We're losing people trying to stop whatever it is that's invading our ship.
I want to join the fight to retake the forward ring, but I keep getting told I'm needed back here, to maintain and monitor our remaining ecosystems for contamination.
I know the real reason they don't want me fighting is because in their eyes, I'm still just a kid.
But no one would even know we'd had an intruder if I hadn't discovered it.
I keep turning that over in my mind while I'm maintaining autosamplers or waiting for phase analysis results on soil biota: how and why would a transhuman's artificial intelligence disrupt our shipboard systems?
Would this entity really resent our mission enough to reach across thousands of lightyears and try to scuttle our ship?
That just seems unusually vindictive for one of them, especially after all this time.
I can't make this make sense.