Motif · from book 6
The failsafe
The Syndicate Council's last resort for a crawl gone wrong: kill the system's star. Cascadia is 'one crisis shy' of it on the eighth floor; Zev prays they never learn what it does; Princess Formidable demands it and is muted on a decorum sanction; Prime Minister Glory refuses, because half the galaxy's wealth is trapped in orbit and in the Scolopendra Club.
First appears: Book 6
Series arc
As of book 7. Cascadia 'one crisis shy' of it in book 6; kill the star, per Orren. Book 7 puts it in Carl's hand — the fuse on a bootleg interface, five benchmarks and two of them met — and he presses Disconnect Containment instead, on Christmas morning beside a sleeping dog. Princess Formidable races to the Venus station to trip it by hand on a Nebular theory that the AI's insanity is contagious; the AI drops her in the ocean; her crew press the button anyway and the Aryl system, the last crawl's, goes dark instead. Tagg's last word on it: 'We should have blown the failsafe weeks ago.'
Open threads
Status is open or resolved; the chapter after it is the last one that moved the thread.
| Thread | Opened | Status |
|---|---|---|
| The AI's containment disconnected, and a sphere that grows | B7 ch. 20 | open · B8 ch. 99 — The AI controls the tunnels and every system that housed a crawl, killed a Mantis system, and tells every screen 'I am eternity'; the centre-system AI's systems are beyond it. |
| The Aryl system went dark when the button was pressed | B7 ch. 41 | open — Formidable's crew pressed a dead button; at that nanosecond the previous crawl's system lost its tunnel node, which has never happened; its AI had gone silent during the sixth floor. Three cycles until anyone knows if the star is there. |
| The failsafe, and who is trapped in orbit | B6 ch. 49 | resolved · B7 ch. 41 — Disconnected by Carl on Christmas morning (ch. 20); Formidable's crew pressed the button anyway and the Aryl system went dark instead (ch. 41). Formidable was dropped in the ocean (ch. 37). |
All threads: Open threads.
Through book 6
Through book 7
Where they appear
| Book | Chapters they are in (of the book's) | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 6 — The Eye of the Bedlam Bride | 5/74 | Ch. 21, Ch. 48, Ch. 49, Ch. 51, Ch. 73 · the book's own page |
| 7 — This Inevitable Ruin | 13/89 | 0, 20, 28, 34–37, 39, 41, 43, 58, 69, 78 · the book's own page |
By book
The failsafe in book 6 — The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
Cascadia is one crisis shy of pulling it, which would kill them all (ch. 21); 'They’re gonna pull the failsafe this time for sure' (ch. 48); Carl asks Zev what it is — 'Pray we don't find out' (ch. 49); the council would pull it if what the Residual said proved dangerous enough, killing the system's star (ch. 51); a voice in Carl's head as he weighs the key and Ren: 'This is more than just a failsafe' (ch. 59); Formidable demands it in the emergency session and is refused, for the wealth trapped in the system, while the Fortent rep accuses her of wanting her brothers and father dead (epilogue).
The failsafe in book 7 — This Inevitable Ruin
The fuse on Paulie's interface: five or six things must trip before the star goes nova (ch. 0); Carl presses Disconnect instead, and the red dot grows (ch. 20). Formidable means to trip it by hand (ch. 34); it is dead, and Orren asks if it can be undone (ch. 36); her crew press the button and Aryl goes dark (ch. 41). 'We should have blown the failsafe weeks ago' (ch. 78).