Something about the smooth, definitiveness of the gesture brought the thumping of the feet and tails even louder, and now Jet could hear the chanting that rose above the sharp reports of snake-like tails smacking partitions like rifle shots.
“Samurai! Samurai! Samurai!” they chanted.
Jet burst into a laugh, and saw her face appear suddenly on the largest monitor across from where she stood. She stood there, laughing, the dark kohl makeup running down her cheeks like war paint, her hair matted on either side of her head, a bruise on one cheek under her eye and blood running from a cut somewhere under her hairline.
She looked like she’d just crawled out of the sewers over a pile of dead bodies then got beat up and thrown into a lake...which she supposed in some ways wasn’t far from the truth.
“Samurai! Samurai! Samurai!”
Tens of thousands of accented Nirreth voices chanted the word, until Jet couldn’t help but laugh up at them again, wondering if they even knew what they were saying.
The crowd continued to roar and pound the stadium floors and walls, even as the announcers’ voices shattered through the more ocean-like sound overhead, speaking so quickly in Nargili that Jet couldn’t make sense of any of it, especially given the still-deafening sound of the crowd. She was just standing there, her hand on the hilt of Black, when the door to the arena opened behind her.
When Jet turned, three figures had already entered through the glass panels.
Alice walked at the head of the bunch, her face unsmiling but her eyes holding a shrewd kind of twinkle that wasn’t wholly devoid of humor. Behind her strode Laksri, his long, cat-like face holding a more complicated profusion of emotion.
Behind him walked a Nirreth Jet didn’t know, but who looked faintly familiar, mainly due to the large, tear-drop pendant he wore around his neck. Something about the aged and ragged-looking appearance of his face struck her as familiar, too...until it struck her suddenly that she was looking at Al-En Mosq, the Nirreth who had been Ringmaster and head operator prior to Trazen. She recognized the thin scar on his face; it wound from his eyebrow up to the top of his dark blue head, a jagged, thread-like design that gave his skull a sewn-together look.
Alice spoke first as she reached Jet.
“Come on, mammal...you are supposed to be at the place of judgment. The Board wants to give you its verdict...”
Jet felt her stomach drop. Her muscles clenched as she tried to hold onto her smile.
“You know you’re a mammal too, Alice...right?”
A smattering of laughter ran through the crowd above.
Jet looked up on in surprise.
Seeing her face up on the monitor, she realized her words had carried over the entire stadium, due to the sense suit she wore. The laughter had been from that percentage of Nirreth and humans in the audience who knew enough English to understand her words. Jet heard the snorting version of Nirreth laughter mixed with the more open, human version. Both sounds echoed strangely in the wide space.
Laksri held an arm out to her then, and Jet looped it with her own, gripping his shirt with her grimy hands, conscious suddenly that adrenaline still trembled all of her limbs. Ignoring the condition she was in, he coiled his tail around her waist, careful to avoid the wound from the sandblaster even as he supported more of her weight.
He pulled her closer as the audience broke out in another set of ecstatic yells.
Jet heard the announcers make another series of comments.
One of those, towards the end, caused Laksri’s tail to tighten around her, even as the audience broke out in a much louder and more Nirreth-sounding roll of laughter at whatever the two Nirreth announcers had said.
Ignoring the obvious joke at her expense...which was easy, really, since she hadn’t understood it, and the distortion and echoes made it even harder to translate the Nargili than usual...Jet held her head high. Even so, she gripped Laksri a bit more tightly as she allowed him, Alice and the ex-Ringmaster to lead her towards the same door through which Jet entered the arena, four hours earlier.
The contrast struck Jet as almost surreal as she passed through that same opening, following blindly as Laksri led her across the front of the plexiglas partition and into a gold circle that had been painted solidly on the floor beneath the largest of the four wall monitors.
Alice flanked Jet on her other side. Jet glanced back to see Al-En Mosq still walking behind them, too.
For the first time, it struck Jet to be afraid of how she’d done.
When they stopped in the middle of the gold-painted circle, Al-En Mosq tapped Laksri’s shoulder to get him out of the way. Once Laksri had released her, and Jet was standing at an angle, supporting her weight mostly on one leg because of the injury, the older Nirreth felt all over the front and behind of Jet’s suit, thoroughly enough that Jet found herself clenching her jaw, even as she heard Laksri give a low hiss from behind her.
Jet didn’t move, however, and when the older Nirreth stopped patting her down, she met his gaze levelly, raising a questioning eyebrow as she folded her arms.
“Where is the map?” he asked her bluntly, in accented English.
Jet noticed that his words didn’t transmit over the loudspeakers that time, unlike hers had. Looking up at the view screen, she saw a replay image of herself, with Black held against the throat of the female technician aboard the Nirreth ship.
“Leader!” the on-screen version of Jet was saying to the Nirreth tech. Jet saw herself frown, right before she switched to English. “...Where’s the command bridge? I know you understand me...” Jet saw a translation of her English words flash across the bottom of the screen in those odd, slanting Nargili characters.
The Nirreth and the humans in the stadium cheered loudly again, obviously thrilled with the replay. Meanwhile, the ex-Ringmaster’s harsher voice jerked Jet’s eyes back to his.
“The map,” he repeated, growing visibly more agitated. “Where is it!”
“What map?” Jet said.
Her voice came out blunt, but mostly, she felt confused.
When Al-En Mosq just stared at her, his dark eyes holding a faint confusion of their own, but one tinged with anger, Jet looked at Laksri, as if for help.
“What map?” she said. “What is he talking about?”
Feeling over the front of her own suit, she showed him with her open palms that the vest, along with the two maps she’d collected, were very obviously gone.
“...Does he not get that those weren’t real?” Jet said, wondering if the old guy was senile.
Laksri snorted in amusement, as if against his will.
“He thinks you cheat,” Laksri said, giving Jet that half smile of his. “...Richter and me. Anaze, too. We try to tell them. We explain about your mind...” He tapped his temple for emphasis. “...We tell all of them. The Board, too.”
“They didn’t believe you?” Jet said, giving Al-En Mosq a wary look as she directed her words at Laksri. “So...what? Are they going to punish me for having a good memory? I already got, like, almost no points, right?”
Laksri made a snorting kind of laugh, that one louder, and filled with a startled disbelief.
Jet watched him and Alice exchange incredulous looks.
“The mammal thinks she did poorly,” Alice said, raising an eyebrow as she folded her arms. “...Maybe she not so bright, after all...?”
“Some believe me,” Laksri added, answering Jet’s question a little late, even as he gave a sideways smile at Alice’s words. “...Some wondering about this though, so they send this one...” He pointed at Al-En Mosq. “He is to look for trick, for some problem with suit. The others will verify this with the program. Make sure no one tampers with this...that no one gains access after they design this thing.”
“They think I hacked the program?” Jet said, astounded. “Is that even possible?”
She wondered that last part aloud, remembering the guards she’d seen around the Rings operations center, and what Laksri and Alice
both explained about all of the safeguards in place to make sure that very thing could never happen. Operators had been executed in the past for suspected game tampering.
The Nirreth took the Rings very seriously, especially given all the gambling debt that could be traced directly to the sport.
“Never happened before,” Laksri said with a smile and a flick of his tail. “...But they check anyway. They give you verdict when this part is finished...” Assessing the look on Jet’s face, he moved closer to her again, wrapping his tail around her waist. She felt the faintest warning in that touch, but most of it felt like worry...or maybe the after-effects of worry.
“It is okay,” he assured her. “You do nothing wrong. They will see this.”
His smile widened a bit, until it showed the faintest edge of white teeth.
“...Anyway, Board’s leader is pleased. He bet on you...very long odds. He won a lot of money. The ones who say you cheat...they not bet on you. But they will come around.”
“So everyone bet I’d lose?” Jet said, not sure if she should laugh or feel insulted. “Richter wasn’t kidding was he? They did all come to see a bloodbath...”
Tugging her wet hair behind one ear, she tried to shrug it off.
“...Everyone must be so disappointed.”
Laksri laughed again, uncoiling his tail from around her waist to switch it back and forth in amusement. He caught her arm then, giving it an affectionate squeeze.
“I do not think you disappointed, Jet,” he said, the smile still living in his voice. “...You should have heard crowd. They very, very happy with you...very happy!”
“Are,” Jet corrected without thinking. “They are happy with me, Laks. Or were...” she added, thinking a bit, even as she glanced at Al-En Mosque nervously.
But Laksri went on as if she hadn’t spoken.
“...They are very pleased when you kill underground lizard,” he added, his voice rising a bit in excitement. “But when you jump in the water and blow up the ship, they all going crazy...” He grinned at her, baring his teeth in an unusual, genuine-seeming Nirreth smile. “When you have sword to engineer’s throat, demanding to see map, all the bets are changing, odds all over the place...” He motioned with his hand in the air to demonstrate the changes.
Jet laughed, shaking her head a little.
When she looked over, Al-En Mosq was staring at her again, as if positive she was hiding something or lying about something but he couldn’t figure out what it was.
Looking away from his nearly black, thinly-lined face and that strangely square jaw and jagged, thread-like scar, Jet fingered the hilt of Black once more, gazing up at the monitor, which showed the two Nirreth commentators now.
They were discussing something with serious-looking faces.
“...They explain that the Board check you not cheat,” Laksri told her, following the course of Jet’s eyes. When she only nodded, he curled his tail around her more reassuringly.
“It’s okay,” he told her again, but when Jet looked up, she saw a slightly different look in his light-rimmed eyes. Seeing the more appraising undercurrent, along with what might have been relief, she didn’t smile back when he smiled at her, too lost in trying to read his face.
“If they cannot decide, they sting you,” he told her softly. “That is other reason he is here.” Laksri nodded towards the older Nirreth. “But it is okay, Jet...you do nothing wrong...”
Hearing the warning woven faintly into his words, Jet only nodded.
She knew what he was saying; they were only looking for evidence of cheating, not of treason against the Royals.
Basically, if Jet could keep her mind on the Rings match, and away from anything else, that would be all that would interest them...and, unless she gave them reason, all that they would ask her about.
Wrapping her fingers around his tail, almost without realizing she’d done it, she nodded, as much to herself as to him.
She was still trying to think around this, around the still-cheering Nirreth in the stands and the fact that the projection was really over, as well as that version of Vancouver, and the fake win she’d scored for humanity...when the screen showing the two Nirreth commentators suddenly went dead.
In their places, a blank-looking room with white walls filled the screen.
It held only a semi-circle of table.
A group of very stern-looking Nirreth sat facing her from that same table...or it felt like they were facing her, anyway. The bench where they sat didn’t look significantly different from the benches that filled the auditorium itself, except that the seat back looked to be made of a smooth, red-ribboned stone, instead of that dense, artificial material like plastic. Whatever kind of stone it was, it was carved with an artisan’s skill, and Jet found herself staring at its smooth contours for a long beat before her eyes shifted to the Nirreth who sat at the dead center of the table.
His eyes focused on her for a few beats as well, so directly that Jet had to assume he actually could see her, maybe through a camera attached to that very same monitor, or near enough that the effect was unnerving. After he finished his appraisal of her, the Nirreth-in-charge, (which he obviously was) didn’t spare a word for her, but looked instead at Al-En Mosq, the disgruntled looking ex-Ringmaster.
“Did you find any evidence whatsoever of illegal game play?” the Nirreth-in-charge asked, his voice mild.
Well, he didn’t say that exactly––what he said was in Nargili.
A different voice, one that sounded almost female, spoke out of the monitor from a speaker in the floor next to where Jet stood.
She stared down at it, before looking back up at the larger monitor.
Al-En Mosq gave Jet a somewhat irritated look.
“No,” he said in the same language, raising his voice slightly, maybe to reach the high monitor on the wall.
The voice in the floor translated that as well, almost simultaneously.
“No,” it said, in a lighter voice than Al-En Mosq had used.
The crowd had fallen dead silent once more, and were again leaning forward from where they stood over the rows of curved benches, their dark eyes fixed on the monitors.
Clearly, they wanted to miss not a single word of the Board’s verdict.
The Nirreth-in-charge spoke in a slightly sharper voice, but something about his words sounded perfunctory now. Jet was still staring up at him when the translation came up through the speakers.
“None whatsoever?” it said.
Al-En Mosq answered him, his tone equally bored-sounding, if slightly more irritated.
“None whatsoever, Honorable Metzet, Voice of the Rings...” the translation said.
Jet watched the two Nirreth speak to one another, listening as the translation matched their words, even as it failed to match their tones.
“...Her suit appears to not have been tampered with in any way,” the program said cheerfully, soon after the elder Nirreth spoke to Metzet again. “The scanners tell us the same...”
The Honorable Metzet gave a sideways incline to his head, indicating agreement. He spoke rapidly in Nargili when the silence stretched. His voice sounded routine once more, as if he wasn’t really interested in his own words.
“...Trazen tells us the same,” the translation program said, before he’d even finished speaking. “It appears that this human’s handlers speak truth...that this extraordinary ability lives within her mind alone, without enhancements...”
Jet felt her jaw tighten a little, but shrugged it off as best she could by fingering the hilt of Black while she waited. Laksri’s tail tightened around her in the same pause, but she didn’t glance at him, and wasn’t sure if it was for the same reason.
Then the Nirreth in the center spoke again, a faint hint of challenge in his voice. After the barest gap, Jet heard his words via the translator.
“I am satisfied,” it said. “Are my loyal comrades in the Rings Board satisfied as well?
None of the other Board members spok
e or moved, even to change expression.
The translation program, too, remained silent.
Then Metzet intoned another set of phrases in Nargili. As he spoke, he glanced up and down the curved table, his expression still disinterested.
“Do we need more concrete proof of the words of her trainers?” the voice translated.
Jet noticed a few of the other Board members wore expressions that held irritation or anger, but none of them appeared willing to disagree openly with the Honorable Metzet. The oldest-looking Nirreth in particular stared at Jet with a shrewd, almost knowing look in his dark brown eyes. He looked at her like he knew she was hiding something, but would bide his time on finding out what that thing was, precisely.
Then Metzet said something else in their language.
“I see no need to prolong this verdict any longer,” the translation program said.
That time, each of the Nirreth sitting around the table inclined their large heads to the right in agreement.
Jet noticed one of the females watching her then, her gaze more thoughtful, but somehow intelligent enough to be even more unnerving than that of the old Nirreth with the brown eyes. She, too, looked at Jet as though she was thinking more than she was willing to voice aloud, but unlike the others, her eyes held no hostility. Yet, they seemed to carry a more concrete knowledge, or maybe a more educated or intuitive set of guesses.
Something in the faces on the monitor seemed to be making Laksri nervous, too.
He’d fallen into a slightly more aggressive posture behind her, Jet noticed, his tail unfurling from around her to lash the air in long arcs, like he did when he was annoyed, or when he and Richter were power struggling. She also noticed that Laksri had moved behind her, as if to be less visible to those faces staring down at them from the monitor.
He needn’t have bothered with the latter. From what Jet could tell, they looked only at her.
If the Honorable Metzet noticed either of their reactions, he was polite enough...or shrewd enough...to keep it off his face.
He spoke again, longer that time.
He was still speaking when the translation began.
Alien Apocalypse: The Complete Series (Parts I-IV) Page 36