2953-04-23 – Tales from the Service: A Search for Cermytes
A reader noted in response to last week’s episode that we are far more likely to learn about Cermyte prevention from the Kyaroh or the Grand Journey than from the Incarnation. This is, while entirely sensible, probably untrue. Confederated Navy prison facilities hold tens of thousands of Incarnation prisoners of almost every rank, about ten percent of which are actively cooperative in intelligence gathering projects. Surely the mechanism used is something some of the numerous IN technicians are trained for, and their technology stack is, though adapted to the trade networks of Sagittarius, far more comprehensible to a Reach spacer than those of the Kyaroh or the Journey.
There was little briefing after the last shift had finally filed out. Belluomo divided his team into four pairs for the search, and Clara Liang found herself partnered up with the grim, taciturn Ruslan Boyko, a waste disposal tech who’d been aboard Janda Dunewhite longer than herself.
This was perhaps the optimal partner for the day’s drudgery, given that Clara, sleep deprived as she was, was in no mood for small talk even before learning that they’d spend the next eight hours prowling around in tight spaces looking for alien bugs. Most of the rest of the crew had an annoying habit of talking while they worked. Clara wondered if, back when sleep had been easier to source, she might have been the same.
They all knew the procedure for diagnosing and containing a cermyte infestation well enough. Cermytes tended to cluster around a food source – that is, an untended polymer mass – in a dark and relatively warm pressurized space, so once they were detected, the center of their colonization needed to be located, isolated, and evacuated. This wouldn’t kill them – Cermytes could live without air for more than a month – but it would slow them down. Without air, they would be dormant and all but immobile, and a crew in vacsuits could exterminate them in relative leisure.
Most of the time, one extermination wasn’t enough; there always seemed to be a few individuals which escaped to form the nucleus of a new colony a few weeks later. A crew could struggle for months to finally be rid of the pests.
The sector Clara and her associate were assigned to cover was the grid of maintenance passages between decks five and six, where high-voltage conduits ran from the reactor aft of the hab spaces to the various weapons systems at the bow. The walk and climb toward this area gave Clara time to finish her coffee.
Boyko glanced over at Clara as she noisily crushed the disposable cup and crammed it into her pocket, a scowl on his lips. “Must you?”
“I don’t think cermytes hear like we do.” Clara shrugged. “At least there’s no indication they do in the breifing materials I’ve seen.”
“But we can hear them.” Boyko gestured up to the overhead paneling barely ten centimeters above his dark hair. “Eyes can’t look everywhere at once.”
“If they’ve big enough to hear, we’re in serious trouble.” Clara shuddered. She’d heard stories of individual cermytes almost a meter long, even though the maximum size listed in the data breifs was only about thirty centimeters. Even that was bigger than any bug had any right to be. Oddly, the fact that these creatures didn’t seem to have any way to harm humans made them even more unsettling to her imagination. No matter how big they were, the only danger they posed was the danger inherent in damage to Janda Dunewhite.
“Still. Quiet.” Boyko switched on both his wristlights and swept the beams down the first corridor. The right-hand wall was dominated by a trio of huge power conduits, and numerous smaller power and communication cables interlocked along the right wall like a complex trellis of many-colored vines. There were about a dozen of these main passages, with several cross-corridors connecting them. “Watch left and down. I’ll handle right and up.”
Clara activated her own wristlights and played them down the high-voltage conduits as the pair proceeded forward. She knew this area relatively well; she’d spent many shifts tracing a faulty cable through that seemingly unorganized tangle on the right, which Boyko was busy scrutinizing. If there were cermytes in this area, that whole network would need to be stripped out, inspected for cladding damage, and re-installed. Critical pathways would probably need to be taken apart even if no pest had ever entered the sector, just to be on the safe side.
As they reached the solid bulkhead at the forward end of the habitation area and turned right to work their way over to the next passage, Clara thought she saw something moving at the edge of her light-beam. She snapped both of her lights onto the spot in an instant, but there was nothing there, cermyte or otherwise.
Boyko paused and raised one eyebrow as Clara slowly lowered her lights.
“Coffee must be making me jumpy.” Clara gestured toward the darkness ahead. “Come on. Let’s get this done.”
