Kamak made his way to the cockpit as soon as he could, and elbowed Corey out of the way to get a better view. In his first lucky break in weeks, Kamak had a pretty good view of the hangar’s new arrival. While he had an angle on their new friend, he lacked an ability to understand what he was seeing.
“What the fuck is that thing?”
The being in front of them appeared to be composed almost entirely of arms, all emanating from the edges of a single disc-like “core” at the center of its body. Some of the segmented arms were curled around themselves to form an approximation of a torso, while others reached out towards the ground to support the body as “legs”. Any of the limbs that were not occupied supporting the body’s structure were squirming around the environment randomly, grasping at thin air with long, spindly “fingers”. It was difficult to comprehend the anatomy of the alien creature, but Kamak got the distinct impression those scattered limbs somehow doubled as sensory organs.
“I don’t like that,” Tooley said. “We should kill it.”
“You can’t just kill it! That’s an uncontacted species,” To Vo warned. “Killing an uncontacted species is a Class 1 felony in council space!”
“Well firstly, so is killing a cop, which we’ve done five times for real and one time not for real, so nothing really to lose,” Tooley said. “Secondly, how the fuck do you know that’s uncontacted?”
“As an officer of the transit authority I’m obligated to remember a registry of known species,” To Vo said. “Admittedly, I don’t have all four hundred and seventy eight-”
To Vo interrupted herself and looked at Corey for a moment.
“-Four hundred and seventy nine known Kentath Retrograde species memorized, but I think I’d remember a giant bug-monster made entirely of arms!”
“Fair play. Farsus?”
“I am not aware of such a creature either,” Farsus said. “Though no knowledge base is infinite.”
“I’ll google it,” Corey said. Everyone stared at him, and he realized too late that “google” probably didn’t translate very well. “I’ll look it up on the internet.”
Corey dug out his tablet and started scouring the net for any trace of this strange new creature. While he did so, Kamak watched as the alien carried out a long conversation with Ol-Voz. The majordomo was clearly trying to defuse some tension, while the mystery alien gesticulated wildly, often in the direction of the Hard Luck Hermit.
“I don’t think the handy one likes us being here,” Kamak said.
“Hey, we have something in common,” Tooley snapped.
“Hey, hold on,” Kamak said. “The maid looks a bit flustered.”
Ol-Voz grew visibly more worried as his conversation with the strange alien continued, and he began to cast sidelong glances at the Hermit’s cockpit. His previously unshakable smile was now quite shaken, and turned into an outright frown when Kamak waved down at him from up in the cockpit.
“I think we’ve seen something we shouldn’t have, boys and girls,” Kamak said. The idea that they had found a loose thread in Morrakesh’s intricate web of lies delighted him to no end, until it didn’t. “Shit, I sure hope Morrakesh doesn’t decide to kill us over this.”
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“A distinct possibility,” Farsus said, with a sage nod. Knowing about his trade dealings apparently didn’t dissuade Morrakesh from considering them a useful distraction, but having seen his strange new alien ally might push them over the limit of “knowing too much”.
“It sure explains a lot,” Corey said. “A new trading partner is going to rearrange trade routes.”
“Must’ve found a new species before the Council did, somehow,” Kamak said. Outside, the alien was gesticulating even more aggressively towards the ship. Ol-Voz looked to be at the end of his rope.
“So if we went out there and introduced ourselves, you think that would make the alien mad enough to start fighting with Morrakesh?” Tooley wondered aloud. “Or would he just kill us?”
“One way to find out,” Kamak said. “You first, Tooley.”
Much to everyone’s surprise, Tooley actually stood up and started heading for the ship’s exit. Corey grabbed her by her flight jacket and pulled her back to her seat with very little effort.
“If we go out there, we’re going together,” Kamak said. “Also, we’re probably not going out there. I think you’re right, that thing would just kill us.”
It had no discernible face and they could not hear its voice, but anger was a universal language. The many-armed alien wanted them gone. Ol-Voz was barely holding his ground now.
“I don’t want to go out there again,” To Vo said. “It smells terrible.”
“What are you talking about? It just smelled like dust and metal.”
“What are you talking about, Corvash?” To Vo countered. “It smelled like death and moldy fruit.”
“We get it, kids, different species smell different stuff,” Kamak said. He hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary either, but it was easy enough to assume To Vo’s nose was just more sensitive to certain smells than his. He didn’t particularly care about such minute details while watching an unknown alien argue with their host/kidnapper.
The strange alien’s anger appeared to be subsiding, and Ol-Voz was frantically pressing buttons on a tablet, working his way through some unknown string of commands. Kamak tried, but could not get an angle on the screen to see what was being done. He figured it either wouldn’t matter, or he’d find out very soon. Probably because it was going to kill him.
The hangar doors opened, and a small procession of slaves stumbled inside. They were soon directed to stand in front of the many-armed alien, and it poked and prodded them with its lengthy fingers, sussing out some unseen quality only it knew. Corey scanned the crowd of captives and tried to find a connecting thread. It took him much, much longer than he would like to see the pattern forming in the captive’s appearance.
Blue skinned women and red skinned men. Tall, bald-headed males, and slightly shorter ones with full heads of brown hair and short beards. A small assortment of short, furry women. Tooley, Farsus, Kamak, Corey, and To Vo La Su, represented in effigy by the slaves.
The strange alien picked his favorite, a tall Gentanian that almost resembled Kamak, and plucked him from the crowd. While the rest of the slaves were dismissed, the Kamak-doppelganger was dragged to the front of the Hermit. The alien pointed at the captive with multiple arms, then up at the cockpit window, and then back at the captive.
“The fuck is this supposed to-”
Kamak got his answer when the alien tore off the first chunk of flesh. They could not hear the slave’s screaming, but they could see him start to panic and flail as dozens of arms grasped on to his skin and tore him to pieces, bit by bit, handful by handful. Minute chunks of flesh were torn asunder one by one and fed into one of several small, fanged orifices on the center of the alien’s circular body. Kamak stared in slack-jawed horror as a face that all too closely resembled his own was torn into a thousand pieces and devoured. His stomach finally gave out when he saw the first fragments of bloody skull beneath the stripped-bare face, and he turned away from the horrific scene before he threw up.
It took a long time before anyone dared to look out the cockpit window again. Every time they tried to glance down, they saw arms flailing and droplets of blood flying. Eventually, they gave up trying, and rode out their tenure on Morrakesh’s ship in stunned silence until he saw fit to set them free.