by Sara King
Fluffy white hair. Like a goddamn cotton ball. And his eyes… Where they used to be sky-blue, they now resembled the electric white-blue of a Huouyt.
What the hell did the scaleless wonder do to himself? Joe wondered, aghast.
As the days wore on, Joe abandoned the little napkins for the drinks they came with. He forgot all plans of rescuing his brother and began instead to routinely drink himself into a stupor each night.
Damn Maggie. Damn Sam. Damn Earth. Damn Congress.
He said each in his mind like a toast as he tossed back shot after shot. Oblivion began to come as naturally to him as breathing.
It was sometime at night—Joe wasn’t sure how many days it was after he’d fled Maggie’s recall—when his hackles suddenly went up.
Joe was well on his way to being drunk, but he still knew something was wrong. He set down his glass and glanced around the room. Nothing out of place.
He was about to go back to his whiskey when a man took a seat beside him at the bar and ordered a drink. He looked as half-dead as anyone else in the room, but Joe’s senses were on high-alert. He might as well have been sitting beside a ticking bomb.
The man caught his stare and nodded, giving him a polite smile.
Joe leapt backwards, grabbed his stool, and swung it at the man’s head with every ounce of muscle he had. The man’s face showed a twitch of surprise before the metal slammed into the side of his skull, knocking him from his perch and sending both of their drinks flying.
Joe dropped the stool and ran.
He took the first alley he came to and peeled down the cobbled stones with every ounce of speed he could muster. Joe heard something big crash into the trash piles behind him and men shouting, but he didn’t look back. He kept on running, taking three more odd turns and climbing onto a roof.
From there, he began the dubiously intelligent task of jumping from house to house, losing his pursuers in the fences and walls behind. On the ground beneath him, he heard another crash and what sounded like a fence being ripped apart, but he wasn’t sure it wasn’t his drunken imagination playing tricks on him.
Joe ducked into an unlocked rooftop storage area and huddled amidst the tools he found there. His fingers found a hammer and he waited.
Outside the storage shed, he heard the roof groan with a new added pressure. Joe held his breath, and soon he began to make out the sound of something being dragged across the rooftop where he had just been.
Dragged? Did he have more than one pursuer?
The sound stopped, and Joe waited, scarcely willing to breathe.
It began again, progressing to the other end of the roof. Then, like someone had thrown a sack of rice over the side, he heard a thump as something hit the ground. The huge pressure continued to groan and slide over the edge after it, every once in a while making a sound like pebbles against Dhasha scales. Whatever it was, it was big. Joe let out a slow breath and stayed where he was.
For a very, very long time.
CHAPTER 6: Joe’s Second
“Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing on my roof?”
Bright light shone into the shed, blinding him. Joe groaned, lifting his hand to shield his face.
A bald man carrying an aluminum watering pail was silhouetted in the sunlight, frowning in at him. Seeing Joe’s palm, the man suddenly took a couple steps back, putting a good ten digs between them. “I know that mark. You’re a Congie.”
“Not anymore,” Joe muttered, pulling himself from the pile of junk where he’d fallen asleep. He stepped to the edge of the sunlight and peered over the edge of the building. He noted the displaced bricks on the cement below, pushed over the edge by whatever had been following him, then looked dubiously up at the sky. “You know what time it is?”
“Twelve-thirty.”
Joe grunted and reached into his pocket to pull out the remains of his cash. His savings were either flagged or frozen—probably both—and as he unwadded the bills, he found himself growing more depressed. Three hundred and eighty-seven credits. Not even four hundred credits to last him the rest of his life.
“You give me a ride to the next town and I’ll give you three hundred, cash.”
The man peered at him. “You kill somebody or something?”
Joe gave him a crooked smile, realizing his nose had begun bleeding again. “Nah. Just a barfight. Need to find another bar.”
The bald roof-owner grimaced. “You should use that money to clean yourself up, not to buy some booze,” the man said.
“Guess that means you’ll drive for free?”
The man smiled, despite himself. “Maybe I will. My sister was a Congie.”
Joe hesitated in wiping the sleep out of his eyes. “Was?”
“Died on Eeloir. Huouyt killed her.”
Joe grunted. “That was a bad one.”
The man’s attention sharpened. “You were there?”
Groaning, Joe put his hand up to shield his eyes again. Confirming that the place wasn’t swarming with Peacemakers, he lowered his hand and said, “Wish I wasn’t, but yeah. I was there. Eight turns of Hell. Makes you really learn to watch your back.”
The man gave him a look like Joe had just sworn his mother was still a virgin. “I heard the Human Ground Force didn’t have any survivors.”
“There were a couple. It was bad. You don’t want to be on the opposite side of a Huouyt. ‘Specially if the Huouyt knows what he’s doing.” Joe shook his head, then eyed the man. “What was your sister’s name?”
“Tertiary Commander Tammy Schroder.”
“Wheaties?” Joe asked, automatically.
The man’s sharp look became painfully acute. “Some people called her that.”
Joe chuckled. “Small world.”
“Why?” the man demanded, suspicion tight in his face.
Joe shrugged. “She was in my PlanOps battalion, under a different Prime. She was Rat’s Second. Really athletic, could outrun most of the guys in the battalion games. Sharper than a goddamn tack. Saved Rat’s life a time or two, and mine more than I’d like to count. Was a deadeye shot. Put down more Huouyt than all her groundmates combined. They all called her Wheaties. Don’t ask me why—she got the name in Basic.”
For a long time, the man said nothing. Finally, “You some sort of con artist or something?”
Joe grimaced. “No sir.”
“And you knew my sister.” He still obviously didn’t believe him.
“The Ground Corps is a big place,” Joe said. “I knew a lot of people.”
The man’s eyes scanned his face, then, eventually, he grunted. “Eeloir wasn’t nearly as bad as this Neskfaat thing. I can’t believe those assholes at the news stations. We’ve got the biggest war Congress has ever seen brewing right on our doorstep and instead they’re going on about this Ghost guy. Who gives a shit?”
“Yeah,” Joe muttered.
In the end, the bald man led him out to his personal haauk, then fired it up and flew him an hour east, dropping him off in a housing district in the next town over. As Joe was getting out of the haauk, the man stopped him. “Your name Joe?”
Joe stiffened. “Who’s asking?”
The man leaned forward against the straps holding him to his haauk. “I know for a fact only two Humans survived that Eeloir thing. One of ‘em was a woman. Are you Commander Zero? The one they’re looking for?”
Joe winced.
Seeing his expression, the man reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. Taking out all the bills he had, he passed them through the window to him. “It’s about fifty bucks,” the man said. He hesitated, his eyes searching his. Finally, he said, “Clean yourself up, Joe.” Then he pulled the haauk into the air and departed.
Watching him go, Joe’s hands fisted on the cash. Self-righteous prick.
He promptly went looking for booze.
Joe found it later that night, after he’d been walking for nearly six hours. He sat down, ordered a whiskey, and began his bli
ssful return to oblivion.
#
Jer’ait watched the Human down his sixth vial of poison for the night from the comfort of a darkened booth. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
The Human had recognized him. How, though, was still grating on him. Not once in his life had Jer’ait been recognized for what he was until he was ready. And sure as hell not that fast. Jer’ait was better than the best. He held the highest kill-rate in Va’gan history. He was always the first on the list when it came time to kill a Jahul—the most notoriously hard creatures in Congress to kill—and not once had Jer’ait ever been outed.
And yet, this Human had done it. Half intoxicated.
And then, as if swatting a Va’gan assassin in the face with a barstool was no more out-of-the-ordinary than slapping a lovely waitress on the ass, his commander-to-be had hunkered down in another bar a single town away and gone right back to drinking himself into a stupor.
Getting up after being knocked from his stool, listening to the Human’s running footsteps as he departed...it was the single most humiliating moment of Jer’ait’s life. He would pay for it later, Jer’ait promised himself.
Still, the oath did nothing to assuage the bruising to his pride. Jer’ait wanted blood. Watching the Human down glass after glass of poison, he imagined the painful ways he could kill him and still make it look like an accident.
Someone in the Peacemakers had to have tipped the Human off. It was the only explanation. There was no other. None.
The Human had certainly spent enough time in the ranks to have made a few friends in the service. He was a living legend. The more Jer’ait had read about him, the more he found to read. His men followed him into battle with a devotion that any Corps Director would envy. He’d earned six kasjas in his lifetime and was credited with eight personal Dhasha kills. Jer’ait could ask any of a million Human recruits who Commander Zero was and they could tell him the first six battles he was in, the awards he won, and the number of craps he took during each mission.
And yet the fool had gone right back to poisoning himself as soon as he had escaped Jer’ait. Such an error in judgment was mind-boggling. It had been no effort at all for Jer’ait to call every bar in the area and ask if they had seen his brother—a man with a luminescent PlanOps tattoo on his palm was hard to forget. Upon receiving his location, Jer’ait had found him and hid in the back of the place to watch.
Yet, in all the time he’d watched the Human, no one had approached him. No spies came to whisper in his ear. He carried no communications unit, received no clandestine messages taped to the bottoms of glasses. He looked truly and utterly alone. And miserable.
A tingle of fear crawled its way up the spine of Jer’ait’s Human pattern. Could his target have recognized him without a tip-off?
No. Not possible, he immediately told himself.
Yet the thought ate at him, gnawing at Jer’ait’s nerves. As the night wore on, he could not stand it any more. He had to know. He got out his reader and called Yua’nev.
“How many people know of this Human and my mission?”
“Where are you?”
“Watching the Human try to kill himself. Tell me.”
“Can he hear this?”
“No. But if he could, he’s too intoxicated to understand what we’re saying.”
“You said he’s killing himself?”
Jer’ait lifted the reader and showed Yua’nev the Human at the bar.
“Ah. A filthy habit.”
“Who else knows I’m supposed to kill him, Yua’nev?”
The Peacemaster’s perfect, mirror-like eyes showed nothing of his thoughts. “A handful of Peacemakers. No one below Eleventh Hjai.”
Jer’ait frowned. “Give me their names.”
“Bek’kiu, Gov’aan, Gra’fei, Elv’uu, you, and I.”
All of whom could keep a secret. Jer’ait scowled, the situation making even less sense. “Who did the Trith deliver the message to? Could it have been overheard?”
“No. It came to me directly, secure-feed.” Yua’nev cocked his head. “Why? What’s going on?”
Reluctantly, Jer’ait said, “It appears you were correct in telling me he could sense Huouyt.”
Yua’nev was not amused. “Do the job, Jer’ait. This is more important than all your other targets combined. Do not allow your pride to cloud your sense.”
Jer’ait cut the feed and glared at his target.
He would wait, he decided, for the Human to be too intoxicated to run.
The Human was halfway through his seventh drink when Jer’ait’s hard grip on his neck made him stiffen. Jer’ait extruded several drops of a potent interrogation drug into his victim, then sat down beside him.
“Let’s try this again,” Jer’ait said.
The Human’s dark brown eyes registered surprise but he made no move to speak, even though they both knew he could.
Jer’ait ordered a drink from the bartender and casually took a sip as he eyed the Human. “My name is Be’shaar,” Jer’ait said. “As you probably already guessed, I am a Huouyt. I am also Va’ga-trained. Do you know what this means?”
“It means you know how to square dance,” the Human slurred.
“Oh yes,” Jer’ait said, “I’m very good at square dancing.”
The Human peered at him. “How good?”
Jer’ait set his drink down and, leaning forward so he could stare into the Human’s brown eyes, said, “The very best.”
“You’re working for my brother,” the Human whispered.
Jer’ait frowned at the Human. “You must have interesting family ties, my friend. What makes you think your brother could afford me?”
“So you’re not working for my brother?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So who are you working for?”
Jer’ait began to get irritated. “I didn’t say I wasn’t under your brother’s employ.”
“Yes you did. So who are you working for?”
Jer’ait watched the Human for several long moments, then retrieved his drink from the bar and took a sip, observing him over the glass. “I can see why so many people find you troublesome.”
The Human’s mouth fell open. “Maggie sent you?”
Calmly, Jer’ait said, “Either you are doing me an injustice by suggesting a creature like you could have enemies powerful enough to pay me for your death, or you have a very unhealthy ego.”
The Human watched Jer’ait watch him, becoming increasingly confused. “Maggie didn’t send you.”
“I never said that,” Jer’ait said, rankling.
“Yes you did.”
You’re in charge here, fool, Jer’ait reminded himself. Act like it. Jer’ait thumbed the whiskey glass, gathering up his composure. When he was ready, he met the Human’s eyes once more. “Tell me more about yourself, Joe.”
“I’m eighty-one Earth years, being assassinated, and rapidly losing my buzz.” Joe glanced at the bartender.
“He can’t help you,” Jer’ait said.
Joe gave Jer’ait an irritated look. “I need another drink.”
That surprised him. Like being paralyzed meant absolutely nothing to the Human. Then again, Jer’ait thought, if he survived Eeloir, he is probably accustomed to such things. “You want to get back to poisoning yourself.”
“Sounds like so much more fun when you put it that way.”
Jer’ait set his drink on the bar and leaned forward. “I know you’ve had experiences with my kind before, on Eeloir. Therefore, you know exactly what kinds of horrible things I can do to you, should you piss me off. I’d think very carefully about your answers from now on, Human. Each one may be your last.”
“Good, this interview is boring me anyway.”
Jer’ait had to resist the impulse to inject something more potent—something more painful—into the irritating Human’s system. Instead, he allowed no reaction to the Human’s sarcasm and said, “You ran from Congress. What did you
think we were going to do?”
“Give up,” Joe said. “Sign a few warrants, seize my assets, forget you ever tried to recall me.”
And normally, Jer’ait realized, that would have been the case. Trying a new tactic, he said, “Why did you run?”
The Human laughed. “’Cause God hates a coward.”
Jer’ait blinked at the distinctly Jreet sentiment. It seemed strange, coming from a small, bulbous-headed weakling. “What?”
“Tell you what,” the Human said, ignoring the question completely. “Tell me the drug you just used on me and I’ll tell you how I blew your cover.”
Jer’ait scanned Commander Zero’s eyes and found, to his surprise, not an ounce of fear within them. He’d heard of such things before, especially in PlanOps, but to have it happen to him was unnerving. He might as well have been interrogating another Va’gan.
“You should not be worried about the substance I used,” Jer’ait said. “I studied Human anatomy before taking this pattern. It could be any of a dozen different chemicals, all of which bring the same result. What you should be worried about is whether or not I’m going to let you live.”
“You are.”
“Oh?”
“You haven’t killed me yet,” Joe said. “And this is the wrong place to conduct an interrogation.”
“So?”
Joe sighed. “So, if I had to guess, I’d say you’re probably some poor bastard who was passing through on his way to his groundteam on Neskfaat when headquarters flagged you down to go out on a wild goose-chase for a retired old vet nobody cares about anymore because some Prime Overseer happens to carry a really long grudge.”
“You are partly right,” Jer’ait said. “Earth was a temporary stop-over and eventually, I will be going to Neskfaat to join with the rest of my groundteam.”
“Figures. That’s Congress for you, eh?” The Human sounded almost jovial. Utterly unafraid. The lack of fear grated on Jer’ait’s nerves just as much as being recognized had. “Always putting its foot in the little guy’s shit.”
