There was a post about this recently, though it didn't go into very much detail at all, so I thought I'd fix that, and try to cover both sides of the argument, for and against.
I've been continually updating this post with new information for hours, while I research this, so feel free to check again later!

About the theory

There is a conspiracy theory that the very tuning system modern music uses (A4=440Hz) is designed to make us more anxious or aggressive, or to otherwise make us less in tune with our spirituality.
It's a pretty fun one.
Proponents of this conspiracy claim that 432Hz is more natural, that it is more fundamental to nature and more in tune with the universe itself.
It is often claimed that the Rockefellers or the Nazis came up with 440Hz, as a form of control or division.
People often talk about how 432Hz aligns with our chakra and so has healing properties, or that it encourages spiritual development.
There are many interesting numerical, numerological and geometric properties/relationships between 432Hz and other things in the world/universe.

For the theory

• 432Hz supposedly resonates with 8Hz (the base Schuman resonance, which is essentially the frequency of the Earth itself). In reality, the Schuman resonance averages to 7.83Hz, which when multiplied by 55 gives us 430.65, not 432. Close but not close enough. Debunked?
• 432 is the sum of four consecutive prime numbers: 103 + 107 + 109 + 113 = 432. This is... pretty damn interesting. EDIT: But according to someone in the comments, 40% of numbers under 999 can be created this way, however see below for even more significance.
• 4 + 3 + 2 = 9. In numerology, 9 has the highest vibrational frequency, aside from the master numbers, and according to one source "represents the sum of all parts, or revelation" and according to another source "represents spiritual wisdom, or seeking to serve all of humanity". Any multiple of 9 can be summed back to 9, which highlights the infinite power of 9 (9x2=18, 1+8=9; 9x3=27, 2+7=9 etc.).
  • If we sum the individual digits of the four primes from above (remember: 103 + 107 + 109 + 113 = 432), so, let's sum those digits (i.e. 1 + 3 + 1 + 7 + 1 + 9 + 1 + 1 + 3). We get 27 and then we sum that (2 + 7) to get 9. There it is again.
  • In numerology, 432 and 864 are both multiples of 9 (which sum to 9) and are also astronomical- and time-related (86400 seconds in a day, the radius of the sun is 432k miles). Notice also that the 864 component of the number is double 432.
• In geometry, the internal angles of the regular polygons sum to 9 (triangle = 180, square = 360, pentagon = 540, hexagon = 720, heptagon = 900, octagon = 1080 etc.).
  • Interestingly, if we use A=432Hz then all of those angles from the regular polygons above show up as notes. 180Hz is an F#, 360Hz is an F#, 540Hz is a C#, 720Hz is an F#, 900Hz is an A#, 1080Hz is a C# etc. If we take those notes, we can build an F# Major Chord using F#, A# and C#. Major chords are arguably the most important.
  • The above also works with the interior angles of the platonic solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron etc.), which form the same chord!
  • It also works with the germ of life from sacred geometry, again forming the same chord!
  • The interior angles of the cube, and the germ of life, add up to 2160. If we remove the 0, thus 216, this is exactly half of our magical 432 (and, of course, also sums to 9).
• If we use the fibonacci sequence (which shows up often in nature, such as branching in trees, the arrangement of leaves on a stem, the fruit sprouts of a pineapple, the flowering of an artichoke, an uncurling fern, and the arrangement of a pine cone's bracts) algorithm, but instead of starting with 0 we start at 180 (because of its meaning in geometry - the internal angles of a triangle), then look what happens:
  • 0 + 180 = 180
  • 180 + 180 = 360 (square/circle)
  • 180 + 360 = 540 (pentagon, perfect fifth interval)
  • 360 + 540 = 900 (septagon, major third interval)
  • 540 + 900 = 1440 (star tetrahedron/Jewish merkabah, perfect eighth interval)
  • Oh, look, a Major chord.
• The Mayans discovered the "precession of the equinox" (basically the way the earth's axis wobbles), which they measured to take 25,920 years per cycle. They called it "the great year". What a coincidence, then, that "the great month" is 2160 years in length.
  • If we take the fundamental 12 and 60, from Sumerian math, and then take the numbers from music/geometry, and we multiply them (e.g. 12 x 2160, 60 x 432, 360 x 72, 180 x 144), in every case, we get 25,920.
  • They say also that the diameter of the moon is 2160 miles but unfortunately it's 2,158.8 miles, which kind of ruins the astronomical significance of all this a little.
  • 2160 / 5 = 432, and when divided by other numbers will give you those various internal geometric angles from above.
  • If we divide any two numbers in the fibonacci sequence, we get the golden ratio (which just like it's big brother shows up all over nature, geometry, architecture and even in the human body), which is 1.61 to the nearest hundredth. If we do 1.61² (1.61 x 1.61) we get 2.592 to the nearest thousandth. Do you see it? Remember, the great precession? 25,920 years?
• On an ancient Sumerian cuneifom tablet, the Sumerians kept track of the lengths of the reigns of their kings. Among the list are Kings who reigned for 288,000 years, 432,000 years and 360,000 years. Ignoring these seemingly impossible reigns, if you take away the zeroes, all three of those numbers show up in the factor nine grid (which is a grid of numbers built on 432, and basically shows you all the frequencies within the 432Hz system). Also, these 3 frequencies form a Major chord. Some say this confirms the theory of the Anunnaki, the aliens or deities who visited the Sumerians, Babylonians etc. and imparted knowledge and wisdom of creation.
• 432² (432 x 432) = 186,624. This is within 0.01% of the speed of light, which is 186,400 miles/second.
• A man named George Van Tassel claimed to have been given an equation by aliens in the 1950s. The equation was F = 1 / T (F = frequency, T = time). If we take the 1 to mean 1x great precession, as calculated by the Mayans, so 25,920, and we take T to mean 60, a significant number for time, the result is 432.
• If we take the number 12, which was significant to the Sumerians, and square it, we get 144. 144 shows up as a note when using A4=432Hz. If we expand 144 outwards to 144,000, this number seems to show up everywhere.
  • Supposedly the Pyramid of Giza is made of 144,000 stones. I can't confirm this.
  • The baktun, which is a Mayan measurement of time corresponding to 20 katun cycles, is equal to 144,000 days.
  • The bible says that there will be 144,000 chosen ones who will be redeemed.
  • 144,000 / 432 is 33.333333333... which may explain the Freemasons' obsession with the number 3.
  • In Hinduism, a kali yuga is a measurement of time equal to 432,000 years.
• 432 is exactly 3 gross, gross being an old measurement equal to 144. Huh.
• An equilateral triangle whose area and perimeter are equal has the area of exactly the square root of 432.
• There are supposedly 432 Buddha statues on Mount Meru, which are said to relate to the location of the chakras. Cannot confirm/deny.
• Supposedly the most ancient of instruments, unearthed from archaeological digs, were all tuned at 432Hz, but this is not true. Hertz did not exist at those times and they had no way to measure it, and from my research it seems the tuning of unearthed ancient instruments varies wildly. Debunked?
• There are images and videos using cymatics to attempt to prove the theory, however these experiments can be specifically tuned to resonate (and thus produce beautiful/symmetrical images/patterns) at any frequency. Debunked?
• In Pythagorean tuning, the first standardised method of tuning, which is based on ratios, 432 arises, as it is a multiplication of the ratio between C and A, C being 1:1 and A being 27:16, which is equal to 432:256. But these are just ratios and can apply to any base frequency, including 440Hz.
• In just intonation, the ratios used to build the scale (from C) are 1:1, 9:8, 5:4, 4:3, 3:2, 5:3 and 15:8. You may notice that all of these are part of the fibonacci sequence, which is fundamental to nature. However, again, these are just ratios and can be used with any frequency, including 440Hz.
• Often people will claim that 432Hz resonates with the heart or the brain or the sun or water. The heart fluctuates between 1-2.5Hz and the brain between 1-70Hz, these numbers cannot be multiplied to reach 432 and so there is no resonance there. The sun is around 5.964GHz which when divided by 42,000,000 gives us 142Hz. Close but no cigar. Water is a wide band between 90-110THz, not favouring any frequency. Debunked?
• It was an evil Nazi/Rockefeller plot which means the theory is more likely to be true/just makes sense, because... evil gonna evil? Well, actually it was the British Standards Institute's idea. Debunked?
• If A=432Hz, then you could have an E note that has a frequency of 162Hz and 162 looks kind of like phi (which relates to the golden ratio, and so is related to nature) - 1.618033988... do you see it? 162? 1.61...? This one debunks itself.
• In an octave there are 13 notes and the most dominant is called the fifth, which is the 8th note. 8/13 is approximately equal to the golden ratio, which is found all over nature. The most important notes in a scale are the 1st, 5th, 8th and 13th, all of which are found in the fibonacci sequence. I mean, sure? But once more this doesn't really have anything to do with 432Hz itself, the same can be said of 440Hz.

Against the theory

• Despite the standard of A4=440Hz, most symphony orchestras all around the world actually still use different standards such as 415, 432, 442, 444, 448 etc., anywhere from 415-470Hz. And in the more distant past anywhere from 380-500Hz. If 440Hz was specifically designed to make us feel anxious or aggressive, or whatever, as many proponents of this conspiracy theory claim, then surely it would be strictly adhered to throughout the musical world? The powers that be would not tolerate these deviances.
• There have been various attempts at standardisation throughout history, the French at 435Hz, the British at 439Hz, the Austrians at 440Hz etc. In the past, there was no standard (that is to say 432Hz was never a universal standard), pieces could sound much higher or lower depending on where or when they were performed (again, A4=380-500Hz). Obviously this is problematic if you have musicians travelling around the world, performing with different orchestras and such, constantly having to re-tune. Clearly standardisation would fix that issue, which is why efforts to do so began after the invention of the tuning fork.
• The practice of dividing a minute into 60 divisions (seconds) didn't begin until the 16th century, I believe. For all intents and purposes it is an arbitrary measurement. The ancients had no concept of seconds, so any instances of other things from those periods of history equaling 432 are purely coincidental. We could have divided the minute into literally anything else and then the numbers would not have lined up. Eventually scientists decided to define the second as "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom". Suggesting that the ancients could even calculate that, or knew anything about it, is absurd, as is suggesting that there is something inherently magical or mystical or spiritual about "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom". If the second was instead defined as something based on the human body itself, especially the brain, then maybe I could get behind this, but seconds and by extension hertz don't really have anything to do with the mind/body/spirit at all.
• String instruments sound objectively "brighter" when tuned higher, due to the higher tension resulting in stronger harmonics. Due to this there was a period in history, referred to as pitch inflation, where orchestras were constantly competing with each other, tuning higher and higher to attain a brighter sound, going far above A=440Hz. Eventually this got to the point where vocalists started complaining about vocal strain. This is one reason why the compromise of 440Hz was decided.

Bonus #1

There is this phenomenon called the overtone series, or the harmonic series, and if you don't know about it then boy are you in for a treat.
All tones, except for pure sine waves, have "overtones".
Let's say we have a string, a piano string, tuned to C... C2. We strike the key. What do you think you're hearing?
A C2? ...just a C? Wrong! You're hearing a whole butt-load of notes.
When a string vibrates, it doesn't just vibrate along its entire length but also along various subdivisions of 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 etc., all simultaneously.
As a result, what you hear is: C2, C3, G3, C4, E4, G4, Bb4, C5, D5, E5, F5, G5 and so on.
As the overtones go up, they become more and more faint but they are definitely there.
This is one reason why low/bass notes sound "fuller" - because there are more overtones. The other reason, I believe, is just because bass strings are thicker?
The more astute reader may notice that embedded in the first 4 overtones of C(2) is a C Major chord and embedded in the first 5 overtones is a C dominant 7th chord. Within the first ten overtones lies the entire C Major scale, aside from the missing A note and disregarding the additional Bb note.
So then, the foundations of our music system itself are literally embedded in every single individual note, thanks to physics/nature.
Isn't that beautiful?

Bonus #2

It's also worth mentioning equal temperament and well temperament. Equal temperament, the modern system, is based on the 12th root of 2. In this system, all 12 semitones are spaced equally far apart and so every key feels the same, so you can modulate freely from key to key, due to the uniformity of the semitones. One drawback is that major thirds are quite a bit off from where they should be, another is that the various musical keys lose their unique flavour or colour or feel.
The previous system, well temperament, is based on ratios - the octaves are not divided equally into 12, so some keys' semitones are higher or lower than others. For instance, some keys have quite stable major thirds and others not so much, this gives every key a unique feel, but overall makes modulation a bit easiebetter sounding than the system before it, and avoids the problem of "wolf fifths/intervals" from the system before it, which I won't go into.
In essence, in the old system some keys are more in-tune (e.g. C) and so are more consonant and others are somewhat out-of-tune (e.g. C#) and so are more dissonant, whereas in the new system every key is equally in-tune.
This doesn't really relate to the conspiracy theory exactly, as you can use either equal or well temperament with any tuning (A=440Hz, A=432Hz etc.), as far as I understand.
Although you could argue that this is a conspiracy in and of itself, in that they took away the unique feel or colour of each key and made everything more... bland or boring. Perhaps this was part 1 of their 2-part evil musical plan!
You could also argue that the new system takes away the mathematical beauty in the ratios of the older systems and if there is indeed some link between frequency and geometry and physics and consciousness and whatever else, then we're kind of doing ourselves a disservice.
As an additional bonus for making it this far, here's a song that starts at A4=432Hz, but changes to A4=440Hz part of the way through. It's subtle!
You can find lots of 432Hz videos on YouTube, including comparisons.
Have fun.
P.S. This took 8 straight hours of my sad, sad life to research and compile.

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Tense Times
"Alright, crazy thought here: How about we just run like everything's on fire?"
"Seriously, Em." Jamet was having trouble focusing. Something about combining adrenaline highs and stress seemed to be making the medication wear off faster. That warm, comfortable quilt of numbness was more like a thin blanket now, thrown over the smoking oven of agony that was her arm. Fear and worry made every reply a biting snap. "If you can't think of anything-"
"Actually, that is not too bad of an idea." Accidental peacemaker wasn't a role Paul typically played. "We have two opposing forces here, both far out of our ability to handle. Why not hunker down, or leave entirely? Let them fight each other?"
"Would that work?" Siers seemed to be honestly considering the merits. His quiet voice filled the comm link and bounced off the dirty walls of Jamet's control center. "The Kipper's drive is available, after all. We simply couldn't use it because of the risk. But with those manufacturing drones distracted by the new arrival could we make use of it in the confusion? Escape the system?"
"Ah, not to throw a wrench in this or anythin', but ah'm currently in a lifeboat? While ah do like you all, especially Em-"
"Aww, that bought you a free pass." Fake sniffles drifted through the transmission.
"-ah'm not really interested in dyin' out here while everyone makes a run for it. That's more the LT's thing."
"It's been less than an hour and already that's going to be a joke?" Jamet shifted slightly, trying to find a position that relieved pressure on her arm. There wasn't any such magical angle or adjustment (of course) but her hindbrain couldn't help it. Something was wrong and instincts as old as humanity kept her moving restlessly in search of comfort. "I really feel like being willing to literally explode for you all should get me some credit. Seriously!"
"Maybe if you pulled it off, Impossible, but that ship's blasted off." Emilia made whooshing noises. "Since you're sticking around it's gonna be nonstop comments for a loooong while."
"Back on track, everyone. Lieutenant?" Siers sent an updated system map, all combatants tagged with distance and speed markers. "What are the odds we can pick up Janson's lifeboat and get to you before the fight lands on your doorstep?"
She eyed it, leveraging less than a week's worth of manual navigation refresher courses. "That's a good question. That new ship? The Tulip? It seems to be much slower than the drones, it's barely over a four thousand miles a second. If that's their top speed even the Kipper could beat it in a straight line." Jamet stuck a leg in the air, then used her heel to slide the system map around. "Uh, just doing math in my head but it looks like fifteen minutes or so before my location becomes a brawl. Someone check that?"
"Seems correct."
"Eh, about right. Lifeboat's giving me a little under seventeen, though."
"Alright. In that case my professional opinion is," the line went silent as everyone metaphorically leaned in, breath held. "It was wonderful knowing you all."
"Booo!"
Siers didn't sound amused. "Hush, Comms. Explain that, lieutenant? And please be very persuasive, because I am a moment away from undocking and giving it a serious attempt." A confirmation beep echoed over the line, followed by the tap of an authorization being entered. "In fact I am already shutting down non-essential systems. Paul? Please close down Environmental in case we suffer more boarders."
"I will need Janson's access for ship bulkheads and hatch closures."
"Granted. Make a note please, Jackson."
"...uh. Ah will?" Then, in quiet confusion: "Jackson?"
"Whoa, hold on! Don't!" Jamet leaned into the console pickup like physical distance would help the argument. "That's not possible-- it took the lifeboat at full burn most of a day to get here. The ship can move a lot faster but you're also talking about doing it by manual navigation, with a casual stop to pick up a lifeboat on the way. How hard do you think that is?" Visions of her failed simulated Kipper ships tearing apart filled Jamet's imagination, spewing pixelated coins and crewmembers across hard vacuum. "Because I'm here to tell you I don't think I could do a drive-by pickup without a ridiculous amount of practice."
"Understood, lieutenant. I'll be using automated navigation, then. Comms, could you mind plotting a course, if you haven't already..?" More clicks and a ringing confirmation.
She sped up, distracting herself from a throbbing sensation that seemed to be making the entire room jump in time with her pulse. "Too slow! The automated system would plot an intercept, move there, decelerate for a mandatory five minutes, then coordinate with the lifeboat for an easy coupling." Jamet blew an exasperated breath. "Which takes another ten minutes minimum because of safety systems. By the time the ship turned this way you'd be looking right at a cloud of pieces where the smelter used to be."
"Well just do it in reverse, then?" The short technician practically added a 'duh' on the end. "Go straight to the smelter, pull the Princess out of her tin castle and turn around."
Jamet leaned as far to the left as she could, setting a sweat-covered forehead on the skinsuit's forearm. It felt cool, refreshing. Or maybe her face was just burning up. Was it possible to have a fever from a broken arm? Or from too many injections? "Damn this hurts."
Paul was immediately suspicious. "What hurts?"
"Doesn't matter. Em, even if you started right this instant it would be something like fifteen minutes just to get here." She took a deep breath and immediately regretted it as everything went fuzzy. "You'd still be going... through docking... when it hit."
He wouldn't let up. "Jamet. Can you hear me? What hurts? Medications in those kits are exceptionally strong. You should not be feeling anything."
"Arm. Throbbing, making me dizzy." Stars crossed through the room, diving from the overheads. Moving her head caused afterimages to jump from every surface-- dozens of consoles like ghosts, only coming together into a solid object when she stopped moving. "Everything is jumping around, catching up to itself." Did that make sense? Someone was shouting about explosions now, tone loud and scared. "It's okay. It missed." Jamet tried to be reassuring but everything felt like it was spinning out of sync.
"What missed?" Paul seemed confused and alarmed in equal measures. "Lieutenant, be completely honest-- did you take the other medications? Because if you used the air cast without-"
Emilia broke in, yelling. "It's firing again! Look! The ship is lighting up!"
Jamet lolled her head to one side, fighting through dozens of afterimages until the workspace came into view. It was true: On screen the damaged flower ship was lighting up. Every remaining leaf slowly gathered a limn of white fire that moved like congealed smoke, power smoothly arcing forward from the bright ring at the back of the vessel. Whatever process the Tulip used to charge up was obviously hampered by losing petals; at least four of the huge pieces spun in freefall behind it now in torn segments. Swarm drones buzzed and dove around it like angry insects.
Its course, however, was undeterred-- still aimed directly at the smelter and the battered co-CEO inside. In fact, it was aiming very directly at it. Janson took control of their shared transmission, sounding extremely concerned. "Uhm, it is about to shoot the LT?"
"Oh shit! Impossible, that thing is about to blast you!" She could practically hear Emilia's arms waving around. "Get out! Or find something to hide behind!"
"S'alright," she mumbled, eyes squinting at the display. Markers were jumping around like fading dots, moving forward and back across half a dozen display ghosts. It was hard to focus on just one. "It missed."
"It hasn't even fired yet!"
Petals finally hit final charge, each tip blazing with contained balls of power normally reserved for primary stars. They dipped together, touching each to the central column in a radiant explosion that instantly turned to a supernova flash that whited out the workstation display. But that was fine because Jamet could feel the beam go by: A soundless roar like standing too close to a power relay when it suddenly goes to full charge. Invisible fields smashed through the entire interior of the control room, sending loose tools and metallic scrap into a brief tornado of movement. Even the overhead lights blurred, shadows jumping back and forth where there shouldn't be any.
For a brief moment Jamet saw someone by her chair, tall and lithe like a bird, bent over with an air of confused inspection. She turned, surprised and ready to shout, but they were gone before her eyes could track. Only trash and tools remained, dozens of afterimages flying around each until they resolved into a single item. "S'that?"
"Lieutenant!" Siers was nearly shouting. "Report if you're alive!"
"It missed! It missed the smelter! Holy shit, she called it!" Then, incredibly: "Wait, how the hell could it miss with a shot that big? Impossible should be atoms right now."
"Actually, she called it before it happened." Paul sounded thoughtful. "Which has me concerned about causality again. But what was it aiming at, if not the smelter? Emilia, help me backtrack the recording. What was near the smelter before it fired?"
Siers brushed the question aside with crisp orders. "We're leaving. Lieutenant, if you're awake, prepare to receive us in as early as ten minutes. I'm going to manually-"
Metallic hail started hammering the outside of her smelting facility, terrifically loud bangs and pings than sending consoles into a frenzy of status updates. Alarms began blaring a moment later, nearly drowning out the comm link.
"Noooo." She slurred the word, then focused. "Navigational... hazard." It felt like lifting an entire mountain but she got a foot up on the console, running cold toes through every blurry image until enough indicators received acknowledgement to shut up the alarms. "He hit... drone cluster... near me."
"Captain, I am forwarding footage from before that shot." Another callout appeared on the workspace, showing the smelter and a region of busy space beyond it. Hundreds of asteroids spun through the image in slow tumbles, in and out of frame until Paul highlighted something. "There, about five thousand miles away. See it?"
Janson sure did. "Ah, that's the tailings."
"The what? It looks metallic, how did we not see that on scan?" Siers was furious.
"We did!" Emilia pulled the image back, then highlighted both the smelter and Paul's marker. "It's a part of the smelter operation! That's where they dump waste products, stuff they don't want or can't use. It's supposed to be there, it's a part of the facility so our visual scan didn't bother cataloging it."
"Makes sense. Smelters don't get everythin', always a pile of tailings layin' around. Looks like it was getting converted into something a lot bigger than contaminate storage, though."
He was right-- with the image zoomed close everyone could see the telltale hexagons eating half the side of the dump site. "How large is- or I suppose was it? Comms, Engineer?"
Emilia sounded unhappy. "Couple hundred miles wide, sir. It's, uh... a lot of dump in one spot."
"Ah! I knew there was a reason. Captain, remember when ah was confused about where their exotic materials were comin' from? I think that was it. Hell of a good recycler on those drones, I'm guessing." Janson seemed pleased to have a puzzle solved.
Siers' voice hit with a reverb and echo effect from using the ship broadcast at the same time as their conference call. "All personnel, prepare for undocking and maneuvers. Harnesses are required, find one immediately." He switched back to normal. "Lieutenant, we're coming if you can hear me."
Wait-- they did this part already. Didn't they? Jamet was so tired everything came through with a weird echo. "Nooo. Navigation... hazard. Don't."
"Oh! Wait, don't!" Emilia repeated Jamet in a panicked tone. "That hit scattered debris everywhere! Well, whatever wasn't vaporized. We'll be going at high speed face-first into chunks of metal and pieces of whatever those drones are. Can we handle more damage like that?"
The overheads flickered around Jamet's control room. She looked up with bleary eyes, slowly tracking around the area as shadows jumped across every space. Everything was throbbing now, from her arm all the way down to both legs. A pounding heartbeat, rolling back and forth like a tide felt in every bone and muscle. Each pulse made the room bright and dark again, sending a dizzying number of reflections and ghost movements spinning out of sight. Nausea hit like a tidal wave, held back only by deep breaths and raw will.
She looked towards the only safe place in the room: Straight upwards over the chair. The portrait was still there, wry and half-amused, poised to speak but silent. Jamet took comfort in the non-motion of the marker strokes while focusing on keeping herself from vomiting, trying to ignore sweat rolling underneath pieces of skinsuit.
"-I'm willing to try, lieutenant. Can you hear me?" Siers asked it with the sad tone of someone expecting bad news.
"I'm... here..." Why did this seem so familiar?
"Sir, I don't think we can fly into that. Nobody can, not until fragments of that blast have time to clear out. Even then it'll take a wrecker with some heavy singularities to eat the big stuff." Emilia was trying to be reasonable and sad at the same time. "Ask Impossible, she'll say the same."
His voice was rough on the communications line. "Lieutenant-- Jamet-- if you're still there: The shot wasn't aimed at the facility. We think it was meant for a nearby drone cluster and you were right on the edge."
She said that before. Didn't she? Just a bit ago?
"But the debris is a significant navigational hazard."
Navigational hazard. Jamet whispered the words at the same time. She definitely said that first, just a minute ago. Even the portrait agreed, eyes permanently turned away in sardonic disbelief.
Siers sounded fatalistic, nearly haunted. "We are undocked now and I need to know if you believe we can make it to you." Jamet opened her mouth, lips moving as she mouthed the next words with him: "I'm willing to try, lieutenant. Can you hear me?"
The portrait overhead slowly came to life. Marker lines blurred, afterimages splitting off in visions of different poses. Eyes closed, then open. Mouth smiling and then frowning, eyebrows slanted in sarcasm or raised in surprise. The artist caught in this chair for a year and a half going through hundreds, then thousands of different possibilities in the space of a long breath. Not just a single picture: Every possible combination they ever could have drawn, given infinite tries and inspiration. Black marks of emotion; rage giving way to despair, then loneliness and isolation as time went on and on, endlessly, no communications, no one coming...
...and Jamet could see it now, see her arm lifted overhead. Whole and unbroken, pointing a thick black marker like a paintbrush. One stroke at a time, pauses in between that lasted both days and instants all at once. But the skinsuit arm was wrong-- thinner than hers, the material red with silver slashes. And the glove was off, showing bird-thin wrists and a long, slender artist's hand holding the marker lightly in a three finger grip. It wasn't hers. She was seeing someone else, sitting in the same immoveable chair, tied to the same spot by an evil system.
"It's time," she whispered as realization hit, hearing the long-gone artist say those exact words with her. The same words, at the same time, but different meanings: Jamet spoke with wonder and realization, remembering Paul's comment about tachyons and the Siers' confusion over recordings. But the past woman said it differently, with despair and heartbreak roiling under a shell of depression.
Jamet tried again, wanting to explain what was happening to herself and the past ghost all at once. "We're together." She meant it as an explanation-- I am here, with you. Do you see? We're the same right now. The ghost whispered it at the same time, but aimed upwards at the completed portrait. Like a prayer. Like a goodbye. We're together.
Then they sheared off, afterimages of a smaller woman sitting up in the chair and stepping down. Ghost lights dying as past systems shut down, leaving her in a twilight darkness. Jamet craned to watch as the shadow moved away, stepping to the airlock with her marker still held in one hand...
"Lieutenant! We are on our way!" Siers yelled it as if he were in the next room, trying to be heard over a rush of sound.
The ghost of an airlock opened for the woman, both there and not at once. She watched a figment of echo and shadow walk through a closed hatch, then murmured to the comm pickup. "No, you're not." Jamet shook her head. "You haven't left yet."
The afterimage faded away, leaving behind only her airlock. Sealed, solid and real. But Jamet could still hear the marker, squeaking and slashing at the other side. A furious shade writing months of tearful anger on the mausoleum walls.
Her head didn't throb any more. But the images were still there, skating off every wrapper, piece of paper or console. Dozens of possibilities, overlapping at once. She looked down at the workspace, seeing the incoming fight both far away and right on top of the smelter all at once. A dot labelled Kipper jumped positions every time Jamet blinked, crossing from right next to the derelict habitation ring to halfway between them with each motion.
But never farther. No matter how many times Jamet looked, the Kipper's course always stopped with a terrible finality. Like an egg thrown against a wall, the dot zipping along and suddenly smashed, gone. The implication wasn't hard to grasp: Collision. Destruction. But communicating that horrible outcome was a problem. Where was she right now? When was she at this moment? Could she do anything about it, and how?
Perhaps she could cheat. It seemed simple, really, all about the timing. Jamet waited until the Kipper's callout reset to the habitation ring, then spoke as strong and clearly as she could into the console's audio: "I'm here. Emilia is right: You'll all die in the debris wave. Don't come."
She waited for the dot to move again, to fly into a fatal collision at the desperate speed of friendship. But it didn't move-- possibilities, collapsed. Paradox solved. "It can change," Jamet whispered in tone of stunned joy. Then she laughed, head thrown back. "We can change it!"
And the portrait over her head turned, looking downward with surprise and something close to anger. Endless possibilities of marker strokes condensed into a single storm cloud of expression, deep lines and forced perspective conspiring in groups of shading to give the illusion of motion.
Beautifully drawn eyes focused across a distance too impossible to put a number on, slowly catching Jamet's in a look of surprise they both shared at the same time.
What... are you?
"What are you?"

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Final Callbacks
Corporate playgrounds are subtle lessons in treachery.
When she was little, before mock games took a turn to real consequences, Jamet's favorite thing to play on was the "seesaw". It was a staple of playgrounds everywhere: Just a single support post with a long piece of metal balanced across it, a seat placed on both extreme ends. Two children would each take a seat, then trade turns pushing off the ground to be the one "up". Being "down" wasn't as good: You couldn't see much with your butt on the dirt. But being on top was fantastic-- taller than an adult, feet dangling, a heady rush of victory.
And all you had to do to secure that feeling was kick off, put the other person down. One winner, one loser, trading places by effort.
The Corporate version had six seats and backstabbing.
With six chairs and a single pivot the seesaw became warfare, a hexagon of social combat. Balanced on a central point only two children could ever be "uppers" at a time. The unfortunate lower pair with their rears in the dirt could work together to push off and force the other side down, of course... but they had to overcome the last third of the group. The middle seaters.
Balanced sideways between the uppers and lowers, middles were neither high nor low. But they did influence change. When lowers pushed off to claim victory middles could lean against the effort and drive them back down. Or help by throwing weight into the push, sending uppers crashing downward without risking their balanced position across the center.
As a social lesson the hexagon setup was brutal in teaching aspiring climbers necessary skills to remain on top: Always alliance someone below, working them to sabotage a partner, ensuring you never lose your spot on top. Failure to breed fratricide in the ranks resulted in painful falls.
The child version of Jamet was a legendary terror of the teeter-totter.
As an adult it was much less enjoyable.
But at the end of her life, sitting in a sadistically comfy chair and riding the edge of a drugged-up psychotic break, those long-ago playground skills came into new practice. In the wake of the Tulip's superweapon firing so close the flow of time seemed to be broken... or least extremely non-linear in nature. Jamet felt like she was riding that seesaw hexagon again, but now a version of herself was in every single seat, ghostly visions intersecting with hers in barely-visible angles. Upper copies were pain-free, older and wiser, looking backwards from distant futures with silent concern. Lower seaters suffered in misery, shattered arms and boatloads of overdosed medication making it hard to think at all.
Which put her back in Middle Management again, balanced between a horrible near-past and a possible bright future. Leaning side to side, throwing her weight as possibilities opened and closed with every moment.
And she wasn't alone.
"These are some insane painkillers in these kits." Jamet stared upwards at the ceiling of the smelter, watching a dead artist's final portrait flow between expressions like it was a video conference call. "I really have to warn Paul about mixing medications."
The portrait seemed just as confused as she was. Stylized eyebrows came down in worry, eyes tracking back and forth like they had trouble focusing on the woman trapped in the control chair. Realistically shaped lips moved, a powerful suggestion of voice without any volume. I can hear you talking. I can feel you, but from where? From when? Then, tellingly: How are you here?
One of the Lower, downstream versions of herself glanced at the console, noting an angry swarm of hostile red dots approaching the smelter in pursuit of the Tulip. This information trickled to Middle in waves, causing a lot of fear along the way until one of the Uppers disappeared in a flash of lost possibilities. Another took its place, looking significantly more beaten and weary.
Jamet had a feeling that wasn't good. How many more of her future selves could she lose before the seesaw didn't work? Actually, that was the perfect question to ask. She gave it a shot, looking upwards and feeling extremely stupid addressing the ceiling. "Can you help me?"
Confusion in thousands of black lines. I don't know. Where are you? Is your present near me, now?
That was an easy answer, considering there was only a single unaccounted-for ship in Pilster-3 right now. "Probably. Are you piloting the Tulip? The uh, big ship with a huge plasma weapon? Are you some kind of CEO on board? Or a passenger, maybe?" Wow, Jamet really hoped Emilia wasn't recording this somehow. In fact-- she glanced at her Lower, who wearily nodded and used her (their) heel to mute the comms link.
Another flash of possibilities, another Upper replaced. A glowing version of herself this time, face full of laugh lines and humor, wearing a uniform she'd never seen before. A future reopened-- which interested present-her very much.
Overhead the portrait was going through several fast expressions. Surprise and disgust, then a deep sort of thoughtfulness before settling on introspective concern. Yes, I have been on the Tulip. Many times. But I have not been a... CEO. This came across with a wary sort of concern, like insulting a host at their own party. Nor am I ever a passenger. Can you narrow down your present?
"That's kind of a weird request. Can you narrow down your present?" Which was apparently the wrong thing to say: Upstream Jamets blazed by like a paired lightshow in a double kaleidoscope of failures. "Ack! Come back!" A new pair settled into place, identical gray hair in braids over their shoulders. One looked tired, arms crossed and lonely. The other seemed surprised, dusting red clay off both hands.
Come back to where? I am present in a research facility, with many others. If we are meeting at the sh- Tulip I need context. What is your present?
Jamet metaphorically looked across at her Middle counterpart. They shrugged, then consulted the Lowers, both of whom pointed chins at consoles full of raging drone swarms across a backdrop of asteroids.
Realization hit. Talk about a unique situation. "Oh! Right! I'm at Pils- no, that won't help. Double asteroid belts! The system has two asteroid belts! That's where I am!"
Oh. Three, seven or eight planets?
Maybe it wasn't that unique. "Two! There's only two planets here! They're both gas giants, with big facilities in orbit for resource extraction."
Streaks of shading pursued both lips as he looking slightly off to one side in thought. A perfectly outlined scar came and went, gracing the left cheekbone for just a moment before disappearing. Yes, I think I know that place. I forgot the third was artificial. What is going on, when you are?
One of her Lowers actually facepalmed, pulling her good arm off the reader and disappearing in a down-time negative flash of light that took Jamet's middle version with it. They both reappeared an instant later looking severely beaten up: The Lower now sported a broken arm, bloody lips and two black eyes. Her Middle counterpart had the same injuries, but met Jamet's worried look and painfully mouthed Janson by way of explanation.
Huh. So it could have gone a lot worse in the lifeboat. Nice to know.
"What's going on... uhhh. There's a drone swarm here. It's attacking you-- or the Tulip, I'm getting confused on that. The drones already took out a bunch of infrastructure here and tried to disassemble our ship. Does that help?"
Raw anger and concern this time, dark eyes growing like the portrait tried to lean in and see better. Consumers. You are describing machines that self-replicate, aggressive and nonresponsive?
"Yes! Triangle bastards!"
Hexagons, actually.
Jamet wondered if hallucinations were allowed to be pedantic twits. There didn't seem to be a regulation or checklist item that covered that particular case. "Sure. Those. You're getting attacked by a ton of them and doing a really, really bad job of fighting back. The Tulip is just coming right for me, dragging everything right into my lap."
Coming right for you? Your present? Why?
"Yes! I turned on the magnetic bottle for the fusion smelter. There was this idea of baiting the drones here and blowing them up. Well it was my idea, but I didn't do it. But I tried. There was a big argument with my crew while they sabotaged me, then this stupid pop up quiz stopped me from blowing up and before I could take care of that your ship-" Every version of herself gave Jamet the exact same flat look at the same time. One of her Uppers appeared to flash out of existence voluntarily, replaced by a confused-looking copy with some wild facial tattoos. "This is probably too much extra information." They all nodded. Except Tattoo, who was examining the clean-cut elderly Upper with a look of horrified disbelief.
A magnetic fusion bottle...? He said it distractedly, as if many things were going on at once. Then the mental voice sharpened in realization and a growing sense of worry. The portrait leaned back in perspective, eyes looking downward warily over shaded cheekbones. A fusion bottle, in a system with two gas giants and double asteroid belts being harvested by Consumers. With one person operating it?
"No!" Jamet thrust her chin at the console like that would indicate everyone else. "There's other people here, too. Janson, Paul, Siers, an angry dwarf, a bunch of habitation ring survivors and some actual garbage in human form. But right now you're headed for me on some kind of... suicidal rescue mission!"
Rescue. Mission..?
The portrait suddenly looked terrified, then snapped out of existence. Black marker lines condensed into a solid ball of darkness, deeper than the lightwell of a singularity and pitiless as the space between stars. Then it vanished entirely, leaving the overhead clean and smooth. Mostly.
"Oh shit." Jamet took a sideways look at the other versions of herself on this time-assisted trip, hoping for an explanation. Both Lowers and her Middle shrugged, lost. But the Uppers looked amused, the elderly version inaudibly saying something that made Tattoo laugh and offer a fist bump of solidarity. Even without being able to hear the exchange Jamet's ears started burning. "Well, I guess it can't be that bad?"
The elderly Upper blinked out of existence. Jamet panicked. "Oh shit! I take it back, it's bad! It's bad!" She popped back into place again, looking rattled. Tattoo leaned away like non-existence might be something that was catching.
Downstream of her the Lower versions were watching console screens with increasingly worried expressions. Jamet checked both displays and then looked at her own, finding them all fairly similar and equally bad. The Tulip was nearly on top of the smelter, less than two minutes out. The vessel did not look like it was doing well, at all: Of the numerous original plasma-equipped petals less than twenty remained, all of them sporting the chewed look of high speed drone hits. Superstructure slashes across the base were so deep and numerous they combined to reveal interior details: Broken support structures twisted outwards, showing something like corridors packed with blue and green lights. One entire side of the Tulip vented bright white cones of energy that looked suspiciously plasma-like from three long, ragged cuts.
But still it came on. Immense, damaged, cut and slashed from every direction. Never stopping, defensive strikes growing weaker by the second.
Jamet was stricken, both angry and deeply worried all at once. "What are they trying to do? Just turn and fight! Solve the problem, then come if you still want to! You're acting like this is all completely new, doesn't anyone know how to fight?" Which seemed completely bizarre: Why the hell would you even have a weapon that insane if you didn't know how to use it properly? That would be like the Corporate Navy forgetting how to-
She led the group in a chorus of groans, even the upstream versions of herself giving off 'what did you expect?' hand gestures. "It's manual navigation all over again, isn't it. This is some kind of stupid thing like Fiscal Enforcement and their warships-- all power, no idea what to do when something happens. I am being rescued," Jamet rolled her eyes at the overheads. "By amateurs."
Marker lines crashed together again, so sudden and violent she cringed downward into the chair even though no sound accompanied it. The portrait was back, but now in a slightly different way: Older perhaps, black lines spaced out to hint at creeping grey and white in a full head of hair. Whiskers ringed new lines around his mouth in a slight stubble of dotted black, giving the picture a slightly harried, but comfortable middle-aged appearance. He looked familiar somehow. Some shape of the eyes and cheekbones that caught her notice.
No rush this time: The portrait studied her with an avid interest, eyes clearly focused and taking note of her half-discarded skinsuit, missing boots and air cast. Jamet felt curiously embarrassed, like she wasn't meeting some sort of standard no one mentioned previously. Every version from Lower to Upper got a piece of that feeling as well, reacting with various shades of awkwardness (downstream) to "not again" and an actual "fuck off" finger-flip (upstream).
Am I speaking with Jamet Emcourt? He sounded strangely excited, but deeply respectful at the same time.
Both Uppers abruptly blinked out, the elderly stylish woman and her tattooed counterpart snapping out of existence with surprised looks. Two new women took their place. One wore a high-collared lab coat with elaborate rank slashes on the sleeves, hair pulled up in a tight bun and expression amused. The other had both hands on ample hips, exhibiting the weight gain and lived-in look of a mother multiple times over. They both glanced at the portrait overhead in shared amusement, then levelled knowing looks at Jamet.
"Uh. No. Close, though? This is Jamet Reals, do you have the wrong-" what the hell did she call this? Comm ID? Inbox? Grav relay? "-catastrophic situation?"
The portrait looked surprised for a moment, then nodded. Of course, my mistake. This is your present?
Was this a time loop? Could she just die already? "Here we go again. Yes, this is my present. Double gas giants, two asteroid belts, big flower ship coming my way, about to die with only one arm and operating a smelter with my feet."
A wry look slowly bloomed into full-blown laughter, marker lines edging every tooth and smile line. Even the crow's feet around both eyes got shading in just the right spots. It was honest mirth and so obviously not at her expense she couldn't help but smile back.
The middle-aged upstream version of her winked out. A skinsuited woman took the spot, helmet closed and one foot back in an automatic fighter's pose. Gloved hands came upward for a confrontation, opaque faceplate scanning for targets.
Well if I had doubts, they are dispelled. It truly is you, in your present.
"Glad we got that sorted out, jerk." Now she sounded like Emilia. When did she pick that habit up? "But about that rescue?"
Of course. The sh- the Tulip is yours, I have cleared the pilot from your present. Although you scared him quite badly.
"Uhh..." She glanced at her Middle, who shrugged. Both Lowers kept looking urgently between screens with 'collision imminent' warnings and Jamet in her Middle Management position. The Tulip was literally on top of them, ship outline eclipsing the smelter. If expressions had words they would be screaming to do something. Like she wasn't already trying. "Well, that's great and all. But what the hell am I supposed to do now? What's happening!?"
Do you believe in predestination?
Both Uppers nodded. Both Lowers shook their heads. Jamet tried to do both, chin going in confused circles. "What?!"
The room lit up, every overhead going to max brightness before popping from overload. At the same time everything jerked solidly as the Tulip scooped the whole facility, hard enough to catapult Jamet out of the master seat and kill her link with the ID reader. Safety systems screamed emergency alerts, every console around the room going into shutdown. She hit the floor on top of the air cast, enduring a horrible amount of crackling and popping noises that probably didn't bode well for ever being able to sign her name right-handed again. Pain torn through her like one of the drones, all sharp metal and evil intent. "Shit!"
Around the room hexagon visions of herself collapsed one by one, blurring out of existence until only the overhead portrait remained. It watched her with a kind, knowing smile.
Do you? Believe in it?
"No!" She rolled over, using bare toes and one good arm to get back on her knees. It hurt so bad she wanted to vomit. The painkillers were definitely off their timers now. "I don't!"
The airlock sheared off in a screaming roar of equalizing pressure, rancid air venting outward in a smelly cloud of crystal vapor. Jamet screamed, one good arm reflexively coming up and sure she was about to be sucked straight out into vacuum. But what hit her instead wasn't desiccating underpressure and boiling internal fluids: It was blisteringly hot, humid oxygen and glaring red light. Air so overly tropical sweat instantly began slicking everything under her skinsuit.
You always said that, presently.
Something immensely large, pink and sticky surged through the torn end of the room, filling it from edge to edge in an impossible wave. It hit Jamet before she could scream, snatching her into a floral-scented embrace that became a long downward spiral into dream.
It felt like fire. Like power.
There you are.

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Familial Swarms
Jamet was pretty sure her right arm was a lost cause.
Oh, she couldn't feel it-- at least, not at the moment. That warm, heavy blanket of numbing agents in her blood was doing a bang up job. But while the pain wasn't there, not yet, a definite feeling of wrongness was creeping in around the edges. Things were moving over there that shouldn't be, like a bulky package in a coat pocket that bumped around just often enough it couldn't be forgotten about. Not to mention the throbbing: It was an interesting sensation having two different heartbeats at once. One in her chest, rough and predictable, but another a split second later from the pile of broken things attached to her shoulder in an air cast.
And she'd just lost an argument with Emilia, of all people. Which was galling on a different level. Possibly just as permanent as losing an arm could be.
"Okay. Fine." She cut the short technician off the communications link, eyes rolling so far back the portrait drawn on the ceiling came into view. He-- Thomas Minyer, she guessed-- looked away to one side with the wry look of a man not wanting to get involved. "You were right." Emilia cackled gleeful joy. "But for the record this plan would have worked. It still might, actually! Now what the hell am I looking at? What is this you're sending?"
"-and years of caf, I am talking a lifetime of the best- what? Oh, that."
"Yes! That!" Jamet awkwardly adjusted callout windows on the console's workspace, using increasingly chilled toes to push the display around. A dedicated feed from the Kipper was in the box, showing long range video of some kind of incoming craft. It looked long and sleek, tapered like a blunt cone backwards into a fat-bottomed base sporting a blazingly bright ring of light. Dozens of lines spiraled backwards from the tip almost to the base, giving it a weird look like a drill coming directly her way. "What the hell is it? Another drone, like the huge one that rammed us?"
"Uhhh, we're not sure?" The pickup went to half volume as Emilia turned away from the broadcast unit to speak across the bridge on her side. "^{Paul? Hey! What are we calling that? A what? That's adorable.}" The connection scratched briefly as something hit the pickup. "Paul and the captain are calling it the Tulip Ship."
Jamet tried to zoom and failed, then settled for leaning as far forward as possible without taking her wrist ID off the reader. She squinted at the display, eyebrows and cheeks scrunching nearly together. "Okay, I can kind of see that. It looked like a drill to me, but a closed up flower sort of works. How big is it? Are there any weapons, or am I just going to get rammed into pieces like a sitting target?"
"Ah can help you there, ma'am." Janson's lifeboat-quality comm link sounded like garbage compared to Kipper's signal. But that didn't matter because it came alongside a hauler full of guilt. "It's about the size of a warship, give or take a couple points."
She cringed into the chair like his voice was going to hit her. "Um. Thank you. And sorry about..." how did one apologize for cold-blooded betrayal? "Things. I guess." If Jamet had a free hand it would be crossing her face at lightspeed.
"It's alright, ah understand. Just didn't like your plan, but ah respect you f' trying. No grudges, seems like everythin' turned out ok. But uh, sorry for," now the big man seemed just as awkward. "Your arm and all that. Is it bad?"
Throbbing like a supernova, swollen beyond all reason and more crooked than a Corporate budget review. "It's fine, actually. No problems."
"I highly doubt that, lieutenant." Paul's voice, in contrast, sounded like he was standing next to the chair. "That you are even functional at the moment is a credit to the lifeboat medical kit. Have you bothered using the analgesics, or the anti-clotting agents?"
She leaned over, glancing down at the floor by the chair. Pieces of the medical kit lay scattered in a wide fan around the pillaged case like casualties of her mad scramble for anything to stop the pain. Some of them were, presumably, the drugs in question. "Yup, definitely took them all. But really, can we focus please? All I have is a stream of an incoming ship. While that is highly interesting can I get some sort of big-picture view? What's the speed, how long do I have, should I be leaping from the airlock right now?"
"Oh, she doesn't know yet." Emilia sounded chastened. That, more than anything, scared Jamet to the core.
"What don't I know!?" She started hitting menu options with her heel, looking for anything remotely related to an exterior sensor camera. It was a long shot: Even modifying a facility into some sort of one-person smelting operation didn't mean Corporate would splurge for sensor suites to look at nothing. But sitting in one spot completely blind while something terrible came was rapidly becoming her own personal phobia. "Em, are you hiding something from me?"
"Uhhh. Nooo?" Sincerity practically evaporated off the speakers.
"Comms," Siers took the conversation in hand with a gentle touch, stopping the argument before it could start. "Would you forward a system picture to Sera, if you haven't already..?"
"Who?" Jamet and Emilia chorused in confused sync.
"Our lieutenant. I believe she could benefit from knowing the full details, or at least we can talk through what is going on here." If he seemed bothered by the slip it wasn't showing it, voice staying steady and directive. "Jamet." He annunciated very carefully. "It seems the new arrival and our local adversaries are not mutual friends. Are you receiving the system picture now?"
Yes, she was, but Jamet almost wished to be back in the dark and blissfully ignorant. The system map Emilia forwarded looked like someone poured red paint on the entire arc of the asteroid belt. So many red enemy dots were moving at once they combined into one long smear, aimed like an arrow at the incoming green dot that was the Tulip ship. "Umm. Yes. And am I miscounting, or are there more construction ships than we thought? That's got to be two hundred plus, right?"
"Ah think so, ma'am." Janson sounded a little slurred and still fighting through residual medication effects. "If ah had to guess what we saw before, that came after us? That was their version o' attack ships. Support stuff didn't move enough f' our sensors to catch. But this? Looks like everythin' all at once, headin' hell bent for a fight."
"Well that's terrifying. We missed all of that?" Jamet squinted hard at the map, trying to anticipate vectors and course paths. If she had to approximate speeds that giant red smear and the lone incoming contact would meet up in something like two minutes at the most. "Wait. That many didn't come out for us, or that Corporate warship-- why now? What changed?"
Siers sounded thoughtful. "That's a good question. Perhaps we weren't a threat?"
"Oh yeah, I definitely don't worry about a freaking Fiscal Enforcement warship dropping in!" Emilia did sarcasm like some people painted walls-- liberally applied, heavy on the edges and double coated everywhere. "How could anything look at a warship and decide not to pull out everything at once?"
"Actually..." Jamet frowned. "Janson?"
"Ma'am?"
"We're absolutely sure those boarding drones use gravity-based power sources? Our local grav was giving them enough juice to get around, but something like the Krepsfield is a... I don't know, a buffet?"
She could picture him nodding agreeably, bushy beard scratching over the front of the skinsuit. "I'd put a bet on it, sure. Same for the big ones, too: Ah bet each one's built around a tiny singularity. Explains why they're shaped like that an' move so quick."
"Oh! They're basically torpedoes!" Emilia sounded impressed. "They're living Cormorents! Or I guess... intelligent Cormorents? Although they act pretty stupid. Maybe they're Academy graduates."
"Okay, that fits." Jamet's eyes unfocused slightly, wandering around the dirty room in thought. "Maybe they don't see us-- I mean, our ships-- as threats? What if they see us as food, or a power source? Free resources?"
"That is... fairly consistent, actually." Paul sounded just as thoughtful as she was. "Although the ramming does not make sense. Unless they assume we are the same? Perhaps it is not a ram, but a failed merge?"
Her mouth dropped open. "We both use singularities! Just in different ways! Captain: If you didn't know what either the Kipper or the attackers were, if you were ignorant of both, wouldn't we just look like the same thing in different versions?" She was on fire now, mind racing and ignoring the growing ache from her arm. "Just one version with an internal power source that moved around while the other used an external one that did the same?"
"Perhaps. But there is a world of difference between those."
Emilia jumped in, excited. "Not really! We're even made of the same stuff! Uh, the ships I mean. Not the people. Or whatever's crawling around inside those things out there." She got back on track. "Paul and I burned 'em out of the storage area, but they were quite happy to sit in there and use the ship parts as material for themselves. From the outside? Yeah, practically family."
"Thirty seconds until both groups intercept, everyone." Siers managed to announce it coolly, as if there was interesting weather going on in deep space. "While this is highly interesting-- and trust me when I say that is a very good thing from my perspective-- does it tell us anything useful?"
Janson clicked onto the link. "Well, it definitely means the new ship isn't anything friendly to 'em."
"Agreed," Paul's voice cracked hard enough to require a throat clearing. "Whatever that method of travel is, whatever materials are in use for the ship? They are antithetical to our hostiles currently in system."
"They're what?"
"Opposites, Emilia." Jamet was nodding at nothing, too excited to care. "They're so incompatible it's an all-or-nothing battle when they get together. I mean, look at that display!" Red contacts swarmed the display into a single large crimson blob, stretched forward until it was almost on top of the green dot. "Not a single runner or holdout. Everything at once. What could be so bad it takes that level of response?"
"We're about to find out, lieutenant. Comms, focus every sensor we have that direction. Center on the Tulip, half closeup and the other half at," he paused, thinking. "Let's say fifty thousand mile zoom. Forward everything to the lieutenant as well. Jamet?"
"Sir?"
"You have not powered anything else down, correct? Only the fusion bottle?"
She blinked, then double checked. "No sir. Power plant still online, Krepsfield and the fusion bottle charged but not active. Why?" The comm link updated into a larger callout, two long range sensor images side by side.
"Just a suspicion I have, although we'll know if I'm right in a moment. Comms if you're not recording then now is the time. Here they go."
Jamet leaned forward, eyes bright and alternating between callout windows on the console. On the right were the asteroids and construction ships, a mix between rock-encrusted hulls and the angry hexagon shapes of completed vessels. They moved in a swarm, over and around each other like fish in water or birds on migration, never ceasing and always in motion. When one darted out another moved smoothly into the gap left behind in an incredible display of split second timing that looked effortless and liquid. It was only when the swarm came close to the Tulip they finally changed motion, dividing into two long columns of equal thickness.
"Janson!" Siers was a directive force on the link. "Their hulls!"
"Ah see 'em, sir. So that's what they look like when they're actually tryin'?"
Her right input shifted, zooming closer on the lead of the swarm. Jamet's jaw dropped as the front vessels-- the most complete units, entirely oval and patterned in hexagons-- began shifting. Hexagon plates slid toward the front of the ship, moving underneath each other in double- and triple-thick layers until the bow of each vessel looked grotesquely thick. Devoid of a plate covering the stern looked almost fragile, a black oval barely half the size of the bow, smooth and black like a reflective egg.
The whole transformation looked pointless until she noticed movement on the front plates: They were folding. Every six-sided shape folded in half over itself, turning from a smooth almost-circle into a three-pointed prong, every sharp end aimed directly forward along the ship's flight path. Multiplied by thousands of hexagons across the hull it turned the ship from a smooth oval into a forest of thorns, layered dozens deep. Knives, ringing the hull, moving at hundreds of miles per second.
Jamet tried to imagine what getting hit by that would do and flinched, shying away from visions of eviscerated hulls and blown-out armor plates gouged all the way through. "Dead stars, what kind of attack strategy is that? For anything?"
"It's a swarm, lieutenant." Siers sounded just as uneasy as she did, but fascinated at the same time. "Each individual piece doesn't matter, just the whole. Every unit is sacrificial, but all of them are adapted to inflict maximum damage for every loss the swarm takes. Just a guess but those plates aren't single use weapons," highlights popped up on her screen, indicating the base of the folded-over hexes. "I think they're meant to come off. Like burrs stuck in skin; damage and an invasion board all at once."
"So they just... go through anything like a high speed saw?" Janson obviously didn't like the idea. His voice was the equivalent of a vocal frown. "An' even if they don't win, they leave behind boarding drones with those hexes? Who the hell would design something that horrible?"
"Corporate would." Jamet said it without a moment's hesitation. "If it was cost-effective enough to use? And could be somehow recovered afterward? They'd have fleets of these... no." She got a horrible feeling, goosebumps racing over bare skin. "You don't think?"
"No." Siers seemed very certain. "I would have heard of something like that. Especially on a scale that endangered entire systems at once. Anything like that I would have spent a great deal of time opposing. But at the same time it's- it's very familiar, somehow." His tone turned dreamlike, vague. "Like I have heard of or seen something like this. With someone, before."
Emilia's voice blasted everyone's ears. "Holy shit! Look! Look at the pansy!"
"Tulip?"
"Whatever!"
"Proper nomenclature is always... oh." Paul sounded surprised. "That is a rather beautiful thing. And somehow appropriate."
Jamet wasn't sure what everyone else was doing, but she couldn't look away from the leftmost callout. She watched with wide eyes, mouth open, throbbing arm and cold feet forgotten.
The Tulip was blooming.
Facing an army of jagged knives the ship opened like a deadly flower. Curved lines on the hull widened into long, tapered leaves that unfolded gracefully outwards to reveal more layers beneath. They in turn folded back as well, rotating slightly to fill outside gaps until the entire arrangement became a huge dish shape, cupped and held in miles-long, delicate looking streamers. Each broad leaf flexed in ways that defied metallic rigidness, aesthetically scolding the very idea of being held in one place.
The revealed interior was an immense flat disc of slowly undulating hull, hosting a single titanic column of pearlescent material, miles wide and long, aimed at the incoming swarm in deadly threat.
"That's a weapon." Jamet had never been more certain of anything in her life.
"Well no shit, Impossible! Unless it's about to breed that swarm with the universe's longest-"
"Comms, hush. If you haven't checked for radiation and energy signatures I think now would be a very good time to start. I think we're about to see what they can do."
On her left side callout the flower ship was brightening, leaves cupping slightly inward as light surged up every edge in a brilliant outline. The light writhed somehow, wavering like heat haze as the tip of every leaf gathered a huge ball of energy, then dipped all at once to touch the central column.
Jamet's screen whited out. She flinched sideways in shock. "Dead stars!" When it cleared the afterimage of an impossibly thick beam still lived on screen, wisps of white streamers coming off it like steam. At least a third of the swarm was gone: Struck completely out of existence by a thick line of living energy that arced across the system display at the speed of light. She stared in shock. "What the hell is it firing?!"
Siers answered her, sounding distracted and not completely engaged. "Plasma. It fired raw plasma, but the problem was in how to keep it focused. That was the issue, always was. Couldn't make it work. But who...?"
"Captain? What?" She looked at the comm link, concerned. "What was an issue?"
"It sure looked like plasma-- see the smoke-like stuff? That's spillage. Tachyons and strange particles lighting up from solar radiation." It was like someone gave Janson a particularly interesting puzzle. "Huge amount of energy output, wow. Think it's a one shot?"
"With a hit like that? Who would need a second blast? There'd be nothing left unless you shot a- I don't know! A planet or something!" Emilia audibly whooped. "That thing's going to take care of our whole problem, one BAZOWW at a time!"
Paul sounded thoughtful. "Tachyons. I wonder: Does that explain our imagery problem? From earlier? Does just having that weapon cause problems with time?"
Jamet caught movement on her display. "Heads up! It's not over!"
If the massive hit bothered the swarm they didn't show it. Light sparkled from thousands of glittering points as the formations angled out, then inwards, centered on the flower ship in a gliding wave of edges. They struck like a hurricane of metal, spraying pieces of broken units and shredded hexes in a fan of discarded fragments. Petals took long whip marks of damage, gouged deeper and deeper as every line of drones blurred by in a grinding torrent. Jamet watched in horror as an entire petal sheared off, struck off at the base and spinning away from the soundless conflict in a ten mile long curl of twisting color.
The ship shuddered in response, leaves slapping outward in motions that seemed languid but crossed hundreds of miles in seconds. The tail end of the drone swarm took the hit and smashed apart, becoming another spray of unguided debris.
But revenge cost the ship. "Look, at the petal!" Jamet wished like hell she could highlight something using only her feet. "Captain, you were right-- those hexes stick like burrs."
"I see it," he murmured back over the link. "That must be hundreds left behind every hit. But the question is how much continuing damage can they do? Is there anything beneath to even board?"
"I have a better question for everyone." Genuine worry seemed to pour over Emilia's voice. "Why is it getting that close at all to begin with? Look at the range on that shot! The ship probably could have sat outside the entire system and blasted things forever."
"Oh no." For the first time in the last few minutes Jamet was suddenly very, very conscious of where she was. It felt like putting on a wet shirt: Unexpected, cold and slightly worrying. "Um, Janson?"
"Ma'am?"
"That was a plasma shot, you said?" She looked down at the workspace, noting callouts for the singularity generator. And right next to those controls was an indicator for the other purpose of the smelter.
"Actually, cap'n said that. Ah just agreed. Pretty amazin' when you think about it, but why? What's wrong?"
"Because I think I know why it came in." She eyeballed the display, wishing for the ability to plot courses from a generic console. "Emilia, is it still on course? Still coming directly for me?"
"I... think so, yes? That's a worrying thought, you might want to get out of there. You know," she sighed. "If you could, I guess."
"Right. But captain-- I think I called it." She looked down at the controls for the smelting system, waiting patiently to be told to restart. "What are the odds the plasma bottle for the smelter looked enough like their ship drive to make them worry? And then when I turned it off..."
Siers groaned. "I get it, lieutenant. On sensor that would have looked like destruction."
"Ohhhh shit." Emilia sounded unhappy. "It's a momma bear."
On Jamet's console the fight continued, swarms of drones looping around like a sadistically augmented flight of birds against the flower ship's determined push. The Tulip fought back, smashing waves and getting shredded in return, but never varying from a course directly at the smelter.
"Well, shit." Was there another lifeboat? Could she jump for it, turn her earlier joke into reality? Would it matter?
"I think it's coming to save me."

Navigation		Destinations
« Back	25	Forward »
1-10	11-20	21-30
« Beginning		End »

Burning Down The House
Emilia stood outside the Storage hatch with a flamethrower.
Well she called it a flamethrower, but over the helmet camera Jamet thought it looked more like a plasma welder taped to a pressurized aerosol bottle. Every now and then the camera would turn sideways and upward, focusing on the clearly worried expression of Paul, then face forward again. "Uhh, how long are we going to wait here?" Emilia managed to sound worried and irritated in equal amounts.
"I second that, lieutenant." Paul sounded just as nervous, although his tone made it harder to tell. She had his camera input on the left side of the screen away from Emilia's to avoid accidentally giving herself nausea. Every now and then the taller man's feed would turn downward to check on Emilia's tiny suited form, then check the heavy pry bar in his gloved hands. "The longer I stand here the less I like the idea."
Jamet tapped a console key. "I get it, sorry. But I don't think it'll be much longer. Janson, can you hear us? What's your status?"
The big man's baritone voice sounded smaller over an audio link. "Captain's authorizing the systems right now, ah can cut local gravity after that. You sure this will work?"
"Will it put our friends in storage to sleep? Actually, no. I'm not sure."
"Ma'am?"
"Engineer?"
"That would have been a great time to lie to me. Jus' saying." Something clicked over the line, then beeped. "That's got it. Everyone ready? Gravity cutting off in five, four..."
She checked the redundant buckles on her workstation, then gripped the edge of the console as the engineer finished his countdown. Right after 'one' it suddenly felt like the entire ship took a nosedive off a cliff, tossing her heart and stomach straight upwards in a horrible feeling of falling. Jamet closed both eyes and took deep breaths, focusing hard on squashing her body's automatic panic reflex. At least she wasn't alone: On screen both cameras twitched wildly as Paul and Emilia fought the sudden urge to freak out under weightlessness.
"Gah! Hate that feeling! Makes me want to throw up every time." A small gloved hand gripped the edge of the hatch like a lifeline. "Paul, hanging in there?" Low gagging sounds floated over suit speakers. "Guess not. Alright, moment of truth here." Emilia's feed slowly floated upwards until her helmet pressed to the inset hatch window.
Inside main storage was a brightly lit, chaotic mess. With gravity off everything knocked loose from the bins floated through the air in long streamers, bouncing off each other and the racks in whirling displays. The back wall was especially bad, spare parts and pieces of random tools nearly obscuring everything from view. But after a few moments of watching Emilia tapped the plexi. "There, I see it. Them? It? They?"
Jamet enlarged the display and squinted, eyes tracking warily across the image. Moving pieces slowly resolved into a large series of hexagons, stuck haphazardly to the walls and upper parts of the storage racks. There were four of them she could see, each as big as her outstretched arms and fuzzy with attached triangular drones. Limp cables drifted through the air, slowly revolving around inert metallic figures that spun and tumbled with leftover momentum. A small river of drones trailed upward, caught in the middle of pulling materials towards the overhead Environmental vents.
After nearly a minute without any movement, Jamet keyed the channel open. "I think they're asleep. Or unpowered. Do you think it's safe to open the hatch?"
"Not really," Paul sounded like a man trying to swallow and talk at the same time. "I doubt any of this is safe. Emilia?" His camera alternated between laser-focus through the window to pointed at the top of her white-colored skinsuit helmet.
"No idea. But I'm willing to give it a try." Her view floated downward, then centered on the hatch controls. "Popping it now."
It felt like the entire comm link held their breath as the hatch whooshed out of view. Emilia held the cobbled-together flamethrower at arms-length, pointed in the general direction of the hexagons.
Nothing moved. Actually, everything moved. But not intentionally.
"Alright, going in. Gonna see how they react to getting flamed." Her POV pushed off, gliding forward gracefully from handhold to handhold as she crossed the room.
Janson popped onto the link, sounding worried. "You remember about the fire, right?"
The camera bobbed once, up and down. "Yeah, I got it. Paul, you're right behind me? Don't leave me if this gets bad. I'm about to light it up." One hand came into the camera angle, grabbing hard onto an upright storage pole to anchor. The other aimed the fat aerosol container at the nearest hexagon cluster, then firmly jammed the button on top. A thick stream of gel shot from the nozzle, tacky chemicals keeping the stream together until it struck the hexagons as a thick goo. Emilia carefully hosed the entire surface down, taking a moment to make sure a lot got into the interior. "Alright, here goes."
Making sure no part of the hanging gel stream was near her hand, Emilia held the plasma welder out and triggered it. Instantly the entire mass caught fire with a hissing blast of flame that blossomed into a spherical explosion, yellow and red globes reaching in every direction. Emilia's camera flinched away as she shouted. "Damn, you weren't joking!"
"Were you too close?" Janson sounded worried. "Fire in zero-G is dangerous, goes in every direction."
The POV kicked back farther, putting a storage rack between the flames and her suit. "Nah, I'm okay. But it was close, had me scared for a bit. Paul, you see anything moving?"
Jamet switched to watching Paul's feed. He was higher up, near the ceiling looking down. "No, nothing moving." He swung the pry bar around one-handed, using the long metal pole to poke at the burning remains. Broken and melted drones slowly spun off, revealing an interior hot enough to spit little balls of cooling metal into the air. Melting strands of electronic slag drifted on thermal expansion. "Can you get the other pods, then switch to the ducts?"
She watched from the console as Paul got to work breaking up the flaming hexagon, using his bar to smash anything that looked like it might still be functional. Emilia tagged off with him, drifting forward to apply more gel accelerant when it looked like the flames might die out. Occasionally she used the plasma tip more directly, slicing off tightly-coupled drones wherever he couldn't get the bar between their cables.
Everything seemed to be going well. Suspiciously well, actually. Jamet pulled up an overlay of the Kipper's Environmental ducts near the storage area. "Paul, quick check of the Enviro lockouts? I don't see any alerts."
His camera stopped moving for a couple seconds, then got back to work. "Nothing setting off alerts here. Reactor vents are at zero tamper notices as well. If everything goes well we will move there next."
"Alright. I'm going to stop looking over your shoulder, but if absolutely anything happens..."
"You will be the first to know." Paul sounded amused. Nauseous, but definitely amused.
Emilia's POV lit up orange and red again. "We'll beat it so fast you won't believe it. We're fine, Impossible, go smack down your Corpo."
Jamet snorted, which was an unusual experience without gravity because everything stuck in her sinuses. With a grimace of distaste she killed the visual feeds, minimizing them off the workspace to avoid the distraction. "Janson, I'm cutting comms with you to focus on this. Are you going to be okay?"
"Ah'm fine, but thanks. Just going to stay here for a bit an' listen to them work, just in case they need help."
"Alright." Tap, click. "Captain, I'm about to call our friend on the habitation ring. Any last minute changes?" She frowned at her gloved hands, wondering why they seemed so jittery. Zero-G, probably.
"Go ahead, lieutenant. Do you want me to listen in or stay off the channel entirely?"
"Oh." That was... quite an offer. And a hell of a show of trust. "Would you be okay not listening in, sir? I didn't want you to think I was cutting deals or anything. I can record the whole thing if-"
She could almost see the sardonic grin as he cut in. "It's fine. Actually, change that-- record the conversation, if you please. It might be useful evidence later on. But I'm not worried about you backdoor dealing." Something whirred in the background, then clanged. "I trust you."
Which stirred up something bitter in her recent memory. A voice, low and husky, deep with personal confidence and enjoyable physical afterglow: Trust me, J. She could hear the gentle music in the background, taste sweet wine and the excitement of the moment. It felt so real, so possible. We can do this. Together. Come with me to Upper. And then that final nail in the coffin, the secret hope too good to be true: Be my partner.
Her hands hurt from gripping the console in rage. She blinked away the memory, deliberately letting go and brushing away traitorous tears. They held in the air like glittering diamonds, evidence of pointless anger that took a careful swipe to knock away. But it still took several long, deep breaths before her heartbeat stopped pounding hard enough to blur her vision.
Jamet tapped the comms key, proud of how level her voice was through a closed up throat. "I appreciate that, Captain. Signing off now, I need a moment to put myself together for this talk."
"Take your time. Janson tells me we still have half a day of deceleration ahead; assuming we can clear Storage I'm going to order everyone down for a rest cycle as well. Make sure we're not tired and making mistakes."
"Good idea. Alright, sir-- signing off."
Click, tap.
Alone on the bridge, Jamet carefully unbuckled the harness and drifted away from the co-CEO console. A soft kick against the seat sent her upwards, rebounding off the overheads with a practiced push that angled her back downward into the CEO area. Snagging the straps, she pulled herself into the seat and buckled in, settling back on the chair with a sigh and closed eyes.
It felt good. Almost too good: Like revisiting a childhood dream and finding it just as wonderful as before. The Command Executive Officer station was a staple of every ship, always raised slightly over everything else in the bridge. Supposedly it was to give the CEO direct sight to everyone's consoles... but realistically it was more about perception and authority. Whoever took this spot, took the ship. It wasn't Corporate Navy; not quite. But the feeling was the same, a throwback to when she still had ambitions and the drive to fulfill them. Before she'd given up the Navy for a lateral move into Middle Management and a tumble into ignominy.
Jamet fell into that emotion, mentally dropping back and downward into herself until she landed at the person she was nearly a year ago. It was a tough fit: She'd changed since then and knew it, could feel the parts that didn't fit into the Corporate mold any more. She was a lumpy, heart-shaped peg trying to convince herself to be sharp and jagged again.
Cupping hands together, Jamet rested her chin across both thumbs and closed her eyes. Mentally she gathered everything about the crew-- Janson's bearded grin, Emilia's struggle to trust, Paul's cautious oversharing, Siers' quiet confidence-- and put it away. Locked it in a box where she couldn't think about it. Empathy wouldn't help for this: Executives didn't have any.
It took a long five minutes, but she found that old Jamet again. Ruthless, hungry, casually dismissive. Management.
She wristed the console to life, dragging open Communications and selecting broadcast with sharp, angry motions. Her workspace lit up with a selection of frequencies, jumping bars showing which ones were actively in use. Jamet selected all of them at once, then set broadcast power on maximum to blot them out of existence with her signal. Whatever petty talks they were engaging in was unimportant now; they'd listen to her or else.
The channel clicked open. She had the whole band to herself.
Jamet spoke into the air with a voice colder than the space between stars and more bored than an immortal buried under mountains. "Material Extraction Station Fortune's Find: This is Executive Reals, commanding Fiscal Recovery Vessel Kipper. Cease all activity at once and surrender. Do not attempt to hide, we have pinpointed several dozen active transmissions and know your whereabouts. Do not attempt to sabotage, steal or repurpose any equipment-- doing so will be met with extreme mortal sanctions. You have five minutes to respond on any channel with a designated representative for forceful employment."
This prepared speech was the brainchild of nearly an hour's careful wording, every phrase crafted to inspire maximum Executive fear. The keystone to this threat was rebranding the Kipper as an authorized vessel of Corporate Headquarter's Fiscal Recovery division.
FR dealt with reacquiring assets from loss, damage or negligent mismanagement. They were the gleaners, the threshers, old-style carrion eaters crawling the remains of Corporate battlefields between every system. Recovery-branded agents held extremely wide latitude of authority when it came to reclaiming any and all property no matter what form it took: Raw ore, infrastructure pieces, natural resources... and most especially trained personnel.
They were the complimentary division of Fiscal Enforcement, the strongarm branch that showed up after everything went wrong to see what was valuable enough to salvage. Anything with a monetary value that wasn't in extremely small pieces became immediate property of the agency, adding to HQ's bottom line.
If Recovery showed up it was because everything (and everyone) around was already considered a loss. Which put any Executive still around on extremely thin ice, robbed of any authority in a heartbeat.
Jamet kept a bored gaze on the clock, timing out five minutes while imagining what had to be happening aboard the habitation ring. For sure their Executive was doing everything physically possible to get her people off their skinsuit communications devices-- the absolute last thing she needed was underlings cutting deals or giving information behind her back. That was the point of broadcasting to everyone: Giving the Exec something to panic about immediately.
It was also a foregone conclusion that a standoff was going down somewhere over there, abused workers versus their Management tormentor. Which was the other reason for claiming to be from Fiscal Recovery: If the Kipper flew in and announced they were rescuing everyone there would have been an immediate (and very, very bloody) comeuppance against the Exec as she lost all power at once. But broadcasting as Recovery changed the game, levelling the field: Now everyone had the exact same asset value, but their Executive might have enough personal pull to be able to leverage a better position for the group.
But her bargaining chips became the workers, alive and retaining asset value. She suddenly had to care very, very much about the health of her people.
Jamet would have laughed at the reversal, but that would require more perspective taking than she cared about.
The clock tipped past three minutes. When explaining this plan to Captain Siers he expressed a lot of surprise about the five minute timeline. "Why such a short time limit? It seems like if something went wrong they wouldn't be able to meet it. Won't that backfire?"
She'd grinned, delighted to explain game moves to a novice. "No, it's fine-- that's actually the point. Think about what happens if we give them something like a day to think it over." She pointed around the bridge, singling out a surprised Janson. "The engineer over here starts having second thoughts, maybe he talks a bit with comms," Emilia took a pointed finger. "They get together with Environmental and suddenly there's a power bloc. A strong group out for themselves. Meanwhile the Execs," Jamet pointed to herself and Siers. "Are trying to cut deals for their own advantage while fighting this new, upstart faction at the same time. It's a mess. Nothing gets done."
Siers looked skeptical. "And a five minute deadline stops that?"
"Yeah." She thought about it and frowned. "Well unless someone knew that was about to happen and preplanned. But that's unlikely in this case. Anyways," the dismissed the idea with a casual wave. "With such a short time to decide everyone just rolls with the established decision makers. The Exec will call the shots, get things moving, then promise the world to her people to prevent them from going back on the deal."
Numbers clicked over, becoming four minutes. Jamet felt smug. "Any moment now..."
"Fiscal Recovery vessel Kipper, this is Upper Management Executive Rachel Targer. I am the ranking member of the Fortune's Find and be aware: We have not ceded this station or its assets to any branch of Corporate, local or otherwise. I demand to know the name of your supervisor."
Over the last year Jamet Reals knew what it felt like to be dragged down. To be taken advantage of, kicked off every opportunity, pushed out and penalized for anything and everything. Doors slammed in her face, allies and friends turning against her, spitefully denied every opportunity. She'd been on the edge of oblivion or worse, taken there by a system she'd upheld and participated in at every turn.
And after all that time, all that struggle and hopelessness, every rage- and tear-filled night alone hunting for any position at all...
It was all worth it.
Jamet grinned like a shark, every tooth standing out in violent promise as she tapped the broadcast key. "You're speaking to her, Ms. Targer."

Navigation		Destinations
« Back	20	Forward »
1-10	11-20
« Beginning		End »

Situational Gravity
The back wall of Storage was covered in slowly churning triangles and sluggish cables.
Eyes wide, Lieutenant Jamet tracked the writhing mass upwards to an overhead Environmental vent, then down again to where a spiky ball writhed around a rack full of broken containers. Shock combined with instant revulsion made every detail stand out: The things looked metallic, roughly triangular and thicker than the palm of her hand. They came in various sizes, from nearly a foot long to barely larger than a stylus. But every one of them had a trio of cables snaking out of each corner that slowly pulled them around, on or under the racks along the back storage area.
The thickest group perched on top of shelving units near the ducts, at least a dozen full-size versions wrapped together in a three dimensional hexagon the size of her outstretched arms. Smaller units slid through gaps in the sides, carrying disassembled pieces of electronics with them in clutches of wrapped cables. As she watched a new, finger-length triangle dropped from the bottom, clattering on the shelf before awkwardly flipping itself over.
Jamet carefully stepped backward from the hatch, one hand dragging on Janson's skinsuit. He let himself be pulled around the corner one step at a time, not making any sudden motions or sounds until they were out of sight. When the corner of the hatch finally blocked view of the teeming mass Jamet reached for the skinsuit's wrist panel, then hesitated: Would being out of visual range matter if the radio started transmitting? What did they navigate with, what kind of sensors did they use? Were they even alive or aware?
She grabbed a handful of Janson's skinsuit and pull him downward until their helmets touched. Hopefully vibrations would travel between the material without being loud enough to detect nearby. "Can you hear me?"
From five inches away he stared at her, eyebrows all the way up. "Yes, ma'am." He was obviously yelling. "Speak up ah little, if you can."
"Is it! Safe! To use! The radio! Doyouthink!?" She yelled, then pointed at her wrist console.
He thought about it for a moment, eyes drifting away. Then he tapped the console on his wrist and spoke over the speakers in her helmet. "Ah think it's fine. We're transmitting pretty much all th' time, anyways." Big shoulders went up and down in a shrug.
Jamet let go and opened her own line to the bridge. "Sir, the boarders?"
He came back immediately. "Yes?"
"Do they look like broken triangles with lots of wires?"
There was a long, expectant silence before her helmet speakers clicked back on. "Yes, I believe they do. You've seen one?"
"One would have been bad enough, but it looks like there's some sort of... colony, I guess?... going on in the storage room. I literally can't count how many of them there are!" Janson made hushing motions with both hands, patting downwards toward the deck. She lowered the volume a little. "Sorry. What are they?"
"Ah'm going to say they're artificial." Janson sounded professionally interested. "Drones, or some kind of advanced construction system. Captain, it looks like they're repurposin' some of our stock to manufacture more of themselves."
"How many of our supplies are being used?"
Janson risked a quick peek. "Sending an image now, sir." He tapped twice, then aimed the top of his helmet around the corner and swiped an icon.
"Wait, these suits have image sensors?" Jamet blinked, then started working her wrist console and mumbling. "Can mine take images, too?"
"Yes, ma'am. Records video, too. Can play it back on your wrist console if you like-- Kipper's suits are a bit on th' high end of tech." He looked slightly upwards. "Captain? Did it come through?"
"Told myself I wouldn't count the cost any more, but really?" She mumbled, annoyed. "Image sensors on suits is just-"
Siers talked right over her irritation. "We've got the image, Engineer. Hold one minute. If you see anything moving toward the hatch seal it immediately."
"Instantly, sir."
The line closed with a click, leaving them standing awkwardly in the corridor. "Should we put our helmets down? Avoid using the radio?"
Janson thought about it. "If it's all the same, ma'am, I'd rather not. Ah'm imagining one of 'em getting into my suit." He tapped the neck seal significantly.
Suddenly that was all Jamet could think of as well. "Thanks for that idea, it's not going to keep me awake later or anything."
"Happy to help." He took another quick peek into storage, putting one eye barely around the corner. "Looks like they're staying on the far wall, ma'am. Also- hmm. They're moving very slow for some reason. Maybe whatever they're doing is taking a lot out of 'em."
"I'd say it's making a lot more of them. Is there anything we can do? Weapons locker, or something?
He nodded. "Yup. We had a Security locker, pretty stocked."
"Okay, let's go get absolutely everything we can hold, then-"
"-an' then we took debris through the entire middle of the ship."
"Are you completely serious?" Jamet threw both hands up in rage. "Fine, fine. Improvised weapons? Where's the alcohol, we'll light them all on fire!"
He nodded. "Good idea. But ah hate to say it: We're on a bit of a timer, ma'am. We could go make somethin' right now, or we can get the GravComm. Not enough time f' both."
She stomped in a circle, then punched the bulkhead. "Okay. Alright. Drones! Where are the maintenance drones?"
Janson looked up and to one side, eyes losing focus as he went into the Engineering system. "Ah have three down a ways, working on a power relay. Want me to pull 'em?"
"Yes! Send them in, have the drones grab the GravComm! Wait, are they strong enough to carry it? How big is the thing?"
"Should be alright. They've got local gravity generators an' manipulators, can carry about two hundred pounds each. Can you pull the storage list, ma'am? Need t' know where it is."
Jamet edged up to the hatch, then stuck an arm around the corner and felt for the handheld console next to the entrance. It popped off with an easy twist. "Got it. Let me search, get those drones coming."
"On it, ma'am."
Her radio clicked on. "Lieutenant? Captain Siers here."
"Go ahead, sir." She ran a wrist ID over the console and started flicking through menu lists.
"Emilia ran the image through analysis, she says there are nearly seventy of them in a single snapshot. But there's good news as well: Paul is in the Environmental systems right now. He thinks they're isolated to storage and the aft reactor area."
Janson twitched, his big suit exaggerating the motion. "The reactor area is where mah drones are coming from. Should ah send them back?"
"No, we need them. Can't do this without help. Risk it. Captain, how much activity in the reactor?"
There was a pause as he consulted. "Paul says every tamper sensor he has is going off in the venting system there. Lots of activity."
"There, found it!" Jamet tapped an entry for GravComm relays, then handed the console to the engineer. "It says bay B-12, is that close to our friends in there?"
"No, bit of luck there. It's th' second rack over, less than twenty feet in. But ah'm having a thought, here. Take a look inside-- are they still moving?"
She peeked, shuddered and pulled back. "Very slowly, but yes."
Janson tapped his wrist console. "Captain? Remember looking at those pictures of our incoming?"
"Yes. Do you need to see them again? Also, a status update would be nice."
"We're using drones to carry the relay, sir. Two minutes to get 'em here, then maybe five to get the relay on the way to a lifeboat." He snuck another look. "Remember earlier, when ah said they were manufacturing those asteroids into ships?"
"I recall. You're talking about how the ones nearest the asteroid belt center were more complete?"
"Yes sir. But also ah was wondering about th' power supply. They don't have one. Not that ah can find, anyways. Unless you can see something with Comms, Emilia?"
"I'll check, but something big enough to power all that would have been obvious from the start. I think, anyways."
Jamet jogged a short way down the corridor, anxiously scanning for the maintenance drones and making exasperated noises when they failed to appear from thin air. Grumbling, she turned to the nearest bulkhead and pulled the emergency cache out. Seconds later she had the contents folded outwards, diving through cases and pulling out tools. "Paul, I'm looking through the bulkhead kit. Anything in here that can be a weapon?"
"Is there an air cast?"
"Yes! Why?"
"Because you did a lot of damage with that to me."
"This is not the time!" She threw a sealed package of rations against the wall, then pulled a handheld welder from a hard shelled case. It clicked on with a searing blue light that made their shadows stand out against the wall. "Okay, found something."
"Cut the chatter, everyone." Siers silenced the channel, then took it back. "Engineer, explain about the power supply. Something we can use?"
Janson snapped his gloved fingers and directed Jamet's attention down the corridor as three maintenance drones rounded the far bulkhead. They floated at a slow walking pace on internal gravity generators, manipulators already unfolded and dangling beneath. "About time!"
"Paul, still there?"
"Yes. Something I can do, engineer?" Frustrated sounds came over the link.
He watched the drones slowly floating down the corridor while talking on the radio. "Do me a favor: Check those alerts in th' reactor room again?"
"One moment... hmm. That's odd. Almost all the alerts in the aft reactor room stopped triggering. What changed?"
Jamet and Janson looked at the drones coming down the corridor, then shared a glance. "You think?" She nodded at the floating assistants.
"Might be, ma'am. Paul, you have alerts around storage? Watch for more activity soon. Ah'm sending the maintenance drones in to get the relay now."
He looked steadily at the three waiting drones, silently sending instructions through his chip. After a moment they started moving again, floating through the hatch as Janson flattened to the side to let them pass. Jamet took up position on the other side of the hatch, welder in hand and sparking nervously every other second.
Janson stared upwards, unfocused. "Paul? Anything?"
"Increase in activity. The Environmental system went from one tamper alert to three. Four, now." He paused, then came back sounding thoughtful. "It's the drones, then? How?"
Jamet stuck her helmet around the corner, welder ready in one hand. Inside the room all three drones were cooperating to pull a large, flat rectangle from a shelf nearby. But on the far wall the invader activity was picking up, triangles flipping and scrambling with increased speed. As she watched three of them combined together, forming half a hexagon side that rapidly filled in with more units. Within seconds a full lattice formed, engulfing an entire container of parts. "Engineer, I think we need to hurry this up."
"I agree, lieutenant. Every single hard lockout is now under assault. Two are in danger of breach, I am going to lock the compartments to either side."
The maintenance drones lifted the large case off the storage rack, then turned and proceeded toward the hatch at half the speed of horror. Jamet made urgent 'hurry up' motions at the three of them without ever setting foot inside the room, eyes glued to the roiling mass of attackers covering nearly the entire back shelving units. "They're getting faster! Also, I think- oh shit."
A group of triangles broke away from the mob, cables whipping across the floor as they flipped between shelves towards the drones. Jamet yelled, moving to one side as the drones floated past, then hit the hatch controls with an open-handed strike that threatened to break the toggle.
The hatch whooshed shut, clipping the lead attacker as it flipped through but leaving the others sealed inside. Instantly the triangular unit orientated on the nearest drone, cables whipping out to surround it. Jamet screamed, stiff armed the handheld welder and charged with it like she was trying to spear it straight through the attacker. "A little help here, Janson!"
Welder met curiously slick metal in a shower of sparks that left a huge gouge on the casing. She had time to swipe it once more before the unit reoriented, a hard hit that sent one of the thick cables flying across the deck. Then it was on her, leaping from the hapless drone unit onto the front of Jamet's skinsuit.
Cables whipped upwards, smashing the front of her helmet hard enough to leave cracks. Half a dozen others wrapped her lower back, hammering painful welts along every rib all the way to the shoulders. Jamet struggled, crashing from side to side against the bulkheads as she angled a free arm between them, fighting what felt like a ton of force to push it away. She still had the welder, but couldn't get an angle on the thing that wouldn't burn a hole straight through the skinsuit. "Jansooonnnnnn!"
She fell down, losing the welder when her wrist cracked against the deck. The damn thing swarmed up her suit, putting the triangular central piece straight over her cracked faceplate as cables dug into the hard shell of the skinsuit. She had a horrified moment to look straight into the interior and see an entire microsystem of moving parts before the entire unit stopped moving.
At the same time three loud thumps announced the maintenance drones hitting the deck nearby, one of them close enough to roll onto her foot. Not that Jamet cared; she was busy fighting wrapped cables and screaming. "Getitoff! Get it off! Get! It! Off!"
"Easy! Easy, ma'am!" She realized Janson was talking to her, helping to untangle the gripping steel. "It's alright! It's not movin'!" The radio was screaming inside her helmet, a chaos of three voices yelling for updates that weren't coming any time soon. Feeling something go slack Jamet twisted hard, rolled and scooted backwards across the deck on her butt. She saw the welder a moment later and dove on it, bringing bright blue flame around.
Janson had the attacker pinned to the deck with one large boot, holding his other hand out towards her in a 'hold' motion. "Easy, ma'am! It's not going anywhere! Ah got it!"
Bright spots jumped and swam everywhere. The skinsuit helpfully pinged a caution advisement against the cracked viewplate to let her know she was hyperventilating. "Is it dead? Kill it! No, wait: I'm going to kill it. Move your foot, Engineer!"
"S'alright! It doesn't have power anymore. Look!" He lifted his boot, drawing a startled yell from Jamet as she triggered the welder again.
It didn't come back to life or whip cables around. Bereft of motion it seemed less harmful: Just a triangular body with a large gash, resting on a bed of oily cabling. She didn't trust it. "What did you do?"
"Ah turned off th' drones. Look." He pointed at the three units, grounded and lifeless. "Ah think it's the gravity lifts. They're powerin' them somehow. When the drones got close those things picked up speed, came after it."
Helmet speakers came to life, making them both jump. "That would explain a lot," Siers sounded concerned. "Lieutenant, are you okay?"
"That's a solid hell no!" She nervously clicked the welder twice in a rapid succession, eyes glued to the motionless thing on the floor. "My back is on fire, I think it beat me half to death! Uh, sir."
"Report to Paul in Medical as soon as you can. Engineer, I hate to push but if you have the situation under control we need that relay in a lifeboat five minutes ago. Sooner, if possible."
"On it, sir. Paul, you there?"
"Yes. Before you ask: Tamper sensors are almost entirely quiet now. Only one is alerting sporadically. Lieutenant-- I will be waiting in Medical whenever you can come."
He nodded as Jamet acknowledged the offer, then looked at the three lifeless maintenance drones. "Ma'am, I know it's a a lot t' ask. But we need to drag this thing."
"That's fine," she took careful steps around the dead thing on the floor. "Ow. My ribs. Alright, I've got this side-- let's go before I collapse in shock or something."
Janson gave her a bushy grin, beard on full display through his faceplate. "You're in danger of gettin' on my good side, ma'am." He grabbed a handle on his side and started pulling. She grunted and dragged her end alongside.
"I wasn't already?"
"Course you were. You ate one of my muffins an' everything."
"That was a muffin?" Jamet wheezed a weak laugh.
The two of them dragged the heavy case down the corridor at a brisk pace, Jamet hissing every other step as her ribs shifted. Less than a minute later they took a sharp turn away from the centerline, angling into an alcove containing a console and a bright red painted hatch. Yellow, gleaming letters spelled 'Emergency Lifeboat' all the way across the floor, with a single thick arrow pointing to a handle on the wall.
Janson hauled downward on the handle, throwing the hatch open with an explosive whoosh of equalizing air. The lifeboat inside was was the size of two closets put together, crammed with emergency equipment and an oversized atmosphere cycling unit. Four jumpseats lined the walls, two on a side, with crash webbing and convertible sleeping meshes tucked neatly beneath. No less than six skinsuits were racked above the seats: One for each spot and two extras. A fat combination Comms and power unit sat against the front of the boat like a bloated tick.
Jamet tried extremely hard not to think about the cost of this lifeboat as she helped drag the case inside.
A moment later Janson snapped the latches, throwing the top open. Inside was a long silver tube, nestled in foam with dozens of small pieces carefully racked next to it. She looked at the pieces, then glanced around the case lid for a set of instructions. "What do I do? How can I help?"
He grabbed the tube and pulled, popping it out of the fitted compartment. "Nothing, ma'am. If we were using this for real it would be a lot more complicated. But we just need it to turn on. Hand me that power pack." He pointed at the far side of the case. Jamet ripped a bright orange box free of foam, hissing in pain while handing it to the engineer. He snapped it on the side of the tube, then clicked two leads into place on the pack. A small console lit up moments later, scrolling through a bootup sequence.
"There, that's got it." Janson tapped his wrist console. "Captain, the GravComm is ready."
"Don't turn it on!" Emilia sounded panicked.
"Ah'm not. I got it set on local network, you should have control. Do you see it, Emilia?"
"Yes! Okay, get ready to fire the lifeboat, I'll turn it on when it's clear! Captain?"
Siers took over, voice strained. "Overriding the failsafes. Normally someone has to be inside to jettison, but let's not have anyone playing hero. Engineer, lieutenant-- get clear."
They scrambled out of the lock, leaving behind the GravComm array and more supplies than any lifeboat Jamet ever heard of. She leaned against the bulkhead nearby as Janson threw the emergency handle upwards one-handed, then waited until the hatch slammed shut to open a radio circuit. "Got it, sir! Go!"
A moment later the hatch rang like a gong, explosive bolts throwing the lifeboat away from the Kipper on a screaming arc of burning propellant. The corridor fell into a tense, quiet moment that stretched for long enough to feel awkward.
Emilia's voice came over the radio, excitement leaking through. "GravComm triggered! Targets are... targets are baited, they took the bait! Holy shit it worked! I mean, I always knew it would work!"
Jamet shared a tired grin with the big engineer, then hissed in pain. "I need to get to Medical."
"For sure, ma'am. But let's change your suit first; it's looking pretty beat up and ah'm a little concerned."
She looked down, then carefully turned to glance at one flank. If anything Janson was understating it-- whatever those cables were made of nearly sliced through the skinsuit in multiple places. She was striped from the waist up, layers shredded two or three deep. Only the absurd cost and quality of the Kipper's equipment saved her from getting mauled. "Oh. Wow, I didn't know it was that bad."
"Just be glad you can't see the back, ma'am."

Navigation		Destinations
« Back	17	Forward »
1-10	11-20
« Beginning		End »

Fiscal Preservation
Something went terribly wrong in Port Dock Juliet.
It started with a standard ship warning, automated, announcing arrival in yet another system. Which system? It didn't matter. The FES Redline never stopped, never slowed down and transits between stars were more common than laundry cycles. Knowing the details of which particular planetary investment happened to draw the ire of Fiscal Enforcement Services didn't impact daily life for the crew in any meaningful way. Even self-inspections were rare; the Redline was bigger than most stationary facilities, with a crew well over a hundred thousand. Management couldn't be everywhere. That's what workers were for.
Then battle station alarms went off with a whooping call of the damned.
Across docking area Juliet thousands of cargo and lift operators hesitated in surprise, then abandoned machinery in place and fled for assigned shelters. In some cases it was a hell of a run: The cargo deck was nearly a half mile square, terraced on the inward side into three levels for storage. The outbound area sported three enormous ship docks, two hundred square feet each and festooned with dozens of cranes and gravity assist lifters. But all the shelters were on the interior sides, behind emergency bulkheads designed to withstand explosion decompression if the entire dock blew.
Workers in colored jumpsuits ran hard, weaving through fixed machinery in panic. From above they looked like rainbow colored trails of movement, all headed for the edge of the dock. Worry clouded the air, jumping from person to person between the strident calls of the siren. But they weren't panicked, not yet. Battle stations happened. It was rare, but occasionally the Redline needed to enact a write-off on an entire system. In those cases everyone got a free break for a few hours, then scrambled to catch up on missed work when it was over. No big deal.
Then Cormorents began launching.
Port side Weapons resided directly below J dock, launch tubes sharing hull space in the area beneath their feet. When the tubes began firing every worker could feel the thrum of each screaming torpedo through their boots. Sense the vibrations whipping from the cargo terrace toward the outward docking area. Hear the singing tension of mechanical assists hurling packages of death into the void. Those closest to the massive docking bays could even see the growing negative space through the open doors as singularities ate starlight and streaked off.
The whoop-whoop of battle sirens abruptly switched to the higher scree-scree of collision warnings. Amber lights flashed on every visible surface, screaming the command to get down get down get down.
Urgent running became panicked sprints, faster workers pushing slower people down in haste. Orderly lines of motion turned into thrashing chaos as everyone fought for another inch of ground towards safety. Emergency hatches filled up and jammed, too full of people to let the desperate inside. Dock supervisors fought the mob, jerking stuck people aside, desperate to clear space and get the throng moving again.
And through it all the deck vibrated with launch after launch after launch. More and more, accelerating at a frantic pace until vibrations merged into an intense, rolling growl so loud the collision sirens couldn't be heard any more. A howl of danger so bass they could feel it shake in every bone.
The entire docking area smashed inward with cataclysmic force, half a mile of heavily reinforced bulkhead bending like paper before impossible forces. Local gravity generators screamed with lifesaving effort, straining to cancel out hellish amounts of kinetic energy seeking to turn anything biological into paste. The fields held just long enough for the collision to pass, then blew as power relays melted under duress.
Juliet Dock explosively breached.
Everything not fixed in place blasted outwards as the three enormous docking windows merged into a gigantic hole in the hull. Explosive decompression snatched equipment and crew alike, sending debris mixed with screaming personnel hurtling into the void. Every emergency bulkhead smashed shut with titanic force, preserving those lucky enough to escape while sentencing everyone else to vacuum.
All that was left behind were corridors of screaming survivors, shrieking sirens and a heavy, thick smoke that settled unnaturally on everything.
Something was going horribly wrong in Port Systems Control Kilo.
Battle sirens sent every technician in a mad scramble to their assigned console to buckle in. Seconds later the courtyard-sized room lit up with activated workspaces, every screen dedicated to system schematics on K-deck and below. It was coordinated chaos as half a dozen dedicated teams shouted ready states and preparations to supervisors, who in turn consolidated information onto a Command console for a single Upper Management Executive to use. Lines of premade icons ran down the edge of the Command space, ready to direct emergency crews or engage safety interlocks with the tap of a finger.
The teams exhibited tension, but no real surprise. These were seasoned professionals, most of them from Lower Management and hand picked for Systems Control. It was considered an upwardly-mobile position in Fiscal Enforcement, somewhere to start real responsibility while fighting up the ladder. Most of them even liked the job: It came with a lot of authority during emergencies, with the added benefit of plausible deniability if something went wrong.
Relaxed professionalism went out the window with the first Cormorent launches.
The moment torpedo indicators flashed on display Systems Control Kilo went into a new level of focus. Technicians traded information in clipped phrases, flinging update icons between shared workspaces at a rapid pace. Information collided and combined, then landed on the Command space in a dizzying array that spelled out a single, impossible projection: The Redline was firing everything. All at once. At a single target.
Their Upper Executive began to sweat, hands nervous on the Command console.
Something was wrong. They'd just arrived in system, but every launch tube was triggering as fast as automated systems could feed from stock. Dozens... hundreds... thousands of torpedoes. What needed that many launches? Was it another warship? Who could possibly have a warship, way out here? The last status briefing said this was a new startup, not a developed system.
His frantic scenarios got cut short as the forward working screens flashed red milliseconds before the entire ship jerked, overloading local gravity and throwing anyone not buckled in across the deck. More than a few panicked yells turned into horrified updates as reports began spamming by faster than they could be called out. Fully a third of the ship schematic was red, offline and-- if confused sensors were believable-- crushed into nothing.
Overhead lights flickered as power relays failed. Both of their ventilation ducts coughed huge clouds of smoke, then began rattling horribly as something broke loose inside. Systems Control teams worked consoles frantically, reshuffling backups to restore power and cut off damaged sections from shorting out still-operable areas. The Environmental group was in a frenzy, handling so many ventilation breaches and hazard indicators their supervisor had to hammer the master override just to clear the screen.
The Executive recovered his Control console from the floor and swiped a thick layer of gritty dust from the surface. Calling up a schematic with shaking hands, he drew a line across damaged sections before tapping the override to seal emergency bulkheads. A moment later communications began overloading with frantic calls from the sealed areas, pleading for aid or escape. He dragged emergency repair team indicators to the worst spots until he ran out of resources, then blanked the rest of his frantic incoming calls.
Volume spiked in the room as half the workspaces cut out and left technicians adrift. They immediately tried to crowd around the working consoles, elbowing for room while struggling to see through a growing haze of smoke. Environmental supervisors yelled helplessly, trying to cut off ventilation before whatever was rattling inside smothered them all.
Across the room Internal Security was a beehive of conflicting reports. Armed groups dashed in and out of a nearby weapons locker, swiping wrist IDs and grabbing everything from stun grenades to projectile weapons. Which the Executive found absolutely ludicrous; who was boarding? Where? He looked down at the Control console and found no answers, only more failing systems and desperate reports of chaotic fighting. Quite a lot of conflict reports, actually, all centered around where he'd sealed the bulkheads earlier.
Another titanic clash sent everyone flying at the mercy overloaded local gravity control. Strained systems blunted the worst of it before throwing critical failure logs and shutting down. Injured technicians screamed as more heavy smoke poured from the vents, accompanied by a hellish rattle and boom that hurt everyone's ears.
Power failed with an abrupt finality. A moment later battery powered lights clicked on, beams sharp and crisp through dense smoke. Systems Control Kilo devolved from a beacon of Management into a dark brawl of confused, hacking figures stumbling about. The only system still working was the broken rattle of the ventilation ducts, growing louder by the second.
Which was odd. He looked down at the handheld Control console, still lit from an internal battery source and connected to the emergency Management network. The entire ship schematic for his side was red, most of it flashing. Markers for power interruption, atmospheric breaches and fighting sprouted everywhere alongside a surprising notice that the ship was coming about for system transit. Transit? Again?
And there in the corner of the screen was a prominent icon, stark red: Environmental lockdown.
But he could hear it above them, rattling louder and louder in the vent. It wasn't locked down. In fact more smoke was pouring through: Thick, cloying, smelling of chemicals that made stumbling people wheeze and cough.
Console forgotten, the Executive looked up at the vent directly over his head, squinting against billows of irritating clouds. It was dark, hard to see. What was making that sound?
He caught a glimpse of something fast and metallic just before it smashed through the vent and landed on him.
Everything was hideously wrong in Port Reactor November.
Second shift was rotating out with Third when battle alarms blared. Immediately a mad scramble started as off-going workers tried to leave as the oncoming crew fought to reach assigned places. Shift supervisors yelled conflicting instructions: Go! Move! Stay! Swap with him, no him not the other guy!
Everything got worse when alarms switched to the shrill cry of imminent collision.
Terrified workers gave up getting to assigned positions and started fighting for safe places to buckle in. It was an immediate swarm around the emergency jumpseats near the bulkheads: Too many people fighting to get a spot in a place designed for half their number. The smarter ones gave up immediately, scattering into the reactor support systems to find somewhere to brace themselves. There was no lack of room; the entire area was a vast maze of conduit and massive couplings, serviced by a spiderweb of gridded catwalks crisscrossing upwards. Consoles and workspaces dotted every landing around the spherical chamber, monitoring systems and accepting input as needed.
Most found a cubby hole or support to latch onto. A few didn't. When the first hit came the unlucky people instantly became projectiles, bouncing painfully off every surface and falling from catwalks in screaming pairs.
Every console around the reactor lit up red with overload. At the same time every emergency bulkhead slammed shut with terrifying force, trapping them inside with a thick, cloying smoke.
Training kicked everyone into gear, briefly causing chaos as two sets of equally qualified personnel attempted to respond at once. It ended up being a blend of both teams working the reactor consoles with desperate speed, attempting to both even out the power draws and keep power generation going at the same time. It didn't help that someone-- those idiots on the Command Deck, probably-- were recklessly cycling Krepsfield singularities at a terrifying pace, repeatedly slamming the power relays until they redlined.
The second impact was actually worse for Port Reactor November than the first. This time around they didn't have warning and no one was secured; personnel scattered across the deck and rammed into each other indiscriminately. Screams and medical demands echoed through the smoky air until the combined noise level was painful. The few uninjured technicians staggered upright and retook the consoles, dragging icons and manipulating systems with feverish intensity until the entire setup abruptly went dark.
Absence of light and the deep thrum of power generation threw a heavy blanket over the room, briefly hushing everyone. In the brief silence before injured cries and barked orders restarted the more aware technicians heard something strange: Rattling and banging sounds, coming from the Environmental ducts. They had several seconds to stare upwards into the darkness in puzzlement before the grates covering the ventilation outlets burst outward and released dozens of metallic invaders.
Triangular shaped with three blunt tips, the foot-long attackers scuttled and flipped across the deck on braided whipcords of wire that shone with a greasy rainbows whenever they crossed a beam from the emergency lights. There was no discernable head; every facet of the palm-thick creature seemed to work equally well as a direction of travel. Some took to the walls immediately, going upwards with sickening ease. Others skidded or spun between machinery, anchoring briefly with cords before slinging themselves across open spaces in a blur of motion.
They went for the crew and systems alike in a blur of hostility, eerily coordinated and soundless.
Whipcords savaged workers, slashing through clothing and wrapping limbs with brutal strength. After a horrified moment of surprise the crew fought back, improvising bludgeoning weapons from tools and emergency kits. The entire reactor area devolved into a chaotic melee of frightened people using anything at hand to fight an endless, quicksilver-fast flood of triangular attackers. The crew had an advantage of size, but the invaders packed a surprising mass in their small frames and their wires sliced like knives.
Two crewmates pinned one of the attackers with an emergency medical kit while a third frantically pounded it to death with a diagnostic tray. It broke apart after a dozen heavy blows, case cracking with a flash of blue lightning that made the attached wires spasm and go limp. The terrified crew member kept hammering away at the pieces, denting the tray and sending bits flying in every direction. In response a team of six invaders clumped together, wires interlocking pieces into a hexagon that sprouted tendrils in every direction. The crew team went down beneath the combined weight, screams abruptly cutting off as hundreds of cords spun in a vicious circle.
While crew fought invader hand to cord, one supervisor broke away and made a lunge for a console. Frantically slapping at communications icons, he opened a line to Systems Control and screamed for help, tagging a dozen different boarding and enemy icons to the priority call.
No one answered.
Everything was apocalyptically wrong at Bridge Control.
Co-CEOs-- the four that were left after two massive impacts left half the officers unconscious-- fought a multi-front war with failing systems and each other for control of the ship. Between the surprise and massive damage they'd been caught completely flat footed, relying on automated systems to respond while each pushed an agenda for approval.
The difficulty lie in how fast developments were happening. This simply wasn't done; no one fought Fiscal Enforcement! When the Redline appeared in-system compliance was swift and total, obedience a foregone conclusion. They always acted at leisure, with time to angle each advantage for maximum Corporate gain. Sometimes that meant a little personal gain as well; the ship Board wasn't above pocketing any excess if an entire system was a write-off to begin with.
But not this time. They'd arrived for a compliance visit after Pilster-3 missed two quarterly reports in a row. At the most the Board expected a failing system with a desperate Upper Executive trying to cover their tracks. At the worst perhaps something had gone catastrophically wrong and some recovery and reinvestment needed to be discussed. Either way this was expected to be a routine trip.
Instead the ship arrived in the middle of a debris cloud, derelicts and cargo on alarmingly close collision courses. Seconds later an automated transmission hit their comms, cutting right through to priority channels that blasted over every speaker whether they liked it or not. It only took a single listen before self-preservation instincts kicked in, every Executive working at once to turn over control to response protocols.
It hadn't helped.
Now they were smashed, the Redline failing on every system down the port side while venting atmosphere at alarming rates. Trillions of credits in damages. Possibly a near-loss, most certainly career ending if someone could pin the blame.
Arguments abounded. Everyone had an idea, but no one wanted the responsibility if it failed. Unified command was a myth. In the end they fell back on Corporate culture and did what was best for everyone: Asset preservation.
The ship turned drunkenly, lined up on an outbound course and accelerated away to safety.

Hello everyone!
In an effort to keep the subreddit and its wiki filled with good and useful information, we are compiling guides for the main lifts (deadlift, squat, bench, potentially others). These guides will be added to the wiki and posted as posts as they are completed. The goal of these guides is to provide basic lift information, descriptions of some common variations, equipment considerations, related and complimentary exercises, additional resources for further reading, and to showcase incredible women (and non-binary folks) performing these lifts.
If you have suggestions regarding things that should be added to these guides, or other subjects you'd like to see in the wiki, please message the mods!

The Deadlift

At its core, the deadlift is a hip hinge exercise. This means the main movement in the lift is bringing the hip joint from a flexed position into an extended position. There is some nature of squatting down involved in deadlifting in its various forms, but the quadriceps (the front/anterior thigh) muscles are not the sole or even main target in this lift. This lift primarily targets the posterior chain muscles, which include the calves/gastrocnemius, hamstrings, gluteus maximus, erector spinae along the spine, and the latissimus dorsi (“lats”) muscles that comprise the majority of the superficial layer of muscle on the back. Your abdominal and oblique muscles also play a huge role in this lift – properly bracing your core, including your lower back muscles, is crucial to safely and successfully deadlifting.

Deadlift Forms and Variations

Stronger By Science and StrongLifts have excellent, extensive “how to deadlift” guides. Generally, this post is written referring to deadlifting with a barbell, but many of these deadlift variations can be performed with body weight, dumbbells, kettlebells, etc.
The two main deadlift forms are conventional and sumo, though I have compiled a non-exhausted list of additional variations below. This article, based on a 2019 article titled “Anthropometrical determinants of deadlift variant performance” by Cholewa et al from the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, is great to help a lifter figure out which stance may be optimal for themselves based on anatomical proportions. Regardless, there is benefit to deadlifting in both positions because they both highlight and recruit slightly different muscles through the lift.
Tl;dr: short arms/long torso, probably mechanically advantageous to pull sumo. Long arms/short torso, probably mechanically advantageous to pull conventional.
Regardless of the type of deadlift you are performing, the barbell (or other weight) should be directly over your midfoot, where the ankle turns into your foot, through the entire movement. This ensures a straight bar path and keeps you in control of the weight through the lift by keeping it close to your center of gravity. Any forward or backward shift in the weight away from the midfoot line can lead to instability and injury.
This megsquats post illustrates one version of an ideal starting position for a conventional deadlift. Shoulders are slightly in front of the barbell, shins mostly perpendicular, knees bent but not as much as the hip, back straight, and a neutral neck – she is not looking up or straight ahead, but at a fixed point on the ground a few feet in front of her. Keeping a neutral neck/spine is going to help with stability but also prevent you from tweaking your neck during the lift! Less visually obvious but equally important is that the scapulas (shoulderblades) are retracted and tight in order to engage the latissimus dorsi muscles and help the lifter maintain control over the weight being moved. One commonly cited cue to help with this particular part of bracing for a deadlift is to “squeeze oranges in your armpits”. Another cue for properly engaging the upper and mid back symmetrically and consistently is to try and "break" the bar in half as you pull from the ground.

• Conventional deadlift: The base form of the deadlift. Feet are placed approximately hip width apart facing straight ahead, arms grasp the barbell straight down from the shoulders on the outside of the knees, shins not quite vertical, and the bar is lifted off the ground with the lifter in fully upright position. This deadlift is more efficient at recruiting the hamstring muscles than the sumo deadlift. The butt should be low enough to create an acute angle rather than having the back parallel to the floor, but not so low that this becomes a squat instead of a hip hinge. The hips will be flexed more than the knees will be in this variation.
  
• Sumo: Only controversial because of bro-science trying to claim this is an “easier” deadlift due to a “shorter bar path”. The feet are wide apart, further than shoulder width, typically with toes angled outward from center. Hands grasp barbell straight down from shoulders, between the knees. Your hips and knees will both be bent to approximately the same degree in the starting position, and your shins will be roughly vertical. This form typically allows the lifter to stay more upright than the conventional deadlift and can be a preferred alternative for people who have trouble with too much lower back involvement in conventional deadlift. Your lower back will be less involved, and your groin/hip flexor muscles will be more engaged. Editor side note re: the “easier” deadlift: I’m sorry, you’re still using your entire body to lift x number of lbs or kilos off the ground, it’s a feat of strength either way. Do whichever form is safest and best for you.
  
• Kettlebell/Dumbbell: Essentially a barbell deadlift with different equipment. Depending on if you are using a single or double hand weights, this can involve your upper back and arm muscles differently. Since these types of weights are typically shorter than a barbell with bumper plates on it, the range of motion is typically increased compared to a barbell deadlift. This can be beneficial for engaging your hamstrings and gluteus maximus more.
  
• Deficit: Very similar to a conventional deadlift in terms of form and set up. The main difference is you will be standing on a platform of some kind (plate, box, step etc) rather than the floor. This increases the range of motion the bar will travel and further isolates hamstrings.
  
• Stiff leg: Your legs will not be fully straight, but you will have a “soft” knee with a slight bend, and less of a squatting motion. Your back will be more horizontal at the bottom of this position than in the conventional deadlift. This also serves to further involve the hamstrings and gluteus maximus.
  
• Romanian: Typically, this type of deadlift will begin with the weight and lifter in the upright position and not from the floor. The movement is the same for a conventional deadlift, but rather than setting the barbell on the ground between reps, you will allow it to either nearly reach the floor or barely touch the floor with each rep. This is a great way to improve grip strength, and also requires maintaining the deadlift form very tightly. You’ll need to have your lats and other back muscles constantly engaged. If you are doing these alongside typical deadlifts, you’ll want to start at a significantly lower weight. Again, these emphasize hamstring and gluteus maximus involvement and reduces quadriceps involvement.
  
• Trap Bar: Rather than using a straight barbell, this type of deadlift uses a hexagonal hex or trap bar. The handles are at your sides instead of in front you with a straight barbell. Hex/trap bar deadlifts are more “squatty” than a straight barbell deadlift and thus involve the quadriceps more and the lower back less than a conventional barbell deadlift. It is still more of a hip hinge than a squat movement. They are more straightforward to learn in comparison to a barbell deadlift.
  
• Snatch grip: Previously discussed deadlift forms have the arms reaching straight down to the bar at about shoulder width. Snatch grip deadlift utilizes a wider grip, with hands well outside the knees. The name refers to an Oylmpic type of barbell lift, the snatch where the barbell ends up overhead of a squatting lifter. A wider grip is beneficial for a snatch for stability along the movement and in the static end position. A snatch grip deadlift is a great accessory for those who do Olympic lifts, or for lifters who would like to recruit more of their upper back muscles during a deadlift. As with deficit and Romanian deadlifts, definitely start with lower weight than your preferred base deadlift.
  
• Single leg: A unilateral isolation deadlift that will remind you of a drinking bird toy. Start with both feet about hip width apart. Plant your weight on the working leg, keeping a soft knee with a slight bend, and hinge forward at the hips in a way that brings your non-working leg up straight behind you until your torso is approximately parallel to the ground (individual flexibility may affect this – you should feel these in your active hamstrings and gluteus maximus). Be sure not to rotate at the hip as in a hip airplane (discussed below); keep your shoulders and hips square and your back straight. To add weight, start with a dumbbell or kettlebell – personally I prefer holding the weight with both hands in front of my planted leg. You may also hold the weight in one hand – be it the active leg side or the opposite. Whichever configuration allows you to perform the movement in a controlled manner while you maintain your balance is fine.
  

Supplemental/Complimentary Exercises

Here are a few of many exercises that are similar or beneficial to the deadlift.

• Good Mornings – This is technically not a deadlift, but the body mechanics and movement pattern are almost identical. Instead of the bar being suspended from your hands, it is resting across your traps and shoulders a la the back squat. Like the deadlift, this exercise is a hip hinge movement generally focused on targeting the posterior chain.
  
• Reverse hyperextensions – Another hip extension exercise, but instead of extending your hips by standing up straighter, you are lying prone (on your tummy) and lifting your legs upward off the ground, or from a 90 degree angle below you if you have access to a reverse hyper machine. This is also an excellent lower back isolation exercise. SquatUniversity has a wonderful blog post about this exercise and lower back extensions.
  
• Hip airplane: This is more of a stretch, warmup, and rehabilitation movement but is very similar to the form for the single leg deadlift while also providing flexibility and mobility benefits.
  

Equipment, Tools, and Other Considerations

Flat shoes: Aside from the actual weight equipment, flat soled shoes like Converse All Stars, Vans skater shoes, or even barefoot if environment allows, is going to be one of the most important factors in a safe and steady deadlift. Squat University goes into great detail on how and why to create a ‘tripod’ with your foot. Here’s another SquatUniversity video on the foot tripod. You don’t want to try and deadlift in a squishy shoe because it interferes with the ability to really plant your foot and create stability that way.
Breathing: Breathing while lifting is different than breathing as you go about your day. How you hold your breath during a lift is going to be crucial to creating and maintaining bodily stability and ensuring you can perform the lift safely and effectively. Many lifters utilize a breath hold technique called the Valsalva maneuver to increase intra-abdominal pressure during a lift. This increases rigidity and stability in the torso to provide support to the vertebral column and maintain a tight, stable core during the lift. This page has a neat diagram illustrating essentially a cross section of the body during a Valsalva maneuver in a lift.
Belts –The basic premise behind using a lifting belt is to help the lifter brace their abdominal muscles more or “better” (thus increasing intra-abdominal pressure) during a lift by providing an additional physical barrier to brace against. A weightlifting belt can be beneficial to some lifters, but is not going to fix or help lifts if you are unable to properly engage your core to begin with. The Stronger By Science Belt Bible is an extensive guide to how and when to use a belt for lifting.
In an experiment with an (admittedly small) sample size of 10 experienced lifters, researchers found that “The use of a properly aligned and fitted weight-lifting belt did not yield a significant difference in muscle activation between the belted and nonbelted trials for the tested muscle groups while performing the conventional DL. Thus, a weight-lifting belt may augment the lifter’s perception, but it does not enhance or detract from motor unit activation.” (Pellechia et al 2018).
Straps are tools one can use when lifting, typically to aid in gripping a barbell if the lifter’s grip strength is not cutting it either out of fatigue or general relative weakness. They can also protect hands with torn calluses or if the knurling (rough textured areas) on a bar are too rough. Using straps may help someone maintain dual overhand grip for longer than without using straps. Generally speaking as long as you don’t rely on straps all the time, your grip strength nor lifts will not suffer for using them. TNation has a decent pros vs cons and when to use straps page.
Lifting chalk is powder or liquid form of magnesium carbonate applied directly to the hands to keep them dry and increase friction between skin and bar, thus improving grip when lifting heavy weights, doing pull-ups, or gymnastics for instance.

Grip types

Dual overhand grip: Dual overhand grip is exactly how it sounds – both of your hands are wrapped around the front of the barbell in a pronated position – your palms face your body. Improving the maximum weight you can pull with dual overhand grip is going to seriously benefit your overall grip strength. In an ideal world you will be dual overhand for as heavy as possible while still remaining in control of the bar.
Hook grip: Hook grip is a very secure but notoriously painful grip configuration. To decrease the rotation of the bar within your hands, your thumb is wrapped between the bar and your fingers rather than around the barbell. This article goes into way more depth about the mechanics, how-to, and supposed benefits of hook grip compared to other grip configurations.
Mixed grip: Mixed grip refers to having one hand “overhand” (pronated) and the other hand “underhand” (supinated) along the barbell. This hand configuration can provide improved stability and security on the barbell through the lift, but there are legitimate concerns regarding this grip. The primary concern is imbalance, not only in terms of strength differences but how it can change the mechanics of the lift. If one side of your upper extremities is pronated and the other is supinated, you are using different stabilization and accessory muscles on each side along the whole extremity. This can lead to strength imbalances and potentially injury if technique is suboptimal. Additionally, this can lead to the bar moving unevenly – one side may come up or go down faster than the other due to the orientation of the arm and hand, and it may also introduce some unnecessary rotation into the lift. A way to compensate for these challenges is to alternate which hand is over and which is under, so that each arm is in each position for an equal number of reps.
A second concern involving underhand gripping the bar in any way (as dual underhand is also a potential but ill-advised grip configuration for deadlifting) is the risk of biceps tear in your upper arms. This can occur if the lifter has an element of “curling” the bar along the bar path, especially as weight increases. This can be avoided by keeping your arms extended through the elbow and using them only as a hook and pulley system by which to hold the bar through the deadlift motion.
Conclusion: “A mixed grip may be beneficial in reducing the overall perceived technical difficulty when performing a maximal DL. Athletes aiming to maximize muscle activation and potentially develop their grip strength should utilize a dual overhand grip or hook grip.” And “The use of a particular grip is largely down to individual preferences, with no scientific evidence suggesting the superiority of one grip over another.” (Pratt et al 2020).

Badass Women Deadlifting Obscene Numbers

• Stefi Cohen casually deadlifting over 500lbs a couple times.
  
• Stefi Cohen’s 529lb deadlift at 120lb bodyweight
  
• C.C. Ingram deadlifting 540lbs for 7 reps
  
• Jen Thompson deadlifting 315lbs x5 after fracturing her pelvis and being unable to squat or deadlift for 7 months
  
• Jen Thompson deadlifting 425lbs
  
• Amanda Lawrence, 562 lbs
  
• Amanda Lawrence, 555lbs
  
• Kristy Hawkins, 540lbs x5, 165lb body weight
  
• Jessica Buettner, 551lbs at 159lb BW
  
• Jessica Buettner, 485x4
  
• Serena Abweh, 340lbs at 103lb BW
  
• Mattie Rogers clean & jerking 297lbs which technically involves a deadlift, and honestly is just plain impressive