Zero's Return (67 page)

Joe lifted his gun, fired
at the weapon of the toothless guy about to take a potshot at her, then swung
to look for other contenders as Gummy’s gun melted in his hands and the man
screamed.

“You,” Joe said, putting
Shael solidly behind him, “are a dumbass furg.”

“And you,” the petite
woman said, “are going to get out of my way or I’ll use your tek for a wall
ornament.”

“Mothers’ bloody talons!”
Joe snapped, straining to keep track of all the movement in the enemy camp
while at the same time keeping Shael solidly behind him and his body armor. 
“Go back to guard Twelve-A and the others!”

“The fight is here,”
Shael growled, shoving her way past him.  “These vaghi will all die for what
they have done.”

Joe opened his mouth to
argue, then closed it again, considering. 
He
had promised not to kill
people, but it would certainly be easier for him in the long run if Shael did
it for him.  As disdainfully as he could, he frowned and said, “You obviously
can’t kill these great warriors.  You’ve already proven yourself too weak to do
so.  Thus, the duty must be mine, and you will go guard the survivors.”

Instead of anger flaring
in her emerald eyes, Shael’s face went solemn.  “You’re right.  Killing them
would only steal our glory.”  She took a look at the camp, sighed, and said,
“I’ll go retrieve our companions so we can leave these vaghi to drown in their
own cowardice.”

Joe, having expected a
completely different reaction, had to mentally backtrack to realize that,
instead of what he had
intended
to say, he had said, “Killing these
furgs isn’t worthy of great warriors like ourselves.  It is a far more
humiliating fate to let them live with their defeat.”

Damn it, you malicious
little leprechaun, stay out of my head!
Joe snapped.

Cajoling
other
people into killing them is the same thing as killing them yourself, and you
said you wouldn’t do that,
Twelve-A retorted.

As Shael continued into
camp alone, Joe narrowed his eyes.  “Technically, I said I wouldn’t maim those
who didn’t deserve it, Pointy,” Joe growled.  Indicating, of course, that he
would be happy to do the same to Twelve-A, if he continued to dig through his
mind without permission.

Try it, you gun-happy
knuckle-dragger,
Twelve-A replied.

“I’m trying to save your
life
!”
Joe snapped.

You’re trying to get
your boots back,
Twelve-A retorted. 
And Jane.  Especially Jane.
 
The way he said it, the telepath was talking about a particularly nasty batch
of Dhasha flake.

“I happen to
like
Jane,” Joe replied, keeping his rifle trained on the furgs in the camp ahead of
him, should any of them try to ambush the naked chick.  “She’s the best damn
girlfriend I’ve ever had.”

Then, as if summoned by
the Dhasha Mothers themselves, Jane’s cold, sleek lips kissed the back of Joe’s
head in a spine-tingling caress. 

“So that the guy in your
head or that freak?” Mike said from behind him.  Then, after a moment, he
added, “Or both?”

Joe’s mouth fell open. 
You
didn’t tell me he was back there.

You were gonna kill
people for a pair of boots,
Twelve-A said.

“Just whose side are you
on
?!”
Joe cried.

Everybody’s side,
Twelve-A said. 
I don’t like it when people hurt people.  It hurts me back. 
I just want everybody to be happy.

Hearing that peace-loving
Dhasha flake, Joe shuddered in professional disgust.

“What do you mean, whose
side am I on?” Mike said, oblivious to their internal debate.  “I’m just like
everyone else out there.  I’m on my own side.  The world is
ending
,
Zero.  We’re just trying to stay alive.  A few idiots get hurt in the process,
that’s life, you know?”

Still distracted by
Twelve-A’s revelation, Joe ignored the furg with Jane, enlightenment hitting
him like a twelve-foot sledgehammer from the Sisters.  Finally, Joe felt like
they were getting to the crux of the problem.  “You’re too damn empathetic for
your own burning good, you know that, you little soot-eating furg?!  You would
empathize with a
Huouyt
if you had the chance, wouldn’t you?!”

“Who the fuck are you
calling a Huouyt, you ailo bastard?” Mike growled.  The highly illicit,
high-impact, rapid-recharge Ueshi-made Nocurna plasma pistol jabbed Joe
painfully forward with her kiss against his skull.

Of course I would
empathize with a Huouyt,
Twelve-A said. 
They’re people too.

“They are
not people
!”
Joe shouted.  The only Huouyt he’d ever met even
remotely
close to
having a conscience was Jer’ait, the current Peacemaster of Congress, and even
he could be a sneaky, self-absorbed bastard.

“Look, I don’t want to
kill you, Zero,” Mike said.  “Just put the fucking gun down, all right, man?” 
The tight way Mike said it told Joe his finger was already depressing the
trigger.  Joe was hoping he would.  The furg would certainly find that
entertaining.

They
are
people,
Twelve-A retorted. 
They only do what their genetics make them
do.  It’s not like they
choose
to lie and hurt people.  It’s in their
biology.

“You’re being
naïve
,”
Joe snapped.  “That’s like letting vaghi swarm your food stores because they’re
hordespawn and that’s what they
do
.”

“I swear to God Almighty,
I will blow you away.”  It had that final-last-warning sort of tone to it.

I’m not going to hurt
anyone I don’t have to,
Twelve-A said, sounding tired.

“You know,” Joe said,
hitting the safety on the rifle and dropping it, “once this is over, you and I
are still gonna have to have that chat about your happy-huggy good-natured
furgsoot.  It’s really getting on my ashing nerves.”

You would not like it
if I wasn’t good-natured,
Twelve-A said. 
In fact, you would probably
dis
like
it for the full five nanotics it took me to utterly obliterate your ignorant,
violent Congie ass and turn you into a drooling monkey to mindlessly follow me
as your supreme leader ‘til death do us part. 

Well, at least he was
feeling good enough to make threats.  Joe grunted.  “Okay, so you have a
point.  Still, you gotta learn some
discretion,
you know?  You can’t be
nice to everybody.  It just doesn’t work that way.”

I’m going to
make
it work that way.

Joe blinked, realizing
that the minder fully intended to do just that.  “Did you learn
nothing
from what happened last night, you pointy-eared jenfurgling?!”

Of course I learned
something.  I learned how to do it better next time.

“Are you
talking
with that freak?!” Mike demanded, poking him with Jane again.

A skinny kid that Joe
recognized as Mike’s daughter ran up and snatched up the gun he’d dropped, then
brandished it at him with shaky hands.

“Hands over your head,
Zero,” Mike ordered.  Up in the camp, people were screaming as Shael marched
right up to Eleven-C, shoving anything and everything out of her path on the
way.  As Shael snapped the cord someone had tied around Eleven-C’s wrists,
Alice squealed with glee and ran to the green-eyed mover, throwing herself into
her busty arms.  Eleven-C was equally as enthusiastic, huddling behind the much
smaller woman like a Ueshi trying to weather a storm behind a toadstool. 
Without missing a beat, Shael turned and led them back through the camp,
looking ready to utterly annihilate anyone who stepped in her way.

As he watched that, Joe
thought that Shael would have made a good Congie.

“
Now
, Zero.”

In fact, he could think
of quite a few instances where he wouldn’t have minded having her at his back. 
All she needed was a little training…

You are
not
training Shael how to fight.

Burn you,
Joe
retorted. 
I’ll do whatever the soot I want.
  Feeling a weird,
molten-hot sensation in his chest, Joe watched her cross the meadow with all
the poise of a Prime Sentinel.  He thought of teaching the woman how to harness
that warrior spirit with a Congie’s efficiency and his heart began to pound. 
Besides. 
She already
thinks
she knows how.  You really want her running around
kicking bigger guys in the shins and screaming in Welu Jreet?  I can help her. 
Give her some moral bearings, you know? 

“Goddamn it, you stupid
Congie prick!” Mike snapped, slamming Jane tight against Joe’s skull.  “Get
your fucking arms up!”

Still watching Shael in
consideration, Joe complied.  As soon as his arms were up, another of Mike’s
skinny kids immediately ducked in and began to disarm him, pulling the guns and
knives free of their sheaths and holsters, collecting them in his arms like
firewood.

Twelve-A went quiet for a
long time, then said,
Okay, but
you’re
telling her she’s a girl.  And
you’re only teaching her how to fight so she doesn’t go around kicking things. 
She makes a lot of the People cry.

Joe snorted.  “
If
I decide to teach her—and that’s a big if—I’m going to teach her whatever the
soot I want,
whenever
I want, and you’re going to stay out of it. 
I’m
Chief of Security.  This is my
job
, and she’s an
excellent
candidate to join the security staff.”
 

She doesn’t want to be
a soldier,
Twelve-A said.

“She doesn’t wanna be a—”
Joe choked.  “Are you a
furg
? 
Look
at her!  She’s ashin’
brilliant at this stuff!”

Her charges taken firmly
under wing, the black-haired beauty stopped in the center of camp, threw a few
more boulders around the clearing for effect, then walked through the terrified
men, women, and children that scampered out of her way like vaghi before a
mowing machine. 

She doesn’t want to
be,
Twelve-A said.

Joe narrowed his eyes,
sensing yet another way the minder was trying to meddle in his affairs.  “Chief
of Security!” he snapped.  “Me.  Not you.  And I’m telling you that she’s got
some
serious
potential.  I’m a Prime.  I can sense this stuff.”

So can I,
Twelve-A
stubbornly insisted. 
She doesn’t want to be a soldier.

Joe turned to scowl back
at the way he had come.  “Oh yeah?”  He jerked a finger towards the Man-Frisbee
even then twitching atop the pine tree, dribbling crimson down the feathery
branches.  “Explain
that
.”

“He’s hallucinating,” he
heard Mike tell his kids.  “Just stay here and keep a bead on him.  I’m gonna
go help Gary take out the crazy bitch.”

Joe blinked and turned
back to look at Shael—just in time to see the tattooed man climbing awkwardly
up from the grass, a knife in his hand, his eyes fixed on her back in fury.

“Jane’s harmless,” Joe
said. 

“
Only for you,
Commander,
” Jane’s husky, Southern-accented voice purred.  “
There are
currently seventeen targets within range.  Twenty-three, if you count the
children carrying weapons.
”

“What the fuck?” Mike
blurted, jerking like the gun had bit him.  At the same time, Joe ducked under
Jane, elbowed the man who held her in the nose, snagged one of the guns from
the pile in the kid’s arm, lifted it, and, while kicking the weapon from the
skinny girl’s hands, fired over the first kid’s startled face to shorten the
tattooed man going after Shael by a head.  Then he spun, put the same gun to
the boy’s temple, and gave his father a long, cold look.

Mike dropped Jane.

“Back away from her,” Joe
said.

Dribbling blood from his
nose, Mike babbled, “Please don’t hurt my—”

“Now,” Joe said.

Mike stumbled backwards
quickly, big hands in the air.  Scowling at the father, Joe languidly retrieved
his weapons from the terrified boy’s arms and, after stooping to reunite himself
with his lost love, gestured for the two siblings to back up with their
father.  Once they were both a decent distance away, he chanced a glance at the
ebon-haired beauty.

Shael was glaring at him
across the abandoned camp, obviously displeased.  Her chest and upper legs were
spattered in crimson gore, care of the man’s suddenly-misplaced head.  Joe was
pretty sure, looking at her, however, that it was the fact that he’d
saved
her, not the fact that he’d covered her in gore, that had irritated her.

“Jane,” Joe said, once he
had ascertained that Shael wasn’t carrying a hunting knife buried in her back. 
“You’re such a vicious bitch,” he said.

“
I am when I wanna be,
Commander,
” was Jane’s sultry response.  With it came the little hum of the
fusion-pack powering back on.

“Fuck, is that AI?” Mike
babbled, taking another two steps back, like Jane was going to come alive and
shoot him and his kids of her own accord.

Joe gave the man his most
psychotic grin over Jane’s sleek ebony curves.  “Bonafide Nocurna.” 

If anything, Mike paled
further.  “Oh God, man, please don’t.  We’re just hungry.  Please.”

Joe considered.  He
could
end the problem, right now, permanently.  At any other time, knowing that
these guys were wandering around, stealing and leaving people to die, he would
have done it.  But he had made a deal with a pointy-eared nitwit. 

A deal you already
broke,
Twelve-A said.

“Not my fault you let
yourself get distracted,” Joe said.  “First rule of warfare.  Use the enemy’s
strengths against him.”

So you’re saying I’m
the enemy, Joe?  Do you
really
want to go there?  We could go there, if
that’s what you really want.  I’m just warning you it wouldn’t last very long,
in case you hadn’t figured that out yet.