Chapter 27: A Different Approach

Chapter 27: A Different Approach

Paulie and Jakiikii were mostly recomposed as Mack and Officer Triddle walked back into the main area of the interrogation chamber, the two aliens looking a little stressed but in good enough spirits despite the way the interrogation had broken down at the end.

Mack glanced over at Mursk and shook his head before lifting his commie and speaking, “Prisoner has become uncooperative. Move her back to her holding cell please.” He paused, “And keep a double watch on her cell.”

He lowered his arm and leaned heavily on his cane as Officer Triddle chirped harshly, “What the in the name of Zalc was that? We had her making mistakes and then whatever you had to say set her off like I have never seen. Not with a major runner of this calibre anyway.”

Jakiikii and Paulie stood near the glass still, watching the thagurn female as she was surrounded by several adjudicators wearing tactical gear who wrestled the deranged alien to the ground and then subdued her.

“It has something to do with the base in the Yellek System. As soon as I mentioned it..” He trailed off and then looked at Paulie sharply. He pointed a finger at him and asked, “She seemed totally fixated on you at the end. She won’t tell me what she knows about you, but somehow I know that you are the key to figuring all this out.”

Paulie shrugged. “I don’t know shit, Mack. Honest.” He felt a slight pressure around his mind, a familiar feeling that Jakiikii was brushing his mental defenses with her strange mental powers.

The miriam senior detective stepped closer and looked into his eyes then glanced at Jakiikii who nodded slightly, her skin flashing pale as she started to hop a little from foot-to-foot as she often did when excited or stressed.

“Okay.” Mack grunted, a barking laugh escaping his toothy maw that was totally devoid of humor. Instead it sounded like the defeated realisation of a man who had resigned himself to his powerless state. “It doesn't matter anyway. There is no way in the nine rings of Trellan that I am going to get approval to pursue that lead anyway.” He said it with a heavy sigh, like a man who had just admitted to himself that his fate was sealed.

Now it was Jakiikii’s turn to chime in, the termaxxi stepping closer to Paulie and gripping his nearer arm with three of hers. “Oh, but that is okay. Paulie had something he wanted to tell you anyway.” She said sweetly. Paulie was immediately suspicious as she was using her cutesy ‘I want something from you’ voice.

He looked at her and then over at Mack who was now staring at him with a look of somewhat defeated consternation. “What?” Paulie asked them both.

Mursk chittered as Officer Triddle looked between them and asked, “Okay. Somebody wants to bring me up to date on who he is anyway and why Ooounoo seemed so bent out of shape at the thought of him being here?” She asked, pointing a taloned hand at Paulie.

Mack waved a hand. “Paulie was the one who helped to blow the lid on Ooounoo’s operation as you know, he was abducted from Urren a few weeks ago.” He paused. “Gosh, has it only been a month?” the man muttered quietly to himself. Officer Triddle clacked her beak annoyedly and he apologised quickly, “Sorry. Yes, he was the key we needed. You know that, but what you don’t know is that he was also picked up by zenkkalkian pirates. Specifically the ones operating out of the Yellek System, and apparently tied to a much larger smuggling operation than we initially realised. Potentially one spanning multiple sectors.”

She looked back and forth, her colorful crest standing on end. “He was abducted.. from Urren? The apocalyptic death world currently under the twenty-five-thousand year quarantine?”

Paulie blanched at that, but Jakiikii whispered in his ear, “Galactic Standard Years, Paulie, only about ten-thousand of your Earth years.”

He grunted, “Oh, that makes me feel a lot better, thank you.” She punched his arm hard enough to sting and he blew a raspberry at her before Mack snapped at them.

“Hey, pay attention you two, this is important.”

Paulie snapped his mouth closed immediately and Jakiikii’s skin flashed pure white for a moment at the chastisement.

The long-necked alien shook his head, the dark blue sensory spines that grew from the back of Mack’s neck clattering with the movement. He looked at the now empty interrogation chamber and then at Paulie and Jakiikii again. “Rozz seems to think he is more important than he at first appears. And you know Rozz, they are never wrong.”

Officer Triddle was blinking her pink eyes rapidly and waving a hand. “Hold on, wait a second.” She took a deep breath. “You are saying, he is a urrenian? An apocalypser? But..” She trailed off.

Mack shrugged. “Apparently so. And a pretty good one too.”

“I thought apocalypse worlds could not produce sapient life!” The alien blurted, her feathered arms flapping in her consternation even as Mack just sighed loudly, apparently tired of having to explain things.

Paulie opened his mouth to speak but felt Jakiikii’s hand’s gripping him too tightly and had to stop to look down at her. Her six eyes were all fixed on the other adjudicator, the woman she was venerating only a half hour before. Now she seemed to be looking at the smaukling as if she had never seen her before, her middle eyes wide and her lower pair blinking rapidly.

She sucked in a large breath as Mack spoke up again, “It’s not important the how. What is important is the why. He is fully cognizant, I assure you. As is his whole species it would seem despite the lies we have been told all our lives. His home planet is called Earth in their native language, meaning fertile soil. Not exactly the name given by violent savages is it?” Officer Triddle shook her beaked head slowly and Mack continued unabated. “The most important thing is that there is some sort of greater threat here. That is the second time that I have heard a threat against his homeworld. I am inclined to look at the situation more seriously now.”

He turned to Paulie and asked, “What was it you wanted to tell me?”

Paulie glanced at Jakiikii and she hissed, “Ishion’s ship?”

He started then mouthed ‘OH’ at her before nodding his head. “I uh.. I had a meeting planned with Ishion later today to talk to him.. about possibly borrowing a ship?”

Mack’s face turned confused as his quills rattled lightly for a second then he got a knowing look on his face and raised his free hand. “Oh, oh no. No way Paulie, there is no way in Ellism’s great creation that you are going to go and assault the base on your own.”

Paulie shrugged, “Oh course I can’t. That is why I was going to ask for the army to come with me?” He said it as if the answer was obvious. But clearly the answer was less clear to Mack as his mouth dropped open even more.

“The army? What the.. have you lost your Zalcing mind?” He started to speak then snapped his mouth closed and stopped. Standing more straight. He cocked his head and then a small smile crossed his face, “Wait. You want to go on an unsanctioned outing to hostile territory without proper authorization and attack an apparently sovereign, criminal colony with the assistance of Gikeian military forces?”

Paulie was confused as to the miriamiam’s sudden change, so he just nodded his head warily.

Mack’s face slowly broke into a grin, the action of it seeming to shift with his posture as he stood up straight. He leaned slightly on his metal cane and then glanced at Jakiikii and Mursk. “I think that I will accompany you to your meeting.” Paulie got a sort of sinking feeling that he was about to be involved in another one of the alien’s deep-cut plots, but if it got him what he wanted anyway then he was willing to go along with it for as long as he needed to.

The meeting with Ishion was not scheduled for another few hours, and with Officer Triddle begging their pardon, she left and it was just Mack and Jakiikii in the room with him. Silence reigned for a while until Jakiikii pulled out the Tablet she had been carrying and started teaching Paulie more yuuvian on that god-awful learning program. The little jingle that had been haunting his waking mind played and he visibly cringed slightly.

Mack watched from the side as Paulie struggled with words that were certainly simple even for children and bumbled over the pronunciation of alien syllables.

Paulie clenched his teeth and bore the mental frustration. He knew that he needed to learn it eventually. And while now was as good a time as any, but he still let out a deep sigh of relief when Mack tapped his wrist commie and announced that they should get moving so they were not late to their meeting with the Sovereign's brother.

It took them only a few minutes of walking, following Mack as he asked Mursk where the meeting was scheduled to take place. It was on one of the more secure private offices in the sixth level. They climbed a few flights of stairs, walked through a large open meeting area with many other tired looking officers and then through a hallway portal into the area Mursk had indicated.

Paulie turned a corner and immediately knew which office it was, the one surrounded by camouflage PDF troopers and royal guardsmen in their bright orange and black powered armour plates. Mack sauntered up to the nearest of them and was immediately halted by a pair of the armoured mendagoonian guards with their plasma staves held at a high alert.

“Hold it!” The first one’s translator buzzed. The other guard’s translator spoke in nearly unintelligible sounds that Paulie recognised as untranslated yuuvian. From his studies he was able to understand maybe every fifth or sixth word. That made him cock his head, had he met the first one before? He must have if their translator had been synced to him specifically.

He looked harder, it was hard to tell the aliens apart visually. His human eyes were not made to pick up on the subtleties of their features, and with their bug-eyed helmets on there was virtually no chance he was going to know without asking. There were slight and subtle differences in their posture, height and armour though.

He stepped forward and raised a hand, taking a chance. “Hello again, long time no see. How are you holding up?” He spoke with a conversational tone.

The second guard just stared at him, but the first one stopped, their head cocking a little as if surprised. They looked at Paulie for another second and then seemed to shake themselves.

They exclaimed loudly, “Oh, it’s you! The hero of Korscam! My Lord, I offer our apologies. The royal prince is already expecting you.” He paused and then said something in medagoonian to his partner and the guards standing further back got an alert over their own internal comms. Paulie could see the realization passing through the assembled guards and a few of the PDF troopers. The first guard looked back at Paulie and then reached up and removed his helmet, hanging it on a specialised retainer at the small of their back.

Now that the alien’s face was uncovered he could see more details of their features. But it was still not all that helpful, he still could not place whether the alien was familiar or not. But his translator had been synced to Paulie’s jargon worm, so he must have known them or at the very least met them once before.

The royal guardsman motioned for him to follow then hesitated. “Come.. are all of them coming too?” He gestured at Mack and Jakiikii.

Paulie nodded, then remembered that the human reaction might mean nothing to the alien so instead replied, “Yes. Yes, these are my friends and colleagues. I trust them with my life.. as I did to you.” He had noticed a small notation on the shoulder plate of the alien’s armour. A small thing, but it looked very alike to the special medal he himself had been awarded during the battle for the palace. A silvery nova containing a motif of the royal palace.

His hunch paid off as the alien waved two arms in a gesture that Mursk often made to mean approval and then they started walking. Leading the way through the small gathering of military force.

The first guard glanced at the second then spoke, their chittering voice translating to English in Paulie’s mind. “I was not sure you would recognise me, Lord. But you somehow seemed to recognise me anyway.” He made a chittering sound like a chuckle. “I remember seeing you fight in the battle for the palace, you were like a storm. Smoke and lightning, it was..” He glanced at the other guard as they spoke in untranslated mendagoonian. “Yes, it was. The Lord Paulie moved like a riiken and struck enemies down with his bare hands like they were made of air.”

“You were one of Captain Elldite’s men.” Paulie said, the realisation hitting him as a small pang of sadness trickled through him.

The first guardsman made the hand motion meaning yes again. “Yes, my name is Lach, and I was there when he died. I couldn’t..” The alien stopped talking as they reached the doorway, his growing distress evident in the rapid twitching of his long and feathery antennae. Having spent a lot of time around Mursk, Paulie was starting to get better at reading the jerky emotional displays of the insectoid aliens.

The second guardsman knocked on the doorway and spoke into his communicator, but Paulie ignored them and stepped closer to Lach. Placing a hand carefully on the alien’s nearer shoulder, he looked into their deep sapphire eyes and spoke, “You did everything you could, and more. I watched you and your comrades fight and die to protect the palace and the star children. And me. I can ask no higher honor than to call myself your friend and ask you for your forgiveness for those you lost.”

“It wasn’t your fault, my Lord.” The alien said quietly.

Paulie patted Lach’s armoured shoulder. “Maybe not, but still.” He smiled at the alien. “And hey, just call me Paulie.” The guardsman perked up a little and then Paulie and his friends were directed through the now opened doorway flanked by a quartet of royal guards, Lach included.

On the other side of a large table stood an ornately dressed mendagoonian male, his regal bearing and flowing red robes gave him away immediately as Ishion. Indeed as Paulie entered the alien turned his way, the insectoid’s pseudopupils seeming to alight on him directly. Those dark spots boring into his own eyes with an almost unerring efficiency.

The prince spoke, his mouthparts moving as the small mechanical translator on his uppermost arm buzzed, “Ah, greetings Lord Paulie. It has been too long since we last spoke in person. How have you been holding up? I heard about the recent attack you thwarted, I would have expected nothing less coming from you.” He looked around, almost suspiciously. His antennae lowering as he continued, the flat tone of his translator robbing the emotion of the words. But not their impact. “What was the reason for the urgent summons?”

Paulie snorted under his breath. “Well, it wasn’t really.. that urgent.” Ishion just stared at him, unmoving and obviously unblinking as his compound eyes remained fixated on him. Paulie swallowed. “Well, I wanted to ask you for a favour, kind of.”

Mack stepped closer and seemed about to speak but Jakiikii grabbed his hand and whispered something at him, causing the miriam to pause.

Ishion stepped closer to the table, his unarmoured legs making faint clicking sounds on the polished tile flooring of the meeting room. “A favour? What can I do for the Hero of Korscam?” The tone was flat, but the question sounded genuine.

“I want a ship. I want soldiers to man it. And I want to go and kill that son of a bitch who ripped me from my home, we found where he makes his base.” He said bluntly.

The room was silent, Paulie swallowed. He was not a great orator or forger of words, so he had opted for the straightforward approach. The blunted punch. As he watched the alien prince cock his head he wondered if he had not perhaps spoken too freely.