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

by JC Andrijeski

  So this was the bomb.

  Presumably, she was supposed to use this to blow up the command center.

  Had they given it to her now because they’d decided she was aiming for the target, instead of the main points run, like most other newbies?

  It seemed an awfully small amount of explosive, in any case...and before, hadn’t the radio guy told her she was supposed to relay coordinates for that hit?

  Still wading through the water, Jet messed around with the device long enough to figure out its basic functions, and to confirm it was a detonator. She got the prongs to extend for putting into the clay, found what seemed to be a timer, and a starting sequence...

  Once she got that far, she decided it was enough.

  Shoving everything into the vest pockets and zipping them back up tightly, Jet began moving forward more quickly through the pipe again.

  Clearly, either the Rings operators or someone with a funny sense of humor thought the bomb might come in handy. The thing had a timer on it, so Jet supposed it might be a way to mark the site of the central ship, that is, if she couldn’t get a signal out for some reason. She had to assume any radio signals she sent would be intercepted, so calling for help from the control ship wouldn’t be a great idea...even if the Base 2 guy hadn’t already told her that they couldn’t send back up.

  As she thought this, the water level began to recede once more.

  Within a few minutes, it was at shin-level once again.

  Instead of comforting her, the change made Jet tense. She immediately suspected they were readying the terrain for a fight.

  Realizing the tunnel had been quiet for too long already, Jet drew Black as she reached the next bend in the pipe, going through distances briefly in her mind to try to get a sense of how far she’d gotten according to the scale they provided on the map...assuming she could trust they’d gotten the scale right in the first place, or that they would recreate it accurately in the projection.

  When she stopped long enough to listen, she could hear someone following her again.

  It occurred to Jet suddenly that if she was really going to hit a Nirreth command ship, she would need at least one modern weapon...preferrably Nirreth, since those were more powerful than the human varieties. Stopping long enough to examine the length of pipe where she now stood, Jet ran up to a small tributary...really just an alcove housing a backed-up spill-off drain, at least given the size of the fetid pool of water that filled the slope.

  Wrinkling her nose, Jet reminded herself yet again that everything around her was virtual, that the foul piss and shit-smelling water wasn’t real, nor was the dead rat she could see floating in it, bloated and with maggots under its skin.

  She forced herself to wade deeper into the pool, then to crouch in it, then to kneel, so that only her head remained above water. She kept Black clutched in her hands as the sound of Nirreth wading through the main pipe drew nearer.

  Turning off her headlamp, she submerged herself entirely once she heard the first of them round the last bend, holding her breath and sinking silently into the water.

  She listened underwater as their feet scraped and splashed in the pipe only a handful of feet from her head. Counting, she got the formation she was hoping to get...one Nirreth way out front, three in the middle, and one behind at a considerable lag. They always scouted one and held one of their people in reserve. They ran fast, so the distance usually made little difference in a fight, and in the event of an ambush, they could still get word back to command.

  When the sounds began to recede further down the pipe, Jet raised her head as carefully and as silently as she’d lowered it, blinking and grimacing in the brackish water.

  Once she had, she let her held breath out in a slow, controlled exhale.

  Being equally careful with the water as she slowly rose to her feet, she peered down the length of the tunnel once she’d reached the alcove’s edge, Black’s hilt gripped tightly in her hands. Walking even more carefully into the main pipe, Jet could only hope they wouldn’t hear her splashing because of their own.

  One lucky break...if these virtual Nirreth were created true to form, their keen senses of smell should be completely overwhelmed down here. Underestimating Nirreth sensory organs was one mistake that screwed up human fighters again and again in those early battles.

  She’d still have to worry about the infrared.

  Without her headlamp, the tunnel was pitch black for Jet herself.

  Even so, her hearing felt keener than usual. From the sounds up ahead, Jet could tell that another of those gradual turns bent the pipeline about a hundred yards up. Cautiously, she sped up her pace, planting her feet on the higher curve of cement and leaping from one side of the pipe to the next. She was conscious of every rub against the soles of her boots, every creak of leather or rustle of fabric, every ripple in the water below.

  Realizing suddenly how risky this maneuver really was, she also decided it was too late to turn back. When she saw the bobbing light of the tailing Nirreth up ahead, she held her breath in addition to the rest, no longer risking harder jumps, but taking long steps along one side of the cement curve.

  Apart from the flickering light up ahead, Jet could still see almost nothing in the low-ceilinged pipe. The Nirreth’s headlamps pointed forward in a sharp line; she could only hope the difference in light would confuse their infrared...at least for a few seconds...if they happened to turn. It made her wonder why they held lights at all, if that was for the benefit of the projection and her game, too.

  Either way, the lights didn’t help her much.

  She got a segment of pipe ahead of where the last one walked, and his own, broad-shouldered outline, but that was pretty much it.

  Still, maybe that was enough.

  Stepping as quietly as she could, she resumed her longer leaps from one side of the pipe to the next, feeling the pressure to increase speed. When she saw the Nirreth stooping to fit his taller and bulkier body through the tunnel, she found herself grateful for that, too, realizing he was less likely to look back for the same reason.

  Jet made her leaps a little longer, hurrying now.

  She caught traction easily on the rough cement pipe walls at each step, unlike in the real world, where she probably would have hit a slimey or slippery-smooth segment by now. The consistency both unnerved her and gave her a small measure of confidence.

  Within a handful of seconds, she found herself less than a full body-length behind him.

  Then half of one.

  Moving as silently as she could, Jet swung the sword right as he reached the edge of that sharper turn in the pipe. He moved his head right as she did, but she managed to compensate well enough to get him in the throat before he could let out a cry.

  Even so, when he fell into the water, the sound was loud.

  Louder than Jet accounted for with her half-assed plan. He fell loudly and heavily to his knees, making gasping, choking sounds as he clawed frantically at his throat. Luckily, Nirreth had the equivalent of a carotid artery in the front part of their necks as well; it didn’t occur to Jet until after she’d already dealt the blow that it might not have worked at all, at least not well enough to drop him.

  She tried to catch ahold of the creature’s upper body before he could collapse forward, and it grasped at her with one clawed hand, its dark eyes pleading. Fighting a sudden, sharp, sinking feeling as she looked at a seemingly living being that didn’t want to die...Jet found herself hoping desperately that the Nirreth was just a VR projection. The idea that she might have just killed something or someone merely for sport on Nirreth national television was more than her mind could really think about, at least right then.

  Forcing the thought away, Jet felt over the front of his person as his strangled breaths began to slow, as his clawed hands loosened their grip on her arms...and as the gill slits on his neck stopped moving altogether.

  She managed to wrestle both a pulre and a sandblaster from the Nirreth’s shoulder stra
p and front holster...the sandblaster being a lot more difficult because it was bulkier and wrapped around him as he slumped forward into her.

  She got it off him eventually though, and managed to sling it over her own back, well enough that she should be able to use it, even if the kickback threw her into a wall.

  She patted the Nirreth over for other toys and weapons as well, even as she fought to control her own panting breaths. She found a communicator, which was close to worthless for her, given that her facility with Nargili was still pretty much nonexistent. She almost left it, then grabbed it anyway at the last minute as it occurred to her that she still might be able to pick out a few things if she could listen in on them. She found a few of those quarter-sized explosive discs that they spun sideways with deadly accuracy and pocketed those as well.

  She also found a map, and it was different from hers. On it, the command ship was clearly in the harbor, and maybe only about two dozen blocks from where she stood, if she’d estimated distances correctly. She’d either have to find a way out through the sewers or else get back to the surface and swim for it.

  Without really admitting it to herself, she’d already decided to go for the ship.

  She was stuffing the map into one of the zip-pockets of her vest when she realized the sound of splashing ahead had stopped, and she didn’t know for how long. Just then, the radio she’d snatched from around the Nirreth’s neck sparked into life.

  “Ratente?” it said. “Yilili doon ullilli di?”

  Ratente must be its name. The one she’d killed.

  The only other word she got out of that next bit was doon, which Jet was pretty sure meant ‘where.’ They must be past another curve in the pipe...they couldn’t see her from where they were, but they were looking for him.

  Even as she thought it, Jet heard the stomping splash of feet as at least two of them began walking back towards the segment of pipe where Jet crouched over the now-dead, or nearly-dead, Nirreth, Ratente.

  Feeling her heart stop somewhere in the vicinity of her throat, Jet resheathed Black, adjusted the sandblaster’s strap around her head and shoulder and pocketed the pulre.

  Then she immediately jumped back up on the cement sides of the pipes, balancing briefly with one foot planted on either side before she began leaping and running...all out this time...down the pipe in the direction from which she’d come.

  She’d made it most of the way back to the alcove with the stagnant pool, when she heard an exclamation from one of the Nirreth that meant they’d found the dead guard. Before she could think about diving for cover, a shockingly bright light flashed down the tunnel, so quickly that Jet barely had time to rip the pulre out of the holster on her thigh and aim it in that general direction. Thanking her lucky stars that her uncle had once shown her how to operate the stone-shaped weapon, Jet fired directly into the light, even as she leapt towards the other side of the cement pipe.

  The pulre’s kickback threw her backwards as she leapt. She crashed into the far side of the pipe wall right where it curved a sharp left...and well past the alcove. Picking herself up as fast as she could with a banged skull and all of her back and arms and shoulders feeling wrenched, she half-crawled, half-walked to get around the corner and out of range of their guns.

  She heard a cry and more shouts from the other end of the tunnel.

  The light was extinguished somewhere in that chaos.

  Panting against the wall, Jet strained her ears to listen. She knew she’d hit someone, if not several someones with the blast, even as it occurred to her that she couldn’t use the pulre again until the weapon recharged, and that the sandblaster, which still hung around her back and shoulder at an awkward angle, was only good at close range.

  All it had done in this fight so far was create a gun-shaped bruise on her back when she slammed into the tunnel wall.

  Jet had the quarter-sized grenades still. That was it for the next ten or twenty seconds.

  Not trusting her accuracy with those, or really knowing how they were triggered even, she decided to run. She could only hope she’d make it back to the last ladder she’d seen before the rest of the Nirreth regrouped.

  Even as she thought it, a hard whine filled the narrow tunnel, echoing down the cement right before a shocking blue and white flash blinded her.

  Dragging herself the rest of the way down the corridor through the deeper water, Jet gasped involuntarily when the pulre blast hit, impacting the curve in the cement wall behind her and sending chunks of rock, cement and debris in both directions down the long pipe.

  Jet got hit in the head, back and arms with sharp pieces of shrapnel from the pipe wall and doused in another wave of sewer water that made her lose her balance and fall face-first in the water. The same rancid-smelling water filled her mouth and nose and lungs, making her choke and cough for air.

  Fighting her way back up to the cement walls of the pipe, she wobbled a bit for balance with the gun on her back, then got it arranged right and began to use to the walls to make her way even faster down the pipe, heading for the ladder and hoping like hell it was one of the real ones.

  One more turn and she could see it again.

  Right as she grabbed ahold of the metal bars and swung herself up on the first few rungs, she heard the echo of booted Nirreth feet through the water behind her.

  Dang, they were fast.

  The pulre had to be recharged by then, but she decided to wait until she really needed it.

  Dragging herself up the ladder hand-over-hand before she could get her feet situated on the lower rungs, she shoved up the manhole cover at the top without even checking to see what lay beyond it. She was jerking her legs up through the opening and into the bright, overcast light of day when a second hard whine of a charging pulre echoed up from below.

  Jet jumped to her feet, then leapt across the sidewalk and out of full cover without thought, right as the blue-white flame exploded against the rim of the tunnel below the street. The blast threw her forward, stumbling and sprawling into the middle of the road.

  It also sent something heavy, probably the manhole cover, skimming not far above her head. She felt it fly past, even as smoke and debris filled the hole, then the air around her. Jet heard the crash as whatever-it-had-been smashed through a plate-glass window on the first floor of an office building. She watched the glass fall, dazed, as she coughed in the smoke, but then she was dragging herself back to her feet, looking around for cover before the Nirreth underground radioed in her location to the nearest culler.

  Again, she almost forgot she was in a simulation as her eyes scanned the skies.

  But she remembered well enough to remind herself why she was here.

  She hit the talk-button on the human-made radio as she ran.

  “I’ve found it,” she said, as soon as the human voice surfaced, panting as she ran down the street towards the water of Vancouver harbor. “...It’s in the harbor,” she added between breaths. She tried to remember her call sign and couldn’t. “This is Digger-something,” she said after another pause. “Do you read me, Base 2?”

  “Base 2 here,” an impatient-sounding voice surfaced. “Do you have the exact coordinates of the ship’s command deck?”

  Jet frowned, seeing a culler ship hovering over a building a few blocks to her left, its lines outstretched towards the ground, past where her eyes could see.

  “How precise do you need?” she said into the radio. “I have a Nirreth map of the area, but it didn’t have a layout of the ship, just its location...”

  “We at least need the ship’s orientation under the water, Alpha-10. We need to be able to bullseye the command deck...” The voice turned openly exasperated. “Alpha-10, you know how big these things are...this was your plan, right? The second we hit it anywhere, they’ll target our guns from all sides. We’ve only got one shot at this...”

  Jet nodded, realizing she’d known that, somehow.

  “Can you get inside?” the base leader asked.


  Jet shrugged, giving a half-smile to no one in particular.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” she told him.

  Jet stayed against the larger buildings with eaves, ducking into alleys whenever they sloped in the right direction. She gradually continued to make her way to the water nearest to that odd conglomeration of sail-like tents where the old recreational cruise ships used to dock, at least according to Everest.

  Stopping a few times to check the map, Jet ran into the burnt-out, underground parking structure below that tented building, seeing the cloudy gray expanse of sky peering through holes in the concrete from close-range blasts from one of the larger Nirreth ships.

  From the size of the holes, that had to have come from a warrior class versus one of the cullers. Cullers were mainly relegated to clean-up, rescue and search and destroy, at least during the war itself.

  Feeling another of those sinking feelings land in the pit of her stomach, Jet realized that, in truth, she was still looking at a war that had already been lost.

  No ships stood at the docks of Vancouver Harbor; the few cars parked in the massive, concrete parking structure stood abandoned and dead-looking.

  Instead of the cheerful crowds of humans depicted on the posters lining one of the unmarked walls, waiting in line to go on vacation, Jet saw only rats scuttling along the walls and what looked like the remains of a dead seagull.

  The glass-fronted building with the rusted and smoke-stained ‘CUSTOMS’ sign over the doors looked like the blackened husk of a broken bottle at the bottom of a skag campfire.

  Already, Jet glimpsed feral dogs sleeping in clusters in the dry areas of shelter on the raised concrete. She knew at night the pack would come alive, fighting for territory and food and attacking other animals and people if they caught one or two on their own.