Chapter 47: Doing What it Takes
Paulie saw the bultesian swing that terrible bladed weapon. The shine of the overhead lights glinting off its razored edge as it cut towards him like a cobra made of steel. The alien was fast, far faster than most he had encountered since his reluctant relocation to the planet of Gike.
Paulie jerked to the side in his panic, his arm overextended and vulnerable still. He almost managed to get out of the way of the cultist’s blade, almost.
The blade of the sword met his nemesis revolver amid a flash of sparks, the sound of grating metal only drowned out by Paulie’s own scream of pain as he felt two fingers break under the assault. The gun was wrenched from his grasp and thrown across the hall, vanishing into the shadows at the edges of sight.
He leapt back, his injured hand held close to his chest as throbbing fingers leaked a slow trickle of blood that splattered upon the red stone floor. This time the pain was more intense than he could simply ignore.
The bultesian swung at him again, spittle flew from their jaws as that strange vertical maw opened wide in a scream of hate or rage. They spoke again in an alien tongue he did not know. That same feeling of dark nausea he had felt the first time he had encountered one of them started to press back up against his mind. Like the opposite of Jakiikii’s warm mental caress, this felt more like his brain was being keel-hauled on a ship that sailed a sea of caustic acid.
He ducked and then dodged left, losing his footing as he tripped over the corpse of another alien he had dispatched before. The blade whistled through the air where his neck had been, the wind of its passing stirring the hairs of Paulie’s head as he fell onto his back. He tried to catch himself with both hands, it ended up being a spectacularly bad idea as his busted and bleeding hand slammed into the ground his vision went pure white for a moment.
Paulie growled as he saw red and nearly passed out from the pain, his mouth twisted and his face a mask of savage pain. It took him several moments to regain his mental faculties, in the time it did he saw the alien standing over him. Those corroded copper colored legs stabbing the air as they reared up and prepared the final blow that would end his life.
But again he was saved by the intervention of another. A bright beam of blue light fizzed overhead, hitting the bultesian cultist straight in the torso. The electron beam tore right through them as if they were as insubstantial as air. The energy dump acting like a microwave, cooking their internals and killing them where they stood.
The alien seemed to freeze, a look of some unknown emotion plastered across unmoving features as they crumpled to the ground just next to Paulie. He heard the sound of advancing weaponsfire, the splitting cracks of plasma bolts hitting stone punctuated by the deep thrum of discharging capacitors.
He pulled himself wearily to his feet just as another cultist leapt around the pillar ahead of him. Paulie had no weapon, his eyes darted to the sword the bultesian had held. Reaching for it, he took cover behind the dead man as a purple glob of searing hot plasma burst upon it. The flash and bubbling hiss of melting fat assailed his senses as he scrabbled at the dead alien. Lifting it with his free hand and throwing it towards the attacking cultist as hard as he could manage.
Paulie was strong, much stronger than his size might suggest and while the body didn’t sail through the air to obliterate the approaching bad guy like he had hoped it did tangle their legs and cause them to fall forward. As they clambered back upright Paulie was already too close for them to defend themselves. He slashed the blade through the alien’s neck, the steel making a slight ringing sound as it cleaved through flesh and chitin. The creature's head bounced once with a wet thud and the body dropped in a flood of gore.
He turned around, body singing in agony from his multiple wounds as he panted from exertion. But it seemed like he was safe for the moment. He looked around his surroundings in an agitated manner, looking for his lost revolver. Surely it was nearby.
A voice spoke behind him and he tensed for a bare second before he recognised it as Jakiikii. “Paulie? Oh by zalc! Paulie are you alright?” She asked quickly as she stepped around the nearer side of the pillar followed by two of the royal guards.
One of them was Captain Elldite, the alien looking around with that impassive helmet covering any emotion their insectoid face may have shown. “What..” Was all they uttered before Paulie stepped up to them and held out his injured arm.
“I can take the child back now, I could not put them in any unnecessary danger, but we needed a clear path to escape.” The mendagoonian seemed to hesitate and then came to a decision.
“Yes. I do believe that to be true.” He paused, gunfire and other sounds still erupting from behind them as they took cover in the shadow of the nearer pillar. “We still need to get to the throne room. I have established contact with the defenders, it is clear at the moment. Though many lives were lost in securing it.”
Jakiikii and Paulie shared a look. They had to save the star children, failure was not an option. She said as much as she responded coolly, the inherent calm in her voice helping to sooth the stabbing distress that Paulie was feeling himself in that moment.
“Then let’s go. This window will not stay open long.” She stepped close to Paulie’s side, one of her smaller third-arms holding an MDF pistol at a low ready.
Captain Elldite looked back over his shoulder as they responded. “You go, take Ishion with you. He will get you through the throne room without being stopped.
The royal guard in question spoke up suddenly, “My captain! I cannot abandon you.”
Captain Elldite responded swiftly and with passion, the translator doing little to cover the clear body language of the two. “No. Your place is with the star children, you think I do not know the truth of your parentage? Why do you think you were assigned to me in the first place, that I could keep such a close eye on you? Go. Now.”
The other alien seemed to want to argue, but they remained silent. What had the captain meant by that, Paulie wondered. But he didn’t have time to dwell on it as Captain Elldite looked his way next.
“Your adjudicator friends did not survive. They fell while defending your action to break the cultists lines. I am sorry, they will not be forgotten. But you must go now!” And with that he turned back and rushed the way he had come. The sounds of fighting intensified as they disappeared out of sight.
The other royal guard, the one so named Ishion gave them a long stare and then looked towards the star children in their care. “Follow me, quickly please. We do not have far to go.” He spoke something else in his native tongue that the translator didn’t pick up but Paulie got the message.
They moved quickly, Paulie still carrying the sword he had looted from the dead alien earlier. In his other arm the mendagoonian child huddled close to his body, the grubling light enough to be no problem for him. Paulie’s body hurt all over, but he ignored the pain as he had trained himself to do. He had two options, keep moving or die. And dying was not an option. He felt a pang of remorse for those they had already lost, but the captain was right. They had to keep moving.
The sounds of fighting echoed through the long hall even as they made the best possible speed for the throne room.
It took them a few minutes of tense movement, using pillars and alcoves for cover as Ishion checked every corner for the enemy. It helped that all three of them could move at pace, no longer held up by the other adjudicators. Paulie felt a tenseness in his gut as he thought of his dead comrades in arms. Officer Flaxiga and Kreenin, he hadn’t even seen them die.
He moved around another pillar but was stopped by an outstretched arm from Ishion. “Wait.”
Paulie stopped, Jakiikii just behind him as he did so. The mendagoonian stepped from around the corner, arms raised and plasma stave held low to his side. He made a few loud calls in the direction he was facing and a little later Paulie heard the sound of rapidly approaching footfalls.
Presently the hall was filled with a group of battered looking mendagoonian royal guards. Some of them were injured, many had extensive damage and charring across their suits, but each and every single one of them looked battle ready and prepared to kill. Ishion turned and presented Paulie and Jakiikii to them, speaking with the benefit of the translator this time.
“Here are the star children of the great and most Holy Nastrica. Do not be alarmed, they are in the hands of ones I trust. We need to get to the safety of the throne room, will you escort us? There are many enemies behind us.” He paused and then swung his armoured head back in the direction they had come from. The wide set dome-like eye pieces of the helmet conveyed no emotion, but his body language said enough. The distant sounds of conflict could still be heard if but faintly through the still air of the hall.
“It is likely that those who remained behind to cover our flight have already lost their lives. But I would beg of you to leave a watch for them and assist their escape if at all possible.” Three of the assembled guards stepped forward after being motioned to by another, the power armoured royal guard who seemed to be in charge then stepping forward and motioning towards Paulie and Jakiikii.
They spoke, their speech untranslated though their tone seemed implicit. They seemed to be demanding further explanation. It was actually Jakiikii who responded to the mendagoonian, her eyes fixed on the assembled royal guards as if she were afraid they might decide to open fire on them. Children or not.
“I and my companion were directly sent to aid and assist in the defense of the palace and the royal progeny. If you are not aware of our identities then I urge you to ask Rozz for them, as you are aware they can not lie.” This seemed to give the alien pause, they made a series of arm signals and then hissed in apparent annoyance.
Ishion stepped back, turning towards them and looking directly at Paulie. “We are to follow, maintain your guard. These are friends, but there is still much danger here.” Wise words it seemed to Paulie, and he gripped the handle of the alien sword in his hand a little tighter as they moved out down the center of the hall this time.
It took them only a moment to reach the ending of the grand hall, the corridor halting at a set of truly titanic double doors fashioned from great slabs of that same native red stone like marble colored red. Through it were shot through streaks of that white quartz flecked with gold that sparkled like tiny golden stars. The effect was somewhat marred by the gouges torn from it by weapons fire and the veritable piles of bodies that had been moved to the sides of the hall.
He looked as they passed by them, seeing many aliens of all descriptions wearing the black and red of the cultists he had come to know. Then they were through and into an even larger room. Paulie immediately got the feeling of standing in some kind of grand indoor cathedral. The ceiling was vaulted and greebled with all manner of inscriptions that seemed to tell the history of their race itself. He saw wars and peace and famine and festivals, all inscribed in the stone of the walls and crenelated arches that supported its grand infrastructure.
Inside the huge doors he looked around more closely now and was surprised to see a long row of bodies inside the room lined up in two neat rows on either side of the doorway. They were royal guardsmen, motionless and not all in the heavy powered armour that Ishion and the captain had been wearing. The dead were positioned as if simply asleep, many of them were unarmoured and he got his first look at one of the aliens.
They were certainly as insectoid as he had assumed. Their heads were blunt and wide almost like that of a damselfly with large compound eyes to the sides of their head and a tall protrusion that looked like a horn that rose from the middle of their heads. They had four thin, segmented arms with small grasping hands on the ends. Their bodies were a pale off-white with small blue splotches like coffee stains across them moving to their lower torso from which sprouted another six limbs, these legs ended in dainty, clawed feet. Their body continued down tapering into a fluffy abdomen almost like a short, thick tail.
His gaze was snapped from the macabre display by another sound, this one that of a clear blast from a horn. The note was so distinctive and immediately attention grabbing that Paulie’s gaze was immediately drawn to the sound. It was being sounded from a large half amphitheater-like structure at the end of the room. It looked like the seats one might see in depictions of old-world civil debates with a raised dais in the center that must have been some manner of speaking platform.
In the middle of the amphitheater looking structure was a larger seat, isolated from the others and much more lavishly adorned. Normally it likely would have been the seat of Holy Nastrica he surmised, but at the moment it was empty. The scars of laser blasts and plasma burns marring the otherwise pristine surface of the stone plinth it rested upon.
Beside and slightly below the throne there was an opening in the stone that looked to lead deeper into the rock’s face. It was from this that the horn blew, a creature emerging from the shadow with a silver instrument in hand. It was odd, unlike any of the aliens he had seen before. Obviously not a mendagoonian, it had two long arms that sprouted from wide shoulders, or maybe he should have called them legs as they were the limbs that held its torso aloft from the ground. From this they had two arms that hung from their lower torso and were long-jointed. To its strangely shark-like head it used one of these to hold the strange silver horn as it blew the long alert.
The alien stopped, its bright livery covered in small teal tassels in a most decorative fashion. The strange alien stepped up and out of the way as Ishion and Paulie followed the other royal guard to the base of the throne.
The thing made a small bow and spoke, its voice gravely and sounding like a coyote trying to bark underwater. “The star children have been found, praise the monarch!”
Ishion made a series of hand gestures, his four arms flying through a range of motions that had the horn blower shivering a little before they gestured to the passage. “Yes. Of course, but you must leave these outsiders here.. they will not..” The alien began before Ishion cut the alien off angrily.
“These outsiders, as you refer to them, saved my life and the life of the star children on more occasions than I can recall. They will come with me and there will be no further discussion on the matter.” The alien seemed to hesitate and then looked towards the other guard, the one who had shown charge before.
Paulie looked at the other mendagoonian guard closer, they were slightly different from the rest. Their suit slightly bulkier, the colors a little different and a small symbol etched onto the front of their helmet in between the eyes. He must have been important for as he gestured at Ishion and then pointed to the door he spoke and the alien herald ducked low before scurrying away into the dark with an apology on their black-skinned lips.
Paulie and Jakiikii shared a look and then turned to Ishion. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.” He told the alien who just waved an arm.
“Do not make me regret it, or you will not live to cause more trouble.” The threat was implied and Paulie got the impression that the man didn’t fully trust him yet. Despite all they had been through so far.
Jakiikii stepped forward, the two young alien grublings in her arms curled into the softer part of her suited chest. “Then no more reason to delay. Lead on, Ishion.”