A19 Gutassi (Patreon)

I've really changed what the captain is like in Executioner's Gambit as well.

———

Tori left Daskatoma without any further demands that she transfer back. She emerged from the airlock to find the liaison standing at attention while Captain Gutassi thumbed through reports on his strand.

The captain glanced her way for only a moment. Then, returning his attention to his strand, he asked her, “Doing all right?”

“Yeah. I just…” she said quietly. She shook her head, not quite certain how to express how she felt. “The commissioner isn’t as bad as I imagined.”

At that, Gutassi grinned. He was an older, heavy-set male whose fur hadn’t begun to grey. His pelt was light brown on his back, dark brown on his head and paws, and a cream color that spread from his belly up to his chin. “No, he’s really not. He terrifies the crew, which is fine by me,” the older male admitted, “but in reality, he’s much easier to work with than most of my officers.”

He lowered his strand for a moment, long enough to give her a fatherly sort of reproach, “Regardless, get your reports in on time in the future. Then, you won’t have to come down here and handle it in person.”

“Okay, thanks,” she said, avoiding his blue eyes. But something was bugging her, nagging at her thoughts. She lowered her ears in frustration. “Hrm…”

“Something else?” Gutassi asked.

“Perhaps,” she admitted, but then glanced toward the liaison who still stood at attention. “Could we… Would you mind discussing it in private?”

The captain nodded. To the liaison, he gestured at the conference room across the hall. “If the commissioner needs me, we’ll be in here.”

“Yes, sir,” snapped the liaison, his eyes never leaving the signal lamp above the airlock.

After closing the door and taking a seat, the captain asked, “So…?”

She fixed the older male with a stare. “Sir, do you want me to catch The Executioner?”

At that, the captain’s eyes bugged slightly out. “What sort of question is that?” he coughed. “Of course, I do. That psycho is murdering my officers! Eventually, he’s going to get the courage up to poison my javea.”

Calmer now, he added, “Please, find him.”

Tori pointed at him and nodded. “You see,” she said, “that’s the sort of reaction I would expect.”

Gutassi looked confused. “And?”

“And that’s not the sort of vibe I was getting from the commissioner—not at all,” she sighed. She pulled out a seat and slowly lowered herself into it, wondering all the while about the commissioner’s peculiar reaction. “He didn’t want to hear about the investigation’s progress. The only thing he wanted to discuss was why my transfer went through when he rejected the request.”

The captain perked an ear. “Why did it?”

She shrugged, mentally prepared for the question this time. “I’ve got no idea—computer glitch, I presume,” she said. “But why would the commissioner have rejected my transfer request in the first place? Wouldn’t he want me to help catch The Executioner?”

Captain Gutassi sat back in his seat and tapped an index finger while he considered. “Well, this ship had to give up two crewmen for you and your mate to transfer aboard. Perhaps, he felt it was a bad trade?”

“Oh, hrm.” She hadn’t considered that. “Who were they? Were they crucial?”

He poked at his strand a moment, pulling up the transfer documents, then took a moment to skim through each. “They don’t appear to have been particularly noteworthy. It seems like a pretty fair trade to me,” he said. “At least, there’s no obvious reason why the commissioner would want to intercede.”

“So, why did he? Why didn’t he want me to transfer aboard? And now that I’m here, why was he pushing me so hard to transfer back?”

“I… You’re right. That is awful strange,” the captain admitted. “Could he be worried that The Executioner was one of the two transferring off?”

She snorted at the thought. “I suppose, but if the killing stopped here and started up back on the Harvest Reaper III,” explained Tori, “then we’ve narrowed the list of suspects from ten thousand down to two. We’d have the case practically solved.”

“True. I suppose it might be an embarrassment that he’d accidentally transferred a killer, but I doubt that sort of thing bothers commissioners.”

“Well, if he’s not worried about transferring the killer, then could it have anything to do with the ship’s real problem?”

That caught Captain Gutassi’s attention. “The real…?” he huffed. “The Executioner is this ship’s real problem!”

“Hardly,” said Tori with a shake of her head. “Everyone is excited over the Boots video. Treating people poorly like Boots does? They love hearing that’s intolerable and that they should fight back.”

With the deepest of scowls, he nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. That video is the source of the problem.”

“No, Captain!” she groaned, putting her paw over his. “The killer and the video are symptoms. The real problem is that people are abusing their power. The crew is sick of it and fighting back.”

Without thinking, she said, “I’ve already heard…”—then, she covered her muzzle, not certain what she was ready to reveal—“rumors that the crew is helping The Executioner.”

He shoved his palms flat on the table, and shot upright, leaning over the investigator. “That’s outrageous!”

“It is,” she agreed, feeling small and vulnerable once more, “and this ship won’t know any peace until the crew feels that they’re being treated fairly.”

He stared at her a long while before the expression on his ears finally softened. “But what does any of that have to do with Daskatoma wanting you to transfer back?”

“That’s what has me so confused.” Tori sighed, resting her face against her palm. “It’s not like you can transfer dissatisfaction from ship to ship.”

The captain’s blue eyes pierced into her, and he spoke without blinking. “Well…” he said quietly, “that’s not precisely true.”

Tori’s ruined ears perked, and she sat up straight in her seat. “No?”

But instead of answering, Gutassi stepped back and stroked his muzzle in thought. “You do realize that the krakun fear almost nothing aboard a gateship, right?”

Tori blinked at the sudden subject change. “Uh, sure?”

Counting items off on his fingers, he said, “Security is armed with batons that could crush a geroo’s skull,”—the imagery sent a frigid chill down Tori’s spine—“but at best, they’d leave a welt on a krakun’s knee. They might need a bandaid if you stabbed one with a kitchen knife, but they’d still crush you to blood before you could try that a second time. They’re not even susceptible to the big orange pills that they poison us with.”

She would never have guessed that! “They’re immune to poison?” she asked.

“That one won’t hurt them, at least,” said the captain. “Legend has it that one of the first geroo captains tried to murder his commissioner by slipping the ship’s entire stock of big orange pills into his drink, but that it only got the krakun stoned. He had to fly back home on autopilot to avoid wrecking his shuttle.”

“Oh, I suppose that makes sense,” she said as realization dawned on her. “The krakun have been subjugating other races a very long while. The company’s had plenty of chances to tweak what we keep aboard so the commissioners stay safe during their visits.”

He winked. “But there is one thing the krakun fear.”

Her mind raced, trying to guess what that might be. “Uh … high voltages?”

The captain chuckled. “No, mutiny!” he said. “If mutineers refused to live under krakun rule any longer, they could sabotage the ship.”

Her caramel eyes opened wide. “And make it self-destruct?”

But Gutassi just yarped. “No, that’s just adventure video nonsense. Gateships don’t have self-destruct mechanisms,” he explained. “But it takes a million different components to keep the trinity running. Sabotage any of them, and the gate, drive, and recycler go down. We’re cut off from Krakuntec.”

Tori stammered, “B-but we keep backups for important stuff, right?”

“Of course, we do,” he reassured her, “but it’s infinitely easier to sabotage a machine than to keep it running. With a few knowledgeable geroo and the determination to see that treachery through, saboteurs could cost the company a ship—and they know it!”

Tori nodded and touched her lips as she thought. “I can see why the commissioners might fear the gate going offline. They wouldn’t want to get stuck a thousand light years from home.”

“Sure, they do, but even if that sabotage happens between inspections, happens while they’re safe in their own beds, the company will still blame the commissioner for a mutiny.”

“But we need the drive to go anywhere,” said Tori. “If the trinity goes down, we’d be left adrift.”

“True, the company would know exactly where we were when we lost contact and where they’d need to go to take the ship back,” he agreed. “But now they have to fly the nearest gateship all the way out here to reclaim their property—hundreds of years of travel time. Can you imagine how angry the company would be if a commissioner’s inaction had knocked out two gateships for centuries? They’d fire that commissioner for sure.”

Oh! Now, that was something Daskatoma would care about. He was, after all, working so hard just to get a job in the first place. Anything that threatened his uncle’s position, threatened them both. Almost to herself, she said, “And with fifty percent unemployment, even the most undesirable job is a lot to lose. It could take hundreds of years for them to find a new one.”

“Sure.”

She looked the captain in the eyes, asking, “But what’s that got to do with denying my transfer? The two who transferred off, Daskatoma doesn’t suspect them of being mutineers, does he?”

“No, probably not,” he said, “but revolt is a very dangerous idea, something that terrifies the company. And ideas are even more contagious than diseases. If the commissioner is worried about a mutiny, he might have secretly quarantined the ship.”

“A secret quarantine?” she gasped. “Is that a thing?”

“It might be,” Gutassi said. “The company wouldn’t tell us if they did, and a quarantine should’ve prevented you from transferring aboard.”

Tori sat back in her seat, imagining what the two who transferred off might have taken with them. Anger? Resolve? Perhaps, copies of the Boots video with plans to share it? “Because revolt could spread to other ships?”

The captain nodded, pausing at the conference room door before he opened it. “Right,” he told her. “And the only thing worse than losing one ship is losing multiple ships.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15p2WuSkl5m97lxC0O6wg5Wc4WHFPsiXPY5w2ew98dyY/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?