-Chapter 5: A Series of Dismal Days


Little Steve was spending his casual Thursday afternoon sat on the sofa of his humble living room. Mild white light, projected from the overcast sky, shone through the windows and was absorbed by his black sweater and slacks.

The short man's focus was directed towards the news broadcasts playing on his TV and his laptop rested quietly on the coffee table. Releasing a sigh, he retrieved a compact phone from his pocket and dialed in a number on its touch screen before raising the device to his ear. After a few moments, "Hello it's uh 'Dylan Monroe'. Is that you Beth?"

A short pause ensued and was subsequently broken as a feminine voice responded "I don't know who you expected to be answering my phone other than me but anyway. Alright 'Dylan' how are you doing you insidious little fucker?"

Steve, or "Dylan" as he said, lent forward and returned "Not too bad mate. Not too bad. Yourself?"

"Yeah I'm sparky, the recent homicides are pretty good for business. I hear you might have a little something something for me on that matter."

"I do. I'm sendin' it over now to air on the news this evenin'." The man propped the phone on his shoulder, fingers tapping away on his laptop's pressure keypad as he spoke. " 'Ave a dekko on it yourself then push the envelope."

"Sure thing. I can always rely on you guys for a good story."

"You know it baby."

"Screw you."

Little Steve finished typing and took hold of his mobile once again. "The love traveling over the line is palpable." His words were intentionally embroidered with sarcasm.

"They do say love and hate are almost indistinguishable when transmitted via radio wave. Now, I'm sure your gift will keep me occupied, see you around."

"Bye."

Beth hung up, leaving Steve in peaceful silence as before. He stretched, stowed away his phone and stood up. The passing of 10 minutes had him sitting down once more with a plate of salad on his lap and a can of beer on the coffee table. One might wonder if the table was ever actually used for coffee.

Moments later, Daws was sitting beside him, also wearing a sweater but with beige slacks rather than black ones. He placed a cup of tea onto the coffee table; although it wasn't coffee at least it was non-alcoholic. For a short while he simply stared at Steve, arms crossed, as the man picked at his salad. The sound of news continued playing across in the background. Daws eventually stated "You look dog shit tired."

The man finished chewing and swallowed before providing a simple response. "Long day."

"Doing what exactly?"

"Dealin' drugs and tradin' arms."

Daws furrowed his brow.

Little Steve noticed this and spoke "Money's gotta come from somewhere. Don't like it, but tis the truth."

"Indeed."

"How about you?"

"Been programming a video game."

The shorter man choked on some lettuce, spitting it out onto his plate while coughing hoarsely and wiping his mouth. "You fuckin' what?"

The moustached man turned his head forward and cocked it to the side in gesture. "My money's gotta come from somewhere."

"Indeed." stated with a tone that indicated a "touché" was in order. Steve looked at the man he called "Stache" for a few moments. Good for 'im, certainly a creative way o' payin' the bills... Wish I could do somethin' like that. He then turned forward also, philosophical mood quickly coming to an end.

"So did you call your friend at the BBC?"

"Yeah, now I'm just waitin' to see the result. Good thinkin' on that by the way."

"Cheers. I'm glad I can bring something useful to the table."

"On top of the extra dosh." The man began picking up pieces of salad once more.

"That too."

A general sound of fumbling was heard as Dave entered into the sitting room from the corridor, having just arrived home. His trench coat waved from side to side slightly as he closed the door.

Daws turned his head back and questioned "So where have you been going all these afternoons?"

" 'Elpin' aroun' The Tight Wallet." He paused for a moment. "Gotta be useful inbetween jobs somehow, innit?"

Both Little Steve and Daws responded "Indeed."


Afternoon had passed to evening. Joanna was also lounging around at home. She sat in her computer chair, feet upon desk, reading a book on her pad titled "The Irrepressible Bastard". Surrounding her was relative darkness, the only light being the bluey-white of her handheld device and laptop, on which the news was playing at low volume. She was hardly concentrating on it, however, captivated instead by the content of her read.

The woman's focus was momentarily broken by the quiet but jarring sound of gun shots from her computer. Her eyes flicked from the pad to the screen briefly before returning to the former. In a few moments they flicked back to the screen and she lowered the item in her hands as she recognised the visual presence of herself and her squad mates.

The pad was dropped carelessly on her desk, her legs hastily lowered to ground level and the laptop volume increased as the screen gained her full attention.

Joanna's own voice could be heard quietly but clearly. "Yohannes, wipe your finger prints off of that shotgun with a cloth, and place it in the dead man's arms. Then let's get the fuck out of here."

The woman sat in shock as she watched the video until its conclusion after the flat door was closed. She then appeared to stare through the screen, artificial eyes wavering from side to side slightly until she closed them, took a deep breath and exclaimed "You're fucking kidding me aren't you? You're abso-fucking-lutely kidding me, you diabolical, piece of shit-fucking excuse for a laptop. You're surely shitting me, because there is no fucking way I could possibly be framing a murder right now on public TV! Fuck!" Her profanity had steadily increased in volume as she spoke, eventually resounding into the adjacent rooms.

The woman remained static, breathing heavily and continuing to watch the display. A short delay preceded the occurrence of a knock at the bedroom door. To which she reacted "Come in Leyo."

Upon this prompt, the portal in the wall to Joanna's right was opened to reveal a huge, eight and a half foot tall, brown scaled sangheili. "Jo?" He stated with timidity. "You only dive into rants of swearing when you're really pissed. What's made you so?" Like many of his kind, his voice was deep and sonorous. Like many also, he had to duck to enter through the room's doorway; though he was able to straighten his posture once inside.

Joanna pressed mute on her laptop and turned to the individual identified as "Leyo". "Uhh. You know that op I was telling you about where that woman tried to shit me up?"

"Yeah."

"Well the fuckers who used to own the place must've bugged it, cause now me and my team are god damn headline news."

Leyo's gaze wandered to the silent, moving pictures of the screen temporarily before returning to Joanna with an air of concern. After holding her own... enthused gaze for a few moments, he focused his attention back on the laptop and strode over to it. This prompted the woman to unmute it and rewind the footage to the section in question. The broad shouldered sangheili observed it from start to finish without a word, near black eyes flickering back and forth across the moving images. "Damn. You got caught unlucky there." he stated upon their conclusion before craning his neck to Joanna. His expression was concerned and his uncovered-head down as he continued "At the very least though, your face was not revealed nor was your name."

The woman quieted the laptop once more. "No but there'll still be an investigation by the high ups, and I don't need some pompous-arse investigator giving me grief over this sort of shit."

"Hmmm."

Joanna's earlier anger had been replaced by a feeling of dejection, her hand rubbing along her forehead and skimming the boundaries of her presently disorganised, spiky hair.

Leyo observed this for a few moments with a slightly upset frown set into his features. "Do you want me to give you one of my massages, Jo?"

"Fuck me that'd be perfect." The woman's hand left her forehead and her glowing eyes looked up at him. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all." Leyo continued somewhat sheepishly "Anything to see you buzz with energy again." Accompanying this was a tightening together of the mandibles that formed a smile.

Joanna gave an appreciative smile of her own, light emitting eyes locking with light consuming ones for a few moments. Then the tall but comparatively small woman lent forward in her chair, rested her forearms on her legs, joined her hands between them and closed her eyes.

The much larger sangheili stepped behind her chair and lay huge hands on top of her shoulders before beginning his work.


"Do you admit to the murder of one 'Louisa Griffiths'?"

"Yes, I admit to the self-defense killing of Louisa Griffiths."

"Hmm, and you admit to ordering one of your subordinates to plant his weapon on the woman's deceased husband 'Pete Griffiths'?"

"I do yes." There was a pause. Joanna had come into work the next day wearing a black suit, brown tie and white shirt in anticipation of the investigative questioning that she now found herself in. Her hair was gelled backwards and tucked behind her ears in a professional but ultimately nondescript style.

"Why did you do this?" The female investigator sat on the opposite side of a white metal table from Joanna.

"To make it look like they shot each other."

"So you are stating that you framed the husband for Mrs Griffiths' murder."

"Yes."

Another pause ensued. "What compelled you to frame him?"

Joanna lent forwards, mounting her elbows on the table. "Because witnesses and journalists would have otherwise gotten real suspicious about the deaths and wasted a massive amount of time trying to reveal some kind of big 'conspiracy'. When in reality there's no conspiracy. The lady shot someone, shot at me and my team and in self-defense we shot her back. We weren't there illegally: we had the land lord's permission to search any flats we needed to. And if my team was incriminated and money was flushed down the toilet taking us to court then there's no way we would fall foul. Since, as I shall once again restate, we acted in self-defense as the camera footage, and other evidence I'm sure has been made available to you, shows." The woman shifted back to a reclined position and crossed her arms. "So the short version is that I framed the husband 'cause I felt "compelled" to skip over all that BS."

The investigator was, to similar degrees, both impressed and offended by her shameless honesty. Not sure which emotion to express she simply defaulted to a neutral countenance and stated "Well... I believe that is enough for this conference. We may wish to speak to you again. Thank you for attending, Ms Joannan. You may leave now."

Ms Joannan stood up, pushed her chair in and, without preamble, departed from the room. Once outside with a door between her and her questioner, she shrugged her shoulders and spoke simply "Well this is all a colossal piss-take, where's me fackin' tea."


Ambassador Pulam was in his office at 1:17am... sitting. His chair was angled parallel to his desk, his arms lay on their arm rests, his posture was slumped. He wore a semi-grimace that crept up a single side of his face, leaving him with a sort of lopsided snarl.

In such a way he just sat, waiting.

Why must my associates always come to me with bad news? First the human's secret, so-called, operations are revealed, and now Dollas wishes to impart on me some form or another of civil issue. Do my fellow patriots not feel it pertinent to inform me of good news? Surely not all in these depressing times is so contemptibly abhorrent, or maybe it is and I simply have yet to accustom myself to it. Hmm, I have much contemplation ahead.

A chime sounded from the Ambassador's desk. The worn out sangheili absent-mindedly pressed a button on the small, sleek wrist mounted computer he came adorned with at all times. In response, the comms-screen on the wall opposite retracted into a slot in the ceiling, and his office door opened behind it, revealing the alien Dollas Morfum.

Pulam's eyes did not falter from their vacant state as he addressed the room's new occupant "Dollas, you bear ill tidings in this deplorable hour of the morning?"

"Unfortunately so, Ambassador." The taut official still stood in the doorway, arms joined military style behind his back. "May I step in?"

The higher ranking sangheili's grimace disappeared in favour of an expression of intense neutrality. He turned his head towards the inter-agency liaison, eyes flicking up and down his figure. "No. I would really rather sit here while you stand blocking my doorway and wholly breaching the confidentiality provided by my office – of course you may step in." Following the sarcastic nature of his words, the Ambassador casually redirected his gaze forwards in a dismissive manner.

Dollas retained a respectable silence as he compliantly entered the room.

"What is it that has gone wrong now?"

"Well, brother, I'll get straight to the point-"

Pulam took advantage of his position of superiority by interrupting with a derisive snort. He then continued himself "By stating that you'll get straight to the point you are delaying the introduction of the point you wish to state."

"My apologies." The liaison took a deep inhalation and dropped his arms from behind his back. "Our citizen tracking department has identified a sharp increase in the rate of sangheilian disappearances."

"Disappearances?" Dollas had captured the ambassador's attention more fully now: Pulam rotated his head to look at his informer, and straightened from his slumped position.

"Sangheili are present one day and are simply gone the next, without a trace to indicate where they have vanished to, what has happened to them and what is the cause. There have been too many in too short a time for it to simply be a coincidence."

A right hand was raised to a chin as the ambassador pondered the meal of information presented on a platter before him. Several seconds passed in thought before he pursued his usual line of enquiry for such matters. "What is being done in investigation of the issue?"

"Well, the men are researching each missing individual and attempting to find possible links between them, cross referencing I believe the humans call it. It seems that many of them have disappeared in groups, leaving behind few who knew the individuals, and thus leaving few sources of information for us to probe.

Waving his right hand in desperation, the ambassador questioned "Is there not more that we can do at this moment?"

"I fear not. As I said, there is insufficient evidence presently available as to what exactly is going on. We cannot draw any reasonable conclusions yet. The disappearances were only fully registered a few hours ago."

Exhaling a deep breath and giving his neck a roll the ambassador questioned "Tell me, what is the human phrase that references their testicles in such a way that forms a curse?" His head now focused back on Morfum, tilted to one side.

Dollas looked downwards momentarily prior to returning his gaze to Rasa. In a simple, innocently pronounced statement, he spoke "Bollocks?"

In a quick motion the ambassador snapped two of his four fingers and expressed a look of success. "Yes! Bollocks! I say bollocks to this situation and this awful time of day, and bollocks to these disappearances!" Invigorated by his unrestrained dissemination of frustration, Rasa spun on his computer chair until he faced towards the other sangheili. Leaning forward, elbows on knees and hands clasped together beneath his chin, he stated with a more energised tone than before "Dearest Dollas, inform the NDA on these findings in case they have not yet noticed the disappearances themselves." One of his eyebrow ridges raised in thought. "And tell Joanna that I wish to speak to her."

"You mean Agent Joannan, sir?"

"Yes, I do."

"It will be done, Ambassador." The liaison of lanky frame placed his right hand over his right heart and partook in a bow, politely excusing himself.

In response, Pulam gave a nod towards the official, permitting him to leave. Without further adieu, he did so, leaving the ambassador with no company but his own.

Again, he sat, staring after Dollas. Before shaking his head and leaning back. I should swear more frequently, the release of tension is exhilarating.


"I fuckin' 'ate Sundays."

"Oh, you fucking ' 'ate' them did you, you greedy bastard."

"Don't take the piss outta me. You know what I mean."

"Yeah. I hate Sundays too."

The three boys – Steve, Dave and Daws – had meandered to The Tight Wallet with the intention of wasting away the late hours of the evening through the consumption of alcohol and biscuits. The internal decor was pleasant as usual, and the men were immersed in the environment's warm orange glow, as well as the sound of other low volume chats from the pub's various inhabitants.

Though internally pleasant, the exterior of the pub was much to the contrary: heavy rain bombarded the roof above and ground surrounding, producing a drone of twangy tips, taps and bops that was pervasive enough to be audible while indoors. The boys had passed through this dismal weather in order to reach the pub, and were removing their water saturated trench coats and hats as they sat down around a small white-cloth covered table.

"Oi Jobe, the usual yeah?" Little Steve's commanding yet unimposing voice called to the bartender.

"Yes governor."

"So what's on the agenda of conversation tonight?" again Little Steve.

"How about past encounters with the elusive opposite sex?"

"Daws, I'm surprised by your choice of topic. You're more of a scoundrel than you let on; although I guess your moustache gives away your deviosity."

"Is 'deviosity' a word?"

"It fuckin' is now."

An hour later...

"So I walks up to the lady, bearin' in mind we're next to a pub, and I just make a casual suggestion. Nothing sexual, nothing risqué. Just ask whether she wants to pop inside and get a drink. And the bitch turns 'round and pulls a gun on me!"

"What the fuck?"

"She pulls a gun on me, a magnum. Now," the short man's expression becomes placating and he extended a hand, palm flat, in submission, the other hand holding a Denny's, "I believe that allowing the good citizens of Britain to wield firearms is a good idea, but fuckin' 'ell? Pulling one out on random strangers is just plain irresponsible."

"She probably had anger issues, or a piss-poor day." Daws spoke his reasoning before nursing his brew of the cheap stuff.

"Yeah, but you know what? She was a tall cow, and I think that when a woman's taller than you it makes her feel all superior. Like she can fuck you about however she wants, i.e. by pulling a god damn gun on you."

A large gulp of liquor swilled down Dave's throat before he began "Yeah. Pullin's never been so fuckin' dangerous."

"I hear that."

It likely went unbeknownst to the three, as many people pass in and out of the building with frequency, but four somewhat conspicuous individuals had just entered. They were each tall, 7 and a half feet and up. They were each cloaked, dark black cloaks stricken with glistening droplets of water from the bleak outer conditions. They each had concealed faces, and three toed feet which produced quiet thumps accompanied by quiet creaks with every step they took across the burnished wooden floors.

The bartender was pouring a glass of whiskey for someone of hard stomach when he saw the sinister entities entering the pub in the corner of his vision. His head tilted upwards to take them in more fully.

Little Steve was just taking a bite into a dry biscuit he had bought, oblivious to the new entrants.

And then they paused. Time slowed as they raised their arms in a backwards motion and threw off their cloaks. A palpable array of water globules slid off of the garments as they flew behind the beings, shifting shape, refracting light with little sparkles and splattering with wet plops as they hit obstacles. The illumination of the room, now unobstructed from the visitors, shone across their bodies to reveal gleaming purplish ebony armour with rounded curves across the shoulders, elbows and other joints... and gleaming violet weapons that emanated hollow taps and sounds of fumbling as they were drawn from their holsters... and viciously sharp teeth aligned across four, face-mounted, mandibular appendages.

An ominous electronic whine was released as the weapons' safeties were switched off.

The bartender through away his glass and bottle and dived to the floor.

Little Steve noticed his comrades looking behind him in shock and turned himself, biscuit crumbling away half in his mouth and half out, to witness the sudden discharging of purple-blue bolts of plasma and sharpened, glowing needles from the sangheilis' weapons.

Screaming, shouting and crackles of burning energy quickly built up into a cacophony of raucous chaos. The four sangheili swept their fire across the various civilians in the room; some dived for cover, others pulled tables down in front of them, more took direct hits from the ferocious onslaught of gunfire, falling to the floor in pools of blood with grievous injuries marking their carcasses.

Steve stood up from his chair and leapt towards the solid wooden benches that composed the booths near the pub's outermost walls. He hit the ground hard, bruising his side and splitting the biscuit in his mouth into two. In relative safety – if with splinters of wood and shards of glass raining down around him – he removed his own concealed weapon from the back of his trousers beneath his sweater, a hammerhead magnum: named as such for the sideways protrusions on its sides that gave it a resemblance to the shark of the same name.

The gunfire was distracted from Steve's location by the room's other targets, to the misfortune of the gunmen. For very quickly, the middle-aged man rose from behind the bench with his magnum trained in the direction of the shooters, crunching down on his food. They had spread out more now, and one of them was only about 7 metres from the short man's location. This sangheili's shield's flickered as four high calibre, armour piercing rounds were ejected one by one from the hammerhead's muzzle, and into his side. Each one dissipated into a mist of sparks as the shield deflected them away and splintered them into fragments. As you can imagine, the sangheili turned his attention towards Steve, who had now finished his rich treat. This redirection of fire left him open to a shotgun blast from the bartender, that had just emerged from behind the counter again. The pellets tore through the alien's shields entirely and ripped apart the facial flesh behind in a spray of purple blood. Lifeless, the creature's body was propelled to the floor by the force of the projectiles.

All fire then focused upon the counter, tearing it apart in a spray of dust, alcohol and fragments of glass; though the man behind it had ducked away before the assault landed. Dave then cropped up from the end of the counter, face locked into a cold and neutral stare as he directed his own shotgun towards another sangheili. A single blast knocked out the beast's shields. Dave then ducked away again, in anticipation of the return fire.

More chaos was added to the mix as a Molotov cocktail spun out from a darkened booth in the corner. A flicker of Daws' moustache could be seen as he crouched away again from the throw. The cocktail broke across the shieldless sangheili and quickly spread a gout of flame across its abdomen and lower body. In the ensuing pain, the beast screamed words of sangheilian as it writhed in the flame, attempting to extinguish itself. A single hammerhead round then slammed through the front of its head where its mouth was exposed, and was swallowed up in it before propelling purple viscera back out of the hole it created.

The bartender had moved to a less gunfire covered area of the counter and stood up to take a shot. He did, though it was only glancing. Unfortunately, fate had dealt him a bad hand of cards as a high energy yield explosive known colloquially as the "plasma grenade" came sailing towards him. A pathetic attempt was made to bat the lethal object away with the shotgun, this merely ended up deflecting it into the floor next to him. The bartender, along with a fairly large section of space he had occupied, was very soon no more.

In the tinnitus of the explosion one might be able to distinguish a shouting of "Jobe man!" but one most certainly could not identify its source.

The two remaining aggressors spoke quickly to each in other in guttural but frantic sangheilian as one sprayed bolts of suppressive fire in a wide arc across Steve and Dave, while the other fired upon those hiding on the opposite side of the room. Then, the fire stopped. Four plasma grenades were removed, all were lit, two were thrown upwards to land on the two sangheili corpses, the others were held in four fingered hands and ran by their holders into suicidal charges towards both sides of the room.

Steve's side had much to be thankful for as they managed to avert the same fate that Jobe had suffered: while Little Steve's hammerhead rounds failed to hit the sangheili's grenade, Dave's shotgun spread managed to do the job, detonating it prematurely before he of little self-preservation had reached them.

The opposite side could not avert such a fate, being engulfed in an explosion of blue along with the aggressor who held the grenade. And that was that... In an instant, the building fell quiet once more. Steve, rattled, stood up straight from his bench, gun quivering slightly in his hands as it continued to aim across the room. His face was covered in a layer of sawdust, and his mouth hung open as he tried to inhale as much air as possible.

Dave's brown hair was filled with similar dust as well as large splinters of wood and shards of glass. He lowered his smoking shotgun and turned his gaze across to Steve, eyes concerned and mouth similarly held open.

21 dead civilians lay with their bodies in various different states of mutilation. Four civilians crouched in equally extreme states of shell shock behind various protective objects. Three boys remained alive.

The pub was absolutely desolated. The counter was a charred, broken and molten wreck with alcohol pooling around it from smashed bottles. Scorch marks, pink shards, glass shards and wooden shards were littered all over the room among corpses and spreads of blood.

But alas, the raining outside had stopped, as had the attack of the four alien aggressors. So the only sound left was that of heaving breathing. That was, until Daws spoke up: "Ahh, guys, one of the bastard's nailed me in the arm. Help me out over here."

Dave and Steve uttered "Shit." in unison, before walking towards the corner Daws was recessed in, boots crunching on top of rubble as they went.


-AN

Hello all. I know its been awhile since I last updated but life has been keeping me busy. This chapter is significantly longer than those before it, which I hope you have enjoyed. Also, that was the first shootout scene I have ever written. I'd like to here people's feedback on what I did well and what I could improve. I'm always open to constructive criticism.

30/12/13 Update: Fixed some word repetitions, made a few paragraphs a bit more concise and fixed some typos. Also, I realised that, in previous chapters, the opposite of Rasa's desk is a comms-screen and in this one it suddenly became a door instead. So I rectified this as well.

Thank you for reading and hopefully enjoying,

RB