The fourth and final Yenshian froze in terror. Saeliko paused, still standing over the screaming man with the broken knee and looked at this last adversary. He was young, maybe just thirteen or fourteen, and noticeably scrawny. This told her much about the Yenshians. Only two types of nations sent children to war – civilized societies with a highly-trained, elite warrior class, and barbaric societies where life was cheap and children disposable. This boy was not elite.
“Put it down,” she told him in the Yenshian tongue and gestured toward his weapon. At first he did nothing. His hands were shaking, and the gun quivered in his grip.
Saeliko sensed movement beneath her and recognized that the fallen Yenshian she was straddling was trying to lift his rifle. She gave him a swift kick to the face, which sent his head snapping backward, which momentarily ended his crying. She then reached down, picked up the man’s rifle with her free hand and lobbed it into the gulch.
The man regained his senses a few seconds later and began wailing again, one hand over his face and the other cupping his wrecked knee.
Saeliko ignored him. “Kid, do you want to live?” she asked the last Yenshian standing.
He still didn’t respond. Saeliko studied him further. He had pale skin – they all did – and a blond tussle of hair that hung loosely over his brow. His blue eyes radiated fear. His gun wasn’t pointed at her yet; it wasn’t pointed at anything.
“C’mon kid, calm down. I’m not going to hurt you.” She slowly returned her scimitar to its sheath and took a step toward him.
He took a step back.
“What’s your name?” His eyes darted back and forth between Saeliko and his three fallen comrades. “Hey, kid, look at me, not them.” She put her hands next to her hips, palms outward to signify that she wasn’t a threat. “What’s your name?”
“Ky . . . Kymak.”
“Kymak. That’s your name?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you, Kymak?”
“Tw . . . twelve.”
“Twelve? Bloody Five, you’re too young for this. Kymak, listen to me. Put your gun down, turn around and get out of here.”
Mr. Toad’s voice blared out in her right ear. “No, Saeliko. Not a good idea! Don’t let him go.”
Eat turtle shite.
“You’re going to . . . let me go?”
“No!” came the voice. “Do not let him go.”
“Yes, I am, Kymak, but you need to put that gun down first. You hear me?”
“But . . .” Whatever he was going to say, he must have changed his mind. His mouth clapped shut and he nodded. Without taking his eyes off Saeliko, he slowly squatted until he could lay the rifle on the dirt in front of him.
When he took his hand off the grip, Saeliko said, “That’s right, kid. Looks like you’ve got a brain in that skull of yours after all. Now look at my face.”
“Why?”
“You see these tattoos?”
A terse nod.
“Think you can remember them?”
“Uh-huh?”
“You sure?”
“A face like yours, I’m not likely to forget.”
“Good. You ever see these tattoos again, they’ll be the last goddesses-damned thing you ever see in your short life.” She paused and let that sink in. “Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now go home, Kymak.”
The boy backed up for a few steps, and then turned and sprinted down the trail. Saeliko watched him go and wondered what would become of him, whether he get the chance to grow old or whether he would be dragged back on the path to a young, useless death.
It didn’t take long for Soup and Dallas to jog onto the scene and survey the aftermath of Saeliko’s work. Soup looked nonplussed, but Dallas gave her a look that wavered between irritation and virulence. Both of them took the time to study the three Yenshians lying on the ground, two unconscious and one holding his knee and blubbering snot bubbles out his nose.
“Vasper?” Dallas asked.
“Well, if I had to wager, I’d say he’s sitting in that cave with a confused look on his face.”
All three of them set their eyes to the black hole in the rock wall. It was a great place for a last stand; Saeliko wouldn’t be tempted to run in there after him. She noted that a pile of rubble blanketed the ground at the cave entrance and the right side of the wall had black scorch marks, indicating that the Yenshians had tried tossing a grenade in the gap.
Dallas walked forward and shouted, “Sergeant Vasper!” They waited for a response and heard none. “Sergeant Vasper, I’m from ARCOB. We’re here to help you. Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, I can hear you,” echoed a rasping voice after a few seconds.
“You can come out. It’s safe.”
More long seconds rolled by until they heard a set of shuffling footsteps coming forward, and then the sergeant emerged out of the darkness looking a lot like the ghost of a former man. The lines on his face and pallor of his skin spoke to the extreme level of exhaustion he was enduring.
Only his eyes gave any indication of energy. Saeliko recognized him as a quietly intense man.
“You’re not Zodo,” he said. His rifle was held low, but his grip was tight.
“No, we’re not,” Dallas admitted.
“Who are you?”
“We’re your new best friends. You just don’t know it yet. Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but we’re running short on time. You mind telling us why Kettle and Haley aren’t with you?”
“Yenshians got ‘em.”
PART 3: NEW PRIORITIES
For all our research on the Zeroes, we still know
little about them. Sure, we know they were
technologically our superiors, and we are
beginning to fathom the depths of their genius.
But we know nothing of their morality. We don’t
know who they were as people. We can only guess
at their values and aspirations, and we are clueless as
to what made them tick.
Which begs the question: Were they as morally bankrupt
as the rest of us in the seventeen worlds, or did they
alone find a way forward?
What meager evidence we have suggests the former.
Enoch Cud, from A Chronicle of Human Failures
3.1 KETTLE
He woke up on the dusty wooden floor of a small room with a single window. Rather than glass or shutters, three metal bars covered the opening, ensuring that the only point of ingress or egress would be the door. From his position lying on his back on the broad wooden planks that made up the floorboards, Kettle couldn’t see any handle on the door, which served to remind him that the circumstances of his presence in the room leaned less toward honored guest and more toward prisoner awaiting torture.
With effort, he propped himself up on his elbows, waited for a few breaths and then hoisted himself into a sitting position. He noted with curiosity that he wasn’t cold despite the absence of a blanket or any other covering. The sun was shining outside and he heard birds twittering a jolly old tune, oblivious to the fact that a nearby living creature named Merrick Kettle was in mortal danger. He guessed that recent events had pulled him out of the mountains and down to a lower altitude where temperatures were milder.
Memories of his capture came back in flashes – their hands bound, mouths gagged, marched alongside the gulch bottom until it intersected a narrow dirt road, thrown into the back of a pickup truck. He had passed out after that.
“Haley,” he said through dry, cracked lips. They must have put her in a different room. Or maybe they had done something else with her entirely. Sudden desperation penetrated his chest. He shuddered, imagining strange men doing horrible things to the Korean and realized with certainty that he had to go find her right this very instant.
With considerably more effort, he commanded his legs to start working again and maneuvered his body into a standing position. His ribs sparke
d a vigorous protest at this new state of affairs, and the muscles in his calves and quads added their voices in full support. Kettle ignored them all and stumbled to the door, where he looked for any means at all that he might be able to coax it open. He searched for weaknesses in the wood or a crack that was sufficiently wide to allow him to jimmy whatever lock mechanism lay on the other side. It didn’t take long to determine that his efforts would be futile.
He pivoted and walked to the window, which was roughly chest-height at the bottom sill. “Hold on, Haley. I’m coming.” With fingers that were still dirty and bruised from tumbling down the gulch, Kettle grabbed the lowest bar and pulled with all his strength. It didn’t budge.
He wished his genetic alterations had seen fit to give him superhuman strength. Being able to go all Incredible Hulk would have come in handy. Instead, he maintained his grip on the bar and lifted his feet onto the wall so he could leverage all his lower-body strength into wrenching on the obstinate piece of metal that stood between him and a potential route to Haley.
He felt the bar move. It was slight. Maybe just a millimeter. Or maybe he it was just his imagination. “Come on, come on, come on!” He redoubled his effort, tugging and yanking in rhythmic bursts.
That’s when the door opened.
Kettle fell to the ground in surprise and spun around on all fours to see three armed men walk in, all of them pointing their weapons at his head. A fourth man followed in their wake, taller and more heavyset, a thick beard adorning a face with a broad nose, pale eyes and bushy eyebrows. The beard was mostly black, though two streaks of grey ran down from the corners of his mouth, curving over the jawline on either side of his chin. A sidearm was strapped to his hip, but he was otherwise unarmed.
The bearded man stepped in front of his three companions and said, “You are Merrick Kettle.”
Kettle didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure what he was expected to say. After an awkward silence, which was made all the more awkward by his position on the floor, much like a dog caught by its owner after tearing up the sofa cushions. “Is . . . umm . . . Is that a question?” His throat was awfully dry, and he was surprised at the cracking in his voice. What he really wanted was to ask for a tall glass of water, but he doubted it would be forthcoming.
“Bring him.”
Two of the men slung their guns over their shoulders and came forward to grab Kettle by the arms and haul him to his feet. The third kept his barrel raised as a deterrent to any rash behavior. The bearded man had already turned and left the room.
“Where’s Haley?” he demanded as the guards pulled him forward. He didn’t think it worthwhile keeping her name a secret. If they knew who he was, they knew Haley’s name, too. “Haley,” he repeated. “Where is she? I swear to whatever god you believe in, if you’ve hurt her in any way, I’ll kill every last one of you.”
The only response was a smack across the back of the head from one of his escorts. Kettle weighed his options, feeling the growing calm in his veins that spoke to his ancestral Zero genes. The discomfort in his ribs faded, and his vision acquired a sense of refined clarity. His heartbeat seemed to slow into more measured, determined pulses. His mind discarded all notions of panic and began taking note of situational factors he might make use of.
The guards on either side had a solid grip on his biceps, but it wouldn’t take much to break free if he torqued his body violently enough. The third man behind him was close, which was fortuitous. With sufficient speed, Kettle could reach back and smack that rifle downward before the man would be able to get a shot off.
The hallway they were walking down was long, with numerous doors and at least two intersecting corridors within easy running distance. Once free, he could either try to debilitate the three escorts or just sprint around a corner and try to lose them. He thought it over for a fraction of a second and decided on the former. He’d take them out, grab one of the rifles and then go search for Haley.
He slowed his breathing further still and planned it all out, scene-by-scene. A snapping torque motion to the right to break free, a momentum-driven uppercut to the man on the left, an elbow to the head of the man on the right, a hard lunge to the man in the rear.
Okay. On the count of three. He took a long breath and imagined his muscles coiling, ready to strike. One. A second long breath and he renewed focus on the lackluster grip of his two escorts. This was going to be easy. Two.
A sudden commotion broke his concentration like a boot stepping on a dried branch. A dozen feet ahead, a door on the right opened and men started filing out, laughing and patting each other on the backs. First two, then a couple more, until eight of them were standing and chuckling in the hallway.
Shit!
He spotted bottles in the hands of at least two of them and quickly guessed that these guys were half-cocked on local grog, but it didn’t matter. He was confident he could subdue three guys, but not ten.
An image of Haley being tortured sprang back to mind.
Damn it!
Kettle tore free of his escorts in a wild, anger-propelled spin and brought his arms up to strike in a helicopter motion. He pounded a fist into one man’s cheek. His intended elbow strike to the back of the second man’s head didn’t quite connect, but his forearm managed to push the guard with cruel force against the wall.
The third guy’s eyes went wide. Kettle was on him in an instant, parrying the rifle away with one hand and reaching out for the man’s neck with his other. The Yenshian didn’t have time to dodge; Kettle wrapped his fingers around his victim’s throat and slammed him backwards down onto the ground, all the while growling like an animal.
The Yenshian went down hard, and somewhere in the midst of the cacophony of sounds, Kettle picked out the satisfactory clattering of the man’s rifle hitting the ground and bouncing out of harm’s way. On a less satisfactory note, he also heard the yells and quickly approaching footsteps of the seven men who had just entered the hallway.
He reckoned he had about two seconds before they’d be on top of him.
Releasing his victim’s neck, Kettle whirled around to where he suspected the fallen rifle had ended up. If he could reach it in time, he’d have a fighting chance . . . maybe. He set his eyes on the weapon and hurled himself toward it, noticing a fraction of a second later that the magazine cartridge had somehow popped loose and separated itself from the rest of the rifle.
Even before his right hand made contact with the collapsible stock, his brain had ample time to process two thoughts: What piece of crap kind of gun is this anyway? and No wonder they couldn’t hit us from across the gulch!
He got his hand on the grip and rolled onto his back, pulling the rifle up and around into a firing position, hoping for a bullet still in the chamber.
The first Yenshian jumped on top of him before he ever had the chance to find out. Two more quickly followed, and then Kettle lost count.
The next few minutes consisted of a veritable smorgasbord of punches to the head and body (which he did his best to protect himself by curling into the fetal position), an unwanted tour of the building in which he was unceremoniously dragged on his ass by angry Yenshian soldiers, and, finally, an introduction to a courtyard where he was picked up and thrown onto his face and stomach in a muddy section approximately in the center of the fenced off area.
On the bright side, the mud was gooey and soft, preventing further damage to his face. On the other hand, as he realized when he lifted his head back out of the mud and saw blood rapidly dripping from his nose area and mixing in with the brown below, he wouldn’t be modeling anytime soon.
“Ouch,” he said.
He coughed twice and tasted blood in his mouth, again.
“More ouch.”
He heard a few snorts and laughs, but he didn’t take a gander just yet. He needed a moment to process the damage, to take stock of the pain radiating from multiple points around his midsection.
“Get up, Merrick Kettle,” a familiar voice commanded.
Still he didn’t raise his eyes. “Be with you in a minute.” Everything hurt, but he concluded that everything still worked. He wondered if he’d be able to take them by surprise if he got up right now and made a mad dash for the nearest section of fence. From what he had seen earlier, he could probably vault over it.
“Get him up,” the bearded man said to someone else. “Yes, major,” came a reply. Footsteps in the mud followed, and a set of hands grabbed Kettle by the right arm just under the shoulder.
“Oh, come on, man!” The man kept pulling until Kettle was fully upright, albeit on unsteady feet. “Okay, okay. I’m up.”
The bearded man, presumably a major in the Yenshian army, was sitting in a wooden chair about ten feet in front of Kettle. Beside him, a little serving table had been set up with a serving jug of unknown liquid and a mug. Kettle didn’t care if it was water, whiskey or wine. He was so thirsty, he’d contemplate drinking just about anything.
Behind and to the side of the major, well over two dozen soldiers stood at varying degrees of ease. Kettle looked to either side of the soldiers and took in the surroundings. The fence was made of wooden planks about six feet tall, so his view of the landscape was limited. Nevertheless, he ascertained that the compound was rural. There were no other buildings in sight, and he couldn’t hear any of the sounds that one would associate with city life. There was a break in the fence where a barred metal gate stood open. Outside, Kettle could see at least four pickup trucks. They were kind of like Ford F150s, but narrower and with smaller wheels and longer beds.
The sun was at a forty-five-degree angle in the sky, the only clue as to the time of day. Kettle didn’t have any idea how long he had been asleep in the room. It might have been four hours, or it might have been twenty-four.
“Are you from another world, Merrick Kettle?”
“What?”
The major lifted his mug and took a pull on the contents. “Another world,” he repeated after swishing it around in his mouth and swallowing. “A man named Jovis tells me you’re not from Okin. In fact, he tells me all sorts of strange things that don’t make sense.”
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