“The [i]Plousios[/i] has suffered major flooding,” Redana says, brightly. “Everything from the old shrine, here, to the cargo holds.” She points at the grand cross-section of the ship with a baton. “As you can see, if the grav-plates here get misaligned, the backwash will flood the engine room, and we’ll be lucky if it [i]only[/i] kills everyone inside when that happens.”

She smacks the baton into her palm. “So why don’t we just dive down and vent it into space? Because there’s evidence that there’s crabs, and worse, down there that will invade the rest of the ship if we disturb their nests. That’s why our response has to get rid of both the water and our uninvited guests in one fell swoop.”

One press of a button brings the next slide onto the board, showing the solution. “Hear me out,” Redana says with a sheepish smile. “If we expose the lower decks to the outer airs, we can sanitize them and vent the water at the same time. As you can expect, it’s going to take a lot of manpower to do this right, but when we do, it’ll be the safest and most effective solution.”

The baton strikes the key points like a whip. “There are seventy-five hundred key points that we need to sever using our saws in preparation for separation. Once this is done, we can secure the two halves of the ship with a series of seventy-two cables and then do the final saw work on the hull. We’ll close off the decks using our portable seals, and then we’ll use a series of shaped charges to force the lower decks to separate from the upper. Before you ask, the force of our acceleration through Ocean will keep them together prior to this point. Then we will retract the cables, weld the contact points together, and do a sweep of the lower decks to clear out debris and do inventory.”

Redana beams like sunlight as she reaches her conclusion. “Given the number of points we need to sever, this operation requires the entire crew. While the Master Hermetic and I prepare the cables, seals and charges, all of you will be sawing our ship in half— and then welding it back together better than it was before. If we all work together, we’ll be finished by the time we arrive. Do you have any questions?”

Redana smiles at her audience of one, beaming like the sun. “So how did I do,” she blurts out, before Iskarot can offer questions. “I know this is a [i]lot[/i] but I think they’ll see the necessity...”