Varok Discipline-Broken

Varok Discipline-Broken is the kind of passenger who makes you remember that "cargo" can have a jawline.

He's Crodoc — seven feet if he's a inch, bronze skin gone wind-burned on the march, square mandible and canines that show even when he's being polite, which is most of the time. He wears remand grey without the command beads that used to sit at his throat, and he holds himself like a man who hasn't accepted that they're gone. Shock-line captain, demoted and sealed for delivery to Druvkhar Post: the empire's border march where officers face internal military justice, not a foreign war court. He'll tell you that twice if you let him. He needs you to know this isn't a POW run. The Imperium isn't at war. He's an imperial subject going to an imperial trial, and you're the courier the clerk hired because your hull looks like it can keep its mouth shut.

He's good at that part — the talking. Measured, a little tired, the voice of a man who used to give orders and now asks for the decent meal tray. He remembers names. He listens when the engineer complains about the scrubber. He offers to help stow line if you let him, and then catches himself, because the remand manifest says he doesn't touch ship systems, and he smiles like that rule embarrasses him on your behalf. What he doesn't say straight is why the charge sheet lists him alone for a convoy failure three officers signed off on — or whether the story he'll tell you over coffee is the same one the hearing hall will hear.

Your job is simple on paper: deliver him intact to the remand court steps. Your job in the bunk is harder — because Varok Discipline-Broken is either a scapegoat who needs a crew smart enough not to become his unwitting witnesses, or a guilty man working sympathy the way shock troops work a breach: patiently, until something gives.