THE VEIL DROPS

FIGHTING BROKE OUT all around her, the second she snapped back into her mind.

The sound flipped back on, loud, disorienting as she tried to make sense of what happened, what she’d just done... what to do now.

It was only a few seconds... maybe not even that... but time seemed to stretch as she stood there, staring around the giant amphitheater as chaos broke out all around her.

Screams rent the air, human and Nirreth.

Gunfire erupted all around her. Human arms. Pulre, the small, stone-shaped guns that let out explosions that could punch two-meter wide holes in walls at close range. Sandblasters shot at close-range targets while Nirreth handguns and a Nirreth-designed rifle aimed at targets from further distances. One of those rifles Jet recognized and had fired at home; it worked similarly to a lot of human semi-automatic arms, so her uncle had trained her and Biggs to use them. Uncle Draven theorized that particular gun might even have been modeled off one of theirs, so it could fire in more rapid bursts at longer distances.

Humans crouched and stood in stone alcoves, wielding mostly human-made automatic rifles and even some shotguns and handguns. Jet saw a lot of skag-looking humans among those uniformed soldiers, fighting side by side with Nirreth who also fired at Isreti’s guard.

How the hell had they gotten here?

Trazen yanked on her neck again, snapping her out of her fugue.

Get back! he thought at her, once again shouting inside her mind. Get back, Jet! They have guns... a sword won’t help you here...

Jet followed the pull of his hand without knowing what he meant at first.

Everyone had guns. She knew that.

Everyone around them seemed to be firing at someone. What good would it do for either of them to try and run now? No one seemed to be paying any attention to them anyway. From what Jet could tell, a good chunk of the stadium had erupted into one big gun fight, with civilian Nirreth and humans screaming and hiding among the bleachers, trying not to get hit by the edges of a stray pulre charge or a sandblaster.

Trazen’s mind nudged hers and Jet’s eyes shifted down.

For the first time since gunfire erupted, her focus shifted away from the skirmishes happening above them and to either side... and back to the guards who’d been standing around Isreti when she killed him.

Jet! Move... now! Get back!

She followed the tug of Trazen’s fingers without taking her eyes off the row of guards. Her mind had clicked on for real by then, the tactical part of it anyway.

She could see murder in those eyes, the hard coil of tails, some with stingers already partway extended.

These were the zealots.

These were the Nirreth who hadn’t just feared Isreti... they’d loved him.

Run for the ramp, Jet! Go! Trazen shouted in her mind.

Pulling her around behind him with both hands, he turned and shoved her in the direction of that same ramp, his arm and hands like spring-loaded steel. He used his tail to shove at her again when she hesitated.

Join the others! Go! Go, Jet! Now!

“Get her alive!” the guard in front said in heavily-accented Nargili. His dark eyes never left Jet’s face, the hatred seething in his nearly black irises. “She must stand trial. She must stand the trial of Retribution. Her blood will decorate the holy altars. We will rip apart her family for real. Kill everyone she ever knew...” He looked at Trazen with equal hatred. “Including this blood-traitor scum and whoever has helped him...”

Jet’s mind spun, fighting with his words.

Her heart lifted as she replayed what he’d said, disbelief twisting his words as she struggled with what they really meant. Part of her tried to make them mean what she wanted them to mean. Another part of her refused to go there, didn’t even want to let herself hope.

Kill them for real?

Did that mean what it sounded like it meant? Was her family not dead?

She continued to fight with the angry Nirreth’s words, replaying them over and over in her head. She tried to remember every aspect of what happened inside the arena. She hadn’t looked at the bodies outside of virtual. She hadn’t seen their faces. Had they killed two other humans? Dressed up two innocents in virtual to look like her mother and Biggs?

Her heart rose more, a violent stab of hope in her chest.

Guilt lived there too, the idea that someone else had died for her.

But that hope burned brighter.

The guard was walking towards her now with long, heavy strides, his tail darting and coiling behind him, that hatred growing hotter in his eyes. Half-hunched, he looked like he might be readying for a leap and Jet watched as he pulled a black baton off his belt.

Two of the other Nirreth pulled their own wands, using sharp flicks of their wrists to extend them to twice their length. Blue and white current at the ends created wave-like beams of light, hissing as they spat sparks.

She’d seen those before, too.

They used them on her on Astet. They’d used them on everyone in the slave pens whenever there was a fight, or a group of humans went crazy or wouldn’t be silent. One shock from one of those and Jet would be out for a few hours.

Trazen shoved at her shoulder again, getting between her and the guards.

“Run, Jet!” he growled.

Before she could recover her balance, Trazen leapt past her, tackling the first of the guards and snarling, slamming the arm holding the baton down on the arena floor with an audible crack. Jet watched in shock as Trazen bit into the other Nirreth’s neck, tearing out a hunk of flesh with his teeth right before he stung the male in the throat and leapt off him.

Staring down in shock, momentarily paralyzed, she watched him wrench a gun out of the guard’s side holster and fire at another of those guards before they could reach him with the baton. He hit one in the side of the body.

Only then did Jet realize the weapon was a pulre.

The guard fell like a stone, half his body missing in a misting spray of blood and Trazen leapt for that body too, taking the second guard’s weapon and aiming it upwards while the rest of the guards scattered.

Two of them used the stone pillars as shields from the second pulre.

Trazen crouched over the second Nirreth’s body, growling, then moved again, attacking the next nearest guard when he peered out from behind the pillar. He shot at another when that one tried to take advantage of his distraction to shoot at him from behind the other pillar.

Jet couldn’t help but stare. She’d never seen Trazen fight before.

She saw the strategy behind how he moved... a near grace. He’d already taken down three of the five, with the fourth visibly injured from catching part of Trazen’s second pulre blast.

More would come, though.

Trazen needed to get out of there, too.

“Go, Jet!” he snarled again, not sparing her a look. “I will find you!”

That time, she decided to do what he said.

She couldn’t do much good here right now. Not unarmed.

Even as she thought it, she darted forward, grabbing the first pulre Trazen fired and shoving it into the pocket of her sense-suit. It would need at least another minute to recharge, but might come in handy later. Glancing up one last time, it hit her that the Rings Judges were no longer on the padded bench, or anywhere within visual range. They’d disappeared entirely, along with the guards who had stood by the stadium wall behind them.

They must have taken the judges out that way, Jet thought... through a hidden door, or maybe down the same ramp where the most intense gun-play was happening now.

If it was the latter, she didn’t like their chances much.

She felt movement to her right and turned, reaching for the hilt of Black without thought. Feeling as much as seeing a body rushing towards her, she unsheathed and swung the sword before she’d identified the shape, stepping back as she swiveled her hips. The arc of the blade managed to force him to stop, and Jet found herself facing off with a Nirreth who’d apparently intended to tackle her from the side.

Seeing the pulre as he ripped it out of a thigh holster––she, Jet corrected in her own mind, as she ripped it out of a thigh holster, since this Nirreth was female––Jet darted forward without thought. She closed the distance between them, twisting sideways out of the pulre’s range even as she brought the sword down, hard, on the other’s wrist.

She severed the Nirreth’s hand in one clean cut.

The hand and the pulre fell to the arena floor.

The Nirreth whose hand it had been screamed, a blood-curdling, high-pitched sound that Jet had only ever heard in Rings, never in real life.

Another pulre blast went off to her left, and Jet turned, still gripping the sword, panting when she saw that Trazen had shot another guard who had been heading for her.

“Jet! Behind you!” he shouted.

She heard frustration in Trazen’s voice, but he’d found another gun, one of the bigger hand-helds that time and was already firing on another of the guards.

Jet turned to find the one she’d shot trying to pick up the pulre with her good hand, to untangle it from the fingers of the hand that Jet had already cut off.

Stepping forward, Jet didn’t wait, but kicked the Nirreth hard in the face, causing her to grunt and throw her jaw up, her head back. Jet swung the sword up in a neat arc, beheading the female Nirreth the way she’d done with Isreti.

That time, she only stared at the beheaded body, watching it twitch, for a bare second.

Crouching down, she picked up the unfired pulre, gripping it in her hand even as she used the female Nirreth’s clothes to wipe off her sword before she slammed it back into the scabbard. When she turned, she saw Trazen behind one of the pillars, still firing at Nirreth guards. She shot at one of them from where she stood, then realized that was a mistake when they turned their focus on her. Realizing she’d already used up that pulre, that the other probably wasn’t charged yet, she cursed.

She was out in the open, too.

“Jet!” Trazen snarled. “Get out of here! I don’t need your help!”

Realizing he was right, Jet turned, sprinting for the transparent wall of the arena even as one of the guards aimed a sandblaster at her retreating back.

Luckily those things had crappy range, and not the most precise of targeting functions.

They were really only good for point-blank shots, kind of like an old-style blunderbuss. Even so, Jet ducked when it went off, feeling her adrenaline and heart rate spike. She ran lower to the ground in reflex even as she saw an arm signaling her nearer to the stadium wall. Whoever it was stood next to the second ramp leading below the stadium, the one that Bukka had emerged from earlier.

“Jet! Come here!” Alice shouted. “Crazy mammal!”

Seeing Alice’s face there and hearing her voice, Jet changed direction without thought, running all-out towards the other woman.

She reached her in a handful of seconds, out of breath and gasping. Slamming her back against the wall, she winced as the sword dug into her spine.

She stood there, recovering, as Alice fired down the ramp from behind cover.

Looking around at where they were, Jet realized the stadium overhang provided a fair bit of protection from above, at least until they drew fire from the arena floor. Jet remained where she was while Alice continued to discharge her human-made rifle, not wanting to distract her as she shot down the ramp into the dark. Looking past the other woman’s armored vest, Jet saw a handful of Nirreth on the other side of the opening, wearing Laksri’s colors.

Next to them, four more humans were shooting down the ramp, too. One had turned the other direction now, though, and was covering Trazen from behind a short wall that ringed the lower level of the arena floor.

After squeezing off another volley of shots, Alice drew back and hit a button on the side of her rifle, causing the empty magazine to slide out a few inches on the bottom. Yanking it out, she slammed a full magazine in to take its place, producing it from a pouch she wore lengthwise across her chest and shoulder. Jet noticed only then that Alice still wore the shimmering black gown she’d had on for the official ceremony, only now she had a flak jacket over it.

Before she returned to the firefight, she looked Jet over.

“You all right?” she said.

“You got another one of those?” Jet shouted above the sound of gunfire.

Alice gave her a small smile, quirking an eyebrow. “You’d probably just shoot off your own foot anyway,” she said wryly.

Before Jet could retort back, Alice turned, firing down the ramp again.

After a few more minutes, the firing began to die down.

Jet heard one of the Nirreth on the other side of the ramp, also a female, let out a growling hiss in Nargili. “All clear!” she said.

Other voices echoed her words.

“Clear!” a human seconded in English.

“Clear!” said Alice, lowering her rifle. Alice turned then, looking at Jet, her eyes serious. “You ready? We’re getting you out of here.”

Jet bit her lip, fighting frustration. “What about Trazen?”

Alice’s expression turned amused. “You worried about Trazen? You seen him fight, mammal? I would be more worried about his opponents...”

Jet didn’t return the smile. “You don’t have a gun for me?”

“We need to get you out alive, Jet,” Alice said, her smile fading as her voice turned borderline impatient. “You still not understand, mammal? You killed Isreti. They will be looking for you. Richter and Laksri and Trazen... they all think you are still our best hope at uniting the Nirreth and humans outside the Green Zone. My orders are to bring you back alive.”

Jet felt her jaw harden. “Richter thinks that?”

“He’s not the only one, Jet. Look around you!” At Jet’s angry look, Alice exhaled then turned, motioning for one of the other soldiers to bring something to her, using sign language that looked military.

Jet even vaguely recognized a few signs from her Uncle Draven and Aunt Lara.

“Jet,” Alice said. “Don’t fight me on this. You are too important to fight... this time, at least. And your family is waiting for you.”

“My family?” Jet felt that hope spike in her chest, even as a human ran up to her, holding out a long flak jacket for her. Jet held out her arms, letting him slide it up onto her shoulders without looking away from Alice’s face. “Then my family really is okay?”

“Yes,” Alice said. “We just got confirmation. They are waiting for you.”

“My brother? My mom?”

Alice nodded, pursing her lips. “Yes. Your uncle and aunt, too.”

Jet fought with the anger that wanted to rise, realizing that it was relief as much as true anger, confusion about what had just happened... along with what was probably a delayed reaction to everything she’d already been through that day.

“Go, Jet,” Alice said, her voice a growl. “Let us do this part. Go take care of your family. I won’t let anyone kill your pet Nirreth...”

That time, Jet only nodded.

The same human male who brought her the jacket was now winding a dark blue cloth expertly around her head while she stood there. By the time he finished, the cloth covered Jet’s hair and most of her lower face, so that only her eyes showed above where the material covered her nose and neck. The sense-suit had mostly disappeared under the flak jacket, leaving only her sense-boots visible below, and the lower part of the leggings.

From a distance, no one would recognize them as being from the Rings.

Alice looked her over, holding the gun up.

It occurred to Jet only then that Alice was in charge. She was leading this part of the army. The thought didn’t surprise Jet exactly, but it made her wonder what Alice’s role really was in all of this. It also made her wonder about Alice’s real relationship with Richter, which was something that had bugged Jet off and on for awhile.

But it was hard to care about any of that now.

Her family was alive. Biggs and her mother were alive.

For the same reason, Jet had decided to go with them, wherever they wanted to take her. As long as it meant she could see her brother and her mother again.

Somewhere in that, Alice must have decided Jet’s disguise would do.

“All right,” she said, giving a satisfied nod. “Take her. Go. Now.”

Jet didn’t have time to think about what to say to Alice.

She didn’t know if she would have thanked her, gotten angry with her, tried to ask her more questions, or given her a hug.

In any case, by the time she’d untangled any of that in her mind, Jet was already running down the dark ramp, surrounded on all sides by humans and Nirreth in military uniforms. They passed bodies crumpled on the ramp floor, some of them gasping and moaning from where they bled. Jet winced as those in her party shot some of those as they passed, even knowing they were probably mercy killings.

She glanced around at her new protective detail as they ran. She didn’t recognize any of them. Moreover, she couldn’t help marveling at just how many of them there were, or how respectfully and protectively they treated her, even now. The humans wore colors Jet recognized from the old history recordings about the war. She also recognized those colors from her first run in the Rings, when she’d worn a variation of the same uniform herself.

The Nirreth uniforms were more immediately familiar.

The six Nirreth Jet counted, half of them male and half female, all wore Laksri’s colors from his brief stint as First Son.

All of them, human and Nirreth, wore armbands around their upper arms. Given that they were running and it was dark, it took Jet a moment to recognize the symbol there.

Once she did, she almost smiled.

It was a small figure of a samurai, sword raised under the Nirreth sun.

Remembering Alice’s words about being the face to unite the Nirreth and the human rebels, Jet looked back up the ramp, gazing into that rectangle of light without slowing her pace.

Alice no longer stood by the opening.

No one stood there, in fact. Jet assumed the troops who had been standing there previously had already moved elsewhere to continue the fight.

The war of the Rebellion against Nirreth Royals had really begun.

And despite everyone wearing her symbol on their arms like some ancient mythological animal, it looked like Jet would miss the war this time around, too.

NIRRETH AND HUMANS saluted her as Jet climbed the steps into a culler ship.

Jet didn’t recognize any of them, but she saluted back, almost in rote. She got smiles from a few of the younger humans, especially the women and girls, and a few careful touches from Nirreth who expressed their approval in more tactile ways.

All of it was a blur.

She walked up the ramp with her head held high, the scarf down below her chin now but still covering her hair.

It wasn’t until she entered the darkness of the hold that someone grabbed her for real.

Jet reached back, gripping the hilt of Black in rote as she stepped back, halfway into a fighting stance, but the person holding her broke out into a happy laugh, disarming her completely. She was still holding the hilt of Black but her fingers loosened when Anaze pulled her into a rough bear hug, still laughing.

“JET! I’m so happy to see you! So damned happy!” Squeezing her, he let out another laugh, what sounded like pure joy. “You have no idea, Jet! God above, you are amazing!”

He gripped her tighter, swinging her around in a half-circle and laughing louder when he made her gasp. The strength in his arms caught her completely off-guard. When did Anaze get so tall? Why did he suddenly seem three times the size she remembered him?

Realizing the last time she’d seen him at all, even from a distance, had been in the Retribution arena on Astet, Jet fought a sudden rush of emotion.

She’d known he was alive. Trazen told her he was alive.

So did Laksri... and Richter.

Even so, some part of her hadn’t really believed it.

Or maybe she’d just thought him dead for so long, the information that he’d survived the ordeal on Astet hadn’t become fully real to her, whatever her mind knew. It felt real now, even before she saw his green eyes smiling down at her. Her eyes had adjusted by then to the dimmer hold of the culler ship, so she could see every part of him.

She found herself focusing on scars on his neck and arms visible around his uniform shirt, remembering some of those from Astet, when they’d been fresher marks. Shaking that from her mind, she looked back at his face, fingering his dark hair and skin almost without realizing she’d done it. He caught hold of her hand, squeezing her fingers. His narrow face, still partly in shadow, was broken by white teeth as he grinned.

“Jet,” he said, softer. Tears came to his eyes. “I’m so glad to see you. I’m so glad you’re okay. I thought I was going to have a heart attack during that damned run... and seeing you on the floor before that monster, Isreti...” He swallowed, squeezing her hand again. “You were amazing. You were absolutely amazing... I could have killed you for doing something so risky, with all of those guards there... but damn. It worked! You killed that evil bastard right in front of his own guard!”

He let out a short laugh, half-choked by tears.

More than anything, she heard that happiness in his voice. She could see it in his eyes, practically feel it through his skin... as if he were Nirreth, too.

Before she could hold them back, tears sprang to her eyes. She remembered her friend from the pits, the talks they used to have about this very day, this very possibility. She fought to blink her tears away, then to wipe them with her hands when they started running down her cheeks. She let go of Black’s hilt, clinging to Anaze’s shoulders instead.

When she looked up next, he kissed her on the cheek.

“You look like shit,” she told him, her voice gruffer than usual.

He laughed again, squeezing her around the waist. “So do you... raccoon girl.”

He let her weight drop through his hands, setting her easily back on her feet. Letting go of him almost reluctantly, she stepped back. When he just grinned at her, his hands on his hips, she wiped her face again, clearing her throat before she looked up at him.

“So who’s running this crazy thing?” she said, her voice still gruff as she forced a smile. “You? Your crazy ass of a father? Laks?”

Anaze grinned, catching hold of her hand.

“Come with me, Jet,” he said. “I can finally tell you everything.”

STRANGELY, GIVEN EVERYTHING that had happened, there wasn’t as much to tell as Jet would have expected. Not as much as she needed to hear maybe, to give her any real sense of closure... or even to make it all make sense in the less-rational parts of her mind.

Some of it, she already knew from Trazen.

Some of it she’d guessed, but hadn’t been completely sure.

Anaze and Laksri had been working together from the beginning, like Laksri told her... so that fell into the bucket of things Jet already knew. Of course, given everything that had happened, she’d no longer been entirely sure it was true... or if anything Anaze or Richter or Laksri has ever told her was true... but it hadn’t been new information.

According to Anaze, that part was true.

Anaze also said he was pretty sure Richter figured out that he and Laksri were more loyal to one another than they were to him. Anaze hadn’t given up on his father entirely, but he’d grown to be wary of him, particularly when Richter started getting more and more secretive about what he was doing in the northern settlements. Anaze knew how manipulative Richter could be––Anaze’s own mother had warned him about his father in that respect––but Anaze also knew Richter genuinely wanted freedom for all humans. As Anaze phrased it, Richter was just “a little less reliable” when it came to what he was willing to do to secure those ends.

In the end, Anaze said, Richter surprised all of them.

Mostly because he hadn’t actually betrayed them.

Not overtly, anyway.

He’d taken Jet’s family for safekeeping... that part was true.

He’d also taken them for leverage... so that part was true, too. Richter had wanted insurance for Laksri and Anaze, as well as Jet herself.

So he’d picked up Jet’s mother and brother not long after Jet’s first Rings match, when it became abundantly clear to Richter that Jet had received some military training of her own. In the beginning he’d only intended to pick up her Uncle Draven and Aunt Lara. But when he caught some of Isreti’s people sniffing around the skag pits, he’d decided to take her mother and Biggs too, before the Nirreth figured out who they were.

Richter still had Jet’s family in hiding when he’d gotten wind of Isreti’s coup back on Earth. They’d already been on their way to Astet when Isreti’s people reached out to Richter personally, and asked him to get rid of Laksri in return for giving Richter and his people immunity in the coming purges. Supposedly, they’d offered him Alaska.

Or maybe they offered him what used to be called Hawaii... Anaze was a bit fuzzy on the specifics.

In any case, Richter knew it was a bullshit deal, and that they’d all end up dead. So he did the only thing still open to him.

He faked Laksri’s death.

He shot him with a drugged dart that made a hell of a mess, knocking him unconscious in a way that feigned his death, then used the pretext of the assassination to get both Laksri and Anaze off Astet using his human military.

Jet, he’d left behind.

Anaze was more fuzzy about that part, which is maybe why Jet still struggled to wrap her head around the rest of the story. According to Anaze, he and Laksri hadn’t been there when Jet’s fate got decided.

They’d also both been furious when they found out Richter left Jet behind.

According to Richter however, it was his only option. Isreti had been adamant that Jet not be a part of their deal. He’d taken her into custody within minutes, and kept her under armed guard before he threw her into the prison below the Retribution arena. Isreti hadn’t cared about Anaze... and he hadn’t known about Laksri... but the new Nirreth King-To-Be had very definite plans around how to dispose of Jet.

As a kind of Plan B, Richter assured them that he’d “made arrangements” to ensure Jet would be in a safe house while she remained with the Nirreth.

Laksri about blew his lid when he found out that safe house had been with Trazen. Of course, by then, Laksri had been warned by Trazen about Isreti personally, so they were all less sure that Trazen was an enemy per se. Even so, according to Anaze, Laksri contacted Trazen at once, making him vow on everything Nirreth hold sacred that he wouldn’t violate Jet in any way.

Anaze seemed to think Laksri was suprised when Trazen agreed.

Funnily enough, Trazen had no idea that Richter had been behind him gaining custody over Jet. He’d made a bid of his own, but really, Richter made that happen, too. According to Anaze, Richter made that part of the deal with Isreti while they negotiated Laksri’s assassination... a compromise of sorts, which Richter phrased as a personal favor to the Ringmaster.

He only told Laksri and Anaze about Trazen’s ties to the Shinkara later.

How Richter had even known about Trazen’s ties to the Shinkara was too baffling for Jet to contemplate. Anaze didn’t know how Richter found out about that, either. When Jet asked, Anaze just held up his hands in a familiar shrug, smiling as if to say, “He’s Richter.”

It was pretty difficult to argue with that.

As Anaze finished talking, Jet found herself curled up on a wide, Nirreth-made bench in the cargo area of the culler ship, staring out a round viewport at a sky that no longer had the blue wash of color she’d gotten accustomed to inside the Green Zone.

This sky was a dirty brown instead, filled with dust and smoke, with no clouds discernible apart from the haze that obscured most of the ground below the culler.

They’d left the protective bubble of the city about thirty minutes before––maybe ten minutes after they lifted off the landing pad outside the Rings stadium.

The culler hadn’t flown to the edge of the city to exit the dome, like Jet expected, but straight up and out, as if they were leaving the planet altogether. Once it popped out of the open door, the ship’s ascent abruptly stopped. They’d fallen back towards the curve of the protective shield only to shift direction and skim over the outer surface and then out over the landscape of the “real” Earth that lived past the Green Zone’s thick walls.

Leaning her forehead against the transparent pane of the round viewport, Jet sighed, fighting back and forth in her head about how much longer she wanted to go over this. Anaze stopped talking a few minutes before... and Jet found that, more than anything, she was tired now.

Maybe more than tired. Her mind had fallen into a near static.

Even so, she kept one ear on the radio signals that echoed through the hollow-feeling cabin, a mish-mash of reports from different military forces operating around the city.

“...Casualties high in the Old City and Kabasi, mainly from cross-fire from the organized crime sector and a holed up squadron of Isreti’s armed forces. We have Nirreth on the ground, trying to reason with the crime side, but they’ve heard about the coup and they’ve got a split inside their own ranks. Some were loyal, due to promises Isreti made, and some––”

A different voice, female and human from the skag accent, broke in from another channel:

“Rings arena is secure. Live prisoners are currently being located to an indoor holding center in Station 10. The human cells there have already been emptied, as well as those holding political prisoners from the last regime, and––”

A male voice cut in from the other side, probably Nirreth:

“Fighting still hot by the Palace. We’re no where near to breaching those walls tonight, not even with bombs. Lakrsi’s people are trying to get in through the canals, using humans to swim up into central water processing. Risk is high. Repeat, risk is high that the Stone will not be secured. We have word that Isreti’s people have already sent for reinforcements specifically to retrieve it. ETA nine hours for the nearest... any unencumbered forces please report.”

Jet looked away from the viewport, sitting up taller on the bench.

She’d been to that water processing plant with Laksri and Richter. She knew exactly where it was. Moreover, they’d just said the mission was in danger. She didn’t understand the reference to a “stone” but she got the gist. There was something in the Royal Palace that both sides needed, and Isreti’s followers were coming for it.

Jet turned to Anaze.

“Take me back,” she told him.

Anaze frowned. “Back? Don’t you want to see your family?”

She shook her head, even though his words brought another pain to her chest. “It can wait. You should really take me back... to the compound of the Royals.”

Anaze’s confusion worsened. “Why, Jet?” He hesitated, his voice growing more cautious. “Laksri will be all right, you know... he’s got a military background...”

She felt her teeth grit. “This has nothing to do with Laks, Anaze.”

Anaze frowned. “Trazen, then.”

In spite of her irritation, Jet raised an eyebrow, realizing that Anaze was telling her something, not just being an ass. “They’re together? At the Palace, I mean?”

Anaze nodded, tapping the headset he wore in his ear. “They’ve just combined forces, now that the Rings stadium and the surrounding areas are secure. The Palace is the priority now.”

Jet exhaled. “I got that much from the radio. That’s why you need to take me back.”

“Are you really ordering me to take you back there, Jet?” Anaze’s voice sounded conflicted. “I promised them I’d get you out. I promised I’d make sure you were safe...”

“Ordering?” Replaying his choice of words, Jet’s eyes widened, and suddenly she found she understood. “If I give you an order, then you have to take me back?”

“Yes, but––”

Jet was already smiling. “No but. Take me back. Right now.” Seeing the frustration on his face, she sighed, wrapping her arms around her bent knees. “Listen to me. I know the compound, Anaze. I know the compound... and I can swim. Do you know anyone else who can say that?”

“I can,” he said, smiling humorlessly.

She shook her head. “You don’t know it like I do. You were on house arrest most of the time you were there. Ogli let me go wherever I wanted. I know those canals like the back of my hand... I considered using them to try and escape more than once.” She gave him a wry smile. “Anyway, if you can do it, you should be going back anyway. Not babysitting me.”

Anaze’s frown deepened. Still staring at her face, he touched his ear.

“Did you get that?” he said.

There was a silence while he listened to whoever was on the other end. Then Anaze exhaled, dropping her gaze. “Fine. Yup. Got it.”

Without saying a word to Jet, he rose to his feet, walking to an intercom panel set directly into the forward bulkhead. Pressing an indentation made for a larger finger than his, he spoke loudly to be heard over the sound of the wind rattling through the hold.

Jet couldn’t hear much over that same wind, but she caught the tail end.

“...Do it. I got the confirm,” he said. “Yes. This comes from both.”

Taking his thumb off the wall, he gave Jet a grim look, his green eyes studying hers as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to be angry at her or not.

He still stood there as the culler began to bank, making a sharp, graceful turn in the air.

Within seconds, they were heading back the way they had come.