“She’s right,” he said, blunt. “We don’t have time for this. She’s ready to go. More ready than anyone else we’ve got. We need to send her. Let her pick the team, and start briefing her on the stone, like she said.”
His coffee-colored eyes grew sharper as he focused on Laksri.
“I hear what you’re saying, Laks, about needing her out here,” he said diplomatically. “But that’s a moot point if we don’t get control over this compound. And you know damned well the stone’s not just religion. We need that stone. And we need to do it now. Before Isreti’s people have time to regroup.”
When Jet glanced at Laksri, he was already staring at her.
She felt Trazen’s eyes on her, too, but it was harder to look at him for some reason.
She focused on Laksri alone.
Looking him over, she realized he was reacting with pure emotion. He was angry, but it was more than that.
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, even his posture.
“Laks,” she said patiently, 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. 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, so aware of him, it was difficult not to look. She bit the inside of her cheek, feeling a pain in her chest.
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.
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 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, his eyes and voice cold.
“I would not be stealing it,” he said. “It is rightfully mine.”
Jet didn’t follow his gaze. She didn’t really let herself pick apart his words, either. Somehow, she didn’t think Laksri was wholly talking about a special stone just then.
On the other hand, if Jet was right about that, she didn’t want to know.
She stared straight at Laksri, keeping her face still with an effort.
When he looked back at her, Laksri let out another purring hiss.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Jet?” he asked, 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.
Even so, her jaw hardened, her skin flushed, enough that she wondered what expression her face wore. She felt Trazen watching her, studying her face minutely, and the realization pained her, without her being able to articulate why.
After what felt like a long pause, Laksri stepped back, giving her a short bow.
“As you wish, Jet Tetsuo.” His voice came out 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 what that meant, either.
Not now.
Not until this was really finished.
25
The Dark
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 formed a dense line behind the barn, coloring the dome sky pink and red.
As the colors started to fade, she focused back on the slow-moving water.
The canal disappeared into the ground 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 had 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 th
at 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 of them individually.
Tyra was probably their best with guns, especially with any Nirreth weaponry. 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 was asked to take point. She also knew the canal tunnels from hours of staring at the maps, both as a slave of the Royals and from Richter refreshing her memory on them today.
Of course, Jet also knew the maps weren’t wholly accurate, at least inside the compound itself. She had to assume the same might be true of the canals.
There wasn’t much to say or think 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.
She should have talked to Trazen.
She bit her tongue, hard enough to taste blood.
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.
The water completely filled the pipe, with no space at the top for air.
Once they were through, they were underwater until they reached the Palace.
Laksri’s people had already taken down the security grid here, by shorting out the terminals on this segment of wall, but Jet still hesitated a bare breath before swimming through the opening. Some of that might have been the fear of going into a pipe where she might drown from lack of oxygen.
Some of it might have been fear Laks’ tech people screwed up, and the security grid was still there.
Jet took a deep breath, literally and figuratively.
Diving, she swam through the opening of the pipe.
Nothing happened. No alarms went off.
More to the point, no electrical grids cut off parts of Jet’s body.
Fighting not to exhale 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 breathe less if she forced herself to be conscious about it.
Touching the switch on her goggles to turn on the headlamp, she glanced behind her through the water only then, and saw Tyra, Anaze, and Alice all swimming hard through the pipe’s opening, 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, but Jet could see the last remnants of orange and pink from the sunset.
She should have said goodbye to Trazen.
The thought brought a sharp pain to her chest.
It caught her off guard, the pain rising intensely enough, she couldn’t think at all for a few seconds. 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 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 going.
When he finished, she told him the mission parameters were already decided. As far as the two of them, she 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 ordered him out of that part of the barn as soon as she saw him hanging around Jet.
Jet could tell Laksri knew she’d blown him off.
Hell, she’d been dressing for the canal right 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 Jet 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, no matter how much he apologized.
Jet couldn’t think about any of that now, though. Not until she knew if she’d even get out of the Palace alive. Despite what she’d told everyone, she knew a few dozen things could go horribly wrong, including the four of them being fried in a security grid, or drowning in the pipe.
The whole thing with her and Trazen and Laksri could end up being a moot point.
She fought not to think about why she avoided Trazen.
Why she didn’t talk to him. Why she barely looked at him.
She should have said goodbye.
She should have really looked at him.
She owed him that.
She owed 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, any irregularities that might help them if something bad happened down here.
Since about twenty 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 here.
The pipe aimed steeply downward.
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 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.
Thirty-two minutes left now.
There was barely room to use her arms to swim in this 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, curving into blackness and then aiming sharply downwar
d.
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 effect 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.
She’d never been claustrophobic, but something about the smaller pipe 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 vertical and head down.
Jet just kicked her way forward, hoping one of them would find a way to signal her if they needed her to stop.
All she could do was hope all three of them would still be with her when they reached the bottom… assuming they did reach it, and didn’t get stuck in the pipe.
Twenty-one minutes of air left.
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 the next segment of pipe was even smaller, 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 the distance they’d already traveled, the unlikelihood of having enough air to retrace their steps.
She was 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 Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 91
