Alien Apocalypse: The Complete Series (Parts I-IV)

by JC Andrijeski

  Feeling her panic return in a muted form, Jet looked backwards at the open doorway and its rushing wind and air. She couldn’t remember what she’d wanted. She couldn’t remember why it felt so important to stay by that sunlit passage.

  Somehow, an opportunity felt gone in those few seconds, though.

  It brought a strange longing, but not really sadness.

  Even as she thought it, noise and commotion by that same window made Jet flinch back into the Nirreth’s arm. As she watched, another body came heaving and struggling over the rim of the hovercraft door, held by its ankles and one wrist by several green, coiling, vine-like ropes.

  A male like her, meaning human of course, dangled from the coils in those ropes. Maybe Jet’s age or maybe a little older, he was definitely human. He cursed while she watched, swinging his arms at the Nirreth who pulled him into the open doorway.

  Rather than wait, the Nirreth dealt with him at once.

  The vines hadn’t even dropped the man to the deck when they extended their tails.

  Jet watched as they stung him multiple times as he hung there. The boy/man screamed, making Jet wince, clutching at the arm of the Nirreth who held her.

  “Don’t hurt him,” she whispered.

  The Nirreth made a reassuring sound, a kind of softer hiss.

  Craning her neck back over her shoulder, she barely had time to meet his gaze.

  “Jet!” he screamed. “Jet! No! Don’t let them take you!”

  The Nirreth holding Jet’s wrist tugged more insistently on her arm.

  “Jet!” the boy screamed. “Jet! What’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you fighting them?”

  She was still staring at the face of the human as the dark-blue creature pulled her backwards down the corridor. She and the lizard-skin-cat-creature rounded a curve a few seconds later, and Jet saw the image of the boy in front of her start to disappear.

  “Jet!” he shrieked. “Jet! Don’t leave with him!”

  But the Nirreth holding her wrist tugged more insistently on her arm.

  “Jet!” he yelled louder. “Jet!”

  Three more Nirreth were converging on him when he dropped from her view.

  She’d recognized him though. She knew his face, even in the haze of Nirreth’s sting.

  It had been Anaze.

  He’d followed her to the Gaslamp, even though she’d asked him not to.

  Jet stumbled down a ribbed corridor, still hanging from the fingers of her Nirreth guide.

  He took her down passages where the tunnels forked, leading her over at least two catwalks and up three cave-like stairwells bounded by a maze of different-colored pipes and wall tiles covered in dizzying geometric patterns.

  Even without the drug, Jet might have been confused. As it was, she only put her feet and hands where the Nirreth told her to put them, and she didn’t try to remember any of it. Only later would she think about how unusual this was for her. Jet would normally make a point of knowing everything about any structure she entered, even for just a few seconds.

  The layout of the Nirreth ship should have had her riveted.

  She could feel a part of her following the guidance of something else. It wasn’t just that she was passive, exactly, it was more like the Nirreth told her where to place her feet as she walked, where to put her hands as they climbed a ladder or a wall dotted in hand and foot-holds.

  After they’d reached yet another floor higher, Jet followed the prod of the Nirreth’s mind and squeezed along a long, narrow passage with high walls. Its claw-like hand continued to tug on her as well, but Jet didn’t mind any more. After walking over several, round, ship-like hatches in the floor, the Nirreth pointed at the last one and grunted something.

  Jet just looked up at its face, bewildered in a passive kind of way.

  “What?” she said, when it didn’t move.

  Hissing a little once more, the Nirreth prodded her shoulder, pointing at the hatch.

  Jet looked at the metal door, then back up at the Nirreth, perplexed.

  “How?” she said finally.

  The creature mimed turning the wheel with his claw-like hands.

  “Ah,” Jet said. She didn’t make a move towards the door though.

  “Open now,” the Nirreth said thickly. “Captain waits.”

  Without another sound, the tall, blue-skinned thing reversed direction in the narrow passage, and began walking back the way they had come. The creature had to stand at an angle to navigate the small space, using shuffling half-steps over the smooth floor.

  Jet was left staring down at the circular door. Her body remained pliable from the Nirreth’s sting, almost heavy, but her head felt slightly clearer than it had in the cargo hold.

  So much clearer, in fact, that the thought reached her again that perhaps she should try for escape. Looking around her, however, she wondered where she would go. Back to the cargo hold? That didn’t strike her as a particularly good plan. She could hide out in one of the nooks and crannies on the ship itself, hoping for a chance to sneak back there.

  Did a ship this small have any kind of emergency vehicle, or glider?

  The Nirreth who left her here certainly hadn’t seemed worried.

  She tried again to assess her options, but Jet’s brain was still pretty fuzzy. She couldn’t just stay there, knock on the door of the head Nirreth’s cabin like some kind of trained monkey. The lizard skins, as most of the skags thought of the Nirreth, wouldn’t be any less likely to torture and enslave her if Jet was obedient.

  She wished she had her pack, at least. Or really, just the sword.

  If Jet even just had her tools...she might be able to cut open one of these walls, design a makeshift place to hide until she saw a chance to get out.

  She was starting to edge back along the corridor in the opposite direction, when the wheel on the ground in front of her began to turn. Jet froze, watching it spin...then fought to move more quickly in the opposite direction as the wheel spun faster.

  Looking both ways down the corridor, Jet felt herself panicking again as she realized she wouldn’t be able to get anywhere in time, not with her body working as badly as it was. She wondered if maybe she should go forward, over the hatch and towards the nearer of the branching corridors...

  But it was already too late.

  Unable to move much faster than a limping shamble, Jet fought to pull herself down the passage, using her arms. For some reason, her arms were coming back to her faster, so she used them to carry much of her weight, propping herself on the narrow walls. Half-lifting herself off the floor, she swung her lower body forward as far as she could, bringing her legs after her.

  She’d only made it a few feet, however, when the door opened. When it did, Jet couldn’t keep herself from looking back.

  Staring at the face peering at her from under the rim of yet another circular door, Jet froze. Blinking, she stared harder at the face, trying to make sense of it.

  It wasn’t Nirreth, it was human.

  The man who owned it smiled at her, and it was a human smile.

  “Hey,” he said. He held up what looked like a cooking pot. “Are you hungry?”

  Jet stared at him, wondering if this was part of the drug.

  “Don’t you want to eat first?” he said, enunciating more slowly.

  “First?” she repeated numbly.

  “Before you go wherever you’re going.” He motioned down the corridor, where she’d been trying to walk. “I heard you worked up quite an appetite with my boys already...swinging swords, trying to jump out of a moving hovercraft...”

  “It wasn’t moving,” Jet blurted, almost before she knew she meant to.

  He grinned at that, winking at her before he motioned once more to the pot he held.

  “So?” he said. “How about it? You can’t fight my whole ship on an empty stomach, can you?” Studying her face, he added more somberly, “Relax, okay? There’s nowhere to go, girl. This ship only seems big until you realize it’s packed to
the gills with lizard skins. And there aren’t any life pods or escape hatches, if you were thinking that...it was built as a catch and carry vessel, so precaution demands a minimal of entrances and exits...”

  Jet fought once more with her voice.

  “You’re...but you’re a...”

  “Human, yes. I’m also the captain of this ship. I asked that big lug to bring you here.”

  Jet blinked at him, still unable to get her mind working right.

  “But why?” she said finally.

  “Why?” he said in surprise. “I picked you up, didn’t I? Don’t you think I need to assess our catch? Figure out what it is we have exactly?”

  Jet blinked, still holding the walls, unable to get past the part about him being human. She stared at his brown eyes, the beginnings of a dark beard on his face, the unevenly cut hair that was almost black. He had a strange smile, one that didn’t touch his eyes at all, seemingly. He seemed to be assessing her instead, almost like the Nirreth had.

  “Who...are you?” she managed, still holding herself up by her hands.

  “Eamon,” he said, giving a short bow. “Eamon Richter...At your service.”

  “Richter.” That time, she really did gape at him. “You can’t be Richter. It’s impossible.”

  “I assure you, I am.”

  “You can’t be,” Jet said again.

  “Really?” he smiled. “And why is that?”

  “You’re not old enough.”

  He shook his head a little at this, smiling wider. “Really. So how old should I be, then? You seem to be such an expert, I am simply dying to know...”

  But something else had occurred to her.

  “You work for them?” Jet said, baffled.

  His face didn’t react, but she could tell the question irritated him. He inclined his head with a shrug, shifting his eyes away from hers.

  “Depends on how you see it,” he said. “On this ship, they work for me.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes,” he said. He must have heard her skeptical tone, because his eyes met hers, a little sharper that time. “You know, it would be much easier for us to discuss all of this downstairs...”

  “I don’t want to go downstairs,” Jet said, feeling her jaw harden.

  “Well, I do,” Richter said. His gaze flattened. “And I may have to insist.”

  Returning his stare she found herself momentarily out of words. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around it though, the idea that this, well...kid...could be the Richter everyone talked about. He looked somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five to twenty-seven-years-old.

  He couldn’t be older than mid-thirties, even if he looked young for his age.

  Anaze’s mother had lived in a settlement run by Richter. She had to be at least forty, if not older. Would someone her age really have followed around some kid for a few years, no matter how connected he might be? Would a bunch of ex-cons and ex-military, for that matter?

  The man calling himself Eamon Richter seemed to have grown tired of waiting for her to make up her mind, though. He began climbing back down the ladder into the room below the round hatch. He paused only once, to meet her gaze directly again.

  “Are you coming?” he said. “Or do I need to get one of those blue bastards to stick you with his tail again?”

  “What do you want from me?” she said. “Why am I here, and not in the cargo hold, with the other skags?”

  “Does it matter?” he asked, and that time his irritation showed in his voice.

  “Yes, it does. What do you want from me?”

  He raised an eyebrow, still holding the soup pot in the hand not clutching the stairs.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking.”

  “You seem awfully sure you know what that is.”

  “If you come downstairs, I’ll tell you.” When Jet continued to hesitate, he sighed, shaking his head. “Either way, I’ll get what I want, so you may as well come willingly.”

  “You’d set a Nirreth on your own kind?” she began angrily.

  “...Without blinking an eye,” he said, before Jet could finish. He smiled, just long enough for her to see that he meant it. “Are you coming? Or shall I call Laksri back? That was the big strapping fellow you stabbed with your sword, in case you were wondering...”

  She looked backwards down the long corridor.

  When she turned back, Jet saw his hard eyes assessing her just as carefully as she did him. She believed him. He really would drug her and drag her down there.

  He seemed to see that much in her eyes, and averted his.

  “Last warning,” he said mildly, resuming his climb down the stairs. “He can be back here in twenty seconds. Too long for you to get very far with that venom still in your system. And if you think the first sting hurt, wait until you get four or five of those in your system...”

  Jet winced, remembering that she'd seen them do that to Anaze, only moments before.

  But that time, she only hesitated a minute.

  Gritting her teeth, she began limping back in the direction of the hole in the floor. Thinking about his words, she realized she didn’t have much choice. Anyway, having remembered Anaze, Jet couldn't help thinking about his welfare, too. She wouldn’t be any good to him if she got so drugged up that she couldn’t even remember his name. He’d come out all this way just to protect her; she had to at least try to return the favor. Her only chance might be if this captain, Richter, was taking an interest in her.

  The idea made her shudder a little, but she gritted her teeth, refusing to let it show.

  It struck her then, barely a half-beat later, that she’d asked for this, in a way.

  Not just in coming alone out to the Gaslamp, nor in not making a detailed enough map of all the underground passages, nor by not traveling underground for long enough.

  Jet had said she would take shelter with Richter, if he offered it.

  She’d just never thought it would be on a Nirreth culling ship.

  THE GREEN ZONE

  Jet sat on the hard cushion of a crescent-shaped seat.

  Her side ached from the Nirreth's sting, but the effects were finally mostly worn off. Her legs felt a bit numb, but they worked again...she could feel her toes. She could think again, too, more or less. The world no longer seemed to be coming through a few feet of water.

  The seat where she perched had been built into the wall of the circular room, along with a few others that ringed a curved, angular table that jutted out of the floor. All of the furniture looked and felt like it had been made for someone three times her size. When Jet was seated, the faintly glowing metal surface of the table stood about level with her shoulders.

  Sliding around in a half-hearted attempt to get comfortable, Jet finally gave up, looking around the ribbed walls of what were presumably Richter’s sleeping quarters. As she stared at the built-in shelves and what appeared to be a fold-up bunk––again, its proportions far too long and thick for an ordinary human––Jet had gone back to rubbing her side where the Nirreth's tail stinger hit her. By then, it was more of a nervous tic than anything. She'd probably have a nice healthy bruise there, but she doubted it had really hurt her.

  Anaze, on the other hand, was probably in pretty bad shape. She'd seen those blue bastards hit him at least five or six times, and all over his body. She could remember that now, even though she'd been in a kind of trance while it was happening.

  Jet glanced at the machines littering pieces of the floor and shelves, and recognized a few. At least one was a weapon...a real one. Her people called it a sandblaster; what it did was essentially blow its targets into pieces so small that it was pretty much impossible to identify the victim afterwards. Well, unless their DNA happened to be on file. As most people's wasn't, they tended to have to go with process of elimination. Stranger-Sandblasted, along with the date the tell-tale burns and splatter pattern had been found, had been written on more than a few of the wooden grave markers in the cemetery behind Je
t's settlement.

  She recognized the shape of the gun itself from watching patrols from underground; she’d seen Nirreth point an identical-looking device from where it had been wrapped around one of their thick wrists. Jet had no idea how to operate the thing, though, or even if it was loaded. There were no markings on it that she could see, or even a trigger switch of any kind.

  She doubted Richter would be stupid enough to let a skag captive have access to something deadly. On the other hand, she wouldn’t pass up the opportunity, if he gave it to her. All she needed was some time to figure out how to use it. She didn't particularly want to watch him demonstrate it, though...at least not on a human.

  Her eyes shifted to the wall-sized monitor that dominated one curved segment of the cabin. The screen appeared dead at first glance, but she saw it flickering here and there, and wondered. It was the only part of the wall not covered in those odd, off-color ridges. The ridges themselves reminded Jet a little of cliff faces in the drier areas high above the settlement, where the sediment created lines in the rock that counted the centuries...or counted the millennia, maybe.

  She continued to rub her side as she thought all of this, although she could barely feel the burn from the stinger now. The lump on her head, from being thrown against the wall fighting the Nirreth in that hold, hurt more than that Nirreth’s stupid tail sting did.

  She’d have to factor those stingers in now, too. Any one of those dark-blue beasts could stab her if she got too close, turning her into a zombie.

  Worse, a seemingly obedient zombie.

  So some of the rumors about the Nirreth's poison had been true, after all. They did have a way to make humans compliant. She wondered if it worked on everyone.

  Jet almost got the impression the thing had been using its mind to control her, once the drug got into her system. Or maybe some part of its body. Either way, she’d felt herself following every command it gave her...commands she seemingly had no ability to refuse. She’d done what it told her to do willingly. More disturbing still, at the time, Jet distinctly remembered viewing the thing as an ally...almost as a protector.