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, 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 silently followed her.
28
The Loran Stone
They reached the main 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, she entered a round room she remembered keenly from her first days in the Palace, even if she’d never seen it this dark. She held her sword out in front of her as she walked, silently crossing the tile floor as she looked for movement on either side.
Apart from the lack of light, the room looked exactly how she remembered it.
The insides of the walls had glass observation panels, where cages jutted out of the wall. Each of those cages housed a large predatory animal native to Earth, although many of those animals had been extinct before the Nirreth came.
Jet could barely see those animals now, without the inside illumination of their pens, but she caught sight of a tiger pacing back and forth in one, and a pair of wolves watching her from another, their black shapes stark over a white wall that normally had a virtual, faux-desert landscape projected over it.
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.
Normally, the cages must mask the sound of the animals somehow, because Jet never remembered hearing them before.
Now the bear snuffled and growled, one paw on the glass wall.
He swayed on his powerful hind legs, right before he let out another bellowing cry, louder that time, and landed back on all fours.
It looked almost 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, only it had grown in the passing months.
Now it took up most of its high-ceilinged cage.
Feeling another stab of pity, Jet looked away, vowing to get them out of those damned things 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 center of the room, Jet aimed her feet for the opposite door, and soon emerged in the passageway on the other side.
Exhaling when she saw no one there, she motioned with her head towards a staircase on the other end of the corridor.
The staircase wound up in a graceful spiral, steep and made entirely of metal.
It was definitely a human design, given the elaborate iron bannister that wound around the outside. The Nirreth didn’t generally design railings into their staircases––partly, Jet suspected, because they risked banging their tails into them as they climbed, and partly because their tails afforded them better balance anyway, so they didn’t need them.
Giving Alice a last glance, Jet began climbing the stairs on her bare feet, moving fast, and as silently as possible.
The library was the only thing that lived at the top of those stairs; it formed the highest point in the compound, and the stairs were the only way in.
Jet paused when she reached the top, looking up at the colorful glass ceiling.
The library had been Jet’s favorite place, when she lived as a slave of the Royals.
The room’s walls were mostly dark now; none of the artificial lights appeared to be on, so most of the books themselves couldn’t be seen apart from their steep shelving. Yet the enormous skylight curved elegantly overhead, teeming with stars from the night sky of the Nirreth dome.
As a result, the center of the room still had some illumination.
Like when she’d first seen it, the library reminded Jet more than anything of an ancient cathedral from Old Earth, like she’d seen in Chiyeko’s picture books as a kid.
Stained glass windows curved down three of the rounded walls, interspersed with wide bookshelves made of wood. If the lights were switched on, she’d see spines of every color and age represented there, with subjects ranging from fly-fishing to philosophy to art to fictional stories about everything from robots and space ships to Ancient China.
The bookshelves filled most of the twenty or thirty-meter-high walls, nestled in between stained glass windows that reached all the way to the skylight.
Jet had thought to herself, more than once, they resembled multi-colored rays of the sun.
The furniture Jet remembered was a combination of human and Nirreth, with most of the human-type designs being more decorative than for common use.
Even so, they gave the room an old-fashioned appearance to Jet’s eyes, in a way she liked, and even found comforting.
The room had an equal blending of Nirreth in it, however.
Long planters filled the spaces on either side of the stained glass below the skylight, filled with vines, flowers, even trees that grew out of the walls above windows and bookshelves. In the one panel without any bookshelf at all, a tree-shaped fountain covered the width of the space, made of dark blue stone and carved with elaborate details of leaves, bark, and flowers.
Even now, Jet found the room profoundly still, eerily beautiful.
It struck her as strange, suddenly, that a space so evenly blended between human and Nirreth cultures would be where they housed their precious Loran Stone.
Before, birds had filled the high dome and roosted on the trees and bookshelves. Colored lights shone on statues and reading lamps by the long tables. Nirreth sat on the long couches, curled up with books, or lounging on their backs, looking up at the skylight.
Now everything was dark. Jet couldn’t hear any birds, not even the rustle of their feathers and feet. She had to assume they were gone from here, too.
Looking up, she scanned the high dome with her eyes.
She wondered if they would have taken it already, if the stone was even…
She saw it. A glint of light caught on its multi-faceted surface, shining a near white in the dark. Blinking up, she squinted at it, doubting her eyes…
But no, she was sure.
That was it.
The blue-green stone glowed faintly in the starlight from the very apex of the dome, where it formed a focal point for the entire room.
It hadn’t occurred to her until now that some of the Nirreth who had lounged in here, staring up at the skylight with their heads resting on their arms, might also have been looking at the stone. Given what Laksri and Trazen said, they clearly viewed it as a kind of quasi-religious object, one wi
th a profound cultural meaning, at least.
Jet had known for some time that Nirreth believed their ruling clans had a whiff of the mystical about them. She’d never given it much thought apart from trying to make sense of their political games, but she’d known it was a big part of their rhetoric.
Staring up at the stone now, it also occurred to Jet for the first time that she had no idea how her and Alice were supposed to get it down from there.
Even as she thought it, Alice was holding up her gun, showing it to Jet.
“What you think, mammal?” she said in her deadpan voice. “I think this is fastest, yes?”
Jet looked at her, alarmed.
“You think you can shoot it down?” she said, a little horrified, in spite of herself.
Alice shrugged. “You got a better idea?”
Before Jet could think of a good answer, another voice broke the quiet, speaking from the far side of the round room.
“That won’t be necessary,” the voice said, its voice a low hiss.
Jet and Alice both tensed and turned.
Jet swiveled on her heel, her sword gripped in both hands as she sank to a fighting stance. Next to her, Alice aimed her gun into that dark as well, pointing it in the direction of the voice. Jet still couldn’t see anything but shadows, however.
Undaunted by their reactions, the stranger continued speaking in the same calm voice.
“This is over now, Jet Tetsuo,” the being said, its voice deep, melodious, and somehow feminine. “This war of yours, this rebellion… it is finally over.”
29
Two Races
Jet lowered her sword, moving out of her fighting crouch before consciously making the decision.
“Who are you?” she said.
The being walked forward, out of the dark and into the starlit center of the room.
Alice continued to aim her gun in its direction, but the being barely spared the weapon a glance, focusing its gaze on Jet instead.
Now that she could see it, Jet thought it had to be Nirreth.
“We are taking the stone,” the creature told her.
Jet felt her jaw harden, even as she raised the sword back to attack position.
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t allow that.” Pausing when the other didn’t speak, she made her voice harsher. “Who are you? How do you know me?”
The creature let out a longer, purr-like sigh.
Jet waited for it to answer, but it didn’t.
“Where is everyone?” she said, feeling her jaw harden. “Where are Isreti’s people? Are they hiding in the residence?”
“Some are, yes,” the Nirreth said. “Most heard of his death. Despite the lies put forward by the remaining movement leaders, they believed him to be dead and left. But some are still here. Some willingly believed the lie, and intend to fight you and yours, as soon as you breach the inner walls. Some will die. They will take some of yours with them.”
Jet clutched the sword tighter in her hands, twisting her palms and fingers over the hilt’s grip.
“Is that a threat?” she said. “Are you threatening us?”
“No,” the other said.
Jet glanced at Alice. The other women returned her brief look, her expression reflecting a similar confusion and hesitation. Alice continued to aim her gun at the Nirreth standing there in the shadows, but she hadn’t fired, nor did Jet really want her to.
“We are giving him to you,” the strange Nirreth said.
When Jet turned, she found those dark, reflecting eyes focused directly on hers.
“We are gifting his debt to you, Jet. We relinquish all claim over him… all vows. For this life, at least. You will both have to decide about the next one.”
Jet frowned, feeling her brow scrunch over her eyes.
Taking a step forward, she reinforced her grip on the sword.
For some reason, pain built in her chest.
“Who?” she said, her voice harsh. “Whose debt? What are you talking about? Who are you giving to me? Do you mean a slave? Because I don’t want a slave.”
The Nirreth didn’t answer.
When the tall creature took a number of slow steps forward, Jet stepped back, feeling her muscles tense as she raised Black higher, making the threat obvious.
The Nirreth barely seemed to notice.
She continued to walk without hesitation, undaunted by Jet’s sword. From the direction of her gaze, the robed Nirreth scarcely seemed to see Black at all.
For the strange Nirreth definitely was female.
Jet hadn’t been able to discern that absolutely at first, but now that Jet saw her under the glow from the skylight, those differences became obvious.
The Nirreth standing before her had a thicker tail and wider shoulders than most males of the species, along with shorter legs. She had a broader, larger-featured face, yet more delicate hands and feet. She also had patterned skin on her throat. Those patterns normally looked quite subtle––so subtle, Jet didn’t notice them at all, her first few months in the Green Zone––but under the starlight, they glowed with an iridescent cast.
Stopping in the center of the circular floor, the strange Nirreth gave Jet one of those subtle Nirreth smiles, her dark eyes shimmering with starlight.
“Perhaps he would like to be one, however,” she said cryptically.
It took Jet a second to realize the Nirreth had just answered her.
“Who?” Jet said, frowning. “Who are you talking about?”
“You know who I speak of, Jet Tetsuo.”
Before Jet could answer, the female Nirreth folded her hands in front of her long robe, which Jet found herself staring at as well. She’d never seen clothing like that on a Nirreth before. Even so, there was something familiar about it. Something she couldn’t quite wrap her head around. Was it close to some kind of human clothing?
Jet couldn’t decide.
She decided to ignore the riddles, to return to why they were here.
“How many are left?” she said. “Of your people.”
“My people, Jet Tetsuo?”
“Yours. Isreti’s.” Jet felt her jaw harden. “The ones who want to see all humans enslaved and eaten. How many stayed?”
The female Nirreth simply stood there, her face unmoving.
“Who are you?” Jet repeated.
“I am not any of the things you just described,” the Nirreth said. “As you well know.”
Jet had known that somehow.
Even so, the female’s answer only frustrated her.
“Then who are you?” Jet said, angrier. “Are you going to tell me? Because if not, I might have Alice here shoot you. I wonder if that would make you more talkative?”
The female sighed, letting out a softer purr.
“We do not have time for all of the complications that could arise around that, Jet Tetsuo,” she said. “I only waited here as a courtesy to you. So you would not waste your time looking for that which cannot be found. That which is no longer relevant to what will come next.”
Pausing, she added more gently,
“The time of the Royals is past. You will explain this to them. It will be hard for them to hear you, especially at first. But you will explain. The venom will help. You can share all of your memories of this exchange.”
“With Laksri?” Jet said, feeling her chest clench. “Prince Laksri?”
The female Nirreth only smiled.
When she spoke next, it was as if Jet hadn’t asked her a question at all.
“A new time must dawn, Jet Tetsuo. One that is based on a different way of doing things.”
She paused, smiling at Alice, then back at Jet.
“You can help them with this. We needed a species that could help, and we have finally found one. It is why so many of our kind resist. On some level, they feel this change, this rightness, and it frightens them. But it will be good in the end. You will see. You each have things the other needs.”
“Humans, you
mean?” Jet said. “Humans can help?”
“Yes.”
Jet glanced at Alice, who frowned as well, holding up her hands in an obvious “I have no idea what she’s talking about” gesture.
Feeling her own confusion deepen, Jet looked back at the female Nirreth.
“You’re not with Isreti’s people?” she said, her voice hesitant.
The Nirreth female smiled, as if that question were amusing.
“Who are you?” Jet said again.
“You needn’t worry,” the female said, again speaking as if Jet hadn’t. “Tell them, they needn’t worry, either. All will be well.”
The female Nirreth’s smile grew distant briefly, thoughtful, almost sad, but most of what Jet saw there looked closer to peace.
Not just peace––joy.
A silent contentment Jet had never seen before, but that looked and felt familiar somehow, although from where or what, Jet couldn’t say.
Whatever it was that female Nirreth projected, it was difficult to rail against.
It was difficult to avoid, to pretend Jet didn’t understand it, or even to simply reject it, although some part of Jet irrationally wanted to.
She couldn’t help wondering why.
She wondered why any part of her would want to reject this.
She wondered why being unkind to this creature felt like blasphemy, too.
“There are those who will fight this, of course,” the female Nirreth said, her voice clear and soft. “Some will fight this very hard, Jet Tetsuo. To their very deaths. They will take others with them.”
Sadness touched that smile briefly, even as her face tilted up and the female Nirreth appeared to be gazing at the stars.
“But change cannot be stopped, Jet Tetsuo. It cannot. And this change is already underway. Eventually, it will feel as normal as breathing… even to those who now think they will choke on it.”
She smiled.
“Even to you, Jet Tetsuo,” she said, softer.
The Nirreth’s words sounded strangely far away by the end.
Jet heard them like they came through a tunnel, like the underwater tunnel she and Alice had just left. Jet felt tiredness seep over her limbs, more tiredness than she could ever remember feeling. She fought to focus her eyes, glancing at Alice who stood next to her, but the other woman looked confused too, her dark eyes glassy in the starlight.
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 93
