Tori (Patreon)

So, Tori broke the bad news to Druka, but which option should they choose?

What would you do if you were walking in their pawprints?

———

For the rest of the evening, Druka and Tori debated what to do. Despite them both finding the commissioner’s offer morally reprehensible, they surprised themselves with the mental gymnastics needed to justify taking the deal. In fact, on three separate occasions, they had agreed to do it, only to change their minds before actually leaving the apartment.

“Well, if we’re not going to save ourselves, maybe we should save someone else?” suggested Tori. “We could save Holly and Sese. The commissioner’s never seen me. He wouldn’t have any idea who he’s saving.”

Druka stared at her. “If I were gonna take the damned deal, I’d want you to get the surgery! I mean, he offered it.”

“Yeah, but I can’t,” she sighed. “We could pick two cubs! I don’t know who, but someone. Someone with lots of years left.”

“Oh yeah,” he chuckled, shaking his head, “two little cubs with the sleeves and legs of their adult-sized environment suits flapping about while they walk. The commissioner would totally believe that was us.”

She beat on his shoulder with a fist. “Well, what about teens? You could rescue Inea next door.”

“No way!” he grunted. “I’m not leaving you here. You could take Inea—”

“No!” she cried, actually throwing her arms around him. “I’m not leaving you! I brought you here. There’s no way I’m leaving you here.”

Druka sighed. “Well, who do you want to save?”

“I want to save us,” she sobbed. “I know that makes me a bad person, but I don’t want to die. I don’t want you to die.”

“Even though it will kill everyone?”

“Yes… No… I don’t know. But saving someone else doesn’t change that,” she whimpered. “Saving anyone kills everyone else.”

Druka inhaled a deep breath and interlaced his fingers behind his head. “It’s like one of those ethics questions from school.”

“Yeah, but worse,” she said. “Those were always, ‘Do you save five geroo or ten?’ and they wanted you to pick ten. This is the needs of two versus the needs of ten thousand. Isn’t ten thousand always going to be more important?”

He shrugged. “If it was ten thousand get to live or two do, then it would be simple, but it’s a little extra time for ten thousand. What if it was only an extra minute of life for ten thousand?”

“It’s not,” she grunted, “it’s two weeks, give or take.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but what if it was only a minute? We get full lives, or everyone gets one more minute. What would you do?”

“Well, that would be a crappy deal,” she said. “I’d save us.”

“Right. And what if it was the opposite end of the spectrum?” he asked. “What if everyone gets ninety-percent of their years remaining or we get our full lives?”

Tori looked up at him. “I wouldn’t sacrifice them all if they had that much time left.”

“Exactly. So, it’s not that we can’t make a choice,” said Druka. “If it were a minute, we’d go. If it were ninety percent, we’d stay. I guess the real question is, ‘Where’s the line? How much time makes one choice become unreasonable and the other choice becomes reasonable?’”

She laid her head back down. “I don’t know. Do you?”

“Not really, no,” he admitted. “I think back in school, they would have wanted us to maximize things. Like, two weeks for ten thousand people … how many lifetimes is that?”

“I don’t know,” Tori said. “It sounds like a lot.”

“Yeah, it does,” he sighed.

Time dragged by in the darkened bedroom until Tori spoke again. “I want to tell you something really honest, but I don’t want you to hate me.”

“I’m not gonna hate you.”

“You promise?”

“I promise,” he said. “I’m not gonna judge you if you don’t judge me.”

“I won’t.” She took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Well, the thing is, there is one thing that really tempts me—I mean, apart from not dying.”

Druka touched the edge of her ruined ear, tracing it gently from one end to the other. She had lost most of the feeling in her ears. So long as he was careful, it didn’t hurt her. “What’s that?”

“Well, what’s going to happen if we don’t take the deal?”

He shrugged. “You said two weeks, then the power goes out.”

“Yeah, but what happens during those two weeks?” she asked. “Are you gonna go to work?”

“Probably not,” he admitted. “We’re just making brackets. Who in the hells needs brackets if we’ve only got two weeks left?”

“Exactly,” she said. “Is anyone going to show up for work?”

He stared at her awhile before shrugging.

“What if no one shows up to grow the food?”

That got his attention. “Well,” he gasped, trying to rationalize things, “I’m sure the captain would handle it. If growing food was the only thing left to do for two weeks, then we could all take turns. Everyone could work an hour a day to get it all done.”

“And when everyone panics?” she asked. “When everyone storms the hydroponic bays? When they grab everything, tear up the plants, ruin everything, just because they’re afraid they’ll go hungry?”

“Uh,” he gasped. “You don’t think—”

“I don’t know!” she cried. “That’s my point. Sacrificing ourselves so everyone can have two good weeks? I don’t want to do it, but at least I’d feel okay about it. But what if the ship falls apart the moment everyone figures out that the trinity isn’t coming back online? How many days would they get once all the plants were destroyed? What would make the oxygen?”

“Wow,” Druka sighed. “So, you’re saying it would be a mercy if we took the deal?”

“You think I’m a terrible person,” she said. “Looking for a way to justify this.”

“No, I don’t!” he reassured her. “But if it was a mercy—”

“I wish I knew,” whispered Tori.

Druka’s stomach rumbled.

“What time is it?” asked Tori, sitting up. “I guess we missed dinner.”

“It’s late,” he said, “really late. And I skipped breakfast and lunch too.”

“Druka!” she scolded him.

“I was too anxious to eat,” he admitted.

Tori climbed from the bed. “Yeah, okay, I can understand that. Well, let’s go down to the market and see what they still have.”

With the trinity offline, many activities were forbidden to conserve power and oxygen. No food was cooking, no one was smoking. Lots of the crew were drinking, enjoying the unexpected holiday, but the couple didn’t share the festive—albeit subdued—mood the others seemed to be enjoying.

Druka bought them a pair of yogurt cups with fruit on the bottom, and they sat at the edge of the market, talking quietly, ignoring and being ignored by the others.

When they finished their food, they discarded their cups and went for a stroll.

Before long, they found themselves outside the shuttle bay, staring through the huge glass windows at the commissioner’s shuttle. Did I lead us here? he wondered. Or did she?

To conserve power, the lights had been dimmed, leaving the gigantic ship looking like a monster hiding in the dark. After several long minutes of standing in silence, Druka was the first to speak. “Do you want to tell him?” he asked. “So he won’t be left hanging?”

Tori stared out at the bay a moment longer before shaking her head. “Not really, no. If I’m ever going to be at peace with our decision, it has to be ours. If I go talk to him, he’ll try to manipulate me into taking the deal.”

Druka nodded and carefully rolled Tori’s words around in his head. “Our decision,” she kept saying, not “turning down the deal” or something more specific. She was still just as much on the fence as he was. She was leaning away from the deal, obviously, since she was afraid the commissioner would talk her back into it, but she wasn’t committed at all.

She wanted to live. She wanted them both to live.

In fact, they had never come to an agreement. They hadn’t said out loud what the plan was. Each time one of them had suggested doing one thing, the other had said why they shouldn’t.

Druka glanced at the time on his strand. It was nearly zero-hundred hours now. He hadn’t brought any power tools with him, but a welding torch was a pretty basic tool and surely a working bay would have one in one of the cabinets. In an emergency, no one would want to run down to manufacturing to grab tools.

He turned. Rows of environment suits hung on the charging stand. Finding one that fit would be simple. All he had to do was grab the torch, suit up, and go cut the weld. He could be done in ten minutes’ time, easy.

Druka turned to look at Tori. It broke his heart at just how much she had suffered. And now that someone had finally promised her the surgery she needed so badly? How could he refuse?

Tori would be livid, obviously, if he decided for the both of them. If he went over to the bench and started suiting up, she’d be pissed, she’d scream, she’d try to talk him out of it. But then what? Nothing. Was she going to hit him with her cane? She couldn’t stop him. He doubted she’d really even try that hard.

She wanted to live. She just didn’t want to be the one making the decision, didn’t want to be a bad person.

But he could.

And once he did it, once he’d freed the commissioner, she’d have no choice. The deed would be done and staying behind would be a pointless sacrifice. It wouldn’t save anyone. She’d go along with it. She wanted to.

Then he’d have her back, fixed, as perfect as she’d been before the accident—even if she hated him for it, even if he had to win her back a second time. Hells, even if she never forgave him, if he never won her back, at least she’d be alive.

That… He swallowed. Saving her life would be easily worth the damnation of my soul.

“Tori,” he said.

She turned and stared into his eyes. Her eyes were so perfect, and his memories gladly filled in the rest.

Druka said, “I’ve made a…”

But then he shut his muzzle. Over her shoulder, he spotted a pair of geroo headed their way. The female was Sese, carrying her nightstick. The male wasn’t Holly. Druka didn’t recognize him, but he was shorter, broader than the gangly administrator. And in the male’s paws, he carried a battery-powered angle grinder. The cut-off wheel installed on it was thin—easily thin enough to slide between a hatch and a door jamb, but sturdy enough to slice through a weld.

Tori cocked her head. “Sese?” she asked. “What are you guys up to?”

The male ignored them. He walked over to the bench, sat down the grinder, and started looking through environment suits, searching for his size.

“Hang on a second!” shouted Druka, but when he took a step in that direction, Sese was there, blocking his way. She touched the end of the nightstick to his soft throat, stopping him cold.

Sweat exploded beneath his arms. He’d never been threatened with a weapon before, and Sese clearly had enough muscle and training to make the weapon lethal. He could easily imagine how a single strike could crush his windpipe.

“Please don’t make me do this,” said Sese.

Druka slowly raised his paws, palms facing her, showing no sign of aggression.

“What’s going on?” begged Tori.

“You’re under arrest,” said Sese, “both of you.”

“Arrest? For what?” shouted Tori.

Druka watched in horror as the male began suiting up. He and Tori were screwed. He had no idea how these two had found out about the commissioner’s plan, but they were clearly replacing them. They’d let the krakun, out and he’d override the ship’s controls, bringing the trinity back online.

Tori, him, and everyone else—everyone besides Sese and the guy with the cutter—would be dead by morning.

“Move,” said Sese. She jerked her head in the direction she wanted them to walk, but never took her eyes off of Druka.

The nightstick didn’t waver.

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WxcV71k1WEoFOA-Jm96bGjQ0XojEwhG1XrxHLsmWJr8/edit?usp=sharing

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