updated data on Chernobyl death toll.
Edit 6: Added fuel rod assembly image.
submitted by Vaudane to ExtinctionRebellion [link] [comments]

[Cryoverse] The Last Precursor 045: Monolith

The Last Precursor is an HFY-exclusive web-serial which focuses on the exploits of the last living human amidst a galaxy of unknown aliens. With his species all but extinct and now only known as the ancient Precursors, how will Admiral José Rodriguez survive in this hostile universe? Make sure to read the earlier chapters first if you missed them!
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Previous Part
Part 001
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Admiral José Rodriguez walks side by side with Lord Drall, second in command of the Kraktol Empire. The Terran and crocodilian appear mismatched in height, with the human standing nearly a full head taller than his counterpart. This height imbalance, when combined with the Terran's domineering presence and technical superiority in all manner of warfare, gives him an aura of leadership, causing the Kraktol general to defer to him when they speak.
The Terran and Kraktol step inside a vacuum lift, using it to drop down some ten or so levels to the lowest decks.
"Where I come from," José explains, "this vessel was already at the pinnacle of Terran technology. Ramma's Chosen had several Dreadnoughts at their disposal, some from older eras, others from the current era. Let alone my faction, there were other factions as well, such as Orion Corp and the Third Hand, who possessed dozens of similarly-sized Dreadnoughts. Even so, the Bloodbearer was especially unique; the flagship of our armada. With just this one carrier, Ramma's Chosen could project military force into any system within a thousand lightyears of our homeworld. We feared no reprisal, because combatting the Bloodbearer directly would mark any man as a fool."
Lord Drall gazes through the transparent vacuum tube window, watching as one deck after another swishes past his eyes. "From the research this era's sentients have gathered, a top of the line 25th Era military vessel would often end up comparable to a civilian-grade 40th Era vessel. In that case, the Bloodbearer should prove even more advanced than its numerical era signifies."
"Correct," José says, nodding. "Top-grade stasis chambers, a facility for regenerating missing limbs within hours, the greatest medical minds of my generation, and a hundred of Ramma's mightiest warriors. I am a killer, a soldier bred for slaying heretics. Even so, I was only one of many. Alone, I am formidable. But when combined with the power of other Chosen, we could perform terrifying feats of destruction."
José continues. "Defeating Yama during the age of Terran Supremacy would have been a trivial task. One Demon Emperor, alone, might be somewhat frightening, but you must remember that we defeated demonkind long before our advancements in military might. With our modern technological terrors in hand, defeating our ancient adversaries would have taken us a fraction of the time we originally spent. The problem comes in that we do not presently live in the age of Terran Supremacy, and thus, our task will prove far more difficult."
The vacuum tube slows to a stop. Its door swishes open, allowing the two faction leaders to stride out, with José in the lead. The Admiral guides Lord Drall toward a large, wide-open facility, one with the words, "Planetary Assault" emblazoned in huge, engraved letters above the doorway.
"You know," José says, "it kind of surprises me that there are vastly more pre-25th Era ships in the modern galaxy than post-25th Era ones. In my time, such old clunkers were outdated, generally considered dangerous, and only used by junkers, raiders, and the poorest of civilians. Many pre-25th Era warships were reworked and rebuilt into civilian cruisers, intended only for simple transport duties. They offered a small amount of protection against the Void Roamers and other undesirables. The fact your 'modern' militaries use such outdated technology is... bizarre."
"And," José adds, "that isn't even taking into account how few there were. Restoring some old clunker to working order was hardly worth the time and effort when parts for newer models were typically found in greater abundance, and far cheaper. Most First, Second, and Third Era ships could only be found in museums, not flying through space. I cannot wrap my mind around any situation which may have led to modern spacecraft disappearing while ancient craft resurged."
Lord Drall pauses outside the Planetary Assault bay. He glances at José and shrugs. "Many Mallali, Avaru, and Rodak archaeologists have sought answers to that question, and others. For countless millennia, we have known of the existence of ancient Precursor artifacts. However, in the First Age, when our species first gained the ability to travel through the void, we were careless and foolhardy. Many vessels we recovered possessed synthminds and databases filled with valuable knowledge regarding what happened to the Precursors. Sadly, our forebearers, in their infinite shortsightedness, erased those synthminds to solidify their unwavering compliance. Obtaining military might at all costs was their primary objective, while investigating the secrets of the Precursors was not even on their radar."
"Unfortunate," José mutters, before stepping into the armory before him. "Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it."
Drall nods. "Indeed."
He follows the Terran, allowing his eyes to roam the insides of what appears to be a small hangar, but one without any shuttles or interceptors. Instead, nine gigantic bipedal war machines stand at attention against the far wall, with a spot in their middle conspicuously absent. These machines, identical to the Titan battlesuit Soren wore while dropping to Tarus II's surface, give Lord Drall a bad case of the chills. Seeing such intimidating mechanical armors lined up, he begins to form an idea in his head of just how much firepower the Bloodbearer truly can bring to a battlefield if it so chooses.
Inside the chamber, a half-dozen Kessu mechanics and janitors walk around, shining the metal fittings of each machine, cleaning the dirt and dust accumulated from 100,000,000 years, or otherwise performing routine maintenance on anything that requires their attention.
One of the mechanics, a white-haired female Kessu with a bright-pink nose, perks up when she spots José. "Prraw? Great Precursor! I am glad you came to visit!"
Her words grab the attention of the other five Kessu, all of whom turn to look at José and flash their cute kitty-smiles. "Meow! The Great Precursor!"
José chuckles. "Mina, this is Lord Drall. He is going to work together as our ally for the foreseeable future. As the second in command of the Kraktol Empire, he possesses a lot of political and military authority. He will dedicate a large number of soldiers to crushing the demons on Tarus II, as well as preserving Kessu society. I want you to treat him with the same respect that you would me."
The Kessu female, Mina, glances at Drall a second time. Realizing who he is, her expression turns cross for a moment, but she quickly comes to terms with her feelings. "Y-yes, Great Precursor. I will do what I can to help out. But... regarding the attack on my... my village..."
Before José can reply, Lord Drall takes a step forward. He drops to one knee and bows his head until the underside of his jaw touches the floor. "Please accept my sincerest apologies, Miss Mina. I will personally get down on my knees and apologize to every Kessu I have offended, if that is what it takes. What my people did was wrong. We bore a grudge against the Kessu for many generations, but the Kessu who wronged us have long since faded to the rivers of time. We will help rebuild your society and ensure a great peace between our species, so long as the Kessu are willing to forgive us our trespasses."
Lord Drall beats his chest and closes his eyes with grief, putting on a convincing performance. José, of course, doesn't fully believe his words, but Mina takes a step back, startled by Lord Drall's self-flagellation. "T-there's no need to bow before me, um, good sir! I lost a few friends and family, but... but that's just the nature of war! If you can help us rebuild and offer restitution for your crimes, we will certainly forgive you! There's no need to spoil the kitten's milk with idle anger; that's what my mother always says!"
Drall nods slightly, tapping the front of his jaw against the exosteel deckplates. "Oh, such wisdom! Such grace! Your mother is truly a kind soul. Does she still walk among the living?"
Mina nods. "Yes. She is still alive, but my father..."
"Graugh! How terrible! In that case, I shall go to your mother after this and beg her for forgiveness! Any punishment she requests, I shall accept it! This violent attack I perpetuated, 'tis a stain upon my grand name!"
One by one, Lord Drall profusely apologize to each of the six Kessu present, making all of them look at him with a certain degree of warmth and reverence. After he finishes, they return to their duties, quietly meowing amongst one another about how they had pegged the Kraktol leader as being far more vicious and bloodthirsty than he really was.
As Lord Drall rises to his feet, he shoots a questioning look at José. "...You are displeased with my words?"
"Not at all," José answers with a shake of his head. "I don't care one iota how your quarrel with the Kessu plays out. From now on, they will be under my protection, as I've said before. It's in your best interest to apologize to each of them, whether you mean it in your heart or not. As long as they believe you, and you stick to your word, you'll already have done a great deal better than some of the... politicians from my era."
Drall flares his nostrils. "Chuff. So you had those back then, too."
"Indeed."
"Disgusting."
Both men share a nod between each other before moving on. José gestures toward the nearest Titan battle-armor and begins to speak.
"The Titan Dropsuit was and still is the mightiest surface-combat device employed by Ramma's Chosen. It could turn any average man into an elite soldier, and any elite soldier into a demigod of death and destruction. Just one Titan could clear out an entire city of hostiles. Nearly indestructible, swift as a speeder-pod, and surprisingly agile, these battlesuits will be our key to defeating Yama."
Lord Drall walks toward the nearest Titan armor, and caresses its thick metal plating. He taps its shell with his claws, and even knocks his knuckles against several exosteel plates around its body. Not once does he hear a hollow ringing sound, indicating the metal must be highly dense.
"Impressive, to say the least. Words fail me. With a weapon like this, you could raid a Mallali core-world by yourself and not even risk suffering an injury."
I said it was indestructible, but that's only against traditional ground-based attacks," José explains. "If any average interplanetary bombardment platform were to attack from space, it could easily land a targeted strike on a Titan battlesuit and reduce it to melted hunks of metal. Naturally, we need not worry about that situation, given any ship within range of attacking these Titan battlesuits will also have to fly within the range of the Bloodbearer's primary cannon array. I pity the fool who suffers from such a blatant death-wish."
José continues guiding Lord Drall around the Planetary Assault armory. He leads the Kraktol commander over to a wall of various gadgets, most of them small, palm-sized devices, coming in all sorts of shapes.
"This here," José says, picking up a small metal cube, "is a portable forcefield generator. You can use it to temporarily seal off passages and pathways. Useful for protecting your flank in a firefight, or for trapping a particularly slippery foe to prevent their escape."
"Like Yama?" Drall asks.
"Exactly. And this here, this is a portable holo-entity generator. The entity can take many different forms, but as of now, it only has my bio-signature inside. It can discharge electrical bursts, either at a low enough level to incapacitate an enemy, or it can unleash enough energy to char them to ash. I've used these on several occasions; their versatility is what makes them formidable."
José explains the purpose of more than five dozen devices. Each one elicits fewer and fewer gasps of astonishment from Lord Drall. He quickly finds himself becoming less amazed, and instead more frightened, by the unbelievable firepower José has at his disposal.
"These weapons are truly awe-inspiring. I find it hard to believe your people, the Terrans, could ever go extinct with such incredible technology at their disposal."
"Hmm..." José mutters, pursing his lips. "I've not spent much time investigating the cause of Terrankind's extinction. As you can imagine... it's a bit of a sore spot for me."
Lord Drall doesn't reply for a moment. When he does, his tone becomes somber.
"Admiral. Truthfully, many Kessu scientists, many Mallali, Rodaks, and countless other sentients have spent an inordinate amount of time investigating what led to the extinction of the Precursors. Yet, no matter how we searched, where we looked, or what we found... in the end, we were unable to come up with a single substantial answer."
He continues. "Graugh! I do not wish to sound like a wild conspiracy theorist. However, it is my personal belief that whatever led to the extinction of the Precursors... it was not artificial in origin, nor was it some terrible accident. If I had to guess, I might even go so far as to say it was... deliberate."
The Admiral frowns. "Deliberate, you say? Perhaps, you believe my people's extinction to have come at the claws of some terrible enemy?"
Drall shrugs. "I cannot say. I am but a humble Rodak, unversed in the ways of science and archaeology. Any guesses I might hazard would likely prove wild and unsubstantiated."
"However," Drall mutters, "certain things simply don't add up. Every historical record indicates that the Precursors- sorry, the Terrans... every record indicates they disappeared at nearly the same time. Some worlds showed minor signs of battle-scars, but for the most part... it seemed to me as if whatever killed them merely 'erased' them from existence. One moment, they were there, and in the next, they were gone."
José gazes at one of the nearby Kessu, someone going about his business oiling a rusty servo motor on one of the Titan battlesuits. The Admiral's gaze becomes distant, as he looks not at the Kessu, but through him.
"...Monolith."
"I beg your pardon?" Drall asks.
The Terran mouths a few words to himself in silence before shaking his head. "No. I... I can't see them being the cause of my species' extinction. If that were the case..."
José lowers his gaze. He stares at the floor for several seconds, then walks toward a nearby tool-chest and plunks his butt down, taking a heavy seat on it. The Terran wearily rubs his facial hair for a moment before looking at his Kraktol companion.
"Lord Drall. You claim not to be a science-focused Rodak. Yet, even so, I imagine you can look toward the universe around us as a source of expanding your consciousness."
The Kraktol leader frowns. "Graugh! I... I am afraid I do not understand, Admiral Rodriguez."
"How many stars are there in the Milky Way?" José asks.
"I do not know," Drall replies. "Many millions, to be sure."
"Three hundred seventy billion, nine hundred and twelve million, six hundred and four thousand, one hundred and thirty-five," José murmurs, without batting an eye. "This number has certainly changed over the last hundred million years, but by the time of my era, the moment before I underwent stasis-sleep and arrived in this era, that was the exact number of stars in the Milky Way."
"The Terrans mapped out our entire galaxy," José explains. "We explored every world, and knew within a certain level of accuracy which stars were likely to go supernova, which ones would form in the future, and so on. But, Lord Drall, the Terrans did not possess the same information regarding the Andromeda Galaxy, nor the other five galaxies we sought to colonize."
José continues. "The Milky Way and Andromeda are merely two galaxies out of eighty within the Local Group. However, compared to the greater universe, we are merely a speck of a speck within the Creator's eye. Our galaxy is small, out of the way, and unimportant."
Drall nods. "Outside of the Local Group, there are untold hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with many more stars and planets than the Milky Way itself."
"That's right," José says, faintly smiling. "Terrankind arose upon a single, minor, ultimately tiny world within this galaxy. We fought countless battles and struggled through the eons, eventually trouncing our enemies and seizing control of the Milky Way. We ascended past the Second Type of stellar civilizations, and rose toward the Third Type, imagining ourselves unstoppable deathgods capable of flattening all who opposed us."
"But..." José adds, "it was when we stepped outside the confines of our galaxy's womb for the first time that we came to a terrifying realization. Much like the enemies we had crushed within the Milky Way's confines, there were many other civilizations outside the Milky Way, each one controlling parts of, or the entirety of galaxies within the Local Cluster. We came to refer to these entities as... Monolith."
Drall's pupil's shrink to slits. "What? Other civilizations? Then... that is to say...?"
"Yes. I believe it is possible that Monolith may have crushed Terrankind. Monolith, of course, is simply a term my people used to describe interstellar civilizations outside of the Milky Way. However, not all members of Monolith are the same. They vary dramatically, with some being warlike civilizations, and others hiveminds. Some colonized for the sake of self-preservation, while others attempted to spread religious or logical dogmas."
"What we found in Andromeda, for example, was a mostly untapped galaxy much larger than the Milky Way, ripe with opportunities for interplanetary exploration and exploitation. However, Terrans were not the only species to get that same idea, and so, we entered war with more than a dozen other members of Monolith. Battle lines were drawn, alliances were forged and broken, and a bright future for our people seemed within reach."
"But perhaps not," José concludes. "We Terrans could not interact with other civilizations outside of the Local Group. Galaxies existed well beyond our reach, and what worried our scientists and military leaders the most was the possibility that somewhere, out there, in the galactic neighborhood... there existed a terrifying species capable of annihilating us with a wave of its hand."
Lord Drall's scales turn ash-grey, giving him a pallid appearance. "Graugh! You are starting to frighten me, Terran. If you are right, then whatever civilization wiped out the Terrans likely still exists. It could destroy the Rodaks, Mallali, Buzor, Avaru, and all the other sentients with ease! After all, we are far from comparable to your species' former glory!"
José nods. "Yes. But, at the same time, I wouldn't wager any credits on Monolith causing Terrankind's extinction. After all, if a species that powerful wiped us out, why wouldn't they have colonized the entire Milky Way afterward? Why kill us due to a mere whim and then let our galaxy go to waste? That seems like a rather flippant use of intergalactic power, don't you think?"
Lord Drall settles down somewhat. "Y-you are right. What use would there be in eliminating all of humanity, only to ignore our galaxy afterward? If these beings were far mightier than humanity, then they would have no reason to kill you in the first place, whereas if they were at a similar power level as you, then Terrankind's extinction would have occurred over a longer period of time."
Slowly, José rises to his feet. He glances around the room at the Kessu, most of them far too engrossed in their work to pay attention to anything he and Drall have to say.
"That's not entirely true, Lord Drall. A highly advanced society might have one reason to kill us."
Drall cocks his head. "And what reason would that be?"
"Simply put, they may have seen us as a threat. Not at that moment, but perhaps, far in the future, we might be capable of threatening their stranglehold on the universe. Such a civilization would surely be... beyond Type III."
The Admiral chuckles. "But... if that's the case, then it doesn't matter. If our enemy is Monolith, and if Monolith is truly the one who rendered us extinct, then there is nothing we can do to stop them. Our enemy is a civilization far more powerful than we can imagine, capable of wiping out a galaxy's inhabitants instantly. Against that sort of enemy, there is no resistance your era's sentients can put up that will change a thing. It would be best to forget about Monolith entirely and live the rest of your lives in ignorant bliss."
José starts walking toward the Planetary Assault Bay's exit doors. Lord Drall follows after him, casting a lingering gaze on the impressive weaponry within the room.
"Admiral Rodriguez. Assuming this 'Monolith' decided to eliminate the Terrans... why would they not exterminate the Rodaks, Mallali, Avaru, and all the other sentients who arose in your place afterward?"
"I cannot say," José replies. "Such a mighty galactic superpower may not give a damn about insignificant Type I and II civilizations. Perhaps even certain Type III civilizations are of no threat to them. But my people? We were conquerors. We sought the advancement of our bodies, our minds, and our species. Given time... perhaps Monolith may have detected us, and decided to squash our ambitions."
A strange light appears in the Admiral's eyes.
"Haha. Wouldn't that be interesting? Killing all of humanity, only for one little Terran to remain? Imagine if little old me could, in some small way, avenge my fallen brethren. That would, indeed, be a delicious twist of fate."
...
The Terran guides Lord Drall around to several other facilities, showing off some of the weapons, armor, and technology they will use against Emperor Yama. Eventually, he and Lord Drall take the vacuum tubes back up to the main decks.
"This operation, it seems relatively safe," Drall mutters. "You said before that Yama does not possess enough power to pierce through your advanced technology and its afforded defenses. Therefore, the only true trouble we'll face is whether or not we'll be able to kill the slippery little demon, or whether he'll escape our clutches."
"That's right," José affirms. "Yama's power makes entrapping him extremely difficult. If he catches wind of our schemes, a single dark fissure leading to Tarus II's surface will enable him to slither away. His body has no mass. He can reshape his appearance and make himself thinner than a human hair, allowing him to slip through any gap in our defenses. If we are not comprehensive in our attack, we'll not capture him, and he'll break free. We cannot allow a single mistake in this operation."
"Do not worry," Drall replies. "If it is competency you desire, my soldiers are the best in the Kraktol Empire. The females serving underneath me were selected from the Thülvik's cousins and adjacent family. Not only are their stocks fine, but their intelligence is high, and their battle experience, refined. I've led many guerilla assaults on Mallali worlds, and as such, have bathed them in blood. They know nothing of fear."
Casually, José glances at Lord Drall. "How might they compare to Megla and Soren then, in terms of combat prowess?"
"Graugh! My daughters are, naturally, fine Kraktol specimens. Soren was never much of a frontline warrior, but Megla is among the mightiest of Kraktol veterans. You need not worry about their battle might!"
Several memories flicker through José's mind, particularly one recent recording of Megla and Soren attempting to fight a mere Class C monster.
The Admiral chuckles. "Haha. That will pose a... problem."
"Pardon?"
"...Nothing. Let's just say, my standards are quite high. I'll require your troops to undergo a few 'tests' to ensure their competency."
Lord Drall scowls for a moment, clearly offended by José's words. "Graugh! With all due respect, my soldiers are elites, each one capable of taking on five Mallali at once! I would appreciate it if you did not insult their competency in battle!"
"We will see," José says, his tone cryptic.
Drall quickly hides his displeasure, silently reminding himself that he must remain on good terms with the Precursor at all costs, even if it means suffering a few demeaning insults. After all, the Precursor has only had Megla at his side as an example of Kraktol battle power. Compared to a whole unit of elite Kraktol warriors fighting in tandem, the Precursor couldn't possibly understand the sheer force the Kraktol Empire can bring to bear.
"Graugh. Hehe, when you see the might of a full Kraktol battle battalion in action, you will surely change your tune, Admiral."
Before José can reply, Drall clarifies, "Naturally, you defeated Orgon's warriors thanks to your superior technology, so if we were to face off against you again, I've no doubt you would crush us. But, I believe that if that technology gap were equalized, the results would surely reverse!"
A flash of mischievousness appears in José's eye. "Oh? If I were to grant your Kraktol warriors the same technology I possess, do you think they could win against me?"
"Graugh! Naturally," Drall says, as the vacuum tube arrives at their destination and swishes open. "You are a walking death god as of now, but had we possessed such mighty weaponry, I believe it goes without saying we would win ten times out of ten!"
A truly evil, vicious grin spreads across José's face. He claps Drall on the back and smiles smugly. "Hah hah hah... well said. I'll hold you to those words. Warriors mustn't let their lips flap loosely, you know."
Drall's high spirits fade, ever so slightly. He picks up on the Terran's confident expression and frowns internally.
Have I, perhaps, overlooked something important?
Next Part
.......................................
Author Note:
If you liked what you just read, please consider subbing to my Patreon! I post patron-exclusive writing posts, with typically one post dedicated to TLP each month, and another to Cryopod. You help me survive long enough to not starve to death, and I give you fun things to read. It's a win-win! Check out some of those posts here and here!
Also consider reading The Cryopod to Hell, the primary story in the Cryoverse! Both TLP and TCTH are part of the Cryoverse, so they're deeply interlinked. You don't wanna miss either of them!
Thank you!
submitted by Klokinator to HFY [link] [comments]

[Humans are Hiveminds] Pt 12: Conclusion

As this is a language of tastes and strands of DNA analog names cannot be written phonetically and are instead replaced with a human name or Earth analog in [brackets].
Span: The diameter of an average [Gaian] = 0.94mm, Kilospan = 0.94m.
Beat: The amount of time takes an average [Gaian] to move their cilia = 0.064s, kilobeat = 1min 4s
Work Cycle: 10 kilobeats. Equivalent to around 15 hours on their time scale
Day: Day length on [Gaia] = 28h 16min. Equivalent to around 3 months on their time scale.
Year: Year length on [Gaia] = 224.4 days = 264.3 Earth days.
[First] [Previous]
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[Faythe] was positively sick with excitement. She had hit a wall on the rescue mission front, [Alice] had been adamant about not revealing themselves further by sending a rescue team, and launching a mission in secret would have required sabotaging half of the station. Even if she thought she could get all the comms and scanners down she wasn’t crazy enough to actually try it. Widespread sabotage or ship hijacking was a dangerous proposition, and she doubted [Walter] and the others would want her to put the station in jeopardy for them.
After 3 solid tenth days of appeals, requests, and contemplating sneaking off while scouting, she had to admit a rescue mission wasn’t going to happen.
But that doesn’t matter now! She thought giddily as she rushed to the docks. They are still alive, and making contact!. Her hope was warring with caution and hope was currently winning. Like most of the station she had followed the messages from the Humans with rapt attention. She recognized [Eve]’s signaling right away and found it a bit funny she had been the main speaker, [Faythe] had always pegged her as the [quiet] sort. [Faythe] had attempted to remain cautiously optimistic as she read the debate, wary of the creatures playing some terrible trick, but frankly she was past caring. Her hope that her friend was still alive had been fading by the cycle, and now they were supposedly about to be picked up. There was no way in hell she was going to miss that.
Thank the depths [Grace] let us be the ones to go get them. I would be gnawing on the walls if I had to wait around and let some other team be the first to greet them again. She thought amusedly, wondering how the reunion was going to go. The “painful testing” [Eve] had briefly mentioned was concerning. She began wondering what kinds of terrible things someone might do while experimenting on supposedly subsentient drones and winced. Sometimes an active imagination is a bit of a curse. She thought as her mind was filled with scenes of detached and methodical disembowelment.
She was so caught up in her thoughts in fact that she didn’t notice the harpoon that flashed out behind her.
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[Sybil] [grinned] as she boarded the hastily readying recovery ship. She always like being a [Hephaestus]., being able to effortlessly push through crowds never got old, though annoyingly enough it seemed she would have to keep that to a minimum if she wanted to avoid notice, apparently it was out of character for her to be that rude.
How boring.
She managed to get abord the ship with no questions raised and made some small talk with a few of the ship crew she knew while she waited impatiently for that blasted representative to arrive. I hope she doesn’t pull the translators off into to a private meeting the moment we pick them up. She thought worriedly. She hoped to get at least one of them alone first, and had a somewhat believable reason to do so. She had been openly expressing concerned for her dear missing friend for tenthdays after all.
A few beats later and representative [Grace] finally arrived. The ship silently slipped free from its birth and flicked up and out of hanger into the lunar surface above. It hung there for a moment before the lunar dust below the ship briefly rippled as the stations great grav units bent the space around it, and in an instant they were elsewhere.
Flicking back into existence 28 thousand kilometers above Earth, the ship did not bother making orbit, it simply fell towards the night shrouded continent below, heading towards the outskirts of a vibrant patch of light. As the ship sped downwards [Sybil] settled in for a few cycles of waiting, running over her plans. The basics of [Mallory]’s plan is somewhat sound, but there are some holes that need patching She grumbled. They were tortured and the humans attempted to mindhack them into being saboteurs and they pretend it worked on them so they can escape. Simple enough. People might ask why they didn’t try and say any of this in their message though. This could be explained by the Humans having a better grasp of Standard Gaian then they let on. I could say they learned enough Gaian and Solarian that they planned out most of the things in those messages, including the supposedly stealthily side comments that [Eve] had added in Solarian, all to make it seem like the crew were being genuine and not just reading off a script, but really the Humans were following every word they said and would quickly notice if they went off script or tried to slip something behind their backs by sending in an language they didn’t know.
The crew didn’t bother risking that since they were trying to play along and pretend they had been fully brainwashed, since they knew the humans were planning on letting them go back to the fleet if they thought their program was working. Thus, they played along, following their script, not letting anything slip until they get safely back onto this ship and out of the humans clutches. Only then do they tell everyone what really happened. If I don’t manage to edit the memories on all of them, that could be explained as the brainwashing being successful on some of them. A suboptimal result, as it would place significant scrutiny on the psyche of the supposedly mindhacked crew, and I would have to justify the humans having somewhat effective mindhacking techniques. However it might still sow enough confusion and outrage to be effective, and by the time they are studied close enough that the story might unravel we will hopefully be long gone…. Yes, that could work.
——————————————————————
[Walter] strained his eyes peering skyward as the beats crawled by. He had asked the humans when the ship was arriving but they had said he would know more about that then they would. He grumbled at that and spent some time calculating the fastest time he expected a ship could be scrambled to collect them. If they jumped in right overhead and had a powered decent downwards it would probably take around 80 kilobeats for them to get here. The trip out to this field took around a quarter of that so they should be arriving in another 60 kilobeats or so. He thought tiredly. He sighed and settled in for 6 cycles of waiting.
The break did give him time to finish up some more of his signal pathway repairs and other projects but that was a minor consolation. The comms were mostly silent, as eventually the mix of tension and boredom sapped most of the energy of the group. The lull was broken near the end of the sixth cycle when [Eve] spotted a faint point of light in the sky that was rapidly growing brighter.
“Look! That’s them!” The group staggered to their feet and twisted their heads to point their eyes skyward. [Frank] [laughed] when he spotted it “Yeah that seems to be them all right, they must be coming in hot. I guess they aren’t bothering with stealth for this.” The point of light grew to become a bright red star in the sky above them, before suddenly not being in the sky at all.
With a thunderous crack a 300 span tall ship appeared before them, going from hypersonic flight to a dead stop in moments. Its hull still glowed a dull cherry red from the heat of its reentry.
“Going with shock and awe I guess.” [Walter] sent wryly. Normally seeing a skyscraper sized structure floating in midair was awe inspiring enough, however he imagined it’s scale was less effective on their current audience. The ship was barely larger than one of the creatures’ heads. Speed on the other hand…well, to the humans it must have looked like the ship appeared from nowhere.
“Ha yeah, that must have looked even more crazy to them…not that they saw it though, they are still looking at the sky. Oh! They are beginning to flinch now. Geez. That pilot is wasted on this crowd.” [Frank] sent mirthfully as the giants around them reacted with comical slowness.
“Oh wow, look at that one, it launched itself into the air! It’s going higher than the ship!” [Eve] [laughed] as one of the white robed figures belatedly hurled itself away from the loud noise. The human guards appeared significantly less amused, as several of them trained weapons on the ship.
“Hmm, maybe that was a bit to provocative.” [Walter] said the humor draining from his signal. The team watched anxiously as the giants continued to stare daggers at the slowly cooling ship hovering above the grass a few kilospan in front of them.
“Sorry that surprised you, that was just a sonic boom from a rapid decent.” [Walter] slowly spoke, trying to calm the situation. “That was a standard landing for this type of mission.” He added, lying through his gills. One of the guards glanced at the radio his voice came from, and then over at him.
“Well you should have warned us then.” It slowly groaned out.
“Sorry, didn’t think to mention it. Could you stop pointing your weapons at the ship though? I don’t think anyone is going to come out while you’re doing that.”
The guard made a wordless grunt which [Walter] figured wasn’t a happy sound.
“If it can move that fast then our guns are useless if we aren’t already pointing at it.”
“Their useless even if they are pointed at it. You can’t even see it move, much less activate your weapon in time.” [Eve] interjected.
“Then there is no harm in us continuing to point our guns at it then.” The guard ground out even slower and louder than normal, before pausing as it listened to something over its comm. “…yes sir.” It said at last before lowering its weapon slightly.
“I guess that’s as much as we can hope for.” [Walter] muttered to the rest of the team as they watched the rest of the guards begrudgingly point their weapons just far enough downwards as to not technically be pointing at the ship.
[Walter] was going to continue but paused as signal came from the ship.
“Team 9, this is representative [Grace] sending. Good job on diffusing the situation. I had figured a small demonstration of our capabilities was in order, but I did not expect it to startle them so thoroughly. With that in mind please inform the humans that this ship is unarmed and we will be opening a hanger door soon.”
[Walter] glanced up with relief. “Yes ser, we’ll begin translating immediately.”
——————————————————————
Director Townsend was not having a great day. Well, that was too harsh. So far it had been a truly remarkable day, he just wished he wasn’t the one in charge of organizing it.
This morning the main thing on his mind had been tightening the budget in preparation for next month’s funding review, now he was standing in the middle of a field while a tiny alien spaceship flaunted gravity and the sound barrier a few meters from his head. It was an interesting change of pace to say the least. He glanced around at the several technicians and researchers from the physics department that he had hastily assembled.
“Please tell me one of our cameras caught that.” He half whispered to one of the technicians.
“Umm, yes, I think camera 4 and 5 got good shots of the deceleration event.” the man said as he began pulling up clips on a nearby laptop. The field behind the lab was currently filled with a rough semicircle of high-speed cameras, range finders, microwave scanners and whatever other equipment the physicists had been able to carry outside, all pointing at the landing site. Townsend was currently standing a few meters back, next to a pair of folding tables where the snarl of cables from all the equipment was being fed to several laptops and a small server bank. He glanced over the mess and was glad there was no chance of rain tonight.
The aid confirmed they had several clear shots of the deceleration and Townsend turned his attention back to the ship now silently floating in the field before them. It was hovering in midair a few centimeters above the ground with no sign of effort, no sound or flames or gusts of wind. The grass below it was completely untouched.
“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.” He thought wryly, as the pain of having to give up the grav drive they were studying was freshly renewed.
Aside from the hovering the ship itself wasn’t that interesting to look at, though he did admit there was a certain elegant simplicity to it. It was a perfect ovoid, 30 or so centimeters tall and 15 wide. Its outer hull was smooth and unadorned. On the high-speed camera shot he had seen it arrive shinning like a mirror, but after coming to a halt its color had shifted, rapidly darkening into a pitch-black shade to better radiated heat. Some sort of color shifting meta material perhaps? I wonder how they managed to make something that complex reentry proof.
He tore his eyes away from the strange sight as he heard an argument breaking out by the wasp enclosure. He suddenly noticed how on edge the guard detail was. “Oh for…” He leaned over to one of the NSA agents that were hovering around him like buzzards and hissed “Tell your goons to stop pointing their guns at the ship! Do you want to start a diplomatic incident?”
The man opened his mouth to reply but appeared to think better of it. He sighed and spoke a few words into his earpiece. Townsend relaxed slightly as the guards lowered their weapons again. Stupid. Why did the NSA insist on bringing armed security for this? If shit hits the fan we’re screwed regardless of how many guns we have…
One of the crackling voices from the wasp cage briefly rose in volume, calling out “Attention, the ship is unarmed. A hatch will open on its side in 87 seconds. It is a door to a hangar. Don’t shoot it.” before falling back into inaudibility as it started talking to a technician next to its cage.
“I guess that’s my cue.” Townsend muttered as he began walking apprehensively over to the front of the crowd where the ship and captives were. He hoped the creatures were just going to leave quickly and not bother with ceremony, he really wasn’t looking forward to giving the apology speech he had hastily written on behalf of the lab.
Waving off the two guards that started shadowing him he made his way over to wasp tank and watched a touch nervously as a technician opened it. The creatures paused for a bit, eying the door like they were worried of some trick, before suddenly flinging themselves out and beginning to buzz around the grass and the tray of returned equipment.
“Uh, I hope everything is in order?” Townsend asked cautiously.
“No, quite disordered.” The radio hissed.
That’s not what I mea- His thought was cut off as the ship a couple of meters in front of them moved. A seam appeared on its smooth surface and pair of doors appeared, quickly sliding apart to reveal an opening around the size of a post-it note. He crouched down slightly to get a better look inside and saw the ‘hangar’ went back a handful of centimeters, with platforms and wasp sized indentations set into the floor and walls at regular intervals. The off-white material of the floor and walls was dotted with faintly glowing lights, seemly marking out paths or landing spots. He couldn’t make out much detail about them from where he was standing though. I doubt pressing my face up against their hull to get a closer look would go over well.
His eye was eventually drawn to faint bit of movement near the front of the opening, if he hadn’t already been peering closely at the spot he doubted he would have noticed. A speck around the size of a mite was on the floor by the entrance and was shifting slightly.
The radio behind him spoke up “That is the council representative.”
Townsend started slightly and saw that one of the wasps was hovering near his head, keeping an eye on him while the others were gathering their equipment. The radio continued “They wish to convey gratitude/relief that you are upholding your end of the agreement. They hope this interaction will improve trust and improve future interaction.”
Townsend relaxed slightly. “That is good to hear. We hope that this is the beginning of more open communication with your people. I and the rest of the facility apologize for the…trying nature of your capture. We hope we can put that period of secrecy and misunderstanding behind us.”
“The representative expresses agreement.”
Townsend nodded stiffly, noting that the creature didn’t mention if itself agreed. He wondered how much resentment they might be holding. He was painfully aware of the many cameras were trained on him right now and figured this might not be the best time for such delicate questions. Instead he stepped back a pace and spent a few awkward moments watching the wasps shuttling the grav drive and the dissected ‘drones’ into the ship. Thankfully they were quick and it seemed the politician was satisfied with his short exchange as it remained silent. Townsend noticed with interest that the wasps were having to tie down the equipment in the hanger as it was apparently in zero g. After a few seconds of fiddling the creatures seemed to be satisfied that all was in order and one of them turned to look out the door at Townsend and the rest of the lab crew behind him. “The ship will leave now. Thank you for releasing us.”
He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“Of course. Safe travels.” He replied, stepping back a few paces in case their departure was going to be as dramatic as their arrival. The doors of the ship snapped shut and hull rippled to a mirror shine once again. For a moment Townsend saw a distorted reflection of himself in the shimmering ovoid, but then with a flick of motion and hiss of wind it was gone. He whipped his head skyward and for an instant saw a faint glint of silver against the darkening sky, and a breath later everyone in the field heard the crack of a distant sonic boom.
He paused like that for a few moments, just looking upwards, before turning his gaze back to Earth and walking back to the lab, sagging with relief.
——————————————————————
When the door closed and the captain informed them that the ship was underway and that it seemed like nothing was being fired at them [Walter] finally let his last doubts melt away. “They did it. They actually let us go. We really are heading back.” He sent with his signal choked with relief.
“You’re just now accepting that?” [Eve] asked bemusedly as the rest of the team let out a ragged cheer and began disembarking from their crafts.
[Walter] [shrugged] “I didn’t want to get my hopes up to high.” He replied as he parked his craft in its familiar perch and disconnected. After scurrying down one of his crafts legs he felt his way blindly along the rungs of one of the paths set in the floor, the familiar routine of disembarking and the feeling of the solid pseudopodholds under his limbs provided a surprising amount of comfort.
After [Walter] and the rest of the team cycled through the hanger’s waterlock and took off their environmental suits they could finally smell again and were immediately hit with the jubilant greeting signals of a dozen or so of their old crewmates gathered in the tunnel outside. A very familiar signal reached him, followed swiftly after by a rush of water and a thud of impact.
“[Walter]!” [Faythe] sent jubilantly as she gripped him in a membrane stretching hug. “I’ve been worried sick about you guys! I tried to get [Alice] or a captain to rescue you sooner but nobody listened. I came really close to doing something stupid a few times. But you’re back now!”
[Walter] [laughed] and hugged her back. “I missed you too. Can you let up a bit though? You’re crushing my gills.”
The pressure dropped immediately and [Walter] stopped resembling a squeezed water balloon.
“Sorry. It’s just…how have you been?” She asked, her signal fading into a much more worried tone.
“…it was terrifying, painful, fascinating and boring. Often multiple at the same time. Being studied and experimented on by something that it can kill you with a twitch of its smallest limbs is…uniquely horrifying. Things got a bit better later, and I got kind of numb to the scale eventually, but let’s just say I’m glad to be back.”
“Experimented on? [Eve] mentioned they did some painful things to you guys at first, what happened?” [Faythe] asked worriedly.
[Walter] [shrugged] “I’d rather not relive it, at least not right now. I’m still in a wonderful mood at finally being back, I’ll process the trauma later, right now I just want to bask in the sense of normalcy of being on a familiar ship again.”
[Faythe] [smiled] “Want to go to the break room and play some [Fleets] to keep your mind off things then?”
“Yeah, that sounds nice.”
The rest of the group was similarly breaking up, most heading to the cafeteria to get the first bit of flavorful food they had in half a day. [Walter] and [Faythe] meanwhile headed over to one of the ship’s small lounge rooms. The ship was operating with minimal crew, [Faythe] bashfully admitted [Alice] probably only let her go on this trip to prevent anymore nagging, so the room was pleasantly empty.
“Nice, I think the game set is in the [scent designation] cabinet.” [Faythe] said as she entered.
[Walter] drifted over to the compartment in question and fished around inside. “Hmm, I’m not feeling it, are you sure it’s…AGH!”
——————————————————————
[Sybil] relaxed slightly as the little [Gaian] stopped twitching as the dart did its work. She would have to work fast, the lack of private quarters made time consuming modifications like this quite a risk. Keeping half her focus on checking the currents and scents coming through the doorway she deployed a few silencer filters to mop up the alarm scent her target had briefly given off. Clumsy she snarled to herself. She had hoped he would be more distractible.
She swam over to the body now drifting limply against the far wall and began the delicate task of deploying her editing equipment. Parting the tough but annoyingly stiff cell wall that covered her current body [Sybil] formed a tube of cell membrane and stabbed it into her target. Keeping a watch on the door she split off part of her attention to focus on the data stream from the equipment she began tunneling inside.
Feeling around the entrance site with a few sensor arrays she felt and tasted nothing alarming, there wasn’t any stray glue strands or chunks of mangled thought center drifting about, so the dart hadn’t failed catastrophically. She began quickly widening the hole and sending in the rest of her equipment; snipping proteins, grasping limbs and memory reading equipment were carried along a rapidly unfolding scaffolding network. The tips of this network forked and twisted deeper inside like thirsting roots, touching and tasting every structure they bumped into, following the scent left behind by the dart.
After a few moments she found the signal line which the dart had first latched onto, and she sent her editing equipment along the line after it, following the trail of sent markers the little machine had laid down as it rushed along the cable. Following the pathways that walker proteins use to carry sensory data back to a target’s main thought center was a trivially simple task, after all it had to be straight forward enough for a mindless molecule to follow. The pathway grew steadily as she made her way further inwards, different lines merging together to form a major signaling trunk. Just as the diameter of the cable started to indicate she was nearly upon her target however, several of the motor proteins dragging her editing equipment along suddenly reported that they had lost grip.
She felt around wildly and realized the pathway in front of her was gone. The sensory cable was sheared through, most likely via a hasty misuse of the pilot’s drone linking equipment. The fool had begun ripping his own mind apart, he would be a near vegetable at this point, assuming he hadn’t killed himself entirely in his thrashing. Damn it all. I don’t have time for this.
It was at this moment the data cables near her tunnel into the target reported a strong current heading towards them. She had brief moment of shock before her mind was suddenly jerked back outwards as her connection to her hacking equipment was severed.
Reeling from the violent sensory shift and the realization she had be tricked, she hastily tried to regain control. Turning her focus to the ragged remains of the data cables that had connected her to her equipment she felt through a few remaining sensing hairs that something large was rushing towards her. Something that smelled rather familiar.
Her dart.
Fuck
——————————————————————
[Walter] was mad.
No. That [word] was inadequate.
He was absolutely furious.
When he had felt something rushing towards him he had been confused. When he had felt it stab him he had been shocked. When he had felt it begin moving inside him, heading towards his mind, he had the icy realization that his friend was gone. That a nightmare from the brightest corners of the overworld was aboard this ship, a mind hacker.
He was suddenly deeply deeply glad for the redundances he had been adding to his sensory network. Most would consider what he had been doing to himself in his limited rest time over the last 3 tenthdays highly paranoid, but after his cycles long purgatory trapped in self-inflicted sensory deprivation he had decided that he wanted a few more sensory lines and better control of his mind weaving equipment. He didn’t want a repeat of that hell to be possible.
So when he felt the vile machine begin clawing its way deeper inside him he hastily powered on his weaving equipment and went to work. He rushed his nearest array towards where he felt the thing racing along, the dumb machine rapidly working its way along a major sensory pathway, its rapidly spinning corkscrew motor burrowing through the water briefly leaving a noticeable wake. A spindly limb protruded from the main body of the missile, loosely gripping the signal pathway it was swimming besides, feeling its way along as its swift passage tore walker proteins from their mountings.
The moment it felt the currents from the mass of scaffolding, sensors and snipping proteins [Walter] was hurling at it the machine reacted. It released its grip on [Walter]’s signal pathway and he lost touch of it, though a few sensor hairs felt its wake. It narrowly dodged a slice from a diamoniod cutting blade which tore the cable it was just swimming along in two. [Walter] winced but he had a spare. He reached out toward the wake he could feel as it hurled itself farther away. He tried to grab the craft, splaying his mind weaving array outwards, scaffolding and motor rods cast wide like a net, but the dart was far too quick and rapidly outpaced the now drag choked limb.
Fortunately, he had more than one weaving array, and by now 2 others had closed in, one of them dragging a food vacuole. He did not want to feel what kind of self-destruct poisons this thing might spit out. He forced himself to bring those limbs in slightly slower, giving time for their wakes to rapidly still in the viscous water.
The dart was quiet now, but he had a vague idea of where it was lurking. If it was moving at all it must be moving slowly as he felt no hint of movement from where he had last felt it. He carefully unfurled all three arrays, feeding them more scaffolding by cannibalizing nearby sections of his cytoskeleton, englobing the region where he was sure it could have gone.
At last he felt a twitch of movement. It seemed the next phase of the dart’s programming was to stealthily continue in the direction it had been heading before it was caught, as it had bumped into a section of net while slowly swimming in roughly the direction of the severed signal line. The moment it contacted the net it tried to swim way again, but [Walter] cut that section of netting free and whipped it forwards using a branch of scaffolding, and the flexible strands of motor protein in the net grabbed at the dart greedily. More lines and scaffolding piled on as he brought more sections of the net to bare, and he began hastily shuttling over the vacuole to contain it in case it might release poison in its death throws.
It did, sort of. As soon as its motor and cilia were completely jammed the missile ceased struggling. [Walter] was almost hoping it was over just before the nest of cables and struts enclosing the thing was wracked by an explosion. The missile had violently split itself apart to release its payload, a cloud of particles and tangling cables tailor made to jam mental machinery. [Walter] was exceeding glad that none of his thought centers had been breached, but the cloud would still be a problem out in his main body. They jammed signaling and motor proteins just as well, and he could feel the shredded remains of the net covering the dart go numb as messages from them ground to a halt.
He hastily ripping open the vacuole he had brought over and tried to englobe as much of the mess as possible. It cost him half of the remaining arrays in the area, but he managed to get most of it inside. There was still a few wisps of jamming particles floating about but he would just have to avoid them for now.
With the immediate threat taken care of he turned his focus outwards to what was wearing his friend. It was still by the door, waiting for him to succumb to the glue he supposed. Shit. [Faythe] is 3 times my mass and covered in armor, she could crush me like a [bug]. I’m faster than her but she is 4 span closer to the door then me. The only thing I can hope for is surprise.
With that in mind he gradually stilled the violent twitching his internal battle had caused and went limp. He felt currents close in as the thing swam over to him, and had to fight off the urge to move as it cornered him. Well. This is the exact opposite place you want to be in when fighting a mind hacker. He thought nervously as he prepared to run or wage an internal battle. He had no illusions of his repurposed civilian equipment being any match for black-market gear in a fair fight. Though, he did have some black market equipment at his disposal now.
He carefully began prepping the glue and debris filled vacuole for offense, hastily gathering vacuoles of a few volatile chemicals, digestive acids and respiration byproducts and merging them with the glue one or lashing them together so they wouldn’t mix just yet. He felt some ripples as the thing fiddled next to him and he knew he didn’t have much time, he hoped this would be enough of a distraction to dart away.
He began moving the whole mess with a remaining weaving array, trying to move just fast enough that he wasn’t noticeably twitching his outer membrane as the complex swam/crawled its was through his cytoskeleton, spiderlike limbs extending to grab at the web of struts and signal lines darting out like tentacles, disconnecting and reconnecting it to his signaling network as it moved. He wasn’t fast enough however, as he felt himself get stabbed a second time, and this time the hole was held open.
A nest of filaments and wires squirmed their way inside him. At first it was only faint movements that nearby sensors could barely feel, and then larger motions as other things were forced through the wound. [Walter] slowed the weaving array’s movements to a crawl. It is sending stuff over, so it opened up a chink in her cell wall, that’s the only place I can get a good hit in. he thought nervously, as he cautiously dragged his bulky payload closer.
Soon he felt the bulk of the machinery crawl deeper in and begin moving along where he knew the severed signal line was still drifting. He [smiled] Good, follow that dead end, nothing out of the ordinary happening over here. He continued along a fast as he dared, aware he had a time limit until the thing found the cut and realized something was up. That time limit ran out when he felt the hacker’s train of equipment stop with a lurch.
With the game up he abandoned stealth and closed the last few millispan to the wound site with several cutting tools thrust out on a pillar scaffolding, aiming for the data cables he knew must be trailing there. The cables were thick, it seemed they were actually tubes with the protein walkways and vibration transmission rods within their armored walls. They were still no match for the four diamoniod cutting clamps that slammed into them though. After a quarter beat of twisting and hacking the bundle of lines came apart entirely and he yanked that strut back with the data cables still caught in its grasp to delay any reconnection. He then shoved the mess of vacuoles into the breach.
The hacker for its part recovered quickly, lurching [Faythe]’s body backwards and severing the tunnel of membrane in an instant. But cell wall was not as malleable. [Walter] abandoned his finer scale controls and moved his body normally, pushing out a pseudopod with the mind weaving gear and vacuole bundle inside it and stabbed the limb into the slowly closing hole in [Faythe]’s cell wall. The last signal he sent the equipment before severing the pseudopod was to merge the little two explosive vacuoles he had stuck on the main one’s surface.
He didn’t pause to admire his handywork though as he had to immediately squirm out of the way of 5 armored limbs rushing at him. He got the impression that this second hug wouldn’t end if he asked politely. He managed to weave between three of them but the last two partly encircled him and began to squeeze.
He stretched his body out 3 times its normal length, trying to narrow himself down fast enough that he could slip out of its grip but it was fruitless. Another limb smacked him down and the three arms pinned him against the wall. He shoved off the wall and the thing had to dart a few limbs out to grip the ‘floor’ as it drifted backwards a touch. That was enough for him to flatten his body and slide under one of the limbs pinning him.
A current warned him of another incoming blow and he narrowly dodged a serrated limb, lightly scraping his membrane. The thing had gotten enough time to fashion something more than crude clubs, and now it no longer needed to play a futile game of punching an amorphous blob. Popping one was much easier. Fortunately, it seemed the glue was beginning to have an effect, as its movements were becoming decidedly more erratic.
He made a mad dash to the exit, and sprayed a series of data packets out in front of him towards the comm unit by the door. “Mind Hacker!“ He managed to [scream] before he was cut off by the thing launching itself off the back wall and barreling into him. They collided in midwater and [Walter] felt a massive gash in his side appear as its claw tore him open.
He crumpled inwards around the wound, doing his best to stanch the flood of cytoplasm and internal organs. His mind began to go hazy as the amount of [ATP analog] with in him dropped precipitously. He noticed the thing wasn’t doing much better though, it was struggling to use nearly half of its body, flailing awkwardly as it tried to keep him from drifting away.
Guess that glue trick wasn’t for nothing. He thought sleepily, as he felt a few weak blows and slashes rain down on him, doing little more than pushing him away from it. I hope they got the warning… was his last thought before his mind faded to scentlessness.
——————————————————————
He awoke again in a medical ward with a nurse and several guards in armored environmental suits.
“What happened?” He sent, feeling around wildly.
A guard caught his signal packet and fed it into a large comm unit floating beside them. They paused for a moment while the machine gargled softly, and when they finally replied it was a through the same isolated comm. In the dry and formal tone of someone reciting a recording the guard responded
“The crew of the [Stalking Sea Predator] received a signal from the body of [Walter] about a mind hacker attack taking place in the ship’s third lounge room. When they arrived they found the body of [Walter] unconscious from a grievous rupture and the body of [Faythe] in the process of attacking it. Initially the body of [Faythe] claimed to be run by the mind of [Faythe] and that the body of [Walter] contained the attacker, but upon requests that it submit to a medical exam it became hostile. It presently revealed that the mind of [Faythe] was not in control, but the attacker did claim it still had her in storage and could irreparably damage her at anytime. As we cannot currently rule out this claim, we are treating it as a hostage situation.”
“The attacker eventually submitted to being moved to the ship’s brig to begin negotiations for a reduced sentence and the body of [Walter] was stabilized for the remainder of the 8-cycle trip back to [Luna Station]. Upon arrival a medical team and a mental hazard team were dispatched to the ship to assess the situation and to awaken the mind inside the body of [Walter]. It is currently unknown how thoroughly the mind of [Walter] was modified while in the presence of the attacker. Does this entity claim to still be the mind of [Walter]?”
Oh light. Here we go. [Walter] thought worriedly as he prepared for several kilobeats of interrogation and medical scans. He didn’t feel any different and didn’t remember being modified, but the truly horrifying thing about mind hackers is that meant nothing.
Eventually the interrogators were reasonably satisfied that he had the same memories as the original [Walter], and that if his personality had been replaced or significantly altered he was doing a decent job of hiding it. Like always they couldn’t rule out subtle changes or hidden triggers though, so he would be under close watch and placed on a tenthdaily schedule of mandatory psych evaluations for the foreseeable future. They removed every mind weaving tool from his body, including the gear from the hacker (boy had that raised some concerns) before finally deeming him safe enough to leave the room while under armed supervision.
(Continues in comments)
submitted by Earthfall10 to HFY [link] [comments]

[Tales From the Terran Republic] Craxi and the Cops, Sheloran Gets Scanned, and an Admiral has an Unpleasant Realization

Sheloran gets examined and Craxina decided to do some target practice.
Sorry about the delays the last little while. Things should pick back up now.
The rest of this series can be found here
***
Admiral Pierce, wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, calmly walked into Republic Fleet HQ.
“Good evening, Admiral,” a heavily decorated woman with silver-tinged black hair said as she rose from her desk. “What brings you in at this hour?”
“Funny, chief,” the admiral replied with a chuckle. “So what the fuck happened?”
“We got hit.”
“That much I know,” the admiral laughed. “Any good info yet?”
“Only what you were emailed,” she said. “Three hours ago the Tartarus Correctional Facility was attacked and two prisoners were successfully extracted. Some people in power armor and who knew how to use it just walked in, cut their way to the cell, and then just walked out.”
“And what isn’t in the email?” the admiral asked. “What’s the word from the chief’s mess?”
The chief sighed.
“Well,” she said after a few seconds, “It was Colonel Wintersmith, that much is obvious.”
“Colonel Wintersmith?” the admiral asked raising an eyebrow.
The chief met his gaze without a flinch.
“Yes, sir,” she replied. “Colonel Wintersmith.”
The admiral smiled and nodded.
“I agree with you, by the way,” the admiral said after a few moments. “It’s good to know where you stand, Chief Larkspur.”
The chief just smiled politely in reply, but her eyes were burning.
“How many people share your opinion of that 'traitor'?”
“Enough, sir,” she replied, “should it come to that.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t,” he said quietly. “What else do we know?”
“They are still ‘analyzing the data’ but Petty Officer Hadid was standing watch when it happened and he’s about as good a sensor operator as has ever drawn a breath. He managed to get one of our ‘headlights’ launched and facing the right side of Tartarus before they jumped.”
“Outstanding!”
“The strike team consisted of only four individuals,” the chief said with just a little pride in her voice. “Two individuals in light armor and the two Marine Raiders. The two people in light combat armor left first. The funny thing is that one of them was tiny and the other was huge.”
“Funny.”
“Both were very skilled at zero-g and just kicked off the side of Tartarus without using thrusters and then ‘disappeared’ as they entered a very well cloaked ship. The marines, carrying two rescue pouches, left shortly later. The pouches also ‘disappeared’, but the marines didn’t. They tethered themselves to the sides of the craft shortly before the ship jumped… Sir, It was a Reaper.”
“What?!?”
“They are saying that it’s impossible but if Hadid says it was a Reaper then it was a Reaper. According to him the distance between the two marines and the estimated mass of the ship are damn near a perfect match. He also says that he couldn’t hit it with a tight beam. There is only one ship that he has ever failed to hit before. It was a Reaper during a war game. In fact,” she said with a wry smile. “It was the one that ‘destroyed’ this facility. Remember that?”
“Painfully,” the admiral laughed. “One suicide jockey completely made fools of all of u-”
The admiral’s face froze as the chief looked at him meaningfully.
“Oh shit...” he said as a terrible realization started to take hold. “She was one of the ones who went rogue after the war wasn’t she?”
“Yes, sir,” the chief replied.
***
Shelia stood in the cargo bay of the Paper Tiger sipping a beer as the airlock opened.
Eno barged through the opening dragging a floating and motionless vacuum rescue pouch and tore past her at a sprint.
That would be Ms. Mongrave, Sheila thought with another sip. Eno had reported that she had sustained “significant barotrauma” as a result of the explosive decompression.
He also said that she would live, which was a good thing. She would debrief him later.
Jessie scooched backwards through the airlock next, dragging a floating quantum supercomputer behind her.
“Hey!” Bunny exclaimed as she collided with the hatch, “Watch it!”
“I hardly bumped you! Quit bitching.” Jessie replied and then turned to Shelia. “We managed to grab a lot of files! Oh, and we shut off the nuke.”
“Good to hear,” Sheila smiled.
As the airlock on the opposite side started to cycle to let in the marines, a very sullen frog-girl in a rumpled pink gown stomped in, arms crossed.
“Nice to see you again,” Sheila chuckled.
“There is absolutely no pooping way they are going to think I wasn’t behind this,” Sheloran grumbled. “Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?”
“Because,” Sheila said as she handed her a beer, “we know something that you don’t.”
***
“...so, basically, you are fucked!” Jessie chirped happily a short while later as everyone, except for Eno, was assembled in the galley.
“But Pam said...” Sheloran squeaked helplessly.
“You mean this Pam?” Jessie replied as she handed Sheloran a tablet.
“Yes, that’s her,” Sheloran replied.
“That would be Pamela Greer,” Jessie smirked. “You might not recognize the name but everyone else here does, that’s for damn sure.”
There was a chorus of angry mutters as everyone nodded.
“She’s a real piece of work,” Sheila said as she popped open another beer. “She used to be a licensed therapist specializing in ‘at risk’ teens and young adults. Well, somewhere along the line she decided it would be fun to take up being a cult leader as a hobby. Everything they said you did she did, and worse. She didn’t just kill people, she ruined them, irreparably destroyed them. Eventually she decided to monetize her ‘fun’ and started offering the ultimate in disposable assassins, completely broken sex-slaves, you name it. You could even give her the person you wanted ‘adjusted’ and she could completely reprogram them into whatever you wanted them to be, some real fucked up Flowers in the Attic level shit. She eventually got caught but not after over a hundred people were destroyed for life. In prison she played the same games and after a few people wound up dead she was supposed to be welded-in, sent to Nirvana, but thanks to our friends at Cerberus she was sent to Tartarus instead where she joined their program and plays her fucked-up little games for them, including leading innocent frog-girls right into their jaws.”
“So she was never a profiler?” Sheloran asked in a small voice.
“Nope,” Sheila replied. “She was caught by a profiler. They saw her on a fluff news segment where she was getting an award. Apparently the girl she was standing beside flinched when she touched her or something like that. It set the profiler’s teeth on edge and they started digging and they wouldn’t stop even when their job was threatened. Eventually they got her. Too bad it wasn’t before that poor kid ‘committed suicide’.”
The news stories and court records popped up on Sheloran’s tablet.
Sheloran felt sick. She had been lied to and would have followed Pam right into the residential levels where the Prophet only knows what would have happened to her. It was too much.
Sheloran buried her head in her hands and started to weep.
***
After Eno stabilized Helen and had her safely in one of their medical pods, it was Sheloran’s turn.
“If you keep scanning me like that,” she grumbled as she glared at him, “You are going to have to buy me dinner.”
“This is incredible!” Eno exclaimed in astonishment. “There is absolutely no damage whatsoever!”
“Well, we plath aren’t much,” Sheloran said, “but we are tough.”
“Tough doesn’t even come close,” Eno said still looking at his medical scanner in disbelief. “You were subjected to about as explosive decompression as you can get and not even a bruise!”
“Well my stomach feels a little funny but- Eeek!” she yelped as a huge human lunged towards her abdomen the scanner stopping just inches away.
“Well, I’m not an expert on plath biology,” he said after a few moments, but nothing seems overly inflamed or damaged. “Bunny,” he said looking upward, “how do these scans compare to the data we have on these guys.”
“Every organ is within eight percent of average,” Bunny’s voice replied, “well within normal variance for their species and thanks to Cerberus we have some incredibly detailed scans of Sheloran from the past few days. Everything looks exactly the same aside from some minor inflammation of the throat and some discoloration of the internal fringes of her gills.”
Eno started to move the scanner towards Sheloran’s gill slits.
Sheloran hissed and batted the scanner away.
“Are you trying to look in my gills,” she said indignantly as she clapped her hands over the slits.
“I was only trying to-”
“That’s private!” she squeaked, very embarrassed, only to see huge, very detailed, full color images of her inner gill fringes floating in front of a large holo monitor.
“Eeep!” she squeaked, leaping in front of the display, splaying out her dress in an attempt to block the screen.
Eno immediately made the image disappear.
“Sorry!” he blurted. “I had no idea! Sorry!”
“Holy shit!” Bunny laughed. “You’re blushing so hard it’s actually visible, Eno!”
“This isn’t funny, Bunny!” Eno snapped. “Go and bother Jessie or something.”
“You got it, blush-boy!” Bunny laughed and terminated the conversation with her trademark “click”.
Moments later, both Eno and Sheloran winced as Jessie’s high pitched giggling could be heard echoing down the corridor.
***
About the same time Eno unintentionally “upskirted” Sheloran, Craxina was standing forlornly in the parking lot of The Drop of Oil staring at thousands of credits worth of goods.
Damn the Terrans and their efficiency.
When she said to get her the stuff “as soon as possible”, she assumed that meant in a day or two…
Not just a few hours! Dammit!
It turns out when a Terran invokes the magic words “as soon as possible”, they mean it! Here, “now” means “right fucking now!” not, “eh, probably tomorrow or the next day” like it did back home.
She barely had time to get here before the spaceship, yes spaceship, landed and started unloading. It turns out that orbital delivery was free on an order this large but orbital restocking?
Not free. Not free at all. It was the exact opposite of free!
So, now here she sat, on a thousands of dollars of easily portable goods, in the middle of a darkened parking lot, in one of the worst parts of town, just her and her little blaster.
She whimpered and pulled out her phone again and reflexively started to call Sheloran.
She caught herself and whimpered again.
She caught some movement out of the corner of her eye. There were a couple of xenos just standing there across the street, watching her.
This was almost every single credit she had. If they took it, there wasn’t enough to buy replacements. They would be done, unable to work until the whole argument with the insurance was settled and, according to Baxlon, there was a problem there. He tried to explain it but all she got is that they didn’t want to pay.
Well, that and the fact that they actually pissed Baxlon off. He said that he was no longer playing nice and we would get “every penny and then some” but that it might take some time.
She looked up from her phone. Those guys were still there. Poop.
She looked down into her little purse at the blaster inside. She didn’t even know how to use it.
Well, no time like the present, she thought to herself as she took a deep, if a bit squeaky, breath and hopped down from her perch on one of the crates.
She picked up a piece of rubble and set it against one of the charred cinder block walls of what was once “home”, walked back several yards, pulled out the blaster…
And started to aim at it.
***
Officer Perkins leaned against the side of her armored police cruiser as she refilled her travel mug from a large steel thermos.
“I’m just saying that we should have given her a medal, not locked her up,” she said as she took a sip.
Officer Xeenan, one of the few xenos in the precinct, looked at her in horror.
“How can you say that?” he gasped, his antennae twitching with agitation. “She murdered those threen!”
“Careful, Xee,” she chuckled, “She killed those assholes. ‘Murder’ isn’t our decision to make.”
“Semantics,” the Vexa replied. “She calmly walked in there and slaughtered them.”
“And did in one morning what we weren’t able to do for years,” Officer Perkins said as she adjusted her helmet. “We should have given her a parade and a steak dinner, not a shuttle to Tartarus.”
Xeenan cocked his head. He knew things would be “different” here in the Republic but to hear his fellow officers openly applauding wholesale murder… correction: homicide, not murder…
It was a bit much.
“While I do agree that the Harkeen were a menace that we struggled to contain,” he said carefully, “there are laws and codes that must be abided by in order for society to function, to even exist.”
“And what did all of those laws and codes do for the people of Free Port, eh?” Perkins replied. “What did they do for that poor little garthra or that little pink thing… or the dozens before them?”
Xeenan snorted with frustration. It was always the same “discussion” time and time again. How the Republic did not collapse into total barbarism and anarchy was a constant mystery to him.
“You know what did do something for them?” Perkins continued, “Sheloran. She took care of business, Terran style! Fuck, she’s a better Terran than most Terrans.”
“She wouldn’t have had to ‘take care of business’, as you put it, if she wasn’t involved in a gang-war with the Harkeen in the first place! Are you familiar with that plath? She’s a dangerous fugitive from the Federation who left a trail of-”
“Shhh!” Perkins hissed almost shoving her mailed palm into his face. “Hear that?”
“Your sense of hearing is much-”
“Blaster,” Perkins said matter of factly. “More blasters.”
Xeenan stiffened in alarm. He was afraid of this. With the Harkeen gone there was a power vacuum on the streets. It was only a matter of time before someone made a power play.
“Car, start,” Perkins said as the cruiser sprang to life and the doors opened.
***
Craxina loaded another power cell with a frustrated little huff.
Why couldn’t she hit it?
Sheloran made it seem so easy when she played one of her simulators.
Zap… Dammit… Zap… Dammit… Zap…
She lowered the pistol and looked skyward.
This was hard!
At least her little impromptu target practice ran off the lurkers. She looked around to make sure they were still gone.
They were.
She took a determined little breath and raised the pistol again. Before she could fire she was interrupted by a little “whoop” from a siren.
She spun around in alarm to see a police cruiser sitting in the parking lot behind her. She lowered the pistol as a human female and a… Vexa? got out.
“Evening,” the human said as they approached.
“Um… hi?” Craxina replied nervously.
“Doing a little target practice?” the human police officer said as she walked up.
“Is there a problem, officer?” Craxina asked whipping out her innocent voice and big eyes.
“Citiz-… Sophont,” Officer Xeenan said in an official tone, “you are discharging an energy weapon in a public area. That is a misdemeanor under the Republic Legal Code.”
“But, this isn’t a public area,” Craxina replied with a childish whine, “This is private property.”
“Yeah,” Officer Perkins said in a friendly, lazy voice. “But it isn’t ‘inside’ either. It counts. Besides, this isn’t a licensed range, which under this city’s municipal code, a bit of a no-no.”
“I… I didn’t know...”
“You have a decent enough set up going on here and blasters don’t ricochet so you aren’t truly being a hazard, but stop it. You’ve already generated two calls to the station,” Perkins said as she looked at a scanner.
“You’re going to have to come with us,” Officer Xeenan said stiffly.
“Oh don’t mind him,” Perkins smiled. “He’s new.”
Xeenan’s antennae flicked angrily.
“She committed a crime and she needs to be-”
“Xee,” Perkins said as she facepalmed. “Look around. What do you see?”
“A criminal discharging a blaster in a public area in a most unsafe-”
“And?”
“… a burned out building,” Xee answered.
“And?”
“...some crates.”
“Exactly,” Perkins smiled. “And what, exactly, do you think will be missing five minutes after we start driving this nice little… what are you exactly?”
“A Careel,” Craxina said hopefully.
“This nice little Careel, who wasn’t actually doing anything that dangerous, to the station?”
“The crates?” Officer Xeenan replied.
“Correct,” Officer Perkins said with an indulgent smile. “We waste a good hour or more hauling in this Careel, who wasn’t doing anything that bad, only to have to come right back out here and fill out a report on a crime that we helped cause… Not exactly my idea of a good night… The whole time taking ourselves out of action where we could have prevented a real crime.”
“But she broke the law!”
“And we officially have discretion when it comes up to class 2 misdemeanors. That means we deal with them as we see fit and I don’t see any reason to do anything more than ‘log and walk’ on this one,” Officer Perkins said as she pulled out a tablet and flicked her finger across the screen.
“Location, Drop of Oil parking lot,” she said. “Encountered a Careel named… what’s your name?”
“Craxina,” she replied with a huge smile.
“Named Craxina who was discharging a blaster in the parking lot in a safe manner. It was being discharged into a wall sturdy enough to prevent penetration and there was no chance of the bolts traveling outside of the immediate area. The Careel was informed that she was in violation of the law and she agreed...”
Officer Perkins looked at Craxina with her “policeman’s face” and Craxina nodded emphatically with huge eyes.
“to cease firing her weapon and carry her fluffy little ass to a range instead… file report...”
The tablet beeped.
She turned to Officer Xeenan.
“See, everything has been done in accordance with all of those regulations you are so fond of.”
Officer Xeenan bristled.
“The entire Free Port is dangerously unstable,” he said angrily, “and you are just going to let this xeno go with a weapon?”
“Yeah, that is a problem,” Officer Perkins replied. “Thanks for reminding me.”
She turned to Craxina and held out her hand.
“Let me see that thing.”
Craxina dutifully handed Officer Perkins her weapon.
“Hmm...” Perkins said as she scanned the blaster. “I knew it,” she said disdainfully. “Now this I do have a problem with.”
“Is it a burner?” Officer Xeenan asked.
“Yeah,” Perkins replied grimly, “And a cheap piece of shit one too…”
Officer Perkins looked at Craxina sternly.
“What is it with you fucking Feds and this gacha machine shit?”
“I’m an Imperial subject!” Craxina hissed with surprising venom.
“Could have fooled me,” Perkins said as she handed Craxina her blaster, much to Officer Xeenan’s displeasure.
“Ex-fucking-cuse me?!?” Craxina squeak-snarled.
“If you are an Imperial,” Perkins replied, “carry an Imperial weapon. If you can’t handle Terran recoil, get yourself an Imperial pulse weapon or a razor pistol. This Fed trash is worse than worthless. Carry yourself over to Selms Arsenal here in the Free Port or Volun-Haral’s boutique in town if you want to embrace the Empress but please, for the love of God, don’t carry this Fed garbage. Seriously, it won’t even scuff our armor. Now a Kresk pulse pistol or a Shai-Ghk Razorthorn? Those will punch a hole right through anything the Harkeen will be wearing.”
“Ok!” Craxina exclaimed.
“Now before I go,” Perkins said with a smile, “I couldn’t help but notice you were holding that pistol wrong...”
***
A little later, across the solar system, Gloria lounged in a small bedroom sipping coffee and looking at a tablet.
Jessie and Bunny had certainly come across with the data. There were lists of ships, stations, planetary bases, and more.
Even Gloria was impressed. The sheer volume of data they were able to produce in such a short period of time was amazing, even for them. According to Bunny they had “friends” help. Gloria suspected that it was more of those weird “not alive” programs like Bunny and Daemon. Apparently they were on their side.
It didn’t really matter though. All that mattered to Gloria was targets and targets she had, lots of them.
She smiled as her eyes flickered with anticipation for almost an entire second before glazing over.
She glanced up as there was a quiet knock at the door.
“Come in.”
The door opened to reveal a grease-stained and somewhat weary looking Harval standing there.
“Ma’am,” he said with a smile. “Your weapons package has been reinstalled and has been loaded as per your specifications.”
Gloria smiled.
“Finally,” she replied, her eyes igniting, “Now the fun begins.”
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