Zero Recall (31 page)

He fell.

#

Jer’ait watched his
companions get into position and kept the Dhasha prince between himself and the
Jreet, away from the direction he knew the Dhasha would lunge when it realized
what was happening.  Carefully, he selected a poison and extruded it into the
claws of his left hand, continuing to scratch with his right.  The prince
grunted and shifted, but did not complain again.  He was close to sleep.

When Jer’ait saw the Human’s
leg move slightly, he knew it was time.  He pushed his left hand under the
second layer of scales and slammed the claws into the Dhasha’s flesh as deeply
as they would go.

It was a contact-based
chemical, one that killed through the skin, the mouth, the eyes, the nose, and
the ears—any surface or orifice that could absorb it.  Since the Dhasha’s skin
was thicker than most creatures, the poison would be slower to take effect, but
the result would be the same.  The prince would die.

The prince snorted and
twitched, opening its eyes.  “Slave, are you incompetent?  My skin burns where
you—”

The prince was on his
feet in a second, bowling the other Takki over.  “You’re the Huouyt!” he
snarled, raising a paw to destroy him.

Behind him, the ceiling
collapsed.

Jer’ait scrabbled out of
the way as the Dhasha turned to look, then felt his gut churn at the sight that
unfolded.

The Jreet had fallen into
the pit.

Like an old spaceship
engine winding up for takeoff, the Jreet appeared as a massive red blur,
screamed its
shee-whomph
battlecry, and wrapped itself around the
closest Dhasha, heedless of the one behind it.  The prince took two steps toward
the Jreet and stumbled, the poison beginning to take hold.

Roaring, the prince
turned back on Jer’ait, but he found only stone.  Jer’ait had moved around
behind the prince and was angling toward the Dhasha the Jreet had not yet
seen.  The second Dhasha was just beginning to get a grasp of the situation
when Jer’ait slammed into it from the side, catching its attention for the
moment it took to keep it from shredding the Jreet.

Behind him, the prince
slumped to the ground.

The Dhasha Jer’ait had
attacked saw this, lowered its cold emerald eyes on Jer’ait, and casually
batted him aside, its black talons sinking in deep.

Jer’ait spun away,
feeling like half his body had been ripped away.  When he managed to sit up, he
was amazed that he was still conscious.  His torso hung in shreds.  Dimly, he
realized the Jreet now had both Dhasha wrapped in his body, though the effort
had stretched him to the limit, giving him no space to free his tek or use his
hands for anything but gripping the first Dhasha’s horns and keeping its jaws
from finding purchase on his coiled scarlet body.

Jer’ait stumbled to his
feet, leaking alarming amounts of blue fluid from his midsection.  He tried to
perform a localized pattern shift and managed to staunch some of the flow, but
the wounds were too grievous.  He was quickly losing consciousness.  If he
didn’t find water to negate his shift, he was going to die.

On the other side of the
room, near the females, a pool of water lay in a deep trough, a spring that the
Takki had diverted for their master’s use.  It was enough to submerge
himself…enough to save his life.  Jer’ait glanced at it, then looked back at
the Jreet.

In a crush of straining
muscle and tearing earth, the Jreet was losing his grip on the first Dhasha,
made all the worse by the fact he had been forced to free the creature of half
its coils when the second one lunged at him.  Already, one of the escaping
Dhasha’s talons had raked the Jreet along his back, opening a huge rent in the
scarlet hide that exposed three digs of bluish muscle to air.

If the Jreet didn’t get
help soon, he was going to be ripped apart.

Jer’ait staggered toward
the Jreet, then fell, his world rapidly losing color.  He had enough poison
remaining on his Takki-patterned claws to kill another Dhasha, but he couldn’t
force his muscles to work.  He could only lay there, head cocked sideways on
the cold stone, and watch as the Jreet rapidly lost the fight.

A dark brown, insectoid
shape skittered across the floor and paused in front of the escaping Dhasha. 
As Jer’ait watched, motionless, the shape switched directions and pressed its
bulbous rear into the Dhasha’s head.

The Dhasha went limp.

The Grekkon skittered
away, leaving the Jreet to deal with the last one.  Jer’ait felt something hard
grab his wrist and drag him across the floor, away from the fight.  Then he was
in a tunnel with perfect sides, sliding smoothly along a floor that gave no
resistance, leaving a trail of blue Takki blood behind him.

Jer’ait realized he’d
been shoved into a niche with three other bodies before he lost consciousness.

#

Daviin felt his muscles
tearing as he twisted around the Dhasha, constricting its midriff with every
ounce of strength he still possessed.

He felt something pop
under the pressure.  At first, he thought it had been one of his segments
severing, but then he realized the Dhasha had gone suddenly stiff, its muscles
like rock under his coils.

He eased off some of the
pressure and raised his head to look.

The Dhasha’s internal
organs were weeping from its mouth, oozing over its teeth and onto the ground. 
The Dhasha had stopped fighting. 

“
Come,
” a tinny
voice said behind him.  The Grekkon was half-in, half-out of a hole in the
wall, motioning at him with a spearlike appendage.  “
Can’t you hear them
coming for us?
”

Daviin opened his senses
past the battle-frenzy and heard the distant rumbling as Dhasha charged down
the main shaft toward them.

Daviin raised his energy
level and unwound from his victim.  Across the room, the Grekkon disappeared
back into its hole.  Daviin hadn’t fully uncoiled by the time the other Dhasha
arrived, but his exit nonetheless went unnoticed—the Dhasha congregated around
the prince’s corpse in mute horror, his two heirs forgotten.

Somehow, Daviin made it
up the shaft and to the point where the Grekkon had stashed his companions.

“
This shaft leads to
the surface,
” the Grekkon said.  “
Take the Ooreiki and the Huouyt with
you.
”

Daviin blinked at the
bodies, barely able to hold himself upright.  “Is the Human alive?”

“Barely.  But you take
the heavier two first.  If you don’t come back for the Human and the Baga, I’ll
bring them myself.”

Joe survived.  Daviin
felt a rush of relief—and regret. 
Sentinel to a slave.
  He shook off
the thought.  “What are you doing?”

“
I go to kill the
final heir and guard our retreat.
”

Daviin did not think he
could get himself to the surface, much less make two trips dragging bodies
along with him, but he grabbed the two heaviest of his companions nonetheless. 
Then, closing his eyes, he forced his torn and shredded muscles to move himself
onward.

Somehow, he reached the
surface, though Daviin had no sense of how long it had taken.  It seemed like
ages—and only seconds.  He dropped the Huouyt and the Ooreiki at the exit to
the shaft and went back for the other two.  He returned to the surface and
dropped the Human and the Baga to the ground.

When Daviin released him,
Joe groaned.  “Five,” he mumbled.  “Only five.”

Hearing the sound,
Daviin’s instincts as a Sentinel made him flinch.  He remembered his relief,
earlier, when he had thought the Human was dead and had therefore spared his
family the shame of knowing one of their princes had sworn himself to a slave. 
Guilt hit Daviin like a punch to the tek. 
I’m his
Sentinel
,
Daviin thought, appalled.  And yet, he was also a Voran heir.  Daviin fisted
his hands, once more finding his honor at war.

Then he realized he was
poised over his ward like a moron, bleeding to death in enemy territory,
debating over whether or not his ward was a slave.

I can deal with this
later.

Daviin began coiling atop
his ward, giving him the protection of his body should enemies find them, since
he knew he would soon be useless to stop them. 

Before he had finished
half his coils, Daviin’s world closed to a narrow black point and he slid to
the ground, spent.  He had a vague sense of movement nearby and then flinched
instinctively as something began tugging Joe’s body from under his coils, but
he lost consciousness before he could stop it.

CHAPTER 17:  The Jreet-Doctor

“Planetary Ops will experience
a bout of panic once the numbers come back.  They’ll lobby for the use of an
ekhta,
but as last time, Koliinaati politicians will clamor to stake a claim on
Neskfaat once the Dhasha are removed and will veto the Ground Corps’ initiative
on the grounds that Neskfaat is too important a resource to destroy.  Their
reasoning will be that they only lost two and a half million groundteams. 
They’ll get a Bajna to crunch the numbers and will suggest Planetary Ops can
lose up to three and a half billion before the toll will force them to increase
the Draft.  They’ll actually look at Neskfaat as an opportunity to whittle down
the overdraft, which has been causing shortages in the Outer Line.”

“So what can I expect the
Ground Force to do?” Rri’jan asked.

“Send in another wave. 
They have no other choice.  The Regency has tied their hands.  However, the
second wave will come after we have completed our business on Neskfaat. 
Between now and then, Planetary Ops will use the two thousand surviving teams
until there’s nothing left.”

“They won’t use them to
train new waves?”

“No.  Planetary Ops will
study the group combinations and attempt to duplicate them, somewhat correctly
believing their successes were due to statistics and not individual talent. 
They’ll send them back again and again to determine the best statistical
combination before they send in their larger second wave of soldiers. 
Basically, they will be doing exactly what we are doing.  They will be
analyzing how long it takes them to die in order to create the proper
combinations needed to root out the one hundred and twelve princes that
survived the first attack.”

“Then we must intervene
before they kill our teams off,” Rri’jan cried.  Forgotten wasn’t sure which
was more amusing—the fact that Rri’jan had grown so attached to the plan, or
the fact that he didn’t believe Forgotten had already taken that into account.

“It will require no
intervention on our part,” Forgotten assured his visitor.  “After the sixth
attack, only two teams will survive.  Planetary Ops will have their statistics
by then, and we will have our team.”

“Just two?”  Rri’jan
looked startled.  “Twelve soldiers out of two million groundteams will survive
the first wave?”

“Two and a half million.”

“So these teams that
survive the sixth assault…they’re the ones we want?”

“No.  They’re only the
candidates.  We have a bigger test in store for them, once they’ve survived to
that stage.”

“What test?”

“We’ll discuss that when
we come to it.  Be satisfied to know that one of the two groups will fail,
leaving us with the one we will send against Mekkval.”

Rri’jan did not seem
displeased with the idea.  Forgotten found the Huouyt’s lack of vision
irritating.

“I want you to know,
Rri’jan, that your brother has a very high chance of surviving to our final
test.  His team is one of my two chosen candidates.  If you sabotage his
success in any way, you will be sabotaging your seat on the Tribunal.

Rri’jan’s electric eyes gave
him a flat, psychotic stare.  “I am not stupid, Geuji.”

Oh, but you are.
 
“This particular group has enough chances of disintegrating as it is.  Jer’ait
will already receive enough complications from the other Huouyt to test his
limits and possibly make a misstep that will mean his death.  The Jreet will
require me to train a surgeon to keep his romps with the Dhasha from being his
last, and will be difficult to control when he realizes the reigning Welu heir
is with him on Jeelsiht.  Sooner or later, the Human is going to reawaken a
deep-rooted phobia Congressional physicians failed to bury in his recruit
training on Kophat.  The Baga will be caught spying on top-secret meetings and
will face execution.  The Ooreiki will eventually begin to question his
tunnel-instinct under the constant stress, and the Grekkon may or may not be
able to maintain his excretion rate for six attacks in a row.”

The Huouyt peered at him
narrowly.  “You have this all planned already, do you?”

“Yes,” Forgotten said. 
“Further complicating things is that the Trith will become involved sooner or
later.  Until now, they have been satisfied with approaching my agents, trying
to guide my actions through their input.  Now, with the plans I am making, the
Trith will not be content to watch as their future disintegrates before their
eyes.  They despise vortexes.  They will be insidious, attempting to steer the
future back on their chosen track by foiling my plans and foretelling my
death.” 

Rri’jan gave him a
calculating look, one that verged on appreciation.  “So you truly can’t be read
by the Trith?”

Forgotten felt a pang of
regret.  Of loneliness.  “It is why the Trith betrayed the Geuji at Uvuai,” he
replied.  “Our futures are incomprehensible to them.  Imagine an entire planet
of possibilities combined into one mind.  If every creature in existence only
has one choice to make in their lives that the Trith cannot foresee, I have
billions of them, each independent of the next.” 

“The Trith betrayed your
species to Congress because you
unnerve
them?”