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[suddenlycaptain]

CFO » 008 » 022
CAROLYN FRY

Comments

[suddenlycaptain]

Nothing really informative; they were all about different conferences and things. There were posters, too. One that had a spaceship -- this one, probably, and said "Contribute" and "Tranquility". The other had a man, I'm assuming Van Rijn based on the V and R on it, and said "Safety Strength Vigilance".

[cargojet]

What does that mean? Contribute? I thought this was a ship of prisoners.

Oh my god.

[suddenlycaptain]

It was a colony ship. And not just because that's what Ward and Resnik told us -- Biswas says it, too. "I took this job because I wanted to be a part of the colonization."

It was a station full of rich people. They probably wanted money; a ship like this would've been an expensive project. You're government, you know that.

[cargojet]

No, you're not with me, Carolyn. We were made to leave. You got chased off that station, and as a consequence, we didn't look as closely at it as we should have.

You're right about the money. I just think they mighta contributed a lot more than that in the end.

[suddenlycaptain]

[ a pause, then- ]

Joe said the Cyllene disappeared around the same time as the Tranquility did.

[cargojet]

He said disappeared as in disappeared, or disappeared as in went off the grid? Should I be asking him?

[suddenlycaptain]

I'd ask him.

[cargojet]

Alright.

Still, you don't think the word 'colonize' is in any way misleading, considering what we're learning?

[suddenlycaptain]

You worked for the government. How many misleading things did you see pushed out to the public? Not an outright lie, had enough truth to it, but more behind the scenes.

[cargojet]

I was responsible for something like that myself, hiding something from the public. It was almost as bad as this.

Colonization isn't always nicey-nicey.

[suddenlycaptain]

I don't want to know.

Of course it isn't. It'd fail.

[cargojet]

But there's people who chose to sign up for this. All these rooms, these empty places, a ship stocked for thousands of people, and the manticores being bred in some other, cold corner of the ship, probably with those military guys between us and them. The manticores were always the plan.

[suddenlycaptain]

Doesn't mean they all knew about it. It's easy to keep secrets on a ship this large. Most people would have no reason to go near the labs.

[cargojet]

No, I absolutely agree. You coulda flown from one end of the galaxy to the other and nobody would have found their way down that way, just the same as us.

And if they did then no loss, right? Easy way to keep their mouths shut.

[suddenlycaptain]

Exactly. It's possible that no one other than the man who ordered it and the scientists themselves knew what was really going on.

Well. And the subjects.

[cargojet]

And if someone found out what was happening, stowed away on board, or somehow tricked the system to pull her here?

[suddenlycaptain]

You're thinking of the prisoner?

It'd depend on what their goal was.

[cargojet]

To find out the truth. She was the captain's wife, right? Well who else might know that something was up?

[suddenlycaptain]

A captain's wife. Whether she was Gallagher's is technically speculation. [ Though a damn good one. ]

If that was her purpose, I don't think she did a very good job getting it out.

[cargojet]

Technically. And no, I'd say that her--oh. Oh. She murdered someone, they said, in a spectacularly horrible way. Well, what if she didn't? What if one of those monsters did, and she got the blame for it?

[suddenlycaptain]

What, you think manticores were already off the ship? According to the closest thing we have to an expert, they wouldn't have picked her up on the way; it would have been at the very beginning. She'd have murdered someone off-ship.

[cargojet]

Not if she was a stowaway. And don't read too much from it, but we have picked up people on the way. Our being here isn't an accident - couldn't be - it's intentional. Look, it'd be expensive taking people across the galaxy to take over different planets. Hard to sustain all those people, whether in stasis or with food. And if you need a constant stream of soldiers, why not draw them in from other universes. Nobody could possibly miss them, and it'd be safer for everyone else on board too.

That expert of yours wasn't always on the ship, either.