Chapter 126: What's Going on in the Federation Pt3 Karashel and the Lazy River

Chapter 126: What's Going on in the Federation Pt3 Karashel and the Lazy River

Karashel cursed in Terran, the best language for such things.

The AI was useless. Of course it was.

It was Balean!

"R-reffffinnnnne queirey!" she snapped.

"I'm sorry, I did not understand your request," the AI responded.

"Querrrie!" Karashel yelled, "Sthap d fokun querrrie!"

"I was unable to understand you. Please-"

"Aghghhh fuckin fckuk!" she yelled as she slammed the cord back into her aching neural port.

“/// sssst-sp #@3kdd querty///”

“///Unrecognizable command. Please rephrase///”

Karashel started to laugh as she slumped against her desk. No wonder the AI couldn't understand.

Her brain was fried. It was over.

Dripping more slime than ever, she started to laugh and sob.

"Oh Creators," she silently prayed, turning her eyestalks skyward. "I know I'm an atheist, and I haven't prayed in years, but please... please help me! I don't... I don't know what to do, and I'm running out of time."

Silence.

Karashel started to get unreasonably angry.

"Fuckin' pieet fo spit!" she yelled at the ceiling. "Weee rr stuk in tha shhiit n itz UR FOLT! Wee didn't axe fur dis! Wee didn dezzerve dis! FUCK YOO!"

She started to twitch as the frustration and rage built.

"Rarrggghhhh!" she bubbled as she struck her desktop, knocking it off the desk.

It hit the ground with a "crunch", and everything went dead.

She shrieked and pulled the cord from her neural socket as she was punished yet again.

She slumped onto the slimy floor of her apartment as it started to ripple and shift around her.

"Fiiine," she bubbled, "' f U won't help..."

She turned her eyestalks downward.

Devourer of Souls hear my plea, she prayed with every fiber of her fading consciousness.

"Took you long enough," a pleasant voice replied.

"Wha?" she bubbled as she wearily raised an eyestalk and started in shock.

Lounging nearby was something from a nightmare, a horrific combination of Baleel and parasite with oily black skin and a gaping round maw ringed with hook-like teeth.

She scooted back in terror.

"So, what do you want?" the horror asked.

"What... what is happening?" she gasped. (What she actually gasped was anyone's guess, but that's what she meant to say.)

"Either your abused mind has finally snapped all the way," the Devourer of Souls replied, scratching its back with a long piercing barbed tongue, "or you have actually summoned the Balean Devil. Considering all of the other freaky bullshit going on in the galaxy at the moment, it's really anyone's guess."

"Other?..."

"Don't worry about it... yet," the fiend replied, warping its gaping maw into a "smile" of sorts. "Either way, we have a little time to kill before you are either saved or you drown in your own slime, so...."

It "smiled" further (not a terribly appetizing sight regardless of your species).

"Why did you 'summon' me?"

Karashel, consumed by confusion and terror, backed against the wall, knocking over a small table.

"Please tell me you aren't trying to cast a love spell again," The Devourer said with a bubbly snort. "Oh, and you are welcome, by the way. If I had granted you that wish, you'd be answering phones in his father's vehicle dealership right now, a dealership that will be given to his younger sister, by the way."

Despite her confusion and declining mental state, Karashel twitched in embarrassment. Adolescence had been a particularly awkward time for her.

The room heaved slightly.

"I didn't do that," The Devourer said in a matter-of-fact tone. "That's all you, so if you have anything to ask, you'd better hurry."

"I... what?" Karashel finally managed to stammer.

"Ugh," The Devourer said, flicking the stubby eyestalks that ringed its maw in annoyance. "Fine. We do this the hard way."

It shot its long slimy barbed tongue out like a lance skewering Karashel's anterior end.

Karashel screamed and rolled backward, her tendrils passing through the phantasmal tongue.

"Oh by the Marsh Guardians," it muttered as it withdrew its tongue. "You can't be serious. You want to take on this Federation thing?"

"Y-yes."

"Are you really that stupid?" the demon snickered, "Why is a Baleel-"

"Yes, I know I'm just a pathetic Baleel," Karashel snapped, finally getting ahold of herself, "but I have to do something! The Federation is-"

She was cut off by a hearty laugh.

"Don't project your insecurities on me," the Devourer of Souls bubbled, dripping caustic slime onto the floor, "I wasn't saying that you were 'just a pathetic Baleel'. I was asking why in the black and fetid Bog, a Baleel who wanted to bring down anyone or anything would waste its time studying these pathetic humans and their tepid propaganda."

"What do you mean?"

The monster looked at her carefully.

"You honestly don't have a clue, do you?" it asked.

"About what?" Karashel asked as the room lurched.

She didn't feel so good.

"I don't have time for this," the Devourer said, "or more precisely, you don't. In just a few minutes, your funny-looking friend will burst through that door and 'rescue' you."

Caw!!! she thought in alarm.

"Yes, him," the Devourer of Souls replied. "Whatever you did when you were playing with that box over there," it said as it gestured towards her damaged desktop. "showed up on his box, and he is already... flying?... this way in yet another box. What is it with you people and boxes these days?"

Oh no! He knows everything!

"That he does, but don't worry, he thinks it's 'cute'," the demon sneered, "As if a stupid little Baleel could ever be a real threat."

Black anger started to overwhelm Karashel's discomfort. Of course he wouldn't become her enemy. That would be giving her far too much credit. The almighty Caw would never consider her a real threat...

because she wasn't!

She never would be...

Unless...

She glared at the demon in her apartment.

"You know," she frothed in her rage. "You know something, don't you?"

"Sure do," it smiled.

"Tell me!"

"No."

"TELL ME, YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!"

The Devourer of Souls recoiled slightly and smiled.

"Too late," he replied. "Your friend is already here. He and the ambassador will be here shortly, and that will be the end of it... and your career."

She started in alarm.

"While these Xx are inclined to laugh all of this off, the ambassador certainly is not," the demon sneered. "It's over for you."

Karashel's eyestalks swiveled over towards the window.

"Nice thought," the demon replied, "but your friend has something with him, yet another box, that will allow him to see you even in the darkness of night or more precisely your-"

The demon laughed.

"Now that might actually work," it said in an amused tone.

***

"What has Councilor Karashel done?" the ambassador asked in alarm as it struggled to keep up with Caw.

"Oh, nothing of note," Caw replied diplomatically, "I just have reason to suspect that she is dangerously exhausted and in need of immediate medical intervention."

"While exhaustion can technically be a problem," the ambassador, still reeling from the shock of an actual Xx visiting the embassy, "it is rarely a true medical-"

It trailed off into silence as they reached Karashel's door.

Slime was oozing out from underneath.

"...oh," the ambassador said quietly.

He pressed the doorbell.

"Councilor Karashel," he said in a loud and clear voice. "It's Ambassador Marsamen. Are you alright?"

Silence.

"Kara!" Caw screeched as he pounded on the door. "Kara, open up!"

Nothing.

"Councilor Karashel," the ambassador said as he pressed the doorbell again, "We are about to enter!"

He pulled out a keycard and inserted it into a card reader mounted underneath the doorbell.

"Oh dear," Caw said quietly as the door opened.

The apartment was in disarray, furniture knocked over, her desktop wrecked, puddles of slime everywhere...

And no Karashel.

"This isn't good," the ambassador said after a few moments of silence.

"Glad you clarified that for me," Caw growled as they surveyed the scene. His crest twitched as he spotted an open bottle of pills.

He started to move to conceal them, but before he could reach them, the ambassador saw them as well and undulated over towards the bottle.

He shook out a couple onto the desktop and groaned.

"Five-threes," he muttered.

"What are those?" Caw asked as he pulled out a scanner.

"Oh, nothing," the ambassador said smoothly, "Just some dietary supplements. Thank you for your concern, Councilor, but this is now an intern-"

"Ambassador," Caw said smoothly, "While I have gotten to know Balean body language pretty well, I don't need that to know you are lying."

"Thank you for your concern, Councilor," the ambassador said stiffly, "but this is an internal matter, and we will handle things from here."

"When I said that Karashel had done nothing of note," Caw smiled, revealing his many razor-sharp teeth, "It could very easily become noteworthy, something that you definitely do NOT want. Now, tell me what those pills are."

The ambassador sighed.

"Five-threes are a... they are a..."

"Drug?" Caw asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Yes," the ambassador said with some discomfort. "Void-born humans..." he said with some venom. "N-not that I approve of what has happened to them! I don't! Even they don't-"

"It's quite possible to object to their treatment and absolutely loathe the fuckers," Caw said with a smile.

The ambassador sighed in relief and bobbed his eyestalks in agreement.

"Exactly," he said. "Five-threes are a human creation. They consist of fifty 'milligrams', or roughly one hundred and twenty Federation Mass Units of caffeine and three of their 'milligrams' of nicotine. From what I understand, these would have a mild stimulant effect in humans, but for a Baleel, both of those substances are much more powerful and much more dangerous, on par with any street drug. The humans can make them legally for their own consumption, but we have it on good authority that these five-threes are produced almost entirely for illegal export... to us! They do make caffeine supplements, but the ones they actually use normally contain enough caffeine to kill a Baleel and are never paired with nicotine!"

"Sounds like something they would do," Caw agreed as he fiddled with his tablet, "Here they are," he said as he looked at the crystalline surface, "A cup of coffee and a cigarette anywhere, anywhen."

The ambassador muttered a word in Balean, a term that Caw had come to know quite well.

Caw chuckled as he pulled up some trade data.

"I see what you mean, Ambassador," he said, "Kind of a flop on the domestic market."

"And they make them by the millions!" the ambassador bubbled angrily, "Maybe one silver lining to all of this will be the end of these things!"

"I wouldn't count on it," Caw said as he searched the apartment. "They will have to pay for all of those nuclear weapons somehow... In a display of my skills in dealing with the obvious, Karashel isn't here."

They both looked at an open and slime-covered window.

"No!" Caw screeched in terror and sprinted over, slipping in the ooze and landing in a slimy pile of discarded clothing. He quickly kicked himself free from the pile and pulled himself up.

Fearing the worst, he looked down.

"It's only the fourth floor," the ambassador said as he undulated up to peer over Caw's shoulder.

"Only the fourth floor?!?"

"We don't have any bones to break, and our bodies can absorb a great deal of kinetic energy," the ambassador replied. "We can fall from quite a distance as long as we don't land on anything sharp."

"So she jumped?"

"Quite possibly," the ambassador replied uncomfortably. This was definitely not something he wanted anyone, especially the Xx, involved in.

Caw pulled a scarf-like strip of cloth off of his slime-coated feathers and examined it.

"Um," the ambassador said in an embarrassed tone, "that's her undergarment."

"Eeek!" Caw squawked as he quickly released Karashel's "panties". The slime-coated strip of fabric clung to his hand, and he started flailing his arm back and forth frantically.

"All units report!" he barked into the air.

"Same as last time, dude," an annoyed voice responded. "She's everywhere and nowhere!"

"We are the fucking Xx!" Caw screeched in frustrated rage. "And you mean to tell me that a single Baleel is beyond us?!?"

"Looks that way, doesn't it?" another Xx, a female this time, replied in a snarky voice.

Ambassador Marsamen fidgeted nervously (but as silently as possible) in the passenger's seat. In the past few hours, he had grown a little more used to the Xx's "irreverent" attitude when dealing with one another. However, it was still fundamentally unnerving, especially the exchange between Councilor Itsheesh and the Xx Ambassador.

The things they said to each other! He could never talk to Councilor Karashel that way...

Though should she survive the night, he might be more than a little tempted.

"May I remind you that this isn't a fucking field exercise," Caw screeched. "Kara is in very real danger at this point!"

Caw spun around and looked at one of the Baleel in the back seat.

"How long does she have left?"

"It's impossible to say for certain," the Balean doctor replied. "There are so many factors in play here, nutrition, sleep deprivation, the amount of slime she has exuded, the amount of time she spends in the river, her ion balance prior to entering the river... She definitely requires treatment at this point, but as far as her actual condition goes, she could just need a few bags of serum and a good night's sleep or..."

The doctor trailed off.

"Or what?" Caw demanded.

"Or she could already be gone," the doctor replied quietly.

"Skreeeeee!" Caw cursed. "All units, cover everything again!"

***

"Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!" Karashel muttered as she hauled herself painfully out of the mud and onto dry ground.

Everything hurt. Everything hurt bad.

And, it was getting hard to think.

Ok, Karashel, she thought as she took a steadying breath. You fucked up for real this time.

Everything started to fade out.

She scraped the inside of her throat with her radula, hoping the pain would help keep her focused.

It didn't.

It just hurt.

Situation: she thought as she took another deep breath. We are in the middle of fucking nowhere, well outside of the city, exhausted, slime-starved, and our electrolytic balance is beyond fucked. We need serum, now!

She knew that if she didn't get serum or something like it before she passed out, that was it. Game over. Thanks for playing.

It didn't sound that bad. She would just go to sleep, and the pain would be over.

She started to slump, her muscles beginning to fail.

NO!

She continued to haul herself along a narrow path winding up the bank and into the giant mushrooms. No, they weren't mushrooms. They were "trees", tall plants with permanent polysaccharide spines or "trunks".

They were so pretty, the way they gently swayed in the starlight. So soothing...

No, she was getting off track.

Focus. What that asshole called her "fast-brain" wouldn't last much longer.

What was serum? It was a mineral-rich proteinous aqueous solution consisting of a wide variety of amino acids and was high in magnesium, calcium, potassium...

She shook herself. She was getting lost in the details.

How did you get it?

You bought it at the store, she thought as she spared the energy for a little derisive snort. Brilliant, Karashel.

In the old days, they would brew something called "slake" out of various plants, fungi, and shellfish that served the same purpose.

All she needed was a dozen different plants and fungi only present on her homeworld, twenty pounds of shellfish, a large pot, a roaring fire, and a whole day to boil it.

She weakly snorted again.

Yep, she thought weakly as she started to slump again, I'm fucked.

Despite her best efforts, her consciousness started to slip again, but this time, she didn't fully black out. Once again, she found herself in that magical "zone" she had experienced in the embassy's garden.

She sighed in contentment as her muscles fully let go. At least there was this final mercy before the end. She could feel so much! She could feel each individual leaf as if it were made of crystal beneath her. She could feel the gentle breeze as it soothed her drying back. She could feel the gentle groaning of the giant plants around her as their roots shifted ever so slightly in the earth...

She could feel the individual indentations that hardened foot parts, or "hooves" left in the trail beneath her as the forest creat-

Blood! her failing mind screamed. Blood is serum!

Then everything faded completely.

***

The green-stag strolled along the forest path, its muscles rippling underneath its taut skin, pausing to paw at the ground, unearthing the sweet rhizomes of a wide leafed plant valued for its decorative qualities across the Federation.

The quadruped didn't care about how it looked as it munched happily.

It had been a good season, and it had grown large and strong, 1.7 meters at the shoulder, and had several successful matings thus far...

And the scars from the battles that earned him that right.

A rustling in the leaves made it crouch and raise its head, ready to run or fight.

It sniffed the air. There wasn't the strange cloying scent of the feathered screeching killers with their glowing lights that burned and killed, nor was there the more natural musk of the two-legged ones who made thunder and smelled of fire or the furred ones.

It was the furred ones that frightened him the most with their silent flying teeth.

It wasn't any of them or the other less concerning strange killers that would sometimes stalk these woods.

It was just a little leaf digger.

He snorted at it, and the digger fled. He didn't have to, but he was embarrassed at his fear. Besides, those roots were his.

The digger would have to find their own.

He ate his fill and decided that it was a good time to get water. He had smelled a female near where this trail ended at the water, and based on the age of the markings, she might be there now.

Or, perhaps he could get a fresher trail.

He strode down the trail, scanning for any danger.

There was none.

The gentle slope became steeper as he approached the wide flowing water at the trail's end.

Suddenly, he started to slip!

He tried to back away, but his hooves kept slipping, one after another!

He started to slide down the slope slowly at first, but he kept sliding faster each second. Soon he was desperately scrabbling for any purchase on the hard-packed slimy dirt.

With a panicked bellow, he fell. Flailing wildly, he slid ever faster towards the bottom, his legs coated in a strange slimy stuff he had never seen before.

Finally, he slid into a lump of leaves and dirt at the bottom. Still scrambling, he tried to clamber onto the mound.

The mound shifted in a strange fashion. Was it a log?

Suddenly the mound was on top of him. That was odd.

No! The mound was moving!

Bellowing with fear and anger, the creature tried to struggle but couldn't get up, only thrash beneath this strange sticky... thing. It tried to bring its wickedly sharp horn to bear, but the mound had already flowed onto its head, pressing it down into a slimy puddle.

There was something sticky and wet covering it now! It was getting into his nose, his mouth.

He couldn't breathe!

He was one of the strongest creatures in the forest, but the harder he fought, the deeper he sank into the strange slimy, sticky soft earth beneath him.

He couldn't breathe!

His thrashing became weaker and weaker...

Until it stopped altogether.

"ghud..." the mound bubbled as it pressed its mouth against the creature's still warm neck.

***

"Now tell me," Caw said in a strangely calm voice, "Why can't we find her?"

"It has to do with their physiology, councilor," the other Xx responded in a polite, precise manner.

Nobody was playing anymore.

The other Xx continued.

"It just so happens that the Baleel possess a very common set of amino acids. In fact, their amino acids are a subset of the amino acid profile of the planet itself. There is no unique protein to focus on which to focus our scans. We are having to analyze protein sequences instead, which wouldn't be a problem except that we are having to cover a lot of area since she could have left the river at any point or could still be floating along with the current."

"And we are limited to the equipment we had at the embassy," Caw said in a perfectly calm manner.

"Right," the other Xx replied. "Security sweepers and package sniffers have the sensitivity, but not the range. We are having to bob and weave over the river and along the banks like murder-flies."

"Fuck it," Caw muttered.

"Councilor?" the other Xx asked.

"We're out of time, beyond out of time," Caw said. "Start focusing your efforts on the banks further upstream. I'm going to call in a favor."

"You said we would keep this to ourselves," Ambassador Marsamen objected, "You said-"

He fell silent. If looks could kill the ambassador would be no more.

"What would you prefer, Ambassador," Caw hissed in a dangerous tone. "Me calling in a favor from someone who knows when to keep their mouth shut or some nature lover finding a naked Baleel corpse, loaded to the gills with five-threes, during their morning walk?"

"Well, I..." the ambassador said weakly.

"Not that you get a say in this anyway," Caw hissed.

He sighed and then facepalmed.

"Get me in touch with the Darksea's Mysteries," he said between his feathered fingers.

A kalent wearing what appeared to be a thin bodystocking appeared on his HUD. "What do you want, Xx?"

"You are the (ahem) diplomatic vessel responsible for toting around a certain august personage that is currently a guest of the humans in the Locus?"

"Our passengers, whoever they may be, are none of your concern, Xx."

"Well, that passenger owes a certain Baleel a solid and WILL DEFINITELY want you to assist me. Call them now, and tell them that Karashel the Baleel needs help that you can provide. You do NOT want him to find out that you failed him or Karashel."

The Kalent glared at Caw and terminated the communication.

Ambassador Marsamen just looked at Caw in complete shock. First the Xx and now the Kalent?

Caw's HUD flashed, indicating an incoming message.

It was the Kalent.

"Councilor Itsheesh," the kalent said much more politely. "How can we help Councilor Karashel?"

The Ambassador's eyes bulged slightly as Karashel's name was spoken with much more respect than the Caw's.

What had Karashel been up to?

***

Half a dozen grav vehicles descended upon a shallow depression in the middle of the woods surrounding Capital City.

"Fan out!" Caw shouted as the Xx started sprinting in a skirmish line down a narrow game trail.

Suddenly a strange silvery craft appeared in front of them.

"She is beneath us, Xx." a Kalent voice announced as the craft started to land.

Caw ran headlong down the path...

And promptly went head over heels as a patch of what appeared to be normal ground dissolved into a slimy mess.

Caw screeched as he started to slide down the slope, unable to stop himself as everything he grabbed broke down into more of this slippery, slimy muck.

Coated head to toe in a mixture of mud and slime, Caw finally came to rest against a small mound of dirt and leaves.

It was really soft...

And it grunted as it rolled over on top of him.

"Moar..." a strange soulless voice bubbled.

"Kara!" Caw exclaimed. "We were so worr-... um... Kara?"

Caw started to try to extricate himself from underneath his friend only to find that the underside of a Baleel's foot can be quite... grippy.

“Kara?... Kara! Kara!” Caw screeched.

As Karashel slowly flowed over his body, Caw turned his head to the side...

and found himself looking right into the wide-open eyes of a magnificent green stag, a dead magnificent green stag with a hole bored deep into its throat.

He suddenly realized what "Moar" meant.

Oh shit.

"Kara!" he squawked as Karashel continued to flow up his body, "Karashel! Councilor Karashel!..."

"Caw?" a female Xx security officer asked in an uncertain voice as she raised her weapon.

"Forgive me, Kara," Caw said quietly, "Twenty-five percent stun!... FIRE!" he shouted.

Karashel convulsed once, her eyes shooting out like party noise makers before collapsing.