Zero's Return (79 page)

By the time Shael caught
up with him atop the hill, Joe was trying to figure out how long a group of
starving survivors would follow them before they struck again.  He figured it would
be around the same time they ran out of the scant piles of food that Eleven-C
had made for them in their gold-encrusted camp.  Probably tonight or tomorrow.

Seeing Shael pretending
to ignore him as she fell into stride beside him, Joe sighed.  He had tried to
slip out of camp without being seen, but lately, she’d been sticking to his
side like a Rashurian ground-leech.  “Nice day for a walk,” he said, not
expecting a response.  She hadn’t said more than a few manly grunts to him in
days, though he got the odd feeling she was watching his every movement,
analyzing it,
learning
from it…

Soot.

Shael gave him another
manly grunt and hefted her club.  Lifting her chin high, she continued to
pretend to ignore him, walking side-by-side up a path that was barely big
enough for one.

Joe sighed again.  He had
to fight the urge to challenge her to a fight-to-keep-your-tek duel right then
and there, because he was down to his last pair of non-shortened pants and he
had the feeling she was quietly eying his grenades.  He hadn’t told her what
they
did
, but he’d caught her fondling them that morning, and he was
pretty sure that she’d registered his screaming fest and underlying panic
afterwards as indicating that whatever they were, they were Very Cool and Ultra
Desirable To Have, and therefore
hers
.  Ever since, he had been
struggling with the dilemma of digging a very,
very
deep hole and
leaving them behind for some Ooreiki archeologist a thousand turns from now to
dig up and pee himself over, or continuing to carry them around with a bunch of
grabby powder kegs who liked to paw through his stuff and steal his favorite
bandanna.

He needed to bury them,
he decided.  Too much could go wrong if she went snooping again.  All it took
was a
twist
…

Twelve-A, I need you
to call Shael back to camp,
Joe insisted. 
We
really
don’t want
her to get her hands on grenades.

There’s that lake we
passed,
Twelve-A suggested. 
You could throw them in the lake.

Joe winced at that.  If
he
buried
them, he at least had the chance of getting them
back
. 
I’m going to bury them,
he told Twelve-A. 
I just need you to
distract her for a bit.

I don’t think it’s a
good idea to bury them,
Twelve-A replied. 
Who knows who might dig them
up?
  Meaning, of course, that the posy-picking peacemunch mind-furg had
gleefully jumped on the chance for Joe to irrevocably lose his grenades.

You know,
Joe
growled,
if I didn’t know better, I would suspect you’re pulling a Neskfaat
on me.
  Which, since the Geuji’s masterminding of the intricate plot ending
in the Huouyt banishment from the Tribunal, had become a colloquialism for
setting someone up to spectacularly fall, pulling their strings to make them
dance to your tune, and then disappearing back into the void of space like an
Ooreiki ghost.

Twelve-A gave a moment of
mental hesitation. 
What makes you think I’m pulling a Neskfaat?

Joe groaned.  Like most
every other colloquialism he’d ever used on the leafling, Twelve-A couldn’t see
past the literal meaning of the saying itself.  Which, taken plainly, meant he
was setting Joe up for the biggest war Congress had ever seen.

Deciding it was too early
in the morning to lecture science experiments on the finer points of Congie
language and culture, Joe just ignored him.  He didn’t
want
to go to the
lake, which was at least ten lengths from camp, but he knew damn well what the
result would be if he buried his grenades with Shael out here to witness it. 
Besides, without Joe to pull their scales and get them moving, Twelve-A and the
People would probably still be wandering around catching bugs and picking
posies somewhere within the same two-length radius if he didn’t bother to come
back for another ten turns, much less ten hours.

Still, looking out over
the mountainous, twisting road they had taken past the lake, Joe realized he
really
didn’t want to leave the People alone for that long.

You should go, Joe,
Twelve-A said. 
We’ll be here when you get back.

Joe snorted at the
peacemunch minder’s crude attempts to get him to give up perfectly good
weaponry and pulled out his binoculars to scan the valley for signs of Mike and
his gang.  It had been a thriving residential area, before Judgement, but now
it was just clusters of silent houses, many of which had been either bombed or
clawed into oblivion.  He saw a lean-looking person here or there, furtively
scavenging the wreckage with half-full knapsacks slung to skinny bodies, guns
or knives at ready, but no large groups.

Had Mike and his tribe
given up?  It was a pleasant thought.  Somehow, though, having seen the lined
desperation in their faces, the bitterness, the
greed
, Joe had trouble
believing they would simply let Eleven-C walk away, even if she was being
guarded by Zero himself.

Joe lowered his
binoculars and caught Shael eying one of the many guns he now kept strapped to
his person at all times.  She looked away quickly, but not before Joe caught a
covetous gleam in her eye.

First the grenades, now
the guns…

Joe sighed.  “You wanna
learn to shoot?”

Immediately, Twelve-A
babbled,
What are you doing?  You can’t teach Shael to use guns.  She hates
guns.  She hates to fight.

Could’ve fooled me,
Joe said, thinking of their ‘epic battle’ with her flailing against his
outstretched arm. 
Now get out of my damned head, you nosy little
leprechaun.  I said I’ll train her how
I
want to train her, and unless
you want a trigger-happy furgling running around with expensive Congie
weaponry, you’re gonna let me handle this.

…which will result in
a trigger-happy furgling running around with expensive Congie weaponry,
Twelve-A argued. 
Just go throw the grenades in the lake.  I’ll make it so
she doesn’t care about the guns.

Joe narrowed his eyes at
the minder’s hypocrisy. 
So you’ll ward her off my guns, but not the
grenades, huh?

Twelve-A hesitated,
obviously not having considered that particular train of thought. 
I, uh…

Who
is Chief of
Security?
Joe reminded him.

You are,
came
Twelve-A’s mental mutter.

That’s right,
Joe
said. 
And I just recruited our first secondary officer.  This is my job. 
Let me do my job, and you go back to mind-melding field mice and leading your
eleven o’clock hugging practice.
  “You,” Joe said, visibly startling Shael,
who immediately gave him a guilty, defensive look.  He pulled one of the guns
off his shoulder.  “You wanna learn how to use this?”

Shael’s pretty eyes
widened and she swallowed.

“Do you want
me
,”
Joe pointed to himself, “to teach
you
,” he pointed to her, “to use
this
?”
he gestured at the gun.

Shael’s breath caught and
she nodded.

“All right,” Joe said,
shoving it at her.  “It’s on safety. 
Don’t
fiddle with any buttons
until I tell you to.”

I’m not translating
for you,
Twelve-A warned.

“You don’t have to,” Joe
said.  “I’m speaking warrior-speak.  It’s universal.”  Indeed, Shael had
dropped her club like the badly-whittled stick it was and was reaching out to
take the laser rifle with all the reverence of an Ooreiki oorei.  Once her
fingers touched it, she swallowed hard and froze like she was afraid that, by
moving suddenly, she would destroy a sacred object of the Black Jreet herself.

“Now,” Joe said, taking
on the famous bark of a Prime.  “This gun is your
life
, you understand? 
This gun means
everything
to you out there in the blood and the diamond
dust, when you’re dealing with bad guys who poke their heads out of shadows to
shoot you in the face when you’re trying to take a crap.”

If Joe had learned one
thing from his time giving lectures as Commander Zero, it was that
tone
carried almost as much meaning as
words
, and even then, she stared at
the gun in open-mouthed awe.

“Now,” Joe said, “this
here’s the trigger.  Pretty obvious.  You pull it, it goes boom. 
Don’t
—”
he barked, startling her into a full-body jerk, “—pull the trigger until you’re
absolutely sure
you’re ready to shoot whatever’s on the other side.”

Shael swallowed and
nodded.

“This here is the charge
clip,” Joe went on, pointing.  “It comes out like this.”  He demonstrated. 
“This is the
ammo
.”  He said the word slowly and waved the charges so
she could see them, then made an exploding gesture with his hands.  “A standard
Congie laser clip is six hundred sixty-six charges.  A standard plasma clip is
a hundred and thirty-two charges, ‘cause they take up more space.  This is
what’s called a tunnelbuster.”  He pointed to the hundreds of additional
charges.  “For those times you get stuck underground and you spend a few days
in a firefight.  One thousand, nine hundred, ninety-eight charges.  Three times
the normal.  See?”  He pulled a standard clip from his other laser rifle and
showed her the difference.

Shael squinted at the two
a moment, her brow tensed as her mouth worked.  “One packs more punch,” she
offered.

“Not quite,” Joe said. 
“Laser is pretty standard.  They got them as good as they could get about a
million and a half years ago and the tech really hasn’t advanced much since. 
It’ll burn through two rods of anything not energy-resistant in a nanotic or
less and can shoot pretty much as far as you can see as long as there’s no
atmospheric interference—which there always is.”

Shael made a face at the
rifle.  “You speak the tongue of skulkers and cowards as if you expect me to
speak it back.”

There she was again,
calling
him
,
Commander Zero
, a skulker.  Joe scowled.  “Well, if
you don’t want lessons, I’ll just take that back.”  He reached for the gun…

…and his hand ran into an
invisible wall that could have been glass had it not shoved him backwards a
dig.

“I never said I didn’t
want lessons,” Shael grumbled, as Joe muttered a curse and shook out his
knuckles.  “I said I wanted you to stop talking in the language of weaklings. 
I…like talking with you, Joe Dobbs ga Badass.  Though he is as honorable in his
words as he is in his actions, Twelve-A ga Test Tube ga Pointy Ear ga Flaxen
Hair continues to try to convince me that my true nature is one of peace, and
the rest of the furgs drool or babble nonsense.  It’s…refreshing to find
another who can speak the tongue of warriors.  Doctor Philip ga Uppity Sootwad
was not a great warrior like you.”

Joe grunted, feeling
infinitesimally guilty for teaching her the litany of ‘clan names’.  Then it
passed. He crossed his arms over his chest, flexing as unobtrusively as he
could, and peered down at her.  “What happened to Beda ga Vora, your worthy
opponent and lifetime arch nemesis, ‘middling warrior of the upland clans’,
over nine rods of rippling crimson muscle?”  The Jreet habit seemed to be
working again, so he wasn’t surprised when she stiffened.

“I…”  Joe could see the
confusion in her eyes, because this is where her theory began to fall apart. 
Her eyes dropped to his legs and she swallowed.

Joe waited.

“They…”  She swallowed. 
“You must have been abducted, as well.”

Joe lifted a brow.

“They abducted me,” Shael
blurted.  “Stole my body and gave it to Humans to fight their enemies.  They
must have done the same to you.”

“Oh, is
that
the
story today.”  Joe sighed and dropped his arms.  “Look, Shael—”

Her pretty green eyes
darkened instantly.  “If you don’t wish to teach me, no one is forcing you,
Voran.”  She shoved the gun back at him and turned to go.

“Hey, hold on!” Joe
cried, grabbing her by the arm.

Normally, Shael would
have simply crushed the offending appendage for the transgression, but this
time, she stopped and looked down at his hand, then reluctantly lifted her eyes
to his face, anger still pooling in the emerald depths.  Anger, and…  Something
else.  Fear?  Confusion?

Then Joe imagined what it
must be like, stuck believing you were something you were not because some
scientists decided to try tinkering with your head as a doctorial coup, and he
felt an instant pang of empathy.  “Look, Shael…” he began softly.

“I don’t understand what
I’m doing wrong,” she blurted, on a whimper.  “I do everything just as I
remember it, and it comes out
wrong
.”

Of course it did. 
Because someone had brainwashed her into thinking she was Jreet, who could
punch their fists through the hull of a ship or strangle a Dhasha if it struck
their fancy.  Jreet survived on brute force, not finesse.  And, at barely five
digs in height, if she was
ever
going to hold her own in a fight,
someone needed to teach her finesse.  Badly.

“Everything is harder
than I remember,” she went on, oblivious.  “I’ve spent
weeks
trying to
figure it out.  It’s not the gravity of this place, because it doesn’t affect
anyone but me.  It’s not drugs, because they would have worn off.  It’s not that
Humans are bigger than Jreet, because I’ve seen them compared to kreenit.  It
is not a superior new fighting technique, because even the most unknown,
clanless Human warriors seem to know it.  I just don’t
understand
!” she
cried again.  “My scales haven’t grown back.  My coils are misshapen.  My
strength still escapes me.  My tek refuses to unsheathe.  I just don’t
understand what
happened
.  It’s like…”  She swallowed hard, and her
voice became a whisper.  “It’s like I’m not actually Jreet.”  Tears were welling
in her pretty green eyes and her lip was trembling.  “So what else could have
happened, Voran?  All I can think is that they stole my body from me.  Put me
in the body of a…”  She hesitated and swallowed hard.  “Put me in the wrong
body,” she finished, her voice breaking.