As she did, grief hit her, and fear––that time for Anaze.
She couldn’t ignore how thin he was, how malnourished and pale he appeared to her eyes. Nor could she ignore that he’d lost muscle, not only fat, along with every spare bit of weight he’d managed to accumulate during their stay at the Royal Palace.
The Guard had him in custody for weeks, so those things shouldn’t have surprised her, but seeing him up-close shocked her anyway, and brought her heart to her throat once she really took in his appearance.
She didn’t want to think about what they’d done to him in those pens.
She’d caught glimpses of that from Laksri, but he blocked most of it from her view.
He’d also assured her Anaze had trained for this.
Anaze was military, Laksri reminded her. Not a skag. Not even a skag like her.
Anaze wasn’t like other humans, Laksri repeated, when she hadn’t been reassured. He’d been trained. Not like she’d been trained, but really trained.
Jet knew what Laksri had been trying to tell her.
It didn’t really help all that much.
Her unease worsened when she remembered he’d be running in the Retribution in less than forty-eight hours. The way he looked now, he wouldn’t last ten minutes in a Rings match, much less the significantly more brutal version they called Retribution.
That thought finally got her to turn her eyes away.
Swallowing, she fought her reaction off her face.
She looked out the window on the other side of the elevators to distract herself, getting her first glimpse of the surface planet of Astet.
She couldn’t see much––just enough to recognize a curve of sky past a row of jutting buildings lurking around the main hangar.
Unlike the Green Zone on Earth, no blue colored the low dome. Instead, a heavy, dark, green-gray swath met her eyes. The same sky turned a dark red nearer to the horizon, the color of blood. It looked more like an oil painting than anything real.
That brief view hit her like a smack to the face.
It leached the last of the venom from her system, that stark reminder she no longer stood on her home planet of Earth.
Still trying to glimpse details through the glass portal, Jet realized something else. She felt light-headed, almost dizzy. It grew bad enough to make her claustrophobic, bad enough, she felt borderline smothered. Her hand flattened against the curved glass, the fingers of her other hand clutching her shirt.
Her vision started to gray.
Laksri appeared beside her.
“Chew this,” he ordered, handing her something.
Jet didn’t hesitate.
Enough of his venom remained in her system that she popped that thing right into her mouth and began to chew vigorously.
Only then, as his fingers caressed the back of her neck, did she understand. He’d given her medicine. Medicine that would make it easier for her to breathe. Crunching the capsule with her back molars, she tried to ignore how bitter it tasted. It got easier when she felt her lungs opening after a few seconds of chewing.
Looking up at him once she’d regained her composure, she asked him a silent question with her eyes.
He answered it, his hand still resting on her neck.
“Swallow it,” he said. “It’s okay, Jet. It’s helping you adjust to the change in atmosphere.”
She fought her way through a few more chews, then swallowed with an effort, her throat dry. “How?” she managed. “How does it help?”
He gave a faint shrug.
“It strengthens your blood. Your system would likely adjust on its own, but it takes weeks… even months. Not all humans can do it. Most don’t die, but some fall into comas, or simply lose all ability to function.”
He looked into her face, worry reflected in his dark eyes.
“It’s like moving to a place of extremely high altitude on Earth,” he said. “Only significantly worse, and without any easing into the difference. I am told this is how humans experience it. So it can kill… but usually does not.”
Jet nodded, feeling some of the tension leave her limbs as the drug continued to spread through her blood. Her eyes returned to that view out the elevator window, even as Laksri resumed speaking in English.
“The pill multiplies red blood cells. Quickly,” he added. “It also aids in absorption and impacts your metabolism. You will still tire more easily here,” he cautioned, squeezing her arm gently. “Do not push yourself too much, Jet. We will make sure you spend time in oxygen-enriched rooms as often as possible.”
Jet glanced at Anaze.
“No,” he said, again answering her unspoken question. “They won’t compensate for this in the Retribution. They’ve given him the drug I just gave you, but no more.”
Jet nodded, feeling her throat close.
She still had no idea how to feel about Anaze, but the information Laksri had given her definitely complicated things. Feeling the protectiveness through Laksri’s fingers didn’t ease her confusion; if anything, it made it more pronounced.
She still didn’t know exactly how to feel about Laksri, either.
At the thought, she glanced up guiltily, wondering if her inability to understand her own feelings about him would offend him. When she met his gaze, however, Laksri’s dark eyes remained cautious, even as a faint smile hovered at his lips. Before she could react to either, he kissed the side of her face, nuzzling it briefly with his own.
“I am patient, Jet,” he murmured. “Very patient.”
She gave an involuntary laugh. “No, you’re not.”
He squeezed her tighter, pulling her against him.
“Not in all things,” he conceded, sending her a flicker of his own humor. “But I will wait for this.”
She didn’t answer, but smiled in spite of herself.
Shaking her head, she nudged him with an elbow, lowering her voice to a murmur.
“And just what will you be waiting for, exactly?” she said.
She’d meant it as a joke, but he answered her seriously, his mouth near to her ear.
“For you to love me,” he said. “For you to trust me. And to feel the same about me as I do about you.”
Her cheeks warmed at his words.
She only nodded though, not looking up.
Her eyes drifted back to Anaze as the elevator hit the bottom level, and the thick, glass doors began to open. Walking out with Laksri’s tail wrapped around her, Jet couldn’t look away from Anaze’s face when she saw him staring at the two of them.
His expression twisted, frightening her briefly, if only because he’d looked like such a zombie just seconds before. That seeing her and Laksri together could elicit that kind of response––right now, given his fugue state––worried her.
She felt a similar flicker of worry off Laksri after his gaze followed hers.
She sensed more specific worries off Laksri, too, dulled by the sense that he’d started blocking her again, keeping things from her that he didn’t wish her to see. Feeling her notice, Laksri glanced down, his dark eyes worried.
“It is nothing,” he said in her ear. “I cannot tell you here. They will scan you soon.”
Feeling her tense, he gripped her tighter in his hands.
“Do not worry, Jet,” he murmured. “Trust me. Try, anyway.”
She did worry, though, and she didn’t fully trust him.
Not yet, and not only because he’d just seemingly contradicted himself.
The fact that it might be Anaze’s life in the balance this time, instead of her own, didn’t reassure her in the slightest.
“Is he here?” she murmured. “Richter. Has he landed?”
Laksri nodded, flicking his tail in a sharper arc. “Yes. He arrived yesterday, Jet. The equivalent of thirty-six of your hours ago.”
She nodded, but felt the tautness in her muscles worsen.
“What about Trazen?” she said.
That time, the gap before he answered stretched longer
.
“Him, too,” Laksri said, his tail lashing harder. “The day before Richter.”
Jet nodded, staring up at that black, green and scarlet-streaked sky.
“It’s so dark,” she murmured.
Laksri followed her gaze.
“It is like your moon,” he explained. “There is a dark side, Jet. We are on it. It is the side least damaged by the solar flare that destroyed most of our civilization.”
Jet nodded, but somehow, the image made her flinch.
Without thinking about why, she found herself wondering which of them would leave this world.
That is, assuming any of them left at all.
19
Spectator
Jet sat in a sound-proofed, virtually-equipped box, high atop the Rings stands.
From that eagle’s-eye view, surrounded by virtually-enhanced monitors, she overlooked a stadium shaped not unlike where she ran Rings matches back home.
It was an odd feeling.
She’d never been in the audience before––not for a live match.
She’d always been the one down below.
Laksri left her there, about a half-hour earlier, according to Jet’s internal clock.
She didn’t know where he’d gone; they hadn’t been in a position to talk freely for almost two days, although he’d managed to communicate a number of things via the venom.
Jet understood why he hadn’t communicated more, even when they’d been alone. She knew they were being watched. Laksri told her they’d been under active surveillance, likely by multiple parties, from the moment they landed on Astet.
Further, as the wronged party in the Retribution itself, Laksri had an obligation to be involved directly in the planning for the run. That meant a fair bit of work behind the scenes, specifically with Trazen and the pullers working under him.
Collectively, Laksri had spent more time with Anaze, the Royal Guard and Trazen than he had with her.
Jet couldn’t help wondering how much of that had been deliberate.
She distinctly got the feeling, through the venom and otherwise, that Laksri didn’t want her knowing much about the specifics of what they had planned, particularly for the Retribution event. She felt protectiveness behind his unwillingness to include her, not overt deceit, but that placated her only marginally.
If she were being honest with herself, it didn’t really help at all.
Jet felt herself growing more and more uneasy as she familiarized herself with specific elements of the Retribution arena, even as she remembered them from recordings. It was strange to be looking at the actual, physical layout of the very first arena model she’d ever studied. Since it constituted the only one Laksri himself had ever known, personally at least, she’d started there, working with him on the various components as soon as he started stinging her during practice runs.
Thinking about those early sessions, Jet remembered the rest of what Laksri showed her about the Retribution. His experiences had been brutal, far worse than anything Jet had seen in the more sanitized, Green Zone events.
As her mind turned over details, she felt the pain in her gut worsen. That was another trick of the venom––it could blur the lines between memory and communication, in that you often felt the other person’s memories as your own.
Jet still had no idea what they had planned for Anaze.
She knew it would be bad.
She also knew, if she hadn’t been who she was, consort to the First Son of the Royals, she might be down there herself right now, behind one of those trap doors. Part of Anaze’s run might have been to watch her get gang-raped by giant space-lizards, or maybe gutted by a handful of the rowdier elements of the Nirreth Royal Guard.
In any case, she’d already been warned that her face and body might be “borrowed” in virtual form, to lend drama to elements of the Retribution they had planned.
According to Laksri, they would draw out the match as long as they feasibly could, no matter what the condition of the “contestant” in the end.
Ratings still mattered, even here.
The Retribution would be televised.
Unlike the regular Rings matches back home, skags living outside the dome would be blocked from viewing it, however. Humans living within the Green Zones would lose access to the regular Nirreth channels for this as well, along with those in the Hamster Cages.
This particular catharsis was designed to be Nirreth-only.
Jet remembered getting flickering images of exactly one, true Retribution match while she lived as a skag with her mother and brother. They’d happened upon the pirated signal somehow, and watched just enough that Jet knew something different was happening than what they normally broadcast for the Rings.
For one thing, the whole thing happened in silence.
The contestant had been Nirreth, but even back then, when her opinion of the Nirreth had hardly been positive, the violence of the run shocked her.
After they watched a few minutes more, it made her sick.
Jet grew up gutting animals, burying friends, shooting raiders, hacking up predators with her sword; Retribution still made her turn away.
Eventually, the Nirreth must have discovered their pirated signal and shut it down. Jet watched as the Nirreth contestant screamed, watching another Nirreth, likely a friend or a relative, get ripped apart and eaten by horse-sized lions.
Then nothing.
The screen simply went dark.
Why they bothered to block Retribution from human eyes, when they showed them the Rings week after week, Jet could only guess.
From Laksri, she sensed Nirreth saw Retribution as more of an internal matter, not fit to share with the species they colonized.
Either way, for Nirreth themselves, Retributions were must-see events.
It only added to their excitement that Jet Tetsuo, star of the Rings, was involved, not to mention Laksri, First Son of the Royals.
Preshow for the Retribution started three weeks earlier, right around when Jet and Laksri’s ship lifted off from Earth. That event, the First Son leaving Earth, signaled the official kickoff for the event; it also opened the betting pools, and the accompanying media extravaganza.
Nirreth television-viewers spent the last three weeks watching dramatic recreations of Anaze’s childhood, documentaries on the skag pits, speculations about Anaze and Jet’s possible relationship before they came to live in Green Zone Hezeret. They played and replayed footage of the attack against Laksri by Anaze, as well as other public recordings showing the two of them fighting over Jet’s affections and interviews of servants and other witnesses from the compound of the Royals about the tensions between the two of them.
They even spent some time on various histories of the human race, showing their proclivities to violence, presumably to provide “context” for Anaze’s actions or maybe just to stir up controversy about Nirreth-human relations.
Commentary by various “experts” peppered a timeline of her and Laksri, most of it set to melodramatic music: the finding of Jet, how she and Laksri met, Prince Ogli’s well-publicized crush on her, Laksri being identified for who and what he was.
They showed footage of her and Laksri during public appearances, cuts from Jet’s Rings matches and Laksri’s reactions to her near-misses, Jet and Laksri working together in training arenas between runs. They even aired a short piece on Richter, as the trader who caught and sold Jet to the Royal family.
They showed and picked apart the evidence around the death of Ogli’s parents, the bomb attack on Green Zone, speculation around Anaze’s possible involvement in either or both.
Jet only saw snippets of the spectacle, both on the ship and once they arrived on Astet, but what she’d seen had been more than enough.
She’d only seen Richter once since they arrived.
He seemed to take the measure of her within seconds of their coming face to face.
She’d nearly walked right into him, entering the common area belonging to
the residency compartments she and Laksri shared.
How Richter managed to get a bed in the Royal compartments, Jet didn’t think to wonder at the time. She flinched when she saw him, coming to a dead halt.
Richter stopped, too. His eyes narrowed, traveling deliberately down the length of her body before returning to her face.
Somewhere in that appraisal, his expression hardened.
He glanced at Laksri, who entered the room behind her.
“I see you and big blue made up.” Richter’s eyes grew cold as ice, despite the lightness of his words. “How nice for you both.”
Whatever he’d intended with his jab, his words only managed to snap her out of her post-venom haze. She gave him a hard smile.
“Where’ve you been, Richter?” she said, lifting an eyebrow. “Skulking around with the other reptiles? I almost didn’t see you there, standing under all those bright lights.”
Richter gave a low snort, but the humor didn’t touch his eyes.
“That’s cute,” he said.
Jet opened her mouth to speak, but Richter cut her off before she could.
“…Nice diversion, too,” he added.
Richter’s eyes remained hard on her body, looking her over like Jet was an animal in one of the Nirreth zoos.
“I guess you’re pretty stoned now, aren’t you, kitten? Don’t suppose there’s much use in insulting you… much less trying to have a real conversation. After all, you’re just a pretty trinket here, am I right?”
His eyes didn’t so much as flicker as they met hers.
Studying her face, he gave a disgusted grunt.
“God. I should have known better than to recruit a woman. Much less a damned virgin.”
Jet’s back stiffened.
She didn’t avert her gaze, managing to hold the smile on her lips.
“Suitably tacky,” she commented after a beat. “But I have to say, a bit heavy-handed even for you, Richter. Usually you’re better at this.”
She hadn’t meant it as a dig about the implant Laksri removed, but she saw Richter’s eyes dart to her neck, anyway. Still studying her, Richter frowned. Real anger grew visible in his pale brown irises, even as a smile formed on his lips.
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 64
