Koelian Tomb – V.

S’iug planted his feet over the regulator taking deep breaths of his mask and letting Koelian air surround him.

The bottle was half empty when S’iug heard it suddenly. A door closed stealthily, a furtive footfall from the rear of the house. He sat upright, alert with narrow eyes. The feet shuffled and advance along the immense hallway. Then miraculously, Brong Vrop, ray in his hand, was framed in the doorway.

S’iug calmly took a last sip from his drink before he spoke. He set the bottle down and said contemptuously, “Brong, you are a fool.”

“Maybe,” said Brong Vrop. “I’d rather be a fool than a corpse.”
“You’ll be that, too, if you kill me. Twice you’ve threaten me before Elias. Whom do you think he’ll look for when they found my body?”

Brong Vrop grinned. It wasn’t a pleasant grin. “When you are in hell,” he said, “maybe you’ll find out I’m not such a fool after all. But let’s not waste time. First I want you to come down to the cellar with me.”

S’iug shrugged.
He poured another drink and made no move to get out of his chair. Brong’s face became did brown with anger. He crossed the room with three long strides. He thrust the maze of his ray against S’iug chest.

“Damn you!” He shouted. “I’ll shut all three of your damn hearts here and now damn purple worm. Get up now. Lead the way to the cellar.”

Elias in the meantime was working the late morning shift. It was few minutes after earth-ten when he arrived at headquarters. He was greeted grumpily by Keln, his chief.

We got a murder,” said Keln. “Guy named R’iun. Photographer for the Blade Blog. That means the media and the social media will raise hell with us.”

Elias seated himself on the edge of his desk.
“Any details?”
“Not many. Holdup apparently. His credits gone and his kPhone. Stuck up in his own home very early this morning. Body was just found by a friend of his. You think it was Brong Vrop’s gang?”

Elias shook his head. “Not enough dough in it. Sounds more like an amateur. Vrop’s not crazy enough to commit a murder for a few credits. He doesn’t fool around with…”
Elias broke as he noted Keln’s gaze travel beyond him and register astonishment. He turned his head around, slid off his desk, sharing Keln’s surprise.

For walking past the desk sergeant towards them was a grinning and bowing Brong Vrop. Vrop’s presence in a flat station was at once an amazing and unprecedented occurrence. Since he had been thirteen years old, Brong Vrop’s chief purpose in life had been to avoid anyone remotely concerning with the forces of law and justice.

“Well,” said Keln heavily as Vron approached his desk. “Have you come to give yourself up?” Brong Vrop threw back his head, all eyes looking at the ceiling, and laughed as if something deeply funny had been said or happened.

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Read all the Koelian tomb chapters in order, HERE!

Koelian Tomb – IV.

Elias herded Brong from the room. As he left the house he heard the gurgling sound of bourbon spilling into S’iug’s credenza.

As they walked down the recycled elastic pathway, Brong Vrop exploded.
“Imagine that guy? Who the hell he thinks he is? The dirty drunken purple blood worm. I got more dough than he will ever see again in his life. I can buy and sell him ten times…”

“You didn’t though, did you?” Said Elias quietly.

Brong bit his lips and cursed. “Gimme my rays and my knives, flat,” he said. “I got permit. I got…”
Elias thrust the rays and the knives in his open hands. He climbed wearily into the squad one-sitter drone. He flew back to headquarters considering his prime institute-mates. One was drunkard, one was a racketeer, one sat in a cold cell waiting of a jury of his peers to condemn him to a mine colony forever.

A few days later the three of them came out of the courtroom together. The fourth would never emerge; save from the side door which lf to the cells. S’iug strode with a slight weave. His breath was like a frozen breeze through his mask. He carried his head high and glanced neither to the right nor to left as he walked.

Brong Vrop strode along at his side. Brong’s face was dark and his lips contorted. Elias, a pace ahead of them turned his head and watched Brong carefully.

“I told you what would happen,” said Brong in a serpentine whisper. “I’ll take care of you personally S’iug. Welng’s going to burn. You going to burn. I warn you that would happen. I…”
Elias shouldered Brong aside. “Shut up and beat it,” he ordered. “Get going Brong.”

Brong shuffled away, tentacles moving fast, eyes fixed on S’iug. S’iug gave no indication that anything had been said or done around him.

“We could send a flat up to your place,” suggested Elias. “Station a flat there to see that Brong doesn’t try anything…”

“Brong is a fool,” said S’iug. “A fool and a coward. Why don’t you leave me alone.”

He walked out into the burning hot street, marched away regally into the lowering double sun twilight.  Elias watched him go. He was aware of an unreasonable apprehension at the pit of his stomach as he stood there silent.

Next morning, S’iug T’rid dressed up slowly and shiveringly. A wracking ache assailed his temples and made his antennas vibrate. The dry bitterness that came every morning to his mouth was there gain. He made his way downstairs. He took a Galorian Rum bottle for the freezer. He did not bother himself with the formality of a glass. I a few moment alcohol brought warmth and circulation to his taxed body. He sighed heavily, made his way to the drawing room, where he placed the bottle on the small table at the side of his armchair and sat down.

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Read all the Koelian tomb chapters in order, HERE!

Koelian Tomb – III.

Brong Vrop, his eyes never leaving S’iug’s face, said “I want to speak to you. Alone.”
Elias said, “I have an idea of what you want to say Brong. I’m here to protect the Union’s witness while you are trespassing.”
Vrop’s eyes shrewd even more. “I didn’t come here to hurt him, flat. But what I have to say is private and I have this right.”
There was silence.

S’iug glanced at Elias who shrugged slightly. “Suppose you search him, take rays and anything else, Elias, and wait out in the hall. If I need you, I’ll call if you hear something you don’t like you enter.”

“Sure,” said Brong eagerly. “That’s fair enough. I can’t do much unarmed and with a flat fully armed right outside.”
Elias hoped that this was not ironic.

With faint reluctance, Elias stood up search extremely carefully Brong paying special attention to his tentacles and took hold of a ray and a couple of weird knives. Elias already knew from his file that Brong had permit for the rays stowed way in his wallet. In this planet the hands of the kotoworld reached into high places.

And then Elias walked into the chilled empty hall, closing the door of the drawing room behind him.

Now Elias knew clearly what Brong Vrop was about to say. Since he obviously would not try violence nor threat with a flat in the hall and aware to S’iug situation, the only other proposition he could make would be financial. Elias sighed; he was not worried about the Union losing a witness.

He knew S’iug better than that. True, the Koelian had become a psychopathic drunkard, a bum in his own unique way. But he had never last his strong sense of superiority. S’iug could not be bribed. Above all by Brong Vrop. S’iug would starve to death before he would accept credits from a gutter-bred reptile like Brong.

Elias shivered in the hall. The friendship between a ruthless thug like Brong and Welng, who was locked in the planet’s high security unit, was an odd thing. Even in institute they had been bosom companions.  Brong supplied the ideas and the plans and Elephine-strong Welng carried them to execution. So had it happened this time. Only S’iug had been an accidental witness to the killing Brong had order his henchman to perform and with all coincidences and the institute S’iug knew who is who.

All of a sudden, Elias hard Brong’s voice raised and beating violently through the heavy door into his ears. Elias span around swiftly and re-entered the room.

S’iug mockingly and more insufferable than ever, casually sipped another drink. Brong’s dark face was flushed and his many eyes glittered with anger. S’iug’s refusal of Brong’s credit offer must have been larded with an insult.

Vrop paid no attention to Elias entrance. He stood legs apart and tentacles folded, glaring with all his eyes at S’iug.
He said with hot, exploding bitterness, “S’iug, if Welng burns, you’ll die. I shall see it to it personally. With my own… I…”

“Shut up,” snapped Elias. “That’s a threat Brong. I can take him in for that, S’iug.” S’iug eyes were contemptuous above the rim of his glass. “Don’t bother,” he said. “Get out of here. Both of you.”

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Read all the Koelian tomb chapters in order, HERE!

Koelian Tomb – II.

S’iug set the glass down on the small table on his side and turned to Elias, a mocking smile on his purple lips.
“I called you,” he announced after a deep breath in the name of our old-school not friendship,” so he did remember who Elias was.
“And because,” he continued, “I expect an old school…” He left it unfinished but Elias knew.
“Brong Vrop,” he said without any surprise.

S’iug nodded. “Brong Vrop, indeed. I thought it advisable to have you present for a range of understandable reasons.”

He half filled his glass again and emptied it with his mask making a sucking noise, Elias hadn’t notice before. “I’m glad you called,” he dared say. Brong, of course, will try to shut you up.”
“S’iug antennas lifted straight up. “By what method? Force, perhaps? Bribery?”

Elias shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know.”
He glanced anxiously at S’iug, “we can count on you, can’t we?”

S’iug looked annoyed and superior. “Count on me?” He said as if he didn’t like the phrase.
“Let us understand each other flat. I have not a very high opinion of the flat-force but I have even lower one of such kotoworld scum as Brong Vrop.”

He took a quick zip of his drink, “I’ve seen an innocent Andorian murdered by Vrop’s reptilian partner. I take it my civil duty to take a witness stand and tell what I knew and what I saw. This is no favour to the flats. I do this because it is my duty and honour and nobody shall make me keep my mouth shut, as you put it.”

There as arrogance and contempt in S’iug’s tone. Even if he was broke and afflicted with a lethal alcoholism, he retained the kingly opinion of himself. To a S’iug, Elias and Brong Vrop were from the other side of the tracks.

Elias watched his drowning another glass of New Bayou bourbon silently and wonder if there was hope for this man.

Footsteps suddenly sounded from the porch. A sound vibration tinkled filmy from the rear of the house. S’iug rose and left the room.

A few seconds later he returned followed by a squat reptile with tentacle limps and a series of small eyes on top of his round head.
Elias was shocked and had literally jumped out of his seat. “Damn,” he shouted. In the meantime S’iug had resumed hi seat, poured another drink and bowed with ironic formality to his visitor. “Brong Vrop, you will excuse the condition of my house,” he said. “I no longer can afford servants and the environmental regulators are down, too. Actually it is rather uncomfortable even for a Koelian.” He smiled.
“However, Mr Brong Vrop, what can I do for you?”

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Read all the Koelian tomb chapters in order, HERE!

Koelian Tomb – I.

Elias Blom landed the squad one-sitter drone at the curb and stepped out on the wet pavement. “New planets old structure, he thought, pushed the unlocked gate and walked slowly up the recycled elastic pathway which ended at the portico of an Earth-Edwardian house standing like a far-away memory, ancient and dispirited, before him.

Elias had born and grown up in this neighbourhood and this house, this very Earth-Edwardian house had awed him. The remote dignity, the Earth roots, the wealth of the T’rid family had awed and dominated the entire planet of Cosmos. S’iug, the only T’rid child, had been three years ahead of Elias in the primary institute. Socially however, the gap between them had been far beyond the three years at primary institute.

The door was changing colours in a way that probably looked extreme stylish a few decades ago and illogical now as Elias tugged at the old-fashioned button. A moment later he heard uncertain footsteps from within and the door slowly slide open.

S’iug T’rid, breathing thru a mask, said in a strange voice, “Oh Elias, it’s you. Come in.”

Elias followed his host through a huge and empty hall; covered wall-to-wall in a strange dark purple colour leaving you with a feeling that you enter a tomb. The house was cold despite the planet’s general humid, with a clammy chill that penetrated to the bones. T’rids were originally from planet Koel II and that might explain some.

S’iug led the way into a vast drawing room whose furniture was clipped and upholstered in Earth-faded splendour. He sat in an earth-antique armchair by a credenza –Elias had seen a link of one before and he knew the name, and placed his feet over a metal register through which came faint waves of air. Elias thought, most likely Koel II short of air. On the credenza was one empty bottle bearing the label of a well-known New Bayou bourbon and another half filled.

Elias declined a drink. S’iug poured liberally for himself and drained the glass though a strange opening in his mask. Elias watched him drink with wonder and pity. S’iug was perhaps three years older but he looked at least twenty. His face had taken an odd deep blue colour like old and ill Koelians get and his eyes dull and rheumy. All that remained of the lad Elias had known at the institute was his air of partisan elegance he had inherited from a long line of Koelian partisans. S’iug wore the mantle as if it had been tailored for him, which, as a matter of fact, it had.

Orphaned in his late teens to find that his family’s fortune had been dissipated, S’iug had lived alone, devoting the little remnant of his inheritance to alcohol. He was solitary, depress drinker, dwelling alone in the vast, bleak mansion. As a child his riches and family status had cut him off for normal companionships. Now, it seemed he cut himself off of his own volition.

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Read all the Koelian tomb chapters in order, HERE!