Alien Apocalypse: The Complete Series (Parts I-IV)

by JC Andrijeski

  She only had six minutes of air left now.

  Twisting her body around, Jet pulled herself entirely out of the curve of the pipe with an effort, fighting against the suction pulling her down. Once she was free of the smaller pipe, she angled and finally shoved the sword and scabbard in ahead of her, watching both get sucked in by the faster-moving current. After a brief pause, she unhooked her oxygen tank too, and pulled it out from around her so it wouldn’t be in the way.

  Anaze grabbed her arm as she did that, shaking his head, but she shrugged him off.

  They had to get the hell out of here. Six minutes wasn’t going to buy her enough time to be worth her getting stuck in the smaller pipe. She had to hope she would catch up to the oxygen tank before she needed it.

  Taking a last big hit of oxygen off the tube, she turned it off and released the tank into the smaller pipe, watching it disappear through the dark opening like the sword. Then Jet held her breath and shoved her feet and legs back inside the L-shaped curve.

  She’d be totally blind going this way, but no help for that, either.

  She barely had time to think before she managed to jam her legs and chest the rest of the way through the cramped opening. Holding the lip briefly in her fingers once she was all the way through, she let go all at once and got yanked roughly down the narrow pipe.

  She only prayed Tyra, Anaze and Alice would be able to follow her.

  She was starting to panic again when she first saw the light.

  No curves or protrusions caught hold of her oxygen gear or her sword; Jet was holding the same breath she’d sucked in from the oxygen pack before she jammed herself into the narrower segment of pipe. Now her lungs were starting to burn for air. She felt like she might black out. She hadn’t exhaled her held breath yet, hoping to hold on as long as she possibly could, hoping it might prolong her time before she needed oxygen for real.

  Also, she was nearly desperate by then; she worried she might suck in a few lungfuls of water the second she exhaled. So yeah, she felt like she was on the verge of passing out when she saw that glimmer of light between her feet.

  Everything changed really fast after that.

  Really fast.

  Meaning, Jet saw the light...

  ...and then she was rushing towards it and light was all she could see.

  She hit the open air so fast it made her yelp.

  She let out another sharp gasp as her feet shot out the end of a pipe. Her lungs filled with air, as much in reflex as anything, and then Jet was in freefall, heading straight down with nothing below her to slow her fall. Her arms and legs pinwheeled as she tried to slow her fall...

  ...Then she crashed into the surface of the water below.

  She sank and sank before she reached the end of gravity’s arc.

  Then she was kicking her way up, following bubbles, feeling a kind of elation run through her at the flicker of light she could see overhead.

  Air––she would have as much air as she could breathe in a few seconds.

  She was going to make it. She was going to live.

  She was nearly to the top when she heard a surprised shout muffled by the intervening water.

  It came from directly above her...right before the heavy splash of another body hit the lake not far from where Jet swam. Smiling as the meaning of the sound penetrated, Jet continued kicking her way up to the surface.

  A few seconds later she was breaching and gasping.

  She focused her eyes, still breathing hard and looking around at the lake, when another sound jerked her eyes upwards. She found the pipe coming out of the rock wall right as another person shot out the end of it, some twenty meters over her head.

  That second person let out a familiar-sounding shriek.

  Then they were dropping like a stone, shrieking again on the way down before they crashed into the surface of the lake.

  That was two.

  Luckily, Jet didn’t have to wait long to know if they’d all made it through.

  The third person to emerge from the pipe didn’t make a sound.

  She shot out and then down in a perfect arc, feet forward, arms clasped neatly around a narrow chest. She went into the water in a perfect line, leaving almost no splash as she disappeared beneath the surface.

  Not far from Jet, Anaze breached the surface of the lake, gasping in air, his black hair plastered to his head. Once he’d recovered enough to slow his breaths, he looked around the lake too. Seeing her watching him, he grinned at her, giving her a thumb’s up and then going back to treading water with his hands and arms.

  Another head surfaced a few meters away. Tyra.

  The last person to breach, Alice, held something in her hands. She switched it to one hand while Jet watched, gripping it in front of her with long fingers as she swam directly towards Jet, mostly using her other arm. Her narrow face looked grim.

  “You trying to kill me, mammal?” she grunted, swimming closer.

  When she reached Jet, she thrust the thing she held towards Jet’s chest.

  “You might be needing this.”

  It was Black.

  Jet grinned, unable to help herself. Taking the sword from the other woman’s hand, she laughed as she looked at it; she couldn’t help it.

  Even in here, Alice called her a mammal.

  Still grinning at the older woman, Jet knotted the cut loop of the scabbard’s strap and slung it around her neck and shoulder. Then she motioned towards the far shore with a jerk of her head.

  “Come on,” she said.

  She didn’t wait that time either, but began to swim...awkwardly since the scabbard no longer sat in a good line on her back. Anaze swam next to her, using the same modified version of breast-stroke that she did, keeping his head above the water. They were followed by Tyra, who swam more or less the same way.

  It was the stroke every skag human used if they learned how to swim, the same stroke they used in the ocean and the Sound near the skag pits of Vancouver. No one wanted to put their faces in that water; they all swam like dogs instead, their heads in the open air.

  Only Alice swam differently. Readjusting her goggles on her face, she put her head down and aimed her body with clean strokes towards shore.

  The way Alice swam was a lot faster. She was already a few body lengths ahead of all of them by the time Jet began to watch her, fascinated by the precision of her arms and legs. She might need to ask Alice to teach her that.

  Past Alice and up ahead, Jet could already see the white outlines of the strangely shaped pipes and looming water-purification equipment she remembered from the one and only time she’d been down here before. She’d been exploring that day...looking for a way out, mostly, and wondering if the underground canals might be her best option.

  It was pretty strange to think she’d just used the same strategy to break back in.

  “You really do know where the generators are, right?” Anaze asked her from where he swam on her other side. “You weren’t just saying that to placate Laksri?”

  Jet grinned at him, then glanced at Tyra, who grinned at her back.

  “Of course I do,” Jet said, tilting her head, Nirreth fashion. “I’m the queen of the Rings.”

  Anaze exhaled in a half-humorous snort, as if he couldn’t help it.

  Tyra threw back her head, laughing for real.

  “Shut up, all of you!” Alice whispered loudly, pausing long enough to look back at them, treading water as her sculpted mouth turned in a downwards frown. “I hear you noisy, baby mammals even through the water! Shut up!”

  At that, Tyra and Jet couldn’t help themselves...they cracked up for real.

  When Alice let out a disgusted sound, turning over to her stomach and stroking away from them with swifter pulls of her arms and harder kicks of her legs, even Anaze snickered a little, watching her go.

  Once on the shore, they didn’t waste a lot of time.

  Those who still had their oxygen tanks strapped to them––which turned out to be
Anaze and Tyra––unhooked them along with the narrow breathing tubes. They left the tanks and the goggles on the floor behind the water-cleaning machines, and did their best to wring out their hair and clothes. Jet and Alice also both re-tied their hair, if only to make it less-obvious they were soaking wet.

  There wasn’t much any of them could do about their clothes. Or their lack of shoes.

  Once they had the tanks and goggles off, Tyra, Anaze and Alice all unhooked their weapons packs, too. They pulled out their still-dry guns, checking to make sure they were loaded and ready to fire. They left the shoulder packs with the rest of the discarded equipment.

  Once everyone was armed and more or less recovered from their journey down the pipe, Jet motioned for them to follow her again. Leading them through the maze-like water purificaton equipment, she brought them to the room’s only real exit on the opposite side of the cave where they came in through the pipe.

  She paused at the edge of that same opening, looking up the dimly lit passage. Gripping her sword in one hand, she held it down and slightly behind her, motioning for the others to stay back while she checked to make sure the tunnel was clear.

  She saw no one. She couldn’t hear anything, either.

  Which, truthfully, was a little odd.

  Even so, she knew there were cameras down here. They might be switched off, or they might not be. No one might be monitoring them because of the chaos outside the walls...or they might be monitoring them even more closely for that same reason.

  Either way, they had no choice but to press forward.

  Taking another breath, Jet glanced behind her at the other three, faintly reassured when she saw them standing directly behind her with weapons raised.

  Without wasting any more time, she began leading them up the narrow tunnel.

  The journey remained eerily quiet.

  All four of them were barefoot, so they made almost no noise as they walked up the tiled passageway. Jet heard the occasional sniff and exhaled breath, but mostly the soft slap of their feet as they moved rapidly up towards the higher sub-basements.

  She recalled the map inside her head, reminding herself where everything was.

  The generators were located two floors up from the main water reservoir where they’d come in. There was a security station on that same floor, but again, Jet had no idea if it would be manned or not, given everything else going on. They might have pushed everyone back into the main residency area, where the heavier security grids were located.

  Still, Jet had to assume they would take pains to keep the protection grid up.

  They might not even know that Isreti was dead yet.

  As for the Loran Stone, the library stood at the very top of the compound, not far from the residence area of the Royals. Jet knew Laksri didn’t want her going for that stone on her own, but Jet wondered if maybe she should do it anyway.

  Woudn’t the stone be the very first thing that Isreti’s people would try to take, if they knew Laksri and the others were about to storm the gates?

  Hell, they might even try to destroy it, if they knew they were about to be overrun.

  Isreti’s followers were fanatics. They would see Nirreth working with humans as nothing less than blasphemy...a total affront to their entire way of looking at the world. If they knew Laksri intended to institute longstanding peace and cooperation with the humans, many of them would be willing to die to keep that from happening. They’d also likely rather see the Loran Stone pulverized into powder than in the hands of a “race-traitor” who would hand any part of their Empire to an inferior species.

  If the stone was really as important as Trazen and Laksri said, then she should try to save it, shouldn’t she? Maybe she should even grab it before they took the generators off-line, since that would definitely alert the Nirreth that they were here.

  Making a snap decision as they reached the landing for the second floor sub-basement, Jet stopped in the hallway, turning to the others.

  “I’m going to go for the stone,” she said, speaking in a low whisper.

  “What?” Tyra whispered back. “Jet, no. You heard Laks. That’s suicide.”

  “They might take it out of here if the alarms go off.” Jet looked at Anaze, and could see him thinking about her words. “You know I’m right,” she said, still looking at Anaze, before glancing at Tyra again. “If they really need that thing, like they said, we should get it first. Then come down here and shut everything off...”

  “What if we did both?” Alice said.

  Jet turned, looking at her. “What do you mean?”

  Alice shrugged her muscular shoulders, her gun held at her side. “You and me go for the stone. Leave the boy and Tyra down here. The alarms go off from the stone...that’s their cue to shut the whole thing down...” Alice looked at Anaze. “You good with machinery, boy?”

  Jet almost smiled when she saw Anaze grit his teeth.

  She knew it was at the “boy” thing.

  “I can figure it out,” he said, conceding her words with a nod. He looked at Jet. “She’s right. Normally I would say we don’t split up, but this makes sense. The faster we do this the better.” He hesitated then, meeting Jet’s gaze. “...But I think you should let Tyra go with Alice, Jet. You stay down here with me.”

  Jet felt her jaw harden. Before she could speak, though, Alice let out an annoyed exhale.

  “No!” she snapped. “We are not having this conversation again. Mammal with sword came in here...she’s already in danger. And I need her to get me to the stone.”

  Anaze opened his mouth to protest, but Alice smacked him sharply in the middle of the chest.

  “Shut up! No more stupid. We’re going.” She looked at Jet, ignoring where Anaze had begun to rub the part of his chest that Alice slapped, giving her an incredulous look. “You ready, mammal? Or you need to hit him, too?”

  Grinning at Alice, Jet shook her head. “I’m good, but thanks for the offer.” She let her expression grow a bit harder when she looked back at Tyra and Anaze. “Don’t be seen...and wait for the alarm. When you’ve finished, run up there...” She pointed up the tunnel. “First right at the top, then Anaze will know the way out. We’ll meet you behind the big fountain. Anaze knows what I mean...”

  She glanced at Anaze directly and that time he only nodded. Even so, she saw a faint hardness touch his lips, right before he glanced at her mouth.

  Ignoring that too, Jet looked back at Tyra, pointing at the metal door at the end of the landing. “Generator’s in there. The controls should be on the other end of the catwalk.”

  Tyra was already motioning at her impatiently. “Got it. If you’re going to do this thing, then go. Me and lover boy will figure it out...”

  Anaze quirked an eyebrow at her and Tyra grinned, winking.

  “All right. See you on the other side,” Jet said.

  Without waiting for either of them to respond, she began jogging up the tunnel. She knew without looking that Alice followed silently behind her.

  THE LORAN STONE

  They reached the ground level of the compound without encountering a single other being.

  They’d walked through five of the cavern-like common rooms already, and Jet still hadn’t seen anyone, human or Nirreth.

  It was starting to really unnerve her.

  Peering out around the doorway leading into the sixth of those giant common rooms, Jet felt another shiver of misgiving at how quiet everything was. The Palace seemed entirely deserted. Even the machinery appeared to have been shut off, if the silence of the normally-humming walls was any indication. She hadn’t heard birds, not even in the rooms with those odd, Nirreth trees that normally had song birds living in their light blue branches.

  It was so quiet, Jet wondered if most of the power had been shut down in this part of the compound already.

  Motioning Alice forward once more, she entered a round room that she remembered from her first days in the Palace. She held her sword out in front of her as she
walked, silently crossing the darkened room as she looked for movement on either side.

  The room itself looked exactly how she remembered it.

  It was nearly round in shape but with strange square corners at regular intervals where glass-covered cages jutted out of the wall. Each of those cages housed a type of large predatory animal native to Earth, although many of those animals had been extinct before the Nirreth came.

  Jet barely glimpsed at those animals now, but she caught sight of a tiger pacing back and forth behind the glass of one cage, and a pair of wolves watching her from another, their bodies sharply outlined in the colored lights that illuminated a faux-desert background.

  With the rest of the room dark, those lit cages looked unreal, and even more like exhibit pieces than something that should house living animals.

  Jet couldn’t help but feel sorry for them.

  She heard a growl from behind her even as she thought it, followed by a deeper grunt that trailed into something closer to a groan. Turning, she saw a black bear watching her. He swayed behind the glass wall, right before he let out another bellowing cry, louder that time. It almost looked like he was talking to her, asking to be let out, or maybe just complaining about where he was. In the cage next to him, which was taller than the others, Jet glimpsed powerful muscled legs over heavy feet and claws. Seeing the craggy head swivel in her direction, she realized she was looking at the baby T-Rex she remembered, only it had grown in the passing months.

  Now it took up most of its high-ceilinged cage.

  Feeling another stab of pity, she looked away, vowing to get them out of those damned cages if she could, once this was all over.

  When she glanced at Alice, she saw the woman staring at the T-Rex as well, her eyes wide. Clearly, she had some idea of what it was.

  Skirting around the round, padded couch that stood in the middle of the room, Jet aimed her feet for the opposite door, and soon emerged in the passageway on the other side.