Chapter 4: A Hold-Up Holdup

The trip through the underground tunnels took only a few minutes. Before he knew it, Paulie was getting up and walking into another terminal just like the one they had left only minutes before, complete with the shining holograms of advertisements plastered across the walls and the flickering halogen lamps swinging gently overhead. It was a strange contrast of futuristic and old-style tech, one of the many contradictions he had seen in his short time in Korscam.

He couldn’t quite place it, but the entire city felt as if it were a fusion of old and new tech. Like an old canvas covered wagon with a fresh set of modern rubber tires. It just didn’t seem to fit at times.

He shook his head to himself as their small group exited the underbus all at once and moved through the diminishing crowds towards the exit hall to the right side of the grey tiled room. The transportation vehicle began to hum behind them and he saw that it wobbled slightly before setting off towards its next stop, a ceaseless cycle that had likely seen it around the entirety of the huge city more times than he could count.

Jakiikii’s six eyes roved all around the surrounding space as they climbed the stairs towards the main street. She seemed a bit worried and so he reached out and touched her shoulder in what he hoped was a reassuring manner causing the termaxxi to jump and let out a small whoosh of air from the breathing slits on her lower torso.

She frowned, her dainty little slash of a mouth turning down on the edges as she spoke. Her husky feminine voice emanated from somewhere deep in her chest instead of her mouth, “I don’t think we are alone.” She hissed.

He shrugged and gestured towards officer Sasfren and her two subordinates. “Correct.”

She grumbled as he gave her a smug smile, the skin around the base of her many eyes wrinkling slightly. “No, I mean it. I keep getting..” She paused and then looked at him directly with all six of her bright orange eyes. He felt at once transfixed and a little nervous, to be fair he still wasn’t entirely used to the way each and every one of her six pupils moved independently of the others. It was as if an entire crowd of one eyed people were staring at him all at once. It kind of set him on edge.

She continued, “Do you ever get the feeling you are being watched?” She asked him seriously. He almost snorted at the question coming from her.

He wanted to make a joke, to quip that he was feeling that way right at the moment. But as if she had manifested something in the air, he felt the small hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He shuddered slightly and just nodded. Even more disturbingly, he felt the presence of his parasite recoil as if he had struck it. But he had not touched it, no, it had felt something too.

He whirled, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that had set off his instincts. But all he saw was the pervasive bustle of the streets. The shifting mass of strange alien shapes and colors, the eye searing profusion of organised chaos that was the busy street.

As if detecting his thoughts, officer Sasfren had also turned to look in the direction he was, one of her trifurcated tentacle hands wrapped around the weapon at her waist. “What! Did you see something?” She seemed a little on edge as well. And he supposed it made sense, she had on multiple occasions displayed a higher than average perceptiveness. Her two companions seemed largely oblivious though, either unworried or unable to feel the tension that had filled the air.

He scrutinised the street which had started to clear of people, it was nearing one of the few slower times of the day. With the generally packed streets briefly approaching a measure of calm which was the reason they were moving when they did. It was easier to scan for threats when one could see more than a meter in front or behind themselves.

It was as he was scrutinising the surrounding area that he saw what must have been capturing his attention. Across the street and about thirty or so meters away stood a person wearing a dark cowl-like covering. Their body shape was only vaguely humanoid, the various lumps and wrinkles in the long cloth covered their form. But it was apparent that they were some manner of alien.

They might have been looking at him, their head seemed to be turned their way. He couldn’t tell, but he got the gut-wrenching feeling that he was being watched.. Intently. Another odd thing he had noticed was the large void in the otherwise crowded street. The masses flowing away and around the figure like water around a large boulder in the middle of a stream.

He leaned towards Jakiikii and asked, “Do you see that hooded guy across the street?” She looked around without moving her head or body, the flexible petals that her eyes were on could move independently of each other with surprising dexterity. He prompted, “In the dark cloak, thirty meters to the left.”

He wasn’t sure if the measurement translated, but before he could correct himself he saw all six of her eyes lock onto the suspicious figure. She tensed and he saw the covered figure jerk as if stung. Clearly they had been watching, and now that they knew that they were spotted the situation potentially became a hell of a lot more dangerous.

He was about to turn to officer Sasfren and point them out when he tensed up too, there was another figure nearby to the first. Another alien in long dark clothing that seemed all at once far too conspicuous when taken with the much more vibrant surroundings. It made them stick out, not like a sore thumb exactly, but certainly more than they may have been anticipating.

He watched for a few seconds as the other figure seemed to speak towards the street vendor they stood by, the cloak moving as they gestured out of sight from Paulie’s position. The vendor looked around, but didn’t seem to notice Paulie’s group and shook their scaled head. They looked distressed, and with the way the two suspicious aliens were dressed and acting he was thinking he might be witnessing a robbery in progress. Of course, he could have been wrong, but Paulie had gotten this far by trusting his instincts. He wasn’t about to stop doing that now.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

He wanted to shout something at them, to give warning to the crowd around them. But he was unarmed, he had nothing to defend himself with much less to subdue the two hooded figures. The option was taken out of his hands when the first alien shouted in anger towards the vendor and struck them across the counter, the shopkeep flailing in pain and falling out of sight.

Jakiikii and the officers jumped collectively, but not nearly as much as the few bystanders near the roadside structure. Several of them jumped bodily to the floor and at least one krakka snapped its shell closed with a loud clack. The two potential robbers reacted in very different ways however.

The nearer one that had not yelled jumped about a meter into the air in seeming surprise, the long dark hood it wore was thrown back from the action and he saw an alien species he had not yet seen before. It was vaguely humanoid, with a head over shoulders from which hung at least a pair of arms. But aside from that they were entirely inimical to his understanding.

It had a face of sorts, a long vertical gaping maw of a mouth opened wide in a scream. Their two sideways V-shaped eyes blinked quickly in alarm and its body hunched as it dove for the cover of the stall. He had only gotten a glimpse of it, but already he felt a sort of mild horror at the sheer bizarity of its form. He supposed he was likely being prejudiced as he had no other reason to believe these creatures were all so criminally inclined, but first impressions were first impressions.

It was the second alien however that grabbed his attention, the strange thing threw aside the cloak and whirled to look their way while pulling something that looked a little like a rounded axe with a crossbow-style arm made of ribbed copper on the front. They held it in their strange stacked grip with deadly intent and he heard the viltessian officer screech loudly as a bright beam of ghostly green light seemed to strike them. It projected from the weapon in the criminal’s hands, the ribbed copper arms of the strange gun beginning to glow a dull cherry red from waste heat as the beam played over the doomed adjudicator’s carapace.

“Bultesians!” Officer Visk shouted as the vekegh dove for cover behind a low duracrete wall.

Paulie saw officer Sasfren hunker her upper body down towards the ground as she slunk backwards towards the exit of the stairs, the maggastium dragging a protesting Jakiikii with her as she drew her sidearm.

Jakiikii yelled for him to move, to take cover or run. But he didn’t, transfixed as he was by the awful fate that had just befallen the viltess adjudicator who had been standing next to him only a moment before. But where the insectoid had previously stood, tall and proud in their dark blue peace officer uniform, there was a pile of charred chiton and a dark purple mass that must have been their insides leaking outside.

The gun or whatever it had been seemed to have cooked the poor creature from the inside out in a second. Flash boiled with such speed and violence that their entire body had ruptured like an over microwaved hotdog. And now that horrible device was being turned his way.

Paulie heard Jakiikii screech again, he had no intention of getting shot though. In a flash he dodged to the side and used his overpowered muscles to dive to the far side of the street. He heard a loud hissing pop behind him but didn’t stop to look. Instead of continuing on around the low-walled structure he crouched and then sprang up atop it.

The metal sheeting of the roof crackled under his feet, but held. From his heightened position he could see both the street thugs clearly, he peered over the lip and saw them loose a few more shots in the direction of the others. The street was rapidly clearing of screaming citizens, only the still hunkering clamshell of the krakka he had seen earlier remained nearby. The rest of the street was clear as the first bright eye-searing blue electron beam lanced out from the other two officers.

He could see them from where he was, officer Visk and Sasfren were taking turns popping up from their cover to loose potshots at their aggressors. But it was risky, the other bultesian pulled a weapon from under their robes and fired towards the hunkering officers as well, another deadly green beam of coruscating energy joining the first as they left bubbling molten craters in the wall where they struck.

He heard Sasfren curse loudly, his jargon worm only translating every other word as the section of wall she was using for cover cracked with a loud pop and the sound of pinging shrapnel. The weapons that the two criminals were using seemed to act like some manner of directed heat rays, the sections of wall or street that were impacted glowed white with heat. Their surfaces vitrified and running like molten glass as the spots slowly cooled into pockets of dark black obsidian.

He needed to do something, but he didn’t have a weapon and even with his superhuman strength and reflexes he wasn’t keen to try himself against two psychotic aliens holding death ray guns. No, he needed to do something clever, something unexpected. But what?

He heard another loud sound, this one more akin to a sizzle than a pop and he watched in horror as one of the green beams caught the edge of the cowering krakka’s shell. Immediately the shell glowed white with heat and began to blacken as the innocent bystander was cooked alive in less than a second. Their clam-like shell split down the middle as their insides flashed to steam, the sound as sharp as a firecracker and punctuated by a terrible gurgling scream that died almost as soon as it began.

“NO!” He shouted as was forced to duck back into cover, at least one shot directed his way and heating the metal under him so much that a portion of it slagged inwards. He grunted as his hands were scorched and he was forced to roll off the roof to fall slowly to the ground behind the stall.

He cursed as he regained his footing, “No! Bastards!” The krakka were some of the most friendly creatures he had ever met, not once in all the time he had been a resident of Gike had he heard one of them so much as raise their voice in anger. In fact, he wasn’t even entirely sure they were capable of displaying the emotion. And they had killed the poor creature out of spite or cruelty, it mattered little to him as to their motivations.

His burned fists clenched involuntarily, but he ignored the pain of it. No, he wasn’t going to just stand by idly while these two potentially affected an escape. Jakiikii and the officers were in danger too, they had likely already called for backup. But it could not arrive soon enough. He swore, all this would have been avoided if he had a gun. He could have easily taken out both of the aliens from his vantage atop the stall had he been so armed.

He stood to his feet and looked at the gap between the brick wall in front of him and the corroded metal wall of the roadside stall he was in cover behind. He peeked around the corner but could no longer see any of the action from where he was. He dashed forwards to the next bit of cover and was forced to duck as a bright blue line crossed in front of his path not more than a few meters from his chest. The line broke apart quickly, fizzing like electrical discharge as the plasma afterglow boiled away. It seemed that he needed to be as aware of his own allies' fire as that of his enemy.

Paulie heard a buzz as the street’s lighting flickered on. He looked up and realised that the sky was darkening from its normal teal color to more of a midnight green. The rich hue punctuated by the subtle lighting of the huge half-moon of the gas giant the planet orbited around, the giant sphere of Trellan IX was covered in flickering super lightning storms and the ghostly glow of titanic aurora that seemed to reach out from its outer atmosphere like spectral fingers.

He had to tear his gaze away from the phantasmagorical sight in order to focus once more on the task at hand. He slunk around the back of the stall he was using for cover and heard garbled speech coming from the next stall. He cocked his head as he noticed something odd about their speech. It took him a second to realise that he couldn't understand what the aliens were saying.

He shook his head and looked inwards, had the stupid parasite stopped working for him again out of spite? No, that made no sense. Mack had informed him that if he were to die that the parasite would die with him, so there would be no logical reason for it to try and get him killed out of some misguided hatred. So that left only one other obvious alternative, these bultesian crooks must not be using jargon worms.

Now that was interesting, he thought. He wondered why they would forgo the usefulness of the internal biological translators, did they know something he didn’t? Or were jargon worms expensive and maybe they could not afford them? Come to think of it, he had not felt so much as a stir from his own brain inhabiting symbiotic translator for a while either, there had to be some connection. It seemed as though he would soon get the chance to find out as he heard the sound of crunching footsteps from the far side of the roadside stall he was next to.

And they were getting closer.