Humanity Endures

Part 2 - The Senate | Chapter 6

When one heads perhaps one of the most massive ministries to grace the galaxy, and commands a warship of similarly awesome scale, there can be no shortage of tasks to be completed or orders to be issued. The bridge of the Ruthless, with rows of stations and an army of officers to staff it, was a bustling center of activity, and saw more action than almost any other like it in the fleet. One would think that such a center of action would never become dull, yet for communications officers, not only was this hellish place dull, but its ineffable dullness threatened to dull that which had not been dull before — including the often-sharp officers themselves.

Quenthal, Xertaza's chief communications officer and one of her most trusted lieutenants, manned his ever-important station with unceasing vigor despite this boredom, directing, delegating to, and commanding thousands of subordinate communications officers, all of whom were essential for the exchange of information across the Ruthless and with other vessels. These critical people worked in the equally vital communications room; if the bridge was the brain of the Ruthless, the communications room — itself an isolated section of the bridge, led by Quenthal from afar — was its beating heart. As it turned out, a heart's job was repetitive.

His uniform spotless, his desk perfectly organized, his hair neatly styled in a way that straddled the line between practical, professional, and banal, while his mind was well-disciplined and effective, it was clear to any who saw him that Quenthal treated his post, his ship, and its captain, with the respect they deserved — and with the attention they needed. While his department was the backbone of the entire ship, Quenthal, disciplined and irreproachable, was the backbone of his department. Such was his self-control that he hadn't even tasted alcohol for years — something almost unprecedented in modern human society.

Being a comms officer had taught him the importance of protocol in communication, and with human society being founded on communication, Quenthal was of the mind that protocol was essential to society — this earned him the loathing of many who worked under him, and occasionally even the temporary dislike of his family on Retharxia, but it also kept the ship running. His effective — if not adored — leadership style, combined with his profound personal prowess at the job itself, allowed the Ruthless's efficiency to become the envy of even much smaller vessels. With the right information reaching the right people at the right time, how could this not be the case?

In front of Xertaza's desk, and flanking Quenthal's own, were two empty workstations for the chief engineer and chief scientist respectively, though these remained unused: the two did not have to be on the bridge to accomplish their tasks, and, as they disliked or annoyed each other to varying degrees of intensity, they often seized upon this fact to work within their respective, distant sections. The chief engineer of the Ruthless was a woman named Farlina, an undisputed — and extremely arrogant — genius. When she wasn't working to maintain, improve, or, on a whim, completely reinvent the ship, and she wasn't drinking or seeking to annoy someone with what she kindly referred to as "witticism," she was inventing and perfecting various pieces of equipment for use across the Empire. Quenthal, however, either couldn't see past the "extremely arrogant" part of her personality, nor could he even acknowledge the "genius" part, for he saw in her nothing but spite, carelessness, and ignorance; he found that tolerating her was almost as difficult as tolerating his endlessly monotonous job. On the other hand, Farlina herself drew great pleasure from watching Quenthal fume and squirm whenever they were in the same room.

The chief scientist of the Ruthless, on the other hand, was slightly more agreeable, if an extreme oddity: Elthinar, a robotically augmented, scientifically-brilliant man, was possessed both of a nigh-psychopathic personality, and a ruthless determination to accomplish his work, though both of these were uninteresting when compared with his utterly baffling appearance. This appearance had a tragic history: Elthinar had an unfortunate early history with the chemical sciences, and had lost more than half his body as a direct result, though instead of replacing his legs and arms with a new, factory-grown set of biological appendages and organs, he saw the injury as an opportunity to improve things. That day, he designed, built, and then applied robotic versions of his former limbs — versions he deemed superior — to himself, along with a few additional augmentations. In the end, Elthinar had acquired not two new legs, but nine; he had also seen to it that his partially-melted face be entirely replaced with an almost unmoving metallic one, bearing four additional, enhanced robotic eyes, some modern, scientific sensors, and a more extensive suite of implants — the resultant creature looked more like a metallic spider than a human. Similar extensive operations had been carried out across whatever else remained of him, and such was the extent of the damage and subsequent modification that there was scarcely a pound of flesh remaining, save, of course, his — albeit extensively modified — brain. While the man-machine hybrid unnerved any non-Kalithiharian who looked at it, and though he definitely had some trouble riding cramped hyperspheres, Elthinar claimed he was more agile than ever, and that his ability to both think and perform scientific analysis was much improved. Xertaza hadn't been one to question an indisputably brilliant scientific mind, especially when doing so would waste valuable time that could be spent ordering that brilliant scientific mind to study this, or analyze that. Quenthal, being surprisingly conformist for a senior officer, agreed wholeheartedly with this stance, even if it did conflict with some of his other principles of regularity.