“He’s with the Royals,” the female explained, her mouth still curled in that small frown, the perfect opposite of the half-moon smile. Her voice held some sympathy, too.
“He has to answer for this. For taking Prince Ogli’s companion. The Divine Son of Kings has lodged a formal complaint with his parents. He claims Laksri took you with full knowing that Prince Ogli intended to do the same, once he felt he had gained your trust. The Prince has accused your friend, Laksri, of an informal but knowing poaching of his desired friend––”
“Poaching?” Jet muttered.
She didn’t want the female Nirreth to stop explaining though, so she prompted her with another question, rather than reacting further.
“Is Prince Ogli likely to win this argument?” Jet said.
She chose her words carefully, even though the Nirreth’s English was impeccable.
The female Nirreth purred, her palms held up.
“I do not know this, friend. Your Laksri, he claims he thought the Prince too young to be harboring such wishes. He tells the Royal Parents that he thinks Ogli’s affection for you is more that of a relative, or a close friend. A sister, maybe.” The female seemed to be thinking how to translate a particular word. “…perhaps a mother. Or a neighbor of some kind…?”
Jet refrained from snorting at the “mother” reference.
She hoped Laksri wasn’t pushing his luck with the Prince.
“Will he win?” Jet pressed. “Ogli?”
The Nirreth sighed, once more holding up her hands.
“I do not know. Normally, in such a case, first contact would take precedent, unless the one chosen was forced.” The female Nirreth gave her an appraising look, a question in her quirked lips. “I am told Prince Ogli more than once tried to get you to say you were forced this morning, in front of witnesses. And that you denied such a thing…?”
Jet nodded, feeling her cheeks flush at the female’s knowing look.
“I see,” the Nirreth said. “Yes, well… I would not worry, then. This law of consent and pairing is the queen’s. She would not like to see it broken. Also…”
She hesitated, then leaned closer to Jet, her face and voice conspiratorial.
“…I think the Royal Mother is thinking that Prince Ogli is too young for this love he feels for you, as well. Your friend Laksri was wise to emphasize this in his discussions with the queen. She has been quite relieved when he did not ask this of his last attendants. Particularly the most recent one, before you came into service. I have heard it said that she would like to see him mature a bit more before he does this binding with a mammal…”
Seeming to realize what she had said, the female’s eyes widened in horror.
“A thousand apologies, beloved guest of the Royals! I am meaning no offense! I spoke without contemplating the fullness of my words––”
Jet waved her off, more annoyed she might have missed part of what the female intended to reveal than offended by the use of the word “mammal.” Anyway, if the Nirreth thought calling her “mammal” was an insult, it was an accurate one, at least.
“No problem,” she said.
“Please do not share this with your blood-connection! He might take this as an insult, and it is rumored he has a short temper when it comes to––”
“Blood connection?” Jet said, baffled.
The female looked just as confused.
“Your companion. The one they call Laksri?”
“Laksri?” Jet stared. “Why would Laks be offended by you calling me a mammal?”
The female Nirreth never really answered that.
Instead, Jet had to reassure her a few more times that she wasn’t offended, and she really wouldn’t say anything. It took four or five tries to calm her down.
Even when she left, the female Nirreth still seemed nervous.
Obviously, Jet hadn’t done anything with that conversation, except kick herself for ruining her chances to find out more about Ogli and his parents.
All of that had been over two weeks ago now, and Jet had more pressing things on her mind these days. They’d scheduled her first Rings match for Saturday night.
She wouldn’t be fighting Tyra, or even competing against her, which was a relief.
Jet was starting to really like Tyra.
She’d even strongly considered trying to bring Tyra over to their side, but the one time she mentioned the possibility to Anaze, he looked utterly and completely horrified.
“She’s got a Nirreth mate,” he said, staring at Jet like she’d lost her mind. “He’s a Rings trainer. Which means he was probably Royal Guard before… or one of the branches of their military. If you tell her anything, he will know at once… the instant he stings her again, which he probably does every night. You, of all people, must know that, Jet!”
Realizing what he was referencing, hearing the bitterness under his words, Jet frowned, hands on her hips.
Then, thinking about his words, she let out a humorless laugh.
“I never had any real choice, did I?” she said. “God. I’m such an idiot. They said it could be Ogli or Laksri… but it was always going to be Laksri. You just said it yourself. If it had been Ogli, he would have known everything. Pretty much the moment he’d gotten enough venom in me to feel my mind, he would have known who I was.”
Anaze’s face grew unreadable.
“They considered Ogli,” he said finally, after a long pause. “He’s young, impressionable, and you would have been his first, most likely… his first serious one, anyway. They thought maybe you could influence him. Gain his trust. Then, if we didn’t tell you too much, perhaps manipulate his feelings in various ways.”
Jet felt a little sick, but only nodded, not wanting to shut him up.
“Was it ever really up to me?” she said.
Anaze shrugged. His expression remained noncommittal, but that time, he didn’t seem to be able to hold her gaze.
“I don’t know,” he said finally, and it sounded truthful. “My father says it was. He said they would have worked with your decision, either way. But he also didn’t seem to think it would be much of a choice for you, either.”
“Do you believe him?” Jet said, her voice skeptical. “You don’t, do you?”
Anaze still didn’t meet her gaze, not directly anyway.
“I really don’t know, Jet.” He exhaled, glancing at her briefly. “I mean it. But he’s fighting a war. He can’t tell me everything. He can’t tell you everything, either. And I know sometimes he presents no-win choices and plans for any contingency.”
Jet didn’t answer, not at the time. Folding her arms in front of her, she just stared at him, but Anaze’s words infuriated her. They might have made her more angry than anything he’d said to her since he dragged her out of the Palace that first night, and she couldn’t even articulate to herself why.
“You are not concentrating!” Alice snapped, bringing Jet’s mind back to the present. “You nervous? Is that what your problem is?”
On anyone else, the question might have sounded sympathetic, even concerned.
On Alice, it was a full-fledged insult.
Alice might as well have spit in her face.
“You be a lot more nervous once you get in front of those cameras, and real, live weapons being flung at your head! Ready to shoot you! Ready to cut off your arm at the shoulder! Lose you eye!”
Jet again wanted to ask Alice where she was from, but again, the woman held her hand up in the signal that they would re-start the simulation program from the beginning.
Just then, Laksri showed up.
He walked casually into the training arena, his tail arcing lazily behind him. Coming to a stop directly across from her, he leaned on the observation wall, visible in the gap between fake mountain scenery.
Jet met his gaze, briefly, and his tail flicked sideways in a more aggressive arc.
After that, she found herself looking around at the topography, maybe to avoid staring at him. As she did
, a light bulb went off in her head.
Dead in the absence of the virtual reality, or VR signal, the landscape had a near-symmetry to it, an almost inescapable logic.
How had she failed to see it before?
Before Alice could finish signalling the program to begin, Jet blurted, “Wait. Is the terrain the same? In the real version. Is it exactly like this? Or different?”
Alice gave her a shrewd look, her eyes shifting sideways.
“Why you ask me that?”
Jet’s eyes continued to scan the room, memorizing its contours.
“Well,” she said finally, once she was fairly sure she had the map in her head. “If I could keep my bearings, I would know the real boundaries of the arena… along with all of the obstacles, and…”
Alice chuckled, and Jet fell silent.
“Smart mammal,” Alice said. “I knew there was a brain up there somewhere.” She tapped Jet’s forehead sharply with her knuckles. “You think you can keep all that in your head and still manage to not get yourself dead with spears and mutant lizards?”
“I don’t know,” Jet replied honestly. “But it can’t be much different than memorizing cave routes in the dark, right?”
Jet glanced at Laksri, almost without her willing her eyes in that direction.
The Nirreth was staring at her, too, and something about the look in his dark eyes brought a faint flutter to her belly and chest. Shoving the feeling down angrily, Jet looked back at Alice, pursing her lips.
“…I could try it, right?” she said.
The woman nodded, her eyes once more shrewd.
That time, when Alice signalled the simulation to start, Jet’s mind let go of everything, and everyone. She let go of Alice herself… of Laksri… of Ogli and his temper tantrum earlier that day… of Richter and his scheming… of Anaze, who’d once been her best friend, the person she trusted above everyone, even her own family.
She focused on the map in her mind of the arena’s terrain.
“Go!” Alice commanded.
Before the word finished echoing in the long space, the landscape burst into life.
A high, snowy mountain appeared, stretching above the entrance to an ancient-looking temple in the shape of a human’s sandblasted, bare skull. Giant Nirreth, twice the size of those in the room she’d just left, leapt out of the opening of the skull’s mouth, the skins of prehistoric lizards hanging on their broad, muscular shoulders, their long fingers gripping clubs with sharp flint knives dug into the ends.
Jet watched warily as they came closer, but instead of trying to figure out which of these was a real Nirreth and which a virtual projection, as she normally would, her mind focused on the map of the cave’s contours beyond what she could see in the simulation itself.
That time, when she moved, she knew exactly where she leapt.
Despite Alice’s skepticism, she even managed to hold onto that awareness when the weapons started flying at her head.
11
Weird Spatial Thing
“That was different,” Laksri said, as Jet exited from the changing rooms. He looked her over, appraisal in his flecked eyes. “It is different, yes? What you do?”
“What did I do,” Jet corrected without thinking.
Still, she smiled as she said it, still glowing a bit from Alice’s praise, the first real praise she’d received since she started the training.
Anyway, those words were probably the most friendly and casual Laksri had spoken to her since their stinging night a few weeks back.
“What did you do?” Laksri said carefully.
Jet smiled, unable to help it. She could almost see him trying to memorize the words. He’d been trying harder with English lately, maybe because Jet was more likely to point things out and correct him than Richter.
No surprise there, really.
It was still strange being around the tall Nirreth.
Nothing had happened between the two of them since that night, but Anaze still slept in Laksri’s quarters along with Jet, and in Laksri’s bed, along with Jet. Jet felt a little bad that Laksri had lost his bed in this whole arrangement––at least until she remembered this hadn’t been her idea in the first place.
Even after the venom and lingering empathy and whatever else had worn off, it had been difficult to stay as angry at Laksri as she would have liked.
For one thing, Laksri himself had been openly apologetic from the first time they’d spoken afterwards. Unfortunately, that also happened to be pretty much the only time they’d spoken alone about anything since.
They’d been in the same exact hallway as where they stood now.
Only that time, Laksri pulled Jet into one of the nearby cubicles before she could speak.
Again, before she could collect her thoughts, he abruptly launched into a formal request for her forgiveness for his, as he put it, “lack of judgment and self-control.”
Jet stuttered out some kind of acceptance of his apology, and that ended the conversation.
Laksri opened the cubicle doors for her, bowed to her, and offered to take her to dinner.
The subject hadn’t come up between them since.
That had been a full day after she woke up in the room to find him missing, so she had to assume he’d been with the Royals all that time. On the plus side, he’d managed to get out of all that without being thrown in jail, assassinated, or forced to hand her over to Ogli.
Since that day, his manner around her continued to be courteous to the point of standoffish.
Looking up at him now, Jet found herself thinking about what Tyra had said, about Laksri being “hot,” and also how he might be able to help her in the Rings.
Ignoring his previous question, she said,
“Did you and your pal arrange a human coach for me? To keep me from having a Nirreth one, like would normally happen?”
Laksri’s eyes registered a faint surprise.
“…Because that’s the rumor,” Jet added, her voice sharper. “That you did it, Laks. That you paid off someone on the Board. Maybe offered a good rate on some long-shot bets on me?”
Laksri’s skin seemed to change shades, growing darker.
“Yes,” he said.
At her silence, his voice grew more subdued.
“It is normal for trainers to sting,” he explained. “To take their charges as mates.”
“But wouldn’t that have given me a huge advantage?” Jet pressed. “In terms of learning the courses? Training me in how to beat the arena? Or even just nailing down the million or so rules, for that matter…?”
Laksri’s face grew inscrutable.
“Do you know the Rings, Laksri?” Jet pressed. “I’ve only got a few more days, but I thought…”
She trailed, but she could see from Laksri’s eyes that he knew where she was going with this.
“…Well,” she said, feeling her cheeks warm. “I could use the help, is all I’m saying. I heard today that more contestants get killed by the judges after the first fight than any other. I figure, anything that might give me an edge, right? Impress them enough they’ll want to keep me around? Especially since they’re already going to be biased towards me for having a human trainer… and maybe for picking you over the Prince.”
Laksri continued to look at her, his dark lips pulled in a faint frown.
Jet got the feeling he was hiding a fair bit of his reaction, at least on his face, since his tail darted around behind him in predatory arcs. After a long-feeling pause, the Nirreth shrugged, his eyes fixed studiously on the door behind her, as if it were the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. He exhaled in a longish purr.
“What you say… it is true,” he admitted. “The first match, it is very significant.” He sounded out the word carefully, glancing at her. “I have been… concerned. About this. It is partly why I come here. It is partly why I try to assess, realistically, how you might fare in these Rings. What I might do to help.”
“So you’ll help me, then?”
Jet said, feeling her shoulders relax.
He gave her a sharper look.
“We did not do so good with this before,” he reminded her.
Giving one of those trilling sighs, he made a gesture with his hands Jet couldn’t interpret.
“…Still,” he said, business-like. “Richter thinks about this too. And I have been realizing…” He paused, glancing around, as if suddenly remembering where they were. “We should be seen again. Public, and soon. It must be clear to the Royals you are still attached.”
Jet nodded, angered a little by the warmth that crept up her face.
The fact that they’d discussed this without her didn’t help.
She kept her voice as business-like as Laksri’s.
“Sure,” she said. “Whatever. So maybe it can serve both purposes, you mean?”
“I am thinking that,” Laksri said slowly. “Yes.”
Jet couldn’t help noticing that his English really was improving. At the same time, she knew she was likely distracting herself from the real issue here.
“So… do you know much about the Rings?” Jet said, her voice more pointed. “Do you realistically think you can help me with this?”
After a faint pause, Laksri made another of those head-inclining nods.
“I do,” he conceded. “Know about the Rings.” Lower, he added, after glancing up and down the corridors, “…I was in the Rings.”
“You were?” She stared at him in surprise. “When?”
The tall Nirreth’s expression grew cagey. He glanced around where they stood, as if already fearing he’d said too much. Then he motioned politely down the hall, in the direction of the residential segments, and his room.
“Perhaps we should eat first?” he said politely. “We can come back for training later, do you not think? When the area is not occupied. It will be easier for you to concentrate.”
Hearing the warning woven into his words, Jet nodded.
Again, she wished she had the faintest idea of Richter’s and Laksri’s actual game plan.
She’d promised Anaze when all of this started that she could follow orders, and even go along without knowing anything, as long as they didn’t do anything that made her question them too deeply.
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 28