Zero's Return (6 page)

Before he knew
what had happened, Fred had been teleported back to his room. 

“Watcher,” Fred
said, in desperation, “I need to confer with my colleagues.”  He went to the
door, but found it locked.

The Watcher
remained silent to his pleas.  When Fred went to the wall in desperation, he
found that his incoming feeds were blank.

As the
Representative of Earth, he was, until he could prove otherwise, guilty.

CHAPTER
3 – The Legend of Zero

Joe cracked his
eyes open to the stale taste of vomit and the sour stench of partially-digested
whiskey.  He stared up at the dirty ceiling through a pounding headache and
listened to himself breathe.  The ache in his temples reminded him of Jane. 
He’d bought her illicit body seven turns ago on the Jahul blackmarket prior to
landing on Der’ru, and not even Daviin knew of her existence.  Joe had
purchased her dangerous curves and cold, sexy beauty for one purpose, and
only
one purpose, and Joe could almost
feel
her impatience with each day he
put her off.  Even then, she called to him from the other side of the bed,
begging him to slide his hand over her ebony lines, wrap his fingers around
her, tug her out into the light…

Not this
morning
, he thought. 
This morning, you’ve gotta give a pep-talk to a
bunch of jenfurgling kids.

Which was true
enough.  He couldn’t easily kill himself on a new batch of recruits’ first day
in PlanOps and die with a clear conscience.  Talk about an excellent way to
traumatize the starry-eyed furgs.  Yeah, Jane could wait.

Then that jaded,
smartass side of him kicked into gear and gave a bitter laugh. 
You’re just
putting off the inevitable.  Who cares if you blow your brains out on their
first day or their tenth day?  You’re just being an ashing slavesoul again. 
Get it over with, Joe.  You’ve served your time.  You shouldn’t have to deal
with this soot anymore.  Stop being a Takki skulker and get it over with.

And he was,
too.  It was the two thousand and eleventh standard day that he’d left Jane
under her pillow instead of letting her serve her purpose.  Two thousand and
eleven days.  Just over six turns.

Joe continued to
stare at the ceiling.  He didn’t need to look at the clock to know it said
05:31.  He always woke six tics before his alarm went off, to the second.  It
was a habit leftover from his training in Planetary Ops, one that he’d done his
damndest to shake, but to no avail.

The bed beside
him was cold, the soulmate that the lying vaghi of a fortuneteller had promised
him still not making herself known.  He squeezed his eyes shut as he heard the
conversation in that tent once more.

“You will
have a soulmate.”

“Really? 
What’s her name?”

“She doesn’t
have a name.”

“O-kaaay. 
Uh.  Where’s she live?”

“She hasn’t
been born yet.”

Remembering
that, Joe felt his left hand shaking under the covers.  After seventy-four
turns of fighting and bleeding for Congress, she still hadn’t shown up.  He
still spent his nights alone, his days trailed by a dozen soulless furgs with
cameras, with Overseers and Directors by the hundreds smiling to his face while
they secretly wondered how they could best position themselves to get a good
picture with the universe’s beloved Zero.  Drinking buddy—and former ward—of a
Jreet Representative.  Personal friend to the Peacemaster himself.  Survivor of
two unsurvivable battles.  The monkey who shat gold and killed Dhasha.

Joe clenched his
shaking hand into a fist, aching inside.  He’d never felt so isolated in his
life.  Even with every new Human recruit taught to memorize his every battle,
his every inane comment, his every stupid thing he’d ever done, Joe had never
felt more alone than he did right then.  It was like a pall that was settling
over his soul, darkening it.

She lied
,
he thought, in anguish.  It had been one of the few things he’d hoped for, one
of the few things he’d allowed himself to look forward to in the damned
prophecy that had come to rule his life.  Those five simple words. 
You will
have a soulmate.

He’d ushered in
a new Age.  He’d had a Jreet rip out his still-beating heart.  He’d befriended
an assassin.  He’d even shown mercy to a Geuji.

And he was still
alone, twenty turns later.  He hadn’t seen any dragons or any innocents. 
Though he was well on his way to dying in shame, he was pretty sure that wasn’t
what the patch-wearing, two-faced bitch was talking about.

And while you
shall die in a cave, shamed and surrounded by dragon-slaying innocents, your
deeds will crush the unbreakable, and your name will never be forgotten.

Congress.  She,
the Trith, the Huouyt—they all wanted him to crush Congress.

It gave Joe a
little bit of comfort that he could screw up the entire pretty picture they all
had painted for him just by pulling Jane out of hiding and pulling the
trigger.  The satisfaction, however, was short-lived.  Because he was still
alone.

Joe took another
shallow breath and wondered what it would be like to be a Huouyt.  To be able
to shed his face and live someone else’s life.  To become a different person.

That’s what he
wanted.  To be a different person.  He hated the monster that Zero had become. 
He hated the constant flash of the cameras.  He hated the fake smiles and
starry-eyed awe.  He hated the power-struggles, the vying for his favor.  He
hated the posters, the motivational vids, the documentaries with his name
splayed across the front cover in bold letters.  He hated the random gifts, the
desperate attempts at seduction, the awed stares.  Lying there, staring at the
ceiling, an unregistered plasma pistol within arm’s reach, Joe would have given
anything to be a Huouyt.  To be able to take on a different face for a week. 
Or a lifetime.

Reluctantly, he
pulled himself out of bed.  He stared at the floor between his bare feet for
several minutes, just breathing in the smell of his own stink.  He hadn’t
rinsed his mouth after vomiting last night.  His clothes were the same ones
he’d worn the last six days.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d bathed.

Like any
woman in her right mind would want me now
, he thought, miserable. 
You
probably scared her off already, you greasy-skinned furg.

But that was the
problem.  It didn’t matter what Joe did—the Congies loved him.  If he wore his
shirt untucked, the next week, it became the latest fad.  If he stopped rolling
his sleeves, the whole Human Ground Force stopped rolling theirs.  He’d become a
mascot.  A figurehead.  A shiny, gilded god that they could prop up in front of
everyone and make smile for the camera.  He could have literally any Congie
woman he wanted—Human or not—just by twitching a brow of interest.

Joe dropped his
head into his hands and stared at the floor.  Beside him on the dresser, the
alarm went off.  He ignored it, studying the dirt and old clothes scattered
over his mats.  He had more than enough money to hire someone to take care of
it, but he didn’t bother with a maid anymore because the last one had hidden a
camera in his bathroom to get pictures of him showering to sell on the net.

Alone.  He was
totally goddamn alone.

Joe twisted to
turn off the alarm.  Jane called to him again at the motion; a sweet, seductive
melody in the back of his mind, begging him to twist a little further, to pick
her up, to caress her deadly body…

Joe got out of
bed and stumbled over to the bathroom entrance, catching himself on the wall. 
He took a deep breath, let it out in a shudder, then, fully intending to
straighten and walk into the shower, Joe lowered his forehead to the doorframe
and cried.

Alone.  His
every move studied, watched, and analyzed.  Never had he been known by so many
people, his face on every billboard, his picture revered on every Human
recruitment poster ever made…and never had he been so totally alone.

I can’t take
it anymore
, he thought, leaning into the wall.  The false smiles, the
politics, the subtle comments…  Jane’s melody was like a siren’s song in the
back of his head.  Not for the first time, he wondered if she was his
soulmate.  He wondered when she had been made.  She was not too old.  Probably
‘born’ sometime in the last seventy-four turns.

Burning
psychics,
he thought, in despair. 
They speak in riddles.

Miserable, Joe
tore his forehead from against the wall and took a long look at the shower.  It
only would have taken a few minutes to sluice off all the dirt and grime, all
the stink of the last week of lonely nights with Jim Beam.

Joe caught his
image in the mirror and grimaced.  He had dark rings under his eyes.  His face
looked hollow, like something from an Eeloiran death-camp.  His skin was dull
with grime.  It was his eyes, though, that gave him pause.

They’d given
up.  He realized it with a start that made him blink.  The strength in their
mountainous brown depths was…flat.  Tired.  Gone.

Looking at
himself, Joe was once again aware that one of the Jreet’s most feared hells was
the hell of Solitude.  Six hundred and sixty-six turns of loneliness.  A Sacred
Turn of isolation that every Jreet warrior had to face before he could enter
the afterlife.

Twenty down,
six hundred forty-six to go,
Joe thought, with a bitter laugh.  Not for the
first time, he wondered if he’d actually died on that operating table on Jeelsiht. 
He wondered if he was actually wandering the Jreet hells even now, looking
blindly for the afterlife.  He realized he had a surefire way to find out.

Those kids
need me,
Joe thought, miserable, staring at the rim of the sink. 
Have
to get them through training.
  But he wasn’t fooling anyone.  They didn’t
need him.  He wasn’t the one who led them in the tunnels or taught them how to
properly put down a Dhasha.  Their commanders and Overseers did that.  Joe just
gave speeches.

…Just like every
other useless figurehead in the universe.

They need me
,
Joe told himself again. 
A speech by Zero will make their millenniums. 
He
looked up again and peered into his own image. 
Just one more speech, then I
can finish the job.

That actually
gave him enough strength to pull on his boots and jacket and splash alcohol
over his face before heading to the door.  Taking the knob in his hand, he
straightened, took a deep breath, and tugged the door open.

Immediately, a
mass of Congie and civilian photographers crowded him, their flashes going off
in his face.  They shouted questions at him, asking things like how he’d slept,
what he’d eaten, whether he was planning on having kids.

Joe fought the
urge to grab the closest camera and smash it into the side of the building. 
He’d learned long ago that just made him look like a sootbag in front of
billions of people—and made the photographers more crazed to get him to do it
again, prodding him like a stubborn animal that wasn’t cooperating,
trying
to piss him off.

Ignoring the
cameras, Joe stepped through the paparazzi and over to his haauk.  Someone had
yanked the key from the console and left it on the ground beside the machine,
doubtless so Joe would have to bend over to retrieve it, giving two dozen
reporters a good picture of his muscular ass. 

Burning
furgs,
Joe thought, hating them.  Instead of bending to grab the key, as
they wanted, he pulled a new one out of his pocket—the trick wasn’t new, and
he’d shipped in a package of fifty of them from the haauk company upon his
arrival on Torat.  Behind him, reporters made sounds of frustration and jeered
at him as he climbed onto the haauk, put his key into the console, and powered
it up.

Just one more
speech
, Joe told himself, lifting up over the rooftop.  Eight haauks followed
him, each filled with five to six cameramen.  They loved the haauk pics.  Easy
to make him look like he was soaring into the future, head held high, ready to
take on Congress’s enemies the moment they reared their ugly faces.  Joe
hunched down against his console and tried to ignore them.  He’d only been on
Torat for thirteen days, and he still hadn’t had the opportunity to get a
customized, locked, shielded haauk.

The civilian
haauks had to stop at the edge of the Congie training base, but the Peacemaker
and Congie crews continued to follow him as he crossed the training grounds and
landed on the main square in front of a formation of nine hundred Human
recruits.  It was obvious that the kids had been waiting for him there for a
while, even though he told their instructors eighteen tics from now, which
meant their battlemasters had probably had them standing there since dawn. 
Sighing, Joe yanked the key from his haauk and disembarked.  He tried to ignore
the mass of black-clad cameramen as they positioned themselves around the
parade grounds, ignoring the Congie commanders and Overseers waiting in a
formation of their own a few rods away, aiming to get that next
multi-million-credit motivational poster pic.

When they got in
his way, crouching on the ground to look up and snap shots of him with the
rising sun to his back, Joe suppressed another urge to kick the cameras out of
their hands.  They loved that, too.  Showed his innate aggression, his fighting
spirit. 

Joe closed his
eyes and swallowed.

His left hand
had begun trembling of its own accord again.  Fisting it, ignoring the
reporters, he walked around them, up to the first rank of Human PlanOps
recruits—all Battlemasters and above, as was required for application—and
paused to give them a long look.