Zero's Return (7 page)

To their credit,
they didn’t fidget.  The only sound was that of the wind whipping in their
battalion colors and the scuffs and clicks of the photographers getting their
pics of Zero ‘training’ yet another wave of Human recruits.

Joe took a deep
breath, put on his Zero mask, and barked, “I hear you furgs wanna be PlanOps!”

Immediately,
nine hundred voices shouted, “Kkee oora!”

“Oh yeah?” Joe
started stalking down the line, looking them up and down with every ounce of
disapproval he could muster.  “What’d they do, send me
niish
?”

Like thunder,
his response was, “Anan oora!”

“Yeah, well.” 
Joe did a circuit, then went down the lines, taking time to look at every
face.  “We’ll see.”  This was the part that was legendary about his speeches. 
He made them all sweat.  Every single one of them.  And with good reason.  If
they couldn’t cut it, he wasn’t going to pass them on to go get their comrades
killed.

“You’re missing
teeth, furg,” Joe said, stopping to peer at a smaller, freckled male recruit. 
“You ain’t grown in your adult ones yet?”

“Anan oora,” the
kid mumbled, still staring straight ahead.

Great,
Joe thought.  Human teeth, unlike the rest of a body’s anatomy, stubbornly
stuck to a more normal growth schedule, despite Congressional attempts to
bypass it.  He was probably looking at an eight-year-old. 
Burning great.

“How old are
you?” Joe demanded.

That made the
kid flinch.  “Seven turns, sir.”

Ash
.  Joe
would have asked more, but he heard a snicker from somewhere down the line.

“You,” Joe
snapped, swiveling on a massive, burly recruit with a smug grin on his face. 
“Get your sootbag ass out of my line.”

The burly kid’s
grin dropped.  For a moment, he just stood there.

“You
deaf
?”
Joe demanded.  “Go clean toilets, furg.  PlanOps doesn’t want you.”

The startled,
bull-necked kid gave Joe a look of panic.  “But I was the best rifleman in my
regiment—”

“You think I
give a Dhasha flake how well you shoot?” Joe barked.  “PlanOps works as a
team
. 
You can’t work with the team, you get yourself and everyone else killed.  Now
get outta here.  I can teach people how to shoot.  I can’t teach them not to be
stupid.”

And so it went,
Joe wandering the ranks, weeding out the ones who snickered or twitched or just
gave Joe a bad feeling.  The Overseer and commanders never questioned his
decisions, just grabbed the kids and led them off, utterly secure in their
faith that Zero knew what he was doing.  And Joe, because he could get away
with it, sent home the ones who reminded him of people he had once known.  He
sent home the innocent kids that reminded him of Maggie, the nervous ones who
had scared hazel eyes like Elf, the happy ones who had laugh-dimples like
Scott, the stubborn ones who challenged him like Monk.  He left the ones who
reminded him of Libby, though.  Those got to stay every time.

When Joe was
finally finished, he went back to face the front of the now much-thinned ranks.

“So.  You think
you’re worthy of PlanOps just ‘cause some bureaucrat liked your paperwork?” he
demanded at those who remained.  Joe looked the perfectly straight columns of
black-clad recruits up and down in open disgust.  “You’re not.  Take a look at
the Congies in front of you.”  He gestured to the Overseer and commanders in
charge of his PlanOps regiment.  “These unlucky furglings volunteered to train
you. 
They
are worthy of wearing the PlanOps tattoo. 
You
undisciplined sootbags are just boots who wanted to be heroes.”  Joe stopped
pacing and rounded suddenly to face the straight-faced ranks of kids.  To their
credit, they never flinched when the legendary Zero scowled at them like they’d
just stolen his favorite PPU.  Inwardly, Joe felt a pang of regret, knowing
that most of these grounders weren’t going to make it past their first battle. 

Kids,
he
thought. 
They’re just kids.
  He forced that down and went on, “The men
and women behind me have been through hell and survived.  Some have even spent
forty, fifty, even sixty turns burning up Congress’s enemies.  They were
generous enough to want to share their knowledge with you pathetic, useless furgs. 
So pay attention.  Watch your superior officers.  Do what they tell you.  Learn
what they have to teach, and maybe you’ll come out of your first battle
alive.”  Joe looked them all over one last time, then said, “Now go to chow,
get signed into the barracks, and find something productive to do with your
inadequate asses until 05:00 tomorrow morning, when your real work begins. 
Dismissed.”

It wasn’t his
most graceful speech, but by the way the starry-eyed Battlemasters he’d
‘passed’ broke up in an awed daze afterwards, he guessed it had worked anyway. 
It was a running joke in the Human Ground Corps that Commander Zero could go
into any Congressional cafeteria, unbutton his fly, piss in the nuajan machine,
and Congress would rush to charge extra.  Joe, who spent each night alienated
and alone, who had no close friends to share drinks with because he couldn’t
stand the outright hero-worship, no lovers because every possible candidate had
seen his picture heroically stomping on Dhasha skulls or squashing Huouyt zora
with his boot, was fighting the urge to test the cafeteria theory just about
daily.  In fact, he felt so far removed from the legend of Zero that it didn’t
even seem like the same person to him anymore, just some usurper that had
stolen his life and made him miserable.

“Excellent
speech, Director Zero!” a man with three inner circles of a Secondary Overseer
said to him, beaming with a huge, official smile.  All around them, cameras
flashed as he approached and, with exaggerated care and pause, held out his
hand for Joe to shake.

Prick,
Joe thought immediately.  He hated to be called ‘Director’ anything.  After
Forgotten blew up Aez, Joe had been assigned to ‘lead’ an interspecies
kill-squad composed mainly of Dhasha and Jreet tasked to take out the Aezi
Prime Sentinel Raavor ga Aez and his misdirected—and fiercely loyal—crew of
renegade Sentinels.  Somehow, Joe had not only inexplicably stayed alive, but
had kept some of the Dhasha
and
Jreet on his own team alive, as well,
and that feat had apparently impressed the bureaucrats enough that they had
belatedly offered him Phoenix’s ill-begotten Corps Directorship.  The
kasja
that came with it hadn’t mentioned subduing the Aezi rebels or helping Flea
uncover yet another Huouyt conspiracy—it had been given to him for ‘uniting
great warriors with extreme differences using pitiable natural resources.’ 
Something that, of course, had only added to his legend.  He hadn’t received
his commendation for stopping a Congress-wide war or saving the Ze’laa family
or the surviving Aezi from extermination.  He had gotten it because he managed
to convince a Dhasha and a Jreet not to kill each other over who got to sleep
on which side of the transport ship.

Accepting his
Corps Directorship had been done with more than a little righteous
vindication—and it was the worst mistake Joe had ever made.  He had hated the
office, and after one and a half turns of driving a desk while his friends and
peers were off fighting battles and getting themselves killed, Joe had gone to the
Galactic Corps Director and asked her nicely for a demotion.  When that hadn’t
worked—and she’d given him a line of soot about Congress needing its heroes to
lead the next generation—Joe had punched her in the face.

They probably
would have left him driving a desk after that, anyway, but Joe had then
intercepted and disabled a four-member Jreet Directorate squad that had been
sent to babysit him under the guise of ‘bodyguards,’ stolen a ship at gunpoint,
gone AWOL, shown up on Rastari with a biosuit and plasma rifle, and had
incapacitated or assimilated the first, second, and third Peacemaker team that
had been sent to retrieve him.  All the while, he was killing renegade Jikaln,
Hebbut, and Dreit; leading a hand-picked multi-species groundteam through the
mountainous woodlands of Rastari; and taking over and commanding a besieged
Congressional outpost in his spare time, holding it against all odds and
turning the tide on yet another war.

After that,
Congress left him alone.  Joe wasn’t quite sure what his official rank was
anymore, since they had stopped paying him around the same time he’d busted the
Galactic Corps Director’s prissy snub nose, but everyone except the hardcore
bureaucrats simply called him ‘Commander Zero.’  To the people who drove desks
or spent their time rubbing elbows with fame and fortune, however, he was
always ‘Director Zero.’  It was one of the first and easiest ways for Joe to
tell if he was dealing with honest-to-God hero worship or an ambitious
sleazeball looking for a leg up.  

The man standing
in front of him, as if the fake grin, posing for the cameras, and plaster-cast
courtesy wasn’t a dead giveaway, had already named himself the scum of the
Corps with his officially-brisk-but-oozing-fake-cheerfulness ‘Director Zero,’
spoken in the overly friendly tone that made Joe’s guts twist with the need to
punch something.  Joe continued to ignore the Secondary Overseer, pretending to
analyze the recruits as they departed, hoping the leech would take a hint and
go away.

He didn’t.  The
man continued standing there, hand out like he expected Joe to take it, a
stupid, sycophantic smile on his face.  Because Joe had
ascended
. 
Because he’d left the Corps behind.  Because he’d survived two unsurvivable
wars.  Because he’d road-burned a Dhasha and lived to tell about it.  Because
he’d turned three squads of Peacemakers to fight with him.  Because he was
alive
. 

Joe wasn’t a
mortal to them anymore.  Mortals died.  Mortals got paid.  Gods got worshipped.

When he was
bored, Joe wondered what kind of robotic Joe Dobbs Congress would fabricate to
continue his legend once he finally put Jane to good use.  Congress, after all,
couldn’t have its legends dying on it.  Bad publicity.  When he was really
bored, Joe wondered if his double was already built, and whether it was getting
his paycheck.

Though, aside
from a little bitterness that he was perpetually stuck doing Congress’s work
for free, the lack of rank and pay didn’t affect Joe overly much.  Three
billion credits went a long way, especially when he’d finally wised up and put
his last billion into the hands of a Bajnan stockbroker.  Now, effectively
rankless and jobless, Joe took whatever Human assignment he wanted, whenever he
wanted it, with Congress kissing his ass every step of the way.  He was
actually doing an old friend from Rastari a favor in going back to Torat and
taking on the current load of recruits, since she had a younger sister in the
batch and she wanted Joe to help get the kid up to snuff before they shipped
her off somewhere nasty, like Dravus or L-4. 

Yet another
reason Joe had to keep putting Jane off.  Some friend’s little sister.  Great. 
He wondered how many little sisters there were out there, and how many of them
he was going to end up ‘training’ in order to put off the inevitable.

Apparently, the
Secondary Overseer organizing that morning’s formation didn’t notice Joe’s
dismissive grunt or the fact Joe never took his hand, because the man’s
sycophantic smile never twitched.  He dropped his arm back to his side.  “Will
you be coming to join us for dinner in the officer’s club tonight?” the
grinning furg asked.

“I eat alone,
Overseer…” Joe squinted at the guy’s nametag.  “Death.”  He blinked and raised
a brow.  “Death?  Really?”

The sycophantic
smile slipped a little at the sarcasm in Joe’s voice.  “It is customary for
Overseers and above to choose their own monikers.”

“Yeah,” Joe
snorted.  “But
Death
?  Come on, man.  You got raisins for balls?”

Even as the
Secondary Overseer was bristling, a curvy Prime Commander stepped up to him and
said, “Nothing escapes Death.”  She winked at Joe.  “Unless you’re the burning
First Citizen.  Death’s got some good stories, if you care to hear them.  Join
us for chow, Commander?”

Joe gave her
voluptuous body a less-than-polite once-over, then grunted at her, too.  “I eat
alone.”

The Secondary
Overseer muttered something impolite and turned to leave.  Joe thought he heard
‘drunken asher’ under the guy’s breath, but he wasn’t sure.  And, frankly,
didn’t care.

“How about
dinner for two, then?” the woman asked, once the Overseer was out of earshot. 
Her smile had broken and there was curiosity in her eyes more than anything
else.

“Sorry,” Joe
said.  “Not interested.”  He’d actually come to enjoy his quiet-time at night. 
It was one of the few times he didn’t have to worry about turning a corner and
running into the paparazzi.  Peacemaker propagandists
loved
his ass, and
paid top dollar for a good pic.

Then, at the
woman’s flicker of disappointment, he realized he was turning down a date with
a pretty lady because he wanted to play yet another game of solitaire with Jim
Beam. 
I’m getting to be an old man,
he thought, with a start. 
Congressional drugs and rejuvenation put his body physiologically at about
thirty to thirty-five Earth-years of age, but after so many pretty young girls
with hero-worship in their eyes hadn’t even so much as made his cock twitch,
he’d long ago begun to wonder if he even still had charges in his pistol.

Still, he’d
learned the hard way—again and again—that Congie women just couldn’t see past
the motivational vids, the heroic poses, the recruitment posters, the legends. 
They didn’t care about
him
.  They cared about his friend in the
Tribunal.  They cared that he had once been Prime to the current Peacemaster,
who still visited him whenever his duties brought him through the area.  They
cared that he had been one of only two legendary Humans to have survived Eeloir
and
Neskfaat, and was the only one officially still alive.  They cared
that he owned a yacht, and had Bajnan brokers overlooking a dozen different
bank accounts on Eeloir.