[Chapter 1] [Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter]
Check out the HSTM series on Royal Road [Book 3: Overlord] [Book 2: Conspiracy] [Book 1: Abduction]
Artwork and other ‘Humanity Unleashed’ setting and story related material can be found on r/HumanityUnleashed. I hope you enjoy the story and thank you for reading!
_______________________
HSTM Overlord: Chapter 20 'Trying New Things'
The next two days passed quickly and Paulie healed from his ordeal in the undercity sewers with Jakiikii close by his side. In fact she hardly left his hip the entire two days that they spent virtually imprisoned in the small apartment complex. They went on short walks up and down the long halls of the building, but not once did they leave the actual structure itself. And not for a moment were they unguarded by PDF troopers or Mursk and his royal guardsmen.
Paulie shook his head as he and Jakiikii returned to their room from one of these short excursions. It was better than just sitting all day in one spot, but not by much. He missed the wind through his hair, the rain on his shoulders and the sun on his face. He longed for lakes and hills, prairies and dark forests. Hell, he would have even settled for a smog ridden skate park with scraggly bushes and crab grass at this point. He was going stir-crazy cooped up inside all the time.
He felt Jakiikii lean into him a little from the other side and he turned his head to look down at her. She was looking up into his face with four of her six eyes, the bright orange irises glinted in the bright overhead lights of the hall and she smiled. The skin around those cat-like orbs wrinkling in mirth.
“What?” She asked, a laugh tinging her husky voice.
Paulie just shrugged slightly, careful not to push her away as he rested one arm around her wide upper shoulders. “Nothing. I was just thinking.”
She nodded her angular head, small mouth flicking open slightly as she stuck out the tip of her long tongue at him. “Oh? Thinking about what?” She pried.
He sighed. He knew that she would not let up on him till he spat it out. And while she could not really read his emotions like she could to others, she knew him well enough to sniff out when he was lying or hiding the truth.
He cleared his throat and glanced around. They were alone, or as alone as they could really be in an apartment structure crawling with armed troops. “I am just feeling cooped up. Like a dog in a kennel, I want to run. I want to be free, I want to see the sky again.” he finished in a grumble.
She butted her head into his shoulder and chuckled at him, her husky voice rumbling from somewhere deep in her chest cavity. “Well, you will. And I will too, you think I am liking this any more than you?” He glanced at her face as she said it, he detected no hint of malice. Just grim humour.
Paulie nodded and stopped as they finally reached the slightly recessed door to his room. Reaching into his pocket he fished for the small green crystal plaque that worked as the access key to his abode, but was shocked to see Jakiikii wave it in the air in front of his nose.
“Ah ah ahhh, looking for this?” She chortled, dancing slightly on her tri-cloven hooves.
“Hey! How did you..” He started, then scrunched his eyes. “You little pickpocket.”
She giggled again even as she unlocked the door. “I swiped it from your pocket earlier when I slapped your ass.” He just snorted. He should have guessed as much.
He patted his pockets to make sure nothing else was missing before taking the card back as she offered it out with a shit-eating grin plastered across her alien features. Her dainty slash of a mouth was upturned slightly on one side and she poker her tongue out at him again. He blew a raspberry in response and she just laughed before punching him in the arm hard enough to sting.
He grimaced, she poked him in the side. “Stop your pouting. Come on, let’s make lunch. I am starving!”
“You are always starving.” He said, shaking his head slowly and following her into their shared room. “You have the metabolism of a hummingbird.” She ignored him.
Jakiikii practically danced across the floor, her high density muscles giving her a deceptive lightness on her hooved feet that was at odds with her strange six-armed appearance. He was no slug himself and indeed under the fractional gravity of the moonlet of Gike he was practically a superman. Able to run, jump and lift objects much heavier than he would have been able to on Earth. It was only through the miraculous medical technologies of the Greater Galactic Intercession that he was spared the degenerative muscular and bone wasting of living in constant lowered gravity.
Jakiikii moved into the kitchen without him even as Paulie stepped across the room to sit heavily on the edge of his bed. The mattress creaked slightly under his great bulk before settling as he pulled off first his left boot, then the right. Tossing them into the corner of his room nearest to the bathroom with a clatter, he slumped back and lay full upon his back with his legs still hanging over the edge.
He could hear Jakiikii humming to herself as she busied herself doing something in the kitchen and he winced as he heard the sound of clanking followed by a muffled curse.
He called out, “You alright, Jeek?” The sound stopped.
She poked her head out of the kitchen a second later and he tilted his head to look toward her. She had all six of her flowerpetal shaped eye stalks facing him. Six cat-like orange eyes flashed in mild anger as she asked, “What did you just call me?”
He shrugged from his horizontal position. “I called you Jeek, why? Is it too much? I figured it was easier than saying Jakiikii every time.” He gave her a boy scout smile.
She glared suspiciously. “If you are really so tired you can’t say the whole thing then you ought to just skip lunch and take a nap.”
Paulie sat up and held out one arm in an apologetic gesture, futile or not. He had opened a can of worms and he feared where it might lead. “Oh-ho.. wait a minute. I am not too tired for lunch. Here, let me come and help.” he started to stand but she shook her head.
“No. I got it.. Pawwl.” She drawled out his name, her voice dripping with a false sincerity that made him smile and shake his head.
He waved a hand, admitting defeat. “Okay, okay. But no more smoothies. I think I have had as many of them as I can take for now.” She gave him a look that he wasn’t sure was pure in intent as a response but said nothing.
Jakiikii ducked back into the kitchen without so much as a huff and set about destroying more perfect ingredients in the hopeless pursuit of culinary mastery. She had really gotten into experimenting with flavours and ingredients lately. Probably his fault mostly, but he was just happy that she was happy, despite the culinary expedition she had forced him to embark on.
He smiled as he heard her resume her singing. The low rumbling like the sound of a distant beehive, though with slightly more musical acumen.
He waited another four minutes before there was an exclamation and one final clatter of something hard skipping across the floor, then Jakiikii rounded the corner of the kitchen with a plate of something and a pitcher of liquid. Two other hands held empty glasses with ice and she set everything down on the table with a slight flourish.
Paulie scooted forward off the bed and then walked to the table before leaning on it and looking at the spread. On the table was the pitcher which she was already pouring herself a drink from, it looked and smelled like a mix of frubble and slarnt juice. The tangy sweetness similar to peaches or melons. The object of his consternation was the other thing she had placed out on the table, it was a plate of what he could only describe as dark purple beetles with ten legs each.
He pointed at it. “Uh, what are those?”
She smiled and nodded her head. “Lunch.”
Now Paulie often considered himself a pretty open minded man, hell he had an alien girlfriend and lived on an alien moon in a star system he kept forgetting the name of after all. But he had lines, and one of the lines he had not yet crossed was eating alien bugs.
He swallowed and then asked timidly, “Lunch?”
Jakiikii stopped drinking her juice, slurping her long tube-like tongue back into her mouth loudly as she nodded and repeated, “Yes, lunch.” She cocked her head at him. “What? You don’t like them?”
He shrugged and then glared at the strange purple tidbits. Each individual one sitting atop its own little cracker like leggy hors d'oeuvres. “I don’t even know what they are?”
She chuckled. “Oh, so now you get picky? I saw you eat a seven hour old microwaved khiis patty that had been sitting uncovered on the countertop the other day. And now you are worried about ung’na bugs? I have seen Mack eat these things by the shuttle-load before. He swears by them.”
“Uhh huh.” Paulie said, unconvinced. Was this his punishment for his cutesy nickname earlier?
She shook her head, long tongue uncoiling from her head like a fleshy rope again as she extended it into her drink once more. She spoke sternly, “Try it. You will like them, I promise.”
He was not sure about it, so he looked at them again. Yup, still bugs. Still purple.
“Ugna bugs?” he muttered slowly.
“Ung’na. Ung’na bugs.” She corrected him without missing a beat, the smug looking alien woman taking another sip of her own lunch of sweet juice as she said it. She was grinning from eye to eye at his apparent hesitation, though he could not be sure if it was because it was some deep elaborate prank or if she was only amused by his antics.
Paulie shook his head and took a breath, then reached in and grabbed one of the bugs as gingerly as he could while still maintaining some pretense of his dignity as a man. The small morsel was about the perfect size for a bite and still warm from whatever preparation she had done to them. They seemed to sit on a small bed of greenish paste atop a thick cracker of indeterminate material that he assumed was similar to any other baked grain product one might find. It looked just like a cracker anyway.
Paulie raised it towards his mouth and then paused as he noticed Jakiikii had stopped drinking and was staring at him with her mouth slightly agape. She snapped it closed as she saw he had noticed and flicked several eyes to look at other points of the room as if he had not just caught her watching.
He shrugged. What was he, a coward? She would not give him something that would actually hurt him, so he decided to just man up and go for it. Paulie popped the large beetle-like grub into his mouth in one big bite and then crunched down on it before his momentary boost in self-confidence failed and he chickened out again.
The first thing he noticed was the things ten legs poking his cheeks as the shell cracked between his teeth and flooded his mouth in strange new flavours. The second he noticed was the flavour of the thing itself. The insect was slightly tangy, sweet like fresh prawn with a hint of something more pungent. Like garlic. He realised that the green paste it sat upon must be some manner of buttery, herb condiment that paired incredibly nicely with the sweetly poky taste of the grub. As for the cracker he was right, it was analogous to any number of cracker-like substitutes one might have found on Earth and had a nice texture.
Paulie’s eyebrows flew up in sudden surprise as they tried to escape his face from the strength of his reaction.
He crunched down again, then again as he started to nod his head. “Hmm? Mmm, mhmm..” he mumbled as he chewed excitedly and swallowed after a moment. He smacked his lips and cocked his head as he noticed the expression on Jakiikii’s face. “Oh, okay. That was.. much better than I expected. I admit it, that was pretty tasty.”
She smiled even wider as one of her hands seemed to reach up unconsciously and touch her own mouth. She noticed it and pulled it back down before nodding. “Y-yup. Mack always raves about them. I am happy you like them!” She said with genuine enthusiasm and Paulie gave her a wide smile. The same hand flew up again and covered her mouth as her eyes crinkled even harder into her form of wild mirth.
She giggled as he popped another one into his mouth. She could laugh all she wanted at him, the things were actually pretty damn good if he was being honest with himself. He finished off the platter in short order and licked his lips as the tangy-sweet aftertaste of the strange alien fodder lingered long after they were gone.
Jakiikii had finished her own drinks by that time, the pitcher was nearly empty and so he filled his own glass back up with some of the sweet juice and sipped it as she gathered his plate and took it into the kitchen.
Paulie stood and walked to the door of the kitchen. “Thanks, Jakiikii. I need to be more open about trying new things, I actually quite liked those things. What were they on?” He asked.
Her head stayed facing forward as two of her flexible eyes turned to look his way and she responded calmly, “Oh they were on some lictop, that green paste is a condiment that Mack always says pairs nicely with meats.”
He nodded. “Well, he is right. Those were pretty good actually. I guess I should not be terribly surprised by food being odd sometimes, I am in an alien city after all.” He chuckled.
She glanced at him again, giggling in response. “You are the alien, this is just Korscam to me.”
“Indeed.” he countered.
The door knocked, pulling them from their casual conversation and Jakiikii rushed past him to her gear that was sitting by the front door as he placed his drink down on the counter next to him. She was already wearing her stealth suit but he watched as she grabbed her MDF pistol and peeked at the small electronic camera that showed a vision out the front of the door.
She nodded to him as her shoulders relaxed after a glance at the screen, she placed the pistol back down as she announced, “It’s just Mursk.”
He stepped out of the kitchen and up to the door as she moved aside to give him some room. He unlocked the heavy metal door and opened it to reveal the unhelmeted figure of Mursk standing in the doorway. He was wearing his powered exosuit like usual, his face bare and his weapon held low in two arms, his antennae perked up as he saw Paulie. His bright blue compound eyes staring in all directions at once.
“Hello Paulie, good to see you. I have been instructed to escort you to Mack. He wants you both, can you gear up and get ready to move.” The mendagoonian’s head cocked as Paulie smiled.
“Yes of course, we will be ready in just a minute.”
Before he could so much as turn around, Mursk’s antennae shot up in apparent surprise and the alien blurted, “What happened to your mouth?”
From behind him Jakiikii burst out laughing uncontrollably and he got the sinking feeling that her enthusiasm during lunch earlier might not in fact have just been about him trying something new.