First Contact

Chapter 852: HISTORICAL ARCHIVE

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Every time they show this, podlings across two planets practically have a melt-down!

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CRUSADE

I find that even the Darkness Marines are intrigued by the offer of dancing moo moo LED paint stencil.

The Warbound of Dark Fury wish to order animated LED paint stencils of P'Thok firing guns in the air.

BOBCO MUST ACCEPT DARK CRUSADE OF LIGHT CREDIT NUMBERS OR WE SHALL DECLARE THEM HERETICS!

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

It never ceases to amuse me how we're all an amalgamation of our species thoughts, desires, and content postings, yet we are not immune to BobCo's advertising.

We have greenies ordering the 1.5 Million Authentic Scientific Experiments Kits as if their lives depend on getting one.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CRUSADE

SILENCE!

THE ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA CONTINUES!

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN whispers>Is it weird that it's more fun to watch these movies with these Crusade guys?

Holding onto the 'oh shit' handle above the door, Mal'Kawp leaned against the door, feeling the cold of the window due to the cold rain and the wind across the body of the grav-lifter. He looked over and saw P'Thok had two cigarettes in his mandibles, one on each side, his hands clenched on the steering yoke as the war hero leaned forward as if it would help him see through the rain streaked windvisor.

"Use the window cleaner, honored hero," Mal'Kawp suggested.

"OK," P'Thok said, reaching out and hitting a switch.

There was a buzzing noise, filled with clicks and pops, with an atonal warbling behind it.

The forward windshield stayed streaked by rain.

"It doesn't work, but the annoying noise can distract me from anger at not being able to see," P'Thok said, suddenly banking the car.

Mal'Kawp looked out the window and blinked in surprise.

He could see the flicker of laser rifles, the after-image inducing streak of plasma weapons, and the snap of am-grenades on the Matrons property.

"This is P'Thok in TC-N4943T, I'll be landing directly in the courtyard. Fall back with the Matron," P'Thok said into his headset.

Mal'Kawp looked over in time to see P'Thok start to use his bladearms to steer as the grav-lifter screamed and dropped altitude. Mal'Kawp held tight to the 'oh shit' handle, suddenly appreciating it's existence as the red, orange, and black grav-lifter dropped like a rock toward the Matron's personal estate.

"HOLD TIGHT!" P'Thok shouted, heeling the grav-lifter onto its side.

Mal'Kawp found himself staring directly at the rapidly approaching ground.

The missile, fired from the Matron's estate defenses, screamed by less than a meter from the grav-lifter, the charge going off and firing off battlesteel barbed and finned harpoons that would tear apart flying craft when the harpoons stuck and began to rattle and vibrate with the wind sheer.

P'Thok leveled the craft out, barely five meters off the ground, and popped the doors. The rain and wind battered at Mal'Kawp.

"Let's go, Rookie!" P'Thok yelled, slapping the release on the harness and jumping out with a pistol in each hand.

Mal'Kawp jumped out, realized how high he was, and resisted flailing in panic as he dropped. He hit the ground, his leg joints crying out in pain, and ducked with a scream of his own when a burst of orange goo full of pale teardrop seeds missed his head by such a short distance that drops of orange fluid splattered his face.

P'Thok landed, looking around, and saw that there were over a dozen of the Matron's security down already. There were thick green vines all over the ground, writhing and twisting in an obscene parody of animal movements. A coil of braided green vine rose up, twisting, with flowers and tiny orange gourds on the vines. It oriented on P'Thok, three of the flowers opening all the way up and orienting on him.

The flowers shook and made a noise like the ringing of a com-link right as P'Thok lowered the pistol and fired. Not at the point that was drawing back to increase the amount of stored energy in the vine, not at the curve of the vine.

P'Thok fired at the ground, hitting the base coil that was sending out three other thick braids of vines.

The vine exploded, the coil pointing at him fell the ground as the energy in the coils rebounded.

P'Thok was running already for the entrance, the entire courtyard lit up the by hovering grav-lifter that was making a weird rapid fluttering/thumping noise as it stayed steady on badly tuned grav-lifters.

A gourd, its interior hollowed out, a burning tallow candle inside, its surface carved into a leering malevolent grimace, sprang out at him, the jaws chomping and full of sharp triangular teeth.

A single shot from his plasma pistol sent it plummeting to the ground, the flesh of the gourd smoking and steaming.

P'Thok ignored the delicious smell from the plasma baked gourd meat as he raced for the entrance. Vines had ripped the armored doors off of the matron's own residence. As he approached, running at top speed, ignoring the twinges in his right foreleg that age had brought him, one of the guards, firing at the waving tips and ends of the vines, was suddenly covered by vines that twisted up from the ground. It gave a screech as the vines twisted and contracted. The carapace shattered and ichor spewed out from the vine covering.

Mal'Kawp stopped, trying to pull vines off of one of the guards, then started chopping with his bladearm as a vine twisted around his own wrist. He hacked it away just below his wrist, not trying to saw it off his arm like he saw others doing.

"LET'S GO, ROOKIE!" P'Thok yelled.

Mal'Kawp didn't understand how P'Thok knew where he was going as he ran through the twisted hallways of the Matron's private estate manor.

Twice he saw malevolently carved gourds crawling on vines attached to the thick stem at the top of the gourd. Mal'Kawp fired on the run, missing three times on the first one, hitting the second on his second shot.

"She's in her bathing chamber!" P'Thok yelled, jumping up and landing on a gourd, sending thick orange gourd matter splattering.

Suddenly, the gourds all collapsed and were pulled backwards by vines. The vines that had squirmed their way into the manor went limp and then were pulled away.

P'Thok kicked open the door to the Matron's bathing chamber and steam rolled out.

Mal'Kawp hesitated at the door.

The bathing chamber was full of steam, the huge kidney-bean shaped pool rippling slightly as the Matron was huddled against the far bath wall.

P'Thok moved slowly through the steam, moving up to the Matron.

"Matron, are you all right?" P'Thok asked. He reached out and touched the top of her head. "Honored progeny, are you injured?"

The Matron looked up and moved her hands, showing her shoulder.

"It bit me, P'Thok. It bit me, father," the Matron said.

Mal'Kawp stared at the rents in the Matron's carapace. All square punched holes.

His hand went to the com-link on his belt, triggering it to summon medical assistance.

LEE DEE DOO!

BOBCO AND GURDY'S DUCK OIL PRESENT IT'S THE GREAT FESTIVE HOLIDAY GOURD, P'THOK! WITH LIMITED COMMERCIAL INTERRUPTIONS!

BOBCO AND GURDY'S! PAMPER YOUR DUCK TODAY WITH THEIR FINE PRODUCTS!

DOO DEE LEE!

Mal'Kawp watched as the medical grav-lifter containing the protesting matron lifted off from the courtyard. Smokey Cone Law Enforcement and the Matron's Security Services were looking over the grounds.

All that was left of the attack were the dead, crushed or dismembered warrior Treana'ad.

P'Thok stood up from one of the dead, dusting off his hands as the Law Enforcement Officer covered the corpse with a reclaimation sheet. He dusted his hands as he walked toward Mal'Kawp.

The sheet gave a sharp bzzt sound and steam rose up as the dead body was converted to its base elements, minus the water, and the sheet absorbed it all. The worker stood up and, holding the sheet, started moving to the next corpse.

"I knew that Treana'ad," P'Thok said, moving toward where the black grav-lifter, painted with red and orange stripes, sat silently, its running lights and illumination strips lit up. P'Thok shook his head. "He was with me on the Great Moo Moo Raid."

"I'm sorry," Mal'Kawp said. "I asked."

"And?" P'Thok questioned, opening the door and getting into the grav-lifter.

Mal'Kawp got in next to him, closing the door. As the grav-lifter took off, Mal'Kawp shook his head. "The video surveillance is useless."

"What does it show?" P'Thok asked.

"The image of a malevolent gourd bouncing up and down and flashing. Orange and white, back and forth, as a simple tune plays and immature hatchling voices sing," Mal'Kawp said. Before P'Thok could ask, he kept speaking. "They just kept repeating that it is eight more days till a certain day, but I did not understand what day it was."

P'Thok nodded. "Halloween," was all he said.

"Yes." To Mal'Kawp it felt like a cold wind blew through the armored grav-car. "A Terran word," he said. He could feel the malevolence, the promise of violence, in the syllables that lacked the clean crispness of clicks or pops.

P'Thok just nodded. "A combination of celebration and fear festival. The Terrans have dealt with their own reanimated dead attacking them several times in their history. They hold a festival where the children wear masks to frighten away the angry dead as well as use their fearsome visages and promises of violence to extort sweet treats from adults and businesses."

Mal'Kawp frowned. "Our people have no fear of the dead. The dead are just that, the dead."

"Yet things have changed. The universe moves onward, but at long last its malevolence has been revealed and, as I learned on the battlefield, if you listen closely you can hear it laughing at us," P'Thok said quietly as the grav-lifter moved through the night.

They were silent as they moved through the night until Mal'Kawp saw it.

It was almost a cone, but it was jagged, unfinished, with skeletal superstructure visible even in the night. The cracked windshield flashed "CONSTRUCTION AREA - DANGER - OFF LIMITS" over the incomplete hive city.

P'Thok laid his badge on the dash and the comp beeped, accepting his credentials before the traffic computer rerouted him or shut down his engine.

"Are you sure there will be something there?" Mal'Kawp asked.

"I am sure," P'Thok said. He cracked the window, the smoke inside the cabin streaming out the crack. P'Thok leaned to the side and tapped the glass with one antenna. "Can't you smell it?"

Mal'Kawp cracked the window and leaned over, his antenna touching the crack. He could smell the storm, smell ozone from the lightning, smell cigarette smoke, smell stress pheromones of an older warrior.

"No," he said.

"It's a particular smell. A smelly kind of smell that smells... smelly," P'Thok said slowly.

The ride was silent as the grav car reached the unfinished city and P'Thok checked a map that he displayed on the dash holo-emitter. The grav car slowly moved through the huge support beam lattice, the lights flashing as P'Thok shined it on the construction.

"Let me," Mal'Kawp said, taking over the searchlights.

Water streamed down from the beams and girders, ran down the bare ferrocrete walls, gushed from unconnected pipes, and fountained down to splash into the deep pools in the exposed rooms at the base of the unfinished arcology.

"There," Mal'Kawp said. He put the beam on a large unfinished room that was slightly higher than the others, the untiled ferrocrete floor was only wet, not submerged. "You can land there. Passages lead to what you marked."

The grav car settled down slowly and P'Thok shut it down, opening the doors.

"Head on a swivel," P'Thok said. He drew both of his pistols and adjusted his hat. "You will have only split seconds to react if it is indeed some type of Terran threat that now plagues the Treana'ad people."

"Understood," Mal'Kawp said. He looked around and shivered, the rain and wind cold. "I still doubt there is anything here."

"You saw the gourds attack the Matron's guards. You saw the bite on her," P'Thok said, activating a shoulder mounted light. It was a small square housing that lifted up from his right shoulder, the LED lamp providing a circle of light in front of P'Thok.

"I am still wondering what killed those moo moos. The blunt teeth of the small gourds seem doubtful," Mal'Kawp said. He avoided a downpour of water from a pipe that had filled the point it tilted on its mooring bolt to dump its contents before returning to upright once the water had been dumped and the weight changed.

The duo moved slowly, deeper into the complex, heading toward the spot on P'Thok's map.

"What makes you think it will be here?" Mal'Kawp asked.

"The attacks, the terrible crimes, the murders, all happen in abandoned areas, far away from where the victims should be," P'Thok said. He pushed aside a piece of tattered macroplas sheeting with the barrel of his pistol, holding it for Mal'Kawp to get by. "This is next in the pattern," he pointed into the darkness.

"Ahead, at one of the lowest parts that isn't the maintenance tunnels, is a garden that was partially completed by the workers to provide a little bit of beauty for them to look at while they ate. It was slated to be a Matron and High Warrior contemplation garden," P'Thok said.

"And you think whatever is doing this will be there?" Mal'Kawp asked.

P'Thok nodded. "It is, to use a certain Terran phrase, a blasphemy that such a creature would commit murders there."

Mal'Kawp nodded then froze. "Honored P'Thok, do you hear that?"

P'Thok cocked his head, listening. "No. Age has slightly dulled my senses."

"I hear weeping," Mal'Kawp said.

"Hurry," P'Thok said.

They rushed forward, into what had been a partially finished luxury garden.

The trees were bare, skeletal fingers reaching for the sky, the leaves scattered around, covering the yellowed and brittle grass. The bushes were bare, tangles of sharp twigs and branches. The water was knee deep, making it so the duo had to stand up further to breathe.

Hanging from a tree was a moo moo tender maid.

Mal'Kawp rushed forward. "Smokey Cone LEO! I'm here to help!" he blurted out.

P'Thok stopped, turning in a circle. "We aren't alone here," P'Thok said softly, barely audible over the weeping maid and the sound of the wind and the rain in the incomplete city arcology.

Mal'Kawp used his bladearms to saw the vines away from her wrists and torso, catching her when she fell.

"Mal, back up, by me," P'Thok said. He looked around. "I don't like this..."

Mal'Kawp nodded. "I have her. Whatever they were going to do..." he stared to say.

The figure plunged down, falling from a great height, slamming into the water.

It slowly stood up.

It had a bulbous head, shaped like a malformed festive gourd. Its body was heavy with twisted muscle. A tail whipped back and forth, spraying water. Its arms ended in strong hands with long, razor sharp talons instead of fingers.

"Eight..." it whispered.

"GOURD GUARDIAN!" P'Thok yelled.

Three others splashed down.

"More..." one whispered.

"Days..." the third said.

"Till..." the fourth.

Mal'Kawp tried to shoot and carry the semi-conscious female Terran at the same time, the plasma bolt hitting the ferrocrete wall with a bright flash that left the lime burning with white fire.

"HALLOWEEN!" They all roared.

P'Thok started shooting as Mal'Kawp moved by, backing up. Mal'Kawp shot one handed.

The creatures stood and watched as the duo backed away, the shots bouncing off of their glossy black hides, leaving behind orange streaks.

"Go, go, go," P'Thok shouted as they splashed through the knee deep water.

The creatures gave their eerie hunting cry as they leaped up to girders, to crouch and stare down at the duo.

"TRICKARETREET!" they bellowed.

Mal'Kawp saw one of his shots hit one of the creatures between the eyes, doing nothing more than leave a slightly glowing orange streak on the flesh.

"Hurry," P'Thok gasped as they climbed the steps to where the grav lifter was waiting. He pointed at it and used his comlink to fire up the engines, turning on the lights.

The creatures behind them screeched as the light illuminated the darkness they were crouched in.

Mal'Kawp put the limp Terran female inside and jumped in after her. P'Thok yanked open the door, climbing in.

The grav-lifter rocked as two of the creatures landed on the top of the lifter. One reached for P'Thok, who was only partially inside.

P'Thok grabbed the steering yoke and pulled.

The grav-lifter took off, straight up, even though P'Thok was half out of the craft. Mal'Kawp grabbed the milk maid with one arm and the 'oh-shit' handle with the other.

P'Thok banked the grav lifter hard as it rose up.

The creatures scrabbled on the top, their claws tearing up strips of battlesteel from the military surplus craft.

They fell away, vanishing into the rainy darkness of the unfinished arcology.

P'Thok climbed inside, pulling the door shut.

"We need bigger fucking guns!" Mal'Kawp blurted out.

WE'LL BE RIGHT BACK AFTER THESE IMPORTANT MESSAGES!