Zero Recall (8 page)

Joe clenched his
right palm tightly to keep the tattoo from showing.  Then he turned back to
face the officer that had spotted him.

The uniformed
man looked him up and down, then his face twisted.  “This is a crime scene.  Go
sleep it off somewhere else.”

Joe blinked,
then realized the man thought he was drunk.  He knew that could very well work
to his advantage, but he was puzzled as to why they hadn’t arrested him yet. 
“Crime scene?”

“Yeah.  You
didn’t know?  Biggest takedown in twenty years.  Crime boss called Ghost.  Was
gonna meet his brother or something.  We’re still looking for him.”

“The crime
boss?”

“The brother.”

Pain arced
through Joe’s chest.  “You arrested him?”

“No, I just told
you we got the crime boss.”  The guy gave him a disgusted once-over.  “Man, you
look like you got worked over by a Jreet.  Go home and clean up.  This place
won’t be open for a while.  Maybe never.  Looks like Ghost was using it as a
front.  Got a roomful of counterfeit bills in the back.”

Joe felt his
world crumbling.

“Say,” the
officer said, “You’re all banged up, but you still look a lot like…”  The man
made a quick grab for his pocket.  “Stay right there.”

Joe watched as
the officer fished out a reader from his pants.  “Sonofabitch, you’re the
brother, ain’t you?  The renegade Congie.”

Joe saw the
officer’s eyes widen as he realized the two of them were in the alley alone. 
The officer was fumbling for his gun when Joe slammed his fist into his solar
plexus and followed it with a roundhouse to the temple.  The officer went down
with no more sound than the thud of his body hitting the ground. 

Grunting, Joe
dragged the man over to the pile of trash and left him buried amongst the
fly-covered plastic bags to sleep it off.

Then he went
looking for Sam.

#

“I hear you know
quite a bit about Prime Commander Joe Dobbs.”  The green-eyed man sat easily
upon Phoenix’s couch, neither overbearing nor anxious in any way.  He had a
calm masculinity to him that seemed to dominate the room.  That, and he had
hair.  Curly black waves.  He clearly wasn’t a grounder.

Phoenix hadn’t
seen anyone so sexually appealing in thirty turns.  She had to suppress a
little heart-flutter, uninvited.  Odd.

Then she realized what he
had said and her thoughts soured.  “You want to talk about Zero,” Phoenix said,
immediately getting a bitter taste in her mouth.

“Yes,” the man
said.  “Interesting name, isn’t it?”  The way he moved his hands, the slow grin—she
could have sworn he was flirting with her.  That brought Phoenix instantly back
to her senses.  She was wearing her rank of Prime Overseer.  No man in his
right mind would flirt with her, especially one that had somehow bypassed all
the safeties and appeared in her office without warning.

A Peacemaker,
then.

“How did you get
through the security checks?” she asked coldly.  “I see no rank.”

The man smiled
easily, his casual charm almost disarming.  “I hear Zero got his name from a
traitor.  Odd, that he kept it even after the Ooreiki was tried and slain.”

Phoenix’s face
twisted.  “He’s a traitor himself.”

The man leaned
forward, his green eyes intense.  “Oh?”

Understanding
dawning on her, a slow smile spread across Phoenix’s face.  “So why now?”

“Excuse me?” 

“Why now?” Phoenix
repeated, leaning back in her chair.  “I’ve been trying to get the Peacemakers
to investigate him for fifty turns.  What made you finally decide it was
important enough to come speak to me?”

The Peacemaker
seemed taken aback.  “You mean no one has interviewed you before this?”

“They have,”
Phoenix said, “but never more than a tri-point.  You’re a what, Sixth Hjai? 
Seventh?”

The man’s only
response was a smile.  “Explain to me why you have lodged thirty-seven
complaints against him in the last fifty turns.”

“I don’t see a
rank, Mr…?”

“And you won’t,”
the green-eyed man said, flashing a charming grin.  “Suffice to say I’m not a
tri-point.”

Phoenix grinned,
despite herself, finding his charisma refreshing.  She looked him over,
imagining him without the sleek blue civilian clothes. 
He’s got an even
better body than Joe,
she realized with a little start.  She thought about
how much she liked sex, and how damn little of it she’d gotten since accepting
Prime Overseer.  Then she checked herself.  She’d been at this too long.  She
was beginning to get soft.  Becoming too complacent.  Too…lonely.

Secrets, she had
learned over the last fifty-three turns, were not good for the soul.  Nor the
digestive tract.  Especially the kind she carried.

“You have access
to my previous interviews,” she said, fighting that carnal urge to open up to
someone, anyone, after fifty-three turns in hiding.

“I want to hear
it from you,” the man said.  “In your own words.”

Phoenix took a
deep breath and trailed her delightfully sensitive fingers across her
glistening black Congie desk.  The man watched her hand, seemingly bemused. 
Then, with a sigh, Phoenix said, “Back in basic.  Kophat.  I—
we
—were
visited by a Trith.”

The man nodded. 
“Uncommon, but not unheard of.”

“This Trith
showed me something…horrible.”  She closed her fingers into a fist.  “I still
can’t explain it.  I just felt…scared.”

“You were still
a child,” the Peacemaker said.  “It could have affected your judgment.”

“No!” Phoenix
snapped, hitting her desk with her fist, that old anger rising again.  That
betrayal.  “No.  This is something I will
never
forget.”  Ever.  She
remembered watching her friends die.  People she’d sworn to protect.  People
she believed in, people she would have given her life to save in an instant. 
Because of Zero.  Because he’d gone to the enemy.

“Try to explain
it,” the man said calmly.  Then, when she still showed reluctance, he urged,
“You can tell me.  I want to get this fixed.”

His friendly
smile, his easy demeanor, the husky overtones...  Despite her disgust for Zero,
Phoenix smiled, deciding the man deserved something interesting for his
troubles.  “The Trith showed me Zero holding a planet in his hand.  A purple
one, like Kophat.  He held it up, like he was showing it to me.  Then he
crushed it in his palm.  I
felt
all those people die.  I heard them
screaming.  Blood ran from his fist and covered the ground.  When I looked down
to watch the blood, I realized we were standing on skulls.  Skulls and bones
and Dhasha scales.  Then, before I could look away, he plucked another one from
the sky and brought it down in his fist.  He held it out to me and smiled. 
Then he crushed that one, too.  I will never forget those people as they died. 
It was as if I were in their minds, feeling it happen.  I think he’s going to
destroy Congress.”

The man’s eyes
flickered across her face.  “You did not include this in your report.”

Of course not. 
She had to hide a smile.  “I knew the Ueshi tri-point would not believe me.” 
Phoenix leaned across her desk.  “Somehow, I think you will.”

The man winked
at her.  Flirting again.  Phoenix couldn’t help but wonder what dinner with him
would be like.  It’d been a while since she’d been with a man.  She fought the irritating
emotions that surged forward at that, an unfortunate byproduct of unevolved
body chemistry.  A problem that, to her chagrin, a good portion of the more
advanced species of the universe did not share.  Unable to ignore the sexual
appeal of this man, instinctively desiring his big, masculine hands on her
body, not for the first time in the last fifty-three turns, Phoenix found
herself wishing she were not Human.

Steeling herself,
putting herself solidly back into her professional façade, she said, “So I ask
you again.  What changed?”

The green-eyed
man stood and gave her a beaming grin.  “Thank you for your time, ma’am.”

She felt a pang
of loss, despite herself.  If nothing else, sex was excellent stress relief. 
And, with the Vahlin gathering his forces for war, very possibly about to
succeed where Na’leen had failed, she needed all the relief she could get.  “Before
you go…”

The man stopped
in the doorway and glanced back.

“Would you like
to share dinner with me sometime?”

“I’m sorry,” he
said, “I’ve gotta go interview Commander Zero.”

“What about
afterwards?” she blurted, desperate to get that relief. 
Damn,
she
thought immediately.  What was
wrong
with her?  It was almost like her
hormones were cutting off her brain.

The Peacemaker
gave her a patronizing smile.  “I’m not your type.”

Phoenix did a
startled double-take.  Oh, he was
good.
  Realizing exactly what she was
dealing with, Phoenix quickly pushed away from her seat and stood, her hand
automatically reaching for the weapon on her belt.

“Careful,” the
Huouyt said calmly.  “If I’d wanted to kill you, you would be dead.  I’m
interested in Zero, nothing more.”

Merciful dead,
Phoenix thought. 
That’s another Va’gan.
  Phoenix had wondered when Koliinaat
would take interest enough to send a professional, and she cursed herself for
letting her guard down so far in the meantime.  She began calculating which assassin
it could be as she watched him much-too-casually pick up a Human carving from an
end-table beside her door, following the nervous tics, the body language. 

She let her hand
fall from her belt, knowing she needed to keep him in the room for a few more tics
to make an accurate ID.  With as much indignance as she could muster, she said,
“You were using hormones, weren’t you?”

Her visitor
cocked his head, seemingly bemused she had caught it.  “It is nothing new. 
Your species releases such scent chemicals all the time.”  The Peacemaker put
down her statuette, which she would incinerate later.  The charming smile had
vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving an unnatural void in its wake.  “As
I said.  Thank you for your time.”

She scanned his
face.  “You’re going to kill him?”  She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

The Peacemaker
turned slightly, to look at her.  “Zero is a Congressional hero.”

“You’re going to
kill him.”  There was something about this assassin’s mannerisms that she knew,
something she had seen before.  But
where
?

The assassin
smiled.  “I’m going to be his groundmate.”

Phoenix gasped,
and this time she didn’t have to fake it.  “
You’re
the one they sent
me?”  Then she sputtered, anger and outrage hitting her at his audacity. 
“You’re under my command and you
drugged
me?”  That, just tics ago, she
had wanted nothing more than to take this furg home with her—and the fact that
he knew it—was almost humiliating enough for her to draw her weapon and kill
him anyway.

“I am a
Peacemaker,” the Huouyt said, his borrowed green eyes suddenly seeming alien
and horrible even as his drugs continued to trigger her base Human instincts. 
“Even in this Human’s groundteam, I will never be under his command.”  He gave
her a wry smile.  “Or yours.”

The over-cocky
furg.  Phoenix felt a rush of satisfaction at her visitor’s lack of
observational skills, despite herself.  Fighting inner disdain, Phoenix
snorted.  “Then you don’t know Joe.”

The Peacemaker
eyed her.  “Enlighten me.”

Phoenix
laughed.  “Enlighten yourself, if you can find him.  Joe’s been missing for two
weeks.  We found his wrecked
haauk
in Nevada and there’s an
investigation as to whether or not a few bouncers killed him that night, but I
personally think he went AWOL.  There was a government takedown staged for
Joe’s younger brother the next day—a big crime boss who’s been causing the
planet a lot of problems.  He was going to meet Joe at the bar.  They caught
the brother, but Joe went missing.”

“Zero’s brother
is a crime boss?”  The Peacemaker asked, leaning his big body thoughtfully
against the door.  Phoenix couldn’t help but notice the sexy muscles of his
arms where he crossed them over his chest. 
Merciful dead!
  She had to
shake herself and concentrate on stillness to resist the urge to cross the room
and mash her body against his like a common whore.

“Biggest hacker
in the Human race,” she gritted.  “Changed his own damn genome using Geuji
nannites and information from classified Congressional genetics experiments.”

The Peacemaker
gave her a long, flat look.  “Interesting.”

“It’s something
in the blood,” Phoenix said sweetly.

“As far as I am
aware,” the Peacemaker said slowly, “Commander Zero is a hero, not a criminal.”

“Yet,” Phoenix
sneered.

He glanced at
the wall, obviously in thought.  It was the stiffness, the quiet, awkward
respect for his pattern that finally gave him away.  Phoenix smiled inwardly.  It
had been a long time since she’d seen Jer’ait Ze’laa.  The Peacemakers’
greatest assassin, Jer’ait had never missed a target.  She wondered how he
would fare against the creature destined to destroy Congress.  The epitome of
Va’gan training faced off against the prophecies of the Trith.

This should be
interesting.

“His brother’s
people could have thought Commander Zero was involved in the sting,” Jer’ait
told her.  “Perhaps they killed him.”

“I don’t think
so.  One of the officers disappeared for a day.  They found him later, under a
pile of trash.  Couldn’t remember how he got there, but had a huge bruise
across the side of his face.  Someone cracked him pretty good.  PlanOps good. 
Bastard was lucky to be alive.”

The Huouyt
cocked his head at her and flashed her another sexy smile.  “Perhaps you could
give me the location of that bar.”