Forging Zero

by Sara King

  Commander Tril inspected them like this, walking among the naked ranks and peering at them with slitted brown eyes. He stopped at Joe and gave him a smug look.

  In that moment, Joe wanted nothing more than to rip the alien’s head off his shoulders. Instead, he was too humiliated to let go of his groin.

  Tril turned away from Joe as the one called Kihgl went to the front of the room to address the entire gathering. Through the little black translator around his neck, Kihgl loudly said, “Listen to me, frightened Takki scum. I am Secondary Commander Kihgl of the Ooreiki Ground Force. That Ooreiki over there is Small Commander Linin, and the one standing at the head of the ranks is Small Commander Tril. You are now a part of Sixth Battalion. Commander Tril, Commander Linin, and myself will be your commanding officers throughout training.”

  Joe’s stomach recoiled when Tril turned back to once again meet his eyes. He’s in my battalion? Instinctively, he knew that wasn’t good.

  Commander Kihgl went on, heedless. “It is my job to inform you that you are now property of the Congressional Army. Any injuries you incur, any damage you cause, any expense for your outfitting beyond standard costs, will be paid with extra service added to your contract. You all began with thirty-three Standard Turns of duty to look forward to. For all of you except one, that number is still in effect.”

  Joe’s gut twisted in fear. He knew which one.

  “For the next three turns, until you graduate as a full member of the Congressional Army,” Commander Kihgl went on, “you will be referred to by numbers. My battlemasters will be passing among you, handing out temporary armbands with your recruit number on them. As soon as you get your number, strap it to your arm. Memorize it, because that’s all you will be allowed to use for the next three turns.”

  The aliens began passing out armbands. Joe held out his hand as the closest alien approached him, but it ignored him, giving an armband to the kid beside, behind, and in front of Joe. Reddening, Joe lowered his arm and stared straight ahead, refusing to let them bully him.

  Commander Kihgl stopped in front of Joe. “Why don’t you have a number?”

  “You never gave me one,” Joe said. Asshole.

  “That’s unfortunate.” Kihgl’s gaze was hard. “We seem to have run out, as the battalion was only supposed to have room for nine hundred. You can be Zero.”

  Joe’s flush deepened. He knew some of the kids had died in travel. He’d woken up to missing faces. He’d heard the aliens talking. He knew they could give him a number.

  One of the smallest kids in the room raised her hand.

  “What?” the alien asked, eyes locked with Joe.

  “Can I make him an armband?” she asked. “I know how to draw a zero.”

  “No,” Kihgl said. “Zero doesn’t need an armband.” Kihgl cocked his head, looking up at him. “After all, zeros don’t exist. Do they, Zero?”

  Joe straightened over the alien, staring down at him. His every fiber was telling him to fight, to pound Kihgl’s smug face in.

  The alien leaned closer, its sticky, slitted eyes almost close enough to touch Joe’s chin. “Need another lesson, Zero? Didn’t learn the first time?”

  Joe leaned down, until they were face-to-face. “Bring it on,” Joe replied.

  The slits along the sides of Kihgl’s neck started to flutter. In an instant, a meaty, boneless arm lashed out, catching Joe in the jaw hard enough to crack teeth. Joe spun out of formation, landing in a daze on the floor, his face on fire.

  “Do you need medical attention, Zero?” Kihgl demanded, walking up to him. “We both know how deeply it would pain me to add another three turns to your service.”

  Three turns? What the hell does that mean? Weeks? Months? Years? Joe pushed himself back to his feet, fists clenched. It took all his self-control not to swing at the snake-eyed bastard.

  “So the ashy furg is smarter than its father. A shame. It would’ve been interesting if you’d followed in his footsteps. Congressional soldiers can always use more target practice.”

  In that instant, a switch flipped in Joe’s head and all he saw was red. In an instant of madness, Joe tackled Kihgl and crawled on top of him as he fell, ramming his fists into the sides of his soft skull. Before he could open the pocketknife and use the blade on him, however, Kihgl threw Joe twenty feet across the room with one boneless arm.

  Two seconds later, the other Ooreiki were on him, over twelve of them at once, and the beating that followed seared Joe’s memory like a branding iron.

  When it was over, they left him there in full view of the rest of the children, his arms and legs each shattered in multiple places by the Ooreiki’s heavy arms. Joe’s last thought before surrendering to oblivion was of the little red Swiss Army knife he’d found in Manny Hernandez’s fingers, surrounded by a pool of blood.

  #

  “Give me control of the modification unit.”

  Commander Kihgl was scowling at the medical officers as they carted the Human away for repairs. Without looking at Tril, his secondary commander growled, “What for, Commander Tril?”

  “He’s in my platoon, sir,” Tril replied. “He’s my responsibility.”

  “We shouldn’t even be using the modification unit,” Kihgl muttered. “It’s for prisoners, not recruits. It stays with me.” Despite his words, Kihgl’s sudah were fluttering in his neck, betraying his frustration. Tril understood—such a show of disobedience, in front of a third of the battalion, would make it harder to control the rest of the children.

  “Why didn’t you use it this afternoon? Why let the furg attack you like that?”

  Commander Kihgl turned on him, anger in his eyes. “I didn’t let him do anything, Commander,” he snapped, startling Tril. “I deliberately provoked him. I took a lesson from the Jreet and used him as an example. If you could not see that, you’re as daft as he is.”

  The disdain with which the vkala had spoken to him in front of other Ooreiki caste members made Tril tense. He glanced to the side and saw that several of his own subordinates were watching the exchange with interest. Struggling to regain composure, Tril said, “He’s giving the other children ideas.”

  “No,” Commander Kihgl said bluntly. “He’s showing them that disobedience has consequences.”

  Tril decided to try a new tactic. “If I had the modification unit, I could—”

  “No.” Still watching the departing physicians, Kihgl made an irritated gesture at the naked, whimpering Humans. “Go give your recruits their vid time, Commander. I’ll deal with Zero.” At that, Tril’s commander turned and followed the path the medics had taken.

  #

  When Joe woke up, he was surprised that they had patched him up as good as new. Every broken bone, every bruise, every cut was healed. A new anger rose in Joe’s throat as he looked down at himself, flexing limbs that he had seen twisted back upon themselves earlier that morning. The evidence was unmistakable. They hadn’t needed to kill the sickly kids. They could have healed them, just like they had Joe, and they would have been good soldiers out of gratitude for it. But they had needed to make examples out of them, so they blew their heads off, instead.

  Spiritually and emotionally sick, Joe was barely paying attention when the alien medic told him they’d tacked another six turns onto his enlistment to pay for his medical treatment. The medic never mentioned finding a little red pocketknife, and Joe knew he wasn’t getting it back. Somehow, that knowledge was worse than the extra time he’d have to serve. It was the only thing he’d retained of home, the only thing he had of Dad’s. He wanted to grab the alien and shout at him, demand it back, fight until he had it, but Joe knew that the medics had probably dumped it into one of the trash holes as soon as they had found it.

  Numbly, Joe put on the loose white shorts and matching T-shirt the medic gave him and followed him to a line of similarly-dressed kids standing in booths with little TVs inside them. The pictures were of people talking, and immediately Joe wondered if it was some sort of brainwas
hing session disguised as free time.

  Only when the alien pushed him inside one of the booths did Joe realize the screen held his mother’s image. It looked…older.

  Thinking it was some sort of trick, Joe started to back out of the booth.

  “Joe?”

  Joe hesitated, staring down at her. Her hair was messy and her eyes were red from crying. She looked so real. How could she be there? Weren’t they traveling a billion miles an hour through space? Was this some weird mind-trick the aliens were playing on them? Subliminal messages?

  Joe turned to the alien outside the booth. “What’s going on?”

  The alien gave him a dispassionate look. Through its translator, it said, “Congressional law states every recruit must have six tics to speak with its family before training begins.” The alien glanced at a group of moving squiggles under Joe’s mother and its face scrunched. “You have five left.”

  Joe dove back into the booth. “Mom?”

  “Joe!” She looked so relieved. So happy. So different from the last time he’d seen her, when she had thought it would be Sam leaving her, not Joe. “Thank God. Joe, I’ve been waiting so long to talk to you! Are you okay? What’s happening there? Have they hurt you?”

  Joe took a long look at his mother’s face. It was lined with worry. She looked like she’d aged ten years since that first day the aliens landed in Washington. She was paler, almost gaunt. Her eye sockets were heavy and dark from lack of sleep. He decided she needed to hear good news. As much as he wanted to tell her his problems, beg her to find a way to help him, he said, “No, they haven’t hurt me. I’m doing fine.”

  His mother’s face momentarily slackened with relief. Then a line formed in between her brows. “That’s not what the other parents are saying. They’re saying the aliens are killing kids and—”

  “They’re not,” Joe said. “They’re just little crybabies. They don’t understand.”

  His mom smiled and looked like she was crying. “You’re so brave, Joe,” she said. “You remind me so much of your father.”

  Joe had to look away from the screen, digging his fingernails into his palms to keep the tears at bay. “Has Dad come back yet?”

  On the screen, his mother’s face contorted. “You know he hasn’t. Why do you keep asking?! You’re not as young as Sam. You know he’s—”

  “Where is Sam?” Joe interrupted.

  His mother’s face softened. “Here,” she whispered. “You saved him, Joe. You actually saved him.” She sounded so stunned. And happy. Glad.

  Glad that it was Joe on the ship, not Sam.

  Joe bit his lip and looked at the wall beside the unit. “They didn’t come back for him?” He’d been wondering why he hadn’t caught sight of the know-it-all bastard in the panicked throng of kids.

  “It was the last sweep, Joe.” His mom sounded like she was close to sobbing. “Sammy made it back home and the aliens left. They’ve been gone for two years, Joe. Sammy’s okay, Joe. You saved him.”

  Two…years. Joe felt oddly numb. Sam got to stay…and Joe was with the aliens.

  Because he ran like a pussy and left me to die.

  He must have said it out loud, because his mother’s face hardened on the screen. “He was ten, you insensitive bastard.” Sammy always had been a Momma’s Boy. “You wanted him to fight aliens, Joe? At ten? Why, so he could get his face blown off like your father?” And her favorite. Sammy had always been her favorite.

  “He left his own brother to die,” Joe muttered. “They had guns to my head, Mom. And he just left.”

  “Seeing how you got him caught in the first place, Joe,” his mother said, her voice cold and utterly even, like ice, “I’d say it’s only fair you took his place.” And it was obvious Sam was her favorite, seeing the fury in her face, the outrage at the idea that Sam should’ve risked his life to save Joe. Joe had always wondered, but had never worked up the balls to ask.

  And here, plain as day, was his answer. Looking at him like she was disgusted he was still breathing. Joe, his father’s son, the football jock, the C-student, the Marine wannabe who never really had any serious aspirations beyond retiring a USMC staff sergeant… Shoved aside for a skinny little math whiz who’d had a college recruiter from MIT come over to watch Sam do Joe’s Trig homework for him while Sam chewed gum, played two MMORPGs, listened to Bach, and watched a pirated Star Trek re-run in the background.

  Of course she wants him more than me, Joe thought. Sam’s a genius. Joe was just…

  Average.

  Then the alien monitoring his call terminated the connection so the kid behind Joe could have a chance. Joe left the booth feeling like someone had poured acid over his insides.

  CHAPTER 4: Joe’s Groundteam

  That night, after everyone had made their mandatory phone calls, Joe and the others were lined up once more in the brightly-lit gymnasium. This time, the aliens arranged them in groups of six. They put the tallest in front, the youngest in back.

  “You are now a member of Sixth Battalion,” Commander Kihgl told them once they were arranged. “It contains roughly nine hundred recruits, monitored by a single secondary commander—myself—two small commanders—Small Commander Tril and Small Commander Linin—and ten battlemasters, whom you will acquaint yourselves with personally as your training goes on. Normally, a battalion is led by a tertiary commander, but as one of the senior officers of this Takkiscrew, I was chosen to lead the brigade, as well. Likewise, Prime Commander Lagrah is in charge of both Second Battalion and the regiment as a whole.” He stopped, letting that sink in.

  When none of the kids interrupted him—and in fact stared at him in slack-jawed silence—Commander Kihgl gestured around the room. “What you see here is your half of the battalion, called a company. You belong to First Company, Sixth Battalion of the Second Brigade, Eighty-Seventh Regiment of the Fourteenth Human Ground Force. But for the rest of your training, all you really need to concern yourselves with are battalion-level and below. Brigades, regiments, and ground forces are only brought together during ceremonies or times of war. Understand so far?”

  Nobody did, of course, but that didn’t stop him from plowing onward. “A company has four hundred and fifty members, arranged into seventy-five groundteams. A groundteam has six members. Because half of you ignorant Takki can’t yet count, we’ve organized you into groups of six.” Commander Kihgl gestured at the lines behind them. “Take a good look behind you. These are your groundmates for the next three turns.”

  Joe glanced behind him. The kid in the back of his group was easily the smallest girl in the room—he had trouble believing she was five. It was the same little girl who had offered to make him a zero when Kihgl ran out of armbands. Remembering that, Joe grinned. She gave him a tentative smile around her thumb.

  “From now on, the six of you will eat, sleep, bathe, and crap together. The recruit in front will make sure the rest of the group does this properly or he will be punished. Further—” Commander Kihgl cut off as five new Ooreiki strode into the room, a very pale, scarred alien at their lead. “Battlemaster Nebil, take it from here. I’m late for a vid meeting with Lagrah.”

  The much paler newcomer nodded and swiftly moved toward the front of the formation.

  “Sir,” Tril interrupted, stepping toward Kihgl, “I’m the small commander of the Company. Perhaps I would be better suited to—”

  “Nebil, make sure they understand their responsibilities,” Kihgl said, then departed. Commander Tril shot a furious look at Kihgl’s back.

  Battlemaster Nebil seemed to be of the same mold as Kihgl, with pale skin and drooping folds of flesh. His neck, arms, and head—every exposed inch of his rough brown skin—were likewise marred by horrible, gruesome claw-marks, mixing with the rumpled, circular marks Joe guessed were gunshots, though nothing as intense as Kihgl’s. Still, compared to Tril’s dark, unblemished skin, Nebil looked as if he’d been run through a meat grinder.

  Nebil stood back to eye them, saying nothing
. After several minutes of just staring at them, he twisted his tentacles behind his back and began walking in front of their ranks, looking them up and down like a warden in a Nazi concentration camp.

  After several minutes of silence, one of the big kids tentatively raised his hand. At Nebil’s grunt, the kid said, “How do we keep our groundmates in line?”

  “How do you keep them in line?” Battlemaster Nebil snorted. “However you burning feel like it.” He started pacing again, watching them. His sticky brown eyes caught on Joe and paused there.

  “What he means is—” Tril began.

  Still looking at Joe, Nebil spoke over Tril with the unstoppable force of a locomotive running over a duck. “But if they’ve gotta go to medical, it will be you who gets time added to your enlistment.”

  Joe actually got chills, getting the specific idea that Battlemaster Nebil was talking to him.

  “So we can hit them?” a girl with a grotesquely large lower jaw insisted. She looked like some sort of piranha, with her chin jutting out past her nose. The child in the back of her group whimpered.

  Nebil continued to hold Joe’s gaze for a moment before he turned and looked her up and down, the silence filling the room absolute. “You can do anything you want, as long as they can fight at the end of the day.”

  Inwardly, Joe groaned. Were they trying to turn everyone into bullies?

  “But,” Nebil said, looking back at Joe, “Keep in mind you’ll have to rely on them in battle. They might end up saving your life—or not. It all boils down to trust, and if you squirming Takki break that confidence, they’re not going to—”

  Tril interrupted him. “We’re running out of time. Group leaders, take a moment to get to know your teammates. You have three tics.”

  Nebil turned and gave Tril a silent stare, but did not contradict him.

  Joe turned to face the five kids behind him. “Everyone get over here,” he said, squatting. “Group huddle.”