Zero Recall (17 page)

It hit the Baga
square-on, crushing the glittering green creature to the wall like a wayward
spider.  Its tiny clawlike feet released Galek’s arm and the severed appendage
fell to the ground, still wriggling.  The Baga followed it down, landing in a
glittering, stunned heap.

Joe walked up
and stomped on the creature’s tubular rear snout, effectively cutting off its
spit supply.  The Baga’s beak, situated on the opposite end of its body, opened
and it let out a high-pitched, almost supersonic scream.  In the hall outside,
the Jreet groaned and put his huge scarlet hands over the cavernous audial
chambers taking up most of his skull.  “Seventh hell, make it stop!” Daviin
shouted.  “Beda’s
bones
!  Kill it already…”

Ignoring the
Jreet, Joe squatted in front of the Baga, peering into its faceted red eyes. 
“Listen very carefully.  I’m a Prime.  I’ve got fifty-five turns in service. 
One of my groundmates turns up missing, I get a slap on the wrist, no big
deal.  It happens.  You, on the other hand, are a sootwad Squad Leader who’s
never seen real battle.  You disappear and they’d maybe make me fill out a
couple forms, maybe not.  You with me so far?”

When the Baga
simply stared up at him with baleful, faceted red eyes, Joe ground the tubular
snout with the toe of his boot.  It screeched again and nodded.

“Good,” Joe said.  “So I
hope you’ll take me seriously when I tell you there’s very few things in this
life I hate more than a Baga.  One of them’s Huouyt, and the fact I’m gonna be
working with
both
of you on this mission puts me in a very bad mood. 
One of you will probably push me over the edge before this is all over with,
and frankly, since the Huouyt isn’t stupid, I’m guessing it’s going to be you.”

The Baga watched
him with unconcealed malice.

Joe leaned
closer.  “In case you’ve got some grand scheme to spit in my eyes once I let
you up, I’ve got news for you.  I spent two turns keeping the peace on Neen. 
I’ve seen it all, you little furg, and I’ll make you regret it.  But, since I
know you charheads don’t learn the first time, I’ll give you two attempts.  The
first time, I’ll break every bone in your body.  The second time, I’ll tear off
your wings, cut off your spitter and feed them to you.  Got me?”

The Baga watched
him balefully behind ruby facets.

Joe let the Baga
up.

The Baga pulled
itself to its feet.  It checked the damage Joe had done and, finding none,
nodded solemnly.  Then it spat.

Recognizing the
pulsing motion in the creature’s glands, Joe was ready for it.  He twisted out
of the way as the gray substance shot across the room to solidify on the wall. 
Then, with the heel of his boot, smashed the Baga into the ground.  Even as the
creature screamed and dragged its abdomen around to try and soak his boot, Joe
brought his other foot down, crushing the lower half of its body.

He left the head
intact.  The Baga, like cockroaches, were almost impossible to kill.  He
proceeded to stomp and crush every moving part, every joint save the head.  Then,
once he was finished, he glanced up at the room.

The Jreet was
staring at him, Galek’s severed appendages hanging limply from his claws.  A
Huouyt was with him, one odd purple eye watching Joe with disdain. 

“‘Woe to the
Takki the day the Dhasha stubs his toe,’” the Huouyt intoned.  “You wake up
during surgery, Commander?”

Joe scanned the Huouyt’s
face.  “My thirty-two shattered bones had nothing to do with this.  The little
fool was going to spit on me.”

“Of course.”  The Huouyt
continued to watch him smugly.

Joe shoved his
toe under the Baga’s flattened corpse and flicked it toward Be’shaar with his
boot.  “Get this dumb prick to medical.”

“It was just an
arm,” the Huouyt said, ignoring Joe’s command.  “He could grow it back.”

“Believe me,”
Joe said, “you’ll thank me later.”

All around him,
other barracks inhabitants were staring at him.  Even Galek, whose truncated
arm still dripped sticky brown Ooreiki blood onto the floor, looked at Joe like
he’d lost his mind.  “You didn’t need to do that,” the Ooreiki whispered.

They’re all
questioning me.
  Furious, Joe tossed the energy cartridges on the floor
beside the broken Baga and headed for the door before he said something he
regretted.

“Where are you
going?” the Jreet asked, blocking his path with an arm that might as well have
been made of half-dig rebar.

Joe merely
followed the arm up to the Jreet’s face and waited.

The Jreet
lowered his arm and looked away.

“The doctors
will have questions,” Be’shaar said, nodding at the Baga.

“Tell them the
truth,” Joe said.  “He pissed me off.  Oh, and while you’re there, get your
chip synched up with our com system.  If the Baga doesn’t have one, have them
put one in while they fix him up.”

The Huouyt
watched him with a strange expression oozing from his odd purple eye.

Joe turned back,
frowning.  “What?”

“Va’gan Huouyt
do not get chipped.”

“What?”  Joe
frowned at yet another mention that the Huouyt was supposedly Va’gan-trained. 
“You’re getting chipped.”

“Check the
rulebook.  We are exempt.”

Joe frowned. 
“Exempt?  Why?”

“Be content to
know that we do not.”

“Like hell,” Joe
snapped.  “You’ll get a chip if I tell you to get a chip.  The last thing we’re
gonna do is go down a deep den and not be able to communicate with each other.”

“Legally, you
cannot order me to do that.”  The Huouyt seemed utterly at ease.  “Congress has
so few Va’gans sign up for service—they’re willing to make a few sacrifices to
keep us.”

“So you’d get us
all killed because you don’t like surgery?” Joe demanded.  He took a step
towards the Huouyt.  “Try this, smartass.  You get chipped or you aren’t
going.”

The Huouyt
looked completely unaffected by his statement.  “Further, you cannot discharge
me based on my refusal.  Look it up, if you do not believe me.”

Looking into the
Huouyt’s flat, alien stare, Joe felt his mood deteriorating. 
Damn
the
Regency bureaucrats.  A million turns of experience, and yet they couldn’t
leave Planetary Ops the hell alone.  They had to go mucking it all up.  As if a
Huouyt would ever work well with
anything
, much less a goddamn Human. 
And a Jreet?  Taking orders from anything but a
bigger
Jreet?  It was
ludicrous.

“Fine,” Joe told
the Huouyt.  “You can stay.  If you don’t get a chip, I’ll just find something
very
important for you to do in the barracks while the rest of us are down in the
tunnels.”  He glanced at the other members of his team, the maimed Ooreiki and
the flattened Baga, then put his hand to his head, the implications of
commanding a multi-species groundteam still staggering him.  “Damn I need a
drink.”  He turned to go find one.

The Huouyt
stepped in front of him, cutting off his escape.  “Jim Beam has cancelled his
future appointments, Commander.”  The Jreet joined him, putting his huge ruby
body between Joe and the door.  Seeing them work together to undermine him, Joe
began to seethe inside.

“Get out of my
way.”

The Jreet didn’t
move.  “I want back on the team.”

Joe looked up
into the Jreet’s sincere golden eyes.  “Not a chance.”

The Jreet held
steady, though his diamond-shaped head lowered in defeat.

“Move,” Joe
growled.

“Where are you
going?” the Huouyt asked.

Joe’s fury built
as he looked from the Jreet to the Huouyt, acutely aware that he couldn’t
make
them move.  Every moment that he, the legendary Commander
Zero
, stood
there, stymied by his own groundteam, he lost respect with both his groundteam
and Planetary Ops in general.  He glanced over Daviin’s bulk at the observers
in the hall, who were still watching the proceedings with interest.  Obviously,
they thought someone was about to die.  A lot of that had been happening
lately, if Joe’s surgeons could be believed.

Only the
Grekkon, whose horse-sized, insect-like body was crouched in a corner, didn’t
appear to care about any of the goings on.  His four beady black eyes continued
to stare at the wall.  He hadn’t even attempted to stop the Baga from chewing
off the Ooreiki’s arm.  As far as Joe knew, he hadn’t even
twitched.

Keeping his
voice as level as possible, Joe turned back to Be’shaar and said, “I’m doing
some reconnaissance.”

“You mean you go
to poison yourself?”  The Huouyt snorted.  “Why bother paying?  I could
accomplish the same for free, plus it won’t get you killed when the squads find
you breaking the code.”

“A few drinks
isn’t illegal,” Joe snarled.

“No, but being
inebriated in a time of war is.”  The Jreet had recovered, and now he sounded
like a man chastising a child.

“I’m not going
to break the goddamn code,” Joe snapped.

“You want to
mourn your brother, go ahead and tell me,” Be’shaar said.  “I’ll make you feel
miserable quite a bit faster than a few shots of alcohol.”

Joe prickled at
the way the Huouyt so casually threatened to drug him.  Huouyt drugged
creatures they didn’t respect.  He tore his eyes away from the Huouyt,
realizing that it was the Jreet he needed to convince.  With the Jreet’s huge
ruby body still blocking the door, he wasn’t getting out of there without his
cooperation. 

“I’m on duty,”
Joe told the Voran.  “I don’t drink on duty.”

The Jreet
immediately relaxed and pulled away from the door.  “My apologies, Commander.” 
He sounded utterly contrite.  Rounding on Be’shaar, the Jreet snapped, “You
see, Huouyt?  You question him needlessly.  A true warrior would not drop his
spear before a battle.”  That the Jreet was so trusting left Joe feeling
ashamed.

The Huouyt continued
to stare at him with his screwed-up eyes.

Suspicious
bastard,
Joe thought.  He shoved past the both of them and went to find
something to take his mind off his brother’s upcoming execution.  Over his
shoulder, he shouted, “And find another groundteam, Jreet.  It’s the last time
I’m going to tell you.  You’re wasting your time.”

At his back, the
Jreet said nothing.

Joe went into
town fully intending to stay dry.  He coasted the streets, spoke with the
nervous grounders about the upcoming tunnel crawl, patted a few backs, offered
a bit of wisdom or an anecdote here and there, even found another Prime and
spent an hour with the Jahul discussing the mission on Neskfaat.

In the end,
however, Joe sat on a stool by himself, the vidscreen in the bar in front of
him tuned to Earth’s news frequency.

“…execution
of the most wanted criminal in Earth’s history.  Spectators are already lining
up outside the central plaza, hoping for a good view of what is sure to be—”

Joe shut off the newscast
and took another drink.  They were executing Sam in two hours.  Even if Joe
hopped on the first shuttle he found, he would never get there in time.

My fault,
he thought. 
I got Sam caught.

Joe slammed a
fist into the bar, drawing looks from several broad-faced Hebbut down the row. 
He glared at them until they looked away.

Got Sam
killed and what do I have to show for it?  A groundteam that’s gonna kill
itself before it even smells a Dhasha.
  He snorted and took another drink,
relishing the way the alcohol burned on the way down. 
I can’t do this.

The Jreet had
shattered his spine with one swipe of its arm.  The Baga had tried to fuse his
face together when he tried to stop him from maiming the Ooreiki.  The Huouyt
had outright refused to obey him.  Even Galek, the youngest and most open to
having a Human in command, had no qualms with questioning him in front of
everyone.  A
boot
, for Mothers’ sakes.

Joe knew he
didn’t stand a chance.  He was smaller, weaker, lighter, and, in the Huouyt’s
case, stupider.

Closing his
eyes, Joe downed another whiskey, trying not to listen to the news feeds,
trying not to think of Sam.

His team had
automatically thought him cruel when he flattened the Baga.  The Huouyt had
asked him if he were taking out his frustrations like a spoiled child.  The
Ooreiki, who had just lost an arm, had given him a look like he’d lost his
mind.  Miserable, Joe knew he would continue to receive the same treatment as
long as he did not have their respect.

But how did he
gain an alien’s respect?  If they’d been Human, he would have started on a
common ground.  He would have shared common strengths and weaknesses.  He would
have established a rapport, exchanged stories of women and home, taught them
little tricks with their weapons, and told jokes about aliens in their native
language of Earth, so the aliens couldn’t understand them.

Yet his new
groundmates weren’t Human.  They came from different planets, had different
breeding habits, spoke different languages, and used different weapons. 

They
were
the aliens Joe and his grounders used to joke about. 

When Sam stepped
out onto the platform, the crowd in the bar cheered.  Joe’s fingers tightened
on his glass.  When a brutish Ooreiki shoved Sam to his knees and forced his
head to the block, Joe lowered his eyes to the tabletop.

When the other Humans
in the bar let out a ragged cheer, Joe cried.

#

Eight whiskeys
later, Joe was still in tears, regaling the bartender with the story of how
he’d saved his brother from the Draft, and had gotten taken to Kophat in Sam’s
place.  The Ueshi bartender was nodding in all the right places, but Joe could
tell he didn’t believe a word of it.  He became emphatic, motioning with his
arms as he told of his training, his time as a Dhasha slave, the fight with
Na’leen and his Jreet.  In the middle of his tale, he knocked over his drink
and wondered disgustedly if he’d have to pay for it.