The thought made her shiver a little. She shoved it away a moment later, unwilling to think about it too closely.
Richter called it Laksri.
He’d known the lizard skin's name. He'd also called it a “him.”
Jet's eyes swiveled back to the dark-haired man in front of her. She noticed for the first time that he had a streak of nearly metallic gold in his hair, woven through the uneven chunks of dark brown in the back. She'd heard something about this, too, but didn't know what it meant. Maybe it was some kind of call sign, so he and his people could recognize one another. A streak of gold would certainly be easier to spot through scopes than your average tattoo...especially given how many of the skags inked themselves these days.
When Richter glanced at her, Jet saw tattoos running up his neck from the front, as well. Most of those appeared to be in what looked like Native American designs, reaching the edges of the almost-beard on his face. His brown eyes were lighter than she’d realized at first, almost a coffee color. He hadn't spoken to her at all while she looked around his room. Jet had to assume he was letting her relax into her surroundings. Which also meant he was likely hoping she would lower her guard, at least marginally.
This man, Richter...he might be the real threat. She knew that now, too.
The Nirreth, after all, would just kill her. They probably wouldn't even bother to be slow about it...humans were immaterial to them.
Richter obviously had something else in mind.
He stared back at her for a beat too long, then smiled faintly, returning his gaze to the small kitchen cubby that took up one corner of his cabin. Glancing once more around the remainder of the space, which was surprisingly large for a ship of this kind, Jet shifted her eyes to the back of his head when he banged one of the pots against a metal stand.
He poured out two bowls of soup as she watched, using the spout on the pot he’d held over a blue flame. He scraped the insides of the pot out carefully once he had, then set it on a ridged metal counter that looked like the walls in most parts of the ship she’d seen. She watched him blast out the inside of the pot to clean it without water, and then put it back on an inbuilt shelf with several other cooking utensils. In a different situation, Jet might have smiled at his fastidiousness. Under the circumstances she only noted it, as one more thing to know about this man who had taken her captive.
Whatever was in the bowl he set down on the table in front of her, it smelled vaguely like chicken.
Jet folded her arms uncomfortably, still massaging her side with her fingers.
“I want to see my friend,” she said, clearing her throat. She made her voice business-like, stripping the emotion out of each word. “The boy you picked up...” She almost said his name, then stopped herself, deciding that might not be a good idea. “...Just now. After me. He’s a friend of mine. He didn't do anything wrong...he was trying to help me.”
“A friend of yours?” Richter smiled. “Interesting.”
“What's so interesting about that?” she retorted, frowning.
He went back to wiping down the counter top with a rag covered in some chemical.
“How did he get to be so far out here?” Richter asked her casually. “According to my people, you weren't traveling together. In fact, one of you was traveling above ground...the other, below the ground. Seems an odd sort of friend, who stalks his companion like prey...”
Richter turned slightly, raising an eyebrow. His brown eyes still held that harder scrutiny above his smile. Jet could see things happening behind both his stare and his smile that had no relationship to the casualness of his words, but she didn't know how to read past either.
She knew instinctively that she couldn’t trust anything this man told her.
“...But now,” he added, his voice still low and friendly. “Now you tell me freely that he is your friend? I find that interesting...yes.”
“I don't know what kind of game you're playing,” Jet said, folding her arms tighter. “But clearly you don't think much of my mind, if you want me to believe this is news to you. You knew all along that I knew him. I don't know why you're pretending you didn't.”
“So you admit it freely, then?” he said.
“Admit what? That I know him? I just said I did.”
He shook his head. “Not that you know him. That you’re a collaborator.”
“A collaborator?” Jet looked at Richter blankly, still trying to get a feel for where he was going with this conversation. This time, her confusion was more genuine. “I don’t know what you mean. He saw me in trouble. He was trying to help me out...to keep me from getting eaten by a bunch of lizard skins. If a skag helping out another skag is now a crime––”
“It is when you’re evading the law.”
“Lizard law.”
“The law is the law, friend.”
Jet felt her fingers tighten into fists. She didn’t answer him, though.
Richter gave her another level stare, as if seeing if she would rise. When she didn’t, he shrugged, his voice casual again, almost bored.
“You must know this ‘friend’ of yours is a rebel, don’t you?” he said.
Jet bit her lip, making a sweeping gesture with one hand. Her voice came out sarcastic. “Aren’t we all rebels, according to the Nirreth? And perhaps according to you, as well, since you seem to be their current favored butt monkey...”
“Butt monkey?” he grinned. “Charming.”
“...But accurate,” Jet retorted.
Even so, her mind was churning, trying to make sense of the man’s words. Anaze a rebel? She'd never seen him down at the docks, with the recruiters. She'd never heard any rumors of him going on ops. She'd certainly never heard him spout any of their propaganda lines. He hated the lizard skins, sure...but who didn't? That didn't exactly make a person a rebel, not when they were all under the same occupation. If it did, every human in her settlement was a card-carrying member of the rebellion, too.
When Richter returned to his work over the small, built-in kitchen, rearranging spices and returning food to the cooler and more of those inbuilt shelves, Jet found herself watching him more carefully. She studied his physical appearance a second time, too, trying to learn whatever she could about him, since she obviously couldn't trust his words.
He stood at six feet and maybe two inches, and wasn't skinny, unlike most of the tall men of the settlement. So, pretty big for a skag, but maybe his mother fed him well before he became a criminal. He was stocky, too, with broad shoulders and thick-looking legs. He wore body armor, or clothes with some kind of Nirreth tech built into the vest and pants. The wrinkled, off-white shirt he wore underneath looked homespun, however, and his boots were leather...maybe even leather from an actual cow. She wondered why anyone would accept body armor from the Nirreth and not some of those high-tech shoes they wore, that could climb up walls. She'd eyed those boots herself, more than once...wondering if she could modify a pair from a dead Nirreth to fit her without her tripping over her own feet.
Richter had been watching the course of her eyes. She saw him smile.
“I wear their shoes, too,” he said, grunting a little in humor as he set the two bowls on the metallic table that stood beside her chair. “...But they’re heavy as hell.”
Brushing off his hands, he smiled at her again, lifting an eyebrow.
“...No need to wear them indoors.”
Jet didn’t answer. His perceptiveness unnerved her, though.
She looked down at the soup and heard her stomach gurgle as the smell reached her again. Definitely chicken, or some substitute. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had meat. Or protein of any kind, really. Even beans were in short supply these days. Most of the fish they caught they had to trade for fuel and other necessities. Anyway, a lot of the fish was pretty suspect, given the condition of the sound and the ocean itself; like most in her settlement, Jet tried not to eat it very often, knowing it was likely contaminated with trace metals and whatever else.
A lot of people had died from eating too much fish over the past few years; most of them kids and old people, but some adults, too.
They’d had a goat for awhile there, but it died in the last round of sickness that went through the longhouse. Goats were expensive, moreso all the time; they hadn’t been able to get up the money to trade for a new one, even with all the families working together.
The chickens they had all got stolen, by Richter’s people, they’d thought.
For all Jet knew, he was serving one to her right now.
“What’s your name, kitten?” he said, smiling at her again. “Can you tell me that much? Or would you rather scowl at me anonymously?”
Jet folded her arms, unable to keep the anger out of her voice.
“Why do you work for them?” she said, holding his gaze. “Stealing from us get too boring? Or was it their fancy footware that won you over?”
This time, the question didn’t seem to anger him as much as it had before.
He shrugged, his voice bored. “I have my reasons.”
“Are you going to let me go?” she said.
He gave her a serious look. “No.”
Jet felt her mouth harden on her face. Before she could speak, Richter shrugged.
“Too many of them saw you come on board. Too many of them saw you fight back, too. So no, kitten...I can't let you go. You're too conspicuous now, I'm afraid.” He smiled, shrugging again. “Your presence has already been...requested. In the Green Zone, I mean.”
Jet fought to keep her expression steady, unwilling to let him see he'd rattled her. She also refused to follow the open line he'd given her, when he baited her about her 'presence being requested' in the Green Zone. Jet was unwilling to chomp down on that particular hook, at least right away. Richter was already a little too confident in his blatant attempts to manipulate the conversation. So she asked him a different question instead.
“What about my friend?” she said, folding her arms.
He gave another bored shrug. “That depends.”
“Depends on what?”
Richter sat down on the couch across from her. Casually, he picked up his own bowl, using a Japanese-style ladle to stir the soup, which looked more like stew to Jet now that she could see it up close. Her stomach gurgled as another waft of its aroma met her nose. She smelled potatoes in there, too, and carrots, and some kind of spice she didn’t know.
“Eat, girl,” he said more gently.
When Jet glanced over that time, he was watching her, seeming to recognize her expression. She saw sympathy in those eyes, too, but resisted it.
“...You’re nothing but a pile of bones,” he added, motioning down her body. “And I can see plainly enough that you want it...”
“Depends on what?” Jet said again, feeling her jaw harden. “On what I do for you in here? On what I tell you? What does it depend on, Richter?” She folded her arms tighter, turning her gaze deliberately away from the stew. She watched him eat, feeling her stomach grind with another sharp spasm of hunger. The hunger sharpened into anger in her voice.
“You really think I’m some kind of rebel?” she said. “That I know anything worth anything to you...or your precious, lizard-skin masters?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Well?” she said. “Then what does it depend on...precisely?”
He looked up, his brown eyes hard on hers. For an instant, he seemed to be measuring her again, as if trying to make up his mind about something.
“You as good with that sword as it looked, girl?” Richter said.
Whatever she'd thought he might have been about to say, it wasn't that.
Jet gave him a disbelieving look. “As compared to what?”
“Have any formal training?”
“With what?”
“With what...” He lowered the spoon. “With the sword, of course!”
She frowned. “Depends on what you mean.”
He sighed in frustration, the spoon propped on his thigh. “Do you ever just answer questions, girl? This could take all day...”
“Why do you want to know if I’ve been trained with a sword?” Jet said, her voice rising to match his. “What difference does it make? It's not like those lizard skins will ever give it back!”
It didn’t look like Richter would answer her at first, but then he sighed, shaking his head.
“It could make a great deal of difference to you, girl,” he said.
“In what way?” She folded her arms, sniffing. “And why do you keep calling me 'girl'? You can't be more than a decade older than me yourself...and I doubt even that.”
He gave her another exasperated look. “Who is interrogating who, here?” he said.
“You’re not answering any of my questions either,” Jet said, folding her arms as she jerked her eyes off the stew once more. “...I don’t know why you’d think I’d rush to answer yours.”
“Because I can have the Nirreth stick you a few more times,” he said, his voice a quiet threat. “Then you’ll answer anything I ask, kitten...whether you want to or not. I could let a few of them play with you for awhile afterwards, too, if I'm feeling so inclined. I assure you, they’d enjoy it, especially after the headache you gave them when they first brought you on board...”
Jet felt her jaw harden, but she didn’t take her eyes off his.
When the pause lengthened, he sighed, setting his bowl on the table beside where hers sat.
“I’d rather we started on a better foot than that,” he said. Giving Jet another hard look, he added, “But don’t doubt for a minute that I’ll do it.”
“I don’t,” Jet said.
When he glanced over at this, amused once more, she looked away. Thinking over his words, she shrugged.
“Some training,” she said. “The man who made the sword taught me some.”
“Any fighting experience?”
“Sparring mostly,” she said. Thinking, she fingered her hair out of her face. “A few fights.”
“A few.” He gauged her face cautiously. “Fighting who?”
She looked him in the face. “Your people, if you must know.”
There was a pause, where he only looked at her. Then he startled her, breaking out into a smile, followed by a low chuckle.
“I do know,” he said, slapping her shoulder affectionately with one thick hand. “Why do you think I had you picked up, Jet Tetsuo?”
Jet stared at him, and then something in her stomach went cold.
Jet shoveled another ladle-ful of stew into her mouth, pausing to chew on a particularly succulent piece of chicken for at least a minute before she swallowed. Half of the bowl still remained and she already found herself wishing Richter had made more.
He watched her eat, a bemused look on his face. She was beginning to think of it as his normal expression.
Still, he was a good cook. It didn’t make her like him any more, but it made her glad she’d decided to eat his food before she tried to kill him.
“So you knew who I was,” she prompted between bites.
“Yes, kitten, I knew.” He smiled again, and this time it was close to a smirk. “I waited for months to catch you alone...I was beginning to think I’d need to stage a raid.”
“What do you want from me?” she said, for what felt like the fiftieth time since the conversation started. “Are you going to tell me?”
“It's complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
Richter smiled, shaking his head half in bemusement and half in irritation. “You just don't stop, do you?”
“Would you, if you were me?” Jet retorted. “You're talking about my life...or in this case, not talking about it.”
Richter conceded her point with a head tilted nod. “True.” Wiping his mouth with a cloth napkin, he leaned back in his chair. “All right,” he said. “I'll speak plainly. You're now the property of the Nirreth high command for the Pacific region...The Royals, as every good Nirreth citizen calls them. I
am working under contract for them, so anything I aquire under the auspices of that contract, de facto belongs to them. In this particular case, I was working under the auspices of a request that had been made of me...not for you, specifically, of course, but for someone meeting a set of criteria that happens to be rare, and that you happen to fit...”
Richter shrugged again, as if talking about any old business transaction he'd been contracted to fulfill...and not Jet's life.
“...Clearly, you'll now have to be indentured to them in some way,” he added. “You've been bagged and tagged, pet. You're officially owned. Meaning, my dear, you'll have to be given work. Despite the myths, the Nirreth don't usually eat humans. They keep them as pets.” He grinned at her, inclining his head. “For you, I would like that not to be in the usual way...”
He indicated towards her body with one hand.
It took a second for his words to sink in. Then Jet felt her cheeks flush hotly.
“You've got to be––” she began in a taut voice.
“...For females, I mean,” he said, cutting her off before she could finish that thought. Smiling at the look on her face, he seemed pleased that he'd gotten a reaction out of her finally. “...So I'm trying to determine if I can convince my friends in the Green Zone to give you a shot at fulfilling that special order of mine. Which means a different kind of job. A job that other humans couldn't do. Not even other human females of your age...”
“And what job would that be?” Jet said. It came out angry, although most of that anger was aimed at herself. She was furious that her face still felt hot, but unable to do anything about it. She tried to keep her voice steady, but couldn't really pull that off, either.
“What kind of job, Richter?” she asked again, her voice harsher.
“Protection detail,” he said.
At Jet's incredulous look, Richter held up a hand to indicate he wasn't finished.
“...And possibly some recreational matches. To entertain our hosts.” He grinned at her. “With the right costume, I'm sure they would be happy to make an exception for you...especially if you're good enough with that sword to be entertaining...”
Alien Apocalypse: The Complete Series (Parts I-IV) Page 5