Title: Canary
邦題: カナリア
原作者 Author: Pneumonica
翻訳 Translated by: 蒼衣わっふる
語数: 3851語
現在の翻訳済み語数: 1000語くらい?
フラグラの二次小説初の外国の方による投稿です。彼の許可を得て、直々にがんばって翻訳・掲載させていただきます。
英語と日本語の文法や構造の際の都合上、どうしても不自然に感じる部分(該当する日本語がないなど)があったり、そもそも文学性をそのまま引き継いで翻訳するのは本来プロの人がするべきですが なにとぞここは大目に見てくださいまし…。
アンダーラインが引かれているところは訳が不安、ミスを見つけた人は勝手に手直ししてもOKであります!
The first story written in English by Pneumonica!!
Original link (Deviantart)
When miners go into the earth, they run the risk of releasing poisonous gasses that kill rapidly, before someone even knows they're falling over. One solution used is to bring canaries. These little birds sing and sing and sing. When they stop singing, the miners reflexively stop breathing and run for their lives. The canaries cycle air more rapidly for their singing, so they tend to die first. When canaries die, everybody else knows there's trouble. That's the purpose of a canary.
鉱夫は常に彼らの命を一瞬にして奪ってしまう毒ガスと共にある。気づいた時にはもう遅いのだ。これを回避する方法のひとつが、カナリアだった。カナリアは常に鳴き続ける。そして鳴き声が止まった時、鉱夫は息を止めて一目散に坑道から脱出する。カナリアは人間より呼吸のサイクルが早いので、人間より先にやられてしまう。カナリアが倒れた時、全員が彼らの置かれた状況を知る。それがカナリアの目的なのだ。
A similar purpose exists for canary surveyors. It's assumed they won't find anything. It's also assumed that if something's out there, it will find them. You don't wait for a canary to report in. You wait for a canary to stop reporting in.
似たような目的のものでカナリア調査がある。彼らは特別に何かを見つけるわけでではないし、見つけてくることもある。我々はカナリアが何かを知らせてくるのを待つわけではなく、カナリアが知らせることをやめるのを待っているわけだ。
My name is Pirin. That's my name now, don't ask what I was born with. I'm an archaeoengineer. That means I go to archaeological sites and ransack them for every valuable thing they have, and good God can they be valuable. I'm the daughter of an Imperial war minister, but I didn't feel like being a good little girl so I sort of defected. I also stole a lot of money from dad. He's welcome to sue me.
私の名はピリンという。どこにでもいる普通の人間。今は遺跡技師をしている。遺跡技師は昔パルエに存在していた超文明の遺跡に行って、なにかしら使えるものを探してくる仕事。
私は帝国の陸軍大臣の娘として生まれたけれど、みんなが思うようなお嬢様というものではなかった。俗にいう不良といったものかしらね。父からはたくさんお金を盗んでいたし、たびたび言いつけられたわ。
I joined the Arkil military and ended up in Pandora, an archaeoengineering corps formed of several detachments. Each detachment has its specialties. There's actually a pretty high turnover rate in membership (missing limbs often mean tickets home), so the specialties can shift over time. We get a few mercenaries, because the Arkils don't seem to think we, who deal in dangerous and sometimes still-active weapons systems, need a strong combat force.
私はわけあってアーキル連邦軍パンドーラ団の混成部隊専属の遺跡技師に参加することになった。各隊はそれぞれの專門分野に分かれている。結構人材の入れ替わりが激しくて(片腕を失うなどでよく送還される)、専門技師は過剰勤務が常だった。我々はいつも危険と隣り合わせで、運が悪いと稼動状態の古代兵器と出くわすこともあるので、幾人かの傭兵が雇われていた。
Our little detachment from Pandora was the Crack detachment. There's a story behind that – Kimball was an archaic mythology geek, and he would always tell us a story about a girl named Pandora with a jar containing every terrible thing. Between our high hazard experience and, more recently, Joker, it's like we were a crack in the jar letting all the crazy out. It isn't really funny when somebody got maimed, but when enough people get hurt it does start getting funny. So, we're the Crack detachment.
私が所属してる小隊は"ひび割れ小隊"なるものだった。これには逸話があって…キンボルは古代神話オタクで、彼はいつも私達に災厄の水瓶を持つパンドラという少女の話をしていたわ。私達が常に接している危険と"ジョーカー"と呼ばれるその彼の奇抜な存在が組み合わさって、なんだか私達はその水瓶のひび割れで厄という厄を垂れ流しているもののように思えた。それがこの小隊の名前の由来。
We were doing the canary survey of a dead city out near the Broussard Range. The country folk called it Empty Hollow. I know a few nobles and most of them think themselves poets, but the names these plebians come up with beats all. Empty Hollow had seen at least three surveys before, but two of them came back half staffed and one didn't come back at all. It seemed almost certain that there was something dangerous at large down there.
私達は俗にいうカナリア調査をブルザード地帯近郊の遺跡で行っていた。昔話では虚無の盆地と言われてるところだ。名づけた多くの人や一部の貴族は自分たちのこと詩的だと思うかもしれないけれど、彼らが名づけたこの何も変哲もない地は名前以上に凶悪だ。 トム意訳:誌的だと思った多くの一般人や貴族の一部がその地名を付けたのに反して、この何の変哲もない地は名前以上に凶悪だ。虚無の盆地は過去において最低3回に渡って足を踏み入れられている。しかしその中の2回は半数が壊滅して帰還、そして1回は誰も戻ってこなかった。虚無という名前に反して、そこに何かがあるのは明らかなことだった。
Pandora's operational coordinator was a crazy witch named Dasharbi, though we called her “Scorch” for reasons I won't go into. I have it on good authority her name is actually Despoina. She seems more Republican than Federation, which might explain a few things. See, someone told her that this would be a guaranteed total loss, and her reaction was, as far as I know, “That makes it even BETTER!”
パンドラ隊の作戦立案者は気狂い魔女のダシャルビ(私達は燻り屋と読んでいるけれど)。私は個人的にデスポニア(註:デウスとデメテルの娘)と名づけている。彼女は連邦人というよりは共和国人のように見える顔つきだから、なんとなくそれで説明がつくと思う。 トム意訳：それだけで分かってくれると思う。ある時彼女に隊員の一人がこういったんです、この作戦は全滅しかあり得ないと。そうしたら彼女は、私が見た限りでは「なおのことよろしい!!!」という顔だったの。
Whenever something is a good idea, just ask Scorch. If she says it's a great idea, they send Crack, because it's a terrible idea. One wonders how any nation wins a war these days.
もしいいアイデア(作戦)が浮かんだら、燻り屋ダシャルビに言ってみなさい。もし彼女がそれをいいアイデアだと言ったら、我らひび割れ小隊を送ってくるわ。…なぜならそんなの最悪でしかないからね。最近はどこの国がどれだけ勝ってるのを気になる奴がいるというものだ。
So, I was at the helm of an engineering Belge during our initial canary sweep. Low-draft vessels are vital in these kinds of jobs. Any watercraft with low enough draft is high enough in the water to avoid hitting debris. Or torpedoes. Water mines are a danger, especially since engineering surveyors often lay mines to prevent claim jumpers. We certainly were. That was Karn's and Vino's job.
ともあれ、私はカナリア調査の先鋒隊として高速艇ベルゲの舵輪についていた。喫水の浅い艇はこの手のミッションでは重要だ。十分に喫水の浅い艇は水底の障害物や魚雷を交わすのに適している。ただし機雷は厄介者だ。特に工兵隊は手柄を横取りさせないように機雷を敷設することもしばしばある。いや、まさに私たちのことであるのだが。それはカルンとヴィーノの仕事だった。
There were actually all manner of dangers. Empty Hollow, like many ancient cities, was flooded. I'm not sure why so many ancient cities were high and dry one year and waist-deep in wet today, but so it is. The life in these ruins is often dangerous. Most of it is harmless, which means the dangerous bits don't stand out.
実際ありとあらゆる危険がそこにはあった。虚無の盆地、あるいはそれを含む多くの遺跡群は水没している。私はなぜこれほど多くの遺跡がこのような特徴を持っているか疑問に思っていた。とはいえ実際それがパルエにおける遺跡であった。遺跡の環境はとても危険だ。ほとんどは無害に見えるが、それは危険の兆候がそれほど見えないからである。
Karn and Vino were sweeping for mines and laying a few of our own. Thira and Kimball were doing some urban spelunking. She had a thing for the underground, which I never understood, and he was good at urban navigation. Plus, he could operate the seismic telemetry, and only two people in our detachment could do that.
カルンとヴィーノは先達のものが敷いた機雷を取り除き、そして今度は我々のための機雷を敷設していく。一方シィラとキンボルは地下空洞の探検を行う。彼女は地下探索のための土地勘があり、彼は都市地帯のナビゲーションに秀でていた。それに加え、彼は地震測定を行うことが出来た。これができるのはうちの隊では2人だけだ。
The other one who could do that was Joker, and he was only one of two flight operators. They had him at the controls of the air utility platform. This meant the job was going to go sour, and double-quick.
もう一人というのがジョーカーだった。そして彼は同時に2人いる操舵手の一人というわけだ。隊は彼をair utility platform(大気測定装置?)のオペレータとして雇っている。つまりこの仕事はとても忙しく即応性が求められるほど忙しい物だった。
It's not that bad things only happen when Joker's at the controls. It's that when Joker's at the controls, everybody knows when bad things are happening. They just spiral out of control. Of course, since Joker was the best at handling an air utility platform, it became part of the reason we were the Crack detachment.
ジョーカーがその任に付いている時に限って厄介なことが起こる、というわけではなかった。言い換えれば、ジョーカーが任についているときはみんなが悪いことが起こると自覚しているだけだった。ただ制御不能に陥っているだけだ。もちろん、ジョーカーはair utility platform(大気測定装置?)の扱いに関してはピカイチである。これは私達がひび割れ小隊たる理由の一つになっている。
With me was Midian. He was never a soldier, but he's always been a mercenary. He joined a mercenary unit at the age of ten in a role he'd be happy to tell you all about and that makes me sick to think about. He'd been hired on to us for so long he was basically a permanent part of the payroll. He was also the only other flight operator, but we only needed one air utility platform for this sweep.
私とミディアンについて。彼は兵士ではなくて傭兵だ。彼は10歳の頃から傭兵に加わっていて、こいつは"何でもかんでも思ったことを口にして騒ぐ役職"についている。このお調子者には私もお手上げだ。
Midian and I were surveying the sea level. We did some basic mine-sweeping, and scanned for major organisms. Me, I'm more afraid of roosting worms and assassin beetles, and when I'm doing sea level surveys shark-fish. Others? They're afraid of titans that you can hear or smell coming from half a kilometer away. We also swept for magnetic signals, since those could mean something valuable. That's what I was really focusing on.
メディアンと私は水深を観測している。我々は簡単な掃海と水面下の生態調査をやっていた。私が恐れていたものは腐肉ワームと殺人カブトムシ、水底調査をしているときはシャークフィッシュ。他?他に恐れるものと言ったら、そうね、500m先にタイタンの臭いや泣き声が聞こえた時かしらね。我々は加えて電磁信号も探査している。この信号はだいたいがいい発見だからだ。私の仕事はこんなかんじ。
There was an Belge ahead of us, principally sweeping for mines and organic hazards while we principally kept our eye out for magnetic anomalies. In that boat were Nini and Tin, the pair of whom couldn't be more lesbian if they had “no dicks allowed” tattooed around their waist. The funny thing? No matter how much they worked together, they wouldn't start dating. Seems there just wasn't a spark.
私達の目の前に高速艇ベルゲが先行していた。私達が水底の磁気信号に眼をやっている間に掃海と危険生物の探知を買ってでてくれている。あの艇には、"イチモツ進入禁止!!"のタトゥーが彼女らのウェストに刻まれていない限りもはやガチレズペアにしか思えないニニとティンが乗っていた。え?何が面白いかって?どれだけ一緒にくつかってても、奴らはデートすらしないんだ。まだそこまでには至っていないようだ。
Joker drifted overhead in the utility platform. He was always conversational on the radio.
“And here we are at scenic Empty Hollow, which isn't empty and might not be hollow – we'll turn to Thira and Kimball for more on that when they're done making out.”
Kimball chimed in. “Joker, you know I'm the one who repairs your lift system, right?”
“Yes, sir, and the blowjob you've earned will make it all worthwhile.” I don't know if Joker's gay. In fact, I'm not positive Joker's a man. But Kimball wasn't into him, he'd made that known.
ジョーカーがutility platformを流した。彼はいつも無線では消極的だ。
「さてみんな、ここが全然虚無じゃないしそもそも盆地でもない虚無の盆地というわけだ!シィラとキンボルの準備ができたら彼らにバトンタッチとしよう。」
キンボルが調子にのって言う。「ジョーカー、オレはあんたのリフトシステムを修理することになってるんだよな?」
「イエッサー。ここでこそ君が培ってきた尺八テクが活きてくるってもんだ。」
ジョーカーがゲイなのかは知らない。
つまるところ、私はジョーカーのPositiveな男ではない。でもキンボルはそうじゃないかもしれない。彼のみぞ知る。
“Try to keep it professional, Joker.”
“I'm always professional about my blowjobs, Kimball.”
We headed down a waterway flanked by decaying buildings. The old concrete had steel reinforcement, meaning even as it crumbled it tended to stay in shape. One tower leaned to the side – I could imagine the interior steel structure slowly straining over long years, and the thing slowly curling over. Down Canal Street (as I was calling it), there was a piece of infrastructure strangely bridging from one building to the next. It was only a matter of time before Joker burst out...
「オレに任せてくれよ、ばっちりやってやるからよ、ジョーカー」
「オレは尺八に関してはいつもばっちしだぜ、キンボル」
我々は
“HEY! SOMETHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY!”
Nini messaged in with, “We're doomed.”
Vino put on her best canary impression. “Chirp, chirp. Tweet, tweet. OH, FUCK, I'M DEAD!”
Tin got a hold of the other airboat's comm to signal, “Damn it, Vino, you said you wouldn't kiss and tell.”
Joker veered at absurd speeds to float over the infrastructure as we trawled towards it. I messaged, “Hey, Joker, what the Hell are you doing? You've got the seismic probe out already? I'm headed right under you, wait before you swing that thing around.”
Vino came in with. “Yeah, she's saving herself up for Midian's probe.”
Midian didn't seem to change his face any. It was impossible to know what he was thinking at any given point in time, or that's what most people thought. I figured he wasn't thinking much at all. He didn't “brood” so much as keep his head clear. I hit thrust to pick it up to 20 kph, because Joker was about to run a series of seismic pulses down the metal of the infrastructure. The stressed, strained, and degraded metal wreathed in crumbling concrete. The overhang that we were passing underneath. Yes, that one.
Joker muttered over the comm. “Whatever. I'm just vibrating it. It's not going to collapse.”
He contacted probe to steel just as we passed underneath. I heard the high-pitched hum of metal vibrating against metal, and just then a piece of concrete about one meter by two meters square broke from the structure and fell into the water, leaving a tenth of a meter of obstruction in the canal above the water. The splash managed to hit Midian.
Midian motioned to get the comm, and I handed it to him. “In fairness, it didn't actually collapse.”
Joker wasn't pleased. “Screw you and the horse you rode in on, Midian.”
Karn chimed in. “Hey, you're diversifying your tastes. Can I call you pony boy?”
Joker was measuring the results of the seismic probe, and started relaying the results. “Looks like this substructure runs into some major infrastructure. I can measure a half a kilometer before it becomes noise. Runs north-northeast for some distance.”
Suddenly, something leaped out of the water. It was a quarter of a meter of something, which made it probably a shark fish. Shark fishes are small, air-gulping sharks that sometimes leap onto boats to eat people's faces. Then they crawl back into the water. One face feeds one fish. They can hit 12 kph on the horizontal coming out of the water, and the airboat was forward at 20 kph. The front ten centimeters of the thing is mouth, and its teeth are ten millimeters of bone, 3 kg of “biting my head off” all traveling at effectively 32 kph or so.
Before I lost my head, there was a flash and it flew to pieces. I had guts all over the front of my field uniform. I looked up while cutting thrust on the boat to see Midian holstering his pistol. This just proved what I said – he wasn't brooding, he was keeping his mind clear.
Karn messaged in with, “Shots fired.”
Joker got the next massage. “Yeah, Midian just put a bloody money shot all over Pirin. She needs a softer touch, that girl.”
I didn't hear him because there was a problem. The trouble with low-draft boats is they don't stop on a dime. I had cut thrust and the vessel was slowing when something wrapped around Midian's face and throat. He started choking and the motion of the boat dragged him across the deck, into the rail, and finally over it and into the water.
I got a rifle out and started firing at what proved to be a tentacle extending from some organism anchored to the walls on the inside of a semi-collapsed building. I saw several organic sacs carrying the remains of animals. I saw what might've been a human bulge, but I didn't wait to confirm – I started firing.
Vino messaged helpfully. “More shots fired.”
Joker chimed in. “Holy crap, Midian found a tentacle monster!”
Thira, who'd been in this unit for a while, called in, “I always knew he was a whoopsie-daisy.”
Midian surfaced as the tentacle pulled away. It had a cut partway through it. Midian swam to the vessel, first throwing a bloody knife onto the boat. As he pulled up, there were two shark fish clinging to his thigh and midsection, so I took the knife and stabbed them once each. They let go politely.
I looked up, but we'd drifted well outside the thing's reach. I got back to comm while Midian bandaged his thigh. “Sessile predator, possibly a plant. It had organic sacs to store prey – it might be composting. Check that I saw what might've been a person.”
Vino then chimed in. “If it's a person, it isn't a survey team. There's been nothing for active mines. The only mine I've found was so old the chemistry was degraded.”
Then Thira called in, shouting. “HOLY CRAP, JOKER, WHAT DID YOU DO?”
Joker replied, “I didn't do anything!”
I got back on the comm. “All silence. Thira, what's happening?”
Thira chimed in. “Heavy footsteps. Mechanical sounds. Ancient engine of some kind, sounds like its walking.”
“What's your position?”
She gave a plotting for her location, and I started calculating. Joker was ahead of me. “Hey, that's right around where the metal substructure leads.”
Thira chimed in, and I could hear what sounded like weapons in the background. “GODDAMNIT JOKER, YOU WOKE IT UP!”
“This isn't my fault! Who in their right mind puts a seismic sensor on an automated guardian?”
As I cranked up the Belge, Midian manned a gun turret. He muttered loud enough for me to hear, “Someone who wants the guardian to hear footsteps.”
Meanwhile, Nini got on the main Pandora channel, and sent the code phrase for trouble. “This is Crack. Canary down. Repeating. This is Crack. Canary down.”
While we were having fun trying to navigate through causeways that were once roads, Thira was shuffling through a raised platform along the side of a deep throughway. The ancient cities often had throughways that allowed for heavy vehicle passage. These throughways were often partially underground, which means she was chest deep in water, slogging through as doctor fish nibbled dead skin off her clothes, occasionally swimming under her clothes to get to the dead skin underneath.
Usually it's unnerving to have live fish swim under your clothes and pick at your skin, but at the moment, the indignity of it all was the least of her concern. She had just slid down into this depth pass to evade a large, walking munitions platform of some kind. She hadn't seen it, but she knew it could spot her by her footsteps. She wasn't certain if it could spot her by her heartbeat, so instead she went into depth. Water-to-solid sound transference is inefficient, so she hoped it would muffle her passage.
She also hoped it wouldn't follow her, because the splash wave if it descended at speed would likely swallow her.
A message chimed in. It was Karn. “Confirm your location, are you in a depth pass near two by seven on the grid?”
She replied, “I sure could be. I've been running for my life a little bit, I don't know.”
Karn chimed back, “I'm going to make a hole. If you're on the wrong side, I'll notify your next of kin.”
Thira ducked down into the water so only her head showed. Even if the thing was water-enabled, it likely wouldn't drop down now, because it knew there was someone on the other side of the street-facing wall (the side she wasn't on) moving as if to plant explosives. That was when it decided to prove her wrong.
A large metal anthropoid machine splashed into the water, which was about chest deep on it. The wave swept by and grabbed Thira along the way. As the machine moved forward through the water towards her, the street-side wall burst inwards, striking it with rubble.
At this point Nini and Tin were just about there, and we weren't far behind. Karn had just blown the side of the wall, and he was running back around to retrieve Thira.
The thing about lasers is that they aren't beams. First, they're pulses. Second, they're cones. Physics says it's quite possible to make a column of light capable of vaporizing metal. Engineering says that the first thing that column will do is vaporize the aperture generating it. So instead you produce light across a wide area and focus it so it all crosses a single point somewhere that you want incinerated.
This is why, caught in the blast of this thing's energy weapon, Karn's stomach burst up into his chest and down into his pelvis and his spine splintered, firing out his back, as opposed to it simply stripping the skin generally from his body.
Joker, in surveillance position, radioed it in. “This is Crack. One casualty, dead. Confirm grease pit.” Unlike danger notices, notifications of things being valuable don't need to be instinctive. Thus, each mission had a different set of codes for valuable things. “Monkey ladder,” this time, meant “nothing found.” That seemed to make sense, but if I heard “grease pit,” I would not have believed it meant “high-value artifact presenting clear danger and present danger.” Don't even ask how “ten bodies running” meant “nonfunctional artifact visible and easily accessible.”
Nini piloted past the opening, and Tin started opening fire with a machine gun. Sometime around this time, Thira had woken up and pulled out a gravitational radiation generator. We'd made jokes about them being useful as the mother of all hand grenades, but they're not designed for it. She would've set it to the minimum fuse time (five seconds) and then waited. At two seconds, she would have reared back for the throw, which would've lobbed at one second.
At zero seconds, the radiator, which ended up going long, caused much of the causeway to collapse, burying the thing. This might be strange, but most of the injury to the causeway was caused by water pressure – the water immediately around the radiator pressurized by the sudden gravity force then released because the gravity force was temporary. The splash threw Thira back again, and she struck the back wall.
I made it to the causeway by then and saw what might've been a blood splash where her head hit, but Thira got up and started running down the platform. She was just about to jump into the deep to swim to us when the underwater rubble shifted. The machine got up, and I got my first look at it.
It had an ablative armor coat, but much of it was stripped off by the radiator. A few of its armor segments had buckled, but it seemed remarkably intact. It had three eyes, along with a pair of antennae that might have had eye-like things on it. It was built like a person, sort of like someone in armor. It had a large energy weapon held like a rifle in four-fingered hands.
The monster looked back to where Thira was standing, and before she could react it lashed out. Its right wrist struck Thira and kept going, pinioning her to the wall behind her. The arm immediately bounced back and it turned. Thira fell to float in the water, surprisingly in one piece, but most of her insides were now on the wall or floating beside her.
Tin and Midian both opened fire, and I issued an order. “Crack group, fly. Repeat. Crack group, fly.” Nini and I both revved thrust and headed out. The machine was climbing up as we left it, and it apparently made it to street level rapidly.
Joker had just enough time to radio, “Incoming fire!” At that moment, the water splashed in a line across the lead Belge. It carved the drive system on the Belge into scrap, and hit the pilot's seat. Nini erupted into a cloud of liquid human remains. The front of the boat kicked upward, throwing Tin into the water.
On the radio I heard, “Kimball on support.” Then I heard gunshots behind me. I couldn't go further down the street because the Belge wreck blocked it, but I went forward far enough for Midian to retrieve Tin. When he pulled her onto the boat she gasped in pain and shock – there was a shark fish on the side of her neck. Paul stabbed it and it let go, but she was bleeding. There wasn't time to deal with it, as he went back to the gun and I turned the Belge about.
Kimball was standing on a balcony now just above water level. He had his weapon out and, while leaning around the corner of a building, he was taking aimed shots at its face. He may have damaged one of its eyes. I saw Joker in the utility platform float in behind it. The machine fired shots into the building where Kimball was taking cover. It didn't manage to hit Kimball, but it did manage to break apart some of the building, and several of the pieces fell onto Kimball and cracked the balcony he was standing on.
The radio gave another message. “Vino, fire in the hole.”
Just then two things happened. One was that the cutting beam on Joker's platform managed to cut a line across the machine's laser cannon. The second was an explosion blowing the armor off of the machine's back. The machine dropped its weapon and turned to face Vino, and Midian took the chance to open fire with the machine gun. The machinery was exposed, and apparently of some importance. It ground to a halt.
I arranged the Belge over to Kimball, who had fallen underwater from the balcony he was standing on. He was held there by some debris. Kimball fished him out, but he was beaten to Hell and back, and his helmet wasn't quite the right shape anymore. I didn't want to think about his skull. I couldn't tell if his lungs were draining of water. Tin was lying in the bed of the craft, squeezing her own neck to try to stop the bleeding, choking on her own blood. I kept the comm set on my head as I ran to try to treat her.
Joker retrieved Vino while I reported in, all the while getting sprayed by Tin's blood as I tried to figure out how to stop the bleeding without cutting off blood flow or air supply. “Crack group. Three dead, two critical. Ten bodies running. Med then RTB. Request medical intercept.”
Five canaries weren't singing.
The commander of Pandora was once called to task for the number of casualties Pandora kept reporting and repeated call for additional soldiers it kept giving. Her reply was to point out the need for maximum salvage opportunity in archaeoengineering sites. Certainly, more efficient means of engagement with dangerous artifacts were possible, but they would end up with little of any salvage value.
She maintained that the standard procedures she followed allowed for maximum salvage. Within that limit, they minimized the total number of casualties by minimizing the number of personnel in contact with hazard and giving them considerable leeway and opportunity to improvise in the face of emergency.
She stated that greater combat forces were required in canary surveys. They accepted the casualty rate, but refused to provide more combat troops than they thought was needed. It might have helped if they knew what a canary was.
最終更新：2014年12月06日 13:23
