Zero's Return (81 page)

Indeed, when Joe exploded
the piece of machinery in question—at the very edge of the six length limit—the
ball of flames took out a good portion of the street around it.  Lowering his
scope, he raised an eyebrow at Shael and said, “The yellow one right beside
it.  If you’ve got the tek.”

Shael grunted, raised her
rifle to her cheek, peered through the scope a moment, then fired.  The yellow
car did not explode.  Joe raised a fist to his mouth to stifle his chuckle. 

“I shot it!” Shael cried,
sounding betrayed.  She raised her head from the scope in fury.  “Look at it! 
I
shot
it and the jenfurgling thing
sits
there!”

Seeing her adamancy, Joe
frowned and raised his scope.  Indeed, he saw that there was a pretty new hole
through the vehicle, exactly where the gas-tank or hydrogen cells should have
been.  He grunted.  “Probably one of those electric deals.”

“Or one of those
scavenging furgs stole the fuel,” Shael growled, watching the retreating Humans
through her scope.

Joe swallowed, realizing
that now would be a
very
good time to teach the Jreet wannabe not to
start picking off Humans like insignificant skin parasites.  “Um, Shael…”

But off in the distance,
the car crumpled with a tortured shriek of metal that echoed over the
mountainsides, carrying to them even at the distance of their vantage point. 
When Joe looked again, the former car had been condensed into a perfect sphere
about the height of his knee, even then rolling down the slightly-sloping
street at the pace of a slow walk.

Seeing that, Joe froze. 
She
doesn’t even
need
the rifle,
he thought, stunned.

But Shael had already
pulled the trigger again.  Joe’s heart gave a startled thump when he at first
thought she’d just taken out one of the figures running from the explosions,
but when he raised his own rifle to get a better look at the damage, he saw no
bodies, only a smoking tree at the base of a telephone tower.

“Hit the top satellite
dish,” she commanded. 

Joe, who instinctively
balked at the idea of destroying the remnants of Earth’s soon-to-be-nonexistent
technology, nonetheless wasn’t about to argue with a woman who had just reduced
a sports car to a glorified marble.  He put the rifle to his shoulder and
pulled the trigger.  The dish took a hole the size of his thumb, which wasn’t
very impressive, so he began making a face.  One corner of the lips came out a
little lopsided, ‘cause hey, he was basically twitching a nanodig at a distance
of six lengths in order to create a three-foot swath of destruction, but other
than that, it was perfectly recognizable as a diamond-headed Jreet smiley…  If
the Jreet would ever demean themselves enough to come up with a smiley face for
their species.

Shael, who was watching
through her scope, grinned.  “You’re not bad at this, Voran.”

Well, I should burning
hope so,
Joe thought, considering how those same skills had kept him alive
through just about every alien Hell in which Congress had ever decided to throw
Humans.  Knowing how delicate her ‘Jreet’ pride was, however, Joe instead said,
“The compliment is yours.  For someone who just picked up their first gun,
you’ve got the favor of the Black Jreet.”

Shael froze and glanced
down at her rifle.  Joe watched as she suddenly paled, then swallowed, her face
changing as she stared down at the thing in her hands like it had suddenly
morphed into a Dhasha hatchling.  Without another word, she dropped it, the
sensitive equipment clanging against the rocky ground as she started to wipe
her hands against her borrowed pants.

“Hey,” Joe said, reaching
out to her carefully—carefully, because he recognized the symptoms of one of
her weird flashbacks, and she had the penchant for obliterating everything in
twenty-dig swaths when she was in the throes of a flashback.

Hey, Pointy,
Joe
said quickly, watching Shael start to back up, staring down at the gun in what
looked like horror, gasping. 
I think we got a problem.

I’m busy,
was
Twelve-A’s distracted reply.

Well,
un-busy
yourself,
Joe cried. 
Shael’s having another breakdown!  In broad
daylight!
  Indeed, she had fallen onto her ass and was panting, tears
beginning to form in her eyes.

Twelve-A did not answer
him.  Shael’s hyperventilating did not slow, and she was starting to whine like
a terrified thing.  Already, the ground around her was beginning to shudder and
crumple, pushing outward in a sphere…

“You’re safe!” Joe
cried.  “Safe, burn it.  I was just teaching you to use guns!”

“
I don’t want to use
guns!
” Shael shrieked, in Human Congie.  She was staring at the thing in
his hand like it had been dredged from the worst, most fearsome, razor-fanged
depths of the Jreet hell of Dro.

Joe blinked at her, then
at his guns.  Slowly, carefully, he lowered it to the ground.  “That better?”
he asked.

“You’re a
soldier
,”
Shael whispered, wide-eyed.  Again, in Congie.

Twelve-A, I
really
think we have a problem
, Joe said, seeing the terror and unconcealed hatred
in her face.

I’m taking care of
something else,
Twelve-A said. 
Find a way to handle it, furg.

I don’t think that’s
an option!
Joe shouted back. 
Help me, burn you.

Can’t.  Stop
interrupting me.  Busy.

As Joe stood there,
gritting his teeth, trying to urge the stubborn minder into cooperating, Shael
held up her hand towards him in a perfect imitation of Nine-G’s tree-flattening
trick.

“I’m not a soldier!” Joe
cried, dropping to his knees and flinging the rest of the weaponry off his
shoulders to scatter the ground around him.  “I’m a Congie.”  He held up both
arms in peace, then yanked off his glove to show her the glowing PlanOps
tattoo.  “See?”

Shael was shaking all
over, shivering so hard her teeth were chattering.  “They want…us to…fight
the…Congies.” 

“Not anymore,” Joe
babbled.  “Those ashsouls are dead.  All dead.”  He was acutely aware that he
was walking a razor edge between keeping her talking and getting utterly
crushed to pulpy, liquefied death.

“C-Colonel C-Codgson?”
she whimpered.  She still spoke perfect Congie.

“Dead,” Joe insisted,
taking a wild-ass guess that when Twelve-A said he killed
all
of the
people who knew about their lab, he meant
everyone
.

“W-who k-ki-killed him?”
she whimpered.  Then, in plaintive terror, “Me?”

“Twelve-A killed them,”
Joe replied.  “No, you’re fine.  You didn’t kill anyone.”

“Yes I
did
,” she
whispered.  The fingers of her left hand were gripping the dried grass with
such intensity that the knuckles were white.  “So they killed Charlie.”

Aside from the
machete-carrying furg and the unnamed guy still topping that pine tree behind
them, Joe didn’t remember her killing anyone.  “Uh,” he said, “Was Charlie your
brother or something?”

Her face instantly
contorted in pain.  Then, in a childish wail, she sobbed, “Charlie was my
raaaaaaaaaabbbiiiiiit.”

Hearing that childlike
grief, so heart-rendingly intense, made Joe forget about the danger he was in. 
“Aw, Shael…” he said, easing himself towards her.  “Come here…”

“No!” she screamed,
scrabbling away from him, hand up again.  “I don’t want to be a soldier!  I hate
soldiers!”

“
I’m not a burning
soldier
!” Joe bellowed back, realizing he had to startle her out of her
terror, now, or he was about to lose a head.  “They
dumped
me here to
die
. 
I’m not even a Congie anymore.”

She gave him a nervous,
uncertain look over her splayed fingers, but didn’t lower her hand.  “You’re
not a soldier?”  She was still panting, sweat standing out in a glossy sheen on
her forehead.

“No,” Joe insisted.  “I’m
nothing
like those pampered Takki.”

She swallowed and started
to shake again.  Slowly, she lowered her hand to grip her knees to her chest,
instead.  “They tried to make me a soldier.”

“They’re gone now,” Joe
insisted.  “You’re safe.  You’re
never
going back.”

“They put me in that
machine
,”
she whimpered.  “Doctor Philip stuck a needle in my arm and
locked
me in
there and wouldn’t let me out when I screamed.”  Her voice was barely above a
whisper, her eyes unfocused and distant.  “They were gonna cull me, but they
put me in the
machine
, instead.  There was a black Jreet and she was
telling me I needed to save the Humans…”

Seeing her total
desolation, her vulnerability, her deepest terrors laid bare, Joe had to do
something to help her.  Slowly, so as not to spook her, he moved close enough
to put his hand on her arm.  Then, when she didn’t kill him for the effort, he
gently—like a man handling a wild Dreit—pulled her into his embrace.  Shael
reacted stiffly, her eyes wide and uncomprehending, but when she did not try to
struggle free, he wrapped his arms around her.  For a long moment, she was
utterly still in his arms, like she was afraid to move.  Then, after what
seemed like an eternity, she began to relax.  They sat like that for several
minutes, Joe awkwardly perched on the ground, Shael pulled up against him, the
two of them saying nothing.

After a while, Joe had
the startled realization she was whispering against his arm.  He had to lean
down to make it out.

“Please don’t let me
forget,” she whimpered.

Joe felt another ache in
his chest.  “I won’t,” he said.  “I promise.”

That seemed to quell her
fears, because she relaxed fully, her head slumping against his chest, her arms
going limp on his thighs.

Joe settled his chin
against the top of her head and let her sleep.  For upwards of thirty tics, he
sat there like that, listening to the soft whispers of her breath against his
bicep, the sound of Earth-insects buzzing around them.  And, given ample
opportunity to sit there and think about it, Joe had the strange realization
that the feeling felt…right.  Like he’d finally found his favorite plasma
rifle, for years stuffed just out of sight under his bed.

Joe was just starting to
nod off himself when Shael jerked in his arms.  “Why do you hold me, furgling?”
she snapped, thrashing out of his grip and hurtling to her feet.  “Where is Eleven-C? 
Why are we not at our stations?”

Realizing he had to think
quickly or forever lose the opportunity, Joe managed, “You don’t remember?  We
engaged in a duel, but we fought each other to exhaustion.”

Shael’s eyebrows went up
and she gave him a surprised look.  “We…did?”  Then she seemed to re-evaluate
his impressive Congie musculature and managed, “I…
did
?”

“To a
draw
,” Joe
agreed.  “We’ll have to try again some other time.”

She swallowed and licked
her lips, obviously not looking forward to that.  “Yes,” she said hesitantly. 
Then she lifted her delicate chin in Jreet challenge.  “Yes.  We can’t leave
that unsettled.”

Joe felt a familiar
twinge in his crotch, thinking of taking her up on an honest-to-god wrestling
match.  Then he thought about exploding head-pimples and gigantic car-marbles
and quickly squashed the idea.  He was still reddening and rubbing the back of
his neck, staring embarrassedly at the ground between his knees, when Shael
imperiously collected a rifle from the ground, threw it over her shoulder, and
said, “Until then, you will continue to train me in modern weaponry, Voran.  It
will serve you well when you are forced to give up your tek and become my
brooder.”

Joe choked.  “Uh. 
Right.”  At her sharp look, he said, “I mean sure.  It would…serve me well…to
have you trained…in weaponry.”

She grunted and started
walking back the way they had come.

Joe scrambled to get his
guns back over his shoulders, then jogged after her.  “You know, Shael,” he
said, coming abreast of her, “I wanted to talk with you about those things you
pulled from my pack this morning.”

Shael gave him a sideways
look.  “Those things Twelve-A told me to pull out?”

Joe frowned.  “He
told
you to pull them out?”

She shrugged.  “He said
they were some great Earth-weapons and I was interested in seeing how they
worked.”

Joe blinked at her,
unable to decide if she’d just told him that the minder had tried to get her
killed
,
or if he’d tried to get her to ‘relocate’ his grenades so they could be left
behind with the next move.  Cautiously, he said, “Those things you took from my
pack.  They’re called grenades.  They’re
extremely
dangerous to play
with…”

Shael’s derisive snort
was all he needed to know that she would therefore play with them at the
nearest opportunity.

“No, listen…”  Joe
grabbed her by the shoulder and stopped them both.  He quickly retracted his
hand at Shael’s dangerous scowl, but quickly went on, “If you set off one of
those things in camp, it could kill everyone.  Not just you, but
everyone
.”

She gave him a dubious
look, then sniffed.  “Show me.”

Joe opened his mouth to
argue, saw that to argue would result in her immediate acquisition of said
grenades and her studious attempt to figure it out for herself, then sighed and
shrugged off his pack.  As she watched with an obvious attempt at detachment,
Joe pulled one of the more impressive grenades from its hallowed spot buried at
the bottom of his gear.  He held the ovoid blue sphere up for her to see. 
“This is called a thunder egg.  One guess as to why.”

“It draws down the wrath
of the gods,” Shael said.

Joe grinned.  “Pretty
much.  It’s the biggest one they’ve got for hand-throwing.  A lot of guys don’t
lob it far enough and it ends up taking them and all their friends out with
it.”  He let out his breath.  “Okay, you ready for this?  I’m gonna throw it
down the mountain, but you should still get behind cover.”