Page 18 of There’s an Alien Down My Chimney

I came out of my own shock, mostly at seeing the jellyfish alien, and hurried to the hole, my gun aimed at what looked like the biggest threat. Ru dodged a snapping set of tentacles, pulled back his lips, and growled, “Get lost Praxidar, this is not your planet, and definitely not your relic.”

With the cylinder under his arm like an oversized football, he leaped back through the hole in the glass and started running for the exit on the other side of the long room. I followed hot on his heels, relieved to note that neither the three hazmat-wearing humans nor the strange alien were following us.

That relief was short-lived when the door behind us slammed open and a host of guards started pouring in, rushing after us with shouted warnings. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but I did think that as long as Ru was holding that artifact, they wouldn’t shoot him. They wouldn’t shoot in this room either, but as soon as we were out, shooting me would become fair game.

The next door, a big metal thing that had not one, but two panels for an access card didn’t open for us. Ru yanked me behind his back, shielding me from possible fire, then he shoved his emergency kit my way and I nearly fumbled it. “Work on the door,” he said, his eyes glowing along with the lines on his skin as he watched the approaching soldiers.

I pulled the flap apart and fished out the device I’d seen him use on the previous door, stumped on what I was supposed to do with it. There were slots on the top that looked like you could feed wires into them, and I recalled that was what I’d seen Ru do earlier. I crawled on my knees to the nearest access panel, prying it free with a sharp metal point attached to Ru’s lock-picking device. Ru set the cylinder down on its flattened top (or bottom) right in front of me. Shielding me from the advancing soldiers.

Daring to lift my head to look over my shoulder, I flinched at the sight of Ru ducking down his head and charging straight into the dozens of advancing men, ramming the first ones with his pronged horns. There were shouts, the boom of at least three guns going off, more shouting, and a deep sub-harmonic roar from Ru.

Yanking wires free willy-nilly, I stuffed them into the slot at the top of the device, hoping for the best. Then I pulled free my own gun, flicked off the safety, and aimed. I worried when the mass of people piled on top of Ru, scared to shoot with him in the center of all of that. At some point, I saw only a bit of horn, with a human hanging off it, and the sharp bit of his tail flicking around.

Like the soldiers, I didn’t much like shooting my gun in a fairly confined space like this, especially not one stacked with boxes of unknown things. I still squeezed off three rounds, wounding at least two of the soldiers on top of Ru. He roared again, the whole pile shivered, and then they started falling, sluicing off him like water.

The fight had seemed impossible one moment, and I’d felt my heart sinking, images of Ru on a lab table being dissected already flashing through my mind. But he was alright, he’d shaken off most of his assailants and now he turned the tables on them. Dodging swings, dealing blows of his own with impressive results. His tail was a weapon to be reckoned with as he ham-stringed people left and right with the sharp, pointed blade on the tip.

A beeping sound alerted me that the device had done something and I shifted my eyes from the fight back to it. Green was glowing from the small screen and I hoped that was a good thing, but I wasn’t sure. I unhooked the cables anyway and hurriedly crawled to the other door panel, rushing to rip it off and get to the wires there.

“That all you got?” Ru was taunting, a laugh in the tone of his voice that came across, even if the actual words did not. I jammed wires into the device, watching Ru from the corner of my eyes. He was standing closer to me now, his legs braced, his arms spread. Somehow, the Santa hat was still on his head, and I couldn’t help but think that this was probably the strangest, but best Christmas I’d had in a long while.

I started to cheer when I noticed that the metal door I was working on started to open. I could see it part down the middle. Then my joy turned to abject horror when I noticed the claws reaching through the gap for grip, and heard the groan of the metal. Two clawed, hairy feet were braced on the floor, and when I looked up, and up, I saw the head of a wolf peering down at me.

So I screamed, I wasn’t ashamed to admit that. I screamed really loud at the sight of a wolf on two legs, yanking the doorway open like it was butter. My training hadn’t included this, I was a pilot, not a fighter, not without my jet at least.

I raised my gun at the creature, my finger already squeezing around the trigger. The first shot went wide as my hand shook too much, then the monstrous creature was through and his clawed hand gripped the gun, crushing it from my fingers. Ru was slashing over my head with his tail the next moment, the barbed tip slicing across the wolf-man’s thick bicep. He instinctively loosened his grip on my hand and I yanked back my fingers, trying to scramble out of range.

Ru’s arm closed around my middle, trying to yank me back, but this wolf-man wasn’t bothered by the slash, reacting fast. I froze, panting in fear when the glowing barrel of some kind of Sci-Fi-looking gun similar to Ru’s, was stuck in my face. Ru froze as well, his chest rumbling with a growl against my back, our eyes on the gun.

“What do you want, Dragnell?” Ru said, and the wolf-man tilted his head to the side, cocking his ears just like a dog would. Aliens were on this base, working with this strange, shadowy government agency I had never heard of before. This was much worse than I thought it was, and we were completely cut off from our only backup right now. Pike was waiting at his vantage point, ready to provide us cover when we ran for Ru’s ship, this was beyond a one-man rescue anyway from the looks of it.

The wolf-man curled his lips, exposing sharp fangs in his snout, “I don’t know what species you are, intruder, but you are not welcome here.” I could understand word for word what the wolf-man had said in deep growls and snarls, and my skin crawled at how eerie that was. Unlike Ru, who at least spoke what was clearly a language, this alien sounded entirely like an animal.

“And I am trying to leave,” Ru snapped, “So if you’ll just get out of our way, we’ll be going.” He rose to his feet, taking me up with him, but my eyes never left the barrel of that gun as it stayed aimed straight at my face. Somehow, I had a feeling the wolf-man knew aiming it at me was a bigger deterrent for Ru. I tried to feel flattered about that instead of scared out of my mind.

“Don’t fucking move,” the creature growled at us, and we froze in place. From the corners of my eyes, I could see that some soldiers were picking themselves off the floor, but more worrisome, the jellyfish alien and two humans in their hazmat suits were approaching us too. Were they going to put Ru in shackles and take him to a lab now? It sounded like the wolf alien just wanted us to leave…

“We’ll take the artifact, thanks for the assist Roavar,” one of the humans said, nervously pointing at the artifact still standing on one of its flat sides near the door. So close, yet so far. I expected the alien to agree, allowing the two scientists to take the thing, but he growled as soon as the human man leaned in to grab it. The human scuttled backward and even through the face plate of his hazmat suit I could see how scared he was of the wolf-man. That made two of us.

“This way,” Roavar said, shrugging his huge, shaggy head in the direction of the door he’d brutally pulled open. He picked up the artifact under one arm, and while Ru had made that look easy, this guy made it look like he really was holding a football, half the artifact seemed to disappear into the fur covering his side. He instructed a soldier to pick up Ru’s bag and then we were all escorted deeper into the facility.

When I saw that the jellyfish creature was slithering along behind us I didn’t think I’d ever see daylight again. Clamping my fingers around Ru’s hand, I tried to draw strength from his company. He was with me, we’d figure this out, we had to. I still had so much to tell him, he didn’t even know what I’d decided.

Chapter 13

Ru’ol

Sitting inside a bare concrete room with my hands chained to a table was not how I had planned for this to go. At least they hadn’t split us up, yet. Stella was sitting in a chair next to me, her hands locked in handcuffs but not chained to the bolted-down table. Her ski mask was a black bit of fabric lying in the center, her pale features exposed. Not good, this was exactly why I hadn’t wanted her to come with me.

This was all my fault, I should have just stood down when Yatzel demanded I hand over this artifact to him. If I hadn’t had the stupid urge to always stand up to those thinking they could bully others to do what they wanted… Then my chest squeezed painfully for another reason, if I hadn’t fallen down this strange path, I would never have met Stella.

There was a glass panel in the wall across from us, through it I could see the artifact standing on its side, my bag right next to it, and Stella’s black backpack on top of mine. Beyond our things, the Dragnell was standing, gesturing angrily with his clawed hands, his fur standing on end while he argued with the Praxidar. I could guess what they were arguing about, and I was fairly certain I knew who was winning this fight.

I wasn’t all that familiar with either species, but the Kertinillian Army had dealings, mostly hostile, with the UAR in my time. With them being from the Alpha Quadrant, where I’d somehow ended up, and my species from the Zeta Quadrant, we were a long way apart. As such, most of our interactions had just been minor scuffles and trade route disputes.

What I did know about the UAR, was that the Praxidar were the brains of the operation and they were very limited in number, less than a million all in all. While the Dragnell were war-like, totalitarian, with an oppressive view on genes and bloodlines. The Humans in that equation, as far as our intelligence told us, were the drones, the workers. Supplying the labor for their quadrant, selling their people for currency and power.

In this situation, I was not at all surprised when the Praxidar, whose frail and defenseless body was no match for the Dragnell, just conceded. Whatever he’d just agreed to, I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, but it was somehow easier to deal with a big aggressive male than a creature so alien it couldn’t even blink.