Another chapter! Enjoy!
-R.R.
They turned and started running, Christopher leading them further into the mechanical labyrinth. Desmond had already lost his sense of direction and reluctantly followed the prawn. Passing hallways, hearing the blaze of the arc gun from behind until they passed through another door, another set of hallways. After a while they'd run fast enough, and turned down several corridors that they could no longer hear steps, or the howl of army men at their backs.
It was an eerie silence, Desmond noticed. His thoughts muddled with adrenaline; nothing but the sounds of their prawn feet hitting the cold metal ground, gills sucking wind. He suspected that it was too quiet, perhaps the men with guns had cornered them, waiting for their approach.
Eventually Christopher stopped them at a closed doorway.
"Our ship should be on the other side of this door. But the humans are most likely guarding it."
Christopher shared a glance with Nik, and lastly on Desmond. The prawn's fingers gripped his gun.
"I'll open the door. You two clear the hallway out. We can sprint for the shuttle."
Desmond briefly shut his eyes before he readjusted his gun to aim. He and Nik waited on opposite sides. They both nodded towards Christopher before he set the door open.
Only a few men in white stood in their way, vaporized by the sudden onslaught. Desmond nearly slipped from the amount of blood and moist human remains. Scrambling, and tumbling into the shuttle after Christopher. Cursing under his breath.
The hatch door shut behind Nik, the engines thrummed alive and the berth released them in free fall.
The thrum of engines quickly followed, instantaneously. None of them said a word to each other, while Christopher took to the controls. Even then, as some sort of alien adrenaline pulsed through his body, it was getting hard for Desmond to breath. Hyperventilating, as fear provided twisting knots somewhere in his gut; the thought of becoming an experiment, of being detained and interrogated relentlessly shadowed above him. It had become death.
As soon as the drop ship thudded back onto solid earth, they darted out and sprinted towards the dark hole; helicopters swarmed the sky behind them, accompanied by beam lights scouring the air and ground in haste. Desmond yelped as one of the beams shot out behind them.
He clambered for the rope and slid down; dark and damp as they jogged and entered the ground hole. A dull boom rocked the tunnel several meters from the entrance. Gravel and dirt trickled down from the tight space. The uneasy, unsettling earth surrounding them shivered all about.
Desmond chittered uncontrollably.
He didn't like the tight space, and how hard it was to navigate. He could barely see Christopher's plated body ahead of him. All the while the air seemed rather thin as they moved, his prawn gills sucking at the air erratically.
"S-stop… I- I need… I can't, breathe…"
He doubled over, used the dirt wall to hold him.
Christopher laid a hand on his shoulder, started cooing. He growled back, swat his hand away and forced himself up. He shook momentarily before he started walking. Gasping between steps, trying to calm his breath but it was difficult to find the right pace.
He had to stop again; Desmond didn't have the breath to protest this time. He merely fell to his knees and slumped over.
The world pressed in on him. The walls, the air; the feeling of his throat and gills as they quivered, until the darkness shut him out completely.
For a while Desmond knew nothing, unconscious and limp. Strangely when he awoke he didn't startle. His antennae flickered briefly; he knew where he was. Home.
"It would have taken us five generations to arrive on the planet. A new home for our future children."
"Why did you leave in the first place?"
"We wanted to colonize other worlds. Ours was getting much too big… You know this already." The clicks were tinged with amusement.
There was a pause. Hesitation; before soft, shy alien words pricked the air.
"I like hearing about it... Tell me about your family."
The adult grunted, didn't say anything; perhaps fiddling with the child in his hands as he contemplated the request.
"I hatched in Jesk'k, a coastal city. Its history is one of much bloodshed, when wars took place between the different colonies. Alphas only partook in alliances with territorial benefits, and at one point whole continents waged wars against the other. But many centuries past the great unification has made it calm. And like many other colonies it has thrived on its own through centuries of peace time.
I had two fathers; both of them shared strong bloodlines in Jesk'k. Each a part of the working caste as engineers."
"You had brothers?"
"Yes."
"What were they like?"
"One was very firm, and the other soft. I did not get along with the firm one often. We were much too alike to agree on anything, thinking we were right and the other wrong."
"Shouldn't alike people enjoy the same things?"
"Personality wise we were both very stubborn, and very opinionated."
"And the soft one?"
"Young and pliable, I only knew him as a child before I left with a handful of our people."
"I remember. You came alone, without your family."
"Yes."
Oliver made a small, trilling noise. Meek sounding, sad almost.
Desmond could hear a shuffling, a soft familiar purr extended into the air. Christopher, as he soothed any fears his boy might have had then; anxieties or worries. It had always sent him reassurance, confidence in the unknown.
"I have you, my Vrrah-jek."
Desmond could hear his child chirping then, imagining those wide eyes searching into Christopher's face, or perhaps Oliver's.
Oliver's voice joined briefly in a purr, picking up Theo.
"As long as we're together."
They didn't know he'd been awake. And so far Desmond would rather keep it that way. He felt tired, weak; more so from the implications of the night's activities, and what they meant. It wasn't so much a conscious stream of thought that wore him down. He'd ignored it, ignored repeating that it was really over for him. That there was no way out of his body; its sensations, its consequences and mental 'drag'. The weight of it just seemed to sit heavily on his head, as though an elephant might have sat on his chest.
He thought about trying to get more sleep, until the alarms started roaring. He sat straight up, adding to Christopher's startle along with his son. It only took a moment before Theo started screeching his head off.
They could hear the sound of the heavy barricade doors opening. While Christopher had decided to avoid gang territory, they resided in an area somewhat bordering the edges of their tent community; just so, but not completely to the outsides. Thick enough that it was still considered suicidal for an MNU operative to wander on his lonesome, or with an entourage of four other men.
Oliver was trying to sooth his nervous son, while Christopher stood up and out of the tent. Reluctantly he went too. Poking his head out after, and noticing that mostly every other tent had brought each prawn's attentions.
"See anything?"
"No."
The sirens died down. Replaced by that of humans echoing out across the compound; the dredge of their clothing, and the clack of guns following their wake. Desmond wasn't sure if he could say for certain, but the faint sound of engines roamed briefly in the activity.
And then, silence.
Prawns standing still, in the way prawns often did. The clattering of their language hardly present, not even grunts or bellows of nonsensical warnings.
"My name is Ignatius Jacobs, speaking on behalf of MNU. From now on, and every month, we will be carrying out inspections. We will in-act a zero tolerance policy. If you refuse to comply with the field marshals and their men, force will be used."
The sound of the Afrikaans man was harsh in the camp's speakers. Someone new, Desmond thought; he didn't recognize the name. It blared all about them from every direction with the same piercing sting.
"Stay in your tents until called upon. For your best interests all contraband materials and weapons should be laid out on the open. You will be detained if these are hidden from us."
It cut out.
The air thickened with hostility so great it made Desmond's head feel light; inciting a desire to defend, defend… fight.
"Fokk…"
Fighting through the fog of this bizarre, inner drive, he could think up of only two plausible explanations for this visit.
One, an excuse to cut down the population. District 10 officially started out with 2.5 million prawns. It could have easily reached nearly 3 million now; the district wasn't built to contain the prawns indefinitely. Wikus, or rather Desmond, had only understood it as a 'step up' from District 9. A step in the 'right direction'; with plans set in place to build attachments and services with money supplemented from the government. He'd seen the plans once; but over the course of three and a half years, considering most things political, agendas could have shifted and plans for new and 'better' things burned.
Two; his adventure with Christopher and his 'friend' could have sparked something. Perhaps MNU had always planned for something like this. What if that signal was so strong, that humans had easily recognized the source of escaping radio waves? Powerful streams of energy, pouring out into the darkness; a cry for help that MNU had worked so hard to cut off… They needed to know why, and how. They needed the culprits, or at least a means to shut it off.
But then, perhaps nothing could be detected? And all they understood, Desmond imagined, was that somehow those nasty prawns had found their way back into their ship. Got there and escaped, despite all their measures.
And inevitably something might just happen.
Helicopters flooded a few minutes after. Quickly, all sorts of noises rose up from every end of the district.
Desmond could feel it; something he'd never felt before. 'The people' were angry, they were restless.
"Chris? Ah… Christopher?" He clacked hysterically.
"We're staying inside." The prawn seemed to snap. Visibly agitated by the way his face seemed to pinch on one side.
And then the guns started spluttering out, automatics and semis. The hollow thud of a sniper rifle in the distance. Desmond fell to his knees with a yelp, as did Oliver. Christopher crouched down and moved away from the opening of the tent.
"Father, the lessons! They'll find them."
Wide eyed, and shaky, Oliver reminded his father of the small notebook they had both been working on.
"I'll get it." He ground out.
"Both of you, into the nest! Down, now."
Christopher crawled to the other back corner, which wasn't far. Flinching and ducking whenever bullets seemed to cruise by.
He returned with the notebook. Hunkering down on Oliver's opposite side.
"We will need to eat the pages."
Desmond clung himself to Oliver. Theo muttered noises between them, nuzzling into Desmond's neck; seeking comfort, the presence of his father sufficient enough to calm.
Christopher ripped out the handful of pages with alien glyphs and things he didn't recognize. He received a few, as did Oliver. Nervously he shoved the pieces, pulp and ink, down his throat. It didn't matter then if his throat had been extremely dry; it would have been too suspicious if it was found.
Outside of their flimsy tent the world erupted into chaos. Smuggled alien weaponry was met with metal bullets and explosives. No one outside of MNU would hear of this, he thought. And if they did, there would be a carefully crafted story to surround the ordeal.
Tania.
He thought fleetingly - of the outside world.
She was still out there, fighting. Was she tired? Had she become just as doubtful as he had? He wavered, and pushed the thoughts away with a weak cry. A prawn thing, something the children often did when calling for their parents; he couldn't help it. He pushed himself closer into their group, grasping for Christopher's arm, squeezing, holding on to.
They both protected their children, arms wrapped from either side.
As the violence continued to rise, Christopher began cooing. Quietly at first, but Desmond could distinctly hear it. His body relaxed a little, his mind drifted just slightly. Fighting off the inane turmoil that seemed not to be his own.
.
Vrrah-jek: A term of endearment for family. But it holds significance to one's 'heir', genetically speaking and socially. A parent takes honor in the rearing of and preparation of their child's training into their trade/caste setting. Finding joy in the good and the bad times.
… TBC.