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

by JC Andrijeski

  He studied her eyes. “It is not your fault, Jet. We believe it was gone before you got here. Alice and you were on the floor of the library, unconscious. I have no idea why they left the two of you alive, but I cannot stop blaming myself, for allowing you––”

  “Where’s Trazen?” she said.

  She blurted the words. Really, she spoke without realizing she intended to.

  Laksri’s expression hardened.

  For a long moment he only stared at her, his long jaw clenched as he studied her face. When she didn’t look away, or say anything after a few moments, he opened one hand, sweeping it sideways in an angry gesture.

  “He is gone,” Laksri said simply.

  “Gone?” Jet frowned. “What does that mean? Where did he go?”

  Laksri’s anger exhaled out of his chest in a low hiss. “To the north, I assume. Perhaps to the south...or the west. There is fighting all over, Jet...he is an experienced commander. He probably felt needed elsewhere. Hezeret, for all intents and purposes, is now ours.”

  “Aren’t you in charge?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Did you send him away, Laks?”

  “No! I did not send him. He left, Jet.”

  “But why?” She felt that pain return to her chest. “Why would he leave?”

  Laksri shook his head, his mouth set back in a hard line. After a longer-feeling pause, he made another angry gesture with his hand.

  “I do not know, Jet. He did not tell me.” He exhaled again, as if controlling his temper with an effort. “I did not trust myself to give him orders...” He gave her a cold look. “We were not getting along. I asked Richter to take care of it. And Anaze. One of them must have told him where to go...or how to get there, perhaps.”

  “Did he say anything?” she pressed.

  “Like what?” Laksri growled.

  “Like to me? Did he say anything to me, Laks?”

  “He said to tell you goodbye.”

  “Anything else?” she said, hearing the edge creep back into her voice.

  Laksri exhaled in another growl of anger. “I do not know! He said to tell you goodbye, Jet, that he understood your choice and goodbye...what do you want from me right now?”

  But she was already getting to her feet.

  Before she could make it out of the room, Lakrsi stood, closing the distance between them. She had just reached out her hand to touch the pressure point to open the door when Laksri inserted himself between her and the access panel. She looked up, meeting his dark eyes even as he held up his hands in a peace gesture.

  “Jet,” he said, his palms still facing her. “I love you.”

  She didn’t drop her gaze, but felt her face tighten. “I know, Laks.”

  “You’ve never said it to me,” he said, his voice a low growl. “Not once, Jet.”

  She hesitated, trying to think if that was true.

  Realizing it was, she frowned. Looking up, she met his gaze again.

  “You’re right,” she said simply, holding up her hands. “I’m sorry.”

  When his face tightened, she reached out, meaning to touch his arm, to reassure him, to say or do...something. She didn’t feel angry at him anymore. She felt sorry for him, for how things turned out, but not angry or bitter. The anger was gone, leaving a regret that never managed to turn completely into guilt.

  He didn’t let her touch him. She watched him step back, sliding out of her reach before her fingers could make contact with his skin.

  “Laks,” she said, sighing. “I care about you. You know I do.”

  “Just go, Jet,” he said.

  She didn’t move.

  She stood there instead, fighting to think past the hurt in his eyes.

  She did care about him. She remembered their time together on the ship to Astet, how things had been with them once. She remembered him as her friend, too.

  At the same time, she also understood how and why things had changed for her.

  Laksri did, too. Hell, he’d understood before she had herself––probably from the first time they saw one another again in that firelit room in Santa Fe, when Jet first realized he’d been alive all that time, that he hadn’t died in that assassination attempt on Astet. She didn’t trust him anymore. She’d never trust him, not after everything he and Anaze and Richter put her through. Not after what she’d been through in those months following Astet.

  Strangely, Anaze seemed to have accepted that.

  Jet even felt they would probably be friends again after this, if in a different way than before, when they’d lived together in the skag pits. Maybe she’d even be friends with Richter in the end...although she still had trouble picturing what that would even look like.

  But Laksri...Laksri had been different. She had wanted more from Laksri. Laksri had wanted more from her. More than Anaze. Definitely more than Richter.

  That wasn’t all of it though, either. Not anymore.

  Both of them knew that, too.

  “Just go, Jet,” he growled. “Go after him. It’s what you want. He’s probably not left the settlement entirely yet. Ask Richter. Or Anaze.”

  Before Jet could decide what to say, the tall Nirreth reached past her, punching the pressure panel with two long fingers to open the door.

  “Just go, Jet,” he said again.

  As the panel opened, he removed himself from her space completely, stepping out of the gap between her and the opening to the corridor. He stood on the other side of the door instead, arms folded, tail lashing angrily, his eyes cold stones where they focused on her face.

  “Go, Jet.”

  She stood there for a few beats longer, looking at him.

  Then, realizing he was right, that there was nothing more to say...not now, at least...she turned away, walking through the newly-made opening.

  That time, when her strides lengthened, she didn’t look back.

  He was sitting alone when she glimpsed him through the window of the small cabin.

  It was cold inside the ship, even in the forward part of the hull.

  When she stopped, glimpsing his profile through the small window set in the metal door, she shivered, wrapping her arms around her ribs and chest as she watched him look out a square viewport.

  Glancing down at herself, it occurred to her only then that her hair was still damp, that she wore nothing but the same swim shorts and long-sleeved black shirt she’d worn in the canal.

  She hadn’t wanted to stop long enough to look for shoes in her size, not after Anaze told her when the transport was scheduled to leave.

  He was going south, Anaze said.

  To the Green Zone in Africa, where the Shinkara lived.

  Anaze hadn’t been able to tell her much beyond that.

  Jet couldn’t even get a sense if he was going to Africa as a part of the rest of what was going on around the world with Isreti’s followers...or if he was returning there for some reason of his own. Rather than try to prise the information out of Anaze, who might not know anyway, she’d opted to go after him instead...to ask him herself.

  She’d paused only long enough to check briefly on Alice, if only to reassure herself that the other woman was all right.

  She’d found her easily when she entered the long common room on her way out of the compound. It was the same room Richter brought Jet for her first meal in the Green Zone, where Jet once fought a virtual T-Rex and watched Ogli play with his pet otter in the canals.

  Now the room was dimly lit but strangely warmer, still filled with tables and canals but also with pillows and more trees than Jet remembered. Most of her people were lying on the floor on cushions as they laughed and ate food, and Jet saw Alice leaning against a male Nirreth she recognized from the training pits, a little dumbfounded when she saw the other woman stroking his long tail, which rested in her lap.

  Tyra sat there too, as did Anslom and a few others.

  Most of them, Jet didn’t know.

  The realization made her smi
le for some reason.

  Reassured to see them all there, looking healthy and happy and maybe even a little drunk on Nirreth beer, Jet decided it was time for her to go...that she could talk to them all later. So she just kept walking, making her way down the aisle past their cheerful group towards the front entrance of the compound.

  Tyra saw her before she got all the way there and called out, waving for her to come join them, but Jet told them the same thing she’d been thinking, that she’d find them when she got back. Even so, she found herself looking at Alice again anyway.

  When their eyes met, Alice smiled, the stars still reflecting in her dark eyes.

  A knowing quirk lifted her sculpted lips, and when she saluted Jet briefly with three fingers, her other hand still coiled around her Nirreth boyfriend’s tail, Jet saluted her back.

  She could talk to Alice later, too.

  She could talk to everyone later.

  That meant her family, in addition to the rest.

  From what Anaze said, Biggs and her mother were still outside the main communication areas anyway, and it might be a few days before they could build reliable links in the mountains where they were camped. Right now, they weren’t in any real danger, from what Anaze said. That part of the continent was low priority for Isreti’s people; they were concentrating all of their remaining firepower on the Green Zones on the West Coast and in Asia.

  Anyway, Richter still had a line open to Draven and Lara, who led the military forces in that area. He assured Jet it had been quiet as hell up there for the past eight or so hours.

  So talking to her mom and Biggs could wait.

  Talking to Draven and Lara could wait, too.

  It could at least wait until morning.

  Jet would travel up there in person soon anyway.

  But all of that just formed a low hum in the backdrop of her mind as she stood outside a small private cabin on the forward end of the third deck of a long-range Nirreth transport vessel.

  She’d almost missed the ship entirely.

  She’d run up to the closing door even as a human in the grounds crew had been rolling away a small step ladder they’d been using to board. Ignoring the guy with the ladder, Jet aimed her feet for the door itself, reaching it even as one of the Nirreth crew members had been in the process of closing it from the inside.

  Seeing her, the Nirreth’s dark eyes had widened in recognition. When she asked for a hand up, he’d reached out without hesitation and pulled her inside.

  Once he had on the deck of the oval opening, he leaned towards her ear, speaking loudly in accented Nargili.

  “We are leaving,” he said. “You will be coming with us, if you do not get off now.”

  Jet barely hesitated, then nodded. “I guess I’m coming then.”

  The Nirreth crew member nodded. Then, looking her over, he gave her a small Nirreth smile. “He’s in the forward section,” he told her, after another short pause. “Fourth door past the second segment...deck three. He was alone, last I saw.”

  Shaking her head a little, unsure if she was amused, annoyed or possibly embarrassed, Jet patted the strange Nirreth’s arm in a friendly way, then walked away from him, towards the forward part of the ship. She’d just entered the first segment of corridor when the Nirreth crew member shut the oval door behind her. The sound echoed with a loud bang behind her, even before he slammed down the locking bar with another metallic thunk.

  By then, she was already getting nervous.

  Now, standing outside the small door, her nerves ratcheted higher.

  She was trying to decide whether she should knock or find some other place to sit, when an announcement came over the loudspeakers, causing her to look up.

  Like most Nirreth announcements on ships, it was brief.

  “The ship will take off in thirty Earth seconds,” the voice said in Nargili, presumably one of the pilots. Jet found herself thinking the Nirreth pilot was female.

  “...It is recommended that you sit,” she added.

  Jet took a breath, then realized she’d run out of options. The last thing she wanted to do was end up a heap on the floor outside of Trazen’s cabin.

  Raising a fist, she knocked sharply on the metal door, peering through the window in spite of herself. She saw Trazen turn, then stare at her, his eyes holding disbelief.

  He motioned for her to enter, his mouth still set in a frown.

  She pushed open the door, closing it behind her and locking the bar before she glanced over at him. Seeing him still sitting there, staring at her, she motioned at the padded bench diretly across from him.

  “Can I sit in here?” she said lamely. “For the take off?”

  He motioned her silently towards the bench, his mouth still set in a frown.

  He watched her as she sank her weight where he’d indicated, then as she gripped the edge of the cushion with both hands.

  Right then, the whole cabin went up.

  Straight up, in a smooth, nausea-inducing line that was nearly soundless.

  Jet hadn’t been on many of these transport ships before, but she’d known more or less what to expect. Even so, for a few seconds, she only gripped the edge of the seat, riding the flip in her stomach from the abrupt change in altitude. When she felt some part of her wanting to turn that into real nausea, she forced herself to turn her head, staring out the viewport at the view of the Green Zone lights below.

  She watched those lights grow small––rapidly––until eventually she could see the actual dome. Unlike with the culler ship, this seemed to happen in seconds rather than minutes. Then they passed through the open doors of the dome and Jet found herself looking down at the city lights through them, right before the thick panels of the dome began to close.

  There was scarcely a pause before the ship changed directions and the dome and the more muted lights began to move under her in a multi-colored blur. Even going as fast as they were, it seemed to take a long time to pass over the entire dome of the city.

  She watched the whole time though, and by the end, she’d adjusted to the motion. Well enough to look away from the viewport anyway.

  When she glanced at Trazen, she found he still stared at her.

  She saw him look over the clothes she was wearing, focusing the longest on her bare feet, which were covered with cut grass from the lawns around the landing area, and probably filthy from walking across the tarmac.

  She looked at her own feet for a second, then flushed, looking back at him.

  A faint accusation touched her voice.

  “You left,” she said.

  He stared at her, the gold flecks in his eyes seemingly brighter than usual.

  Then he got up, walking over to her and sitting deliberately on the padded bench next to her.

  Before she could say anything, he wrapped his tail around her waist and yanked her up against him. Her breath left her lungs in a sharp exhale when he did it, but she didn’t fight him, or pull away once he had her half-leaning against him. Reaching for him once she’d caught her breath, she wrapped her fingers around his muscular arms, looking up at him.

  “You left,” she said, softer.

  He was studying her face, that faint frown still hovering at the edges of his lips. She still didn’t know Nirreth facial expressions well enough to know exactly what the look meant, so she just waited that time, letting him be the one to speak next.

  For a long moment, she wondered if he would.

  Then he exhaled in a kind of purring sigh, leaning back from her. His tail loosened its grip around her waist, although he didn’t retract it entirely. Rubbing his face with one hand, he pulled away from her gently, a rejection that he seemed to want to disguise as something else. She let go of him reluctantly, but now she was the one frowning.

  “You wanted to leave,” she said, her voice carefully neutral.

  He gave her a sharp look. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No,” he growled. He moved a few inches further from her o
n the bench, turning his body so he faced away from her more squarely. Coiling his hands around his thighs, he stared into the center of the cabin as if thinking. After another pause, he let out a rumbling growl.

  “Jet,” he sighed. “I have...commitments. I am...” He hesitated again, glancing at her. “...Owned. In a sense.”

  Jet’s frown deepened. “Owned? Like a slave?”

  “No.” He shook his head again, giving another purring sigh. “No, I chose this. I made vows. Vows I am bound to.”

  “But you said before...” Jet trailed.

  Remembering their conversation on the ramp before her last Rings match, she closed her mouth, fighting with how to ask him what she wanted to ask him. Or maybe say to him what she wanted to say to him.

  Then again, maybe she’d said enough.

  He seemed to understand. Part of it anyway.

  “I thought I would stay in the Green Zone,” he explained, his voice lower. “I thought my life would be there, that even if we fought against Isreti, I would do so on the ground...either in the rebel forces or in the Green Zone itself. But that is all different now. With everything that’s happened...” He let his words trail too, then stared away from her again, focusing sightlessly on the other side of the cabin. “I made vows. I should go back, Jet. I should ask them what they want of me. Maybe I cannot stay near you now...I don’t know.”

  Remembering what the female Nirreth told her under that dome of stars, Jet pursed her lips. She honestly wasn’t sure if she should bring that up now. What if this was just Trazen looking for a way out? What if she’d just reveal it all as an excuse?

  The longer she thought about it though, the more she realized she had to tell him.

  Sighing herself, she leaned forward, resting her forearms on her legs, in part so she could look up at his face.

  “What if you had a choice?” she said. “A different choice?”

  He glanced at her, his dark eyes wary. “What do you mean?”

  Jet studied his high cheekboned face, feeling her throat tighten. Her own face flushed in the same set of seconds, and she clasped her hands between her knees.

  “It would be a lot easier if you just stung me,” she said finally, frustration touching her voice. “...If I could just show you this, instead of having to explain it all. I don’t even know if you want to hear it...but I’m pretty sure she wanted me to tell you.”