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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/IneenAldrop on 2024-11-02 21:14:35+00:00.
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HSTM: Abduction-Chapter 30 ‘What Ends is New Beginnings’
Paulie saw nothing for a few moments and so he used that time to dash forwards with superhuman speed, the lower gravity of the moon did nothing to alleviate his mass though and he slammed into the far wall with enough force to crack the wall under his shoulder.
“Ow, shit!” He swore as he rebounded off it and to the floor, shoulder now bruised from the impact. Losing his footing probably saved his life though as another triple burst of those bright plasma bursts hissed through the space his upper torso had only just vacated.
He rolled back into cover and was rewarded with the sounds of the thug cursing in long hissing gurgles before another shout. “Arbiters! Get out here …!” The alien criminal yelled a word that Paulie’s translator worm didn’t complete. There was the sound of scuffling and Paulie leaned around the pillar he was using for cover to see two more dark shapes duck into the cover of the overturned furniture.
Paulie took aim with the gun in his hand and then realised it didn’t seem to have a trigger mechanism like he had been expecting. He swore silently, of course not. Why would an alien gun be built like one with which he was familiar? He slipped back into cover and looked over the gun in his hand, it was small. About the size of a nine-millimeter pistol. The outside was a dark matte blue metallic color, a series of small dials and buttons on the top and back with what could have been a side mounted magazine or power pack.
While he looked at it dumbly he jumped as another sound broke the relative silence. A series of much louder cracks, like something splitting the air itself. A few more of those ear popping cracks were followed by the sound of something screeching in pain for a moment. Then another crack and the pained cries fell still.
“Zalc! The dumb judy-cator shot Tarks!” Another series of loud cracks and the sound of scuffling. At least one of the goons in the hall turned their head towards the sound and Paulie used the distraction to rush the other two. The two that were still looking yelled, one of them aiming their weapon his way. But Paulie had been expecting that.
With a yell he bounded up and to the right, kicking off the floor in the moon’s lower gravity and using the wall to rebound up and over the shots they loosed in his direction. He felt the wall crack under the force of the impact and for a split second he thought that he might end up barreling straight through it. But then his momentum was arrested and he rebounded off the newly cratered wall and back towards the ground. Faster than the hostile aliens could react, he was in front of them.
He used his momentum to kick the thick synthetic looking table they were using as cover out of the way. The motion sent it spiraling away, along with the slight looking alien that had been using it as cover. He threw the seemingly useless pistol as hard as he could at the leftmost alien, a sort of shrimplike creature with large compound eyes and pale yellow flesh. It went down hard in a spray of shattered chiton fragments and orange blood, the gun having left his fingers with seemingly lethal velocity.
The distracted alien tried to turn towards him as the other alien landed in a heap on the other side of the hall under the heavy table, but they only succeeded in turning halfway before Paulie had drawn the knife and Slashed it across the small pink otter-like alien’s face. It fell back with a scream that made Paulie shudder slightly even in his adrenaline fueled state. He leapt over the flailing alien and to the side of the door the commotion seemed to be coming from.
Paulie stopped and sucked in several shuddering breaths. With a moment to think, he did so. What the ever-loving shit was he doing? He wasn’t a police officer. He wasn’t a soldier, mercenary or even a fighter. He had been in lots of fights in his youth, yeah, but nothing like this. Nothing with guns or these stakes.
He could die, he would die if he wasn’t careful. He had resisted the plasma blasts before. But something told him that they had not been trying to kill him outright before. He didn’t think he was going to get off as easily this time.
Paulie held the knife at the ready, filtering out the sounds of the still screeching alien writhing on the floor behind him. No, he needed to keep his wits about him as he moved inexorably towards the target of his current ambition. Another series of loud cracks split the air as he peeked through the doorway only to see a withering barrage of back and forth fire. The bright blobs of plasma shots came from a couple of Mack’s attackers.
The return fire from further in the room was sporadic, the bright blue lines of the shots like ghostly contrails that seemed to fizz and pop in the air like lightning. At least one of the two remaining thugs saw him as he peeked inside. The strange ant-like creature opened its mandibles in a loud chittering alarm as it brought its gun to bear on him.
He had two options, both bad. He could duck out of the line of sight of the alien, giving them time to ready for his eventual move. Or he could just dive in, trusting his speed and agility to see him victorious.
Paulie didn’t even have to think it over, his friend was in danger and so he reacted.
Paulie dove into the room with a loud shout, “Look out you weird buggers!”
Maybe not his most impressive insult, but it did the trick as it caused the nearer alien to flinch slightly. This marginally threw off their aim, combined with Paulie’s much stronger angle of attack and reaction time it allowed him to just stay ahead of the plasmafire that was directed at him. The bolts flying wide to blast smouldering craters out of the wall behind him.
Each loud thunderclap of collapsing plasma containment fields struck him like a physical blow, the power in each of those shots would have put down a moose he imagined. Much less he himself. He hit the floor hard and coughed as the air was knocked from his lungs. But it was just enough.
He lined up and threw the knife that had been in his hand at the nearby insectoid, and his aim was true. All that knife throwing he had played around with in his youth had finally come in handy it seemed as the blade sailed end over end to bury itself up to the handle in the ant alien’s neck. All six of its arms reached up to grasp at the blade as it gurgled, a wash of bright orange blood spilling from its mandibles as the thing dropped its gun and keeled over, twitching and gurgling.
The other alien seemed to have noticed him now, and he tensed as the wide barrel of the gun it held swung in his direction. He took a breath, the air screaming into his abused lungs as he got his arms down and under him. The effort to push himself up and out of the way seemed almost impossible to muster, but he managed to just dodge the first bolt of brilliant purple light as it simmered right under his back. Singing the shoulders of his shirt and causing a line of white hot pain along his shoulder blades.
He could smell burning hair, his own in all likelihood as the thug readjusted for another shot. He was cooked. There was no way he could dodge again, not out in the open like he was, winded and in pain to boot. He would have closed his eyes to avoid seeing his own death coming, but he needn’t have bothered.
A line of coruscating blue energy speared through the small gap in the alien’s eyes. Its far-too-human face turned at once from anger to pained surprise as an explosion of gore painted the wall behind it a deep maroon in color. The many-limbed body flopped to the ground without a twitch and Paulie slowly got to his hands and knees, still unsure as to how he was not dead.
He got to a kneeling position and looked over his shoulder just in time to catch a dark shape flying at him before he was knocked to the floor once more in a heap. It was Jakiikii, the termaxxi had come to his aid in just the nick of time. She was hugging him with all six arms, the woman seemingly beside herself that he had nearly watched him die. He smiled widely as she untangled her arms from his and then offered him two hands which he accepted gladly.
“Thanks for the assist, I don’t think I would have made it otherwise.” She nodded as he groaned and shrugged his scorched shoulders, her face serious despite his words.
She rushed around him after a moment and he followed her, “Mack! Oh, Mack! Are you okay?!” She cried out as she moved to the back of the room and through a badly scorched doorway, the mortar still smoking from the carbonised scarring across its surface. He heard her let out a trilling cry and his heart dropped.
Expecting the worst, he followed the distressed alien woman into the back room and stopped. Mack was there, his body lying on the floor amid a small puddle of bright blue fluids that must have been blood. Jakiikii was kneeling by his side, two arms covering her face, two on his still form and two more rubbing together all at once. He swallowed heavily and fell to his knees in shock and horror. He had been too late, he was always too late. It was just …
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