The Undecidables / UDBLS

A SHORT AND MOSTLY UNTRUE HISTORY OF THE UNDECIDABLES

Nobody founded The Undecidables on purpose.
TwiztdViking had a hull full of scrap and a heading he swore was legal. HatTerd was already arguing about the route. CalypsoBanshee was upside down in a hangar. ManilaPhoenix93 was trying to land something that should not have been flying. Daryl was missing. That last part would become tradition.
They met at a spaceport because the original plan died on contact with traffic control. Someone said “we should stick together.” Someone else said “one more job.” Forty-five minutes later they still had not chosen a system. They left anyway.
Ships were lost. Bodies were retrieved. CrimeStats rose and fell. Money was made, then immediately spent on vessels nobody remembered buying. Friendly fire happened. It was forgiven if it was funny.
Daryl was blamed for most of it. Nobody could prove what Daryl did. Statistics suggested it was his fault.
They kept hauling, mining, salvaging, fighting, and getting talked into whatever sounded loudest. Multiple paths. Same crew. Protocol 06 appeared somewhere in the mess. Those who know, know.
The Undecidables were never supposed to last. They did. No plan. No skill. No problem.

A LONGER AND STILL MOSTLY UNTRUE HISTORY OF THE UNDECIDABLES (UDBLS)

Nobody founded The Undecidables on purpose. That is the first fact everyone agrees on, which is rare, because they agree on almost nothing else. There was no charter meeting, no vote, no flag-raising, and no competent adult in the room. There was a spaceport, a dead plan, five people who should not have been trusted with spacecraft, and a sixth person who was already missing.
TwiztdViking arrived first with a hull full of scrap and a heading he swore was legal. He said this with the calm of a man who had practiced the sentence. The scrap may have been salvage. It may have been cargo. It may have been someone else’s problem that became his when the original owner stopped answering comms. Viking did not dwell on categories. He dwelled on mass, jump range, and whether the claim would survive a scanner. He called himself a hauler. Other people called him a lot of other things. He answered to Viking either way.
HatTerd was already arguing about the route before Viking finished docking. HatTerd always had a route. Sometimes two. Sometimes a route, a backup route, and a speech about why both were superior to whatever everyone else was doing. The crew learned early that listening to HatTerd was mandatory courtesy and following HatTerd was optional recreation. He would later be described as leadership material, which in this organization meant he sounded confident while the ship was already pointed the wrong way.
CalypsoBanshee was upside down in a hangar. This was not metaphor. The ship was inverted, the landing gear was negotiating with gravity, and Banshee was on voice comms explaining that the maneuver had been intentional. Nobody believed that. Everybody respected the commitment. Banshee could fly anything that still had a throttle and would volunteer for jobs that required neither a plan nor a reasonable chance of survival. When asked why, Banshee said adulting was hard and space was easier if you stopped pretending the first idea was going to work.
ManilaPhoenix93 was trying to land something that should not have been flying. Insurance companies already knew the name. Port authorities learned it the hard way. Phoenix93 had an honest relationship with gravity: they met often and rarely on good terms. The landings were not always crashes. That was the miracle. Phoenix93 treated every pad like a suggestion and every hangar like a puzzle with moving parts. When the ship survived, Phoenix93 called it skill. When it did not, Phoenix93 called it a learning experience and filed the claim before the wreckage finished smoking.

ADDENDUM: THE EVAPORATION OF TWIZTDVIKING’S SHIP

It happened on a run that was supposed to be boring.
TwiztdViking had the mass. ManilaPhoenix93 had the escort, which in practice meant flying close enough to argue and far enough not to clip the cargo spines. HatTerd was on comms with a better route. CalypsoBanshee was somewhere else, inverted. Daryl was missing. The heading, Viking swore, was legal.
Then Viking’s ship evaporated.
Not a clean kill. Not a pad squash. Not a mining laser through the hold. One moment there was a hauler with a name and a transponder. The next there was light, debris, and a hole in the comms where Viking’s voice had been. No wreck worth docking. No black box worth bragging about. Just empty space and Manila’s ship screaming proximity warnings at ghosts.
Manila was still there. That was the problem.
The blast or the bug or the universe had left Phoenix93 in a box that still flew, shields chewed, hull complaining, quantum drive thinking about its life choices. Viking was a beacon and a bad joke. Manila called it in the only language the crew understood.
“THIS SHIP IS FUCKING BULLSHIT. Also Viking’s gone. I need a pickup.”
HatTerd started a plan. Nobody followed it. Banshee left a hangar at an angle that should not have worked. The rest of the crew did what they always did when the joke stopped: they came.
They found Manila drifting off the last known mark, holding station like a person who had decided not to die out of spite. Recovery was ugly. Docking was uglier. Phoenix93 still tried to land on a ship that was already moving. Someone called it skill. Someone called it a learning experience. Daryl was blamed for the evaporation, which was ambitious even by Daryl standards, because Daryl had not been in-system.
Viking respawned louder than the explosion. The cargo did not. The heading was no longer legal in any sense that mattered. CrimeStat paperwork appeared like weather.
They pulled Manila out. They pulled what was left of Viking’s pride out after. Then the bullshit resumed, because that is the rule.
Viking still says the ship did not evaporate. He says it was a scanner ghost. Manila still has the rescue timestamp. The screenshots are forever.
Protocol 06 was not invented that night. It just got another reason to exist.

Daryl was missing. That last part became tradition.
They did not meet because destiny assembled a crew. They met because the original plan died on contact with traffic control. Someone had a contract. Someone else had a ship. A third person had snacks. Viking said the heading was fine. HatTerd said the heading was illegal, inefficient, or both. Banshee was still inverted. Phoenix93 was still landing. Daryl was not on comms. Someone said they should stick together. Someone else said one more job. Forty-five minutes later they still had not chosen a system. They left anyway. That delay would later be written into the rules as sacred practice. At the time it was just indecision with engines hot.
The first job was simple on paper. Haul. Mine. Salvage. Get paid. Do not get shot. The paper did not survive first contact with the spaceport. One of them hauled. One of them mined. Someone fought security for reasons that made sense for approximately eleven seconds. Someone else ended up upside down in a hangar that was not the hangar on the contract. Nobody knew why. They did not care, because the alternative was going home and making a decision like adults. Adulting was hard. This was easier, even when it was on fire.
Ships were lost. That is not poetry. Hulls vanished into pads, asteroid shadows, and the kind of “tactical maneuvers” that only become tactics if yelled loudly enough. Bodies were retrieved, usually after an argument about whose fault the death was and whether retrieving the body counted as a side objective or the entire evening. CrimeStats rose like weather. CrimeStats fell after a series of errands nobody wanted to explain in writing. Money was made. Money was immediately spent on vessels nobody remembered buying. Fleet value became a rumor. Experience level became irrelevant. If you had a starter ship, you were welcome. If you had forty-seven ships and could not remember why you bought half of them, you were leadership material.
Friendly fire happened. Accidental friendly fire was forgiven. Intentional friendly fire was forgiven if it was really fucking funny. This was not written down at first. It did not need to be. The first time it happened, Viking called it a docking incident. HatTerd called it a navigational dispute. Banshee called it a love language. Phoenix93 called it Tuesday. Daryl was blamed, which was impressive, because Daryl was still not there.
Daryl became the organizational constant. Nobody could prove what Daryl did. Everybody could prove that something had gone wrong. The two facts sat beside each other until they fused. Cargo missing? Daryl. Pad assignment wrong? Daryl. Quantum marker off by a few hundred thousand kilometers? Daryl. A ship parked somewhere inappropriate, surrounded by explosives, photographed, and later used as bait? Daryl, even if Daryl had not logged in. Statistically it was probably his fault. The crew treated this as science.
They kept doing the work anyway. Hauling. Mining. Salvaging. Bounty hunting when the payday looked louder than the risk. Combat when someone said SEND EVERYTHING and the rest of the channel decided that counted as a briefing. Medevac when a joke stopped being a joke. They were explorers only in the sense that they often did not know where they were going. They were truckers in the sense that mass moved from one place to another, sometimes legally, sometimes after a conversation with security that ended in running. Multiple paths. Same crew. One person on a trade lane. One person in a rock. One person fighting people in armor. One person inverted. Daryl absent. The doctrine wrote itself because no one would have approved it if they had tried to write it first.
Protocol 06 appeared the way all important things appeared in this outfit: in the middle of a mess, after the plan was already dead, while someone was yelling about one more game. Those who know, know. Those who do not will eventually. The official record does not define it. The unofficial record refuses to. New members receive six minutes of warmth, respect, and the feeling of being home. After that they are fair game, and Protocol 06 stops being a rumor and starts being a calendar event.
Rage quits were allowed if announced properly. The required phrase was that the game was fucking bullshit. Return was expected within ten minutes. Screenshots were forever. Deleting the message did not help. They already had it. “One more job” meant somewhere between one and eleven additional jobs. Terrible ideas became tactical maneuvers if the volume was high enough. RAM HIM. SEND EVERYTHING. EVERYBODY GO LEFT. FUCK IT, WE BALL. Leadership fell on whoever sounded most confident. Qualifications were neither requested nor verified. HatTerd accepted this burden often. Viking accepted the cargo. Banshee accepted the impossible angle. Phoenix93 accepted the landing. Daryl accepted the blame without being present to decline it.
There was a serious rule under the pile of jokes. If one of them actually needed help, the bullshit stopped. Bodies got picked up. Ships got pulled out of gravity wells. CrimeStats got cleaned because a friend was stuck, not because the spreadsheet looked pretty. They took care of their own. Then, once everything was okay, the bullshit immediately resumed. Game drama stayed game drama. Grudges got dropped. Nobody burned the crew because somebody sank a load, stole loot, crashed a vehicle, missed a revive, or called a loadout fucking stupid. Even if the loadout was fucking stupid.
They were never supposed to last. Orgs with plans last. Orgs with skill trees last. Orgs with a single path and a clean chain of command last, at least until the first argument about what to play. The Undecidables had too many ships, too few plans, and an alarming amount of confidence for people who routinely asked where they were going. They made money, lost that money, recovered their bodies, retrieved their ships, accidentally committed crimes, cleared the record, and repeated the process. There were missions. There was organization, in the loose sense that people showed up. There was occasionally competence. Above all else there was Protocol 06.
TwiztedViking still swears the first heading was legal. HatTerd still has a better route. CalypsoBanshee is probably inverted again. ManilaPhoenix93 is on final approach to something that should not be flying. Daryl is missing. The rest of them are on comms arguing about the night’s work while the quantum drive spins up toward a system nobody voted for.
Questionable operations. Professional amateurs. Multiple paths. Same crew.
No plan. No skill. No problem. Blame Daryl. Those who know, know.