“No,” Isreti cut in, his voice harsh. “If you were truly a believer in the old ways, you would have walked into that arena and shot her in the head. You would have put her down for disobedience...not cradled her in your tail like she was your only child!”
The silence thickened.
Jet felt more than saw Trazen’s tail slash behind him as well, but he didn’t speak.
“Would you wish to hear the Board’s decision, Ringmaster Trazen?” Isreti said.
Trazen removed his hand from Jet’s neck, but stepped closer to her once he had. “I would know of it, of course, Venerable First Son Isreti.”
Isreti smiled. Jet heard that in his voice, too.
“We will not kill her,” he hissed softly. “But we will confiscate her. She will no longer be kept like a house pet, Trazen, lavished with gifts and rich foods. She will be kept here, at the arena, in the pens that are being wrought for those like her...”
Jet felt Trazen tense again, but he wasn’t touching her, so she had no idea what he was thinking. She knew it didn’t matter. He couldn’t go against Isreti. Not here. Not anywhere most likely, but definitely not here, where he would likely be sentenced to death for treason if he defied him openly in a public forum.
But Jet herself? She no longer had anything left to lose.
They’d killed her family. They’d just told her she’d be sent to a prison where she’d be beaten up, abused by whatever Nirreth felt like abusing her.
She had nothing left to lose.
And she sure as hell wasn’t going back to another Nirreth cell.
She rose to her feet and unsheathed her sword in a single, fluid movement.
For a split second, less than a breath...less than half a beat of her heart...she thought she saw Isreti look at her. His dark eyes widened, accented with kohl and gold powder. A smug smile tugged at his dark Nirreth lips above that white robe and a diamond choker just below his throat.
But Jet was already leaping in the air as she met that dark gaze.
She flexed her muscles without thought, leapt as part of standing, moving even as she felt eyes shift her way, guards step forward, not fast enough to do anything but watch her as her weight rose in the air.
She’d already swung the blade in a clean arc as she continued to rise up in the air.
It didn’t connect until she’d begun to fall.
The combination of her weight falling, the sharpness of the sword, the angle of her blade, the jerk of her hips in midair and her legs as they brought that sword around...it made the blade sing as it sliced through the air.
When Jet’s booted feet hit the ground, she landed in a crouch, the blade behind her, covered in blood, her jaw clenched so hard it hurt.
Isreti’s body remained suspended only a beat longer after she separated his head from his neck. Then, as she exhaled a held breath, panting in another as her eyes shifted up, the giant body with its white cloak fell, collapsing in a heap on the carpet.
The head hit down next to it a split second after.
Silence descended in that whisper of seconds.
The entire amphitheater stared down at the carpeted stage between those two stone pillars, as if struck dumb in disbelief.
Then, from somewhere above, a siren’s wail exploded out of the upper stands.
Jet heard a familiar voice through the noise of the breach alarm, right before Trazen clamped a hand on the back of her neck, yanking her backwards even as his mind filled hers.
It’s Richter! he thought at her, practically yelling it through the venom. It’s Richter and Laksri! They’re here, Jet! They came! They’re already fighting!
Jet stared up at the stands as he shouted in her mind, stumbling backwards as he yanked on her neck, watching as the amphitheater erupted into skirmishes pretty much everywhere her eyes fell. She glanced at the ramp where she’d been looking before, and saw Nirreth fighting down there, shooting at one another down the tunnel into the dark, some of them wearing military uniforms she recognized from when Laksri had been First Son.
As she stared, she realized something else.
It wasn’t only Nirreth fighting.
She could see humans fighting, too.
Somehow, the reality of that alone was enough to wake her up out of her trance.
THE VEIL DROPS
Fighting broke out all around her, the second she snapped back into her mind.
The sound flipped back on, loud, disorienting as she tried to make sense of what happened, what she’d just done...what to do now.
It was only a few seconds...maybe not even that...but time seemed to stretch as she stood there, staring around the giant amphitheater as chaos broke out all around her.
Screams rent the air, human and Nirreth.
Gunfire erupted all around her. Human arms. Pulre, the small, stone-shaped guns that let out explosions that could punch two-meter wide holes in walls at close range. Sandblasters shot at close-range targets while Nirreth handguns and a Nirreth-designed rifle aimed at targets from further distances. One of those rifles Jet recognized and had fired at home; it worked similarly to a lot of human semi-automatic arms, so her uncle had trained her and Biggs to use them. Uncle Draven theorized that particular gun might even have been modeled off one of theirs, so it could fire in more rapid bursts at longer distances.
Humans crouched and stood in stone alcoves, wielding mostly human-made automatic rifles and even some shotguns and handguns. Jet saw a lot of skag-looking humans among those uniformed soldiers, fighting side by side with Nirreth who also fired at Isreti’s guard.
How the hell had they gotten here?
Trazen yanked on her neck again, snapping her out of her fugue.
Get back! he thought at her, once again shouting inside her mind. Get back, Jet! They have guns...a sword won’t help you here...
Jet followed the pull of his hand without knowing what he meant at first.
Everyone had guns. She knew that.
Everyone around them seemed to be firing at someone. What good would it do for either of them to try and run now? No one seemed to be paying any attention to them anyway. From what Jet could tell, a good chunk of the stadium had erupted into one big gun fight, with civilian Nirreth and humans screaming and hiding among the bleachers, trying not to get hit by the edges of a stray pulre charge or a sandblaster.
Trazen’s mind nudged hers and Jet’s eyes shifted down.
For the first time since gunfire erupted, her focus shifted away from the skirmishes happening above them and to either side...and back to the guards who’d been standing around Isreti when she killed him.
Jet! Move...now! Get back!
She followed the tug of Trazen’s fingers without taking her eyes off the row of guards. Her mind had clicked on for real by then, the tactical part of it anyway.
She could see murder in those eyes, the hard coil of tails, some with stingers already partway extended.
These were the zealots.
These were the Nirreth who hadn’t just feared Isreti...they’d loved him.
Run for the ramp, Jet! Go! Trazen shouted in her mind.
Pulling her around behind him with both hands, he turned and shoved her in the direction of that same ramp, his arm and hands like spring-loaded steel. He used his tail to shove at her again when she hesitated.
Join the others! Go! Go, Jet! Now!
“Get her alive!” the guard in front said in heavily-accented Nargili. His dark eyes never left Jet’s face, the hatred seething in his nearly black irises. “She must stand trial. She must stand the trial of Retribution. Her blood will decorate the holy altars. We will rip apart her family for real. Kill everyone she ever knew...” He looked at Trazen with equal hatred. “Including this blood-traitor scum and whoever has helped him...”
Jet’s mind spun, fighting with his words.
Her heart lifted as she replayed what he’d said, disbelief twisting his words as she struggled with what they really meant. Part of her tried to make th
em mean what she wanted them to mean. Another part of her refused to go there, didn’t even want to let herself hope.
Kill them for real?
Did that mean what it sounded like it meant? Was her family not dead?
She continued to fight with the angry Nirreth’s words, replaying them over and over in her head. She tried to remember every aspect of what happened inside the arena. She hadn’t looked at the bodies outside of virtual. She hadn’t seen their faces. Had they killed two other humans? Dressed up two innocents in virtual to look like her mother and Biggs?
Her heart rose more, a violent stab of hope in her chest.
Guilt lived there too, the idea that someone else had died for her.
But that hope burned brighter.
The guard was walking towards her now with long, heavy strides, his tail darting and coiling behind him, that hatred growing hotter in his eyes. Half-hunched, he looked like he might be readying for a leap and Jet watched as he pulled a black baton off his belt.
Two of the other Nirreth pulled their own wands, using sharp flicks of their wrists to extend them to twice their length. Blue and white current at the ends created wave-like beams of light, hissing as they spat sparks.
She’d seen those before, too.
They used them on her on Astet. They’d used them on everyone in the slave pens whenever there was a fight, or a group of humans went crazy or wouldn’t be silent. One shock from one of those and Jet would be out for a few hours.
Trazen shoved at her shoulder again, getting between her and the guards.
“Run, Jet!” he growled.
Before she could recover her balance, Trazen leapt past her, tackling the first of the guards and snarling, slamming the arm holding the baton down on the arena floor with an audible crack. Jet watched in shock as Trazen bit into the other Nirreth’s neck, tearing out a hunk of flesh with his teeth right before he stung the male in the throat and leapt off him.
Staring down in shock, momentarily paralyzed, she watched him wrench a gun out of the guard’s side holster and fire at another of those guards before they could reach him with the baton. He hit one in the side of the body.
Only then did Jet realize the weapon was a pulre.
The guard fell like a stone, half his body missing in a misting spray of blood and Trazen leapt for that body too, taking the second guard’s weapon and aiming it upwards while the rest of the guards scattered.
Two of them used the stone pillars as shields from the second pulre.
Trazen crouched over the second Nirreth’s body, growling, then moved again, attacking the next nearest guard when he peered out from behind the pillar. He shot at another when that one tried to take advantage of his distraction to shoot at him from behind the other pillar.
Jet couldn’t help but stare. She’d never seen Trazen fight before.
She saw the strategy behind how he moved...a near grace. He’d already taken down three of the five, with the fourth visibly injured from catching part of Trazen’s second pulre blast.
More would come, though.
Trazen needed to get out of there, too.
“Go, Jet!” he snarled again, not sparing her a look. “I will find you!”
That time, she decided to do what he said.
She couldn’t do much good here right now. Not unarmed.
Even as she thought it, she darted forward, grabbing the first pulre Trazen fired and shoving it into the pocket of her sense-suit. It would need at least another minute to recharge, but might come in handy later. Glancing up one last time, it hit her that the Rings Judges were no longer on the padded bench, or anywhere within visual range. They’d disappeared entirely, along with the guards who had stood by the stadium wall behind them.
They must have taken the judges out that way, Jet thought...through a hidden door, or maybe down the same ramp where the most intense gun-play was happening now.
If it was the latter, she didn’t like their chances much.
She felt movement to her right and turned, reaching for the hilt of Black without thought. Feeling as much as seeing a body rushing towards her, she unsheathed and swung the sword before she’d identified the shape, stepping back as she swiveled her hips. The arc of the blade managed to force him to stop, and Jet found herself facing off with a Nirreth who’d apparently intended to tackle her from the side.
Seeing the pulre as he ripped it out of a thigh holster––she, Jet corrected in her own mind, as she ripped it out of a thigh holster, since this Nirreth was female––Jet darted forward without thought. She closed the distance between them, twisting sideways out of the pulre’s range even as she brought the sword down, hard, on the other’s wrist.
She severed the Nirreth’s hand in one clean cut.
The hand and the pulre fell to the arena floor.
The Nirreth whose hand it had been screamed, a blood-curdling, high-pitched sound that Jet had only ever heard in Rings, never in real life.
Another pulre blast went off to her left, and Jet turned, still gripping the sword, panting when she saw that Trazen had shot another guard who had been heading for her.
“Jet! Behind you!” he shouted.
She heard frustration in Trazen’s voice, but he’d found another gun, one of the bigger hand-helds that time and was already firing on another of the guards.
Jet turned to find the one she’d shot trying to pick up the pulre with her good hand, to untangle it from the fingers of the hand that Jet had already cut off.
Stepping forward, Jet didn’t wait, but kicked the Nirreth hard in the face, causing her to grunt and throw her jaw up, her head back. Jet swung the sword up in a neat arc, beheading the female Nirreth the way she’d done with Isreti.
That time, she only stared at the beheaded body, watching it twitch, for a bare second.
Crouching down, she picked up the unfired pulre, gripping it in her hand even as she used the female Nirreth’s clothes to wipe off her sword before she slammed it back into the scabbard. When she turned, she saw Trazen behind one of the pillars, still firing at Nirreth guards. She shot at one of them from where she stood, then realized that was a mistake when they turned their focus on her. Realizing she’d already used up that pulre, that the other probably wasn’t charged yet, she cursed.
She was out in the open, too.
“Jet!” Trazen snarled. “Get out of here! I don’t need your help!”
Realizing he was right, Jet turned, sprinting for the transparent wall of the arena even as one of the guards aimed a sandblaster at her retreating back.
Luckily those things had crappy range, and not the most precise of targeting functions.
They were really only good for point-blank shots, kind of like an old-style blunderbuss. Even so, Jet ducked when it went off, feeling her adrenaline and heart rate spike. She ran lower to the ground in reflex even as she saw an arm signaling her nearer to the stadium wall. Whoever it was stood next to the second ramp leading below the stadium, the one that Bukka had emerged from earlier.
“Jet! Come here!” Alice shouted. “Crazy mammal!”
Seeing Alice’s face there and hearing her voice, Jet changed direction without thought, running all-out towards the other woman.
She reached her in a handful of seconds, out of breath and gasping. Slamming her back against the wall, she winced as the sword dug into her spine.
She stood there, recovering, as Alice fired down the ramp from behind cover.
Looking around at where they were, Jet realized the stadium overhang provided a fair bit of protection from above, at least until they drew fire from the arena floor. Jet remained where she was while Alice continued to discharge her human-made rifle, not wanting to distract her as she shot down the ramp into the dark. Looking past the other woman’s armored vest, Jet saw a handful of Nirreth on the other side of the opening, wearing Laksri’s colors.
Next to them, four more humans were shooting down the ramp, too. One had turned the other direction now, though, and wa
s covering Trazen from behind a short wall that ringed the lower level of the arena floor.
After squeezing off another volley of shots, Alice drew back and hit a button on the side of her rifle, causing the empty magazine to slide out a few inches on the bottom. Yanking it out, she slammed a full magazine in to take its place, producing it from a pouch she wore lengthwise across her chest and shoulder. Jet noticed only then that Alice still wore the shimmering black gown she’d had on for the official ceremony, only now she had a flak jacket over it.
Before she returned to the firefight, she looked Jet over.
“You all right?” she said.
“You got another one of those?” Jet shouted above the sound of gunfire.
Alice gave her a small smile, quirking an eyebrow. “You’d probably just shoot off your own foot anyway,” she said wryly.
Before Jet could retort back, Alice turned, firing down the ramp again.
After a few more minutes, the firing began to die down.
Jet heard one of the Nirreth on the other side of the ramp, also a female, let out a growling hiss in Nargili. “All clear!” she said.
Other voices echoed her words.
“Clear!” a human seconded in English.
“Clear!” said Alice, lowering her rifle. Alice turned then, looking at Jet, her eyes serious. “You ready? We’re getting you out of here.”
Jet bit her lip, fighting frustration. “What about Trazen?”
Alice’s expression turned amused. “You worried about Trazen? You seen him fight, mammal? I would be more worried about his opponents...”
Jet didn’t return the smile. “You don’t have a gun for me?”
“We need to get you out alive, Jet,” Alice said, her smile fading as her voice turned borderline impatient. “You still not understand, mammal? You killed Isreti. They will be looking for you. Richter and Laksri and Trazen...they all think you are still our best hope at uniting the Nirreth and humans outside the Green Zone. My orders are to bring you back alive.”
Alien Apocalypse: The Complete Series (Parts I-IV) Page 82