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

by JC Andrijeski

  Jet nodded.

  That, at least, matched with what she’d felt on him at the time.

  She glanced up, studying his face. She saw a frown touch his dark lips, right before she felt his worry intensify.

  Glancing ahead, she realized it was because they’d almost reached the end of the ramp.

  The rising sounds from the crowd were slowly wiping out all other physical sound, like a rising ocean. She could hear the swell of voices, laughter, the distant stomp and thump of feet and tails, the tinnier sound of the Rings announcers and what must have been media loops playing in the background.

  She might have noticed earlier if they hadn’t been talking through the venom.

  Anything else? she asked him softly. She gripped his tail, sending more of a peace offering through the venom. Before I got out there, I mean. Anything else?

  He looked at her, his dark eyes flashing, the gold flecks and rings making them as bright as small suns. Jet saw his long jaw harden as he stared at her face. He continued to walk straight ahead, into that rectangle of light where the ambient noise grew abruptly louder.

  Yes, he thought at her, even as the ramp’s cameras must have picked them up, bringing a swell of shouts and screams as their faces were likely splashed across the high monitors. Don’t get killed, Jet. I’ll be extremely annoyed with you, if you do. Unforgivably annoyed.

  He tightened his tail around her as he thought it.

  She let out a soft chuckle, too soft for him to hear above the rising shouts.

  She could tell he at least saw her smile, even if he only shook his head, his expression torn between amusement and what might have been real anger.

  He really was worried about her.

  The realization bewildered her.

  It also touched her.

  Feeling the intensity of that, the realness of his concern, Jet fought with a pain in her chest. It all felt so personal. His worry, his frustration, his grief, even the way he held her. Every word he’d thought at her just now.

  It felt personal enough, she couldn’t help but be touched.

  Everything she felt on him touched her, even as it confused her, bewildered her, scared her… not to mention made her probable death feel infinitely more real.

  She didn’t know what to do with any of it.

  All it did was make her want to cry.

  She had no idea what to do with that, either, much less what it meant.

  15

  Final Run

  Kneel…

  Trazen’s fingers pushed at her shoulder.

  Jet obeyed without thought.

  Her mind flickered back to her very first Rings match, when Laksri had to prod her to do the same thing. But this would be a first, too. The format for a challenge match meant she didn’t kneel in front of the Rings judges on her own.

  Next to her, only a few yards to her right, Bukka, the half-human-half-Nirreth giant, knelt on a knee that looked thicker in circumference than Jet’s waist.

  Jet distracted herself by going over her memories of every segment of the course, even though she didn’t need to do that, either.

  She and Trazen, not to mention Alice, Tyra, and Anslom, had been training all week.

  Everything she could have done to prepare herself, it was done.

  Now training was over. Now was the time to run.

  Her training team changed up the physical locations of the props on her whenever they could, to try and prepare her for any possible combination.

  Jet knew it might not help her much; ever since the Rings Operators had known of her “spatial thing,” as Anaze had called it, or her “photographic memory,” as Richter called it, the pullers had gotten more and more creative with the physical layout of Jet’s runs.

  They’d also gotten in the habit of rearranging that layout––sometimes mid-run––just to screw up her ability to find herself in their maze.

  As a further precaution, the pullers instituted a policy of cloaking the physical arena prior to Jet’s arrival.

  According to Trazen, Jet was the first contestant they’d ever done that for.

  Still, worrying about it now was useless.

  Once she got a few landmarks lodged in her head, she could usually figure out the big things. There were only so many things they could change, given that the largest objects––the lake and some of the bigger platforms–-were more or less fixed in place.

  Or so she told herself.

  Jet went through each possible permutation of the course in her head, right up until Trazen nudged her, giving her that silent command to kneel.

  Tearing her eyes off the blank, virtual wall surrounding where the Rings arena stood, Jet knelt… and found herself facing a row of Nirreth.

  Rings Judges.

  She knew all of them by now, by name and by sight, even though a few of those faces had changed with the rise of the new First Son.

  Silence fell over the crowd.

  Even after all this time, the silence unnerved her with its completeness. Given the size of the crowd, it struck her as borderline mystical. When Nirreth went quiet, they stopped moving. They stopped fidgeting. They even stopped breathing loudly.

  She snuck a peek up to the box that stood just over the padded bench where the Rings Judges faced her in a row.

  There, First Son Isreti sat, wearing a bright purple tunic that matched the one worn by his breeding partner, a female Nirreth with whom he had two children.

  Kneeling on the floor by his and his breeding partner’s chairs were two other persons. Jet flinched when she realized they were both human, and both naked. When she glanced back at the First Son’s face, she could have sworn he saw her looking and smiled.

  The two slaves had to be a message, too.

  She remembered what Richter and Trazen said, about Isreti being an ideologue.

  He wanted to go back to the days when the top of Nirreth society lived like decadent kings, treating anyone below them like servants and pets.

  The idea of anyone even wanting that––human or Nirreth––terrified Jet.

  Yet she remembered when she believed all Nirreth thought that way.

  Most skags assumed all Nirreth thought that way still.

  When Jet looked up next, the judge in the middle, a male Nirreth with dark, seaweed-green eyes, was staring at her.

  She knew him. His name was Nurem, and he’d been the chief judge of the Rings since she’d gotten here, a role they called “Keeper of the Law,” which didn’t really translate that great into English.

  Somehow, she found seeing him there strangely reassuring.

  She’d never especially liked Nurem per se; she’d never known him well enough to have any opinion about him at all, really. But Nurem always struck Jet as fair. He never came across as particularly hateful towards humans, either.

  “Who owns this mammal?” he said, smiling at her faintly.

  Behind her, Trazen answered.

  “I do,” Trazen said, intoning the words in formal Nargili. “Trazen Holandano, Fourth Son of Murek Holandano. Current Ringmaster and Operations Director of the Rings. I own this mammal, having received her as a gift from our beloved First Son.”

  He bowed in the direction of the Royals’ box.

  “…I have paperwork to prove this ownership.”

  “And the conflict there, honorable Ringmaster? With your professed role in our city?”

  Jet knew this was formality, too.

  Trazen barely hesitated. “I have abstained from my role as Operations Director of the Rings in this and all other relevant matches with my possession, Honorable Keeper of the Law Nurem, to eliminate any conflict between my role as Ringmaster and the fact of my servant’s participation in this challenge. I have instead delegated this role to appropriate persons, with input from prior Ringmasters and Judges to ensure the rules to which we must all adhere are honored in my absence…”

  Nurem nodded once, his dark green eyes showing approval.

  “Very good, Ring
master Trazen.”

  To Jet’s left, one of Trazen’s guards repeated both of their words in English so that both languages were represented on screen.

  Nurem turned to Bukka and her owner, his voice intoning the same question.

  “And who owns this mammal…?” he said, his voice more brusque.

  “I do, honorable Nurem, Rings Keeper of the Law.”

  The voice was higher and slightly nasal, and held just the faintest note of peevishness. Jet couldn’t help glancing at the previous Ringmaster, Al-En Mosq, who stood just behind Bukka’s enormous, heavily-muscled back, his chin jutting up with pride.

  “I am Al-En Mosq, son of Ingren Al-En…”

  He continued to intone his full family name and title, but Jet tuned the rest out.

  She found herself staring at Bukka instead, who wore a skintight sense-suit over bulging muscles, all the way up to her thick neck. When looking at the woman’s physique brought up another whisper of nerves, Jet forced her eyes away, trying to think instead of the practice fights she’d done with Trazen, and with Laksri before him.

  She couldn’t think of Bukka as human. She couldn’t.

  Bukka didn’t even look Nirreth really, given her size.

  Honestly, Jet might be better off comparing Bukka in her mind to that baby T-Rex she fought in the dining hall of the Royals’ Palace for her demonstration match.

  The thought made her smile a little, in spite of herself.

  She didn’t let herself look up again, at the Prince’s box, or his naked slaves.

  As Al En-Mosq finished with his formal recitations and his words had been translated into English for the benefit of the crowd, Nurem leaned back on the padded bench, glancing to the other four judges in turn, two on either side of where he sat.

  Jet lowered her head more, knowing the cameras would be focused on her and Bukka now, not on the judges, or on either of their owners. Out of her peripheral vision, Jet found herself studying Bukka’s face that time, not her body.

  The woman wore no expression on her broad features. None.

  She didn’t even look peaceful. She didn’t even look stupid.

  She looked empty, like a machine.

  Jet was still staring at the other woman when Trazen laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. Jet’s eyes jerked forward, and she realized the center judge had been speaking to her.

  She’d done that before her first Rings run, too.

  It hit her suddenly that most people in this audience… not just First Son Isreti… expected Jet to die in this match. They expected her to get her head torn off by Bukka.

  The thought made her swallow, even as she refocused on Nurem, who was smiling at her, his eyes holding what might have been sympathy.

  “You enter this contest willingly, human?” he said in heavily-accented English.

  Those were the words he used every tournament, but again Jet found herself thinking about the first one. Maybe because, like that first time, Nurem looked at her like he felt sorry for her. He looked at her like he didn’t expect her to survive this match either, especially not with Bukka kneeling next to her, so that the contrast between them was even more obvious.

  “I am willing,” Jet said. “It is an honor to fight in the Rings…”

  When she said it, it almost felt true.

  It also struck her that this would be her last time.

  For good or for ill, Jet would never run the Rings again.

  The rest of the formalities went by in a blur.

  The next thing Jet knew, she stood outside the door to the arena, in a waiting area that stood between the outer, transparent wall, and the inner wall, which was still black with virtual paneling, so that Jet couldn’t see inside.

  She knew Bukka would be entering through a different hole in the cage.

  Next to her stood Alice Rajpoor, Jet’s human trainer.

  The human wore a long, black, shimmery dress.

  Like Jet’s, Alice’s normally straight black hair had been done up in soft curls. Her eye make-up was a deep, iridescent black with highlights of gold and green. Despite the dress, the combination somehow made Alice look more dangerous, not less.

  “Any words of wisdom, Alice?” Jet muttered.

  Glancing at the other woman, she clasped her hands together to warm up her fingers even as she shifted her weight between her feet.

  “No, mammal,” Alice said, her voice uncharacteristically low. “Well. Yes.” She paused, nudging Jet’s shoulder with sharp fingers. “Don’t die.”

  Jet snorted.

  Walking past Alice to enter the waiting cubicle before the main door, Jet glanced over her shoulder a last time before she was all the way inside. She focused on her trainer’s heavily made-up face. She looked past her own cross-harness to do it, from which her sword, Black, stuck out over her left shoulder.

  “You sound like Trazen,” Jet said with a smile.

  When she met Alice’s gaze, she was shocked to see tears in the woman’s light brown eyes. Starting, Jet turned while only halfway through the door.

  Stepping back through and closer to where Alice stood, she gripped the other woman’s bare arms, almost in reflex.

  “Hey,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

  Alice laughed, but there was no humor in it.

  She seemed like she might be about to speak, then seemed to think better of it.

  Instead, she nodded, wiping her eyes with careful fingers.

  “No mercy, mammal,” she said, her voice hard. “I know you. You feel sorry for things. Even big angry things that try to kill you with a club.” She paused, her eyes and voice holding a more overt meaning. “No mercy. Hear me on this? This is not that kind of fight.”

  Jet nodded, quirking an eyebrow. “Be an asshole. Got it.”

  “I mean it, Jet.”

  Jet met Alice’s gaze, smiling. “I know.”

  She did, too.

  Releasing Alice’s arms, she stepped back two full paces, bringing herself fully inside the enclosed waiting area outside the inner door.

  The door behind her remained black, completely opaque. As soon as Jet crossed the threshold of the transparent door with all of her limbs, however, the pre-match warning alarm began to go off.

  The sliding door that stood between her and Alice began to close.

  Jet glanced up at the swirling red light hanging over that darkened door.

  Then, looking back a last time, she caught a final glimpse of Alice’s face.

  The woman just looked at her, her elaborate up-do of soft, dark curls in direct contrast to her angular, wolf-like face. That face had always comforted Jet somehow, maybe just the intelligence she sensed in the older woman from the beginning, above and beyond what Alice ever let her see.

  Right then, Alice’s face held an expression that was almost angry, reflecting a helplessness mixed with frustration Jet had never seen on her before.

  Something about the expression, and the emotion she saw there, touched Jet, too.

  It also made her wonder if Alice knew more than Jet supposed.

  About today, that is. About Isreti.

  About what was scripted to happen.

  Realizing it was too late now to know any of those things, Jet fought to push any lingering doubt out of her mind. She raised a hand in a final wave, but she had no idea if Alice saw it.

  Just then, the door slammed shut with a clang.

  As it did, the door in front of her began to open.

  16

  Moonless

  Jet had her sword, Black, in her hand.

  She’d unsheathed it without thought, before the door was all the way open.

  She couldn’t even see the virtual world in front of her yet.

  Even so, she was already shifting her weight from foot to foot, feeling her adrenaline spike, her heart start to beat harder in her chest. She crouched in a half-fighting stance as the door rolled the rest of the way open.

  The space beyond the open door showed nothing at first.
>
  Pitch blackness stared back at her.

  Then a wind blew through that stillness, ruffling her hair, rustling leaves and what sounded like scraping branches. Stars shone briefly through a sudden glimpse of dark clouds, billowing into thick shapes somewhere above her head.

  That opening in the clouds closed seconds after Jet saw it, leaving no trace of a moon, and a near-complete darkness in front of her and to either side.

  Looking through that open door, Jet felt her breath catch.

  She could see almost nothing, even with that bare glimpse of stars. The light from the ante-chamber didn’t penetrate that darkness at all, not even to give her a hint of the environment that awaited her, nothing apart from that faint rustle of leaves.

  She knew the scene wasn’t set underground, or in a sewer, or inside any building.

  She was outside. It was night. It was cold.

  They were going to do whatever they could to confuse her orientation.

  She walked forward, still gripping her sword in one hand.

  Once she’d passed the threshold of the entrance to the arena, the door behind her vanished. She’d expected that, but even so, she turned, fighting a catch in her throat when her eyes didn’t immediately adjust. Even though the light from that chamber hadn’t made it into the virtual world, she felt a shock of fear when it vanished.

  Everything felt darker and quieter.

  Jet held her breath, listening.

  She knew she wouldn’t likely run into Bukka straight off.

  The other woman used a different entrance into the virtual world, an entrance located in some other section of wall.

  Even so, Jet couldn’t discount the possibility entirely. For all she knew, they might have walked Bukka in a dozen yards to her right. They might have let her in minutes before they opened the door for Jet.

  They might have done a lot of things.

  They also might want things to start off with a bang.

  Since Jet was technically the reigning champion, the Rings Operators might feel justified in making the run harder for her at the outset.