by Sara King
The overly-tanned woman gave his pale skin a suspicious look. “Who’s askin’?”
“Joe Dobbs.”
“Never heard of you.”
“I was told to come here.”
“Sure you were. You look like a cop.”
“I’m a Congie.” Joe held up his right palm.
The woman snorted. “Fake.”
“You know it isn’t.”
She gave him a patronizing smile behind too much makeup. “Look…guy…I’ve got other people needin’ drinks. You gonna order or what?”
“Just tell Mindy I need to meet our friend sooner than expected.”
“I don’t know no Mindy. You gonna order or what?”
Joe hurled the table across the room as he got to his feet. Into the silence following the crash of the table and broken glass, he shouted, “Look, they’re calling me back and I just want to see my brother before I gotta go die on some burning Dhasha planet. Why’s it gotta be so goddamn difficult?!” He kicked over a chair, sending it careening across the room to shatter against the wall.
Even after rotations without the Congie nanos and drugs, Joe was still stronger than most.
The bouncers converged on him, and Joe, already in a foul mood from going AWOL, threw the first punch. He was doing all right, knocking out three and keeping the rest at a wary distance, until one of them drew a taser and fired it at him. Then the three that were still conscious began pounding his face into hamburger.
Joe passed out long before they tossed him on his head in the dusty parking lot and took to tearing apart his haauk.
When he woke up, Joe was sprawled in the dust behind the building, curled amongst the trash bags. He grunted and righted himself, then stumbled around to the front.
Six police haauk lined the parking-lot. Two more hovered near the road. Joe ducked back behind the building, his heart pounding.
“Hey!” a Human voice shouted. “You there!”
Joe clenched his right palm tightly to keep the tattoo from showing. Then he turned back to face the officer that had spotted him.
The uniformed man looked him up and down, then his face twisted. “This is a crime scene. Go sleep it off somewhere else.”
Joe blinked, then realized the man thought he was drunk. He knew that could very well work to his advantage, but he was puzzled as to why they hadn’t arrested him yet. “Crime scene?”
“Yeah. You didn’t know? Biggest takedown in twenty years. Crime boss called Ghost. Was gonna meet his brother or something. We’re still looking for him.”
“The crime boss?”
“The brother.”
Pain arced through Joe’s chest. “You arrested him?”
“No, I just told you we got the crime boss.” The guy gave him a disgusted once-over. “Man, you look like you got worked over by a Jreet. Go home and clean up. This place won’t be open for a while. Maybe never. Looks like Ghost was using it as a front. Got a roomful of counterfeit bills in the back.”
Joe felt his world crumbling.
“Say,” the officer said, “You’re all banged up, but you still look a lot like…” The man made a quick grab for his pocket. “Stay right there.”
Joe watched as the officer fished out a reader from his pants. “Sonofabitch, you’re the brother, ain’t you? The renegade Congie.”
Joe saw the officer’s eyes widen as he realized the two of them were in the alley alone. The officer was fumbling for his gun when Joe slammed his fist into his solar plexus and followed it with a roundhouse to the temple. The officer went down with no more sound than the thud of his body hitting the ground.
Grunting, Joe dragged the man over to the pile of trash and left him buried amongst the fly-covered plastic bags to sleep it off.
Then he went looking for Sam.
#
“I hear you know quite a bit about Prime Commander Joe Dobbs.” The green-eyed man sat easily upon Phoenix’s couch, neither overbearing nor anxious in any way. He had a calm masculinity to him that seemed to dominate the room. That, and he had hair. Curly black waves. He clearly wasn’t a grounder.
Phoenix hadn’t seen anyone so sexually appealing in thirty turns. She had to suppress a little heart-flutter, uninvited. Odd.
Then she realized what he had said and her thoughts soured. “You want to talk about Zero,” Phoenix said, immediately getting a bitter taste in her mouth.
“Yes,” the man said. “Interesting name, isn’t it?” The way he moved his hands, the slow grin—she could have sworn he was flirting with her. That brought Phoenix instantly back to her senses. She was wearing her rank of Prime Overseer. No man in his right mind would flirt with her, especially one that had somehow bypassed all the safeties and appeared in her office without warning.
A Peacemaker, then.
“How did you get through the security checks?” she asked coldly. “I see no rank.”
The man smiled easily, his casual charm almost disarming. “I hear Zero got his name from a traitor. Odd, that he kept it even after the Ooreiki was tried and slain.”
Phoenix’s face twisted. “He’s a traitor himself.”
The man leaned forward, his green eyes intense. “Oh?”
Understanding dawning on her, a slow smile spread across Phoenix’s face. “So why now?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why now?” Phoenix repeated, leaning back in her chair. “I’ve been trying to get the Peacemakers to investigate him for fifty turns. What made you finally decide it was important enough to come speak to me?”
The Peacemaker seemed taken aback. “You mean no one has interviewed you before this?”
“They have,” Phoenix said, “but never more than a tri-point. You’re a what, Sixth Hjai? Seventh?”
The man’s only response was a smile. “Explain to me why you have lodged thirty-seven complaints against him in the last fifty turns.”
“I don’t see a rank, Mr…?”
“And you won’t,” the green-eyed man said, flashing a charming grin. “Suffice to say I’m not a tri-point.”
Phoenix grinned, despite herself, finding his charisma refreshing. She looked him over, imagining him without the sleek blue civilian clothes. He’s got an even better body than Joe, she realized with a little start. She thought about how much she liked sex, and how damn little of it she’d gotten since accepting Prime Overseer. Then she checked herself. She’d been at this too long. She was beginning to get soft. Becoming too complacent. Too…lonely.
Secrets, she had learned over the last fifty-three turns, were not good for the soul. Nor the digestive tract. Especially the kind she carried.
“You have access to my previous interviews,” she said, fighting that carnal urge to open up to someone, anyone, after fifty-three turns in hiding.
“I want to hear it from you,” the man said. “In your own words.”
Phoenix took a deep breath and trailed her delightfully sensitive fingers across her glistening black Congie desk. The man watched her hand, seemingly bemused. Then, with a sigh, Phoenix said, “Back in basic. Kophat. I—we—were visited by a Trith.”
The man nodded. “Uncommon, but not unheard of.”
“This Trith showed me something…horrible.” She closed her fingers into a fist. “I still can’t explain it. I just felt…scared.”
“You were still a child,” the Peacemaker said. “It could have affected your judgment.”
“No!” Phoenix snapped, hitting her desk with her fist, that old anger rising again. That betrayal. “No. This is something I will never forget.” Ever. She remembered watching her friends die. People she’d sworn to protect. People she believed in, people she would have given her life to save in an instant. Because of Zero. Because he’d gone to the enemy.
“Try to explain it,” the man said calmly. Then, when she still showed reluctance, he urged, “You can tell me. I want to get this fixed.”
His friendly smile, his easy demeanor, the husky overtones... Despite her disgust for Zero, Phoenix smile
d, deciding the man deserved something interesting for his troubles. “The Trith showed me Zero holding a planet in his hand. A purple one, like Kophat. He held it up, like he was showing it to me. Then he crushed it in his palm. I felt all those people die. I heard them screaming. Blood ran from his fist and covered the ground. When I looked down to watch the blood, I realized we were standing on skulls. Skulls and bones and Dhasha scales. Then, before I could look away, he plucked another one from the sky and brought it down in his fist. He held it out to me and smiled. Then he crushed that one, too. I will never forget those people as they died. It was as if I were in their minds, feeling it happen. I think he’s going to destroy Congress.”
The man’s eyes flickered across her face. “You did not include this in your report.”
Of course not. She had to hide a smile. “I knew the Ueshi tri-point would not believe me.” Phoenix leaned across her desk. “Somehow, I think you will.”
The man winked at her. Flirting again. Phoenix couldn’t help but wonder what dinner with him would be like. It’d been a while since she’d been with a man. She fought the irritating emotions that surged forward at that, an unfortunate byproduct of unevolved body chemistry. A problem that, to her chagrin, a good portion of the more advanced species of the universe did not share. Unable to ignore the sexual appeal of this man, instinctively desiring his big, masculine hands on her body, not for the first time in the last fifty-three turns, Phoenix found herself wishing she were not Human.
Steeling herself, putting herself solidly back into her professional façade, she said, “So I ask you again. What changed?”
The green-eyed man stood and gave her a beaming grin. “Thank you for your time, ma’am.”
She felt a pang of loss, despite herself. If nothing else, sex was excellent stress relief. And, with the Vahlin gathering his forces for war, very possibly about to succeed where Na’leen had failed, she needed all the relief she could get. “Before you go…”
The man stopped in the doorway and glanced back.
“Would you like to share dinner with me sometime?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’ve gotta go interview Commander Zero.”
“What about afterwards?” she blurted, desperate to get that relief. Damn, she thought immediately. What was wrong with her? It was almost like her hormones were cutting off her brain.
The Peacemaker gave her a patronizing smile. “I’m not your type.”
Phoenix did a startled double-take. Oh, he was good. Realizing exactly what she was dealing with, Phoenix quickly pushed away from her seat and stood, her hand automatically reaching for the weapon on her belt.
“Careful,” the Huouyt said calmly. “If I’d wanted to kill you, you would be dead. I’m interested in Zero, nothing more.”
Merciful dead, Phoenix thought. That’s another Va’gan. Phoenix had wondered when Koliinaat would take interest enough to send a professional, and she cursed herself for letting her guard down so far in the meantime. She began calculating which assassin it could be as she watched him much-too-casually pick up a Human carving from an end-table beside her door, following the nervous tics, the body language.
She let her hand fall from her belt, knowing she needed to keep him in the room for a few more tics to make an accurate ID. With as much indignance as she could muster, she said, “You were using hormones, weren’t you?”
Her visitor cocked his head, seemingly bemused she had caught it. “It is nothing new. Your species releases such scent chemicals all the time.” The Peacemaker put down her statuette, which she would incinerate later. The charming smile had vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving an unnatural void in its wake. “As I said. Thank you for your time.”
She scanned his face. “You’re going to kill him?” She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
The Peacemaker turned slightly, to look at her. “Zero is a Congressional hero.”
“You’re going to kill him.” There was something about this assassin’s mannerisms that she knew, something she had seen before. But where?
The assassin smiled. “I’m going to be his groundmate.”
Phoenix gasped, and this time she didn’t have to fake it. “You’re the one they sent me?” Then she sputtered, anger and outrage hitting her at his audacity. “You’re under my command and you drugged me?” That, just tics ago, she had wanted nothing more than to take this furg home with her—and the fact that he knew it—was almost humiliating enough for her to draw her weapon and kill him anyway.
“I am a Peacemaker,” the Huouyt said, his borrowed green eyes suddenly seeming alien and horrible even as his drugs continued to trigger her base Human instincts. “Even in this Human’s groundteam, I will never be under his command.” He gave her a wry smile. “Or yours.”
The over-cocky furg. Phoenix felt a rush of satisfaction at her visitor’s lack of observational skills, despite herself. Fighting inner disdain, Phoenix snorted. “Then you don’t know Joe.”
The Peacemaker eyed her. “Enlighten me.”
Phoenix laughed. “Enlighten yourself, if you can find him. Joe’s been missing for two weeks. We found his wrecked haauk in Nevada and there’s an investigation as to whether or not a few bouncers killed him that night, but I personally think he went AWOL. There was a government takedown staged for Joe’s younger brother the next day—a big crime boss who’s been causing the planet a lot of problems. He was going to meet Joe at the bar. They caught the brother, but Joe went missing.”
“Zero’s brother is a crime boss?” The Peacemaker asked, leaning his big body thoughtfully against the door. Phoenix couldn’t help but notice the sexy muscles of his arms where he crossed them over his chest. Merciful dead! She had to shake herself and concentrate on stillness to resist the urge to cross the room and mash her body against his like a common whore.
“Biggest hacker in the Human race,” she gritted. “Changed his own damn genome using Geuji nannites and information from classified Congressional genetics experiments.”
The Peacemaker gave her a long, flat look. “Interesting.”
“It’s something in the blood,” Phoenix said sweetly.
“As far as I am aware,” the Peacemaker said slowly, “Commander Zero is a hero, not a criminal.”
“Yet,” Phoenix sneered.
He glanced at the wall, obviously in thought. It was the stiffness, the quiet, awkward respect for his pattern that finally gave him away. Phoenix smiled inwardly. It had been a long time since she’d seen Jer’ait Ze’laa. The Peacemakers’ greatest assassin, Jer’ait had never missed a target. She wondered how he would fare against the creature destined to destroy Congress. The epitome of Va’gan training faced off against the prophecies of the Trith.
This should be interesting.
“His brother’s people could have thought Commander Zero was involved in the sting,” Jer’ait told her. “Perhaps they killed him.”
“I don’t think so. One of the officers disappeared for a day. They found him later, under a pile of trash. Couldn’t remember how he got there, but had a huge bruise across the side of his face. Someone cracked him pretty good. PlanOps good. Bastard was lucky to be alive.”
The Huouyt cocked his head at her and flashed her another sexy smile. “Perhaps you could give me the location of that bar.”
Phoenix knew she was allowing the Huouyt’s chemicals to manipulate her, but at that point, she really didn’t give a damn what happened to Zero as long as he arrived on Jeelsiht on time. She had to stop the Dhasha Vahlin. “Perhaps I can.” She found it, scribbled the address on a slip of paper, and put it on the desk for him to take. She took a step backwards as he approached, keeping the assassin out of arm’s reach.
The Huouyt watched her step back, then took the paper. This close, the hormones were like a pounding, insistent wave in her head. She stifled the insane urge to step forward, into the stranger’s reach. She cursed herself inwardly for not noticing it sooner. Soft, Phoenix thought. You’re getting
soft in your old age. She decided she needed to start dating again, to get the stress out of her system before it killed her.
Still standing on the other side of the desk, the Huouyt slowly folded the paper in half, watching her with an amused smile. “My thanks.”
Phoenix narrowed her eyes at the disdain in his face. “Just get out.”
The Huouyt gave a sarcastic bow and left.
He, Phoenix thought, more than a little impressed, has gotten better. She glanced at her open door—where the assassin had appeared uninvited—then glanced at her personal web link. She’d wasted precious seconds on thinking about his eyes, his chest, his sexy hands…
Yes, it was definitely time to start slaking her body’s thirst for hormones elsewhere, lest she allow her judgment to slip like that again. She thought of it happening around Zero and she felt sick.
Definitely time to start dating again, Phoenix thought, pulling over her personal console and sitting back at her desk. Just as soon as this war’s over.
#
Joe found out very quickly that he was not going to free Sam. At least not alone. They had his brother under the strongest lockdown on the planet. Congressional forces were being used to supplement local police, leaving a wall of bodies three digs thick around Sam’s prison.
News crews covered the capture full-time, leaving Joe staring at his brother’s image in shackles every time he turned around.
The knowledge that Joe had gotten his brother captured burned in him. Every instinct told Joe he had to help Sam, but everything he knew about Congress and security told him he’d be wasting his time. Sam wasn’t going anywhere. He was the first major Human criminal Earth had seen since its induction into Congress.
They wanted to make an example out of him.
Joe went to bar after bar to watch the news-feeds, ordering a drink or two every time to keep the bartender happy. Once the drinks came, he’d set the whiskey aside and draw up plans on how to free his brother on the little napkins that came with it. When he wadded them up in frustration, knowing that his plans were desperate and stupid, he would finish his drink and order another, all the while watching the newscast portray his eerie-looking brother as some sort of homicidal psychopath.
