Catastrophe 10 (Patreon)

Just a short one while I'm thinking about it.

———

Kai’to stared silently at Commissioner Taigen for the longest while, unsure what to do. This monster wanted to eat the dead crewmen! It was barbaric and disgusting. Perhaps to him, they were just flesh and bone, but to her—to all the geroo still alive aboard the ship—they were people!

At last, the silence was broken by Kai’to’s strand, ringing from her shoulder. On reflex, she glanced at the screen, but it only read, “Unknown”. She gulped. Was it the lio calling her? The commissioner was standing right in front of her! She couldn’t let him find out about them.

So, she used the call as an excuse to exit the uncomfortable conversation. “I guess they got the strand network going once more,” she muttered to no one as she grabbed her welding gear. Her ears hung low. “I’ll just take this call on the way.”

No sooner than the door closed behind her, she ripped the communicator from her shoulder. “Vaagai?” she hissed into it.

“Yes, me,” said the lio on the other end of the call.

“Oh, thank goodness,” sighed the geroo. “Tell me you have good news.”

“Yes, good news,” said Vaagai. There was a long-ish pause while Kai’to waited to hear what the news was. She was about to ask when the lio finally continued. “Yes, well, the news. Spoke with you bring cubs on board before AP7739 arrive the captain I did. We safe keep until ship out of path moved.”

Kai’to squinted while her brain rearranged the words back to a more familiar order. “Your captain said that you can take cubs on board before the comet arrives?”

“No!” insisted Vaagai. “You take cubs. Very specific Captain was. In two days fourteen hours, you come with cubs on board.”

“Me?” gasped the geroo. She looked at the timer module she’d hidden in her strand holder. Two days and fourteen hours from now? That was still six hours ahead of the projected impact—six hours that she could be helping ensure that the ship was repaired in time to move it. “No, I’m an engineer. They’re going to keep me working up until the deadline. I’ll have one of the non-engineers chaperone the cubs, someone we can spare more easily—perhaps one of the parents.”

“Please, Kai’to,” begged the scientist. “Hurry, I know. But speak too fast you do.”

The geroo sighed. She kept forgetting to speak slowly, to use simple sentences. “I will be busy in two days and fourteen hours. Another adult will escort the cubs,” she said, slower this time.

“No,” said the lio once again. “You and cubs or no cubs. Keep on board and hope.”

Kai’to groaned and bared her teeth. She hated how inflexible these aliens were being, but if she wanted the extra safety, they were giving her little choice. Should she do it? Ducking out six hours early could hurt the ship’s chances of being ready on time. But then again, she wasn’t an engineer who had experience working on the trinity. The odds of her absence truly mattering was probably pretty low.

Perhaps she could agree to chaperone the cubs and still set up someone else to do it? Maybe if the lio had already arrived and ready to do the transfer, it would be too late for them to back out. She shook her head. No, they definitely seemed like the stubborn sort. She could easily see Vaagai break off the transfer deal if she didn’t show.

She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right. I will escort the cubs. How many?”

“Sixteen.”

Kai’to missed a step and nearly fell. She dropped the welding gear and cradled the strand against her ear with both paws. “Sixteen? As in ten and six? That’s it?”

“Yes, sixteen and you. Seventeen totals,” said Vaagai.

“Sixteen? That can’t be right, Vaagai!” There were thousands of cubs on board! Sure, they wouldn’t have room to take them all, but there had to be room for more than just sixteen. “You can take more than sixteen! We can fit sixteen in your conference room alone.”

“No, Kai’to. I the calculations ran personally,” she said. “Plenty of food we have Antigua Prominade go to. Sixteen cubs, one adult more, must very ration food tight. Be very…”—Vaagai paused, searching for a geroo word—“hungry on arrive. Not safe bring more.”

Kai’to groaned. Clearly the lio had thought this through more carefully than she had. She had been imagining only the best possible case where they transferred the cubs off, waited for the danger to pass, and then transferred them back on once more.

But the lio were expecting the geroo to fail—or at the very least, were preparing for it. They had enough food to cover them for the next few weeks on their way to the station, but bringing on more mouths to feed meant skipping meals and arriving with just enough buffer that no one suffered any permanent harm from starvation.

It made sense. She was being stupid and Vaagai—just like Commissioner Taigen—was being practical. Kai’to was letting her emotions cloud her reasonable mind.

“Only sixteen, geez. What if I didn’t come? Then could you take eighteen?” she asked. “I probably eat as much as two young cubs.”

“No. You and sixteen or none.” There was a pause and a mumbling like Vaagai was talking to someone else in the room. The words were loud enough to hear but said in the lio language, so they meant nothing to her at all. Then the scientist translated, “Also, schematics ship need. Send please.”

“Yeah, I’ll send you the ship schematics,” sighed Kai’to. “But there’s just gotta be a way to take more than sixteen cubs.”

“Unless more food you bring,” Vaagai said.

Kai’to went cold. Could she pack up palettes of food as a safety precaution? Could she take weeks’ worth of supplies away from the ship in a time of crisis? If the comet didn’t impact the ship, then the food could always be returned.

But still…

She thought about the dead bodies in the walk-in, the food cache that Commissioner Taigen was saving in case he went hungry, and she shuddered.

“I don’t know that I can bring more supplies,” she admitted. Everyone would be busy repairing the ship. Someone would have to identify food that wouldn’t perish and pack it up. Who could do that? “If I can find more, I will.”

“Otherwise seventeen,” said the lio. “You and cubs sixteen.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WhzFr21XOyd6qj7Xz2oTXNIWgNvv4FqWsfXo9qvtHmQ/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?