by Sara King
The Jreet was staring at him, Galek’s severed appendages hanging limply from his claws. A Huouyt was with him, one odd purple eye watching Joe with disdain.
“‘Woe to the Takki the day the Dhasha stubs his toe,’” the Huouyt intoned. “You wake up during surgery, Commander?”
Joe scanned the Huouyt’s face. “My thirty-two shattered bones had nothing to do with this. The little fool was going to spit on me.”
“Of course.” The Huouyt continued to watch him smugly.
Joe shoved his toe under the Baga’s flattened corpse and flicked it toward Be’shaar with his boot. “Get this dumb prick to medical.”
“It was just an arm,” the Huouyt said, ignoring Joe’s command. “He could grow it back.”
“Believe me,” Joe said, “you’ll thank me later.”
All around him, other barracks inhabitants were staring at him. Even Galek, whose truncated arm still dripped sticky brown Ooreiki blood onto the floor, looked at Joe like he’d lost his mind. “You didn’t need to do that,” the Ooreiki whispered.
They’re all questioning me. Furious, Joe tossed the energy cartridges on the floor beside the broken Baga and headed for the door before he said something he regretted.
“Where are you going?” the Jreet asked, blocking his path with an arm that might as well have been made of half-dig rebar.
Joe merely followed the arm up to the Jreet’s face and waited.
The Jreet lowered his arm and looked away.
“The doctors will have questions,” Be’shaar said, nodding at the Baga.
“Tell them the truth,” Joe said. “He pissed me off. Oh, and while you’re there, get your chip synched up with our com system. If the Baga doesn’t have one, have them put one in while they fix him up.”
The Huouyt watched him with a strange expression oozing from his odd purple eye.
Joe turned back, frowning. “What?”
“Va’gan Huouyt do not get chipped.”
“What?” Joe frowned at yet another mention that the Huouyt was supposedly Va’gan-trained. “You’re getting chipped.”
“Check the rulebook. We are exempt.”
Joe frowned. “Exempt? Why?”
“Be content to know that we do not.”
“Like hell,” Joe snapped. “You’ll get a chip if I tell you to get a chip. The last thing we’re gonna do is go down a deep den and not be able to communicate with each other.”
“Legally, you cannot order me to do that.” The Huouyt seemed utterly at ease. “Congress has so few Va’gans sign up for service—they’re willing to make a few sacrifices to keep us.”
“So you’d get us all killed because you don’t like surgery?” Joe demanded. He took a step towards the Huouyt. “Try this, smartass. You get chipped or you aren’t going.”
The Huouyt looked completely unaffected by his statement. “Further, you cannot discharge me based on my refusal. Look it up, if you do not believe me.”
Looking into the Huouyt’s flat, alien stare, Joe felt his mood deteriorating. Damn the Regency bureaucrats. A million turns of experience, and yet they couldn’t leave Planetary Ops the hell alone. They had to go mucking it all up. As if a Huouyt would ever work well with anything, much less a goddamn Human. And a Jreet? Taking orders from anything but a bigger Jreet? It was ludicrous.
“Fine,” Joe told the Huouyt. “You can stay. If you don’t get a chip, I’ll just find something very important for you to do in the barracks while the rest of us are down in the tunnels.” He glanced at the other members of his team, the maimed Ooreiki and the flattened Baga, then put his hand to his head, the implications of commanding a multi-species groundteam still staggering him. “Damn I need a drink.” He turned to go find one.
The Huouyt stepped in front of him, cutting off his escape. “Jim Beam has cancelled his future appointments, Commander.” The Jreet joined him, putting his huge ruby body between Joe and the door. Seeing them work together to undermine him, Joe began to seethe inside.
“Get out of my way.”
The Jreet didn’t move. “I want back on the team.”
Joe looked up into the Jreet’s sincere golden eyes. “Not a chance.”
The Jreet held steady, though his diamond-shaped head lowered in defeat.
“Move,” Joe growled.
“Where are you going?” the Huouyt asked.
Joe’s fury built as he looked from the Jreet to the Huouyt, acutely aware that he couldn’t make them move. Every moment that he, the legendary Commander Zero, stood there, stymied by his own groundteam, he lost respect with both his groundteam and Planetary Ops in general. He glanced over Daviin’s bulk at the observers in the hall, who were still watching the proceedings with interest. Obviously, they thought someone was about to die. A lot of that had been happening lately, if Joe’s surgeons could be believed.
Only the Grekkon, whose horse-sized, insect-like body was crouched in a corner, didn’t appear to care about any of the goings on. His four beady black eyes continued to stare at the wall. He hadn’t even attempted to stop the Baga from chewing off the Ooreiki’s arm. As far as Joe knew, he hadn’t even twitched.
Keeping his voice as level as possible, Joe turned back to Be’shaar and said, “I’m doing some reconnaissance.”
“You mean you go to poison yourself?” The Huouyt snorted. “Why bother paying? I could accomplish the same for free, plus it won’t get you killed when the squads find you breaking the code.”
“A few drinks isn’t illegal,” Joe snarled.
“No, but being inebriated in a time of war is.” The Jreet had recovered, and now he sounded like a man chastising a child.
“I’m not going to break the goddamn code,” Joe snapped.
“You want to mourn your brother, go ahead and tell me,” Be’shaar said. “I’ll make you feel miserable quite a bit faster than a few shots of alcohol.”
Joe prickled at the way the Huouyt so casually threatened to drug him. Huouyt drugged creatures they didn’t respect. He tore his eyes away from the Huouyt, realizing that it was the Jreet he needed to convince. With the Jreet’s huge ruby body still blocking the door, he wasn’t getting out of there without his cooperation.
“I’m on duty,” Joe told the Voran. “I don’t drink on duty.”
The Jreet immediately relaxed and pulled away from the door. “My apologies, Commander.” He sounded utterly contrite. Rounding on Be’shaar, the Jreet snapped, “You see, Huouyt? You question him needlessly. A true warrior would not drop his spear before a battle.” That the Jreet was so trusting left Joe feeling ashamed.
The Huouyt continued to stare at him with his screwed-up eyes.
Suspicious bastard, Joe thought. He shoved past the both of them and went to find something to take his mind off his brother’s upcoming execution. Over his shoulder, he shouted, “And find another groundteam, Jreet. It’s the last time I’m going to tell you. You’re wasting your time.”
At his back, the Jreet said nothing.
Joe went into town fully intending to stay dry. He coasted the streets, spoke with the nervous grounders about the upcoming tunnel crawl, patted a few backs, offered a bit of wisdom or an anecdote here and there, even found another Prime and spent an hour with the Jahul discussing the mission on Neskfaat.
In the end, however, Joe sat on a stool by himself, the vidscreen in the bar in front of him tuned to Earth’s news frequency.
“…execution of the most wanted criminal in Earth’s history. Spectators are already lining up outside the central plaza, hoping for a good view of what is sure to be—”
Joe shut off the newscast and took another drink. They were executing Sam in two hours. Even if Joe hopped on the first shuttle he found, he would never get there in time.
My fault, he thought. I got Sam caught.
Joe slammed a fist into the bar, drawing looks from several broad-faced Hebbut down the row. He glared at them until they looked away.
Got Sam killed and what do I have t
o show for it? A groundteam that’s gonna kill itself before it even smells a Dhasha. He snorted and took another drink, relishing the way the alcohol burned on the way down. I can’t do this.
The Jreet had shattered his spine with one swipe of its arm. The Baga had tried to fuse his face together when he tried to stop him from maiming the Ooreiki. The Huouyt had outright refused to obey him. Even Galek, the youngest and most open to having a Human in command, had no qualms with questioning him in front of everyone. A boot, for Mothers’ sakes.
Joe knew he didn’t stand a chance. He was smaller, weaker, lighter, and, in the Huouyt’s case, stupider.
Closing his eyes, Joe downed another whiskey, trying not to listen to the news feeds, trying not to think of Sam.
His team had automatically thought him cruel when he flattened the Baga. The Huouyt had asked him if he were taking out his frustrations like a spoiled child. The Ooreiki, who had just lost an arm, had given him a look like he’d lost his mind. Miserable, Joe knew he would continue to receive the same treatment as long as he did not have their respect.
But how did he gain an alien’s respect? If they’d been Human, he would have started on a common ground. He would have shared common strengths and weaknesses. He would have established a rapport, exchanged stories of women and home, taught them little tricks with their weapons, and told jokes about aliens in their native language of Earth, so the aliens couldn’t understand them.
Yet his new groundmates weren’t Human. They came from different planets, had different breeding habits, spoke different languages, and used different weapons.
They were the aliens Joe and his grounders used to joke about.
When Sam stepped out onto the platform, the crowd in the bar cheered. Joe’s fingers tightened on his glass. When a brutish Ooreiki shoved Sam to his knees and forced his head to the block, Joe lowered his eyes to the tabletop.
When the other Humans in the bar let out a ragged cheer, Joe cried.
#
Eight whiskeys later, Joe was still in tears, regaling the bartender with the story of how he’d saved his brother from the Draft, and had gotten taken to Kophat in Sam’s place. The Ueshi bartender was nodding in all the right places, but Joe could tell he didn’t believe a word of it. He became emphatic, motioning with his arms as he told of his training, his time as a Dhasha slave, the fight with Na’leen and his Jreet. In the middle of his tale, he knocked over his drink and wondered disgustedly if he’d have to pay for it.
“Look,” the Ueshi bartender finally said, shoving another glass full of amber liquid at him, “You ain’t weaseling any free drinks tonight. Maybe other guys’ve fallen for it, but I’m not stupid. You’re a Human, but that’s the end of the similarity. You’re a drunk. Zero’s a warrior. You can have this last one, but any more furgsoot and I’ll have you kicked out.”
Joe sobered as the Ueshi walked away. All around him, aliens were laughing. He stared at his drink, unable to tug his eyes away. Then, furious, he slapped it across the table, showering half the bar with glass and whiskey.
“That’s it!” the Ueshi snapped. He motioned two Ooreiki to grab Joe, then they continued to hold him as the Ueshi dug in his pockets for his credit stub and dialed in a number six times what Joe owed and pressing Joe’s finger to the confirmation screen. When Joe protested, one of the Ooreiki doubled him over with a blow to the gut.
“Well, what do you know,” the Ueshi said, smugly tucking the credit stub back into Joe’s pocket. “You really are Zero. Now get him out of here. Right out front, where the squads can find him.”
The Ooreiki dumped Joe in the street outside the bar, badly scraping his knees and face on the concrete. After the others left, one of the Ooreiki pooled beside Joe and began easing his Planetary Ops jacket from his back.
“No,” Joe mumbled, trying to fight.
“For your own good,” the Ooreiki said. “This is Jeelsiht, not Kaleu. Corps Director’s ordered squads out in every city to enforce the code. The squads saw you like this, they’d kill you as an example. Wouldn’t matter how many kasjas you have, Commander. Now keep that tattoo out of sight and go get an antidote. They sell them at Jei’Jei’s Liquids, right down the street. Come back when you’re all sobered up and your jacket’ll be in my locker. If I’m not here, just ask the Ueshi at the bar.”
The Ooreiki finished removing the jacket and stood once more. He folded Joe’s jacket under his arm and disappeared back inside the bar.
Joe lay there shivering in the filth, staring down at the bloody pavement.
Sam was dead. He had seen his headless corpse, hefted up by one foot, naked, hung by a crane so the entire Times Square could see it.
Sam was dead, and Joe had done it.
Slowly, he picked himself up and began wandering the streets.
I got my brother killed. The shame ate at him like worms roiling in his insides. I led the Peacemakers right to him.
After everything else that had happened to him—losing Sam, his groundteam’s disdain, Maggie’s constant betrayals—Joe felt as if his soul had been worn down.
He wandered down the street, intending to find Jei’Jei’s Liquids and acquire an antidote before heading back to the barracks, but when he stopped outside the store, he saw a squad taking a break inside. Six Jikaln warriors, their naturally chameleon-like bodies blending with the racks of liquids as they padded along the rows on all fours, the neon green lights of the store gleaming off their teeth and claws.
Joe slid into an alley across the store and waited.
Tics went by, five or ten, Joe couldn’t tell, and still the squad remained.
An elderly Jahul, stinking despite the heavy scent of soap, scuttled into the alley with him and prodded him with one of its six feet. “They do this before every mission. You better go, son. That squad ain’t gonna leave. Even if it looks like they left, they still there. Tryin’ ta catch guys like you.” His marble-like black eyes shifted to the luminescent tattoo on Joe’s right palm, upraised for all to see.
Joe grunted and closed his fist. “Thanks.”
The Jahul hesitated in the alley. “You want a ride home? I got time to take you anywhere in Dayut. Congie barracks, methinks?”
Joe dreaded the look the Huouyt would give him when he arrived drunken and bloody. “No. I’ll walk it off.”
The Jahul eyed him. “Your purification system is equipped to handle such a high dose?”
“It’ll handle it,” Joe muttered. “Just get out of here.”
“Son—” the Jahul began.
“Go!”
With a reluctant glance over its shoulder, the wet-skinned, six-legged Jahul climbed aboard his haauk and left.
Joe got to his feet and stumbled into the light. One of the Jikaln inside the shop looked his way, but made no motions to follow. Joe began to wander, wondering how he’d managed to be so stupid.
I just watched Sam die, he thought as he walked. I just watched him die and it was my fault. I should have stopped them. I owed it to him to stop them.
The longer he was on the streets, the worse he felt. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t take it anymore. Joe stopped in the first bar he found and ordered another whiskey. He drank it in silence, shame boring into his soul. I should have stopped them. Once he finished his drink, he ordered three more.
Joe felt yet another set of bouncers dropping him onto the cold stone street outside by the time he finally succumbed to oblivion.
CHAPTER 10: A Stubborn Piji Shell
“Then where is he, Jreet?” The Huouyt assassin made a lazy gesture at the open door. “Please, enlighten me.”
“He’s doing what he said he would,” Daviin retorted. “Reconnaissance.”
Jer’ait snorted. “You’re a furg.”
“He said he didn’t drink on duty,” Daviin said, growing irritated.
“He was lying.”
Daviin prickled. “Why do you think so little of him?”
“Because he was lying, furg,” the Huouyt sn
arled. “He left the barracks with every intention of drinking himself into a stupor. He has a chemical dependency. I recognize the symptoms.”
Daviin prickled. “His file said nothing about a dependency.”
“He developed it when he got his brother arrested. It’s why he kept going back to those bars on Earth. It’s the only reason we could find him.”
“He got his brother arrested?” Daviin gave him a curious frown.
“He was a criminal, being tried for treason,” Jer’ait said. “Execution was today.”
Daviin flinched, realizing he would be sentenced to another level of hell for interfering in a matter of blood-debt. “They were going to kill his brother? Is that why he went AWOL?”
“I suppose during his sober moments he was probably trying to make a plan to save him, yes,” Jer’ait admitted.
“Why didn’t you say something?” Daviin demanded. “We could’ve helped him!”
Jer’ait laughed. “You know who I am.”
“Yes. Exactly my point.”
“You know who I work for.”
“One’s brothers must come before one’s country,” the Jreet intoned. “Without a tribe, you are nothing.”
“Huouyt do not have tribes,” Jer’ait retorted. “We have ourselves and we have our employer. I have a job to kill the Vahlin. It is Huouyt code that I must remain loyal to my employer until I’ve finished the job I accepted of him.”
Daviin snorted. “That code is Dhasha flake.”
“It is the only code we live by.”
“The regen medicine from his operation would have removed the dependency from his system,” Daviin said. “He went to gather intelligence.”
“It’s mental, Jreet,” the Huouyt said. “Our fearless leader has succumbed to the pressures of his job. He’s nothing but a lying, useless cur.”
Daviin’s body tightened into constriction position. Coldly, he said, “You’re wrong.” He had seen something better. Something that had made him wish to swear allegiance to his damned soft hide.
