Catastrophe 14 (Patreon)

I know there's still plenty of requests, but after posting the previous Catastrophe scene, I felt motivated to write another—and that muse is a fickle thing, so I hope you guys are in the mood for more!

Also note that in addition to replacing episode 7 with 7 ver 2, please ignore episode 11. That one didn't happen with this new plan and will be removed during the rewrite.

I hope you're all having a great September and thanks again for your continued support!

———

Vaagai was grinning wide when she called to update Kai’to on the repairs they’d completed, but her mood didn’t last long. Good thing she’d decided to make the call from the empty conference room…

“Wait! Wait! Please slow down, Kai’to. You’re talking too fast again,” she begged. “What do you mean, the comet isn’t there?”

She heard the geroo growl in frustration, but there was little she could do about it. Vaagai was skilled in the language, but far from fluent. “I said,” the voice repeated slowly, “I pointed a telescope at AP7739, and it’s not there. Why are you people screwing with us? We’re dealing with a crisis! Why are you trying to make this harder?”

“What do you mean, it’s not there?” the lio gasped. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know!” shouted the alien.

Vaagai didn’t recall standing, but she must have. Now, she was furiously pacing around the small room. She’d given the geroo orbital data she’d received straight from Lieutenant Kosal. Why wouldn’t that be correct? Could Kai’to have positioned the telescope wrong? Or could there have been enough damage to their ship that they didn’t realize it was pointing the wrong direction? Those might be possible, but a feeling in Vaagai’s gut said they were both unlikely. If Kai’to said the comet wasn’t there, then it probably wasn’t there. So, where was it?

“Use one of your own telescopes,” Kai’to said, “find it, and call me back, okay? Maybe this is all just a mistake—like maybe someone typed in the wrong coordinates or something.”

The lio groaned. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Kai’to asked, starting to speak too quickly once more. “You’re a scientist! I’m just a welder. You’d know tons more about telescopes and orbits and shit!”

“Slowly,” Vaagai reminded her. “Yes, I’m a scientist, but I… But this…” Ugh! How could she even explain this? The geroo had lived her entire life aboard a civilian vessel created for surveying planets! Probably even janitors on the Clay Basin I could look through its telescopes. But almost all lio ships were military ships. No one aboard got data of any kind without going through the appropriate channels first.

She was about to ask the geroo to do the search for her when Vaagai’s analytical mind started asking the logical questions which had to follow. If the data was wrong, then why was it wrong? Could someone be trying to frighten the geroo into fixing their Trinity first? She shook her head, unable to conceive of any reason why that would make sense.

But that only left two other scenarios. Either someone had made a genuine mistake—possible but highly unlikely—or something nefarious was afoot. “Hang on a moment, please,” she whispered as she retook her seat.

What if someone was up to something—the captain, the lieutenant, the empire itself … it didn’t really matter who. What would it be? Vaagai’s secret project had been tugging a comet out of orbit with a drone. This could be a huge lifesaver if anyone ever spotted a big one on a collision course with their colonies—or worse yet, their homeworld! But any technology intended for good, could also be perverted for evil.

What if someone was intentionally pulling AP7739 off course to make it hit the geroo ship? After all, that would explain why the comet wasn’t in the correct location. If the orbit she’d been given was the comet’s final target orbit and was still being diverted onto that course, then the rock would be somewhere between the original orbit and the new one.

But why? Why would someone want to kill ten thousand geroo? Apart from being pointlessly evil, it would accomplish nothing. The krakun didn’t really care about their slaves, and losing a survey ship would be a minor inconvenience for them. Besides, why all the bother? The simplest way to destroy a ship—any ship—was to lob a missile at it. Why exploit her secret project to accomplish such a trivial goal?

Unless there was more to this? The Clay Basin I, after all, was a lot more than just home for ten thousand geroo. It was also a gate ship, and a gate ship meant a connection to somewhere else.

Vaagai gasped. Not just anywhere else, but somewhere important: Krakuntec Prime! Lobbing a rock at a gate ship could conceivably mean lobbing a rock at the krakun homeworld, and that was something the empire would love to do!

No, that’s stupid, thought the scientist, for a dozen different reasons! Most significantly of all, they didn’t just want to hit the gate ship with a rock. That would have been relatively simple. They would have to fling one through the gate itself. That was a far harder trick.

The drone she’d designed might be capable of such delicate control—constantly adjusting the course this way and that until it was aimed dead center of the target, but the target itself would be a huge issue. The gate ship would have to be turned correctly so the comet would even hit the right side of the target, so it could slip past the Clay Basin I and zip right into the gate.

Of course, all the debris clouded around AP7739 would end up destroying the ship, but to the empire’s tacticians, that might be a small price to pay for the chance to kill millions—or maybe billions—of krakun!

Then again, the geroo ship was huge. It would need more than a three-point turn to put it into a parking space, as it were. After surveying a system, a ship that big probably spent a week changing directions before heading off on its next assignment. So, they wouldn’t just turn to the proper heading and wait for the comet to hit, they’d need to carefully get turning at just the right speed so the gate would be in the right position when the comet hit.

Again, that could be done, but why would the geroo do it? Did they hate their masters enough for a suicide strike? And even if the empire had found a team of geroo willing to enact such treachery, how would they have planted them aboard a krakun-owned slave ship? The logistics were beyond all imagination!

Unless…

The empire did have two prototypes of Vaagai’s tractor beam! Her team had installed one on the drone, but the other was here on the ship, in case the first one broke down and had to be replaced. The beam was powerful but also flexible in focus. That was the only way she could pull a comet without breaking it apart. If used obliquely on a ship, it could impart a spin without tearing the hull from her frame.

She huffed. But for them to do that, they’d have to move in close beside the Clay Basin I…

Vaagai slapped her forehead. Close in beside the ship like they’d been for days while they enacted repairs!

Shit! She’d been used. Kai’to had been used. Every geroo was being used.

She shook her head. No. It was still far from that simple. Even if everything lined up perfect—the comet, the ship, and gate—they still needed the trinity to come online at the correct moment. They couldn’t just come online as soon as possible. Once online, the geroo would move the ship out of the comet’s way. And if they didn’t, Krakuntec would see the comet headed straight for them through the gate. The big lizards certainly had cameras looking through the gate for that sort of treachery. Krakuntec would simply shut off the sister gate so that nothing could come through.

The lio empire had to be planning to bring the trinity back online mere milliseconds before the comet reached it. That way they wouldn’t give Krakuntec the time it needed to react.

But for that, they’d definitely need someone aboard the Clay Basin I. There was no way to enable the trinity remotely.

Vaagai felt her stomach turn sour. There were plenty of well-armed troops aboard—far more than required for the mission she’d thought she’d been on. When they picked up the cubs to take them to safety, they had to be planning to storm aboard and take control of the trinity, to set a timer that would bring it back online at just the right moment.

And she’d handed it all to them wrapped up in a bow.

“Are you still there?” Kai’to’s voice asked.

“Yeah, I’m still here,” she whispered, trying to keep the dread from her voice. “Something bad might be happening, and I don’t have the access I’d need to prove it. I’m going to need your assistance.”

“Wait, what?” groaned the geroo. “We’re up against a clock here if we want to get out of the way of this comet—if it really exists! I don’t have time—”

“I need you to do this for me,” interrupted the lio. “Thousands of lives are on the line.”

The line went silent so long that Vaagai feared the geroo might have hung up. “What do you need me to do?”

The scientist sagged with relief. “I need you to find me that comet,” she whispered. “Get me the exact coordinates.”

“I don’t know how—”

“Then I need you to find someone who can,” the lio demanded. “This is important!”

With some hesitation, Kai’to whispered, “Yeah, okay.”

“And also, one other thing.”

“More?”

“Yeah, I need to know if the ship is spinning,” she said, “and how fast.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16BZeGYoYYO1Ok9DIFJTw-Wt4iouqj35MGZyo_sGz2y8/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?