Trope-a-Day: Distress Call

Distress Call:

<breedlewheep>. Vessel in distress, vessel in distress. Cycle 214. Free trader More Money, More Propellant under attack by forces unknown. Reaction drive disabled. Point-defense laser not responding. Atmosphere venting from multiple compartments. Message repeats.

<breedlewheep>. Vessel in distress, vessel in distress. Cycle 215. Free trader More Money, More Propellant under…

So, yeah. Kind of like that pretty much everywhere, on the standard frequencies you’ll find in the Accord on the Law of Free Space or your local astrogator’s handbook, or if all else fails, on the guard/hailing frequency defined by the hydrogen line.

Not much else to say ’bout it.

(Side note: except maybe the fine custom that has evolved to deal with false distress calls – namely, very politely and insistently salvaging your ship anyway, then letting you have all the fun of navigating the Admiralty Court to get it un-condemned.)

 

Epistolary Experiment (13/30)

Cousins, sisters, brothers, partners, commensals, and any other clan-affiliates you see fit to share this with:

Whatever you’re doing, drop it, get off your branches, and get to Torqat in the Csell Buffer right now. Bring anything that can fly and hold mass. Flagrantly was scouting a heat signature about 40 degrees above the ecliptic and just hit the big time. It’s an entire Vonnie supply convoy and temp, hot and hulked. Tree work, we think – they left plenty of wreckage of their own behind, and if they were the contacts we picked up making hard burn for the gate, they didn’t feel like stopping to chat. And whatever the coggies are using these days, it tore right through these hulls like cheap flimsies and left no survivors.

But that doesn’t matter. They didn’t take any prizes or plunder. There’s about a million tons of flotsam and derelict floating out here with no hand to claim them, and we can’t get more than a couple of hundred aboard, best-case. Make sure the rest are ours too.

This could make our name in the Association.

– from the outgoing queue of the d!grith merchanter, Flagrantly Bourgeois


From: Adm. [blank], Imperial Naval Intelligence
To: Imogen Andracanth, VP Research, Ring Dynamics
Subject: UNSEEN KEY
Security: EYES ONLY UNSEEN KEY

It seems we may have grounds for an exchange of data. May.

A silent fane meeting has been set up with Three Voices Arbitration and Escrow. Please find details attached.


FROM: CINC, CRIATH STATION
TO: FIELD FLEET COREWARD COMMAND (CS UNCONQUERABLE SELF)
CC: FIELD FLEET SPINWARD COMMAND (CS LIBERTY’S PRICE)

*** EXPEDITE
*** EYES ONLY FERVENT SPAN
*** INFORMATIONAL / REQ

  1. REPUBLIC FLEET SUCCESSFULLY PREVENTED FROM TRANSITING TRAILING-COREWARD BORDER OF QIRAF ASSEMBLY OR TRAILING BORDER OF PEOPLE’S STATE OF BANTRAL. CONTAINMENT ACHIEVED WITH LIGHT LOSSES INCLUDING ONE TOTAL LOSS, DESTROYER CS CORVINO. FULL SCHEDULE ATTACHED.
  2. VARIOUS DIPLOMATIC PROTESTS RECEIVED FROM AFOREMENTIONED POLITIES FORWARDED TO MINISTRY OF STATE AND OUTLANDS UNDER SEPARATE COVER.
  3. FORWARD SCOUTS INDICATE TRANSIT ACHIEVED WITH MODERATE DAMAGE TO REPUBLIC FLEET, NOW ESTIMATED AT 60% OF INITIAL STRENGTH, AND NEAR-COMPLETE ANNIHILATION OF BANTINE FLEET. DETACHED FLEET UNITS AND GROUND BASES ARE REPORTED ON SEVERAL WORLDS WITHIN BANTINE SPACE.
  4. FORWARD SCOUTS ALSO INDICATE LACK OF FOLLOWING LOGISTICS TRAIN FOR REPUBLIC FLEET, AND ALSO THAT SAID FLEET IS ADOPTING A SUBSTANTIALLY MORE CONSERVATIVE ENGAGEMENT POSTURE IN ADVANCING BEYOND BANTINE SPACE. REQUEST ANY INTELLIGENCE DATA AVAILABLE EXPLANATORY OF THIS.
  5. REQUEST CLEARANCE FOR FURTHER PURSUIT AND/OR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.
  6. AUTHENTICATION GOLD SPLEEN DIRE CYNOSURE LOCK PITCH / 0xCC679B834412A6DB

RADM EMRÍËN VIDESSOS


From: Releq Claves-ith-Lelad (First Lord of the Admiralty)
To: Lords of Admiralty; Imperial Naval Intelligence (Board); Imperial Security Executive; Naval Strategy Board; Existential Threats WG; Calis Corith (Presiding Minister); High-Tension Thinkers (Cleared)
Security: EYES ONLY FERVENT SPAN

Suggestions are invited as to why the Republic fleet is steaming full-out into the coreward Expansion Regions without waiting for their logistics train to catch them up, securing their flanks or rear, or seriously pressing their attack in the Reaches or elsewhere along the Borderline, as they have done in previous border wars. Their current actions make extremely limited strategic sense to my people.

If any of you have any classified projects, secret installations, angelic superweapons, registered x-threats, or similar such that might explain this behavior in your individual bailiwicks, this would be a very good time to let us know about them at Core Command.

Otherwise, speculation is welcomed.

Releq

Salvage Law…

…is what I have been thinking about this morning, seeing as it’s likely to come up before all that much longer in ongoing writing. So here, have a snippet that, I think, illuminates some cultural differences:

Article V: Salvage of Persons

1. No remuneration is due from sophont persons whose lives are saved; but the salvors shall receive positive-externality payments from the Admiralty Court assessed as if acting under the universal duty to prevent cognicide.

2. A salvor of sophont life, who has taken part in the services rendered on the occasion of accident giving rise to salvage, shall be entitled to a share of the payment awarded to the salvor for salving the vessel or other property or preventing or minimizing damage to the environment, properly reflecting and annulling their opportunity costs rightly incurred by choosing instead to salve persons at risk.

– Salvage Act, section III, article V

Scavengers, Ye Be Warned

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

With the voice and under the authority of the Galactic Volumetric Registry of the Conclave of Galactic Polities, this buoy issues the following warning:

The designated volume, including the englobed moon and its satellites, is a SECURED AREA by order of the Presidium of the Conclave. This volume MAY NOT BE APPROACHED for any reason.

This moon contains the remnant of a Class Three Perversion, including autonomous defensive technologies and other operational mechanisms, nanoviruses, infectious memes, certainty-level persuasive communicators, puppet ecologies, archives which must be presumed to contain resurrection seeds, and unknown other existential risks.  These dangers have not been disarmed, suppressed, or fully contained.

ACCEPT NO COMMUNICATION REQUESTS originating from within the englobed volume.  Memetic and information warfare systems are not known to be entirely inactive.

If any communication requests are received from the englobed volume, or other activity is noted within it, you must depart IMMEDIATELY, and report this activity to the Conclave Commission on Latent Threats WITHOUT DELAY.  A renascence of a perversion of this class poses a most serious and imminent threat to all local space and extranet-local systems.

Further, the englobement systems surrounding this volume are equipped for containment of remaining unidentified threats and the prevention of access. Any vessel approaching within 250,000 miles of the englobement grid, or attempting to communicate through the englobement grid, or attempting to actively scan through the englobement grid, will be fired upon without further warning.  Your presence has already been reported to higher authority, and escaping after transgressing the englobement grid will therefore not preserve you.

Naval vessels should note that this area has been deemed a black-level existential threat zone by the Presidium of the Conclave. This englobement grid does not respond to standard Accord command or diagnostic sequences. Interaction should not be attempted without explicit authorization and clearance from the Commission on Latent Threats.

DO NOT APPROACH, COMMUNICATE WITH, OR EXAMINE THIS VOLUME FURTHER!

No further warnings will be given.