Tori (Patreon)

Let's see how good these krakun investigators are anyhow!

———

Gutassi blinked and the call ended as abruptly as it had begun. “Well…”

“Well, indeed,” agreed Tori.

He turned to her and gestured at the door. “C’mon. I guess we should go meet him.” But she violently shook her head.

“Absolutely not!” said Tori. “How could you ever explain that? ‘This is Tori, she’s investigating a series of poisonings, but that’s totally unrelated to anything…’ No. I’m gonna go hide away in my apartment where he won’t be liable to run across me. Call me when it’s all over.”

“Hrm, yeah, that could be bad,” he agreed. “Thanks for pointing that out. I guess I’ll go alone.”

“Good luck,” said Tori as she climbed to her paws. “Remember, show some surprise when he drops the news.”

“Yeah, good luck, Cap,” echoed Tipohee.

“Show surprise, show surprise,” Gutassi muttered to himself as he made his way down to the shuttle bay. “You can do this. No big deal. Just trying to keep everyone from being murdered.”

The half-hour that followed was the longest of Gutassi’s career, and he paced the deck before the airlock so furiously that his paws buffed a shine into the aluminum deck. “I sure hope you buried all the evidence, Tori,” he whispered, “for all of our sakes.”

“Captain,” buzzed the intercom, “Officer Jintauroka’s ship has come through the gate and will be landing shortly. He didn’t make any requests. Should I pump in a compromise atmosphere, sir?”

“Negative,” said the captain. “I have no idea how long he’ll expect me to meet with him. Give him Gerootec normal.”

“Understood.”

The minutes dragged by as the ship landed and the bay pressurized. At last, Gutassi stepped through the airlock and waited for Jintauroka to descend the ramp. The dull green krakun stepped out, barely shaking the deck. His yellow eyes scanned the bay once before focusing on the captain, but he wasted no time with introductions. “Commissioner Troykintrassa arrived two days ago at approximately, oh-eight hundred hours. Correct?”

“Correct,” said the captain. “I met him here, personally.”

“Recount it for me.”

“Okay,” huffed Gutassi, trying to sound a little irritated. “He landed, basically ignored me, and griped about his shuttle. He said that it was falling apart, and that he barely made it here.”

The krakun lowered his mighty head closer. “Oh, did he?”

“Yeah,” said Captain Gutassi, “I offered to have my engineering chief look it over. He wanted her to run a diagnostic on it but said specifically that she wasn’t to disassemble anything—threatened to kill her if she delayed his departure.”

“And you have that diagnostic data?” asked Jintauroka.

The captain pulled his strand from the holster and punched Onaha’s icon for a voice-only call. “Hey, Chief. You still have the results from the diagnostic you ran on the commissioner’s shuttle?” After a pause, he added, “Can you send them to my strand?”

“Raw data,” interjected the krakun.

“Uh, better send me all the data you collected,” said Gutassi.

“I want to speak with her also,” added the officer.

“Yeah, send me your data and then head down to the shuttle bay,” said the captain into his strand. “Officer Jintauroka here has some questions… Well, have them give you a crutch and take a runabout… Actually, better have someone else drive you!” he chuckled before hanging up.

The krakun was staring at him, so Gutassi explained, “She wrecked a lift today. Broke her ankle, but she’ll be here as soon as she can.”

“So, the commissioner agreed to let your engineer run a diagnostic. And then what?”

“He told me to wait nearby in case he had any questions about my status report.”

“Is that unusual?” asked Jintauroka.

“I guess,” said the captain. “Usually, I meet with the deputy commissioner initially, and then I have a liaison stand by in case he needs anything, but the commissioner was very specific about not wanting to wait for me, if he had questions.”

“And did he have questions?”

“We spoke two more times before he left,” said Gutassi. “He called me into his office the first time and yelled at me because the reactor was underperforming. He told me to rebuild it immediately.”

“And the second time?”

“The second time was … uglier,” Gutassi said. “I told him that my engineer had no quick fixes to tune up his shuttle—that manufacturing would have to fabricate new parts—and gave him an update on the reactor. We had taken it offline and were getting ready to begin the rebuild. He was pissed. If it weren’t for the fact that I had been trying to follow his orders, I think he would have crushed me right then. Instead, he demanded we abort the rebuild and put the reactor back online as soon as we could.”

“I don’t follow,” said the investigator. “Why was he upset?”

“Well,” explained the captain, “the rebuild ended up taking twenty-eight hours, so we were on emergency back-up power that whole time. On back-up power, there’s enough juice to keep the crew alive and some of the lights on, but not enough to power the gate. The commissioner didn’t want to be stuck aboard that long.”

“I see.”

“As it was, he was still stranded here for seventeen hours,” said Captain Gutassi. “Once we take the gate offline, we have to wait until it discharges fully before we can bring it back up. So, it’s always down for a minimum of seventeen hours when we take it offline. We were down seventeen hours due to my misunderstanding of what he had meant by ‘immediately’, and then another twenty-eight hours for the rebuild after he left.”

“And he returned to his shuttle for this whole seventeen hours?”

“No,”—Gutassi pointed at the large airlock farther down the bay’s edge—“the commissioner has an office he stays in while auditing my report.”

The krakun unclipped the strand from his necklace and held it on edge before the geroo. “I’ll take a copy of that report.”

“Uh,” said the captain, hesitating. “Our reports are confidential company information. We’re not allowed to release them.”

“I have clearance,” said Jintauro. “The report.”

“Hey! I don’t even know what this is all about,” grumbled Gutassi. “No one has told me a single ancestors-be-damned thing, and I’ve already gotten my tail chewed off twice this week. If you want a copy of our status report, just get it from Commissioner Troykintrassa.”

“The commissioner is dead.”

Gutassi stared up at the krakun, counting the seconds. “D-dead?” he stammered.

“The commissioner’s shuttle crashed,” said Jintauro. “He did not survive.”

“Whoa,” said the captain. He rubbed his face. “The geroo are only allowed sixty years. Your people are basically immortal in comparison. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a krakun actually dying.”

“We are not immortal,” said the office. “Your report.”

“Oh, sorry.” Gutassi flicked at the file and touched his communicator to the gigantic one towering over him. “Oh, and here’s the diagnostic data from Onaha, too.”

Lifting his strand, the krakun glanced at the files and nodded. “Show me his office.”

Gutassi led the way through the hatch and into a hallway that led past the commissioner’s quarters. A scissor-lift with a crumpled front corner sat diagonally across the corridor. A ruined bumper had broken free and been scooted aside.

“Well, I guess I know which vehicle Onaha wrecked now,” said the captain. He bent and peeked inside the wheel well. “Yeah, that’s all messed up. I see why they left it here.”

The krakun touched the freshly polished metal at the edge of the commissioner’s hatch. “Your engineers repaired the hatch but not the vehicle?”

“Not surprising,” said Gutassi as he stepped inside. “Polishing out a dent just takes time and tools, but we only stock essential parts. Before engineering will be able to repair that lift, manufacturing will have to produce the replacement parts. I’m sure Onaha’s people have already queued requests. The details will be in my next report—two weeks from now.”

The officer ducked as he stepped inside, carefully studying every facet of the space as he went. With a claw, he flipped open the refrigerator. “Empty,” he said.

“The commissioner only visits every other week. Before his next audit, we’ll restock some fresh beverages for him—for his replacement, I guess,” Gutassi corrected himself.

The krakun peeked in the bathroom. When he pulled his head out, he said, “Smells like everything has been washed.”

“Sure,” said the captain. “The commissioner visits early sometimes, so I insist that the crew cleans immediately after each visit.”

Then the investigator pointed to a print hanging on the faux-stone walls. “Why is that hanging upside-down?”

Gutassi’s stomach clenched with worry. Had the commissioner flipped it to send a message to anyone who came looking for him? “I-is it?” the captain stammered.

The krakun turned and stared at the geroo a moment before looking back at the print. “Obviously, it is. The shore is at the top, the sky is on the bottom.”

“That’s … embarrassing,” said the captain with a nervous chuckle. He glanced around the room, trying to recall if they usually stocked the office with any sort of writing implement. Then he wondered if Tori would have thought to check behind the frame when she was destroying evidence. “The commissioners never mentioned that we hung it wrong. My people can’t see infrared or ultraviolet. It just looks like a blank canvas to me.”

The captain managed a smile, but his scent reeked of fear. “But thanks for telling me. I’ll make sure the crew corrects it.” He tapped some notes on his strand, trying to act as casual as possible.

The krakun looked at the print for a moment and the captain stared at his strand while trying to send some sort of telepathic command to the gigantic beast. Don’t look behind the print! Please don’t look behind the print!

Of course, it didn’t work. Rolling back onto his haunches, Officer Jintauro grabbed the frame with both of his front claws and yanked it from the magnetic mounts that held it to the wall.

“That’s really not necessary, sir!” gasped Gutassi. “I have people who…”

The captain watched, helplessly. The krakun seemed to move in slow motion. He pulled the print aside and casually peeked behind it, but there was no hidden message scrawled on the faux stone wall.

That didn’t make Gutassi feel any better, however, because from his vantage point on the deck below, he could see what the investigator couldn’t—that someone had scratched a word into the plastic backing on the reverse side of the frame.

In simple krakun runes—each taller than a geroo—stood a single, crude but clearly legible word.

Poison.

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JSDqwRPet9nVSVzCpU75qrPUHy6UFh5SpmF9WDvWTg4/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?