“You will win,” he told her, pulling her closer.
“Richter says I shouldn’t win,” Jet joked, trying to keep her voice light.
“In that sense, yes… he is correct. But you will win a place in the Rings. Remember that, Jet. You will.”
“I will win,” Jet muttered, a near mantra under her breath.
They reached the boundaries of the low rectangle of light.
Jet blinked up in confusion, starting to slow her steps until Richter gripped her harder, forcing her to speed up so that she reached the light moving with long, more confident-seeming strides.
The second she hit the edge of that opening, the crowd beyond the corridor began to roar. She heard Nirreth voices mainly, a few yells and growls at first, then what could have been human voices, too.
The sound swelled as more and more of them saw her appear on the screens, until the Nirreth howls and stomping feet and smacking tails grew deafening, echoing up and down the dizzyingly high roof of the coliseum.like a series of tidal waves.
Jet continued to walk up the triangle-shaped ramp, fighting disbelief, keeping her legs moving from the prodding of Laksri’s hand and tail, seemingly more than by the power of her own muscles and mind.
On her other side, Richter had released her.
Anaze moved so that the two of them walked abreast.
However, when Jet saw herself on the high monitor, only she and Laksri appeared on the wall-sized image, moving together in a near-synchronicity, one likely aided by the venom.
It didn’t occur to Jet until she saw them both up there, that this maneuver had probably been planned by Richter and Laksri as well, down to their near-matching outfits and the dark blue kohl eyeliner she wore, the mascara that faintly sparkled, the dark blue eyeshadow decorated with tiny, diamond-like sparkles.
How had she not seen it? Her makeup had clearly been designed to match not only Laksri’s skin, but also his eyes.
Next to a muscular, unsmiling Laksri, Jet looked more fierce, but also a lot smaller. She couldn’t help wondering if that had been deliberate, too, and if so, what they were going for exactly, in terms of the overall impression.
At this point, she was beginning to think Anaze was right, that Richter planned pretty much everything he did, down to the most insignificant-seeming detail, and no matter how oblivious or even boorish he acted on the outside.
Laksri’s fingers squeezed her arm.
“Not in here,” he said in her ear.
But she’d already felt the same thought through his skin, and remembered less than a heartbeat later what it meant.
Fear hit her in the next set of breaths, as she remembered they would be scanning her mind randomly as part of this event. The deepest of those scans happened a week ago, during her last, so-called “medical exam.” Laksri said they wouldn’t get a lot of actual thoughts, more her overall mental state, but they’d still cautioned her repeatedly to be careful.
One more thing to think about, to obsess about, to get distracted by.
Oh, this was going to be fun.
Even now, she had to be careful.
Laksri warned her they’d mostly be looking for key words, as well as fears, signs of aggression––anything that spiked her emotions too high or too low––which was part of the reason Laksri insisted on stinging her that morning.
He’d wanted to help her moderate that part of her presentation to the Board, in addition to assisting with any last minute memorizations, since the venom should help lock those into her mind, as well.
Given how spacey she felt on the venom at times, Jet was surprised to note that it didn’t slow her reflexes any, not if Laksri stung her the right way.
Not long after starting her training, Jet learned the Nirreth also had a way of pushing their venom out in a denser stream, which could paralyze a human’s whole body. Laksri told her he’d done something like that, or close to that, the first time he’d stung her on the culler ship.
According to him, a normal sting wouldn’t slow her down.
If anything, her reaction times should speed up.
The paralysis came from some kind of overload of Nirrith adrenaline, or the equivalent of adrenaline in their system. The venom itself didn’t produce those effects, but instead gave her that clarity that helped with memory and movement.
In effect, Laksri said, the venom sped up certain processes in her nervous system, so much so that the brain had trouble keeping up, in terms of reacting verbally and translating that know-how into conscious thoughts.
Most of what she retained fell into the category of the subconscious, as a result.
For the same reason, while she was venomed it felt like her thinking processes slowed down, but it was only in contrast to the muscle and sense memory that went with the venom.
If nothing else, on the venom, Jet tended not to startle too easily, or overreact to false stimuli in the Rings programs.
Even so, something about being on the venom in the real Rings, in front of all these people, made Jet nervous.
“You’ll be fine,” Laksri assured her.
He kissed her neck as he said it, and Jet realized they must still be up on the main screen because the crowd erupted into sound––yells and long, trilling cries from Nirreth throats, and what sounded like a high burst of whistles. Their pounding feet shook the stadium floor, along with a heavier thumping sound Jet realized must be the hard smack of their tails against the low walls that stood behind each concentric circle of benches.
Her heart rose to her throat, even as she remembered Laksri and Richter’s words to her the night before.
“But how will I know if they pick up any information about who I am… who I really am… in any of the scans?” she’d asked, once they told her what had been done to her.
“They already did,” Richter said, matter-of-fact. “They did pick it up, Jet. During your last medical check-up.”
As that was pretty much the last thing Jet expected him to say, she’d fallen silent, staring first at him, then at Laksri. They’d been in that garden underneath the water processing plant, alone but for birds in the trees and fish in the canals winding through the room between the gently looping paths and bridges.
“And?” she said, a beat later. “Why aren’t I in a prison cell? For that matter, why aren’t you?”
Richter chuckled. “Don’t worry, kitten, we had the tapes pulled. We replaced them with the initial scans. In the relevant parts, anyway.”
“So why the hell couldn’t you have just told me what was going on earlier?” she demanded. “Why wait for the scans at all, if you’re just going to doctor them anyway?”
“Because,” Richter explained patiently. “We needed your training in the Rings to remain intact. Laksri and two techs we have working for us went over those scans with a fine-toothed comb. Luckily, you’re pretty focused when you train. We were able to keep just about everything in terms of the time you spent working out in the Rings with Alice.”
He smiled at her in that infuriating way he had.
“A few good cuts and snips while you worried about Laks and I turning on you, and a few internal monologue rants against Anaze, and we were in business. We’re just lucky Ogli didn’t sting you that day he got frisky in the barn. Although, come to think of it, I’m sure I––”
“––could have worked with it, I know,” Jet muttered. “Funny how whenever you say that, it does not reassure me.”
“Nice touch about you actually wanting the big blue, by the way,” Richter added with another grin, that one a touch harder. “We’re lucky they cut out all intimate material as a matter of policy… at least the physical parts… but we were able to use a lot of your time together to really sell the whole interspecies thing, since you actually have feelings for the big guy.”
Jet felt her jaw tighten, but she didn’t look away from Richter’s face.
Still, some of her anger must have shown, because Richter laughed aloud.
“Don�
�t worry, kitten,” he chuckled. “Your secret’s safe with me. Anyway, I never would have agreed to the coupling in the first place if I hadn’t seen the two of you flirting before all this. I had to know you could be convincing, stung or not, or the others would have picked up on it immediately.”
He shrugged, his eyes shrewd. “Didn’t Laks tell you they can see in infrared? It’s how he talked me into letting him approach you.”
Richter winked at the Nirreth, obviously enjoying Jet’s anger.
“Laks already knew you had a bit of a sweet spot for him. And, like I said, he wanted you in his bed even before we picked you up that day. I guess Anaze is a better salesman than I thought…”
“A little too good,” Anaze muttered, his arms folded from where he sat on a blood red stone next to a tree covered in white blossoms.
He stared up at the dome of the sky when Jet turned, not meeting her gaze.
Through all of Richter’s speech, Laksri hadn’t said a word, but Jet got the distinct feeling he hadn’t liked the conversation any more than she had.
Or maybe he was just a lot better at faking that kind of thing than she’d let herself contemplate. Maybe he’d just rather if Jet had more reason to think his role had been more innocent than it was.
It was hard to know, really; he hadn’t stung her that day and his face was as inscrutable as it always was when they weren’t connected through the venom.
At Anaze’s crack, though, Richter only chuckled again.
“You’re a popular girl, kitten,” he grinned at her. “You’ve had my two best boys fighting over you pretty much from day one.”
By then, Jet was barely listening to him.
It occurred to her that Anaze was probably right.
She might not be able to read Laksri even half as well as she wanted to believe.
Jet remembered that again now, as she walked into the harsh lights and high monitors of the main arena.
She really was on her own here.
16
The Judges
Jet took Laksri’s offered hand as they neared the edge of the ramp.
She’d seen video of the arena before. She knew the basic size and layout, but it still caught her by surprise to see it at full scale. It seemed to grow around her, the instant they left the shadow of the high-walled ramp.
Up until that point, Jet could only really see the viewscreen straight ahead of them, which alternated between images of her and Laksri, panning shots of the crowd, an image of the Nirreth royal flag rippling in the wind, and a live shot of the Rings Board, which consisted of an oval table rimmed by well-dressed and grim-faced Nirreth.
Jet counted fourteen members in the longest of those shots.
One, surprisingly, was human.
Even more surprising, Jet recognized her.
Jet had seen her at her demonstration, holding a pink, fizzy drink. She still had the same blue-tipped fingernails Jet remembered, and the blue hair.
Despite the massive screen that hung over the far side of the auditorium, Jet still hadn’t managed to glimpse any details of the actual arena, apart from a short stretch of the concourse that crossed her immediate line of vision. She stared at that narrow slice, trying to get a sense of whether the obstacles fit the parameters she’d measured from her training.
It got her mind back on her immediate problem.
For a few seconds at least, it was even calming.
Then Jet got distracted again.
When another roar from the stands went up, her eyes were drawn up and around at the sheer size of the crowd, the number of Nirreth and humans filling the wider auditorium. She stared at all of them, seemingly against her will. As she took in the length of the full benches, noting how far they slid upwards and backwards on a steep, angled slope, rising up at least ten or fifteen stories at the back, her heart nearly stopped in her chest.
It hit her again, with force that time, that Richter was right.
There was no possible way humanity would win any real battle against the Nirreth.
Not without help from the Nirreth themselves.
Apart from even the technological disparity, there were just too many of them.
Just in this one place, more Nirreth sat and stood on stone benches than Jet suspected remained alive of humanity in what used to be called Canada. She couldn’t fathom actual numbers, other than to compare what she saw to the skag pits themselves.
Their entire settlement of maybe two hundred plus wouldn’t fill even a fraction of the innermost ring of seats above her. She hadn’t known this many Nirreth lived on the entire continent, much less represented an unnamed portion of a single Green Zone.
Forcing her eyes and mind off that sea of faces, Jet jerked her attention back to the arena itself, and the physical layout of the course.
That helped almost immediately.
Her focus and clarity returned as she began comparing every detail in front of her to the three maps she already carried in her head––the two she’d gotten from Laksri, and one she’d memorized from the practice arena.
Her mind clicked through the process methodically, and Jet remembered again, somewhere in the background, how surprised Richter had been when Anaze and Laksri told him what she could do.
He didn’t call it Jet’s “weird spatial thing” like Anaze had, however.
Richter had a different set of words to describe what Jet had always assumed every human being could do.
“You mean to tell me, kitten here has a photographic memory?”
Richter stared at her in disbelief.
When no one answered him, he broke out in a genuine-sounding laugh.
“Well, hell,” he said, still chuckling. “I would have pulled her while she was still in diapers if you’d told me that, boy.”
The boy, in that case, had been Anaze.
Despite the fact that the man saying it to him was his father, Anaze’s facial expression turned stormy.
“I told you she was good in tight spaces,” he said. “I said she could maneuver well in the dark,” he added, his voice growing more annoyed, not less. “She was the best builder in the settlement because she remembered the exact location of every tunnel and pipe. She could dig and build without us ending up with a passageway sunk in old bilge water or sewage from a broken line.”
Richter rolled his eyes at Anaze.
He did it without taking his focus off Jet.
“I think you are now, officially, my favorite human,” he said with a grin. “How do you like that, kitten?”
Jet didn’t bother to verbalize her opinion.
She did try to decide, later that day, whether Richter finding her more valuable reassured her, or made her more uneasy.
After all, if he thought she was worth something beyond her age, sex, and relative handiness with a sword, he might be less likely to dump her if things got sticky.
On the other hand, he also might throw more jobs at her that could get her killed.
Reaching up to grip the hilt of Black, the Japanese-style sword strapped to her back, Jet continued to take inventory of the room. She gripped the handle of the sword almost as a form of reassurance as her thoughts dwindled to a murmur in her mind.
The ladder looks the same, she decided after another beat. Same dimensions… same distance apart as in the practice arena… slightly more off-center to the pond…
Her eyes drifted to the rock-like walls dotted with hand-holds.
…Same basic components. Over twice the size, and a good twenty-six paces further from the moving track. Plus there’s that hook thing… never seen that before…
Her mind shifted back to the first pool of water, noting its spatial proximity to the rotating hooks, as well as what must be a collection of weapons portals through which real, physical objects might be launched.
The pond has a ladder. That’s new.
Looking around, she found more than a dozen more of those weapons clusters. She wondered if the angles shifted, if they could
be aimed. She wondered it loudly enough that she hoped Laksri would hear it.
Luckily, he did.
“Yes,” he told her softly in English. “But only the larger ones,” he added, pointing them out with a few subtle flicks of his tail. “Mostly, it’s easier for them to manipulate the projection. But I wouldn’t rule it out entirely, even on the smaller ones.”
His voice turned warning.
“Remember, Jet. Points. Always points, Jet. Points matter. Most of what attacks you will come from the projection, so you need to watch for more than physical projectiles.”
“I won’t be able to dodge much of anything if I have a spear sticking out of my back,” she muttered, her voice holding more of an edge.
When she glanced up, Laksri conceded the point, with his eyes and tail as much as his words. All three held the flavor of an apology.
“That is true,” he said, squeezing her arm with his fingers.
Jet had already gone back to mapping the long room.
She noted the transparent walls Richter and Laksri described to her.
Those hadn’t been in the practice arena, either.
She mapped the locations of doors in the floor and in two of the walls. Some of the doors had panels in the outside walls, which meant she could trigger them herself, if she wasn’t careful. Memorizing the exact location of each of the triggers, as well as the dimension and locations of the doors themselves, she moved on, taking in the next aspects of the room.
Seventeen steps up to the lowest platform… fifteen steps from that to the mud pit, below…
Full length jump from platform two to platform three.
Only way off five is that rope thing… probably motorized, so no way of knowing when it will come around unless they map it to the projection…
Cluster of those weapons tubes right next to the top of the third ladder… will need to ride that sucker down on the rails before they can trigger that bunch…
Pool height exactly twice the length of platform six… could definitely make that in a jump. Leave open as an escape route if they trap me near that other cluster…
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 33
