Nobody Left Behind 17

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With arms crossed over her chest, Siki glared at the krakun’s head. Eventually, when he could take her scrutiny no longer, he snapped, “What?”

“It’s you,” grunted the geroo. “You’re a real piece of … work.”

Sarsuk frowned hard and his scaled brow bunched. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Siki threw up her paws. “You’re so, ‘Oh, woe is me! Life is so unfair!’”

“It is!” he shouted. “None of this was my fault. They executed—”

“Which you deserved,” she interrupted.

The krakun’s jaw fell open, and he looked hurt. “I didn’t steal—”

“Maybe not, but you’re still a criminal. You still deserved execution.” He opened his mouth to reply, and she shouted over him, “You murdered a guy because he was out after curfew. How is that reasonable? You’re a murderer!”

Sarsuk pouted so hard that his lower lip stuck out. Eventually, he sucked it back in and opened his mouth to reply, but Siki wasn’t done. She waved her arms in the air. “And you were so upset about it that I actually had to bribe you with javea to tell me the story, only for the murder to be a damn footnote in the tale.” She looked up and to the side, mocking a thoughtful tone of voice, “Oh yeah, I guess I did murder him, didn’t I?”

“I wasn’t upset about him!”

“You don’t say,” said Siki, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Kanti—”

“Who you also murdered!” she shouted.

Sarsuk growled and glared. “He’s not dead.”

“And you say that why? So, you won’t feel guilty?”

“No.” The krakun stared at the floor. When he spoke again, his voice was far softer. “I think I do feel guilty.”

# # #

The platform rose slowly from the prison below until it stopped inside an open-topped cage—not that Sarsuk could climb out with his wrist shackles chained to a bolt-eye at the edge of the elevator platform. He blinked and blinked again until his eyes finally adjusted, and he found himself atop a raised platform in the middle of a cobbled courtyard. Around him, there was space for hundreds or maybe even thousands, but only a few krakun milled about here and there.

A castle wall surrounded the area, enclosing the courtyard, gardens, and various stone structures. To his left loomed a clock tower so tall that he had to crane his neck to see the analog face at its top: eleven-hundred and thirty hours, only half an hour before his scheduled execution.

Sarsuk wanted to throw up, and he even tried, but his stomach was empty. His jailors had offered him a big breakfast, but he was too upset to manage a single bite. Bokdrull, his murderous sociopath of a next-door neighbor, thanked him multiple times as he put away fistful after fistful of food that would otherwise go to waste.

The few krakun in the courtyard turned when they noticed his arrival. Some stepped closer to get a better look but then turned and trudged slowly away. He didn’t recognize any of them, and apparently neither did they recognize him.

He desperately wanted to pace, to burn off some of his anxiety, but the cage surrounding him was tiny, and the chain securing his wrists was shorter still.

Sarsuk glanced up at the time once more—twenty-five minutes to? That couldn’t be right! It had only been half-past just a moment ago.

Across the courtyard, an orange security officer exited a blocky building and headed toward the dais. With a silvered mask covering his face, he walked upright and carried an object in either fore-claw. In his left, he held an iron walking stick that clanged against cobblestones with every other step. In his right, he clutched a leather collar.

Sarsuk gasped, and his hearts beat overtime, slightly out of sync, leaving him light-headed. Was that the collar that Bokdrull repaired? he wondered. Or was that one now bagged up and sitting in an evidence locker alongside a motor and tagged “Exhibit B”?

With a grunt, the muscular krakun ascended the stairs to the prisoner’s left. “Good morning, inmate,” he said in a cheerful voice. “Ready to get on with this?” Then, he set the walking stick and collar down beside the cage.

The former commissioner couldn’t look at the collar, and he instantly regretted seeing the metal bar—one end tapered to a point and polished smooth. It wasn’t a walking stick at all but a pike! And not just any pike, but an espionage pike. It was so short—the very worst length that the empire’s criminal justice system could issue.

The empire enforced a lot of capital crimes, but few of them got the public really riled. The pike awaiting Bokdrull, the murderer’s pike, was cold and impersonal, so long it was practically a flagpole. When his former neighbor met his end, palace visitors would be able to see what remained of him from kilometers away. They could point up at the gory mess and reassure their spawn, “You see, Junior? They caught him. There’s nothing to be frightened of now.”

But the very worst of all capital crimes was espionage—a crime against the empire itself. They gave traitors the shortest pikes, lifting their heads no higher off the ground than their necks had previously, so that every palace visitor could see them up close and personal, face-to-face.

They still allowed the public to spit in eyes or even slug jaws. Spinning a head all the way about with a single punch was certainly brag-worthy, and the net was full of such videos. Though the crown had recently outlawed the use of hammers, pliers, and fireworks on severed heads, anyone caught taking trophies from one like a tooth or eye was likely to receive a warning, not a ticket.

“Please, please, please,” groveled the yellow krakun. “I didn’t do anything wrong! I’m innocent!”

The officer just nodded. He checked the time on his communicator and took a seat beside the cage. “Yup. You hear that a lot in this line of work.”

“But in my case, it’s true!” sobbed Sarsuk.

The officer shrugged as he looked about the courtyard. A few more krakun wandered in through the gate, but they either continued on their way or turned back around when they realized that they didn’t recognize the condemned. “Small turnout today,” he muttered, then looked up to study the overcast skies. “Will probably rain. That keeps away most of the gawkers.”

Sarsuk sobbed quietly, his face buried in his claws.

“Which one’s your mom?” asked the faceless guard.

The prisoner looked about, hopeful, but he didn’t see her, didn’t see anyone he recognized, in fact—none of his coworkers, none of his neighbors, Nyakkat, Dennydr, not even Ashiok had come.

“She’s dead,” lied Sarsuk, not wanting to explain that they hadn’t been close for thousands of years.

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, son,” said his jailor in sincere tones.

Sarsuk sighed. I guess I’m destined to die in the same obscurity that I lived my life, he thought. No one’s going to remember me. They might not even notice that I’m gone. Hey, where’s that Sarsuk guy? Haven’t seen him around lately. Oh him? I think he quit centuries ago. Haven’t seen him since he got in that argument with his boss.

He turned to his executioner, and his lips toyed with the shape of the question he needed to ask, not sure if he really wanted to know the answer or not. At last, he managed to whisper, “So, um, how long…?”

“Depends,” said the officer without waiting for Sarsuk to find the words. He seemed unsurprised, as if each of his clients had asked.

The execution itself would take a millisecond, nearly instantaneous, but krakun were some of the toughest creatures in the known galaxy. Though chopping their heads off would surely kill them, they weren’t apt to lose consciousness immediately.

“I’ve seen drug addicts go like that,” said the executioner, snapping his talons. “Three, four minutes, and you could tell no one was home anymore. But then again, I saw this one guy—he was huge, had more muscles than the emperor has golds—that guy flat-out refused to die. On the morning of the third day, he was still watching the crowds, grinning when people lost their bets on how long he’d stick around.”

Sarsuk leaned his face against the bars and slowly sank to his knees.

“But a guy like you? Middle-aged, saggy around the middle, probably hasn’t exercised in the last couple millennia? He shook his head. “I doubt you’ll see noon tomorrow.”

Sarsuk started sobbing. He hadn’t intended to, and honestly, he had no idea if a longer time or a shorter one would have been more comforting to hear, but his end was imminent, and all the rage and self-pity he’d been forcing down since his capture came spilling out.

Through tear-blurred eyes, he looked up at the clock tower once more. He couldn’t make out the time precisely, but he doubted he had more than five minutes remaining.

“Well, who’s this?” the executioner suddenly boomed.

Sarsuk’s yellow head snapped up, and his eyes blinked repeatedly. He tried to clear his vision, hoping he’d see a friendly, supportive face. There was only one krakun remaining in the courtyard, but she had already turned and started to walk away. Though as she did, her long tail swung to the side, revealing a tiny figure standing behind her.

Sarsuk stared at the slave. Though hard to tell one type from another when they wore environment suits, it looked about the size and shape of a geroo. Ugh, geroo! he groused to himself. If I had it to do all over again, I would never have signed on to commissioner ships in the geroo fleet. I never would have taken a few dozen in as my cleaning crew.

“Is that one of your slaves, convict?” asked his jailor. He waved a claw at the tiny creature and beckoned it closer.

The yellow krakun let his head hang down in embarrassment and shame. He couldn’t see inside the tiny visor from this distance, but it wouldn’t have mattered much. He’d never gotten to know any of his cleaning crew slaves—didn’t know their names, couldn’t tell one from another. The suit did look like the sort his crew used. It was the right shade of orange.

The slave hugged a folded piece of paper under its arm and hopped closer. The executioner yelled out, “Hey! Are you one of his slaves?”

The little creature nodded, “Yes.”

The silver mask looked at Sarsuk a moment before turning back to the slave. “How the heck did you get here? Did you take the bus?”

“The bus?” groaned Sarsuk. “Ridiculous. How would a slave catch the city bus?”

The jailor shrugged and turned his attention back to his ward. “All right, convict, let’s get on with this.” He unlocked a latch and started lowering the cage walls back into the dais. “You’ll want to tuck in your tail before it gets chopped off,” he warned.

Sarsuk quickly pulled his tail back in from the bars and curled it around his side. As the bars lowered, he stared at the tiny, lone figure who had come to watch him die. The suited geroo pulled the slip of paper out from beneath his arm. He set it on the paving stone in front of him and began to unfold it, taking some effort to flatten out the creases. Then, the slave lifted the sheet off the ground and held it up over his head.

Sarsuk squinted and leaned forward until the chain restraining his cuffs pulled tight. The paper looked like the label peeled from a can. It had clearly written something on the blank side, but at this distance, the lines were too thin to make out.

The krakun focused so hard to read the miniscule sign that he wasn’t paying attention to the officer—until he slipped the collar around Sarsuk’s neck and secured the buckle. The thing emitted three shrill beeps, announcing that it was armed and ready.

Sarsuk’s hearts beat faster, and his throat went dry. He dropped to his belly and groveled. “Please don’t do this! Please stop!” he begged. “I’m innocent!”

But the officer wasn’t paying attention to him. He focused instead on the slave’s sign. He squinted and leaned forward off the edge of the dais. “Hey there, lil’guy!” he called. “What have you got there?” Eventually, he gave up trying to read the message and tromped back down the stairs.

Out in the courtyard, the officer crouched low, his snout close to the hand-written sign. “Hey, convict!” he called back up. “Your slaves made you a lil’going-away sign! It says, ‘Goodbye Sarsuk.’ Aw, how nice of you guys. Oh, and look at all this! Did everyone sign it?” The slave nodded his helmet once more.

Sarsuk banged his head against the stone, wishing he could just lose consciousness now so he wouldn’t have to endure the rest of this torturous moment.

With a long talon, the officer tapped an iron grate behind where the slave was standing. “Hey lil’guy, you really shouldn’t stand there,” he said. “You’re right in the middle of the ‘Splash Zone’. You wouldn’t wanna get washed down into the sewers, would you?”

The slave took one look behind him and quickly shook his helmet, “No.”

“Well then, come up on stage,” said the executioner. “You’ll be safe up there, and it’ll give your master a chance to read the lil’sign you’ve made for him.”

“What?” gasped Sarsuk. “You’ve got to be joking!”

“Stuff it, convict!” snapped the executioner as he scooped the geroo up into his palm.

He retraced his steps, grunting as he climbed the stone stairs. He held his claw open in front of Sarsuk’s face, and the slave balancing on his palm lifted his sign once more. The larger text written across the width of paper did indeed say, “Goodbye Sarsuk” in scrawled Krakun runes, but the smaller glyphs all around the edges of the sign weren’t signatures as the executioner had presumed. Instead, each was a short epitaph written in the Geroo language.

After four hundred years of being a commissioner over geroo ships, Sarsuk was completely fluent in the language and every popular dialect thereof. He didn’t bother reading all of them. With a glance, it was clear that although heartfelt, none of them were kind, none of them wished him well.

When Sarsuk lowered his eyes, the officer pulled his palm back so the slave stood in front of his chest. With his other fore-claw, the executioner removed a communicator from his necklace and flipped to the death warrant. He read aloud, “Sarsuk of Vestacorneria, the crown has found you guilty of espionage, and you have been sentenced to die this day—”

The yellow krakun’s head swung left and right as his moist eyes searched the empty courtyard. His life was about to end just as miserably as he’d lived it, just like all of his lowest moments, in the company of a slave.

Suddenly, a thought struck him. His eyes popped open wide, and he stood upright, pulling the chain taught. “Hey!” he announced. “You can’t execute me.”

“Oh, no?” asked the officer. “You wanna bet?”

“No, I’m serious,” the prisoner said. A grin slid across his mustard-yellow lips. “Penal code §10.739/a-g clearly states, ‘Under no circumstances may any prisoner be executed in secret. Regardless of offense, all of the following sub-clauses must be fulfilled to ensure a legal execution: One, prisoners must be executed in a public place. Two, citizens of the empire may not in any manner be discouraged from attending the execution. Three—”

And then, in unison, the two krakun recited, “at least two witnesses must be present in person and with a clear, unobstructed view as the execution is carried out.”

Sarsuk grinned, and the executioner actually raised his mirrored mask, letting it rest against the huge crest on the back of his head. A scowl furrowed so deeply on the officer’s crevassed face that Sarsuk gulped. “Yes, yes, I’m well aware of the regulations.”

The executioner sighed, and without warning, he raised his claw, transferring the slave from his palm to the top of his snout. The geroo emitted a tiny squeak of alarm as it scrabbled for purchase, crumpling the sign it still held, but otherwise managing to get a safe footing without falling to his death.

“Well,” the officer huffed, holding his head very still for his passenger’s sake, “unless you know of a regulation saying that I can’t officiate and witness these proceedings, then I’m gonna put myself down as witness number one.”

Sarsuk gulped and watched helplessly as the officer drew a signature on the communicator’s face with his talon. “Done.”

The former commissioner looked around the empty courtyard, not trusting his voice. The moment stretched, but eventually, he felt compelled to open his mouth. “Well…” he said, drawing the sound out as far as he dared, “due to lack of turnout, I guess you should lower this platform back down, and I’ll return to my cell. We can just try this whole thing again another day.”

Sarsuk risked the tiniest of smiles. “Or … I could escort this slave back to my apartment where he belongs. Just stop on by when you’re ready to give this thing another—”

“Hey, slave,” said the executioner, crossing his yellow eyes and struggling to focus on the figure balancing atop his snout, “would you mind acting as witness number two?”

Sarsuk’s eyes went wide once more. “No!” he shouted. “You can’t be serious. I demand a proper witness as is my right—” But the slave was already nodding and refolding his homemade sign.

The condemned continued to protest, but the other two ignored him as the slave hopped down on top of the communicator and did his best to draw Geroo runes on the oversized screen. Then, the slave gathered his sign once more and climbed on top of the executioner’s wrist, so his body wouldn’t be blocking the screen.

“All right, that’s out of the way. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah,” said the orange krakun. “Sarsuk of Vestacorneria, the crown has found you guilty yadda yadda yadda.” He scrolled down to the bottom of the page to a huge red button labelled “Execute.”

Then, he lowered his head, so he was looking directly at the suited slave. “Hey, lil’buddy, how would you like to push the button?”

“No!” shouted Sarsuk, rattling the chain on his manacles. “Don’t you dare—!”

But the little geroo was already diving for it.

Sarsuk’s vision went white, and for a moment, a pain too intense for words replaced all consciousness. A purple flash faded in his eyes, a lingering bass hum. Then, disoriented, Sarsuk tumbled through space. He hit his head as he fell, opened his mouth to cry out, but there was no sound.

For a long moment, he just laid there, dazed and disoriented. In fact, he couldn’t recall ever feeling so confused. He tried to draw a breath … and couldn’t. His eyes popped open wide, and he tried again, gasping just as hard as he possibly could, but no matter how he tried, he couldn’t breathe. He panicked. He was suffocating!

“All right, I’ve got some work to do,” said the executioner. He set the geroo down within a dry spot in front of Sarsuk’s face, then took a moment to right the head so Sarsuk was facing forward instead of laying on one cheek. “Give his snout a pat, tell him how much you’ll miss him, and I’ll be back in a bit to get him up on his pike.”

The officer stepped from Sarsuk’s field of vision, and the yellow krakun tried to turn his head but couldn’t. He heard the sound of manacles unlocking and the executioner’s grunt. Then, he watched in horror as the orange krakun pulled on Sarsuk’s tail, dragging his headless body to the steps and gracelessly down them, making a muffled thud against each stone slab.

The slave in front of his nose waved goodbye to the executioner before turning its attention back to Sarsuk. It took the paper sign from under its arm, set it back down in the dry spot, and with some care, it smoothed out the creases a second time.

Sarsuk opened his mouth to shout, “Yes, I saw it already, you tiny-brained little vermin!” but of course, no sound came out. His lungs were being dragged across the square for disposal with the rest of his body.

The slave finished what it was doing, but this time, when it raised the greeting card his cleaning crew had made, he held the opposite side up for Sarsuk to see. This side had writing on it too, but the words were a bit trickier to make out since they’d been scrawled atop the printed side instead of the blank side of the label. The glyphs on this side, the former commissioner noted, had all been drawn in the same style, penned by a single author.

He shouldn’t have read it. He hadn’t intended to. He should have just closed his eyes, but like all krakun, he was a tremendously fast reader, and before he could stop himself, he’d memorized the entire message.

“Sarsuk,” the missive read, “you were a horrible monster who lived upon a pedestal. The energy it would have taken you to help people our size would have been so insignificant that you could have done so without any conscious effort. But instead, you’ve used your power and authority to hurt and for no better reason than to amuse yourself.

“Dekka was a kind and wonderful person, the only guy I’ve ever loved. You wouldn’t know his name, since you never asked, so I’m telling it to you now. When he cried for help, you killed him, and that better than anything else illustrates what a waste of a person you were. He wanted help, and you crushed me with his death, crushed his family, his friends. I sat with him for hours, watching him grow weaker until he could hold on no longer. And now, I wish more than anything else that I could do that with you.

“You had thousands of years to grow, to learn to be a good person, but instead you’ve become more horrid than the worst nightmare anyone has ever dreamed. I hope you linger on in this life for a very long time and that you use these final hours to think on every single slave that you’ve harmed and just how easy it would have been for you to help them instead.”

She’d signed the page with a simple glyph that read, “Suni.”

Sarsuk closed his eyes for a moment, trying not to think about what he had just read, but his mind was running wild. He could no longer focus on the self-pity he’d been nurturing for thousands of years. All he could do was think about how many others he had hurt.

He opened his eyes once more and stared at the suited slave. He opened his mouth, but of course, he could not speak. Probably for the best, he reasoned. If I had the chance, what could I possibly say?

The slave grabbed his helmet with both paws and gave it a twist, unlocking it from the latch built into his environment suit.

Sarsuk wanted to gasp, to shout a warning, but all he could do was to move his lips. The sulfurous Krakuntec air was a deadly poison to geroo, and even a single breath of it could kill—as it had done to Suni’s mate.

The slave pulled the helmet aside and held it under his arm. “Do you remember me, Sarsuk?” he asked in the Geroo tongue.

The former commissioner squinted, taking a moment to study the face before him—the geroo face that seemed completely unharmed by the sulfur in the air. Though he had an eidetic memory for faces, he didn’t recognize the geroo immediately. In the past four hundred years across dozens of ships, he’d seen countless geroo—generation after generation of them—and as most krakun do, had paid little attention to any of them. This geroo looked vaguely familiar but older and thinner than any he’d deemed noteworthy—harder too, like a soldier returning from war, like his ship captains did as they neared the ends of their careers.

Could he be the son of a geroo that Sarsuk had executed? A brother that held a grudge? Ateri, the captain of the White Flower II, had given him a list of the crewmen he was transferring to the apartment cleaning staff, but the commissioner had never even looked at it. He couldn’t have cared less who was washing his toilet, so long as he punished Ateri for the accident that had cost him his arm.

“I’m Kanti,” said the geroo at last.

Sarsuk’s mouth opened and closed on its own. He knew a Kanti—he’d met a few of them over the past couple centuries, in fact—but only one hailed from the White Flower II.

But he couldn’t be that Kanti, could he?

That Kanti had been … well, a nobody, really. Just a geroo born without permission when his mother’s contraception had failed. To Sarsuk, that made him a stowaway. But he couldn’t be that Kanti. He’d executed that Kanti.

No, that’s not correct, he reminded himself. He had intended to execute Kanti, but the geroo had fled and hidden inside the walls. Sarsuk stared in frustration. This slave did look a lot like that one had…

No.

Wait!

Kanti!

That’s the slave that had committed suicide rather than face Sarsuk’s wrath. He’d jumped into the recycler, and Sarsuk had lost his arm trying to grab him when he did. His mouth and eyes opened wider. That Kanti was dead! No molecular bonds resisted the recycler! He would have been vaporized. Even his necklace—the one thing geroo kept around to memorialize a dead ancestor—would have been reduced to ions. His atoms would have been recycled into air and water and fertilizer.

“I wanted to see you die,” said the sulfur-breathing Kanti. His ears spread wide in a grin. “And I wanted to tell you that I’ve beaten you—not once, not twice, but three times now. I beat you in the recycler when you lost your arm, and I walked away unscathed.”

How? How? How? mouthed Sarsuk silently. How had he avoided the amphipentauxparietal tesserachora’s field? Was it the same way he survived sulfur exposure?

“And then, I beat you in your apartment,” Kanti continued. Sarsuk had no idea what the geroo could be referring to, but he soon explained. “Aboard the White Flower II, each of us lived in fear of the great and powerful Commissioner Sarsuk. We thought you were oh-so-important that all ten thousand of us were insignificant to you. Not only did you rule our ship, but several others besides.”

He smiled wider. “When you stole us, we thought we’d see how a rich and important krakun lives his life. But that wasn’t the case, was it? Sheesh. Look at me. Even here on Krakuntec, I’ve managed to make friends—real friends, friends I’d die to protect. I’ve found a family. But you don’t have any friends, do you?

“Back in your apartment, you nearly caught me,” said Kanti. “You picked me up and demanded to know if I thought your girlfriend was using you. What a joke! She obviously was. I would have warned any of my friends had they been dating someone like Nyakkat, but not you. You deserved to be her patsy—not to mention that we knew you’d punish us for being honest about it.”

Sarsuk closed his eyes. Kanti was right, of course. He would have punished them for telling him what he didn’t want to hear. In a way, it was fitting that he’d brought about his own downfall by shutting the crew out of his life. He’d left no one to watch out for him.

“And the third time I beat you? Well, that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Sarsuk opened his eyes and the geroo leaned closer. “I … killed … you, Sarsuk. You tried to kill me and failed, but I seem to have killed you without really trying.”

Kanti fished inside his suit for a moment and retrieved his strand. He took a photo of Sarsuk and then stuffed the device back where it belonged before raising the helmet over his head. “That’s all, really. I’d ask if you had any last words for me to pass along, but the stupid expression on your face will have to do. Gotta go. I’ve got friends and family waiting for me.”

He pulled the helmet back on and clicked it into place as the executioner ascended the stairs once more. “Finish saying all your goodbyes?” he asked. “Sarsuk of Vestacorneria’s got a date with a pike.”

Kanti took a moment to stroke Sarsuk’s snout with his gloved paw, then he waved goodbye to the officer and mounted the slave access ladder on the side of the dais.

In the courtyard below, Sarsuk watched as more suited slaves uncoiled hoses, preparing to wash his lifeblood away into the drains.

“Nice slave ya got there,” said the executioner as he picked up the pike. “You must’a been a real piece of garbage to commit espionage, but I guess you couldn’t have been all bad.”

He grabbed Sarsuk’s head by a horn and tromped back down the stairs before heading off to the palace gates.

“If it’s any consolation, at least you know that you treated your slaves well. You must’a been one helluva master for that lil’fella to risk who-knows-what making it out here just to see you off.”

———

Editors link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bFbEYXV4iVHyA5mFoff7WwhdPSCL2PwjLTwNF4OjeoU/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?