Zero Recall (19 page)

“It will hurt much more
if you don’t start moving.”

The Human peered at him
through one puffy brown eye, then reluctantly stood.  He teetered a moment,
then steadied.  “You’re not on the team.”

“Walk, Human.”

The Human muttered
something under his breath, but he walked.  Slowly, but steadily, he padded
barefoot toward the edge of the alley, then balked, seemingly realizing his
current state of undress.

“I can’t go out there
like this.”

“You can.  And will.”

“Ghosts of the Mothers,
what are you, some avenging angel come to cleanse me of my sins?”

“No, I am a
Sentinel-trained Jreet who has little pity for inebriated fools.” 

The Human laughed.  “You
know, I might just start to like you, sooter.”

“My name is Daviin.”

“I’m Joe.”

“Walk, Joe.”

“Right.”  The Human took
a deep breath, eying the bustling street.  Bracing himself, he muttered, “God
hates a coward
.
”

And walked.

#

“Commander Zero,
if you’re not down here in
three tics
—”

Joe shut off the
Overseer’s snarl and leaned back into his cot, staring up at the ceiling of his
barracks room.  He heard the wall creak as the Jreet shifted outside his door. 
Joe lifted his head off his pillow and shouted, “I said
get lost
!”

The Jreet—who
had the best hearing in Congress—ignored him.  Instead, he said through the
door, “You should go to the meeting, Joe.”

They were going
down the tunnels in two days.  Two days, and the Jreet hadn’t let him so much
as step into a bar in a week.

My own
personal nanny,
Joe thought, miserable.

Outside his
door, the Jreet shifted again, and this time the door slammed open.  Joe sat
up, outraged that Daviin had somehow managed to hack his password.

A furious
Ooreiki stood in the doorway, its
sudah
whipping in its neck.  It jammed
a tentacle at him.  “You!” Ooreiki Secondary Overseer Moskin snapped.  “Do you
want to be tried for disobedience, as well as drunkenness?”

Joe lay back
down and returned his eyes to the ceiling.  “It’s all pretty much the same to
me.”

The Ooreiki’s
voice lowered to a dangerous whisper.  “Zero, you are one of the most decorated
soldiers under my command, but I swear to the ancestors’ ghosts, if you do not
show up for your trial, we are going to demote you.”

“Wouldn’t be the
first time,” Joe said to the ceiling.  “And it would save me the hell of trying
to keep my Takkiscrew of a groundteam from killing itself.”

In a fury, the
Ooreiki strode across the room and easily ripped him off his cot.  Not even
trying to keep him upright, the Ooreiki stormed out the door, dragging him by an
arm.

A ruby hand
bigger than Joe’s chest suddenly blocked their path. 

“Where are you
going with my Prime?”  The ominous sound of the Jreet’s voice even made Joe
flinch.

The speed of the
Ooreiki Overseer’s sudah suddenly took on a new intensity.  “Where did you come
from?”

“The asher’s
been squatting outside my door for the last week,” Joe muttered.  He yanked his
hand free from the Ooreiki’s grip. 

Overseer
Moskin’s pupils expanded to enormous, terrified black ovals.  “Then this is why
you would not leave your room?”

“No,” Joe said. 

At the same
time, Daviin said, “Yes.”

When Joe frowned
at the Jreet, Daviin lowered his head to face the Overseer and said, “If he
leaves his room before he returns me to his groundteam, my honor demands that I
kill him, as well as everyone around him.”

The Ooreiki took
two nervous steps backwards.  Almost meekly, he said, “We need Joe to make an
appearance for his toxicity trial, my lord.”

“The trial is
cancelled,” Daviin said.  “Leave.”

“But...”

“
Now
!”
the Jreet snarled.

The Ooreiki Overseer
fell over itself trying to escape down the hall.  Joe watched it go, then
returned his attention to Daviin.  He looked the big Jreet up and down, taking
in the mountain of ruby coils stacked outside his door before returning his
eyes to the Jreet’s diamond-shaped head.  “So why are you still here?”

“I want on the
team,” Daviin said.

“I’ve already
said no.”

“I intend to
make you change your mind.”

Joe sighed,
expecting as much.  “I don’t suppose you’ll let me out for a drink?”

“A meeting,
yes,” the Jreet said.  “To poison yourself, no.”

Joe gave him a
disgusted scowl.  “I should check on the others.  They haven’t heard from their
Prime in over a day.”

Daviin bobbed
his chest-sized head.  “That you should.  I’ll come with you, in case the
Ooreiki returns to harass you.”

Joe squinted at
the Jreet, wondering just what the chances were he could slip away from the
Jreet and go get a drink.  Probably infinitesimal.  He sighed.  “Just how badly
do you want to be on my team, Daviin?”

The Jreet raised
itself up proudly.  “I would go nowhere else.”

Joe eyed him a
long moment.  “Tell you what.  The Huouyt is being difficult and I need a
scout, and you’ve got inviso-mode, so you could work.” 

Daviin perked up
instantly.  “And?”

Reluctantly, Joe
said, “And, you want back on the team so bad, I’ll make you a deal.  I have
several important meetings with a long-time associate coming up.  If you can
manage to follow me between now and then, without losing track of me, but
without me seeing you or noticing you’re there, and can give me a full report
of what my friend and I said at the end of the day, I’ll let you back on the
team.”

The Jreet
hesitated so long that Joe wasn’t sure he had heard.  Finally, he said, “And if
I fail?”

“You’ll leave. 
Permanently.”

The Jreet’s
enormous coils tightened.  “I won’t fail.”

“A full day,”
Joe reminded him.  “I can’t see you or notice your presence.  If I do, you will
leave and find some other fool to haunt.  Agreed?”

“Agreed,” the
Jreet said.  Its small golden eyes watching him, the Jreet suddenly vanished. 
Joe found himself unnerved at the way the Jreet’s monstrous red body had simply
disappeared and he was suddenly facing an empty hall.

Joe grinned. 
“Now to go find Jim Beam.” 

#

“You tricked me,
Human.”

The sound had
seemingly come from the thin air beside him.  Joe sighed and put down his
glass.  “And you were doing so well, too.”

Daviin lowered
his energy level, making every head in the bar suddenly turn at the mass of red
that had appeared beside him…

…and filled up
the rest of the bar, rolling over tables and booths and filling up
inconspicuous aisles. 

“I’ve been
following you for the last six hours, and I know for a fact you no more intend
to have me on the team than you do to have me document your secret discussions
with your long-time associate.  Jim Beam is a form of poison.  I just heard the
bartender discussing it with a Human in the corner.”

Daviin had taken
the time to form most of his body into a huge coil overlapping several pieces
of furniture, leaving Joe feeling acutely aware at just how easy it would have
been for the Jreet to kill him while he drank on, oblivious. 

From the looks
on the other patrons’ faces, Daviin made them feel the same way.  There was an
air about Jreet that left everyone else feeling insignificant and weak.  Most
of the patrons quickly got up and found something else to do.

Prime Dhasha
destruction, all two thousand lobes of him.
  Inwardly, Joe considered
allowing Daviin to join them in the tunnels, then cursed himself for being a
fool.  The Jreet would not follow orders.  He had just proven as much.

 “You’ve been
here awhile,” Joe agreed.  He hefted his whiskey and wiggled the glass.  “But
not long enough for me to finish my meeting with my long-time associate.  You
failed, Jreet.  Go home.”

The Jreet didn’t
move.  “I figured out why you drink yourself to death.”

Joe glanced at
the infoscreen, which only moments earlier had contained sentimental
memoryclips of his brother Sam that his mother had sent to Joe while he’d been
across the galaxy, fighting Congress’s wars for it.  Immediately, he bristled. 
“Get out, Jreet.  I was giving you an honest chance, but you screwed it up. 
I’m serious about keeping you off the team.”

“I know.”  The
Jreet lowered his head until he was at eye-level with Joe.  “That’s why I want
you.  There isn’t another Prime on this planet who has the courage to turn me
down and mean it, or the audacity to make me bumble around for six hours like a
soft-skinned hatchling, utterly alert, thinking I’m looking for some mysterious
Jim Beam.”

“You mean the
stupidity.”  Joe sighed.  “Look, I’ve seen what a Jreet can do.  I know you
could wipe the floor with a Dhasha.  You could kill more of them in an evening
than I’ll ever hope to kill in my whole life.”

The Jreet
waited, listening.

“But I can’t
take you back on,” Joe said.  “You’re a risk to everyone else who goes down
there with you.”  Then he laughed out of frustration.  “Who am I kidding?  I’ve
got a Huouyt assassin who won’t get chipped, a cocky little Baga nutcase, an
Ooreiki who looks at me like I shit ruvmestin but questions me like I don’t
have two spare brain cells to rub together…  About the only one who doesn’t
question me is the Grekkon, and as far as I know he doesn’t have an opinion on
anything…which worries me even more than the Huouyt.”

“He doesn’t
question you.  A quality of a good soldier.”

“No,” Joe said. 
“This isn’t infantry.  This is an elite squad.  I need grounders with the
ability to make their own decisions if they have to.  You saw how he just stood
there when the Baga was pulling his crap?  Like he didn’t even give a damn.”

“He probably
didn’t,” Daviin said.

“That’s exactly
what I’m talking about!” Joe cried.  “If we were all Humans, somebody would
have put that Baga in his place.  Hell, they all woulda helped me re-arrange
his face.  But everyone just stood around and watched.  Even the MPs in the
hall didn’t do a damn thing.  Nobody did.”

“Except you.”

Joe sighed. 
“Yeah.”

The Jreet turned
to the bartender and ordered a round of something foreign.  The Jahul bartender
first brought out a regular-sized glass, then looking his newest customer up
and down, got out a two-gallon canister and set it on the table beside Daviin.

Joe sniffed it
and wrinkled his nose at the toxic burning-tire smell.  “What is it?”

“Deadly.”  The
Jreet lifted the canister and took two long swigs, then set it down half full. 
He smacked his scaly lips and stretched his huge, diamond-shaped hearing
cavities in Joe what he recognized as a Jreet smile.  “And delicious.”

“Huh,” Joe
said.  “I guess you have no reason to worry about the Tox Squads.”

Daviin snorted. 
“It would take more than a few Jikaln to scare me.”

Joe sighed. 
“That’s one thing I didn’t miss on Earth.  You can drink ‘til you pass out
every day and no one will cart you off to the brig.”

“It’s the same
on Vora.”  Daviin glanced out the door.  “At home, they would have rioted if
the clan leader outlawed enjoying oneself with friends.”

Joe grunted. 
“Don’t worry about it.  Volunteers are exempt from the Director’s stupid
rules.”

“I am not a
volunteer.”

Joe glanced up. 
“You told me you were.”

“I pledged to
serve.”  The Jreet’s golden eyes were watching him carefully.  “They accepted
my Sentinel training in lieu of Basic.  Took my oath this afternoon, after I
realized you’d tricked me.”

Joe felt his
mouth falling open.  “Why would you—ghosts!  You became a
Congie?
  Don’t
you know that’s stupid?!  They’ll send you down every rat-hole they can find
and charge you extra time for every trip to medical.  They’ll never give you
up.”

“I gave them a
condition.”

“Recruitment
doesn’t make conditions,” Joe said, frowning.

Daviin smiled. 
“They do for me.”

Seeing the two
thousand lobes of twisted alien muscle, Joe decided the Jreet was probably
right.  “Huh.  I’ll bet.”  Joe sighed and tilted his glass.  “Well, I hope you
made it a good one.”

“I did,” Daviin
said. 

Seeing his smug
look Joe stiffened.  “If you conned them into putting you on my team—”

“The condition
was that I be allowed to modify my Sentinel oath.”

Joe frowned.  “I
don’t get it.”

“There is
nothing to get.”  Daviin took another swig of his toxic sludge, downing it in
one gulp.  Then, without lead-up or segue, Daviin pulled a crystal dagger from the
leather sheath in his chest and sliced open his scaly ruby hand.   He then
reached out and grasped Joe’s arm before Joe could pull away.  Holding Joe in
place, he tore Joe’s coat open and smeared the bluish blood beading on his palm
across the bare skin of Joe’s torso.  In this, he scratched a symbol with a
scarlet claw over Joe’s heart, cutting bloody paths in the skin with a talon. 
Joe was so stunned he could only sit there and watch the Jreet carve on him.

“There,” Daviin
said, releasing him.  “You didn’t flinch.  That’s good.”

“Wait,” Joe
said, pulling away.  “Now just hold on.  What’d you do?”

“Joe Dobbs, I am
now your acting Sentinel.”

Joe stared.  His
eyes traveled from his drinking companion’s face down to where his blood was
mingling with the Jreet’s over his heart in stinging red-blue pathways.  Then
he laughed.

Tics went by and
the Jreet’s eyes never wavered.  Joe realized he was serious.

“You’re saying
you swore an oath…to obey me?”