Chapter 46: Primal Nature
Paulie stepped around the corner, still following behind the mendagoonian royal guards in their black and orange power armour. They had been walking for a few minutes since they had fought the forces of the cult of The Infinite and Divine. He got the impression that they were still in danger though, their comms were still largely out. Neither Rozz nor the other members of the adjudicators had so much as pinged them for their progress since they had entered the structure. It could have simply been the thousands of tonnes of rock and plasteell blocking transmissions. But he got the gut feeling that it was more than that.
There were darker conspiracies than this, the whispering in his mind grew at the thought and he had to shake his head to clear it. “Damn worm.” he muttered, and not for the first time in the last few weeks.
Jakiikii nudged him with an elbow as they scurried through the palace towards the vague promise of safety. Her voice was a low and husky burr as she voiced her concern, “What is it? Are you alright, Paulie?”
He shrugged. “I really don’t know anymore. I just.. don’t know.”
The thought should have concerned him, but he found the admission strangely comforting. It was nice to have somebody in whom he could fully entrust himself in this alien place. They had on many occasions saved each other from harm and death. He smiled at the termaxxi quickly, her bright eyes stopping their roaming to fixate on his face as he gave her a winning smile.
“I can tell you this though.” He saw her cock her head slightly, the two juvenile aliens in her arms fretting and chittering in unheard complaint. “These cult assholes never knew what hit them.”
He chuckled as he said it, Jakiikii joining in a moment later. The breathing vents on her upper back flared as she chortled deep in her chest. The skin around her eyes crinkled in her own version of a smile.
It took them only a few more minutes more to reach a new type of hall. This one wider, grander even with taller ceilings trimmed in gold and polished artworks in every alcove. The red stone was prevalent all around, the color of freshly spilt blood or raw meat. It made him shudder, a feeling like he was stuck in the belly of some humongous beast once more flitted through him. He suppressed it. Surely this must be on the main way to the throne room proper. He gazed at the opulence around them in wonder. Any one of these treasures would surely have made him wealthy beyond words back on Earth.
Paulie saw jewel encrusted furniture. The golden filigree and inlay so bright that it drove back the shadows in glittering phantasms of golden brilliance. Paintings of such fine detail that it was as if he were staring directly through a portal into another world. Creatures and flora beyond description, alien life of such variance and oddity that he had not the words to express them. He saw crowns and swords and guns and tools, all mastercrafted and feeling of great age. It was a treasure trove of more than simple wealth, it was history. It was memory.
He tore his gaze from the wonders all around as Captain Elldite halted and then gave the signal to take cover, his injured arm still tucked tightly to his armoured chest. Paulie moved quickly, the jostling causing his charge to squirm uncomfortably. He shushed the alien child and put his back to one of the large red stone pillars, smiling at Jakiikii as she stepped to his side carrying the other two star children.
“Captain Elldite seems worried.” She muttered to him.
Paulie nodded, glancing towards the alien in question. They did seem to have a nervous air about them. Something to do with their duty and the potentiality of failure no doubt. He felt the boy in his arms grip his coat a little tighter, the alien child pressing himself into Paulie as if they could disappear. He remembered that they could understand Jakiikii but not him, they must be terrified.
He wanted to soothe their fears, to calm them and take away their worries. But he couldn’t, they were right to fear. To worry. He was worried too, they were so close to their goal and yet remained exposed. Their rear was an endless hallway of huge stone pillars, their front an equally endless corridor of the same native red rock.
He heard a noise coming from the hallway, but he couldn’t tell which direction it was from. The damn echoes in this place, it was messing with his head.
He stood, leaning out from cover to hear better while Jakiikii hissed at him to get back into cover. He was about to reply that they were in no immediate danger when a bright glob of superheated plasma shot past him and struck one of the mendagoonian royal guards square in the back of their lower neck. The shot must have been immediately fatal as the alien fell forwards in an uncontrolled stumble and collapsed to the ground. Motionless.
A bare fraction of a second later another shot flew in, this time a red laser from the opposite direction. It missed another guard by millimeters and carved a glowing furrow into the wall behind them. Shattering a priceless piece of pottery in the meantime.
In that moment all hell broke loose, the air suddenly filled with violet globs of screaming plasma and hissing projectiles. Some of them the more conventional type he might have seen back on Earth. He ducked back into the cover of the pillar as shouts of alarm and chittering hisses of pain erupted from all around. For the first time in a while he felt paralyzing dread. Not the artificial dread that the parasite often exuded, no.. this was true dread. Born of an uncompromising knowledge of one's own tenuous grip on mortality.
He may have stayed that way forever, till death took him in the very least. But questing fingers like soft clay gripped him tightly as the child in his arms screamed in fear or despair. The sound was so primal, so frenzied in its desire for safety that it triggered something deep inside Paulie. Some imperative urge to protect, a base desire far more integral to his natural impulses than anything he may have consciously conjured.
Paulie suddenly felt a sort of icy heat fill his veins, the familiar electric rush of danger sharpening his resolve into a razor’s edge. The adrenaline released in the most base of fight or flight scenarios. His vision sharpened, his hearing heightened. He stood slowly to his full height, his mind sharp as cut diamonds and harder than the crust of a neutron star.
He took a deep breath as the child in his arms stilled, it was as though they had suddenly felt his body language shift. Some integral understanding of his shift in attitude. No longer was Paulie afflicted by the fear of death. Only the desire to protect the ones he loved from harm, and a need to punish those responsible.
For a moment a memory flashed through his head. An old woman lying on a white bed, the scent of antiseptic and age all around her withered form. And her eyes filled with a longing for life and the love of one who knows their time is all but spent but still thinks of nothing but their own kin’s wellbeing.
Tears beaded in his eyes from the strength of the memory, but he wiped them away. He had no time to feel sorry for himself. He made several split-second decisions in that moment, he could not set the child down where he was and Jakiikii’s hands were already full. But neither could he allow the grubling to come to harm if he were to act. He glanced down at Jakiikii and gave her a smile, the termaxxi’s own eyes widening as if she was shocked by what she saw in him in that moment. And then he moved.
He crouched, and then took off at a dead sprint towards the far wall. As he reached it he used his free arm to redirect his momentum and sprang in a forty-five degree angle for the next pillar. Enemy fire flashed through where he had been but heartbeats before, but was wholly ineffective. Paulie smirked at that, even in his heightened state of mine he reveled in his superiority over these pale imitations of life. Their bodies were so soft, their bones brittle like dried soil.
He glanced down at the mendagoonian grubling in his grasp as he moved. They looked up at him with wide eyes, their mandibles slightly agape as though they could not process what was happening. He gave them a gentle pat on the head and ruffled their fluffy fur.
“Don’t worry little guy. They won’t live long enough to touch you or your sisters.” The sentence ended in a deep growl as he grabbed Nemesis from its holster and checked to make sure the chambers were loaded. It was, all six shots ready. Six bodies that didn’t know they were dead already.
Paulie watched as another guard was hit, the alien scrambling into the cover of a nearby pillar as they left behind two severed arms on the ground. The ends were still smouldering from the heat of the plasma that had disfigured them. A screech echoed through the hall, but whether it was anger or pain he could not tell, red and green and yellow beams of light flashed by. The firefight was intense enough to heat the air of the corridor, the tang of ozone filling his nose like a poisonous fume.
It was do or die time. Either he punched a hole through for them to exploit, or they would be slowly cut apart by the crossfire that was slowly encroaching upon their position. These cultists must think themselves so safe, they had all the advantages in numbers and positioning from what he could see. But they didn’t seem to know everything. For example, they seemed to have made one fatal flaw, a hole in their plans that would end in their ultimate downfall.
They didn’t seem to know who Paulie was and what he was truly capable of.
He blinked and then moved again. This time he alternated his strategy, with no free hands he was forced to use only his legs to maneuver. That was fine, he kicked off the pillar and into a straight jump that saw him skidding to a stop inside one of the exhibit alcoves on the far side of the room, he winced a little as he turned around.
“What in the.. what are you doing?” A voice said from nearby, the mechanical translation of Captain Elldite’s suit. Paulie was breathing hard, the sore ache in his chest nearly forgotten in his mad dash. Paulie stepped up to the man as at least one shot from the enemy grazed the hem of his greatcoat, a single curl of smoke rising from the heated fabric.
Paulie nodded to him and handed him the squirming child. “Take the child.”
The man protested, but Paulie growled the comment at him again. This time leaving no room for debate. “Take him now or we will all die here.” The mendagoonian seemed to freeze. Paulie gave them a flat stare, pouring all the anger and hate he felt for their adversary into the look. “You will protect him.”
Captain Elldite made a gesture with his remaining arms on his injured side as he reached out and gingerly took the star child from his hands. “I will, with my life. What are you going to do?” The translator conveyed no emotion, but Paulie could hear the stress in their chittering reply. Their natural voice fluttering with something, fear or tension. He could not tell.
He gave a cold half smile as he answered. “I am going to make an exit. Be ready to take it.”
He didn’t wait to see if the man complied, but Paulie knew he would. The captain was a man of action, but above that the royal guard was a man of his word. And he had agreed to watch out for the child, and that was all Paulie had needed to hear. He hated to leave the mendagoonian youngster behind, a hole in his heart opened for a moment before he filled it with duty. He could do more to protect the grubling if he was free to take risks.
And he immediately did so, dodging around the outside of the pillar this time and running down the hall straight into the teeth of the enemy amid flashes of light and withering fire. A part of him screamed internally, or maybe it was the parasite in his head. It was asinine, it was insane.. and it worked.
He had often heard of the fear that a charging beast could inflict on people. Predator-induced shock it was called, and in that moment he was as a jaguar. He bared his teeth and let loose a roar of pure rage, the sight of him charging like a bolt of living lightning had the desired effect. The enemy directly in front of him either froze in momentary panic or scrambled back from this approaching avatar of destruction like frightened herd animals.
Paulie might have the advantage now, but it would last only seconds.. heartbeats.
But moments were all he needed.
In a second he was in the enemy formation, his eyes roaming for danger even as he fired his gun twice. Two of the aliens crumpled under the blows. He saw a heechian in that same dark garb raise some manner of weapon towards him. Instead of dodging or running he jumped straight towards them, lashing out with a kick that launched the purple and black skinned alien into the wall with bone sundering force. When they slumped to the ground they did not rise again. The fight was far from over though, the enemy was numerous.
Paulie gasped in mild shock as something seemed to bite him in the thigh. The pain was intense enough to cut through the rage that fogged his mind. Rather than stop him however, the pain only spurred him onwards. His lizard brain screamed as he caught movement in his peripheral vision, the barrel of a plasma gun being lowered his way. With another yell he rolled across the floor, pain lancing through him as injured ribs shifted. But he didn’t care. Pain was only temporary and he had always had a high pain tolerance.
The move caught the enemy off guard, the shot going high to splash harmlessly off the wall. In response he meted out far more accurate judgement, his own shot blowing a fist sized hole straight through the offender. Before their body had even hit the ground another two cultists had sprung from cover to rush him. He shot the first one with the gun before being forced to scramble back just as the blade of the second chewed into the floor where he had been only an instant before.
It was a bultesian warrior, the alien’s strange vertical mouth opening wide as it made a sort of choking grunt that could have either been a curse or a poor attempt to mimic a cat throwing up a hairball. He assumed the first.
The strange creature rushed him, the tips of its four legs clattering against the hard floor in an almost metallic manner. The dirty copper color of the protruding bone only further reinforced his suspicion that the alien was made of sterner stuff than its comrades. Paulie raised his gun, confident that his next shot would put the alien down with little trouble before they had the chance to reach him.
He aimed quickly and squeezed the trigger. Tensing slightly in preparation for the gun’s immense recoil. But instead of the expected fireball and thundering sound of the gun going off, there was a dull clack as the hammer struck the round with no effect.
Paulie stared in shock and growing horror as he suddenly came to two opposite and starkly serious realisations. He had just gotten a dud round. And he didn’t have the time to cycle the chamber to another cartridge before the bultesian was upon him.