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

Part 6 -From Bad to Worse-

Paulie snorted loudly as he came too, his entire body jerking at once as he spasmed slightly. Panic went through him as he felt he was confined, he yelled aloud and struggled before something cool touched his face and a low hissing brought him back to awareness.

He blinked, and everything was different and the same. He looked down, he was slouched sideways in the same seat he had strapped himself into before the jump and Krissh was standing next to him, one of her hands on the side of his chin as she inspected his condition.

She stepped back as he shook his head to clear it. “Oh, good. You survived. I wasn’t sure that you would make it through the jump as your kind has never been documented as passing through one conscious before.” She stepped away and muttered under her breath, “Not that it hasn’t happened before though.”

He coughed and then reached up with a hand to rub his eyes. “What happened? Was that supposed to happen?” He was confused, one second he had been preparing for the so-called displacement jump and then the next..

He sat up and ripped off the restraints as he tried to stretch out his tensed muscles. But his head scraped the ceiling of the small bridge before he could stand fully. He settled for shaking it out and then turned towards the short alien female. Her face was dark again, the color telling him that she was more amused than stressed.

He pointed at the diminutive reptilian woman and asked in an accusatory tone, “You knew that was going to happen. I know you did, and you didn’t give me any kind of warning at all!” He tried to inject a little hurt into his tone, he wasn’t really all that upset. But he would be damned if he didn’t get at least a cursory description of what the hell he had just experienced. He had a suspicion, but to call it a base hunch would have been an insult to all other hunches. It was more of a speculative guess fueled by his extremely limited knowledge of how physics worked.

She made a gesture he was unfamiliar with, something like a cross between a wave and a snap of her fingers. “I figured you would either make it or you wouldn't. Why inundate your mind with additional stress by explaining the process ahead of time?” He could hear the logic in her hissing barks, but that didn’t really make it any less callous.

He grumbled again. “Well, I would still have liked a warning at least. What the hell was that? Are all jumps like that?” He felt a pang of fear, his claustrophobia only being further exacerbated by the sensation of becoming an infinitely small point.

A small part of his brain had gone wild with fear as he approached it, but he managed to just push it back down through sheer strength of will. But will alone would not protect him from whatever was trying to get through the bridge door to kill them both.

With that thought he turned towards the door. “They have stopped.” He remarked, a bit dumbly.

He saw the female shake her head, the color changing skin around her eyes darkening slightly. “No, they were just caught off guard by the sudden displacement jump. They will be back at it as soon as they can get their stupid little legs under themselves.”

Paulie shuddered again, the lingering memory of the jump grabbing hold of his mind like a dark fog. He stood, nearly banging his head on the low ceiling as he forgot. He felt his pocket, the laser baton was still there as was the red memory crystal in his back pocket. He turned towards the door as it clanged again after a few moments, the pounding resuming once more. He could actually see where the heavy armoured blast doors were beginning to buckle inwards slightly under the ferocious assault.

“By the breath of Naaern, he is persistent. We need to make the next free jump, if only we had a graviton flux conduit handy...” Krissh muttered, her low hissing telling him she was mostly talking to herself.

He didn't rightly care what a graviton flux conduit was, as long as they got out of here and to their next designated jump point. He crawled on his hands and knees over to the computer she sat at, “Hey, how often do we do these jump things?”

Krissh shook her head, “Not nearly fast enough. We should be primed for the next jump in three or four pips.”

Paulie frowned, that wasn’t nearly as helpful as he had been hoping. “What’s a pip?” He asked her, genuinely curious as to her people’s units of measurement.

She glanced at him and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘damn aliens’ before she responded as if explaining something to a particularly dense child. “A pip is one-hundred-and-twenty ticks.” She smiled at that as if everything was cleared up, her needle-like teeth flashing in the lights just overhead.

Now Paulie was even more confused. “What the hell is a tick then? A type of bug?” He knew he was just being antagonistic now, but he hardly cared. He was tired and hungry and frustrated. He wanted to go home and forget this entire awful experience had ever happened, but the chances of that happening were slim to impossible even he had to admit.

Now it was the smaller alien’s turn to throw up her too-long arm in frustration, her injured arm still snug in its sling. “What kind of a question is that?!” He felt a little sorry for antagonising the obviously stressed alien and so raised his hands in an apology.

“I’m just not sure what you mean? How long is a tick compared to, er..” He trailed off and then said, “Can you demonstrate?”

She hesitated and then nodded. She started counting, her words coming out a little faster than seconds would have by about half maybe. “Is that more helpful?” He gave her a simple nod and she shook her head. “Okay, now we should be good to make the next jump in about two pips.”

Now having a basic grasp of just how long that was, Paulie hunched his way back over to the chair he had been at before and strapped himself back down. This time he made sure to tuck his hands into the belt of his slacks. No sense breaking a knuckle by flailing around too much.

The brown alert lights flicked back on and the humming sensation started to build again. He snorted slightly as the thuds on the armoured bridge door took on a more frantic pitch before stopping. They must have realised they were not going to breach the door before the jump and had rushed for cover.

“Get ready, human.” Krissh barked as the electrical pulsing reached a fever pitch and the ship started to twist inwards again.

Even though he was ready for it and had some idea as of what to expect he still screamed in primal terror as the ship was pulled through that infinitely small hole in reality. The sensation was nearly indescribable, it was as if he could feel his entire body becoming compressed. A horrible pressure that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

All at once his vision blacked out and he reawoke slumped in his chair once more. This time he seemed to have at least maintained his upright posture in the chair, though his muscles still seemed to ache slightly.

He placed a hand on his head. “Oh man, that’s a migraine.”

He heard another barking laugh from the smaller alien female. Her bright purple eyes alighting on his own as they made direct eye contact. Once more she gave him a toothy grimace, her own approximation of humor doing little to assuage the small shiver that rolled through him.

Krissh’s stumpy legs kicked the air slightly as she used her good arm to unstrap herself. “Alright, we only need to do that nine or ten more times, then we will be in GGI patrolled space or at a listening outpost.”

Now it was again his turn to ask her, “What outpost? How far does the ship jump each time?” He was surprised himself with the speed with which he had simply accepted the reality that the ship was moving faster than the speed of light. It had always been a thing in science fiction, and now he was living in a fiction that had become a horrible reality. He shook his head as the scaled woman answered him.

“Well, that is highly variable. Displacement jumps are not really known for their accuracy. The larger graviton dump you do the more inaccurate the jump. So generally only very small charges are used in systems in order to prevent displacing the ship inside of a planet or something.” She said it so casually it took Paulie a full ten seconds to realise what she had just said.

He stiffened, “Displace inside a… Hey! What the hell do you mean we could jump inside of a planet? Isn’t there some sort of like gravity well or something to stop that from happening?” Now that he thought about it how was he standing upright in the first place? The ship must have artificial gravity generators, but how the hell..

He raised his hands to his head as the bevy of conflicting thoughts rushed through it. She seemed to either not notice his evident distress or she chose to ignore it. “Well, no. Why would the gravity well of a planet stop a displacement jump?”

The door thudded again, making the pair of them turn to look at it. It had been bulged inwards by this point to an alarming degree, evidence of the furious assault that was being wrought upon its surface on the other side of the door. He gulped audibly as another shuddering impact shook the floor of the ship itself.

He looked to Krissh, “How long till the next jump!?”

She shook her horned head, face paling as she stepped at the readouts. “Not soon enough. Four pips at least, and from the sounds of it Jual will be through that door in less time than that.” She reached into her suit’s side pouch and withdrew the small laser baton she had been holding onto. Rolling it over in her hands she turned to him and gave a sad looking grimace. “Well, I can’t say it was a nice time knowing you. But I am thankful for your help, human..” She paused, “Pawly.” She said, her voice gurgling as she attempted to make the unfamiliar sound.

He smiled as he hefted his own weapon and unstrapped from his too-small chair. “Thank you in turn, Krissh’shanibe.”

The two of them shared a friendly moment before the deck shuddered again and there was a sound like screaming metal as one of the plates was finally stretched past its limit. The door cracking under the assault and leaving a gap large enough for one of the small aliens to worm through into the room should they have wished.

Paulie aimed his laser baton at the door in preparation for just that, but nothing came shimmying through the gap. The dark tear just sat there, terribly silent now after the loud impacts that had brought it into existence.

He crouched down even farther, wary of what might spring through that dark wound to hurt or maim them. After a little longer than he would have otherwise expected something did sail through the hole, a small oblong shaped object that bounced along the metal decking with a sound distinctly ceramic in quality.

Paulie was immediately suspicious, his suspicions being confirmed as Krissh let out an alarmed bark and tried to throw herself away from the foreign object. But it wasn’t fast enough.

The object seemed to glow briefly before a terrific noise filled the room. The concussive blast of it was powerful enough to knock Paulie on his rear and nearly blind his eyes and ears. He clapped his hands to his head in an automatic response, the laser baton dropping from his fingers as he rolled onto his side and passed out.

He didn’t know how long he was out, but it could not have been long as he came too with his hands once more bound and the sound of angry barking filling his ears.

As he tried to sit up he grunted as something blunt hammered into the side of his head with enough force to make him see stars. The bright whizzpopping flashes dancing before his eyes as he lay on his side helplessly. He heard the angry shouting again and he struggled to hear the words through the ringing tinnitus that permeated his mind.

“You can’t just kidnap people and expect them to become your loyal servants, you dumb akoosh!” A female voice shouted, the hisses strangely slurred. There was a deep slapping sound and a barking cry of pain.

Now another voice answered, this one making his fists bunch instinctively as he recognised it as the cruel captain of the ship, Jual. “You don’t get to have an opinion you stupid useless loorm! You are my property! I own you, if I tell you to disrobe and spread your legs for me then I expect you to do it gladly and with my praises on your lying lips.” Another slap, this time followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the deck and a groan.

“Don’t hurt her..” Paulie groaned as he tried to sit upright again only to receive another club to the back of the head that knocked him forwards to the ground.

He was only just able to see Krissh as the small female zen’kkalkian lay on the decking at the larger male’s feet. She was bleeding yellow blood from multiple deep lacerations on her horned head and her purple eyes fluttered as she seemed to drift in and out of consciousness.

Jual turned to the guard next to him and gestured towards the woman. “Dispose of this trash.” The guard nodded and pulled a laser baton before aiming it at the downed woman’s head. Paulie screamed in distress as he tried to rise once more, but as a single crack echoed through the room the hope died in his chest as Krissh’s body jerked and then was still. A small curl of vaporised fluids drifting up from the new hole in her head.

Paulie felt a sob leave his chest and made no effort to hold it back. He was roughly pushed onto his back as the man approached, waddling on his stumpy elephantine legs.

Jual sneered at him, his hissing barks taking on an air of supreme disgust as he grabbed a long spear-like object from the guard next to him. “You on the other hand may still have some value to be extracted. Though you don't need to be alive for me to cash you in, the bone marrow of you apocalypsers is said to have powerful aphrodisiac properties.” Jual chuckled, the sound far from pleasant as the corner of his mouth twisted into a cruel grimace. “You caused me a lot of trouble, you filthy abhorrence. A shot to the head is far better than you deserve.” And he jabbed Paulie with the spear which crackled with electricity as arcs of bright light danced across his chest.

Paulie screamed again, lightning arcs of electricity snapping his muscles taught as the cruel device zapped him with what must have been thousands of volts, the unfettered electricity coursed through his body. The shock didn’t kill him though, it seemed the device was designed to cause pain. Not kill outright.

He sagged as the device was removed and the alien butcher crouched next to his head. “Did you like seeing your little friend die, Urrenian?” Another shock, he spasmed for a moment as the prod was removed again. “You will die slowly, screaming till your vocal chords shatter and your mind is broken into a thousand howling pieces as the pain drags you down into the waiting maw of Naaern.” The spear touched again, and he felt his vision darkening from the pain.

“No, please..” he groaned. Another shock, the darkness creeping closer as the veneer of pain began to overwhelm him.

Cackling hisses followed him as he fell, down.. down.. down. Flashing teeth and rending claws assailed his consciousness as he was rendered down past the point of human endurance. Darkness everlasting consumed him as Paulie’s mind seemed to unravel and he was consumed by that black oblivion.