Chasing Cthulhu (Urf Oomons #2)

“Thanks.” The female says in her Earth-Human speak. The language is just as adorable as humans themselves, all chirps, and squeaks.

This is a strange culture that these Earth-Humans have. Apparently, it is a regular thing for males to just show up at a female’s residence, maybe to assault her and abduct her, or maybe not. And how am I to know when this human female is in danger or not? Which males are predatory, and which are benign?

When I heard another vehicle coming up to my human’s house, I was ready to do violence again to protect her, but it was unnecessary because this human male meant no harm at all. There was not a whiff of anxiety in the air, and the male was relaxed. Keeping close to be sure of the female’s safety, I watched as the two interacted. The only thing he did was speak to my female and then leave, taking the criminals’ vehicle with him.

I am still shocked at myself. Did I really kill two people? Even as I ponder it, I am willing to do so again. Is this just who I am now? A violent, obsessed male?

My introspection yields no answers, and it is not clear what she is thankful for now. That I killed those first two men? Or that I did not kill her most recent visitor? Could be that she is thankful that it was not I who harmed her small animal companion.

She is trying to communicate with me, and it is so charming. I obviously have the advantage in our conversation thanks to my universal translation implant. It was updated with Earth-Human speak a while ago. I cannot speak it though because my people, Homeworlders, vocalize in an entirely different way than these humans and cannot physically make the Earth-Speak sounds. I doubt she can make Homeworlder sounds. She is so very focused on understanding me, though. Her brows with their tiny lines of fur are drawn together in concentration. She is even taking a video for later study.

My admiration for this little female grows as she remains in my presence, working to communicate with me. What a different creature she is from the human female my pod-mate brought on our ship so long ago. Tiny quaked in terror and passed out in fear when she first got a good look at me, but this one is so brave and fierce. Not only did she berate me, stomping her delicate foot at me when she thought I had harmed her animal, now here she stands questioning me as though not concerned at all. It is too much.

As if by their own will, my tentacles have been moving me incrementally closer as we converse. She gives no sign of noticing.

“Are those Yew-Eff-Ohs searching for you?”

I shrug my tentacles in confusion. That word is not in the translation matrix.

She stabs a digit at her device. Poke, poke, poking it with her nimble little finger. Is there anything she does that is not absolutely adorable?

Turning the screen toward me, she slowly moves through a collection of images. I move the last little distance closer to her so that I may see them clearly. They are almost all Seereechee drone vessels.

Alarmed, I jerk back from the device and look around us, searching the sky. But it is fast becoming overcast with clouds, and I see nothing. The atmosphere on this planet is so changeable. One moment the single star Earth orbits shines down hotly and the next a cloud of dense, moist air blocks it and everything cools. One day everything is calm, the next there are great gusts of wind and pounding rains. It is a wonder.

“You recognize them?” She draws my attention from the clouded sky.

I perform a human nod of agreement.

“Are they looking for you?”

I nod again and I can feel my color darkening with thoughts of Seereechee drones searching for me. This has been a constant pressure, weighing me down. I do not even know how they are managing to get people from the surface of this planet up to their ship. And for that matter, how did I end up imprisoned on their ship? I had been dining in the cafeteria of our homeship, I must have lost consciousness because I woke up months later imprisoned on a Seereechee ship.

I should not be out in the open here conversing with her. My working theory has been that the Seereechees have not picked me up again because the water interferes with their tracking in some way. Every moment I am out in the air is a chance that they will find me, but I cannot stop moving toward her instead of away.

“You don’t look happy about it. You don’t want them to find you?”

My head swivels from side to side in negation.

“Huh. Well, I guess that’s why you’re hiding out here.”

No, I am hiding out here to stay close to her and watch her so that I can intercede if she is attacked again by any more of these Earth-Human males. There is a whole world of oceans I could be moving through, staying ahead of Seereechee detection, but I cannot bring myself to leave her unguarded. What would have happened had I not been here to defend her earlier?

“So,” she draws my attention back, “If that’s a ‘no’ then why are you hiding out here?”

“To keep you safe,” I explain, gesturing toward her with one hand and two tentacles. She does not understand. Without a device to access the translation matrix, all she hears when I speak is the incomprehensible vocalizations of Homeworlder speech. She does seem to pick up on the meaning of my gestures though because her eyes widen a tick. She lifts a hand to point at herself with one delicate digit, and she takes one step back. She is acting as though I have said something threatening when I have not.

To communicate that I mean no harm. I hold my hand up, palms out in a universal gesture of peace, move back a pace, and hold still.

That is when I see it.

Directly over her home, unveiling itself from dense cloud cover as it lowers, is a Seereechee drone shuttle. Silent and ominous, this disk-shaped spacecraft has not even caught her attention, though it is almost overhead.

My first instinct is to grab her and carry us both to the safety of the water. I could swim miles away from here. But of course, I cannot do that. Humans are unable to breathe underwater and cannot hold their breath for more than a few moments.

The only option is her domicile.

I reach out arms and tentacles, grab her up and move quickly toward the house. She yells in fright, scenting of alarm and fear. Her distress only grows when she catches sight of the ship.

The mechanism for the doorway is some barbaric puzzle that I do not take the time to figure out. I just bust through, causing glass and wood splinters to fly. I cover my human’s delicate face as a few shards bounce off the wall and back toward us.

To one side of the door is a room with an over-abundance of windows and to the other side is a corridor. I take the corridor because the more concealed we are from that shuttle, the better.

On either side of this corridor, there are doors, but they are closed with the same puzzling mechanism, a knobby perturbance that does absolutely nothing when I press on it. At the end is an open door. I make my way there with this human yelling incoherently the whole time.

When I push the door the rest of the way open, I enter a strange room and rush across to flatten myself and my female on the other side of a—well, it is a large soft surface. It scents strongly of the human, more so than the rest of this home. Is this where she sleeps? No matter, the only concern right now is hiding. Can I even hide from the Seereechees when they can track my implant? I cannot remember how they got me the first time. How can I protect us from them?

There is a hard case next to us. It is barking. No, of course it’s not barking, the animal locked within it is barking. I jam the end of a tentacle into the case and the barking little beast quiets because now he is chewing on my appendage. That is fine so long as he quiets.

“Why!?” The human starts yelling, “What is going on? You—umphh.”

I have wrapped a tentacle around her face, silencing her mouth. She bites me and I allow it. There is no way to know if this noisy Earther could draw the Seereechees to us.

Now I crouch and wait, being chewed on by two ridiculous earth creatures and hunted by a slaving pirate species, and hope for luck. Maybe they will give up the chase. Maybe they did not notice us at all.

But fortune is not with me this day. A blue light shines through the fabric-covered window across the room and when that strange light falls on me, I am suddenly limp. My tentacles fall away from the beings I had been holding securely, my body rises weightlessly from the floor, and I pass into unconsciousness.