Totaikona 2

I'm not entirely certain where this story is heading overall but this seemed like a reasonable direction to take it. Please leave any thoughts, comments, ideas you might have!

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The blackmead helped, but not by much. Still, Totaikona dragged his scaled butt into the elevator and down to the bunker below his shop, where the majority of his indentured employees were kept. He always kept a healthy mix of species, for multiple reasons.

Firstly, he had the space for it. The bunker was a concrete bowl, like a miniaturized stadium, and each of the fifteen main species he kept in their lockered environments around the top edges, while he could stand in the center and speak with any environment individually.

Secondly, he needed lots of employees for them to be at all effective. He had nearly as many as a Planetary Acquisitions’ gate ship, nearly eight thousand, and besides the cost of keeping them fed and supplied, they cost far less than a krakun employee—he had two of those, and their time was far better spent on other tasks anyhow.

Thirdly, trading lesser species was another one of his side hustles. Given how much specialty work he needed to put the slaves through, he could make a profit selling skilled laborers over those with undefined skills. It always helped to have a wide portfolio in that case.

There were many reasons besides these. As much as he would have liked a full compliment of anup—they were the easiest to work with, dedicated and strong for their size with a decently long lifespan—they were also the most expensive, frequently reaching nearly two hundred golds per head. But still, it was mostly a one-time investment, and so much less fuss than the others. He’d managed to get his last shipment off a military surplus sale due to dishonorable discharge, but he’d had no disciplinary issues with them at all.

“Aeindi!” he called out, walking toward the main hatchway of the largest block. Totaikona pressed a thumb down onto a call button that surrounded the base of the concrete ring. “Aeindi, wake your canine tailhole up. We have a rush job!”

The anup habitat, behind a large, thick sheet of glass to keep the bromine atmosphere separate from Krakuntec air, had the fanciest quarters of any of them. The anup kept it a glistening white, painted like the limestone that they favored for their construction on their homeworld. Most other species didn’t bother much with making their spaces all that fancy, but anup loved their work all the more.

The anup Aeindi, who looked basically like any anup only a little taller, a black canine with pointed ears, approached from out of the main archway of the structure inside the habitat, carrying his rod. He approached his own tiny computer console near the hatchways and turned on the intercom. “Yes, what is it, my lord?” He spoke using his own language.

My lord. Always so polite. Always knowing their place.

“I need you to go out and scout a ship from the lot,” Totaikona said. “We have a lot of building to do. I’ve already sent the specifications to your computer—paraphrased as you like it.” The anup were obedient but they were still nowhere near as quick as krakun when it came to parsing data. “Needs space for krakun habitat as well as all necessary shielding, plenty of modular space for cramming in equipment. We are going to have a lot of equipment and the inspector is going to cut off my tail if it’s not up to code. Have your mate start putting together a team to operate the thing, don’t care who, just make sure they aren’t going to screw up. I want recommendations by the time I come back this e—e—eve…”

Totaikona suddenly buckled and sneezed. This made his neck hurt horribly, just behind his first heart, which protested at the treatment. He had to blink a few times before he even felt secure enough to turn his head upright.

A slick of discharge had slathered against the glass, and Aeindi had to take several strides to his left in order to be clearly seen through the glass again. “My lord, are you quite well?” Aeindi pressed a paw up on the glass of the habitat with genuine concern.

“Shut it!” Totiakona snapped. “I’m fine. It’s just so dusty in here.”

“I can get a team together to clean the dome—”

“Don’t bother!” Totaikona sniffed and coughed, mucus draining thickly down the back of his throat. “This is more important. I have to do my part and you have to do yours. You have all other teams at your command. As usual, if you run into any problems, inform Puravi when he gets in for his shift.”

“Puravi already went home, sir,” Aeindi corrected.

“Oh, right. Much later than I thought. Well, when he comes in in the morning. I might be busy for a while.”

Given this was an all-claws-on-deck situation, he’d need to call his krakun employees to busy up their schedules. Shit, wasn’t Yodokere attending a live auction in Safr-Yarnel for the weekend? Totaikona might have needed to recall him early; he was the best best at sourcing parts and there was only so much that Totaikona could do on a mobile com.

Aeindi saluted with his rod. Totaikona nodded, and turned to leave.

At the time, he was going over who all he needed to call to source the missing parts. His best scientific supplier was also the most expensive, so he’d try first to grab anything he could find secondhand from a nearby university if they were looking to unload. All planetary scanning was just taking measurements from a long distance; while the tools would mostly be fitted for use in a planetside krakun lab rather than a spaceship, it was all the same parts in the end. Once he had those, hopefully by day three, that left days four and five for programming and debugging, day six for the inspector and flight clearance, then dragging the damn thing out to the PA launchpad in Jai Korona to be in orbit by the morning of the seventh. He’d be able to squeeze this under the wire just so long as everything went absolutely perfectly.

Naturally, the next thing Totaikona recalled was looking up into the eyes of a pebbly brown krakun with a breathing mask over her muzzle, shining a light into his vision. Totaikona felt like hell enough as it was, and he swatted the light aside.

“You’re awake,” the EMT said.

“Dammit all, did I pass out?” Totaikona protested, looking up and noting the ceiling was that of the same cement slave chamber. He struggled to right himself, but found his muscles weak. He felt utterly blocked up, like someone wadded up a several kilograms of steel wool and hid it behind his face. “What time is it?” he asked.

“Nearly nineteen hundred hours,” the EMT’s star-yellow partner replied.

“What!”

“We need to take you to the hospital.”

“No, absolutely not!”

Totaikona then realized he’d already been loaded onto a hover stretcher, which heaved him off the ground for the EMT and his ally to cart Totaikona out though the heavy bunker doors. However, Totaikona wrested himself from the platform to stand on his own four legs, at which motion he hacked and coughed horribly. “I can’t go to the hospital! Leave me be, it’s just a bug!”

“Sir, you have a headfever of sixty-five.” The large female EMT, thick gloves on her paws, attempted to gently wrest Totaikona back to the stretcher. “Your insurance will require evaluation!”

There was a downside to paying through the nose for good insurance, and that was they’d make him pay through the nose further if he missed his screenings every decade. While Totaikona didn’t want his premiums to go up for the next fifty years… this job would have still been worth it.

“Aeindi, you tailhole!” Totaikona forced himself from the grip of the krakun. All around, at the walls of the glass habitats, slaves—geordians, lio, coosa, umbrans, and more beside—were all staring down at the action at the bottom of the cement bunker. Not a single one of them was doing the job he’d ordered done two hours before!

“My lord, I’m so sorry,” Aeindi said, having called the rest of the anup together in the main plaza of the habitat but gone no further. “You seemed almost dead.”

“Did you call the paramedics? You know that goes on my insurance record!”

“I had no choice!”

“Aeindi, I just told you that this job is important. I had better see a clean, flight-ready ship in six days or I am feeding you to the covrin upstairs, am I understood?”

Totaikona didn’t get to hear the response, because the next thing he did was sneeze. This time, his first heart protested at the violent action so hard it skipped several beats painfully. Totaikona’s head hit the slanted wall of the chamber as he fell to the floor again, though he couldn’t tell if the stars in his vision were from the sudden change in blood pressure or the possible concussion. The EMTs swarmed over him again, and this time he didn’t resist except to make sure his claw was gripped tight over his busted-up mobile com. He wasn’t about to let it out of his sight.