Chapter 2: Simple Instructions

Paulie sat heavily on his seat, the fact that the stools had no back support was a point of lamentation now that he had finished the last bite of sweet and tangy meat from the platter before him. Had he been able he would have lounged like a stuffed tiger in the afternoon sun.

“Ouuphff.” He grunted as he held his lower chest. “I think I ate too much.” The comment was punctuated by a loud burp with such deafening volume that other nearby tables went silent to stare at him.

Mack’s neck quills shivered as he exclaimed, “By the hairs of zalc’s behind, boy! What was that?”

Jakiikii seemed to chuckle, the low husky sound emanating deep from her lower chest as Paulie answered. “It was the sound of ultimate culinary satisfaction. A compliment in my native culture to be sure. It proclaims to the world, that was a good meal and I would like everyone to know it.” He was bullshitting of course, but Mack didn’t have to know that. The patrons around them went back to their own conversations and the brief moment of relative silence was swallowed up in the muted buzz of a thousand indistinct conversations once more.

Mack shook his head atop his long slender neck, both large grey eyes fixating on Paulie with a mild scowl plastered across his normally flat features. “Well, it was also incredibly uncivilised behaviour. I guess I should have learned to expect that by now.” The miriam muttered, brows crinkling in his consternation.

Paulie shrugged. He had needed to let one out regardless of what the others thought, better to let it out than hold it in as one of his favorite movie characters had always said. He leaned back as far as he could and let out a groaning stretch as he readjusted his button up shirt, this one was a simple solid grey. He had finally convinced Mack to get him different clothing than the plaid blue business casual he had been wearing, he had also picked up a long brown great coat similar to the miriam detectives complete with its endless bounty of internal pockets and a pair of heavy grey tactical boots. The coat was almost like having another dimension to store just about anything he wanted, what he had jokingly started calling his pocket dimension.

He stood and grabbed the coat from where he had stashed it under his stool and pulled it on, he left it open at the front though. Wearing it made him feel vaguely authoritative, like those no-nonsense cops from bad 80s police action shows he had used to watch as a younger man.

Jakiikii gave him what seemed like an appraising look as she stood as well. She had been sticking closer to him lately he had noticed, maybe it was her general assistance in his training, maybe it was something else. Either way he was glad for her presence, she was as intelligent as she was deadly. And he had seen enough of her marksmanship to know just how incredibly efficient she was, her six eyes and arms gave her the kind of precise stability that a human marksman could only ever dream of. He swore he had seen her split the hairs on a flea at two hundred meters with that electron rifle of hers.

He noted the lack of juice in her pitcher and smiled. “You were certainly thirsty.”

The termaxxi woman smiled and cocked her head a little. “Yes, you know how much I have to drink to keep up my calorie requirements.”

He nodded. She was right, as a nectarivore she survived mainly off of sugar and protein rich fluids. The major downside of which seemed to be her need to eat constantly, almost a dozen small meals per day. Well, per Gikean day that was, which he had discovered was highly variable due to their orbital period around the large gas giant of Trellan IX that the moon orbited.

He tested his footing as he thought of it, had he wanted to he could have sprang directly over the table, Mack and the other nearby patrons of the establishment in a single bound as the world's low gravity was mere childsplay to his high gravity muscles. But he had already learned the kind of unwanted attention that attracted, hell, he was already a target purely for his race.

Paulie looked around the social shopping center as Mack stood and made his way to his side of the table. He was the only human around, maybe the only living one on the planet. Well, that was what he was going to find out anyways. He jumped slightly as Mack interrupted his thoughts.

The alien nodded to Jakiikii and thanked her, “Okay, that was nice. Thank you for the meal, Jakiikii.” She nodded with a smile, a few of her eyes tucking close to her head in mild embarrassment at the open compliment. Mack turned his flexible neck back to look at Paulie without moving his body causing the long sensory quills that sprouted from the back of his neck to shiver and clatter against each other. “You need to be getting back to the new safehouse. Remember, try not to get caught out. And if things get dangerous let your escort handle things.”

Paulie opened his mouth to protest but it seemed like Mack had anticipated his response as the man tutted. Paulie nodded slower. “Okay, but I am not just rolling over if they try to come for me again.” He paused, “Besides, they haven't seemed to bother me since the attack on your apartment. Maybe I finally scared them enough to leave me alone?”

Jakiikii shrugged from his other side. “Maybe, I saw what you did and I will admit that it scared even me a little. A whole planet full of big scary apocalypsers like you? I shudder at the thought.” The way she looked at him when she said it made him feel as though she did anything but shudder, at least not in fear.

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He pushed her mild teasing aside and gestured to the table. “I understand the need for security, trust me Mack I do. But this still seems a little over the top. I mean, Jakiikii alone would really be all I need.” He heard her make a small noise but ignored it, “No sense pulling three additional adjudicators off the street..” He didn’t get to finish as Mack pointed at him and butted in.

He didn’t sound exactly angry, but neither did the dapper gentleman seem all too pleased as he barked quietly. “Hey! It wasn’t my idea in the first place. Orders direct from Major Mauk, so there isn’t any way for you to jeavl your way out of this. Just accept it and wait till your credentials are accepted. With how fast you made it through the tests you should be cleared for active duty like Jakiikii in another few days. Then we can move on with the raid.” He gave another grumble and then nodded to Jakiikii before turning and striding away on his four legs.

Paulie hunched, sufficiently cowed by the man’s remarks. He glanced at Jakiikii who was scowling at him. She had no eyebrows, but the upper curl of her flower-petal-like eye flaps curled down in a fine semblance of a furrowed brow.

She placed her two middle arms on her wide hips and asked, “Why do you have to antagonise him like that? You know how much stress he is already under, and the strings he had to pull to keep you from being locked up in an isolation cube just because of what you are.”

He ducked his head as he followed her away from the busy eating area. The slight ache in his overfull stomach only worked to make him feel even worse about the whole situation. “I know, I know. But it is so hard to understand the bigger picture sometimes, Jakiikii. Surely there have been times where you questioned his intentions?”

She stopped, two of her eyes turning all the way around to look at him while she remained facing forwards. She shook her head slightly. “I don’t think you understand. He took me in from nothing, I had nothing, Paulie. I was nothing. I might as well have been dead, I had lost everything that mattered to me in the world..” She choked up a little and he stepped closer to her, but she put out an arm to stop him before he reached her side.

“No, not everything. Even at my lowest point I still had my own sense of self-worth, and it was Mack that helped me realise that. I have suspected for a while that Ooounoo was responsible for what happened to me. She is the most powerful criminal overlord on Gike after all, but not even a virus in the eyes of what holds sway over the Greater Galactic Intercession, Paulie. There is a sickness..” She seemed to stop and look around. “No, this isn’t the time or place.” She spoke quietly, as if to herself.

Paulie was a little confused. She could be an enigma at times, her past as tragic as a movie and three times as convoluted. He stepped to her side and gave her a friendly nudge. “Well, it can’t be all bad right?” She glanced at him with a single pink and orange eye, the slit of it narrowing like a cat’s. He smiled and gestured to himself, “You have me now too.”

She smiled a little at that, a short wheeze escaping the breathing slits under her lowest pair of arms. He grinned as she nodded and elbowed him back. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

He motioned for her to accompany him. “Come on, I want to get back home, neighbor.”

Jakiikii smiled again, her dainty little mouth opening slightly to reveal a portion of her bubblegum pink tongue inside. “Yeah. Neighbor.” She rolled the word around, clearly still not used to its connotation. She had only been permitted to stay in one of the adjudicators complex’s holding rooms and the temporary safehouse apartment that Mack had once leased, but now with some prodding from Paulie she had been permitted to live fully autonomously in the same building that Paulie was being held in. Under the same guard detail he had of course.

He nodded to himself, it was only fair that she had a place to call her own. He dodged around a krakkan as it slithered along the walk outside the dining plaza, the small clamshelled alien’s long red eyestalk nearly popped out of its body as it shimmed back on its array of muscular yellow tentacle feet as Paulie stumbled and almost fell.

“Oh my! Please accept my most sincere apologies.. uh, I am sorry. I am not familiar with your kind?” The small alien said in a burbling gurgle. Only Paulie’s jargon worm allowed him to understand the alien’s slurry speech.

He waved a hand at the small molluskian alien, “Not at all. I was the one not watching where I was going, be well stranger.”

The small creature seemed to pause and then the eyestalk gave a little bow. “Truly you are most courteous. I bid thee be well and have a good day.”

Paulie smiled. He liked the strange little clamshelled aliens. They were disturbingly polite and well known for their near fervent adherence to their social code of politeness. He watched as the small creature waddled away on those thick tentacles, its striated shell looking like something one might find at the bottom of the sea. Not wandering around the sidewalks of some alien shopping center, that long red eyestalk bobbing about like a curious snake.

He shook his head and glanced at Jakiikii. She just pursed her lipless mouth slightly, nothing to comment on the matter. Paulie got the impression that she wasn’t as big a fan of the strange little creatures as he.

As they took another few steps out into the mall they were met with a trio of dark blue suited figures of various shapes and sizes. Primarily amongst them a snake-like alien woman with two long trifurcated tentacle arms, one of which waved in their direction as she reached him. Officer Sasfren’s fleshy display petals that were arrayed around her feline face like a flower flashed a muted green as she gave them a nod. “Oh, you are done already? How was lunch?”

Paulie nodded and gave her a smile, he had originally been distrustful of the alien due to her standoffish nature and seeming suspicion of him. But over the last couple of weeks he had started to see her as a person rather than a vague alien authority figure. She was generally charismatic but could be quite timorous when around new and dangerous situations. She had lamented to them more than once about her section twenty-two violation that she had received for what her superiors saw as a dereliction of duty during the attack on Mack’s quarters.

While she had not been exactly blamed for the disaster that had nearly seen the loss of both a key witness and a senior Censec detective, her lack of direct action had still seen her censured and punished. He had noted the irony of her punishment was to continue doing exactly the thing she had been doing when she had been cited. That being guarding him as a witness and unregistered, potentially dangerous individual.

Paulie reached into one of the pockets of his coat and pulled out a small plastic bag which he handed her. “Here, I saved you Jakiikii’s after-dinner cookie. She didn’t want it.”

Jakiikii butted in, “Can’t eat them anyways. Figured Paulie might want it for something.”

The maggastium adjudicator’s head petals flushed a muted purple as she took it. “Oh, thanks! I used to love getting these as a hatchling.” Her sharp teeth flashed as she said it, the cookie quickly disappearing inside alongside the sounds of happy chewing.

He gestured towards the open street in front of them. “Well, I am ready to go home. If you would lead the way?” The alien nodded and signalled to her two underlings situated nearby. As a small and rather conspicuous group, they moved out towards the exit of the large enclosed structure.