The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure

by JC Andrijeski

  Alice flanked Jet on her other side.

  Jet glanced back to see Al-En Mosq still walking behind them, too.

  For the first time, it struck Jet to be afraid of how she’d done.

  When they stopped in the middle of the gold-painted circle, Al-En Mosq tapped Laksri’s shoulder to get him out of the way.

  Once Laksri had released her, and Jet was standing at an angle, supporting her weight mostly on one leg because of the injury, the older Nirreth felt all over the front and behind of Jet’s suit, thoroughly enough that Jet found herself clenching her jaw, even as she heard Laksri give a low hiss from behind her.

  Jet didn’t move, however, and when the older Nirreth stopped patting her down, she met his gaze levelly, raising a questioning eyebrow as she folded her arms.

  “Where is the map?” he asked, in heavily-accented English.

  Jet noticed that his words didn’t transmit over the loudspeakers that time.

  Looking up at the view screen, she saw a replay image of herself, with Black held against the throat of the female technician aboard the Nirreth ship.

  “Leader!” the on-screen version of Jet was saying to the Nirreth tech. Jet saw herself frown, right before she switched to English. “Where’s the command bridge? I know you understand me…”

  Jet saw a translation of her English words flash across the bottom of the screen in those odd, slanting Nargili characters.

  The Nirreth and the humans in the stadium cheered loudly again, obviously thrilled with the replay. Meanwhile, the ex-Ringmaster’s harsher voice jerked Jet’s eyes back to his.

  “The map,” he repeated, growing visibly more agitated. “Where is it!”

  “What map?” Jet said.

  Her voice came out blunt, but mostly, she felt confused.

  When Al-En Mosq just stared at her, his dark eyes holding a faint confusion of their own, but one tinged with anger, Jet looked at Laksri for help.

  “What map?” she said. “What is he talking about?”

  Feeling over the front of her own suit, she showed him with her open palms that the vest, along with the two maps she’d collected, were very obviously gone.

  “…Does he not get those weren’t real?” Jet said, wondering if the old guy was senile.

  Laksri snorted in amusement, as if against his will.

  “He thinks you cheat,” Laksri said, giving Jet that half smile of his. “…Richter and me. Anaze, too. We try to tell them. We explain about your mind.” He tapped his temple for emphasis. “We tell all of them. The Board, too.”

  “They didn’t believe you?” Jet said, giving Al-En Mosq a wary look as she directed her words at Laksri. “So… what? Are they going to punish me for having a good memory? I already got, like, almost no points, right?”

  Laksri made a snorting kind of laugh, that one louder, and filled with a startled disbelief.

  Jet watched him and Alice exchange incredulous looks.

  “The mammal thinks she did poorly,” Alice said, raising an eyebrow as she folded her arms. “Maybe she not so bright, after all…?”

  “Some believe me,” Laksri added, answering Jet’s question a little late, even as he gave a sideways smile at Alice’s words. “Some wondering about this though, so they send this one.”

  He pointed at Al-En Mosq.

  “He is here to look for trick, for some problem with suit. The others will verify this with the program. Make sure no one tampers with this… that no one gains access after they design this thing.”

  “They think I hacked the program?” Jet said, astounded. “Is that even possible?”

  She wondered that last part aloud, remembering the guards she’d seen around the Rings Operations Center, and what Laksri and Alice both explained about all of the safeguards in place to make sure that very thing could never happen. Operators had been executed in the past for suspected game tampering.

  The Nirreth took the Rings very seriously, especially given all the gambling debt that could be traced directly to the sport.

  “Never happened before,” Laksri said with a smile and a flick of his tail. “…They check anyway. They give you verdict when this part is finished…”

  Assessing the look on Jet’s face, he moved closer to her again, wrapping his tail around her waist. She felt the faintest warning in that touch, but most of it felt like worry, or maybe the after-effects of worry.

  “It is okay,” he assured her. “You do nothing wrong. They will see this.”

  His smile widened a bit, until it showed the faintest edge of white teeth.

  “…Anyway, Board Leader is pleased. He bet on you. Very long odds. He won a lot of money. The ones who say you cheat… they not bet on you. They are sad. Lose much money. But they will come around.”

  “So everyone bet I’d lose?” Jet snorted, not sure if she should laugh or feel insulted. “Richter wasn’t kidding, was he? They really did all come to see a bloodbath.”

  Tugging her wet hair behind one ear, she tried to shrug it off.

  “Everyone must be so disappointed.”

  Laksri laughed again, uncoiling his tail from around her waist to switch it back and forth in amusement. He caught her arm then, giving it an affectionate squeeze.

  “I do not think you disappointed my people, Jet,” he said, the smile still living in his voice. “…You should heard crowd. They very, very happy with you… very happy!”

  “Are,” Jet corrected without thinking. “They are happy with me, Laks. Or were…” she added, thinking a bit, even as she glanced at Al-En Mosque nervously.

  But Laksri went on as if she hadn’t spoken.

  “…They very pleased when you kill underground lizard,” he added, his voice rising a bit in excitement. “But when you jump in the water and blow up the ship, they all going crazy!”

  He grinned at her, baring his teeth slightly in an genuine-seeming Nirreth smile.

  “When you have sword to engineer’s throat, demanding to see map, all the bets are changing, odds all over the place…”

  He motioned with his hand in the air to demonstrate the changes.

  Jet laughed, shaking her head.

  When she looked over, Al-En Mosq was staring at her again, as if positive she was hiding something or lying about something but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

  Looking away from his nearly black, thinly-lined face and that strangely square jaw and jagged, thread-like scar, Jet fingered the hilt of Black once more, gazing up at the monitor, which showed the two Nirreth commentators now.

  They were discussing something with serious-looking faces.

  “…They explain that the Board check you not cheat,” Laksri told her, following the course of Jet’s eyes.

  When she only nodded, he curled his tail around her more reassuringly.

  “It’s okay,” he told her again.

  But when Jet looked up, she saw a slightly different look in his light-rimmed eyes. Seeing the more appraising undercurrent there, along with what might have been relief, she didn’t smile back when he smiled at her, too lost in trying to read his face.

  “If they cannot decide, they sting you,” he told her softly. “That is other reason he is here.” Laksri nodded towards the older Nirreth. “But it is okay, Jet. You do nothing wrong.”

  Hearing the warning woven faintly into his words, Jet only nodded.

  She knew what he was saying; they were only looking for evidence of cheating, not of treason against the Royals.

  Basically, if Jet could keep her mind on the Rings match, and away from anything else, that would be all that would interest them.

  Unless she gave them reason, that’s all they would ask her about, too.

  Wrapping her fingers around his tail, almost without realizing she’d done it, she nodded, as much to herself as to him.

  She was still trying to think around this, around the still-cheering Nirreth in the stands and the fact that the projection was really over… when the screen showing the two Nirreth c
ommentators suddenly went dead.

  In their places, a blank-looking room with white walls filled the screen.

  A white, crescent-shaped table stood in the center.

  Around that table, a group of very stern-looking Nirreth sat facing her… or it felt like they were facing her, anyway. The bench where they sat didn’t look significantly different from the benches that filled the auditorium, except the seat back looked to be made of a smooth, red-ribboned stone. Whatever kind of stone it was, it was carved with an artisan’s skill, and Jet found herself staring at its smooth contours for a long beat before her eyes shifted to the Nirreth who sat at the dead center of the table.

  His eyes focused on her for a few beats as well.

  He stared at her so directly, Jet had to assume he actually could see her, maybe through a camera attached to that same monitor, or near enough that the effect was unnerving. After he finished his appraisal, the Nirreth-in-charge didn’t spare a word for her, but looked instead at Al-En Mosq, the disgruntled looking ex-Ringmaster.

  “Did you find any evidence whatsoever of illegal game play?” the Nirreth-in-charge asked, his voice mild.

  Well, he didn’t say that exactly––what he said was in Nargili.

  A different voice, one that sounded female, spoke out of the monitor from a speaker in the floor next to where Jet stood.

  She stared down at it, before looking back up at the monitor.

  Al-En Mosq gave Jet an irritated look.

  “No,” he said in the same language.

  The voice in the floor translated his words almost simultaneously.

  “No,” it said, in a lighter voice than Al-En Mosq had used.

  The crowd had fallen dead silent once more, leaning forward from the rows of curved benches, their dark eyes fixed on the monitors.

  Clearly, they wanted to miss not a single word of the Board’s verdict.

  The Nirreth-in-charge spoke in a slightly sharper voice, but something about his words sounded perfunctory now. Jet was still staring up at him when the translation came up through the speakers.

  “…None whatsoever?” it said.

  Al-En Mosq answered him, his tone equally bored-sounding, if slightly more irritated.

  “None whatsoever, Honorable Metzet, Voice of the Rings,” the translation said.

  Jet watched the two Nirreth speak to one another, listening as the translation matched their words, even as it failed to match their tones.

  “…Her suit appears to not have been tampered with in any way,” the program said, soon after the elder Nirreth spoke to Metzet again. “The scanners tell us the same.”

  The Honorable Metzet gave a sideways incline to his head, indicating agreement. He spoke rapidly in Nargili when the silence stretched.

  His words sounded routine once more, bored, as if Metzet wasn’t really interested in them himself.

  “Trazen tells us the same,” the translation program said, before he’d even finished speaking. “It appears that this human’s handlers speak truth… that this extraordinary ability lives within her mind alone, without enhancements.”

  Jet just stood there, doing her best to keep her expression still, fingering the hilt of Black while she waited. Laksri’s tail tightened around her in the same pause.

  Then the Nirreth in the center spoke again, a faint hint of challenge in his voice.

  After the barest gap, Jet heard his words via the translator.

  “I am satisfied,” it said. “Are my loyal comrades in the Rings Board satisfied as well?

  None of the other Board members spoke or moved, even to change expression.

  The translation program, too, remained silent.

  Then Metzet intoned another set of phrases in Nargili. As he spoke, he glanced up and down the curved table, his expression still disinterested.

  “Do we need more concrete proof of the words of her trainers?” the voice translated.

  Jet noticed a few of the other Board members wore expressions that held irritation or anger, but none of them appeared willing to disagree openly with the Honorable Metzet. The oldest-looking Nirreth in particular stared at Jet with a shrewd, almost knowing look in his dark brown eyes. He looked at her like he knew she was hiding something, but would bide his time on finding out what that thing was, precisely.

  Then Metzet said something else in their language.

  “I see no need to prolong this verdict any longer,” the translation program said.

  That time, each of the Nirreth sitting around the table inclined their large heads to the right in agreement.

  Jet noticed one of the females watching her then, her gaze more thoughtful, but somehow intelligent enough to be even more unnerving than that of the old Nirreth with the brown eyes.

  She, too, looked at Jet as though she was thinking more than she was willing to voice aloud, but unlike the others, her eyes held no hostility.

  On the other hand, they seemed to carry a more concrete knowledge, or maybe a more educated or intuitive set of guesses.

  Something in the faces on the monitor seemed to be making Laksri nervous, too.

  He’d fallen into a slightly more aggressive posture behind her, his tail unfurling from around her to lash the air in long arcs, like he did when he was annoyed, or when he and Richter were power struggling. She also noticed Laksri had moved behind her, as if to be less visible to those faces staring down at them from the screen.

  He needn’t have bothered with the latter.

  From what Jet could tell, they looked only at her.

  If the Honorable Metzet noticed either of their reactions, he was polite enough… or shrewd enough… to keep it off his face.

  He spoke again, longer that time.

  He was still speaking when the translation began.

  “…Due to the exceptional outcome of this preliminary Rings match,” it began.

  Jet saw the Nirreth smile during those first words, even as a bit of that pleasure reached his voice.

  “…We have no choice but to award this contestant full status as a member of the Rings fighting corp. Her team will be chosen over the next three-week period. Untagging of the contestant will occur immediately and full training privileges will commence in two days…”

  Jet felt Laksri stiffen at Metzet’s words.

  She barely noticed as her mind spun around them as well, trying to make sense of what they meant. Had he said untagging? Had that been translated right? Didn’t that happen after the fifth match only?

  Why would they do that early? After only one match?

  But the Honorable Metzet was still speaking, so Jet forced her mind back on the translated words leaving the speakers, aware she’d already missed a handful of them.

  “…Ranking will occur this week, once data has been compiled from the record of the match and the special skill set of the contestant has been evaluated in full. Since this skill set is a new one in the history of the Rings, we will need the imput of the Ringmasters and current and past Rings Operators to assess its worth in terms of actual matches, as well as the relative advantages it might confer upon its owner…”

  A lot of this muddled in Jet’s head.

  She could tell from the rising tone of murmurs in the larger crowd, as well as the tense faces of Alice and Laksri that whatever was happening, it wasn’t what anyone expected.

  No one in the crowd called or cried out, probably because they wanted to hear all of Honorable Metzet’s words, but Jet could definitely hear and feel the tension building as he continued to speak.

  Unfortunately, she had no idea what any of it meant.

  “…No restrictions in contestant and owner selection of crew,” the translation program continued cheerfully as Metzet intoned.

  “…Due to the shortened period available to the contestant and her owner in terms of choosing a satisfactory and competitive team, contestant will be granted full access to all available candidates through a formal interview process to be organized by the Boards within the
solar week. Screening will be done and viable selections offered for approval starting in four days, following removal of the implant…”

  The male Nirreth’s words were sinking in for Jet now, but she still wasn’t sure what to do with them. When Laksri moved closer to her, she found herself doing the same, closing the gap between them even more.

  Metzet droned on for a few seconds more, but Jet understood very little of the actual words, even though she tried very hard to listen to the more cheerful-sounding translations.

  The latter words were in English, but her mind could only hear them as individual snippets of sound, without pulling the meaning from their cadence. She just stood there, in a bit of a daze and now openly tired as her side and her shoulder began to throb.

  Still soaking wet, she shivered, and Laksri wrapped his tail around her.

  The machine continued to translate Metzet’s words dutifully, the voice carrying that odd cheeriness as Jet did her best to make sense of it.

  “…Since we already have offers of sponsorship for the candidate, even beyond the royal family to which the creature claims ownership, these petitions will be forwarded to the owners for consideration as well, along with any bids for matches with other favored contestants who would wish to test her skills…”

  Laksri gave Jet a worried look as the machine translated that part.

  After Metzet continued speaking, the machine added,

  “…It is now at the owner’s discretion, of course, since we are releasing the creature of her trial status as of today. However, we will not approve any such challenge matches for at least one moon of this world, due to the need to collect a real score for her rankings, which is said to only occur…”

  Laksri looked at her again, his face perceptibly relieved as the mechanized voice continued without a pause.

  “…After ten full matches against the skills of the Rings Operators themselves, who are well-versed in testing for the true weaknesses and strengths of any candidate,” it finished, speaking more quickly, as if to catch up with the Honorable Metzet, whose voice continued in that hitching, uneven cadence.