Chapter 22: A Bigger Problem
Paulie frowned at Mack’s comment, closing his mouth with a snap and glaring daggers at an innocently smiling Jakiikii.
Mack pushed them back a little as he wiped an eye and stared for a moment, seemingly reveling in the moment of their reunion. He quickly sobered though, his tone becoming all business as he waved for them to follow and rushed back to his cluttered workstation.
The table was a mess, covered with empty food containers and cluttered junk. The garbage next to it was overflowing with discarded wrappers and drink canisters. All across the table nearby were digital storage medium reading devices. Macroscopic amplifiers, disk and tape players, acoustic resonators and other things he did not recognise with purposes he could not divine with a simple glance.
There was something else too, a dark mass of pulsating matter covered in numerous tiny red spots like red stars in a cloudless sky. He realised after a moment of watching the primordial ooze that it was Rozz, or at least a small portion of the strange being that called itself such. Rozz seemed to notice them about the same time, the mass of tiny black tendrils moving as one toward the edge of the table before waving a small, eye covered tentacle towards him.
“Blood!” It burbled in a surprisingly cute voice.
Paulie cocked his head but Mack just snapped, “Knock that off. What did I tell you about your attitude? I will put you back in the box if you let yourself go like that.” The small portion of the quantum hive mind shifted back a little and then seemed to shrink in on itself a little.
“Apologies. We let ourselves become distracted again. This portion does require additional sustenance however. And sooner rather than later, its hunger grows.” The normally somber tones that Paulie recognised spoke now. Deeper and somehow more ancient feeling than the one he had heard just a moment before.
Mack glanced towards them and bade them to approach with a gesture all the while reaching for a small cooler sitting by the side of the desk and tossing a suspiciously blood-colored packet to the small cosmic horror doing happy little sludge monster dances on the other side of the table. “Come on, Rozz won’t bite. At least, not on purpose.” The pale skinned alien chuckled, the motion of it making the long blueish quills that lined the back of his neck quiver and dance with a slight chattering sound. Like dry reeds in the wind. Rozz didn’t respond, though the package had disappeared into the mass of dark pulsing ooze and small, happy sucking noises emanated from within.
Paulie tried to ignore the hive mind’s slurping as they stepped closer tentatively, Jakiikii much more readily than he as she was already very familiar with Rozz while Paulie still remembered their first interaction where his genetic signature had been ‘tasted’ by the creature. He shuddered slightly as he remembered the sensation of a thousand tiny barbed tongues covering his hand and forearm in slimy pricking kisses.
Mack was insistent however and after only another heartbeat of hesitation he stepped up to the desk and tried to ignore the mini shoggoth-like blob as it happily roved about on the tabletop, the now empty packet discarded near a pile of others like it. Its thousand tiny red eyes staring out in all directions at once, unblinking. Unsettling sanguivorous blobs aside, the data being presented on the screen of the main console seemed to have grabbed Jakiikii’s attention nearly immediately as she leaned in close and then stared at both Mack and the data with widening eyes.
“Is this real?” She asked, aghast.
Mack nodded his blunt head in affirmation as he seemed to flit through several pages of strange lines of falling alien text. Paulie could decipher but only little fragments of it at any one time. Letters and symbols he half-recognised. A simple word or common phrase, nothing complete. Nothing that made explicit sense of the nonsense or explained to him what might suffice to make the date being presented so exemplary or surprising.
After another minute of this back and forth between the two, Paulie poked Jakiikii’s middle shoulder and nodded toward the screen as she glanced back at him absently with a singular petal-shaped eyestalk.
The pink of her eye was showing as they were open wide with excitement and the reflective orange of her iris was small as her cat-like pupil was dilated. He spoke slowly, “I uh.. I can’t tell what you two are talking about.” He said lamely.
Her eye narrowed for a second then widened again as she switched two more eyes to him and blurted, “Oh! Oh, Mack Paulie can’t read Yuuvian yet.” Mack stopped scrolling through the data stream and then looked at Paulie who waved at him a little sheepishly. “I mean, I have been teaching him letters. And he has been learning, but languages can take a long time to get right.” Paulie nodded his head again.
“Yeah, especially when they are alien languages older than my entire civilization’s history.” He muttered a little grumpily.
Mack for his part looked a little cowed and bobbed his head. “Yes, yes.. I should have remembered that.” The miriam rubbed a five-fingered hand on the back of his head just above the quills and then smiled wide, the grin seeming to split his skull in two as it revealed twin rows of sharp, needle-like teeth made for tearing flesh. “Okay, here. The computer has a psicrystal narration function. I can just highlight the relevant data and have it speak it out loud.”
As Mack said it he highlighted the orange colored text in purple and Paulie heard a voice speak from the computer. A heavily synthesised one that reminded him of old-style text-to-speech readers, it was understandable to him though.
[The data on the outlying regions of the Yellik System of planets is sparse, but data obtained from the drive is consistent with a series of illicit marauder or criminal bases in the area operating from the interior planets or moons of the interior planets. It is recommended by the high commander of the guard that units are…]
Paulie waved his hands, “Stop. Stop.” Mack paused the narration, the droning of the mechanical voice blessedly shut off mid-word, and Paulie sighed. “This will take too long, can one of you just tell me what it says? Or at least the general gist of it?”
Jakiikii and Mack shared a glance before they both started talking at once.
“Well the data drive you gave me that you recovered from the zen’kkalkian vessel that captured you.. oop, sorry you go.”
“Mack was showing me the data you had taken from that ship that abducted you. It seems that.. oh! Sorry Mack.”
There was a moment of utter confusion as Paulie tried to follow both conversations at the same time then Mack waved a hand and barked. “Jakiikii, you read this, I will brief him on the situation.” She nodded once and went back to reading the computer screen. But Paulie noticed that two of her flexible eye stalks remained trained on him and Mack while she did so.
As Mack turned back to him he saw the tiredness in his body language. He looked like a man that had not slept properly in days. Sallow features, his normally pale skin even more pale than normal. His large, expressive grey eyes seemed slightly sunken in their sockets, but they gleamed with excitement as the man adjusted the lapels of his brown overcoat and started talking animatedly.
“Well, the data recovered from the crystal storage device that you provided led to a most interesting set of discoveries. Not the least of which is a near-total dissemination of the whereabouts of Ooounoo’s main operational hub. The names of associates in direct business with her operation and the true scope of the smuggling and abduction racket she was running on multiple different species. I know that you knew the individual who gave us this for only a brief time, but her sacrifice was invaluable.” Mack turned his head to look back at the screen again, and for the first time Paulie noticed the complicated looking machine hooked up to it.
It looked like some manner of small old-school projector. The small screen reader was hooked up to the computer via a set of colorful cables in a thick bundle, these disappeared into the underside of the machine and in the middle of it all he recognised the red data ruby that he had originally received from the small reptilian woman. A now very dead woman named Krissh’shanibe.
Paulie’s left eye twitched and he felt his vision get misty, but he blinked the feeling away. He felt anger boiling in his gut, red and hot like an iron pulled straight from the furnace heat. Now was not the time to relive traumatic events, he needed to focus on the here and now.
So he asked the obvious question.
“Where is it?”
Mack paused, his mouth partially open as he seemed to think over his response. “Well. The thing is, there is no way to officially sanction a task force to..”
Paulie asked again, a little more forcefully this time which caused Rozz to stop sliding around and Jakiikii’s head to look his way.
“WHERE is it?”
Now Mack shook his head. “Paulie, I understand.” He started to say, waving his hands in the air as if he could ward off what he must surely know was coming. “What happened to you, and all the others of your people is unacceptable, but I have to follow procedure. And I will do everything in my power to see them brought to justice.”
Paulie was seething now. “Justice?” He nearly spat, his hackles rising as he continued on, “What justice? This thing that other people call justice, is not justice.”
He was almost shouting now, the previously welling anger that he normally tried to hide deep in his core spilled out of his weakened mental bonds to the forefront. Jakiikii hopped up and rushed to his side, reaching out for him but he didn’t want to be comforted nor reassured in that moment and so stepped back two paces. She withdrew slightly, seeming to understand that now was not the time to try and calm him.
Mack seemed a little upset in response, as if Paulie’s outburst had solely been directed at the miriam detective’s own actions and not the greater corruption of the galactic system.
Mack shuffled on his four stumpy legs and retorted, “It is justice! The only kind of justice I know how to enact.” He was slightly blue in the face, his sallow features flushed as he angered in response to Paulie’s heated outburst.
Paulie shook his head, the anger chilling slightly. But no less intense. “Not the kind of justice monsters like this deserve. Not the kind of justice I would give them.” He snarled, hand drifting his waist and the gun that sat there.
“Paulie!” Jakiikii snapped, startling him out of his wrath by the sincere concern in her voice.
The red tinging the edges of his vision slowly receded and he took several deep calming breaths. He was shivering slightly, skin tingling and his arms had goosebumps from the strength of the emotions that had welled from him.
Paulie shook his head a little and then looked at the termaxxi as he released Nemesis, her skin had paled to a near sand colored tan rather than its normal blotchy brown and tan with lighter spots. He swallowed heavily again, there was a lump in his throat that he could not get down and he could feel his own heart racing. Visions of being trapped in a coffin, the dark pressing down on all sides like a physical force. He shuddered again and closed his eyes as he tried to think happier thoughts.
Jakiikii stepped toward him again and this time Paulie did not retreat from her presence. Instead he let her reach out and grab his gun hand in two of her own.
“Paulie, are you alright? You are shivering.”
He shook his head slightly and opened his eyes all the way now. Looking at her, he gave her as real of a smile as he could muster. “Y-yeah. I just, I can’t stand the thought of those.. Pirates.” He spat the word, feeling the heat rising in him again as he forced it back into the shadowed recesses of his mind where he dared not tread anymore. “I can’t just do nothing!” The words were torn from him by sheer emotion, no logical thought behind the furtherance of this goal. Just reactionary anger and spite at the thought of the perpetrators of his own torment being allowed freedom and life.
She looked into his eyes and he felt a gentle pressure around his mind like a heated blanket. Safe and warm, she seemed to pause, her cognitive ministrations paused as she sought his permission to continue. Paulie gritted his teeth and gave her an almost imperceptible nod. Immediately the weight settled more firmly around him, her psychic comforting helping him to focus and push the negative emotions back into the recesses of his mind where they had come from.
He took another deep, calming breath and let it out before smiling and nodding his thanks to his partner.
Mack stood next to the table still, his face a mask or worry and minor confusion as he glanced between them. “Well..” He said, his voice a series of barks and grunts that was translated to recognisable speech via the parasite that Paulie still held deep in his skull. “I guess now would be the best time to tell you, there is more to it than that.”
Paulie sighed, the rage subsiding with Jakiikii’s calming presence. “Of course there is.”
Mack looked at Jakiikii and then glanced towards Mursk who was standing guard silently by the edge of the library shelving. The senior detective lowered his voice and then gestured at the red crystal. “There is evidence on that drive of more than just this singular operation. Ooounoo might have been the local forerunner in this illegal trafficking game, but all truth be told, Trellan is a small backwater system in the greater community. Far from the beaten path as it were.” He paused to let the words sink in.
Paulie’s left eye twitched as the realisation struck him with the force of a hammer. “Wait, are you saying?” He stopped, he didn’t want to say the words. But he had to. “Are you saying that this is not even the worst of it?” Jakiikii leaned on him as he tensed again, but he held his emotions in check with an effort of will.
Mack shook his head sadly, the blue quills that covered his neck chattering from the motion. “Not even close. If the information is right, then Ooounoo might have just been a small-time player. A virtual peon compared to the actual evil running the whole zalcing thing.”
“How many people?” Paulie breathed.
Mack paused at the question. His face going pale as he blanched and then whispered, “Millions. Billions maybe.”
He felt Jakiikii’s grip on his arm tighten. “My people too, and so many others. What is the point? Why would they do this to any sophont race?”
Paulie didn’t respond. He didn’t have an answer, nobody did.