Free Zero's Return by Sara King

nothing but
excuses.
    God, he wished
he’d stayed on Telastus.  In a war, with death around every corner, slipping up
to him in the darkness, wearing the faces of friends, he hadn’t had the time to
think.  Now, when his only real duties were to show up once a week to dress
down a few PlanOps hopefuls, he had nothing but time.  It had quickly
become apparent to him that taking the recruiting job on Torat was one of the
worst decisions he’d ever made.  Every time he looked those young faces in the
eye, he felt Jim Beam calling to him in the back of his head.  And, raising her
seductive voice with his, Jane.
    Joe dropped the
haauk to the roof of his private apartment, ignored the flashes from nearby
roofs as the paparazzi got their pics, and unlocked the door to his pad.  Once
he was inside, he shut the door, leaned his back against it, and tilted his
head back to rest against the cheap metal as he stared up at the dusty ceiling.
    Just a couple
more turns, he thought.  I can go a couple more turns.
    For the
thousandth time since leaving the Geuji sprawled over that box on Koliinaat,
Joe heard the muffled, tinny words, “ But with great responsibility, one
finds great loneliness. ”  His hand started to tremble again, and Joe
squeezed it into a fist.  Not for the first time, he wondered what would have
happened if he’d accepted the Geuji’s plea for friendship.  He hadn’t
understood Forgotten’s meaning before—had been too narrow-minded and
self-centered to even begin to comprehend—but now he did.  He understood it all
too well.  Every soul-wrenching second, he understood it. 
    He needed a
friend.  Someone who wasn’t stuck debating with fat old sootbags or hunting
down intergalactic criminals or making babies while detonating Huouyt ships. 
Someone who could sit across from him over dinner and listen to him pour out
his woes, or take him out for target-practice when he felt that
spirit-smothering urge to use Jane.  Joe found himself wondering—again—if he
could find Forgotten and get on his knees and ask him for a second chance.
    No, Joe
thought, the bitterness returning in an acrid wave.  He would have used you,
and you would have danced to his tune.  You’re an amoeba to his space station. 
You can’t be friends with something like that.
    And yet,
sometimes, when Joe was staring into that mirror, after waking up alone and
hung over yet again, the stale taste of old alcohol or bile burning his throat,
he wondered if Forgotten could have helped him.
    He was still
standing there, yet again trying to convince himself not to go seek out the
pistol under his pillow, when the call feature started buzzing on his
wrist-com.  Joe reluctantly glanced down at the device, then winced when he
read the origin ID.
    Old Territory,
Koliinaat, Headquarters of His Excellency, Daviin ga Vora, Representative of
the Jreet.
    “Burn me,” Joe
muttered.  He dropped his arm and leaned his head back against the wall to
again stare at the ceiling.  The last thing he wanted to do was to get lectured
on honor and duty by a self-righteous prick on his lunch break.
    A few moments
later, his wrist-com activated, without his consent.  One of the bennies of
being a Tribunal member, one that Daviin made use of shamelessly, was the
Tribunal’s right to commandeer private technology for the Regency’s purposes.
    “It says you’re
alive and conscious,” Daviin’s irritated voice said from the device around
Joe’s wrist.  “And that you’re not being tortured or otherwise detained, nor
are you in the middle of excellent sex—something my assistant tells me you
haven’t had in six turns—which makes me wonder why you would ignore another
call from your best friend in this miserable world.  Are you drinking again?”
    “None of your
damn business,” Joe muttered, still not bringing the unit to his face.  “What
do you want, you unlovable furg?”
    The Jreet
Representative went quiet for so long that Joe