Children of Zero Read online

  But if he didn’t drop the nuke, the dozens of innocent children would turn into millions when the virus caught up with them. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. As the Kye-shiv nosed upward into the sky over the target, Radovan changed the words. Now I am become Death, the savior of this world. It wasn’t a boast, nor was it meant to soothe his ego. He was literally going to save this world from a viral Armageddon by annihilating some very bad people . . . and a whole lot of innocent bystanders.

  On his hologram, he could see frantic movement among the outlines amidst the parked shuttles. The Enders had spotted his Kye-shiv. Some of them began running, scattering like cockroaches when a light turned on. Too late. They were defenseless, and the M9s were too far away to come to the rescue.

  Radovan’s SageSeven fed the authorization code for the nuke into the ship’s computer, and he mentally executed the release.

  That was it. Destruction simplified.

  He switched engines, engaging the Kye-shiv’s massive twin jets. They burped to life simultaneously with audible crackling sounds and immediately propelled the craft forward with raw acceleration that pressed Radovan’s frame backward against the chair. At full throttle, the g-forces caused his vision to start to narrow, but the sensation was momentary. As soon as he felt comfortable again, he began a gradual banking maneuver that would take him back out to sea.

  The hologram remained focused on the six shuttles and the scrambling silhouettes. After a few moments, all of the targeted objects vanished just as data came streaming into the ship’s computers confirming the successful detonation. Instinctively, he brought his hand up and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger in a futile attempt to stop the tears from coming. The water welled around his fingers and started forming rivulets down either side of his nose.

  Before he lost all control of himself, he commanded the Kye-shiv to set course for the Sollian Sea. He couldn’t go back to the capital; they would find out what he had done. In an instant, he had gone from a respected member of Lavic society to its most terrifying villain. The Sollian lay at the far outskirts of the great Laventhene Empire. He could disappear there, lying low until he sorted out what to do with himself.

  That settled, he let the emotions sweep over him, and he balled like a child.

  1 COLLISION COURSE

  The Sollian Sea, long a magnet for the dregs of all civilized nations, brings out the worst of womankind; the politicians liars, the merchants cheats, the priestesses more interested in the bottle than the Five. The only honest women of the whole damn bunch are probably the pirates.

  ~ Tillian Gaviso, from Remarks on My Adventures and Near Death in the Sollian

  1.1 KETTLE

  This was a terrible idea.

  Kettle surveyed the scene in front of him. In other circumstances, it would have been madly beautiful. White sand beach, azure waters fading back out toward the reef, a gentle breeze running through the pinnate leaves of coconut trees, the sun slowly dropping down toward the horizon. It was the kind of place a man daydreamed about when he was sitting in an office cubicle with a stack of work to chew through. A bona fide, jaw-dropping, inspire-the-meaning-of-life paradise.

  A defiled paradise. Kettle stood at the crest of a gentle rise on the approach to the beach and took in the state of corruption in front of him. A green tent canopy had been set up in the sand with a couple of tables underneath. The tables were piled up with food, and a cooler sat off to the side with tell-tale American beer stickers plastered all over it. Two little kettle grills had been plunked in the sand with burgers and hot dogs sizzling over charcoal.

  None of that bothered Kettle, though he hoped the beer selection would be better than the stickers suggested. The real problem was the people. And, come to think of it, the music. A pair of big cheaply made speakers were belting out what he suspected was called dubstep. Or maybe drum n bass. He had no idea.

  Three dozen military personnel in tee shirts, beach shorts and bare feet mingled around the tables laughing and spooning food onto paper plates. Some sat in the sand, while others had claimed fold-out chairs that had been brought down for the occasion. Most of them looked to be in their early twenties, though a few might have been even younger. Kettle spotted one kid who couldn’t have been more than eighteen looking wide-eyed with a beer in one hand and a nervous smile, trying to play it cool despite a face full of acne. There were a few women standing next to the cooler chatting together and laughing.

  And then there were the alpha males. They were usually pretty easy to spot at a party like this. Kettle saw four of them throwing a football around. They had their shirts off, partly because they were sweating, but partly to show off. One of them strutted with a little bit more confidence than the others. The alpha of the alphas, apparently. Even from where Kettle was standing, he could see that this guy belonged on the cover of Men’s Fitness. His deeply tanned abs tightened up as he planted his feet in the sand and threw the pigskin with a tattooed right arm. A pair of Oakleys adorned a ruggedly handsome face with a strong jaw and some dirty blond stubble.

  Kettle immediately disliked him for two reasons. First, the guy’s right hand was reserved for throwing the ball, but his left was clasped around a bottle of Captain Morgan. Kettle wasn’t sure why, but he had a strong feeling that this qualified him as a douchebag. Second, Kettle heard the guy say bro. Except he used that dismal frat house pronunciation, brah. “Hey brah, throw me the ball!” Kettle didn’t want to be associated with anyone who said brah.

  It wasn’t too late to leave. Nobody had seen him approaching yet. He could just slip back into the coconut trees.

  “Hey, Kettle!”

  Damn it. He glanced toward a cluster of bodies and made eye contact with a burger-holding, cap-wearing man who somehow managed to look short and lanky at the same time. He was short, actually. Lieutenant Jean-Francois Cote of the United States Navy stood about five-foot-seven, but he had a light build that made him wiry. When Jean-Francois had first shown up for duty with the Navy, people started calling him J.F., which sounded a lot like a weird pronunciation of Jeff. Eventually, it was unanimously decided that the problem would be solved by shortening J.F. to just J. Five minutes after that, it was unanimously decided that having a single letter for a name was far too artistic for a Navy man, so J became Jay. Jean-Francois had taken all of this in stride, as was his nature. He was pretty mellow about the little things in life.

  He was also the only person here that Kettle knew. He liked Jay, mostly because Jay was a little older and a lot smarter than the average enlistee. Jay enjoyed reading philosophy, which is more than Kettle could say for himself.

  “Hey,” Kettle called back and walked down to meet him. When he was close enough, Jay threw him a can of beer from the cooler. A Bud Light. Kettle’s inner voice let out a sarcastic Hooray!

  “I was wondering if you were going to come.”

  “Well, you know I wouldn’t miss a chance to see Diego Garcia’s finest.”

  Diego Garcia. A speck of American land in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Technically, it was an island atoll, and it wasn’t American. The Brits owned it, although that was a point of debate. The British had purchased the place from Mauritius in the mid-sixties and then unceremoniously kicked out the indigenous Chagossians in the early seventies as a favor to the American military who didn’t have anywhere else in the Indian Ocean to call their own. Strangely, the British government later decided that giving roughly two thousand Chagossians the boot had not been strictly legal, but now they had their hands tied. The Americans, who had invested ungodly sums of money into building up military facilities across the atoll, weren’t about to welcome back the locals. All of which meant that the only people allowed to set foot on this little slice of paradise were military, the vast majority of whom were American, though there were still a couple handfuls of Brits hanging about to represent Her Majesty’s interests.

  “You’re a cynical bastard, Kettle.” Jay nodded his he
ad toward the alphas. The four guys had given up on football and were trudging through the sand toward the food tables. “They’re not so bad, you know, once you get to know them.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “No, I’m serious. See that guy with the tats on his arm?” He pointed toward Mr. Men’s Fitness with the last remnants of his burger.

  “The one with the rum? Yeah.”

  “His name’s Dallas.He helped me out the other day when...”

  “Dallas?” Kettle rolled his eyes.

  “Yep. Dallas. What, you don’t like his name now?”

  “It’s fine,” Kettle chuckled. “Suits him perfectly.”

  “You’re such a snob,” Jay rebuked, shaking his head and smiling at his friend. “Anyway, as I was saying before your Highness interrupted me, Dallas helped me out with a flat. He was walking by when it happened. Soon as he saw me, he just strolled over and grabbed the spare out of the back. Helpful guy.” He swigged some beer and nodded to himself as if confirming his conclusion.

  “Did he call you brah?”

  Jay snorted. A few drops of beer escaped his mouth and dribbled down his chin. “Yeah, I think he did,” he admitted after swallowing. “Anyway, looks like I’m going to be spending some more time with him on Wednesday.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Him and I are both PCSing.”

  “Man, you know I’m not good with army acronyms. What’s PCS?”

  “Permanent change of station.”

  “Permanent . . . Whoa, whoa. You’re leaving? Jesus! Why didn’t you tell me?” Kettle frowned. This was bad news. He’d been here for a couple months and the list of friends he’d made so far consisted of just two people: his boss, fortunately, for obvious reasons, and Jay. Kettle didn’t feel like making any more, so his list was about to be slashed in half.

  “I didn’t know until recently. I requested Pearl Harbor-Hickam, but I didn’t actually think I’d get it.”

  “You’re going to Hawaii? What’s the point? We’ve got a perfectly good tropical island right here.”

  “Civilization, man. That’s the point. Honolulu. Waikiki. An actual night life! An old fart like you might be okay watching Star Trek TNG reruns on a Friday night, but I wouldn’t mind an actual date with a living, breathing woman.”

  “I’m thirty-four, smartass. I’m only seven years older than you. And don’t diss TNG. Jean-Luc Picard is an inspiration to us all. Plus, he’s a Frenchman like you. Give him a chance.”

  Calling Jay French was a bit of a stretch. He had been born in some little hole of a town in rural Quebec, but his parents had moved to Minnesota when he was in kindergarten, hence the eligibility for military service. The Quebec-Minnesota childhood meant that Jay was quite probably the only human being now living on Diego Garcia who (a) could speak fluent Quebecois French, (b) used the word oofta as a regular part of his vocabulary and (c) had the least bit of interest in the game of hockey.

  “Yeah, well, see how you and Jean-Luc like it when I send you a picture of me on Waikiki Beach with one arm around a buxom, dark-skinned Hawaiian girl and the other around a surf board.”

  “Damn right!” Dallas broke in, apparently having arrived just in time to hear the last part. “Hula dancers, surfin’ and sex on the beach! Oorah!”

  He was a Marine, Kettle surmised, picking out the tell-tale battle cry. The Navy and Coast Guard boys used hooyah, and Army was something else; he couldn’t remember what. Kettle also realized that Dallas was a fair bit drunk. His stance was a fraction wider than normal, his tanned cheeks were just slightly flushed, and Kettle wagered that beneath the shades, Dallas’ eyes would either be glossy or red, or both.

  With Dallas facing directly toward Jay, Kettle was positioned a little off to the side where he had full view of the tattoo splayed across the Marine’s bicep and running down to the forearm. Whoever the artist had been, he or she had done a hell of a good job. A massive three-masted sailing ship was bucking through stormy seas, water crashing up around the bowsprit, almost submerging the figurehead of a woman with long streaming hair. The detail was superb; he could make out the cannon ports along the hull. Kettle furrowed his brow when he saw the skull and crossed cutlasses on the black flag. Odd that a Marine would choose a pirate ship for a tattoo. Even odder were the words inked in two lines across the right side of his chest in a flowing italicized script. Let God and man decree laws for themselves and not for me. Kettle had read that line before. It was from a poem, but he couldn’t place it off the top of his head. Contrasted with that were two words scrawled beneath the ship. Semper fidelis, the Marine Corps motto, Latin for always loyal. Taken together, the ink paradoxically marked him as a piratical anarchist who was loyal to his country. Or just a confused kid.

  “Jay, buddy. Who’s your friend?” Dallas inquired, pointing the rum at Kettle. “He another squid like you?”

  “Nope. Sergeant Dallas Stalock, meet Merrick Kettle, our resident waste management technician.”

  Dallas tilted his head. “You’re a garbage man?”

  “Well, it’s a little more complicated than that,” Kettle countered. “The military produces some pretty nasty garbage. There are a lot of non-biodegradable, bio-hazardous components. It’s the kind of stuff that you don’t want seeping into the ground here if you like seeing nice birds and . . .”

  “So you’re a garbage man.”

  “Ah, sure. Whatever. I’m a garbage man.”

  Dallas looked content and turned back to Jay, a cocky smile creeping onto his face. “Did you invite the Asian chick?”

  “Yep.”

  “What Asian chick?” Kettle asked.

  “Her.”

  At first, Kettle didn’t see who Jay was looking at. The sun had almost completely dipped beneath the waterline and the remaining daylight was faltering. A few portable lanterns were hanging from the tent canopy above the food tables, but they were hindering more than helping his efforts to make out the figure walking toward the party. When she eventually stepped into the radius of the nearest lantern, Kettle saw a young woman wearing white jean shorts and a loose-fitting orange polo shirt. Her hair bounced behind her in a pony tail that dropped down just past her shoulders. Kettle couldn’t immediately decide how old she was. If he had to hazard a guess, he’d say around thirty-ish. She wore black-framed glasses perched on top of high cheekbones on a face that was round and mousy. The girl was looking around for someone, and that someone turned out to be Jay. She spotted him and walked over.

  Kettle also couldn’t tell right away if he was attracted to her or not. She wasn’t alluring in a classic sense. She was slender but not curvy. Her midsection was pudgy; she definitely wasn’t in great shape. Her glasses made her look bookish at best and peevish at worst. When she walked through the sand, she looked awkward, as if it were a new experience that she was just trying to come to terms with. Her smile was maybe her best feature; it caused dimples to pinch the corners of her mouth. Yet, he could clearly see some nervousness in the way she took in her surroundings.

  Jay boisterously called out to her. “Haley!” He extended his hand, which she accepted and shook. The handshake made her seem even more out of place with the young soldiers on the beach, most of whom were more familiar with fist bumps. Jay introduced her to the other two guys.

  “Nice to meet you,” she told them. Her accent made it clear that English wasn’t her first language.

  Dallas shook her hand and held it. He boldly and cryptically stated, “I like Chinese food.” He then proceeded to use his other hand to lift his Oakleys up onto his forehead so that he could make proper eye contact.

  Kettle was dumbfounded. Dallas was obviously drunker than he had originally thought. The Marine’s eyes, as Kettle had guessed earlier, were glazed.

  “Umm, sorry?” Haley managed to work her hand free. “I don’t understand.”

  “Chinese food. Your people make awesome food. We should have dinner sometime.”

  “Oh. Umm, no . .
. I’m not Chinese.”

  “Haley is from Seoul,” Jay explained without sounding condescending. Dallas didn’t react, although it wasn’t clear whether the delay was from rum-lag or if he didn’t know where Seoul was.

  “I’m Korean,” Haley offered. “It’s okay. Many people make same mistake.”

  Kettle made note of her little grammar slip-up. He decided that it was kind of cute.

  “What brings you to DG?” Kettle asked, immediately regretting how cheesy that question sounded out loud.

  “Boobies.” There wasn’t a hint of anything other than sincerity in her voice when she said it. Or at least it sounded like she said boobies. Her pronunciation was off, so it might have just been boobs with an elongated syllable at the end. There was a stunned silence from all three of the guys. Kettle looked to Jay, who shrugged and lifted his eyebrows as if to say he was equally confused.

  “Oorah!” Dallas chipped in.

  “Hmm,” Kettle remarked, looking contemplative. “Boobies?”

  “Red-footed boobies.” When she saw the continuing looks of awkwardness and confusion, she added “They breed on Diego Garcia.” Still nothing from the guys. “They’re birds,” she finally said. “I’m ornithologist.”

  “Ah, of course,” Jay chimed in as if he had known all along. “Red-footed boobies.”

  Kettle was confused. “How did you get here?” he queried. “I thought DG was military-only.”

  “Research invitation,” she declared. “American government grant, split between Indiana University and Korea University.”

  “How many people?”

  “Sorry?”

  “On your research team?”