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

by JC Andrijeski

  Jet was still lying there, when the bands around her were unlocked. Sitting up on the table, she clutched her hands together, unmoving as Richter threw her a handful of fabric.

  “Put this on, kitten.”

  Jet glared at him, but managed to untangle the fabric he'd handed her. It was a pair of those metallic and form-fitting leggings the female Nirreth had been wearing in the sun dome room, and that the female human attendants had worn, too. With the pants, Richter had given her a long shirt, dyed a dark, almost olive green-brown.

  She didn't want to wear their clothes. She already felt like a groomed pet, but she didn't see much choice, given that her own clothes had already been disappeared into a hole in the floor.

  Richter uncuffed her hands long enough for the three Nirreth to put the shirt on her, then cuffed them back while they arranged it down over her hips. Jet then had to deal with the indignity of them putting the pants on her, too...but she refused to let Richter see that it bothered her. She also refused to help them in any way. She glared at Richter instead, the entire time they pulled and tugged at the fabric to get it to line up right with her legs.

  “Of course those are kids' clothes,” Richter said humorously, tilting his head as he once more assessed her with his eyes. “But they'll work. You've got nice legs, Jet. A nice face, too. No way to tell under all that dirt you had on you before...or in those rags you were wearing.”

  His mouth drew down in a frown as he continued to look her over.

  “It should be a crime to let a beautiful woman dress like a street urchin all the time. To crouch in holes in the ground like a rodent.” He grinned a little then, meeting her gaze. “You almost look like a human being again, Jet. In fact, I'm regretting I don't have the money to keep you myself...”

  Jet continued to stare at him, her expression unmoving.

  Finally Richter smiled, chuckling a bit.

  That time, it even seemed to reach his eyes.

  “Afraid of doctors,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Of all the stupid things. If you want to be afraid of something, kitten, I can give you things.” He grinned at her, chucking her chin with the back of his hand. “Still. You've got fight. It's good to see, with so many of us mammals lying down and taking it these days. You'll be fantastic in the Rings...that scowl alone is worth your weight. I'll probably get double my asking price by the end of today.”

  Jet refused to return his smile. Instead she rolled her eyes, looking up at Laksri.

  “Can you lead me?” she asked him pointedly. She motioned towards Richter with her head. “...Instead of him?”

  This only made Richter laugh harder.

  Hard enough that Jet turned, fixing him with another angry stare.

  “See how easy it is, kitten?” he said, clapping Laksri on the shoulder.

  Jet continued to glare at him. “How easy what is?”

  His smile remained, but the humor leached out of his coffee-colored eyes, leaving them more serious than she'd ever seen him.

  “To think they'll be the ones to protect you,” he said softly.

  Before Jet could think of a reply, he stroked the hair back from her face, smiling. She jerked from his touch, but Richter barely seemed to notice.

  Sighing, he motioned towards Laksri with his head, indicating for the Nirreth to bring her along as he aimed his feet for the door.

  Jet stood next to another canal now. This one was outside.

  Her long black hair swayed in the wind.

  It was strange to have it down. Stranger still that it was so clean. As irritating as Richter's words had been about how different she looked clean, Jet knew there was likely some truth to his words. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a real bath, in anything but gray water and that horrible chemical soap compound they used at the settlement, that took her hair out in handfuls and made her smell bad for about a day afterwards.

  Her hair smelled vaguely like flowers now, from the shampoo the women had used. Her skin smelled good, too...different enough that she kept inhaling, in spite of herself.

  She saw Nirreth staring at her as they passed, and staring at her hair.

  Laksri was looking at her hair too, the one time she glanced back at him, so she guessed human hair was a bit of a curiosity for them.

  They'd taken her out of that white stone building over an hour before, and Jet hadn't seen Anaze since. She'd barely noticed, with all of her terror of that white-walled room, that Anaze had remained behind them, staying with the other Nirreth guards while she'd gone through her examination and shower. Now he'd remained behind again, according to Richter, to go through all of the same anti-viral and other quarantine checks that Jet had been put through...as well as his own 'bath' to make him fit for public display.

  According to Richter, Anaze would be there for the demonstration, however.

  As she'd requested, only Laksri held her now in his jointed fingers. Richter walked on his other side, periodically speaking to him in a combination of English and the Nirreth's own language.

  Jet had wondered if his using Laksri to translate had been for show. Now, watching and listening to him with Laksri, she knew without a doubt that it had been.

  Jet's hands remained cuffed in front of her, but she had to admit she was more comfortable. Being clean for the first time in months after a real, hot-water shower, was enough for her body to feel oddly relaxed, even given everything else. That, coupled with the clean clothes from the Nirreth, made it harder for her to feel the same level of anxiousness she had when they first landed. The clothes were comfortable, too...the pants fitting more like second skin than the coarse fabric she'd worn for as long as she could remember in the settlement.

  Between the clothes and the sun overhead, she was warm too, also for the first time she could remember. It always seemed to be cold in Vancouver, no matter what the season.

  Outside, the Green Zone looked just like its name implied...like a giant, wooded park, dotted with more of those organic-looking buildings.

  Jet had yet to see anything that really approximated cars from old-world Earth.

  Instead, Nirreth walked the green paths in those sandals and leggings and flowing shirts, and sat at benches talking in their clipped and fast-moving tongue. She saw what might have been “trolleys” that ran on the larger streets, and thought she glimpsed boats on one of the wider canals, but other than that, she saw no transportation at all, not even aircrafts in the blue sky. All she saw overhead in fact, were a few clouds and the sun.

  Overall, it was far, far quieter than anything Jet would have expected.

  Once again, Richter seemed to read some portion of what lived on her face.

  “Most of the major gatherings happen indoors,” he told her. “The Nirreth view nature, even the sun and sky, as worthy of contemplation. Not quite spiritual, at least not in the human sense, but as a sort of exercise to attain a certain measure of equanimity...” He smiled at her. “...What you would think of as 'peace,' I suppose. They're a warlike tribe at heart, just like humans, so they have to work for their calm, too.”

  When Jet didn't answer him, Richter shrugged, motioning towards the nearby buildings.

  “...So the markets, the bazaars, the political gatherings and even festivals all happen indoors...that's why they're such fans of creating rooms with open spaces, and with facsimiles of the sun and sky, even underground...”

  Jet found herself nodding, in spite of herself.

  Anything he could tell her about this place could maybe help her at this point. She didn't want to buddy up to him, but she didn't want to discourage him from talking to her, either. She needed to know everything she could possibly know about the layout of this place...and how to get out of it.

  “So where are we going now?” she said, her voice neutral.

  Richter smiled. “To see the Royals, of course.” He winked at her, smirking again. “They'd like to get a look at you prior to the demonstration.” He glanced over her mockingly, and she got the d
istinct impression he was trying to get a rise out of her once more. “Now, anyway,” he added. “...Meaning now that you're finally in a relatively unsoiled state. They've invited us to lunch at their visitor's compound.”

  “Lunch.” Jet stared at him, but his expression didn't waver, so she had to assume he was serious. “What will they be serving?”

  He grinned at her, showing his white teeth. “Not human, if that's what worries you.”

  She didn't smile back.

  “It crossed my mind,” she said tersely.

  Richter laughed softly, shaking his head. “I told you. They like to think of themselves as benign rulers these days. Eating humans is passé...only the most gauche would dare to even suggest putting human on the menu these days. Certainly no one in the Royals would do it, and not only because they'd probably lose an arm or a leg, given the queen's thoughts on the subject...even if they were joking.”

  More seriously, he added with a shrug,

  “The Royals, especially the queen, are pretty serious about the ban on human eating, actually. They're arguing over a law right now, forbidding it on pain of death.” He smiled at her again, winking. “They view those early days of the invasion as a bit of an embarrassment...a dark blemish, if you will, on their collective cultural history. They claim that they didn't realize, at the time, that we were all sentient. Of course, that's complete nonsense...but no moreso than the lies humans have told themselves over the years about why we did the barbaric things we did.”

  Jet felt her jaw harden a little, but she didn't contradict him.

  Really, she didn't even entirely disagree with him, but it still irritated her, his constant comparisons between the Nirreth and humans. She was well aware of her own species' somewhat spotty track record when it came to treating one another decently.

  She was still looking around, taking in the nearby garden that wound between two lopsided-looking buildings, when one of those trolley-like carriages pulled up to them. Laksri guided her towards the door as it opened, his fingers almost careful now. Richter followed behind, pausing to say something to the other Nirreth guard who flanked them, low enough that Jet couldn't hear it, or even be sure which language he'd been speaking.

  Jet found herself studying the trolley-vehicle itself.

  It looked like it was made out of white stone, not unlike the building they'd recently left. A single fin below the main carriage disappeared into the tile sidewalk like the keel of a boat.

  On top, the carriage had sail-like appendages that fluttered lightly in the breeze, strengthening Jet's association with a boat and the ocean. The sails shone a translucent white in the light of the sun, almost like very finely cut crystal, but they moved more like heavy cloth. Jet honestly couldn't tell if they were functional in any way, or purely for decoration.

  Inside the trolley were velvety padded benches, deep black in color and about twice as wide as what she'd seen in the old wrecks of trains they'd found on the tracks and in train stations near Vancouver. The detailing of the rails and the inside walls was minimal, making the seats stand out strangely, almost like they were floating above the ground.

  “Are you going to sit?” Richter asked abruptly, making her jump. He'd come up from behind her while she was standing in the doorway of the vehicle, staring around.

  She glared at him, annoyed that he'd managed to startle her.

  As usual, her irritation only seemed to amuse him.

  “...Or are you just going to ogle?” he added sarcastically, grinning.

  Before she could answer, Laksri prodded her towards one of the middle benches. Jet followed the direction of his fingers, if only to get away from Richter's stare. She slid down the bench as directed, settling herself near the window as Laksri sat heavily on the seat next to her.

  Behind her, Richter plunked down against the window as well, while the other Nirreth sat in the bench directly in front of her. Jet couldn't help noticing that they'd exactly surrounded her, and figured that was probably Richter being cute, too. They couldn't possibly see her as a threat right now, with all of them armed and her wearing party clothes, her wrists locked together in front of her so that they were close to useless. Instead of overthinking it, she tried to ignore it, staring out the window as the trolley glided forward soundlessly.

  She'd never been inside any moving vehicle that made so little noise. Engine-less wagons made more noise than the Nirreth trolley, and by a not insignificant amount. It made the cullers seem positively loud in comparison...and the settlement people tended to talk about the cullers as 'shadows' that drifted down silently in the night.

  Compared to the smoking and rumbling combustion-based engines they had left over from old-world Earth, however, the cullers were quiet as death.

  Jet kept her eyes focused out the window, trying to memorize every landmark she could see, and how they fit into one another. She made a point of finding ways to distinguish buildings and streets and even the markings she saw periodically on stones laid in the pavement, which seemed to crop up mainly at the intersections between two or three of the many canals that zig-zagged and circled different parts of the city.

  The trees made it difficult to see much, though, especially in terms of the fronts of the buildings themselves, or the exact layout of their exits and entrances. There were so many trees in fact, that Jet had to concede defeat after they'd been riding for about twenty minutes or so...although she didn't stop trying to find ways to orient herself inside the overall maze of streets and canals and structures.

  “How big is it?” she asked after a few minutes more. Her eyes never left the window.

  “You know old-world Earth measurements?” Richter asked.

  She shrugged. “Well enough to get the idea.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Then it's about 90,000 acres. That's about 140 square miles, if that's easier for you...”

  Jet felt slightly dizzy. “It can't be that big,” she muttered. “It's too quiet.”

  “It can remain quiet because it is that big,” he said, chuckling.

  She shook her head. “I don't believe you. You want me to think that, so I'll feel lost inside. But no city is that big...not even in old-world Earth.”

  “I assure you, kitten,” he smirked. “...If anything, my guess falls short, given all the building they've done around here. We came in on a private landing pad, remember? This is their capital on this part of Earth...meaning most of the United States, Canada and old-world Mexico. They have four major spaceports here, and immigration processing for anyone coming to this part of the planet from one of their other, off-world colonies. Their economic hub in the West lives here...and most of their broadcasting planet-wide, including the Rings, and most of the other entertainment they fancy. Hell, didn't you hear me? The Royals live here, pet...the ruling family of the colony. There is a higher segment of that same family, of course, living in Africa, but they are all related. Earth is an important colony to the Nirreth...it's become one of their primary residencies, since the atmosphere failed on their home world.”

  “But where are we?” she said, turning. “What part of the country?”

  “This used to be New Mexico, if you really must know,” he said. “Right around where Santa Fe used to be. If it wasn't for the plasma bubble, projecting this blue sky and all of the clouds and sun, you'd see the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and a lot of red dirt under a brown and yellow cloud from all of the leftover radiation...”

  “What?” Jet turned at this, thrown into shock in spite of herself. “The sky's not real?”

  Richter chuckled, shaking his head at her, his eyes showing a mock disappointment.

  “Really, Jet?” he said. “Come on. You really thought there'd be blue sky and sun here, but not on the rest of the planet? Explain that one to me...”

  Seeing her frown, he chuckled again.

  “You can clean up the ground with a few decades of nanoscrubbing easily enough, darling, but cleaning the atmosphere's going to take a bit more time. E
ven for the Nirreth's big-brain scientists. And you keep wondering why I say we need them...” His eyes hardened once more, holding that peculiar look. “We humans probably would have killed ourselves off entirely by now, Jet. Even you must realize that. You've studied history, haven't you? Or do you still believe the rebels' propaganda that the Nirreth did that to our sky and water...?”

  Jet gritted her teeth, but didn't answer, turning her gaze back to stare out the window.

  She'd wondered about the sky, of course, but it hadn't ever occurred to her that it might not be real. It looked real. In fact, that blue sky and those white clouds looked more real to her in a way than the low-hanging, brown cloudbank that had covered Vancouver like some kind of disease for her entire life. The cloudbank had been there for as far back as Jet could remember, so that feeling of familiarity with the blue sky was irrational, too. Maybe it was just that some part of Jet knew that this was how a sky was supposed to look.

  She was still thinking about this when the trolley began to slow.

  Jet looked through the front window, peering around the shoulders of the giant Nirreth in front of her. She caught a glimpse through the glass just in time to see them pass through a high stone arch surrounded by thick walls. The arch itself looked older than it could have been. Jet saw symbols carved across the front of it, in that odd, chicken-scratch language of the Nirreth, and then it was gone.

  The trolley kept rolling along silently, bringing them into a wider, more exclusive-looking garden, with equally high trees and what looked like a pond covered with white birds.

  That was when Jet realized something else. She hadn't heard any birds since they got here. Not one, the whole time they'd been standing on that street, even with all of those trees surrounding the winding walks and canals.

  She considered asking Richter about that, as well, when the trolley rolled to a stop. Jet watched the doors rise once more, giving her a view of the overly-bright looking building on the other side. A pale, turquoise blue in color, it shimmered in the fake sunlight, sending off rays of iridescent light like diamonds. Tall Nirreth stood on either side of a shadowed door, and Jet saw marble-white steps leading down to the circular drive, bordered on either side by scarlet flowers with large, bell-shaped blossoms and dark-green stems.