Zero's Return (63 page)

Twelve-A sighed. 
You
should get some sleep.

Joe’s eyes widened. 
No. 
Don’t you even…that is a
bad
idea!

Eleven-C got up and
walked to the center of their gathering, near the fire.  On the other side of
the camp, Alice’s thin voice shattered the calm of night.  Like a cheerful
gremlin, she cried, “Hey everyone!  Eleven-C is going to make some more food so
you don’t have to guard it all the time!”

No!
Joe cried,
struggling for control. 
No, damn it!  No!

Good night, Joe,
Twelve-A said. 
Don’t worry.  I’ve got this.
  The minder winked at him from
under his straw hat.

The last thing Joe heard
before the Void claimed him was Mike’s sharp intake of breath as the ground
underneath Eleven-C’s slender fingers started to shimmer and change.

#

Shael’s stomach urged him to share in the latest of
Eleven-C’s glorious bounties, but his warrior instincts kept him at the edge of
camp, watching.  Something was not right.  The Voran had fallen asleep with the
rest of their charges—typical—leaving Shael to guard the fire alone.  It was an
uneasy situation, as
none
of the skulkers sharing their fire or their
food had gone to sleep yet.  As time wore on and Shael added kindling from
Nine-G’s pile to the fire, more and more of their guests started to watch
Shael
when they thought his back was turned.  Almost as if they were waiting for
something.  What was worse, something about these newcomers reminded him of
Doctorphilip and his Earthlings.

Ever since Eleven-C had created her latest feast,
the newcomers had started whispering amongst themselves, casting lustful eyes
at the brown-furred Human who had fallen asleep in Nine-G’s arms.  The only one
of the People who didn’t appear to be sleeping was the minder.  For his part,
Twelve-A was sitting with his back to a tree, a frown on his face under the
hat, quietly staring at his toes.

Knowing full well the value of someone like
Eleven-C, Shael walked over and squatted beside the telepath.  In a hushed
whisper, Shael said, “These weaklings who share our fire…  They skulk about
like vaghi about to steal a slab of melaa.  What are they planning?”

When Twelve-A opened his eyes and looked up at him,
there were lines of concern etched into his face. 
It’s not good.  Maybe you
should go wake Joe up.

Shael stiffened, the insult striking him to his
core.  “Wake up Joedobbs?  Why?” 

Twelve-A winced. 
I think Joe was right…  I think
I need his help.

“
His
help?” Shael roared.  “I am Shael ga
Welu!  Is my protection not enough for you?!”  He shouted the last loud enough
to make most of the clothes-wearing skulkers flinch.  Beside him, Nine-G
grunted and twitched in his sleep, making Eleven-C snuggle closer.

No,
Twelve-A said quickly, his frown
increasing. 
It’s not that.  It’s that…

One of the bearded skulkers—the one Shael had heard
Joedobbs call ‘Mike’—walked up and cocked his head at Shael, saying something
in the filthy Earthling tongue. 

Finding himself the subject of the soft-skinned
alien’s unabashed perusal, Shael rose and straightened, lifting his head to
return his stare with disdain.  “What does the softling want?” he asked
Twelve-A, peering into the alien’s brown, weak eyes.

He wanted to know what language that was.

“Tell him it is the language of my brethren, the
great tongue of Welu.”

Okay.
  Twelve-A turned to face Mike.

A moment later, Mike flinched and backed away, twisting
to stare down at the minder in something akin to horror.

“The softling fears you,” Shael noted, with
approval.

Oh no,
Twelve-A whispered, pulling his legs
in and slowly scooting away from the furg. 
Shael, you need to wake up Joe. 
Right now.

“Why?” Shael demanded.  Even then, the bearded
skulker was backing away in terror, calling out in his filthy tongue.  Shael
sneered his disgust.  “Would you like me to evict them for you?  Is that why
you want Joe?”  Any
furg
could bully lesser creatures with a gun.  It
took a
true
warrior to show them his power with nothing but his fists
and coils.

Please wake him up,
Twelve-A said, blue eyes
wide and fixed on the one called Mike. 
This is getting out of control.  Joe
would know what to do.

Out of
control
?  Shael snorted and put
himself between Twelve-A and the softling daring to stare at him as an equal. 
Shael
knew how to put the furg in his place, and it wouldn’t require Joe’s precious
‘Jane,’ either. 

No, Shael, don’t…this is really bad.

Shael scoffed.  Ignoring the minder, he stalked up
to the bearded Human and slapped him, hard, across the cheek.  “Keep your eyes
to yourself when dealing with your betters,” Shael growled.

Shael wasn’t sure what happened, but in one moment,
Mike jerked, holding his face, then in the next, he kicked Shael in the stomach
and ran his knee into his forehead as he fell, shattering Shael’s world into a
flurry of stars.  Startled at the sheer amount of
pain
, Shael screamed. 
Nothing in his long centuries of training had prepared him for this.  Not even
his battle with Joedobbs had hurt this badly, and it left Shael curled in on
himself, whimpering.  Above him, he heard Mike shouting more of his filthy
words across camp, but Shael could only think about how much his face hurt, how
it had felt as if the bones themselves had shattered into shards of glass.

One of the weaklings came, and again, they yanked
Shael’s hands behind his back.  Remembering what had happened the last time
he’d let fools bind his hands, Shael regained some of his senses and
struggled—only to get kicked in the side and face in an obliterating wave of
agony.  In that moment of pain and terror, Shael’s grasp on his war-mind
slipped entirely, leaving him once again unable to defend himself as his
assailants began binding his wrists and ankles and left him there, staring at
the dirt. 

Don’t worry,
Twelve-A assured him. 
I’ll
take care of this.  They’re just scared.

Though he didn’t dare say it out loud, hurting and
bound, surrounded by strangers,
Shael
was scared.  But, as promised, the
newcomers suddenly stopped their mad rush around the camp and went utterly
stock still.  Twelve-A got up from where he sat and walked over to the
frozen-in-place Mike, who started to shiver and whimper.  Very gently, the
telepath reached up to touch Mike’s face.

“What are you doing?” Shael demanded, frowning.  “
Kill
him!”

I’m not killing anyone,
Twelve-A replied. 
This
was all a big misunderstanding.  I’m just making sure he knows he doesn’t need
to be scared of me.

A
misunderstanding
?  Shael blinked at the
weakling’s naïveté.  Now that the telepath had marked himself as their leader,
the dishonorable vaghi of this group—which had already proven themselves
hostile—would execute him at their first available opportunity.  All around
them, the People were sleeping.  Not even the Voran had woken at the sounds of
the struggles.

“You need to
kill them
, Twelve-A,” Shael
growled.  “They
struck
me.  And left me
bound
!”

You hit them first,
Twelve-A insisted
stubbornly.

Shael narrowed his eyes.  “Don’t be fooled.  They’ve
already stabbed us in the belly once, after we offered them the safety of our
fire.  It would be nothing for them to do it again.”

They’re good people that are hungry and scared,
Twelve-A replied. 
They think I’m going to hurt them for hurting you.

“You mean you’re
not
?!” Shael raged.

They are so scared of us,
Twelve-A told him
mournfully. 
We need to help them, Shael.

The simple, addlebrained
furg
.  “Look at what
they did to me!” Shael shrieked, yanking at the ropes they had bound him with. 
“They
plotted
this, furg.”

True
, Twelve-A replied. 
But just because
they were scared.  I can make them not scared.

Even then, the telepath had his hand on the shoulder
of the shivering ‘Mike’ staring into his dull brown eyes.

Disgusted, Shael twisted in his bonds to face Beda. 
“Voran!” Shael shouted across the camp at him.  “Wake up, skulker!  Twelve-A is
going to get himself killed!  Voran!  Wake!”

The lazy Takki ignored him and continued to sleep.

I put Joe to sleep,
Twelve-A admitted. 
He
needs someone to shake him out of it.

“The Sisters
stake
you, minder,” Shael
growled.  “You put him to
sleep
?  Are you daft?!”

He was going to hurt someone,
Twelve-A
replied. 
Now shhh.  I’m helping Mike realize he has nothing to fear.

“Those vaghi’s minds are naught but diseased flesh,”
Shael snarled.  “Stop trying to befriend them and
free
me.”

I’m just going to prove my intentions.  That
should make him feel better.

“What intentions?” Shael demanded.

To let him stay.

Shael froze.  After they had beaten and bound him,
their intentions to do the same to the others clear, the telepath intended to
let them
stay
?  Frowning, he twisted to get a good look at the minder. 
He was holding the hand of the leader of the weaklings, smiling.

See?
Twelve-A demanded. 
I didn’t have to
hurt him.  They’ll take some extra food and leave peacefully in the morning.
 
If anything, the minder sounded proud of himself. 
He just needed some
reassurance.

All of a sudden, Mike began to move again.  He
lunged forward, slamming his forehead into the minder’s startled brow. 
Twelve-A went down with a cry of alarm, then a scream when Mike kicked him,
hard, in the face.

“Kill them!” Shael shrieked, realizing the others
were starting to move again with the telepath distracted.  “Kill them now!”

Twelve-A’s response was a panicked mental babble of
pain.

“Voran!” Shael cried.  “Voran, help us!”  Several of
the strangers were rushing him from all sides.  Shael tried to reach his
war-mind, but, in his growing panic and leftover pain, reaching for it was like
reaching for smoke.  The kick that followed slammed Shael’s head so far against
his spine that his body lifted from the earth, leaving him stunned.

A few minutes later, Nine-G gave a startled yelp,
then started to howl.

It was when Twelve-A started screaming, however,
that Shael began to whimper uncontrollably.  “Beda,” he managed, shaking into
the dirt.  “Please help us.  Please.” 

Beda ga Vora never moved.

#

Joe woke to the sound of
crying.

The fire had long since
gone out, and the cool, dewy morning had given way to another hot summer
day—and sobbing.  Everywhere.  Joe tried to launch himself to his feet with a
yell, only to find himself hogtied, face down in the grass beside his boulder,
Jane run away with another man, his boots and his Prime Sentinel ovi nowhere to
be seen.

“What happened?” he
cried, twisting to get a better look.  Most of the People were lying on their
stomachs in the meadow, tied hand and foot with the same purple nylon rope that
Mike had worn around his waist.  Most were bloodied or bruised.  All were
crying. 

Rope
, Joe thought,
disgustedly remembering the odd lumps in the top half of their backpacks and
knapsacks.  Recognizing where he had seen that cheerful purple rope before, Joe
felt a wave of relief, realizing that their attackers hadn’t yet graduated to
the murdering kind—they were still in the Tie-You-Up-And-Leave-You-To-Die
stage.  How unfortunate for them. 

He lifted his head to
make sure that their visitors were completely gone, then said, “Twelve-A, you
better sooting get me out of this, pointy-eared asher.”

His response was complete
silence.  When Joe frowned and looked, off to one side, Twelve-A was likewise
hogtied, lying on his side, cheek resting in his own blood.  Beside his head,
his straw hat was a mangled, crimson mess.  His nose was obviously broken, one
eye swelled shut, his entire face a mass of bruises.  His body was worse.

Joe’s heart gave a
startled hammer.  “You okay over there, Pointy?” he shouted.

Twelve-A said nothing. 
The blood had been trailing down his face for some time and was starting to
coagulate as it dripped down the grass.  From this angle, Joe wasn’t sure he
could see the rise and fall of breathing or not.

“Soot.”  His mission
taking on new urgency, Joe started awkwardly flopping the couple digs it took
to get to the place where he’d hidden a pistol under the log.  He tried to
slide underneath the trunk to grab the grip with his teeth, but his head was
too big to fit into the crack.

“A little help?” he
finally shouted at Twelve-A.

Twelve-A never moved, the
pool of blood continuing to spread under his head, collecting flies.

Riding a pang of worry,
now, Joe considered his options.  He had twelve other weapons stashed around
the camp, but all of his knives were in similar nooks or crannies like the
pistol even then staring at him from the shadows under the log.  That left a
rifle.

May the Sisters give
the thieving scavengers all a good screwing
, Joe thought, frustrated.  A
rifle was…not ideal. 

But, judging by the
pained whimpers all around him, it was all he had to work with.  Grunting, Joe
started flail-roll-wiggle-inching his way to his next-closest weapon stash, a
laser rifle he’d tucked into a stand of brambles.  As soon as he got his body
turned in the opposite direction and over the first hummock, however, he saw
Nine-G and his heart stopped.