Chapter 5: Fight or Flight

Paulie looked both ways in mild panic before spotting what he assumed had to be the rear door to the stall itself. Without hesitation he grabbed for the handle and tore it open before ducking inside.

He almost tripped over something as soon as he entered, but he managed to close the door regardless as he tried to regain his bearings.

“Oh zalc preserve us, please.. I have offspring, there is no need for this violence.” Paulie nearly jumped out of his skin as a voice sounded from right under his nose.

Paulie lurched back and tripped, landing hard on his rear even in the lower gravity of the small moon. In front of him, cowering on the floor behind one of the many small shelves was the shopkeeper he had seen earlier. It was a strange creature, all spindly arms and long shaggy fur. It wore something almost akin to a light blue toga, though the clasps were all in the wrong places to accommodate the six arms and six legs it had. Almost as if it were imitating a style it had seen another species wearing.

He cocked his head as he tried to remember its species, but he was coming up empty. As he did so its four bright eyes blinked and it seemed to realise that he wasn’t one of the bultesians. It shivered in what could have been terror or pain, maybe both, and asked quietly in a shaking voice. “Are you here to hurt me too?”

Paulie’s mouth opened. Who the hell started a conversation like that? The poor creature must be absolutely terrified. “What? No, I was trying to hide from those psychopaths outside. What the hell do they even want with us?” He asked, trying to pry a little while he was here.

The strange creature shook its head. The longer fur under its chin and cheeks fluttering in the dim light of the room. “They are looking for.. No, I cannot say. I am already threatened enough simply for what I am.”

Paulie cocked his head and looked around the cramped space. They were in some back storage area, he could see a small workbench and what looked like a hammock in the back under a single flickering worklight. He turned back to look at the cowering alien. “And what is that?” He was genuinely curious as to what the alien meant.

The man, for he assumed it was a male by its speech, shifted till it knelt instead of cowering. “What.. what do you mean, you don’t know?” Paulie shook his head and shrugged. The gestures must have conveyed the proper meaning as after another moment of staring at him wide eyed, the creature let out a heavy breath.

Another trickle of their dark rust colored blood leaked from their cracked teeth as it answered his question slowly. “I am yelquian..” It paused to see his reaction, Paulie just blinked slowly. “Okay, so you have never heard of the cult of the Infinite and Divine?”

Paulie was now additionally confused and a little on edge. He didn’t really like the sound of cultish activity, anytime zealots showed up it was pretty much guaranteed to be a dark time for any involved. “Cults? No, I haven’t heard about anything like that before, what is it?”

The yelquian cowered again as there was a sound outside the door. “Bad news, very bad news.”

The skinny alien bolted for the back of the store and Paulie had just enough time to turn back towards the door before it suddenly glowed white hot and was kicked in with a heavy blow by a pair of spider-leg-like appendages. These were revealed to be the lower legs of a bultesian as it stormed through the door, its weapon raised and ready to fire.

Paulie was standing close to the door and was almost struck as it burst open in a shower of molten sparks. He ducked involuntarily, and that likely saved his life as a bright beam of shimmering energy passed through the space his head had just been. The beam bored a slagged hole through the wall behind him with a loud hiss. The popping of molten metal hitting the damp floor sounded like firecrackers and lit up the dim room like a crazed lightshow.

He took a heartbeat to thank his lucky stars and lunged for the alien, trying to settle this fight with a close range grapple and overpower the weaker alien before they could get another shot off. He stepped close, fast enough that the alien’s eyes seemed to flash in surprise. That sideways mouth opening as he reached in and punched it as hard as he could in the chest, that turned out to be a mistake.

He had expected the alien to be dispatched with that one blow, to be sent flying back into the wall to collapse in a tangle of broken limbs as its life essence leaked out upon the cold duracrete floor. What he had not been expecting was for something in his hand to snap and for the alien to crawl painfully back to its sharp stabbing legs with a loud gurgling hiss of rage, a thin line of dark green liquid drooled from their looling mouth as they shook their lumpy head.

“Shit!” Paulie swore, holding his broken hand in his other as he took a step back. He felt bad, and not just because of the shooting pain in his hand. No, he realised that he felt hollow, empty. As if a piece of himself that he had never noticed before had suddenly gone missing.

On the bright side, the enraged alien cultist had lost their weapon in the struggle and now the fight was much more even. He looked around quickly, and one of the shelves nearby caught his attention. It had the semi-modular look of a snap-together furniture piece and so he grabbed one of its supports with his uninjured hand and ripped it free with a grunt. The rest of the shelf collapsed, spilling its inventory upon the floor with a loud crash. He was less worried about the mess than he was about becoming a mess himself, like that viltessian officer. He shuddered.

The odds may have seemed poor at first, given the alien’s resilience to his first attack. He had felt some manner of heavy subdermal armour or perhaps bony plates when he had injured his hand and he was not keen to repeat the experience. But now he had a weapon, the heavy metal pipe felt like it was made of aluminum in the low gravity. But he could almost immediately tell it was fashioned out of some manner of mild or low carbon steel.

The bultesian warily eyes the pipe, the thing taking a few steps to the side on those long spider-like legs. They were covered in a glossy grey skin at the tops, but the last thirty millimeters or so seemed to be bone or chiton, it was a dirty copper in color and the clacking sounds they made as they walked informed him that the substance was likely very hard. Certainly hard enough to cause him irredeemable harm should they make contact with his body.

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Clearly the strange creature thought so as well as they lunged at Paulie with their two forward most legs in a stabbing motion. Paulie just managed to rear back, twirling the steel pipe as he did so to smack the closer leg away with a loud clang. The hostile alien moved back, clearly wary of his agility now.

Paulie hefted the pipe, ready for anything. He winced as he stepped on something that rolled under his foot, momentarily losing his footing. The bultesian hissed a challenge in its native language, or maybe it was a vapid curse. He couldn’t tell either way as he didn’t speak their language. It lunged at him, this time with its own closed fist.

Paulie could have avoided it, dodged out of the way. But he didn’t. Instead, he stepped closer to the alien as it threw it, raising an arm to block the blow as he had learned in his younger fighting years and counter swung the pipe at one of their nearer legs. The metal pipe hit the appendage with a satisfying crunch of sometime being broken under the surface.

He pushed down the dark emptiness that was threatening to swallow him whole and leapt back as the alien screeched loudly and favored its right side. He had hurt it, but not mortally. But maybe enough to swing things in his favor. The blood rushed in his ears as he felt his heartbeat quicken. The adrenaline flooding his system numbed the pain in his hand and lowered his inhibitions, the pure fire of instinct taking hold over his mind.

He looked at the alien, his mind noting lapses in its defense. Exploitable openings where he could break another leg or arm, bruise and sunder flesh, incapacitate and kill this threat. His fight or flight kicked in hard, and he chose fight.

He decided that the only way he was going to win would be to take the fight to the enemy directly, and so he quit circling and rushed the alien with a roar of primal rage. The cultist was almost entirely unprepared for the assault and tried to jump to the side to avoid him. A task that they likely would have done easily had their leg not been injured as it was. A tiny gap in the thing’s defense. A microscopic gap, but a gap nonetheless.

Paulie roared again and brought the heavy steel pipe down on the alien’s exposed head with all the force his body could muster. He used both hands, the broken bones shifting painfully as he felt the rod impact the downed butesian with bone shattering force. There was a loud crack and he screamed again, this time in pain as the feedback shock of the impact traveled up the pipe and into his already damaged hand.

He dropped the pipe instinctively, all thoughts going to the center of his agony as he fell forwards to his knees and cradled his hand. Blood dripped from his fingers, but it was not his own, the strong scent of copper filled the room as the remains of his attacker’s head pooled out upon the duracrete floor of the room. He felt a little sick looking at it, he had killed more than once now. But none had been so visceral, so gruesomely brutal. So full of personal venom and spurred by hatred.

He turned away, sick to his stomach as he looked around the room and stood shakily to his feet. His heart continued to beat at his ribcage as if trying to escape, he felt the adrenaline spike again in response to his mental state and tried to take deep calming breaths. He was getting too accustomed to this feeling, the depths of his personal disgust only outshone by the deep hollow feeling that still filled his core. It had subsided a little as the alien had ceased to be, but the strange feeling persisted like a bad smell he could not block out.

He made his way towards the open doorway, the remains of the door itself were still splashed across the floor. Droplets of steel crunched under his booted feet as he pulled his greatcoat tighter with his good hand and exited out into the gap between the market stall and the tall brick buildings.

The narrow sidewalk area was dark, the light from the street lamps was muted. Blocked for the most part by the surrounding structures. Not for the first time he remarked to himself as to the shoddy and slapdash nature of the roadside stalls. Many of them looked as if they were converted shanties, their corroded steel walls mixing with the dark grey plastics and partially rotted wooden struts. They gave off the distinctive look of decay and rot, the style of hastily built and poorly maintained buildings.

When he got out of this situation he would be sure to ask Sasfren or Jakiikii what that was all about, but for now he still had the issue of another deranged cultist loose somewhere on the street in his very immediate vicinity.

He heard another series of strange cracks from the area in front of him and moved to the corner as quickly as he could manage without hurting himself more. What he saw when he turned the corner made his heart sink.

The wall that Jakiikii and the others had been hiding behind was slagged, the grey duracrete shattered and melted from the tremendous heat of many energy blasts. How the small gun the bultesian cultists carried could deal such damage was beyond his human understanding, but clearly they had the ability. He was looking at the after effects now after all. No, what really brought a pang of fear and anger to his heart was the additional steaming corpses strewn about the far side of the street. Clearly additional civilians had been caught up in the attack after he had been forced from the roof.

But where was the other one now? As he thought it, he heard a slight sizzle from behind him and reacted, dodging to the side as fast as he could. Almost fast enough, almost but not quite.

Paulie gritted his teeth as something seemed to slap his side hard, the feeling of terrible freezing pain spread across his upper thigh and lower stomach as he heard the sound of something crackling. Then he hit the ground and rolled into a heap, slamming into the nearby stall with enough force to dent the thin metal of the wall.

A gurgling sound reached him as he cracked open eyes misted with pain. The alien approached, its face seemingly contorted in anger as it gestured towards him. He was a little confused as to why it didn’t just shoot him dead on the spot, it seemed to be staring at him. He looked down at himself and realised he was splashed with the blood of the other cultist. Clearly it recognised the fact and seemed to be enraged. It approached him and loomed over him, the deathray crossbow-looking weapon aimed straight at his skull as it screamed indecipherable obscenities at him.

He smirked, if he was about to die then he would do it with curses on his tongue and a smile in his eyes. “You know, you look a lot like a big sideways slug had sex with a spider.”

The alien cocked its head a little, seemingly confused as to his lack of fear. He smiled at it and spoke, “Are you going to kill me now? Because I really wanted to go and try to make a lasagna with the ingredients I have been working with. I think I can do it, the sauce just isn't right yet though. I have not found anything..” He was cut off as the bultesian kicked him in the side, hard.

“Ouugh!” He grunted, curling instinctively towards the pain. “Bastard.” He grunted as he held what felt like a fractured rib.

He glared up at the alien and was a little dismayed that he saw what looked like some manner of grin cross its strange features. He was a little upset he had to admit to himself, there were so many things he still wanted to do with his life. People to help and things to say, his thoughts turned toward Mack and Jakiikii. His only two real friends in this strange new place.

He blinked slowly and then closed his eyes, receiving another vicious kick for his trouble as the alien shouted something at him in its native tongue. He looked up, the barrel of the alien gun had once more descended towards him.

He wanted to cry out in pain, rage or anger. But in reality, he was simply too tired to muster the energy.

He heard a faint noise and looked up, well, up from his perspective of lying flat on his back. He grinned as he saw the source of the noise, it was officer Visk. The pink-furred vekegh man had stepped around the corner, electron pistol raised and ready to fire upon his torturer. But he didn’t. Paulie saw the man seem to hesitate for a bare moment, their eyes flicking from Paulie to the bultesian cultist and back. He saw the hint of hatred or anger cross their otter-like features. Small ears twitching as their lips pulled back in the barest hint of a snarl.

Whether it was anger or disgust he didn’t know, but he had just enough time to recognise the look of somebody at war with themselves before they pulled the trigger. The deathray wielding criminal had likely not even heard the man approach, preoccupied as they had been upon Paulie. As a result a tiny hole was bored into their head via the near light speed beam of accelerated electrons, the energy dumbing into their skull as the remains of the beam exited the other side. Their body was snapped sideways slightly, the alien cultist going limp as they crumpled to the ground next to Paulie with a thud.

Paulie’s eyes were momentarily dazzled by the afterimage of the blazingly bright electron beam. The fizzling blue motes of its ionised track shimmered in the air like fireflies for another second or two and he soon found himself being inspected by gentle hands. A husky voice spoke concernedly from somewhere nearby and impossibly distant at the same time as he lapsed into unconsciousness.