Zero's Return (69 page)

Was he a great
warrior…did a Dhasha have claws?  Joe snorted, unable to keep the disdain out
of his voice.  “I dunno,” Joe said, tugging off his glove and holding up his
PlanOps tattoo, casting the evening aglow, “I was one of only two Congies to
survive the great battle of Eeloir.  You heard of Eeloir?” 

He had intended to
impress her with his most famous battle, but Shael was staring intently at his
left palm, her sunburned face slack.  “You’ve been marked by the Sisters,” she
said, in total awe.

Joe blinked and glanced
again at his palm, realizing that, somewhere between the gun and the tattoo,
she had come to believe he wielded some form of potent warrior magic, and that
he’d been chosen by the gods, that’s why his hand glowed.  Grinning, he opened
his mouth to say just that.

“It’s actually nothing
special,” he heard himself say.  “It’s called a gene-mod.  They infuse the skin
cells with genetics to make them bioluminesce, that’s why it glows.” 

You sister-twining
asher!
Joe snapped. 
Get out of my head, rodent.

You were going to lie
to her,
Twelve-A said tiredly.  As if that was some crime unto the Mothers
or something.

But Shael’s face had
already twisted.  “
Genetics?
”  The way she said it, she might have been
talking about flesh-eating parasites.  “Only cowards and skulkers modify their
bodies’ genetics, Voran.  A true warrior uses what he is born with, and no
more.”  Then she looked him up and down.  “But I suppose such honor would
be…beyond you.”

Joe bristled at her
scorn.  “It was a service award for saving the Ueshi Representative on Eeloir,”
Joe growled.  “If I hadn’t been there, a Huouyt would have killed him, taken
his pattern, had his friends remove his zora, then gone back to Koliinaat to
take his place on the Tribunal.”

“So you saved a
politician.”  Like he had rescued a pregnant vaghi and set it loose on Kaleu.

Joe felt his pride
prickling.  “I stopped the Huouyt from taking over.”

She gave him a once-over,
then sniffed.  “I thought service awards went on the right hand.”  As if he
were lying, now.

Joe narrowed his eyes. 
“Got it transferred to my left hand once I lost my right arm to the Dhasha on
Neskfaat.  You ever heard of Neskfaat?”  Yeah, take
that
.  Another one
with only a handful of survivors.  There was no
way
she could call him a
coward, now.

When she just gave him a
blank look, however, Joe scrambled to find something else she would recognize. 
“I’m Zero.  You ever heard of Zero?” 

“Zero?” she asked, her
petite face twisting in a frown.

“Yeah,” Joe said.  “
The
Zero?  Only Human who’s ever commanded a Dhasha?  Sentineled by a prince?  The
good-looking face on all the recruitment posters?”

Hearing those words out
of his own mouth, Joe started, rewinding the conversation in his head.  Since
when did he try to impress girls with
war-stories
?

Clearing his throat
embarrassedly, Joe put his glove back on and said, “It’s just a tattoo.  Means
I’m PlanOps.  One of the good guys.”

Then he remembered they’d
intended to strip him of rank, weapons, and biosuit and abandon him on what was
essentially an alien planet to die.  Betrayed by his own damn kind.  By
Congies.  Sent back to a planet that didn’t want him for a crime he didn’t
commit.  Story of his goddamn life.  He’d hidden that ship in Crystal Springs
Reservoir, though he didn’t see much hope in ever using it again.  Humans had
been given Execute-On-Sight status within Congress.  Whatever money he had
still stashed away from his caper with ‘the Ghost’ twenty turns ago was
probably going to rot forever in his secured accounts on Faelor. 
He
was
never seeing it again.

“You are much too proud
of yourself, Voran,” the woman sneered.  “Only a cowardly furg sings of his old
battles.  Real warriors find new ones.”

Joe felt his pride
prickling again.  To be told with utter certainty by an ignorant
non-warrior
woman that
he
, after spending his
life
risking his ass in the
deepest, darkest, most dangerous places in the Universe, was a coward, was
completely unacceptable to him.  “Oh yeah?” he demanded.  “Like throwing around
a few terrified women and children?  Impaling a dude on a tree?  Yeah,
definitely something the bards will write songs about.  Here, let me take some
notes.”  He mimed getting out his stylus and datapad.  “Was that once or twice
I had to shoot that guy before he stabbed you in the back?”

Shael stumbled to a halt,
her face flushing with fury.  Joe stopped with her, a renegade reckless streak
finally ready to take that sledgehammer and bash through whatever mental
barriers those scientist furgs had saddled her with.  “And before that,” he
continued, “when they tied you up and left you to die, did you
surrender
or did they just hit you ‘til you stayed down?  Hmm?”

From the way her eyes
widened, Joe knew she had surrendered.  Because she was soft.  And a girl.  And
scared.  And she really had no clue about battle or fighting.  He would have
snickered, but then he realized she was looking up at him with obvious intent
to murder, and self-preservation hit him like a brick to the temple.

Now would be a good
time to intervene,
Joe announced, utterly secure in the fact that his buddy
would stomp on the annoying Jreet wannabe and put her in her rightful,
non-warrior
place.

Twelve-A did not respond.

Joe felt the air around
him start to solidify and squeeze.

I could use some help!
Joe cried, not having expected his ace in the hole to be sleeping.

The minder remained
silent.  The air that had condensed around him was starting to press inward.

“Twelve-A’s unconscious,”
Joe blurted on what little air remained in his lungs.  “I need to get back and
tend to his wounds before they kill him.”

Some of the anger left
the woman’s fiery green eyes and the pressure eased slightly.  With some
hesitation, she said, “The vaghi broke his internal chambers.  It will kill
him.”

“Modern.  Medicine,” Joe
gasped, having nothing to return to his starving chest.  “Can fix.”

“Warriors don’t need
medicine,” she sneered, disdain oozing from her voice in a perfect imitation of
Daviin’s sentiment on the matter.

“Twelve-A.  Not. 
Jreet.”  His world was dimming, the lights starting to go out.

Shael cocked her head and
seemed to consider that for much too long, then grunted.  With a disgusted wave
of her hand, she said, “I suppose.  Care for the weakling, then.  We can finish
this later.”

In that moment, Joe found
his windpipe no longer blocked, his guts no longer being forced through his
esophagus, and he sucked in a desperate lungful of air.  Falling to his hands
and knees, he struggled to catch his breath.  For her part, Shael turned and walked
off, completely unconcerned.

This time, after a quick,
conflicted look at his gasping form,
both
Alice
and
Eleven-C went
trotting after Shael.

“Traitors,” Joe growled
at them. 

“Gun,” Eleven-C said, as
she passed.  This time, she was pointing to Shael, who was once again wearing
nothing but her birthday suit.  Meaning, of course, she thought Shael was the
better weapon.  Joe scowled as the experiment turned and hurried to catch up.

“Fickle furgs,” Joe
muttered.  He got to his feet, did a brief check to make sure she hadn’t broken
anything, collected his gear, and took off at a loping jog.  He passed Shael
within a couple tics, and though she raised her chin and tried to keep pace, he
quickly outdistanced her much shorter legs and bootless feet. 

Score one for the good
guys,
Joe thought smugly, listening to her curse in Jreet behind him. 
Keeping up his steady, ground-eating lope, he pulled himself quickly out of
earshot.

#

Joe’s smugness faded the
moment he returned to the clearing to find Twelve-A wrapped in the arms of all
of the People, face utterly pale, head lolling in complete lifelessness. 
Nine-G, in whose lap the minder was sitting, was picking through Twelve-A’s
silky platinum hair, pulling out bits of blood and grass.

“Jreet hells,” Joe growled,
peeling experiments from their dogpile around their friend.  “Let me at him. 
Come on.  Get out of the
way
.”

The experiments responded
sluggishly; most had been asleep.  Many of them refused to move at all, simply
glanced over their shoulders at him, saw Joe’s face, then drifted off again. 
When Nine-G saw Joe, however, the gigantic man did his work for him.  Shoving
everyone aside in an invisible wave as he leapt to his feet, Twelve-A’s limp
form slung in his gigantic arms, Nine-G lumbered up and shoved the minder’s
lean body at Joe with a look of worry.

“Yes, I know,” Joe said,
dropping his bag to the ground and starting to rummage through it.  “He’s
hurt.  Put him down so I can work on him.”

Nine-G shoved Twelve-A at
Joe again, this time knocking him over. 

Joe, who had had enough
of being manhandled by Takki-hugging, gun-stealing experiments, had Jane out
and slapped to the huge man’s nuts in an instant.  “Try it again, furg,” Joe
warned.  “I’m in the mood to descale a Dhasha.”

Nine-G, one of the few
experiments with the brains to really understand what a gun
did
, went
utterly still, his eyes open wide.  He swallowed and glanced down at his
crotch.

“That’s right,” Joe
said.  “Drop him.”

Since ‘drop him’ was very
similar to ‘drop
it,
’ which Joe had taught came right before getting
bitten, stung, cut, or splintered by unpleasant Earth-things, Nine-G did.  Joe
was pretty sure that the resulting five-foot fall didn’t do Twelve-A any
favors, but with a brief check of his pulse, he was relieved to find the minder
still had a heartbeat.

He removed the gun from
his big friend’s nuts.  “You may go now.” 

Nine-G nodded and stood
there, watching.  Sometime in Joe’s absence, the jenfurgling sooter had removed
Twelve-A’s bandages and wrapped them around his own massive hands, which he now
discreetly slid over his crotch.

Grunting, Joe went back
to rummaging through his kit.

With an anxious sound,
Nine-G removed a hand from his crotch and reached for Joe’s shoulder, obviously
about ready to continue manhandling Joe until he understood that Twelve-A was
hurt.

Without looking at the
massive experiment, Joe again raised Jane to nut-level.

Nine-G swallowed and
straightened.  Then, with a worried look, he took a couple paces to the side,
obviously trying to walk around the gun.  When it followed him, he gave a deep,
unhappy grunt and sat down, making the ground shudder when his massive cheeks
hit the grassy dirt.

“Thank you,” Joe said,
returning Jane to her holster.  He dragged out his medkit and a pack of
bandages.  Then, pulling the scrawny minder over his shoulder, he stood and
carried him down to the tiny creek beside their camp.  Behind him, he heard
Nine-G get to his feet and follow, bringing all the People with him.

Thus, Joe had forty-two
curious onlookers standing around in a semi-circle as he dunked Twelve-A in the
creek, washed the dirt and fly-eggs from his hands, face, and body,
straightened his broken nose as best he could, then laid him out on the grassy
bank and started administering nanos, meds, and battledust.

By the time the grabby,
ebon-haired Bagan itch returned, Joe was crouched beside his sleeping friend,
timing the shallow rise and fall of his chest, relatively sure that Twelve-A
would survive.

“You left us behind!”
Shael cried as she stormed up, panting.  For their parts, Alice and Eleven-C
hurried to reunite themselves with their colossal friend, who squealed happily
and locked them both into his arms in gigantic Hebbut hug.

“Not my fault you
couldn’t keep up,” Joe replied unhurriedly, stuffing his gear back into his
pack.  “Besides.  I barely got here in time as it was.  Hell, the pointy-eared
furg still might die.  His chest was filling up with blood.  That can put
pressure on the diaphragm, make it impossible to breathe.  Nanos should take care
of it, though.”

Shael continued to stare
down at him in fury, utterly uncomprehending what he had said.

Joe sighed and poked
Twelve-A in the pointy ear.  “He’s
alive
,” he made a ridiculously happy,
bouncy gesture, “because I
saved
him.”  He jabbed a thumb to his chest. 
“He was going to
die
,” he made a cutting gesture across his throat,
“from his
wounds
.”  He jabbed a finger at his stomach.

That seemed to cut
through some of her fury, because she blinked and looked down at Twelve-A
battered face.  The nanos were helping, clearing away some of the bruising, but
the damage was still evident.  Seeing how
much
damage, Joe was actually
surprised the blue-eyed wonder was still breathing.

“He talked to me in the
Human training compound,” Shael reluctantly muttered.  “Kept me company in the
darkness.”

Joe realized that that
was probably the closest thing to ‘concern’ that he had yet seen from Shael. 
“He should survive,” he assured her.  “I hope. Still working on it.”  He
extracted another dose of antibacterials and, dipping a porous needle into the
silvery solution, gingerly slipped it into Twelve-A’s arm.

He’d spoken Congie, but
she apparently got his meaning.  Instead of giving him some flake about wasting
resources on non-warriors, she eyed the telepath harshly, then grunted and
said, “Good.”  Then she turned and walked off through the nose-picking People,
leaving Joe admiring her petite curves from behind.