Catastrophe 5 (Patreon)

A comet is headed toward the ship! What will Kai'to do?

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Kai’to recoiled in her seat. Three days to get the trinity online! Was there enough time? She had no way of knowing. She knew that several spaces had been breached and many geroo may have already died. She knew that the trinity was down, but what was the extent of the damage? How many other components had been destroyed by the impact? She had no way of knowing.

“Well,” she said as calmly as she was able, “there are ten thousand geroo on board our ship”—she gulped—“well, at least there were. I’m guessing your ship isn’t nearly large enough to act as a lifeboat.”

Vaagai shook her head.

That made sense. The Clay Basin I was huge. Kai’to had no idea how big the lio ship was, but they’d be lucky if the ship could host a dozen extra in emergency accommodations—a far cry from the whole crew, certainly.

“Okay, then we have to proceed with the presumption that we can get trinity online in time—working up until the moment of impact if need be,” she said. “If we can’t make it in time, perhaps you can offload a few of our cubs and back off to a minimum safe distance at the last moment.”

“Yes, okay,” said the scientist, “but we help! Online in time if help.”

Kai’to released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Thank you, Vaagai. If your ship can move around ours, you might be able to facilitate repairs far faster than we could via the airlocks. You might be the key to saving us!”

The lio’s mouth pulled up at the edges. Kai’to recoiled for a moment, but the expression didn’t look as threatening as she had first expected. Was this their weird way of smiling?

“Okay, then let’s start with an external damage assessment,” said the geroo. “Images of the exterior would be invaluable to my crew. Can we orbit around the ship and scan the surface details?”

Vaagai made a fist and drew a circle in the air around it with a fingertip. Kai’to nodded. “Orbit. Photos.”

The lio nodded, and lifting a device the size of a bar of soap from the table, she made a quick call. The geroo could understand none of the growling words, but she presumed it was to the navigator. She hung up and zoomed the hologram of the ship back out so the two could study it.

Each time they identified a damaged section, Vaagai marked the hull edges in red to make them easier to track. After ten or twenty minutes, the lio stopped and gestured worriedly at a debris field drifting away from the ship. Kai’to had paid the drifting rubble little notice. Without a shuttle, the crew was not normally in a position to recover anything that floated free—that included any spacewalkers who weren’t careful to secure their lifelines—so her attention had been focused on the ship itself.

Kai’to looked up at the rubble and squinted. Then Vaagai panned and zoomed the display to get a better look at it. The scanning pass had been focusing on the ship itself, so the rubble image was just a radar reflection taken at long range; blurry and indistinct. But still, there was no mistaking it: the commissioner’s shuttle.

“Krakun,” said the lio.

Kai’to nodded. She hadn’t realized the commissioner would be visiting today. The officers kept well-informed of the company’s bi-weekly inspections and so did the engineers who maintained the mission-critical services that Commissioner Taigen liked to check in on, but he wasn’t likely to inspect the air purifiers or water filters. He wasn’t going to poke through the ship’s crawlspaces to verify that she’d put out poisoned bait for the kerrati. “Crap. Was his visit today?” she muttered. She turned to the lio. “Any distress call from the shuttle?”

Vaagai shook her head.

“Well, either he’s still on board the Clay Basin I, lost, or on that shuttle in need of assistance,” sighed the geroo. “But despite how big and important he is, he’s just one person. Let’s just focus on saving the gate ship. Rescuing him off his shuttle accomplishes nothing if we can’t get the trinity up before impact.”

The lio nodded. “And if krakun on your ship?”

Kai’to shrugged. “Perhaps he’ll be thankful for you saving his life? Who knows? Maybe this will be the event that leads to peace?”

Vaagai was silent a long time in thought before she finally nodded. “Yes, okay.”

After an hour of scanning, the lio loaded all the annotated scan data onto a memory stick that Kai’to could take with her. She turned to Vaagai who smiled once more. Kai’to was starting to get used to that, but she still found it distressing. “Now what?” asked the big alien.

“Well,” the geroo said slowly, “I need to get this stick to engineering. Between that data and whatever internal damage reports they’ve already prepared; this will go a long way toward helping us form a reasonable response.”

Vaagai frowned. “If krakun there, we stay here.”

“Understood,” said Kai’to. “That’s probably for the best. One of the gate connections has been severed. With your ship, you’d be able to repair it ten times faster than we could, more safely too. I’d like your guys to work on that, okay?”

The lio nodded. “Other things?”

“A few, if that would be okay,” admitted Kai’to. “I also need a countdown until the comet impact, a way to contact you, and I might need your help transporting geroo from one airlock to another, like you rescued me. That would be far more efficient than us trying to deliver spacesuits and giving crash-courses on how to spacewalk.”

“Yes, much faster,” she agreed. With some research and experimentation, she managed to display a count-down on the bar-of-soap communicator she kept on the desk. Well, getting it to display the time was simple, but making it show in digits that Kai’to could read took a lot more experimentation. “Push this button to call,” she explained. “Stand near hull. Should reach us okay.”

Kai’to nodded, and then unable to help herself, she threw her arms around the alien, squeezing her hard. Vaagai squeezed back, forcing all the air from her lungs for a moment before she loosened her grip.

“Time is guess. Hurry,” whispered the lio. “Many small rocks before AP7739. Not wait until last second.”

“We’ll go as quickly as we can. Thank you, Vaagai,” whispered the geroo as she held her. “I’ll be forever in your debt. If there’s ever anything you need, you just tell me, okay?”

“Oh geroo,” sighed the lio. Then she reminded her, “Still at war. May regret promise.”

Kai’to nodded but said nothing. The most important thing was saving her people. She didn’t care about who won the stupid war, so long as her people were safe.

Vaagai silently stroked the back of Kai’to’s head while they embraced.

“Please, just try to get the gate fixed in time,” said the geroo. “I’ll keep you updated on our progress.”

The lio released her and nodded. “Docking soon. You ready?”

Kai’to put on brave ears and nodded. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rSxdafEJPIbCfrU0ROnUSqwDHyzwYYpL_OwcgthEWKc/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?