093: DESPERATION

by Derin

<<First ………. <Prev ………. [Archive] ………. [Map] ………. Next> ………. Last>>

Captain Sands backs away behind a bed, but I’m faster. He’s almost within reach before Heli shoulder-checks me directly into the metal frame of the bed. Pain blooms in my hip as I drop to the floor, my improvised weapon rolling out of my grip, and before I can get up again, she’s dragged me a safe distance away from him and has me pinned to the floor. Heli’s one and a half times my weight and, judging from the way she’s holding me down, seems to have some kind of combat or wrestling experience; I know before I even try that I’m not going to break her hold. I wriggle anyway.

I can’t see much with my nose pressed to the metal tiles, but there’s the sound of some kind of scuffle above. Then it stops, and Captain Sands says, “If everyone is ready to be reasonable…”

“I still want to try violence, actually,” Sam says. “What the fuck are you doing?!”

“Saving this crew from the people who stabbed two of our number to death. I thought I’d made that clear.”

“Like fuck they did,” I growl at the floor.

“Aspen’s right,” Sunset says. “Tal would never.”

“And neither would Lina,” Celi adds.

“And didn’t we determine that Tinera has to be innocent?” Sam asks.

“In reverse order: no, we determined that Tinera didn’t wield the knife, not that she couldn’t be part of the planning. Two: Lina’s the only one we were already pretty certain was guilty, given her access to drugs and her injuries.”

“Well, yeah,” Celi says, uncertain. “But that could just – ”

“And three – Sunset, do you have any idea what Tal even did to end up here?”

“Ke was some kind of cybercriminal, right?” she frowns.

“Ke got busted stealing from an emergency relief fund for typhoon victims. The Durana Fund.”

“The Durana Fund are a bunch of wealthy hacks with ties to illegal child slavery,” I tell the floor.

“Aspen, every large charity are a bunch of wealthy hacks with ties to illegal child slavery. But when their coffers are emptied, who do you think suffers? It’s not the wealthy hacks. They certainly don’t free any child slaves. Criminals like Tal always like to justify their crimes by pretending they’re stealing from the rich or whatever, but the money taken in such a way is taken from the typhoon victims. I’m sure that Tal thinks ke’s a good person, but kes history clearly shows that ke is incapable of making such a decision. And the others… well. Tal has the excuse of being not particularly smart, outside of kes specialities, and might be more ignorant than evil. The others don’t have that excuse.”

“More ignorant than evil?” Sunset sneers. “You’re the one committing mass murder right now!”

“Do you want to know how many people that Friend killed?” Captain Sands asks. “Or Lina? Of course, we can only guess for Lina, but – ”

“Lina didn’t kill anyone,” I say. “That’s the Friend, and Tinera, and Denish. And I know that for Denish it was an accident. And Tinera says her victim deserved it, and I believe – ”

“She probably thinks that Renn and the dead Friend deserved it, too. What happens when she wakes up one morning and decides that another crewmate deserves it, Aspen?”

“Come off it, we already know she didn’t kill – ”

“We know she didn’t wield the knife. We also know – you yourself have testified, many times – that she’s an excellent project coordinator in a crisis. Did you know that her victim was thirteen years old?”

“He… what?”

“He was thirteen years old. And he was asleep. Tinera broke into his house, cut his throat in his sleep, and was making off with several valuables when his mother entered. She stabbed her twice in the stomach before fleeing. I bet she wishes that she killed her too; she would’ve been a lot harder to identify if she had and might still be free. And she’d already murdered a sleeping child, so – ”

“Whatever Tinera did, Lina wouldn’t,” Celi insists. “Someone tricked her with the drugs, or – ”

“Lina was convicted of organ stealing,” Captain Sands says. “Highly structured organs, such as lungs and hearts and kidneys, are still very difficult and imperfect to grow under laboratory conditions. For those who want something more long-lasting than clumsy cybernetics, the demand for donated organs is rather higher than the supply. There’s a lot of money to be made in butchering the dead.”

Wow, okay, that’s… super gross, but… “But the dead don’t need them,” I point out. “If she was saving lives – ”

From my current position, I can’t see him, but I can feel Captain Sands’ pitying look. “Aspen,” he says. “Where do you think an oncologist gets their supply of organs from?”

“Cancer can have an unfortunately high death ra – ”

“Cancer that is likely to kill is usually treated with radiation or chemotherapy. Do you know what chemotherapy does to a heart? To a kidney? Not much at first, granted, but with how long we can keep a patient alive these days, how far we can go to save them… if a patient dies of cancer, after all efforts have been made to save them, those organs are long ruined. There’s only one way for an oncologist to get a steady supply of healthy organs from their patients. While Lina was never actually convicted of murder, the trial notes do mention that a suspicious number of her younger, healthier patients died suspiciously early in their therapy.”

“She wouldn’t,” Celi protests.

“She did, though. And there’s nobody in that ring that somebody here doesn’t insist is innocent, and you can’t all be right. Is it really so surprising that none of you were right?”

I don’t have time to dwell on these revelations about my friends’ past crimes right now. I need to figure out what the fuck Captain Sands is doing, why he turned away from his plan to get enough evidence to reasonably convict Lina even if it had to be fabricated, to this mass slaughter with no trial and no evidence. What could the Friend possibly have told him that would prompt this? It couldn’t have been an actual confession; the Friend hadn’t known about the drugs and had to be innocent. It couldn’t have been real, solid evidence, or he’d insist on a trial. What had it said that would make him do this? What’s going on?

I need to get up. I stop listening to the conversation and focus on Heli pinning me to the floor. “Why are you helping him?” I ask.

“Why am I stopping someone from assaulting my captain? You need to ask?”

“Don’t pretend that you, of all people, have morals,” I growl. “If he’s treating them like this, what do you think he’s going to do to you, when he has the time and space to deal with you?”

“I think that Captain Sands is preventing a mutiny of criminals, and that when he puts his proper crew together, he’s going to care a lot more about who’s shown actual loyalty to him than some random dalliance with a dead convict. You heard him; he locked the atmosphere thing behind a password. The others are already dead. Maybe you should be planning more for your future instead of making yourself look like a traitor and a security risk.”

“Oh. Wow. You might literally be the most pathetic excuse for a person I’ve ever – argh!” I gasp as my arm is bent viciously at a painful angle. Everyone looks over, but is immediately distracted by a loud, beeping alarm.

“Oh, what is it now?!” Captain Sands exclaims.

“That’s a vitals alarm,” Celi says. “Somebody’s vitals have just dropped to zero.” There’s typing at the terminal. “It’s Adin,” Celi says quietly.

“Huh,” Captain Sands says. “I would’ve expected Denish to go first, being so much bigger and everything. But I’m no doctor. Can you shut off the beeping?”

“Can you shut off the depressurisation?!” Sunset’s voice is pleading. “Please, we can work this out, just stop!”

“Fuck this,” Sam growls, and moves. Heli is fast, rising up off me and grabbing Sam in one fluid motion. My muscles scream in protest as I force myself to my feet. This whole thing feels like a dream, a nightmare. It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.

The alarm goes off again. Through audible sobs, Celi says, “It’s Tal,” and with a feral scream of rage, Sunset launches herself at Captain Sands, who raises a large knife to defend himself. I grab Sands’ knife arm while Sunset’s fragile nails claw at Captain Sands’ face. Those pre-Neocambrian nails must be stronger than they look, because there are visible bloody tracks on the captain’s face as Heli throws her to the ground and Captain Sands, whose sex work and engineering past apparently contained self defence training for some reason, drops the knife, neatly disengages my grip and kicks me into the side of another bed.

“Adin and Tinera are dead,” Celi announces quietly, barely audible over the alarms. Ke shuts them off quickly.

“Don’t just sit there at the computer!” Sunset shrieks as Heli restrains her. “Stop him!”

“How?!”

I sink to the floor as the alarm beeps again, Celi shuts it off, and it starts up immediately for the sixth and final time. I glare up through my tears. “Hey, Captain,” I spit.

“Yes, Aspen?”

“May the seeds you tend grow to shelter you.”

“Oh, they will. Today, we build a strong crew that isn’t full of murderers. One that will let us do our actual job of getting these colonists safely to their new home. Or did you forget about those?”

“Do you think there’s any coming back from this?” Sunset’s voice is hysterical. “You’re not building anything! Do you think any of us are ever going to trust you again? The only one on your side is the fucking rapist! Or are you going to kill us, too?”

“What? No! None of you have stabbed any of your coworkers.”

“If you expect us to fall in line and follow your orders, you are very sorely mistaken,” Celi says.

“I’m aware of that. I understand that it might be beyond your perspective to look past this. If you feel you can’t serve on this crew in the future, I’m willing to dismiss you from duty. You can spend the rest of the trip off-duty and rest until we reach Hylara if you so wish; it’s probably for the best, in fact. We’ll fill in the roles of anyone who doesn’t wish to serve with new – ”

“You won’t get the chance,” Celi growls. “Aspen, the psychological override.”

“Heli, stop them.”

I head for the computer, wary of Heli, but she doesn’t go for me or for Celi. She just smashes the computer screen with the dropped arm brace.

“Thank you,” Captain Sands says. “Keep them in here while I strip our protesters’ ranks in the system. I trust you’re willing to serve as my second in command?”

“Yes, captain.”

“Excellent.”

“He’s leading you on,” I tell Heli. “He’s going to arrest you for your crimes as soon as he has the manpower to do it. He’s playing with you right now because you’re all he’s got, but there’s no way he’ll ever forgive or trust – ”

“Shut up,” she growls.

I exchange a glance with Celi, Sam and Sunset. Heli’s the strongest among us, but she can’t take on all four of us. If someone keeps her busy while someone else goes for the captain…

But then I realise that Sam is cradling a broken arm, and Sunset is blinking hard, dazed, while blood runs down the side of her head. Celi leans on the edge of the terminal desk, carefully keeping one foot off the ground. And Heli holds the arm brace like a weapon.

And then I hear one of the doors leading into the ring open, and I give up trying to understand anything.

Captain Sands, frowning, heads out of the medbay to take a look. He walks out of sight. Stops walking. Swears.

And then he’s suddenly back in sight, as he goes sailing through the air, landing neatly on a hospital bed.

Denish strides into the already crowded room and grabs Heli’s wrist in one large hand, squeezing until she drops the brace. Blood soaks a clumsily wrapped bandage on his right arm, and a broad grin lights up his face. “Hello everybody! Did I miss anything? Do not move, please.”

Sunset squints up at him. “You’re dead,” she says.

“Really?” Denish pokes himself. “I do not feel dead.”

“Nobody’s dead,” Lina says, coming into view next to Denish. “Not yet, anyway. Don’t insult our medical skills.” In her left hand, she holds some kind of power tool. I’m not sure what it is, but she wields it like a gun.

Tinera appears on Denish’s other side. She’s also holding a mysterious power tool like a gun in her left hand, and has it trained directly on the captain, as he groans and goes to pick himself up off the bed.

“This is a mutiny,” she announces, “for anyone stupid enough not to have already guessed. And contrary to popular belief, I don’t like hurting people and don’t want to hurt any of you. But if you don’t all lie face down on the ground and stay still right now, I absolutely will.”

I lie down and stay still. I still don’t really understand what’s going on, but for once, I’m fine with this turn of events.

At least, I’m fine with it until I hear someone walk up to me and stop just out of sight, and I feel the needle sink into my neck.

<<First ………. <Prev ………. [Archive] ………. [Map] ………. Next> ………. Last>>

76 thoughts on “093: DESPERATION”

  2. Tal mustve just ripped the system apart again, or maybe ke finally worked out how to slip around the passwords (or enlisted Amy’s help???)

    however ke did it, reading as my favourite characters drop like flies had me feeling 😦

    MY HEART IS NOT ALRIGHT.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  4. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I KNEW IT HAD TO BE PLANNED (I say while sweating with relief). god what slimy pieces of shit Heli and Sands are. I’m very curious how much of his backstory he lied about, I wonder how deep the rabbithole goes or if he just did some self defense training one time……..
    I’m also really interested to learn more from Lina and Tinera on their pasts, I dont think it will come straight away but this tease at it is so intriguing my brain is bending itself backwards trying to think of possible motives for both of them. MVP DENISH FOR THIS CHAPTER WHAT A KING

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  7. Hey, I just noticed we didn’t get an alarm when Renn and the other Friend died. Shouldn’t that have happened the instant the murderer killed them? They’re definitely dead though, and have been autopsied, too. Was the “crewmate is dead” alarm added just after the murders or did the murderer disable the alarm for the intended victims?

    Also, I hope the convicts don’t now believe that all the non-convicts are their enemies. There’s enough conflict on this ship already.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

      1. I meant the “vitals have just ceased” alarms that sounded when the convicts “suffocated”, not the alarm song when Sand locked the air locks and started to pump the air out of habitat ring 2. Those should have gone off for the murder victims, unless they were only activated after the murders. Maybe they were, to leave the murderer less of a chance next time, if there is a next time.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I’d assumed it was one of several that Tal set up a year ago and basically forgot about. So Renn and the Friend might not have had that alarm set up.

        Liked by 1 person

  9. And another thing!

    >“She probably thinks that Renn and the dead Friend deserved it, too. What happens when she wakes up one morning and decides that another crewmate deserves it, Aspen?”

    As opposed to Keldin Sands deciding that an entire group of people deserves death on the mere suspicion that one or several of them murdered two crewmates ?!? Like, is that any better?
    I do feel sorry for Tineras and Linas victims, though. Assuming they actually committed the crimes they were convicted for. I’ve got a strong suspicion the courts suck just as much as the prison systems they supply.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  10. Ah. I am both thrilled and deeply concerned about this turn of events. On one hand, nobody’s dead (yet)! On the other hand, I have a bad feeling Aspen could be waking up to at least two corpses and a missing chunk of bone, which… would not be great. Hopefully the convict crew has enough loyalty from when Aspen was their captain to at least hold off on removing his computer chip. It’s not like Tal couldn’t probably lock people out of the system without needing to remove their chips anyways. (I have VERY low hopes on them not resorting to severe and irreversible violence though, they just nearly got murdered.)

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Yes, getting nearly murdered would ruin anyones day. Coupled with Sands’ open contempt and distrust of them, there’ll be no coming back into their good graces for a long time for him, if ever. No matter how sure he is that Adin is a good person who will always have you back if you say “sorry” in the right way.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  11. GET THEIR ASSES DENISH AND TINERA AND LINA AND JUST !!! GET THEIR ASSES!!! and yeah it tracks that they’d sedate aspen too, gotta cover all your bases yknow

    Like

    Reply

  13. Okay, so I understand that Denish would have the expertise to break out considering he was a pirate and breaking through an airlock is his specialty. But how much of this was planned?

    Doctor Friend gave another false confession incriminating everyone, likely banking on Sands trying to kill everyone and then the convicts breaking out while the rest of the crew were mutinying against Sands.

    But did Doctor Friend have an opportunity to communicate with the other convicts about the plan? Or did it bank on Denish’s ability to break out without communicating any plan?

    The alarm “the Doctor is Out” was made a year ago. The timeline’s a little fuzzy, so maybe that was after Sands became captain. In that case, then this probably was already planned in case Sands tried to kill everyone and they correctly guessed how he would do it.

    But then who killed Renn and Friend? One of the convicts? Was it a murder suicide? The motive for everyone is super weak. Was this a catalyst to get Sands to try to kill everyone so they could mutiny? I don’t think so.

    Hopefully with Heli and Sands in time out and Aspen as captain some actual progress will be made in the murder investigation.

    And damn Sands, your favorite book author was totally willing to kill you. How does that make you feel?

    It’s interesting how Adin’s vitals went down first. He has the DIVR-32 gene which lets him better cope with changes in pressure, so if anything he should go down last. Guessing that was a hint that something was up.

    But why the syringe at the end? What is happening? What is Aspen going to wake up to? Looking at the chapter titles, the only one that has me concerned is lobotomy, but that’s not the next one. It is soon though.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Also, something I was thinking the entire time everyone was yelling. “You know Sands, you and the new crew + Aspen could’ve had a long and calm discussion about the merits of using the death penalty without trial. Unfortunately, we can’t do that people are dying!”

      (Just now thought this. I bet the reason that Sands wasn’t doing much about Hedi was because he knew that if he killed the entire old crew, Hedi would be the only one still on his side. One loyal crewmember is better than none.)

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

      2. Enai: I think it’s supposed to be for Aspen. It’s specifically a song by a band their sister liked, so I think it is specifically a signal possibly for or somehow related to them.

        Like

      3. @Enai my feel was that “the doctor is out” as the title of the song has the meaning that communicates “welp time to pack it up and start being uncivilized because civilization just went out of the window” or something like that.

        Liked by 3 people

    3. Assuming the convicts did in fact do the murder (which I’m not convinced of. My money’s on Captain and Heli did it), why kill the Friend? Why not Heli? Heli is for sure a sexual predator whom at least Tinera hates enough to actually attack her, Adin hates her for coercing and raping him and the others probably hate her for that, too. The Friend is obviously okay with lobotomy-type brain surgery if the patient acually wants it. That’s not a reason to murder it, or else it would be a reason to murder the doctor Friend, too.

      Renn, I can see. He did or said something to Adin that had him angry days later, and Adin seems a rather chill person otherwise. It takes a lot to provoke him.
      Then again, why would Sands want to kill him? Or Heli?

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    4. Re: Sands’ favorite book author- Sands is a spy. He’s professional liar, and a highly proficient manipulator. There’s every possibility that he was just schmoozing to get on Aspen’s good side when he said he liked their books.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

    5. I suspect the alarm was created before aspen knew about the killswitches, back when the crew thought they might have to do some impromptu surgery to keep their captain from killing them. I wouldn’t be surprised if the needle was anesthesia for more chip-removal surgeries

      Like

      Reply

  16. MUTINY MUTINY MUTINY MUTINY FUCK YES SIR !!!!!!!! This whole chapter definitely made ME feel like I was being slammed around a room and horribly disoriented!

    It also made me feel a burning rage for Sands beyond anything previously, which is saying a lot considering last chapter! No way to undeniably confirm you’re a fascist quite as fast as indiscriminately trying to kill a group of people due to one common trait. Anyways I hope that needle doesn’t do anything too bad.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  17. So presumably Tal’s alarm was sufficient to allow (some of) the crew to escape the trap. Then Tal must have still have had access to the computer to fake the vital-sign alarms. (But something’s off about that anyway. As others have pointed out, why didn’t such alarms sound for Renn and the other PUF? Maybe they only sound in the med bay? Is that even where they are right now; I’ve lost track?)

    But anyway. That means at least four of the six are alive and well. As Lina says, the other two aren’t necessarily dead, but may not be well (which she also kind of implied).

    Sedating the “senior” (for lack of a better term) crew also makes sense. Then they can restrain them and wake them up one at a time, and decide what to do next from there. Hopefully starting with Aspen.

    Though I have to wonder. We’re (okay, I’m) assuming Tal still has access to a computer terminal. Did Hab2 even actually depressurize, or did Tal manage to override and fake that too?

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. My guess is, the captain’s passwords were overridden back before he’d set them, and back before he was captain too. Way way back when the crew was wary of Aspen, Tal probably coded himself non-overridable admin rights, and there was probably an automatic block on the Habitation Ring 2 depressurization, too, with false feedback just for the captain – whoever that is at the moment they need it.

      This crew was fully 100% ready for self defense since before they broke their kill switches.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. It actually doesn’t, though. There’s nobody here to give any pilfered organs to and money means nothing, so why would she do anything of the sort?

        Or maybe Sands is just overly paranoid to the point of disengaging his logical faculties.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Oh for sure there was no reason Lina was every going to do anything during Celi’s surgery. But it’s pleasing to learn that Sands had a logic beyond plot device and/or invasive paranoia. I hadn’t considered that a loose end until now but it’s been tidied away beautifully.

        Liked by 2 people

      3. You know, for an engineer Sands isn’t too big on logic. A lot of his actions seem to follow what (I think) his first impulse or intuition is, and he doesn’t re-assess.
        Consider the surgery: he strusts the court system, so he believes Lina stole several people’s organs. It’s reasonable to worry she might do it again. Except it isn’t, because there’s nobody who could use the stolen organs and they’re not exactly shelf-stable to store for later! Yet, that doesn’t occur to him.

        His treatment of the convicts: of course he’s mistrustful of them, they’re Bad People. So he makes them work more because they need to Be Punished and moves everybody else to the other habitat ring to Keep Them Safe. Except all these actions are actively harmful because they divide the crew and undermine trust instead of building it. And Aspen told him so, as well as Renn (is that the motive to murder Renn? Insufficiently deferential?). But again, Sands does not examine his first impulse and doubles down.

        Liked by 3 people

      4. Doesn’t look like I can reply to a nested comment, so this is actually for Enai’s “For an egineer Sands isn’t too big on logic.”

        We already know one person who didn’t have experiencd in the job they were said to have…..

        Liked by 1 person

  23. Oh thank goodness. Mutiny against Sands could not come soon enough for me. Whatever anyone did, they don’t deserve to me massacred by a fascist with a god complex. Even Tinera (although that revalation is horrifying.)

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  24. I also don’t know if anyone’s asked yet how old Tinera was when she stabbed that kid. Like if she was also around 13 that’s still horrifying, but in a very different way to an adult stabbing a child.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

    2. I’m still not convinced Tinera actually did what she was convicted of. A for-profit prison system means the state has a vested interest in having a steady supply of prisoners to exploit, doubly so if there’s a large death rate. Actual guilt is not necessary. If you want to feel very enraged or depressed, google “central park five” or “innocence project”. That’s both from the USA, obviously, but I think Derin has modeled the Texan prison system after them, so they’re probably close enough and Luna doesn’t look any better (oxygen rations! W!T!F!).

      Same goes for Lina: did she, personally, get all the money for the organs she pilfered? You can’t have a one woman illegal organ trading operation. Who matched the unlucky donors to the recipients? Took the organs to them and implanted them? Did her superiors order her to do what she did? They must’ve known the death rates were off, statistics is a really powerful tool and hospitals use a ton of them for their metrics.

      Liked by 4 people

      Reply

    3. Also, considering Tinera’s angry insistence taht ‘he deserved it’ and the kind of things we KNOW drive Tinera to violent rage…

      It’s not impossible that he hurt a friend of hers and she decided to have her revenge, and the mom just got in the way. Obviously still fucked up but a different kind of fucked up than random robbery violence.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    2. It is easier to get forgiveness from Aspen, who continually blames themself for every mistake as though it were a moral failure, for sedating them once the mutineers have sorted everything out than to make a mistake now and let a possibly complicit Aspen remain conscious and free.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  30. Thank god for mutiny! Everything’s gonna be alright now, right? …Right?
    I sure hope we get some answers in the next chapter, though I’ve lost track of what all the questions were

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  31. Wait—why did Sands try to use this method of killing them? Wasn’t he still under the impression that they had working kill switches, or did I miss something? This seems like a rather slow and unpredictable method of execution.

    Like

    Reply

    1. Maybe he tried and got an error message. The kill switches are broken, so the computer would say something like “error 404 – device not found”. And then he decided that the Dangerous Criminals had Become Ungovernable and he thought he needed to Protect His Crew from them. How to do that? Probably nobody else is down with mass murder, not even Aspen the hypocrite, so best to make it a fait accompli. Locking the airlocks and taking away the atmosphere will accomplish that quickly and halfway cleanly, he can deal with everyone’s objections later.

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

    2. Did Sands necessarily know how to activate the switches? Was he in possession of the necessary device(s) to do so? I forget how exactly the switches work, but I was under the impression that they were exclusively intended for use in the colony by highest-echelon leader-rank people, and that the prisoners weren’t meant to be awakened during the voyage at all. Given that, it makes sense that some of {Sands didn’t have the rank or knowledge to activate the switches, the activation equipment was stored or otherwise unavailable during the voyage} may be true.

      As Enai points out adjacently, he also could have tried and failed due to implant deactivation.

      Like

      Reply

  33. This is interesting because, TBH, I do feel like “a little too willing to extend copious amounts of goodwill” is actually an Aspen character flaw, and pressing a little more for details about some of the convicts’ criminal backgrounds might have actually equipped them to argue against Sands better than they have so far. This flaw also showed up with Sands himself: he threw up a lot of red flags so far that Aspen kind of argued themselves out of taking seriously. Things did not HAVE to get this bad. Also if some of these backgrounds are actually as described, whew, they are pretty bad. OTOH, the original crew has demonstrated a lot of really great characteristics over ~90 chapters of story and there are clearly some mitigating factors going on, and nothing really justified Sands ejecting the WHOLE DAMN RING. In my heart of hearts I wish Sands was bluffing with that gambit and was going to prove better than he’s seemed so far… we’ll see…

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  34. This seems so wildly out of character for Sands. He’s stubborn and he’s bigoted, but he’s never acted before without talking to Aspen, and often without making some kind of concession to Aspen. Hell, he picked Aspen as his second-in-command and continued to trust him even when Aspen’s priorities, values, and ideas ran directly counter to his. There has to be something else going on besides Sands just now deciding that it makes more sense to kill the entire old crew than continue to investigate or try to hold a trial.
    As for the mutiny – I’m sure that’s been in the works a good long time. I’m also interested to see how Tinera and Heli are managed going forward. Aspen got to know all of the convicts before realizing they were criminals, and when he found out that they were, decided that their crimes must’ve been not as bad as they seem on paper. There’s some truth to that gray area, but I am honestly sort of hoping to see how this story handles someone who is a good person that did a genuinely awful thing that can’t really be entirely saved by extenuating circumstances – Tinera, I’m looking at you. If the murdering-a-thirteen-year-old in his sleep was to be entirely explained away by circumstances, I would be kind of disappointed, because the reality is that good likeable people do things sometimes that are awful and wrong and difficult to understand.
    The converse of that is that sometimes people are awful and wrong and do horrible things to others – Heli Graf. I’m interested to see how everyone handles a crewmate who has committed a crime, and perpetrated harm against another, but still doesn’t deserve to be stripped of her rights and abused by the system.
    Finally and on a less serious note – I hope Aspen is able to mend his relationship/still have a relationship with his old crew 😦 He’s certainly not always perfect but it’s just going to be depressing if this takes a turn of him always trying his best and it ending in no one trusting or liking him. Idk maybe I’m weak for that.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  38. Soooo… Who’s really the murderer after all? It’s just that the captain is suddenly very fast to protect himself with a knife… 👀

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  39. *AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-*

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  42. Dr Friend, if I’m right and you basically set this plan in motion back when everyone was still suspicious of Aspen, you are a genius. And if it was Tinera, Tiny you’re a genius.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  43. D: I hope we’re going to find out that Tal cleverly hacked something to make it only seem like everyone’s dying 😦

    Woo hoo! Here comes the cavalry!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  45. and now we find out they may not know how to disable the kill switches but they sure can install them and that was exactly the plan for if ever someone tried to use them – and Sands just did, which is what freaked him out so much :3

    okay yes I’m baselessly theorising but what are the comments for if not shouting into the void/Derin’s inbox at 4:43 in the morning?

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment