Statement of Proximate Cause — Dock Seven

A note on what this document is. It is a commercial loss adjustment, written by a claims officer with no standing to say anything about the Cosmic Cascade and no interest in acquiring any. It settles a bill. It is filed here because it is the only contemporaneous account of the Dock Seven action written by somebody who was neither a Star Ranger nor a witness with a stake in the Corps' version, and because the adjuster declined, in writing, to change the one word everybody asked her to change.

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1. The charter

At 0447, 2831 UCSD, Mid-Autumn, three Guild hulls on the Threshold data circuit — Ninth Draft, Reasonable Notice, Held Open — were diverted by request of Line Captain T. Shepherd, Star Rangers, to a position forty kilometres off Dock Seven.

The request came in on an open channel and was not an order. The Guild is not chartered to the Star Rangers and takes no direction from them; the Line Captain appeared to know this and did not pretend otherwise. She asked. Our vessel masters agreed before a rate was discussed, which I record here because the Guild's public reputation is that it does not, and because the file should show that on this occasion it did.

The rate was discussed afterward, at the standing priority tariff, and was signed against Line Captain Shepherd's personal account rather than a Corps authorisation code. The Guild has been asked several times since whether this was irregular. It was not irregular. It was simply what a person does when there is no time to route an authorisation and she intends to be answerable for the charge herself. I have adjusted claims for thirty-one years and this is the second time I have seen it.

2. What was recovered

Eleven crew, off the Star Rangers vessel Sufficient Cause, in four lifts across forty-one minutes. All eleven survived. All eleven were medically cleared at Threshold within the day.

The Line Captain did not come off. This office has no view on that and offers none. It is recorded because a claim for eleven recoveries invites the question of why the number was not twelve, and the file should answer it plainly rather than leave it to be asked.

3. The loss claimed

Hull stress consistent with sustained proximity to an unstable fold aperture, on Ninth Draft and Held Open. Survey-certified, itemised at annex. Reasonable Notice took no structural damage and claims only fuel and tariff.

No claim is made in respect of the Sufficient Cause, which is not a Guild vessel.

No claim is made in respect of any vessel or installation registered to the Hyperfold Yield Combine, and this office notes only that it has received no correspondence from that concern's insurers, at any address, since the date of the incident. Whether the operation whose loss is not claimed here was insured by anybody is not a question this office is required to answer, and it has not enquired.

4. Proximate cause

The Guild's counsel advised against the entry below and advised it twice. The advice was sound and I have recorded that it was given.

The entry stands as written because all three vessel masters and eight of the eleven recovered crew gave the same account without conferring, and because when I offered them the standard boundary-event formula instead, all three masters declined to sign. A claim signed by nobody settles nothing. I would rather file a word my counsel dislikes than a form my witnesses say is untrue.

PROXIMATE CAUSE: Dragons.

I add, for whatever it is worth to whoever reads this after me, three things the witnesses agreed on and one they did not.

Agreed: that whatever it was drew a line around the Combine's platform and the aperture, and around nothing else. That it held for some minutes without entering. That when it finished, it stopped, and did not go on to anything further, which is not how the accounts of such things usually run.

Not agreed: what it meant that our hulls were untouched. Two of the masters hold that we were let go. The third, Master Roon of Held Open, says we were not let go, because we were never taken up, and that there is a difference between being spared and being no part of the thing. She was insistent about it and I have not been able to fault her reasoning, though I notice that nobody who was not there finds it a comfortable distinction and nearly everybody who was there arrives at it eventually.

I am not qualified to adjudicate between them and the Guild does not employ me to. I record both.

5. Disposition

Assessed, itemised, and settled in full against the Threshold circuit indemnity pool. Tariff waived on the Guild's own motion; the vessel masters were consulted and did not object.

The claim was paid.

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See also: Baby Universe, The Warm-Edge Correlation, and the chapter What Came Off the Ship (S05E02C03).