Zero Recall by Sara King Page A

sure
as hell not that fast .  Jer’ait was better than the best.  He held the
highest kill-rate in Va’gan history.  He was always the first on the list when
it came time to kill a Jahul—the most notoriously hard creatures in Congress to
kill—and not once had Jer’ait ever been outed.
    And yet, this Human
had done it.  Half intoxicated. 
    And then, as if
swatting a Va’gan assassin in the face with a barstool was no more
out-of-the-ordinary than slapping a lovely waitress on the ass, his
commander-to-be had hunkered down in another bar a single town away and
gone right back to drinking himself into a stupor.
    Getting up after
being knocked from his stool, listening to the Human’s running footsteps as he
departed...it was the single most humiliating moment of Jer’ait’s life.  He
would pay for it later, Jer’ait promised himself.
    Still, the oath
did nothing to assuage the bruising to his pride.  Jer’ait wanted blood. 
Watching the Human down glass after glass of poison, he imagined the painful
ways he could kill him and still make it look like an accident. 
    Someone in the
Peacemakers had to have tipped the Human off.  It was the only explanation. 
There was no other.  None.
    The Human had
certainly spent enough time in the ranks to have made a few friends in the
service.  He was a living legend.  The more Jer’ait had read about him, the
more he found to read.  His men followed him into battle with a devotion that
any Corps Director would envy.  He’d earned six kasjas in his lifetime
and was credited with eight personal Dhasha kills.  Jer’ait could ask any of a
million Human recruits who Commander Zero was and they could tell him the first
six battles he was in, the awards he won, and the number of craps he took
during each mission.
    And yet the fool
had gone right back to poisoning himself as soon as he had escaped Jer’ait. 
Such an error in judgment was mind-boggling.  It had been no effort at all for
Jer’ait to call every bar in the area and ask if they had seen his brother—a
man with a luminescent PlanOps tattoo on his palm was hard to forget.  Upon
receiving his location, Jer’ait had found him and hid in the back of the place
to watch.
    Yet, in all the
time he’d watched the Human, no one had approached him.  No spies came to
whisper in his ear.  He carried no communications unit, received no clandestine
messages taped to the bottoms of glasses.  He looked truly and utterly alone. 
And miserable.
    A tingle of fear
crawled its way up the spine of Jer’ait’s Human pattern.  Could his target have
recognized him without a tip-off?  
    No.  Not
possible, he immediately told himself.
    Yet the thought
ate at him, gnawing at Jer’ait’s nerves.  As the night wore on, he could not
stand it any more.  He had to know.  He got out his reader and called Yua’nev.
    “How many people
know of this Human and my mission?”
    “Where are you?”
    “Watching the Human
try to kill himself.  Tell me.”
    “Can he hear
this?”
    “No.  But if he
could, he’s too intoxicated to understand what we’re saying.”
    “You said he’s
killing himself?”
    Jer’ait lifted
the reader and showed Yua’nev the Human at the bar.
    “Ah.  A filthy
habit.”
    “Who else knows
I’m supposed to kill him, Yua’nev?”
    The
Peacemaster’s perfect, mirror-like eyes showed nothing of his thoughts.  “A
handful of Peacemakers.  No one below Eleventh Hjai.”
    Jer’ait
frowned.  “Give me their names.”
    “Bek’kiu, Gov’aan,
Gra’fei, Elv’uu, you, and I.”
    All of whom
could keep a secret.  Jer’ait scowled, the situation making even less sense.  “Who
did the Trith deliver the message to?  Could it have been overheard?”
    “No.  It came to
me directly, secure-feed.”  Yua’nev cocked his head.  “Why?  What’s going on?”
    Reluctantly,
Jer’ait said, “It appears you were correct in telling me he could sense Huouyt.”
    Yua’nev was not
amused.