Even with their nonchalance, it still managed to unbalance her a little.
After they’d walked back through the city center, and Laksri showed Jet a few parks and fountains and even a Nirreth-made shoreline, complete with waves, they took one of the sailboat trolleys back to the compound of the Royals.
Jet watched the rest of the Green Zone city disappear behind those gates with a sigh.
Despite Laksri’s promises that she would get to spend a lot more time out there, now that she was an official Rings’ contestant, Jet couldn’t help feeling a wave of melancholy to leave it behind. It hit her, for the first time in a long time, how alone she really felt in this world, with no one but co-conspirators, a nine-year-old Nirreth son of the Royals and a freshwater otter to keep her company.
After that, Jet remembered, she and Lakris had returned to his quarters.
Feeling her face flush, even with everything going on, Jet shoved that from her mind, too.
What they’d done after leaving the restaurant couldn’t possibly be relevant to whatever she faced now. Beyond those more embarrassing memories, though, Jet’s mind was blank. She and Laks must have fallen asleep, and then nothing...nothing until this.
Still, those words resurfaced in her mind again, what Richter said in the restaurant.
He’d told Laksri that things would be moving fast.
Too fast for Trazen to be a real threat, at least in the ways Laksri feared.
Jet was still standing in the doorway, looking down the corridor, when she heard the first screams.
Flinching back from the sound, she tried to decide if she should venture out, figure out what was going on...maybe help whoever was screaming. She needed to at least determine enough to know whether she should flee the building.
She was still trying to decide which direction to head, when a sharp sound behind her made her turn her head. Glancing around in alarm, Jet clenched her fingers on Black, feeling her heart thud in her chest.
“Laks?” she said, her voice sharp. “Is that you?”
No one answered.
Making a decision, Jet retreated back into his room, hitting the panel to close the door. The sound came again as soon as she left the door’s entrance. That time, she realized it came from the wall monitor, the one above the low, green couch. Jet walked to the smooth console even as Richter’s face materialized on the far wall, his expression grim.
“Jet?” he said, his mouth and voice a frown. “Jet! Are you there? Turn on the screen!”
Frowning a little, Jet reached down, punching in the sequence to make herself visible.
She was speaking the instant she keyed in the command.
“What the hell is going on, Richter?” she said, sheathing Black even as she glanced at the door. Another tremor overhead made her bite her lip. “Is this your idea of ‘subtle’? Because if so, I’m not really clear what the point of all of this cloak and dagger crap has been...”
“It’s not us,” Richter said. “It’s a rival branch of the Royals...”
“Another rebellion?” Jet said, frowning. “You’re kidding.”
“No,” he said, impatient. “Royals. Not rebels. As in, someone who thinks their family should be next in line. The queen’s sick...”
“Sick?” Jet frowned. “What does that mean?”
“You can ask her yourself tomorrow, love...” Richter said, frowning. “Assuming we all make it to then...”
“The queen’s here? The real queen?”
Richter rolled his eyes. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because no one’s supposed to know, Jet! Especially not pets of the Royal family and skag traders...”
Seeing Jet frown again, Richter cut her off before she could speak.
“Look, the point is, these aren’t the lizard-skins we want in charge. The queen’s liberal on the human question...more or less. The Royals bombing us now are extremists on the other side. This one isn’t about democracy and cozy relations between mammals and lizards, love,” Richter said, his eyes holding a dense kind of intensity. “...Trust me, you don’t want to be caught by this lot. They’re just trying to capitalize on what they see as instability in the realm. If they had their way, humans would go back to being food.”
Jet felt her face drain of blood, but the emotion that came up in her was closest to anger. She found herself tugging at the hilt of Black, without actually unsheathing her.
“So what do I do?” she said. “Hide in my room, like a good mammal?” She felt her jaw harden. “Where’s Laks?”
“He’s doing a little job for me,” Richter said. “I need you to do the same, kitten. All bets are off now, we have to improvise...”
“A job.” Jet glanced up at the ceiling when the building shook again, watching more flakes of powder come down. “Do you really think this is the right time, Richter?”
“Too honeymooned out, love?” Richter smiled.
Chuckling when Jet scowled at him, he continued to stare at her, his eyes reflecting none of the smile on his lips.
“...I need you, Jet. We’re not responsible for this, but we’ve got to be realists. We can’t risk these jokers usurping power. They’ll reverse every bit of the liberalization the queen has managed to get on the law books in the past thirty years. Which means we’re going to have to speed things up. I left you a package under the middle cushion of that sofa. I want you to deliver that for me...”
“Deliver it where?”
Jet was already leaning down towards the sofa as she said it, ripping up the middle cushion. Taped underneath the green fabric was a small device, what looked almost like one of the pulre cylinders she’d spent most of the day dodging in the Rings.
“You got it?” Richter said.
“Deliver it where, Richter?” she repeated, holding it up for him to see.
“Good,” he said, giving an approving nod. “You’re going to set that outside the bedroom door of the Royal parents, kitten. As close to the opening as you can without risking someone moving it. And no one’s going to see you...” His last words sounded almost like a threat.
“What the...?”
“I told you,” Richter said, cutting her off. “We have an opening here. I need you to do this, and I don’t have time to explain it all to you right now...I just need you to do it. You’re either a part of this team, or you’re not. Right?”
“You want me to kill the Royal parents?” Jet said, feeling nausea rise in her chest. “Why? Didn’t you just say they were better than –– “
“Not the queen. She’s staying on the other side of the compound. Ogli’s parents.” His voice grew harder. “...And not kill. I don’t want you to set foot in their chambers at all. I want you to set the bomb, then get the hell out. Got it?”
“I got it, but what the––?”
“Jet! We don’t have much time! Are you in? Or not?”
Jet stared up at him. Feeling her jaw harden, she nodded. “How much time do I have?”
“Ten minutes...not a second more. And kitten,” he said, his brown eyes growing warning in the pause. “You can’t be seen. Are we clear about that?”
“And what if I am?”
“You can’t be,” Richter said.
Looking up at him, Jet found herself understanding that time. She gave him a short nod, gripping Black tighter.
“You want me to kill anyone who sees me,” she said.
“Bright girl,” he said. “Ten minutes, kitten...then back to the room. Laks should be done by then, too. I’ve got loops of the two of you in there, but it won’t fool anyone if you’re gone too long. That ten minutes is firm, got it?”
Jet nodded again. “Got it.”
“Best of luck, kitten...” He glanced at his watch. “I’m engaging the loop. You’re on the clock...now.”
Before Jet could protest, his image faded back into the eggshell-white wall.
Cursing under her breath, Jet pocketed the device she’d pulled from the c
ouch cushions and ran to the door of her and Laksri’s room. Hitting the panel, she didn’t wait any longer than it took to see that the coast was clear. Then she pelted down the corridor as fast as she could, aware suddenly that she was still barefoot.
She was still running when another impact tremor nearly threw her to the stone floor. Recovering her balance enough to resume her speed down the narrow corridor, she bit her lip, trying to decide which route to the Royal chambers would likely have the least amount of traffic. She hadn’t seen anyone yet, human or Nirreth, so either they’d given some sort of evacuation signal, or they’d locked everyone inside their rooms until the crisis could be averted.
Another impact tremor shook the corridor, harder that time, forcing her to reach out a hand to each side and use the walls for balance. She struggled again to keep from falling as she jerked her weight back to center and began running full-speed once more.
The bombs were hitting harder.
They must be bombing her side of the building now.
Trust Richter to see this as an opportunity.
Even as she thought it, the alarm went off overhead. Jet winced against the piercing sound, fighting not to let it confuse her mind. She’d already reached the end of the first corridor, and still hadn’t seen anyone, so she veered left, making a snap decision to use the utility tunnels, even though it might lose her a minute or two in either direction.
She found herself intensely aware of her time limit now, nearly gasping as she pushed her fatigued muscles harder to reach the end of the Nirreth civilian residency quarter. Reaching the slight opening and fork at the entrance to those smaller halls behind her, she veered left, aiming for the utility and service tunnels.
Conscious of the soreness of her muscles, pretty much all over her body after the Rings match and then the lack of sleep that followed, Jet found she was having to push herself already, and she wasn’t halfway done with her assignment. She was sweating through the thin shirt she wore, too, and her hand slipped a little on the first rung of the ladder as she began to climb down into the first tunnel of the utility corridor. She knew the sleeping quarters of the Royals lived on the next floor down, but she still felt that clock ticking overhead as she made her way hand-over-hand on the metal rungs, praying she didn’t run into anyone.
Climbing down off the ladder at the next opening in the wall, Jet found her luck running out. A security guard stood there, one who looked almost familiar to her in the split second before she held Black in her hand. She ran him through with the blade before she had time to think about whether that was such a good idea, either. Before he could cry out, or notify anyone on his VR link, she cut his throat with the second slice of Black’s blade.
The surprised look in his eyes hit at her somewhere, deep in the chest.
It struck her then, that she did know him. He was Parente, the guard who’d pulled Ogli off her that day the young prince demanded she undress.
The realization brought a near-scream to Jet’s throat. Fighting back a hard rush of nausea, she withdrew the sword, feeling sick enough that she nearly staggered.
“I’m so sorry,” she told him. “Friend,” she said in Nargili. “I’m so very, very sorry...”
But her words were meaningless, she knew. He probably hadn’t even heard them.
She’d killed him.
Forcing every shred of feeling out of the forefront of her mind, she jerked out the blade, gagging at the blood that covered his chest. Covering her mouth with one hand once she’s wiped Black on his shirt and re-sheathed the blade, Jet found herself taking the weapon off his side holster before he’d finished falling to his back. Without letting herself think too clearly about the second part, either, she shot him with his own gun, twice, right where she’d impaled him with Black. She hoped it would disguise the signature of her blade.
Mostly, she needed to make sure he was dead, since he clearly recognized her.
His eyes remained surprised as he fell to his back, and frozen where they stared up at the ceiling. Jet found herself standing there, panting, irrationally wanting to kill Richter, to stick her sword in his throat next.
But Richter hadn’t done this. She had.
Before she could let the thought go too far in her head, Jet was already gone, running barefoot along that stretch of corridor, hoping like hell she wouldn’t run into anyone else. But she already knew how unlikely that was, given where she was.
She wouldn’t let his death be a waste. She could at least do that for him. She owed him that, at least, to finish this thing, whatever it was.
Four minutes had passed, according to her internal clock.
She could see the doors to the Royals’ bedchambers up ahead, along with two more sentries. She shot the first one in the face before he could speak, then found herself dodging fire from the second before she managed to down him, too, getting him first in the abdomen, and then in the chest. She knew how lucky she’d been, though...in terms of her own life, at least. Clearly, they’d been more than a little distracted as well, and likely not expecting the attack to come from a girl they’d just lost money on in the Rings that same day.
Sprinting the rest of the way to the doorway, wanting this done before she ended up having to kill anyone else, Jet nearly fell a third time as another impact tremor stumbled her feet, moving the floor in a hard jerk.
She reached the doors, then looked around the hinges, hearing shouting from not far away, maybe from someone who’d discovered the first body she’d left by the utility tunnels. Scanning the doorway for a hidden spot, any place big enough for the device Richter left her, she finally left it in one of the potted trees standing a few feet from the door.
It would have to do.
Burying the device in the dirt, she spent a few minutes grunting and tugging the pot closer to the actual doors...then pulling the second potted tree on the opposite side of the door closer, too, to make them look symmetrical. Hastily cleaning up the dirt she’d managed to spill, Jet turned just in time to miss being fired at by a third guard, who again she managed to surprise, mostly by calling out to him and telling him she needed help.
Everything happened so fast that Jet found herself moving almost on autopilot.
When she stabbed the fourth Nirreth she’d managed to kill that night, he didn’t even have time to look surprised. She’d unsheathed Black while he wasn’t looking, getting him in the throat in the quiet between blasts from the invading Nirreths overhead. Then, when the bombing or gunfire or whatever it was started up again, she used his gun on the cut, too. Again, the pulre’s blast obliterated the wound left by her sword, just like it had with the first guard.
Before Jet could second-guess any of it, or wonder if she’d missed anything, she was running again, as fast as she could, for the second set of utility tunnels. She didn’t want to retrace her steps, and not only because she’d have to pass by the first guard she’d killed. She managed to crawl inside the second tunnel a minute later, and began climbing up to the next floor, now moving as fast as she possibly could, with less regard for noise.
When she heard voices outside the tunnel the next floor up, she stopped, though, panting as silently as she could just under the lip of the opening, hoping they would move on before she had to do something drastic yet again.
Eight minutes. Maybe nine by now.
Jet gripped the hilt of Black, aiming the blade downward, her fingers slick with blood. She stared up through the hole in the floor above her, fighting to keep her breathing as silent as possible as she heard the guards talking loudly overhead, mostly to be heard over the sound of the continuing tremors and shaking of the building. She had no where to go. Whatever Richter had set in motion, whatever he’d wanted from her in dragging her here, planting her in the house of the Nirreth Royals, Jet now knew the truth.
She wasn’t a person at all to him. She doubted anyone mattered to Richter really. They were all just pawns in his twisted game, dancing to a tune he didn’t share with anyone, not ev
en Laksri, who followed him like some giant, lizard-skin dog.
But she couldn’t think about Laksri right then, either.
All Jet knew was that she probably wasn’t going to make it out of here alive. Whatever she’d really done back there, she knew she was out of time.
It was now or never. As much as she hated him for it, Jet already knew she’d play Richter’s twisted little game to its logical end. It wasn’t only because Anaze asked her to, or because of some warped sense of loyalty she felt to the promises she’d made to all of them, much less to those she’d left back at home.
She’d do it because, at base, Jet knew Richter was right about her. She could hate him for it as much as she liked, but the truth was, they were a lot more alike than not. Both of them would do pretty much whatever it took to get humanity out of slavery and out of the horrors of the skag pits. Both of them would do whatever they could to win Earth back for humanity, in some form at least...even if that meant sharing it with the lizard skins.
Even if that meant killing kind-hearted Nirreth like that guard...or even a nine-year-old Nirreth boy, if he stood in the way.
Or the boy’s parents.
Swallowing, Jet reinforced her grip on the sword, trying to blank her mind, to get the image of that guard’s face out of head.
She was still trying when the explosions started behind her.
Whatever else they meant, the bomb going off did give Jet the opening she needed to get out. She heard the guards react overhead, yells in the corridors below her, then pounding footsteps as someone...or several someones...ran for the main elevators.
Jet listened until the voices faded, then she began to climb.
When she reached the top, she half-expected at least one of the guards to be there still, but the corridor was clear.
Heaving a sigh of relief, she vaulted up the last few rungs of the ladder, knowing if she hadn’t hit the ten minute mark yet, she would in a matter of seconds. She climbed nimbly out of the utility tunnel, then gasped when she landed funny on her ankle. Briefly conscious of the pain in her hip from the Rings, as well as the wrench in her shoulder, she shoved both from her mind and began to run. She stumbled again briefly when a second set of alarms exploded overhead, this one signaling a breach of the compound...then broke into a full sprint. Sure by now that she’d passed the ten minute mark, she hoped like hell that it wasn’t too late to get off clean. She hung a right at the corridor that led back to the civilian residency center, using her hand and arm to slingshot herself around without losing speed, then pounding past the still-closed doors.
Alien Apocalypse: The Complete Series (Parts I-IV) Page 40