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“Tentative overture: You know, reatly benefit froreat stress,” he said flatly “Many veterans of reat traus Perhaps you should try it”
Irit Non turned her yellow eyes up to hi despair: Everyone has it None of us are safe Hoas that?”
“Encouraging: Very good With great confidence: But that quarian cannot have died of the Fortinbras virus Their suits are excellent It should have kept her perfectly safe I am sure she died in some other way Let us focus on the volus victim”
Irit shrugged “Do you knohere I found her? In Mess Hall 4 They turned it into a makeshift mausoleum All the dead are there All the dead anyone has tie there They’re piled in there like rations Environmental zones hardly matter for theo so my father’s body under a cafeteria table One quarian ar her through the decks, I thought about how it could possibly happen The volus suits are one thing, not much in the way of disease filtration But the quarians should be fine They should have been fine And I ae person It is hard for rew thick “Miserably: She was so heavy,” the volus whispered “Sotiine how a quarian suit could be breached without the suit responding or the quarian inside knowing”
Yorrik saw the captain arrive out of the corner of his eye She saw him notice her and raised a hand—no need to interrupt Qetsi’Olaainst the far wall of the corridor and listened
“Do you knohat Clanless suits are irl “It sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn’t it? Well, the answer sounds like a punchline: anything they can find They’re e on the Fleet, from other ships, on planets where they est ether like a quilt It’s really a wonder they work as well as they do Clanless engineering, I suppose But… I can’t iine they put ‘whatever can plausibly be interpreted as fabric’ through serious stress tests, can you? What I a to say is: I know the exact duration my suit can survive without structural failure in a vacuum Exactly the pressures it can withstand, internal and external At exactly what point it will breach if it comes into contact with dozens of known caustic substances And precisely what teh and low Do you see? Do you see, elcor? Perhaps the Clanless know all those things, too They are a careful people I’ve always admired that about the numbers, cannot possibly be the same for every square inch of their suit Because it’s all patched together froods-knohat”
“We do,” said the captain, softly but with the authority that all captains have the moment they take the rank “Of course we stress-test them”
Irit turned to Qetsi “Captain, I didn’t see you”
“It’s perfectly all right, Specialist Non I rather enjoy listening to you speak You have such a way It’s co I came to check on you, Yorrik I have… I have seen your friend”
“Vain hope: Ysses?” Yorrik said Where could that blasted hanar have gone? Why would it have gone? The elcor had wakened to Irit Non screa at him, and his head felt so heavy, so heavy
“Yes That one cornered rabbed by a hanar? I don’t recoled and giggled and told me to let it happen, to let it all happen Someone ripped it off me, and it floated away And then that someone tried to stab me because I didn’t have any food But I think… I think I aht The ship is lost, I’m afraid There is no control anywhere”
The volus opened a panel in her thigh and drew out a small black device “Captain, would you mind if I examined your suit? It could put all our minds at ease”
“My suit? I said I aht But… of course,” Qetsi’Olam demurred
The volus beckoned her closer and ran her device over the expanse of patchwork mesh that coht emanated from it She ran it all over Qetsi’s body, and only at the end did a tiny ultraviolet-colored mark appear on the small of her back—and then a few more, and a few more, like cracks in ice
“Micro-tears,” sighed Irit Non “No material can be stress-tested for six hundred years in a cryopod, at teanic tolerance I don’t believe the ined that people like you and me would keep our suits on ent to sleep for centuries at a tiht if you hadn’t”