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

by JC Andrijeski

  Of course, Nirreth favorites had been thrown into the mix as well, despite the meticulous detail some of the Nirreth architects employed in hunting down previously indigenous life forms to complete their largely fictitious yet eerily familiar-feeling “paradise Earth.”

  Jet supposed they justified those Nirreth plants and trees by saying their vision of the future involved a perfect blend of what was Earth and the best of what they’d been able to salvage from Astet, the Nirreth home world.

  Still, she couldn’t help thinking it was more of an Earth amusement park than Earth itself. It reminded her again of the old human movies––more fantasy than reality.

  But the Nirreth seemed to like their landscapes that way.

  “Change?” Laksri said, his voice a bit more prodding that time. “New clothes? ...Then we go out. This is okay?”

  Jet looked at him. His mouth had curled in that half-frown she knew indicated displeasure. His tail flicked more sharply behind him, too. He probably thought she’d been deliberately ignoring him, or at the very least, spacing out.

  “Change into what?” she said, once she’d collected her thoughts. She heard the taut edge creep back into her voice. “What kind of clothes should I wear?”

  Laksri motioned towards one wall, his three fingers flat.

  Hesitating only a few seconds, Jet walked to where his hand had pointed and examined the blank surface. At least now, she had some idea of what to look for, even though her and Anaze’s room had been equipped with more human-like furniture, including a floor chest and a taller wardrobe full of racks for clothes.

  But Jet had seen some of the wall storage units that most Nirreth used, including in Prince Ogli’s private chambers the one time she visited.

  She’d also seen them in the massive, Grecian-looking changing room attached to the Rings’ training center. That same changing room housed a communal bath the size of a small pond, with hot and cold jets, soapy scrubbers and knee-high water that stood a dozen feet from the rows of drying cubicles between stone-like pillars.

  So it only took Jet a few seconds longer than the average Nirreth to find the faintly glowing spot to the right of a curved stretch of unbroken wall in Laksri’s near-featureless room.

  Laying her palm on the spot, Jet was rewarded by the wall breaking into four segments that retracted seamlessly, revealing an opening taller than she stood. Shirts hung in rows on branch-like hangars, and next to those, rows of form-fitting pants in various colors and with different designs hung as well.

  After a few seconds of staring, Jet noticed that not a single one of those garments had been made to fit Laksri’s proportions. In fact, every one of them was about three sizes too small for him, if not more.

  “These are for me?” she said, startled.

  She turned around when he didn’t answer her immediately.

  He was watching her, his dark eyes appraising as she examined the clothes, almost as if assessing her reaction towards them. It occurred to Jet that he might be trying to interpret her facial expressions and verbal cues as much as she was his.

  “Laksri?” she said, letting her voice grow a shade sharper. “The clothes. Are they supposed to be mine?”

  He nodded, in that jerky, awkward style of a Nirreth imitating human mannerisms.

  “You and Richter did this?” she pressed, wanting to understand the full meaning of the clothes already being in his room. She wasn’t sure what exact information she wanted off him, only that she wanted more information than she had.

  Laksri only shrugged that time, his eyes flat.

  When she continued to stare at him, he blew air out of his lips in a short burst, a near whistle. Jet knew that sound, too; it meant he was likely annoyed.

  “I do it,” he said, his voice gruff. “Need clothes...both places. Richter no good with Nirreth clothing...what is right...so I not ask him. There is a problem with this? Bad clothes? Bad size?” Pausing, he articulated more clearly.

  “...You not like?”

  “Wrong size,” she corrected him, unthinking. “And no, it’s not that. It’s just...”

  “What?” he said, impatient again. “I want food. Anything on that side...” He made a jerking motion with his hand, one copied by his tail as he motioned towards the right side of the closet. “...That is fine. For this...for out. The rest is in...inside. Or training. Maybe in barns with Ogli, or other types of outside. But not good for this...for public. Understand?” He pointed his finger down, towards the floor, but at an angle so that it aimed at the closet as well. “...Same with feet. Right is good. Left is no good. Understand?”

  Jet looked down, and realized he meant shoes.

  She honestly couldn’t tell much difference between the two categories he’d outlined, other than the fact that those shoes on the right appeared to all be close-toed, whereas those on the left were mainly open-toed. Both looked like the regular sandals that all Nirreth wore, at least when dressed in civilian wear and not the booted uniforms of the cullers or one or another branch of the military.

  She considered asking what the deal was with the ‘good’ and ‘no good’ thing, regarding the shoes and the clothes, then decided it could wait. She was starving, too. Nirreth generally only ate two meals a day, one around ten o’clock in the morning and the second around four or five p.m. It was edging past five now, at least if Jet’s stomach’s grouchiness was any indication.

  Of course, most of the clocks weren’t Earth-based clocks, but Nirreth clocks, although they’d started using both to some degree, in the Palace at least...likely to acknowledge the different lengths of days and nights of Earth as compared to Astet.

  Again, Anaze had been the one to clue her in on the fact that the Nirreth home world was a good two times the size of Earth, and therefore had significantly longer days and nights. Jet had only the faintest idea of conversions, and didn’t really care all that much, frankly. She still found herself thinking in Earth times out of habit. The Astet clock made no sense to her anyway, so she pretty much didn’t bother to learn it, at least beyond the basics.

  Once again, Laksri blew air out his lips in a short, yet somehow expressive burst.

  Irritated that time, Jet grabbed the first shirt and pair of pants that her hands found on the right side of the closet. She could argue fashion with the Nirreth later; better to get this dog and pony show over with so she could go to sleep and wake up herself again.

  It was only after she’d pulled the shirt off the hangar and compared it to the others still on the rack that she noticed that all of the shirts on the right side had symmetrical designs down each long sleeve. The pants appeared to have similar designs down the outside and inside of the cloth legs. Those on the left side appeared to be more uniform in color, or containing more random designs built into the fabric itself, especially with the long shirts.

  When Jet turned around, Laksri still stood where he had been standing since they arrived, but now his expression appeared calm. He’d turned his head politely so that he faced completely away from her. At her silence, he motioned towards her with one of his hands, without turning his head to look at her.

  “Change,” he grunted. “I am hunger.”

  “Hungry,” she corrected.

  That time, instead of looking annoyed, he made that low, snorting sound that she associated with amusement. Probably his version of a Nirreth laugh.

  “Hun-gree,” he enunciated, acknowledging her words. “You are still not changed,” he added, motioning his fingers at her a second time, still staring at the door.

  Hesitating only briefly, Jet shrugged, then pulled the barn-smelling shirt over her head. Dropping it on the floor, she donned the new shirt after tossing the clean pants and now-empty hangar onto the shoes to free her hands. Tugging the new shirt over her head, she slipped out of the dirty pants at once, almost in the same set of motions, a little more self-conscious that time. Dumping those on the floor, too, she tugged the new pair on hastily. She didn’t bother to arrange the fabri
c around her legs until she had the pants mostly up and over her hips.

  When she glanced at Laksri, he remained stone-faced, still staring in the opposite direction.

  The lack of underwear in the Nirreth clothing was something Jet had been forced to grow accustomed to. The bra thing bothered her more than underwear. Not like she was super big on top, but during the Rings training especially, she had enough upstairs to be uncomfortable. Her mother always helped her sew halters at the skag pit, like most of the skag girls and women did, at least until Jet could do it herself. She tried to explain the problem to the Nirreth who saw after her and Anaze’s clothes, but the male Nirreth had been visibly baffled, above and beyond his spotty English, and Jet’s even worse Nargili. Jet finally had to approach Alice, one of the few times she had been sincerely grateful to the Rings’ trainer.

  Alice dealt with the issue somehow, and Jet found four halter-top style bras of some stretchy fabric in her chest of clothes the next day. Each of them fit perfectly, so Alice must have had her own chat with the Nirreth tailor, or else found someone else who could teach him how to make what Jet needed. Apparently, not a lot of human women had been trained in the Rings before now.

  None, actually...at least before her and Tyra. It was a sobering thought.

  Once Jet had the patterned fabric all aligned on her legs and arms, she started looking at shoes. Pulling out one pair covered in light blue stones, she set them on the floor and began shoving her feet into them.

  “You can look now,” she told Laksri. “What do you want me to do with the dirty clothes...?”

  When she glanced up that time, she jumped physically. Somehow he’d managed to cross the room without her hearing a single footfall. He stood over her now, and once again, she was reminded of just how tall he was. Really, compared to just about any human she’d ever seen, even in the Rings on the pirated stations...even compared to most other Nirreth...Laksri was really danged tall. She watched as he picked up her dirty clothes, wrinkling his nose a little, even though he did most of his breathing through the narrow slits in the lower part of his neck. Apparently the smell part was in roughly the same place it lived on humans.

  It also struck Jet that Nirreth could probably breathe through three different parts of their body, not just the two humans had...four, if you counted each set of gill slits separately. She wondered if their ancestors had ever been able to breathe underwater, the way Chiyeko told her that humans had once been able to do, when they lived in the sea.

  It was an odd thought, that humans might have that in common with the Nirreth. It would explain their endless fascination with water...more than the fact that nature had apparently decided at one point to divorce them from their primordial beginnings altogether.

  Carrying her soiled clothes gingerly with two long fingers on each hand, Laksri brought them over to another segment of wall and pressed a knuckle into a bright spot on the smooth surface. A second opening appeared, this one much smaller, and nearly round. Laksri shoved her clothes through the opening and they disappeared.

  Then the hole disappeared, too.

  He walked back to Jet while she was finishing buckling her second shoe, and touched the discolored panel next to her wardrobe. The doors closed simultaneously and the lines disappeared back into the eggshell white and featureless wall, as if they’d never existed.

  Jet found herself looking around, taking in the overall space of his room for the first time. Every wall and surface seemed to be the same pearly white in color, with almost no furniture. Yet, the ceilings remained absurdly high, at least by skag standards. The only furniture she saw included a low couch covered in flat, dark-green cushions over a white, hard-looking back and seat. Jet also saw a low table covered in a number of mechanical-looking devices. She could only identify one of the four or five lying there, a kind of portable view-screen that the Nirreth used to talk to one another, and to share information. The screens folded up into a variety of shapes, the most common being a bracelet-type band that they wore around their wrists. The screen changed size, orientation and location, too.

  Looking around, Jet wondered about sleeping arrangements.

  Laksri didn’t sleep on that bench-couch thing, did he? Come to think of it, Jet couldn’t remember what kind of bed the prince slept on, either. She wondered if, like the closets, the bed lived somewhere inside the walls. The one, small door she could see on the far side of the room looked awfully low for his height...more like a tunnel than a regular door. Jet had already seen a few bathrooms with doors like that, so she figured it could be the same. Compared to the dug holes around the skag pits, those little washing, toilet, cleaning cubicles were heaven, but still nothing like the porcelain seats and deep bathtubs she’d glimpsed in a few of the old Earth movies and picture books.

  “Are you ready?” he said.

  Once more, Jet found herself looking at the tall Nirreth, her heart pounding faster.

  That time, she heard the undercurrent in his words, and knew what he meant.

  Exhaling a breath in the hopes that it might unclench her muscles, she thought through her options, maybe for the last time.

  “I really can’t fake it?” she said, hearing the doubt in her own voice.

  He gave another of those low snorts, but his expression looked slightly less hard.

  “No,” he said simply.

  Jet shook out her arms, feeling like she was gearing up for a fight.

  “All right,” she said. “Knock yourself out.”

  Laksri’s eyes grew faintly puzzled at the last, but he moved closer to her. Reaching towards her cautiously, he caught hold of her hips, after holding his palms up briefly, like one might do when trying to reassure a wild animal...which Jet supposed wasn’t far from the truth, at least from Laksri’s point of view.

  Rather than stepping towards her again, he pulled her closer to where he stood, his eyes watching her face. Jet couldn’t really hold that black-eyed stare however, and found herself watching his tail instead, her whole body tense. She remembered it had hurt the last time...a lot, at least until the venom kicked in. She remembered it feeling like a knife had been inserted between her ribs, along with the pressure of the venom being forced into her system as he finished injecting her.

  On the side of her body where his tail was coiling in lazy circles, Laksri slowly lifted her shirt to expose the bare skin, moving cautiously enough that he almost seemed to be asking permission. Realizing why he was lifting her shirt, Jet didn’t fight him. Sighing again, she instead tried to resign herself to the whole thing, to not make it a big deal.

  “Do you need me to hold it up?” she asked him.

  “No,” he said, his voice gruff.

  Hearing the change in his tone, Jet glanced up, in spite of herself.

  His eyes didn’t meet hers.

  Instead, he was staring down at where his long fingers gently gripped the fabric of her shirt. He got it up high enough to expose most of her side and part of her belly and bunched up the loose fabric in his hand. He seemed to hesitate then, and when Jet looked up that time, Laksri’s eyes were on hers.

  A flicker of what might have been nerves crossed his expression, right before he pulled her closer.

  “I won’t,” he said, his voice abrupt that time. “You don’t need to worry. I won’t...even if you ask.”

  Jet blinked up at him, bewildered. “I thought you said you had to?”

  Laksri stared at her just as blankly. Then his expression cleared, his dark eyes sharpening.

  “Not sting,” he clarified. “Sting, I do. I must do.”

  “Then what are you talking about?” Jet said, still confused, and now a little annoyed because his words briefly got her hopes up.

  “Sex,” the Nirreth said, blunt. “I mean I won’t do sex...even if you want.”

  Jet smiled, her lips creeping up sideways in spite of herself. “I don’t think you need to worry about me asking,” she said. “No offense. I’m sure you’re handsome and all, as fa
r as Nirreth go, but you’re not exactly my type...”

  “Shut up,” he said, his voice gruff again.

  She did, but not so much for his words...more because just then, the end of his tail brushed against the bare skin of her side. She jumped a little, looking down in reflex, then immediately felt her whole body tense. Laksri tensed, too. His fingers curled more tightly around her hip, gripping the bone and flesh, and he tugged her nearer in the same set of seconds, less gently that time. His other hand lifted her shirt higher, even as he pressed his tail hard against her side. When she looked up at him, he was staring at her again, his eyes half-lidded.

  “You’re getting off on this a little too much, Laks...” she muttered.

  Just then, his body tensed more...right before his tail jerked against her.

  That time, it felt different.

  It still hurt. It hurt as much, if not more, than the last time, really. He’d done it so quickly in the hold of that culler ship, Jet hadn’t had a lot of time to feel much of anything.

  This time, he pushed into her slow, his fingers gripping her hip and side harder as he did it. Maybe because she’d been expecting it to be worse, based on her half-baked memories of when she’d first been caught, or maybe because she’d been expecting it this time, it didn’t seem that bad. Not bad enough to struggle anyway. She found herself gripping the Nirreth’s arms instead, watching his face as she winced against the pain. That time, the drug or poison or whatever it was seemed to release into her slowly.

  She watched Laksri’s eyes close as it did, even as his face tightened. She had time to think his features looked almost open in those few seconds at the end...

  ...then the drug hit her system, making her limbs lose all of their resistance.

  When she looked up next, the Nirreth’s eyes appeared darker, the flecks of color lighter than before. He was looking at her again, and for a moment, she had the absurd thought that he might bite her. Not viciously, but more because of something unexpressed she could see in his eyes, as if he were holding back some intensity of feeling.