him with a smile on her face and love in her eyes.
She said "Good morning, darling. Welcome to the rest of our lives."
-She stood, leaning over him, and very gently kissed him.
\ No newline at end of file
+She stood, leaning over him, and very gently kissed him.
+
+==== Mellie: Detective, Resistance Operative ====
+
+Mellie had called in sick for a couple of days, getting Behan to cover
+for her. When she showed up, she looked like she'd been sick. Her eyes
+were deeply shadowed, black circles under them. She was obviously
+exhausted. She was told to go back home and come back the next day
+rested. She was perfectly willing to do that. She slept all day.
+
+She came in fresh and cheerful the next day. Behan and she caught a
+triple homicide in the North End. There were two suspects. Both had
+run off through the run-down neighborhood immediately after the
+killings. The cordon had been called down quickly though. They might
+still be trapped in the area.
+
+The house was made of gray stone like most of the others in the poorer
+sections of town. Dirty and covered with the red dust of the desert
+nearby, the houses looked like dark coffins dripping with blood.
+Mellie shuddered at the thought.
+
+They were out of the modified AirLorry before it touched down and
+running toward the house. Two uniformed officers stood guard, back to
+back, in the front space, eyes darting back and forth. Their shoulders
+eased back a little when the reinforcements landed.
+
+Mellie and Behan ran quietly past the two officers, using matter
+penetrating equipment to scan the house. Nothing seemed to be moving.
+Behan placed his hand on the door opener and overrode the lock. The
+door opened and they slipped inside. Mellie went right, Behar left.
+Still nothing moved.
+
+They found the bodies in a back room. The men had been lined up
+against a wall and shot. Like a firing squad. Millie thought.
+
+Two of the faces looked vaguely familiar. Behar drew in a sharp
+breath.
+
+She looked at him.
+
+"They're undercover Resistance operatives." he said. "Mason" he
+indicated the middle body "was a friend of mine. His wife is dead, but
+he has two sons and four grandchildren." He sighed. "I'm godfather to
+his sons."
+
+He looked at his friend a moment longer. When he turned back to her,
+his face was blank. "Let's check the basement."
+
+A hallway led outside with a door leading to the basement next to
+that. No light came from below.
+
+They pulled lights from their belts and started down the stairs. There
+were windows high on the walls, but the glass had been sprayed black.
+No light came through. And their lights seemed to be swallowed by the
+stygian darkness.
+
+They had almost reached the bottom of the stair when brilliant light
+exploded from a corner of the room, blinding them. Mellie dived to her
+right, followed by Behan, who landed on top of her.
+
+She said something like "Ummmpphh!"
+
+Behan rolled off and fired at the lights. Mellie was able to drag
+herself up beside her partner but was still having trouble breathing.
+Having a ninety kilo man land on top of you takes your breath away,
+she thought.
+
+The lights went out, although there was a dim glow where they had
+been.
+
+Mellie could hear whispers coming from that direction. She could see
+Behan's face and waved at the corner.
+
+He nodded. She went right. He went left. No lights. Nudging their feet
+along, trying to find objects silently. She thought she could see him
+as a darker shadow in the blackness. When he turned his face toward
+her, she knew she was right. They were less than twenty feet from the
+corner. The glow emanating from the area was a putrid yellow. The
+odors in the area were just as foul.
+
+Behan held up his fist, pumping it twice. Then he slashed it forward
+and they moved together. Leaping over boxes and cans. They landed in a
+pool of slime, which was glowing yellow. Movement to their right
+brought them scrambling to reach two figures moving toward the stairs.
+
+Moving faster than Behan, Mellie tackled the closest one. An inhuman
+screech shattered the silence and Mellie grabbed onto what felt like a
+crab leg.
+
+"Shit! Brol." she grunted. Wrenching the leg encased in chitin
+backwards, she felt it pull loose. The creature shrieked again.
+Multiple appendages grasped her , lifting her up and throwing her at
+the wall. She hit the duracrete wall and all the air rushed out of her
+- again. Sliding to the floor, she watched as Behan attacked the other
+Brol with a pipe he had picked up. He broke a couple of legs before
+the thing stuffed him under the stairs.
+
+They heard the two Brol skitter up the steps, then the yells and a
+couple of screams as they made their get-away.
+
+Mellie groaned and picked herself up from the floor, hobbling over to
+the stairs. Behan was just backing out from the small space
+underneath.
+
+He stood up, groaning even louder than Mellie. "You all right?" he
+asked.
+
+She smiled. "Probably about the same as you are."
+
+"In that case, call emergency." But he laughed.
+
+Officers came pounding down the stairs, looking concerned.
+
+Lt Marks appeared. "Well, you're both alive at least."
+
+One of the patrol officers joined them with a Brol leg in hand. It was
+about five feet long, made of hard chitin, an exoskeleton. Inside lay
+muscles and tendons and ligaments that attached to chitin instead of
+bone.
+
+A crime scene tech came by, looked at the leg, and said "We should be
+able to identify that guy by the morning."
+
+Mellie was surprised. "How can you identify one Brol out of the
+thousands on this planet?"
+
+The tech grinned. "They are all required to register when they arrive.
+We have their DNA. Each and every one of them." He got back to work.
+
+Behan nodded. "There's a law on almost every human planet. Alien
+sentients are required to register on arrival and record their DNA."
+He rubbed his back. "Brol are the most plentiful aliens on Agalder,
+but they are by no means the only ones."
+
+Lt. Marks walked over to them. "Get back to HQ. Get the computer work
+done." He hesitated a moment, looking at Mellie, then shrugged. "And,
+for God's sake, take a fresher. You both stink."
+
+The emergency personnel checked Mellie and Behan over and released
+them and they made their way back to Headquarters. There was a
+mountain of computer work to be done. Not only have they been fired
+upon and responded by firing their own weapons, but there was an alien
+species involved. But they washed up and put on clean clothes before
+getting to work. All personnel kept a spare set or two of clean
+clothes at HQ. Just in case.
+
+Something was bothering Mellie. Finally she recognized the concern her
+brain was niggling at. She turned to Behan. "Why didn't they kill us?
+That had to be deliberate."
+
+Behan looked up and nodded. "Good point." he said. "They never meant
+to kill us."
+
+Mellie frowned. "But they were shooting at us when we came down the
+stairs."
+
+Behan asked her "Did either one of us get hit?"
+
+"No, but..."
+
+"Brol never miss. They are close to the best shots in the universe.
+They want us alive. And they probably want to talk to us."
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projects / universe.git / commitdiff