Chapter 35: Lengthening Shadows
Paulie and Jakiikii were led further through the stenchful morass of the darkened alleyway, the teal colored sky far above looking like the last vestiges of some pastel delight between the grim edifices of the darkening structures that surrounded them on all sides like a concrete cage. He breathed shallowly, the dark stench of rotting things a sickly-sweet fog that seemed to coat the insides of his very lungs with its foul bouquet. He was already starting to get used to it though, the fumes lessening in their potency as they continued to follow the shambling form of their erstwhile guide. The large duigong shuffling through the murk ever forwards as if on a mission, and they followed a pace behind. Assured of their new course by the trusting creature’s promise of guidance.
Their path continued to twist and turn, as hopelessly lost as he had been before, it was now a forlorn memory compared to the absolute state he found himself in now. He had never even realised just how many darkened side alleys and underground causeways the city must have had.
Down winding passageways and through rusting cages of rotting iron bars, they followed the large alien. All the time making small adjustments to their position relative to where they had started. Paulie glanced back behind them as the all-pervasive smell of garbage and rot seemed to fade slightly.
“We must be getting farther away from where they live now.” He muttered, mostly to himself.
Jakiikii responded to his grumbled comment. One long upper arm gripping his long overcoat as she pressed closer to him, three of her bright orange eyes fixing on his face as she did so, the slitted pupils dilating a little as she spoke in earnest. “Yes, and I would ask you not to be impolite to our gracious guide. She is the only way forward here, admittedly I have used their tunnels before. But without a guide we might as well be foundering in the dark like blind slicklings. With Alecc showing us the way we should be able to get there in less than an hour.”
Paulie grumbled to himself even as he rested his own arm in her lower back briefly. It was nice to be here with her on a mission of great importance. He had never been important to anyone back on Earth, not to his abusive parents nor to any of the dead-end jobs he toiled for over the course of his life. He smirked as he felt one of the termaxxi woman’s hands sneak around to his other side. He gave her a small sideways smile that she returned with her own dainty slash of a mouth, the smallest bit of her long proboscis-like tongue peaking through like a bubblegum-pink snake.
He nodded to the large mass of trash and rotting cloth ahead of them, “Do you think they really care about the politics of what goes on in the rest of the city? Treated like outcasts as they are?”
Jakiikii shifted from tri-cloven hooved foot-to-foot as she let go of him slowly. The little hopping motion was a sign of a deeper anxiety he had learned. “She cares about her people. And to me that tells me all I need to know.” She said it stiffly, and he swore a little internally. He knew she had a bit of a soft spot when it came to family and such ideas.
Reaching out to her, he gripped her middle shoulder gently, causing her to half-turn his way. “I trust your judgement, Jakiikii. You know that.”
She tensed, slowing for a second before letting out a sigh from the breathing slits on her lower abdomen. She buzzed and then nodded her angular head, all six eyes seeming to find somewhere else to look other than his face for a moment as she seemed to formulate a response.
He let go of her shoulder as she did so and then kept walking as if nothing had happened. He knew she would catch back up in a moment, and so he was unsurprised as he heard the sound of her feet on the crumbling duracrete and felt a hand reach for his own from behind.
Glancing her way again he smiled. She said nothing, simply continued to hold his hand in hers as they walked side-by-side in silence towards their certain destination.
It took them less than twenty more minutes of walking through the damp tunnel-like network before they reached their destination. The duigong slowed and then stopped, shuffling to the side amid the sound of clicking legs on damp stone. Gesturing to the tree-way opening, the alien pointed to the leftmost one with one of those long arms and vocalised with a deep buzzing burr that his parasite translated automatically into more recognisable speech.
“The destination is reached, you may proceed to the surface undetected by the leftmost passage. I thank you for the sacrifices you have made to keep those that would prey on me and my people back. Hunters of those with hearts filled with darkness and hate.” They started to shuffle away and then paused, a slightly smaller arm extending from lower on their body and reaching to touch Paulie’s shoulder.
He stood his ground, despite the small lizard brain in the back of his mind demanding he flee. Alecc’Gersh’tani, the leader of the Myuonss clan of the People of the Wandering Hills spoke again more softly.
“I would ask that you take the greatest care with your lives. I have heard things from the darkened places, whisperings of evil deeds and plots most foul with pain and suffering. And right in the middle of it all, a stranger from beyond the stars. You.” Paulie swallowed, glancing at Jakiikii before nodding his head and placing a soft hand over the alien’s own. A pause, “Things of madness and hate scurry even now in the far places.”
He looked into the shadows of its hood and spoke confidently. “I will. We will. We will get to the bottom of this thing, we have to. Failure is not an option.” He took a breath, finding that the creature’s smell was not so offensive to him as before. “And we thank you kindly for the warning.”
The big alien seemed to nod to herself, the hood that covered its large head shifting in odd ways that made his skin prickle. She buzzed to him once more, “I had thought that would be the answer of one with your strength. You have been given the ability to act as the shield to others less able than yourself.”
Paulie shrugged, a little embarrassed in spite of himself. He had nothing to say, but it seemed that Jakiikii did. The termaxxi stepping close to his side and placing an arm on his shoulder before looking to their guide.
“I knew it when I first saw him. He was special, destined to do great and terrible things. The hunter of hunters indeed.” She finished with a mutter that he felt was for him alone.
The large lumpy-looking alien seemed satisfied with this new turn of events. Making a nondescript buzzing that could have meant anything before turning around and hobbling away into the darker parts of the tunnel, with the covering of refuse it was not long before even the large form of the shambling creature was obscured. Their camouflage blending neatly into shadow.
Paulie and Jakiikii were left alone in the dim light, only the glow from their illuminated wrist-worn PDAs showing the crumbling brickwork and rotting steel trusses of the passage around them. She shivered a little, her skin flashing that same pale white in response to some unknown emotion and he pulled her close in a one-armed hug that had her leaning into him as if trying to sink into him like the ocean.
He chuckled and gestured towards the aforementioned exit. “I guess we only have one way to go now, how are we going to get back?”
“Through the front gate, hopefully with Flurn in tow.” She spoke, cheerfully despite the slight waver of uncertainty in her voice.
Another moment of relative stillness passed, and then Paulie shrugged and straightened his spine. “Alright. Let’s go get that traitorous son of a bitch then.“
He checked under his greatcoat, the hidden holster for his Nemesis revolver and the standard-issue MDF pistol were a comforting weight in the face of life’s potential uncertainty. He glanced down at Jakiikii, her bright cat-like eyes flashing in the dark as they flicked up toward his face.
It took them only another minute to find the aforementioned exit and leave the stinking confines of the mouldering tunnel system through an unlocked maintenance gate, the cool air of the night blowing faintly across Paulie’s face as for the first time in the weeks he had been a resident of the tiny worldlet he saw the open night skies of Gike. Unfettered by the tall spires of towers and the noise of a bustling city.
His breath caught in his throat, the wide prominence of Trellan IX as it crested the eastern horizon. The swirling gasses and raging lightnings of its bottomless skies faded into the deepening green of the night as the stars were arrayed in the heavens like faint, guttering pinpricks, their light partially obscured by the influence of the city behind them and the radiant majesty of the gas giant that the world orbited.
Paulie smiled and turned his head towards Jakiikii as he noticed her staring at him again. “This reminds me of home a little.” he paused, nodding towards the image of the gas giant far above them. “Well, with the exception of that anyways.”
He chuckled, Jakiikii nodded slowly. “I have come out here before, alone and with Mack. I find it.. strangely comforting.” She scooted a little further into the night. “If that makes any sense at all. I mean, civilization is supposed to feel comforting, not these wilds.” She waved one of her middle arms towards the sparse trees and shrubs that surrounded the city. Paulie nodded his head, a slight stirring in his mind suppressed as the jargon worm seemed to shy away from the idea of a vast empty wilderness.
He cleared his throat, “This isn’t really that wild though.” Jakiikii looked at him and he shrugged. Pointing a hand towards the walking paths and streetlamps nearby he mentioned, “Well, for starters there is obviously still the influence of some civilization out here. If those footpaths have anything to do with it. Back home there are vast areas that are pretty much uninhabited. Northern Canada, Siberia.. Antarctica. Places like that.”
He took a few more steps out of the darkness, squeezing past the hesitant termaxxi woman and towards some of the nearer lights. She moved to follow, they had no real destination in mind other than the simple notification of Flurn’s last known whereabouts. And it was a fair distance away if the computer information on the datapad was to be believed.
As they walked Paulie thought. He thought about the mission. He thought about Mack and Jakiikii. But most of all he thought about himself, himself and his future. What his future must hold. He shook his head in mute response to something Jakiikii said, her voice a slight grumbling drone in the back of his troubled mind. He murmured to himself, telling the dark influence of the parasite to back off. A dark chuckling came from the depths of his mind as the separate will of his passenger receded again, but they never went away entirely. Not anymore. Not like they used to.
That was another thing that was troubling him. That he was having such an adverse and strong reaction to his jargon worm, not something that the others seemed to understand. He wondered, and not for the first time, what was so different about him that he should struggle so. Or maybe it was just a partially defective implantation. He had gotten the distinct impression that he had not been abducted originally for his charm and good looks. No, they had wanted something else from him, calling him ‘specimen’.
He was jolted from his dark line of reasoning by a heavy shove that nearly bowled him over. He opened his mouth to exclaim but was stopped as a pair of strong hands clamped down over his mouth and he was bodily dragged from the path into the relative murk of the bushes next to them.
His eyes widened as Jakiikii hissed at him, her chest rumbling as she tried to modulate her voice. “Shhh, they will hear you.”
He watched as she pointed up the path with another arm while simultaneously keeping him wrapped up with the other five. As he did so he jolted a little too, for what he saw gave him immediate pause. Off the edge of the path, in a small clearing mostly shrouded by trees was a group of tourists. He squinted, no.. not tourists. They held themselves far too rigid, their eyes were too shifty and their body language screamed of heightened suspicion and a readiness for violence. Indeed as he watched one of the supposed tourists reached under a scaled arm and adjusted the handle of a weapon.
Not tourists then, but who could be wandering around at night armed to the teeth and ready for a fight? Besides them of course. Was it somebody out looking for them? Who else might know where they were besides Mack or Rozz? Alecc maybe, but as much as he had a hard time trusting somebody he had only met an hour before, the large duigong just didn’t strike him as the kind of person to report them to anyone wishing them ill will.
“Who are they?” He wondered aloud, Jakiikii snaking her arms tighter around him as she released her hold of his mouth. She shook her head slightly, all six petal-like eyestalks searching the scene for any additional information. He swore under his breath, “If only there was some way to hear what they are saying.”
Jakiikii tensed and then slid away from him. He gave her a pointed look.
“Whatever you are thinking, forget it…” he started to warn. But she cut him off.
“It isn’t up for debate, Paulie. And you said it yourself, we need to hear what they are saying. I can slip over there without being seen, figure out what they are talking about, and then slip on back. Leaving them none the wiser and with no risk.”
Paulie immediately felt a small swell of panic in his chest, what if she was wrong. What if they saw her, they had no idea if the unknown group was hostile or friendly. He wanted to tell her not to go, to let him do it. But even as the words appeared in his mind he knew the selfishness of them. She was right, of course she was, she would have no problem slipping over to the group and ascertaining the nature of their business without detection.
Begrudgingly and with a sense of finality he nodded his head slowly. “I know. I just..”
Jakiikii stepped to his side again and pulled his head down, placing a gentle kiss upon his lips before whispering, “I know too. I’ll be right back.” And then she was gone. Completely and utterly. He thought he heard the scrape of bark and the rustle of leaves, but without any way of knowing where she was in the all-pervasive gloom, her invisibility was virtually complete.
He gave a small sigh and went back to crouching in the undergrowth of the small glade. If he could glean any additional information from where he was to help their case then he would. But he still shivered slightly and unconsciously gripped the handle of his revolver. If things came down to violence he would be ready.
He couldn't tell what they were doing from where he hunched, but he could almost hear their grumbling voices over the wind. Apparently his parasite didn't want to translate, or maybe the jargon worm only worked in a certain proximity to others. He still wasn’t too sure how the whole thing worked, but he did know that the hisses and growing barks that he could just make out were as unintelligible to him as a pack of bickering hyenas would have been back on Earth.
They seemed to be moving something, or perhaps they were looking for something? It was unclear, but from their practiced movement he could assume that whatever it was they had done it many times before. They had the look of professionals about them, no wasted movements. No excessive expenditure of energy. No, these were killers through and through, the more he watched them the more sure of it he became. The small hairs on the back of his neck seemed to stand and he whirled around, hand now firmly wrapped around Nemesis, the revolver loaded and ready to make a steaming mess of anything that might threaten him.
A familiar voice came out of the dark. “I will never understand how you do that.”
Jakiikii seemed to step right out of the very shadows themselves, one second nothing. And the next, she strode to him in a few steps. Her dainty cloven hooved feet making virtually no noise on the packed earth.
She gestured towards the not-tourists and spoke in an excited tone. “I think they are burying a body over there.”
That gave Paulie pause. “Burying a.. body? Why? You don’t think..” He never finished the statement. He didn’t have an explanation for the action, but it seemed that Jakiikii did.
“They were making comments about the downfall of Holy Nastrica, one of them mentioned something about the last barriers to the palace being down and others being in place. I think.. I think they were plotting to assassinate her.” The horror in Jakiikii’s voice convinced him of the truth of her words like no rational argument ever could.
He glanced back towards the group, but they were moving off now into the night. Finished with their gruesome work it seemed. “What do you mean, how could they do that?” He thought about it, “Ooounoo didn’t have that kind of power I have to assume, so it can’t possibly be her behind this. Do you think there is a connection here, do you think it’s even possible?”
Jakiikii was pale, her normally mottled brown and tan skin an almost solid white as she nodded, all six eyes dancing around before they focused on his face. “They mentioned the commander of the palace guard being broken, they said that the rest of palace guard would fall in short order. I can’t believe it, but I am compelled to act. If there was even the smallest chance they could succeed, or that a plot was underway already..” She shivered, her inability ot finish the comment a sign of her ultimate distress.
Paulie finished for her. “Chaos, anarchy and death. The city would fall into turmoil. Crime and murder would run rampant, more than the adjudicators could handle in all likelihood. I have seen things like that happen on Earth, there is historical precedent. And the resulting power vacuum would likely cause additional confusion amongst the remaining loyal elite.” he grumbled and then started tapping on his wrist commie. Within moments he had Mack’s number ringing on the small device, but there was no answer.
He felt something pressing into his shoulder, it was Jakiikii. She was leaning into him as she looked over his shoulder to get a better picture of what was going on. He tried again, no answer again.
“You try it.” Paulie suggested, and watched as Jakiikii’s calls also failed to elicit a response from the miriam detective. “Damn, what is so important that..” Paulie started to say, but stopped as the small hairs on the back of his neck seemed to stand on end again, but stronger this time.
There was a strange feeling, as if a great many lights winked out in the back of his mind, and then a flash of light for real. Faint, barely noticeable at first, but as he and Jakiikii turned to look towards the edge of the city he saw a strange brightening over the roofs of the nearer buildings. An ominous orange glow that seemed to slowly fade.
Jakiikii breathed out heavily, her husky voice buzzing in her chest as she started to ask, “What..”
And then it hit them.
A wall of force, not a sound but a wave of compressed air strong enough to whip the branches of the alien trees around them into a frenzy of motion and flatten the hair on Paulie’s head. He stood ramrod straight, he recognised what it was immediately, so did Jakiikii.
“That was an explosion in the city!” She cried, stepping closer to Paulie even as he took two steps closer to the city as if there was something he could do from there. But there was nothing to be done, nothing but watch as the distant fires raged out of sight in the city that had once been his prison, now was his home. And it was under attack.