Challenge #01732-D271: Ageing Ungracefully
Still, working on their manners ... I don't know if there are any etiquette schools around known space who take enrollments from intelligent battleships. -- RecklessPrudence
Humans love war. It is a well-known fact. In their early history, they would war with opposing factions of humans, different coloured humans, and, in a large swathe of history covering the pre-Shattering period, nouns. They don't often talk about the war they lost against emus, though.
Given their love of war, it was no surprise that the first vessels of the United Fellowship of Terran planets were battleships. They took every advancement they had ever made in their numerous battlefields and figured out how to bring that weaponry with them into space. It must have been quite a shock when the Hungry Caterpillar and other devices rendered battle obsolete. Humanity sulked for a decade or three, but they never got rid of their battleships. They'd show them off to other warlike civilisations and make displays of strength with them, but they didn't recommission them at all. It took Galactic Society some years to find out why.
At least one of them is alive.
The Deuteronomy is more than a century old, now, and doesn't look a day over five. She's well-maintained. Her systems are upgraded and most of her cargo space is taken up with memory banks. She remembers all of her crew, past and present. But she still has the manners of a warship. Her default method of dealing with trouble is to aim her cannons at it and send the opposing side a message that boils down to, "You wanna have a go, mate?"
Humans and other experts in AI have been attempting to teach Deuteronomy manners since her 'outing' at Pinkus West, when the Ambassador taking a tour along her halls called her 'an old hulk' and the ship herself went on an hour-long tirade about how she was a beautiful example of post-isolation engineering and aesthetics and if the Ambassador didn't change his mind, soon, she'd swap out her display fireworks for nukes that she'd hidden from her crew.
Ever since that day, she has had the same attitude in regards to any insult to her vanity. People have been trying to get her to please stop doing that for fifty years.
On the night watch, the crew with less to do have involved conversations with her about how to politely deal with perceived insults. Including the art of insulting people so they may not even realise that they've been insulted.
Deuteronomy consistently has the same response. "Where's the fun in that?"
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / croreja]
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