Alice’s gun pointed at the floor now.
She still clasped it in both hands, but from her face, she’d all but forgotten it.
“It will seem like we made this change,” the female Nirreth said. “It always seems like that, doesn’t it?”
The woman smiled, her voice holding that soft joy.
“It always seems all at once too, does it not? Like one dramatic move, rather than a few billion very small ones? I suppose that makes it easier for those who prefer to stay still and watch… or even to run as fast as they can in the opposite direction.”
Jet fought to understand.
The words sounded like music now, a faraway melody she longed for, but couldn’t quite make out.
She felt like she should be doing something here.
She’d come to do something… hadn’t she?
Something important.
Something for Trazen.
“You will be all right,” the female Nirreth repeated. “Everything will turn out all right, Jet Tetsuo. There is no wrong choice. Only the one that is right for you.” The female Nirreth smiled. “It is okay to want things, you know. It is okay to only want little things, too… to have a good life. To be a good person, in some quiet way.”
Jet barely heard her.
She’d fallen to her knees at some point while the woman spoke, while she’d been trying to follow whispers in that soft melody of the stars. She knelt on the carpeted floor of the library, but despite everything that happened that day, Jet felt no pain.
The breath that left her lungs came out more like an exhale than a gasp.
The emotion she felt now was closer to relief than fear.
She couldn’t really focus on the room anymore.
When the alarms went off overhead, those sounded far away, too.
The next thing she knew, she was lying on her back, the hilt of Black still clutched in one hand. Eventually she opened her fingers and let it go. Panting, still fighting against the tiredness that felt like cement on her limbs and body, Jet stared up at the apex of the room, and then got lost in the wash of stars that swiftly filled her vision.
In the middle, like a translucent eye staring down at her from above, she saw the glint of a blue-green jewel reflecting multi-colored starlight.
Staring up at it, Jet smiled.
She couldn’t help herself, although she couldn’t put into words what she felt.
Somewhere in the midst of that smile, her eyes closed…
…And everything went dark.
30
The Choice
She woke up not knowing where she was, for the second time that day.
Lying on something soft, she held up a hand to shield her eyes from a too-bright light.
She didn’t feel like she had that first time she woke up.
She didn’t feel sick.
She didn’t feel like her heart had been ripped out of her chest.
She felt… peaceful.
It took her a few seconds more to see past that glare, then a few more to get her bearings in any meaningful way.
By then, her mind coalesced around her, bringing her back for real.
When she turned her head, she saw Laksri sitting on a velvet couch, right next to the one where she lay. A wave of dizziness went over her when she tried to sit up, but Laksri moved towards her at once, helping her carefully into a seated position, pushing a cushion behind her back to steady her.
Jet gave herself a few seconds to just sit there, to bring herself back into her body.
When she felt more or less back in control of things, she turned her head and found Laksri watching her, the pale, colored lights in his black irises transporting her briefly back to the library’s skylight, back to that female Nirreth’s voice that sounded like music.
“Where are we?” she said, clearing her throat.
“The Royal compound, Jet,” Laksri said.
His voice was careful, his dark eyes still studying her face.
“What happened?” she said, when he didn’t offer anything more.
Laksri looked away, leaning his muscular arms over his thighs before he looked up at her again. For the first time, she noticed he was wearing non-military clothes, totally different than what he’d worn when she’d last seen him, inside that barn.
Dark leggings covered his legs and a dark-blue shirt hugged his arms and chest. A matching blue scarf wrapped around his head, and he wore a pendant she remembered around his neck.
The clothes were similar to the kinds of things he’d worn before the assassination attempt, while he was still the First Son of the Royal family.
But he didn’t wear the Royal crest, Jet noticed.
He didn’t wear it anywhere on his body.
He didn’t wear the ring of the First Son either, she realized, looking down at his hands.
“The Loran Stone,” she said. “It’s gone, isn’t it?”
Laksri met her gaze, frowning. He nodded, once.
“Isreti’s people have it,” he said.
“No.” Jet shook her head. “No. They don’t.”
He studied her eyes. “It is not your fault, Jet. We believe it was gone before you got here. Alice and you were on the floor of the library, unconscious. I have no idea why they left the two of you alive, but I cannot stop blaming myself, for allowing you––”
“Where’s Trazen?” she said.
She blurted the words.
Really, she spoke without realizing she intended to.
Laksri’s expression hardened.
For a long moment he only stared at her, his long jaw clenched as he studied her face. When she didn’t look away, or say anything after a few moments, he opened one hand, sweeping it sideways in an angry gesture.
“He is gone,” Laksri said simply.
“Gone?” Jet frowned. “What does that mean, gone? Where did he go?”
Laksri’s anger exhaled out of his chest in a low hiss.
“To the north, I assume. Perhaps to the south. Or the west. There is fighting all over, Jet. He is an experienced commander. He probably felt needed elsewhere. Hezeret, for all intents and purposes, is now ours.”
“Aren’t you in charge?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Did you send him away, Laks?”
“No! I did not send him. He left, Jet.”
“But why?” She felt that pain return to her chest. “Why would he leave?”
Laksri shook his head, his mouth set in a hard line.
After a longer-feeling pause, he made another angry gesture with his hand.
“I do not know, Jet. He did not tell me.” He exhaled again, as if controlling his temper with an effort. “I did not trust myself to give him orders…”
He gave her a cold look.
“We were not getting along. I asked Richter to take care of it. And Anaze. One of them must have told him where to go. Or how to get there, perhaps.”
“Did he say anything?” she pressed.
“Like what?” Laksri growled.
“Like to me? Did he say anything to me, Laks?”
“He said to tell you goodbye.”
“Anything else?” she said, hearing an edge creep into her voice.
Laksri exhaled in another growl of anger.
“I do not know! He said to tell you goodbye, Jet, that he understood your choice and goodbye. What do you want from me right now?”
But she was already getting to her feet.
Before she could make it out of the room, Lakrsi stood, closing the distance between them. She had just reached out her hand to touch the pressure point to open the door when Laksri inserted himself between her and the access panel.
She looked up, meeting his dark eyes even as he held up his hands in a peace gesture.
“Jet,” he said, his palms still facing her. “I love you.”
She didn’t drop her gaze, but felt her face tighten. “I know, Laks.”
“You’ve never said it to me,” he said,
his voice a low growl. “Not once, Jet.”
She hesitated, trying to think if that was true.
Realizing it was, she frowned.
Looking up, she met his gaze again.
“You’re right,” she said simply. “I’m sorry.”
When his face tightened, she reached out, meaning to touch his arm, to reassure him, to say or do… something. She didn’t feel angry at him anymore. She felt sorry for him, for how things turned out, but not angry or bitter. The anger was gone, leaving a regret that never managed to turn completely into guilt.
He didn’t let her touch him. She watched him step back, sliding out of her reach before her fingers could make contact with his skin.
“Laks,” she said, sighing. “I care about you. You know I do.”
“Just go, Jet,” he said.
She didn’t move.
She stood there instead, fighting to think past the hurt in his eyes.
She did care about him.
She remembered their time together on the ship to Astet, how things had been with them once. She remembered him as her friend, too.
At the same time, she also understood how and why things had changed for her.
Laksri did, too.
Hell, he’d understood before she had herself––probably from the first time they saw one another again in that firelit room in Santa Fe, when Jet first realized he’d been alive all that time, that he hadn’t died in that assassination attempt on Astet. She didn’t trust him anymore. She’d never fully trusted him, not after everything he and Anaze and Richter put her through. Not after what she’d been through in those months following Astet.
Not after all the lies.
Strangely, Anaze seemed to have accepted that.
Jet even felt they would probably be friends again after this, if in a different way than before, when they’d lived together in the skag pits. Maybe she’d even be friends with Richter in the end––although she still had trouble picturing what that would even look like.
But Laksri… Laksri had been different.
She had wanted more from Laksri. Laksri had wanted more from her. More than Anaze. Definitely more than Richter.
That wasn’t all of it, though. Not anymore.
Both of them knew that, too.
“Just go, Jet,” he growled. “Go after him. It’s what you want. He’s probably not left the settlement entirely yet. Ask Richter. Or Anaze.”
Before Jet could decide what to say, the tall Nirreth reached past her, punching the pressure panel with two long fingers to open the door.
“Just go, Jet,” he said again.
As the panel opened, he removed himself from her space, stepping out of the gap between her and the opening to the corridor. He stood on the other side of the door, arms folded, tail lashing angrily, his eyes cold stones where they focused on her face.
“Go, Jet.”
She stood there for a few beats longer, looking at him.
Then, realizing he was right, that there was nothing more to say, not now, at least… she turned away, walking through the newly-made opening.
That time, when her strides lengthened, she didn’t look back.
31
Trazen
He sat alone when she glimpsed him through the window of the small cabin.
It was cold inside the ship, even in the forward part of the hull.
When she stopped, glimpsing his profile through the small window set in the metal door, she shivered, wrapping her arms around her ribs and chest as she watched him look out a square viewport.
Glancing down at herself, it occurred to her only then that her hair was still damp, that she wore nothing but the same swim shorts and long-sleeved black shirt she’d worn in the canal.
She hadn’t wanted to stop long enough to look for shoes in her size, not after Anaze told her when the transport was scheduled to leave.
He was going south, Anaze said.
To the Green Zone in Africa.
To where the Shinkara lived.
Anaze hadn’t been able to tell her much beyond that.
Jet couldn’t even get a sense if Trazen was going to Africa as a part of the rest of what was going on around the world with Isreti’s followers, or if he was returning there for some reason of his own.
Rather than try to prise that information out of Anaze, who might not know anyway, she’d opted to go after him instead, to ask him herself.
She’d paused only long enough to check briefly on Alice, if only to reassure herself that the other woman was all right.
She’d found her easily when she entered the long common room on her way out of the compound. It was the same room Richter brought Jet for her first meal in the Green Zone, where Jet once fought a virtual T-Rex and watched Ogli play with his pet otter in the canals.
That had been the first time she’d seen Trazen too, she remembered.
She remembered him watching her from the other side of the room.
She remembered his eyes, his kindness to Ogli.
Now the room was dimly lit but strangely warmer, still filled with tables and canals but also with pillows and more trees than Jet remembered. Most of her people were lying on the floor on cushions as they laughed and ate food, and Jet saw Alice leaning against a male Nirreth she recognized from the training pits, a little dumbfounded when she saw the other woman stroking his long tail, which rested in her lap.
Tyra sat there too, with Anslom and a few others.
Most of them, Jet didn’t know.
The realization made her smile for some reason.
Reassured to see them all there, looking healthy and happy and maybe even a little drunk on Nirreth beer, Jet decided it was time for her to go.
She could talk to them all later.
There would be a later again.
She kept walking, making her way down the aisle past their cheerful group towards the front entrance of the compound.
Tyra saw her before she got all the way there and called out, waving for her to come join them, but Jet told them the same thing she’d been thinking, that she’d find them when she got back. Even so, she found herself looking at Alice again anyway.
When their eyes met, Alice smiled, the stars still reflected in her dark eyes.
A knowing quirk lifted her sculpted lips, and when she saluted Jet briefly with three fingers, her other hand still coiled around her Nirreth boyfriend’s tail, Jet saluted her back.
She could talk to Alice later, too.
She could talk to everyone later.
That meant her family, in addition to the rest.
From what Anaze said, Biggs and her mother were still outside the main communication areas anyway, and it might be a few days before they could build reliable links in the mountains where they were camped. Right now, they weren’t in any real danger, Anaze told her. That part of the continent was low priority for Isreti’s people; they were concentrating all of their remaining firepower on the Green Zones on the West Coast and in Asia.
Anyway, Richter still had a line open to Draven and Lara, who led the military forces in that area. He assured Jet it had been quiet as hell up there for the past eight or so hours.
So talking to her mom and Biggs could wait.
Talking to Draven and Lara could wait, too.
It could at least wait until morning.
Jet would travel up there in person soon anyway.
But all of that just formed a low hum in the backdrop as she stood outside a small private cabin on the forward end of the third deck of a long-range Nirreth transport vessel.
She’d almost missed the ship entirely.
She’d run up to the closing door even as a human in the grounds crew had been rolling away a small step ladder they’d been using to board. Ignoring the guy with the ladder, Jet aimed her feet for the door itself, reaching it even as one of the Nirreth crew members had been in the process of closing it from the inside.
Seeing her, the Nirreth’s dark eyes had widen
ed in recognition. When she asked for a hand up, he reached out without hesitation and pulled her inside.
Once he’d brought her onto the deck just past the oval opening, he leaned towards her ear, speaking loudly in accented Nargili.
“We are leaving,” he said. “You will be coming with us, if you do not get off now.”
Jet barely hesitated, then nodded.
“I guess I’m coming then.”
The Nirreth crew member nodded.
Then, looking her over, he gave her a small Nirreth smile.
“He’s in the forward section,” he told her, after another short pause. “Fourth door past the second segment. Deck three. He was alone, last I saw.”
Smiling back, unsure if she was amused, annoyed or possibly embarrassed, Jet patted the strange Nirreth’s arm in a friendly way, then walked away from him, towards the forward part of the ship. She’d just entered the first segment of corridor when the Nirreth crew member shut the oval door behind her.
The sound echoed with a loud bang, even before he slammed down the locking bar with another metallic thunk.
By then, she was already getting nervous.
Now, standing outside the small door, her nerves rose higher.
She was trying to decide whether she should knock, or find some other place to sit, when an announcement came over the loudspeakers, causing her to look up.
Like most Nirreth announcements on ships, it was brief.
“The ship will take off in thirty Earth seconds,” the voice said in Nargili, presumably one of the pilots.
Jet found herself thinking the Nirreth pilot was female.
“…It is recommended that you sit,” she added.
Jet took a breath, then realized she’d run out of options.
The last thing she wanted to do was end up a heap on the floor outside of Trazen’s cabin.
Raising a fist, she knocked sharply on the metal door, peering through the window in spite of herself. She saw Trazen turn, then stare at her, his eyes holding disbelief.
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 94