Of course, that might be fear, too.
Even the thought of letting him sting her again sent such an intense reaction through her system, she knew her perceptions of Trazen had to be distorted still.
Hell, she could admit it.
Her wanting to spy on him through the venom felt like pure rationalization. Some part of her wanted Trazen to sting her again. That same part of Jet fantasized about him in her less-aware moments, even revisited their brief encounter in her dreams.
That part of her wanted to give Trazen an excuse.
According to Laksri, that part of her might just get her killed.
When the door opened behind her, not only to the booth that time, but to her own, partitioned row of seats, Jet jerked her gaze backwards.
She relaxed only marginally when she saw Laksri’s face.
Noting the tense look there, she forced herself to relax her own facial expression, if only to reassure him. After his brief pause and stare, Laksri resumed walking down the sloped aisle. He slid onto the bench next to her with his usual liquid movements, looking over at her only after he was situated, his tail coiled just past the opening between the lower bench and the padded backrest.
“We’re all right,” he murmured, kissing her cheek, sliding an arm around her shoulders. “Relax, Jet.” Kissing her again, he raised his voice, although he still spoke quietly. “We will have our food coming,” he added, nuzzling her face. “And drinks.”
Jet nodded, her eyes back on the window in front of them.
She jumped slightly when Laksri coiled his tail around her.
When she looked up, he frowned, his eyes holding an open scrutiny. A low panic hit as it occurred to her that he might have picked up on her thoughts about Trazen through the remnants of the venom. She deliberately blanked her mind, but not before Laksri let out a low hiss, the anger in his voice audible.
“Don’t bother,” he growled. “Think about him, if you want. I’m sure he enjoys it.”
Sighing a bit, Jet conceded defeat.
“Is he here?” she said finally.
“You know he is,” Laksri said.
“Have they started?”
Laksri gave a short nod. “Hours ago. He is upstairs.”
She nodded back, biting her lip.
“Laks, don’t be angry. You really don’t understand––”
“Save it, Jet.” Laksri’s tail unclenched from around her, flicking in irritation behind both of their backs. He started to speak again, then seemed to think better of it, covering over his hesitation by making his voice softer. “…It will start soon.”
“How soon?”
He glanced at the timepiece set in the floor. “Thirty time increments.” Glancing at Jet, he hesitated. He must have seen her trying to convert that in her mind, because he added, “Forty-six of your minutes. Give or take.”
She smiled tensely at that, in spite of the anger she still felt on him.
In addition to speaking English more frequently and with more sophistication, he’d started using her human expressions more often. His English had improved to the point where she almost wondered if he’d been faking it before, pretending he didn’t speak it very well.
He grunted, but his arm tightened around her, and she felt his amusement.
“No,” he said. “Unlike you. With Nargili.”
She smiled more genuinely at that. “Can you blame me?”
“No,” he said, smiling back.
She leaned into his hard side, sighing a bit. “There’s only so many times I can come up with something polite to say when I’m being called a ‘special mammal’ and being asked for a quickie sting while you’re not looking,” she added humorously.
Laksri laughed aloud, shaking his large head.
She heard the irritation there, too.
He gripped her tighter in the pause, and Jet couldn’t help but feel the tension he carried through his fingers. She considered asking him to sting her, so she could hear his thoughts through more clearly, but she wondered if that was such a good idea in here.
He heard her that time, too, and rolled his eyes, snorting a Nirreth laugh.
Glancing over at her stare, he smiled, leaning closer.
“No, it is not such a good idea, Jet,” Laksri murmured, nuzzling her face. “You don’t want to miss the preliminaries, do you?” He gave her a teasing look, glancing over his shoulder at the Nirreth seated behind them. “…Or give these ones a free sex show? With the sexy, long-haired, celebrity human?”
She snorted, rolling her eyes.
Even so, she saw his heavier expression when he turned back to face her.
“It is your first Retribution,” he said. “You should be clear for it. Well enough to understand what you are seeing.” He studied her eyes. “Also, you are forgetting… again… that we have neither of us been good at ‘just one sting.’ If you distract me, we won’t be using this booth for its intended purpose. And while these screens can be darkened,” he added, glancing back at the wall of glass. “…I don’t think you’d thank me later.”
Snorting again, Jet shook her head in amusement.
Even so, her chest tightened.
She’d heard the added meaning in his words.
Laksri knew they were being watched, just like she did.
She wondered if he was alluding specifically to Trazen, then realized it didn’t matter. She could think of half a dozen factions who might have surveillance in here, including Richter. Leaning deeper into his side, she folded her arms, fighting to control her heart rate, in case anyone had a scanner on them in here, too.
Still, it was strangely comforting, that he’d noticed the same thing she had.
Laksri stroked her arm and shoulder, as if thinking the same thing.
When the main monitor flickered to life, blocking her view of the arena below, Jet jumped. She jumped even more violently when the announcer began to speak, his voice echoing through the small, bubble-windowed room.
He spoke Nargili, of course, but Jet found she understood well enough, even through a thick, unfamiliar accent.
“The Retribution is now officially in session…” the voice droned, loud in the small room. “Participants, please take your places and await instructions.”
Jet swallowed, glancing at the clock.
Had that much time really passed?
Even as she thought it, the image on the monitor shifted, refocusing on the arena below, opening up a view of the wider stadium.
In the same instant, she saw him.
21
Retribution
On the plus side, Anaze looked more aware than the last time Jet saw him.
That wasn’t saying much… but it was something.
Four guards surrounded him, leading him out of a darkened corridor that reminded Jet of the entrance ramp to the Rings arena back on Earth.
Anaze wore a black sense-suit.
His hair had been shorn, leaving maybe half a centimeter to color his scalp. His face still looked bruised, but his shaved head seemed to darken his whole complexion somehow, even as it made his features stand out, especially his leaf-green eyes.
Jet couldn’t see his face or eyes through the window itself, of course. He was too far away. But the close-up monitor showed every detail, down to a new cut over one eyebrow that dripped blood onto his cheek. She could even see from his eyes that he was reasonably coherent, not stoned out of his head on venom.
She honestly couldn’t decide if that was a good or a bad thing.
He already walked with a limp. She swallowed hard when she saw that, even as she fought to shake it off. Anaze wasn’t some groomed pet of the Nirreth, she reminded herself.
Laksri had said it over and over.
Anaze was a fighter.
She’d known that even when she hadn’t known his true identity; she just hadn’t realized the extent of it. He’d grown up around rebels, around Richter, around the cullers and the bandits who took on both the Nirreth and other hu
mans.
He’d held his own with the ex-soldiers making up Richter’s unit.
He’d survived Richter himself, as a child.
Anaze held his own in the pits when she’d known him there, too, even against the most dangerous adults and the worst of the underground gangs.
Laksri was right.
Anaze might not be Nirreth, but Anaze wasn’t the typical human, either.
Still, she couldn’t pretend to be indifferent to his condition.
Whatever else he’d been in the time since, Anaze had been her best friend once.
Leaning forward, she stared at him through the glass, watching him limp towards a high, half-moon bench loaded with Nirreth, most of them muscular enough to have been fighters themselves.
Jet read about this part of the ritual during the trip to Astet.
Those twelve or so Nirreth formed the equivalent of a court.
Really, they comprised the original body that the Rings Board had once been, before it morphed into a modified judge’s panel for the entertainment version of the Rings. This group of Nirreth prison guards and ex-military fighters even fulfilled a similar function, if one with significantly more dire implications.
They judged the person against whom the Retribution would be enacted.
They also had final say on when it ended.
Because, Jet reminded herself, no one came out of Retribution alive.
Even the betting consisted of stats on how long the run would last, not style, skill, or kill points, like the Rings back home.
The big Nirreth in the center of the bench, where Metzet would have sat on Earth, filled most of the main monitor. The silence of the Nirreth judges somehow made Jet aware of the near-silence that had fallen over the observation booth, with one notable exception.
The blond and her Nirreth boyfriend still giggled from a few rows up, audible even through the partition. Their drunken, horny laughter and Nirreth snorts, given what was going on below, irritated Jet to the point of violence when she couldn’t block it out.
She could even hear the sound of the young Nirreth’s mouth as he kissed some part of his human companion’s skin. Jet forgot the blond and her Nirreth boyfriend entirely, however, when the muscular judge began to speak.
His voice came through the speakers in a low growl, so heavily accented Jet could barely understand him.
Luckily, they translated his speech at the bottom of the television screen into English, just like they did on Earth.
“Do you accept your punishment, Anaze Galren?” the judge said.
Jet swallowed, watching Anaze’s face.
It struck her that, according to Richter, there had never been a human Retribution before. Usually human crimes weren’t seen as big enough, or personal enough, to warrant something so extreme. Human rebels usually didn’t warrant the title of “terrorist,” either. Their crimes against the Nirreth tended to be posited more like the actions of unruly animals, livestock that had gotten out of control.
Ringleaders were sometimes shot as examples, but usually on the spot and without trial.
More often, they were stung repeatedly and sold as pets.
Like other culled humans, some ended up in the Rings.
Thinking about that reminded Jet of the man she’d watched from the skag pits for years, a Rings fighter from a nearby settlement on the coast, someone people in her own skag settlement had known and traded with, before he got culled.
They thought he died in the Rings.
He’d been a champion for years, until one day, seemingly for no reason, he died a gory death on screen, and Jet and the rest of the skags watching had broken out in wails. Jet remembered how sick she’d felt, how angry. They’d all been devastated––at the barbarity of it, the sheer unfairness of him dying so brutally after all that time.
Jet knew now that the human was still alive.
His swan song in the Rings had been a gift, probably for good behavior.
His Nirreth owner retired him since he’d been pushing forty and was getting a little old for the Rings, despite his impressive physique. Jet even met him once in the Green Zone, at one of the functions where they brought previous and current Rings stars together for photo ops and interviews.
He’d seemed happy. He even had a girlfriend.
His girlfriend was human, not Nirreth, but Jet stammered so hard when introduced to the two of them, she’d barely gotten her name out.
Of course, he still probably got stung regularly by his “hosts.”
He might still get stuck servicing them sexually, too, depending on their tastes. Even so, to say his fate was worse than it would have been otherwise, given conditions outside the Green Zone walls, would be a pretty distorted half-truth, if not an outright lie.
Jerking her mind back to the present, Jet realized she’d already missed at least some of the ceremony around Anaze’s run.
“…I do,” Anaze was saying now.
His voice came through clear, like the person she knew.
She glanced at Laksri.
Maybe because he knew cameras would be on him, gauging his reaction, Laksri watched Anaze with a hard frown on his face, his dark eyes angry.
Out of nowhere, Jet remembered when he’d tried to discover her feelings for Anaze. In that same conversation, he’d asked her to stop sharing a bed with Richter’s son.
Hearing her, Laksri looked over.
Briefly, that hard look in his eyes intensified.
He averted his gaze, focusing back on the screen.
Frowning, Jet let her eyes follow his, right as the judge broke the silence.
“…The participant’s owner agrees that Retribution is necessary,” the lead judge said, after what must have been a signal.
His tail coiled behind him in a sensual arc, the only indication Jet got of any emotion on him. The feeling it gave her nauseated her a little. The guy was getting off on this. Not only that, his enjoyment was blatant, certainly more overt than anything she’d noticed on Trazen.
Laksri turned, giving Jet another hard stare, that one less ambiguous.
“…If the participant would position himself according to the rules of the contest?” the large Nirreth added, motioning politely with one hand.
His hooded eyes, a flat black that unnerved Jet even through the cameras, aimed towards the opening into the walled arena.
Unlike the Rings amphitheater back home, a stone wall marked the edge of the play area, unlike the transparent cage Jet knew from Earth. The rest of the arena had no covering at all, with the exception of a clear guard-wall standing between the bottom fifty or so rows of stadium seats and the floor.
Nirreth in those seats could still see unobstructed kills, Jet realized.
The thought made her feel ill.
Forcing it from her mind, she bit her lip, focusing on Anaze’s face.
Laksri said he would survive this. He’d all but promised her.
Anaze reached the opening in the wall.
Jet remembered the two of them in the pits, hanging out in the forest, talking about what it would take to make a real rebellion work. Thinking back on it now, she even remembered him musing about partnering with oppositional factions among the Nirreth. She’d laughed it off at the time, sure he’d been joking, but looking back on those conversations, she couldn’t help seeing how he’d been probing her, looking for her reactions.
He’d also likely been trying to decide how much he could tell her.
They’d even fantasized about what a post-Nirreth world might look like.
He’d talked to her about governorships of various kinds, Green Zone-type arrangements (although she hadn’t known enough about the Green Zones at the time to know that’s what he’d meant). He’d floated models with centralized authorities versus collectivities of local governments, like what the old tribes used to have.
Jet remembered being impressed by how much Anaze knew about all those things. He’d talked like he’d been reading books on different
forms of government since he was a kid.
He probably had been.
Maybe Anaze really had been trying to reach out to her, to share his ideas as much as test her beliefs. Maybe he really had tried to be her friend.
The more Jet remembered that person, and what she thought she knew about him, the more she realized her assessment of him hadn’t been as far off as she’d thought. She’d revised every opinion of him she’d ever had when she learned his true identity, especially when she found out Richter was his father.
Now, she found herself revising it back.
She glanced at Laksri, feeling him looking at her again.
That time, he didn’t avert his gaze. His dark eyes studied hers, a frown touching his narrow, sculpted lips. She saw his worry; he didn’t want to see Anaze die any more than she did. He also seemed to be admitting to her, without saying it aloud, what a real possibility that was, despite his assurances.
Feeling her throat tighten, Jet followed his gaze back to the monitor. She focused on the image of Anaze standing there, at the edge of the stone-wall.
She had time to think how small he looked, compared the Nirreth walking beside him.
…Then his feet crossed the line that ended just past that wall.
22
The Shinkara
Immediately, the virtual net kicked in, filling her eyes, nerves, and ears.
Jet had never been on the other side of the Rings before, much less in a private, virtually-equipped sense-booth like this one.
Laksri warned her that it would be intense.
He said it would be almost like running in the Rings herself.
Even so, the change managed to catch her completely off-guard. The sound of the venom-stoned Nirreth and his equally stoned and horny human friend cut off in mid-stream, as if someone turned off a radio.
The glass window and the monitor vanished.
Jet found herself still seated, but oddly unaware of her own body, which she also couldn’t see, or get a handle on really, other than to feel that she hadn’t moved. Rather than being at Anaze’s eye-level, Jet found she hovered in the air somewhere just above him, looking down at him through the trees, her view unobstructed, despite the odd angle.
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 66