#Lore24 – Entry #92 – Sci-Fi Month II #1 – United Expeditionary Force
From the Personal Logs of Captain Durgen Silvercask, translated from Dwarven Script:
What in the hells am I doing here? I must be insane to even consider this command. And yet I am here, in my cabin aboard the Maharani Morgiana, overseeing the final shakedown after she was refit for this fool endeavor, spearheaded by a human woman who is barely out of diapers, no less! You’ve lost your damn mind is what’s happened, Durgen; you didn’t used to take risks like this when you were younger.
Where do I even start with this mess? I suppose I’ll save my thoughts on my ship for later… A tangle of corporate interests at the top of this “United Expeditionary Force” should have been my first hint to go find a hole and dig deep, but A3’s always been there for me, so I couldn’t exactly tell them to fuck off, could I? At least DSM isn’t involved in this, but I’d be an even bigger fool not to suspect trouble from that lot sooner or later, given who is in charge of them. My first officer on this deployment, Ryllae Lunari, may not have any official ties to DSM, but she’s an elf nonetheless, and what she does have are ties to some of the Great Houses, so that’s just as bad. Her record’s good, but that doesn’t mean a damn thing to me; if she can prove herself capable and loyal, then I’ll change my opinion, but I might as well move a mountain by myself.
Then there’s the absolutely daft decision on the rest of the personnel involved with this expedition. I can smell the corpo stink all over most of these choices, even all the way out here in the Demon Sector. Too many races, too many groups, all shoved together in the name of “discovery and exploration”. This is a gods-damned powder keg waiting to explode. I’ll be the first to admit my prejudices, and I’ll tell them to their faces, but I’ve been around long enough to know this foolishness can only end badly. Small groups on short deployments are generally fine, but this is meant to be a years-long mission, and some idiot has put elves in the same units with aerians, dwarves with kobolds and orcs, elves with kerryns, and a whole mess of other cockups.
Then there’s the religious lot they’ve brought in. As if having Erisayan and Yurisayan clergy together wasn’t potentially bad enough, all the major religions have some form of representation here, and a lot of the lesser ones, too. That’s just asking for problems; there will be blood spilled over this decision, I have no doubts about it. Give it time; there’s going to be friction, and it only takes so long before sparks fly; the canary’s already dead, and nobody noticed. Well, I did, but it’s not like I can do anything about it just yet. I’m sure there are other level-headed sorts aboard that might listen to reason.
This isn’t going to be a quick journey, either. It’ll be weeks before we’re into the Marchosias system, assuming we don’t run into any problems or hostile situations. To think we’re relying on navigational data from a bunch of wildcat explorers looking for treasures… we bare have any idea what space is like on this side of the Demon Barrier, and we’re already diving headlong into it! Guess that’s what you get when you have an emotional human girl in charge of things. Have to give her credit for standing up to that witch at the top of DSM, but she needs to be reined in before she gets thousands of people killed. But, with this many people coming in from all over known space, they’re going to do exactly what people do when cooped up in small spaces for long periods, especially with the Love and Lust delegation aboard, and that means children and other unplanned complications.
I might not be quite so concerned about this were this strictly a military operation…maybe…but we’re only responsible for keeping the Morgiana and its support ships running and seeing that the expeditionary teams are protected from whatever dangers are lurking out there. I can deal with outside threats if there are any; it’s the threats from the inside, the ones I know about and especially the ones I don’t, that worry me. Half the scientists enrolled here have barely set foot outside their offices in years, to say nothing of the scholars coming along, and the lot of them are now expecting to travel into the vast unknown. They probably think this is going to be some kind of pleasure cruise, that they’re aboard some kind of damned floating hotel!
It all boils down to this mess of an operation being rushed. It’s barely been two years since they found a way through the Barrier. We should be moving a lot slower than this, but all the higher ups see are profits. Can’t deny that I understand the feeling; the untapped resources out there are enormous, I’m certain, but running off like this can only lead to bad things. Why are we even going so far as Marchosias anyway? There are dozens, maybe hundreds of other systems between here and there that we should be starting with, and those could take decades, centuries perhaps, to even partially explore! Is it just because it’s one of the closer of the original seventy-two discovered stars? I hope there’s more to it than that.
Anyway, I’ve already started making changes in my command structure and will implement them once we’re out from beneath the combined corporate eyes here and will send recommendations to other divisions within this expeditionary force as soon as we’re outbound and away from Aphelion Station for them to do the same; it won’t be ideal, but maybe I can severe the fuse before this powder keg goes nuclear.