Wanted: Your Brain

Partial transcript of an Imperial Navy recruitment holovid on file at the Cronus Academy of Sciences, Elysium, Corinthian Subsector.

If you think science is boring, you're not seeing all of its implication and applications. Science isn't something you need to endure while you're in school, its uses are all around us in technology and methodology. Science saves lives every day. Science lets you turn the raw materials you have at hand into real advantages. Science gives you options that you wouldn't otherwise know about.

As an ancient astrophysicist once said, "Science exposes The Truth whether you believe in it or not."

I remember we were sent to investigate a rebellion. We arrived in-system and did the standard planetary analysis. We were outgunned 10 to 1, but we had the element of surprise. We went over the geographic data, and it turned out this huge rebel base was right next to a fault line under significant stress. That was our way in.

I talked it over with my CO, and we decided to give the fault line a little nudge. We did the math as fast as we could before we were detected, and we hit it with as blunt an instrument as we had available: all six missile bays. Targeting was dead on, and we could see the whole line line lit up with fire. That did it - the fault slipped a good couple of meters, and it looked like the whole continent kicked up a cloud of dust.

We didn't hit the base at all, but the quake flattened every structure and damaged every ship on the ground. Our company of marines hit the ground and cleaned house in only a couple of hours with zero friendly casualties. The captured equipment alone would keep a couple of batallions of mercs in the field for a year or more. And we did it with barely a shot fired.

That day we ended a rebellion in an afternoon. We captured thousands of enemy combatants with scientific analysis of the situation and a proper application of force. As an added bonus, the land should be quake-free for the next few thousand years.

We were outgunned ten to one. Xenogeology saved our ass that day.

Never tell me science is boring. It's what gets me up in the morning. Science bores you, you need to go find better questions to ask.

Now study hard so you can make a damn difference.

- Lt. Cmdr. Benjamin Cartwright, PhD
  Chief of Planetary Data Analysis Command (PDAC)
    aboard the Strike Destroyer Fulcrum (DS-8817)