Runo'oa Interview (Patreon)

This scene would follow the comedy one.

Subcommander Kimoa

———

Tori hobbled to the mouth of an empty corridor. Officer Sese stood in the middle of the gigantic hallway, ready to turn anyone away that might try to come this direction. The rusty red geroo sighed and took a moment to catch her breath. “That didn’t take long,” she grumbled. “I’ve only just gotten here!”

Sese smiled. “Yeah, the killer’s keeping a tight schedule. Perhaps he’s got somewhere to be?”

“Cute,” said Tori with a weak grin. “What do we know so far?”

“Not much. The vic was Subcommander Kimoa—the most senior ranking victim so far.”

“Oof,” she groaned, “that’s gotta ring some alarm bells.”

“You’d think,” said the big officer. “A gal was delivering some food and spotted him slumped against a wall outside the reactor. Figured he was drunk and called us to see that he made it home.”

Tori checked her strand again, but there was even less information there—little more than confirmation that the killer had struck again and where. “What was Kimoa in charge of?”

Sese pointed to a krakun-sized doorway down the corridor. “The reactor,” she said. “Not letting anyone leave until you’ve had a chance to interview them.”

“Thanks,” said Tori. “I appreciate that.”

# # #

Tori looked about, but there wasn’t much to see. Apart from a table with a built-in display monitor, the room was little more than a metal box with some office chairs. “You said the four of you were in this conference room all morning?”

Runo’oa nodded. “Save for a short bathroom break, yeah,” he said. “We even had lunch delivered so we could maximize our time in here.”

“Why was that?”

He sighed. “Laying low, basically. Subcommander Kimoa was on a tirade, screaming his head off,” the cinnamon geroo explained, “so we were staying out of sight. If I thought we could get away with meeting out in the central market, we would have.”

Tori frowned. She was accustomed to cubs throwing fits, but not high-ranking officers. “Screaming? What about?”

Runo’oa gestured to the monitor in the table. The display showed a huge schematic—the reactor, she presumed—with live numbers showing temperatures, flow rates, and power. He tapped a red number near the edge that read “90%”. He explained, “The subcommander was upset about the reactor’s efficiency.”

Tori’s ruined ears drooped. “Should I be worried?”

He shook his head. “No, not really. The reactor is long overdue for a refit, but it’s still within safety tolerances. There’s plenty of time.”

That perked an ear. “Why is it overdue? What’s the hold-up?”

Runo’oa sighed. “Kimoa is the only one who can schedule the refit, and he hadn’t done it.”

She squinted at him, not certain if he was being serious. “So, Kimoa was angry about the reactor efficiency … which was low because the refit is overdue … which has been held up because he hadn’t scheduled it?” Her words sounded as incredulous as she felt.

“Basically, yeah.” He held up his palms. “And before you ask, no, screaming won’t increase the reactor’s efficiency. It doesn’t make any of us work more efficiently either.”

“He sounds charming,” said Tori as she tapped some notes onto her strand. “Did he have any enemies?”

“Sure, everyone who ever met him.”

She glared at the cinnamon geroo a long while. “Everyone?”

“Well, I never met his mother,” said Runo’oa with sincere ears, “but I can only presume.”

Tori rolled her eyes. “By ‘enemies’, I meant someone who might have wanted to kill him.”

“Oh no, not everyone then,” he said with a shake of his head. “Half, perhaps? Half of all the geroo who’ve met him?”

She stared at the engineer from the corner of her caramel eyes. She asked, “And which half were you in?”

He just smiled. Was he trembling? Was he afraid of being accused, or did he actually have something to hide? Eventually, he shared, “I didn’t poison him.” He sounded sincere.

“I never said he was poisoned.” Tori smiled.

Runo’oa just smirked. “C’mon now, we all know he was.”

“Well, now he’s gone,” said Tori. “Any idea who will take his place? Might that be you?”

He shook his head. “No, they’ll assign an officer. I’m sure the position pays well, but apart from that, I wouldn’t want it.”

Tori tapped some more notes, then took a moment to scroll back through them. “I’m really curious about this scheduling thing,” she said. “You put this refit thing on the schedule, and you reschedule everything that conflicts. What’s the big deal? Do you have any idea why he’d been putting it off?”

That made the engineer laugh. “I don’t know much about Kimoa’s responsibilities,” he said, “but I suspect that scheduling refits were one of the most challenging things he had to do.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

Runo’oa sat back in his seat and studied the investigator for a moment, not turning away from her scarred face. “Have you always been a murder investigator, Tori?”

She shook her head. “No, I used to repair circuit boards, why?”

“Well, imagine you were going to go into a room to fix a circuit board, and I was going to lock the door behind you,” he said, “that I wasn’t going to let you out until the work was done—even if that meant you’d starve to death.”

Her eyes went wide. “What? Why?”

“So, if you can’t fix it,” he said, “you’ll die. What are you going to bring with you?”

Tori set down her strand and leaned on her palms. She demanded, “What sort of question is this?”

“A sincere one,” he said. “You don’t want to fail and die, so what do you bring with you?”

She sat farther back, taking a moment to imagine what he’d described. With a shrug, “Gee, uh, everything, I suppose?”

“Precisely!” said Runo’oa. “Your soldering iron could break, so you better bring three or four. You don’t want to run out of solder, so you bring lots. Wire, schematics, magnifiers, tons of spare parts, training videos, test equipment. Perhaps, cleaning supplies, food. Maybe even a plastic bag to piss in, just in case—”

Tori interrupted, “What’s your point?”

“My point is,” he said, “that’s what it’s like to do a refit on the reactor.”

She sat in silence for a few moments. “You bring a plastic bag to piss in?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” said the cinnamon geroo. “You see, when we take the reactor down, everything stops. There’s not enough power in the batteries to run the trinity, to light the agricultural decks, to cook food, to keep the ship warm. And that power isn’t going to come back until we finish rebuilding the reactor and get it back online.”

She swallowed with a dry throat. “That sounds … scary.”

“I try not to think about it,” he said. Then he leaned closer. “Anyhow, without the reactor, we can do a little light manufacturing—cut sheet metal, drill holes, that sort of stuff. But we don’t have the power we need to do the really heavy stuff. So, if we put everything back together and find out we’re missing a screw, we damn well better have already manufactured a bunch of spares, because we won’t have the juice to make more.”

Tori’s ears opened wide. “Oh! I get it.”

“And it’s not just screws—anything could get damaged and need to be replaced, so before we begin a refit, we have manufacturing build up spares of everything. We don’t start until we’ve got a warehouse loaded up with all the parts we’ll need to build a second reactor.”

She studied his face for a bit. “Do … that many parts go bad in a refit?”

Runo’oa shook his head. “No, it’s really rare that we’ll need any of those parts, but if we do need something, we better have already made it up,” he explained. “It’ll be too late to manufacture it then. The trinity will be offline, so we can’t radio for help. We have to be able to fix it ourselves, or we will die—everyone aboard the ship will die.”

Tori frowned. She didn’t like thinking about that sort of possibility but was glad someone did. A thought occurred to her… “Okay, but if you seldom need any of these parts, then wouldn’t you still have them leftover in the warehouse from the last refit?”

“You’d think so, but no,” he sighed. “Materials are scarce. If we don’t end up using the parts, they’re just going to end up recycling them and making them over the next time we need them.”

She cocked her head. “How horribly inefficient.”

“That’s just how things are,” explained Runo’oa, “but at least this way, we know everything is fresh and new. There’s very little risk that we’ll need something, drag it out of storage, and find out it got rusty and corroded, sitting there too long.”

“I guess…”

“But it’s not just parts! Agriculture needs to harvest enough food to carry us through—”

She waved her paws, stopping him. “Don’t refits take under a day?”

“Typically, sure, but what if everything goes wrong? What if lots of stuff is broken?” he asked. Then, counting off on his fingers, “We’re going to want to make sure that all the kitchens have pantries, refrigerators, and freezers stocked to the top. Every kind of test equipment better be calibrated and ready for use. Every kind of tool we might need better be ready and available. Batteries better be charged, clean water must be topped off, emergency medical supplies, flashlights, you name it… We won’t be able to process any more wastewater, so we best pump out all the holding tanks that the toilets flush into.”

“Ew!” she said.

“Would you rather have to hold it until the refit is done?”

She sat back in her seat. “And Kimoa had to coordinate all of that?”

“No, different officers are in charge of different facilities,” he said, “and the subcommander would have had to work with them to ensure that everyone was ready before we began.”

Tori folded her paws in her lap and studied the cinnamon geroo for a long while. She asked, “So, who do you suppose murdered Subcommander Kimoa?”

“I’ve got no idea, Investigator Tori,” he said. “I just hope that whoever replaces him is ready to get to work. The reactor is running sluggishly, and no one has scheduled a refit yet.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pttlBQfKKbmBivDyfmjB1HWzdimhEw71ET8y0Oac95s/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?