"Let me get this straight. We, the Red Solstice, detect an alien incursion, decide to do nothing in order to better observe the monster in its 'natural state.' Then, somehow, the Church knows about it, and we let them investigate using our ship as a base of operations. Finally, we get cold feet and spaz out trying to help them."
"It was concluded that we should maximize the value of the data they were willing to risk themselves to obtain."
"We sent our own guys down to the station, lost three of them—a good pilot no less. Then abandoned them to work with the knights on that planet. Not to mention we lost an entire landing gunship to that alien clown-mech."
"That's about right."
"It cut comms on the shuttle the instant it saw it."
"We learned it has a laser and lighting fast reaction time."
"I'm not trying to be negative; I'm just trying to get the story straight. Am I correct so far?"
"Yeah, but you are being negative, because you are talking about what happened and not what we have learned. I mean, look at all this data."
To be completely fair, there was a decent bit of data.
"I'm a negative person. I read all this and I say the station crew are being cagey; they know more. One of those Luddites would be more forthright."
"If you can't find the 'show' instead of the 'tell' here, you won't last long on this ship."
"You hired me to analyze data 'under context.' The context here tells me I'm only getting a political snapshot of the data."
"You are never gonna get the full picture; that's Data Science 101."
"I didn't mean to get all philosophical."
"I didn't either. Just finish up with the transcripts and we can move on to the cinema."
"Yeah, all 480p."
"You kids and your 'standards.' 240 is plenty."
The two dutifully marked up the transcripts, identifying keywords, phrases, and linguistic patterns. Ultimately, they were transcribing what someone else had already transcribed. It was the sort of data that nobody would ever look at nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of one thousand.
The two corporate analysts and career cynics were begrudgingly tolerated by the more optimistic crew, provided they didn't talk too much. They enjoyed a somewhat deferential admiration from the commanders and a tacit, unfriendly alien acceptance from the less accredited crew members. There were four other analysts of their training; they all officially worked ten-hour shifts, often overlapping. Each 'job' which 'employed' three contributed thirty hours a day, even as the individual could only contribute about sixteen. Not all of those were the most efficient hours. But thirty over twenty-four yielded one hundred and twenty-five percent, which looked good on a screen or among the most elite stakeholders' printed paper.
That nearly one hundred percent of measurable peacetime value flowed through only six people was not lost on the stakeholders (the commanders and the bigwigs) involved. Yet somehow, a common-sense fact obvious to all observers was completely alien to all six overworked and—despite what they claimed—underpaid analysts.
Submitting their reports and trying to avoid the indulgence of gentle speculation, they retired and leaned back in their desk chairs. They dimmed the unpleasantly bright lights in that claustrophobic room where each had long since resigned themselves to the familiar smell of the other, and flicked on the footage.
High-resolution video of a smudge in the distance, moving for three seconds before the camera fails.
A metal claw flicks around a steel girder. Half a second of footage; the camera did not fail.
Silvery mist coats the outside of a camera. Thirty seconds.
Two station crew members cutting lead liner out of a hazmat suit. Five seconds.
Then... "WOAH." "That's our boy!" The two voices erupted in unison.
Terribly low-resolution footage, barely 360p. The monster, tail retracted, lumbered in between cafeteria tables on four legs—dense, yet without excess. It gave the impression of a stray fighting dog: healthy and businesslike, undefeated and uncowed, yet wary and angry.
It took only two steps, then with a casual ease and a speed that blurred the image, it 'leapt'—possibly onto multiple cafeteria tables—straight up into the ceiling, its head blasting away the panels above like a freight train smashing so many cereal boxes. There was a hole in the ceiling and the creature dissolved within. The footage ended; a note attached to the file claimed that the 'breach' led directly to the outside vacuum of the station. Review of the footage revealed that depressurization routines could be detected from this video alone.
"Holy smackaroons, it sunk those tables into the floor. They are stuck there, look!"
"How many pounds of force do you think that was?"
"Chart says here probably about nine thousand. If it weren't killin' folks, I'd be a little skeptical of that footage."
"And the tables frickin' took it. DANG!"
"Thirty seconds before the pilot spotted it, too. Earmark that one; that's gonna be a favorite if I've ever seen one."
"Of course, of course."
The two marked the video as one of interest. Really, it was double-marked, as on that escape shuttle some other group of analysts was sorting through their data and broadcasting the choice stuff. The two co-workers flicked through more videos, hoping for a winner. They found another one.
A clean and still laboratory, obviously from the helmet camera of some individual. In the center sat an alien shape, some sort of landing pod. The two had seen the same thing in the original ninety seconds of footage, but not from this angle.
"That's a beautiful piece of machinery."
"A demon's egg."
"Why ain't you a poet, boy?"
"Starving artists die." The old man chuckled and the young one continued "So I set my alarm for five-a-clock."
"Heh, your daddy ever tell you you got a purty mouth?"
The two laughed before returning to the video.
"That snake is living."
"I can't tell; it's too low resolution."
"I'd bet a lot of money that room is pressurized, even though that demon's egg punched a hole straight into the station from outside."
"That's what the transcript says."
"God, I could die in that room. Doesn't look real; looks like a movie set."
They clicked through more videos.
"Oh shoot, this is one of our drones."
The drone eyed the monster, this time watching it swing lazily around the corner of a station. The monster gripped handles made for creatures only a fraction of its size like an Olympic gymnast. You almost forgot it had deadly claws for hands. Briefly, it looked like it was going to drift into space, then with a smooth motion, it grabbed a handle next to an airlock. Pausing, its 'back' and 'neck' and 'head' all turned in unison; the monster resembled some sort of weasel here. There was a moment the monster looked directly at the drone camera.
The old man laughed out loud, a knowing chortle. Both viewers knew exactly what was going to happen. There was no reason it was funny aside from the cartoonish, slapstick irony that both viewers had been trained to recognize from a preliterate age.
They had barely begun to realize it as it was happening: the drone camera failed. Amusingly, it had a microphone which began to crackle and pop as it failed only half a second later.
"It must be exploding; the sound has to come from somewhere."
"That drone costs eight years of my salary, and we just spent it for that video."
"Movies cost a lot of money."
"It just feels bad to think about, you know?"
"You should ask for a raise; it's only five years of my salary."
"Look, I'm old. They can take me out and shoot me if they want."
"That can't be efficient. You have experience."
The old man changed the subject.
"Is that the only action? I thought there would be way more. That beast directly attacked people on the station, no?"
"You wishing for those ugly gore videos, old man?"
"Don't tell me we actually have some?"
"Fifty or so videos. It's nearly an hour of total footage."
"What?"
"Yeah, they were all grouped together. The senders packaged them and marked it 'Trigger Warning-XXX' as a precaution to ward off those who are squeamish."
"I don't know if they know what a title like that means…"
"What do you mean?"
"It's not important anymore. I like an industrial accident video as much as the next freak, but one whole hour? How many people died?"
"The death count is at eleven, with only two major injuries—unless you count the dead."
"Yeah, and not counting the radioactivity. Those numbers tell me someone is dying within the next few weeks."
"They had the station shielding; only armored individuals were on spacewalk. We estimate that the armored knights got a cancer dose and the civilians just got an intense set of X-rays."
"Hey, let's get this over with. We've got hours of boring junk to sift through."