Zero's Return (24 page)

#

“Doctorphilip, I
want to go outside.”

Doctorphilip
hesitated in writing yet another report to his superiors analyzing Shael’s
warrior attributes and how to emulate them.  Glancing at him over his
paperwork, Doctorphilip raised a thin black eyebrow.  “You know we can’t risk
exposing the Jreet’s alliance with my species to Congress.  We need to keep you
out of sight.”

Shael snorted at
yet another example of Doctorphilip’s weakness.  “I don’t care about the
tantrums of politicians.  They object and the Jreet will crush them to a soul. 
I’m tired of this stale air.  I want to see the surface.”

Doctorphilip
dared to shake his head.  “Sadly, we can’t allow that.  It would violate six
different treaties.  You
must
stay out of sight.  We’ve gone
over
this, Shael.”

Shael, sick of
being trapped within the four same sterilized white walls day in and day out,
with no one to teach and nothing to do, surged to his coils in a fury.  “I
am
going outside, you miserable furg.  You will open the doors, or I will open
them myself.”

Doctorphilip put
down his weakling’s instrument, crossed his tiny, feeble fingers over his knee
and gave Shael a frown.  “Where did you get this ridiculous idea to go outside,
Shael?”

Shael, who had
been communicating with the puny furg Twelve-A for the last few weeks,
grimaced.  Twelve-A, who had some sort of superior communication technology,
had told Shael not to mention him, as it would get him put back to sleep, and
Shael greatly enjoyed his company whenever he was awake.

Thus, Shael
swore to the Sisters he’d offer a sacrifice for his sin, took a breath, and
lied.  “I miss the swamps of my homeland,” he said.  “I wish to see how your
pitiful planet compares.”  Which was partially true.

Doctorphilip
gave him a smile that, for just a moment, Shael thought held a bit of disdain. 
Then it was quickly hidden, obscured with more platitudes.  “I assure you,
Shael, my planet has no swamps.  It is dry and barren and you would not enjoy
it.”

He’s lying,
Twelve-A told him. 
It’s beautiful.

“You’re lying,”
Shael snapped, before he could have second thoughts about it.  “Bring me my
melaa and open the doors, slave.  I will see the surface today.”

Instead of
cowering in fear, as he usually did, Doctorphilip’s eyes darkened.  In the
language of his own kind, he snarled something that made Shael’s scales
tighten, despite the fact he couldn’t understand the words.

What did he
just say?
Shael demanded of Twelve-A, scowling up into Doctorphilip’s beady
blue eyes.

For a moment,
the minder hesitated.

Speak,
weakling,
Shael snapped.

He said, ‘You’re
an annoying little brat, you know that?’
Twelve-A replied.

Shael froze. 
“You
mock
me?”

Doctorphilip,
whose face had been filled with smug contempt, blinked in surprise.  Almost
immediately, sly cunning slid into its place for the briefest of instants
before he gave an obsequious bow.  In his tongue, he said, “I would never dream
to mock you, Shael.”  Then, quickly, he rattled off a few more words in his
filthy language.

What did the
cur just say?
Shael again demanded of his friend-weakling.

Shael, it’s a
test, and you really shouldn’t—

Tell me, or I
will bring this entire mountain down upon us,
Shael snapped.  He was in his
war-mind, and he was ready to do just that.

Twelve-A
hesitated a moment, then he said,
He called you a hairy cunt he couldn’t
wait to breed to something intelligent.

Shael’s mouth
fell open as he stared at his servant.  “You vaghi skulker…you
dare
?!” 
He grasped Doctorphilip’s head in the barrier of his mind—

—and flinched
when something sharp pricked his chest.  Almost instantly, Shael was wrenched
from his war-mind and shoved back into the narrow, three-dimensional view of
his normal senses.  He looked down, saw the tiny, fluffy-ended red dart
sticking from his body, and froze.

“So,”
Doctorphilip said, casually lowering his pen back to his desk, “when did you
learn Congie, Shael?”  His smile had slipped slightly, and his eyes were
alert.  Pleasantly, he added, “Has one of the crew been teaching you, or were
you just picking it up?”

Please don’t
tell him about me,
Twelve-A whimpered. 
Please…they don’t know I’m awake
and I don’t want to sleep again.

No longer caring
about lying to a craven coward, Shael snarled, “I learned your language from your
own filthy lips, betrayer.  You’ve been insulting me all along.”  He upended
Doctorphilip’s brownish weakling’s drink across his paperwork and clothes, then
hurled the mug to shatter on the opposite wall.

Doctorphilip’s
face darkened and he glanced down at himself, then at the shattered pottery
against the wall.  “That was my favorite mug.”

“I shall stake
you for your insolence,” Shael decided.  “Then I will hunt down your kinfolk
and children and dry out their innards as they scream for mercy.  How
dare
you insult a son of Welu!”  Shael tossed his soggy papers aside, too,
scattering them in a wet flurry around the room.

The look
Doctorphilip gave him was filled with cold, unconcealed malice.  “My
dead
mother
gave me that mug.”

Shael sneered at
him.  “I’ll be sure to bury it with your tekless remains.”  He lunged forward,
grabbed Doctorphilip by the throat, and attempted to hurl him through the
concrete wall.

Instead,
Doctorphilip remained exactly where he was and chuckled.  “Oh, you poor,
deluded little vaghi.  You want to kill me?”  He reached out and placed
his
hand around
Shael’s
throat.  “How about now, you petulant little shit?” 
He started to squeeze, and Shael, despite his great, powerful body, was unable
to force Doctorphilip’s hands from his throat.

“I am
so
tired
of your constant, arrogant, full-of-shit
crap
,” Doctorphilip
snarled.  “You think you’re a Jreet?  You’re a
lab-rat
.”  As Shael
choked and slapped at the weakling’s wrists, unable to get air, Doctorphilip
yanked him close, until their faces were almost touching.  “What, Shael?  Can’t
breathe
?  Now why would that be?  Is this
weakling
stronger than
you?”

It was all the
more horrifying because it was exactly as he said.  Shael couldn’t breathe,
couldn’t fight his way free, despite being bigger, stronger, a hundred times
more powerful, trained in a thousand forms of death.

Doctorphilip’s
face twisted in a spiteful smile.  “I’m one of the top linguists in my field. 
You think I
want
to be down here, baby-sitting mindless morons like
you?  You think I
want
to be stuck underground day in and day out,
listening to your idiotic rants?  It’s the only way I could get a
pension
,
bitch.”  Doctorphilip shook him, then, sending shooting pains down Shael’s neck
and back.

“You’re just a
lab-rat,” Doctorphilip snarled into his face.  “Lucky number thirteen.  We’re
done with you by the end of next month, then we’re sending you to follow in the
footsteps of all your little friends who didn’t quite work out.  You know what
happened to them?”

Terror was
beginning to bubble up on a wave of shame, terror that he didn’t understand how
Doctorphilip could continue to hold him, terror that he had no idea how he had
overlooked how very large Doctorphilip was, terror that his underling’s
cringing and scraping had been an act, terror that it had been replaced with
malicious malevolence, terror that Shael hadn’t seen his true nature until now,
terror that he was going to die.

“They’re dead,
you cocky little bitch,” Doctorphilip said, lowering his face to Shael’s.  “And
you’re next.  One last appearance before the brass and then I get to find
myself some new material.  Hopefully a maker this time. 
Real
quality,
not just one more mediocre mover we don’t have the money to feed.”  He snorted
in complete disdain.  “You telekinetics…you’re like cockroaches.  What we
need
are more like Twelve-A.  They’d let me out of this shithole for good if I could
figure out how to make another Twelve-A.”  His sneer darkened.  “But I won’t,
because they saw the pretty little half-assed certificate in xenolinguistics
and completely ignored my Ph.D. in cell biology.  I’m stuck with
you
instead of working on the
big
project.”

Then
Doctorphilip released his throat and grabbed the back of Shael’s neck,
instead.  As Shael lurched and struggled to catch his breath, Doctorphilip
yanked him over to his bed and shoved him back inside.  While Shael coughed and
sucked in desperate lungfuls of air, his servant strapped him back into his bed
and shoved a needle under his scales. 

“Remember that
you aren’t worth the shit on the bottom of my shoe and I just might give you a
good lay before we send you to the morgue,” Doctorphilip sneered.  His face
twisted with an even deeper malice.  “Not that you’re going to remember this,
anyway, cunt.”  Then he slammed the lid of Shael’s bed shut, locking him into
the darkness.  Through the muffling lid, Shael heard the rasps of his feet on
carpet as he walked away.  An instant later, the voices and images of Shael’s
bed started up again, and Shael felt the sudden coolness streaking up his arm
as the weaklings’ antidote for the poisonous fumes in Shael’s breath entered
his veins.

No
, Shael
thought, as the immediate tug of sleep once again came over him.  He struggled
to stay awake, knowing that it was important, knowing that he
needed
to
fight,
needed
to be awake, that he had stumbled across something
horrible, and if he let his eyes slide back shut, he would never remember…

Regardless of
how hard he struggled, however, Shael felt his eyes closing again, sucked back
into the lull of sleep.

No!

#

The woman had
fallen into a clump of brush and was huddled there, clumsy and obviously in
pain, and Joe was about to take pity on her and go help her extract herself,
when all of a sudden, it seemed as if the unlovable Jreet gods themselves came
to life and started carving a five-rod-wide path through the vegetation for the
woman to follow.

Joe stopped,
mid-step, and stared, that eerie feeling of witnessing something he couldn’t
explain raising his hackles and setting off every goosebump and mental alarm he
had.  As trees started snapping in half like matchsticks as they were
mercilessly plowed out of the woman’s way, Joe dropped to the ground and tried
to assimilate just what he was seeing.

Something
was moving those trees. 
Something
was plowing plants, soil, and stones
aside as if it were no effort at all.  For an instant, he thought that maybe
the woman really
did
have a Jreet guardian, and that the invisible hand
that had thrown him across the room had belonged to a Jreet Sentinel with his
energy level up.

But, watching
the forest literally fold out of her way, Joe knew that there wasn’t a Jreet
alive big enough to create what he was seeing.  Which meant it had to be
something else.  If she were
closer
to the brush, he would have thought
she were, indeed, some sort of android pushing it, or maybe using some sort of
automatic weapon to mow it down.  But she never touched it—never even came
close.

The woman walked
for
lengths
that way, the terrain simply peeling out of her way as she
passed.  When she finally stopped, darkness had fallen, and Joe was pretty sure
that the strange force snapping the trees in half had been coming from
her
,
not anything around her.  Several times, he’d seen the great machinations stop
completely while she swatted at a horsefly or paused briefly to take a piss.

But if
she
were peeling back the forest, was she even Human?

His eyes kept
drifting back to the barcode, knowing that, had Flea or Jer’ait been with him,
they would have pieced it together within the first ten tics and would
currently be lecturing him on the pitiful size-to-usefulness ratio of the Human
brain.

Then Joe froze. 
Hadn’t that been what the scientists had been trying to do when they got Earth
condemned to Judgement?  Extend the usefulness of the Human brain. 
Manipulating genetics to make Humans smarter…

…or able to
throw a Dhasha forty rods.

Sweet
Sisters, is that what I think it is?
Joe thought, watching the woman
through his scope.  She was curling up in the grass, trying to pull clumps of
dried straw around herself, shivering.  Joe’s heart started to pound with the
possibilities, both good and bad.  Good, because he could teach her to be his
personal kreenit annihilator.  Bad, because, as evidenced by the three lengths
of forest she had simply pushed aside, she could squish him.  Like a mite.

And somehow, for
some reason, that made him all the more interested in going up and offering his
services.  Personal ass-kicker, gear-carrier, night-vision specialist,
survivalist, medic, bedmate if desired… 

As soon as he
had the thought, goosebumps of alarm slammed into place all along Joe’s spine
and arms as he remembered, vividly, his dad on the floor grinning up at his mom
after she’d thrown him to the mat in Taekwondo practice, saying that the guys in
his family had a thing for chicks that could kick their ass…

No way
,
he thought, shaking himself.  That was just crap, because the only girl who
could kick his ass was Rat, and after the thing with the Huouyt on Jeelsiht,
she’d never turned him on.