C12 Prime Suspect (Patreon)

This is a two-parter, and the conclusion of this Executioner's Gambit scene will post tomorrow.

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Tori shifted her weight from paw to paw. The deck here in the shuttle bay was even colder than the rest of the ship, and it made her wish for a pair of boots. Eventually, the white shuttle lowered a ramp, and the detective’s long and snake-like neck emerged from inside.

Engineering Chief Onaha had turned the lights inside the bay down to the lowest level she deemed safe, and from Tori’s vantage point, the krakun looked like little more than a shadow emerging from a shadow.

“What?” hissed Detective Jintauroka. He tromped down the ramp and must have misjudged the end of it in the gloom, groaning when his claw unexpectedly struck the bay’s deck. He boomed, “What fresh hell is this? It’s like the inside of a refrigerator aboard this ship!”

He turned to Tori, his head hanging above her so she had to crane her neck. “Yeah, something is definitely screwed up,” she agreed. “We’ve had hot days and cold days, but this is the coldest I’ve ever seen.”

The krakun breathed in a deep breath through his nose only to hack it out once more in a cloud of vapor, over and over, as if none of them satisfied him. “And the air… The air is…”

“There’s no sulfur in it,” Tori reminded him. “Sulfur is lethal to geroo.”

He slowly lowered his head until his snout was just a meter from her face. “Who are you, mammal?” he demanded.

That seemed like a curious question since he’d insisted that she met him there. “I’m … Tori,” she offered hesitantly. “Why are you here, Detective Jintauroka?”

“I’ll ask the questions, Tori,” he snapped, raising his head and looking around the dim bay as if the geroo were irrelevant.

“Suit yourself, Detective, but you’re not my boss. You’re not my boss’s boss. You may have some sort of authority back on Krakuntec, but you’re a thousand light years into deep space now.” She turned and started to shuffle back toward the airlock. “Here, you’re just some krakun trying to order people around.”

The detective took a step to the side and lowered his head until it was between her and the exit. “As a Krakuntec company, Planetary Acquisitions is subject to our investigations,” he explained, “and as property of said company, you are subject to them as well.”

Tori crossed her arms in annoyance, but with a blanket draped over her, she lost much of the gesture’s impact. “Investigating what?”

“Why, investigating the death of Commissioner Troykintrassa, of course,” said Jintauroka as he turned slightly away.

For the past hour, Tori had been preparing herself for this very moment. She knew that the detective would surely spring this news and would be carefully gauging her response. Captain Gutassi was supposed to be here in her place, and she had drilled with him for hours over the sorts of questions that an investigator might ask. “Wait. What?” she squeaked in a reasonable facsimile to genuine surprise. “How can he be dead? He was here just two days ago.”

Jintauroka ignored her question once more. He turned his head back but studied her from farther away. “Were you present when Troykintrassa visited the ship?”

“Yeah. I wanted his permission for reconstructive surgery,” said Tori. Sticking an arm out from beneath the covers, she pointed through the bay windows to the long benches in the dressing area. “I waited out there while the captain greeted the commissioner.”

“Recount what happened.”

“I… I told the captain about my permission form, the shuttle arrived, and the captain went out to talk to Commissioner Troykintrassa,” she said. “When he came back through the airlock, he called Engineering Chief Onaha.”

As she’d hoped, that factoid seemed to catch the detective’s attention. “Why did he call the engineering chief? Do you recall what he said?”

Tori nodded. “Yes, he said that the commissioner’s ship was acting up, and that Onaha should run a diagnostic on it to see if we could fix it.”

Drawing the sound out, he said, “I see.”

“Why are you asking me this?” asked Tori. “Shouldn’t you be talking to the captain?”

Again, he ignored her questions. “And then, what happened?”

The geroo sighed. She shifted her weight and used her cane to gesture toward the gigantic airlock at the corner of the bay. “Well, the commissioner went through there, to his stateroom, and the captain and I took the corridors. We waited outside his airlock.”

“Very well. Come with me,” said Detective Jintauroka. He took a half dozen steps, then turned back to see if Tori followed, but each krakun step required dozens of hobbling geroo steps to cover the same distance.

“Grr. You’re so slow!” he complained. “I’ll freeze to death before I get there at this rate.”

Just loud enough for him to hear, Tori mumbled, “The captain walks far faster than I can.”

After a long, cold walk to the airlock, she climbed over the hatch’s rim and waited while the detective closed the hatch behind them, locked it, unlocked, and opened the second hatch. With the air already equalized, he didn’t need to cycle the lock.

The corridor’s scent must have hit Jintauroka hard, and he covered both his eyes and nose with his claws. “Oh! Oh! It stinks in here!” he bellowed.

Tori, of course, couldn’t smell it, but she played along, grumbling, “Well, geroo have scent glands—”

“No, it stinks of chlorine,” growled the krakun, “like bleach or something.”

Tori nodded. “Sure. The cleaning crew uses bleach to kill germs.”

With a claw still over his eyes, he banged on the airlock wall. “It’s disgusting!”

“Sorry,” muttered Tori, though she felt anything but.

Eventually, he opened yellow eyes to a squint and stomped angrily into the corridor beyond. Tori climbed over the hatch’s rim once more and followed at her own pace. For a moment, she almost felt sorry for the gigantic reptile. The air burned at her eyes, and she wondered if Onaha had gone overboard with the bleach.

Down a long corridor and around a turn, Tori found Detective Jintauroka beside a scissor lift parked at an angle and blocking the door to the next room. He waited while she approached, limbs pulled in close to his sides and tail wrapped around his body. From a distance, he reminded her of a gigantic loaf of orange bread. “And what happened here?” he demanded with a flick of his chin.

“I don’t know, sir,” Tori answered honestly. She pointed to the vehicle’s crumpled corner. “Captain Gutassi said the engineering chief broke her ankle. Maybe she was driving it?”

He reached out and rubbed a finger along the shiny metal area where engineering had ground away all evidence that the door had been welded shut. “And this? Why would they fix the door and leave the lift sitting here?”

Tori shrugged. “Runo’oa—he’s one of the engineers—explained that the ship only keeps backups for the mission-critical parts,” she explained. “I suppose manufacturing will need to make replacement parts before they can repair the lift.”

Jintauroka grabbed the hatch and yanked on it, letting the metal slam against the lift. Then he grabbed the lift with both claws and put his back into shoving it. Tori scrambled out of the way as quickly as she was able, barely ahead of the rubber tires as they screeched and screamed across the aluminum deck. “Stupid thing … is in my … way!” the krakun grunted through the exertion.

When the lift was finally clear, he threw the hatch open, letting it bang against the wall. He entered the stateroom and pointed a finger angrily down at the deck inside. “Come in here, Tori.”

While climbing over the base of the hatch, she asked, “Sir, are you okay? Would you like some time to … compose yourself?”

“I’m fine,” snarled the giant reptile. “And the last thing I want is to spend additional time aboard this ship, ‘composing myself’!”

“Yes, sir,” muttered Tori.

The detective looked about the dim room and stuck his head into the bathroom portion. “It’s humid in here, like it’s been freshly scrubbed down.”

“Yes?” said Tori. “Isn’t that better?”

“So, you met with Commissioner Troykintrassa here?”

“No,” Tori said.

“No?”

“He wouldn’t meet me in person,” she explained. “We talked over the intercom.”

“And then?”

Tori gestured to the geroo-sized airlock. “Then, I went back into the corridor. Onaha was there, telling Captain Gutassi that she couldn’t fix the shuttle.” She shook her head. “No wait, I’m wrong—”

Jintauroka moved his head closer to her. With ice in his voice, he said, “You’re lying to me.”

“No, I just forgot,” huffed Tori. She pulled the blanket up over her head so she didn’t have to look at him. Quieter now, she explained, “Look, I’m cold, I haven’t slept, and the commissioner told me that I couldn’t possibly understand his reasoning for not signing my permission form.”

A short pause. “You must have been very angry at him.”

“Of course, I’m angry at him!” Tori shouted, popping back out from within the poncho. “If you could walk in someone else’s pawprints for just a moment, you’d understand.”

“I do understand, but were you angry enough to kill him?”

Tori blinked. “What?”

Jintauroka repeated, “Were you angry enough to kill the commissioner?”

Tori threw her head back and groaned. “That may very well be the dumbest question anyone has ever asked me.” Then, she let the blanket fall from her shoulders exposing the countless scars that marred her pelt. She held her wrists up to him, as if offering to let him cuff her. “Yes, you caught me, Detective. I beat the commissioner to death with my cane. Then, I carried him over my shoulder and dumped him back in his shuttle. When the shuttle bay door opened, I shoved the shuttle out, and it drifted back through the gate into Krakuntec space.”

The orange reptile glared at her. He growled, “Don’t get snippy with me.”

“If you don’t want snippy answers,” said Tori, picking up the covers once more and arranging them around her shoulders, “then stop asking stupid questions.”

The detective pointed a talon at her. “You might not have been able to harm a krakun physically, but you could still sabotage his shuttle.”

“Sabotage his shuttle? Are you joking?” she asked. She showed him a palm, uncurling it as much as she was able. “I wouldn’t know how, and even if I did, my paws are so scarred over that I can barely pick up a fork. I’d never be able to unscrew a panel or yank out cabling or whatever.”

“Fine,” he grunted, sounding disappointed. “Tell me what it is you forgot.”

“I forgot that Onaha spoke to the captain while we were waiting; that was before I talked to the commissioner,” she explained. “That’s all. She said she couldn’t fix the shuttle and got snarky about the captain second-guessing her. And then I talked to the commissioner, and he refused to sign my form.”

“And then?”

Tori blinked. “And then, what?”

“What happened then?”

“Nothing happened then,” lied Tori. “I went back to my apartment and cried. The end.”

When the krakun didn’t reply, she added, “Now, I’m going back to bed.”

“Stay right there.”

Tori whined, “Why?”

“Because,” he said, lowering his belly to the deck and moving his face close to hers, “you’re my prime suspect.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vSZgPolkwwMS__T2NXY6ZCt0BfFkkcAQPfGgpbY0elY/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?