A8 Blackmail (Patreon)

Lots of furry cons confirmed. I will be vending at all three of the following this year:

• Furry Weekend Atlanta: 5/11-5/14
• Nomadicon (Nashville): 5/26-5/28
• Megaplex (Orlando): 9/15-9/17

Back on Executioner's Gambit, but I'm rearranging some scenes. I think that Tori meeting her boss and talking to all the doctors is enough for her first day, so here's a little wind-down with the neighbors to bring it all together:

A3 New Lodging
A4 Argument
A5 Introductions
A6 Under Your Tongue
A7 Doctor Visit
A8 Pharmacist
A9 Pariah

———

Tori trudged back toward the apartment. She still had plenty more geroo to interview, but her energy reserves were running low. Even if she talked to more suspects now, she doubted she could give them her full attention.

Beside the neighbor’s door, Druka was hanging out, gabbing with two other geroo: Biiz—the next-door neighbor—and a male with a white pelt and pink eyes. Druka’s ears perked when he noticed Tori, and he pulled away from the others. “Oh, there’s my mate,” he said. “Tori, this is Biiz’s friend, Thojy. He used to live in the apartment we just rented.”

“Right,” said Tori, nodding her head. She touched paws with Thojy in greeting. “Biiz said his buddy used to rent it.”

“Oh, yeah,” sighed Thojy wistfully as he touched Tori’s paw in greeting. “I miss the old place so much. The kerrati up here are so much politer. They actually have the decency to run away when you turn on the lights.”

Tori blinked, frozen in place a moment before she took back her paw. She hadn’t been expecting him to say such a thing and wasn’t certain whether it had been in jest or not. Every ship in the fleet had a kerrati problem to some degree. The little rodents could squeeze between the walls and their populations were notoriously hard to control.

“Oh, really?” she asked. “I haven’t seen any sign of them, but we’ve only been in the apartment for a day.” The vermin typically infested the lower decks—those closest to the recycler bays—but she’d thought that all the way up here on fifteen, that they’d be a rare sight.

“Absolutely,” said Thojy with a straight face. “Down on sixteen, the little turds will just stare you down—wait for you to turn the lights back off—especially the spotted ones. They act like they own the place!”

Druka and Tori shared a look of alarm.

“As a matter of fact,” Thojy added, “just last night, I got out of bed to take a leak, and I caught a bunch of them having a party in my living room. The guys were hanging out in a little circle, and the gals were in the middle. They’d climbed up on top of one of my son’s toys and were dancing to entertain the males.”

“Really?” said Tori, but this time her tone more dubious than before.

“Yup,” said Thojy. “And one of the little spotty ones looks over at me and yells, ‘Yo, roomy! Grab me a beer while you’re up.’”

At that, Tori yarped a laugh. She squeezed her eyes shut and grinned at the white geroo. “Silly.”

Thojy nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “as if I had any beer left in the fridge. Had to run to the market to get a six pack.”

Tori covered her eyes. “Thojy, you’re terrible!”

“You think that’s terrible?” he asked. “Realized I was out of credits and had to dance for almost an hour just to raise enough in tips.”

Biiz looked away, his shoulders twitching slightly as he held in a laugh.

“Pity tips, honestly. Didn’t earn them,” said Thojy. “But the kerrati appreciated the beer. I got a, ‘Thanks, toots,’ and a slap on the ass when I delivered it.”

Everyone stared at him in silence. “They had to climb on each other’s shoulders to get up there. I really appreciated the effort.”

Biiz gave his best friend a shove before turning his attention back to Tori. “Come in,” he said. “Join us for breakfast.”

Tori shook her head as if to clear it. “Breakfast?” she peeked at the time on her strand.

“Is for us,” said Biiz, beckoning the others inside. “Lusa and I work thirds.”

Lusa, short and chubby with an orange pelt, waved from the kitchen as everyone took seats around the table. Biiz called out to their son, “Inea! Come to breakfast. Neighbors are here.” And Lusa set a tall plate of breakfast cakes down at the table’s center.

“Coming!” shouted a younger voice from a back bedroom.

Druka served a cake onto Tori’s plate, and with a few deft slices, divided it into bite-sized bits.

A skinny adolescent emerged with eyes downcast. He shuffled casually to the table and flopped down as if the artificial gravity were several times normal. “Hello, neighbors. Whoa…” he said, finally noticing Tori’s ruined face.

Inea stared at her—as most people did—but with more of a sense of shock and wonder than the usual revulsion.

“Nice to meet you, Inea,” said Tori, breaking the awkward silence.

“What happened to you?” he whispered.

“Inea!” hissed both of his parents in unison.

“I’m recovering from sulfur poisoning,” Tori explained, looking only at the cub. “I had a meeting with my former commissioner that went … poorly.”

Inea covered his muzzle with one paw for a moment before finally pulling it away. He didn’t blink, but his ears lowered from alarm to empathy. “Did it … hurt?”

Tori shook her head. “Not at the time, no,” said the rusty red geroo. “I fell into a coma, but when I woke up … then yeah, it hurt.”

The conversation died, and everyone sat in silence for many long seconds before Druka offered, “Turns out, you guys happen to have the best surgeon in the geroo expeditionary force—”

“One of the best, at least,” said Tori.

“Right, one of the best, if not the best.” She wasn’t sure if he was injecting artificial positivity into his voice, or if he truly believed that Doctor Amhela could save her life. “So, we’re hoping that when Tori finishes up her assignment, that he might be able to … help.”

The conversation died once more. Eventually, Druka offered, “My day went really well. New co-workers seem cool. Spent the day cutting sheet metal, which is kinda fun.” He helped Tori adjust the grip on her fork. “How about you, hon?”

“It was a tough one, actually,” she said. “My boss doesn’t want me on his team. Then, I spent the rest of the day talking to doctors.”

“What did Doctor Amhela say?” asked Druka.

Everyone stopped eating. They stared at Tori, waiting for her answer.

“He…” Tori bit her lip, unsure how much to share. “I couldn’t interest him in a bribe.”

Everyone exchanged glances, but Druka covered for her, “Before we left our old ship, we held a bit of a fundraiser. Wasn’t a lot of credits, but we were hoping it would be enough to get the doctor’s help.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think it is,” sighed Tori. “Said he doesn’t care about money. Just didn’t want to get in trouble.”

Thojy nodded. “Trouble for performing surgery without authorization.”

“Yeah.” Tori sighed. “He said he’d do it for free, but he wanted everyone to sign off on it: an administrator, the captain, and even the commissioner himself!”

All around the table, ears fell low. “Oh, is that all?” asked Lusa, sadly shaking her head.

For a beat, no one said anything, but Thojy didn’t wait long. “Well, there’s always blackmail.”

Tori choked on a bite of breakfast cake and had to take a drink to get it down. In the meekest voice, she asked, “Blackmail … the commissioner?”

Thojy yarped loud. He banged his palm on the table. “No, silly! Blackmail the doctor, of course.” When everyone stared at him, he shrugged. “That’s what they’d do to us in school: First, bribe us to be good with treats and crap, then threaten to punish us if that didn’t do the trick.”

No one said a word, and Thojy waved a forkful of breakfast cake as if it were a director’s baton. “He should’a taken the bribe while he had the chance.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1j1TdE0tquCv6tlqJ6RnC6ej3U1iXm4QcxivsofPvxDE/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?