Herald of the Stars: Chapter Eighty-Nine (Patreon)

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I ping the waiter and he arrives a couple of minutes later.

“What will you have, Magos?”

“I’ll take herbal rose blend and a shortbread as well as the shrimp stir fry and the bilberry blancmange for dessert. Oh, and a light beer.”

Brigid raises an eyebrow, “I wasn’t planning on taking a whole meal, but that does sound lovely. Give me a few seconds to rethink.” She runs her finger along the menu with the odd pause for a handful of seconds. “I’ll have the stuffed dumpling soup, a white wine spritzer, and the cranachan as my sweet with a bitter recaf please.”

The waiter nods, “Thank you for your orders. Everything is fresh today and prepared by hand so it will be about twenty minutes.”

“No problem,” says Brigid. “I’m sure the magos can entertain me.”

I chuckle, “I’ll give it my best shot.”

The waiter smiles and leaves.

“I’ve done enough sharing for now, Aldrich. How about a snippet from you? What’s your current pet project, aside from that lasrifle you’ve been working on for the past few years.”

“Yes, the mark two has proved to be a frustrating project. Apart from the lasrifle, I’ve been writing a lot of textbooks and working with the machine-spirits to integrate them into the personalised learning we run as well as redoing all the manuals for all our systems into something more unified. Aruna has done a lot of the busy work, helping with the formatting and researching old data to ensure we don’t miss anything vital.”

“I didn’t know you were doing that.”

“My name is on the front of every cover!” I shake my head and laugh. “I guess you lucked out in avoiding being part of the test groups when you first started out; I hand rewritten manuals to the tech-apprentices and if they can follow the manuals, the manuals go into circulation, otherwise I try again. I’ve mostly finished everything on the Distant Sun, so now I’m working on linking terms in the manuals to the textbooks and learning programs. Once I’m finished with the ones for Distant Sun I’ll be going over the origami, cobra, and moth class manuals.”

Brigid nods, “A little too micromanaging for my tastes, but when you're the only person who knows how everything links together, I can see why you approached the problem in such a manner.”

“It’s not too bad, especially as my implants make the actual typing incredibly fast. There will be a lot of crossover between the ships too. The manuals for the origami and moth are only a decade old, but they weren’t done by me and I want to make sure they are good enough and formatted in the same way as the ones for the Distant Sun as that will make moving crew between ships much easier.

“Once I’ve unified and updated everything, I’ll be able to delegate the work to others: people who have learned from my books already and will be used to how I want everything set up.”

“Ah, that makes a lot more sense,” says Brigid.

“It’s not just that, one can’t really say they know a subject until they can successfully teach it. Writing the manuals and textbooks is a way for me to double check I really do understand what I’m talking about and find weaknesses in my own knowledge.

“My personal machine-spirit frequently tests my knowledge and points out things I’ve missed, but there’s no way to know there even is knowledge to miss until I make or replace components myself. The simulators are particularly helpful for that as it lets me rapidly test different methods multiple times.

“For example, one of the things we refitted in the Distant Sun was all the fastenings, so that they matched the Iron Crane and the moth class ships. They should all detach in the same way. In theory, you can now access and modify most of the vessel with a single mechadendrite attachment. Erudition’s Howl hasn’t gone through this process yet.

“We were able to assign two weeks of the training syllabus to more useful pursuits, unify everyone’s first mechadendrite and repurpose manufacturing space, and reduce predicted work time on all maintenance tasks by three percent. On an individual level, it’s just a nice convenience. At scale, it’s tens of thousands of work hours every year that can be spent on something other than screwing around.”

Brigid raises an eyebrow. “Well, you clearly didn’t waste that time on improving your jokes, Aldrich. Still, that is remarkable. I remain a tad confused as to why these new manuals are necessary. All STCs come with manuals, do they not?”

“Oh, they do, to an extent. Only the cargo container STCs are complete though and I’m using their formatting for what I’m writing. Even the manufacturing grade astartes STCs don’t always have proper documentation. It was likely done for secrecy reasons originally, but there’s so much gear out in the galaxy now that it matters much less than it used to and having proper manuals so users can maintain their own equipment better massively reduces our ‘tech burden’ as I like to call it. I’m not even going to get into how disjointed the manuals for most of Distant Sun’s components were. You’ve studied it yourself afterall.”

“Endlessly!” says Brigid. “They were quite horrible. The instructional rites and prayers are useful, perfect, even, if you come across a new problem or device, but we are far more than just troubleshooters. Turning a cogitator on and off again can only take you so far.”

I laugh, “Or checking it’s plugged in.”

Brigid smirks, “That too.”

The waiter brings out our drinks and we spend a quiet moment enjoying them.

“You spoke about your obsessions, Brigid. Was it one of those that led you down the logis path?”

“I suppose so. My current obsessions lie in unintended macro problems.”

“Is that what the uniforms were about?”

“Partly, though that truly is my hobby. Fashion exists in eternal flux and so there is always something new to hold my interest. It was data I acquired from applying new uniforms at scale that led me to my current interest as well as trends I noticed from my role as ship’s purser.”

“How so?”

“Well, I have two at the moment. The first is the void armour all the heralds wear.”

“It is a fairly standard imperial design. I only added the low powered endoskeleton and replaced the plasteel with MOA. Is there something wrong with it I am not aware of?”

“Well, you’ve tested it, but you don’t wear it into combat, Aldrich.”

I shrug. “Proper power armour is preferable and I like my servo harness.”

“That is to be expected,” says Brigid. “I noticed that after combat, stellar corps companies always request a large amount of replacement limbs for their armours, not parts for repairs. I wanted to know where all these missing armour sections were going and looked into it.

“Unlike power armour, which uses artificial muscles, as well as multiple servos to move and enhance limbs, the void armour endoskeleton only uses low power servos which can move without power when required. The problem is that when they are damaged, unlike power armour, the user does not have enough strength to overpower the broken parts and maintain function so they have to remove the whole section and it gets discarded on the battlefield and often can’t be recovered.”

“I did not expect that at all,” I say.

“Perhaps you can understand my interest in unintended consequences?”

“I feel a sudden interest in the matter.”

“I hoped you might! Now, when you redesigned the void armour, you put the endoskeleton underneath the armour to protect it. From an engineer’s perspective, that makes perfect sense as it keeps dirt from the mechanisms, reduces wear and tear, and prevents direct damage. No fingers or clothing gets caught in it either.”

I nod along to Brigid’s explanation.

“However,” says Brigid, “if you make it an armoured, low powered exoskeleton, when it gets damaged in battle, the broken part can be removed quickly, rather than the wearer discarding the whole limb. This would retain protection for the user and perhaps a modicum of functionality. Not only that, you don’t have to make space for the skeleton and can reduce the size of the void armour, saving approximately two kilograms of MOA and ceramite composite armour plates. This is weight that can be put to use elsewhere.

“At scale, this is a massive cost and time saving in multiple areas as we don’t have to breed so many lagomorphs. On a practical level, it reduces waste and improves the armour’s usability.”

“Wow, that is quite the proposal. I’ll put a team on it and we’ll get some prototypes done.”

Brigid smiles, “I do like how you never hesitate, Aldrich.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” I lean back in my chair, “but it’s not arcanotech, so I’m happy to spend a few resources on a well argued design adjustment.”

The waiter clearly has an excellent sense of timing as he brings our food as the conversation lulls. We exchange a few minor comments on our dishes but otherwise eat in silence.

While we wait for dessert, I ask Brigid to expand on her second unintended macro problem.

“I’d be happy to, Aldrich. This second issue is one I encountered when I noticed almost every transaction between our personnel is for twenty-six bytes or more, no matter if the exchanged object or service is worth less than that and the consequences.”

“Yes, that is odd.”

“Well, it comes down to what is considered petty theft. Anything at twenty-five bytes or below doesn’t end in a level one punishment, only an unpleasant chore and a fine. Few try to steal such small amounts from others as it’s at or below what they are given for free anyway, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

“To ‘insure’ against petty theft, people value their trades at twenty-six bytes or more as between twenty-five and two hundred counts as minor theft and will get you a level one punishment. Now, you would think no one would be dumb enough to risk a level one punishment to steal something worth half a week's wages for even the most junior of tech-apprentices but it doesn’t actually work as people intend.”

“This isn’t where I thought you were going with that factoid.”

“Well, it gets stranger for here we have another odd social factor at work. Forgive me for saying this, Magos, but being your bodyguard on an assault comes with a high enough casualty average it counts towards the risky assault quota for sentenced personnel.”

I wince, “I do tend to end up in the thick of it. Too big a target I suppose.”

Brigid looks me up and down, hiding her smile behind a sip of recaf, “you could say that.”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” I snort. “You were saying?”

“Right, by stealing personal objects from, say, the corporal of your rival training squad, or the particularly obnoxious ‘know-it-all’ member of your class, you can make yourself popular with your friends, enjoy some petty revenge, and get a chance at being your bodyguard. This creates an opportunity to impress the big boss for swift promotions or the go ahead for pet projects.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’ll have to establish an official personal guard to stop this nonsense.”

“Well, it’s about time you did so anyway.”

I sigh, “I had been hoping to avoid the expense. Using volunteers was also a vain hope in soothing my guilt at any losses. I wanted my own mistakes to only be inflicted on the willing.”

“Well, in that you succeeded, Aldrich.”

“A little too much, I think!”

Brigid smiles, “Just so. Trying to impress you is not the only consequence of this twenty-six byte minimum either. The avoidable thefts cost us a lot of administration time, while the inflated prices reduce trade, slightly impacts social mobility and reduces personal wealth growth. This reduces morale as a whole across the fleet and corps.”

“How measurable is that?”

“We have approximately ninety thefts a month that require a level one punishment, or just over two thefts per thousand people per year. No one ever admits it’s because they want a chance to meet you, but Aruna’s data collection is comprehensive and I asked him to filter crew conversations for this particular issue; about a third of minor thefts were for this exact issue. If you were to add up all the hours of all the people who have to spend their work time on it, it would employ one person at full time. Brig time causes scheduling burdens on fellow team members too.”

“That’s not too bad, but I can see how it will get worse as our personnel increase.”

“Exactly, as for the suppression of trade, the only reason it doesn’t cause massive inflation is because of the temporary nature of our energy based bytes, with their five year expiry date. I ran some simulations which suggest that increasing the petty theft limit to one hundred bytes would increase trades by three percent as people would be paying closer to what minor goods and services are worth, and thus can afford more. It would also reduce brig time and lost or unnecessary work hours.

“As for the exact impact on morale, that is hard to say, but few like paying more than something is worth. A minority of traders in the promenade have come forward to my office to complain about the ‘insurance tax’ which is how I first heard of the issue.”

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Brigid. I wasn’t expecting to talk about work when I invited you out, but it was fascinating anyway.”

“Work is my life, Aldrich, and my children have long flown the nest. You hoped to find out more about my life and have done so.” Brigid smirks a little and tucks her red hair behind her ear. “You weren’t expecting something else, were you?”

I give her a sad smile, “Not today. Though if you are amenable, I would like to talk to you more at a later date.”

“Well, you can hardly avoid the lady who holds your purse strings now can you?”

I laugh, “That would be most foolish.”

Brigid stands, “Thank you for the meal, Aldrich.”

“You’re most welcome.”

Brigid departs.

I sit quietly for a few more minutes, then pay the bill and return to work.