by Sara King
The Huouyt laughed at him. “We shall see, Jreet. Go looking for him, if you’re so sure. I doubt you’ll find him in a library. I, on the other hand, am going to attend the briefing. It will not be my breja they pull for missing it, and I think at least one member of our team should stay informed.”
The Huouyt departed, leaving Daviin’s claws digging into the scales of his palms.
In all reality, probably the easiest way to be re-instated in the Human’s groundteam would have been to go to the briefing and complain to the Overseers. Daviin knew the tekless cowards would buckle to his demands in an instant. Yet, as desperate as he was to get back on the team, Daviin did not want to go behind the Human’s back. He knew that as soon as he did, he would lose all hope of gaining his Prime’s respect.
After a moment of indecision, Daviin turned and took the opposite hall, toward the city.
Without Jer’ait to ask questions for him, Daviin found it difficult to locate a single citizen willing to stand around long enough for him to get close enough to ask directions, and Daviin was too slow to run them down. Thus, finding the Human took a mix of instinct, smell, and luck. Humans were not common on Jeelsiht, so their scent was distinctive. As Daviin ignored the bars and wandered the most likely gathering places in vain, however, he had a growing, unhappy sense that Jer’ait had been right.
When Daviin finally found the Human, it was well into the evening.
Joe was face down in an alleyway, stripped naked, his valuables gone. The reek of alcohol and vomit was everywhere. Daviin stilled in the entrance to the alley, staring at the Human in disbelief.
Beda’s bones… He lied.
Daviin was stunned. He had thought the Human honorable. He had thought him a warrior. He had respected him.
To think he had thought him worthy of a Jreet!
As Daviin watched, the Human stirred and vomited into the puddle growing at his side. The fresh scent of half-digested alcohol wafted back to where Daviin lay.
Daviin almost left him there, content to let the fool find his own way home and seek out another groundteam, but anger overrode his logic. He wove his way up to the Human and grabbed him harshly by the arm. As the Human groaned slightly, trying to bat him away, Daviin leaned back on himself and lifted Joe with him. He dangled the protesting Human out in front of him and brought his head down until their faces almost met.
“On Vora,” Daviin growled, “we thread liars on sharpened stakes and let the vermin eat them alive. It takes days for them to die.”
The Human opened his eyes long enough to see Daviin’s face, then squeezed them shut again. “The answer’s still no.”
Daviin shook him until he felt the joints in the Human’s shoulder dislocate. The Human screamed and tried to fight him, but Daviin was unaffected by his weak struggles. He watched him writhe pitilessly, ignoring his cries. Behind him, several passers-by peeked into the alley at the noise, then, upon seeing Daviin’s coils filling up the space, quickly found somewhere else to be.
Once the Human’s screams had died down to unintelligible drunken sobs, Daviin leaned down and said into his face, “Liars are scum. You lie, you make yourself as honorless as a Huouyt. A warrior is nothing without his honor.”
“Fuck honor,” he heard the Human whisper.
Daviin jerked back, stunned. “What did you say?”
“I said fuck honor!” Joe screamed, opening his wet brown eyes. “It never got me anywhere.”
Daviin whipped back and threw him across the alley. Joe tumbled into the wall, then lay in an inebriated pile, groaning. Before he could right himself, Daviin was atop him. “Honor,” he said quietly, “Is everything.”
The Human shuddered. It took Daviin a moment to realize he was crying. Daviin pushed him over, furious, intending to give him something to cry about, when the Human said, “Yeah.” His sobs grew to wretched wails, like a spitted Takki.
Daviin hesitated, realizing the Human cried out of a deeper pain than his physical bruises. He cried out of shame. Daviin grasped Joe’s good arm and wrenched him back off the ground. “Lie to me again,” he said into the Human’s face, “And I will kill you.”
Softly, the Human said, “I’ll be dead by next week.”
“Not by my hand,” Daviin said.
“By mine.”
Daviin peered at the Human as he said this, and realized he spoke the truth. He analyzed the Human a moment, then said, “No.”
Joe laughed again. “No?”
“No,” Daviin repeated. “You’ll live.”
“Sorry to tell you this, asher,” the Human spat, “but you can’t stop me. You’re not even on my team.”
Peering into the Human’s stubborn brown eyes, Daviin saw the warrior’s spark once more. Intoxicated, naked, dangling six digs off the ground by a limb, unable to move his other arm, the Human might as well have been on even ground, his spear at Daviin’s throat.
“Someday,” Daviin said, “You will tell me why you poison yourself.” He dropped the Human, who crumpled on the pavement with a grunt of surprise. “Until then, you will walk.”
From his awkward pile, the Human laughed. “Burn you, Jreet.”
“You will walk,” Daviin said, “or you will be dragged.”
The Human stopped laughing.
Naked as he was, his soft body would be shredded on the sharp black gravel, and they both knew it.
“I hope you rot in hell,” the Human finally muttered.
“Which one?”
The Human peered at him for a while, considering. “How many are there to choose from?”
“Ninety. If I found myself in your situation—which I wouldn’t—I’d curse me to the Frozen Hell. Rii. It’s one of the very last. There is very little that is more uncomfortable to a Jreet than cold.”
The Human used his good arm to drag himself into a squatting position. “Soot my head hurts.”
“It will hurt much more if you don’t start moving.”
The Human peered at him through one puffy brown eye, then reluctantly stood. He teetered a moment, then steadied. “You’re not on the team.”
“Walk, Human.”
The Human muttered something under his breath, but he walked. Slowly, but steadily, he padded barefoot toward the edge of the alley, then balked, seemingly realizing his current state of undress.
“I can’t go out there like this.”
“You can. And will.”
“Ghosts of the Mothers, what are you, some avenging angel come to cleanse me of my sins?”
“No, I am a Sentinel-trained Jreet who has little pity for inebriated fools.”
The Human laughed. “You know, I might just start to like you, sooter.”
“My name is Daviin.”
“I’m Joe.”
“Walk, Joe.”
“Right.” The Human took a deep breath, eying the bustling street. Bracing himself, he muttered, “God hates a coward.”
And walked.
#
“Commander Zero, if you’re not down here in three tics—”
Joe shut off the Overseer’s snarl and leaned back into his cot, staring up at the ceiling of his barracks room. He heard the wall creak as the Jreet shifted outside his door. Joe lifted his head off his pillow and shouted, “I said get lost!”
The Jreet—who had the best hearing in Congress—ignored him. Instead, he said through the door, “You should go to the meeting, Joe.”
They were going down the tunnels in two days. Two days, and the Jreet hadn’t let him so much as step into a bar in a week.
My own personal nanny, Joe thought, miserable.
Outside his door, the Jreet shifted again, and this time the door slammed open. Joe sat up, outraged that Daviin had somehow managed to hack his password.
A furious Ooreiki stood in the doorway, its sudah whipping in its neck. It jammed a tentacle at him. “You!” Ooreiki Secondary Overseer Moskin snapped. “Do you want to be tried for disobedience, as well as drunkenness?”
&n
bsp; Joe lay back down and returned his eyes to the ceiling. “It’s all pretty much the same to me.”
The Ooreiki’s voice lowered to a dangerous whisper. “Zero, you are one of the most decorated soldiers under my command, but I swear to the ancestors’ ghosts, if you do not show up for your trial, we are going to demote you.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Joe said to the ceiling. “And it would save me the hell of trying to keep my Takkiscrew of a groundteam from killing itself.”
In a fury, the Ooreiki strode across the room and easily ripped him off his cot. Not even trying to keep him upright, the Ooreiki stormed out the door, dragging him by an arm.
A ruby hand bigger than Joe’s chest suddenly blocked their path.
“Where are you going with my Prime?” The ominous sound of the Jreet’s voice even made Joe flinch.
The speed of the Ooreiki Overseer’s sudah suddenly took on a new intensity. “Where did you come from?”
“The asher’s been squatting outside my door for the last week,” Joe muttered. He yanked his hand free from the Ooreiki’s grip.
Overseer Moskin’s pupils expanded to enormous, terrified black ovals. “Then this is why you would not leave your room?”
“No,” Joe said.
At the same time, Daviin said, “Yes.”
When Joe frowned at the Jreet, Daviin lowered his head to face the Overseer and said, “If he leaves his room before he returns me to his groundteam, my honor demands that I kill him, as well as everyone around him.”
The Ooreiki took two nervous steps backwards. Almost meekly, he said, “We need Joe to make an appearance for his toxicity trial, my lord.”
“The trial is cancelled,” Daviin said. “Leave.”
“But...”
“Now!” the Jreet snarled.
The Ooreiki Overseer fell over itself trying to escape down the hall. Joe watched it go, then returned his attention to Daviin. He looked the big Jreet up and down, taking in the mountain of ruby coils stacked outside his door before returning his eyes to the Jreet’s diamond-shaped head. “So why are you still here?”
“I want on the team,” Daviin said.
“I’ve already said no.”
“I intend to make you change your mind.”
Joe sighed, expecting as much. “I don’t suppose you’ll let me out for a drink?”
“A meeting, yes,” the Jreet said. “To poison yourself, no.”
Joe gave him a disgusted scowl. “I should check on the others. They haven’t heard from their Prime in over a day.”
Daviin bobbed his chest-sized head. “That you should. I’ll come with you, in case the Ooreiki returns to harass you.”
Joe squinted at the Jreet, wondering just what the chances were he could slip away from the Jreet and go get a drink. Probably infinitesimal. He sighed. “Just how badly do you want to be on my team, Daviin?”
The Jreet raised itself up proudly. “I would go nowhere else.”
Joe eyed him a long moment. “Tell you what. The Huouyt is being difficult and I need a scout, and you’ve got inviso-mode, so you could work.”
Daviin perked up instantly. “And?”
Reluctantly, Joe said, “And, you want back on the team so bad, I’ll make you a deal. I have several important meetings with a long-time associate coming up. If you can manage to follow me between now and then, without losing track of me, but without me seeing you or noticing you’re there, and can give me a full report of what my friend and I said at the end of the day, I’ll let you back on the team.”
The Jreet hesitated so long that Joe wasn’t sure he had heard. Finally, he said, “And if I fail?”
“You’ll leave. Permanently.”
The Jreet’s enormous coils tightened. “I won’t fail.”
“A full day,” Joe reminded him. “I can’t see you or notice your presence. If I do, you will leave and find some other fool to haunt. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” the Jreet said. Its small golden eyes watching him, the Jreet suddenly vanished. Joe found himself unnerved at the way the Jreet’s monstrous red body had simply disappeared and he was suddenly facing an empty hall.
Joe grinned. “Now to go find Jim Beam.”
#
“You tricked me, Human.”
The sound had seemingly come from the thin air beside him. Joe sighed and put down his glass. “And you were doing so well, too.”
Daviin lowered his energy level, making every head in the bar suddenly turn at the mass of red that had appeared beside him…
…and filled up the rest of the bar, rolling over tables and booths and filling up inconspicuous aisles.
“I’ve been following you for the last six hours, and I know for a fact you no more intend to have me on the team than you do to have me document your secret discussions with your long-time associate. Jim Beam is a form of poison. I just heard the bartender discussing it with a Human in the corner.”
Daviin had taken the time to form most of his body into a huge coil overlapping several pieces of furniture, leaving Joe feeling acutely aware at just how easy it would have been for the Jreet to kill him while he drank on, oblivious.
From the looks on the other patrons’ faces, Daviin made them feel the same way. There was an air about Jreet that left everyone else feeling insignificant and weak. Most of the patrons quickly got up and found something else to do.
Prime Dhasha destruction, all two thousand lobes of him. Inwardly, Joe considered allowing Daviin to join them in the tunnels, then cursed himself for being a fool. The Jreet would not follow orders. He had just proven as much.
“You’ve been here awhile,” Joe agreed. He hefted his whiskey and wiggled the glass. “But not long enough for me to finish my meeting with my long-time associate. You failed, Jreet. Go home.”
The Jreet didn’t move. “I figured out why you drink yourself to death.”
Joe glanced at the infoscreen, which only moments earlier had contained sentimental memoryclips of his brother Sam that his mother had sent to Joe while he’d been across the galaxy, fighting Congress’s wars for it. Immediately, he bristled. “Get out, Jreet. I was giving you an honest chance, but you screwed it up. I’m serious about keeping you off the team.”
“I know.” The Jreet lowered his head until he was at eye-level with Joe. “That’s why I want you. There isn’t another Prime on this planet who has the courage to turn me down and mean it, or the audacity to make me bumble around for six hours like a soft-skinned hatchling, utterly alert, thinking I’m looking for some mysterious Jim Beam.”
“You mean the stupidity.” Joe sighed. “Look, I’ve seen what a Jreet can do. I know you could wipe the floor with a Dhasha. You could kill more of them in an evening than I’ll ever hope to kill in my whole life.”
The Jreet waited, listening.
“But I can’t take you back on,” Joe said. “You’re a risk to everyone else who goes down there with you.” Then he laughed out of frustration. “Who am I kidding? I’ve got a Huouyt assassin who won’t get chipped, a cocky little Baga nutcase, an Ooreiki who looks at me like I shit ruvmestin but questions me like I don’t have two spare brain cells to rub together… About the only one who doesn’t question me is the Grekkon, and as far as I know he doesn’t have an opinion on anything…which worries me even more than the Huouyt.”
“He doesn’t question you. A quality of a good soldier.”
“No,” Joe said. “This isn’t infantry. This is an elite squad. I need grounders with the ability to make their own decisions if they have to. You saw how he just stood there when the Baga was pulling his crap? Like he didn’t even give a damn.”
“He probably didn’t,” Daviin said.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” Joe cried. “If we were all Humans, somebody would have put that Baga in his place. Hell, they all woulda helped me re-arrange his face. But everyone just stood around and watched. Even the MPs in the hall didn’t do a damn thing. Nobody did.”
&
nbsp; “Except you.”
Joe sighed. “Yeah.”
The Jreet turned to the bartender and ordered a round of something foreign. The Jahul bartender first brought out a regular-sized glass, then looking his newest customer up and down, got out a two-gallon canister and set it on the table beside Daviin.
Joe sniffed it and wrinkled his nose at the toxic burning-tire smell. “What is it?”
“Deadly.” The Jreet lifted the canister and took two long swigs, then set it down half full. He smacked his scaly lips and stretched his huge, diamond-shaped hearing cavities in Joe what he recognized as a Jreet smile. “And delicious.”
“Huh,” Joe said. “I guess you have no reason to worry about the Tox Squads.”
Daviin snorted. “It would take more than a few Jikaln to scare me.”
Joe sighed. “That’s one thing I didn’t miss on Earth. You can drink ‘til you pass out every day and no one will cart you off to the brig.”
“It’s the same on Vora.” Daviin glanced out the door. “At home, they would have rioted if the clan leader outlawed enjoying oneself with friends.”
Joe grunted. “Don’t worry about it. Volunteers are exempt from the Director’s stupid rules.”
“I am not a volunteer.”
Joe glanced up. “You told me you were.”
“I pledged to serve.” The Jreet’s golden eyes were watching him carefully. “They accepted my Sentinel training in lieu of Basic. Took my oath this afternoon, after I realized you’d tricked me.”
Joe felt his mouth falling open. “Why would you—ghosts! You became a Congie? Don’t you know that’s stupid?! They’ll send you down every rat-hole they can find and charge you extra time for every trip to medical. They’ll never give you up.”
“I gave them a condition.”
“Recruitment doesn’t make conditions,” Joe said, frowning.
Daviin smiled. “They do for me.”
Seeing the two thousand lobes of twisted alien muscle, Joe decided the Jreet was probably right. “Huh. I’ll bet.” Joe sighed and tilted his glass. “Well, I hope you made it a good one.”
“I did,” Daviin said.
Seeing his smug look Joe stiffened. “If you conned them into putting you on my team—”