The fascinating thing was, the herdsvog who collected the original recordings and physical data had been on another planet entirely.
Yet the creatures at that time, Vog years earlier—the facial expressions, physical build, body temperature and genetic make-up—perfectly matched those uploaded by the Ameboid. The lifeforms recorded by the Vog herdsvog had disappeared in curious fashion, vanishing from a shelter upon one of the herder worlds. Not a trace of them could be found anywhere, however… upon investigating the shelter’s interior, there were trace amounts of what the Vog called gilmus.
Sparkling flickers of dissipating matter often found in ruptured dimensions.
What was also fascinating was that the bio-readings of the alien lifeforms were actually superior to those of the long extinct Faknahts.
That greatly interested the Vog, enough to muster a riot squad on relatively short notice to investigate.
For twenty-eight Vog years, no one had sighted the lifeforms since the herder world recordings, yet the Vog had hard documented proof of their existence.
The Vog leader very much wanted to locate these lifeforms, and determine for itself the genetic connection to the Faknahts of the past.
Those long extinct creatures were a prized delicacy.
These elusive, and genetically superior cousins to the Faknahts might very well be even better to eat.
The green lines upon the wall flickered twice, then thickened, drawing the attention of the Vog leader. A red line ran from the top to the bottom of the circle, perfectly dividing it. The Vog leader thought-projected a command, and the other Vog on point collapsed back upon the main group. Menacing .200 kor battle blasters were lowered and aimed forward. Eye stalks were focused.
The leader gave a thought, and the tech working with the wall opener obeyed.
The red line flickered. Became green. Thickened.
Then it parted.
The circle opened from the center out, the edges of that dividing line dissolving into nothing as if ravenously devoured by a swarm of unseen hull eaters. There were no sparks, no heat, just the smooth, focused, disintegration of a forced entry.
Music reached the Vog.
Lasers pierced the alley. Then the way was opened.
A tunnel lay before the Vog, cut through construction material some four feet thick.
The leader entered first, ducking through the tunnel. The others followed, single-file. The leader emerged on the other side, to a single blaring note. A few of the nearest lifeforms saw the Vog emerge from the wall and staggered back in horror as other Vog invaded the saloon.
Strobe lights swept over the leader’s chrome armor and exposed flesh. The leader’s diagnostic scanned the atmosphere and confirmed that an exceedingly high level of Vem was present in the atmosphere. There was also a highly toxic mixture of other debilitating mind-warping gases. The nearby creatures retreated from the sparkling line forming at the leader’s back, but he didn’t need diagnostics to know the Vem was suppressing their fear.
The Vog was aware of Inter-Planetary Cosmic Law, and now possessed evidence that this public venue was violating vapor regulations. The leader also suspected that there was enough illegal and unregulated contraband on the premises to shut it down for good.
Not that any of that mattered to the leader.
What was about to happen wasn’t because of illegal activity.
What was about to happen was because they were Vog.
And the rest… were not.
On a mental command, the Vog commenced firing.
*
“Hold on,” Nathan said and pulled away from Mackenzie, whose grip was as drunk as the rest of him. Equally smashed and distracted by their surroundings were the two gun runners. Nathan cleanly split the pair without so much as a dirty look from either, especially Eli.
Pink cloud matter swirled and thickened, but the man in black was back there, standing rigid, a shard of dusty volcanic rock barely glimpsed through that otherworld fog.
Nathan pushed through that pink haze and found himself standing three feet away from that mysterious figure. As close as Nathan was, he could see the finer details of the man in black. The fabric he wore resembled a bulkier pair of long johns but with a full hood and mask. There was one slit across the eyes, just wide enough to see from, and Nathan didn’t quite understand what he was looking at.
The fabric was cut there, that much was obvious, but the flesh around the eyes wasn’t the color of skin. The pink swirling hues hindered that determination, but the haze didn’t obscure the eyes. The eyes were dead black, without any whites at all, as if coated in shoe polish. As Nathan stared and studied, the man in black did the same. The man in black’s chin lifted ever so slightly, his brow scrunched up in unchecked bewilderment, as if Nathan might’ve been a twin of a long-lost relative or friend.
A hand came up. A three-fingered hand, bare, corded, and thick. One of these fingers resembled two of Nathan’s pressed together. That inhuman paw wavered in the pink clouds surrounding them, and reached out…
And caressed Nathan’s cheek.
The fingers traced the outline of his jaw, down to his chin, then slid back all the way to his ear. There, the fingers actually flicked his lobe, before pinching and feeling strands of his hair.
All under the soft scrutiny of those black eyes.
There was no breach of decency, no sense of danger or malefic intent… just a profound curiosity. And Nathan was smashed enough on Vem to allow it to happen.
“Who are you?” he finally asked, still aware enough of minding his manners, especially with the man in black, who was clearly not a man but some other creature entirely.
The question stopped the alien. It eventually withdrew its hand and reached for its waist. The man in black reached inside the folds of its clothing, felt around, and pulled something free. It raised its arm high enough so that it could release the item.
A chain dropped from the hand, the silver twinkling in the soft light.
And at the end of that length was a locket. A piece of jewelry fabricated by human hands, without question.
The man in black gestured for Nathan to take the piece. When he didn’t, the creature offered it again.
“Nathan,” Jimmy Norquay called out.
Nathan half turned.
“Nathan, get back here,” Jimmy called out. “We gotta go.”
At that, the man in black gripped Nathan’s shoulder, and again, dangled the locket from a fist.
Lost in wonder, Nathan took the jewelry.
The man in black motioned for him to open it.
“Nathan!”
“Wait, dammit!” Nathan shouted back, meeting the man in black’s eyes again as his fingers fumbled with the clasp.
Then Eli and Gilbert were there, hands on Nathan’s shoulders, pulling him back.
Which was right about when all hell broke loose.
*
The snap and crackle of ten .200 kor battle blasters ripped through the saloon. Green spears of killer light lanced through the unsuspecting crowds in a rapid-fire stutter, exploding whatever unprotected flesh it hit. Dancing as they were, oblivious and chemically impaired by the miasmic fluff of Vem, the saloon’s patrons were helpless. Heads burst apart in meaty sprays. Torsos were sliced in halves and uneven quarters. Arms and legs were severed in spurts of dark matter. A veritable stew of alien innards and life blood splashed onto the floor, smothering the brightly lit galaxies underneath. All the while, the saloon’s strobing light systems transformed the killing into a flickering, thought-freezing horror show, leaving patrons staring in wide-eyed disbelief at their dead partners a second or two before they themselves were murdered. Some aliens near the center of the killing spree realized what was happening, but were blown apart before they could muster their Vem-addled bodies into fleeing. Their deaths gained the seconds needed for the creatures on the fringes of the dance floor and the saloon to run for cover.
Not that there was much.
; The green bolts punched through smoke, wood, and metal alike, scorching gaping holes through the material. Pillars toppled, some crashing over the dead or dying. Screams cut the air, made worse when the music stopped playing.
The Vog leader’s implanted tracker scanned the area, sweeping a cone of blue threads left and right.
A handful of blue pixelated bipeds appeared in that cone, behind a wall. The leader locked on to the lifeforms and thought-commanded four of its squad to follow.
The others received commands to level the saloon.
*
A series of green spears blasted through the walls, razoring through half the creatures inside and driving Nathan, Eli, and Gilbert to their knees. Another wave of green light spat through the outer barriers, twisting the pink clouds into poisoned whorls. One man-thing took a blast straight through the head, neck, and a good portion of its upper chest, dropping the creature in a contortionist knot of limbs.
“Jesus Christ!” Nathan heard someone scream and immediately thought it was Eli Gallant.
In truth, however, it was him.
The shots split the air overhead and anyone not already splayed out on the floor. Voices were cut horribly short with startled gurks! and expulsions of breath.
A cringing Nathan glanced to his left to see a smoking body crumple flat on its backside as if sitting on a front deck, a split instant before a second shot blew through its chest and whisked it away.
Hands clamped down on his still wet coat, keeping him in place.
“Get back here,” Jimmy Norquay shouted, cowering somewhere back in the haze.
“We gotta go,” Gilbert said, and Nathan realized then that the music had stopped, replaced by frenzied alien screams.
Nathan peered ahead.
The man in black was there, eyes narrowed, spread out over the floor like a tensed rock spider. He drew in his arms and pushed himself up and into a low crouch. The gun runners pulled on Nathan, dragging him back a whole step.
The man in black glanced over his shoulder, appraising the situation, and nimbly shuffled towards Nathan. Those thick paws hooked the stunned man under his armpits and hoisted him into a low crouch. The alien pointed at the back of the room, where Jimmy and Mackenzie were, and the pack of them hurried towards the two men. Bodies littered the floor, dead and leaking colors that sparkled in those rolling pink clouds.
“Who the hell has pink clouds in a shithouse, anyway?” Gilbert demanded, and no one answered.
Two human ghosts emerged, standing against the one sliding door that, if Nathan recalled correctly, no one was using when they had entered the room. There were other doors, opened, and only steps away, but the pull—that mysterious magnetic draw that they all felt—wanted them at that door.
Except that door would not open.
Mackenzie waved his hands over the barely visible seam. He scratched at what might’ve been a lock to no avail. In the end, he lifted a booted foot and stomped at the door.
“Can’t open it?” Jimmy asked.
“Can’t open it,” Mackenzie huffed, pink-faced and no longer looking drunk.
Nathan looked back towards the main saloon. “Channy’s back there,” he muttered.
Eli Gallant grabbed him by the collar and pulled him close. “Channy’s a big girl. She’ll take care of herself.”
Eli held on, until Nathan plied his hand away.
The man in black was behind them, crouched as if about to sprint, watching the men. The snapping bolts of green light had ceased for the moment, and there was movement along the floor, as perhaps half a dozen aliens had the sense to flatten themselves and hope the shooting stopped.
“Get back then,” Jimmy Norquay said. And with that, he flung open his winter duster, blowing the pink clouds apart. He reached inside for the dynamite stashed within.
Screams nattered at Nathan’s ears, coming from outside.
The man in black watched him. Watched Jimmy pull out the dynamite.
Then, as if arriving at a decision, the alien did something that caused Nathan to blink twice.
He reached inside the folds of those long black drawers of his and pulled out what appeared to be a four-pointed star. He flicked his wrist, and the star became five. Nathan’s eyes narrowed at that instant of card trickery, mighty impressed.
But then the stars’ edges lit up with purple light, while their centers swirled like moonlight upon glassy water.
37
The man in black met Nathan’s gaze, and that one look conveyed a message, an emotion, that no embedded translator need decipher.
Then he rose to his feet, except Nathan didn’t see him rise. One second he was crouching, and the next he was standing. Pink smoke curled about his shadowy frame, and then the man in black was hurrying towards the main saloon and the extreme violence therein.
“Light a match, Jimmy,” Eli said, holding onto Nathan’s soggy coat.
“I’m trying to,” Jimmy replied.
But the matches were not only broken and short, they were also wet.
*
The leader Vog stopped just to the side of the chamber entrance, where the Faknaht beings were clustered in the back. His tracker ignored the other creatures completely. His four underlings gathered at his back. Two stepped to the other side of the closed door.
Behind them, on the main saloon floor, blasterfire erupted.
The Vog back there attended to the resistance in kind.
The leader glanced back and saw his troopers take cover, holding their battle rifles at the ready. The mass shooting had devolved into a more selective fire. Aliens hid behind the bar for cover, firing projectile weapons and low-power energy beams. The projectiles merely bounced off the chrome Vog armor in bight orange flickers of contact while the energy beams struck and did nothing.
As expected.
The Vog armor would deflect or absorb most attacks, unless the shooters had access to much more powerful weapons. The leader doubted they did, but he assumed they would know otherwise in short order.
The leader Vog turned its attention back to the main door. He readied his .200 kor battle blaster and stepped before the closed portal.
Which immediately slid open.
*
The clouds had diminished enough for Nathan to see the man in black rush ahead just as the doorway opened.
There, towering in the doorway, was a creature that resembled polished silver. The alien was tall, standing upon spindly legs, and possessed spindly arms, but its main body was bulky and powerful. It brandished what Nathan knew was a rifle of some kind, and things that looked like a snail’s eyes sprouted from what he figured was the creature’s head.
Everything was silver—shining, blazing, silver.
And then an amazing thing happened.
The man in black rushed the silver alien head-on. The alien aimed its weapon a split second before the man-in-black threw one of his stars—which became a fist of spinning energy that cleaved the silvery alien’s skull in two.
Liquid silver spurted from that clean division of skull, and the spindly legs gave out. The alien dropped to the threshold. The doors refused to close.
The man in black stopped at the entrance, placing his spine to the doorframe, and looked back.
Then he did another incredible thing.
He disappeared.
*
“Jesus H. Christ,” Eli Gallant said in unchecked awe, mirroring Nathan’s earlier sentiments.
“The hell was that, Eli?” Gilbert wailed.
“The hell I know, you moron,” the gun runner fired back before pulling on Nathan’s coat. “Come on, you stubborn shit flinger. He’s doing it for us.”
That took all the fight out of Nathan, and he felt that silver locket in his fist.
The unmistakable sound of a fight reached them all then, and silver figures staggered through the open portal. Some fired their weird rifles faster than any Winchester, and killer light split the air.
Nathan allowed the men to pull h
im back.
“Can’t light the fuse,” Jimmy reported loudly, digging through a soggy match box and flicking away most of what he brought up. The men stood around, weapons out, but still too damn soupy in the head to properly use them.
“The hell we do then?” Gilbert asked, dropping to a knee and taking unsteady aim at the distant door.
Jimmy leaned against the stall door, with the stick of dynamite in his hand.
Then, an alien—one of the many bar patrons—stepped in close to Jimmy. The alien inspected the destructive stick in the outlaw’s hand, and plainly asked, “What do you need?”
Jimmy hesitated only a second. “A light.”
“Where do you need it?”
Jimmy held up the dynamite and indicated the fuse.
The alien touched the end with a single long finger, unleashing the sparks signaling a lit fuse.
Jimmy’s expression was one of oh shit!
He jammed the stick against the door’s base, grabbed the helping alien’s shoulder and leaped away. The other men did the same.
Two seconds later, the dynamite went off, and smoke of a different color filled the chamber.
The booming explosion visibly frightened the assisting alien, and that was fine by the men, who quickly clustered about the rent in the door. The seam had opened just enough to poke a few fingers in there, and between them all, they forced the doors apart enough to slide a body through.
Inside, however, was the most incredible thing of all.
Right there, before them all, was an empty, early 1900s passenger car.
38
One after the other, the men pressed through that narrow gap, until they were all inside the passenger car. The helpful alien cautiously peeked around the corner of the door, at which point, Nathan, who had a hand on the car door on this side of reality, hesitated and met the creature’s gaze.
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