Zero Recall (9 page)

Phoenix knew she
was allowing the Huouyt’s chemicals to manipulate her, but at that point, she
really didn’t give a damn what happened to Zero as long as he arrived on
Jeelsiht on time.  She
had
to stop the Dhasha Vahlin.  “Perhaps I can.” 
She found it, scribbled the address on a slip of paper, and put it on the desk
for him to take.  She took a step backwards as he approached, keeping the
assassin out of arm’s reach.

The Huouyt
watched her step back, then took the paper.  This close, the hormones were like
a pounding, insistent wave in her head.  She stifled the insane urge to step
forward, into the stranger’s reach.  She cursed herself inwardly for not
noticing it sooner. 
Soft,
Phoenix thought. 
You’re getting soft in
your old age.
  She decided she needed to start dating again, to get the
stress out of her system before it killed her.

Still standing
on the other side of the desk, the Huouyt slowly folded the paper in half,
watching her with an amused smile.  “My thanks.”

Phoenix narrowed
her eyes at the disdain in his face.  “Just get out.”

The Huouyt gave
a sarcastic bow and left.

He,
Phoenix thought, more than a little impressed,
has gotten better
.  She
glanced at her open door—where the assassin had appeared uninvited—then glanced
at her personal web link.  She’d wasted precious seconds on thinking about his
eyes, his chest, his sexy hands…

Yes, it was
definitely time to start slaking her body’s thirst for hormones elsewhere, lest
she allow her judgment to slip like that again.  She thought of it happening
around Zero and she felt sick.

Definitely
time to start dating again,
Phoenix thought, pulling over her personal
console and sitting back at her desk. 
Just as soon as this war’s over.

#

Joe found out
very quickly that he was not going to free Sam.  At least not alone.  They had
his brother under the strongest lockdown on the planet.  Congressional forces
were being used to supplement local police, leaving a wall of bodies three digs
thick around Sam’s prison.

News crews
covered the capture full-time, leaving Joe staring at his brother’s image in
shackles every time he turned around.

The knowledge that Joe
had gotten his brother captured burned in him.  Every instinct told Joe he had
to help Sam, but everything he knew about Congress and security told him he’d
be wasting his time.  Sam wasn’t going anywhere.  He was the first major Human
criminal Earth had seen since its induction into Congress.

They wanted to make an
example out of him.

Joe went to bar
after bar to watch the news-feeds, ordering a drink or two every time to keep
the bartender happy.  Once the drinks came, he’d set the whiskey aside and draw
up plans on how to free his brother on the little napkins that came with it. 
When he wadded them up in frustration, knowing that his plans were desperate
and stupid, he would finish his drink and order another, all the while watching
the newscast portray his eerie-looking brother as some sort of homicidal
psychopath.

Fluffy white
hair.  Like a goddamn cotton ball.  And his eyes…  Where they used to be
sky-blue, they now resembled the electric white-blue of a Huouyt.

What the hell
did the scaleless wonder do to himself?
Joe wondered, aghast.

As the days wore
on, Joe abandoned the little napkins for the drinks they came with.  He forgot
all plans of rescuing his brother and began instead to routinely drink himself
into a stupor each night.

Damn Maggie. 
Damn Sam.  Damn Earth.  Damn Congress.

He said each in his mind
like a toast as he tossed back shot after shot.  Oblivion began to come as
naturally to him as breathing.

It was sometime
at night—Joe wasn’t sure how many days it was after he’d fled Maggie’s
recall—when his hackles suddenly went up.

Joe was well on
his way to being drunk, but he still knew something was wrong.  He set down his
glass and glanced around the room.  Nothing out of place.

He was about to
go back to his whiskey when a man took a seat beside him at the bar and ordered
a drink.  He looked as half-dead as anyone else in the room, but Joe’s senses
were on high-alert.  He might as well have been sitting beside a ticking bomb.

The man caught
his stare and nodded, giving him a polite smile.

Joe leapt
backwards, grabbed his stool, and swung it at the man’s head with every ounce
of muscle he had.  The man’s face showed a twitch of surprise before the metal
slammed into the side of his skull, knocking him from his perch and sending
both of their drinks flying.

Joe dropped the
stool and ran.

He took the
first alley he came to and peeled down the cobbled stones with every ounce of
speed he could muster.  Joe heard something big crash into the trash piles
behind him and men shouting, but he didn’t look back.  He kept on running,
taking three more odd turns and climbing onto a roof.

From there, he
began the dubiously intelligent task of jumping from house to house, losing his
pursuers in the fences and walls behind.  On the ground beneath him, he heard
another crash and what sounded like a fence being ripped apart, but he wasn’t
sure it wasn’t his drunken imagination playing tricks on him.

Joe ducked into
an unlocked rooftop storage area and huddled amidst the tools he found there. 
His fingers found a hammer and he waited.

Outside the
storage shed, he heard the roof groan with a new added pressure.  Joe held his
breath, and soon he began to make out the sound of something being dragged
across the rooftop where he had just been.

Dragged?  Did he
have more than one pursuer?

The sound
stopped, and Joe waited, scarcely willing to breathe.

It began again,
progressing to the other end of the roof.  Then, like someone had thrown a sack
of rice over the side, he heard a thump as something hit the ground.  The huge
pressure continued to groan and slide over the edge after it, every once in a while
making a sound like pebbles against Dhasha scales.  Whatever it was, it was
big.
 
Joe let out a slow breath and stayed where he was.

For a very, very
long time.

CHAPTER
6:  Joe’s Second

“Who the hell
are you and what the hell are you doing on my roof?”

Bright light
shone into the shed, blinding him.  Joe groaned, lifting his hand to shield his
face.

A bald man
carrying an aluminum watering pail was silhouetted in the sunlight, frowning in
at him.  Seeing Joe’s palm, the man suddenly took a couple steps back, putting
a good ten digs between them.  “I know that mark.  You’re a Congie.”

“Not anymore,”
Joe muttered, pulling himself from the pile of junk where he’d fallen asleep. 
He stepped to the edge of the sunlight and peered over the edge of the
building.  He noted the displaced bricks on the cement below, pushed over the
edge by whatever had been following him, then looked dubiously up at the sky. 
“You know what time it is?”

“Twelve-thirty.”

Joe grunted and
reached into his pocket to pull out the remains of his cash.  His savings were
either flagged or frozen—probably both—and as he unwadded the bills, he found
himself growing more depressed.  Three hundred and eighty-seven credits.  Not even
four hundred credits to last him the rest of his life.

“You give me a
ride to the next town and I’ll give you three hundred, cash.”

The man peered
at him.  “You kill somebody or something?”

Joe gave him a
crooked smile, realizing his nose had begun bleeding again.  “Nah.  Just a
barfight.  Need to find another bar.”

The bald
roof-owner grimaced.  “You should use that money to clean yourself up, not to
buy some booze,” the man said.

“Guess that
means you’ll drive for free?”

The man smiled,
despite himself.  “Maybe I will.  My sister was a Congie.”

Joe hesitated in
wiping the sleep out of his eyes.  “Was?”

“Died on
Eeloir.  Huouyt killed her.”

Joe grunted. 
“That was a bad one.”

The man’s
attention sharpened.  “You were there?”

Groaning, Joe
put his hand up to shield his eyes again.   Confirming that the place wasn’t
swarming with Peacemakers, he lowered his hand and said, “Wish I wasn’t, but
yeah.  I was there.  Eight turns of Hell.  Makes you really learn to watch your
back.”

The man gave him
a look like Joe had just sworn his mother was still a virgin.  “I heard the Human
Ground Force didn’t have any survivors.”

“There were a
couple.  It was bad.  You don’t want to be on the opposite side of a Huouyt. 
‘Specially if the Huouyt knows what he’s doing.”  Joe shook his head, then eyed
the man.  “What was your sister’s name?”

“Tertiary
Commander Tammy Schroder.”

“Wheaties?” Joe
asked, automatically.

The man’s sharp
look became painfully acute.  “Some people called her that.”

Joe chuckled. 
“Small world.”

“Why?” the man demanded,
suspicion tight in his face.

Joe shrugged.  “She
was in my PlanOps battalion, under a different Prime.  She was Rat’s Second. 
Really athletic, could outrun most of the guys in the battalion games.  Sharper
than a goddamn tack.  Saved Rat’s life a time or two, and mine more than I’d
like to count.  Was a deadeye shot.  Put down more Huouyt than all her
groundmates combined.  They all called her Wheaties.  Don’t ask me why—she got
the name in Basic.”

For a long time,
the man said nothing.  Finally, “You some sort of con artist or something?”

Joe grimaced. 
“No sir.”

“And you knew my
sister.”  He still obviously didn’t believe him.

“The Ground
Corps is a big place,” Joe said.  “I knew a lot of people.”

The man’s eyes
scanned his face, then, eventually, he grunted.  “Eeloir wasn’t nearly as bad
as this Neskfaat thing.  I can’t believe those assholes at the news stations. 
We’ve got the biggest war Congress has ever seen brewing right on our doorstep
and instead they’re going on about this Ghost guy.  Who gives a shit?”

“Yeah,” Joe
muttered.

In the end, the
bald man led him out to his personal haauk, then fired it up and flew him an
hour east, dropping him off in a housing district in the next town over.  As
Joe was getting out of the
haauk
, the man stopped him.  “Your name Joe?”

Joe stiffened. 
“Who’s asking?”

The man leaned
forward against the straps holding him to his
haauk.
  “I know for a fact
only two Humans survived that Eeloir thing.  One of ‘em was a woman.  Are you Commander
Zero?  The one they’re looking for?”

Joe winced.

Seeing his
expression, the man reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet.  Taking
out all the bills he had, he passed them through the window to him.  “It’s
about fifty bucks,” the man said.  He hesitated, his eyes searching his. 
Finally, he said, “Clean yourself up, Joe.”  Then he pulled the haauk into the
air and departed.

Watching him go,
Joe’s hands fisted on the cash. 
Self-righteous prick.

He promptly went
looking for booze.

Joe found it
later that night, after he’d been walking for nearly six hours.  He sat down,
ordered a whiskey, and began his blissful return to oblivion. 

#

Jer’ait watched
the Human down his sixth vial of poison for the night from the comfort of a
darkened booth.  He wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

The Human had
recognized him. 
How
, though, was still grating on him.  Not once in his
life had Jer’ait been recognized for what he was until he was ready.  And sure
as hell not that
fast
.  Jer’ait was better than the best.  He held the
highest kill-rate in Va’gan history.  He was always the first on the list when
it came time to kill a Jahul—the most notoriously hard creatures in Congress to
kill—and not once had Jer’ait ever been outed.

And yet, this Human
had done it.  Half intoxicated. 

And then, as if
swatting a Va’gan assassin in the face with a barstool was no more
out-of-the-ordinary than slapping a lovely waitress on the ass, his
commander-to-be had hunkered down in another bar
a single town
away and
gone right back to drinking himself into a stupor.

Getting up after
being knocked from his stool, listening to the Human’s running footsteps as he
departed...it was the single most humiliating moment of Jer’ait’s life.  He
would pay for it later, Jer’ait promised himself.

Still, the oath
did nothing to assuage the bruising to his pride.  Jer’ait wanted blood. 
Watching the Human down glass after glass of poison, he imagined the painful
ways he could kill him and still make it look like an accident. 

Someone in the
Peacemakers had to have tipped the Human off.  It was the only explanation. 
There was no other.  None.

The Human had
certainly spent enough time in the ranks to have made a few friends in the
service.  He was a living legend.  The more Jer’ait had read about him, the
more he found to read.  His men followed him into battle with a devotion that
any Corps Director would envy.  He’d earned six
kasjas
in his lifetime
and was credited with eight personal Dhasha kills.  Jer’ait could ask any of a
million Human recruits who Commander Zero was and they could tell him the first
six battles he was in, the awards he won, and the number of craps he took
during each mission.

And yet the fool
had gone right back to poisoning himself as soon as he had escaped Jer’ait. 
Such an error in judgment was mind-boggling.  It had been no effort at all for
Jer’ait to call every bar in the area and ask if they had seen his brother—a
man with a luminescent PlanOps tattoo on his palm was hard to forget.  Upon
receiving his location, Jer’ait had found him and hid in the back of the place
to watch.