Studying Alice’s face, she found herself thinking she’d hit a nerve that time, though.
So Richter was a sore spot with Alice, too.
She was suprised to see a smile form on Alice’s dark face. The same look reflected in a shrewdness around her wide brown eyes.
“I think you do all right, Jet,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically soft. “Just keep your eyes open, eh? And stop letting them see you are afraid.”
Before Jet could come up with a response, the trainer smacked her sharply on the back with the flat of her hand, her lips curling into a frown.
“Now move your ass!” she said, returning to her normal voice. “Two more days until the next match! I don’t want to spend my afternoon that day, scraping bits of you off the equipment. I’d rather find my own Nirreth boyfriend. Eat food, watch a movie, then have sex with him before I sleep...” Giving Jet another, harder look, she motioned towards the nearest set of gun turrets. “We start the next simulation. Fifteen seconds. You not ready, I am going home, to take a bath and drink vodka, complain to my gypsy gods about my useless mammal athlete.”
Jet snorted a laugh, in spite of herself.
She didn’t argue, though. Instead, she fell into a combat crouch, facing their section of the arena while she waited for Alice’s cue.
Even so, her eyes drifted to the other side of the arena, where she found Al-En Mosq watching her again. Next to him, the massive female human stood staring at her as well, her thick arms folded in front of that inhumanly muscular torso, her face as expressionless as a doll’s.
Maybe not a doll’s.
More like a wolf’s, or some other predator.
Looking away, Jet shook it off, irritated with herself for reacting.
Alice was right. Big or not, Al-En Mosq’s new woman she was just a woman, like her. Her size might even slow her down, which could potentially give Jet the advantage. Her uncle always said the faster opponent usually won in hand-to-hand...at least if the fight stayed off the ground. Once the fight went to ground, the advantage generally shifted to the best grappler.
The Rings were like any fight, though.
You could freak yourself out and lose if you got lost in your own head. Some fighters liked to play head games for that very reason, to get under their opponents’ skin, psyche them out, rattle them, or just piss them off enough to lose their cool.
Still, something about that dead-eyed stare bothered Jet.
Truthfully, it bothered her a lot.
“Yep,” Richter said. He plopped his weight on the grass in front of the domestic animal pens, leaning on the wooden wall. “It’s like we thought...”
He stretched out his legs, favoring the one on the left, Jet noticed. She watched him warily, even as she sat on one of the folding chairs that had been placed on the grass in front of him by a member of Laksri’s security team.
She still hadn’t gotten the hang of talking openly in front of other people.
By “other people” she essentially meant anyone who wasn’t Laksri, Richter or Anaze.
Feeling the stares of the four Nirreth security guards behind her, knowing they were listening to everything she said, tails lashing behind their backs, made Jet nervous. She knew they were Richter’s, that appearances had to be maintained, that she and Laks were royalty now, and couldn’t just disappear into one of the basement gardens with Richter for one of their chats like they had before the coronation.
None of it reassured her.
“...He’s requested a challenge match,” Richter added, giving Jet a direct stare. “The Boards said no until his mutant qualifies...which both Al-En Mosq and Trazen must have known they’d say. They want you to know they’re gunning for you. Trazen especially, I’d wager. It’s the same reason he’s got Al-En Mosq training her out in the open, even though most pre-trials contestants are stuck in the pre-arena until they qualify.”
Richter gave Jet a more serious look.
“The Boards won’t deny them for long, kitten,” he added. “Trazen’s already arranged everything legally for when she fights...gotten special permission to use a replacement judge for Al-En Mosq for the matches she runs, and recused him from official duties for any fights against her direct opponents. Including you, Jet. Trazen’s got Al-En Mosq sitting with the judges on lizard skin matches only...and those with male human prisoners, who haven’t yet been cleared to fight the females, even human ones. Al-En Mosq said he’ll do this until he’s satisfied she can run with a new trainer, without him. Trazen got the Board to okay it.”
“What’s her name?” Jet said, folding her arms.
Richter gave her a disbelieving look. “Does it matter?”
“Yes,” she said. “It does. Especially since you want me to try and kill her.”
Richter’s eyes narrowed, their coffee color a near-amber under the artificial sunlight.
“Bukka,” he said, blunt. “It’s...African or something. Shit, I don’t know. Bukka Rudhi, or something like that.” He looked up at Laksri, grunting. “She’s serious?”
Laksri didn’t answer.
Richter gave Jet a flat look. “Blame me all you want, sweetheart, but you’d better get your head in the game. You’re going to have to face her soon. If you hesitate...or start having fluffy feelings about her as a fellow human...you might just find yourself bleeding from a gut wound on the arena floor.”
Jet grunted, running a hand through her hair to get it out of her eyes. She ignored Laksri’s appraising look as it settled back on her shoulders. She still hadn’t gotten the hang of wearing it down, where it felt constantly in the way, and where it seemed in constant danger of blinding her whenever a gust of wind caught a handful of strands.
She got Richter’s point.
She even agreed with him, although she wasn’t about to admit it to his face. She couldn’t afford to start thinking of this woman as anything other than a possible death sentence.
“So...be ready?” she said only, giving Richter a look. “You mind defining that for me a little better, Richter? Or should I just start doing push-ups right now, while you all carry on the meeting?”
Laksri gave a low snort of humor.
When she glanced at him, he gave her a thin smile, lashing his tail in a more friendly wave than the one he’d aimed at Richter. Still, Jet saw the worried look in his dark eyes. Those same eyes shifted down the length of her body in the next pause. She could almost feel him thinking how small she was, even for a human. Shifting self-consciously in her chair as Laksri’s appraisal continued, she tried not to remember the smug look she’d seen on Al-En Mosq’s face that morning, or the sharklike gaze of his pet Neanderthal.
When Jet looked over next, she saw Anaze staring at her, too.
The look in his eyes differed from Laksri’s, though.
If anything, he looked at her with anger, his mouth pursed in a frown that held a thread of puzzlement. She raised an eyebrow at him, tempted to ask, but Anaze’s glance shifted away before she could. She saw that same look pause on Laksri though, just long enough for that anger in his eyes to intensify.
Seeing that, Jet folded her arms tighter, biting her tongue.
Anaze had been treating her like some kind of prostitute ever since she and Laksri officially became a thing...meaning in actuality, not simply as a part of their play-acting to convince the Royals Jet was housebroken.
Ironic, really, since she was only in this position in the first place because of Anaze. He’d been the one to feed her name to Richter, and to convince Richter that Jet would be the ideal candidate for their Rings-champion-slash-rebel-mole. The memory still angered her whenever she let herself dwell on it. She’d hung out with Anaze for years, thinking they were friends. She’d trusted him, and all that time, he’d been sizing her up as an expendable foot-soldier in his father’s army.
Now he had the gall to judge her for it.
Giving him a scathing look, one she hoped held as much contempt as she felt, she got a faint twinge of
satisfaction when she saw Anaze blanch. Turning towards Richter, she let her voice grow bored.
“What else do we know about her? Anything?” She gave another low grunt. “...Anything that can actually help me, that is?”
Richter lifted a hand off the grass from where he’d been supporting his upper torso on his palms. Making a vague sort of gesture, he shrugged.
“She’s not local,” he said. “...Obviously. Al-En Mosq’s keeping pretty quiet about how he found her, but the rumor is, she’s some kind of Russian South African, or maybe Dutch Russian. I don’t remember exactly. We’re still trying to find evidence of genetic tampering. We’re not the only ones...a lot of the Nirreth are pretty suspicious, too. I mean, look at her...”
Richter snorted, glancing around at the rest of them. When no one returned his smile, he shrugged again.
“...Yeah. Well. My point is, it wouldn’t take much to get her disqualified. A number of different parties are looking into it, so we may even have help. No one wants to bet on her until they know for sure she’s not going to be disqualified.”
Jet sighed a little, internally that time.
The Nirreth and their gambling addictions.
She supposed she should be grateful that Laksri didn’t seem to suffer from that particular affliction. Most Nirreth went into a kind of fever around the Rings.
“Anything on her stats?” Jet pressed, leaning forward. She folded her hands in her lap, then unfolded them to twitch around the fabric of her long dress. “...Have you seen any of her prelim scores? Special skills? Brain scans?” She gave a low snort. “...It would be convenient if she was stupid, at least.”
“No, pet,” Richter said. Letting his voice grow serious, he looked at her with those coffee-colored eyes. “I haven’t seen anything. But I was told, in confidence of course, that she’s not stupid.”
At Jet’s frown, he made another of those vague half-shrugs.
“...Not a Nobel prize winner. She’s not book smart, or educated, but I was warned she has a good mind for the fights. Al-En Mosq’s demonstration with her used Nirreth opponents. His choice, which means the idea likely came from Trazen. Usually they use animals, to give the fighter an advantage in terms of intelligence, but again, I think Trazen was trying to make an impression. I don’t know details, love, I wasn’t invited, but I hear she did well. Well enough that I’m told her preliminary scores would be a lot higher, if there wasn’t the question about her parentage.”
“Is she a mutant?” Jet said, staring at him. “What do you think?”
He met her gaze, and for an instant, the cheery veneer faded.
“I would bet my life on it,” he said. “But opinions are worthless. We need proof.”
“What kind of mutant?” she pressed.
“If I had to guess?” Richter said. “I’d say she’s a Nirreth-human hybrid. Maybe 70-30, human to Nirreth, to keep her looking as human as possible. They’ve done something to make her blood seem pure. But again, I’m not the only one who’s speculated this. He’s infused Nirreth DNA in her somehow. I don’t know how he managed to fool the medicos, but––”
“I agree,” Laksri cut in.
When Jet glanced at him, she saw his eyes focused on Anaze, his dark pupils dilated.
Great, Jet thought, so he’d seen their little glaring match earlier. She kept her face expressionless when Laksri looked back at her with a slight frown.
“...I have seen such creatures before,” the Nirreth added. “Their form was more mixed...less pure on either end...but there are similarities. The way the legs form, and the shoulders...it is very much the same. The lack of a tail, and the human skin tones...these are constants, in every hybrid I have seen of our two kinds.”
“What about the blood, Laks?” Jet said.
His tail flickered more sharply behind his back. He scowled.
“I do not know. But the physical traits of humans tend to be dominant. Perhaps Trazen found some way to make the blood factors match closely enough that the traces cannot be found.”
Richter rolled his eyes dramatically. “Yeah,” he said. “...That, or he just paid off the medicos. Or did a blood transfusion before the final tests. In any case, Al-En Mosq didn’t do this on his own. I’m still betting Trazen is holding his leash. Trazen knows his way around the rules. There are a hundred ways he could break them without undue risk of being caught. Hell, we broke a few ourselves, if you remember...”
Laksri’s expression turned grim as he met Jet’s gaze.
“Or that,” he conceded quietly.
“So how much time do I have?” Jet said. “How long before Trazen and Al-En Mosq get their challenge match?”
“That depends, kitten,” Richter said, giving her another of those level stares. “Laks owns you now. He says he’s not going to agree with any challenges.”
Jet looked at Laksri. “Is that true?”
Richter answered, however. “It is his right.”
“But?” Jet said, looking warily between them. “There’s a ‘but,’ right?”
“...But,” Richter said, giving another nod. “There will be political fallout. Trazen’s raising a stink about you being queen and a fighter.” He gave Laksri a thin-lipped smile. “...Pretty ironic, coming from a Ringmaster who’s trying to run his own candidate from behind the scenes, but there it is. He is demanding that you step down from the fights.”
“Great,” Jet said at once. She gestured shortly. “So I stop. Big deal.”
Richter gave her a hard look, his eyes warning. “Not so fast, kitten. We need you in the Rings. If you turn into a house pet, the Nirreth aren’t going to stand for you being on that throne, not for long.” Grunting, he ran a thick hand through his chestnut-colored hair, right before he planted it back on the grass.
“Memories are short around here,” he added. “You’re their favorite little Samurai right now. If you’re not fighting, you’re just a girl with nice hair who’s getting screwed by their king-to-be every night.”
Jet winced, her jaw hardening, but Richter held up a hand.
“...My point is, that whole symbol of ‘sword-wielding human girl fighting for freedom’ is the only reason they’ve put up with you in this role in the first place. If you disappear out of the limelight...or worse, if the only time they see you is at the periodic banquet in a revealing dress, stoned from Laksri’s tail...they’re going to start viewing you as another of their pet dogs. They might want to sleep with you, but they won’t want you on the throne. Not exactly the poster child for human independence that we’re looking for, love.”
Jet felt her face tighten, but as she turned over his words, she could only nod.
“You’re so sure they’ll accept me now?” she said.
“No,” Richter said, blunt. His eyes looked honest, which again threw her. “But we don’t know much of anything in terms of how much they can accept from a human. Didn’t Laksri tell you? This whole thing’s a grand experiment. We can go off what we know about Nirreth culture, and how they’ve responded so far, but the truth is, we’re throwing darts with a blindfold on, only hoping we’re aiming roughly in the right direction.”
When Jet glanced at Laksri, he made a subtle gesture with his head and hand, conceding Richter’s words.
“This is true,” he said with a low hiss. “We have capitalized on the Samurai thing, since they have responded to this...but we do not know how long it will last, or if it will translate to them viewing humans more sympathetically as a whole. I can guess that it is so, from what I know of my people...but there are many agendas being played right now, and not only in the government. There are those who make a career out of manipulating the sentiments of my people. Right now, our agendas appear to align, but that will not always be so. Until we have consolidated our new rule, we cannot afford to do anything that might turn popular sentiment against us...not unless we are forced.”
He paused, his dark eyes on Jet’s.
“...Trazen knows this. It is why he is cond
ucting this charade with Al-En Mosq. He is hoping to force you out of the Rings...or to humiliate you with a loss of face, assuming his candidate can beat you in a one-on-one match. If he can get me to refuse the fight, that is also a loss of face. One serious enough that popular sentiment could again turn against either of both of us, if the refusal went public.”
“What does he want?” Jet said. “Trazen? He must be after something...this can’t all be some grudge thing with me?”
“We’re looking into that too, kitten,” Richter said.
That time, however, she saw the caginess in his eyes, and even in his body language. Feeling her face flush with heat, she kept her voice low and controlled with an effort.
“You know something,” she said. “Is he the mole you were worried about before?”
“Mole for who?” Richter said, his voice carefully blank.
“Don’t give me that crap!” she snapped, losing her cool abruptly. “It’s my skin on the line...especially if I have to fight that freak!”
That time, when Richter and Laksri exchanged looks, she saw a different look come to Richter’s face. After a longer pause, where Laksri’s expression grew almost as angry as Jet’s, Richter gave a low sigh, turning back in her direction.
“Look, kitten,” he said, running another hand through his hair. “You have to have noticed, Trazen’s not the most pro-human rights Nirreth on the planet.”
“Yeah?” she said, feeling her mouth harden. “So? What does that mean exactly?”
“It means he’s ideological,” Richter said, his voice colder. “He also knows people. In fact, love, he knows enough people to likely be aware that Lakri’s story about being abducted as a child and thus not knowing his real parentage is nothing but bullshit. He may not know the real story, but rest assured, love, he’s looking into it. Chances are, he’ll make the connection to the rebellion on the home world. It’s just a matter of time.”
Alien Apocalypse: The Complete Series (Parts I-IV) Page 45