Chapter 17: Hot Sweep

Paulie’s breath was short, the adrenaline spiking in his system as they stalked through the halls with Mack and the others. His armour was a reassuring weight over his heart just as the heft of his revolver gave reassurance to his mind. He was protected, he was armed, and he was the baddest motherfucker on the entire worldlet. He flexed his arms and rolled his neck, he was ready for this. More than ready in fact.

He needed it.

That surprised him. Generally he kept such a tight reign over himself, managing his emotions like a general marshaling troops on the eve of battle. He was losing control, he could feel it. A part of him was excited to find out what might happen if he did, but the more rational part of his brain understood that losing control would only lead to disaster.

Paulie licked suddenly dry lips as Mack and Officer Sasfren signaled to slow and then halted at a closed door. The hall seemed to cut in two directions at this point. Mack tapped at the small screen of his wrist computer and then spoke softly under his breath.

“Which way.. which way?” After a moment the man seemed to come to a decision and pointed them to the right. It was well that he did so as after no less than twenty meters they entered into a room that seemed to be populated by several frantic looking aliens.

The nearest one screeched as it saw them, its triangular, furred head swiveling towards its companions. “Blues!” It screeched in an alien tongue that he intrinsically understood due to the parasite lodged in his grey matter.

Mack was forced to lunge out of the doorway as a series of loud pops issued from the room. The brilliant purple orbs of plasma fire sweeping through the space he had only just before been occupying. The miriam’s reflexes were slow to Paluie’s eyes, but not so slow as the others. Paulie and Jakiikii thumped to the wall, making room for others of their small force to take cover from the heavy fire being directed their way. One of the other officers took a grazing hit to their armour that left a charred streak across the bright lettering.

The wall across from them smouldered and sizzled as the stray shots impacted it and burst like boiling soap bubbles full of wrath and fire. Drips of melted plaster filling the space with choking smoke, he coughed and covered his mouth with a sleeve.

One of the other officers muttered something angry and mildly obscene sounding under their breath as they fiddled with their own weapon. The electron rifle hummed as it was powered on and he watched as Jakiikii lifted her own gun with two arms straight through the wall beside her, the powerful shots piercing through it and barely slowing. She looked across to Mack and the man nodded his grey head grimly.

Paulie didn’t have the time to ask what the silent communication meant before the termaxxi seemed to shimmer as if with great heat and vanished. In the dim light of the hall he was unable to get a fix on her position, but as the fire from the room at first intensified and then died suddenly he had his suspicions as to what she had done.

Indeed, Mack motioned for them to move forwards and entered the room. Paulie followed the armoured alien in front of him and had to smirk slightly as he saw the wide smile of the termaxxi as she lounged casually on top of one of the desks. Her rifle held in two of her six arms.

She hopped down and walked over to him, the woman’s bright eyes roving around the room independent of each other as she spoke. “Don’t worry. I got it handled.”

Paulie had to smile at her comment, she was so confident that it was hard not to assume that she could in fact deal with anything. But another part of him was worried, what if she got herself into a situation she was unable to handle alone? He pushed it down and nodded, “Yes. You certainly did. Where’s Mack?” He asked suddenly, turning his head to look around the room.

Officer Sasfren seemed similarly confused. “He was just here a moment ago.” She hissed in mild consternation, the viltessian officer next to her looking similarly confused.

Paulie heard a faint scraping sound from the wall next to the farthest desk and as he watched it seemed to break apart and then open into two distinct doors that had blended so seamlessly into the wall that he would never in a million years have seen them. From under the desk emerged the grey skinned form of Mack, the detective was brushing off his brown greatcoat and stopped as he saw them all staring at him.

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“What?” He seemed to be genuinely confused as to their worry. “I figured there must have been a secret exit around here. Why else would they have left this specific room guarded?”

Paulie frowned, the explanation seemed a little too contrived for him to believe it was the whole truth. But it wasn’t in his current interests to try and expose the man if he did in fact have something to hide from them. So he just shrugged and walked towards the hole in the wall.

He reached Mack’s side and whispered to him, “How on Earth did you know that this was here?”

Mack stepped to his side and slapped his upper arm. “Sometimes things are best left unanswered until they become important to know.” Paulie frowned again but nodded. The man was telling him to drop it, and he did. But the small nagging sensation at the back of his mind was not so easily sated and he knew that this would be coming back to bite him in the ass eventually. He could just feel it.

They didn’t have time for doubts now though. Even as they stood gawking at the new development, Ooounoo could be escaping. Paulie would not let that happen.

Gesturing towards the opening he asked, “So, are we going or are we just going to stare at it?”

One of the other officers, the viltessian female with a dark red carapace, spoke up suddenly. “Yeah!” Their hissing shout filling the room and caused a flutter of emotion from the other assembled officers. The long-limbed alien shouldered her way to the front and nodded respectfully to Mack before he raised an arm, weapon held aloft. “Come on, let’s move in!”

With another glance at Mack and a sideways look towards Paulie, the blue skinned alien dove into the hole. The sound of their footsteps echoing in the confined space even as the others moved forwards to follow. Officer Sasfren’s slithering tail disappearing into that dark hoe even as he watched.

Jakiikii and Mack stepped up to Paulie’s side as they watched. “You should go first.” Jakiikii said, hand on Paulie’s shoulder.

He was a little surprised, he had expected her to want to take point. But he looked at her and saw the pained expression in her eyes, maybe it was the dark. Maybe it was the memories of her past, but she had a sort of strangely haunted look in her petaled eye stalks that he had never seen on her face before. So he put a gentle hand on one of the alien woman’s shoulders.

“I will be right beside you Jakiikii. We both will.” He said, nodding to Mack. The miriam detective nodded in agreement and Paulie stepped forwards into the passage before his nerve broke.

The dark slammed down around him like a black veil, the sensation of being pressed on all sides immediate and horrifying. Paulie felt his heart quicken as memories of his confinement in a metal coffin were brought unbidden to the forefront of his mind. His breathing grew heavier and he blinked rapidly as he fumbled for a light or anything to alleviate the crushing dark. If only he had a flashlight. And then as if a ray of pure holy light had descended from heaven, a beam stabbed out from behind him and illuminated the dark passage in front of him.

He glanced over his shoulder and smiled as he saw Jakiikii nod solemnly to him. She understood, of course she would. She must have been in far worse scenarios than even he.

Putting the fear aside, he pushed through the dark as if it were a physical thing. Arms outstretched as if he could force it back through sheer force of will. It helped, it must have. Before he was truly aware of it, they had exited the passage and stood amid piles of crates and glass containers containing what might have been preserved specimens for scientific study or the horribly mutated leavings of some genetic research. It was hard to tell in the dim flickering light of the other officer’s flashlights.

Officer Sasfren was already up ahead, the other officers with her were looking around cautiously. They must have been expecting a trap, but nothing seemed forthcoming. The room remained dark and silent, the scuffing of boots and the scraping of claws the only sound he could hear. And if it was quiet to him, it must be near total quietude to the rest of them.

He cocked his head, a new sound reaching him through the dark. Winding through the room like a stream through dry rocks, a sort of scuffling clank. Followed by silence. It sounded like it was coming from above them.

He stepped closer to Jakiikii and saw her bright orange eyes were scanning the room as well. “Did you hear something?” He asked her.

She shook her angular head slightly. The small wattles that hung from her chin moving with the motion. Two of her six eyes turned to him, “Maybe. But I don’t know. What do you think it was?”

Mack stepped to their side, speaking loudly enough for the other officers to hear. “A trap.” Paulie jerked and Sasfren whipped her head around, her dark, pupilless eyes now scanning for threats as her expression petals turned a dark shade of purple.

The maggastium woman spoke, a multitector in her outstretched hand even as her other arm clutched her MDF rifle. “We are being watched in all likelihood, the detector is going off. RF, lidar.. Zalc, even the radiometer is detecting increased levels of radiation.” She looked around, they were surrounded by science equipment after all. The old machinery was likely emitting all manner of signals too. “There is no way for me to tell where it is coming from.”

From what little of the GGI’s technology that he had gleaned, much of it seemed to rely on some manner of microfusion batteries. Or maybe aneutronic micro-plants. He squinted as he tried to remember, his eyes had kind of glazed over that part of his introduction training with the Rozz. Either way, it was likely that it would output some measure of radiation that would be interfering with the alien’s sensors.

One of the other CenSec officers seemed to notice something and called out, “Hey, over here. Some sort of doorway!” Their squealing hiss was loud in the otherwise quiet room, the rest of the officers falling in line with them as they pushed towards the entrance, flashlight beams illuminating slices of the dusty room.

Paulie was a little shaken, the entire experience was so far out of his realm of comfort that his body was pumping him full of adrenaline and other hormones, which was probably why he noticed the alien before any of the others. His eyes dilated and his breath caught as for a split second he saw a hatch in a dark corner of the room open. A malevolent alien face looking out from the shadows to be joined by the nasty barrel of some type of weapon with which he was unfamiliar.

Even as he opened his mouth to shout, his arm was already moving. The heavy revolver held in his shaking grip.

Time seemed to slow, and Paulie pulled the trigger.