092: GUILT

by Derin

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“Excellent,” Captain Sands says. “If we’re lucky, we might be able to avoid any further unpleasant business.”

I watch him leave the room. “I think I hate that guy,” I remark.

Celi raises an eyebrow. “I thought you two were friends?”

“What gave you that impression?”

“Um. Everything? Actually, on that note, I… need to talk to you about something. Something to do with Kinoshita’s notes.”

“You found something new?”

“No. Just…” Celi bites kes lip. “I’m sure that you’ve noticed that the captain is making some… rash and unpopular decisions. Now, things will probably calm down once this murder business is dealt with, but I can’t help thinking… what if they don’t?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing! Almost definitely nothing. But I think we need to be… at least as prepared as the original crews were. That’s reasonable, right? To be prepared?”

“Where’s this going?”

Celi sighs. “You’re our psychologist now, right? After… Renn.”

“Sure. Nominally.”

“Well, I’m your replacement as the assistant psychologist. Now, I’m not sure if you recall, but according to Kinoshita’s notes, when she was the psychologist and was pretending that Reimann was becoming paranoid and unfit for command, she and her assistant worked together to authorise some kind of psychology override to limit his powers in the system. Specifically, they stopped him from being able to wake colonists.”

I nod. “They were worried he was going to wake up his smuggled loved one, and when he couldn’t do that he started his war against the computer instead. Are you saying we should be using this override to shut Captain Sands out of things?”

“No. I’m saying that we need to keep in mind that it exists. Sometimes, after tumultuous situations like this, people calm down… sometimes they spiral. We can’t afford a captain who’s going to keep getting worse. If he can’t settle the ship down after finding this murderer, we might need to keep an eye on him, and be ready to stop him from doing further damage.”

I nod again. I’ve been worrying about the same thing. Captain Sands was generally quite composed when he was in control, but he clearly had a paranoid streak that got worse when he lost control of the situation, and he was stubborn as rootrot. If he couldn’t repair the damage he’d done to his relationship with Adin and the others, if he couldn’t build up everyone’s faith in him again and no longer had the crisis of solving a murder to keep everyone focused… what would he do? Would he calm down, or get worse?

I like to think that in that situation, he’d behave reasonably. He’s a reasonable person. But Celi’s right; we need to be prepared for the worst.

“Do you know how to do the override thing?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Great. Show me.”

The override is easy. Way too easy. It’s probably not great to put such power in the hands of two psychologists, but then in a properly trained crew, I guess that’s not supposed to be a problem. But then, it had been a problem with Reimann’s crew. So.

I head back to Habitation Ring 2, using the side of the ship we don’t travel through so often to minimise my chances of running into anybody, to update Lina on Captain Sands’ stupid plan, then get out of there as quickly as possible. Somehow, I don’t think it’s a good idea for word to get back to Captain Sands right now that I’m ‘conspiring’ with the suspects, although part of me wonders if this is somehow part of his plan. I mean, it just doesn’t make sense that he still trusts me at all, right? He had to know that there’s no way I’d go along with his ‘bully the suspects into incriminating Lina whether through truth or deception’ plan; he must know I’m doing this. He has to be antagonising me on purpose too, but… to what end?

I warn her anyway, and wonder if I should take a nap. It’s not even late, but it’s been such an exhausting day. I know I can’t, though. If the Friend is giving Captain Sands enough to incriminate Lina right now, he might push to execute her immediately, and I need to be there to stop him. Through reason, preferably. By force, if need be – if I can’t convince Captain Sands, I only need to convince Assistant Psychologist Celi Tate, a much simpler prospect.

I really hope it doesn’t come to that. Captain Sands isn’t one to take that kind of thing lying down, and if we start declaring him unfit for command and forcibly stripping him of computer access, it can only end in mutiny. I really, really don’t want mutiny.

I head to Network and Engineering Ring 2 (the computer ring nobody’s been murdered in), grab a random computer and flip through random games and books for awhile. I can’t focus, of course. The Friend is telling the captain presumably critical information just ten rings away and I’m not there because it wanted to speak with him alone. Will he tell me the information when they’re finished? Probably not, since I told him I won’t be involved in his stupid interrogation plan. Will it be enough to condemn Lina? I don’t know. At least there should be some kind of a trial; he wouldn’t bother trying to get rock solid information if he didn’t intend to hold one –

I must’ve misclicked something on the computer, because it suddenly starts blaring very loud, very horrible music. I nearly fall out of my chair in surprise. I recognise the music – it’s TechDream nonsense. Shia used to be really into it, so I’ve heard more of it than I ever wanted to when we shared transport. I even recognise the song – The Doctor Is Out by the Heartbreak Screamers. Awful band, worse song.

I look for a way to shut it off, only to realise that it’s not coming from my computer. It seems to just be blasting into the ring, like an alarm. I head to the neighbouring ring. It’s playing there, too.

Sam approaches, hands over their hears. “What the fuck is that racket?” they ask.

“The Heartbreak Screamers.”

“The what?”

“The Heartbreak Screamers!” I yell. “They’re a terrible band!”

“I can hear that! Who’s playing it?”

“How should I know?” I head back to the Network and Engineering Ring and pull up the AI.

Turn off the music.

– Please specify what music you wish to be shut off, Dr Greaves. –

There’s only one fucking song playing. I hate AIs.

Turn off The Doctor Is Out.

– You do not have sufficient permissions to deactivate this alarm. –

Alarm? What the fuck?

What alarm?

– The Doctor Is Out. –

That’s really not a helpful answer. What’s it an alarm for?

– The Doctor Is Out is Alarm X114375-2. It is triggered by receipt of Signal ##E#2575##p9. –

What does that mean??

– I do not have any further information. –

You don’t know what the alarm’s for? Didn’t you set it off? How can you not know?

– This is a manually coded alarm. I was not told the meaning of the signal when it was encoded. –

Oh, great, more Reimann bullshit probably.

Who coded the alarm, and when?

– Alarm X114375-2 was manually encoded by Senior Computer Technician Tal Smithson on Day 12815. –

Okay. Time to ask Tal. I check kes location – Habitation Ring 2, of course, where ke’s still locked up with the other suspects – and notice that our Public Universal Friend is out of bed and apparently also on its way to the Habitation Ring. If it’s walking around on its own, that’s certainly a fantastic sign. And I should go and see Captain Sands. Not necessarily to find out what it said, just because he should know that Tal set the alarm too; then we can go and ask what it’s about. He’s the captain, so it makes sure to get him. That’s just efficiency. If he happens to want to tell me what the Friend said, that’s also great.

Anyway, a quick look tells me that Captain Sands is still in the medbay in Recreation and Medical Ring 2, which is between us and Tal anyway. Sam and I head over.

We’re not the only people with the same idea. We run into Celi and Sunset on the journey, heading for the medbay. Heli is with them, which gives me pause – isn’t she meant to be confined to Recreation and Medical Ring 1? – but it makes sense, with an unknown alarm. If it’s some ship problem, nobody wants to have to go back to rescue a trapped prisoner; might as well bring her and keep an eye on her just in case.

The music shuts off just as we enter the medbay.

“There we go,” Captain Sands says, looking up from the medbay terminal. “Sorry about that, everyone. I must have hit the wrong key or something.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” I say. “But the AI says it’s an alarm.”

“An alarm?” Celi asks. “For what? Are we all going to die horribly?”

I shrug. “No idea. Apparently Tal set it over a year ago. I don’t know what it does.”

“Knowing Tal,” Sunset says, “it could be ‘one of the flaws in the AI that I can’t fix is about to kill us all’, or it could be ‘someone just won the ten thousandth game of solitaire on this ship, congratulations!’”

“Exactly. We should probably find out which.”

“I’ll go and ask kem,” Captain Sands says, heading for the door.

“I’ll come with you,” I say.

“No, Aspen, it’s alright.”

Yeah. I should’ve expected that. I said no to his interrogation scheme so I guess I lose all Captain Backup Privileges. Whatever. I turn to leave.

“I’ll come with you, then,” Celi says, and there’s a strange edge to kes voice.

“No need,” Captain Sands says. “I’ll just nip down; you guys should be getting ready to respond to an emergency if there is one.”

“We’ll all know faster if there’s an emergency if we all go,” Celi insists.

“Good point,” Heli says. “We should all go down.”

“You are banned from contact with the convict crew, Heli, for what should be very obvious reasons,” Captain Sands snaps.

“Everyone except Heli, then,” Celi says.

Captain Sands looks flustered. “It’s fine. I’ll report back – ”

Sunset says something sharp in a language I don’t know. It sounds like a swear. I glance over; she’s at the medbay computer terminal, staring at the screen, shaking. She starts typing rapidly.

I rush over to see what she’s doing.

Unlock all airlocks around Habitation Ring 2.

– You do not have sufficient clearance for that. –

Unlock the fucking airlocks!

– You do not have sufficient clearance for that. –

Restore the atmosphere in Habitation Ring 2 to normal.

– You do not have sufficient clearance for that. –

“The atmosphere?” I ask. “What’s wrong with the atmosphere?” I look at Captain Sands. “What the fuck did you do?!”

“What needed to be done,” he says firmly.

I have the second highest rank on the ship. I take Sunset’s place.

This is the Logistics Officer. Restore the atmosphere in Habitation Ring 2 to normal.

– You do not have sufficient clearance for that. –

“Fix it,” I tell Captain Sands.

“No.”

“What did you even do? Fucking with the atmosphere?”

“He did what?” Sam asks, rushing over to the terminal. They shoulder past me and start typing rapidly. “Oh, shit. He’s depressurising the ring.”

“You’re killing our crewmates?!”

“I’m ridding this crew of murderers!”

“One murderer! And you’re killing – ”

“It was a group effort. I have the Public Universal Friend’s confession; they all worked together. What did you expect from such people?”

I’m half-listening to the conversation, staring at the screen. This doesn’t make any sense. Captain Sands can be paranoid and impulsive and stubborn, but slaughtering half the crew without trial like this just… just doesn’t fit into anything he’s done so far. What’s going on?

I guess I can ask him, once we’ve saved everyone. Decompressing CR1 to eject it took about half an hour; are we on a similar time scale? I know a human can die long, long before a ring is fully depressurised. So in terms of our timeline, that means…?

Doesn’t matter. We’re on a time limit and solving this sooner is better. Celi and I exchange a glance. I take over from Sunset and start typing.

“Captain Sands,” Celi says, “as the psychologists aboard the Courageous, Aspen and I agree that you are mentally unfit for command. We’re removing you from your position as we speak. The computer will designate your replacement, and they will use their captain’s rank to undo this.”

“That’s not going to work,” Captain Sands grins. A manic grin, like a cornered animal.

“Of course it will,” I snap.

“Really? How much luck have captains had undoing Reimann’s work?”

I stop typing. “You password protected the command?”

“Of course I did! This system is ridiculous. It’s unreliable. With someone like Tal on the ship, able to change roles willy-nilly, did you think I’d rely on things like authority levels? I password protect most computer changes. I suppose that won’t work any more, if you’re so set on this mutiny, since there’ll be people of higher rank than me to countermand what I do, but this command was sent by the captain, so if you’re really willing to upend the entire order of this ship to undo it, you’re wasting your time.”

“That’s okay,” I say. “There’s other ways around it.”

“There are?” Celi asks.

“Yep.” I grab the nearest heavy object, a metal arm brace left out from when Celi was cementing Sunset’s broken hand, and step forward. “I’m going to keep breaking his bones until he tells us what the password is.”

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58 thoughts on “092: GUILT”

  2. Holy SHIT, what an update. So many parts are finally reaching a boiling point- I’d started actually expecting Sands to end up recruited into the gang & changing his mind, and yet I find myself 100% unsurprised that Aspen is willing to turn on their captain to save their friends.

    And, well, considering a LOT more of the crew knows about certain criminal histories than Sands expects them to, and none of them seem to have issues with it, I think that perhaps poor Aspen jinxed themselves by saying they didn’t want a mutiny.

    At least it doesn’t seem like it’ll be a very drawn out mutiny, after the bone-breaking gets done? The crew seems to get on with Aspen and the original crew more than they do with Sands, especially with how he’s been acting after the murder, so I don’t see many of them trying to take his side in any schisms.

    All in all, this was one hell of an update! Very glad I subscribed to this story, because it is SO GOOD.

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  3. Holy hell, Aspen. I mean, it’s a fair reaction, but I didn’t think it would come from them of all people.

    Also–FINALLY. Sands is no longer captain! Although god only knows how smoothly that power transfer is going to go. I’m predicting that the captaincy goes right back to Aspen, but also it might not, and when the rest of the crew find out about the psychologists’ override. And then, of course, there’s the problem of, you know, saving half the crew from Sand’s insanity.

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  6. First of all, what the FUCK, Sands.

    Second of all, what the FUCK, Sands.

    Third, the Aspen and Celi tag team was great. The picture in my head of Aspen taking control of the computer as Celi tells Sands that he’s mentally unfit for captaincy like a sentence was delicious.

    Fourth, YEAHHH aspen’s feral era. That’s not very good for the politics of the ship probably but YEAHH ASPENS FERAL ERA I’M HERE FOR IT.

    Fifth, The Doctor is Out seems very on the nose. As in the Friend is out of the Medbay? Lina is out somehow? No clue, especially because it’s set a year ago and I don’t think he’s a seer. But still, absolutely hilarious and I feel like the title has SOMETHING to do with it at least.

    Lastly, what the FUCK, Sands. I thought we were getting some progress but actually it was devolving.

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  7. I was not expecting things to escalate that quickly. But I guess both sides of this conflict are in a rather bridge-burny mood today.

    Unfortunately for Sands, I don’t think he’s going to find anyone on his side in this mutiny. It’s been abundantly established that everyone on this side of the door is friends with at least one of the convicts, so killing them in one fell swoop just pisses off everyone at once.

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  11. GET HIS ASS! Genuinely I don’t think this will end in Aspen breaking bones but also fuck Sands I’m rooting for his bones to be broken. Also WHAT did the friend tell him and why. If it’s acting for the greater good what purpose does causing the captain of the ship a mental breakdown serve?

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  14. It feels like the captaincy is cursed, if you’ve had 2 captains go mad and try kill huge swaths of people. Also, this feels very out of character for Sands, I really, really wasn’t expecting something like this, and Aspen is right, it doesn’t fit with any of his previous behavior. Something’s got to be afoot, maybe he had a mental break, or, and I just came upon this theory as I was typing this, maybe the Friend, during their completely isolated conversation, while the Friend had pretty much fully recovered, dosed Sands with some kind of drug that’s causing this behavior.

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    1. in regards to your first sentence, I assume you’re referring to Sands ejecting the convict crew and Reimann axing people in the network, but there’s been a third large scale loss of life from the captaincy, that being Aspen jettisoning the blocked off chronostasis ring

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    2. It sure does look like the captaincy is cursed, especially this being out of character for Sands. I wonder what could cause it, though. There’s no physical aspect other than the uniform and surely it’s not a cursed pair of pants. Aspen felt on edge in the role too and never wore them anyway. There’s no fixed “Captain’s room.” The only difference between the captain and others should be how their ID chip registers with the system. If there is a captaincy curse, maybe it’s connected to the AI and the synnerve mystery experiment through the ID chip?

      Did Kinoshita seem more paranoid after she became captain? She seemed fine. Was she captain while her crew were alive? Maybe the paranoia only applies if they have crew to be paranoid about? Or maybe she didn’t keep a long enough journal after she became captain for us to know if she was paranoid. I think her last entry was just after her last crew member died, and don’t recall when she became captain.

      About the Friend theory: Hmm, interesting idea! But why would the Friend dose him with something to drive him crazy? Unless this Friend is not a Friend at all. Or not a “good” one –maybe his idea of the greater good is extinction. He was convicted of mass murder and we don’t know the details. But his behavior so far seems consistent with being an ordinary Friend. Maybe the gene edits interact weirdly with Friends?

      I hope it’s not the Friend. Interesting thought.

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  15. OH MY GOD?????? THE WAY MY HEART FUCKING DROPPED WHEN IT SAID HE’S DEPRESSURIZING THE RING……..I WAS REALLY HOPING HE WAS GONNA MAKE A TURN FOR THE BETTER. JESUS CHRIST.

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  17. WHAT THE FUCK SANDS.

    Also YES ASPEN BREAK SOME BONES.

    Typo note: “Sam approaches, hands over their hears.” should be “ears”

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    1. YES!!! Same!! Like Reimann, he has a loved one in storage. Like Riemann he’s a plant to prevent the Antarctica conspiracy

      HE SAID HE WAS GOING TO LOOK AT THE OTHER PARTS OF THE JOURNALS (the parts Renn didn’t think were important, remember?) and his behavior took a sudden, really irrational change.

      Aspen has been scared he’d try to kill off crew This Whole Time and he is now trying to kill off fully half of them

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    2. Oops just saw the 86
      Why would this destroy your theory? I think it reinforces it

      I just realized too that he was SO ready to have Lina executed for suspicious injuries (even knowing she couldn’t have really been fully guilty??)

      Sands is a heckin nasty and I feel SUSPICIOUS of him whether he’s the current murderer or not. He’s trying to be the next one regardless

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    3. ok OR it’s the synthnerves

      Aspen’s got one all the way down to their hand (the one that was cramping and hurting with no injury, remember)

      Then the Friend who was revived first is taken down entirely by some?? Weird full body reaction? Again, no injury.

      What if the synthnerves can be remotely activated and used with or without the knowledge of the person???

      What if the Murder really was Aspen and our Friend, but not if their own will? What if they were piloted remotely?

      Then anybody at a terminal at the time could be the real murderer.

      Heck, what if the AI stays connected to the synthnerves?

      DERIN what have you done to me this is becoming the prime example of “living rent free in my head”

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  21. I don’t know if breaking bones would work, after all Sands doesn’t have to hold out very long.

    A threat to that one particular cryocasket he care about however…

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  25. I wonder what the alarm was for.

    It was set a year ago so can’t be related to the current situation. Captain Sands set a password lock and that was a known danger after they learned about Reimann, so maybe Tal set an alarm on a password lock. I think they revived Sands sometime in the last story-year, but also Tal and the others thought Aspen might go rogue on them, and Aspen might plausibly have asked them to set an alarm for that and I forgot. They did find Aspen at the terminal, presumably setting the lock right before they arrived. So this could be for the password lock.

    But why play “The Doctor Is Out”? That would make more sense if the alarm is related to the doctor Friend somehow. Maybe something related to their vitals?

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  26. I need to sit down. Not the Crew being in dangerous of being space squished again. Fuck. Aspen better think of something fast.
    Also, if the old Crew really did murder those two together, they will have had a very good reason for that.

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      1. maybe they didn’t want to put aspen in an even more difficult position? assuming sands’ account is accurate; he has a knack for twisting people’s words to fit his narrative

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  27. What the fuck is up with this ship I swear to god.
    I mean its a purposely sabotaged vessel dedicated to illegal experimentation and building a slave state but I mean beyond that.

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  28. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK
    OH MY GOODNESS I AM SO HERE FOR ASPEN HITTING KEL WITH A BLUNT INSTRUMENT. BUT WHAT THE FUCK. (positive, compliment, I love this story. Genuinely one of my favourite ever books and it’s not even finished yet)

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  29. On the plus side, I’m now feeling entirely vindicated that Aspen should have never let Keldin take the comand from them. They should have insisted that they were the captain and Sands had ONLY been revived as an engineer. They were wrong to even begin someone who had knowingly got on a slave ship.

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  30. There’s no way Sands would just decide to do this if he was in a proper state of mind. Something’s up with his brain.
    Remember the speculation over whether the synthetic nerves could mess with their behavior? The prisoners had the synthetic nerves disabled while they were disabling the kill switches, and Aspen has the citrus allergy gene that makes them sort of immune to the synthetic nerves, but Sands still had them…
    Could the synthetic nerves be influencing his behavior?
    (Maybe the space zombie scenario isn’t an impossibility :D)
    I don’t know why we wouldn’t have started seeing behavior changes in the other crewmates, though.

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  32. Something about this doesn’t make sense. Not just what Sands is doing, because that definitely doesn’t make sense. But also why he’s doing it.

    Supposedly the doctor PUF confessed to being part of a group effort to commit murder. A conspiracy, if you will. But if that’s the case . . . why didn’t it know about the sedative? Also, Sands knows it’s an unreliable witness, willing to say anything that–in its opinion–will serve the greater good. So why suddenly believe it now?

    Something else is going on here.

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  34. AAAAA WHAT A CHAPTER HOLY SHIT !!! I’ve read most of this in big chunks and havent had to think about update times but now I’m gonna have to pace myself wehhhhhhh.
    There’s just so much to unpack! If Sands knew the Friend was a conspirator why would he let it leave the medbay? And more importantly, why would the Friend tell Sands this, and Sands alone? Very, very suspicious, possibly hinting a much larger plan with a different goal than simply murder? Despite it all I trust the original crew and even if it is true that they orchestrated the murders I trust that there was a very good reason for that.
    I think in all the chaos the AI and the Synnerve Hive Mind has managed to escape much scrutiny. I find it hiiiiighly suspicious that the Friend suddenly became incapacitated right around all this drama, and I’m very interested to know what it was planning to say about the drug before it got cut off by a convenient bout of head pain….
    agghgh theres just so much to comment on I feel like I need to make a red string conspiracy corkboard lmao

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  35. Hm, well. *dumps all my previous theories in a box, sets it on fire, and uses the flames to make some kettle corn* 👀🍿 Guess I’ll just have to wait and see how this goes down, cause I’ve been thoroughly thrown for a loop with this one.

    Also like, I figured Sands was the type to spiral into (even more drastic) abuse of power, honestly, but I figured it would be a much slower descent based on literally everything about the way he’s acted so far. The optimist side of me even though it could have been slow enough for someone to yank him out of it. What the fuck happened, what did he and the doctor PUF discuss. This is so beyond fucked up I’m just trying to think of what he could have possibly been told for him to jump to these conclusions and for it to escalate so quickly. Also yeah that alarm was definitely Tal setting up something related to the doctor PUF but what exactly…

    Anyways! I think violence generally makes things worse, but honestly I sure am looking forward to some good old Aspen sanctioned violence. I’ve been waiting for something to push them this far since we learned they held someone at knifepoint before. Play bitch games win bitch prizes, as they say.

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  36. You know, the captain override was mighty convenient of Celi to mention. Almost as if it was planned. Ke is the only one who’s been around Doctor Friend for most of the murder investigation and the person most of the forensic evidence has gone through. After all, the murder conspiracy could involve literally anyone alibi or not, the only requirement is that at least one person without an alibi (the convicts) has to be involved.

    Now, what the hell did Doctor Friend say to make Sands do something so drastic? Why the custom alarm? Either Tal made a custom alarm for if someone is depressurizing an area with someone in it (in which case “The Doctor is Out” is a reference to how they saved Adin by poking a hole in his space suit) or it’s an alarm for if someone tries to use the kill codes (in which case “The Doctor is Out” could be a reference to who the kill codes were used on).

    We still don’t really know how the kill codes work except that those in the leadership group presumably know how to use them. If Sands knows that the kill codes don’t work, then depressurizing the room the convicts are in makes some sense.

    Is Sands drugged? Did learning the kill codes don’t work freak him out so much he resorted to this?

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  38. Oh gosh, Sands found out that they had their kill switches deactivated, didn’t he? I don’t think it’s been established that he knew that before, but that’s the only reason I can think of that he’d depressurise the ring rather than just use the kill switches (since I think it’s just the convicts in there iirc), so I’m guessing that the Friend either told him or Sands figured it out indirectly

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  39. I literally had to go reread the entire series over this. what the fuck.
    It’s kind of hilarious just HOW MUCH foreshadowing there is towards this — pretty sure Tinera at some point says she’s “lost too many friends to bad team leaders” and “a new captain would be another risk factor” and like. YEAH IT SURE IS.

    Ok but seriously WHAT IS HIS END GOAL ?? Like okay, you kill the convicts you view as disposable & dangerous. sure. but you’ve also pissed off the ENTIRE REST OF THE CREW who definitely did NOT want these people to die. Are you just gonna like, try and bullshit your way into maintaining power? is this some attempt at a noble sacrifice? is he hoping they’ll “realize he was helping all along”??

    This is a baffling and frightening disregard for human life – not only that, but people he’s known and been around! Aspen was – IS – willing to do nearly anything to protect these people, and they’ve known them for what, a year? And they were down to throw out Chronostasis Ring 1 to save Denish long before that mark.
    I think they’re allowed to bust Sands’ kneecaps in as much as they want. At this point it’s just character continuity.

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    1. I think his end goal is that he thought he was going to die.

      Sands thought that a bunch of convicts had just conspired together to murder trusted crewmates, who he trusted because of his biases, which he was willing to believe because of his biases. And he thought they knew that he was onto them. His assumption was that if he ever let them out they’d murder him.

      So he tried to activate the kill switches, on the assumption all of this could be explained later. And then the kill switches didn’t work and he had to go with a slower method and suddenly later is now.

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  42. What if this is another Sands plot a la “bully Adin until someone confesses?” What if he’s trying to guilt or surprise a co-conspirator (or even a blackmailer!) into revealing them/kemselves through their reaction or lack thereof?
    Sands is definitely very charismatic, but he sure doesn’t care about being liked, as evinced by…almost everything he does. He’s practical and he’s ruthless, but he’s also pretty attuned to interpersonal dynamics – he knew about Heli before Aspen and regularly correctly interprets interpersonal dynamics and how people will react to things. Therefore, he must know that a) trust is fundamental to running this spaceship, and b) no one will ever trust him again if he goes through with this. Sands’ entire purpose is getting the colonists – among them his husband – to Hylara safely. He may not care about the convicts as much as the perfect precious innocents on the ship, but he knows that he cannot captain the ship on his own, and that trust is imperative to a functional crew. I think this is an act, and as soon as its over, he will hand the captaincy back to Aspen, because even making this gesture has thoroughly destroyed his crew’s faith in him.
    Also, maybe a bit more meta – for much of this story, Reimann was described as having “gone insane” for no real reason, proceeding to murder colonists and cut off his own arm and generally rampage around the ship meaninglessly. Very recently, we’ve discovered that this is pretty far from the truth. We don’t know enough about the situation to say for sure, but we know that his crew really was conspiring against him. The AI really does seem to be evil and is invading people’s brains. He cut off his arm to prevent the ship from tracking his movements. Probably there’s even more that going on, which might make Reimann’s actions in the end, seem like the reasonable actions of a desperate man that was out of options. Captain Sands is acting so out of character and frightening that most of these comments are also calling him “insane” or suggesting that something is wrong with his brain. I think as with Captain Reimann, and everything else on this ship, we’re about to find out that the real story is quite a bit more complicated.

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  43. here i thought the alarm was because sands went for the killswitch! i guess technically he still could’ve, realized it didn’t work then depressurized the whole thing but i dunno… that timetable seems rough

    everyone’s going feral! i did not expect that level of escalation so quickly. this was always going to come to a head but i’m kinda surprised sands is making his move now… seems way too opportunistic. if so, that leaves a bunch of potential holes which should be good for our intrepid heroes lol.

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  44. Calling it now: It’s a scam. There’s no depressurization happening, this is simply Sands turning up the psychological pressure to see what shakes out.

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  45. Now see, murdering half a dozen people would seem to prove my hypothesis that Sands is a fucking crook right. I just wonder what Dr PUF told him that set it off.

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  48. Yep, that did sound like a Tal alarm! I’m very worried for the Friend! 😦

    oh, out of BED! But this didn’t happen last time. Hmm!

    “a quick look tells me that Captain Sands is still in the medbay in Recreation and Medical Ring 2”
    ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ

    What the FUCK, Sands?!

    I hope the alarm gave the crew enough warning to save themselves somehow 🥺

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  49. holy SHIT I did not expect him to go off the rails that quickly. I mean, I figured it’d happen eventually, but good lord! also, since we’re already playing with lives here, why not grab his husband from chronostasis ring 3 and remind him exactly how it feels to have the life of someone you care about threatened? bonus points if they wake the husband up (because obviously they wouldn’t actually kill him) and he goes “babe what the fuck is wrong with you”

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