Zero Recall (18 page)

“Look,” the
Ueshi bartender finally said, shoving another glass full of amber liquid at
him, “You ain’t weaseling any free drinks tonight.  Maybe other guys’ve fallen
for it, but I’m not stupid.  You’re a Human, but that’s the end of the
similarity.  You’re a drunk.  Zero’s a warrior.  You can have this last one,
but any more furgsoot and I’ll have you kicked out.”

Joe sobered as
the Ueshi walked away.  All around him, aliens were laughing.  He stared at his
drink, unable to tug his eyes away.  Then, furious, he slapped it across the
table, showering half the bar with glass and whiskey.

“That’s it!” the
Ueshi snapped.  He motioned two Ooreiki to grab Joe, then they continued to
hold him as the Ueshi dug in his pockets for his credit stub and dialed in a
number six times what Joe owed and pressing Joe’s finger to the confirmation
screen.  When Joe protested, one of the Ooreiki doubled him over with a blow to
the gut.

“Well, what do
you know,” the Ueshi said, smugly tucking the credit stub back into Joe’s
pocket.  “You really are Zero.  Now get him out of here.  Right out front,
where the squads can find him.”

The Ooreiki
dumped Joe in the street outside the bar, badly scraping his knees and face on
the concrete.  After the others left, one of the Ooreiki pooled beside Joe and
began easing his Planetary Ops jacket from his back.

“No,” Joe
mumbled, trying to fight. 

“For your own
good,” the Ooreiki said.  “This is Jeelsiht, not Kaleu.  Corps Director’s
ordered squads out in every city to enforce the code.  The squads saw you like
this, they’d kill you as an example.  Wouldn’t matter how many
kasjas
you have, Commander.  Now keep that tattoo out of sight and go get an
antidote.  They sell them at Jei’Jei’s Liquids, right down the street.  Come
back when you’re all sobered up and your jacket’ll be in my locker.  If I’m not
here, just ask the Ueshi at the bar.”

The Ooreiki
finished removing the jacket and stood once more.  He folded Joe’s jacket under
his arm and disappeared back inside the bar.

Joe lay there
shivering in the filth, staring down at the bloody pavement. 

Sam was dead. 
He had seen his headless corpse, hefted up by one foot, naked, hung by a crane
so the entire Times Square could see it.

Sam was dead,
and Joe had done it.

Slowly, he
picked himself up and began wandering the streets. 

I got my
brother killed.
  The shame ate at him like worms roiling in his insides. 
I
led the Peacemakers right to him.

After everything
else that had happened to him—losing Sam, his groundteam’s disdain, Maggie’s
constant betrayals—Joe felt as if his soul had been worn down.

He wandered down
the street, intending to find Jei’Jei’s Liquids and acquire an antidote before
heading back to the barracks, but when he stopped outside the store, he saw a
squad taking a break inside.  Six Jikaln warriors, their naturally
chameleon-like bodies blending with the racks of liquids as they padded along
the rows on all fours, the neon green lights of the store gleaming off their
teeth and claws.

Joe slid into an
alley across the store and waited.

Tics went by,
five or ten, Joe couldn’t tell, and still the squad remained.

An elderly
Jahul, stinking despite the heavy scent of soap, scuttled into the alley with
him and prodded him with one of its six feet.  “They do this before every
mission.  You better go, son.  That squad ain’t gonna leave.  Even if it looks
like they left, they still there.  Tryin’ ta catch guys like you.”  His
marble-like black eyes shifted to the luminescent tattoo on Joe’s right palm,
upraised for all to see.

Joe grunted and
closed his fist.  “Thanks.”

The Jahul
hesitated in the alley.  “You want a ride home?  I got time to take you
anywhere in Dayut.  Congie barracks, methinks?”

Joe dreaded the
look the Huouyt would give him when he arrived drunken and bloody.  “No.  I’ll
walk it off.”

The Jahul eyed
him.  “Your purification system is equipped to handle such a high dose?”

“It’ll handle
it,” Joe muttered.  “Just get out of here.”

“Son—” the Jahul
began.

“Go!”

With a reluctant
glance over its shoulder, the wet-skinned, six-legged Jahul climbed aboard his
haauk
and left. 

Joe got to his
feet and stumbled into the light.  One of the Jikaln inside the shop looked his
way, but made no motions to follow.  Joe began to wander, wondering how he’d
managed to be so stupid.

I just
watched Sam die,
he thought as he walked. 
I just watched him die and it
was my fault.  I should have stopped them.  I owed it to him to
stop
them.

The longer he
was on the streets, the worse he felt.  It wasn’t long before he couldn’t take
it anymore.  Joe stopped in the first bar he found and ordered another
whiskey.  He drank it in silence, shame boring into his soul. 
I should have
stopped them.
  Once he finished his drink, he ordered three more.

Joe felt yet
another set of bouncers dropping him onto the cold stone street outside by the
time he finally succumbed to oblivion.

CHAPTER
10:  A Stubborn Piji Shell

“Then where is
he, Jreet?”  The Huouyt assassin made a lazy gesture at the open door. 
“Please, enlighten me.”

“He’s doing what
he said he would,” Daviin retorted.  “Reconnaissance.”

Jer’ait
snorted.  “You’re a furg.”

“He said he
didn’t drink on duty,” Daviin said, growing irritated. 

“He was lying.”

Daviin
prickled.  “Why do you think so little of him?”

“Because he was
lying,
furg,” the Huouyt snarled.  “He left the barracks with every intention of
drinking himself into a stupor.  He has a chemical dependency.  I recognize the
symptoms.”

Daviin prickled. 
“His file said nothing about a dependency.”

“He developed it
when he got his brother arrested.  It’s why he kept going back to those bars on
Earth.  It’s the only reason we could
find
him.”

“He got his
brother arrested?”  Daviin gave him a curious frown.

“He was a
criminal, being tried for treason,” Jer’ait said.  “Execution was today.”

Daviin flinched,
realizing he would be sentenced to another level of hell for interfering in a
matter of blood-debt.  “They were going to kill his brother?  Is that why he
went AWOL?”

“I suppose
during his sober moments he was probably trying to make a plan to save him,
yes,” Jer’ait admitted.

“Why didn’t you
say something?” Daviin demanded.  “We could’ve helped him!”

Jer’ait
laughed.  “You know who I am.”

“Yes.  Exactly
my point.”

“You know who I
work for.”

“One’s brothers
must come before one’s country,” the Jreet intoned.  “Without a tribe, you are
nothing.”

“Huouyt do not
have tribes,” Jer’ait retorted.  “We have ourselves and we have our employer. 
I have a job to kill the Vahlin.  It is Huouyt code that I must remain loyal to
my employer until I’ve finished the job I accepted of him.”

Daviin snorted. 
“That code is Dhasha flake.”

“It is the only
code we live by.”

“The regen
medicine from his operation would have removed the dependency from his system,”
Daviin said.  “He went to gather intelligence.”

“It’s mental,
Jreet,” the Huouyt said.  “Our fearless leader has succumbed to the pressures
of his job.  He’s nothing but a lying, useless cur.”

Daviin’s body tightened
into constriction position.  Coldly, he said, “You’re wrong.”  He had seen
something better.  Something that had made him wish to swear allegiance to his
damned soft hide.

The Huouyt
laughed at him.  “We shall see, Jreet.  Go looking for him, if you’re so sure. 
I doubt you’ll find him in a library.  I, on the other hand, am going to attend
the briefing.  It will not be my
breja
they pull for missing it, and I
think at least one member of our team should stay informed.”

The Huouyt
departed, leaving Daviin’s claws digging into the scales of his palms. 

In all reality,
probably the easiest way to be re-instated in the Human’s groundteam would have
been to go to the briefing and complain to the Overseers.  Daviin knew the
tekless cowards would buckle to his demands in an instant.  Yet, as desperate
as he was to get back on the team, Daviin did not want to go behind the Human’s
back.  He knew that as soon as he did, he would lose all hope of gaining his
Prime’s respect.

After a moment
of indecision, Daviin turned and took the opposite hall, toward the city.

Without Jer’ait
to ask questions for him, Daviin found it difficult to locate a single citizen
willing to stand around long enough for him to get close enough to ask
directions, and Daviin was too slow to run them down.  Thus, finding the Human
took a mix of instinct, smell, and luck.  Humans were not common on Jeelsiht,
so their scent was distinctive.  As Daviin ignored the bars and wandered the
most likely gathering places in vain, however, he had a growing, unhappy sense
that Jer’ait had been right.

When Daviin
finally found the Human, it was well into the evening.

Joe was face
down in an alleyway, stripped naked, his valuables gone.  The reek of alcohol
and vomit was everywhere.  Daviin stilled in the entrance to the alley, staring
at the Human in disbelief.

Beda’s
bones…  He
lied
.

Daviin was
stunned.  He had thought the Human honorable.  He had thought him a warrior. 
He had
respected
him.

To think he had
thought him worthy of a Jreet!

As Daviin
watched, the Human stirred and vomited into the puddle growing at his side. 
The fresh scent of half-digested alcohol wafted back to where Daviin lay.

Daviin almost
left him there, content to let the fool find his own way home and seek out
another groundteam, but anger overrode his logic.  He wove his way up to the Human
and grabbed him harshly by the arm.  As the Human groaned slightly, trying to
bat him away, Daviin leaned back on himself and lifted Joe with him.  He
dangled the protesting Human out in front of him and brought his head down
until their faces almost met.

“On Vora,”
Daviin growled, “we thread liars on sharpened stakes and let the vermin eat
them alive.  It takes days for them to die.”

The Human opened
his eyes long enough to see Daviin’s face, then squeezed them shut again.  “The
answer’s still no.”

Daviin shook him
until he felt the joints in the Human’s shoulder dislocate.  The Human screamed
and tried to fight him, but Daviin was unaffected by his weak struggles.  He
watched him writhe pitilessly, ignoring his cries.  Behind him, several
passers-by peeked into the alley at the noise, then, upon seeing Daviin’s coils
filling up the space, quickly found somewhere else to be.

Once the Human’s
screams had died down to unintelligible drunken sobs, Daviin leaned down and
said into his face, “Liars are scum.  You lie, you make yourself as honorless
as a Huouyt.  A warrior is nothing without his honor.”

“Fuck honor,” he
heard the Human whisper.

Daviin jerked
back, stunned.  “What did you say?”

“I said
fuck
honor!
” Joe screamed, opening his wet brown eyes.  “It never got me
anywhere.”

Daviin whipped
back and threw him across the alley.  Joe tumbled into the wall, then lay in an
inebriated pile, groaning.  Before he could right himself, Daviin was atop
him.  “Honor,” he said quietly, “Is everything.”

The Human
shuddered.  It took Daviin a moment to realize he was crying.  Daviin pushed
him over, furious, intending to give him something to cry about, when the Human
said, “Yeah.”  His sobs grew to wretched wails, like a spitted Takki.

Daviin
hesitated, realizing the Human cried out of a deeper pain than his physical
bruises.  He cried out of shame.  Daviin grasped Joe’s good arm and wrenched
him back off the ground.  “Lie to me again,” he said into the Human’s face,
“And I will kill you.”

Softly, the Human
said, “I’ll be dead by next week.”

“Not by my
hand,” Daviin said.

“By mine.”

Daviin peered at the Human
as he said this, and realized he spoke the truth.  He analyzed the Human a
moment, then said, “No.”

Joe laughed again.  “No?”

“No,” Daviin repeated. 
“You’ll live.”

“Sorry to tell you this, asher,”
the Human spat, “but you can’t stop me.  You’re not even on my team.”

Peering into the Human’s
stubborn brown eyes, Daviin saw the warrior’s spark once more.  Intoxicated,
naked, dangling six digs off the ground by a limb, unable to move his other
arm, the Human might as well have been on even ground, his spear at Daviin’s
throat. 

“Someday,” Daviin said,
“You will tell me why you poison yourself.”  He dropped the Human, who crumpled
on the pavement with a grunt of surprise.  “Until then, you will walk.”

From his awkward pile,
the Human laughed.  “Burn you, Jreet.”

“You will walk,” Daviin
said, “or you will be dragged.”

The Human stopped
laughing. 

Naked as he was, his soft
body would be shredded on the sharp black gravel, and they both knew it.

“I hope you rot in hell,”
the Human finally muttered. 

“Which one?”

The Human peered at him
for a while, considering.  “How many are there to choose from?”

“Ninety.  If I found myself
in your situation—which I wouldn’t—I’d curse me to the Frozen Hell.  Rii.  It’s
one of the very last.  There is very little that is more uncomfortable to a
Jreet than cold.”

The Human used his good
arm to drag himself into a squatting position.  “Soot my head hurts.”