Executioner's Gambit: Jintauroka 2 (Patreon)

He just accused the captain!

———

“How?” she yarped. “The most dangerous weapons we have on this ship are nightsticks. They even carefully selected our euthanasia drugs to ensure they aren’t toxic to krakun.”

“Well—”

She interrupted, “Plus, what possible motivation would the captain have?”

Looking indignant, the officer said, “It’s hard to say at this point.”

“Well, pick your favorite,” said Tori. “We can explore it together and see just how ridiculous it is.”

Jintauroka set his palms on the deck. “Fine. How about revenge?”

“Revenge for what?” She gave him an exaggerated shrug. “The commissioner hasn’t been on this ship for fifty years!”

“Fifty years isn’t that long to hold a grudge.”

With her jaw hanging slightly agape, she said, “Perhaps not long for a krakun, but it’s a lifetime for a geroo!” How old was the captain, even? She sat back in her seat. “I doubt the captain had even been born fifty years ago. If he had, he was probably still a little cub and wouldn’t even remember the commissioner’s last visit.”

“What about Thojy?” asked Jintauroka, taking a moment to point a terrifyingly huge talon at her heart. “He’s the reason you were on the bridge. What if Thojy murdered the commissioner?”

“Even more ridiculous!” she laughed. “Thojy’s a young parent. There’s no way he was around the last time Troykintrassa visited. What motive could he possibly have?”

“He had a motive to kill ten others.”

“Yeah, ten others that were universally hated,” she groaned. Tori sat up and lowered her voice, as if she were speaking with a friend. “Did you know that after some of these deaths, fistfights actually broke out in the corridors because so many crewmembers wanted a chance to help bring the bodies to the recycler?”

Her ears spread in a tired smile. “Thojy didn’t hate the commissioner. He didn’t even know the commissioner. No one aboard this ship did.”

Jintauroka tapped the deck with a talon, and Tori could feel the vibration through her seat. “Well, he didn’t need to know him personally. The geroo are slaves, and the commissioner is their master. It’s hardly shocking that—”

Tori shook her head. “I think you have a very gloomy idea of what life is like for us geroo,” she said. “You see, we’re born, we find a mate, we raise our cubs, and live our lives almost entirely without company interference. The only interaction we have with krakun are the deputy commissioner’s biweekly inspections—and for those, the captain is the only geroo he interacts with. The rest of the crew keeps their distance and goes on with their day.”

“But—”

“Now your people, no offense sir, are the ones truly living in a dystopian nightmare,” Tori said with total sincerity. “Unlike on this ship where we do regular maintenance on everything to protect the lives of our crew, the corporations on your planet do as little maintenance as necessary so they can maximize their profits.

“And if I understand correctly,” she said, “once you close out your investigation and declare the commissioner’s death an accident, the krakun tradition is for his relatives to sue the company for negligence, and then the company is expected to pay them off by ‘settling out of court’ so they don’t have to admit responsibility. Do I have that right?”

Jintauroka chuckled quietly at her simplistic view of his society before finally admitting, “More or less, I suppose.”

She raised her palms. “Well, there’s nothing here for you, Officer Jintauroka. All we have is a ship full of geroo, doing their jobs while the commissioner checked in on us. We came back online to find that corporate neglect had killed someone that we don’t really know that well.” She smiled, feeling a little relief that perhaps the danger had passed.

The green krakun frowned. “But you’ve got to admit the possibility that Thojy—”

“Why are you so excited to hang this accident around Thojy’s neck?” she squeaked. He was getting her so frustrated that she stood without even realizing it. Tori sighed and took her seat once more. “Yes, he’s a criminal. He’s been caught, I’m confident that they’ll convict him for Nija’s murder, and execute him. Even though I’m confident that he murdered the other nine, there’s really no reason to bother proving it. So, why are you so intent on twisting something that was clearly an accident into yet another murder you can pin on him?”

The officer glared at her and moved his snout slightly closer so his eyes drilled into her. “This ‘accident’ was far too suspicious to be anything of the sort,” he growled. “We already know that Thojy was capable—”

“Capable of what?” she shouted. “Hacking the shuttle so that he could remote pilot it into Krakuntec? I spoke with Nija about hacking before her death, and she told me the lengths that the company goes through to make sure that no geroo ever learns how to do that.”

Tori put a palm over her eyes. “But yet you’re confident that Thojy, a crewmember I only just told you about a few minutes ago, was an expert in a skill we’re kept from even dabbling in?”

“It’s possible—”

She interrupted, “And how did Thojy keep piloting the shuttle after we closed the gate?”

“He could have just sabotaged the engines—”

“So, you must have a distress call from the shuttle with Troykintrassa yelling, ‘Help! Help! My engines are out!’?”

Jintauroka frowned. He paused for a moment before offering, “Thojy could have also sabotaged the radio. After all, a patrol ship did try to hail the shuttle but got no response.”

Tori pointed an angry finger in his face. “If the commissioner didn’t respond, it was because he didn’t want to respond.” She drew a calming breath and let it slowly out. “We know the radio was working when he arrived, and if it wasn’t working when he left, then he would have insisted that someone fix it. Even if he was in a hurry, I refuse to believe that he’d have left until it was okay.”

“But Thojy—”

Tori crossed her arms. “Y’know, trials on gateships aren’t long drawn-out affairs. Security was going to accuse Thojy, and there’s no way he has a good explanation of who stabbed him if it wasn’t Nija. So, they’ve probably sent him off to the recycler by now,” she grumbled. “If you were so convinced that Thojy tampered with the shuttle, then why are you just standing there, gabbing with me instead of rushing to interview the condemned before he gets reduced to atoms?”

“Well—”

The pieces fell together in Tori’s mind. “Oh, wait! I get it now.” Her muzzle hung open and she stared at the krakun. “You know that the crash was an accident, but you’re thinking, ‘Why should I waste this opportunity? I can say that Thojy did this too. He can’t defend himself, and he’s already been punished. It’s a win-win.’”

She covered her mouth with a paw and stared. “You get the notoriety of solving a case that most investigators would have called an accident, and even though you accuse someone of a crime they didn’t commit, there’s no real damage done. The criminal was already executed before you got a chance to speak with him.”

The krakun’s claws moved slowly, and he scooped up the office chair with Tori in it. Holding her—not all the way on her back but probably reclined half way—he glared down at the tiny geroo. She gripped the seat the best she could with one paw and squeezed the cane with the other.

The krakun’s voice was low and growly, like scrap metal dragged across the deck, “And is this the part of the interview where you try to blackmail me?” he asked. “Because it could also be the time when a famous geroo investigator died suddenly of her wounds…”

“No no no!” she shouted, waving the cane but trying not to hit him with it. “I don’t want anything from you except for you to hear me out.”

He moved his snout so close to the trembling geroo that his breath ruffled her fur. She tried to hold the cane still to the side so it didn’t touch him. Jintauroka growled, “Make it quick.”

Tori pleaded, “This is a terrible, terrible thing you’re considering, sir.” He pulled slightly back and she hurriedly explained, “Although you might be thinking that Planetary Acquisitions wouldn’t give this sort of accusation a second thought, they will! The company has gone to great lengths to assure the commissioners that they’re perfectly safe when they come aboard a gateship.”

The krakun’s brow tensed and his eyes closed to angry slits. “It appears they were wrong about that.”

“No, they weren’t!” she begged. “Troykintrassa died on Krakuntec, and his accident had nothing to do with any of the gateships.”

“Except—”

“But if you even breathe the rumor that a slave killed him, then the company will investigate—regardless of the fact that Thojy is already dead.”

He slowly set her back on the deck and she spent several long moments, sucking in breaths and squeezing them out before managing, “I don’t know what they’d do under ‘normal’ conditions, but I’m absolutely positive that if they investigated now, they’d grossly and tragically overreact.”

“Why is that?” he demanded. He slapped his claw against the deck so hard that Tori’s chair made a small bounce.

“Because of the ten victims, sir,” she explained. “All ten victims were widely hated. They were horrible people who did horrible things.”

Jintauroka tilted his head in surprise. “Thojy was a vigilante?”

“Yes, but even worse,” she said, “all ten of his victims were those in positions of power: administrators, officers, and supervisors.”

The officer sat back and pondered this a moment. “The crew was happy to see them die, so I’m guessing they were happy that Thojy was killing them.”

“Yes, exactly!” Tori blurted in relief. “Even though he was committing terrible crimes, he enjoyed a measure of support from across most of the crew.”

She stared down at the deck. “And if the company thought that the crew supported rebellion against authority…”

“I’m guessing the company might react harshly,” he finished for her.

Tori stood from her seat and lifted her paws in prayer. “They would purge the ship,” she said. “Sir, there’s ten thousand geroo on board, and they’d kill every last one of us just to make sure that any traces of rebellion were stamped out.”

The geroo walked closer to him, and he bent his neck, keeping his eyes on her. “Please, sir, you’re already a successful krakun with an important job,” she said. “I don’t know how much of a career boost a lie like this might give you, and maybe you don’t care so much about the lives of slaves, but just think … ten thousand geroo will die if you do—officers, crew, and even little cubs.”

Tori’s strength threatened to give out on her, and her head hung limply from her neck. “Honestly, sir, is that many lives worth a pat on the back and a ‘Job well done!’?”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cIHVbS98_dMW2InvJXiuAL-8vTLh5K86Pvo-bXLvr4k/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?