The room also had its own winding canal, this one wider than most Jet had seen, and breaking up more of the floor. To compensate, a series of decorative bridges crossed over the water at different points in the room.
Unlike any other building Jet had entered since arriving here, this structure also had living animals––mainly birds, but she also glimpsed what looked like mammals bounding among the rocks and climbing some of the larger trees.
Songbirds clustered in the branches of the Nirreth's homemade bosque.
Jet could have sworn she saw a gray and blue roadrunner dart across the floor. A few larger birds lived inside the building as well, raptors perched on branches embedded in steep walls. One appeared to be eating a small mammal, tearing at it with its beak as it gripped the creature in its claws––a rabbit, maybe a squirrel.
Richter nudged her, pointing with his head towards the arched entryway through which Nirreth were still gradually filling the room.
“You see that small one?” he said in a murmur.
She nodded, her lips pursing. “I see it.”
“That's Olgi. He’s the son of the Royals. If all goes well, he’ll be king here one day. Not just in the West, but over all of Earth. He’s the eldest offspring of the Queen’s brother.”
Richter’s eyes followed the smaller Nirreth across the floor.
Jet saw a deep interest there, a near-calculation in Richter’s eyes.
“…It’s another reason the West is so important to them, Jet,” the smuggler added. “These Royals are relatively new ascendants to the throne, and they’ve chosen Earth, the West specifically, as their home. Moreover, they are greatly interested in cleaning up and colonizing Earth more broadly, including repairing the atmosphere.”
Jet followed the younger Nirreth with her eyes.
She’d never seen anything but an adult Nirreth before.
“How old is he?” she asked.
“Dunno exactly.” Richter shrugged. “But from the looks of him, I’d guess around nine or ten of our years.” At Jet’s raised eyebrows, he smiled. “They age a bit faster than us. Physically, anyway. Reach their full height at about eleven or twelve.”
“And what about non-physically?” Jet said, frowning.
Richter shrugged, smiling.
Jet continued to watch as the young Nirreth wandered the room.
None of the adult Nirreth seemed to pay much attention to him, despite what Richter said. The boy ended up in the grove of trees, looking at the raptors in their high perches. Jet watched him bend down, pick up something that crouched in the bushes.
Whatever it was, it had brown fur.
“What is that?” she muttered, squinting.
Richter smiled, following her gaze. “Otter, I think.”
“Otter?” Jet stared at him. “One of ours? I thought they were extinct?”
“Sure,” Richter shrugged. “Probably. I haven’t kept up on the status of otters in the contaminated wilds recently, Jet.” Grunting, he waved a hand around the wider room. “Whole damned place is a big zoological park. They’ve tamed the ones they can, built cages for the ones they can’t. I think the otter must be the boy’s pet. It seems to know him.”
Jet’s gaze returned to the young Nirreth.
She watched him laugh as he tossed the otter playfully into the canal.
It immediately did a flip in the water, splashing him with its tail.
The boy leaned down to splash the otter back, when an adult Nirreth grabbed Ogli by the arm, leaning his mouth down to the boy’s head. Jet saw the tall, muscular male whisper something to Ogli, his angular face holding a fierce expression.
“Busted,” Richter said, smiling at Jet. “Guess even the Royals get their spankings.”
Jet didn't answer.
She was staring at the male Nirreth with Ogli. Something about his feline features struck her as unusual. His eyes were large, his mouth and cheekbones strangely symmetrical, his jaw long. It took her a few more seconds to realize what it was.
He was almost… handsome.
“Who is that?” she said, pointing with her cuffed hand, the one on the table. “Is that his father?”
Richter frowned, following her eyes. “No.”
“Who is it?”
“That’s Trazen. The Ringmaster. He’s quite the celebrity.”
“Rings… Master?”
“Ringmaster, pet. He runs the Rings. It’s a position with a lot of power these days, and he’s the youngest they’ve ever had. He’s the architect.” Squinting across the room at the strangely handsome Nirreth, Richter scowled. “Try not to piss him off.”
Glancing at her, he raised an eyebrow, his voice growing more serious.
“Don’t get too close either, Jet. He has… a reputation. Particularly with women. Most Nirreth and human females find him easy on the eyes, and he goes through lovers at a pretty impressive rate. But it’s said he kills a lot of his human consorts…”
Jet flinched, looking sharply at Richter. “What?”
Richter shrugged, unapologetic.
His eyes returned to the other side of the room.
“Let’s just say, an unusual number of them have met ‘accidents,’ kitten. I’d rather you not have any ‘accidents’ of your own…”
Jet frowned. She turned her head, watching the muscular Nirreth with the boy, Ogli. He was pointing at something in the branches now, talking to the young Nirreth calmly.
When Jet glanced back at Richter, the smuggler held up his hands.
“Hey, I never said Nirreth were saints,” he said. “They’ve got their sadists, just like humans.” The smuggler’s eyes returned to the other side of the room, right before he frowned. “Just be careful, Jet. He might be pretty for a Nirreth, but he’s bad news. And there’s a damned good chance he’s going to be interested in you already… for multiple reasons.”
Jet nodded, frowning.
For once, she took Richter’s words seriously.
She glanced at Laksri, wondering if he was listening to this, and caught him watching the same Nirreth. Jet noticed a hardness around Laksri’s dark mouth as he watched Trazen with the boy.
Following his gaze back across the room, Jet watched the Ringmaster fold his hands at the base of his back, listening. In front of him, the young Nirreth spoke in a series of hand gestures and words, as if explaining himself.
She was so busy watching the two of them, not to mention the otter, which continued to try to entice both Nirreth into a game from the canal, Jet didn’t see the other adult Nirreth approach their table from the other side.
Jet jumped when the thing spoke, and not only because it spoke perfect English.
“…This is her? The skag you were bragging about?”
Jet turned, staring up at the large male. He scowled at Richter, his muscular hands planted on the table across from them.
Like the others had, he looked her over like she was a slab of meat.
“She’s awfully skinny,” the Nirreth commented. “Are you sure she can fight?”
Richter laughed.
“Ask Laksri here. She got a chunk out of him while we were bringing her on board. He’s the best I’ve got, in hand-to-hand.” He thumped Laksri on the shoulder good-naturedly, using the hand attached to the arm he had slung over Jet’s chair. “…They fight hungry in the frontier, Rebbs. Not like the fat fucks you have waving swords around here.”
The tall Nirreth, the one Richter called Rebbs, squinted at the bandage on Laksri’s chest, as if trying to assess if it was real.
“You really think she’s trainable for protection?” Rebbs said finally, eyeing Jet’s face. “She looks pretty pissed off, Richter.”
“She just hates me,” Richter said, laughing. “They’re all trainable. You should know that by now, Rebbs.”
The Nirreth grunted, as if conceding the point.
“Well, you’re asking too much,” he said shortly. “She’s way overpriced.”
Richter waved him off, interrup
ting before he could go on.
“No. Don’t even think about trying to hammer me down now. I won’t discuss price with anyone but your mistress. And I won’t talk to her until after the demonstration.”
Rebbs hissed a little, but seemed to concede that point, too.
“Fine,” he said. “But she is still overpriced. It’ll take four months just to get her up to a reasonable weight. We can’t broadcast fights with girl skeletons fighting full-grown mammals. No matter how good they look with a sword.”
He sniffed the air subtly, as if trying to catch a whiff of Jet herself.
“…Nice hair, though,” he admitted.
Richter rolled his eyes, glancing at Jet.
“She’s underpriced, and you know it, you cheap bastard,” he laughed.
Jet’s eyes returned to the grove of trees, where she’d last seen Trazen and the boy. She jumped a little when she saw Trazen standing there, alone now. His hands still appeared folded at the base of his back, but now he appeared to be staring directly at her.
She saw his muscular tail flick back and forth, like a cat watching prey.
His handsome face held totally still.
Next to her, Richter clapped her on the shoulder, jerking her eyes back to him.
“Wait and see,” the smuggler said to Rebbs. “Your mistress will agree to my highest price, and without a blink. Especially after she sees the demonstration.” He smiled up at the Nirreth. “…And it’s not just her hair that’s nice, Rebbs. Ask Laksri here. He’s got a crush on her already.”
Rebbs dismissed this with a hand gesture.
Making another soft hissing noise then, he glanced around the room and straightened, as if the conversation had lost interest for him.
“We will talk after,” he said to Richter. It didn’t sound like a question.
“Until then,” Richter said cheerfully, leaning back in his seat.
Looking at him, Jet remembered again that she hated him.
That he could talk casually about “training” human beings like they were dogs that just needed a good beating. That he would already be implying that she would be useful for more than just as a bodyguard or the Rings. What really got to her, though, was his assumption that she’d do whatever he wanted to make his sale of her a success.
Whatever this “demonstration” was, Jet intended to make sure she disappointed him.
If that meant sitting in the middle of an arena, letting some Nirreth in a toga take swings at her with a club until she was black and blue and bloody, then so be it.
Whatever happened, she swore to herself, she wouldn’t fight.
Not for him. Not for Richter.
Not even if they killed her.
11
Demonstration
Jet hadn’t known what she expected exactly, but it wasn't this.
When Richter went on about his “demonstration,” Jet envisioned a dirt and sand arena. Maybe a cage where they’d throw her Black, her sword, make her fight another human, or several armed Nirreth.
She’d expected them to threaten her, or maybe chain her other wrist behind her back while they threw multiple opponents at her.
She’d expected something theatrical, possibly with costumes, or even with her fighting naked. Anything to give the Nirreth something to bet on, to argue about, to use as part of their odd human auction.
Instead, everything struck her as mildly anticlimactic
There was no prelude, no preparation.
Jet stood in the same room where they’d fed her lunch, next to a long canal cut into the middle of the floor. Surrounded by a ring of Nirreth, she just stood there, looking around at them. All the Nirreth present looked more suited to a cocktail party then a fight… at least any kind of fight Jet had seen back home, much less the overblown Rings contests they showed on the Nirreth broadcasts back at the compound.
Her lunch sat heavily in her stomach.
It made her feel slightly nauseous, and more inclined towards a nap than a fight for her life, much less a fight for sheer entertainment.
Jet suspected the nausea stemmed from adrenaline and nerves; the food had been good, and tasted clean enough. Truthfully, it tasted and looked cleaner than anything she ate back home, at the settlement.
On the other hand, she still wasn’t sure what that food had been exactly, or even if the main course had been meat.
And if it hadn’t been meat at all, what the hell was it?
Scowling at the thought, she focused on Richter.
He stood with his thick legs slightly apart, comically short next to the Nirreth looming over him on either side. Richter’s eyes were hawk-like as they studied her face, as if he were trying to decide what Jet might do before she did it.
“You ready, love?” he called out.
Jet gave him an incredulous look. “Ready for what?”
“To earn your keep,” he said, smiling.
When one of the well-dressed Nirreth said something to him, Richter waited for Laksri to translate, then nodded.
“Sure,” Jet heard him say. “She won’t get any more ready than this.”
The Nirreth said something else.
That time, Richter gave him an irritated look.
“Does she look prepped to you? I told you, she knows nothing. Stop worrying. And stop accusing me of pulling shit, if you don’t mind…”
The Nirreth gave him a skeptical look.
Exchanging looks with another Nirreth, he muttered something, and Jet found herself thinking they knew exactly what Richter was about, and what he was capable of. For the same reason, they harbored no illusions about his ability to “pull shit.”
Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, Jet scowled, not liking the eager expressions on all the Nirreth faces she saw.
They surrounded her now, but none of them stood particularly close.
She still felt crowded, verging on claustrophobic, just from the sheer number of them.
They hadn’t given her sword back. She didn’t see any of them holding Black, either. She glanced through those interested, staring faces, and glimpsed Laksri there.
She also saw the Ringmaster, Trazen.
Trazen stood on the side opposite to Laksri and Richter, his muscular arms folded in front of a dark gold tunic. His eyes had gold in them too, she noticed.
He watched her like before, tail twitching, his face utterly still.
Jerking her eyes off him, she looked around at the rest of them.
What were they waiting for?
One of her wrists remained chained to her ankle on the same side. The chain was long enough that she could stand upright, but it still felt heavy.
It also felt in the way, and distracting.
Jet had yet to be in a fight that didn’t depend in small or large part on speed.
Often, speed was everything.
She had to decide how much of that she still had, hopefully before they threw whatever they planned on throwing at her. While Jet continued to scan faces in the crowd, she tried to decide whether she might be able to use the chain to her advantage, too.
She found herself distracted when she noticed humans in the crowd.
Humans besides Richter, that is.
One was a woman who looked to be in her thirties.
Like Richter, she seemed to have some kind of “in” with the Nirreth. She stood among the tall, midnight blue aliens at perfect ease, wearing clothes similar to those of the richest-looking Nirreth in the hall. She held a pink-colored drink in one manicured hand, her nails decorated with dark-blue fingernail polish. She’d dyed her hair the same color, contrasting the shocking pink and green of her tunic-like shirt.
The woman had dyed her hair and nails to match Nirreth skin tones.
Her hip-jutting pose and raised glass reminded Jet of cocktail parties on Old Earth.
Well, cocktail parties according to the old movies she’d seen, back at the settlement. A few old-timers still had beat up copies of Old Earth movies, some
of which showed humans in fancy dresses and suits drinking drinks in thin-stemmed glasses and laughing.
The women in those movies always had hair that looked shiny and fake; it was often done up on their heads in elaborate designs, held back from flawless faces with metal clips with shiny stones or bits of glass. Their eyes and lips were always painted with makeup, their mouths red or pink and the eyes darker, usually smoky and with long lashes and arched brows.
The men usually had shiny hair too, only shorter and slicked back, emphasizing their toothy smiles and dimpled cheeks.
Everyone looked like a doll in that overly-clean world.
Everyone looked contented, bored, well-fed. Their muscles looked more for show than anything they had to use. They all carried more weight than they needed, except the women, many of whom looked borderline frail.
The Nirreth luncheon was the only thing Jet had ever seen in real life that looked almost like those movie parties.
It still wasn’t that, of course, and not only because of the Nirreth, or the interior design. Here, even the clean humans, like Richter and that woman, had a feral quality to them, like the cleanliness they wore was more of a mask than the reverse.
It was a charade, but not the same one she remembered with those movie humans, with their fake muscles and pretend hungers and pretend problems.
Also, yeah, in the movies, there were no Nirreth.
The world belonged to humans then.
None of those humans worried about food. No one worried about poisoned water or rabid dogs. No one worried about being eaten or enslaved by aliens.
It wasn't only a world where the Nirreth didn't exist.
It was a world where the very idea of the Nirreth was impossible.
A world where all humans were safe.
Jet knew she was distracting herself though, thinking about this.
She couldn’t really afford that distraction now.
Even as the thought crossed her mind, something changed.
Then Jet heard it.
She heard the animal approach.
12
What Is It?
The crowd parted around the sound, creating an aisle on either side, almost perpendicular to the canal.
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 12