Zero Recall (53 page)
Authors: Sara King
Joe frowned at Jer’ait.
“And you know this how?”
“He’s second in command
of the Peacemakers,” Flea said, faceted eyes glinting. “He knows everything.”
“Hardly,” Daviin scoffed.
“Let me get this
straight,” Joe said. “You think this creature…this Geuji…blew up Aez and faked
the rise of a Dhasha Vahlin so he could start a Dhasha rebellion? Why do all
that, unless he planned to carve out an empire for himself? Having the Dhasha
all camp out on Neskfaat isn’t exactly the best strategy, if you get my drift.”
“I don’t know,” Jer’ait
said, frustrated. “That’s where my theory falls apart.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “So
say this Geuji blew up Aez and started the war. What does that have to do with
you coming here to kill me?”
Now for the leap of
faith. “My superior received a message from a Trith. Supposedly. It
predicted Aez’s destruction and the Dhasha insurrection.”
The Human stiffened
visibly. “So?”
“What are Trith?” Daviin
asked.
Jer’ait ignored the
Jreet. “It also predicted you would kill the Vahlin, Joe.”
“Trith are full of ash,”
Joe snapped, his face flushing in a show of Human rage.
“I don’t think it was
made by a Trith,” Jer’ait offered.
Joe opened his mouth,
then closed it again, a frown creasing his brow. “You’re saying this Geuji is
predicting I’m gonna kill a Dhasha Vahlin that doesn’t exist?”
“Yes.”
“Why would he do that?”
Flea demanded, looking from Joe to Jer’ait and back. “What’s he trying to tell
us?”
“He’s trying to tell me,”
Jer’ait said, “Not to kill Joe.”
Joe’s face darkened.
“This is stupid. Trith or no, nobody can predict the future.”
“Damn it!” Daviin boomed,
“Who are these damn Trith you keep speaking of?”
“You’ve never heard of
them?” Flea asked.
“No, damn you,” the Jreet
snarled. “What are they?”
“They see the future,”
Jer’ait said.
“No they don’t,” Joe said
stubbornly.
Daviin glanced between
them. “Well? Do they or don’t they?”
“They do,” Jer’ait said.
“They’re the only species Congress has not conquered.”
“Unless you count the
Geuji,” Flea said.
“The Geuji are
conquered,” Jer’ait said. “Only one remains to be caught. When he is, he’ll
be imprisoned with the rest of his people and the Geuji will never be heard
from again.”
Daviin had a troubled
expression on his face. “These Trith you speak of. Do they have bulbous heads
like Joe, but bigger? And they’re small, like this? Gray skin? And they
smell like unwashed cheese?”
The tension in the room
suddenly increased a thousandfold.
“They spoke to you?” Joe
asked. He sounded like he’d been punched.
“Tried to,” Daviin said.
“The Welu interrupted us.”
“What’d he say to you?”
Joe asked.
The room fell silent as
the Jreet shrugged. “Something about killing someone. I wasn’t really paying
attention.”
“What about you?” Joe
asked, looking at Jer’ait. “What did the Trith say to you?”
Jer’ait gave him a
puzzled look. “No Trith came to me.”
The Human’s eyes
narrowed. “Flea said they did.”
“No,” the Baga corrected,
“I said they were sighted in the
area
. They were also killed. All
three of them.”
Everyone stared at the
Baga. “Excuse me?” Joe finally said.
“Got it on security
footage. They all died of accidents. Like one slipped on a soapy floor, fell
down and cracked his huge ugly head open. Another one had a cooling unit fall
on him from thirty stories up when a cable snapped above him. And the last one
got run over by a haauk. And here’s the weirder thing: Like half a tic after
each accident, a couple Ooreiki walked up, grabbed them by their little feet,
and carted them off. Nobody can figure out where the bodies went. Government
doesn’t have ‘em. Overseers are stumped.”
When Jer’ait found his
breath again, he said, “So Forgotten is at war with the Trith.” He groaned.
“It makes sense.”
“Why?”
“The Trith betrayed the
Geuji, billions and billions of turns ago,” Flea said.
Daviin and Joe glanced at
Jer’ait, obviously waiting for him to confirm.
“One and a half million turns
ago,” Jer’ait amended. He tilted his head at the Baga. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
The other two waited for
him to go on. Jer’ait took a deep breath, feeling their stares like coals. “It’s
true. When the Geuji tried to peacefully break away from Congress to form a
government of their own, in a very
distant
part of the galaxy, the Trith
told Congress where to find them. Congress surprised them. Surrounded them. There
was never clear legal evidence to lock them away, but Aliphei and the Tribunal
did it anyway, then threw away the key.”
“No evidence?” Daviin
demanded. The Jreet, of course, despised a dishonorable trial like nothing
else.
“Technically, they were
illegally detained,” Jer’ait admitted. “The Geuji had never sworn oaths of
loyalty to Congress—they were too smart for that—so they technically weren’t
committing treason by attempting to form their own government.”
“Then they should be
freed,” Daviin grunted.
Jer’ait glanced up at
Daviin. “Perhaps. But it will never happen.”
Daviin bristled with
indignance. “Why not?”
“Look at what he’s
doing
,
Daviin,” the Baga said. “Jemria could crack up all of Congress without
breaking a sweat.”
“But he’s not,” Joe
said. The Human was following the conversation with an alert gleam in his eye,
and it was clear he wasn’t liking what he was hearing. “He hasn’t sicced those
Dhasha on anyone, just left them there to die.” He cocked his head. “And,
from what I hear, most of them were rebel furgs anyway, even before this whole
Neskfaat thing. You ask me, he just put them all in one place for PlanOps’
convenience.”
Which was true enough.
And that bothered Jer’ait even more. He shook his head, trying to return to
the facts. “Jemria’s after something. Something we’re not seeing. After the
Geuji were first discovered on Neskfaat, they—” Jer’ait froze.
Neskfaat
.
He swore suddenly, cursing his own blind stupidity. The other three watched
with curiosity, waiting.
Jer’ait actually had to
collect himself before he could continue. “Neskfaat,” he said softly, “was the
Geuji’s planet of origin, one and a half million turns ago.”
The Human paled. “You’re
kidding me. I thought it was a Huouyt planet.”
It was the Baga who said,
“I thought you guys knew that! You know those annoying little land-crawler
pests that are everywhere? The ones we’ve gotta check we’re not carrying in
our gear before we get back on the ship? The vaghi? The Huouyt intentionally
introduced them here. The continents used to be covered with Geuji, nothing
but slime-mold as far as the eye could see. Then the Huouyt set the vaghi
loose and the vaghi ate them all. Well, all but a couple. A Jahul gave his
life to protect a few of them. Fought the vaghi off with stones. Saved the
species, extracted them to ships. It’s in the
history books
, guys,
don’t you
read
?”
“Oh burn me,” Joe said.
To Jer’ait, he said, “Is this Geuji sootwad doing a reenactment or something?”
“If it was a
reenactment,” Jer’ait said slowly, “I’m pretty sure our troops would have been
eaten alive by vaghi, not ripped to shreds by Dhasha.”
“But it’s a message,” Joe
said.
“Clearly,” Daviin
growled. The Jreet looked upset, his big fists tensing at his sides. For all
their arrogance and battle-hardened rages, Jreet had a soft spot for
misfortune.
“So, what, this is a war
against the Trith?” Joe asked, sounding incredulous. “I don’t see it. Where
are all the little gray corpses? Three dead hardly constitutes a war.”
“Three dead is more than
Congress ever managed in all of its existence,” Jer’ait said. “Besides, how
else do you explain Forgotten killing all the Trith except for the one who
visited the one creature who’d never kill you?”
“Two,” the Baga said
proudly. “They met with me, too.”
“And what did they say?”
Daviin demanded.
“They said Joe would
destroy the world,” Flea said.
Jer’ait froze.
“What?”
“Flea,” Jer’ait said.
“You know a Trith cannot lie.”
“Yeah. So?”
Jer’ait lifted his gaze
to stare at the Human, awe and fear suddenly warring within him.
“Oh, get over it,” Joe
snapped at him. “They’re fucking with me.”
“But why you?” Daviin
demanded. “Why would they only fuck with
you
, Joe?”
“Damned if I know,” Joe
growled, looking livid, now. To all appearances, their Prime wanted to put his
fist through something’s face, preferably something small and gray. “They did
it on Kophat and they’re doing it again. I don’t know why.” He
sounded…pissed. Not at all reverential or humbled that the Trith had found him
worthy of their words. Just…pissed.
And, in that moment,
seeing his Prime’s rage for what it was, the truth hit Jer’ait like a Congressional
freighter. He felt his
breja
curl in a cold, clammy wave. In a soft
breath of awe, he whispered, “He’s a vortex.”
“By this point, Jer’ait
will have told the others what he’s learned.”
“You allow Jer’ait to know
about our plans?!” Rri’jan cried.
“No, fool. They won’t be
able to put that together. But they’ll suspect I’m behind the Dhasha
rebellion, as well as Aez’s bombing.”
“And this doesn’t hinder
your plans?”
“Absolutely not. They
won’t connect me with a future attack on Mekkval. It’s beyond their
capabilities.”
“So this next tunnel crawl…if
your two groups are still alive at the end of it, will it be time to send them
against him?”
“No,” Forgotten said.
“The two that survive this crawl will need to go down one more time. We only
need one team.”
“Only two will survive?”
Rri’jan asked, curious. “Out of eighty? What are you doing to them this
time?”
“I’m not giving them a
ride home.”
#
As the shuttle
entered Neskfaat’s atmosphere, Joe wondered how many of the eighty remaining
teams would die this time. Looking out the window at the corpses that matted
the ground beneath them, he guessed a lot.
They give us
one day,
Joe thought, disgusted.
One ashing day. Didn’t even bother to
give Jer’ait a
kasja. Remembering the way the Huouyt Overseer had given
Jer’ait a disgusted look when he found out Jer’ait had made the kill, he
bristled. He was angry, but as of yet had said nothing to his friends. They
were indignant Jer’ait had not received his fair reward, but Joe was pretty
sure no one other than Jer’ait had put together what was really going on.
That afternoon,
under the watchful eyes of Daviin and the Baga both, Jer’ait had administered a
drug that had taken away Joe’s shakes as if they never existed. For that
alone, Jer’ait deserved a kasja.
They’re not
even bothering to hide it anymore,
Joe thought, disgusted.
They don’t
expect us to live.
He glanced at his friends.
Instead of
dicing, Flea and Daviin were sitting across from each other, scowling at each
other as if somebody had been caught cheating, each intensely focused on his
opponent. They’d been sitting that way for the last two hours, and the four
hours before that, back in the barracks. Flea had flown backwards to get on
the shuttle in order to continue staring the Jreet down.
“Guys,” Joe
warned.
“Shh!” Flea
snapped. “Ka-par.”
Joe narrowed his
eyes. “You’re burning me, right?”
“The Baga will
bow to me,” Daviin said, continuing to give Flea his full predatory attention.
“Once and for all.”
“He’s just
trying to get that last batch of credits back,” Flea retorted, faceted eyes
still locked on Daviin’s face. “I won
big
last night, Joe.
Billions
.”
Joe groaned and glanced
over at Galek, a little unnerved at the way Jer’ait’s drugs seemed to have made
him…more relaxed. Even when a gun had gone off in the staging area before
getting on a shuttle, Joe hadn’t even gotten a tingle of alarm. On one hand,
it was good to be without fear. On the other hand, he hated feeling like his
survival instincts were being blunted.
Which is more
important?
Joe wondered.
Instincts or a lack of fear?
Remembering
the way he’d almost gotten them all killed in that last damn crawl, he decided
it was a lack of fear…at least until he could find some way to permanently
rewire that part of his brain.
Under his
prolonged stare, Galek gave him a nervous grin and went back to the reader on
his lap. The Ooreiki was the only other one on the ship who wore a biosuit
besides Joe. Despite the Baga’s attempts to get Galek to dice with him the
night before, however, the Ooreiki had ignored him completely, and had been
quietly studying the map of their landing zone for hours.
Across the
shuttle, the Huouyt was naked, as was necessary for him to take a new pattern.
The Grekkon had to keep the glands upon his bulbous rear free of obstruction,
the Baga couldn’t fly while wearing one, and Daviin didn’t need one, and
wouldn’t wear it if he did.
“
All right,
”
Joe said. “
We make this fast. I want us down that tunnel within a tic, got
me?
”
The armored
doors of the shuttle hissed open and Joe tensed, expecting sniper fire.
Nothing.