Zero's Return (43 page)

“Oh…”  One of the men
gave another nervous laugh and reached behind him to pull Max from where he had
been leaning against the wall.  In choppy Congie, he said, “Bobby only wanted
to test him out. 
Sweet
gun.  He was bulls-eying things at like two
miles.  And the AI is freakin’
awesome
.  Bit of a sarcastic shit, but
he’s cool.”

There was a bit of
hesitation, then the guy holding Max said, “You fully with us right now,
Ma’am?  Last night, you were a bit loony.  Guessed you hadn’t had much to eat
in a while.  Sleep help at all?  We’ve got food, like we said…”

Rat narrowed her eyes at
them.  “Give me my gun.”

The two men glanced at
each other.  Then, to Rat’s complete surprise, the closer guy handed her Max. 
And, with him, a can of food and a spoon.

“You pull the tab,
there,” the man said, gesturing at the top of the can.

After a tense moment in
which she considered using the weapon on them, Rat reluctantly lowered Max to
the floor and sat down on a crate of rope and pulleys, still watching her
visitors.  When she could force herself to take her eyes off of them and look
down at their offering, it quickly became evident which tab the man had been
talking about.  She pried it up slowly, her fingers numb and shaking.  Once she
cracked the lid and the smell of meat wafted up to her, however, Rat lost
control and tore the lid away, then started spooning it out as quickly as she
could scoop it into her mouth.

It took her several
minutes—and most of the can—to realized that the two men were watching her in
fascination.  She slowed and scowled at them over the can.  “What?” she
demanded.

“So, uh,” one of them
began, “why aren’t you brain-dead like the rest of the Congies?”

Rat frowned and paused,
swallowing another spoonful.  “Congies aren’t brain-dead.  I know plenty of
smart Congies.  You’re talking to one.”

“Well, yeah,” Bobby began
slowly, glancing at his brother.  “But…”

“He means why aren’t you
a drooling idiot?” his brother filled in for him.

Rat tensed.  Unlike what
the Earthlings liked to think, Congies were
not
stupid.  She told them
so.

“No,” Bobby said, making
a nervous laugh.  “You’re obviously still okay.  We’re just wondering about the
rest of them.”

Rat put the last spoonful
of meat into her mouth, frowning.  “The rest of who?  Congies?”

Bobby’s brother nodded
vehemently.  “These guys, they’re like zombies.  Hundreds of them in Congie
black, walking around like they don’t remember how to pull down their own pants
to take a piss.  Like little kids, man.”

Rat froze, the little
hairs along her spine lifting.  “You
saw
this?”

“Well…yeah,” Bobby said. 
“There was a group the Demons captured back in one of those Nazi orchard
camps.  They’re keeping them for food.  Like cattle.”

The news hit Rat in the
gut like a Jreet’s fist.  “They’re eating Congies.” 

“Uh-huh,” Bobby’s brother
said. 

“And the Congies aren’t
fighting back?” Rat insisted.

“Huh-uh,” Bobby said,
vigorously shaking his head.  “They mostly cry and hug themselves and whimper
and shit.”

Rat glanced down at the
empty can in her hands, a hot rage rolling up into her guts.  “You said the
Ground Force wiped them?  Took their memories?”  That was…an anathema.  Betrayal
by their own kind.  Turned on by the very Congies who had served with them. 
Only an order from the Regency itself would have made the Corps do something so
utterly revolting.

The brothers looked at
each other.  “Well,” Bobby said, “I don’t know about that, but I
do
know
they ain’t actin’ like no Congie I ever seen.  Afraid of everything.  Run from
their own shadow.  Don’t even put up a fight when their keepers walk in and
pick one for dinner each night.”

Rat felt bile rise in her
throat.  “Pick one for…dinner.”

Bobby’s brother quickly
piped up, “Yeah, but you ain’t for a second got a chance of freeing them. 
They’re like
cattle
.  They just stare at you.  We ran into them on the
road after Bobby got away from that mutie freak.  They were just
wandering
. 
You could walk up and punch ‘em and they’d just cry.  Demons got ‘em a couple
days later.  Just rounded them up with a few guys and took ‘em out to some pens
in the orchards.”

“Some…pens.”  Rat felt it
hard to think, hard to breathe.  Those were her
friends
in there.  Men
and women who had seen the same battles, fought the same enemies, survived the
same hardships.

“Here,” Bobby said,
offering her some water in a beat-up plastic bottle.  “You just had your sodium
intake for, like, the week.”  He gestured at the can of SPAM.  “Don’t want you
passing out again, you know?”

Rat numbly took the
bottle, still thinking about her brethren, who were probably meeting similar
ends all over the planet.  Men and women who had been taken from their families
as mere children, terrorized, made to fight, trained to
die
for their
friends back home…  And instead, here they were dying as helpless aliens on a
planet that no longer wanted them.  Defenseless.  Weaponless for the first time
since being Drafted. 

That the Regency had so
casually taken their memories and abandoned them to die left her feeling
utterly sick.

They used us,
Rat
thought, staring down at the bottle, unable to drink. 
They used us and cast
us off like Dhasha flake.
  Her hand tightened on the plastic and the
container’s sides started to crinkle.  She wondered which Representative had
ordered it, and whether she would ever get off Earth to seek vengeance.

It had to have been
one of the Grand Six
, Rat thought, squeezing her anger into the sides of
the bottle. 
Either that, or Aliphei himself.

In their act of wiping
the Congies, it was clear that whoever had done it hadn’t wanted Humanity to
survive.  Which meant it couldn’t have been the First Citizen.  Aliphei had
more important things to think of than a tiny mudball like Earth.  As soon as
he had passed Judgement, the last remaining Shadyi had retired to examine
another conflict brewing along the Outer Line, case officially closed.

Further, the Ooreiki had
vested interests in trade with Earth, as it had a monopoly on rosemary and
oregano for the perfumes trade.  The Ueshi had taken up many of Earth’s
hedonistic pleasures with great enthusiasm.  Aside from the petty cash that the
Jahul made from blackmarket trading between Earth and Ooreiki planets that didn’t
want to pay the Congress-imposed duties tax on luxuries, the Jahul couldn’t
give a soot about Earth.  The Jreet had fought to
preserve
Earth.  That
left the Huouyt…

Or Mekkval.

No! 
Rat refused to even consider that
possibility.  Mekkval was a warrior.  He had been a Ground Force Overseer for
more than five hundred turns.  He understood honor.  He wouldn’t have betrayed
the trust of brothers and sisters who had given their lives for Congress. 
Whatever the Humans back on Earth had done, Mekkval would have known the
Congies were innocent.

And yet,
someone
had given the order to
brain-wipe an entire regiment of Human Ground Corps, which meant it had to be
the Huouyt.

That seemed like
just
the sort of thing the
psychotic ashers would do, too, especially after she and Zero—
Humans
—had
screwed up their plans not once, but
three
times.  And Huouyt weren’t
known for holding grudges to their death-bed—they were known for holding
grudges until they got
even
.

But why give the Congies brain-wipes?  That just
seemed…petty.  It also cut Earth’s chances of surviving a Sacred Turn by a
staggering percentage.  All Humanity’s warriors, all the ones who knew how to
fight, were essentially already
dead
.

Bobby cleared his throat
nervously, eyes fixed on the water battle.  “So, you, uh, got a name?  How’d
you come by such a nice gun?”

Rat lifted her head and
considered telling them to both get lost.  Then, seeing the genuine curiosity
in his eyes, Rat cleared her throat, instead.  Softly, she said, “I killed
Dhasha for a living and my Va’gan decided I needed it when my last rifle missed
a target and almost cost him his life.  Convinced Mekkval to buy it for me,
‘cause my Sentinel was too damn broke from losing his position as a Welu prince
to afford something like a Rodemax.”

Bobby’s eyes widened. 
Then, when he saw she was utterly serious, he lowered his head quickly and
looked away. 

“Dude,” Bobby’s brother
said softly, “dropping names like that, normally I’d say you were full of
shit.”  Then he let out a deep breath slowly, between his teeth.  “But there’s
like a hundred dead guys down there who say different.”

“Eighty-two,” Rat said.

“Can’t really argue with
that,” Bobby said softly.  He gave her a long look.  “Say…  You wanna group
up?  We ain’t really warriors—shit, I was a fireman and my brother Theo was a
nurse—but we’re pretty handy with a gun.”  Then he flushed.  “Well, I mean, not
handy like
you
…”

Theo rolled his eyes. 
“What he means is we’d love it if you would watch our asses for a while.  We’re
both scared as hell.  Bad shit happening out there.  Real bad shit.”

“And you look like you
can take care of yourself,” Bobby added, gesturing at the open-air balcony and
the corpses beyond.

“I ambushed them,” Rat
said, still staring at the water bottle in her hands.

The brothers looked at
each other.  “And that…
bothers
…you?” Theo demanded.  “Have you seen what
those bastards have been
doing
out there?”

Rat grunted, then twisted
off the cap and started to drink.

“Look, lady, those guys
calling themselves the Centerville Demons…” Theo went on.  “They’re taking the
name a little too seriously, you know?  They’re not acting Human.”

Rat drank down less water
than she wanted, but more than she should have, then capped the bottle and
handed it back to Bobby.  “Maybe they aren’t.”

“Aren’t
Human
?”
Bobby gave his brother a nervous look.  “You mean, like what, another mutie?”

Rat flinched at the word
‘another.’  “You’ve seen the mutants?”

Bobby scoffed.  “I’ll
say.  The creepy-eyed ailo made me carry his ass around for three days.”

Rat frowned.  “He made
you
carry
him?”

“Like one of those
Egyptian kings or something,” Theo affirmed.  “Got like a whole prison
following him like the messiah.  Real nasty creeps.” 

“Not sure which is
worse…” Bobby agreed.  “The HSG or the Demons.  At least the HSG wasn’t eating
anyone…yet.”

“And they went east?” Rat
demanded, glancing out over the balcony railing.

“Yeah,” Bobby said. 
“Avoid that asshole at all costs.  He’s crazy smart.  Like, smarter than
Einstein
smart.  I watched him build this weird little rocket the size of your fist
one night when everyone else was sleeping.  Used nothing but a run-down skimmer
and a lawnmower.  The next morning, once everyone had eaten breakfast, he
launched it at one of the patrol bots on its way overhead and it
blew it up
. 
A
Congie bot
!  They’re
indestructible
.  You know why he said he
did it?  ‘Cause he was sleeping all day on his fucking litter and was bored.  Has
the whole group convinced he can read minds.”

Rat stiffened.  A
mind-reader.  That would be difficult.  She unconsciously lifted her hand to
the claw-shaped pendant that Mekkval had given her.  The Takki technician that
had briefed her on it had
claimed
that it would muddy the mental waters
for a telepath, but the idea of putting it to the test still unnerved her.

“Yeah, but don’t worry
about those idiots,” Bobby said quickly, correctly judging her discomfort. 
“They’re way past us now.  Last I heard, the HSG was headed for Nevada.  Gonna
hide out in the desert until the dust settles.  Hydroponics or something.”

“You ask me,” Theo added,
“all those criminals are gonna kill each other before they get their first
crop.  I never seen so many violent convicts in one place.  Like they emptied
out a damn prison.”

…or a top-secret military
base.  Rat stared down at Max, wondering if she had enough energy to hunt down
the group and destroy it.

After, of course, she
took out the Earthlings eating the Congies.  No one who had survived the Draft
would put up with that soot once they’d heard about it.  Ever.

“So,” Theo said.  “What
do you say?  You want a couple of beefy, unpaid manservants in trade for your
skills with a gun?”  He said it in a joking manner, but Bobby still cast him a
scowl.

“Ain’t nobody’s servant,”
Bobby growled.

“Aw, come on, man,” Theo
said, grin fading.  “It was just a joke.”  Then the grin slipped back in
place.  “’Sides.  Three days as a beast of burden shoulda mellowed you out a
bit.”  He gave his brother an utterly bovine expression.  “
Mooooooo.
”

Bobby threw his empty can
aside and the brawl that followed was distracting enough that Rat didn’t see
the guys sneaking into the tower with them until Max said, “
Unidentified
life-forms within two rods.
”

What happened next lasted
only about three seconds, but it ended in two men dead on the floor, one with Rat’s
knife thrust through the underside of his jaw, into his brain, and the other
with a blast from his friend’s laser pistol through his forehead.  Rat slowly
lowered the attacker’s gun as the corpses fell, the camo-clad bodies twitching
in death-spasms.

The two brothers looked
up at her from where they had started wrestling on the floor, blinking.

“Thanks, Max,” Rat said,
retrieving her Rodemax from the wooden planks and slinging him back over her
shoulder.