C14 Krakun in a Box (Patreon)

Woo! This scene for Executioner's Gambit is a biggie as we roll into the conclusion. So, I've split it in half and will post the rest tomorrow.

Also, just got back from Gateway FurMeet. Was a ton of fun and I'd really like to go back again next year!

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The krakun stormed out of the room, leaving Tori alone with the evidence scrawled into the back of the picture frame. Unsure what to do, she dialed Captain Gutassi. Her voice worried and unsure, “Captain—”

He didn’t let her speak and interrupted immediately, “Are you still in the kitchen? Is the food inspector still there?”

Tori cocked her head. Food inspector? What the heck is he talking about? Is he speaking in code? Is someone listening in? she wondered. “Uh… No…?” she answered. “The food inspector left to find how Daskatoma ended up on the ship.”

“He’s come in through the emergency escape airlock on Deck 17,” said Gutassi.

Tori blinked in surprise. “Oh! There’s an—? I didn’t know that,” she said with a nod, “but that explains a lot. I was wondering how he could have landed his shuttle—”

He cut her off once more—this time, his voice even more serious, “Is the food inspector satisfied?” he demanded. “Can we expect a passing grade, or will he shut us down?”

Shut us down? Yeah. That’s one way to put it, thought Tori. More like, will we have to shut down the trinity, commit mass suicide, and take the two krakun to their deaths with us? She frowned and stared at the gigantic picture frame propped against the wall. “Ah… Yeah… The thing is, I’ve spotted a…” What could she say? “A major health violation in the … kitchen that we managed to miss somehow. The health inspector hasn’t noticed it, but I’m worried he will if he comes back here.”

The captain’s voice sounded strained, even more worried than before. “Is this violation something we could clean up before he gets back?”

“No,” Tori sighed. “I think we’d need a couple hours minimum, maybe longer.”

A very short pause, then, “Okay, here’s the plan: stall him.” The captain added, “Get to Daskatoma before the food inspector does and mix it up. If you can’t get the food inspector to go home, keep him there as long as possible. I’ll see if there’s any way we can make the … kitchen less hospitable.”

Of all people, he wanted her to go? “What? Sir, you’ve seen how slow—”

“Unless you know a way to sabotage the kitchen,” Gutassi warned, “you best get going now!”

# # #

A short walk from the airlock led Tori to the gravity down-well, and after a few gentle hops, she found herself on Deck 19. The corridor here was big—for a geroo at least, but it didn’t seem nearly as tall as the other spaces the commissioner might inspect.

She turned toward the ship’s stern and started walking, but it didn’t take long to spot Daskatoma. He’d crammed himself in—shoulders spanning wall to wall, and horns against the rafters. “Don’t tell me you’re stuck!” she yelled. “Please don’t say you’re stuck.”

“I’m not stuck—I don’t think. However, I am starting to think this was a bad plan,” he admitted in a voice tinged with concern. She could see some space around him in the corridor’s four corners, but that meant little. “I’m feeling more than a little claustrophobic.”

Tori hobbled to him, and he lowered his head to her level. She stuck an arm out of the blanket and pressed her palm to his snout, giving it a shove as if she could single-handedly scoot the 250-ton creature. “Well, put it in reverse, and get back on your ship!” she told him. “You’re not supposed to be here. Detective Jintauroka has declared this entire ship a crime scene—”

“A crime scene?”

Tori cursed herself silently. Of all the people in the galaxy she needed suspecting that they’d murdered Troykintrassa, Daskatoma was one of the last. Oh well, there’s no hiding it, she rationalized. Jintauroka was suspicious, and Daskatoma would learn that soon enough whether she spilled the news or not.

“I know, it’s ridiculous,” Tori groaned. “I haven’t a clue if he seriously thinks the wreck was intentional or if he’ll only accept it as an accident through the process of elimination, but he’s going to give me an ulcer.”

The krakun rested his chin on the deck. “I’m sorry, Tori.”

“No, I’m sorry, Dask,” she said, rubbing her scarred palm across his snout. “I just heard about your uncle. We’ve been offline for a day. It must have happened after we closed the gate.”

He sighed and went silent for a moment. “Yeah, I couldn’t call. They said the trinity was offline.”

Then, frustrated, she hammered her fist lightly against his nose. “But what in the ancestors’ names are you doing here? The detective is looking for you, and you’re not gonna want to cross him.”

Instead of leaving, Daskatoma laid the side of his head down on the freezing cold deck and closed his eyes. “I don’t know!” he admitted. “I was totally unprepared for my uncle to die. I’m freaking out and can’t stay still.”

She rested her forehead against his nose. “And so, you call me with a ship-wide alert? Seventeen minutes of silence to mean, ‘Come meet me on Deck 17?’” She wanted to hug him but obviously couldn’t. “That’s… Grief does funny things to people, Dask, but that’s bizarre behavior.”

“Heh. Yeah, I guess I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“Next time, just call my strand, okay?”

“Yeah, I will.”

She stood there a moment, but something itched at her brain and refused to add up. Grief does do funny things to people, but krakun were so extremely intelligent. Would they act so irrationally? Somehow, she just couldn’t buy grief as the cause behind the krakun’s curious behavior.

She took a step backward when a thought crossed her mind. “Wait a second. If you had come to talk with me, you would have called my strand, but you didn’t…” she said, more certain than before, “because you didn’t come here to talk with me.”

Giant golden eyes popped wide open, and he looked about in a panic. “What? Er… Of course—”

Tori pointed at him with her cane. “You wanted to call Thojy, didn’t you?” She growled and stomped around in a circle, thumping the deck with her cane just as hard as she could. “Aw, you turd! I bet you called him, but he couldn’t answer, of course. He abandoned his strand. So, you resorted to a coded message to get his attention.”

Daskatoma raised his head so quickly, he banged his horns on the low ceiling overhead with a muffled thud. “What? Er…”

More accusatory pointing with the cane. “You knew that Thojy was the killer, didn’t you?” she said. “But this meeting couldn’t wait. You knew there was a detective on board investigating your uncle’s death, and that made you nervous—a krakun detective so close to a serial killer friend of yours. You wanted to talk to Thojy before Jintauroka did… Were you planning on killing him? Making sure he couldn’t talk?”

“What? No!” he shouted. “I’d never—”

“What were you going to tell him?”

Resting his weight on his tightly confined elbows, Daskatoma waved his claws frantically about at the wrists, but didn’t manage any words.

“No, I’m getting it now,” said Tori. “You didn’t just happen to know that your friend, Thojy, was the killer. He’s the killer because you hired him!”

“I… I…” gasped the krakun.

Tori groaned. “That’s what has you so nervous. You’ve hired a contract killer, and then your uncle dies unexpectedly, shortly after coming aboard Thojy’s ship. Had the shuttle crashed at any other time, you could just sit back and wait for the detective to realize it was only an accident, but this coincidence makes you a common denominator between the deaths. That makes you look so very suspicious.”

“But I didn’t do—!” he started to explain, but Tori furiously interrupted.

“Ugh, I’m so stupid! Thojy said he knew you when he was telling his ridiculous sandwich delivery story. I thought he was just joking, but he was telling the truth, wasn’t he?”

Daskatoma frowned. His voice was far quieter now, “I told you I have various friends among the geroo.”

“But why, Dask?” Tori pleaded. She couldn’t believe that he had anything to do with this horrid case. He seemed like such a decent guy. “Why would you do this?”

“I didn’t do anything! I loved my uncle. I never would have hurt him.”

“Not Troykintrassa, you dummy,” the geroo growled. “Thojy! Why would you hire Thojy to kill so many geroo?”

Daskatoma frowned so hard that his lower lip stuck out in a pout. Silence stretched. “It’s my job,” he explained at last. “If a ship is off track because of bad crew, it’s the commissioner’s responsibility to eliminate the troublemakers—not punish them, not transfer them elsewhere, but … y’know…” After a pause, he made a fist and lightly thumped it on the deck. Tori bounced, barely keeping her balance, then shuddered in horror at the imagery.

“That’s awful, Dask! I thought you were a better person than that.” She couldn’t face him. “How could you?”

“I can’t! And that’s the problem, really,” he groaned. “That’s why this ship has gone all head over tail. I didn’t do what the company expected of me and things got worse and worse.”

She gasped. “Are you defending executions?”

Daskatoma rolled his eyes. “No, of course not!” he said. “But this is fundamentally what makes the job what it is. Not that it pays much, mind you, but if the job was just flying to ships and reading reports, it would be a minimum-wage position. Anyone can do that. There’d be no way that my uncle and I could split a salary and still make rent.”

Tori covered her mouth and closed her eyes, feeling even measures of anger and disgust. “I can’t believe this.”

“I don’t want to kill anyone, but I need this job,” Daskatoma whined. He pleaded, “You understand that’s not me, right? That’s why I was trying to fix things without resorting to violence.”

Her ears raised. Without violence? What did he mean by that? Then, it dawned on her. The video! “You mean Boots? You made Boots?”

She glared at him, and the krakun gave her the most fragile smile that a gigantic lizard ever could, begging for her understanding. “Well, not me. My cleaning crew did. I just suggested ideas,” he said quietly, as if worried someone might overhear. Then, he rolled his eyes, “And I reigned them in when they tried to put sex in the story.”

She raised a ruined ear in confusion for a moment, trying to imagine where they’d have included that, but Daskatoma continued, “I thought if I could show the crew that they didn’t have to put up with crappy bosses, maybe they’d stand up for themselves—y’know, push back? They’d fix things themselves without me having to…”

He fell silent, and the words hung between them. Tori’s ears frowned, and she concluded for him, “But it didn’t work.”

The krakun looked up with an ambivalent expression. “Honestly? It worked better than I expected but not as well as I’d hoped,” he said. “The crew loves Boots, and they’re energized about what it represents, but it didn’t change their behavior enough. They’re still letting themselves get pushed around.”

Beneath her blanket, Tori crossed her arms. She glared at him. “So, your answer was murder?”

“Oh, jeez, Tori. It’s not like that!”

“No? What is it like then, Daskatoma?” she demanded.

The enormous lizard angled his face down and rested the weight of his huge head against his chin. From the side of his mouth, he muttered, “Thojy yelled at me.”

“He yelled at you.”

“Yeah.”

She gestured with her fingers only a few centimeters apart. “A geroo … scolding a krakun.” Then, nearly dropped her blanket as she spread her arms and cane.

“Thojy was afraid that my uncle would fire me, so he made me write up a list of the ten worst offenders aboard the ship.”

Tori just glared.

“Yeah, well, making the list was easy,” admitted Daskatoma, flopping down on the deck. “But then… I just couldn’t…”

The rusty red geroo said nothing, so he asked, “Could you? After all, it’s your job to kill Thojy.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lt82rR5zplMd4nl5EuImZH3oCVEy-WdPtdF8_T0fOlc/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?