Zero's Return (40 page)

Within eighteen
days, there was almost nothing left.

Silence ruled
the abandoned houses.  Corpses—most shot or stabbed in the mob panic that
followed Judgement—lay everywhere, rotting in the sun.  Kreenit were polishing
off those that were left alive, whittling the survivors down to nothing.

After a long internal
debate, Rat, still limping from her mis-healed bone, decided not to chance
reaching out to her fellow Humans for shared protection.  As she discovered
over her weeks of observation, there
was
no protection.  People weren’t
trying to help each other.  They were out to
take
from each other. 
Which meant, of course, that the moment they saw Max, Rat would become a
target.  The moment she revealed herself and
slept
, she would die for
the weapon she carried. 

Seeing the
devastation around her, finding it just as difficult as the pillaging bands to
find food, water, and shelter, Rat began to feel lost, abandoned.  Used to
having friends around her, companions who would guard her back in the thickest
of fights, Rat was now alone and wounded.  She felt exposed, vulnerable.

Not for the
first time, Rat wished she could go home.

Over the last
nineteen turns working for Mekkval, Koliinaat had become her haven, her cubby
of sanity in the chaos of war and subterfuge.  When she was really exhausted,
lonely, or fed up with her Bagan’s soot, she could even spend long hours
discussing philosophy with the Watcher, to take her mind from the chaos.

But now, stuck
on Earth, surrounded by an entire race that was losing everything it had ever
known, there
was
nothing to take her mind from the chaos.  Her stomach
was constantly cramping from the lack of food.  She felt dizzy, and her body
was losing muscle tone at an alarming rate.  She could barely sleep,
perpetually aware that any furg with a knife would kill her for what she
carried.  She exhausted herself running from rampaging kreenit—only to spend
long hours hiding from violent bands of people who had done the same.  Water,
when she could find it, usually came in the form of a toilet bowl or a fish
tank.  Her body, no longer taking on its constant nannite infusions, was
succumbing to the alien illnesses.  For the first time since she’d been
Drafted, she grew feverish, her head pounding and her nose filling with mucus
that she couldn’t seem to rid herself of.  She developed a cough, and no matter
how many times she dosed herself with nanos, it kept coming back.  Eventually,
she ran out, and had to start supplementing her nannite intake with alien drugs
she barely understood, that alternately made her sleepy or dizzy or much too
careless.  Not one of them, it seemed, was a cure-all like the advanced
Congressional technology, and, when one of the drugs made her try to embrace a
kreenit in a bear-hug, she decided she could live with a cough and stopped
taking them altogether.

What was worse,
the shortness of the planet’s daylight cycle was completely throwing her body’s
rhythms out of whack.  At most, it seemed the Earth’s spin allowed it only two
thirds of a natural daylight pattern, and, instead of her normal five hours of
sleep twice a day, the lack of light was trying to force her body into eight,
once.

It was the lack
of food, though, that kept her slinking around the cities, looking for
something—
anything
—to eat.  Unfortunately, the rest of the Human
population, suddenly without the infrastructure that had supported its
gluttony, was consuming everything the Earth had on hand, and more.  The
kreenit, when not eating people, were eating whatever the Humans didn’t.

As the horrible
days dragged into horrible weeks, Rat finally decided, like Beanie-Man’s group
and so many others, to leave the population centers to the kreenit and head
east.  The city, while it
should
have been a relative bonanza of
resources, was becoming a death-trap.  People were getting hungrier, food was
running out, and the kreenit were cutting the population down by a something
near a tenth each day.

Thus, on the
twenty-fourth day after landing, she slipped into the alien shrubbery several
dozen lengths outside the city, intending to hit the mountains and start
heading south, using the rough terrain as a deterrent to any more unwanted
encounters. 

Knowing she was
going to be alone, that her only company would come in the form of a
sociopathic AI, Rat resigned herself to doing what she always did:

Survive.

CHAPTER
15 – The Titans’ Struggle

Shael wondered
why the Voran continued skulking around when it was clear the furg was neither
welcome, nor of the same cut as the food-making Eleven-C and her devout
followers.  By his own admission, the softling Voran was the weaker warrior,
having even gone so far as to hand over the camp’s valuables for
Shael
to guard at night.  It was more than clear he was unnecessary.  Shael, the
stronger warrior by far, had decided to lend his protection to Eleven-C and her
weakling comrades, and this band did
not
need two Jreet to protect
them—such was asking for disaster.  Besides, Shael was a
prince
.  The
Voran was just a nameless warrior, with no bards or newscasts singing Joedobbs’
name.

When it was
clear that the Voran was not going to leave of his own accord, Shael asked
Twelve-A if he wanted him to end Joedobbs’ miserable existence, but the minder
had said,
He is useful, in his own way.

Shael didn’t see
how.  The first thing the skulker did was convince Twelve-A to change the
ambrosia that Eleven-C was making into pieces of cooked
greenery
and
mushy things that were undoubtedly pulled out of the ground.  The
ground
!

That, and the
skulking furg
dared
to limit his meat intake.  The ruvmestin core to all
this had been that he had worked with Twelve-A to produce meat.  Real meat,
good meat, and lots of it.  Sure, Shael couldn’t exercise his rights as a
predator and kill it himself, but it still filled his stomach and was
delicious.  Shael had been in the process of gorging himself on the greasy
bounty to pack on a few extra segments when the skulking Voran had told him to
stop, that he would make himself sick.  The
audacity
.

What was worse,
Shael had continued eating, despite the Voran’s warning, and he
had
gotten sick.  He, prince of Welu, had gotten
sick
!  Instead of growing
him new segments, half of the delicious meat that he’d packed down in his glee
had come back up, and now rotted on the ground several days behind them, with
the entire
camp
to see his shame.  Further, Shael’s normally proud
excrement had gone soft and watery, and he had spent many hours hunched in the
woods, groaning.  That day, the Voran had instituted ‘rations’ in order to keep
the People from getting ‘fat.’  And Twelve-A, the spawn of a Dhasha’s dick, had
backed him.  Shael had briefly considered killing them both, but then Twelve-A
had reminded him that Shael couldn’t speak Eleven-C’s language—only Twelve-A
could do that—so he needed Twelve-A for translation duties, which was certainly
true enough.  The skulking Voran, though, needed to go.  First he’d killed the
kreenit
without
him, then he’d called him fat.

“You!” Shael
shouted, during a lull in activity where all who were gathered for another
lunch break could watch the Voran’s public conquest once and for all.  He
shoved a finger into the Voran’s breastbone.  “I challenge you for your
position, Voran.”

The
sister-twining Voran looked utterly unfazed.  Very slowly, he put the primitive
metal knife back into its sheath, lowered the branch he was carving, and
stood.  Shael actually felt himself balk a little when the Voran rose…and kept
on rising.  He coiled above Shael like a mountain, bigger than anything Shael
could remember facing in his glorious past.

The Voran
babbled some words in his filthy tongue, and, seeing he wouldn’t elaborate,
Shael narrowed his eyes and summoned Twelve-A.

He wants to
know what position you’re talking about,
Twelve-A replied.

Oh, the Voran
was going to insult him further by playing
coy
.

“You unlawfully
took the position of war leader from these weaklings,” Shael growled, jabbing
his finger back into the furg’s soft belly meat.  “I challenge you for it.”

Instead of
responding, the Voran raised his big arms and crossed them over his even bigger
chest, making Shael once more painfully aware of how much older his opponent
was than him.  For there to be such disparity, the Voran had to have seen two,
possibly even three hundred turns more than Shael.  Which shouldn’t have been
possible.  There was only
one
Voran older than him, and Shael wouldn’t
have had the bad luck to fall in—and share a
meal
with—with Beda ga
Vora.  That was…unacceptable. 

So the Voran was
big.  It was easy to imagine the skulking Vorans hiding in the shadows, keeping
their heads down and gaining unearned segments in hiding over the years.

And yet…  The
Voran was
big
.  If he
had
fought those extra turns, then he had
experience
on his side.  Shael felt another humiliating wave of unease.

Maybe you are
acting rashly,
Twelve-A agreed. 
He has vanquished many foes.

Shael snorted. 
“More than
I
, the prince of Welu?”

Uhhh
… 
His friend went satisfactorily silent.  Of
course
Shael had more kills. 
Of the Vorans, only Beda was his rival, and even then, there were quibbles as
to who
actually
had more kills.  And this…  Shael looked his opponent
over with disdain.  …
weakling
...was not Beda ga Vora.

“So you’re
challenging me?” the Voran asked, sounding almost curious.

“I am!” Shael
said, straightening proudly.  Even with his coils fully extended, however,
Shael only came up to the Voran’s chest.

“In hand-to-hand
combat?” the Voran scoffed.  “My
strength
?”

Shael felt a
tiny sliver of uncertainty twist through his coils at the Voran’s self-assured
tone.  Lifting his head, he growled, “Of course!  Hand-to-hand combat.  I would
accept your defeat in no other way.”

“My weakness is
my war-mind,” the Voran insisted.  “You would have a much better chance
fighting me there.”

Shael scoffed at
the softling’s attempt to manipulate him.  “Welus do not seek out the
weaknesses
of our enemies.  I will crush you honorably, and you will crawl away to live
out the rest of your miserable existence in shame.”

“Huh,” Joedobbs
said.  He seemed to consider that.  “And if I win?”

Shael snorted. 
“You
can’t
win.”

“Of course,” the
Voran said.  “But if I
do
?  Do I retain my title and responsibilities
and you drop your bid to take my place, permanently?”

Laughing, Shael
said, “If you beat me, Voran, I will
serve
you, if that’s what you
desire.  I am a
prince
.  I’m not going to lose.”

“I see.”  The
Voran scratched his nose.  “So you refuse to fight my war-mind?”

“I will beat you
fairly,” Shael snapped, poking his soft chest again.  “Stop trying to sully my
victory, Voran.”

“You know,”
Joedobbs said, “I think that the Welus have a saying for times like these. 
‘Don’t sing your songs before your deeds are done.’”  He cocked his head at
Shael.  “Isn’t that right?”

Shael felt his
face heat at the Voran’s insinuation that he had not already won.  Of
course
he had already won.  There was no way this Voran, who was too weak to guard his
own
blankets
, could win this fight.

“So,” the Voran
offered into Shael’s indignant silence.  “Are you ready?”

“Prepare to seek
the Sisters,” Shael growled.  He reached out to hurl the Voran aside.

The Voran took
his blow and stood there, utterly unfazed.  He raised a thick eyebrow.  “That
was it?”

Shael felt a
brief instant of panic and tried to throw his opponent again.

The Voran
remained as stoic as ever, not even flinching as the meat of his shoulder
absorbed Shael’s blow.

Try kicking
him,
Twelve-A advised.

Shael did—and
hurt his coils.

“What…
are
…you?”
Shael cried, backing away, nursing his coils.  The greatest warrior that Welu
had to offer—and Shael’s greatest attacks had left the Voran completely
unscathed.

The Voran said
something in his filthy tongue again, cocking his head curiously.

He asks if
you give up,
Twelve-A offered.

Shael’s massive
jaw fell open.  “You…
dare
?”  He put his coils back to the earth and
stormed back up to the Voran, prepared to wipe his tiny mind across every
available surface until his body stopped twitching.

Try the
crotch,
Twelve-A suggested. 
That should hurt.

Why should
that hurt?
Shael demanded of the minder. 

He has
a…vulnerability…there.

Willing to take
any lead he could get at this point, Shael moved to slam his coils into the
Voran’s weak spot.

Shael wasn’t
sure exactly what happened after that, but one moment, his coils were extended
in a strike, and the next, he was flat on his back, staring up at the Voran,
who was once again scratching his nose.  He once again calmly spewed the
Earthlings’ filthy tongue.

He says he
really doesn’t want to fight you,
Twelve-A said.

The horror of
that statement hit Shael like a brick to the heart.  The Voran didn’t want to
fight him…because the Voran didn’t see him as a worthy opponent.  Which meant
he thought Shael was
weak
.