None of it mapped right, and she felt nothing to explain why.
Finally, after she’d gone thirty or so paces, the truth hit her.
She’d actually climbed down.
She was on a second, lower level of the arena.
Which meant there was a whole segment of the arena Jet hadn’t mapped, or connected to the map that ran along the surface.
Leaning over without slowing her pace, she touched the rough wall of the cement sewer tunnel, pulling her fingers away at the feeling of slime and moss.
She could be anywhere right now.
The sense suit could make her feel those same sensations, even if nothing but air greeted her fingers in reality. The actual terrain could be a long, rectangular or square room, filled with the occasional ladder to the surface.
There could be actual, physical obstacles in here.
There was no way of knowing.
There was no way of knowing what might be waiting for her, and which was likely to be real, and which fake.
Her boots splashed through water at the bottom of the pipe, and again Jet had to remind herself that what she was looking at wasn’t real, despite the detail down to the human graffiti tags filled with images and words she almost recognized.
She was about to risk trying one of the ladders back to the surface, when she heard a loud splashing and thrashing up ahead in the metal pipe.
Gripping Black in both hands, Jet moved forward, trying to make no noise.
She could see the bend up ahead in the tunnel now, and knew the splashing thing lay beyond that bend.
The sound echoed up the pipe walls. Whatever it was, it sounded heavy. It also sounded low to the ground. Whatever it was, maybe it had been injured.
A growling noise echoed down the cement pipe, and Jet froze.
Briefly, she tried to place if she’d ever heard it before.
Whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t human.
It didn’t sound Nirreth, either.
Glancing up the ladder, Jet considered climbing it, wondering if she should risk what might be on the other side. Whatever lay beyond that bend, it might come for her if she made noise opening the hatch.
On the ground, at least she had her sword.
Weighing the risks, Jet decided the ladder was a trap.
Walking past it, she gripped Black’s hilt tighter, making her way cautiously towards the bend. She would at least see what she was dealing with. Then she’d know whether running back to the ladder or fighting the thing on the ground was the smarter idea.
Climbing up the cement pipe carefully with her boots, she walked on the dry part of the curve to keep from making noise. Turning her head to shine the head lamp on the relevant segment of pipe as soon as she was close enough, she came to a stuttering stop, balanced on the side of pipe with one hand touching the wall over her head.
The fingers of her other hand clutched the hilt of Black as she stared down at the bottom of the pipe and the foot or so of water that filled it.
An animal stared back at her with black, reflecting eyes.
It was big. Bigger than Jet expected.
Before she could ID the thing with any confidence, it opened its flat, triangular-shaped jaws, making a growling, hissing sound through two rows of brilliant white teeth. The teeth looked too long for its mouth… and its body had to be over twenty feet long, from the end of its nose to the half-curled tail that ran up the pipe wall on one side.
Realizing she had no idea if it was real or not, Jet leapt back without thinking, that time landing in the water at the bottom of the pipe with a splash. By the time she regained her balance, the creature had already lunged in her direction, too fast for her to be able to even think about running, much less making it to the ladder before it caught up with her.
Facing off with the thing, she fought to think through how best to defend herself, even as the name of the beast came unbidden to her mind.
Alligator.
They were new in the Vancouver area.
Jet’s mother told her they’d never ventured so far north before, not until sometime in the past twenty or so years, when the monsoons got hot enough and the southern part of the United States dry enough that the reptiles began lake and river hopping to follow the water.
Jet had seen large ones like this in the wild, but only at a distance, mainly in the estuaries and river mouths.
She’d only run into one at closer quarters, a baby she found floating in the monsoon-filled remnants of what had once been a recreational swimming pool, overgrown with poisonous water plants that looked a bit like orchids, and choked with lilies and mosquito spawn as well as a number of smaller fish and amphibians too contaminated to risk eating.
The biggest one Jet had seen in the wild hadn’t been half the size of the monster she faced now. Staring at the small, black, gold-rimmed eyes, she couldn’t help wondering if it had been genetically modified, or simply exaggerated in the virtual projection.
When it lunged at her next, Jet acted without thought, just like Mishio said.
She swung Black at its head, hitting hard scales with the sharp edge.
She didn’t manage to break the tough skin, but she did drive it back a foot or two in mid-lunge, keeping it off her.
When it lunged after her, Jet swung hard again, trying to saw past the tough scales. She managed to drive it back a second time, but didn’t inflict much damage.
She tried to decide if she could distract it long enough to make a run for the ladder.
While she hesitated, the reptile jerked its body in a whip-like arc, its tail coming off the side of the pipe and smacking her in the side of the head. It couldn’t hit her full-strength, since the pipe was too narrow for it to come all the way around, but the blow still threw her into the pipe wall.
Jet slashed at the thing’s head when it scrabbled forward on its stubby, clawed legs, rushing to make up the distance after she’d fallen. Using her hands, including the one clutching Black’s hilt, Jet dragged herself to her feet, still holding the sword out in front of her.
The lizard moved faster than Jet would have imagined, given its size. She drove it back another few feet, her peripheral vision now watching the tail…
Then she heard another noise echo up the tunnel behind her.
That sound was a lot more familiar.
Heavy, booted feet were walking the wide pipe.
They were coming straight for her.
The culler ship sent an extraction team. They must have landed as soon as they figured out where Jet had gone.
Realizing she was out of time, no matter which way she opted to go, Jet brandished the sword in front of the massive animal, panting.
From the echo in the pipe, she could guess she had maybe five minutes before the Nirreth were upon her. Then she’d be dealing with modern weapons instead of claws and teeth.
Moving before she could lose her nerve, she leapt up over the alligator’s head, dodging the snapping jaws by jerking up and to the right the instant she saw it lunge. Already in motion, the lizard couldn’t correct for Jet’s abrupt change in direction.
The creature might even have been real––or just programmed to act like it was.
Whatever the reason, it acted like it expected her to step back, like she had the other times. Jet managed to get past it before it could turn its head, and then the animal was trapped by the narrow width of the pipe.
Jet landed half on the monster’s back, having no where else to go.
Turning swiftly around, she planted one foot on either side of the creature’s body, just behind the thick front arms, then twisted the grip of the sword in an arc with her hand.
She gripped it with all of her strength before plunging the blade straight down, into the neck of the monster, two-handed.
The giant body began thrashing the instant Jet had it pinned to the water and mud at the bottom of the pipe.
It knocked her off-balance but she managed to maintain her grip on the sword, half
-kneeling on its thick neck as she reinforced her grip and twisted the blade, her hands slick now with sweat and filthy water and the creature’s blood.
When it paused in its thrashing, she pulled the blade out, plunging it into the creature a second time, straight through the middle of its triangular-shaped head.
After a few heavier, slower jerks of its long body, the lizard grew still.
Right when Jet let out a sigh of relief that it was finally dead, another hard thrash of its body and limbs threw her off.
She slammed into the concrete wall a second time, her breath leaving her in a whoosh that made her chest explode in pain.
As she lay there, unable to move, she felt the current of water grow stronger.
The Rings operators were flooding the tunnel.
Hearing footsteps echoing louder in the tall pipe, she scrabbled to her feet in the slippery, sewage-smelling water, still gasping in pain, her free hand clutching her chest. Without checking the alligator to determine if it was alive, she fought her way over its body and wrestled the sword out of the bone of its skull. Just as quickly, she climbed back in the direction of its tail, then leapt to the drier curve of the pipe once it was in range.
She missed getting her traction, and lost her balance.
She fell back into the bottom of the pipe, landing on her hands and knees and making enough noise that she winced. Pausing only to dunk the blade briefly in the now, rapidly-rising water, cleaning it of lizard blood, she waded past the end of the alligator’s tail, moving as quickly as she could and using the scaly skin as leverage.
Once she’d cleared the animal, she began wading in earnest through the brackish stream as quickly and as quietly as possible. She bit her lip against the smell, reminding herself none of this was real.
By then, the water had risen to her knees, and Jet found herself hoping it would drive the Nirreth soldiers back. If they had been real Nirreth, it probably would have, but under the circumstances, Jet couldn’t afford to wait and find out.
Instead she half-waded and half-jogged through the current.
She took the first fork in the tunnels she came to, choosing the one that led her deeper in the direction she already wanted to go.
The pipe being smaller aided her decision; it would be harder for the Nirreth to follow, at least at any speed.
Unfortunately, that also meant it filled up with water faster. While that would provide an additional deterrent to the Nirreth, it might also get her killed.
Jet hadn’t seen anything about points in the projection when she killed the alligator, so she had to assume she was in completely blind, no way of knowing if she was off-course, or racking point counts or not.
She was still pretty sure she’d stumbled onto a real, honest-to-goodness, underground level, so the best she had to go on was the VR map they’d given her. All her prep on the terrain with Laksri and Alice felt completely useless down here.
Wading faster through the rising water, aware suddenly of how much noise she was making with the splashing and her boots echoing on the pipes, she felt over her person again, looking for a weapon she might have missed.
She stopped when she found a small mechanical device attached inside her vest, in a pocket she could have sworn was empty the first tine she checked. The device lay so flat inside the fabric, it could have been a part of the shielding in her armor; even so, Jet was reasonably sure she wouldn’t have missed it.
She also found a set of dense, flattened bricks of some kind of clay on the other side of her vest. Unlike the metal device, she recognized the clay-like substance right off. Her uncle showed her something similar once, when they were getting ready to help the nearest skag town build a new longhouse after their previous one got hit by raiders.
The clay was a kind of explosive, extremely powerful, her uncle said, and relatively stable, given its punch.
So this was the bomb.
Presumably, she was supposed to use this to blow up the command center.
Had they given it to her now because they’d decided she was aiming for the target, instead of the main points run, like other newbies?
It seemed an awfully small amount of explosive for a command center, in any case. And before, hadn’t the radio guy told her she was supposed to relay coordinates for that hit?
Still wading through the water, Jet messed around with the device long enough to figure out its basic functions, and to confirm it was a detonator. She got the prongs to extend for putting into the clay, found what seemed to be a timer, and a starting sequence…
Once she got that far, she decided it was enough.
Shoving everything into the vest pockets and zipping them back up tightly, Jet began moving forward faster through the pipe.
Clearly, either the Ringmaster or an operator with a strange sense of humor thought the bomb might come in handy.
The thing had a timer on it, so Jet supposed it might be a way to mark the site of the control ship––in the event she couldn’t get a signal out, for example, or if she didn’t know the coordinates. She had to assume any radio signals she sent would be intercepted, so calling for help from inside the Nirreth ship wouldn’t be a great idea, even if the Base 2 guy hadn’t already told her they couldn’t send back up.
As she thought this, the water level began to recede.
Within a few minutes, it was at shin-level.
Instead of comforting her, the change made Jet tense. She immediately suspected they were readying the terrain for a fight.
Realizing the tunnel had been quiet for too long already, Jet drew Black as she reached the next bend in the pipe, going through distances briefly in her mind. She tried to get a sense of how far she’d gotten, according to the scale they provided on the map.
Of course, she couldn’t trust them to recreate it accurately in the projection, or that they wouldn’t twist it on purpose, just to screw with her.
When she stopped, holding still to listen, she heard someone following her.
It occurred to Jet that if she was really going to hit a Nirreth command ship, she would need at least one modern weapon.
Preferably a Nirreth weapon.
They simply packed more punch than any of the human varieties.
Stopping long enough to examine the length of pipe where she now stood, Jet ran up to a small tributary––really just an alcove housing a backed-up spill-off drain, given the size of the fetid pool of water that filled the slope.
Wrinkling her nose, Jet reminded herself yet again that everything around her was virtual, that the foul piss and shit-smelling water wasn’t real, nor was the dead rat she could see floating in it, bloated and with maggots under its skin.
She forced herself to wade deeper into the pool, then to crouch in it, then to kneel, so that only her head remained above water. She kept Black clutched in her hands as the sound of Nirreth wading through the main pipe drew nearer.
Turning off her headlamp, she submerged herself entirely once she heard the first of them round the last bend, holding her breath and sinking silently into the water.
She listened underwater as their feet scraped and splashed in the pipe only a handful of feet from her head. Counting, she got the formation she was hoping to get: one Nirreth way out front, three in the middle, and one behind at a considerable lag.
They always scouted one and held one of their people in reserve.
They ran fast, so the distance made little difference in a fight, and in the event of an ambush, they could still get word back to command.
When the sounds began to recede further down the pipe, Jet raised her head as carefully and as silently as she’d lowered it, blinking and grimacing in the brackish water.
Once she had, she let out her held breath in a slow, controlled exhale.
Being equally careful with the water as she slowly rose to her feet, she peered down the length of the tunnel once she’d reached the alcove’s edge, Black’s hilt gripped tightly in her hands. Walking even more carefully i
nto the main pipe, Jet could only hope they wouldn’t hear her splashing because of their own.
One lucky break… if these virtual Nirreth were created true to form, their keen senses of smell should be completely overwhelmed down here. Underestimating Nirreth sensory organs was a mistake that screwed up human fighters again and again in those early battles.
She’d still have to worry about the infrared.
Without her headlamp, the tunnel was pitch black for Jet herself.
Even so, her hearing felt keener than usual.
From the sounds up ahead, Jet could tell that another of those gradual turns bent the pipeline about a hundred yards up. Cautiously, she sped up her pace, planting her feet on the higher curve of cement and leaping from one side of the pipe to the next. She was conscious of every rub against the soles of her boots, every creak of leather or rustle of fabric, every ripple in the water below.
Realizing suddenly how risky this maneuver really was, she thought about it as she leapt forward, then decided it was too late to turn back. When she saw the bobbing light of the tailing Nirreth up ahead, she held her breath in addition to the rest, no longer risking harder jumps, but taking long steps along one side of the cement curve.
Apart from the flickering light, Jet could see almost nothing in the low-ceilinged pipe.
The Nirreth headlamps pointed forward in a sharp line; she could only hope the difference in light would confuse their infrared––at least for a few seconds, even one second––if they happened to turn. It made her wonder why they wore lights at all, if that was based on the actual invasion histories, or added for the benefit of her Rings projection.
Either way, the lights didn’t do much.
They flickered and glowed forward, reaching a segment of pipe ahead of where the Nirreth jog-walked. For Jet, it provided a sharp view of the Nirreth’s own, broad-shouldered, shadowed outline, and that was pretty much it.
Maybe that was enough.
She resumed her longer leaps, feeling an urgency to increase her speed now that she was closer, before the lagging guard thought to look back. When she saw the Nirreth stoop to fit his taller and bulkier body through the tunnel, she found herself grateful for that, too, realizing he was less likely to look back for the same reason.
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 36