TOC MetaStories: Ineen Aldrop's 'He Stood taller Than Most'

Part 3 -Unlikely Alliance-

All at once Paulie found himself able to move. The adrenaline that now coursed through his blood burning the sedative out of his system like a fire in a granary. He wasted no time using his newfound leverage to tear his other arm and legs away from the table. The force of his exertion was so great that the table twisted like a fortune cookie and he threw himself behind it as he gained his freedom.

A series of sharp snaps followed him, a tugging sensation making him look at his coat. A small smoking hole seemed to have been burned right through the nylon fabric near to his liver, but he himself had not been hit. The weapons fire stopped as he heard the sound of panicked voices. It seemed that the guards were no more excited to go after him than he was to jump in front of their weapons.

But he had to do something fast. He looked around, he was in an almost barren room, the walls and floor the same dark grey metal as the roof. He looked around more and then saw the table he had been strapped too, it was twisted, sparks issuing from torn wires that jutted from the base of it. An idea formed in his head and he grinned as he shifted his position to place his arms under the slab.

Paulie put all one-hundred-eighteen kilograms of his body behind the table and gripped it hard before he pushed up and out. He moved explosively like he had been taught in sports as a kid, the table resisting his wiry but powerful muscles for only an instant before the entire assembly was lifted right out of its floor mount.

“What the Kaarf!” One of the guards shouted right before the entire table was unceremoniously rammed down their throat, smashing them aside as if they were as insubstantial as a stuffed toy.

Paulie had thrown the heavy piece of equipment at the last known location of the guards and gotten lucky. Three of them were either unconscious or dead, he didn’t have time to check as the fourth and final reptilian guard fired at him again. This time he thought he saw the faint reddish streak of something fly towards him, but it went wide as the panicking alien’s shaking arms threw its aim.

Paulie bellowed like a crocodile as he charged the last guard. He had to take their gun or incapacitate them. It was by far the dumbest thing he had ever done in his life, rushing an armed.. man, alien? Luck it seemed was still on his side though, the sight of him charging causing the short alien to freeze. Without a weapon of his own Paulie did the only thing he could think of, he shoulder charged the guard like he was going for a tackle.

The small reptilian alien’s bones shattered as the two-hundred-and-one centimeter tall man linebacker tackled him into the nearby wall. Their eyes glazing over as bright yellow liquid sprayed from their lolling mouth. Sharp teeth shattered and their long arms horribly twisted, a final wheeze escaped their foaming lips as they jerked once more and fell still. Paulie lay there for a moment, momentarily dazed as he tried to regain his bearings.

He scrambled to his feet as he heard a sound behind him. It was the taller alien, they had just picked up one of the fallen batons. With only heartbeats to spare Paulie grabbed the baton the crushed guard had dropped and whipped it towards the remaining alien in a backhanded toss. His aim was true, years of highschool sports having instilled in him a deadly accuracy. The baton took the small creature straight in the face and they went down with another spray of that yellow liquid. It must have been their blood, they did not rise again and after a second Paulie stood shakily to his feet to survey the carnage.

He coughed as the acrid stench of rot now mixed with the exotic tang of alien vital fluids and burning wires. He put an arm over his mouth and nose in an attempt to block out the smell as he moved toward the fallen alien. He reached their body and crouched as he finally got a closer look.

They were small, he only now realised just how diminutive they really were compared to him. They looked like children wearing elaborate halloween costumes, except their proportions were all wrong. Arms too long and torse a little too short. He peered closer. What had the female called them? Great Joove or something? He wondered if it was a title or their name.

Whatever it was, it no longer mattered. The still form of the alien remained where it had fallen, he couldn't tell if they were alive or dead. And to be honest, part of him didn’t really care.

It was then that Paulie heard another noise. A low hissing sound coming from the other side of the room. He looked and was surprised to see the female still there, lying where she had fallen originally.

If she saw him approach slowly or heard him she didn’t show. She simply continued to lay there on the decking, sobbing with that same strange gurgling hiss. He seemed to innately understand the sound was sorrowful, the faint squirming sensation rising in his mind again that made him shake his head slightly.

The small reptilian seemed to be clutching one of their arms and with a start he realised that it was bent at what seemed to be an unnatural angle. Though what was normal for the aliens was honestly hard to say. Perhaps she had sprained it.

Even as he thought it he felt a pang of guilt. No, he knew exactly what had happened. In his desperate bid for freedom he had hurt her, likely broken her bones as easily as he might have a childs. They were so small after all.

He knelt next to the crying alien and reached towards her only to jerk back in alarm as she bared her sharp teeth and let out a loud barking hiss.

Paulie looked at their scaled features, they seemed more fearful than angry. He reached out to her again, stopping just short of her by a dozen centimeters. “I don’t know if you can understand me, but I promise I never meant to hurt you..” He paused. No noticeable response, though they didn’t lash out at him again.

Their chatoyant purple eyes seemed to stare at him with some unreadable emotion. He tried again, “I apologise for harming you. Where am I? What is this place, and what are you?” he couldn't help but ask the still trembling figure the questions. He may have been overwhelming them, but he was desperate to know.

Once more the small alien jerked as if struck, but he got the impression that this time it had more to do with his words than his appearance as they stopped crying. Her mouth opened and closed several times silently as her eyes stared at him, her posture didn’t change as she lay on her side but he got the distinct sense that he had surprised her.

All at once she spoke, those barks and hisses conveying meaning in that strange way. “You.. it has never.. How?” She paused as if he could answer her unspoken question. As he remained silent the female pointed at him with her uninjured arm and tried to sit upright. “The jargon-worms have never worked on your kind before, it had always been assumed that your brains were insufficiently developed or otherwise incompatible.”

What was the alien talking about, jargon-worms? Before? How many others had they kidnapped before. He asked her, a tinge of anger in his voice as he accused her. “What do you mean, others? How many other people have you abducted like this?”

She shook her small head, the gesture at once so familiar and at once alien in its connotation. “Not we, you are the first apocalypse worlder that we have ever taken. But we are not the only ship to have visited Uerrn, the great Jual used to be the second on a larger Zen’kkalk brutaliser that had visited your world many times before.”

As she said it he was once more taken aback. He remembered a flash to the shape of the alien ship as it had taken him. Did that mean that all the crackpots claiming to have been abducted by aliens were all true? Had the military really been hiding alien technology? The dam of questions was threatening to burst and he only barely managed to hold it back, he really had bigger things to worry about at the moment.

He turned back to the female who seemed to have stopped shivering. “You are hurt, can I help?” He felt bad about hurting her. She had been an unwilling participant he had seen, and given the way she had been treated he didn’t think that she was the same as the taller reptilian. Zen’kkalk, he corrected himself internally.

She seemed to scoff, but with her strange alien features it was difficult to determine her true emotions. “Help me? What are you.. no, fine. There on that table, not the one you.. ripped straight of-of the deck.” She seemed to laugh wryly, the idea crazy to her as it would have been to him had it happened any other way. She gestured and he saw the small table she had grabbed the injector from. On it were a few other implements that looked wicked in their design. “The small blue vial, bring it here.”

He nodded and moved to comply. The vial was indeed small, as he stepped over to the table he had to hunch over to reach it as it barely stood past his knees. There was a small tray with vials of various ambiguous liquids. He grabbed the bluest looking one and then walked back to the alien.

He held out his hand to her with the vial on his palm. “Here, is this the right one?”

Her eyes went wide once more as he offered it to her. She muttered, “You.. are very big.” He kind of chuckled a little as he heard her say it. She shook her horned head and tentatively reached out towards him as if she were afraid he would change his mind or harm her again. He didn’t move, keeping still as if he were trying to feed a skittish animal.

As she grabbed it slowly he once more felt the texture of her tiny hand. Her scales were cool and smoother than he would have otherwise suspected, not at all like a lizard as he might have thought. She took the vial and uncapped it before using the tapered tip to place a single tiny drop on the tip of her long pointed tongue. He once more noticed that her species had sharp pointed teeth, almost akin to those seen in deep sea fish. They must be strictly carnivores then.

She swallowed with difficulty before shaking her head and capping the vial. She seemed to hesitate and then offered it to him in a slightly wavering hand just as he had. He smiled with his lips only and gingerly plucked it from her palm. As he watched she seemed to sigh and then with a sharp motion that amarmed him she gripped her broken arm and pulled it straight with a grinding crunch that made his blood turn cold.

Holding the small vial up to the flickering overhead light he asked, “What is it?” It honestly looked like blue juice to him, nothing about it at all stood out as mysterious or impressive at a glance.

She swallowed again. “Quickheal, a stimulant and directed pain inhibitor. It should help my body heal in days, not weeks. It would heal those that remain alive as well if you were to administer it.” She gestured towards the carnage that he had wrought and he ducked his head in shame.

“I was scared and angry. I shouldn't have been so aggressive, I just.. have trouble holding my anger in check sometimes? I apologise.” He would have said more but she cut him off as she stood slowly and pulled a long strip of cloth from one of the pockets of her small white suit. He watched as she used it to fashion a rudimentary sling that she tucked her injured arm into.

“No, don’t be. They are slavers and murderers. Criminals even by the standards of my people. I was taken from my home and forced to work for them as a xenobiologist due to my veterinary training. I have been wanting to escape the clutches of the ‘Great’ Jual for a long time now.” The way she hissed the word made Paulie feel like she was being the opposite of honorific with its use.

He stood to his full height and offered her his hand. “Well, it is good to have a friend then. We have not been formally introduced. Hello, my name is Paulie. Nice to meet you, I wish it had been under less.. violent circumstances.”

She seemed to grimace, though it could have been a smile as she cocked her head and took a slight step back. “What is this gesture?” She put out her arm straight forwards and down as if she were also trying to shake the hand of somebody that only stood as high as her waist.

Paulie laughed at the mimicry, the noise startling the tiny alien woman for a second before he shook his head. “No, not like that. It’s called a handshake, it's a friendly gesture in my culture. You grip each other's hands and shake them slowly for a moment, it is supposed to show good faith and comradery. Or something, I’m not entirely sure why we do it to be honest.”

She made that grimace again and tentatively reached up with her good arm to grip his much larger hand. She flinched as he wrapped his fingers around her tiny hand ever so gently and gave it a slight shake, gently as he could. As he let her go she withdrew her hand and then seemed to giggle as she looked at him again. At least that is the interpretation he got from the barking gurgle that escaped her toothy maw.

“Oh if my dam could see me now. Shaking the hand of the biggest Urrenian I have ever heard of. I must be crazy.” She made the noise again and he smiled before giving her a little bow.

“Well, if you are crazy then I am insane. What was your name, if I may ask?”

She seemed to blush again, the lighter skin around her eyes darkening to a different shade of green as she tapped the top of her head in what seemed like a formal manner. “Oh, I am sorry. My name is Krissh’shanibe. But if that is too hard you can call me Krissh.”

Paulie nodded and said it, approximating her hissing bark as best he could. “Krissh.” She made that grimace again that he was now starting to associate as a smile.

He wanted to say more, to learn about this strange little person and her history. But before he could say anything the room was flushed with a harsh yellow light and a strange chirping sound began to repeat through hidden speakers. He saw Krissh duck down reflexively, her good hand going to cover her eyes as she once more started to tremble.

He took a protective step towards her and hunched down to be more at her level. “What is that? What’s happening?”

She shook her head and uncovered her eyes, the skin around them had gone pale. Even more so than it normally was. “That is the shipwide yellow alert. It means that you have been discovered, and they will shoot to kill us on sight.”