Litue 1 (version 2) (Patreon)

I rewrote and extended the start of a sequel to "Long Way Home". I've got the next chapter done also but I accidentally wrote it in third person. Derp. It was working pretty well, but since the original novel was in first, it seemed wrong to make the sequel in third.

I'll try rewriting it to first this weekend and get it up soon.

Also, don't forget to tune into my interactive story writing thing this afternoon! I'm very nervous about it, but you guys are the most supportive audience ever, so I figure how bad can it be?

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I stood on the small iron platform, wringing my paws with apprehension while a brown geroo with dirt on his face scooped shovel after shovel of wet sand into a burlap sack. Was he a farmer? I wondered, actively trying to distract my mind. He smelled like someone who dug in the dirt for a living. I closed my eyes and swallowed. One more scoop, and the platform beneath my paws shifted and started swaying slightly back and forth. I grabbed the rusty chains that held the platform and raised my long, striped tail to steady my balance.

“Yup. That ought to do it,” he wheezed. “Thank you, Miss.” He gestured vaguely to the grass in front of the platform, and I stepped away. Without my weight holding the balance down, the scale lurched, and the platform with the sandbag thudded to the ground.

Another geroo, this one fat and pompous, put a paw to my shoulder and walked me across the lush green grass to a picnic table beneath a tree. He had introduced himself earlier as Governor E’e, and he seemed quite proud of that title, but I found him to be a most unpleasant sort of person. I’d never had much respect for elected officials of any sort, and it was far too late to abandon that bias now.

Like most politicians I’d met, his ears opened wide, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. He tried to pretend that he didn’t loathe me, but his hatred was so palpable that it oozed between his words like epoxy around a hull patch.

Just finish this stupid lecture already, I groaned internally, so I can go back to my nice quiet cell with my crewmates.

The bench was too low for ringel, leaving the wooden table even with the top of my chest. It would have been awkward to rest my arms on it, so I folded my paws in my lap and I focused my attention on the awful manacles they had fashioned for my wrists—a short length of chain welded to a pair of… Were those hose clamps? That had to be what they were. The officer who had put them on me had tightened them down with a wrench rather than a key.

Guess they don’t get a lot of aliens on this world…

Whatever. I had no idea what the court system was like on New Gerootec, but it wouldn’t matter much. The case against my crew and me was pretty solid.

At least I wouldn’t have to put up with this pageantry for much longer.

I ignored the governor sitting across the table. He was rambling on and on about my crimes, so I was watching the farmer as he lugged the heavy sandbag across the grass.

A real living planet! I thought as I sniffed the fragrant early-summer air. The geroo actually found themselves a planet with a breathable atmosphere—no dome holding the air in, no breathing masks required to filter out poisons. Even the temperature was quite pleasant. Amazing. What lucky little shits.

Well, big shits, I suppose. Geroo were twice as tall as ringel and several times as thick—bottom-heavy mostly. They looked like they’d evolved in higher gravity than my people had. Us ringel were natural climbers, while geroo… Honestly, I have no idea what evolution had in mind there. With their thick legs and tails, it looked like nature had selected them for survival of the least-likely-to-get-blown-over-by-a-strong-wind.

They could breathe the same air as us and eat the same foods, but the females had pouches instead of tits. That was distracting! From a distance, they all looked male. Oof. Just imagine if everyone on this planet was male. What an awful waste that would be. They’d never get anything accomplished. Well, unless they worked out a way to use belching and farting as currency somehow.

Oh well. As jealous as I was, I suppose the geroo deserved it, with the krakun having destroyed their homeworld and all. I tried feeling happy for them, but happiness was in rather short supply.

In the branches above my head, a tiny creature peeped endlessly. “Beep. Beep. Beep,” it sang without tiring. The tuneless song reminded me of the low voltage alarm on my ship’s primary atmospheric processor. That thing was so annoying! I turned my head and opened my muzzle to shout at Uulihe, to tell him to fix the damn thing once and for all, before realizing where I was.

E’e paused to see what I was going to say. Feeling foolish, I shut my mouth and returned my gaze to my paws.

The farmer released a latch and the tree over him lurched, its long leafy branches swayed, and the rope tied to the sandbag snapped taut. “Bauuum…” it twanged at the very lower limits of my hearing.

My throat constricted tight while the farmer stared at the tree branch with paws on his hips. Then he returned to his winch and began resetting it for a second try.

He scooted the sandbag over, closer to the tree’s trunk this time, and he retied the rope to a new spot on the limb.

“Disgusting, Captain Litue. The things you’ve done are absolutely disgusting,” said Governor E’e, drawing my attention once more. Whatever, fatso. He’d only gotten my attention because he’d actually used my name and title. Previously, he’d only ever called me, “Pirate.”

With a small grin on my ears, I idly wondered how much the chamberlain would have paid for Governor E’e. The big geroo probably wouldn’t have made much of a breeder, but with his wide girth, he’d have made an excellent feast for the turek’s pet boidae worm.

My ears drooped and my conscience surprised me with a small pang of guilt. I hadn’t felt that way before. Stealing geroo and selling them off had just been a business thing. Yeah, it was immoral, but it paid well, and it wasn’t really my fault what happened to them. I wasn’t the one using them as worm food.

Until I’d befriended a geroo, that was.

Well, in all fairness, I doubt Jungo would consider me his friend, but I’d certainly allowed myself to get closer to him than I had intended. Perhaps he was the reason that geroo seemed more like people now and less like chattel?

The farmer released the latch again, and the tree swung, this time catapulting the sandbag high into the air. He barely dove out of the way in time shouting, “Geez!”

I didn’t mean to cry out. Honestly, I was trying to be as unemotional as possible throughout this whole meeting, but watching the sandbag spin a full loop in the air was more than I’d been prepared for. “Please no!” I gasped. “Not like that.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw E’e pause and grin before resuming his rant.

Back at the tree, the farmer winched the branch down a third time, ready to try another anchor point for his hangman’s rope.

“...That’s why we’re offering you this stay of execution,” said the governor.

Suddenly, the tubby geroo had my full attention. “Wait,” I gasped. “What?”

“A stay of execution,” he repeated. “If you accept this deal.”

I blinked and shook my head; not sure I’d heard him right even the second time. “I take a deal … and then you’ll … pardon us?”

I must have said the wrong thing because that pushed the fat geroo into a fit of hysterical laughter. He barked sharp yarps as if it had been the funniest thing he’d ever heard and slapped his palm against the picnic table a few times before he nearly toppled from his seat. At last, he finally regained his composure.

“In your dreams!” he shouted. “No, definitely not a pardon. A stay of execution. You agree to help us out, and if you prove helpful, then we simply won’t carry out your death sentence. You’ll remain on death row, but your punishment would effectively be a life sentence—so long as you remain cooperative and useful.”

He tilted his head, taking a moment to appraise me like a farm animal that he might buy. “If you’re interested in making a deal, that is.”

I laughed and stood up on the bench, resting my manacled paws on the table so I could lean closer to him. “For a stay of execution?” I gave him my nicest smile and lowered my voice to a sultry whisper, “Governor, for a stay of execution, I’d gladly suck your dick until you cut your mate and your own cubs from your will.”

The governor chuckled and lifted one ear in a smirk.

The farmer threw his latch for a third time. The branch swung and the sandbag jumped straight up in the air a couple of meters. Then it bounced up and down for a short while before coming to rest a little way off the ground. “Perfect,” he declared.

I turned back to the governor. “Very well,” he said. He leaned back in his seat and tapped his fingers against the table a few times in thought. “We have a deal. I will inform the prosecutor and he’ll announce it to the court after the verdict is read. At that time, you will be returned to your cell.”

He grinned with more than a little malice on his ears. “But the rest of your crew? They’re gonna hang.”

# # #

Ugh. I’d agreed too quickly. I thought I’d been bargaining a stay for my entire crew, not just myself. But once I realized that they’d be left out in the cold, it was too late. E’e knew how enthusiastic I was about taking the deal now, and nothing I could say would bring him back to the negotiating table at that point.

My only options were to take the deal or leave it, to save myself or hang with the rest of my crew. So of course, I took the deal. If I could have saved anyone else, I would have, but I was fresh out of leverage. I couldn’t even bargain a decent meal for their last.

Back in the cell, the crew waited for me to tell where they’d taken me. I couldn’t say. I was so distraught that all I could do was lay on my bunk and cry. In classic ringel style, they tried to cheer me back up with sex, but I was too upset to even join in.

The trial was dreadful, and it dragged on pointlessly, giving each of the geroo—and even the ship’s A.I.—a chance to be heard. Jungo had been conspicuously absent, but it hardly mattered. Twenty others and the disembodied voice of the ship’s computer took the stand one by one and told essentially the same story.

They had offered us each a chance to tell our side of what had happened, to refute what the others had said, but what was the point? Even if the jury would believe the word of aliens over those of their own people—and I doubt that was the case—we had actually been kidnapping and selling geroo, so I doubted any lie could convince them otherwise.

Most of my crew were pretty stoic during the trial. Getting caught and punished was a risk that every pirate faced, so there certainly was no surprise in where we were headed. Uulihe was irreverent to the point where he nearly got himself muzzled. Good for him! Besides, I couldn’t blame him. There wasn’t anything he could say to make things worse, and he’d always been a bit of a sociopath. Despite all the hours of testimony, all the hours of geroo telling about their fear and suffering, of going hungry in our cell and worrying about what would become of them, Uulihe was still incapable of empathy.

Hentzi blubbered throughout the trial, muttering in ringel that it wasn’t fair, that he hadn’t even been conscious when Jungo and his crew had been abducted. And though it was true, it was hardly a defense. He had helped steal the other geroo, helped sell them off when we’d rendezvoused with the chamberlain. And even though we weren’t on trial for the batches of geroo we’d abducted and sold prior to this batch, everyone knew there had been others. Hentzi had helped then too, so the fact that he’d been unconscious during when we’d taken a New Gerootec ship and crew was largely irrelevant. He still had more than enough guilt to hang.

I sat on one side of a long wooden table with the rest of my crew, listening and waiting for the trial to finally finish. Beside me, Doctor Clainence snuggled close. Then Hentzi, Grunaske, Siskidie, and then Ensign Uulihe down at the end. Uulihe heckled each witness ruthlessly, sneering and mocking their pain. The rest of us sat quietly, heads bowed.

When the sentence was finally read, it was a surprise to no one. “I sentence the six of you to die for your crimes,” the judge said simply. The witness statements had said enough. The judge had no reason to tell us his opinion.

“Sir,” Governor E’e said, stepping forward. “If you will refer to the final page of the criminal complaint…”

The judge nodded and flipped pages and silently read the sheet. “One moment… Very well,” he said at last. “Since the defense forces see value in what knowledge the defendants may have as well as having previously agreed to share said knowledge, judgement still stands but the convicts will be remanded to the defense force’s custody.”

The noise level in the courtroom raised a dull roar and the judge had to bang his gavel several times to get those present to stop talking. “Order! Order! To be clear, each of these criminals are still to be executed, but we will allow the governor to dictate when so that no useful knowledge will be lost in a rush to get justice.”

“What?” shouted Uulihe. He leapt to his paws and stared at me from the other end of the table. “You made a deal behind our backs? You fucking bitch!”

Then he leapt at me.

What an idiot. I doubt Uulihe had ever won a fair fight, and it had been ages since I’d lost one. If there was any single person in the courtroom that I wasn’t frightened of, it was the ensign. Despite my wrists being cuffed, I knew I could take him apart.

In the end, it didn’t really matter. The bailiff had been ready, and he threw himself on top of Uulihe before the hot-head could even make his way down the table to where I was waiting for him.

Uulihe had been dragged off first—past the audience and out the main door to the square where the hanging tree waited. But then I was led away—walked back to the staircase leading to the cells. I looked back on my crew with my ears and tail drooped low. They all stared at me with tragic betrayed faces. I thought I saw a hint of understanding from my second, Lieutenant Siskidie, but it was the look on the doctor’s ears that really hurt my heart. Doctor Clainence looked as if she could never forgive me.

“I’m sorry,” I mouthed to them all as I was led out of sight.

Weeks passed and I still felt terrible for having abandoned my crew. As Captain, my crew was supposed to be my first priority and my ship second, but now I had lost both. I had lost my purpose in life.

Despite holding my captive, my jailors were quite kind. They allowed me to visit Jungo in the hospital once, and that had been pretty nice. Jungo hadn’t forgiven me—not that I could truly blame him—but at least it had given me a chance to apologize, to get some of the guilt off my chest.

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wUvSCyQ4bwrxDx_Se4dpiVixOXDyc3Np8bMo_tbSoY8/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?