She found the thought mildly satisfying, even though she knew a cornered snake was more dangerous than one sunning itself on a rock. Making Richter more paranoid probably wouldn’t help anything. Besides, according to Laksri, they needed Richter. He still had a lot of pull with just about every remaining human military force on Earth. The North American faction looked to him as their leader, and would follow his commands, even now.
Also, Richter oversaw the only real network of human spies living and working among the Nirreth on Earth. According to Laksri, Richter even had plants on some of the off-world colonies. Despite his opinions as to Richter’s character, Laksri seemed to see Richter as a kind of strategic genius; he told Jet with grudging admiration that Richter’s spy network was tightly coordinated, disciplined, able to be mobilized quickly and strangely loyal to Richter himself. Laksri also said that because of it, Richter had a fair bit of influence among the skags, the Green Zone humans on multiple continents, those off-world colonies as well as the hamster cage settlements surrounding Nirreth farming colonies.
That meant he probably had people on the ground in Jet’s old home.
Not only Anaze, but other people. People who still lived there, in the pits.
People with direct access to Jet’s mom, and her brother.
So yeah, even apart from Laksri’s more complicated, strategic reasons, Jet couldn’t afford to piss Richter off. She knew he likely wouldn’t hesitate to kill one of hers, just to make a point. If he thought Jet was actively working against him, he might decide to take out her entire skag village. Or maybe just hurt a few of them until she got more cooperative.
Looking away from Richter’s face as the thought ricocheted in the back of her head, Jet finished off her last swallows of water before setting the glass abruptly on the drink cart.
When she turned that time, she kept her expression carefully neutral.
“Did you come to see if I die, Richter?” she said.
His smile turned faintly predatory, right before he glanced down her dress.
“It would be crime to kill you in that get-up, love,” he said. “I won’t have it.”
She rolled her eyes, biting back irritation in spite of herself.
He still knew how to get to her. Better than Laksri or even Traven did.
She was about to say something biting in return, when a second man entered the tent behind him. She thought at first it was one of Richter’s mysterious “people,” but when she looked closer, she started a little, recognizing his son, Anaze.
She hadn’t seen Anaze since that whole mess went down with the Royals.
Even that night, he’d barely said a word, at least after they finished explaining to Jet the basics of what had happened.
Anaze looked older now––older than he had even a few months earlier.
His angular features, so different from the thick, large-featured face of his father, still made her think of a feral animal, but now he looked borderline dangerous. Anaze and his father shared the same olive-toned skin and large eyes, but Anaze had inherited his mother’s body-type, rather than the stocky, wrestler-like build of his father. Lean and long-limbed, Anaze looked more like a distance runner than a boxer.
He also had more of his mother’s Native American features, with high cheekbones and eyes that slanted slightly at the corners, giving his darker skin a different meaning, at least in terms of his overall ethnicity. He appeared to have gained some weight since Jet had seen him last, but none of it was fat. He looked more as if he’d gone back to fighting with his sword every day.
She remembered then, that Richter had once said something about putting Anaze to work in the Rings as well, and found herself wondering...
“Well, princess?” Richter said, breaking into her thoughts, and pulling her eyes off Anaze. “Are you ready for this?”
“For what?” she retorted at once. “Being bait for you and your jackass rebels?”
Richter burst into a laugh. That time, it sounded almost genuine. “You have so little faith in me, kitten...”
She didn’t bother to answer that.
For some reason, her silence made Richter laugh again.
When she glanced at Laksri, she caught a faint warning in his dark eyes, right before they flickered to Richter. Fighting back another flush of irritation that he wouldn’t just cut the crap and talk to her, she looked back at Richter, too.
“So did you find out anything?” she said. “Anything you can tell us?”
“What makes you think I would tell you, kitten?” Richter said.
“Nothing whatsoever,” she said.
“So why even ask?”
She gave him a disbelieving look, then sighed. “I was having an optimistic moment,” she said, adjusting her dress. “Don’t worry. It’ll pass.”
That time, both Laksri and Richter laughed, although Laksri’s sounded more like a rumble from deep in his chest, a kind of purring sound she’d grown to like. Looking between the two of them, she let her hands fall to her sides, exhaling in a half-irritated sigh. When she glanced at Anaze, his expression looked wary, too, but he was watching her, as if gauging her mood.
“What, then?” Jet said, sighing again. “What do I need to know? Anything?”
Still chuckling, Richter shook his head.
“Don’t get shot,” he said.
Walking up to her unexpectedly, he gave her an even more unexpected hug, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing before Jet could react well enough to prevent it. She let him hold her, more stunned than even annoyed. When he ended the hug, he didn’t release her right away, but just grinned into her face, holding her bare shoulders in his big hands.
“I really am quite fond of you, Jet,” he said, surprising her again by kissing her on the cheek. Glancing at the tall Nirreth behind her, he looked back at her face long enough to give her a wink. “...Laksri might have a fight on his hands, if he intends to keep you.”
Before Jet could think of a suitable retort, Richter let go of her, chuckling again as a low growl came from the Nirreth’s throat, a warning that Jet found herself thinking wasn’t entirely in jest.
Her own part-annoyed, part-puzzled and part-stunned reaction hadn’t quite worn off when she happened to catch Anaze’s gaze. His eyes flared with a darker anger, right before he turned towards his father. Seeing the murderous look that lived there briefly as he stared at Richter, Jet blinked, taken aback. She’d heard Anaze criticize his father before, but she’d never seen him look at him like that...or even be openly defiant of him.
Fighting to push it out of her expression, at least until she could decide what any of it meant, she snorted, folding her arms.
“Yeah,” she muttered. “All this love from the best friend who conned me, the guy who kidnapped, enslaved and prostituted me,” she grumbled, raising an eyebrow at Richter. Rolling her eyes towards Laksri, she added, “...And the lizard they sold me to.”
She’d more than half-expected this to make Richter laugh, too.
But when she looked around at the three faces that time, she fell silent again, studying their eyes in bewilderment. The expressions she met, rather than looking amused, reflected something a lot closer to guilt.
Jet knew she should be listening. She should be paying attention to what was being said by the lizard-skin in the pointed, metallic-looking hat who stood at the sloped podium in front of her and Laksri. Yet somehow, whenever she tried, her mind drifted.
Part of it was, most of the ceremony seemed to be conducted in some form of archaic Nirreth poetry, likely filled with symbols that no amount of translation would catch.
She heard a few of the less cryptic things, here and there.
“...As in the books scribed by the most holy oracles and saints, when calamity happens, it is often a means of making way for change that might otherwise have been difficult to perceive as necessary and right...
“...According to our most ancient rules, ascribing all rights to the eldest son of the cleanest bloodline to our
most beloved royal family, descended from that most ancient of tribes, the Ukanazi...
“...Our son, Laksonagiki-Antualogi, lost lo these many years, due to the factional struggles of ingrates, usurpers, traitors and the impure, has risen once more to his rightful place...”
Jet couldn’t help pressing her lips together at that one.
Laksri himself had been the head ingrate, usurper and traitor.
“...Blessed be our gods, who have returned him to us, when he himself was unaware of his own exalted place among our people...
“...Most auspicious tidings, that our honored son has taken as a wife one of our hosts on this most glorious world and new capitol of the Nirreth Empire...”
Wife? She let that blow by her too, though.
Not long after, Jet found herself tuning out again.
She and Laksri sat on a high, flat platform, cross-legged above the crowd. Laksri wore a wide, carpet-like cape so heavily embroidered with detailed designs that Jet found it difficult to look away from the metallic threads. The images combined what she now recognized as symbols for the gods from the Nirreth religion with maps of constellations and planets, all surrounding a traditional image of the royal family tree of the Ukanazi done in red and gold thread.
The latter had been rendered in such detail that Jet found she could actually recognize some of the faces from paintings she’d seen scattered around the royal compounds.
When Laksri nudged her lightly with his arm, Jet tore her eyes off his cloak for probably the twentieth time since the droning speeches had begun.
Avoiding his concerned look, she tried to focus on the crowd that ringed the small stage.
Her eyes caught rippling banners in all of the colors of the different houses that made up the royal family, cascading in long streams from tall poles of gold and green metal.
She scanned faces without making eye-contact.
Still, she found herself pausing on the faces she knew, including Trazen and one of his walking human dolls, who’d probably been stung a good six or seven times before the ceremony. She leaned on him languorously, stroking his tail where it wrapped around her waist. Looking away when she realized she’d been focusing too intently on the motion of the woman’s fingers, Jet gritted her teeth a little, giving Laksri a bare glance before focusing back over the crowd.
She’d heard nothing but bad things about how Trazen treated his human “companions.”
She saw the only human to serve on the Rings Board, too, a woman she now knew to be named Patrician Thorne. She sat beside the Voice of the Rings, Metzet, who took the center spot in the very front row of chairs, like he did on the Rings Board itself.
Jet caught Richter’s profile a few beats later, where he sat with Anaze and Yulark, one of the Nirreth government officials Jet met following the death of Ogli’s parents.
Yulark’s new role had been part of the compromise with the usurpers, too. His previous title read something along the lines of “Secretary Overseeing Human and Nirreth Encounters,” which, from what Jet could tell, was a joke. Most “human and Nirreth encounters” in reality were handled by the military, and to some extent, the Trade Commission. Yulark’s office had no real power at all.
The Queen recently named him in the role of Supreme Chancellor, however, the same role that Ogli’s father held until the day of his death. The Supreme Chancellor answered only to the King and Queen and had authority over the parliamentary-type group that made laws for the colonies. Jet didn’t know Yulark at all, but she knew he had ties to the same Nirreth faction that bombed the Royals’ compound that night.
For that reason alone, she treated him carefully.
She tore her eyes off his face when she saw that he’d noticed her stare.
She saw the curiosity in his eyes though, and hoped it was benign.
Hopefully, he was just a fan of the Rings.
Truthfully, Jet didn’t mind the Rings themselves so much, not anymore. Fighting in the weekly competitions was one of the few distractions she could stomach, maybe because they didn’t involve as much political maneuvering, backstabbing, lying and posturing as living in the compound of the Royals did every day.
Laksri reached for her under the blanket-like robe, squeezing her knee.
She almost wished she’d asked him to sting her before this. For one thing, her heart rate wouldn’t be through the roof as she waited for someone to aim a gun at her head. For another, she’d have a much clearer idea of what Laksri himself was currently thinking.
She might also know what this ritual was even about.
Maybe she could remedy that tonight. The part about what Laksri was thinking, anyway.
Something of her thoughts might have reached him, because his hand grew heavier on her leg, right before he turned, meeting her gaze. Seeing the heat in his expression, she smiled. The Nirreth returned the look in his more subtle, Nirreth way, then turned his eyes back to the crowd, but not before he stroked her leg more deliberately under the robe, his tail coiling closer to her on the podium they shared.
She considered returning the affection, if only to distract herself, but, just then, sound exploded in the small chamber, shocking her.
Gunshots.
She’d expected this. But somehow, expecting it didn’t help.
The sound still managed to paralyze her briefly.
By the time the rush of adrenaline hit her bloodstream, Laksri had already pulled her down, behind the wooden podium, crushing Jet’s head and most of her upper body under his muscular chest. Even so, Jet forced her knee up when the shots continued. Grunting a bit under the Nirreth’s weight, she managed to get the pulre out of her boot.
“Jet, no,” Laksri said.
She struggled her way free of him anyway. Peering over the low platform, she saw Nirreth and humans fleeing. She ducked reflexively at another volley of pulre blasts, even as she glimpsed Trazen crouched against a pillar, a different kind of weapon in his hand.
He glanced up at her even as she saw him, and she saw his frown, right before he motioned her sharply to get down.
Showing him the gun she held, she stayed where she was.
Trazen frowned, but seemed to shrug it off.
His tail lashed behind him before he disappeared behind another pillar, out of Jet’s view. Jet peered through the smoke wafting through the now nearly-empty aisles, and saw at least one Nirreth on the ground. Whoever he was, he was still moving, gasping as he clutched a wound on one thick leg. When a flash came from the end of the rectangular pavillion, Jet fired without thought, watching the white flame leave the end of the pulre even as the kickback drove her arm and shoulder back sharply, making her gasp.
Laksri grabbed her, jerking her back behind the platform. Knowing the pulre had to charge up for twenty seconds or so anyway before she could fire it again, Jet didn’t fight him. When she glanced up next, Nirreth security guards crouched over her and Laksri, their tails lashing aggressively.
Then everything went dark.
The Nirrith guards smothered them both with a heavy blanket that cut out all light.
Jet fought to breathe in the dense space, gripping Laksri’s arm as shots continued overhead. Still, she understood what they’d done. The “blanket” was more protection...a bizarre, tar-smelling, flexible but hard material that could stop most conventional bullets, even those used by the Nirreth military. From what Jet knew, it could stop pretty much anything from a hand-held projectile weapon, even pulre, with the sole exception of the new exploding tips that just popped up on the grid, what the humans called “fireflies.”
Containing a napalm-like substance in the tips that could apparently melt metal and bone, fireflies were recent imports from one off-world colony or another, but had already been found on some of the local rebel factions, along with a number of black marketeers.
All of this flashed through Jet’s mind as she crouched under the black blanket.
Still, frustration made the adrenaline seeth through her blood.
>
She’d rather be in the fight. It wasn’t arrogance or bravado; she wanted to know who was trying to kill her. She could never trust anyone else to keep her safe, especially here.
Another volley of shots erupted, that time directly overhead.
Jet gripped the pulre, biting her lip when Laksri held her roughly against him, as if feeling on her that she wanted to get free of the black cloth. Jet knew the proximity of the shots meant that the Royals’ security team had found a target and were shooting back. She wanted to raise her head and see who it was, at least if they were human or Nirreth, but Laksri growled against her ear when she struggled against his hold, gripping her tighter in his muscular arms. When she tried again to writhe free, he wrapped his tail around her too, and she felt the threat of a sting when he poised the end of it against her belly.
Letting her muscles relax, she elbowed him sharply, if only to let him know she was angry. He didn’t budge though, not even to move his tail.
Seconds later, someone grabbed both of them from behind.
Laksri continued to hold her as Nirreth hands jerked the two of them backwards.
He gripped her tightly with one arm and his tail as he used the other hand for balance, yanking her unceremoniously to her feet and climbing nimbly up beside her on the platform. Still holding her, he fumbled in a pocket with one hand as he walked under the urging of their guards. When Jet felt his arm next jostle against her back, she realized he clutched a gun now, as well, something bigger than a pulre. Maybe one of the smaller blasters.
Maybe what Trazen had carried.
She hadn’t even known he was armed.
Then again, Laksri wasn’t your average Nirreth either, much less the average son of the Royals. Knowing him, the weapon was his own from his smuggling days. Jet knew Laksri had been imprisoned when he was younger, and that he’d had his own people turn on him before, including his own family. He’d been forced to fight in the real-life Rings as part of that, what they called Retribution, which not only involved torture and a fight to the death against ungodly odds, but often the torture of loved ones, as well.
Alien Apocalypse: The Complete Series (Parts I-IV) Page 43