Chapter 31: Only One Thing to Do

Chapter 31: Only One Thing to Do

Paulie paced up and down the hall as the sounds of sirens and shouting voices washed over him. He was deep in thought, not more than an hour ago he had been subjected to a revelation that had not quite sat well with him. Officer Visk, that smug asshole, had not only been a traitor the entire time.. but he had also been some manner of cybernetic super assassin?

He shook his head, no. It was just not adding up. Why break into Ooounoo’s cell with such stealth that it left no traces and then kill her in a way that left as much evidence as possible? Was it just malice? Was it a show of force.. a warning perhaps? Maybe he had been interrupted in his subterfuge by Officer Triddle. What had been Visk’s grand plan here? Paulie looked up at the sound of his name being called and saw Mack standing with Mursk not five meters from the shattered window that the aforementioned man had defenestrated himself from to facilitate his impossible escape.

“Hmm? What did you say?” He muttered, still paying only half an ear to their conversation.

Mack jutted his head forward slightly as he gave a sharp smirk and growled, “I said that Visk jumped out a two story window rather than fight you.”

Paulie shook his head. “No. Not at all.”

Mursk cocked his unhelmeted head now, the small light of his autotranslator lighting up as he asked, “No?”

Paulie slammed the brakes down on his inner thoughts hard as he turned his full attention to the other two men now. Looking first at the mendagoonian and then the miriam, he reiterated. “No. That’s what I said, no. He didn’t jump to get away from me, hell.. he seemed annoyed that he didn’t have the orders to take me out too. He said as much, and after having seen that escape I do believe that he would have tried had he been given the chance.”

“What?” Mack said, seemingly perplexed. “But, if he was here to bury the evidence, why would he leave you alive?”

Paulie shrugged. “There must be more to the story, there is just no way to know. We need to track him down and get it out of him I guess, or whoever he is really working for. Clearly he has a boss, he mentioned having orders. This implies that there must have been somebody higher up to issue them to him.” Paulie finished saying smugly as he crossed his arms in a self-satisfied manner, impressed with his own powers of deduction.

Mursk nodded appreciatively too, “Yes. Yes that makes sense, but who? A high level cyber operative like that, those orders would have had to come from very far up the chain of command. They don't let enhanced operatives off the leash like that for no reason.” Paulie watched as Mack slammed one of his fists into the open palm of his other hand as if he could pummel the information from the air between them.

Mursk spoke again, the royal guardsman’s translated speech a dull monotone. “Well, they should not be that hard to track. They left injured, and we have to have at least one solid lead on where he could be headed next, right?”

“Space?” Paulie said hopefully.

“No, Flurn.” Mack said suddenly. Paulie and Mursk looked at each other and then at him.

“What makes you say that?” Paulie asked curiously, not mocking or with derision, but genuinely flabbergasted at how Mack could have jumped to such a conclusion.

Mack took a step closer to the window, gingerly he looked out to the ground far below. “Well, he is injured, maybe not much for a cybe.. but certainly enough to need some manner of medical attention. Flurn is a traitor, had prior association with Visk, likely is part of the chain that was tasked to deal with Ooounoo and has the expertise to fix and heal him.” He nodded his head, the blue sensory spines on his neck clattering as he did so.

Paulie shook his head. “Ok, but that does not help. We don’t know where Flurn is.” Mursk made a hand gesture for assent as he could not nod his head.

Mack sighed. “Look, he clearly has a list, and if he is cleaning up Ooounoo’s tracks then he needs to clean all of them. Meaning we have an opportunity to potentially beat him to his next meal.”

Paulie struggled, thinking really extra hard to remember the conversation Ooounoo had with Mack. He frowned, brows furrowing as he found the connection, “You said something about a special shipment. A blockade runner, er.. the smuggler?”

Mack nodded, “Well, that is one. Yes, and one that is likely out of his immediate reach. So we go to the next best thing. Her other known associate, one that was only just discovered and Visk has surely not yet had the opportunity to dispatch.”

Mack pointed at Paulie, but it was Jakiikii who answered, causing Paulie to jerk in surprise. “Miicree.”

“Jesus!” Paulie spluttered in surprise as the termaxxi woman stepped up to his side. “I am on edge enough as it is, Jakiikii.”

She stood on the tips of her hooves and gave him a little peck on the chin. “You love me anyways.” He chuckled after a second, nodding.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Mack smiled wide as he saw the interaction, his sharp little teeth glimmering in the bright overhead lights of the station. “Yes, Miicree. And she will not be hard to find I think, for you or for Visk. Luckily we have an advantage, Mursk?” He nodded to the man, and Mursk’s face broke into the closest thing to an evil smile that Paulie imagined the insectoid alien could make as his antennae curled to the sides.

He made a chittering sound, a sound that Paulie had come to recognise as him laughing. “Oh yes, an advantage indeed. His royal highness the Prince has issued us with one of the palace guards’ sukk-sou.”

“His what?” Paulie asked.

Jakiikii on the other hand immediately perked up, her eyes flashing bright as she asked excitedly, “Really?!”

Paulie turned to her and said, "What is a sukk-sou?”

Her various hands gripped each other in excitement as she explained quickly, “They are a type of heavily modified VTOL transport craft, though these ones have been armoured and weaponised for use by the Guard and PDF forces, they are awesome!” She spoke with the same enthusiasm that she always did whenever weapons or vehicles of mass destruction were involved. Her skin flashing pale as she did a little hop of excitement.

He nodded as he observed her antics. “Okay, so big gunship. Got it. Where are we going to go and get one of those?” He asked Mursk and Mack in general.

Mursk tapped his wrist. “According to this message, it is already on the way. I suggested to the pilot to land on the roof pad, but they informed me that the roof was not sturdy enough to handle the sukk-sou’s weight. So we are to meet with it in the main parking lot. If we rush we should get there just as it arrives.” It made sense. If it was an uparmoured transport of any kind it was probably pretty heavy, thus the lack of roof accessibility.

Paulie nodded once, “Okay, let’s go then.” But as he was turning to go he was stopped by Mack reaching out a hand again. “Yeah?” he said to the shorter, pale-skinned alien.

Mack gripped his arm and then pulled him onto a sudden and surprising hug. “Just.. be careful out there, alright Paulie?” Mack said, a slight waver in his voice that made Paulie smile. The alien was not usually very showy with his emotions.

He patted the alien on the back softly, careful to avoid the sharp expression quills there. “Yeah, you too old man.” Mack nodded his head and gave a large sigh, looking at Jakiikii as he pushed Paulie away and brushed the front of his coat off.

“Take care of him, you know how much he likes to get into trouble.” Mack said to her with a small smile, his sharp teeth showing between pale lips.

Jakiikii smiled back with her dainty slash of a mouth, “Yeah, I will.” And she stepped forward and gave Mack a six-armed hug too. She stepped back quickly though as another figure approached their little group.

“We have gathered the evidence we could, Sir.” An adjudicator Paulie did not know said gruffly as they stepped up to the group and dropped a slight salute that looked somewhat halfhearted in nature. “What do you want us to do with the prisoner?” The small baxxzuin’s features screwed up in what might have been anger at the mention of the traitor adjudicator, but they maintained enough composure to listen to Mack’s clipped response.

“Take them to secure holding, maximum guard. Take no chances.” The baxxziun started to turn away but Mack stopped them, “Oh, and check them for suicide paraphernalia before you do, don’t want to lose our star witness here to a poison pill or the like.” The short, fuzzy alien snapped a much more crisp salute and then stomped off.

Mack immediately turned his attention back to Paulie and the others as he shooed them, “What are you still doing here?! Go!”

Paulie did not need to be told twice, he nodded and then tapped Jakiikii’s upper shoulder. She jerked her head in the direction of the door and then nodded. As they moved out, Lach and Hauxsu fell alongside them into a protective detail with Mursk leading the way.

In this manner they hurried their way from the room and out into the main hall which was now veritably swarming with police and other associated personnel. These moved aside or were bodily pushed aside by either Mursk or Paulie himself as they painstakingly made their way through the crush. Once while they were trying to navigate the throng an authoritative looking vekegh officer tried to hold them up, the pink-furred otter-like alien holding up a hand to halt their progress and refusing to move, demanding to know what their rush was.

Mursk looked ready to flame the alien, but Paulie was in no time to get into an argument and so just grabbed the shocked officer under the arms and bodily picked them up as if they weighed nothing before placing them out of the way nearer to the wall before walking past them without a second glance.

After that they were given a wide berth and made good time to the lower floor and the main entrance. As they neared it Mursk once again activated the beacon of his suit and they were subsequently waved through the security check amid blaring alarms and flashing green lights.

Once they had passed from the interior of the structure and onto the front patio area of the building they finally slowed and came to a halt. Paulie was not even breaking a sweat, nor was Jakiikii, though she did look a little paler than usual. He nodded to her and she smiled back with only her eyes, the fleshy ridges along the tops of her petal-shaped eyestalks crinkling with emotion. She seemed to be alright, though she was sucking in large gulps of air from the two breathing vents on her upper back as she brought her heart rate back to normal.

“Okay, where are we supposed to meet them? Are they here yet?” He asked Mursk with a nod out into the large parking area. As far as he could see, there were no armoured behemoths parked and waiting to carry them away.

Mursk made the gesture for no, his arms waving still in that same expressive manner even as he answered his question verbally via the autotranslator. “Not quite yet, they are near though. You will likely begin to hear them soon as your hearing is far better than mine.”

Even as the mendagoonian man said it, there was a sort of low rumbling hum building in the air that Paulie had begun to pick up on. A sort of deep hissing growl, like the sound of distant airplanes on a runway spooling up their engines for takeoff. He looked up and then to the left as the sound grew in volume and intensity. Mursk looked in the same direction a few heartbeats later, followed by Jakiikii and the other two guards.

From over the top of a nearby building came a massive, white, hurtling.. thing.

Paulie could describe it no better than that. Though the sky was clear, a bright teal that contrasted with the flat, grey slabs of the nearby buildings, the craft itself was painted a stark white that almost made it blend into the sky above were it not for the ugly dark protrusions hanging from its heavy sides like remora on a bloated whale’s body. It was fat, heavy and incredibly ugly even for a craft of pure industrial design. But it had a sort of charm too he noticed, there were two long tails that hung from the back tipped with fin-like vanes that helped to steer its meteoric descent towards the hard duracrete of the parking lot in front of them.

“Good God, they need to slow down!” Paulie shouted as the whine became a roaring whirlwind that threatened to steal his very breath from his lungs. Mursk replaced his helmet and Paulie wished in that terrifying moment that he had one too as the screaming downdraft of the bloated craft’s engines whipped up a hurricane of debris. “They will crash!”

Just as he thought that their end would come in the sudden and rapid explosive disassembly of this bulbous edifice of steel and ceramic, its engines spooled to an even more deafening wail like ten thousand cats caterwauling in the middle of the night, then it slowed to a smooth-ish stop and slammed down into the ground with enough force to set off multiple nearby groundcar alarms.

He breathed out a sigh as he realised he had been holding his breath throughout the entire gutwrenching experience.

“What. The. Hell.” He said, enunciating each and every word for emphasis. “Was that?”

Jakiikii slapped his shoulder. “See, I told you they were awesome. Not sure why the pilot pulled back the landing so much, they must be new. She could have taken five times the force without flinching.” Paulie paled slightly, the craft had already come in hot enough to strip the paint off the nearby curbs and parking spots, hell, had they come in any hotter they may have been boarding it inside a blasted crater.

Mursk and Hauxsu were both staring as well, they were young and might not have had the chance to see one of the flying tanks given the stark manner in which they stood there. Hands wide and speechless, antennae standing more or less on end. Lach on the other hand was already moving towards the craft when a hatch on the side popped out then lifted to reveal another royal guardsman in their signature orange and black powered armour standing just inside the craft.

This alien hopped out, wings fluttering for a brief moment as they hit the ground below and then shouted something up into the opening that was unintelligible to Paulie. As he shook himself from his stupor he started towards the large white craft, Mursk and Hauxsu quick on his heels. Paulie could now get a closer look at the craft, with a nod he realised that the large shapes hanging from the sides were heavy with weapon pods of various alien designs.

He saw what looked like huge versions of the blaster guns he had seen the Guard use in the palace fight, others looked like they were full of rockets and the last ones were totally unfamiliar to him. Long triangular barrels of shimmering dark metal that seemed to connect to large and complex looking mechanical contraptions whose purpose he could not divine. Whatever they were it was clear they were powerful weapons, and the sukk-sou was absolutely loaded to bear with them.

Paulie reached the side of the craft as a metal ladder was swung down from the opening and they were ushered up it in quick succession, with Mursk and the unknown royal guardsman taking the tail end.

As they finished loading in, Paulie was met with his next surprise. A full group of PDF defense troopers was strapped in and ready to go as well as at least half a dozen more mendagoonian power armoured royal guards. Whatever they were expecting to meet, they surely had the firepower and the manpower to take it out.

“Is all of this for Visk?” Paulie asked himself, Jakiikii was standing right next to him and overheard the self-inflicted remark.

She just shrugged her shoulders, her skin flashing dark for a moment as she growled out a response from deep in her chest. “I hope so, because if not then I am afraid of what they are expecting to find.”

“Is he really that dangerous?” Paulie muttered, then closed his mouth as Jakiikii just gave him a pointed look. He remembered the trail of carnage the traitor had carved through the very heart of the main adjudicator’s complex.

He just nodded and then looked around as they were directed to a series of unoccupied crash couches on the near side of the craft by the royal guardsman that had held the door for them. Paulie strapped in, the sounds of the engines screaming back to full burn muted enough through the ship’s thick armoured hide as to be bearable. But only just.

Jakiikii was right, whatever they were heading into they better have the firepower to match it, because if not then he wasn’t sure who did. He fingered the grip of Nemesis under his coat as if the cold steel of his revolver could tell him the answer, it didn’t. But he smiled coldly regardless, if they could not catch him alive then Paulie could at least make certain Visk would not live to cause more havoc.