Tisis

Damage assesment (N)

"One thing...I only wish to know one thing..." my father says to the assembled block leaders.

"...how did this happen?" he concludes his sentence, pointing to the empty chair of the leader of X and to my own chair, where I am sitting, putting up my bravest face.

I will not lie, the wound this barbarian inflicted on me does hurt, but the crew in the medical station assured me that I won't be suffering from any long-term effects. They cleansed the wound and closed it up.

So there really was no reason whatsoever to neglect my duties this morning like my father suggested I should.

He looks around and when nobody rises to the question, he hits the table with his fist, making all of us jump.
The sudden movement sends a jolt of pain through my body, but I smile it off.

"I asked you lot a question! How did this happen?! How did the humans manage to overthrow the entire security force of block X without anyone else noticing?! Why, can you even imagine what would have happened if not for the courageous actions of my dear daughter?!"

Now the leader of block M rises and asks, "This raises a good question, captain. What was your daughter even doing back there? Isn't she assigned to a post in block D?"

I want to raise my voice, but my father raises his hand asking me to remain silent.
Instead he says, "That is not of your concern. She was there on my personal orders...and by following them, she may well have saved us all! Now, let me repeat my question...how could this possibly happen?"

The leader of block M sits down again, lowering her head.

"...so we have no idea whatsoever, how the humans managed to overcome all of our safeguards? How they managed to shut down the entire block without even one of our people being able to send a distress signal?"

The block leaders murmur among themselves.

Father is right.
They couldn't possibly have opened their cell doors, left alone overwhelm all of the guards without any of them noticing in time.

It just cannot be. They don't even have the implants to access the ship systems and even they did, they wouldn't have any sort of administrative access.

No, in light of the facts, it is completely impossible for the vermin to have done this...and yet they did.

I lean back in my chair and look up to the ceiling.

This is the second time the humans have done the seemingly impossible, isn't it?

I try to remember what my teacher told me about the FTL incident which has put us into this miserable situation in the first place.

He told me, that in the beginning of our journey, quite a number of humans studied our ways with utmost diligence and great effort.
Our people back then seemed to believe, that this mutual understanding would do well for the long journey ahead of us.

Alas it was not meant to be. After all, destruction is in their nature.
Nobody knows the exact details any more, but they somehow managed to override the safety protocols, which lead to the FTL incident...the complete destruction of our FTL drive, which left us stranded in the middle of nowhere with most of our machines in a similarly sorry state.

According to the stories, it took my ancestors about a decade to get the ship back into a somewhat working condition, but both the FTL drive and the subspace communication systems were beyond repair.

Ever since then we've been going as fast as we can with our propulsion engines in the hopes of reaching civilized space one day, so we can finally get our ship repaired properly.

But my people learned their lesson back then.

Countless safety measures got enacted and the vermin got locked up in cells, condemned to do the labor of the machines they destroyed in their wake.

But there is no way that the knowledge of how to access our systems survived among the humans up to today...is there?

No, it couldn't be.
These savages are utterly incapable of performing such a feat of intelligence.
But if it wasn't the vermin...

I look over to my father and think about the mission he entrusted me with.

Could it be, that he saw it coming?
Could it possibly be...that it wasn't the vermin who shut down the block systems?