Catastrophe 9 (Patreon)

I wasn't quite done yesterday. There's still a little more to tell about Kai'to's first meeting with Commissioner Taigen.

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Kai’to lifted her visor. “Okay, I think that’s the last one. Can you put me down now?”

“Gladly,” said Commissioner Taigen, lowering his massive head to the deck. “I assure you that I’ve enjoyed this even less than you have.”

The geroo slid down the krakun’s cheek, spilling onto all fours and rested there a moment, just happy to be on solid ground once more. Eventually, she got up and dusted herself off a moment before picking up her welder. “Well, I guess I’ll see if they still need help cutting out the debris in front of the airlock—”

“Actually,” the commissioner said, interrupting, “I do have one more thing I need you to do…”

The engineer hung her head but kept her groan silent. “What?”

Taigen rested his chin on the backs of his talons. “I saw you talking to those two on body disposal earlier,” he said. He stared out the open doors to the marketplace as if he were seeing their interaction once more. “You’re a sensitive type. You know the right things to say, but you’re pragmatic too. That’s an unusual combination.”

Kai’to didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.

“The task I have in mind for you is … well, it’s not the sort of thing just anyone could do.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. Her stomach roiled and the air around her began to smell of fear musk. “What … sort of thing, sir?”

The krakun looked away, his voice louder than it had been. He seemed almost casual now. “I’ve been a commissioner over geroo for a very long time. I think I know your people pretty well—what’s important to you, what you can cope with, what you can’t.”

When he said nothing more, she looked up at him, waiting for him to meet her eyes. “Like?” she asked, not sure where this conversation was headed.

“Well,” he said, “like when there’s an accident during an EVA and a spacewalker will drift off into space. Crewmen die in accidents. That’s a reality you have to accept with such a large crew, but geroo cope with that particular sort of loss worse than others.”

Kai’to had never known of anyone to be lost into space, but it was a real risk—and one of the reasons why she’d never tried to get spacewalk-certified. Without a shuttlecraft, there was no way to recover anyone if their safety line came loose. They would simply float helplessly until they ran out of air.

“It’s the necklace,” said Taigen, bringing Kai’to’s attention back to the conversation. “A geroo dies from sulfur exposure, and he’s still just as dead, but at least the family can put his necklace in the family shrine, right? You lose a body out into space and the best the family can do is make a replica for their shrine.”

Kai’to nodded. “It’s better than nothing, but you’re right, sir, it wouldn’t be the same. The sense of loss would be much more intense if the original necklace couldn’t be recovered.”

“Exactly!” the krakun sighed. He seemed relieved that she understood. Then, he reached out with a talon and pushed the doors closed.

Kai’to gulped. She’d grown reasonably comfortable in his presence after riding around atop his head, but now she felt like she was back to square one—a teeny tiny mammal cowering before a gigantic creature that could crush her without ever realizing he’d even done it.

“So, what I’m going to need you to do is to fetch a wire cutter,” he said. “In the cafeteria, there will be plenty of plastic bags. I need you to be brave. Go into that walk-in, collect up the necklaces and strands. Keep each pair in its own bag, and then put them somewhere safe. By keeping them together, that will help the relatives find their loved one’s necklace when the crisis is finally over.”

Kai’to scowled and took a moment to smooth her hackles back down. Although she appreciated that the krakun was trying to be sensitive toward geroo priorities, he was coming off as a little oblivious. “Sir, I really don’t think that would be necessary. Trust me, the families will bounce back a lot easier if a stranger hasn’t touched their loved one’s necklaces. That’s going to feel a lot more like a violation than a kindness. We’ll get the trinity back online soon, and then the families will have a proper chance to say their farewells.”

Taigen shook his head. “You don’t know that it’ll be back online so soon. The ship’s suffered a major catastrophe. What if it takes a week? What if it takes ten days?”

Well, if it takes a week to get the trinity back online, she thought, then it never will be. We’ve only got three days! But of course, she couldn’t say that. “Sir, I’m sure we’ll get it back online soon—”

“Hoping that it can be fixed quickly is one thing,” he said. “I’m all in favor of hope. But as a pragmatist, you have to prepare for the worst. Planning ahead saves lives. Hoping things will turn out okay doesn’t.”

She raised her palms and took a step closer. “Sir, I know you have this huge brain and all, but we’re only talking about a few days or a week. The bodies will be fine in the walk-in until the trinity comes back online. There’s no reason to mess with them until after this crisis is over.”

Taigen sighed and tapped one of his talons on the deck. That in itself was a terrifying thing as the claw was as long as she stood tall. Having never actually spoken to a krakun before today, she couldn’t read his emotions, but yet, he seemed frustrated. “Kai’to,” he asked, “what would you do to survive?”

The geroo’s eyes opened wide and her ears stood high upon her head. She had no response and she musked hard.

“You’re young,” he said, “you might not even have thought about it. Hell, you could live a whole geroo lifetime and never have had the chance to. But I’m six thousand years old, Kai’to, and I’ve had more than my fair share of lonely evenings left to contemplate my mortality. I know exactly what I’d do to stay alive. Hell, it would be easier to think about the things I wouldn’t do since the list is so much shorter.”

“Sir?” she whispered, really wanting out of this conversation more than anything else.

“In a crisis,” he said, “you do whatever you have to just to make it through. You use as little electricity as you have to, you conserve your food and water. If you run out of clean water, you’ll drink what’s tainted. If all the fresh food is gone, you’ll eat some that has spoiled. That’s how you keep from dying. If you have to sink below your station, if you have to trap and eat kerrati, you will.”

Kai’to turned away. What was he suggesting? Living like an animal? It was just some ship damage. It could be repaired…

He put a talon behind her, encouraging her to turn back and face him. “If you ran out of food, how long could you survive?”

“Uh… I…” she gasped. She had no idea. In her entire lifetime, the most hunger she’d ever known was waiting for dinner when she’d had too light of a lunch.

“The short answer is weeks,” he said. “If you got trapped in a crawlspace or something and you had access to water, but had nothing to eat, you could actually survive quite a while. You’d have a good chance of being rescued and nursed back to health.”

Kai’to frowned. “I’m guessing the long answer follows.”

The commissioner smiled. “I suppose it does. The long answer is only a few days. This crew can’t sit back and wait to be rescued. We have to rescue ourselves. We have work to do, and if we’re going to find answers to our problems, we have to be able to think. We can work on an empty stomach for a little while, but the longer we run on empty, the less effective we’ll be. We have to eat.”

“Sir?” she whimpered. “Is there something you’re not telling me? Has the agriculture deck been destroyed? Are we not going to be able to feed ourselves?”

He shook his head. “I’ve heard no such reports. To the best of my knowledge, food production hasn’t been impacted.”

She dropped her welding visor and wiped at her eyes, sniffling. Kai’to was so upset, she couldn’t keep the whine from her voice, “Then why are you—”

“Because this ship was never intended to host a krakun overnight,” he explained. “I’m like you geroo. I can skip a couple meals, but I’m going to need to eat eventually.”

“Uh…” she gasped.

“And I eat a lot,” he said. “If I try eating the food you grow, there’s not going to be enough for everyone.”

Her heart started racing, and at first, she wasn’t certain why. “Commissioner?” Then she froze and took a quick glance back at the doors to the market. Beyond them was the cafeteria. Inside the cafeteria was the walk-in. At the back of the walk-in… “Sir, you’re not saying…”—she gulped—“what I think you’re saying, are you?”

Commissioner Taigen pulled his lips together, chewing on them for a moment. “I truly, truly hope it doesn’t come to that,” he whispered, “but like you, I’m a pragmatist. Events are still unfolding, and nobody yet knows how badly the ship has been damaged nor how long it’s going to take to get everything running again. If worse comes to worst, I might not be the only one who has to face that prospect.”

Kai’to’s ears fell even lower. She’d never been in a real crisis before. Her and the rest of the engineering team had been up against a few deadlines that had cost them all some sleep, and though it felt like a crisis at the time, it wasn’t like anyone was making cannibalistic contingency plans. Was this truly the sort of depravity they’d have to consider along the way?

“But of course, if it did come to that,” he whispered, “it would be far better for me to stoop to that level than for the crew to. With us being different species and all, I’d be less apt to need therapy if that happens. You understand, don’t you?”

“Why are you even telling me this?” she shouted in his face. Immediately, she covered her muzzle with both paws, but he didn’t seem nearly as angry—or even offended—as she would have expected him to be. Kai’to cleared her throat. “I mean,” she said, starting again, “pragmatist or not, is eating dead bodies really the sort of thing you’d consider on the first day of a crisis? It… It seems like the sort of thing that you might have discussed with the captain … privately … and only when it became clear that you couldn’t wait much longer.”

The commissioner’s huge eyes turned down. “I’m sorry about dragging you into this.”

She raised her palms, gesturing desperately at him. She had a hard time even forming the words. “So, why are you?” she finally managed.

“Because honestly,” Taigen sighed, “Captain Ishe is every bit as pragmatic as I am, and when she gets a moment’s break from fighting fires, I’m afraid she’s going to come to a completely different conclusion than I have.”

Her ears lifted. “Meaning?”

The commissioner sighed. “Kai’to, in all likelihood, you’ll never be put in a position where you have to make a decision like this, where you have to intentionally sacrifice ten lives to save a hundred, for example. But the captain and me? That’s part of our job. Even if we don’t have to enact them, we make contingency plans like that all the time.”

“What are you talking about, sir?” she gasped, still not understanding.

“Because when it comes to me—a krakun—the tradeoff isn’t going to be about sacrificing ten lives to save a hundred, Kai’to. It’ll be sacrificing one life to save a thousand.”

The geroo took a frightened step back, furiously shaking her head. “No! She wouldn’t!”

“Do you know Captain Ishe very well?” he asked. His expression revealed nothing.

Kai’to didn’t reply. In truth, she’d only ever had one conversation with the captain. Beyond that, she knew her by reputation alone.

“Well, I do,” said Commissioner Taigen. “I know her very well, indeed.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mF9gmcr9sIR0LdFg1iPdPM-o-UhfFkS1eiqP9jKaseg/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?