He was reacting to Trazen. He was reacting to her. If she focused on Trazen or did anything to heighten the emotion she could see there, it would only make him dig in his heels more. Everything about him right then looked geared for a fight.
In the same breath, it occurred to her that Richter knew that, too. It was why Richter had been gentle with him just now.
She found herself mirroring Richter’s tone, and nearly his posture.
“Laks,” she said, patient, folding her arms. “I appreciate your concern. But there’s no time for it right now, okay? I can do this. If you let me take Tyra and Anaze...and Alice...we’ll be in and out. The longer we wait, the bigger the risk.”
“You heard her,” Richter seconded. He glanced at Jet, giving her an appreciative look, as if realizing she was working with him. “Give her those three, Laks. Let’s do this. We’ll be right outside the entrance, waiting for her...she’ll know the fastest way to the generators. She can shut the whole thing down faster than someone else could even find it.”
He glanced at Jet, raising an eyebrow as if to ask her if he was lying about that part.
Jet nodded, stepping forward as she confirmed his words.
“He’s right,” she said, her voice confident. “I know exactly where the generators are...and I know where they are in relation to the water processor. This won’t be hard. No one even has to know we’re there, apart from anyone working down there.” Hesitating, she added. “Do I need to know what that jewel thing is you were talking about?”
Trazen growled, “Yes. You do.”
She kept her eyes on Laksri, still not looking at Trazen.
She found herself aware of Trazen though, enough that it was difficult not to look. Enough that she found herself biting the inside of her cheek.
She saw Laksri look at Trazen. She didn’t let her gaze follow.
“Laks?” she said, quieter.
After another beat, Laksri seemed to back down. His tail grew less violent behind his back and he nodded, looking directly at Jet.
“The Stone belongs to whoever leads the Nirreth,” he said, his voice more subdued. “It is what we must get before Isreti’s people do. Much of the populace will be behind us, if they see our rule as legitimate. It is why breaching the compound tonight is so important.”
Jet nodded, still keeping her eyes off Trazen with an effort.
“Okay. Well, we’ll get you inside. Do you know where this jewel-thing is?”
“The Loran Stone,” Laksri corrected her. “No. I know where it was before, but I suspect it has been moved.”
“Where was it before?”
“They kept it in the library,” Richter said, answering before Laksri could. “It was part of the ceiling design, Jet.” He smiled at her faintly when she turned. “You spent some time in there, as I recall. Do you remember the big blue-green stone that made up the apex of the dome?”
Jet stared at him, then blinked. “Yes.”
Richter made a flourish-like gesture with his hand and Jet’s eyebrows rose higher.
“They kept it in plain sight like that?” she said.
Richter shrugged. “Anyone who stole it would end up in Retribution so fast their head would spin,” he said. “No one steals the Loran Stone, Jet.”
She let out a short laugh. “Aren’t we about to steal it?” she said.
“I am the First Son,” Laksri said, hissing softly.
Jet returned her gaze to him. Laksri was looking at Trazen again though, his eyes and voice cold. “I would not be stealing it...” he said. “It is rightfully mine.”
Jet didn’t follow his gaze. She stared straight at Laksri instead, keeping her face still with an effort. Looking back at Jet, Laksri let out another purring hiss.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Jet?” he asked her, his voice softer.
Jet saw the concern behind the question that time. Seeing the hardness in his eyes melt, she had to fight another, different swell of emotion. After a bare pause, she nodded.
“It should be me,” she said, mirroring his quieter tone. “It makes sense, Laks. You know it does.”
He didn’t answer at first. Then he looked at Trazen again.
Again, Jet refused to follow his gaze to the other Nirreth.
Even so, her jaw hardened, enough that she wondered what expression her face wore. She also felt Trazen looking at her, and didn’t know how to feel about that, either.
After what felt like a long pause, Laksri stepped back, giving her a short bow.
“As you wish, Jet Tetsuo,” he said, his voice formal that time, carefully polite. “Take whoever and whatever you need. Our resources are at your disposal.”
Looking at his face, Jet couldn’t help but see the grief there.
She couldn’t let herself think about that right then either, though.
Everything moved fast after that, but it still seemed to take too long.
By the time Jet, Anaze, Tyra and Alice stood on the grass at the edge of the stone canal, the sun was already falling in the sky. Jet watched as it dipped behind the trees that stood in a long row behind the barn, then looked back at the slow-moving water.
The canal disappeared into the ground right in front of her, swallowed by a thick stone pipe that led under the second compound wall.
When she looked back, she found Trazen staring at her.
She had trouble holding his gaze.
Unlike with Laksri, however, she couldn’t read the look there at all.
Looking away with an effort, she pulled her goggles down over her eyes. Then, still avoiding looking directly at Trazen, she swung her arms, glancing at Anaze, then at Tyra and Alice.
“Everybody ready?” she said.
Alice let out a characteristic snort, pulling down her own goggles.
“Remember,” Jet said. “Conserve oxygen. Turn it off whenever you can. We have no idea how much we might end up needing.”
Heads nodded. Anaze nudged her with an arm, as if to tell her to get on with it already.
All four of them were barefoot, wearing form-fitting shorts and tight, long-sleeved shirts. They each had a small oxygen pack that rested at the base of their backs, knives strapped to various parts of their bodies and goggles with headlamps.
Jet has Black strapped to her back, too.
Anaze, Tyra and Alice all had guns bound to their backs in lieu of swords, locked into waterproof bags that fit snugly in the space between their shoulder blades. The packs lay flat so they wouldn’t cause any drag, or catch on anything if the tunnel grew tight or had protrusions that didn’t show up on the plans.
Jet looked at her small team, thinking about each one individually.
Tyra was probably their best shot. Alice had the most military experience. Anaze might be the best at hand-to-hand.
Jet would lead them, though. Mostly because of her “weird spatial thing” as Anaze called it, and the fact that she knew the compound best, even compared to Alice or Anaze. Jet knew the canal tunnels from hours of staring at the maps too, both as a slave of the Royals and from Richter refreshing her memory on them today.
Of course, Jet also knew that the maps weren’t wholly accurate, at least inside the compound itself. She had to assume the same might be true of the canals.
But there wasn’t much to say or think about on that score now.
“Okay,” she said, smiling in what she hoped was a reassuring way to the other three. “Time to play follow the leader.”
Without another word, or another glance at anyone they were leaving behind, Jet jumped feet-first into the canal, holding her goggles tight to her face with one hand.
It only occurred to her as she hit the water that maybe she should have left a message behind for her mother and Biggs.
By then, it was too late.
She didn’t wait for the other three splashes before she began to swim, stroking hard towards the opening at the base of the stone wall. Laksri’s people had already taken down the security grid he
re, by shorting out the terminals on this segment of wall, but Jet still hesitated a bare breath before swimming through the opening.
Nothing happened. No alarms went off.
More to the point, no electrical grids cut off parts of Jet’s body.
Exhaling in relief, Jet held her breath at the end, only igniting the oxygen when she couldn’t hold it any longer. She took a deep breath from the supply then clicked it back off, hoping she might breath less if she was more conscious about it. Touching the switch on her goggles to turn on the headlamp, she glanced behind her only then, and saw Tyra, Anaze and Alice all swimming hard through the tunnel, their headlamps already shining with a green luminescence. The lamps shown eerily through the gloom of the water, barely making a dent in the shadow their bodies cut against the light from the dome behind them.
That light was dimming already, too...turning orange and pink from the sunset.
She should have said goodbye to Trazen.
The thought brought a sharp gasp. It caught her off guard, intense enough that she couldn’t think past it at all at first. She hadn’t had a single moment alone with him. She hadn’t seen him at all before just now, by the banks of the canal.
Really, they hadn’t had any time alone together for a lot longer than that.
Laksri cornered her before Jet and the others had finished getting ready, telling her again how sorry he was, trying to talk her out of going into the palace herself. He’d argued that they might be able to set up some kind of communication link between her and the team instead...that she wouldn’t have to go in personally but could guide them from behind the wall.
He argued again that she was too important to risk for something like this.
Jet listened without really going there with him, not wanting to get him riled up before she and her team could get out the door. When he finished, she just told him they could talk about it when she got back...after he had the Loran Stone back in his possession. He backed down after she’d said it a few more times.
Well, and after Alice argued with him, not long after she walked into the staging area. Alice seemed to have no fear of telling anyone off, even the First Son of the Royals. She’d ordered him out of that part of the barn as soon as she saw him hanging around Jet.
Even so, Jet could tell Laksri knew that she’d basically blown him off.
Hell, she’d been dressing for the canal in front of him as he spoke. He’d watched her undress, but Jet tried not to care about that, either.
She suspected that annoyed Alice as much as anything.
In the end, Laksri asked her if she would have refrained from going if it had been Trazen asking, instead of him.
Laksri apologized almost as soon as he’d said it, but he couldn’t un-say it. Anyway, Jet could tell he wanted to talk about it more, that he hadn’t gotten past the thing with her and Trazen, either...apology or not. But she couldn’t think about that now, either, not until she knew if she’d even get out of this thing alive. Despite what she’d told everyone, she knew a few dozen things about this breach could go horribly wrong, that the whole thing with her and Trazen and Laksri could end up being a moot point anyway.
She should have said goodbye to Trazen though.
She should have really looked at him. Something.
Shoving both Nirreth out of her mind, she swam harder, focusing on the dark water up ahead. She clicked the oxygen back on here and there, taking breaths where needed, but most of her focus remained on the pipe, which had already grown smaller in the fifteen or so minutes since they’d started swimming.
Apart from the dim greenish glow of their headlamps, the tunnel was entirely dark. Jet looked up periodically, at the top part of the curve, looking for oxygen bubbles of any kind, any irregularities that might help them if something bad happened down here. Since about ten meters past the opening, however, the pipe was completely full of water. If their oxygen ran out, they wouldn’t have any kind of recourse there.
The pipe aimed steeply downward now, too.
Jet felt a kind of pressure building in her chest as she swam deeper into the chasm. Down here, her headlamp scarcely seemed to penetrate the darkness much at all.
She saw no protrusions on the tunnel walls, but algae grew, here and there. She saw what might have been snails a few times too, along with other small creatures she didn’t stop to identify as she turned her head to survey the different segments of the pipe.
She checked the amount of time she had left on her oxygen tank.
Forty-two minutes.
Richter estimated it would take them at least thirty to get to the water processing plant, at the bottom of the compound.
The pipe grew smaller after the next connecting point.
Then smaller again, until Jet had to fight not to have a reaction to being in the tighter space.
It felt like they’d been swimming for a long time. She checked her oxygen again.
Thirty-two minutes of air left now.
There was barely room to use her arms to swim in the new segment of pipe; Jet found herself mostly kicking to make her way forward. She was still adjusting to the change when the pipe altered course abruptly, curving into blackness and then aiming sharply downward.
Jet felt like she was freefalling at the new angle.
Something shifted in the way the water moved, although it may have been suction as much as gravity, or some other affect of the tightening pipe. She found herself clicking on the oxygen after she’d gone a few dozen meters down, fighting with the part of herself that wanted to breathe harder, that was struggling with the enclosed space and the odd angle, however unconsciously. She’d never been claustrophobic, but something about the smaller space and the head-down dive made her feel like she needed more air.
She swam for what felt like forever at that angle.
It was hard to tell how much she was actually swimming now, and how much gravity and suction were pulling her forwards into the dark.
She couldn’t really look back to make sure the others were behind her...there wasn’t room to turn around far enough to check, not with Black strapped to her back and the small space of the pipe and the angle that had her almost vertical and head down. So she just kicked her way forward, hoping one of them would find a way to signal her if they needed her to stop...and hoping all three of them would be with her when...if...she finally reached the bottom.
Twenty-one minutes of air left now.
Abruptly, Jet hit into a wall of the pipe and let out a gasp.
She’d hit another sharp L-curve, this one flattening out the pipe below her.
Feeling herself start to panic when she realized the next segment of pipe was even smaller still than the one she’d be leaving behind, it hit her suddenly that she might not be able to twist her body enough to get through the curve at all. The idea panicked her more as she thought back on where she’d just come, and the unlikelihood of having enough air to retrace their steps.
She was still still struggling, trying to jam her legs and body into that sharp curve when someone slammed into her from above.
Jet let out a shocked gasp and looked up, feeling her panic spike as Anaze’s body tangled into hers. He seemed to have realized what had happened by then, and struggled to kick his way back up the pipe, to get off her. Then someone else slammed into him and all three of them...or maybe four of them by then...crashed into the bottom of the curve.
The suction continued to pull at Jet’s legs.
The intensity of it worsened her panic as she fought to climb at least partway off the hole before they could jam her inside it. That grew harder to do as they struggled to climb off her from above. That struggle went on for what felt like minutes, making her breath come in harder pants, turning her fear into full-blown terror as the water yanked harder on her legs.
The pipe in front of her tried to pull her legs down further, but she kept her hands flat against the walls of the higher section, holding herself out so she wouldn’t get stuck and en
d up getting all four of them killed down here.
Her arms were starting to shake from the exertion of holding them out of that hole.
Eventually, the weight on her lifted.
As soon as it did, Jet let out a breath.
She didn’t wait but immediately re-examined the pipe, knowing it was critical now that they find a way through. They definitely didn’t have enough air to get back up...and Jet had serious doubts they would make it back up that pipe again anyway. They would likely just end up exhausting themselves, swimming in place as they tried to climb both gravity and the strength of the current to reach the top bend.
No, the only way out was forward now.
She focused back on the L-shaped curve in which was partway stuck.
She needed to figure out a way to get all the way through. She couldn’t curve her body enough to make the turn; even going feet-forward, she kept getting stuck on the wall of pipe behind her. She was still sitting there on the edge, using her hands to brace herself against the walls, when someone grabbed her shoulder and she looked up.
She could just make out the shadowed forms of the other three.
Anaze hung directly above her, bracing his body against the pipe with his arms and legs and shoulders, holding up his own weight along with that of Tyra and Alice to keep all three of them from smashing down on top of Jet’s head.
Jet looked up at him through the goggles as Anaze tapped her shoulder, then motioned towards her sword, tugging sharply on the taped grip of Black’s hilt.
Of course. The scabbard was in the way.
That’s why she couldn’t bend her back.
Jet felt her jaw clench, realizing how much she’d lost her ability to think in those long-feeling moments of panic. Now she focused all of her will on getting out of the scabbard inside the narrow confines of the pipe. She fought to get the strap off her shoulder in the small space, then, when she couldn’t do that, she drew the knife still stuck in a smaller sheath near her oxygen tank and started to cut the damned thing off.
Both ends of the sword slammed against the walls of the pipe, making a hollow clanging sound as she sawed through the thick material. In a matter of minutes, she managed to cut all the way through. The whole mess had been costly though, in terms of time.
Alien Apocalypse: The Complete Series (Parts I-IV) Page 85