Tori (Patreon)

*playing Clue in the background* It was the captain, in the atmosphere, with the shuttlecraft!

So, how do you go about covering up a murder, Tori?

I'm amused that the first Tori novel was a murder mystery and this one has somehow turned into a murder anti-mystery!

———

Tori rubbed her face. “Okay, we need paper and pen.” The captain handed her a tablet, but she hesitated. “I’d rather use something we can toss in the recycler, so there’ll be no evidence left behind.”

“I’m already planning to dispose of this one,” said Gutassi. “That’s the tablet with the radiation images. We removed the networking, so no one should be able to access it remotely.”

“Fine,” she said. She set the computer on the desk and pulled up a seat. The other three hovered around her. Pulling up a blank page, she said, “First, let’s deal with the emergencies. Why did we shut down the trinity yesterday?”

“To keep Troykintrassa from contacting Krakuntec,” said Captain Gutassi.

Tori glared at him for a long moment. “What plausible excuse do we have,” she asked a second time, “for shutting it down while the commissioner was still here?”

The captain looked properly shamed for a moment before he returned to his pacing. “Well, the commissioner ordered us to take it offline.”

Engineering Chief Onaha frowned. “Ordered us?” she asked. “Knowing full well he’d be stuck here until it came back online?”

“Commissioner Troykintrassa was so pissed that the reactor was underperforming,” the captain suggested as he paced, “that he insisted that we start the rebuild immediately, and that he would supervise the entire process, personally. He said that if a single screw went missing, he’d toss the whole engineering team out an airlock.”

Tori leaned back slightly. “Okay, that’s an admittedly krakun way of handling a problem, but then he overrode the trinity controls, taking it back online before the rebuild happened.” She let the words hang in the air for a moment before adding, “Why?”

The officers stared at their paws for a while. Eventually, Druka asked, “Because he got sick and wanted to go home?”

The captain shook his head. “I don’t like that. We shouldn’t admit that he was feeling sick. That gives the investigators too much truth, too many things to dig into. We can’t let them suspect he was poisoned.”

“I don’t like anything about this lie,” said Tori in frustration. “You said that a rebuild takes even longer than seventeen hours, but the trinity was down for exactly that much time—not to mention that it hasn’t been rebuilt, so it’s still underperforming, right? A newborn cub could see through this sham.”

“So, what should we tell them, Tori?” asked the security chief.

“Well,” she said, “simple lies are better than complex ones. How about, ‘The commissioner was pissed about the reactor and ordered it rebuilt. We brought the trinity offline to start work on it, and that pissed the commissioner off even more. He didn’t want to get stuck here. So, we scrapped the rebuild plan, waited until we could bring it back online, and he left.’ Can we conceal that he did the override?”

“I believe so, but it’ll be trickier without Computer Chief Nija,” said Gutassi. “I can tell them that it was a communication problem. I meant to take it offline once the commissioner left, and some junior officer thought I wanted to start immediately.”

Tori frowned. “The fewer we bring into this, the better. You overreacted. You ordered it offline without waiting. You pissed the commissioner off.”

Gutassi’s ears hung low. “But I wouldn’t have,” he said. Everyone glared at him, so he quickly backed off. “Fine. The commissioner was a lot scarier than his nephew. I panicked. Happy?”

“Not even remotely,” grunted Tori. “Okay, next order of business, we have to start that rebuild now. We screwed up by starting it early, so we should have restarted the process the moment he left—and that was ten minutes ago. Besides, we have to be offline before they realize that the shuttle is going to crash. Once they know there’s going to be an investigation, they’ll order us to stay online, and we desperately need that time to get rid of the evidence.”

# # #

Tori stared at the enormous hatch. At roughly belly-level, the smooth aluminum door was jagged and melted from being welded shut and then cut back open. She tapped it with her green cane. “This is going to be a problem,” she said.

Onaha ran a pad across the surface. “I’ll have a team grind it down flat. Make it look good as new.”

Tori turned to her. “No, that’s the problem. The rest of this hatch is old and dirty, but the grinder will leave this area shiny. The investigator will wonder why you were working on it recently.”

The chief of engineering frowned. “We can tell him that someone backed into it with a lift—dented the metal. It had to be repaired.”

Tori thought for a moment before shaking her head. “No, too risky,” she said. “Have someone actually run into it with a lift. Dent it good, fix it up. If the driver gets so much as a bruise, take him to med bay, make sure there’s paperwork for the accident, injuries, everything. Then make the whole team sit through a boring refresher course on safety so it never happens again.”

Onaha scowled. “You’re just trying to make my guys hate me.”

“Good,” grunted Tori as she hobbled through the hatch. Over her shoulder, she added, “If they curse your ancestors for the next year, then that means we prevented a purge.”

“Would you rather I do it myself?” asked Onaha. “We’d bring one fewer geroo into the conspiracy that way.”

“Absolutely,” said Tori as she looked around the commissioner’s state room. “If it’s plausible that you’d be driving the lift, then do it, but not yet. There’s a lot for you to oversee.”

When the chief stepped into the krakun’s chamber, her ears wilted flat.

Tori’s eyes shifted between the engineering chief and the massive room, but she couldn’t spot what the older geroo was reacting to. “What’s wrong?”

“The smell,” groaned Onaha, covering her nose. “It’s awful!”

“It is?” She sniffed the air out of habit, but of course, she couldn’t smell a thing. The sulfur burns inside her muzzle had scarred her sinuses. From the way Onaha’s eyes watered, Tori felt relieved to be spared the experience.

Onaha dry-heaved once before regaining a semblance of composure. Gesturing toward the partially-open door to the commissioner’s restroom, she added, “Stinks. Like he crapped all over the deck then lit it on fire.”

“He might have done just that,” said Tori. Correcting herself, “The first bit, about the deck; not the lighting it on fire part.”

Onaha managed a weak smile.

“Put a team in hazmat suits and have them scour every centimeter of the bathroom with high-pressured steam. Recycle everything that’s not bolted down. If you get any of the carpet in here wet, cut it out and recycle it too.” She pointed at the open drink container. “Recycle that. Scrub every surface. Recycle every rag, every brush, bucket, spray bottle, their hazmat suits, cleaning equipment, anything that might have been contaminated.”

“Recycler’s down. Trinity is offline,” Onaha reminded her.

Tori nodded. “Fine. Load it all in bags. Stack the bags on pallets. Put the pallets on the conveyor belt at the mouth of the recycler. The moment the trinity comes back online, all that evidence needs to cease to exist.”

# # #

After keeping the trinity offline for twenty-eight hours, the reactor had been rebuilt and Tori had run out of ideas to cover up the mess. She’d checked off the final task from her to-do list and set the tablet on the to-be-recycled pile herself. Now she waited in the back corner of the busy bridge, nervously swinging her paws while the captain paced.

“Where’s Onaha?” asked the security chief.

“Med bay,” grunted Gutassi. “Broke her ankle in some kinda accident. Bad luck piled atop of more bad luck.”

Tipohee sighed. “She gonna be okay?”

“I presume,” said Captain Gutassi. “Anything left? Is that everything?”

Tori shrugged. “I guess,” she said. “Was everything I could think of, at least.”

“Well, no point in dragging our tails,” he sighed. Then in a louder voice, he announced, “Bring the trinity back online.”

“Coming online now,” said the lieutenant who’d first broken the news about the commissioner’s plumbing. “Reactor at one hundred percent. Drive, recycler, and gate online.”

Gutassi sighed. “Nothing to do now but wait—”

“Incoming call from Krakuntec,” said the lieutenant.

“They wasted no time,” said the captain, scratching the back of his neck. “Put it on screen.”

The screen at the front of the bridge flickered and a white krakun with a mask of black scales appeared. “Where in the names of the dead gods have you been?” he demanded. “You’ve been out of contact for two days straight!”

“I’m very sorry, sir,” apologized the captain, his back straight and paws folded behind him. “I … misunderstood the commissioner’s orders, so we ended up doing two trinity shutdowns back-to-back.” He paused. “If I may, sir, who am I addressing? Usually, only the commissioner ever contacts—”

“You just stay right there, mammal,” warned the krakun. “Don’t you move a muscle.”

“Yes, sir,” Gutassi sighed.

A moment later, the call became a three-way—the screen splitting down the middle and a new krakun face appearing on the right half of the video connection. “Officer Jintauroka?” said the black-faced krakun. “This is Yanalooka, director of the geroo fleet for Planetary Acquisitions. We spoke yesterday.”

“Yes, I recall,” said Jintauroka as his eyes scanned the image on-screen. “Is this the mammal in charge of your wayward ship?”

“Yes, sir, this is Captain Gutassi of the Desert Oasis I.”

“Wayward ship?” squeaked Gutassi. “The commissioner ordered us to begin the reactor rebuild as soon as he was safely back in krakun space. I don’t understand why us being offline would be a surprise to—”

“I have a number of questions for you, mammal,” said Officer Jintauroka.

“Yes, sir,” sighed Gutassi. “How can I help you?”

“I’ll ask my questions in person,” said the officer. “Prepare to receive me within the hour.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19TTzkN1V-_EPeXdR2IKIQlzU11LJ8k-4-U8rdEVt-Ko/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?