Chapter 15: Gearing Up and Moving Out
That was how Mack found them a little while later, the door knocked loudly and Jakiikii paused mid-sentence, the story she had been telling falling from her lips as she sucked her long pink tongue back into her mouth. The container of juice she had been sipping from settling down next to his plate as she glanced at Paulie and then crept towards the door.
“Who’s there?” She asked, a little more cautious than Paulie likely would have been in that moment.
She straightened and then opened the door as a muffled voice answered her. “It’s Mack, open the door.”
As she rushed to comply, the older miriam came plodding through the door on their four soft-soled feet. Mack adjusted his overcoat and looked towards Paulie. “Oh, you are here too.” His large grey eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn’t seem to remark on anything.
Paulie nodded, placing his fork on the plate and rotating on his stool to better look at the miriamiam. He was wearing the same brown overcoat dapper suit, but he looked somehow slightly bulkier.
It took Paulie a second to realise why. When he did he just chuckled and gestured to the man, “Hey, are you wearing armour?”
Mack looked down at his chest and then opened his coat, underneath it was what looked like a smaller version of Paulie’s own vest. It was much lighter clearly, but it would still offer some amount of protection against plasma and low powered kinetics.
Mack grunted as Jakiikii slapped the vest, the thumping sound prodding the man to say, “Yea. After hearing about the idea from you it reminded me of combat armour that the military wears. We have something similar that the special operations officers might wear, but I decided to just have a smaller version of your vest made instead of fully gearing up like them.”
Jakiikii nodded. “That makes sense.”
Mack smiled, “I had one made for you too, Jakiikii. If you want it, it likely would interfere with your stealth suit though.”
Paulie shook his head. “You can’t get a stealthed version?”
Mack indicated in the negative, his sensory spines chattering as his neck swung about. ”Not in the time we have before the assault, no.” He seemed a little on edge, and Paulie was reminded of how important this raid in particular was to the man. And to him especially.
He tried to reassure him, but Mack waved it off. “No, not now. We need to get moving.”
Jakiikii glanced worriedly between the Censec detective and the food still sat steaming upon the table. “Wait, I thought the assault wasn’t set to start for another few hours at least.”
Mack smiled widely and looked at Paulie. His toothy grin held no malice, but it was far from warm as he spoke, “Remember what I said about keeping things a little chaotic.”
Paulie nodded, “Sooo.. we go early?”
Mack nodded. “Get your stuff. I already instructed everyone to come in early for a rebriefing. But that was a while ago. I wanted to come and get you two myself.” Jakiikii seemed set to argue but settled for a disgruntled huff as she grabbed all six plates at once and took them into the kitchen.
Her somewhat growling voice reached out from the other room, “I guess we will have to finish the rest of these later.”
Mack looked at Paulie and his brow crinkled in what he now understood to be a questioning look. Paulie shrugged, “She wanted to cook me breakfast.” Mack nodded slowly, the look that crossed his face unknown to Paulie.
Jakiikii re-entered the room, her hands now empty as she scooped up her weapon from its place on the wall and then nodded to Mack. Her bright eyes flashed as her color-shifting skin darkened slightly, “Okay. I have everything I need. Paulie?”
She turned several of her flexible petal-like eye stalks towards him as she said it. He nodded. “Yes, I am set to go.”
Mack glanced around the room and then back at them, but if he was thinking anything he didn’t say it as he motioned for them to follow and left out the front door. The walk down the hall was short and quiet, Paulie himself was a bit preoccupied thinking of the fight that lay ahead. He had never been in a real protracted firefight before and was not exactly excited, though he had to admit that a part of him was still looking forwards to kicking some alien asses.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
As the three of them reached the ground floor he was mildly surprised to see them joined by a few familiar faces. Officer Sasfren and the ever dour Officer Visk among them. Paulie gave the two of them a wave and Officer Sasfren smiled wide, her expression petals opening up and displaying a light greenish color that he had come to associate with a general sense of wellbeing. Visk on the other hand simply snorted, the vekegh male turning a cold shoulder to him as they walked around Sasfren and through the main doors.
He ignored the impolite pink furred otter-alien as he turned his attention back to the doors at the end of the open hall. He frowned, for the doors were blocked by a large mass that seemed to sit just outside the exit. It took him a few more steps to understand what he was seeing.
It was a large armoured vehicle. One of the only one’s he had seen in his long time in the city so far. He had seen the occasional ground vehicle, delivery coach and powered lifting device on the crowded market streets. But he had not seen the same perfusion of personal transportation vehicles like he might have expected to see in a city back home on Earth.
He supposed that might have had something to do with the terrifically efficient public transportation network that Korscam had. The great looping tracks that interconnected the city to nearly every other point acting like arteries in a body, the myriad of strange aliens going about their daily business acting as the lifeblood that flooded through these metal veins.
The comparison to some great living beast felt like an accurate one, he had been in the city long enough to know that it operated in much the same manner. He looked back at the terrific armoured monster that they approached. It was half as wide as the narrow street, but looked as if it was made for maneuverability.
It looked just like the kind of six-wheeled armoured car he might have seen in some bad sci-fi cop show back on Earth. The sides were painted that same deep blue as the officers' uniforms that stood beside it and across this was emblazoned falling lines of white alien script and the front was swept into an armoured ramming nose. Paulie paused and then fished around the inner pocket of his greatcoat for a moment, pulling out the small multitector he had been given the previous day by Mack.
Aiming the strange device towards the script, he pressed the visual translation software function and watched as it translated the yuuvian script into something much more recognisable. The text read, ‘Central Security Vehicle, Please Stand Back’. Made sense, it was about the equivalent of labeling it ‘Warning, Police Vehicle’.
He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned his head to see Jakiikii standing next to him. “Oh.. yes?” He prompted.
She grabbed his wrist and gave it a brief tug towards the back of the armoured car. “Come on, we need to get moving.”
He nodded, replacing the multitector into his inner pocket. “Okay, what’s the rush, eh?” he chuckled lightly, but quickly stopped as he saw the seriousness of her features. Those bright shining eyes of hers seeming to bore into his own. “Okay.. okay.” he said, tossing up his arms as they walked around to the rear of the large vehicle.
Mack was standing there upon the duracrete roadway. The road itself around them was strangely clear, Paulie looked both ways curiously. He craned his neck but saw no sign of civilian activity, they must have cleared the street for some reason. Maybe the sight of the large, dark, imposing adjudicator vehicle had frightened them? What might that mean, was there a reason to be fearful of the local Censec forces? From what he had seen they were generally well received by the locals, treated with a sort of quiet respect and distanced dignity that he had come to appreciate. It made it easier to walk through crowds anyways, having everyone make a small gap around them.
Paulie looked into the back of the small, gloomy interior of the vehicle. The sides were equipped with multispecies bucket seats, the walls covered in some manner of netting or mesh and the roof was bare metal with two large hatches and a single incandescent-looking bulb that flared slightly as he watched.
He glanced at Jakiikii, “What the hell are we going to do in there, it’s like a sardine can!”
She shrugged. “Beats getting shot before you can even put it in park.”
Mack snorted at the comment. “Just get in you two. We are on the clock, we need to get to the go point in the next few minutes, or we may actually miss the start of the raid.” he paused, giving both of them a hard look. Thos large grey eyes of his widening slightly as his pupils narrowed. “And I don’t think either of you want that. Do you?”
Paulie nodded and then gripped the edge of the opening, his foot landing on the small metal step that served to give access to the raised floor of the compartment’s interior. But he stopped, a flash of fear bolting through his heart at the thought of being enclosed in darkness again. Metals walls pressing close, his breathing louder than the furious beating of his own fearful heart. He felt the psychosomatic pain of healed injuries and the fear of death that came with the threat of confinement.
He was breathing heavily, his heart pounding in his chest like a runaway steam locomotive’s boiling heart. He couldn’t do it, the thought of it was too much. A darkness rose in the back of his mind, the crushing sensation following him from his subconscious to his waking mind like a nightmare of evil thoughts and whispered fears. He closed his eyes.. and then stopped.
He felt something grip his shaking hand, and Paulie opened his eyes. It was Jakiikii, the termaxxi female looking at him with some measure of concern or perhaps worry. “Paulie, are you alright?”
He shook his head, “I.. it’s the dark. It reminds me of..” He found to his own surprise that he couldn't finish the statement, instead the words died like blighted grain upon his lips. The very thought of their utterance like a dark anathema to his mind. He felt the alien woman grip his hand a little tighter and let out a tiny grunt as he tried to hold himself in check on the turbulent ocean of his roiling inner thoughts.
He took a deep breath, sucking in a huge lungful of air as he quashed the fear and the dark presence of the parasite all at once. He opened his eyes and looked into jakiikii’s own. The light pastel pink of her sclera and the bright reflective orange of her iris seemed to give him a sort of boost, his mind climbing back from the edge of gibbering horror as he nodded jerkily.
“No. Not yet.” he muttered to himself. He was not crazy yet.
If Jakiikii or Mack heard him they didn’t comment on it. Instead they simply climbed into the back of the armoured vehicle with him as he settled down beside Jakiikii and Officer Sasfren, the maggastium officer giving him her own version of a supportive glance.
Paulie nodded back in a professional manner, he felt the fear lance into the corner of his mind again and swallowed heavily. He was about to try and ignore the seeping of dark emotional undertones that flowed through the subconscious of his mind like thick, rotting tar. But before he had the opportunity he felt something grab his hand again.
It was Jakiikii again, and he smiled as he saw her closer middle arm reaching out for his own. She was a good friend, comforting him because she knew he was hurting. Being as she was a very social species herself, she may have needed the closeness of the contact as much or even more than he. But he wasn’t going to complain. Her hand was warm, and her grip was sure.
Paulie looked forwards, not seeing the helmeted face of the grim looking peace officer across from him. Not the dimly lit metal walls of their moving coffin nor the thick green netting that covered it. He saw the future he was barreling towards, a future in which he no longer had to fear for his life or the life of his friends.