Still hanging from the pipe, she looked both ways down the long, dark green corridor.
She felt herself panicking as it hit her that she wouldn’t get anywhere in time, not with her body working as badly as it was. She wondered if maybe she should go forward, over the hatch and towards the nearer of the branching corridors––
But it was too late for that, too.
She’d only made it a few feet when the hatch in the floor opened.
When it did, Jet couldn’t keep herself from looking back.
Staring at the face peering at her from under the rim of yet another circular door, Jet froze. Blinking, she stared harder at that face, trying to make sense of it.
It wasn’t Nirreth.
It was human.
The man who owned it smiled at her, and it was a human smile.
“Hey.” He held up what looked like a cooking pot. “Are you hungry?”
Jet stared at him, wondering if this was part of the drug.
“Don’t you want to eat first?” he said, enunciating more slowly.
“First?” she repeated numbly.
“Before you go wherever you’re going.” He motioned down the corridor, where she’d been trying to walk. “I heard you worked up quite an appetite with my boys already. Swinging swords. Trying to jump out of a moving hovercraft––”
“It wasn’t moving,” Jet blurted, almost before she knew she meant to.
He grinned at that, winking before he motioned once more to the pot he held.
“So?” he said. “How about it? You can’t fight my whole ship on an empty stomach, can you, girl?” Studying her face, he added more somberly, “Relax, okay? There’s nowhere to go. This ship only seems big until you realize it’s packed to the gills with lizard-skins. And there aren’t any life pods or escape hatches, if you were thinking about doing that. It was built as a catch and carry vessel, so precaution demands a minimal number of entrances and exits.”
Jet fought once more with her voice.
“You’re… but you’re a…”
“Human, yes. I’m also captain of this ship. I asked that big lug to bring you here.”
Jet blinked at the man, still unable to get her mind working right.
“But why?” she said finally.
“Why?” he said in surprise. “I picked you up, didn’t I? Don’t you think I need to assess our catch? Figure out what it is we have, exactly?”
Jet blinked, still holding the walls, unable to get past the part about him being human. She stared at his brown eyes, the beginnings of a dark beard on his face, the unevenly cut hair that was almost black.
He had a strange smile, one that didn’t seem to touch his eyes at all.
He seemed to be assessing her instead, almost like the Nirreth had.
“Who… are you?” she managed, still holding herself up by her hands.
“Eamon,” he said, giving her a short bow. “Eamon Richter… at your service.”
“Richter.” That time, she really did gape at him. “You can’t be Richter.”
“I assure you, I am.”
“You can’t be,” Jet said again.
“Really?” he smiled. “And why is that?”
“You’re not old enough.”
He only shook his head at that, smiling wider. “Really. So how old should I be, then? You seem to be an expert on me, and I am simply dying to know.”
But she barely heard that.
Something else had occurred to her.
“You… work for them?” she said.
She didn’t bother to hide her bewilderment.
His face didn’t react, but she could tell the question irritated him. He inclined his head with a shrug, shifting his eyes away from hers.
“Depends on how you see it,” he said. “On this ship, they work for me.”
“Really.”
“Yes,” he said. “Really.” He must have heard her skeptical tone, because his eyes met hers, noticeably sharper now. “You know, it would be much easier for us to discuss all of this downstairs––”
“I don’t want to go downstairs,” Jet said.
“Well, I do.” Richter’s gaze flattened. “My ship. My rules.”
“No.”
“I’m afraid I may have to insist.”
Returning his stare, she found herself momentarily out of words. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around him at all, the idea that this, well… kid… could be the Eamon Richter everyone talked about, everyone feared. He looked somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty years-old.
He couldn’t be older than mid-thirties, even if he looked young for his age.
Anaze’s mother lived in a settlement run by Richter.
She had to be at least forty, at least. Would someone her age really have followed around some kid for a few years, no matter how connected he might be?
Would a bunch of ex-cons and ex-military ever follow someone so young?
The man calling himself Eamon Richter seemed to have grown tired of waiting for her to make up her mind. He began climbing back down the ladder into the room below the round hatch. He paused only once, to meet her gaze directly again.
“Are you coming?” he said drily. “Or do I need to get one of those blue bastards to stick you with his tail again? Throw you down here unwillingly?”
“What do you want from me?” Jet swallowed, still struggling to speak. “Why am I here? Why am I here? Why not in the cargo hold, with the other skag?”
Richter’s voice grew a trace of irritation.
“Does it matter?” he asked.
“Yes. Yes, it does. What do you want?”
He raised an eyebrow, still holding the soup pot in the hand not clutching the stairs.
“It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“You seem awfully sure you know what that is.”
“If you come downstairs, I’ll tell you.” When Jet continued to hesitate, Richter sighed, shaking his head. “Either way, I’ll get what I want, so you may as well come willingly.”
“You’d set a Nirreth on your own kind?” she said, frowning.
“…Without blinking an eye,” he said easily.
At her shocked look, he smiled, just long enough for her to see that he meant it.
“Are you coming?” he said next. “Or shall I call Laksri back? That was the big strapping blue bastard you stabbed with your sword… in case you were wondering.”
She looked backwards down the long corridor.
When she turned back to the hatch, Jet saw the human’s hard eyes assessing her, just as intensely as she was him.
She believed him. He really would set Nirreth on her.
He really would tell them to drug her and throw her down into the hold.
Richter seemed to see that much in her eyes.
He averted his.
“Last warning,” he said mildly, resuming his climb down the stairs. “Laksri can be back here in twenty seconds. Too long for you to get very far with that venom still in your system. And if you think the first sting hurt, wait until you get four or five of those in your system.”
Jet winced, remembering she’d just seen a whole group of Nirreth do that to Anaze.
He’d been screaming.
Gritting her teeth, she began limping in the direction of the hatch in the floor.
She didn’t have much choice.
Anyway, having remembered Anaze, Jet couldn't stop thinking about his welfare, too. She wouldn’t be any good to him––not if she got so drugged up on lizard-skin tail-venom, she couldn’t even remember his name. Anaze likely came out to the Gaslamp in the first place to keep an eye on her, to make sure she was safe.
He’d been trying to protect her.
She had to at least try to return the favor.
Her only chance might be if this captain, Richter, took an interest in her.
Of course, the possibilities around that made Jet grit her teeth.
It also struck her, barely a half-beat later,
that she’d asked for this, in a way.
Not just in coming alone out to the Gaslamp, nor in not making a detailed enough map of all the underground passages. Not even by not traveling underground for as long as she could, but instead walking a good chunk of her route in the far-riskier overland.
No, she’d asked for it even more directly than that.
Jet had said she would take shelter with Richter, if he offered it.
She’d just never thought it would be on a Nirreth culling ship.
4
Questions
Jet sat on the hard cushion of a crescent-shaped seat.
Her side ached from the Nirreth’s sting, but the effects had mostly worn off.
Her legs felt numb still, but they worked again.
She could feel her toes.
Jet could also think again, more or less. The world no longer seemed to be coming through a few feet of warped glass.
The seat where she perched had been built into the wall of the circular room, along with a few others ringing a curved, angular table that jutted out of the floor. All of the furniture looked and felt like it had been made for someone three times her size. When Jet sat on an offered chair, the faintly glowing metal table in front of her stood about level with her shoulders.
Sliding around in a half-hearted attempt to get comfortable, Jet finally gave up, looking around the ribbed walls of what were presumably Richter’s sleeping quarters.
As she stared at the built-in shelves, and what appeared to be a fold-up bunk––again, its proportions far too long and thick for an ordinary human––Jet had gone back to rubbing her side where the Nirreth’s tail stinger hit her.
By then, it was more of a nervous tic.
She’d probably have a nice healthy bruise there, but she doubted it had really hurt her.
Anaze, on the other hand, was probably in pretty bad shape.
She’d seen those blue bastards hit him at least five or six times with their tails, all over his body. She could remember that now, even though she’d been in a trance while it was actually happening.
Jet glanced at pieces of machines littering the floor and shelves, and recognized a few.
One appeared to be a weapon… a real one.
Jet’s people called it a sandblaster.
It earned the name by blowing its targets into pieces so small, the only way to identify them afterwards was if their DNA happened to be on file.
As most people’s DNA wasn’t on file, some skags also called the weapon, “the eraser.”
Unless someone happened to witness the death, or managed to determine the victim’s identity via process of elimination, most just got a generic marker. “Stranger-Sandblasted,” along with the date the tell-tale burns and splatter pattern had been found, had been written on more than a few of the wooden grave markers in the cemetery behind Jet’s settlement.
She recognized the shape of the gun from watching patrols from underground; she’d seen Nirreth point an identical-looking device from where it had been wrapped around one of their thick wrists.
Jet had no idea how to operate the thing.
Knowing might not even help her, since a lot of Nirreth weapons had DNA triggers.
She doubted Richter would be stupid enough to let a skag captive have access to that kind of weapon. On the other hand, he might be arrogant enough to think she wouldn’t dare use it. A lot of skags were terrified of Nirreth technology––any Nirreth tech, even the non-weapon variety. But tools didn’t scare Jet.
Out here, a weapon was a tool.
In her current situation, it might be a godsend.
Feeling Richter’s eyes on her, Jet let her gaze shift to the wall-sized monitor that dominated one curved segment of the cabin. The screen appeared dead at first glance, but she saw it flicker here and there, and wondered. It was the only part of the wall not covered in those odd, off-color ridges. It reminded her of patterns she’d seen on clifffaces high above the skag settlement, where sediment created lines in the rock.
She continued to rub her side, although she could barely feel the burn from the stinger now. The lump on her head, from being thrown against the bulkhead by that Nirreth bastard, hurt more than his damned tail stinger did.
Those stingers complicated things, though. Any one of those dark-blue beasts could stab her if she got too close, turning her into a compliant little zombie.
She’d have to factor that in from now on.
It unnerved her that the rumors about their venom turned out to be true. Nirreth did have a way to make humans obey them without question.
She’d heard settlers call it “zombie juice” and just figured it had to be bullshit.
She wondered if it worked on everyone.
The whole thing disturbed her. She definitely got the impression the thing had been using its mind to control her, once the drug got into her system. Whether that was true or not, or how the venom controlled her, she’d followed every command the lizard-skin gave her.
She’d done everything it told her to do.
Worse, it felt like she’d done it willingly.
More disturbing still, at the time, Jet distinctly remembered viewing the thing as an ally, almost as a protector.
The thought disturbed her deeply.
It disturbed her enough that she eventually shoved it away, unwilling to think about it too closely, not until she knew more, or could combat the effects in some way.
Richter called the lizard-skin Laksri.
He’d known its name.
Richter also called it a “him.”
Jet's eyes swiveled back to the dark-haired man in front of her. She noticed for the first time that he had a streak of nearly metallic gold in his hair, woven through the uneven chunks of dark brown in the back.
She’d heard something about this, but didn't know what it meant. Maybe it was some kind of call sign, so he and his people could recognize one another. A streak of gold would certainly be easier to spot through scopes than your average tattoo, especially given how many of the skags inked themselves these days.
When Richter glanced at her, Jet saw tattoos running up his neck from the front, as well. Most of those appeared to be Native American designs, reaching the edges of the almost-beard on his face. His brown eyes were lighter than she’d realized at first, almost a coffee color.
He hadn’t spoken to her at all while she looked around his room.
Jet had to assume he was letting her relax, grow accustomed to her surroundings. Which also meant he was likely hoping she would lower her guard, at least marginally.
This man, Richter… he might be the real threat. She knew that now, too.
The Nirreth, after all, would just kill her.
They probably wouldn’t even bother to be slow about it.
Richter obviously had something else in mind.
He stared back at her for a beat too long, then smiled faintly, returning his gaze to the small kitchen cubby that took up one corner of his cabin. Glancing once more around the remainder of the space, which was surprisingly large for a ship of this kind, Jet shifted her eyes to the back of his head when he banged one of the pots against a metal stand.
He poured out two bowls of soup as she watched, using the spout on the pot he’d held over a blue flame. He scraped the insides of the pot out carefully once he had, then set it on a ridged metal counter that looked like the walls of the ship.
She watched him blast out the inside of the pot to clean it without water, and then put it back on an inbuilt shelf with several other cooking utensils.
In a different situation, Jet might have smiled at his fastidiousness.
Under the circumstances she only noted it, as one more thing to know about this man who had taken her captive.
Whatever was in those two bowls, it smelled vaguely like chicken.
Jet folded her arms uncomfortably, still massaging her side with her fingers.
She cleared her throat, but Richter didn’t look over.
She made her voice business-like, blunt.
“The boy you picked up…” She almost said his name, then stopped herself, deciding that might not be a good idea. “…Just now. After me. He’s a friend of mine. He didn’t do anything. You should let him go. He was just trying to help me.”
“A friend of yours?” Richter smiled, giving her a sideways glance. “Interesting.”
“What’s interesting about that?” she said, her voice a touch cold.
He went back to wiping down the counter with a rag covered in some chemical.
“How did he get to be so far out here?” Richter asked it casually. “According to my people, you weren’t traveling together. You weren’t even traveling on the same side of the ground. One of you was in overland. The other, underland.”
Pausing, giving her another sideways glance, he quirked an eyebrow.
“Seems an odd sort of friend, who stalks his companion like prey.”
His brown eyes still held that harder scrutiny above his smile. Jet could see things happening behind both his stare and his smile that had no relationship to the casualness of his words, but she didn’t know how to read past either.
She knew instinctively that she couldn’t trust anything this man told her.
“…But now,” Richter added, his voice still low and friendly. “Now you tell me freely he is your friend? I find that interesting, yes.”
“What do you want? What do you want with either of us, Eamon Richter?” Leaning back on the chair, she folded her arms tighter, staring at him with an overt wariness. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing. But clearly you don’t think much of my mind if you want me to believe you didn’t already know I knew that other skag. I don’t know why you’d even pretend such a stupid thing.”
“So you admit it freely, then?” he said.
“Admit what? That I know him? I just said I did.”
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 5