Jet felt another surge of anger hit her, but couldn’t tell how much of it was hers and how much Trazen’s. It didn’t really matter, she supposed; she knew Richter mostly said it to piss them off. Although why he’d want to anger Trazen right now, given what he’d said, she had no idea.
He’s trying to unbalance me, Trazen told her through the venom. He wants me to feel cornered, like he’s going to tell Laksri what I’m doing with you...
You aren’t doing anything with me, she reminded him in a mental mutter.
He tightened his tail around her waist. No. Not yet.
Not yet?
Trazen didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at her at first. Instead he continued to stare right at Richter’s face. Jet had already returned her own stare to Richter and the gun when Trazen surprised her, speaking to her mind with softer thoughts.
Did you mean what you said to Laksri, Jet?
Jet’s brow crinkled in puzzlement. She looked up at him. Which thing?
Trazen’s tail tightened perceptibly around her waist. When you told him that all agreements between he and I were void. The agreements we had about you. He looked at her, and the gold flecks in his eyes shocked her, causing her to stare up at him. You knew what you were saying, didn’t you? You knew how both he and I would take what you said?
Jet continued to stare up at him, bewildered at first.
Then, as she turned over his words, she felt her face grow hot. Shrugging, she told him the truth, knowing he’d probably feel it through the venom anyway.
Yes. Well...I knew how Laks would take it, she added. I knew how I meant it, and I knew he’d understood what I said.
And me? Trazen thought at her. How was I supposed to take it?
She didn’t look up that time, despite the prodding of his mind. Trazen, I don’t know.
He pushed at her mind again. Did you mean it?
Her fingers tightened on his tail. Trazen, this isn’t really the time––
Richter laughed, breaking into her thoughts.
“What are you saying to her, Ringmaster? Our beloved Samurai of the Rings is turning bright red. Are you trying to seduce her, even now?”
Jet felt the heat in her face worsen, but at least some of it was anger now. She glanced at Tyra and caught a smirk on the other woman’s face above where her muscular arms crossed her chest. The other female Rings fighter was still sitting at the bench across from them, leaning into Anslom’s side, listening and watching the interaction with them and Richter with a shrewd look on her high-cheekboned face.
Instead of addressing Richter, Jet spoke to Tyra. “You worked for him this whole time? Richter? Since I met you?”
She nodded. “He recruited me right out of the pits, Jet. Same as you.”
“Is that what they call it?” Jet said, giving Richter a hard look. “Recruitment? They used to call it something else.”
Tyra laughed. “Well, it happened a little differently for me, it’s true.”
Jet didn’t really care about that story though. Not now. She glared at Richter. “What about Laksri? Are you still holding his leash, too?” She gave Trazen a bare glance. “Was that whole thing at the warehouse in Santa Fe just for show?”
Richter folded his own arms, glancing down at Anslom and Tyra before he gave a single shake to his head. “No.”
“But you were there, right?” she said, her words colder. “I saw someone slinking around in the shadows that night. I’m thinking now that must have been you.”
Trazen gave her a surprised look, one Jet didn’t bother to answer.
She felt his surprise through the venom though, as well as his attempt to see what she saw that night while they were in that old building in Santa Fe. Without looking away from Richter’s face, Jet showed him her memories from that night, her glimpses of a familiar-seeming shadow in the main dining area and again while they were in that firelit room.
Looking at those memories again, she couldn’t be sure.
Richter only held up his hands, smiling at her. “And what if I was there?”
“Did Laksri know?” Jet’s jaw hardened more. “Or is Anaze still the one pulling strings for you these days? Manipulating Laksri from behind the scenes?”
Richter shook his head again, rubbing his stubbled jaw with one hand.
“Neither, kitten.” He smirked at her, meeting her gaze. “Much as I’d love to take credit for being the mastermind you seem to think me...my son still harbors delusions of rebellion and grandeur of his own, I’m afraid. If I’m not mistaken, him and Laks are trying to rescue your mother and brother from my people even as we speak.”
Jet flinched, her body tensing.
Next to her, Trazen held her tighter, as if warning her not to do anything stupid.
Weirdly though, Richter’s words gave her an irrational surge of hope. Maybe Laksri hadn’t been lying after all. Maybe him and Anaze really would help her get her family away from Richter’s people.
Richter must have seen that hope in her eyes because his light-brown eyes hardened to stone. “Don’t get too excited, kitten,” he warned her. “They won’t succeed. Not in the way you’re hoping, anyway. You still don’t seem to understand just how many people I have working for me...watching things, keeping an eye on what’s going on. I’m sorry to say, I’ve known what Anaze and Laks were up to for months. And I can’t risk Isreti finding out about your family...or getting ahold of them for their own reasons...”
His frown turned closer to a scowl.
“Truthfully, I thought I raised the boy better than that...but his mother was always a pain in my ass, too. Hopefully I can make him see reason when I pick him and his friends up tonight. Hopefully I can convince him and Laks...and you, Jet...and your new playmate Trazen...that we all need to work together if we want to come out of this thing with Isreti alive...”
His eyes looked almost sincere when he added,
“We need one another, pet. We need one another. No matter how pissed off you are at me, you can’t be totally blind to what’s happening. Isreti is a fanatic. He’d wipe all of us out, given any excuse at all.” Richter turned, giving Trazen a direct look, his eyes unflinching. “He’ll happily wipe out a good chunk of his own people, too...isn’t that right, Ringmaster? You know exactly what kind of fantasies Isreti and his ‘followers’ like to entertain.”
Trazen didn’t speak, but Jet felt the Ringmaster agreeing with him.
Richter looked back at Jet, his voice growing more urgent.
“All this work to pull together a human rebellion...to find common ground with the Nirreth who just want to live in peace...it would be for nothing, Jet,” he said. “It could all be gone in the blink of an eye. Then you, me, Anaze, your family, Tyra here...we’d all be dead. More to the point, our people will have nothing. No second front. No future. No hope of an eventual easing of tensions with the Nirreth. There would be no rebellion. Only slaves. Cattle. And eventually, there likely wouldn’t even be that. We’d either be bred out of existence into a new race entirely...or they’ll simply wipe us out, given enough time.”
Jet felt her teeth grind together, but she didn’t speak.
Watching her, Richter let his scowl deepen, even as he rubbed his jaw with a free hand.
“Jet, for God’s sake! This can’t be about personal crap. Not now! If you’d put your grudge with me aside and just think for a minute...instead of throwing punches and yelling...I think you’d agree with me. We don’t have the luxury to fight amongst ourselves anymore.”
Jet found herself turning over his words, in spite of himself.
She also found herself reminded of how he ended up the leader of this rebellion...the human side of it, at least.
Richter still might turn out to be a sociopath, but he was good with words.
He paused, still studying her face. He didn’t look at Trazen at all now she noticed, only her. He seemed to think their cooperation hinged on her. Or maybe he really did think he needed her, even more than he needed
Trazen.
His eyes held an added meaning when he said, “We’re alike in this, Jet. Remember? We are, as much as you hate it...as much as you’ll deny it up and down and swear at anyone who points it out. You and I are alike, kitten. Practical. Practical to the damned bone. It’s why you never outed me in that Palace. It’s why you went along with things when you first got culled.”
His brown eyes glittered harder in the path lights that shone into the pagoda.
“...It’s why you’ll work with me now,” he added, his voice deeper. “As much as you hate me, you need me, too, Jet. You know you do.”
Jet frowned.
Just like he’d said, she felt some part of her recoil at Richter’s words. She hated the idea that anything about the two of them could be alike...but she couldn’t really disagree with him, either. In truth, Richter’s words almost exactly mirrored thoughts Jet herself had had about the two of them. Clearly Richter had picked up on the same thing.
They were alike, she and him.
In this one area at least, they had a similar...tendency.
Ability maybe. Maybe even curse.
Jet, like Richter, could strip her personal feelings out of the equation almost entirely, if she felt the situation required it. She could stop caring about the means if they interfered with the ends...at least when those ends really mattered to her. She’d done that since she’d arrived in the Green Zone. Arguably, it was one reason she’d survived.
It might even be why Richter and Anaze had chosen her.
Even as a kid, Jet had been practical, maybe even to an inhuman degree. She’d always thought the pits had done that to her, but not everyone was like Jet in the pits either. She remembered her mother muttering about Jet’s ability to take her own feelings out of the equation, even back when Jet attended the skag school.
Maybe that made her an ideologue of some kind, like Richter.
Maybe it made her something else.
Either way, like Richter, she was what she was.
She also wanted what she wanted. She wanted her mom safe. She wanted her brother safe, and she wanted him to grow up to a better, less soul-crushing world. She wanted the human race to do more than simply survive. She wanted her uncle and aunt to do more than just die slowly in the skag pits or be forced to live as slaves...or be eaten.
She wanted her people to be free again. Really free. Not living in the shadows like cockroaches, feeding off the poisoned scraps left by psychotic Nirreth like Isreti.
She wanted the human race to remember who they used to be.
She wanted them to be something better this time, maybe.
She was willing, as Richter termed it, to be “practical” towards those ends.
Even if that meant making a deal with the devil himself.
THE SPECTACLE
Jet leaned over the high-tech sharpening stone, pressing the edge of her sword to the crystal-white material. Sparks flew from the edge, but didn’t wear down or damage the blade. She watched, eyes narrowed, but didn’t really have most of her attention focused there.
Sharpening the blade in here was really just for show.
All part of the spectacle...which is why the Nirreth media stood around her now, snapping images of her in her sense suit while Black spat off a cascade of bright orange sparks.
Dark make-up already surrounded her almond-shaped eyes, making them darker-looking, she’d been told. Making her look more feral, more animal-like. Light gold thread wove into the dark patterns of the sense-suit...Trazen’s colors, but also designed to make her look more deadly by design. Something in the gold thread and the way it ran up her legs and arms made her look almost machine-like on the big monitors, she’d been told. They had learned to capitalize on Jet’s assets, including an ability to look dangerous, despite her small size.
Only her hair hung down in more of a feminine style, long and black and curled by the stylists who oversaw how she looked in the Rings matches.
This match was special. Her first challenge match.
The first challenge match ever against two female human opponents...although Jet strongly suspected the “human” designation should probably be in quotes in relation to Bukka. Regardless, Bukka had tested human enough for the Rings Board to qualify her.
That, or someone paid a heck of a lot of money to make sure she did.
Jet fought to keep everything else out of her head. She knew they might scan her mind in here, especially since First Son Isreti had come out as one of Bukka’s major sponsors. As a result, not only did he have a lot of money vested in the match’s outcome, but he also had a big hand in designing the spectacle of the match itself.
Jet felt Trazen standing behind her, behind that row of reporters, but made herself not look at him, either. Some part of her wanted to look at him. For reassurance maybe. For some sign that he thought she might not end up gutted on the floor of the Rings arena before the day ended.
Swallowing, Jet shoved that out of her mind, too.
She found her thoughts drifting back to the night of Tyra’s party. Maybe because of the venom, she could still remember every detail of their long talk under that white-painted pavillion that stood on a Nirreth-made lake at the base of a giant Nirreth-made waterfall.
Tyra and Anslom hadn’t said much, not once Richter got there.
Trazen remained relatively quiet too, listening more often than he participated, although he asked pointed questions on more than a few occasions, especially about the plans for today, meaning the day of the challenge match itself. Trazen never left Jet’s side for the rest of that meeting...or let go of her with his arm or his tail.
He stung her a few more times, too, as the night wore on and the venom began to lose its edge. By the last one, she practically sat in Trazen’s lap, but even then, both of them kept the majority of their focus on Richter, sharing notes in the background as they tried to decide how much of what he said was likely to be true, and in what ways they should risk trusting him with their own lives, much less the fate of either species.
That left Jet and Richter to do most of the actual talking.
They talked for a long time.
For the first time Jet could remember since she’d met him, Richter told her things.
He told her a lot of things.
Of course, Jet had no idea how many of those things were true. She knew Richter likely would have omitted a lot. He probably exaggerated other things he’d said, or obscured details. Some of what he told her might have been made up out of whole cloth.
Trazen agreed with all of those assessments, too.
Even so, Jet found herself believing that Richter had told her more truth than he’d ever told her before.
Something in Richter seemed to exhale, the longer the five of them sat at the stone table under the pagoda. The longer he explained his plan to them, what he thought needed to happen next, the more his voice changed, the more his eyes held less of that smug gleam she always associated with him and more urgency and sincerity.
It might all have been an act, of course.
She knew Richter was smart. As much as she hated to admit it, Richter might even be a genius. But she found herself thinking it hadn’t all been an act, even so. Truthfully, he came off as desperate almost. At the very least, he seemed like a man who knew that a noose hung over his head...a man gearing up for a last stand.
He confessed to Jet that he hadn’t realized what ideologues Isreti and his supporters truly were before they took power. He’d thought all of that “return to the old way” stuff had been mostly rhetoric, but from what he told Jet, he now really thought Isreti and his followers believed that rhetoric. Richter told Jet that Isreti’s “Old Way” doctrine had become akin to a religious movement in some parts of the Nirreth world, that Isreti and his followers were recruiting more and more Nirreth into the fold every day.
Young Nirreth mostly succumbed to the ideology...ambitious Nirreth who were more vulnerable to appeals to their egos and the promise of u
nlimited sex with human slaves. Nirreth who would welcome the opportunity to do basically whatever they wanted with impunity when it came to the local race...and even to those Nirreth dubbed “race-traitors.”
Richter said it was still mostly a fringe movement, that most Nirreth didn’t believe in that crap, either...but that all of that might change once Isreti was crowned king.
Which meant they had to act now.
Richter had already heard rumblings of death squads going out to hunt the remaining human skags once Isreti was king. According to those rumors, the plan was to butcher the old and others who made unattractive slaves wholesale and either eat them or use them as fertilizer. The rest would be rounded up and bred for food or slaves or both. Richter said all of this was already planned, and would begin following the official coronation.
According to Richter, that would be two days after the challenge match.
He saw the challenge match itself as their last chance to stop this. It was their last chance to do anything before the death squads began their work.
Jet gritted her teeth at the memory, holding the edge of Black to the white sharpening stone.
Killing her was part of the ritual, Richter said.
Having Bukka murder Jet was the first nail in the coffin of what remained of the human fighting spirit, the idea that humans had any spirit to lose.
Remembering those words now, Jet nodded to herself.
That part felt true, too.
It all felt true really, but the idea that they might be able to stop it...her, Trazen, Richter, Tyra, Anslom and a handful of others...just sounded far-fetched.
Still, she knew sometimes all it took was a single falling domino.
She didn’t really want to be that domino, but if she had to be, then she would.
Alien Apocalypse: The Complete Series (Parts I-IV) Page 76