Forging Zero

by Sara King

  Then he saw him. It was impossible to miss the Dhasha’s iridescent rainbow scales silhouetted against the obsidian behind him. The beast rode in an elevator, descending one of the nearer buildings. He was scanning the formation as the machine bore him down the side of the Prime Commander’s tower, his sharkish mouth open. Even from this distance, Joe could see the multiple rows of triangular black teeth, the egg-shaped crystalline green eyes focusing on them without pupils.

  He was only a hundred feet from the bottom. Joe’s heart began to pound. He wished the elevator would quit. He wished the building caved in. He wished the power would go out… Anything to keep it from reaching the plaza and releasing its cargo upon the recruits again.

  His prayers went unanswered. As Lord Knaaren stepped off the elevator, a deep, resonant horn echoed across the plaza, vibrating in Joe’s spine. Knaaren strutted toward them deliberately, trailing a handful of the twenty-eight children he had taken the week before. Joe could not tell if Elf was amongst them without turning his head to look.

  Instead of stopping at each battalion as he had the last time, Knaaren stalked directly to Sixth Battalion. Commander Tril stepped out to meet him.

  “Where are your standards?” Knaaren demanded. “Every battalion has standards except yours.”

  “I was never notified our standards were ready, Ko-Knaaren,” Tril replied.

  “So you are unprepared.”

  “I was busy securing battle dress and otwa cartridges for my recruits.”

  “So you’re incompetent. That should have been done beforehand.”

  “I was working with Peacemakers until the last inspection, Ko-Knaaren. I’m still catching up.”

  The Dhasha snorted, and Joe felt the blast of rotting breath all the way from where he stood. “So be it. The traitor’s battalion does not need standards.”

  “I’ll find them as soon as we’re done here.”

  “You don’t need them. Your battalion is a disgrace. They’ll be stored for the day you deserve to carry them.”

  All around Joe, the Ooreiki of Sixth Battalion stiffened. He could feel their anger like heat waves emanating from them, but none of them moved to object.

  Tril bowed his head quickly. “As you wish, Commander.”

  “You will refer to me as Your Lordship, you stupid vaghi.”

  “My apologies, your lordship,” Tril said immediately. “I’d forgotten you used a different ranking system.” Joe had never seen an Ooreiki so subservient.

  The Dhasha, meanwhile, appeared to be enjoying making the Secondary Commander grovel. “You forgot? You ignorant Takki. Dhasha spit on Congressional titles. Perhaps I should just take you back to groom me tonight so you don’t forget again, eh, Tril?”

  “I apologize, your lordship,” Tril repeated. “It will not happen again.”

  “See that it doesn’t. And see that your Humans learn the proper way to march. Their efforts are disgraceful.”

  “Of course, your lordship.”

  Lord Knaaren grunted and moved away, circling Sixth Battalion slowly, eying its recruits. Joe caught Elf staring at him from the knot of humans following the Dhasha commander. His eyes were red and puffy from crying, his face pale as death. Joe watched him until they moved out of sight, guilt scoring his chest.

  “I want that one,” Knaaren said, stopping.

  Commander Tril stepped forward.

  Battlemaster Nebil caught Tril by the arm and stopped him. “No, furg,” he hissed under his breath, glancing to make sure Knaaren hadn’t seen. “You’ll only make it worse.”

  Tril’s sudah were fluttering as he violently ripped his arm out of Nebil’s grip. He stalked toward the Dhasha, who was slowly walking along the ranks, eying the rest of Sixth Battalion, his new slave walking behind him with the rest. Knaaren gave a startled snort when Tril stepped in front of him.

  “I’m going to have to ask you do not take any more of my recruits, Ko-Knaaren. We are down twenty-nine as it is.”

  Knaaren jerked to stare at him, emerald eyes cold. “You dare tell me what to do, Ooreiki?”

  Tril stood tall despite the way the Dhasha’s rainbow lips were peeling away from his teeth. “It is a request, your lordship. Nothing more.”

  “Then I deny your request.” Knaaren began choosing recruits from the ranks at random. He didn’t stop until he reached twenty-nine. Bearing huge, sharklike black teeth, the Dhasha paused in front of a rigid Tril and said, “Now you’re down another twenty-nine. If you haven’t improved them in a week, I will take twenty-nine more.”

  “The battalion can’t function in the—”

  “It will function or it will perish,” Lord Knaaren retorted.

  Tril’s body was as stiff with rage. “Your lordship, the combined force exercises have minimum troop requirements for each battalion. You would put us below the standard if you take any more.”

  Knaaren sprang at Tril, but landed short, his thousands of pounds of muscle making the ground shudder and spraying the front row of recruits with a shower of gravel. Commander Tril stumbled backwards, his sudah rippling in his neck.

  “Then if I take any more,” Knaaren growled, his slick ebony teeth brushing Tril’s neck, “I’ll have to start with you, Ooreiki worm.”

  “I’m sorry, milord. So sorry…” Tril fell backwards to the ground, cringing and babbling in terror.

  Knaaren snorted and turned on the children behind him, Tril’s groveling already forgotten. “Take the whimpering Humans back to my quarters. They’re making it hard to think.”

  Bet that’s not very difficult, you asshole, Joe thought.

  Finished with Sixth Battalion, Knaaren moved to the front of the regiment and faced them. A Takki turned up the volume on the translator hanging from the Dhasha’s thick neck.

  “You all know why you’re here,” the translator boomed across the plaza. “One of your battalion commanders is a traitor to Congress. We are here to give him the punishment he deserves.”

  “You are here to give him a fair trial, Knaaren,” Commander Lagrah said. Joe felt every Ooreiki in the plaza stiffen. Beside him, Battlemaster Nebil sucked in his breath and turned to watch their Ooreiki Prime Commander.

  Knaaren twitched to stare at Lagrah. “Do you wish to join him, Commander? Perhaps you’ll share a cell on Levren. I hear a vkala is always welcome there.”

  “Such is why the Dhasha are rarely elected to the Tribunal.” The new voice came from above them. “You have absolutely no tact.” Lord Knaaren looked up, digging his talons into the plaza beneath him. Representative Na’leen sat enthroned on a huge haauk floating twenty feet off the ground, six Huouyt attendants clustered about him.

  “Come down here and speak to me like that, you spineless Takki coward,” Lord Knaaren snapped up at Na’leen.

  Instantly, the pilot lowered the skimmer to the ground and Na’leen disembarked, striding up to Knaaren and stopping directly under his huge jaws. “I said, your kind are too stupid to serve on the Tribunal. You have the thought processes of an Ooreiki niish that just crawled from its membrane. It would please me greatly to see you declawed and trained as beasts of burden.”

  Knaaren tensed, and for a moment, Joe thought he would eat Na’leen. Finally, he said, “You’re filled with empty threats. The trial proceeds at my direction.”

  Representative Na’leen peered up into the Dhasha’s eyes, his electric-blue gaze cold. “If I had threatened you, furg, you would be dead now.” He ignored the Dhasha’s teeth as if they did not exist to him. “I won’t waste words trying to make a Dhasha see reason. I came to watch and advise. You will heed me, or Congress will have to find a use for your scales, once they tear them off your back.”

  The Dhasha took a step toward the Representative, forcing him backwards with his massive, scaly chest. Immediately, two bus-sized Jreet materialized and jammed their glassy daggers into the Dhasha’s chest, under the scales. Knaaren backed up, teeth clacking together in a laugh as deep violet blood began to leak from around the Jreet s
pearheads. The Jreet, in turn, yanked their spears free and vanished again.

  Representative Na’leen continued as if nothing had happened. “I did not come here to humiliate you, Knaaren.” He lifted a flat, paddle-shaped limb languidly, his cloth-of-gold cape shimmering about his shoulders. “I came to observe your pathetic attempt at justice.”

  “He’ll get a fair trial,” the Dhasha said.

  Na’leen bowed, surprisingly elegant for a being that most resembled a squid. “Then I leave it in your capable claws.” He moved in his awkward three-legged shuffle back to the skimmer and settled into the scoop-shaped throne in its center.

  Knaaren turned his back to the Huouyt abruptly. In an angry snarl, he snapped, “Bring out the prisoner!”

  Four black-clad Ooreiki emerged from the far end of the plaza, leading an Ooreiki dressed entirely in white. Joe realized, horrified, that Kihgl was missing his arms. Where the flowing brown tentacles had once been, two wiggling stubs remained. They looked like the tail of a lizard regrowing itself.

  They tortured him. It left a tightness in Joe’s chest as he watched. As much as Kihgl had scared him over the course of the last few weeks, he had still saved him at the Choosing and protected him from the Peacemaker. He had let Joe into his confidence. He had even tried to give him Battlemaster.

  I’d be dead if it weren’t for him, Joe thought, taking in the gashes that were still raw to the fact that one half of Kihgl’s face was limp and drooping.

  The tension in the air as Kihgl approached increased a thousandfold, and the sudah of every Ooreiki in the plaza was fluttering.

  Kihgl’s escort came to a halt in front of the Dhasha, then backed off several paces, leaving Kihgl standing alone before the predator.

  “Cut yourself, Commander?” Kihgl asked, looking at the purple fluid leaking from the wounds the Jreet had given him.

  The Dhasha stiffened, and for a second, Joe thought he would eat him. “Battalion commanders, approach,” Knaaren snapped.

  Tril left Sixth Battalion to stand with the other eight, facing Kihgl in a grim line. The Dhasha towered behind them, resplendent and gleaming. A young, dark-skinned Ooreiki with an eight-pointed star on his dark blue uniform stepped in front of them. Unlike a Prime Commander, however, each point of the young Ooreiki’s star had a tiny circle balancing upon it, each a different color. Several of the battlemasters stared at the symbol, their sticky eyes hard.

  The strange Ooreiki unrolled a shimmering scroll and raised it in front of him as he spoke. “Secondary Commander Kihgl of the Three Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Ooreiki Ground Force,” the new Ooreiki read, “you are charged with treason, conspiracy, sedition, and espionage. Myself and attending members of the Peace Force found forbidden volumes and artifacts hidden in your quarters. Further questioning revealed you have a vast knowledge of the Trith conspiracy. We have examined archives from your previous duty stations and found numerous occasions where your loyalties are questionable in your speech and actions. On these grounds, we have found reasonable evidence to implicate you for the charges previously stated. What is your defense?” The Peacemaker rolled up the silky parchment and waited.

  Joe held his breath with the others, willing Kihgl to say something that would spare him.

  Kihgl’s sudah remained utterly still. “I have no defense.”

  “You admit your guilt?” Knaaren demanded.

  Kihgl continued to stare at the fluid dripping from Knaaren’s chest. It was already starting to slow, now, becoming only a small trickle. Kihgl seemed to take a breath, steadying himself, before returning his gaze to the line of battalion commanders. “This trial has only two outcomes for me, and I fear them both more than death itself. Do what you will.”

  The line of Ooreiki stared at him in silence. When it was obvious none of the other commanders were going to question him, the Peacemaker insisted, “The ship’s records indicate you questioned Congress’s motives in making you train these recruits.”

  Kihgl remained motionless, sudah as though dead. “In the beginning, I didn’t believe they were worth my time. I wanted to get back to my old regiment on Lakarat, not waste my skills trying to train Humans that would in all likelihood end up in a Dhasha’s pens. Ooreiki are Congress’s grounders. No other species has even come close to matching our success in the tunnels. Humans are so weak—I thought they should’ve been assigned to the Space Force or the Sky Force. I didn’t understand how the bureaucrats on Koliinaat could be stupid enough to put them in biosuits.”

  On his haauk, Representative Na’leen made an amused snort.

  “So you believed Congress was wasting your time?” Tril demanded pointedly.

  Kihgl turned to face Tril directly. “Kkee.”

  “Proof of his guilt,” Knaaren said.

  “Please,” Na’leen snorted from his haauk. “It’s a common sentiment. If you’d ever sat through a Regency meeting over mineral rights, you would understand.”

  “Explain to me why you ran,” Lord Knaaren said, ignoring the Huouyt. “If you are innocent, why did you flee?”

  “I was afraid.”

  Joe blinked. Kihgl had actually tried to run?

  “You are a secondary commander of the Congressional Army. You fought my kind on Ubashin and survived. If you were innocent, you had nothing to be afraid of.”

  “I am not innocent.”

  The Dhasha stiffened, its talons digging into the gravel. “If you’re not innocent, why are we wasting our time trying you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lord Knaaren’s thick muscles tightened under his metallic rainbow scales. The rest of the formation was silent as they stared at Kihgl. “Do you have anything to say in your defense?” Knaaren snapped.

  “No,” Kihgl replied.

  The Dhasha growled, deep in its chest. “Commanders, your verdict.”

  For a long moment, none of them spoke. Then, softly, Commander Lagrah said, “Kill him.”

  Kihgl’s sudah gave the briefest of flutters, then went still.

  No, Joe thought. Please don’t kill him. Guilt was settling over his shoulders like a moldy jacket. This was his fault. Kihgl had gone crazy over that stupid tattoo…

  Joe glared at the other Commanders, feeling angry that Kihgl’s own friends would betray him. Lagrah, in particular. Once, Joe had thought the ancient, drooping-skinned Ooreiki was one of the good ones, one of the ones that saved children who were slated to die. Now, he simply looked old. The pale, sagging skin that had once made Joe think of power and wisdom now looked washed out and used up. The black scars crisscrossing were no longer impressive. They made Joe hate him because they made him look like Kihgl. They’re nothing alike, he thought angrily, looking from Kihgl’s still form to Commander Lagrah. Each was motionless, staring at each other, saying nothing more.

  A thin stream of neon-orange saliva began to drip from between the parallel rows of the Dhasha’s black teeth. “I hear no other opinions,” he said.

  “Neither do I.” As Kihgl said it, his body relaxed. He almost sounded relieved.

  The Peacemaker stepped forward with his silken paper and two of his companions grabbed Kihgl by the white uniform he wore, forcing him to face the herald. “Kihgl, we have determined you to be a traitor to the Congress…”

  The interesting part over, the Dhasha made a satisfied grunt and began to walk back to the elevator.

  “…You are hereby stripped of all rank in the Congressional Army and shall be shipped to Levren for further questioning. Afterward, you shall receive Jreet poison through the chest until you are dead. Three days later, your oorei will be extracted and shipped to Poen for burial.”

  The Peacemaker lowered his silken scroll. “Do you have any last words for the assembly before you meet your fate?”

  “Kkee,” Commander Kihgl said. He was facing the Dhasha, who was walking away. “I’m looking forward to the day someone puts you animals in your place.”

  Lord Knaaren turned back, mild curiosity in his gemlike eyes.
When he saw Kihgl staring at him, he let out an angry snarl and padded back. “What did you say?”

  “Careful, Lord Knaaren,” the Peacemaker said. “This one belongs to us now.”

  The Dhasha made a disgusted sound and swatted at Kihgl lightly—shredding one of the new limbs growing from Kihgl’s side. Then he turned and began to walk away again.

  Kihgl ignored his dangling limb like it didn’t matter to him. “You’re abominations. Congress should’ve never let you crawl off that sootwad you call a planet.”

  What are you doing? Joe’s mind screamed. Shut up, you dumbass.

  Lord Knaaren spun around on his haunches and launched himself at Kihgl, who stared him down. Lord Knaaren’s basketball-sized emerald eyes were glinting like cold gems.

  “Take him back to holding!” the Peacemaker snapped. “Lord Knaaren, he is a Peace Force prisoner now. Killing him does us no good until we learn his secrets.”

  Lord Knaaren was ignoring the Peacemaker, his emerald eyes locked on Kihgl’s. He was utterly motionless, like a cobra about to strike.

  As the other Peacemakers reached to take Kihgl away, Kihgl said, “You’re just helpless niish.”

  “Silence that prisoner!” the Peacemaker screamed. His companions cuffed Kihgl and dragged his head backward until Joe could see a vibrating ball in his throat.

  “Release him.” Lord Knaaren’s voice was crisp. Cold.

  The two Peacemakers glanced at their leader, then reluctantly let Kihgl go.

  “What did you mean by that, traitor?” Knaaren snarled. “Who are helpless?”

  No, don’t say it, Joe pleaded.

  “The Dhasha,” Kihgl replied.

  Lord Knaaren stared at him for long moments, his emerald eyes glinting. Finally, he said, “Are you calling me weak?”

  Kihgl gave the Dhasha lord an amused look. “Without your Takki, you are nothing. Someday, they will grow tired of serving you and you’ll all die, starving and rotting in your own filth. Until then, you should be returned to the pitiful rock you came from and used to pull plows.”

  Lord Knaaren let out a roar and lunged forward. In an instant, he bit down on Kihgl’s torso.