Chapter 30: Official Summons

  Paulie glanced over at Jakiikii again, the termaxxi woman shifting nervously as she stood beside him. They were flanked on both sides by their mandatory security escort, the lumpney and the vekegh standing slightly behind them as he stood in the entryway to their apartment building with Jakiikii at his other side. The tile floor clicked slightly under the nervously shifting insectoid officer to his side and Paulie took a deep and slightly calming breath.

  While Mack had arranged for them to be free to move about with relative impunity, their residence was still being guarded for what was being referred to as ‘security reasons’. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been before, before he and Jakiikii had been constantly trailed by at least three officers no matter what they were doing or where they were. Now he at least had the general autonomy to move around the city unimpeded. Not that they had much chance to yet, it had been only days since Mack’s injury and the raid on Ooounoo’s base, and Paulie was itching to get into some more action.

  But action, it seemed, would have to wait. He checked his wrist computer again, the small screen showing him the same message he had been looking at nervously for the past twenty minutes.

  Jakiikii elbowed him with two of her upper arms, hissing into his ear as best she could. “Stay calm. I am sure it’s nothing.” The effectiveness of her whisper was lessened by the fact that her voice seemed to reverberate from her whole chest instead of coming from the dainty, slit-like mouth on the front of her angular head.

  In return, Paulie just patted one of her upper arms in what he hoped felt like a reassuring manner. Because in all truth, he was anything but calm.

  He checked the message again, gaining another nudge for his trouble. The termaxxi shook her head as three of her six flower petal-like eyestalks turned to look at him, “Geez. You would think this was the first time you ever got summoned by the big boss.”

  He knew she was saying it in jest, but he still couldn’t help but shake his head in the negative. She nodded slightly and patted his upper back as the sound of an approaching ground vehicle reached them. It was another of those imposing looking police cruisers, the round wheels making little noise on the dark roadway as it slowed to a halt in front of the doorway.

  Paulie moved to take a step forwards but was halted by the pink-furred vekegh officer who growled softly. “Hold on, let us check it out.”

  Paulie shook his head slightly and motioned for the man to be on about it then. The otter-like alien moved forwards slowly, cautiously, one webbed hand upon the holstered MFD pistol on his belt. As he neared the cruiser the front window slid down and a strange, almost sickly green-colored bird-like face poked out the driver’s side window.

  It was the same smaukling that had been driving them around the last few days. They clacked their long beak and croaked, the alien speech being translated by Paulie’s jargon worm into more recognisable speech. “Whhaatt is the meaning of the hostility aye? I was told to come and so here I am, no need to be so aggressive!” They raised both their strange five-fingered hands to show they held no weapons and in response the vekegh lowered their guard and nodded towards Paulie and Jakiikii.

  “It’s clear. Move out.” He ordered stiffly.

  Paulie huffed slightly, the alien still seemed to think they were in charge here. Little did they realise just how much of an upper hand Paulie really had, had he wanted too he could have easily crossed the space between them and torn the smug alien in half longways before they had the chance to scream.

  Paulie jerked a little as the dark thoughts of violence entered his head again and then glared internally at the dark presence of the parasite that lurked in the back of his mind. It seemed to be growing more bold by the day, and Paulie wasn’t too sure what he was going to do about it. He shuddered as he remembered the thing’s slimy promise to imprison him in his own mind forever. Why was he so affected by the brain worm? Were others affected in a similar way? As he had been told, most seemed to get one implanted in their youth, growing through the pains and oddities of the biological translators before they ever reached maturity.

  He was shaken out of his speculative spiral by Jakiikii nudging him again and speaking into his ear, well, towards his ear anyways. “Hello, Paulie? You there?”

  He nodded and shifted uncomfortably. She reached out and gripped his wrist. “Hey, are you alright? You seem a little pale, well, for a human anyways.” She made a show of poking his cheek with a long-fingered hand and he chuckled.

  Paulie took a step, and then another. He gave her a reassuring smile as they climbed into the ground car together. “Yeah, thanks. I am fine, just a little tired. I didn’t sleep well last night..” He trailed off.

  She smirked, “Thinking too hard about other things?” She asked, seemingly insinuating something. But Paulie didn’t rise to the bait as he just continued speaking.

  “Yes. I was thinking about home again and how incredible of a discovery most of the things I have seen since my abduction would be considered. Much of what you see as mundane and everyday would be the scientific discovery of the decade back home on Earth.” He waved out the windows to some of the passing buildings and the stalls that sat out in front of them. She scooted slightly closer to get a better look at what he was referring to.

  Outside the car the city passed slowly, the smaukling cursed colorfully in their native tongue as a particularly thick swarm of civilians blocked the roadway momentarily. The car buzzed slightly as the alien snapped their beak and laid on the cruiser’s equivalent of a horn, many of the more skittish aliens scattering in the face of the authoritative vehicle’s dark blue presence.

  The buildings that lined the roadway looked old, some incredibly so. Their colorful facade cracked and pitted by the passage of time, but they didn’t look rundown or shabby. Instead they had the look of something well past its time but cherished by its owner. Damage had been dutifully repaired time and time again. Holes filled, walls repainted, and windows replaced till naught but the skeleton of the structure remained of the originals. But he smiled as he saw it, for it spoke of a deeper strength to these funny little aliens than might otherwise be apparent from the weak gravity of the planet or their frail bodies.

  Jakiikii once more grabbed the larger part of his attention as she uttered low enough to be considered a whisper, “I don’t know what to expect here, Paulie. Mack has never taken me to see Alloen, nor has my presence ever been allowed near to the higher-ups in the complex. I.. I don’t trust them.”

  He couldn’t tell if she was upset or angry about the fact. Her husky tenor voice rumbled from somewhere deep in her chest as she let out a breath, the breathing slits on her lower sides flaring as she did so.

  Paulie had been arrested a few times before as a youth and was used to dealing with authority from a long and troubled life. But even he was getting a general feeling of disquiet about the whole situation. The manner in which Mack had messaged him, those cryptic words telling him to remain cautious and alert. It felt almost like a warning... The vehicle lurched to a halt, startling Paulie from his thoughts.

  They had arrived.

  Their driver squawked, “We are here, have fun now. Thanks for riding the royal taxi service.” Paulie nodded his thanks and gave the alien a small smile at the joke before he pushed the door open, climbing out with Jakiikii right on his heels.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  They had stopped around the side of the large brutalist structure, the sheer slab-like walls of the modern fortress as imposing a sight as he had ever seen with his own two eyes. Paulie looked around even as the cruiser accelerated away, they were in a small parking lot. Several other ground vehicles filled the space around them. None that he could recognise except for another police cruiser with a large dent in the passenger door that he was sure he had seen parked there before, or maybe it had never moved.

  “Paulie! Jakiikii! Over this way!” A voice barked out to them from across the duracrete surface.

  It was Mack and Officer Sasfren. The miriam detective waved their way as he leaned heavily on a crutch. He shifted unsteadily as Paulie and Jakiikii approached, Officer Sasfren offering him a stabilising hand. Mack nodded to the snake-like alien gratefully as he cleared his throat.

  “Well.. you two certainly took your time getting here.” Paulie opened his mouth to say something before he realised the man was smiling, sharp white teeth glinting in between his pallid grey lips as he chuckled softly.

  Paulie smirked and reached out to shake the man’s hand. “Good one.”

  Mack gripped it firmly, now familiar with his human antics. Gesturing to the doorway behind them, he motioned for them to follow. “Come, we are already a little late. And the Adjudicator Major General does not like to be kept waiting.”

  Mack’s face was a mask of false bravado, but Paulie knew the alien well enough now to notice the drooping of his sensory spines. The thin blue-grey spines that ran down the back of his long neck shivered slightly as they walked towards the building quickly. The clatter they made was subtly muted by the sound of his own booted footsteps. Mack was nervous, even if he was trying his best to hide it.

  Paulie and the others walked through the sliding doors and into a checkpoint, the officer on duty waving them through with just a cursory glance. They seemed to be intimately familiar with Mack and Sasfren, exchanging muted pleasantries as they moved past with a hesitant nod to Paulie himself. He was gathering a reputation amongst the complex it seemed, his actions in the assault on Ooounoo’s stronghold seemed to be making the rounds. He gave the feathered alien a toothy grin and smirked as they blanched a little and took half a step back. Apparently his notoriety held him to a little bit of a legendary status. The savage urrenian.

  ‘Could come in handy.’ he mused silently to himself as he walked through the open checkpoint.

  Jakiikii and Sasfren stopped at the next open space, Mack turning to look at him and nod at the two females. “Alright, we will be back.” he put out a five-fingered hand and rested against the wall as Paulie looked between them.

  Holding up a hand, he asked, “Hold on, they aren’t coming too?” He had heard Jakiikii’s mention that she had never been summoned to the Adjudicator Major General. But he hadn’t really thought that he would be having to see the man without her at his side to bolster him. Mack shook his head, his hairless head swinging from side to side. “I don’t like this.” Paulie muttered under his breath.

  “And yet, you will do it regardless. I don’t much like talking to the man either.” Mack muttered so quietly that Paulie was sure he wasn’t supposed to have overheard him. But he did.

  It only cemented the feelings of unease that fluttered in his middle. With a final sideways look and a little wave to Jakiikii and Sasfren, he followed Mack through the passage towards whatever fate awaited him next.

  Paulie looked around as they walked, he had never been in this part of the adjudicator’s complex before. It looked.. older, more worn down by the passage of time. It was hard to accurately describe, the floor seemed trodden by a hundred thousand steps, the duracrete polished smooth and shiny by the passing of countless feet and armoured boots. The walls seemed thin, he knew they weren’t, they were multiple layers of hardened carbcrete and ballistic nanoweave interlayers. But he still got the distinct impression that they seemed tired. As if the years of supporting the great weight of the building around them had taken its toll upon them.

  The air changed too, every step seemed to carry them further from the outside as they delved deeper into the bowels of the fortress. It might as well have been a castle, the structure designed to resist assaults. Not for the first time Paulie wondered who or what might have the chutzpah to assault a building filled to the bursting with heavily armed cops.

  He thought of the bultesian cultists he had fought, then of the zen’kkalkians, and he shivered slightly at the knowledge that there was so much he didn’t yet know. Evil existed in this universe, he had seen it. He thought of the battered and scarred Sergeant Aril, the nerivith veteran had not gotten into that state by accident. No, he had to remind himself that despite the relative calm and tranquility of his situation. The galaxy was a chaotic place filled with many different forces, some good and full of life.. others hateful and hellbent on the destruction of everything different from themselves. Paulie nodded to Mack and the detective gave him a long sideways look, brow raised, and large grey eyes fixed on him.

  He cleared his throat, “I’m fine.. just.. thinking.”

  Mack blinked at him in response, one of those great grey orbs staring at him for another moment. Finally after a long pause, he spoke. “Well, keep thinking. And try not to do any of that human stuff you like to do. The Adjudicator Major General is not a patient man.” And with that, the miriam limped forwards, the clacking on the crutch the only other sound in the heavy air.

  Paulie followed Mack as he turned down another hall lined with closed doors. They were heavy and made of metal with small porthole-like windows set high upon their faces. He chanced to peek through one and saw a large room filled with desks at which sat a great many different aliens. The uniforms of the officers nearly as varied as their shapes, he must have been in some deep administrative part of the structure he mused.

  Mack’s walk ended at a larger doorway, this one preceded by another armed checkpoint and sensor station. This time Mack was stopped and made to disarm himself before he was allowed to hunch through the sensors. They beeped and rattled as the guard frowned and gestured for Paulie to move up next. The guard seemed nervous to be this close to him, and so Paulie made sure to keep from startling the alien.

  Paulie swallowed and then reached under his coat slowly, he was armed with his nemesis revolver and a standard issue MDF pistol. But he had also fashioned a sort of holster for a large knife that he had clipped to the back of his belt. He wondered if the sensors would pick it up or even consider it a threat. He decided to test his luck and left it in place as he unholstered his guns and placed them into the receptacle near to the guard. As he stepped through the sensors the alien officer remained blissfully silent about the blade he had concealed his back.

  The guard frowned and then tapped at their screen, their wide mouth opening slightly in a hiss. “You don’t seem to have a valid genecode on file, general clearance checks out..” They clicked their long tongue a few times and then glanced towards Mack. The miriam detective was not smiling, in fact the alien had about as unamused a look as Paulie had ever seen on him. The guard shook their head slightly and then muttered to themselves before pressing another series of buttons on the panel as it whirred and beeped like an old computer.

  A second later they handed Paulie a small slip of plastic and motioned for him to take it, which he did. “I issued your.. assistant, a temporary genecode pass. But you will need to get it updated later if you want to access higher level clearance areas again without supervision.”

  Paulie grunted, he didn’t. Paulie stepped closer to Mack as he walked through the gate and the miriam reached out an arm and used Paulie to steady himself. “Hey, how’s the.. uh..” he gestured towards Mack’s previously amputated leg.

  Mack grunted as he turned away, “It hurts. Not the prosthetic, my hip. My thigh, everything around it. I still haven’t gotten use to this damnable piece of trash, temporary zalcing *hiss-click* thing!” The man chattered unintelligibly. The jargon worm seated deep in Paulie’s brain didn’t seem to have a direct translation for that one.

  The slight gasp of shock from the nearby guard who covered their face with a wide, webbed hand made him think that maybe the curse was just so crude that his parasite had refused to translate. Mack shot the guard a venomous look as if to say ’What are you going to do about it?’ before he thumped Paulie’s leg with the crutch.

  “Come on, let’s get this over with.” He grumbled, the sensory spines along the back of his neck shivering with a distinct clattering sound even as he clunked away.

  With a final glance at the seemingly traumatized officer, Paulie followed Mack through the last door at the end of the hall. The door opened into a small waiting room, the walls lined with stools and a few other strange seating furniture pieces, and in a small kiosk-like alcove at the far side of the room was one of the strangest aliens he had yet seen in all his time amongst the denizens of Gike.

  The creature itself was large, at least the size of some manner of cattle or perhaps a small horse. But that wasn’t even the strangest thing about the quadrupedal alien. No, it was their body which seemed to be entirely made up of some manner of glittering greenish crystal. Set high and upon what he could have considered the being’s shoulders were two perfectly round orbs of that same material like crystal balls. They seemed to rotate slightly in his direction as he entered the room and then the strange gemstone entity spoke.

  Or rather, a tinny artificial voice issued forth from a boxy device strapped to one of its legs.

  “-Annoyance- Hello, do you have an appointment? -Anticipation-”

  Paulie glanced at Mack and the alien detective nodded his head, “Yes, we are expected by the Major General.”

  The thing, he assumed it was some manner of secretary, lifted a series of jointed crystalline tendrils that seemed to sprout from what he saw as its chin to point at two of the nearby stools. They chimed almost musically as it spoke again, the translation giving away its emotions verbally in an attempt to personify the otherwise expressionless rock-like being.

  “-Irritation- Fine, take a seat to the side of the room then. The Adjudicator Major General Alloen Mauk will be with you as soon as he deigns you worth his time. -Indifference-” And with that they seemed to hunker slightly, their attention now entirely focused on the small screen that sat on the desk in front of them.

  Paulie looked at Mack and the man smiled. “Verdant doesn't like people disturbing their supreme supremacy watch time.”

  Paulie wasn’t sure what supreme supremacy was but judging by the rude manner in which they had been treated then it must be engaging indeed. He settled back against the wall as best he could on the backless stool. He crossed his arms as he listened to the subtle sounds coming from the creature Mack had referred to as Verdent’s desk. Not much longer to wait, and he would finally figure out what this was all about.

  Instead of relief, Paulie was feeling a deep and growing sense of unease however. The strange feeling seemingly starting at the very bottom of his psyche and working its way outwards to the rest of his mind. He cleared his throat and glanced at Mack, the man was hunching slightly inwards. He didn’t seem to be feeling great either. Paulie’s disquiet grew, but in his current position there wasn’t much he could do about it. Not for the first time he wished that Jakiikii was there with him. Her soothing presence would have gone a long way to calming the roiling beetles in his middle.

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Whatever happened, he would face the challenge head on like he always did. It had worked for him before, and it would again.