# Time Bomb **URL:** \ **Category:** General\ **Created:** [October 31, 2024, 5:46pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/time-bomb/964 "2024-10-31T17:46:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2024, 5:46pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/time-bomb/964/1 "2024-10-31T17:46:02Z")
**WATCH CONSTABULARY / ORBIT GUARD**** SPACECRAFT INCIDENT REPORT** **REPORT: MERI-11-5122** **EVIDENCE BLOCK 2A** **DESCRIPTION:** The following comprises a transcript of conversation occurring in the forward (open) hold of the _Magpie_-class debris recovery vehicle CMS _Comber’s Bounty_, in the minutes immediately preceding its destruction. The transcript was recovered from a surviving buffer memory of the local voice command system node and as such is of limited quality and records only local sounds. **BUFFER STARTS** FLTCOM: — you brought this thing onto my ship without checking, you — [silence, approximately 6s] FLTCOM: Because you did not bother to check what this “marvelously intact” piece of wreckage was before you brought it aboard. In contravention of procedure, good sense, and every other consideration but the chime of coin behind your eyeballs. [silence, approximately 14s] FLTCOM: Oh, yes. It’s an antique. As I profoundly hope did not occur to you, the VI-4 libration point is most famous for the _Battle_ of Meridian VI-4. What we have here – is your camera on? – is a Type 95 Deep Javelin, one of the most ridiculously deadly torpedoes the Bureau ever came up with. Yes, it’s centuries obsolete, but that doesn’t make it any _less_ deadly. [silence, approximately 7s] FLTCOM: Let’s start with the drive. See these nice, shiny nozzles? There’s your first clue. They’re as pristine and unsullied by use as your cerebrum. The nuclear salt-water drive on this never fired. That means these tanks are still full of highly enriched uranium tetrabromide, which is unlikely to have decayed enough to help us. If any of the valves marinating in the corrosive nuke-juice decide to fail, we get a nuclear drive plume in here. And if the damn stuff has crystallized on the baffles by now, we could get a critical assembly by poking it too hard. [silence, approximately 2s] FLTCOM: The warhead? That’s just a nice, safe, nucleonic shaped-charge driving a plasmated beryllium filler through whatever’s in front of it. That would be Mechanical Switching Three, Auxiliary Avionics, and most of the rest of the ship, if you weren’t clear on that. That uses the X-rays. The gamma rays, meanwhile, they tickle the off-axis lasing rods to give it some extra punch. And that little thing on the nose that’s less than a foot from the bulkhead? That would be the proximity fuse set for a couple of _miles_. Arms as it leaves the tube, and yes, it _is_ armed. [silence, approximately 15s] FLTCOM: Do? What _I_ am going to do is return to the bridge and put out a distress call for the Orbit Guard and the best EOD tech in the system. What _you_ are going to do [sigh] Much as I would like to strap something with the apparent density of your skull to the nose of this catastrophe as improvised shielding, _you_ – assuming you wish to board any starship in the future as something other than ballast – are going to return to your cabin, stay there until instructed otherwise, and while you are contemplating the number of different ways in which you have probably killed us all, you can memorize _every single damned illustration in the **Dangerous Debris Diges —** _ **BUFFER ENDS** * * * This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at [https://eldraeverse.com/2021/08/17/time-bomb](https://eldraeverse.com/2021/08/17/time-bomb) ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2024, 5:49pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/time-bomb/964/2 "2024-10-31T17:49:08Z")
Somehow this one got confused and on a different date during the export, so it got a new post despite the old one still being extant. For the actual comments on this, see here: [Time Bomb - General - The Eldraeverse](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/time-bomb/378) ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2024, 5:49pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/time-bomb/964/3 "2024-10-31T17:49:08Z")
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**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2024, 5:49pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/time-bomb/964/4 "2024-10-31T17:49:13Z")