Sequel to "Long Way Home" (Patreon)

"Long Way Home" was intended as a one-off, so I'm not really planning to write a sequel, but a guy was asking about it and so I dashed out an opening chapter. I hope you enjoy it!

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Captain Litue stood on the small iron platform, wringing her paws with apprehension. Meanwhile, a brown geroo with dirt on his face scooped shovel after shovel of wet sand into a burlap sack. Was he a farmer? she wondered, trying to occupy her mind. He smelled like someone who dug in the dirt for a living. She closed her eyes and swallowed. One more scoop, and the platform beneath her paws shifted, swinging gently back and forth. She lifted her long tail to steady her balance.

“Yup. That ought to do it,” wheezed the geroo. “Thank you, Miss.” He gestured vaguely to the grass in front of the platform and Litue stepped off. Without her weight holding the balance down, the scale lurched, and the platform with the sandbag thudded to the ground.

Another geroo, this one fat and pompous, put a paw to her shoulder and walked with her across the lush grass to a bright red picnic table stationed beneath a tree. Governor E’e, he had called himself, and he seemed quite proud of that title, but to Litue he seemed like a most unpleasant sort of person. She’d never held much respect for elected officials and it was far too late to change that bias now. His ears smiled broadly and he tried to pretend that he didn’t loathe her, but his hatred was so palatable that it oozed between his words like epoxy around a hull patch.

Just finish this stupid lecture already, she thought, so I can go back to my nice quiet cell.

The bench was too low for a ringel such as her, leaving the table even with the top of her chest. She looked down at the uncomfortable manacles they had fashioned for her tiny wrists: a short length of chain welded to a pair of … hose clamps? That had to be what they were. The officer who had put them on her had tightened them down with a wrench instead of a key. Guess they don’t get a lot of aliens on this world…

Whatever. She had no idea what the court system was like on this world, but the case against her and her crew was solid. At least she wouldn’t have to put up with this pageantry for much longer.

Litue ignored the governor sitting across the table from her. He was rambling on and on about her crimes, but she was watching the farmer lug the heavy sandbag across the grass.

A real, living planet! she thought. She sniffed the fragrant early-summer air. The geroo actually found themselves a planet with a breathable atmosphere. Amazing. In the branches above her head, a tiny creature peeped endlessly. “Beep, beep, beep,” it sang without tiring. The tuneless song reminded her of the low voltage alarm on her ship’s primary atmospheric processor. That thing was so annoying. She opened her muzzle to shout out Uulihe, to tell him to fix the thing once and for all, then reminded herself that she’d never return to space. She shut her mouth and stared back down at her paws.

The farmer released a latch and the tree he stood under lurched, its long leafy branches swayed, and the rope tied to the sandbag pulled taut. “Bauuum…” it twanged at the very lower limits of her hearing.

Litue’s throat constricted tight and she watched in horror as the farmer winched the heavy branch down once more. He scooted the sandbag closer to the tree’s trunk and retied the rope to a new spot on the limb.

“Disgusting. The things you’ve done are absolutely disgusting,” ranted the governor. Litue grunted, and with a small grin on her ears, she idly wondered how much the chamberlain would have paid for the governor. He probably wouldn't have made much of a breeder, but with his wide girth, he would have been quite the feast for the turek's boidae worm.

Litue felt a small pang of guilt. She reverently lowered her ears back down.

The farmer released the latch again, and the tree swung, this time catapulting the sandbag high into the air. He barely leapt out of the way with a shouted, “Geez!”

Her tears flowed freely now and her shoulders shook with each silent sob. “Please no,” she whispered. “Please not like that.”

She tried not to listen as the farmer winched the branch down a third time, to try a new anchor point for the hangman’s rope.

“...that’s why we’re offering you this stay of execution,” said Governor E’e.

“Wait,” gasped Captain Litue. “What?”

“A stay of execution,” he repeated, “if you accept this deal.”

The ringel blinked. “Then you’ll … pardon us?”

The fat geroo roared with laughter as if this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. He even slapped his palm against the picnic table a few times before he finally regained control. “In your dreams!” he laughed. “No. Not a pardon. A stay of execution. You agree to help us out. If you prove helpful … then and only then will I commute your execution to life in prison.”

He tilted his head, taking a moment to appraise her like a farm animal he was considering buying. “If you’re interested in making a deal, that is.”

“For a stay of execution?” she said, standing up on the bench and leaning forward to better look him in the eye. She smiled her nicest smile and lowered her voice to a sultry whisper, “I would suck your dick until you cut your mate and cubs from your will.”

The governor chuckled, one ear lifted in a smirk.

The farmer threw his latch a third time, the branch swung, and the sandbag jumped straight up in the air a couple meters, then bounced up and down before coming to rest a little way off the ground. “Perfect,” she heard him declare.

“Very well,” said the governor. He leaned back in his seat and tapped his fingers against the table a few times in thought. Then he grinned with more than a little malice on his ears. “We have a deal. But the rest of your crew? They’re gonna hang.”