C16 Tight Squeeze (Patreon)

This scene was surprisingly hard, and I put it off for ages. Some of this was surely executive dysfunction, but also, I'm terrified of finishing the story, and this Executioner's Gambit scene is one of the last.

It's also long, so I'll split it in two. Expect the other half tomorrow.

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Feeling angry and used, Tori hobbled along the darkened corridor, ducking low to squeeze herself into the corner with the deck below her, the wall to one side, and the claustrophobic expanse of scaled krakun hide to the other. She muttered to herself and resisted the urge to jab Daskatoma with her cane.

“Stupid. Stupid. Stupid,” she growled but without ever specifying whether she meant him or herself.

She worked her way under his arm and along his ribcage, trying to focus on the light ahead of her and not the mountain of meat above. As he breathed in, her space crushed smaller. She squatted down, made herself tiny, and waited for the next exhale which would grant her a precious few more steps.

Should she have been worried about getting trapped or crushed? Perhaps, but at this point, Tori felt so angry about falling for Daskatoma’s deception that she didn’t care. She focused only on catching Thojy before he could escape.

After passing a dozen mammoth ribs or so, Tori finally came to an intersection where a geroo-sized corridor crossed the oversized hallway that the krakun had squeezed himself into—or at least, she presumed it was an intersection. For all she knew, this smaller corridor simply T’d the larger artery.

She stepped out into the smaller hallway and took a few cherished steps without having to duck or crawl, taking a moment to stretch her aching back. Then, she stared at the next darkened triangle of confining closeness she’d have to enter if she was to reach the airlock.

Suddenly, Tori heard voices, and she froze in place. Muted and unclear, she could make out one male voice, wheezing and out of breath, a female voice muffled almost to silence, and a cub’s cries, deadened to a soft drone.

She looked around, her damaged ears flicking this way and that, trying to locate the sound’s source. She didn’t think she was hearing voices from through a wall, and they weren’t from the side corridor—at least not the side she was on. So, it had to be Thojy, his mate, and his cub, in the opposite corridor. Didn’t it?

Tori stared at the wall of krakun scales. She couldn’t see the geroo, obviously, and resisted the urge to kick Daskatoma’s side in frustration. Peeling the strand from her shoulder, she smashed Sese’s icon from her contact list. The big officer answered on the third ring, her ears high in surprise. “Oh, I wasn’t expecting a video call,” she said. “Usually, you just call me on voice—”

“I’ve located Thojy,” interrupted Tori.

“You have? Where?” shouted Sese in alarm.

“Deck 17,” said Tori. “Daskatoma has crammed himself into a corridor to block the way, but I can hear Thojy and his family trying to make it to the airlock…”

“Daskatoma is…? Stay right there!” shouted Sese, the video going wild as she fell into a full-on sprint. “I’ve got this! Do not confront him!”

“That you, Tori?” called a familiar voice from the krakun’s far side. “I was wondering if I’d see you here today!”

Without even hanging up, Tori slapped the strand back in her holster. The device didn’t insert correctly, and it clattered to the deck, but she ignored it, leaving it behind as she scuttled into the darkness. “Give it up, Thojy!” she shouted back. “No way you’re getting off this ship.”

“We’ll see about that!” he laughed.

Tori hurried toward the stern—walking hunched over when she could and crawling on her knees when she had to. In the distance, she could hear Thojy’s family shuffling along as well, though she could make out little more than shouted encouragement and Thojy chanting, “Go! Go! Go!”

Soon, she could feel her ruined body growing tired, begging for a moment of rest, but she refused to give in. She let the blanket fall behind and faced the cold without it, keeping only her cane as she crawled past the last of Daskatoma’s ribs, around his enormous belly, and then to a more open clearing up under the beast’s tail. Here she found a little more light, and on the corridor’s opposite side, Tori could see a figure in an orange environment suit pulling a second figure free from beneath the krakun’s pelvis.

The suited figure turned toward her in silence and stared, frozen. On the deck below her, Thojy struggled to rise to his paws. He’d wrapped himself in a blanket for warmth, but a damp spot at the waist stretched in a crimson stain down to his knees.

Tori, unsure what to do now that she was confronting the killer, called out, “You should get that checked out. Looks painful.”

Thojy looked up, hesitating for a moment, but he relaxed soon enough when he saw that Tori was alone. “Thanks. I will,” he called back. He bent carefully and retrieved a helmet from the deck. His mate knelt and gathered up two more items—an empty, helmetless suit for her mate and a helmeted suit not so completely empty. A tiny figure squirmed and cried inside; the cub’s head and shoulders within the suit’s helmet, no doubt, but the suit’s arms and legs hung down like deflated balloons. Thojy grinned, adding, “Just as soon as we get to our new home.”

“You’re not going anywhere!” growled Tori. She hobbled toward him, propelled by anger. Still, her brain questioned this, What in the hells are you going to do, Tori? Tackle him? Hold him down until Sese arrives? He’s a serial killer! And injured or not, he’s far more dangerous than you are. Plus, his mate is there too. What will she do to protect her only cub’s father?

“Thojy!” said the muffled voice from within her suit.

“Go, Besho. Go,” begged Thojy as he hobbled ahead. “Get Guhash onto the ship, and I’ll be right behind you.”

“I’m not leaving you!” she sobbed.

“No, of course not,” he promised her, pushing on her back as he took small, limping steps toward the airlock. “You’re just getting a head start. You’re redeeming that reward I earned, no matter what happens.”

Besho cried and argued, but as Tori grew close, Thojy’s mate must have changed her mind and took off down the corridor, sprinting off with cub and extra suit in paws.

Tori “raced” after Thojy, the two of them groaning and panting in exertion, hobbling along at nearly the same slow speed. “Give it up, murderer!” spat Tori. “You will pay for your crimes!”

“Crimes?” he laughed, maintaining the shortest of leads. “I did the commissioner’s bidding. The company demanded executions, and I obeyed. I’m a loyal employee, not a criminal!”

Not sure how to argue that, Tori shouted, “And Nija? She wasn’t on the list. Regardless of the others, that one was murder!”

“She was on the list!” howled Thojy over his shoulder. “Dask may have reduced the task to nine, but she was listed. She was a valid target!”

Tori snatched at Thojy’s tail but missed. “You beat her head in with a pipe, Thojy!” she reminded him. “Not even Dask is going to call that ‘an execution’.”

“I improvised!” he growled, letting the blanket fall away so she had to navigate around it to keep from tripping. Thojy held his free paw—the one not carrying the helmet, at least—hard against his side, the white fur wet with clotting blood.

“Nija really got a piece of you,” needled Tori. “She was always smarter than you, always thinking ahead, while you’re little more than a drifter! You couldn’t even plan a budget.”

“Shut up!” he shouted in a rage.

“Even if you did survive until tomorrow,” she continued, “I bet you’d burn through all those credits in a year!”

Thojy moved faster now, his tongue lolling to the side as he panted hard for breath. Tori growled in frustration, but lowered her voice, worried about how sensitive the krakun’s hearing might be. “And … victim eleven?” she asked obliquely, not daring to say Troykintrassa’s name aloud.

Thojy glanced behind himself once and then again. “You wouldn’t dare,” he said at last.

He was right about that. Whether Daskatoma had been acting or not, he was in no state to hear the truth about his uncle. He’d be liable to flail about in misery, liable to crush them both accidentally. And even if he kept it together long enough for the two to vacate the passageway, the deputy commissioner had yet to face Jintauroka. No. Keeping the true nature of Troykintrassa’s death a secret remained paramount.

“Besides, it was the only thing I could do to save him,” muttered Thojy. “Dask had his plans. He was going to make this work, but his uncle was holding him back. He was going to fire him, Tori. Trust me, I know the warning signs. With Troykintrassa out of the way, Dask will get his commissioner job. He’ll finally be able to give me and my family what we truly deserve!”

“And what’s that?” grunted Tori, making more near-miss grabs at Thojy’s back while they raced alongside the krakun’s tail.

“More years!” said Thojy with his ears in a wide grin. “Only a true commissioner has the authority to add years onto someone’s birth token, and it’s only a matter of time now before Dask is the commissioner.”

“Pfft. Is that what he told you?” asked Tori. “He just made that shit up so you’d stop asking for more and more rewards after each successive favor. The company doesn’t care who Dask gives years to, you idiot!”

Truthfully, Tori didn’t know that for a fact, but she could tell from the way Thojy’s ears pulled back that the barb had landed in a tender spot. Daskatoma was perfectly capable of manipulating geroo—even those he thought of as friends—and Thojy was being as foolish as she had been for taking the krakun at his word.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” he still groaned, visibly slowing now, “when I’m playing with my great-great-grandcubs and your necklace is just a dusty relic in someone’s shrine.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SHUku9Zqppt7rtKLDLE6gGZI7U3NERsotun_9XiKbl8/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?