Totaikona 1 (Patreon)

Hey! I know these small stories dropped off over the holidays but since book 2 is now done and I'm still depressurizing a bit before I tackle book 3, here's a free-written snippet for a side story about Pokokuro's cousin. This is a first pass off the top of my head and so is, of course, subject to change based on my whims before any final form is decided upon. As usual if you have thoughts or ideas about this story feel free to share them!

--

Totaikona snorted, tossing his head as he came to, his neck  wrapped in a thick blanket. The tips of his horns ground painfully against the cold concrete as he twisted his head, until he realized the base of his neck was taking the weight of his chest, as his upper half had slid off the bed entirely overnight.

His mobile com, right next to his tympanum, buzzed shrilly. How long had it been ringing? His head felt like it was going to explode.

The red-scaled krakun struggled to right himself, the metal weave in the cheap blanket tearing as he rolled over. Righting himself didn’t help the pain; it felt like a hangover, but he hadn’t done any drinking or pill-popping the night before, at least none he could recall. The mobile com shrieked again. Totaikona grasped at his head to squeeze the hurting out, before he finally fumbled for the device and answered it.

“Hello—” He started, then perked up when he saw who it was at the other end. “Oh! Little Poko!”

“I told you to stop calling me that,” Pokokuro snorted, seeming more irritable than usual. The pink-scaled krakun was his cousin on his mother’s side. Her father was the infamous Thrull, CEO of Planetary Acquisitions and wealthy as all hell—meaning she had golds to throw around, and that demanded every bit of Totaikona’s currently-drifting attention. “Gods’ hell, what happened to you? You look like you were hit by a freighter.”

Totaikona didn’t have opportunity to look in a mirror, but give how he felt, he didn’t argue. “Rough night…”

“Well drink some blackmead and get your tail in gear, I have a job for you,” Pokokuro demanded.

“Right.” Totaikona proceeded to do the opposite of that, even with Pokokuro looking at him through the mobile com’s camera, he merely heaved himself back onto his bed and slumped against the frame. “What’s the job?”

“I need you to do a planetary scan for me.”

Totaikona snorted and chuckled, but his face fell when Pokokuro’s glower didn’t change. “You’re serious?”

“Of course I’m serious! How often do I call you in the middle of the afternoon to tell you a joke?”

“It’s the middle of the afternoon?” Totaikona checked his mobile com’s clock, which he’d somehow missed—currently 1540 hours. “Oh, shit. I haven’t even opened the shop yet—”

“Screw your shop! This isn’t a barter, I’m paying you money for this, and I need it done within the week.”

She sent a text message with the contract terms. Totaikona’s shining eyes lit up at the number. That, plus a finder’s fee if the planet was viable for terraformation? He could easily keep the shop closed all month if it meant those kind of golds!

“Doesn’t Planetary Acquisitions have its own fleet of scanning probes?” Totaikona questioned. “I’m pretty sure you manufacture those things by the shipload.”

“Unfortunately, there’s regulations in the way. For one, despite being Thrull’s daughter, I can’t merely request the use of a probe without approval from the board, which would include our defense contractors. They aren’t about to let me borrow their toys when I could just as easily have the gate ship repair its own sensors.”

“And why aren’t you doing that?”

“Because I don’t want to,” Pokokuro said. “I’m attempting to instill some sense of shame into this crew, and I wanted to take the important task out of their grubby little paws. Besides, it’ll take them nearly two weeks to rebuild the devices and the sooner I can get this done, the better. So, that’s left me independently contracting again.”

“Well, I’m glad you decided on me!” Totaikona said with a smile that made his lips hurt. “I must have made an impression on you with the Jetter rebuild!”

“You weren’t my first choice,” Pokokuro grumbled flatly. “More like seventeenth. Just nobody else could even promise to have a ship ready to specifications in a week, and you seem to always have something.”

“Oh I no doubt can get this ready for you—”

“Good. I’ve sent you a file outlining the company regulations for planetary scanning.”

The little mail icon danced on the screen. The regulation file was eleven hundred pages long, and Totaikona had a difficult time skimming through it as his eyes were threatening to blur. Why wasn’t the headache going away? Maybe he really did need to drink some blackmead. “Uh-huh. Yeah I got the parts for that,” he lied. “And for that. And for that. It’s gonna be tricky fitting all of this onto one ship, but I can send anup up there when—”

He paused on page 811. “What’s this about needing krakun supervision?”

“That’s a requirement of contractors,” Pokokuro said. “You still have your space flight certification, don’t you?”

“W-wait, you want me to go into space?”

“Either you or you find someone who does.”

Well, that was out of the question. Totaikona only subcontracted work at a flat rate, and everyone else he knew would demand a percentage. He wasn’t about to let a piece of that organ pie out of his claws.

“Right right, okay, I’m going into space!”

Totaikona stamped the contract with his personal electronic seal, then huffed because he was feeling patchy and hot all over. “Anyway. How are things? I take it the new job is going well.”

“I hate it,” Pokokuro said. She normally would have hung up but it sure sounded like she needed to vent. “First day on the job, I get snubbed by the captain who broke his own damn ship, hence the contract. They sure got lazy in the short period of time that my predecessor has been gone. And I’m gonna be busy all week; I have to visit one of my ships every day. They sure run their commissioners ragged in this company…”

Totaikona tilted his head. “Surely you wouldn’t speak ill of your— of your…” His nose twitched. It was like someone had jammed a thread up one nostril. Suddenly bucking, the red krakun sneezed, and his mobile com jumped from his claw. The device went skittering off his belly, ricocheting off his tail, and clattering to the concrete floor.

He had to blink a few times to get his vision straight again. Then with a great deal of effort, he heaved himself upright, laying against the foot of the bed, he reached over and grabbed his mobile com off the floor. The titanium frame had dented slightly, and the floor had left a scuff mark over the glass face.

“Sorry about that,” he said with a sniff.

Pokokuro leaned into the screen as though to get a better look. “… you’re not sick, are you?”

“Nah, it’s just dusty in here,” Totaikona lied. He hoped it was just a morning bug of some kind. It didn’t matter either way, because he was taking this contract before Pokokuro could think better and rescind it.

Pokokuro stared at him, then snorted. “Whatever, just get it done. I’m meeting friends for dinner and can’t be chatting all evening. You have any questions, don’t call me, just leave them in my inbox and I’ll handle it in the morning.”

“Right-o, cousin, just one thing first… I will get to use the company launchpad for this, right?”

“If you want—why, what’s wrong with yours?”

Totaikona slipped from his mattress and, feeling the weight of his body the whole way, sauntered over to the windows of the sparse bedroom. Peeling aside the thick slats of the window shade, he peered out into the courtyard of his empire.

His main office, where he was, perched atop a tall tower above his parts shop a hundred meters below. Beyond several precarious stacks of derelict autos, lorries, yachts, jetters and drones, were a number of atmospheric spaceships, haphazardly scraped of their hulls to get at the parts within. He hadn’t been up in well over a century, and the spread of junk had overtaken the raised patch of concrete with a high-contrast circle and x painted over the center.

That’d take more than a week to clear out.

“Just making a note of it,” He told her. “I won’t keep you, I’ll get to work straightaway.”

“You do that,” Pokokuro said. “And of course…”

“Keep it under the table, I know! Bye bye, little Poko.”

Pokokuro snorted and hung up. Totaikona tossed his mobile com over to the bed again, just before another sneezing fit overtook him. He looked down into the snapped-off window slat in his claw.

Well, that was in the bag. He went over to the machine to steep a large bowl of blackmead, while he groggily pondered how to get one of those pieces of shit out on his lot spaceworthy within a week.