Tori (Patreon)

Gah! I'm sorry about that. Don't read that. I pasted the wrong text into the post. Let me finish that one before you read it.

Geez.

Like I was trying to say, I'm still working on Tori while I have the momentum.

——— 

Tori sat, staring at the open airlock to the commissioner’s tomb. That really was the right word, wasn’t it? She’d once read it in a novel about medieval Gerootec. They didn’t have recyclers back then, obviously, and the story had mentioned how the kings would have their remains permanently sealed inside a stone house instead of being buried underneath the soil.

She wasn’t clear on what purpose a tomb served, but perhaps that was just what the rich did to further distance themselves from the poor? She wasn’t sure. Regardless, whether the gigantic beast realized it or not, his chambers had become his tomb. He wasn’t leaving them—not now, not ever.

Tipohee had stationed officers at either end of the corridor—Sese at one end and a male she didn’t recognize at the other—to keep any curious onlookers out. That seemed a pointless precaution considering how everyone went out of their way to avoid the krakun, but if someone did manage to help him escape, he’d be able to bring the trinity back online and call down a purge on the ship. Some guards seemed like a reasonable precaution, considering.

Sese waved. Tori waved back, but the officer was a good twenty meters off and Tori didn’t feel like shouting. She wondered what she should do. Was there any point in working on the case? If they managed to find Thojy and prove he was the killer, so what? Would that change anything? Hardly. The commissioner was still dying, and nothing was going to get the captain to bring the trinity back online.

The gate would remain down forever to keep the krakun from sending in troops to sweep the ship. Well, perhaps not forever, but without the gate, the krakun would be forced to fly troops out to reclaim the company’s property. How long would that take? Years? Decades? Even if she somehow convinced Doctor Amhela to clone her a new body, she was never leaving the ship. She’d never see Kaz nor her family again.

This ship was their tomb just as much as the commissioner’s chambers were his.

She pulled the strand from her shoulder to call Druka, only to find that the network was down. Had she been sitting there that long? Had the engineers already welded the commissioner’s airlock shut and turned off the network? It appeared so.

Tori stood from her seat, ready to go visit her mate in person when she realized that she didn’t know where he worked. It was one of the manufacturing bays, obviously, but she hadn’t visited him at work since the transfer.

The light above the commissioner’s airlock lit. Tori winced. The others had left, gone to shut down the trinity and strategize how to best break the news to the crew. No one would ever speak to the krakun again. The poison in his system would do its damage unchecked until he finally succumbed, alone.

Tori could hear the commissioner’s voice buzzing from the tinny speaker inside. “Captain? Captain!” he was shouting. Engineering must have cut the power to his office but apparently the intercom and indicator light still had juice. The airlock must have been on a separate circuit.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Tori’s eyes opened wide as Troykintrassa beat on the airlock hatch. Her heart raced. With the outer hatch open, the inner hatch couldn’t be unlocked—that’s how airlocks were designed. But the krakun was huge! It might be possible for him to bend the metal enough to force it open, flooding the corridor with deadly sulfur gas. She wanted to flee but where would she go? Besides, she moved so slowly now that if he managed to get it open, she’d never escape in time.

She leaned on her cane and took a step forward. Someone needed to speak with him. That would be the only thing that kept him from breaking the hatch.

The rusty red geroo stepped over the base of the hatchway as the intercom buzzed a second time. “Captain! Can you hear me, Gutassi? What in the names of the dead gods is going on out there?”

Then he went silent and many long seconds passed. Tori was tempted to leave, but instead she pressed the intercom button. “Hello?”

“Hello? Hello? Who is this?” demanded the commissioner. “Where’s the captain? What’s going on out there?”

“I… I don’t know where the captain is, sir,” said Tori, already regretting that she had begun this conversation. “I tried to call him, but the network is down.”

“I realize the damned network is down!” shouted the krakun. “You tiny-brained…” His words decayed into a groan and then the connection went silent.

“Sir? Sir?” Tori asked. “Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay!” Troykintrassa screamed so loud that the hatch vibrated. “The power’s gone out. The hatch is jammed. The wireless network is offline. It’s a thousand degrees in my office, and I’m going to suffocate if I can’t get some fresh air!”

Tori didn’t know what to say. She stood in silence, trying to work up the nerve to leave the airlock.

“Hello? Are you still there?” asked the krakun, quieter this time.

“Yes, sir,” said Tori. “I’m still here.”

“What’s going on out there?”

Tori bit her lip, wondering what she should say. Did it matter? Maybe not, but she certainly didn’t want to be the one to tell him the truth.

She opened her muzzle to talk, then closed it, finally managing to make a sound on the second attempt. “I’m… I’m not sure, sir. Something very bad, I think.”

“It better be,” grumbled Commissioner Troykintrassa. “It better be the end of the universe for the captain to have walked away from his post when I gave him a direct order to wait outside my chamber.”

A pause and then, “Listen, you. What’s your name?”

“Tori, sir.”

“Are you an engineer? An officer of some sort?”

“No, sir,” she said.

“Listen to me, Tori. This is very important. Are you listening?”

She swallowed. With closed eyes, she pressed the intercom button once more. “Yes, sir.”

“There’s something I need you to do,” he said. “Go down to the drive room—this deck, far aft of the ship. The drive room will be filled with engineers. Grab the first one you see and tell them that you have orders from the commissioner to get a maintenance crew suited up and have them fix the hatch to my chamber. I don’t care if they have to cut the damned thing off its hinges. Have them drop whatever they’re doing and get on that immediately.”

Though the intercom was audio only, she nodded in silence.

“I also want someone to prep my shuttle.” A pause. “I’m… I’m having some issues and need to leave immediately.”

When she didn’t respond immediately, he asked her, “Did you get all that, Tori?”

She winced. How could she escape this mess? “Sir, I heard some of the engineers talking earlier. I think they said that the trinity was down.”

“What?”

“They said that the trinity was down: the recycler, the gate, the drive. All three are down,” she said. “If the gate is offline, I don’t think your shuttle can take you back to Krakuntec.”

Troykintrassa groaned and the channel went quiet.

“Sir?”

“Damn that Gutassi and the reactor he should have rebuilt weeks ago! Okay, I want you to do exactly as I said before. Drive room, maintenance crew, open my hatch. Have someone verify that the trinity is actually down. If it is, find me one of the ship’s doctors and bring him back here. Can you do all that?”

“Yes, sir,” said Tori.

“Okay, go. Hurry,” he demanded. “Do that and hurry back.”

Tori stared at the console for a long time. Then she turned and hobbled out of the airlock.

“What the hell am I doing?” muttered Tori to herself. She was thankful that she could finally leave the airlock, but she couldn’t actually follow the commissioner’s orders. The captain had intentionally trapped the krakun in his quarters to isolate him, to keep him from trying to take control of the ship. If he managed to bring the trinity back online, they’d all be dead.

She should just leave and not return. Put him out of her mind. There was nothing she could do to help him.

She walked down the corridor, away from the airlock. She wasn’t going to the drive room, wasn’t going to follow his directions, but she needed to stretch her legs. She needed to go somewhere.

At the end of the corridor, Sese gave her a smile. She had strung red caution tape across the hallway and lifted it up in the middle for her to duck beneath. “Are you okay, Tori? You look … ragged.”

“Yeah, it’s been one helluva day, and it’s not even lunch yet,” sighed Tori.

“I tried calling the chief, but the network is down,” grumbled the big officer. “How the heck are we supposed to find Thojy like this?”

Tori frowned. “There’s a lot going wrong today—much bigger problems than Thojy. The investigation will have to wait.”

“Great,” she grumbled. “This is stupid. We need to catch him before he can get settled in, find him while he’s still injured.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Tori as she walked off.

She padded slowly across the deck, her heart racing. As a whole, the krakun were horrible monsters that kept her people enslaved. But not all of them were bad. Daskatoma, for example, was truly likable. He was just trying to make the best of a bad situation he was born into, working a job that he didn’t really want. And his uncle—who knows? She only spoken to him for a minute. Was he like his nephew?

And now he was suffering, dying—and probably didn’t even realize it yet—alone, locked in a chamber without any light or air flow. It seemed like such a horrible, such a cruel thing to do to someone.

Before she even realized it, she was in the drive room. The lights were dimmed to their minimum, the huge room quiet, the consoles dark, and there was no sign that anyone was about.

Tori called, “Hello?” but was unsurprised when no one answered.

She sighed, and without really thinking about it, turned about and headed back the way she came.

Sese lifted the tape a second time. “Forget something?”

Tori shrugged. “Just needed to stretch my legs.”

———

 Reviewer's link:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UVmVUBrMvb5elVNiOb1tUo1_v64DTl4Ni1kK3q2YRlo/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?