"We should get off the main streets, we don't know how many other Laikan assassins are around," she said.
"Not really a good idea to go off the main lit streets of Ictopia at night, my dear," suggested Hendricks.
Spying a group of Laikans in black trench coats, she pulled him down a side street.
"We may not have much choice. What's the quickest way to the space port?"
"By taxi."
"Well, okaaay," she aggrieved, "but walking, what's the fastest way?"
"Oh, well as the Centchun ballywack flies, that way," he pointed down the road and a bit to the right.
"Let's go," she dragged him on.
***
The police were outside, so far just the locals, and Trillo had a job to do. He entered the auditorium with his cronies and flicked on the lights. Down toward the stage Chase and Milk stopped mid crouch walk, 'valkswagon' they collectively thought.
The Laikans took aim and fired, but people had already got up to see what was going on and they unfortunately took the blasts. Nothing like innocent people getting shot to cause pandemonium and this seemed to most like such a good opportunity. The Laikans didn't care and started blasting people to get them out of the way and get a clear shot of Chase.
Who along with Milk got up and ran to the side of the stage and finding no door ran around the back of it. There was a door with a crush bar. A sign on the door read:
In case of fire
OR being chased by the police/InterG/hitmen/other assorted people who might be chasing you.
They hit the crush bar and bundled through into a bare corridor. At one end was a staircase, the other had a wall with another sign that read:
Well, it wouldn't be much fun if this led outside.
Would it?
"Going up then," observed Milk.
"Appears so," Chase offered as someone screamed in the auditorium and there was guttural Laikan laughter. Dangerously close. They ran up the stairs which doubled back on itself every flight. As the two pursuees rounded the corner laser blasts hit the wall where they had been. Chase leant round and sent a laser blast into the closest Laikan who folded like a bad poker hand.
***
Julianna and Dr. Hendricks were not faring well either. The space port being on the edge of the city meant that they had to go through a number of rough neighbourhoods to get there.
They didn't get far.
A group of Human youths got up from the steps leading to a tenement building and surrounded them.
"Don't do this," warned Julianna.
"Do what, honeypie?" asked one.
"Whatever it is you plan to do, don't do it, not now, not never."
"C'mon, you look stressed; well me and the boys here can help you with that, can't we boys?" he called to much laughter and hooting.
"It's the perfect couple for the doc's experiments," another youth said.
"It is that, it is that," the first one said and stepped forward. Julianna shot him in the face before another clubbed them both out cold.
***
Chase and Milk were still in the stairwell and the air was thick with laser smoke.
"As much as I'm enjoying this, I think it's time to leave the stairwell," Milk shouted over the noise of Chase firing down.
A laser beam zinged past his head and he had to agree.
"I agree."
They burst through a door and into a corridor of doors which led, undoubtedly, to rooms. They headed for the main staircase only to find more Laikans ascending it.
"Valkswagon," said Milk and they headed back to see Laikans coming out of the stairwell.
"Hang on; I reckon I've stayed here before," Chase realised. "The rooms interconnect. Quick in this one."
Milk kicked the door in and was thankful to find it empty.
Chase stopped briefly by a low table and then they scrambled through the connecting door into the next room.
The Laikans piled in, but the lead ones stopped on seeing the grenade on the table.
"Back," screamed Trillo and then dived behind a large, ornate sofa as the grenade exploded.
Chase and Milk stormed out of the other room guns blazing, taking out the few Laikans who hadn't gotten in through the door.
"Well that's that, then," mused Chase.
"Can we go to the roof now?"
"Why not?"
***
Around about the time Chase and Milk were being chased through the sky by the police, Julianna was just waking up. She groggily looked around what appeared to be an operating theatre in someone's basement.
"Ah, you've rejoined us then," commented Hendricks.
"Where are we?" she asked and tried to get up.
She failed at this usually basic task due to her arms being bound together under the operating table she was laying on. Her legs were worryingly untied
"Not too sure, myself," replied Hendricks, "better to ask these young gentlemen."
"Oh, shabbus," she groaned.
"No shabbus, lady," said a voice she couldn't see, "as the doc's not home yet, we can have a little bit of fun."
Now she knew why her legs were untied.
Four faces loomed over her and a hand ran up her leg to the hem of her, admittedly short, skirt.
"Oh yes, gonna have some fun," another youth cackled.
"Not yet," Julianna replied calmly and brought her hands up grabbing two youths and bashing their skulls together over the table. She then kicked out with both legs and caught a groin and a stomach. Two youths writhed on the floor and two were out cold.
Julianna got up and found her gun on a nearby table and stood over the bodies.
"Rape me, will you?" she asked in that calm that comes beyond anger, "Big men are you? Not so big now."
Her whole body was shaking from adrenaline and anger as she aimed her gun down at one of the boy's heads.
Hendricks coughed discreetly.
"Wouldn't mind getting me out of this chair, would you?"
She sucked in four hard breaths, her gun wavered and she forced her hand to steady. Her finger tightened on the trigger and then slowly released. She stood there looking at each of the boy's bodies before slowly looking up at Hendricks. The good Doctor was tied to a wooden chair and he smiled at her as she slowed her breathing and looked back at the four bodies. Two were writhing in pain and she quickly knocked them out with a foot.
She stood for another second, composing herself and then turned back to Hendricks.
"Yeah, of course," she went over and untied him.
"How did you escape like that?" he asked while he rubbed his wrists.
"Cortian Knot Trick?. Can we please go?"
He looked down at the bodies. "Yes, probably wise."
***
Chase and Milk had found the VIP launch. It looked like a helicopter, but without rotor blades. Instead it had two small turbines on either side of the tail to propel it forward and two short wings that contained larger turbines to get it airborne. These wings could rotate to use the turbines for further forward propulsion.
They had found it and were flying towards the space port when two similar vehicles with police markings took up the chase.
Ictopia had its fair share of skyscrapers, but not many compared to other cities, I mean you generally need big business to have skyscrapers and Ictopia just wasn't that kind of city. Most of the tall buildings were built back when some dumb people thought that Ictopia might be gentrified and Chase was trying to use these to evade the police, but there was just too much open space. The issue there being that the police had guns and the VIP launch just didn't. It was going to take some fancy flying, which luckily, Chase was adept at.
Most of the skyscrapers were clustered in one area in the middle of the city and Chase headed away from them with the police hot on his tail.
"You do realise that we are completely exposed here?" asked Milk as the Police once more threatened to shoot if they didn't land.
"It had crossed my mind," Chase repl
ied as he began to ascend and turn.
The thing with these craft is that you can rotate the wings to have the turbines facing backward and thus giving you more speed, but at the expense of having nothing holding you up. They were made perfectly for short jumps from hotels to space ports, not for police chases.
The police were quite confused about the VIP launch's decision to turn around and come back at them, well over the top of them and they pulled as tight a turning arc as possible. Which isn't that tight, to be honest. As they were turning Chase judged he had ascended as high as he could before the police were back on them and then rotated the wing turbines. The launch rocketed forward, much to the distress of the police who had only just turned around and were far too low to pull such a stunt. They themselves rocketed up and then rotated the turbines.
The VIP launch was reaching the skyscrapers and losing altitude fast.
"Pull up, pull up," shouted Milk, the big girl.
They whizzed between the buildings, weaving left and right as the ground got closer. The police were in amongst the buildings now and far too low. One rotated its turbines; the other pushed on and went careening into the side of a building.
Just as it seemed to Milk that he could see the whites of pedestrians eyes (he couldn't, his eyes were squeezed tightly shut), Chase rotated the turbines and the launch shot upwards and out of the cluster of buildings. The police were too far away to stop them before they would reach the space port.
***
Julianna and Dr. Hendricks had left the basement and were trying to find a door out. They walked through a large room that contained great glass cases and in each was a form. Didn't really know what else to call them, you see, they were strange hybrids of races. A Human with a Merrick head, a Petruthsian with a Laikan head, a Human with a Grey's head.
"So this was the plan for us," mused Hendricks as he lit his pipe.
"It would appear so, but why are they in glass cases?"
Hendricks took a closer look. "Look, there are dates on each case."
They both looked at the cases and, yes, there were dates on each, born and died. Some a month, some a day, some only a few minutes.
"This is sick. Whoever lives here is trying to cross races," Julianna spat.
"Indeed, how interesting."
"No, not interesting, the only interesting thing is to get out of here," she stormed down the room to another door. Dr. Hendricks took another look and then followed.
***
Chase and Milk were at the space port and things didn't look good. There were a lot of police around, no doubt looking for them. They found a 'staff only' door and slipped inside.
Now space ports were two things at once; they were much like an airport for those who were taking the space liners in and out, but they were also like a large car park for those who flew themselves. Originally both ways of entering and exiting had been like a modern Earthen airport with lots of checks etc, but it was just judged as being too much work. In the end if you were on nefarious business then you wouldn't land at a space port anyway, so, for those flying themselves, there was only minor checks. It was still too many checks for Milk and Chase who would be stopped on sight, if not shot on sight.
They broke into a number of lockers before they found one that contained a janitor's uniform nearly big enough for Milk to fit into.
Julianna and Dr. Hendricks were not being looked for by the police, but when they got to the hanger they found a large group of Laikan assassins milling around their ship.
Chase and Milk ended up on the far side of the hanger having had to avoid police patrols. Luckily from where they were they could see Julianna and the Doctor. They could also see the Laikans. Considering that there were around a hundred ships in this hanger it would have been easy to sneak up to the ship, the problem was that the ship was where all the Laikans were.
In Chase's mind there was only one plan, to blast their way out. He waved at Julianna, who had spotted them, and start miming his plan. She looked at him confused and he tried again. On the third try she nodded.
"Follow my lead," Chase told Milk.
"Is your lead going towards peace and comfort or danger and being shot at?"
"Well, the second first and then the first second."
"Great."
Chase and Milk crept forward and away from their ship, before aiming up on the Laikans and taking down three with laser blasts. The others ran toward Chase and Milk and took cover to open fire. Seeing their chance Julianna sprinted to the ship pulling the Doc with her.
She unlocked the ship and they bundled in as Milk and Chase traded shots and other people took cover and were glad that for once it wasn't them in a fire fight. She started the engines and told Dr. Hendricks to strap in as she left the ship again.
Dire straits were being entered as the police poured into the hanger and there were still five Laikans between Chase, Milk and the ship. Then Julianna came out and shot two in the back. The Laikans turned in surprise and fired at Julianna, skinning her shoulder. Chase took the opportunity to leap out of cover, run up to the Laikans and shoot the remaining three from close range.
Milk ran up to him as the police opened fire.
"Valkswagon," exclaimed Chase. "Start up the ship," he shouted at Julianna and she disappeared.
Chase took aim at the police.
"Don't," cried Milk and then shot a barrel of something that thankfully went up in fire and smoke.
The smoke blanketed the police and Milk and Chase darted to the ship. They got in as the door closed and Julianna pulled the ship up, sped out of the hanger and up into the sky.
They sped through the galaxy thankful that no one seemed to follow them. No one did because, well, they seemed to have killed a number of Laikans who appeared to have killed a number of innocent people and anyway right after they left a gang war erupted in the suburbs and everyone went to deal with that and forgot about Chase and Milk. 'It was,' thought one police captain, 'shaping up to be a pretty average day in Ictopia'.
No one really knows the origins of the Laikan race, the best they can do is compare it to the story of the Albertines who came into space at roughly the same period and who people knew a whole lot more about. Although that isn't a whole lot.
Albertine folk lore says that the founders of their race came from an unpronounceable name that seems to translate as the Blue Planet of the Cage and were dragged through space to the planet they landed on by the Great Monkey Paw which is a star constellation that does look a bit like a paw. It has many names, the Humans call it 'The Dog Star's Paw' and the Carutes know it simply as 'Wibble'.
Between leaving and arriving folk lore is sketchy but does refer to the 'Three Great Helpers', Entwhistle, Paul Jones and Novoselic, though who they were or what they did is a mystery.
This all leads to a lot of speculation on both why and how they managed to evolve into Humanoid shape in such a short time. Originally people thought their appearance proved that people evolved from monkeys until it was pointed out that none of them had actually evolved into people and that a Humanoid shape was better for surviving on the planet they found themselves on. Leading to the following theories:
Theory 1: they mutated to suit their environment and did so in such a short time because away from the mysterious health benefits of Earth and their shorter life span, generations rose and fell quicker.
Theory 2: one or all of the 'Great Helpers" genetically engineered the monkeys and then they populated quicker for the same reasons as in Theory 1.
Theory 3: someone shagged a monkey. This theory is never spoken of in front of an Albertine unless you want your head ripped off and shoved up Uranus.
From: A Brief Guide to the Universe for Earthens
THE ASSASSINATION OF JIMMY JAZZ
The Prime Minister felt like a small boy again, he remembered his mother's warm hug at the school gates on his first day at Primary School, the weak September sun poking hesitantly throu
gh the drizzle as if deciding if it was really worth it. He remembered the first time his parents went away and left them with a baby sitter, telling him at the door that he was the man of the house now. He remembered the same words in his teens after his mother broke the news that his dear, life loving Father had died.
"Is he even listening?" asked the President.
"It would seem not," commented Ateksos emotionlessly.
"No, no I'm sure he is," Sir Jeffery said positively unpositive.
"Yes, no, what were you saying? Sorry," blurted the PM.
"Listen, man, while I'm away at the Council, you've been selected to take my place as head of the World Council," the President said. Again.
"Yes, right. Are you sure?"
"Nope," replied the President.
"Yes," said Sir Jeffery.
"Look you have advisors and all you have to do is keep everything together while I'm away, stop any squabbling amongst nations and help the progress of our introduction into space," the President explained and then felt sorry for the PM.
He was a good man, a moral man, one who had always backed the President in global affairs while having a certain sage wisdom. The President felt guilty that he often thought of him as an idiot savant. Now he was a man who had had the Universe dumped on his lap. He looked at Sir Jeffery and was reminded that the British had once had more balls than any modern American, but not now, not for a long time. It wasn't the PM's fault.
"We should get going," Sir Jeffery interjected into the President's thoughts.
"Right, yes, let's do it," they all walked to the door and as he got there the President turned to the PM, laid reassuring hands on his shoulders and said, "You're the man of the house now."
They left and the PM sagged a little.
"You look like you need a cup of tea," said Defosimo.
"And a nice HobNob," chirped Ateksos.
***
Sir Jeffery and the President, Andrew Forster, sat in the back of a long limousine with the rest of the original landing party.
"So, what's the first order of business?" asked the President.
Sir Jeffery let out a long breath. "Getting a good Chokdee cocktail," he replied.
"You look tired," spoke the President.
"Yes, yes, I am, it's all been quite a ride. I'll be glad to be back in space. But to answer your question you will need to acclimatise and then meet the rest of the Great Council. Take your seat with them."