C13 Majuscule (Patreon)

Part 2 of this Executioner's Gambit scene today!

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Tori stared at him for a long moment. “What?”

Detective Jintauroka held up one talon. “Bringing the trinity online is a big deal aboard a gateship. Overseer Saqqadr patched me into a call with your bridge shortly after it came online. On the bridge were: Lieutenant Malii, Lieutenant Oake, Subcommander Kena, Subcommander Apai, Commander Ety, Captain Gutassi—”

Tori interrupted, “You memorized the bridge crew’s faces?”

“And you, Tori,” he said, undaunted. “Six officers and you… You’re not even an officer, are you?”

She shook her head. “Nope.”

“Six officers, all alert and ready—and you, disheveled, wrapped in a blanket—”

Okay, sure, he should have been suspicious of her, not that she’d ever admit it, but this was why? Tori shouted, “And that makes me a suspect in something?”

“Yes. That makes you incredibly suspicious,” he said. “You should never have been aboard that bridge.”

Tori yarped. “I think you have a very unrealistic imagination of what life is like on a gateship. This is your first time aboard one, isn’t it?” she asked.

“That’s irrelevant—”

“Yeah, I thought not,” said Tori. “Look, I’m wrapped in a blanket because I’m cold. It’s cold aboard this ship, and it probably doesn’t help that I’m recovering from sulfur poisoning. I’m not as hardy as I used to be.”

She drew a deep breath and released it slowly. “As for being disheveled, screw you,” she snapped. “That seems awful intolerant and close-minded, even for a krakun. Not everyone is capable of looking shiny and polished.”

She pulled the blanket back up over her head. “Plus, I’ve been awake for… I’m not even certain what day it is now. I’ve been chasing a murderer who…” She had almost said the word “poisoned”, but stopped just in the nick of time. “Well, he bashed his latest victim’s brains in with a metal bar, if you’d like to picture that.

“And as for bringing the trinity online, that happens a few times a year. It’s not nearly as exciting as you make it out to be.” From beneath her cowl, she glared at the reptile. “But a serial killer loose on board? That’s happened only a couple times across the entire fleet’s history. This is a very big deal, and the captain wanted to hear my updates.”

He held up a second talon. “Also suspicious: Isn’t it company policy to cull any crew member who is gravely injured?”

Cull? What a horrible word choice when talking about people! She disliked this krakun even more now than she had before. “The administrators decide who gets treatment and who gets a big orange pill. They decided I should live.”

He raised a third talon. “Well, you know what else makes me suspicious of you?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me,” she sighed.

The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. “You mentioned that you’re investigating a serial killer,” he explained, “but when I said that Troykintrassa’s death was suspicious, you didn’t even show any curiosity.”

That more than the other things felt like a fair point. Or should he have shown an interest in her case? Tori wasn’t certain. “Sorry to disappoint you,” she said, but mentally, she was scrambling, looking for a plausible reason why she hadn’t shown interest. She took the time to sit on her heels with her back against the wall, trying to make herself small, trying to conserve body heat, trying to slow her racing heart. “I think I’m doing a decent job on the one case I have, and I’m not interested in becoming your little pet detective, Detective.”

She rested her cheek against her knee. “Besides, if your gut says that I’m a killer, then you need to stop trusting it. Re-evaluate whether the commissioner’s death really was suspicious in the first place.”

She breathed in and let it out slowly. “Regardless, good luck on your case, and if it really was a murder, I hope you catch the guy.”

“I do think it’ll prove to be murder. I’m seeing too many suspicious coincidences already.” He held up a fourth talon. “The corridor was disinfected with a chemical known to destroy biological evidence, and the bathroom has been … steamed? Power-washed? What evidence were you trying to hide?”

Tori trembled and tried to keep the worry from her voice. “Evidence? You can guess what kind of evidence the cleaning crew took care of.” She rolled her eyes. “Honestly, I’m more worried about your fear of clean bathrooms.”

Now, the krakun extended all five of his talons and grinned.

What? Tori worried. What evidence does he think he’s found?

Detective Jintauroka sat back on his rump and lifted his front half. With a flourish, he gestured at the framed art hanging high over her head. “Take this painting, for example…”

With a grunt, Tori climbed back up onto her paws. She walked a few steps away from the wall and craned her neck way, way up, but this picture looked like the others hanging in the room: black. She wondered if all commissioners selected stateroom art that was primarily infrared and ultraviolet palettes, simply so the crews working the ships could not appreciate them.

“If nothing peculiar is happening aboard this ship,” Jintauroka asked, “then why is this hanging upside-down?”

Tori’s blood ran cold. “Is it?” she squeaked.

The krakun gestured grandly with his claws as if he were a famous artist critiquing a colleague’s work. “Of course, it is. The sky is on the bottom and the shoreline is on the top.”

“Huh. How embarrassing,” said Tori. Her body began to shake and tremble. “You’d think one of the commissioners would have pointed out that we hung it wrong.”

She turned back to the detective and cleared her throat twice, trying to hide her anxiety, hoping the blanket contained the scent of fear musk. “They just look like blank canvasses to us. Maybe Troykintrassa found it amusing that we didn’t know better?”

He tapped a talon in her direction, as if using it to ring a bell. “Or maybe Troykintrassa flipped it to get my attention,” he said with a wide grin, “knowing you wouldn’t notice it and flip it back?”

“Knowing?” squeaked Tori. She didn’t want to ask it, but couldn’t stop herself. “And he’d do that because he knew you’d be here…?”

“He would if he knew he was going to die.”

Tori stared at the grinning lizard, and the seconds ticked slowly by, the encounter growing more awkward as each passed. “Well, that’s dark, Detective,” she managed at last.

Jintauroka reached slowly up with both claws. Tori wanted to scream, to beg, to say anything that might make him stop, but she was frozen, immobile, helpless. He wrapped his talons around the gigantic frame and yanked, pulling the artwork from its magnetic mounts.

Tori’s eyes scanned the gloom, searching the wall behind the artwork, looking for a hidden message that the commissioner might have left, but the angle was poor, and she couldn’t make out anything.

Jintauroka must not have found what he was hoping for either. He squinted. He moved his face closer to the wall. In frustration, he lowered the picture and pulled the communicator from where it hung around his neck and squeezed, turning on flashlight mode.

But while the detective studied the wall, he absently lowered the painting. Tori stared up at the massive object in horror—its length and breadth being roughly comparable to her bedroom—and she backpedaled until her tail pressed flat against the wall while he lowered the picture to the spot where she had just been standing.

But this wasn’t what had frightened her, not what had truly made her blood run cold. Because in that moment when Detective Jintauroka released the top of the picture’s frame to let it flop over and lean against the wall behind her, Tori saw it.

Scrawled across the back of the frame in all-majuscule characters, scratched deeply into the surface, Tori saw a single Krakun word.

“Poison.”

She dropped to the deck and covered her head as the frame fell, narrowly avoiding being crushed.

Then, after taking only a moment to catch her breath, Tori scrambled to the frame’s edge on her paws and knees, dragging her blanket and cane behind her. If I’m not out by the time he looks down, he’s liable to move the picture and see the message!

The triangular exit grew closer and closer as she crawled. Then, just as she pulled herself out into the gloomy stateroom, the commissioner looked down at her, his flashlight’s beam encircling her like a spotlight.

He sniffed and wrinkled his snout in displeasure. “Is that…?”

“Yes, that’s what fear musk smells like,” she assured him. Then, she took a moment to wrap herself back up in the blanket and leaned against the picture frame, hoping that would keep him from picking it back up. “You nearly crushed me!”

Jintauroka opened his mouth, but whether to apologize or say something else, Tori didn’t know, because in that moment, the displays on their communicators lit with a ship-wide message, and the devices beeped an alert.

Tori pulled her strand from its holster. Daskatoma was on the display, but it looked strange. The camera positioned too closely to his face; the aluminum walls tightly framed his head—as if he were crawling through an air duct. “Attention loyal crew of the Sailor’s Gambit I,” he announced. “This is your… Well, I was your deputy commissioner. I’m not sure if I’m anything now…”

Tori groaned, but Jintauroka looked pissed. “What in blazes is that?” he growled.

“That’s Deputy Commissioner Daskatoma,” Tori explained. “But what’s he doing here? The shuttle bay is only large enough to hold a single shuttle.”

“I regret to inform you that your beloved commissioner, my uncle, Troykintrassa,” he said with a sniffle, “has died in a tragic accident.”

The detective roared, “This ship is a crime scene, damn it. He shouldn’t be here!”

Despite its volume—which was so intense that it made Tori cower and cover her ears—the broadcast continued uninterrupted, “To mourn his passing, we will now observe a solemn, seventeen minutes of silence.”

Tori’s mouth hung open in confusion. “Seventeen…?”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K5xDef7gZ6KFDhCNmxOapAGnAVIEpdzndRC0N4Sge7s/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?