Chapter 48
{Altus!} I cried in my mind.
Within seconds, I felt that giddy, headstrong feeling that could only mean Altus had heard me. {Dante! Buddy! Aaron helped you out earlier, didn’t he?} He sounded kind of jealous that I hadn’t asked him. But he seemed to know why I had contacted him.
{Yeah, but know I’m gonna need that slig morph. Can you help me out?}
{Yeah, no sweat, you’ve got it!} He eagerness was a little unnerving, but I overlooked it.
I thanked him and began to chant. A second later, I was a pantless, maskless slig. I climbed up and into the pants I had swiped from the fallen slig guard, pulled on his mask, and picked up his gun.
Ready for action!
I marched around, kind of aimlessly, until I stumbled upon a pair of sligs chatting about going to relax in one of the slig tents. I followed them carefully, not wanting to look too suspicious. And they surely led me to massive tent.
I walked in after them, and took a quick surveillance of the tent. It was a big open room, and I could see every corner. Overhead, there were beams set up across the tent, holding the structure in its proper shape. And from these beams were hung the familiar, cocoon-like upright beds that the sligs sleep in. each bed had a snoring slig, and the whole room sounded like a wood-sawing convention. And, across the tent and at the far wall across from me, were several Getcha Pants machines.
The two sligs I had followed were preparing to climb into a sack when I plugged them. The gunfire woke only the sligs nearby; those farther away likely thought the gunfire was from outside.
I began picking off the sligs, and it took a few minutes for them to realize what was happening. They cried for help, waking more sligs, but since they were all helpless, they crawled for the back for some Getcha Pants.
I simply kept shooting, marveling at the way the fragile slig bodies seemed to be torn apart by the bullets that pounded into them. I had managed to tear away most of the sligs before the first few reached the machines and suited up. I picked off a few more sligs before I turned and ran out of the tent.
I stood outside the tent and waited for someone to come up. I noticed a few mudokons hanging around, gathering rocks in buckets to clear the ground. This way the sligs wouldn’t trip up, I supposed. But I had no more time to speculate, because four sligs tore out of the tent. I quickly started talking.
“Hey! What’s with all the shooting?” Hoping they wouldn’t recognize me.
They didn’t.
One slig grumbled, “Some idiot slig came in and shot a bunch of us in our sleep. Lousy coward.”
I uttered a short curse in the sligs’ natural tongue. It was raspy, almost a buzz, and sounded kind of like shzmo. The other sligs agreed with another slig phrase, a mechanical meh-mick sound.
“Did you see where he went?” I asked, sounding concerned.
The slig that had spoken before grunted. “No, I guess he got away.” He looked pretty worried now. “The boss is gonna be pretty pissed about this.”
I grinned with my slig tentacles. “Not to worry,” I chuckled. “I have a solution.”
The slig turned on me. “Oh? What’s that?”
I raised my gun and shot the three other sligs in rapid succession. I was ready to shoot him when he drew on me. We simply stood there, uninterrupted for a few moments, waiting to see who would dare shoot first.
It turned out to be neither of us. Instead, I quickly swung my gun up and in a short arc. The other slig didn’t expect this, and so wasn’t watching for it. Instead of pulling his trigger, his stupid face followed my gun up and down again, knocking his gun from his hands.
I saw him take in breath to shout for help, but before he could, I spoke.
“One syllable and I shoot.”
He shut right up.
“Now,” I went on, “who’s in charge at this camp?”
The terrified slig snorted in spite of himself. I cocked the gun and he sobered up quickly. He gulped before he spoke. “Bung, from Tastee Treets. He’s here managing a slig search party. We’re looking for a mudokon that his coworkers called ‘Dante.’ Have you heard of him?”
So here it was. Bung, director of Tastee Treets’ slig training facility, was out here looking for little old me. How flattering.
“Where’s his tent?”
The slig hesitated, obviously not willing to reveal his boss’ location to this murderer. So I cracked him across the face with my gun and shouted the question again. “Where’s his tent?”
The slig cowered a moment longer and spoke. He gave me the directions to Bung’s office, and begged me not to shoot him.
I told him to repeat the directions slowly. He did, and I shot him anyway.
I quickly undid the catch on my slig pants and pulled off my mask. A few short seconds later I was a mudokon again. I whistled a high pitched, sharp greeting to all the mudokons in the area. They loudly whistled back, and came trotting over. About seven of them. Probably not enough to charge up the shrykull.
No time now. I chanted and sent them to the new settlement.
Now, to find Bung’s tent.
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