Chapter 5: The new alien.

“I am Keltrixtionlenz. Royal of the Dagerstanteens.” The alien who had freed Murry scanned him as Murry struggled to get to his feet. Even though he spoke, the alien's mouth never opened or moved. He only smiled with his pretty pink lips. "Greetings."

After a second, the new alien snatched a piece of fabric that dangled from his weapon’s holster around his thigh. He wrapped the silk around Murry’s arm. He then spoke again with that same deep husky tone.

“Stay here.” Rising from his crouch, the blue creature spun back to the cages. When the hairy recruit peeked his head over the cage, both Murry and blue-tentacle-man saw the movement.

Murry had no intention of going anywhere. His whole body hurt, even his hair. He nodded and then frowned at the introduction. He would never remember that long, hard-to-pronounce name, and he had no idea if he was supposed to be impressed by the alien being a royal. What Murry focused on right now was adjusting his body to accommodate his abused anus and protecting his injured arm. Thankfully, whatever silk fabric the alien used to cover the wound was helping. The pain was slowly easing.

When the hairy recruit alien shot a strange-looking gun at Murry’s rescuer, Murry tried to call out a warning. His yell was unnecessary. The blue alien rolled to the left with a grin. Rapidly, Keltrix used all his long tentacles at once. He pulled guns from the holsters on this thighs, legs, and middle of his back. With precision, he shot. The hairy alien went down as Keltrix gracefully rose to his feet.

“Surrender, Derbergurs,” Keltrix called, but his lips didn’t move. “Accept your fate. You must pay for your crimes.” The alien’s face was smooth with eyes and nose and ears. Everything was in the right place, and yet… his lips appeared sealed together. Glued. The thick, plump pink lips stayed perfectly still as if he was a ventriloquist.

“We can negotiate, Keltrixtionlenz.” The fat alien popped up and shot a series of bullets, but Alien-blue-eyes moved quickly and dodged the blast. Rolling to the side, he made a sound Murry thought might be laughter. Every one of his tentacles now held a gun. He walked with confident strides hunting the hairy monster.

With so much blood loss, Murry was disoriented. He started to crawl on all fours to the door but got confused. His ass was killing him. He said he would stay put, but he just wanted to get out of here and away from the table and the gunfight. Maybe he could get back to Earth. Murry would go home and never deviate from his schedule for as long as he lived. If he made it home, he would never be curious about anything ever.

As he crawled, Murry glanced down at his arm. Already the throbbing agonizing pain had let up, and he sighed with relief. He slipped the fabric off his arm and moved the silk to the bites on his calf.

Running into a cage, Murry realized he was going in the wrong direction for escape. Turning past another enclosure, he halted when he came to the dead recruit-alien. The weapon the hairy alien had fired earlier was still clutched in his furry claw-hand.

Murry had never watched many sci-fi moves. He had no idea what he was doing, but a sense of self-preservation started to take over and control him. Angrily, Murry pried the gun from the hairy palm and then put his fingers in all the same places that the young alien had gripped the weapon.

Murry clutched the odd pistol right as he spotted the fat one raising his gun. The old fat alien aimed for Murry’s saving blue alien.

Keltrix crouched over a blue spot on the floor. He seemed to be inspecting the dried puddle. Not thinking, Murry shot his weapon at the head of the fat alien. Anger and pain made Murry’s gut burn. This creature had hurt him, and he wanted to see him dead. He closed his eyes. When they opened, he stared at the hairy monster.

The fat alien stood for a heartbeat. The side of his head was now missing. Wobbling, the hairy alien then face-planted the floor. Murry closed his eyes at the gruesome image.

When Murry finally got the courage to lift his head again, he looked around to make sure he was safe. His eyes met the amused stare of Keltrix-something-whatever. The pretty blue alien had reached his side and slowly took the gun from his hand.

“Good shot.” Alien-blue-eyes sounded surprised.

“Thanks.” Directly after Murry responded, the overhead light flickered, and then the room went black. A sound came over a loudspeaker, and a noise crackled. That didn’t sound like words.

“My sibling says it is time to go. We have taken the ship.”

Murry felt a tug on his uninjured arm. He tried to raise, but the room was utter blackness. He ended up stumbling into the side of a cage.

“You cannot see in the dark?” Keltrix had a deep voice that was melodious and calming. If it were another time and place, Murry would’ve begged for a story and closed his eyes, and gone to sleep. He didn’t comment on the question. That seemed more like a statement anyway. Plus, since he wasn’t used to having anyone talk to him and expecting a response, Murry didn’t bother.

Murry was working on getting his shaking legs under him when he was lifted into Keltrix’s chest. Two of the alien’s waist-high tentacles tucked Murry against smoothly carved pecs with no nipples. He was wrong about the blue man being wet or slimy. The alien’s skin was simply warm and muscular. Wrapping his uninjured arm around the alien’s neck, Murry stroked the skin. The tube hair brushed the back of his hand. The tubes were soft and curled around his wrist. He tried to shake them off with his fingers.

“Thanks.”

“You say that a lot.” Keltrix chuckled. “No problem, Human.”

“How come you understand me when I speak?”

“Your language, though I have not studied it, the sounds are not hard to understand. My species is exceptionally smart, and I am brilliant.”

“And cocky.” Murry closed his eyes since he couldn’t see anything anyway. Instead of looking around, he felt the wind blowing on his face and the solid hold of Keltrix. The alien was running at a clipped pace. He tried to think about the fact that Keltrix thought he spoke his own language instead of the pain burning his ass. Happily, the silk fabric seemed to have cooled the sting of his arm, and now it worked on his leg.

“Cocky is not the correct term, Human. Efficient, confident, brilliant. I am a clever warrior, an experienced killer, a skilled assassin. I know what I can and cannot do.”

“Warrior? Assassin? Are you going to kill me?” It dawned on Murry a little late that he was trusting this six-tentacled alien. He had no reason to place his life in the alien’s… hands? The creature was armed enough to turn Murry into nothing but a memory. “If you’re going to hurt me, please just kill me now. I can’t take more torture.”

“I am impressed you are still alive.” Keltrix slowed his gait. “Not many survive Derbergurs. You could take more torture.”

“Thanks,” Murry said sarcastically as he opened his eyes. “I’ll pass on the more torture.”

“You say thanks quite often.” Keltrix laughed. “I do not think you are using it properly.”

Before Murry could respond, he caught the hint of a doorway ahead of them. A tiny light gleamed, casting a small portion of a hallway in the pale-yellow glow. They entered a square room with computers and equipment Murry didn’t recognize. As they came to a halt, Murry figured out that Keltrix wasn’t the only one like him on the ship.

The space they entered had bodies of the dead hairy monsters littered around the metal floor. Two other blue aliens with the tube hair stood holstering weapons to their bodies.

“Took you long enough.” The blue alien who spoke first was missing his right middle tentacle. His white tube hair was short, and the tubes stood straight up toward the ceiling. It looked like a mohawk. “What is this?” White-mohawk asked.

“Did you find any trace of Fentontailia?” The other alien posed the question. This creature didn’t have black tubes like Keltrix either. His hair was red and completely straight. His abundance of tiny tubes even covered his left eye like part of a curtain. While he asked, one of his limbs adjusted a bag on his back.

“You were right, JP,” Keltrix addressed the alien with red tubes. “Dagerstanteens blood was in the room where I found this one, but I cannot say that it is Fenton’s. I do not sense him here.”

“You want to kill this thing?” White-mohawk alien gestured to Murry. “I will do it.”

Murry had been holding his breath just waiting for that. He wanted death, but now hearing the question, he prayed that he didn’t get moved to a new room for execution. Involuntarily, Murry gripped tighter to the alien’s neck.

“I owe the human. At least, I owe this male enough that I will not leave him here or kill him.” Strong tentacles gripped a little harder around Murry’s shoulders as if in a protective gesture. “We do not have to kill every alien we meet, Rhylent.”

The word that came out of the alien named JP sound like a swear word, but Murry didn’t know what he was saying. In fact, he didn’t know why he was able to understand what any of them were saying at all. He assumed they were speaking English, but why? There were too many questions, and his broken body stole most of his thoughts. Understanding the specifics of the aliens around him was low on his priority list. Not bleeding to death was much higher. He faced the fact that he might never be able to use his arm again. Even if the pain had lightened, he could recall with clarity what the damage had been.

“I am not happy about taking a strange alien on my ship,” JP muttered. Murry was momentarily taken aback by the sentence. To them, he was a strange alien.

“It is our ship,” Keltrix exhaled with a huff. “Rhylent?” Keltrix looked to White-mohawk. “What say you? Do you agree with JP?”

“I do not care.” Rhylent kicked the dead body of one of the hairy aliens on the floor. “If it gets annoying, just kill it. Now we should go before this ship crashes and burns.”

After Keltrix nodded at Rhylent’s suggestion, they moved to the exit. All of them started jogging down another dark hall off the main room with the low light. Keltrix and JP followed Rhylent as they twisted and turned. The three aliens seemed to have no problem navigating in the dark. As they ran, there wasn’t even a glimmer to help light the way.

While the alien group swiftly rushed, Murry closed his eyes. Tiredness and aching pain were taking over his mind. Every cut throbbed. Crashes of metal were heard in the distance. The smell of fire swirled in the air. There might have been an explosion. The ship shook. Strangely, Murry couldn’t seem to rouse himself enough to worry about the dangers around him. He set his head on the alien’s shoulder and let the tentacles cradle him to sleep.