Catastrophe 11 (Patreon)

I've been having a lot of fun with Kai'to's story. I might even have commissioned a drawing of her...

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Vaagai burst into the conference room with a data chip held high. “I got it!”

“Hoorah!” boomed Captain Loophi. Chief Engineer Leap hummed the victory march and clapped her paws in time to the meter. The captain just grinned. “And Vaagai here had just finished telling me that she couldn’t cut it as an operative, that she needed someone else to do it for her!”

The scientist gave everyone a sheepish grin before taking her seat.

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense!” shouted Leap. “Bring up the schematic.”

Vaagai inserted the chip into the console and with a gesture, brought up a hologram of the interiors of the Clay Basin I and highlighted all the corridors and engineering spaces.

Everyone stared in silence as the hologram slowly spun. With a gesture, Leap highlighted an airlock. “Here’s the airlock closest to engineering: 9A. If it’s operational, we want to dock there.”

“Speak with Kai’to,” said the captain. “Tell her we’ll dock there and to meet us with the refugees.”

“Have cubs ready to go,” muttered Vaagai as she typed the text message into her communicator. “Will dock at airlock 9A.”

Lieutenant Kosal stood at attention. “Once the cubs and your traitor are clear—”

Vaagai scowled. “Kai’to is not a traitor! She’s an engineer who’s trying to help.”

“Fine,” grunted the lieutenant, “once the cubs and your patsy are clear, I’ll storm in with my shock troops.”

Loophi held up a paw. “We’re not storming anything,” he said. “Your troops will enter as saviors, ready to help out in their time of need.”

Lieutenant Kosal frowned but spoke defiantly, “My men will be going in armed, sir.”

“Of course, they will. Of course, they will,” said the captain dismissively. “It won’t take much acting. I realize these are fighters, not operatives, but they will go in with their weapons holstered, not aiming at the crew and ordering everyone around them to get down on the deck.”

Kosal sat back down. He looked worried. “I will not expose them to any undue risk.”

Captain Loophi looked back to Vaagai. “Risk assessment?”

“Negligible,” she said, shaking her long, frazzled mane. “The crew are unarmed. They could improvise weapons like kitchen knives in a pinch, but they’re in a time of crisis and are well aware that they’ve raised a distress call. Unless we go in with an aggressive posture, they’ll presume we’ve come to help.”

“Even though we’re armed?” asked the lieutenant.

“Most of the crew are civilians,” said Loophi. “They’re not going to confront armed troops with hostility unless commanded to. And even then … well, they’re still just unarmed civilians.”

“And the officers?”

“More inclined to confrontation, certainly,” said Vaagai, “but only security personnel will be armed. And I get the impression that there are few of them aboard—you’ll outnumber them.”

Lieutenant Kosal took out his tablet, ready to take notes. “Do you know what sort of arms their security officers carry? Will light combat armor be sufficient or should we equip hard-plate armor?”

Vaagai rested her paws on the table. “Kai’to said that their security only carries nightsticks.” Everyone stared at her in disbelief until she shrugged. “Coming aboard was the first time she’d ever seen any sort of firearm.”

The lieutenant sat rigidly for several long moments. Then he spoke as he typed, “Minimal … threat.”

“Not entirely,” said the captain. “Tell him about the commissioner.”

Vaagai nodded and with some gestures brought up a hologram of a krakun floating in space beside the ship. “There may or may not be a krakun aboard. We know the krakun’s shuttle is floating loose and there’s no indication that anyone on it is alive, but that could just mean that the commissioner is trapped aboard the Clay Basin I.”

Kosal frowned, his face deeply lined inside his fire-red mane. “Anti-personnel weaponry isn’t going to stop a krakun—just piss it off.”

“But you do have arms that can pierce a krakun’s hide?” asked the captain.

“Of course, sir,” said Kosal as if the question had been rhetorical, “but then I have to send my troops in wearing pressure suits. Each missed shot will breach the hull. If I send them in unarmored, the crew might very well imagine them as rescuers like you’re hoping, but I assure you that won’t be true if they go in suited and helmeted.”

“A fair point,” said the captain.

“But…” said the chief engineer, rising to her paws, “we don’t really need to kill the krakun, do we?”

Kosal rolled his eyes. “The krakun isn’t going to just let us take control of the trinity,” he grunted, “so, yeah, we kinda do.”

“But look at this,” said Leap. With a gesture, she began dragging the hologram of the krakun through the ship’s schematic. “The krakun is huge.”

“You have no idea,” said Kosal.

“Yes, well, a creature that big can’t just go anywhere. It won’t even fit on most of the decks.” Leap typed on a keypad, highlighting the oversized decks where the krakun could fit and fading out the ones where it couldn’t.

Kosal frowned. “It can still get to all the critical compartments—the reactor, the engines, trinity controls.”

Captain Loophi rubbed his chin. “True, but it’s not much of the ship. Certainly, a lot less than where we can go. Can we … contain it?”

Kosal rose and inspected the schematic carefully, turning it this way and that. “I … think so, Captain,” he said at last. “My men and I will need to study the schematic, but we could plant some proximity-triggered explosives to pen it in.”

“You want to booby trap the corridors?” asked Loophi, sounding alarmed.

“Not technically, no,” said the lieutenant. “A booby trap would be a hidden explosive. I’m thinking we put big flashing lights on them, hang signs on them that say, ‘Bomb. Do not touch!’ in big red geroo glyphs.”

Vaagai groaned and pressed her palms into her eyes. “You can’t blow up the ship. We need it.”

“Don’t get a kink in your tail, sister,” chuckled the lieutenant. “We can tweak the yield to be precisely what we need—powerful enough to disable a krakun without killing it. Such a blast wouldn’t tear up more than a deck or two. So long as we don’t plant one of these charges near the hull, it should be safe enough. We just need to discourage the beast from engaging us or to disable it if it tries.”

“Until a geroo wanders through and sets it off,” grunted Vaagai.

“Nah, we can tweak the sensors so they will ignore the movement of any small creatures,” Kosal assured her. “And I can put a warning beeper on them in case anyone krakun-sized gets close. He won’t set them off unless he thinks we’re bluffing.”

“I don’t like it,” the scientist grumped, crossing her arms.

“I do,” said the captain. “It’s … elegant. Use as little force as we need to. Act like we’re there to help up until the moment we seize control.”

“And how do we keep control once we have it?” asked Leap. “Surely, you don’t plan to leave some marines behind to keep them from bringing the trinity back online early.”

Kosal scratched behind an ear as he studied the diagram. “We’ll set the timer in Trinity Control.” Then, he turned to the scientist. “How long before impact will we need to be clear?”

Vaagai frowned. “Every additional minute will be a little more dangerous, but it’s going to get really hairy in the last hour before impact. We need to be out before then.

The lieutenant mumbled as he thought it through. “Dock at T minus six hours, ten minutes to load refuges, one minute to offload troops, four hours to help out and get situated … that leaves us forty-nine minutes to sabotage the system and an hour to sit back and watch Krakuntec get pummeled by AP7739. Tons of time.”

“So, what’s the plan, Kosal?” asked the captain.

“Plant explosives on this door and this one,” the lieutenant said. “That’ll keep them out.”

Leap shook her head. “What happens when a geroo tries to enter engineering?”

“They’ll die.”

“Sure, but then what?” she asked. “What keeps the next engineer from climbing over the body and gaining access?”

Kosal frowned. “We could put explosives on the timer,” he suggested. “That’ll keep them from messing with it.”

“Absolutely not,” said Vaagai. “If someone sets that off, our timer will be destroyed. The gate has to open just milliseconds before the comet arrives.”

The lieutenant hmmed and hawed. “Well, we just need to buy an hour, just delay them from deactivating our timer long enough for the comet to arrive. There’s poisonous gas, welding the hatches shut…”

He suggested other options, but the captain was intently focused on the map. “All of those things are fine,” he said, “but Kosal, how do you win a knife fight?”

That brought the lieutenant up short. He smiled at the captain with eyes that looked older than his face. “I’ve been in a knife fight or two, Captain. Stab them in a vital organ. You’ll win.”

“Or…” said Loophi, taking a moment to close the door to the conference room, “give them lots of small cuts. How gently could we shoot them?”

“Shoot them?” gasped Vaagai. “Gently?”

“Shoot their ship—in non-vital spots like storage spaces and crew quarters, be careful to avoid knocking out anything that could keep the trinity offline,” explained the captain. “Let some of their air out. It’ll give them more important things to worry about than breaking back into Trinity Control. We could buy an hour easy that way.”

Vaagai gasped in horror, but Kosal kept a straighter face. “That might work, Captain,” he said, “but shooting at an unarmed civilian vessel? Even one owned by the krakun? That’s a war crime, sir.”

Captain Loophi sat back down with a sigh. “Command has already accepted the loss of their ship and her entire crew. Honestly? Any we kill now will just be a mercy. It’ll be less horrible than drifting for weeks, waiting for the reactor to give out.”

Kosal walked to the door but stopped with his paw upon the handle. He looked far older than he had when Vaagai had entered. “I don’t know about this, Captain. It’s … I just don’t know.”

“Well, figure it out quick,” Loophi said, putting his paws behind his head and leaning far back in his chair. “That rendezvous could still happen earlier than we’ve planned. If they get the trinity online before we dock, they won’t wait to move the ship out of the way.”

“And if they do?” asked Vaagai. “If they move the ship out of the way before AP7739 arrives? What then?”

Loophi shrugged. “Then we’ll invite ourselves aboard to celebrate their near brush with death, take control, and move them back into position. One way or another, we’re completing this mission.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ClBg2ggTCJuMxNzCYjlMEkIDd3omgTWtf7fk8otttN0/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?