She was leading this part of the strike team.
The thought didn’t surprise Jet exactly, but it made her wonder what Alice’s role really was in all of this. It also made her wonder about Alice’s real relationship with Richter, which was something that had bugged Jet off and on for a while.
But it was hard to care about any of that now.
Her family was alive.
Biggs and her mother were alive.
For the same reason, Jet had already decided to go with them, wherever they wanted to take her. If it meant she could see her brother and her mother again, she would go back to Astet with them, if that’s where they wanted her.
Somewhere in that, Alice must have decided Jet’s disguise would do.
“All right,” she said, giving a satisfied nod. “Take her. Go. Now.”
Jet didn’t have time to think about what to say to Alice.
Different parts of her wanted to thank her, yell at her, ask her more questions, make her promise again to watch out for Trazen… give her a hug.
By the time Jet untangled any of that in her head, she was already sprinting down the dark ramp, surrounded on all sides by humans and Nirreth in military uniforms.
They passed bodies crumpled on the ramp floor, some of them gasping and moaning from where they bled. Jet winced as those in her party shot some of those as they passed, even knowing they were probably mercy killings.
She glanced around at her new protective detail as they ran.
She didn’t recognize any of them.
Moreover, she couldn’t help marveling at just how many of them there were, or how respectfully and protectively they treated her, even now. The humans wore colors Jet recognized from the old history recordings about the war.
Jet recognized those colors from her first run in the Rings, when she’d worn a variation of the same uniform herself.
The Nirreth uniforms were more immediately familiar.
The six Nirreth Jet counted, half of them male and half female, all wore Laksri’s colors from his brief stint as First Son.
All of them, human and Nirreth, wore armbands around their upper arms. Given that they were running and it was dark, it took Jet a moment to recognize the symbol there.
Once she did, she almost smiled.
It was a small figure of a samurai, their katana raised under the Nirreth sun.
Remembering Alice’s words about being the face to unite the Nirreth and human rebels, Jet looked back up the ramp, gazing into that rectangle of light without slowing her pace.
Alice no longer stood by the opening.
No one stood there. Jet assumed the troops who’d been there previously had already moved elsewhere to continue the fight.
The rebellion against Isreti’s fanatics had really begun.
Thinking about that, Jet frowned, reminded of her first Rings match, where the pullers recreated part of a war that had already been lost, that she’d been too young to fight.
Despite everyone wearing her on their arms like some mythological animal, it looked like Jet would miss the war this time around, too.
23
The Explanation
Nirreth and humans saluted her as Jet climbed the steps up to a culler ship.
Jet didn’t recognize any of them, but she saluted back, almost in rote.
She got smiles from a few of the younger humans, especially the women and girls, and a few careful touches from Nirreth who expressed their approval in more tactile ways.
All of it was a blur.
She walked up the ramp with her back straight, the scarf down below her chin now, but still covering her hair.
It wasn’t until she entered the darkness of the hold that someone grabbed her for real.
Jet reached back, gripping the hilt of Black as she stepped back, falling halfway into a fighting stance…
…but the person holding her broke out in a happy laugh.
That laugh disarmed her completely, even before she recognized the specific voice. Jet was still holding the hilt of Black but her fingers loosened when Anaze pulled her into a rough bear hug, still laughing.
“JET! I’m so happy to see you! So damned happy!” Squeezing her, he let out another delighted laugh, what sounded like pure joy. “You have no idea, Jet! God above, you are amazing! You did it! You really did it!”
He gripped her tighter, swinging her around in a half-circle and laughing louder when he made her gasp. The strength in his arms caught her completely off-guard.
When did Anaze get so tall?
Why did he suddenly seem three times the size she remembered him?
Realizing the last time she’d seen him at all, even from a distance, had been at the Retribution arena on Astet, Jet fought a sudden rush of emotion.
She’d known he was alive. Trazen told her he was alive.
So did Laksri… and Richter.
Even so, some part of her hadn’t fully believed it.
Or maybe she’d just thought of him as dead for so long, in that prison on Astet, that the information that he’d survived never felt fully real to her.
It felt real now.
Even before she refocused on his green eyes smiling down at her, his presence hit her like a smack in the face. Her eyes had adjusted by then to the dimmer hold of the culler ship, so she could see every part of him.
She found herself focusing on scars on his neck and arms, visible around his uniform shirt. She remembered some of those from Astet, when they’d been fresher marks. Fighting back the sting in her eyes at the memory, she wiped her eyes, forcing a smile.
As she did, she found herself fingering his dark hair and skin, almost without realizing she’d done it.
He caught hold of her hand, squeezing it roughly in both of his.
His narrow face, still partly in shadow, was broken by white teeth as he grinned.
“Jet,” he said, softer. Tears came to his eyes. “I’m so glad to see you. I’m so glad you’re okay. I thought I was going to have a heart attack during that damned run… and seeing you on the floor before that monster, Isreti…”
He swallowed, squeezing her hand again.
“You were amazing. You were absolutely amazing. I could have killed you for doing something so risky, with all those psychotic lizards standing right there… but damn. It worked! You killed that evil bastard right in front of his own Guard!”
He let out a short laugh, half-choked by tears.
More than anything, she heard pure happiness in his voice. She could see it in his eyes, practically feel it through his skin… almost as if he were Nirreth, too.
Before she could hold them back, tears sprang back to her eyes.
She remembered her friend from the pits, the talks they used to have about this very day, this very possibility. She fought to blink her tears away, then to wipe them with her hands when they started running down her cheeks.
She let go of Black’s hilt, clinging to Anaze’s shoulders instead.
When she looked up next, he kissed her on the cheek.
“You look like shit,” she informed him, her voice gruff.
He laughed again, squeezing her around the waist, lifting her up in his arms.
“So do you,” he shot back. “I don’t know how you got that cool Samurai name, when mostly you just look like a raccoon…”
He let her weight drop through his hands, setting her easily back on her feet.
Letting go of him almost reluctantly, she stepped back.
When he just grinned at her, his hands on his hips, she wiped her face again, clearing her throat before she looked up.
“So who’s running this crazy war, anyway?” she said, her voice still gruff as she forced a smile. “You? Your crazy ass of a father? Laks?”
Anaze grinned, catching hold of her hand.
“Come with me, Jet,” he said. “I can finally tell you everything.”
Strangely, given everything that had happened, there wasn’t as much to tell as Jet thought.
Maybe there just wasn’t as much as she needed to hear––to give her a sense of closure, or even just to make sense of it all, in the less-rational parts of her mind.
Some she already knew from Trazen.
Some she’d guessed, but hadn’t been completely sure.
Anaze and Laksri had been working together from the beginning, like Laksri told her, so that fell into the bucket of things Jet already knew.
Of course, given everything, she’d no longer been entirely sure that was true… or, really, whether anything Anaze, Richter, or Laksri had told her was true… but it hadn’t been new information.
According to Anaze, that part was true.
Anaze also said he was pretty sure Richter figured out that he and Laksri were more loyal to one another than they were to him.
Anaze hadn’t given up on his father entirely, but he’d grown wary of him, particularly when Richter started getting more and more secretive about what he was doing in the northern settlements. Anaze knew how manipulative Richter could be––Anaze’s own mother warned him about that––but Anaze also knew Richter genuinely wanted freedom for all humans.
As Anaze phrased it, Richter was just “a little less reliable” when it came to what he was willing to do to secure those ends.
In the end, Anaze said, Richter surprised all of them.
Mostly because he hadn’t actually betrayed them.
Not overtly, anyway.
He’d taken Jet’s family for safekeeping––that part was true.
He’d also taken them for leverage, so that part was true, too.
According to Anaze, Richter picked them up not long after Jet’s first Rings match, when it became abundantly clear to Richter that Jet had received some military training of her own. In the beginning he’d only intended to pick up her Uncle Draven and Aunt Lara, but when he caught some of Isreti’s people sniffing around the skag pits, he decided to take her mother and Biggs too, before the Nirreth figured out who they were.
When he’d gotten wind of Isreti’s coup, Richter still had Jet’s family in hiding.
He’d already been on his way to Astet when Isreti’s people reached out to Richter personally, and asked him to get rid of Laksri in return for giving Richter and his people immunity in the coming purges.
Supposedly, they’d offered him Alaska.
Or maybe they offered him what used to be called Hawaii… Anaze was a bit fuzzy on the specifics. Or maybe just on his Old Earth geography.
In any case, Richter knew it was a bullshit deal, and that they’d all end up dead.
So he did the only thing still open to him.
He faked Laksri’s death.
He shot Laks with a drug-infused dart that made a hell of a mess, knocking him unconscious in a way that staged his death. Then Richter used the pretext of that assassination to get both Laksri and Anaze off Astet, using his human military.
Jet, he’d left behind.
Anaze was fuzzy about that part, which is maybe why Jet still struggled to wrap her head around the rest of the story. According to Anaze, he and Laksri hadn’t been there when Jet’s fate got decided. They’d also both been furious when they found out Richter left Jet behind.
According to Richter, he had no choice.
He claimed leaving Jet in the pens was his only option.
Isreti was adamant that Jet not be a part of their deal.
Isreti’s new Guard took Jet into custody within minutes, and kept her under armed guard and isolated, even before he threw her into the prison below the Retribution arena. Isreti hadn’t cared about Anaze, and he hadn’t known about Laksri… but the new Nirreth King-To-Be had very definite plans around how to dispose of Jet.
As a kind of Plan B, Richter assured them that he’d “made arrangements” to ensure Jet would be in a safe house while she remained with the Nirreth.
Laksri about blew his lid when he found out that safe house was with Trazen.
Of course, by then, Trazen had warned Laksri about Isreti personally, so they were all a lot less sure where Trazen stood on much of anything, much less whether Trazen was an enemy per se. Even so, according to Anaze, Laksri contacted Trazen at once, making him vow on everything Nirreth hold sacred that he wouldn’t violate Jet.
Anaze seemed to think Laksri was suprised when Trazen agreed.
Funnily enough, Trazen had no idea Richter had been behind him gaining custody over Jet. Trazen made a bid of his own, but really, Richter made that happen, too.
According to Anaze, Richter worked that out with Isreti while they negotiated Laksri’s assassination… a compromise of sorts, which Richter phrased as a personal favor he owed to the Ringmaster.
He only told Laksri and Anaze about Trazen’s ties to the Shinkara later.
How Richter had even known about Trazen’s ties to the Shinkara was too baffling for Jet to contemplate. Anaze didn’t know how Richter found out about that, either.
When Jet asked, Anaze just held up his hands in a familiar shrug, smiling as if to say, “He’s Richter.”
It was pretty difficult to argue with that.
As Anaze finished speaking, Jet found herself curled up on a wide, Nirreth-made bench in the cargo area of the culler ship, staring out a round viewport at a sky that no longer had the blue wash of color she’d grown accustomed to inside the Green Zone.
This sky was a dirty brown instead, filled with dust and smoke, with no clouds discernible apart from the haze that obscured most of the ground below the culler.
They’d left the protective bubble of the city about thirty minutes before––maybe ten minutes after they lifted off the landing pad outside the Rings stadium.
The culler hadn’t flown to the edge of the city to exit the dome, like Jet expected, but straight up and out, as if they were leaving the planet altogether.
Once it popped out of the open door, the ship’s ascent abruptly stopped.
They’d fallen back towards the curve of the protective shield only to shift direction and skim over its outer surface and out over the landscape of the “real” Earth that lived past the Green Zone’s thick walls.
Leaning her forehead against the transparent pane of the viewport, Jet sighed, fighting back and forth in her head about how much longer she wanted to go over this.
Anaze stopped talking a few minutes before, and Jet found that, more than anything, she was tired now.
Maybe more than tired.
Her mind had fallen into a near static.
Even so, she kept one ear on the radio signals that echoed through the hollow-feeling cabin, a mish-mash of reports from different military forces operating around the city.
“…Casualties high in the Old City and Kabasi, mainly due to cross-fire from the organized crime sector, and a holed-up squadron of Isreti’s armed forces. We have Nirreth on the ground, trying to reason with the criminal gangs, but they’ve heard about the coup and they’ve got a split inside their own ranks. Some were loyal, due to promises Isreti made, and some––”
A different voice, female and human from the skag accent, broke in from another channel.
“Rings arena is secure. Live prisoners currently being located to an indoor holding center in Station 10. The human cells there have already been emptied, as well as those holding political prisoners from the last regime, and––”
A male voice cut in from the other side, probably Nirreth.
“…Fighting still hot by the Palace. We’re nowhere near to breaching those walls tonight, not even with bombs. Lakrsi’s people are trying to get in through the canals, using humans to swim up into central water processing. Risk is high. Repeat, risk is high that the Stone will not be secured. We have word that Isreti’s people have already sent for reinforcements specifically to retrieve it. ETA nine hours for the nearest. Any unencumbered forces please report.”
Jet looked away from the viewport, sitting up taller on the bench.
She’d been to that water processing plant with Laksri an
d Richter.
She knew exactly where it was.
Moreover, they’d just said the mission was in danger. She didn’t understand the reference to a “stone” but she got the gist. There was something in the Royal Palace that both sides needed, and Isreti’s followers were coming for it.
Jet turned to Anaze.
“Take me back,” she told him.
Anaze frowned. “Back? Don’t you want to see your family?”
She shook her head, even though his words brought another pain to her chest.
“It can wait,” she said, swallowing. “We need to go back, Anaze. There aren’t many humans who know the Royal Palace like we do, and if the only access is through the water, Nirreth can’t swim. You need to take us back to the compound. Now, Anaze.”
Anaze’s confusion worsened.
“Why, Jet? You heard them. They have other humans. And the Nirreth can sting them to feed them information about the interior of the compound.” Anaze hesitated, his voice growing more cautious. “Laksri will be all right, you know. He’s got a military background, Jet––”
But she was already shaking her head.
“This has nothing to do with Laks, Anaze,” she warned.
Anaze frowned. “Trazen, then.”
In spite of her irritation, Jet raised an eyebrow as it occurred to her that Anaze was telling her something, not just being an ass.
“They’re together?” she said. “Laks and Trazen? At the Palace?”
Anaze nodded, tapping the headset he wore in his ear.
“They’ve just combined forces, now that the Rings stadium and the surrounding areas are secure. The Palace is the priority now.”
Jet exhaled. “I got that much from the radio. That’s why you need to take me back.”
“Are you really ordering me to take you back there, Jet?” Anaze’s voice sounded conflicted. “I promised them I’d get you out. I promised I’d make sure you were safe.”
“Ordering?” Replaying his choice of words, Jet’s eyes widened as she found she understood. “If I make it an order, do you have to take me back?”
“Yes, but––”
Jet was already smiling.
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 89