THE VEXING ISSUE OF BIRDS…

During the tumultuous years leading into the Cataclysms and the rapid relocation efforts above the dying Earth, an undetected pest had successfully invaded the CSSTATs: Birds. Just as rats stowed away aboard oceangoing vessels of yesteryear, birds who sought safety from the crumbling Earth did the same aboard shuttlecraft and massive resource transports en route to the orbital construction efforts.

Strict controls were in place to detect human refugees, but none thought to scan for the hollow-boned survivalists. Equally impressive was the selection of nesting areas that were devoid of the infrared sensors used to scan for these would-be escapees. Whether by accident or design, the avians are viewed as “pests” by Station personnel. Nesting habits notwithstanding, their ability to create widespread havoc in large enough numbers is not to be underestimated. Flocks sucked into air intakes were a major issue until the directional antigrav systems were put into service.

After several controlled “vacuum purge events” failed to solve the problem, operations chiefs chose to simply deal with the reality of birds in the CSSTATs. The floating park system proved to be a magnet of sorts for wild flocks of all types. Current generation avian species are so adapted to space life as to possess migratory routes from one floating park system to another in a vertical (rather than horizontal) orientation. The birds remain one of the last, non-genetically altered species in existence.