Petals of Titanium -- My Life as a Mecha Setting Bridge Bunny Quest

You shift settings on the scan feeds, prioritising the Rose's data. The 3D scan map on your display blurs and then refocuses, looking identical to before. You've gotten out ahead of any actual conflicts between the two scan systems.

"Li," First Officer Grayson says, glancing back at Anja, "keep Perbeck informed."

"Yes, sir," Anja chirps. "That is why you keep me around."

"Well, it's certainly not for your personality, Ensign," Grayson says, without turning around. His voice is dry, but strained. You get the distinct impression Anja is resisting the urge to respond, but your attention is firmly on your own workstation.

Long minutes go past, with you squinting at your display, as if this will make the object snap into proper focus. If it works, it takes its time -- it takes at least half an hour. "It's a ship, sir," you decide. "A damaged one. It's leaking radiation like crazy."

"... The Lily says the same," Mazlo agrees, after listening into his earpiece.

"Anything else beyond 'a ship?'" Grayson asks, a little dryly.

"... An Empire class supply freighter," you reply, frowning at the data you're seeing. "Flying Auxiliary colours. The ATS Strawberry. There's no active distress beacon, but the radiation may be obscuring the signal."

"Any chance of survivors?" Grayson asks, grimly. The Merchant Auxiliary are civilian traders in peacetime, vital support ships during times of war. Not strictly navy, but close enough for the loss to feel personal.

"Impossible to say until I know what the damage looks like," you say, cautiously. Your gut tells you no.

"The Lily says that the radiation levels aren't survivable," Mazlo says, a little smugly. As if he's the one who showed you up.

Frowning, you glance at your scan map, then at the raw data from the Lily. Technically speaking, the numbers you have now do indicate that… if they're accurate at this distance, and constant throughout the wreck, and if there's nothing providing additional radiation shielding you're not aware of. Humans in space are unbelievably fragile, but the thin line between alive and dead has more wiggle room than some people credit.

"We'll know for sure when our course brings us closer," Grayson remarks.

A suspicion begins to settle in the pit of your stomach. You know that the Lily doesn't have a regular crew so much as an assortment of technical officers thrown together on extremely short notice, who had the fortune of being dragged into the ship as it fled the top secret R&D station. Engineers, laboratory researchers. While you are aware that your counterpart on the Lily outranks you, has been with the navy longer and likely has more education than you, on paper, you're willing to bet that her experience and training lies heavily in the direction of textbooks and controlled testing environments. There's plenty of work for scan specialists in research and development, but while it might prepare one to operate the scan suite of a warship, it does not necessarily make that person adept at the fuzzier nuances of the job.

As you drift closer, this suspicion is reinforced. As the freighter's silent, tumbling hulk crosses closer and closer to your vector, the scan data of the radiation pattern is highly characteristic. The Menschy radiation in those levels almost always indicates a kinetic barrier failure from an overwhelming outside force. The scans are also getting detailed enough to detect a rupture in the hull, meaning…

"The Lily says catastrophic reactor malfunction," Mazlo relays, and you stop up short.

"So, that was an accident? Poor ship maintenance?" Grayson shakes his head, grimacing. "Hell of a way to go out here." Despite this sympathetic response, though, there's a certain relaxing of his shoulders. Part of him is relieved, and you don't blame him. Except, he's not right to be.

"Sir," you interject, carefully, "The reactor radiation is, I believe, incidental. That failure likely happened after the ship was struck by a high speed projectile, enough to punch cleanly through its shields and still have enough energy to breach the hull on the other side. I believe that this is battle damage."

Grayson frowns, a little taken aback. He looks at you, consideringly, as if deciding whether or not to make an issue out of this. Evidently, your expression wins him over. "Mazlo, please put the Lily on call."

A short moment later, the main screen switches to an image of captain Patel, with a smaller screen showing the perpetually-distracted looking woman you recognise as your counterpart. "Hello, Lieutenant Grayson," Patel says. "You say there's a problem?"

"Yes, sir," Grayson says, respectfully. "Ensign North believes that the Strawberry was sunk by battle damage."

Captain Patel glances to the side at this, frowning, and your counterpart looks up, irritated. "Ensign North is mistaken," she says. The Lieutenant insignia on her uniform seem to stand out particularly prominently, catching the light as she moves. "Perhaps the Rose's scan systems are not sophisticated enough to note this, but the ship is cloaked in residual reactor radiation -- it almost certainly had its containment and coolant systems compromised. This would also account for the Menschy radiation. I've seen runaway reactors before, Ensign."

You keep your features carefully neutral, thinking. You're suddenly incredibly grateful that you kept both sets of data running on your screen -- Grayson is looking at you like he's going to give you a chance to respond, but you'd feel much worse about things if you had had to take a guess in the dark. "I have the Lily's raw scan data in front of me, ma'am," you say, carefully, giving a slight smile that is just uncomfortable enough to convey to her how much you regret correcting her like this. "I respectfully suggest that you apply an A17 filter, and compare it to the standard shield penetration models. It is my belief that the reactor radiation is confusing your sensors, unfiltered."

Her expression is skeptical at first, as if humouring you while she adds the filter to her scan output, but in quick order, her face colours. "... I see," she says, mortified. "I apologise, sir," she tells Captain Patel, "The ensign is correct." What you suggested are standard techniques for quickly refining data in the field like this, and she most certainly learned them in specialist training -- however, they're useless for anything approaching serious research. Your suspicion that this is the first time she's been in anything like a front line position deepens into absolute certainty.

"I see," Patel says, face grim. "Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Lieutenant Grayson. We will be proceeding at level two battle stations."

"Certainly, sir," Grayson rumbles back. As the direct call ends, he follows suit, issuing the now all too familiar shipwide call to assume level two battle stations. You know that whatever amount of sleep Captain Andre managed to get is about to be interrupted.


"No signs of life from the wreck," J6 says, her flat voice filling the bridge. The visual feed of the ship from one of her unit's drones is heartbreaking -- the hull rupture is massive, and appears to punch cleanly through multiple crew decks. Most of the crew would have died almost instantly, with the survivors killed by the reactor malfunction, accounting for your series of events. "I am picking up an automated distress signal, as well as something else. Relaying to you now, Rose."

"Mazlo, what does it look like?" Captain Andre asks, having taken up her usual spot once Grayson had vacated it. She's alert, but her eyes have the twitchy quality you come to associate with heavy emergency-stim use from your specialist training. She'll pay for that later.

"It's an encoded message piggybacked to the distress signal. Standard imperial encryption." He rolls out his shoulders, fatigue clear in his thin features. You and Captain Andre aren't the only ones onboard running on fumes -- he's likely been working a lot of extra shifts in order to coordinate things with the Lily while you've been overseeing the scan repairs. By luck of the draw, the other ship doesn't have a communications officer with Mazlo's qualifications. "I'll have it readable in a few minutes, ma'am," he promises.

This proves to be optimistic. Time goes by excruciatingly slowly, as the two ships' vectors bring them closer and closer to the wreck. You're still not seeing anything hostile on your scan feeds, but everyone's on edge.

"Is there a problem, Sub-Lieutenant?" Andre asks, looking pointedly at Mazlo.

"I… I have the decryption done, ma'am," he says, slowly, tearing his eyes away from the screen for a moment. "But I… there's something with this cipher… I'm almost certain this contains coordinates. It's formatted like a rendezvous."

"Will it be much longer?" Andre asks, frowning. Captain Patel is waiting on the intelligence, as Mazlo well knows, and if this really is a set of coordinates for a rendezvous the Strawberry was to make with an escort fleet, that could greatly alleviate some of your immediate danger.

"No, ma'am," he says, but sweat is clustering obviously on his brow.

As the minutes continue to tick by, you can't help yourself -- you steal a glance over at his display, a familiar interface showing there as he attempts to run the cipher through various programs, each time turning out something that isn't quite usable.

With a flash of secondhand embarrassment, you realise why. It's a naval cipher he's using, but a tricky one, almost identical to another, much more common variety. Perhaps as a result, he has his basic settings wrong -- he's decoding for the incorrect cipher. A mistake he likely wouldn't be making if he were a little better rested. You only recognise the difference because you read a book on the history of this cipher family last month. Obviously, you have to rectify this situation, sooner rather than later but it's different from the shipwreck. This is Mazlo's job, not yours, no one is actively calling on you to explain, and It's a simple mistake -- he'll be able to fix the problem once he realises what the problem actually is.

How do you handle it?

[ ] Quietly send Mazlo a message alerting him to his mistake without embarrassing him

[ ] Tell him about his mistake out loud, drawing attention to it

[ ] Do it yourself while he's still stuck