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

by JC Andrijeski

  When Richter didn’t answer, taking a longer pull off the beer, Jet found she understood.

  “He knew about this.”

  Again, it wasn’t really a question. Jet nodded to herself, watching Richter’s face.

  “...He didn’t want to be here when you told me,” she added.

  “Look, kitten...” Richter began.

  Right then, however, a tall Nirreth approached their table. Richter had been bent towards her, his face inches from hers, his voice holding that curiously strained note it had when he first told her about the surveillance...but when he saw the muscular Nirreth standing there, he straightened at once, his face all smiles.

  “Come to check out our girl, Trazen?” he said, his voice holding the flavor of a taunt.

  All trace of his previous agitation disappeared, leaving only a faint smile and the same arrogant laugh.

  “...I suppose you’ll throw both barrels at her next time, eh?” he smirked, taking another few swallows of beer. “Get her back for making you underestimate our lowly human female?”

  Jet’s eyes swiveled to Trazen, seemingly on their own.

  The Rings operator smiled faintly, folding muscular arms over his broad chest.

  As he gave Richter a returning appraisal, Jet found herself assessing him.

  Trazen was built more like Laksri than most of the other Nirreth she’d seen since being at the Green Zone. He was clearly a fighter...even his tail was pure muscle where it lashed behind him in dangerous arcs. He looked to be a few inches shorter than Laksri, but his chest and arms were bigger, more like those of a boxer, or someone who did a lot of weight lifting. His long face had two of the largest, blackest eyes Jet had seen on any Nirreth so far.

  Be careful how you stare, she felt through Laksri’s warning fingers. He will take it as arrogance. You already beat him...and he knows we know this game was not so ‘easy’ as Richter pretends...

  Jet lowered her eyes, moving instinctively closer to Laksri, who wrapped an arm around the middle of her back.

  When Jet looked up next, the muscular Trazen had a more genuine-looking smile on his lips, one that carried the faintest air of suggestiveness. His eyes looked her over in that silence, but that time, his appraisal carried more of a knowing quality; it also seemed to soften somewhat in his eyes.

  “She is exquisite,” he said, bowing to Laksri once he had finished looking her over from head to foot. “You are quite fortunate,” he added to Laksri. “...I’m afraid the virtual screens did not do her justice, and I thought her quite unique, even then.”

  “Thank you, honorable friend,” Laksri said, bowing.

  “I don’t suppose either of you is open to share...or perhaps an exchange...?” Trazen added, nodding towards the female standing to his left.

  At his words, Jet turned, looking at the other human for the first time.

  In the same set of seconds, she realized the woman standing with Trazen was beautiful. Maybe twenty-something-years-old, she had long, blonde hair that framed an oval face with deer-like eyes and full lips. Her body, which was draped in less cloth than Jet had ever worn in her life outside of a shower, looked more voluptuous than athletic, reminding Jet of those videos of parties from Old Earth with the women with the curvy bodies and tight dresses. The fabric was unlike anything Jet had seen worn by any of the Nirreth; a pale blue, it barely seemed to cover her skin.

  Before Laksri could answer, Richter laughed.

  “You’re kidding...right, Trazen? Aren’t the brain scans enough? Do you really need more intel on our girl?”

  “I had thought she belonged to the Royal father,” said the muscular Nirreth. A faint thread of irritation touched his voice that time, perhaps because he was forced once more to acknowledge Richter, when clearly he addressed the question to Laksri. “...Not to trader scum like you. And I was not asking you, mammal. I ask her lawful companion.”

  Laksri’s arm had already tightened around Jet, before Richter even opened his mouth.

  “No,” he said in Nargili. The meaning seeped through his skin to Jet’s mind. “...We do not share. I am sorry, for I honor your position...and your consort is quite tempting...” Laksri added politely, indicating towards the clearly multiply-stung girl with the dyed blonde hair. “Is she a recent acquisition? I don’t recall seeing her at any of the Royal functions before...?”

  “She is new,” Trazen said dismissively. His eyes continued to linger on Jet. “...We had thought perhaps to sell her for the Rings, too, now that the Boards have opened it to female mammals for sport. She is aesthetically pleasing enough for such a placement. But sadly...” His lips twitched in a small smile. “...She is not a fighter.”

  Jet caught most of this through Laksri’s touch.

  Again, her eyes drifted to the other girl.

  Even though she was probably a few years older than Jet, something about the softness of her face made her appear younger, almost frighteningly vulnerable.

  The girl frowned a little as she returned Jet’s stare, and through the make-up she wore, she looked like a doll dressed up in adult clothing. Her dark skin gleamed under the greenish light of the room, and Jet felt a sudden wave of compassion as it occurred to her that the girl was deeply unhappy under the effects of the Nirreth venom.

  She wished she had enough money to buy her from the muscular seer.

  Laksri glanced at her, and she felt a pulse of empathy through his fingers. His voice, when he addressed Trazen, remained polite.

  “...I am sorry about that,” he said. “I am sure you will find another suitable candidate...”

  Trazen’s eyes grew colder as they flicked over the blonde girl.

  “Don’t be sorry. She has other...talents. And as you say, we will find another female for that purpose...” Giving Jet another appraising stare, he added, “A pity you are guarding this one so jealously...not that I blame you. Still, if you change your mind, let me know. I may be able to ensure her safety in other ways. If you were feeling so generous...”

  Still smiling faintly, Trazen bowed to Laksri and Jet, ignoring Richter entirely as he swept away, nearly knocking over their glasses with a final lash of his tail as he left. Jet found herself thinking of the feral cats that hung around skag town, especially the toms.

  When he left, Laksri’s worry seeped through his skin.

  “I do not like that,” he told Richter quietly, glancing at Jet in the same breath. “He might have been serious. About his interest in her...”

  Richter frowned. His eyes shifted briefly back to Trazen, who now stood over a different table, his tail coiled around the blonde’s waist as he spoke to an older Nirreth.

  “He’s screwing with you, Laks,” Richter said, waving a hand dismissively. “...with both of you. He had to remind us of our place. He can’t enter a girl in the Rings, not when he’s the operator. He also can’t sleep with a contestant...much less take another Nirreth’s mammal off him...or fix the games...no matter how many threats he lobs your way.”

  “But you heard his words,” Laksri said in a low voice. “I do not think that was idle threat. He may approach the Royals themselves...see if they will pressure me. Or make a formal request. This puts me in a very bad position...”

  “It’s a power play,” Richter repeated, waving it off. “I’m telling you, the political fallout would be huge if he bedded her. The Royals would never allow it, even if it wasn’t against the Queen’s law. It would look too much like they were trying to curry favor...”

  “Power play or not, he will use her, if he can.” Laksri’s dark eyes flickered nervously to Jet’s face. “He has a reputation. The Royals overlook it, due to his stature, but he is not kind to his...charges. I am not the only one who notices this tendency of his, to go through consorts...”

  Jet felt a shiver on his skin, even as her jaw clenched at his words.

  “Don’t worry about it, Laks,” Richter said again, giving him a warning look, right before his eyes darted to Jet’s. “We talked about thi
s already and it won’t come to that. Things will move too quickly for him to make a move like that...”

  “You had better be right. It is no joke, about Trazen. He is clever, but he made it to his position because he is a killer, Richter...”

  “He won’t touch her. You have my word.”

  Laksri’s expression grew harder. “Just be sure it is worth more than other ‘words’ you have spoken to me in the past,” he retorted, his voice a near growl. “...Or it may not be only Jet who is fighting in the Rings...”

  Richter gave him a narrow look, then smiled faintly, making a conceding gesture with one hand. “Planning on falling on a sword for our girl, Laks? That’s admirable. Really.” His smile turned harder in the pause. “...All right. Fair enough. I’ll keep him away from her.”

  “You had better.”

  “I will, big guy. Calm down.”

  He handed Laksri the new drink the waitperson brought him, smiling diplomatically. Then he drained the last of his own beer, and gestured for her to bring him another.

  Their food arrived not long after that, and Jet found herself thinking through their words, wondering what Richter had really meant when he’d said he’d take care of it. She also wondered what Laksri meant by his threat about the Rings.

  From both conversations, two words vibrated the longest in Jet’s mind.

  Moving fast, her mind wondered.

  What is moving fast?

  Jet was awakened from the sleep of the dead, her mind frighteningly clear.

  She didn’t know what had woken her at first.

  The room felt empty. It also looked and felt faintly smoky, but Jet couldn’t smell smoke, and she didn’t see anything on fire. She gazed around the dimly-lit room and the fake stars overhead, and tried to slow her heartbeat, even her breathing.

  Had it been a nightmare? She had no memory of anything like that, either.

  Then the walls, the bed, the floor...the whole room...vibrated, knocking more chips and paint off the ceiling and walls, even a few chunks from the VR panel that stretched across the ceiling. Powder from the eggshell-colored walls turned into a dense cloud in the air, explaining the mystery of the smoke.

  While Jet still didn’t know what was going on precisely, she knew it wasn’t an earthquake. She knew an impact concussion when she felt one. She’d experienced enough of those underground while growing up that she’d recognize that feeling anywhere.

  The compound was under attack.

  Jet didn’t waste time when another string of vibrations shook the floor and walls and ceiling and some part of the compound overhead, setting off what sounded like larger explosions on the floor above.

  Black was in her hand almost before Jet remembered where she was...or to look for Laksri. Rolling to the side of the mattress, she crouched against the bed to protect herself from the falling ceiling chunks, fumbling on the floor for her clothes. She called out to Laksri when she realized she couldn’t see or feel him anywhere.

  “Laks? Where are you?”

  No one answered.

  “Laks?” she said, louder. “Laksri! Yell, if you’re here!”

  Dressing hastily, she ducked down again when another round of shaking began.

  More chunks fell from the curved ceiling above Laksri’s bed, coating the surface of the sheets with white powder and dark blue pieces of virtual screen. The screen continued to spark and show images even after it broke...now it was stars and clouds and the moon again, as opposed to the daylight view of the sun and blue skies. The chunks that fell to the bed continued to shimmer with those stars, as if the sky lived in each separate piece.

  Crouching low as she ran, Jet made her way to Laskri’s living room right as the building trembled again. She paused only long enough to hit the trigger-switch that opened the bedroom door. After looking for Laksri and again not finding him, she tried to get into the main storage closet, but the sensor spot on the wall wouldn’t trigger the mechanism, even when she hit it with her knuckles.

  Heading barefoot for the door when another blast hit, Jet grabbed the scabbard Laksri had given her a week earlier and strapped it around her right shoulder so that it settled across her back in a diagonal line. Thanking the stars they hadn’t taken her sword away after the match, she sheathed Black, then hit the panel that opened the door to the main corridor.

  She sent up another silent prayer when it opened.

  In retrospect, it crossed her mind that maybe that part should have surprised her...or at least made her ask a few questions.

  At the time, however, all Jet could feel was relief. She didn’t like the idea of being trapped during an attack. She didn’t like it at all...no matter who or what was out there.

  It had already crossed Jet’s mind, of course, that this was another simulation.

  A test, maybe, to see how she would react if the Royal Palace fell under attack.

  While she stood there, gazing both directions down the corridor, her mind ran over the possibility again. She tried to scan through her memories of the night before, starting with the confrontation with Trazen at the city center restaurant, and the conversation between Richter and Laksri afterwards. She remembered the anger and the urgency on Laksri, that feeling of indecision...or maybe what she’d felt on him was a decision, one he simply had misgivings around having made.

  She remembered talking to a few more Nirreth officials.

  She’d even met one or two members of the Board.

  None were as unnerving as Trazen had been, and most of the rest of the afternoon passed with small talk and attempts to make Jet seem celebrity-like and docile and apolitical, given everything Richter seemed to think she’d done wrong in the Rings.

  As a part of that, Richter and Laksri kept their discussions to safer, less-confrontational topics after Trazen left...such as Jet’s training sessions, now that she had access to the main arena, and who they thought the Boards might offer up as candidates for Jet’s permanent training and support team. They threw around a few names, all of them meaningless to Jet, outlining the pros and cons of each, then discussed the possibility of getting Laksri himself named as one of her official trainers, since the Royals would now undoubtedly want her stung regularly as a part of her training.

  Whatever indulgences they might have granted Ogli in terms of his infatuation with his new pet would have evaporated as soon as the news of Jet’s test scores hit the main broadcasting channels. The Royals would not pass up an opportunity to hitch themselves to a new champion, especially given her novelty status as a female.

  Woven into that discussion, though not stated outright, was the fact that there had been some unrest in the Green Zones of late.

  Challenges to the Royal edicts were starting to be heard in different corners of the kingdom, most of them around economic issues, but some around the colonization codes and the caste system. Richter and Laksri didn’t come out and say it, but Jet caught a few hints that the Royals were anxious for good publicity, and Jet was one way for them to accomplish that.

  It crossed her mind how isolated she was from real news, whether human or Nirreth, just from living within the confines of the Royal compound.

  In some ways, Jet knew more in the skag pits.

  She’d also seen differences in the treatment of humans in the main areas of the Green Zone, as compared to the Royal Palace. Humans were hardly free in either place, but in the main city of the Green Zone, they walked around much more freely, if in segregated enclaves.

  Jet saw a group of them in a park playing what looked like some kind of board game on the sidewalk, laughing and throwing Nirreth coins back and forth as they wagered.

  Women and men made up that group, and Jet didn’t see any Nirreth interfering with them, or even paying much attention to them. Just like those children for whom Jet signed autographs later, a few even nudged one another when they saw her, and then all were staring, their eyes holding an eager shine that marked her as a celebrity in their eyes.

  There wer
e children in that group, too.

  One of them saw Jet and waved frantically, giving her a face-splitting grin when Jet waved back and smiled.

  She saw other humans sitting at cafes along the Nirreth streets, and in the sailboat-like street cars. All of them had to be owned, of course, but Jet still found their relative freedoms somewhat bewildering. She even saw a human couple holding hands as they walked down the sidewalk, the woman laughing at something the man said as they headed for one of the giant outdoor parks.

  Richter had been right.

  The Green Zones were more complicated than anyone in the skag pits could possibly imagine. Jet hadn’t seen enough yet to be able to draw any real conclusions, stung or not, but she wanted more than anything to talk to some of those humans, to find out what their lives were like. They certainly seemed to have more freedoms than she did.

  Seeing them together, talking and laughing and watching the sunset inside the dome, Jet felt lonely too...and uncomfortably isolated, as if she were living inside the Royals’ bubble.

  You are, Laksri had told her at the thought. Most Nirreth are not so hard on your kind...nor so unsympathetic to their plight as a conquered race. It is why the Rings match worries Richter. It is also why we need things to change...there are signs that the possibilities exist for much better ways to coexist, Jet. The Royals fear a loss of their empire. They do not fear the humans, but they fear the Nirreth who might become sympathetic to them...

  Jet found herself turning over those words, too, even as she watched two human kids throw a virtual ball back and forth, laughing as it turned into a grinning human head, then a Nirreth one, sticking its tongue out at them, then a penguin, then a hedgehog, then a bear cub...

  Jet also discovered, in listening to Richter and Laksri talk in the restaurant, that she had an audience with the Royal parents set for the following day. Since Jet had only glimpsed Ogli’s parents on the monitors a few times during old Rings broadcasts, the news gave her a bit of a jolt, even through two stings. Laksri and Richter discussed it as a mere formality, in voices that indicated they’d expected the request, given Jet’s surprising performance in the Rings.