Ash first turned on the simulated gravity at approximately 10% inside the engineering can, as he had some plans that he needed to use the tracked plasma cutting tools for. As his feet made contact with the floor more firmly he reviewed footage and audio.
Many of the survivors were inside research areas, specifically areas designed to carry out experiments that might be reactive or dangerous. One human was inside the engineering areas, perhaps the station's engineer? Another was an unknown, as the first time Ash identified him was after the incident, so he suspected was aboard one of the ships docked. Two interesting people, a couple he guessed, were in an unshielded area and survived and did not even seem that much worse for wear when he later saw them on recordings.
Ash suspects this couple had significant cybernetic alterations whose purpose was defensive and lifesaving in nature — considering the advanced state of medical technology it wasn't uncommon for well off or paranoid people to have these alterations.
Medicine was so advanced that you could have your body crushed into paste, leaving only your head intact, but so long as someone got your disembodied head to a trauma center within four or five hours you could be revived through a full nanomedical rebuild of your body. Hypoxia induced brain damage could be reversed within a handful of hours before it became irreversible. As such armored brain cases, some with backup life support systems and oxygenating respirocytes were a common alteration to humans, especially those who took risks. This couple had at least that, and probably hardened chest cavity, alternate and self-repairing organs or a number of other options.
Ash considered that and decided that if this space station didn't disappear from their original dimension then the search and rescue probably could have responded in enough time to ensure "zero casualties" if the only injuries were decompression and similar trauma. But that wasn't even the primary source of injury here. He will have to dissect one of the dead humans to analyze the actual physical damage to their organs and brains to satisfy his curiousity.
He'll collect all the androids, as well, if he has to leave this station although he has much less hopes as far as they are concerned. Although his supernatural upgrades in arriving in this universe deleted this restriction for him, the fact is that almost every class 3 and above AI has significant copy and tamper protection built into their computing modules. In fact, half the mass of an AI's computer module is usually reserved for copy and tamper protection. Any sudden forces acting on the interior of the device, even if the AI survived, would likely be considered tampering or an attempt to circumvent the copy protection — and once that tripped the entire brain of the AI would be fried, sometimes with small explosive charges.
That is even true on AIs built in jurisdictions where they are considered people, otherwise most companies would not sell their products there. The only difference there is that companies have a lot stricter requirements to offer continuing support and repair with the encryption keys used to unlock the copy protection escrowed with most governments, that way they can be released in the event the company went out of business.
He supposes it would be considered murder of some kind if a person fucked around with an AI's module, tripped the copy protection and "killed" them.
Watching the presumed engineer in the engineering areas spring into action was actually quite surprising. The fusion reactor scrammed immediately after the incident and he first ensured it was of no continuing danger before sallying forth out of the engineering area with a few androids and a lot of bots. The space suits of the future looked pretty cool, Ash decided.
It took a little over five hours for most of the survivors to meet in the engineering areas, in one of the larger rooms. He was kind of glad to see that Scary Guy From Poltergeist wasn't among them. There was a lot less arguing about the situation they found themselves in than he thought there would be considering it was a universal axiom that time travel was impossible. Then again, he supposes that considering they could see the unimproved surface of the moon when it used to be terraformed and full of cities that is pretty hard to argue against.
The officer of the station that was left led a coalition with the most survivors in being completely scared beyond all mortal ken about their presence in the past causing a paradox that would eventually lead to them not being born in the future.
That is kind of a stupid thing to be worried about, in Ash's opinion, because that horse has already left the barn. Just existing, given the time delta, would likely cause any number of butterfly effects that would compound and compound until the precise future you were from becomes different enough that your mom didn't meet your dad. He seemed to want everyone to clean up every trace of themselves and then go on a long ballistic near-relativistic loop in order to get back to their own time that way.
The couple and one other person were the smallest bloc and they argued against that idea. The husband argued the opposite position, that since they were here they were meant to be here and anything they did would tend to make the future they all knew happen anyway. The past is immutable, since it already happened, in other words.
That is also not really a view Ash respects, but maybe he is being too unfair since he is looking at these arguments while knowing the truth of what actually happened, like a man criticizing the decisions of someone in hindsight. The wife was the one who made the argument that was closest to the truth, that they could have transitioned into a parallel universe.
—-
Irina was starting to get annoyed with the stupid little man. Still, she would try to convince him and if that didn't work, well, they would tell him where the bear shits in the woods and he could like it or lump it. This was too good a chance to pass up even if the man was right. And she was almost certain he was not. This was reality, not a child's VR fantasy storybook.
"The most likely scenario," she began and emphasized the next part, "given the fact that time travel is impossible, is that we are in an alternate parallel dimension that only resembles our own solar system. We all know our knowledge of history before the second Colonial War era is fragmented and unreliable. Although this looks to be Sol we can't even be certain what century it is! Alexei and I are experts on pre-desolation Earth and the beyond identifying the continents — that is China, that is Europe — we have no confidence on anything at all!"
The engineer was pale and frightened, she felt, but he at least had the balls not to back down, "Professors Kuznetsov, with all due respect we can't take that risk! The possible consequences if I am wrong are small but the consequences if you are wrong are fatal! You'll have to come with us, I insist. The freighter Measure Twice, Cut Once has all the facilities we need to make this plan work. It can refuel on reactive mass directly from one of the Jovians in order to ensure we will have the fuel to slow back down and it has a full medical suite so that all occupants can be placed in pseudo-stasis for the duration. You won't even know the time has passed!"
Irina gave a sideways glance to her husband, who nodded and said simply, "No."
The man sputtered, which caused Irina to want to roll her eyes. Clearly this little man was used to only interacting with androids. He seemed hardly superior to that of the VR addicts who played god in their own individualized virtual worlds. He wouldn't last ten seconds on the Earth of her memories, the bio weapons didn't suffer any fools to live. He composed himself, though, "What do you mean, no?! I'm in command here, you must listen to my instructions in this emergency!"
Alexei sighed, and repeated himself. "I mean, no, Engineering Officer. We won't be doing that, and frankly you can't make us."
The engineer started to get angry, "You two may be big shots on Luna but we aren't ON Luna! I have the authority here, now."
Irina smirked but remained quiet. Alexei didn't like confrontations, really. It was very amusing to her, considering their past. He'd have no compunctions about killing this man if necessary but he sometimes got all squeamish about verbal confrontations. Alexei tried to explain it to her, saying he was weak against "second hand embarrassment" but it did not really make sense to her.
Alexei rubbed the back of his neck and again shook his head, "You misunderstand, Engineering Officer. I am not doubting your legal authority in an emergency — it is just, you don't have the ability to enforce that authority. There's two factors that make your plan doomed from the start."
The other humans started whispering amongst themselves. A small group who was more or less neutral and would side with either side backed up slightly. The engineer was confused, "Like what? All the operational bots are under my control. It's only because I respect you two that I haven't had them stun you and dragged you to the brig on the freighter."
Irina smiled and decided to help out and her voice was silky smooth, "We'll kill you. That's the main point you haven't considered. You clearly don't know a damn thing about us if you think a couple of security bots will stop us." Things got quiet, then, she realized. Even in this third rate backwater threats of violence between humans was almost unthinkable. She wondered if she and Alexei were the only ones in the room to have prior military service?
Alexei spoke up again in the silence, "Before you try your luck, the second factor is that our yacht the Tachyon Fairy has already cleared moorings. Neither of us was sure if the reason you are so scared is you're scared of losing your own life or are scared of changes to the timeline itself… so, if for some reason you do prevail and our connection to our ship is terminated, our instructions are to destroy this station and then nuke from orbit the largest settlement on the planet Earth. Is that enough butterflies for you?"
Irina chimed up, "And then land somewhere on the planet where someone will find it, and shut down. The Fairy can make a planetary landing in 1G, even if she probably couldn't leave the gravity well again. May take them a while to figure out it isn't a dragon, but I bet they will." Irina was actually pretty optimistic that their yacht could in fact lift off again. It was designed to land and lift off again in up to Martian gravity but assuming the damage done in the full gravity landing was repaired and the ship was tilted back on it's ass for a vertical take off she figured it would work, but decided to keep that to herself.
The engineer seemed to droop, but looked resolute too. "I brought back several weapons from storage, I was going to remove the core from one or two to fab a fission battery but all three are online and I have the keys for them. I can detonate them wirelessly from here. That was going to be my last resort, but… unless you give me some reassurances I will ensure at least you don't make it off this station alive, no matter what happens after that."
Irina thought better of him, at least. It wasn't his own life that he was so concerned about but rather the timeline? Did the idiot have such respect and fidelity for the fucking Solar Union? In her opinion almost any change to the timeline would probably be an improvement for the backwater hicks living in Humanity's cradle. Irina smiled and quickly demonstrated the truth of the fact that their knowledge of the past was somewhat limited, "We have ourselves what the Ancient Humans would have called a Canadian Stand-Off, then. But I think we all can walk away mostly satisfied. And Alive."
—-
Ash was amused and a little bit scared by the confrontation. His opinion of these future humans was not great, from his perspective they looked weak and indolent. And maybe some were, but that couple wasn't and, honestly, neither was that engineer, even if he did look nervous.
Although the couple called it a compromise it was more of them stating terms — according to them their interest wasn't to change the timeline but to study all the fauna and flora of pre-Desolation Earth. She explained that in addition to not knowing even a fraction of the animals from Earth that nobody even knew what the baseline human genome looked like.
Both the engineer, and to be frank Ash himself, were a bit skeptical of this reasoning but both husband and wife looked very excited about the prospect. They thought primitive Earth was a perfect place to spend their retirement. The final agreement was more along the lines of 'We will land our ship somewhere deserted and live out our lives like hermits, nobody will ever discover us and therefore we won't interfere with the timeline. Promise.'
The other side started off negotiations with a demand that they allow them to destroy their ship and go to the surface with an unpowered lander while taking no technology. The woman named Irina just laughed and told them that they may as well incinerate everyone now if that was their bottom line. The couple had the whip hand in the negotiation and the final result demonstrated that.
The most the engineer could get out of the couple was to let someone aboard their ship to ensure that their fabricator design databases were erased. He wanted to disable them permanently but the couple said they could still use them to manufacture simple things to camouflage their ship. The engineer finally accepted that, along with a promise that in the event of their death they had to incinerate the ship.
Neither side really trusted the other so the mechanics of how this went down were convoluted. The couple demanded that the others leave in the freighter first because they had the sensible idea that if they landed their yacht, which couldn't take off again, what's to stop a man paranoid about contamination of the timeline from turning around and nuking them from orbit, especially since they promised to land in a deserted out of the way area?
From the look on the engineer's face that was his exact plan. The couple would ensure he was months into his boost and at a reasonably good fraction of C and then when they were sure his sensors couldn't detect them they would pick a landing site in secret.
Ash watched the drama until it got to the point where the engineering officer explained his plan for the debris of the station and remaining ships parked here. They had calculated that it would fall into the moon, rather than get established on some odd orbit. The guy explained he placed a dozen or so six thousand megaton planetary bombardment warheads around the station, triggered to be set off by any sudden acceleration or deceleration.
As soon as the station impacts the lunar surface they will all go off and there won't be a piece big enough to identify as anything more than a highly elevated concentration of metals.
Ash felt the floor drop away from him, metaphorically anyway. He is at once "very concerned" and very quickly sent commands to stand by to the motorized plasma cutters. He had been positioning them on to cut through the emergency pressure door nearest to the docking pylon for the freighter Mistress of Space IV, which was the freighter left on the station, assuming something else didn't happen. The crew of this ship had all been onboard the station during the incident according to dock records. He wanted to get his diagnostic and spider bots on the way and felt this atmosphere was a hindrance. His plan was to cut a hole and depressurize this area so his bots could move freely.
Ash did not know what setting the accelerometers on those nukes were set to go off at, but he did know that rapidly depressurizing this entire can would impart brief significant acceleration and might very well trigger them. He inwardly curses at himself, there is no reason for him to be in such a rush. He closes his eyes and recalls his first flight instructor, an American "Good Ole Boy" from Texas, "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast."
He reactivates the local life support system, causing air to start to circulate. Then he overrides the safeties on it and starts pumping the atmosphere into storage. It's not really a fast process and it might take twenty minutes to pump the entire can down to a reasonable vacuum. THEN he will cut a hole in the pressure door.
Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.