Chapter 9: Trial Run

Paulie was wearing his regular clothing again and standing in what he had started referring to as the arming room as he tried on his newest piece of equipment. Though the other peace officers called the room something more diplomatic, he elected to stick with his word for the sake of brevity. Besides, it was what it was.

He looked around, the walls were lined with locked racks of various weapons, arms and destructive devices. To the far side of the cavernous space was a large shooting range and there were adjoining rooms for maintenance, repair and rearming of equipment commonly used by the adjudicators and regular peace officers.

He shifted a little uncomfortably, the heavy weight of his newly fashioned armour having met with both the disapproval and annoyance of the armorer that stood behind the table in front of him.

The armorer was tall, nearly as tall as he was. But where he was relatively lean, they were bulky with blubber or maybe just fat. The slight whirring of their motorised mobility disk contrasted with the loud pops of the officers honing their skill at the range in the near distance.

The barnumite armorer snorted, their nostrils flaring as their voice gurgled from their sinusal vocal chords. “So, what do you think? Heavy enough for you, human?” The large slug-like alien’s four eyestalks seemed to bore into Paulie’s face at the question, clearly dripping with as much sarcasm as they were with mucous.

Paulie shifted his shoulders and took a few experimental steps. It fit well enough, and it certainly felt heavy enough to stop bullets. Not so much as to be a hindrance, but definitely enough for him to notice even in the much lower gravity due to the thick armour’s sheer mass. He smiled at the ten tentacle-armed alien, “Yeah. Yeah, I like it. You tested it out?”

The barnumite shifted their legless lower body, the wheeled disk they were sitting atom groaning in protest at their bulk. “Yes..” they gurgled wetly, clearly a little annoyed by his question. “It is good to stop just about anything they will throw at you, except electron rifles and hypervelocity sluggers at close range. But if you see any of those then there isn’t much else you could do anyways.” He bobbed the strange eyestalks atop their head and muttered, “Not that you could carry that effectively anyways.”

Paulie didn’t really care overmuch. It was just good to feel the weight as it settled across his shoulders like a weighted blanket. He turned around and then back to the large wide-bodied alien. “So you called it a laminate material? What does that mean?”

The large alien, whose name he understood to sound like a wet sneeze, gestured to the vest he wore. “It is made of an energetic-ceramometallic alloy laminated polymer film and coated in a lining of spall-resistant hyperdiamond-buckyweave. It would stop a meteor impact from killing you, though the kinetic force that it can absorb will still hit like a jaakl trampling you.”

Paulie nodded slowly. He got the picture, if not the specific reference. He could take a hit, but it wasn’t going to be for free. He would still need to be careful, he gave the large alien a nod and jogged over to the other side of the room. In front of him was another short hall that he followed into another even larger room filled with all manner of exercise and weight lifting equipment. And in the middle of it all was a pair of huge climbing towers and the ever changing obstacle course that had been the bane of his existence these last few weeks.

He saw a large familiar shape at the center of it all, the strange furry white creature that seemed to supervise the legion of struggling Censec officers looked like some manner of huge overgrown caterpillar to him. They were tall, taller even than Paulie himself by a few centimeters. But he knew that it was an unfair comparison, though he still smiled as they turned to look his way as if alerted by some sixth sense.

He heard the large medagoonian woman’s chirping burble as she slowly waddled over his way on her six stumpy legs. He couldn’t understand her speech, but she wore an additional device around her thick neckless body that he recognised as her personal translator alongside a loose fitting Censec emblazoned robe. Apparently her people were not compatible with the jargon worms and had to use archaic digital translators instead of the biotech parasites.

He saw the strange devices tapes spin as it clicked and whirred softly, the mechanical voice that the translation unit synthesised lacked emotional overtones in its monotone drone but it was better than trying to read the sharp hand symbols she was throwing at him seemingly unconsciously.

The device spoke flatley, “Paulie the human. It is good that you have come for I wish to once more test your mettle against my newest arrangement.”

He gave her a little nod and answered slowly. “It is good to see you too, Officer Tell’eal. Though I will admit that I did not come to test the new course. I wanted your opinion on the maneuverability of my new body armour.”

The large insectoid’s pitch black eyes gave nothing away and her flat, nearly featureless face was as impassive as stone. For a long moment he wondered if he had somehow offended the large alien woman, but his fears were assuaged as she let out a low creaking groan and shuddered slightly. He recognised it for what it was immediately, she was laughing at him.

Paulie scowled and smacked his chest. “What is so funny? I am bulletproof now!”

The buzzing of the translator chipped in, “You think yourself faster than a plasma blast and stronger than the tides. Paulie, you may be the strongest being on this world, but even you are not this superman you seem to aspire to be like.”

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He scowled again, he should never have tried to explain hero comics to her because she now liked to throw the references back at him on a regular basis. He grumbled, “Yeah, well I would still rather be me than some stick-limbed alien.” If she heard his grumbled comment then she didn't call him out on it, instead she made a simple hand signal.

“You may proceed when ready, recruit.” It wasn’t said in jest, in fact he had a hard time telling if the large fluffy alien liked or hated him. What with her monotone synthetic voice and near complete lack of facial expression. She did have a pair of large feathery antennae that stuck out from her head like a pair of floppy bunny ears. These perked up a little as she said it, he wasn’t sure if this meant she was happy or angry, but he decided that it didn’t really matter either way as she had given him permission to do what he had wanted to do anyways.

He nodded and stepped past her, the mendagoon’s four short arms flashing in another series of signs that he didn’t know the meaning of. But she chittered and the translator whirred away. “I will observe, be sure not to let that hot blood of yours boil your braincase.” This was followed once more by a chuckle and he shook his head slightly.

Paulie walked to the obstacle course that had been painstakingly rearranged again since the last time he had seen it. What had once been a course of low sloping tunnels and pipes was now a towering enfilade of large walls interspersed with openings and engineered hindrances. The tops of which seemed to be a part of the exercise as much as the parallel doorways that peppered their bases.

He checked his feet, the course was always marked out with a thick blue line. Following the line would show the course’s path as well as allow for one to take the least possible risk of hitting a dead end. Most of the time anyways.

He took a moment to limber up, winching slightly as his still healing muscles pulled tight. He was a bit stiff, but not mortally so. And so Paulie ignored it and continued loosening up for another minute before he turned towards officer Tell’eal and gave her a thumbs up. The four-armed insectoid gave him a sign in response and he took off towards the first set of partitions at an easy run. The armour jostled slightly, but he had strapped it tight and it caused little issue.

Paulie smiled, he had always liked a challenge. In high school he had been a track star, first at the relay and then later at discus and javelin. While he had let himself go a little over the years, he had never truly lost that core of skill and drive that had seen him a state champion three times over. If only he had taken his skills with him to college instead of dropping out to pursue a career in welding, he lamented internally.

He felt a slight buzz at the back of his mind. The negative thoughts rousing his parasite.

He snorted as he dodged around a series of tight pillars, bouncing off one of them with a muffled curse as he misjudged his new mass. The body armour was heavy, but in the lower gravity of Gike it didn’t feel all that bad. It still had inertia though, and he kept misjudging it. Either taking turns a little too late or cutting too early, he swore again as he completely missed the next doorway and instead plowed right into the side of one of the towering wall causing it to shudder under the force of his impact.

Another officer high up on the top of the wall yelled out in alarm and nearly lost their footing, the uniformed alien shouting down at him to be more careful. Paulie cocked his head and gave a nod before turning around and exiting the course with his shoulders a little hunched.

Officer Tell’eal was there, her impassive face staring at him. Those pitch-black insect-like eyes giving nothing away, the barest twitching of her antennae and the tapping of a single wide foot showing her consternation.

He reached her and let out a heavy sigh, “I can’t do this. I am not used to the gravity, it keeps throwing me off..” He didn’t get a chance to finish his excuses.

She stomped her foot in what he assumed to be frustration, he was a bit taken aback by that. She rarely if ever showed such blatant emotion in his experience, her translator beeped and crackled as it tried to keep up with her groaning speech. “You are not feeling the weight of your own body, this added mass is dragging you back like resistance bands. You must learn to anticipate your own movements, I see you and am amazed. Do you hear me, human.. amazed. That you can move like the lightnings of Trellan but still hit with the power of a mokku’s kick. You are like no other I have trained before, and it is for this reason that you have become the core object of my disquietude.” She paused, the sides of her body expanding as she took a large breath.

“Paulie. You have the power to do great things, but you need to believe in yourself. I have seen you flip weights that I would struggle to budge. Seen you leap over obstacles that most are required to climb with a single bound.” he shifted a little, suddenly uncomfortable with her heaped praise. It was not like her, she was generally so sparring with any type of compliment. She continued unabated, “So it is with a deep satisfaction that I tell you, I know that you can bear this weight. But I want to see if you believe that too.” She stepped back a pace, all four arms locking fingers as she looked at him with that strange flat expression.

Paulie stood there in silence, not really sure how to respond. She had never told him anything other than what she seemed to believe was true. Any time he had slacked she knew, anything he didn’t do his best at she would call upon him to improve. And he had, in these short weeks he had honed himself like a blade. Taken the weakness and turned it to strength, burned away self doubt and cultivated confidence. So if she said he could do it, then he could.

He straightened, his confidence bolstered by Tell’eal’s words. Paulie gave a sharp nod. “Okay, you are right of course. I just need to stop acting and start reacting. I know what I can do, so let's see what happens.” Officer Tell’eal’s antennae perked up again, the motion much like that of an attentive hound.

He strode back towards the course with a newfound sense of composure. He could do it, and he would. Or he would die, not today of course. But at some point in the future. If he let himself go unprepared, he would slip up and fall ill to the ravages of this harsh new reality. He wouldn't, couldn't, allow for that to happen. He had too much to do and too many things he still wanted to figure out. And so Paulie toed the line, his focus narrowing to a laser-point. All other thoughts pushed out of his head, no doubt or fears had room in this new zone. He quashed the dark presence in the back of his head that whispered self doubt and fears to him.

He heard a countdown and tensed.

He breathed out.

“Zero.. begin..” Somebody spoke in the distance, the sound coming from miles away. Or was it right behind him? He didn’t care.

Paulie shot forward like an olympic sprinter, his arms and legs pumping. The thick soles of his combat-style boots hammering the ground like artillery fire as his blood thundered in his ears. His heart pumped a potent cocktail of adrenaline and endorphins that worked to heighten his perception and strengthen his body’s own high tolerances as he moved with a grace and speed entirely unlike his earlier performance.

He dodged through the pillars again, no longer seeing them as obstacles and instead mapping a path through them as if they were no more trouble than walking through a door. This time he managed to take the last corner correctly, throwing out a leg to slow himself before catapulting through the next partition.

Paulie smiled wide as he ran, the feelings of stress and anxiety seemed to melt away as he hurdled a low wall and dove through a duracrete pipe without slowing. He rolled back to his feet and used the corner of the tower in front of him to leap a full three meters into the air, grabbing a handhold and pulling himself atop the climbing tower in seconds. But he didn’t stop to revel in his victory, for the course was only half completed.

Paulie took a second to suck in a huge breath and then ignored the other descending wall entirely as he judged the distance to the next tower. An image of his first flight from Ooounoo’s goons slashed through his mind. His jump from across the street from roof to roof, this was nearly the same distance. But now he was no longer suffering from the pains of malnourishment, near death and incarceration. No, he was fit and healthier than he could remember being in years. A biological machine.

Paulie smiled wide, and rushed the edge of the wall before leaping into empty space.