[The Legend of ZERO 01.0] Forging Zero

by Sara King

  “Are you going to whine all the way up?”

  Joe slumped against the railing, all of his fight suddenly leaving him. He caught a look of satisfied amusement on the Takki’s reptilian face before turning to slump over the banister and stare out at the huge, winding stair wrapping around the honeycombed tower.

  The elevator passed over several badly-scarred Takki on the switchbacked stairs, each with unreadable sapphire eyes. They never looked up from their tasks. The humans were worse. The ones he saw had dead eyes, their bodies riddled with half-healed gouges that had ripped their skin into wrinkled valleys of scars. Only their hands were unscarred—beautiful, working hands that showed not a single scab.

  Joe glanced over the railing at the ground below. They were at least a thousand feet in the air. Nobody could survive a fall that far.

  Briefly, Joe thought of the skydivers he had read about whose parachutes never deployed and they ended up alive on some parking lot somewhere, with only a few broken bones to show for their mile-high plunge. He felt sick as he thought about it. Maybe if he jumped head-first…

  Battlemaster Nebil lashed a tentacle around Joe’s throat and dragged him away from the edge. “Don’t even think about it.” Joe endured the Ooreiki’s painful grip for the rest of the ride. When the elevator stopped, Nebil dragged him onto the roof and into a tank-sized opening cut into the ebony stone.

  On the other side, the hallway widened into the balcony of an enormous amphitheater. In its center, a handful of humans were gathered around Lord Knaaren, whose iridescent body twitched in time to his sleepy groans. The humans tending the Dhasha were prying up scales and using blue metal sticks to dig out huge flakes of skin from underneath. These they were piling in baskets, which a Takki was collecting.

  “Stay here.” Without another word, Nebil descended into the Dhasha’s chambers. All of the children looked up as he entered, then glanced up at Joe as soon as he spoke. Slowly, haltingly, one of the boys stepped away from the rest. With a start, Joe recognized Elf.

  The Ooreiki led Elf back to the top of the stairs, where the battlemaster paused for a moment to look Joe up and down. Finally, he said, “Good luck, Zero.” At that, Nebil turned and walked out the door, gesturing for Elf to follow him. Elf stayed for several long heartbeats, looking at Joe with an anguished look of pity and relief. Then, like he was afraid to lose the opportunity, Elf turned and hurried after the Ooreiki, leaving Joe alone.

  At least I saved Elf. Joe felt a ridiculous laugh forming in his chest. Turning, he stared down at the pathetic figures scraping filth from under the Dhasha’s scales. He watched the meek, scuttling slaves for several moments before, out of nowhere, a Takki grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and spun him around. If an Ooreiki was solid muscle, a Takki was solid steel. As easily as lifting a doll, the Takki threw Joe against the stone railing overlooking the sleeping Dhasha. His six armored fingers were tipped with blunted purple talons that dug into Joe’s skin as he held him.

  “Why were you standing here?” the Takki demanded. “Humans are not allowed beyond the den.” He pulled Joe down the stairs, until he was only feet from the twitching Dhasha. There, it shoved a blue metal scratching stick into Joe’s hands, then pushed him toward Knaaren. When Joe did not immediately squat and begin cleaning with the rest, the Takki casually raked purple talons along his back, opening up the hide there and shoved him to his knees.

  Joe stared down at the basket of stinking skin flakes beside his thigh. He saw tiny, red alien insects crawling through the mess, four sets of mandibles ripping at the dead skin, each the size of a large water-beetle. They snapped at the humans when they came too close. He saw a kid flinch when he was bitten by one of the invertebrates, a welling of blood beading on his wrist. Then the Takki ruthlessly grabbed Joe by the back of his head, its wrought-iron arms shoving his face towards the Dhasha’s sleeping body.

  Joe whipped around and slammed the metal stick over the Takki’s glistening purple muzzle.

  The Takki’s pained howl woke Knaaren. The Dhasha was on his feet instantly, bowling his attendants aside as he sought to locate the source of the noise. As soon as his eyes found the whimpering Takki, he knocked the creature to the ground and ripped off its head. Then it turned to Joe.

  Joe dropped the crowbar.

  CHAPTER 27: The Trouble with Takki

  “I recognize you,” Knaaren said, purple scales stuck between his rows of black teeth. “You’re the big one who claimed he wasn’t a bully.” The Prime Commander glanced up at the railing where Nebil had disappeared. “Looks like you lied, doesn’t it?”

  Joe made a split-second decision. Standing before the monster, all Joe’s self-righteous thoughts about death before slavery fled him and, in that instant, faced with those razor-filled jaws, all he wanted to do was live. He lowered his head and waited.

  Knaaren gnashed his teeth together, grinding bits of purple flesh and scales between them. Chewing, Joe thought, disgusted. He heard the sharp crunch of bones as the Dhasha crushed the Takki’s skull in his jaws. Then, swallowing, Knaaren said, “Why are you here?”

  Joe felt all his courage drain out his feet. “I questioned Commander Tril in front of his battalion,” he managed.

  The Dhasha snorted, filling the place with a blast of fetid breath. “Really. That’s unsurprising. What did you say?”

  “I think I said he was a sad dancing monkey that didn’t deserve to lead the Sixth,” Joe said.

  Lord Knaaren bared his rainbow lips and clacked his inky black teeth together, then snatched up the rest of the dead Takki and swallowed it. Joe endured several minutes of the sick crunching of bones only a few hand-widths from his neck before the Dhasha languidly returned to his place amongst the brightly colored pillows, apparently not in the mood to kill Joe after all. “Tell me of Human females. What’s the best way to get them to breed?”

  Joe stared. “What?”

  Knaaren watched his reaction like a hungry cat. “Every Human I’ve asked so far has clearly not known what I was talking about. Somehow, I think you might.”

  Joe cleared his throat, face reddening. “Well, uh, I hear they like flowers. Candles. Dinner and a movie. My friend told me a poem worked for him.”

  “Dinner?” Knaaren’s attendants moved forward and began picking purple scales and flesh from between his teeth. “I’ve not been withholding their food.”

  “They…uh…” Joe didn’t know how to say what followed without inciting the Dhasha’s wrath. “I think the Ooreiki made them all sterile anyway.”

  “Do you think I’m stupid?!” the Dhasha snarled. “Of course I’m not using former recruits. I ate those useless creatures immediately.”

  Joe glanced at the other human slaves. For the first time, he realized all of them were boys. He felt a fearful twisting in his gut. He ate all the girls.

  “I paid for a shipment from Earth,” Knaaren continued. “Nine females. I tried to vary the colors, to create more interesting stock, but most are your dull pink.”

  Joe felt a sick feeling rising in his stomach.

  Knaaren eased backwards on his pillows, still watching him. “The recruit I put into their stable has done nothing more than eat and sleep.”

  Immediately, Joe understood the problem. Most of the recruits had been far too immature when they were Drafted to know anything about sex. Whoever Knaaren had chosen, he was probably more interested in bedtime stories than reproduction.

  “So what must I do?” Knaaren insisted. “Must I buy these things you speak of and bring them here for the male to use?”

  “Yeah, probably,” Joe said.

  The Dhasha snorted. “Useless creatures. How is it your species survived, if the male cannot impregnate the female without help?”

  “We’ve always had it, I guess,” Joe said, flushing.

  “That will mean another two rotations before I can start breeding them, even if I send my fastest ship,” Knaaren growled. “You Humans are turning out to be more trouble than you’re wort
h.”

  Joe kept silent, not sure what the Dhasha wanted him to say.

  “You taste good, though,” Knaaren continued. “No scales at all. Very tender. You’re even better than farmed Takki. At the farms, they de-scale them and keep them in one spot until their muscles grow soft and they can’t even hold themselves upright and still they are tougher than a Human could ever be. Humans are much more palatable, even with their bitter aftertaste. That’s why I bought those nine from Earth. I want to start a farm.” He gave Joe an interested look. “You’re larger than most Humans, aren’t you?”

  Joe felt his gorge rising. “No,” he lied. “About average.”

  “Pity. I need a good stud. This one I have is useless.”

  Joe kept his mouth shut.

  The Dhasha closed his double-lidded eyes. Joe waited for him to say something else, but the Prime Commander had fallen asleep.

  When he no longer had Knaaren’s attention, several Takki came forward and dragged Joe away to receive his first beating upon arriving in the dens. He quickly realized that, despite the terrible force behind an Ooreiki thrashing, their punishment did not hold a candle to the cruel efficiency of a Takki slave.

  #

  “Nebil, why do you continue to allow your recruits to disfigure their uniforms? Zero is gone, and your entire platoon is dangerously close to following in his footsteps.”

  Battlemaster Nebil had barely said a word to Tril since he had included him in the perceptual punishment. Curtly, Tril’s battlemaster said, “Commander, my platoon is my business. As long as it performs well in the hunts, I expect you to leave it alone.”

  Tril felt his sudah give a quick flutter at the word ‘expect.’ No one under his command had ever dared to speak to him like that. An array of punishments for Nebil drifted through his mind, immediate demotion and transfer topping the list. He quickly had second thoughts about both of those, however, because Nebil’s platoon far outstripped the others in efficiency and hunting skill. Tril didn’t like to admit it, but Nebil was one of the best battlemasters he’d ever seen, and he knew that when Sixth Battalion finally brought Second to heel, it would be Nebil’s platoon that led the charge.

  Still, Nebil’s disrespect had to be dealt with. With all the dignity he could muster, Tril said, “I’ve ignored your disobedience until now, Battlemaster, and every day I see more of your recruits with their arms bared. That did not concern me overly much—if you wish to distinguish your platoon from the others as a sort of friendly competition, that is fine. However, this morning I saw three recruits from another platoon with their arms likewise bared.”

  Nebil looked amused. “Perhaps you should transfer them to Fourth.”

  “I had their battlemaster withhold two days’ worth of food for the infraction.”

  Nebil’s face hardened.

  “So, Battlemaster, tell me. How should I run Sixth Battalion? You’re only one of ten battlemasters I have to deal with each day, each of whom wants something different for his platoon. If I allow Fourth Platoon to make its own dress code, how do I make it fair for the other nine platoons in my battalion? Should I allow Second to paint their jackets orange? Should I let Seventh go without boots?”

  “Do what you want,” Nebil said coldly. “All I know is that when Fourth marches through the plaza, people turn their heads to watch. When we come after another platoon in the hunts, they know who we are. Fourth is the only platoon in the regiment that has its own table at the chow hall. When it goes to sit down, everybody else moves out of the way.”

  Tril’s sudah were whipping in irritation. “I’ve heard about that, Nebil. You purposefully left Fourth Platoon’s time slot and now go to eat whenever you please. The other commanders are furious.”

  Battlemaster Nebil looked completely unruffled. “Those Takki pussies are trying to make Sixth choose between food and sleep. A battalion can’t function long that way before it cracks. I’m not letting them push my recruits around. You shouldn’t, either.”

  At that, Nebil turned and left without another word.

  #

  From the very first moment in the den, the Takki methodically shattered Joe’s dignity. It was everything he could do to remind himself he was a human being. For the first few days, until Knaaren commented on it, they refused to clothe him. They gave him the nerve-shattering jobs—like picking rancid strips of flesh from between the Dhasha’s teeth—and made sure he crawled like a dog between the Dhasha and the refuse heap to deposit his piles of rotting skin and parasites. When he was too slow, they ruthlessly added their claw marks to his skin.

  Joe only left Knaaren’s den a few times, but during each outing, he realized with a sinking gut how hopeless his situation was. The platoons continued to drill and the battalions continued to hunt, still functioning efficiently despite the missing recruit called Zero. Unlike the other humans, who hoped for a miracle upon seeing their old comrades, Joe always opted to stay behind if he got the chance. He didn’t want Libby and the others to see him as he was—a bent-necked, rubber-spined, teeth-picking slave.

  Knaaren, however, gave him no choice. The Prime Commander was getting increasingly odd—sometimes shouting at thin air as if someone was standing there, shouting back. The Dhasha’s dreams were also becoming more restless. Almost as soon as Knaaren closed his eyes, he began to quiver and shake, snapping at the air with his huge jaws so often that the most dangerous task for the slaves became grooming the Prime Commander while he was sleeping.

  On those rare occasions when Knaaren decided he wanted certain slaves to accompany him out onto the drill plaza, even the slightest suggestion that Joe wanted to stay behind was enough for the Dhasha to order the Takki to hurt him.

  Knaaren himself couldn’t touch the humans without causing irreversible damage. His claws, as Commander Linin had demonstrated, were wedge-shaped and as sharp as razors. Instead of simply tearing flesh like claws on Earth, these cut. And, with the human slaves dressed in nothing except flimsy purple robes, even a light bat from a Dhasha paw was enough to cut them in half. Therefore, he had the Takki do his dirty work for him.

  And they excelled at their job. They gave Joe a new scar at every opportunity, and the two times Joe dared to fight back, they showed him just how weak he really was. It took no effort at all for a Takki to beat him senseless. Unlike the Ooreiki, the lizard-folk didn’t even have to put much energy into it. They simply had to slap him and Joe felt like he’d been hit with a Mack truck.

  Joe eventually discovered his treatment was not special. The Takki dealt with all the other humans with the same amount of cruelty. To the Takki, all slaves who had to wear purple robes to symbolize their servitude were considered lesser creatures than they, who had been the loyal companions of the Dhasha for millennia. Joe quickly realized that the Takki were proud of their station. They were even angry that Knaaren had decided to grow humans as food. That was their place, they figured, and the humans were trying to usurp it.

  Insanity. Joe found that they had no concept of Self, no sense of purpose other than to live and die serving the Dhasha. He never heard any of them use the word ‘I.’ As far as he could tell, they all thought of themselves as a single being with different jobs to do. If any of them failed in their duties, they were ostracized by the whole until the stress became too much and the victim made a fatal mistake in front of its master. This lack of compassion made them quick to snitch on the other slaves, human and Takki alike. And, Joe quickly found when Knaaren calmly ate one Takki in front of its uncomplaining mate, they had not an ounce of courage.

  Joe hated the Dhasha, but he hated the Takki even more. Knaaren was thoughtless and brutal, but it did not even compare to the Takki’s cold, methodic cruelty. The more he served with them, the more he realized that, without the Takki, the Dhasha never would have evolved past a stinking, mindless predator. It was the Takki who gave Knaaren the ability to send summons to his subordinates. It was the Takki who kept dead skin from rotting away his scales and his teeth from falling
out. It was the Takki who manipulated objects and carried delicate instruments. It was the Takki who opened doors and operated haauk.

  Knaaren took it all for granted, too. Several times, Joe glanced up at the door locking them inside the den and wondered what would happen to Knaaren if he suddenly went on a rampage and killed all of his slaves. His powerful forequarters were too stubby to lift higher than necessary to run, and his paws were too rigid to press individual buttons. His sharklike face was too wide to do anything but mash the keypad and his tail was too small and stiff to use it as another limb. In short, he had absolutely no way of getting himself out of the den, should the Takki lock him in there forever.

  And yet, for some reason, they never did.

  They’re cowards, Joe thought, hating them. All this time, they could be free and the Dhasha couldn’t stop them, but they don’t even try.

  What made him hate them even more was that the Takki were treated even more poorly than the humans and still they did nothing to help themselves. Knaaren cuffed and batted them daily, sometimes scoring deep furrows in their scales, sometimes breaking through and dipping into skin. He ate them often, usually for a slight infraction. Those that he ate were always replaced, their fresh scales and bright eyes indicative of transfer from some Dhasha slave colony. Those were usually the first to make mistakes and become lunch. The older ones, the ones bearing the most scars from Knaaren’s rages, had somehow clawed their way to the top of the Takki food chain and spent all of their time outside the den, managing their master’s affairs.

  Once Knaaren was clean and groomed, he only seemed to care about making Joe and the other humans do his bidding, watching their movements with an interested air. Joe could not help but shudder when those green, egg-shaped eyes were fixed on him, feeling like a trapped rodent pinned under a cat’s cold stare.