Gert/Sarsuk's Head (Patreon)

@Pickles and I were talking and we somehow got onto a conversation between Gert and Sarsuk's head.

Yup. Had to write that.

This isn't canon. It's not even theoretical. It's just silly.

———

Gert peeked in the room and looked around, not even noticing the gigantic krakun head mounted to the wall. He was so accustomed to talking to geroo shorter than him, that he almost never looked up.

When he finally noticed Commissioner Sarsuk, he leapt backwards—right into the doorframe. “Wha! Ow…” he groaned. Then, he opened the door completely and entered, rubbing between his shoulder blades where the door frame had hit him.

“Gert?” whispered the krakun.

Gert looked up at the door frame as he shut the door. “I really like the doors on this planet,” he said. “It’s great not having to duck when you walk in a room.”

He turned and looked at the drab yellow krakun a moment. “Huh. Commissioner Sarsuk. It really is you.”

Sarsuk blinked. “You’re … Ateri’s cub! What in the dead gods’ names are you doing on Liotec?”

“Ateri … wha? No. My father was Danash,” sputtered the big geroo.

To that, Sarsuk chuckled. “Yeah, right. Like anyone believed that.”

Indignant, Gert ground his fists into his hips. “I should ask you that same question! Why are you on Liotec?”

The gigantic head glared at the tiny mammal and ground his teeth. “I got kidnapped… Headnapped… Stolen,” he grumbled. “I have no idea what you’d call it.”

“Wow…” Gert whispered, taking a couple steps back so he could take in the whole sight all at once. “That’s just… Wow.”

“Very eloquent,” sighed Sarsuk, rolling his eyes. “I can’t believe that idiot fa… Captain of yours was grooming you to be his replacement. Now, answer my questions! Why aren’t you aboard the White Flower II and how in blazes did you get here?”

“Huh. Well, it’s complicated,” said Gert. He flopped down in a lab chair and put his heels up on a table. Then, on his fingers, he counted off, “We stole the ship and a terraformer, defeated a bunch of pirates, terraformed a new planet for us, and then I … well, I guess I didn’t feel like I fit in with anyone. So, I … kinda took one of the pirate’s ships and wandered off to see the galaxy.”

In silence, Sarsuk blinked his eyes, then glared at the geroo some more. “Uh huh. Sure. And then you just happened to end up on Liotec and stumbled into a secret government laboratory where they were keeping my head alive?”

“I know!” said Gert, throwing up his paws. “What’s the chances? I was talking to the lio gal who was guarding the gate—gorgeous gal, really! I mean, golden pelt, caramel eyes, so many muscles…”

Sarsuk looked like he might be ill. “Stop, please. I’m begging you,” he sighed. “And then she just let you … waltz in here?”

“Well … no,” admitted Gert. “She said I couldn’t come down to see you, but she was really into my fur patterns. Anyhow, she curled up for a nap after we did it—”

“Did it?”

“Yeah, you know.” Gert’s ears were blushing a furious shade of crimson now, so he kept them laid back against his head. “She rode me so hard that I thought she might snap my pelvis. Anyhow, she took a nap, and I got bored waiting for her to wake up, so I wandered off. I wanted a chance to say, ‘hi’ to you before I left.”

Sarsuk’s lips pinched tightly together, and he wrinkled his nose as if smelling something rancid. “Hi,” he said at last.

Gert sighed. “Sure feels good to sit down. She left me walking funny all the way here.”

The commissioner groaned and let his head hang down until his chin touched the deck. “You’re an absolute ninny, Gert. None of that makes one lick of sense,” he said. “My brain must be hemorrhaging. I must be having a stroke. Go. Find Siki. See if she can get a doctor to treat me before this idiocy costs me my last brain cell.”

When Sarsuk mentioned his keeper’s name, Gert’s ears perked back up. “Siki?” he asked. “Is she … cute?”

“Gert, just stop it,” groaned his former boss’s boss. “Start over from the beginning. When they took the White Flower II away from me … who took it over?”

“Well, no one,” said Gert.

“What? They didn’t assign my fleet to another Commissioner?” gasped the krakun’s head. “No one came in to check on you little vermin to make sure you were doing your jobs?”

“Nah. I don’t think the company really cared.”

Sarsuk looked stricken. “What?”

“Well, not for months and months,” Gert explained. “But I guess six months for you is like a day for us, since you guys live so long, huh?”

The krakun just glared at him.

“Anyhow, eventually, the company assigned your old fleet to Pokokuro.”

“Poko…!” Words failed Sarsuk for a moment, and when they returned, they propelled flecks of spittle across the laboratory, “The daughter… Planetary Acquisitions’ CEO… Thrull’s spoiled brat?”

“Oh yeah,” said Gert, growing solemn. “She’s a piece of work.”

“I bet.”

“Pokokuro insisted on speaking to Captain Ateri immediately after she became Commissioner,” Gert explained, “but of course, Ateri couldn’t make it because he and I were aboard a pirate ship that was cloaked nearby.”

Sarsuk blinked but said nothing.

“Jakari handled the call instead, and Pokokuro was pissed!”

Sarsuk didn’t even blink.

“So, she vowed to execute Ateri.”

A huge grin crept across Sarsuk’s snout. “She did it? She actually did it? What a beast! I guess it’s not like she had to fear the company’s response—”

“Oh no, Pokokuro couldn’t.”

“She … couldn’t?”

Gert shook his head. “We were scanning a planet to see if it was viable for terraforming,” he explained, “so, we tampered with the data to make the planet look viable.”

The former commissioner stared at the tiny mammal for a long while. “Chiauo Gi?” he finally sputtered. “You invoked Chiauo Gi to keep her from executing Ateri? That’s the stupidest plan ever. Eventually, she was going to realize that the planet was a fake and execute every—”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what happened,” Gert agreed. “Except Pokokuro didn’t want to wait for the company to finish terraforming the planet. She used her own money to buy a bunch of geroo that looked … well, they looked somewhat like all of the ship’s officers. They weren’t exactly clones.”

Sarsuk’s eyes opened wider.

“Then, she smuggles them all aboard and starts executing the officers so that these doubles can replace us.”

The krakun slowly licked his lips. His words were softer now, “So, Pokokuro did—”

But Gert was already shaking his head. “Nah, Ateri pulled the greatest bluff of all time,” he said. “He claimed that he had the ship rigged, and that if she didn’t leave, then she’d die with us.”

“That’s … madness,” whispered the commissioner.

“Yeah, I know,” Gert agreed. “I doubt they ever would have put the whole sending-his-mate-to-take-a-call-for-him thing behind them, but there’s just no coming back from something like that. No gift basket is ever going to smooth that over.”

“And then you stole the terraformer?” Sarsuk asked, but Gert was already getting to his paws. The geroo stretched and yawned, looking around the lab. “What?” the krakun asked.

“Uh, just wondering if that cute soldier at the gate was finished with her nap yet.”

Sarsuk tilted his head and stared at the distracted little mammal. “I have no—”

“I wonder if she’d let me take top next time.” Gert grimaced and pressed on his hips. They still ached.

“I don’t—”

“I could ask her nicely.” His ears drooped in a frown, and he looked up at Sarsuk’s eyes. “Do you think that’s too wimpy? She’s… Well, she’s really assertive. She’d probably respect me more if I demanded.”

“Hang on, Gert! How in the dead gods’ names did you guys steal a terraformer?” demanded Sarsuk, more exasperation in his voice. “That’s the single most expensive asset that the company—”

“Nah,” said Gert as he opened the door he’d come in minutes earlier. “I should just ask her. I think she’d respect me a lot more if I was true to myself.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-LkE8vTs2sfu5gzWl0KGqKqyncWKsxsviXfUpvciN3Y/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?