Jonathan_S wrote:munroburton wrote:quote="saber964"]
If not Hamish, certainly did. Also I bet Ariel and Monroe have one too.
I wouldn't be surprised if Honor(or Elizabeth) arranged for every treecat in the RMN to get one, whether the cost for it came out of her pocket or the Admiralty budget.
I can't remember whether Wayfarer's chief engineer had a lower-end model life support box for Sam or couldn't afford one at all. I do remember that Sam ended up in Nimitz's box in Honor's quarters whilst Nimitz was in his skinsuit during combat actions.
That suggests such things are beyond the income of a lieutenant commander in the engineering track(unless Tschu had dependents to support, but I don't recall mention of that). Honor's parents were both doctors, one of whom had seen the consequences of naval combat up close, so she and Nimitz were lucky to get one for their very first deployment.
The wording in the quotes isn't 100% unambiguous but my reading is that as of OBS there were not standard issue life support modules for treecats - if you wanted one you had to buy one out of pocket.
On Basilisk Station: Ch. 27 wrote:Nimitz had hurtled from his perch at the first shrill of the alarm. He'd been through this same drill as often as she, and he scurried across the cabin to the boxlike affair she'd had clamped to the bulkhead below her sailplane plaque immediately after coming aboard. That box wasn't Fleet issue, and it had cost Honor a small fortune, for it was a custom-built life support module, sized to Nimitz's stature and fitted with the same search and rescue beacon as a Fleet vac suit. It was good for a hundred hours on its internal life support, and the door slammed automatically behind him as he fled into it. He couldn't open it from the inside, but unless something scored a direct hit on it, he could survive even if battle damage opened the cabin to space.
In HAE I suppose you could read "settle for a standard life support module" two alternate ways. The first, which I think is more likely, is that they still aren't Fleet Issue but simply that they're less expensive than a skinsuit (partly because they don't have to be custom tailored, nor do they require components to be
as miniaturized) and so more affordable to spacers. The second is that "standard" means standard Fleet issue, as contrasted to the enhanced version Honor commissioned. Here's the pertinent quote
Honor Among Enemies: Ch 39 wrote:[Honor] simply couldn't, and at least [Nimitz] was better off than Samantha. He had his skinsuit; Tschu hadn't been able to afford one, and he'd had to settle for a standard life support module. But that much Honor had been able to improve upon. She still had the deluxe module she'd bought Nimitz before Paul designed his suit—the one with the built in anti-radiation armor and the extended life support—and she'd insisted that Tschu take Samantha to her quarters and put her inside its greater protection.
Now, with un-bonded treecats volunteering to serve the Navy has an obligation to provide adequate protection to them; like they would to any other spacer. So I damned well expect that they'd be issued skinsuits.
But prior to that I also heartily hope that no paired spacer ever had to ship out without at least a life support module for their 'cat. That even when the Fleet wasn't issuing them that there was a charity or something that would assist in providing basic life support modules to those in need. The overall cost couldn't have been that high simply because there were so few bonded pairs out there - as as they move up the ranks (or reach the end of their service) people could donate their used life support modules back for refurbishing before being loaned out to needy 'cat's humans.[/quote]
Already been done both Lurks in Branches and Springs from Above have skin-suits.
