New Tenant 1 (Patreon)

@Diego wanted to know what would happen to Kanti and the crew when Commissioner Sarsuk went to prison. Would they starve? Would they leave? Would someone take over?

Let's find out!

———

“Attention, cleaning crew,” an unfamiliar krakun voice announced on every strand simultaneously. Kanti looked to his fellow workers, and they looked back at him. Sarsuk had been missing for a month, and over the last few days, his possessions had been moved out and new furniture had been moved in. But where did that leave them? They couldn’t predict. They had no choice but to wait it out…

And hope.

“Hello, cleaning crew?” the voice said again. “I was told this apartment came with a cleaning crew. Can you hear me?”

Technically, Tish was the village mayor. She took care of all issues that kept the geroo living in harmony, but Kanti was the only one who could leave the apartment and interact with the outside world. He took responsibility for any matter that impacted the crew as a whole. Tish nodded at her mate, so Kanti tapped his strand’s screen and replied, “Um, hello? Can you understand me, sir? Do you speak Geroo?”

“Oh, blast,” the krakun grumbled. “I haven’t the foggiest what all those squeaks and barks mean!”

Back aboard the White Flower II, Commissioner Sarsuk had forbidden the geroo from speaking Krakun. Sarsuk was fluent in Geroo, so speaking to him in their native language had never been a problem. Similarly, he also insisted that the crew learn Krakun so that he could speak his native language and still be understood.

But if the apartment’s new tenant didn’t speak Geroo…

“Um, I know Krakun also,” Kanti said with the hissing, snarling sounds that exemplified the krakun’s tongue, “if it will not offend you for me to speak it.”

“Oh, of course not!” the krakun chortled. “What blasted good is a language if you don’t use it?”

Kanti looked up at his fellows, and they looked back at him. Several shrugged. This particular krakun seemed most unlike their previous owner.

“Would all of you mind putting on your masks or whatever and coming out here?” he asked. “I don’t get many opportunities to speak with anyone face-to-face, so I much prefer it when possible.”

“Uh,” Kanti replied nervously, “all of us?”

“Well, I mean within reason,” the krakun said. “I’m sure you have young and old and some caretakers or whatnot who’d rather stay inside, but for everyone who can spare me a few minutes, I’d appreciate the effort.”

“Of course, sir,” Kanti said, his ears lifting in relief, glad that he wouldn’t have to wrangle young cubs into environment suits. “We’ll be right out!”

The crew suited up and filed out in groups of ten. Tish went with the first group, and Kanti stayed behind to exit with the final group, but eventually all of the crew—save for the cubs and their teacher, Marsa—had gathered around on the apartment’s carpet to meet their new owner.

“Okay, that should be most everyone,” Kanti spoke into his helmet’s radio so he wouldn’t have to shout.

“Ah, very good,” the krakun said. He hobbled over from the couch and then laid down on the floor in front of the crew. Like all krakun, this one towered over them, a behemoth. But unlike the commissioner, this krakun seemed less … malign. His scales were white but cloudy—an indicator of old age for the giant beasts. His eyes were pink, and he squinted hard as he approached the geroo as if he had a difficult time seeing them. And most significantly, he was missing the entirety of his right foreleg—not even a stump emerged from his shoulder. “My name is Veracule. I just rented this apartment.”

The geroo waited in silence.

“I’m certain you must be very curious about me, but first,” he said, “I’d like to hear your story.”

After a protracted silence and many shared looks, Kanti cued his mic. “Our story, sir? We’re just a cleaning crew. We don’t really have—”

“Oh nonsense,” interrupted the krakun. “Everyone has a story of some interest—even if it’s a short one. So, what’s yours?”

Kanti swallowed hard. “Well, um,” he said. “We used to live on a spaceship, but our owner, Commissioner Sarsuk, stole us from work.”

“You shouldn’t say that!” Thea hissed.

“Well, it’s true!” Kanti replied. “You know damn well that the company didn’t give us away.”

“Well,” she huffed, “you still shouldn’t say it.”

“How fascinating!” laughed the old krakun. “Go on.”

“Well, Sarsuk fell in love with this gal,” Kanti explained, “but it was pretty obvious she was grifting him.”

The other geroo nodded, and the krakun moved his face a little closer to Kanti. “You didn’t warn him?”

Kanti yarped a laugh. “No way! He’d never have believed us. It would have just made him mad. He would have killed us.”

“I see.”

“Anyhow, he disappeared about a month ago,” said Kanti. “He’s probably in prison now.”

“Really?” Veracule said, recoiling slightly.

“Well, she sure wasn’t after his money,” Kanti shared. “We figured she was setting him up as a patsy for something. Anyhow, we haven’t seen him in ages, so we’ve been worried about what would happen to us.”

“And you said you don’t really have a story!” the krakun laughed. “Well, my story isn’t nearly as colorful as that, but the highlights are this: I’ve been having problems with my foreleg for centuries, and the doctors finally decided that they couldn’t save it. So, good riddance. I’m glad to be done with dragging it around. And now that it’s gone, I qualify for disability which will be paying our rent.”

Kanti cued his mic. “You couldn’t get a new one cloned? Our previous owner did when he lost—”

“Well, Mr. Sarsuk must have had better insurance than I do,” the krakun interrupted. “They wouldn’t pay for it, and I couldn’t afford it.”

Around him, various crewmembers offered their condolences, so Kanti offered, “I’m very sorry to hear that. We all are.”

“Not important,” the krakun said, waving the thought away with his left claw. “But what is important is that my situation translates into a very different relationship between myself and all of you. So, I wanted to give you all a chance to weigh in, to decide if this was right for you.”

“Uh… A choice of what?” Kanti didn’t like the sound of that. This krakun might be very different than Sarsuk was, but whenever Sarsuk offered someone a “choice”, neither option was a good one.

“Well, first off,” the krakun said, “I’ve always been a bit of a hermit, and losing my foreleg has only made me more so. When I work, I do it remotely. I have everything delivered, and I never leave my apartment if I can help it. So, my cleaning crew will need to work around me instead of waiting for me to leave.”

Veracule paused, then thought to add, “I realize that can mean more risk for you guys. My vision isn’t so great, but I will warn you guys when I’m moving around so you’ll have a chance to get out from under my claws.”

Kanti turned to the rest of his village. They muttered among themselves, but he didn’t get a sense of whether they liked or hated the notion. Eventually, he turned back and cued his mic, “So, does that mean we could come and go as we please? We wouldn’t have to stay cooped up in the barracks every night and all weekend long?”

The krakun smiled. “Absolutely. You wouldn’t have a set schedule. In fact, I would much prefer that you spread out your work. Perhaps, some of you could work in the day, some in the evening, and some at night? That way there would always be someone around, so the apartment wouldn’t feel so lonely.”

Kanti spent a moment imagining that. They could split the crew into smaller shifts, but it would add some complications. Despite the overcrowding they all felt, at least everyone was on the same schedule. They didn’t have to, for example, worry about being quiet because some of the crew had to sleep during the day.

“Your work may be different too,” said Veracule. “I never have any company, for example. I don’t want to live in a sty, but there’s certainly no need to dust, vacuum, and change sheets every single day. You could do all of those a lot less often, and I wouldn’t mind at all.”

Kanti blinked. That could make a huge difference in their lives. Back when Sarsuk was around, it took them eight solid hours each work day to get their assignments done. But if they only had to do most jobs once a week? That would be almost leisurely.

“Mind you, I might not need as much cleaning, but I might need help in other ways: carrying things, maybe calling for help if anything happens to me, other such things,” he said.

Kanti turned about, but most of the crew were nodding. They were all clearly interested in shorter work days and not being cooped up all the time. He turned back to the krakun, but before he could reply, Veracule asked, “That’s most of what I need of you. So, what is it you need of me?”

Kanti squeaked in surprise. “Pardon?”

“Well,” the krakun said, “it doesn’t sound like you got along well with your previous owner, but I don’t want you guys to hate me like you hated this Sarsuk guy. If I have a heart attack, I want to know you’re actually going to call me an ambulance, not just leave me there to die. I don’t want you to fear me or hate me. It’s in our combined best interest to live harmoniously where I like you and you like me.”

Kanti chewed on his lower lip a moment. “Well,” he said, “there were a lot of things about Sarsuk that we didn’t like. Most of all, he neglected us. He never bought us any food.”

“What?” gasped Veracule. “How is that possible? What have you been eating?”

“We steal. We trade with the slaves in other apartments,” Kanti said, being careful not to mention the sourang. “Everything we have is stolen or scavenged. Or we’ve traded for them with something stolen or scavenged. We’re still sleeping on foam padding that we tore out of Sarsuk’s couch. If we waited for the commissioner to get us some, we’d still be sleeping on concrete.”

“Well, I can certainly do better than that,” said the krakun. “I’m not rich, but you guys are very small. I’m sure that I can afford to feed you and supply you with other basic necessities like medicine and tools.”

From the corner of his eye, he could already see Suni wiggling in place. She had been the village doctor for the past fifteen years, but without any equipment or medicine, she’d been nearly helpless, unable to treat even the simplest of problems. If Veracule actually delivered on his promises, this would be a game-changer for her.

“Also,” Kanti said, “we’re badly overcrowded. The barracks is so tiny that we’re basically sleeping in a pile. I know you can’t make the barracks any bigger, but we need … family planning help so that we don’t make matters worse. Our females have nanobots to keep them sterile, but they’ve all been deactivated—”

“Actually, we can make the barracks bigger,” said the white krakun.

Kanti blinked, stunned. Cautiously, he asked, “You can?”

“Of course,” Veracule laughed. “Portable habitats are common. You glue one to the wall, and they seal airtight. Then, your ‘barracks’ as you called it becomes the back room, and the compartments in the habitat become the front rooms. They’re not cheap, but I can afford to buy you several times the space you have now.”

Kanti was so surprised that he nearly fell on his tail. With only a glance over his shoulder, he could see that the rest of the crew was urging him to accept the offer.

“Plus, I think it’s safe to say that I’m a lot more easy-going than your previous owner. I’m not going to murder anyone when I get upset.”

Kanti’s ears were high in a grin. He felt optimistic but only cautiously so. “And the catch?”

Veracule grinned. “Ah yes, the catch. There’s always a catch, isn’t there?”

The krakun sucked in a breath and let it out with a slow sigh. “The catch is that you’re a rather small crew. If you split up shifts so only a quarter of you are out at any one time … well, that’s going to leave you spread very thin. But there are three ways we can fix this.”

The krakun raised a talon. “First, I could sell you off and buy a bigger crew. That’s very disruptive for you, but it would save me having to learn a new language. I could get a big coosa crew, for example. I already understand Coosa.”

Raising a second talon, he said, “Or, I could buy more … uh…”

“Geroo,” Kanti offered.

“Yes, I could buy more geroo. This would be less disruptive, certainly, but it mixes in more unknowns,” Veracule sighed. “I presume all of you guys get along well currently, but what if I mess that up by buying some that mix in poorly?”

Kanti frowned. Another Saquel would be awful! “And the third option?”

The krakun shrugged. “The third option is for you guys to take care of this yourself.” He pointed to the airlock leading to the barracks. “Get busy in there and make the crew bigger. It won’t take long if everyone helps out.”

The insides of Kanti’s ears paled. Back on the White Flower II, the company never insisted that anyone have cubs. Though, they didn’t really have to. They were far more worried about overpopulation than increasing the population.

“Well, uh, uh,” Kanti mumbled into the radio, “several of the crew have taken mates, and they might be interested in having another cub, but you can’t really expect—”

“No?” the krakun interrupted. “What do you think will happen if I sell you back to a breeding colony? I’ve got no idea if their geroo stocks are high or low at the moment. If they have lots, they may just rent you out and you’ll get to stay with your mates—though you may not see your friends again. But what if their stocks are low?”

Kanti swallowed.

“My guess is they’ll give you guys one last chance to get your females pregnant, then ship you off to work some jobs. The gals will be left behind to raise your cubs.”

Kanti looked back at his crew and saw wide eyes through the visors. Those who stood with a mate squeezed them a little closer.

Veracule yawned. “I need a nap,” he said, getting up with a groan. “Talk it over, okay? Let me know which you prefer when I get up.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JSGaJYfzxFB71K9_f0RrtyBDrkkBZNnA0Ict7-kP3N8/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?