Forging Zero

by Sara King

  Joe stared, a deep, gnawing anxiety beginning to build in his gut. He’d already failed Elf. They had to graduate. He couldn’t let Maggie and Monk fall into the hands of that creature.

  Nebil’s sudah were still fluttering as he turned his head away. “Listen, Zero. I think you’re our best chance. After you went in for surgery, your platoon almost killed the recruit that wounded you. It took six battlemasters to break up the fight.” Nebil snorted. “Your recruits respect you, Zero. That’s why I’m giving you the reader. If the Training Committee found out I did that, they’d take another rank and put me on Neskfaat to inspect Dhasha draftees.” Nebil paused, glanced at the low ceiling, then back at Joe. “Sixth is in serious trouble. Tril doesn’t see it, but I do. The battlemasters and commanders are already turning on us. They hid our standards from Tril when he went to retrieve them. They’re giving us the worst time slot to eat—earliest in the morning and latest at night. Repair orders and supply requests fail to go through. We’ve got the worst haauk in the regiment, and we end up having to bunch all of our recruits up into the same vehicles on the hunts because half of them aren’t working at any given time.”

  Nebil looked tired. “I saw the same thing happen twenty turns ago. A battalion in my regiment failed in a mission to retrieve a group of prisoners that enemy Huouyt had captured. Their failure wasn’t their fault. The Overseer in charge of the mission had given the battalion a bad dropoff location and they got massacred before they even got off their ships. Still, the other Ooreiki in the regiment took their retreat personally. It started with insults. Words quickly turned to actions and for eight rotations, their fellows picked at them, giving them bad assignments and withholding gear until every single soldier in that battalion was either dead or transferred. Then, once the soldiers were gone, they renumbered the battalions and pretended it had never even existed.”

  Nebil leaned forward, intense. “It’s happening again. A stray comment here, a changed keycode there… Tril thinks the turning is just a myth, but if we don’t stop it now, it’s going to get worse. For all their beautiful creations, Ooreiki can be…dark…creatures sometimes, Zero. We need to put an end to it now if we’re going to keep you Humans out of the crossfire.”

  “Were you one of the ones who got transferred?” Joe asked.

  Nebil’s pupils narrowed. “No. I was Prime Commander of the regiment. They took away four ranks when I abandoned the Takki ashsouls out of shame.”

  Joe stared. Nebil was a Prime Commander?

  “Since then, I’ve never trusted Ooreiki nature. Commanders, especially. They’re always struggling to gain favor, to make the one bold move that will catch their superiors’ attention and get them promoted to Overseer. Lagrah’s the one exception, and that just makes the ashy furnace we’re in all the worse because he makes Tril look like a janja slug in comparison.”

  Joe glanced down at the silvery pad Nebil had given him. “I’ll try to get his flag.”

  “Do more than try, Zero.” Nebil gave him a long, silent look, then turned and left him alone in the barracks.

  Joe spent the next four hours deciphering the symbols of the PPU with the help of Nebil’s lesson pad. He was actually making good progress when he heard voices on the balcony outside the door. He hid it away under his pillow as his groundteam returned, sweaty and covered in black dust.

  “Joe!” Maggie cried, breaking into a run. She looked stunned he was alive. They all did.

  Frowning, Joe asked, “Where were you guys?”

  Maggie made a face. “Nebil had the whole platoon raking the plaza because we got in a fight with the other platoon.”

  Joe glanced at Libby, instinctively knowing she had started the fight. “You didn’t hurt that kid, did you?”

  Libby looked away, confirming his suspicions. Joe felt a rush of pride—and shame—that he was the cause. “Libby,” he began, “you know it’s not cool to—”

  “He deserved it,” she interrupted. “Tank cheated.”

  “He didn’t cheat,” Joe said. “I was stupid. I didn’t get out of the way fast enough.”

  Libby shrugged and he knew he would get no more out of her on the subject. “They fix your guts?” she asked, giving him a dubious look.

  “Tril said you were dead,” Monk added, wide-eyed.

  Joe sighed and gently patted his stomach. “The jenfurgling medics said they couldn’t heal everything without putting six more turns on my service, so I told them to go burn themselves. As it was, they still gave me a turn.”

  “You gonna be with us tomorrow?” she asked softly.

  Wincing inside, Joe held up his PPU. “Guys, look at this. Battlemaster showed me what a few of the symbols mean.” Libby’s gaze sharpened, but Joe blundered on, trying to ignore her scowl. “This one means Acquire, which beams out a signal and maps out the terrain around you. This one is Zoom, and you can pull back so far you’re looking at the whole planet. This one’s Orient, which twists the map around until it’s facing the same way—”

  “Somebody said Second Battalion really kills kids on the hunts,” Maggie said. She hadn’t been paying attention. None of them had.

  Joe reluctantly put his PPU away. “They don’t.”

  “Yeah, but they’re bigger than us,” Monk said.

  “We eat the same green crap they do,” Joe said.

  “Yeah, but…” Libby glanced again at his bruised torso. “If you’re not there… Things could get really bad. Sixth Battalion looks up to you.”

  Joe snorted. “You said yourself I almost pissed myself trying to crawl through a tunnel. They don’t look up to me.”

  Libby looked dumbstruck. “They do. You’re older than they are.”

  “There’s nobody in the regiment better at this than you, Lib.”

  “Yeah, but Joe, it’s you they like,” Libby insisted.

  “Just keep Second Battalion from getting your flag tomorrow,” Joe said. “I’ll be there to help you next time. Promise.”

  His friends grimaced and muttered under their breath, but in the end, he managed to convince them it would be worth it…if only to see the shocked expression on Second Battalion’s faces when they stole their flag right out from under them, making them look like unprepared Takki. That seemed to make his friends happy. They actually went to bed grinning, obviously seeing it in their dreams.

  CHAPTER 24: Contraband

  Joe spent the next day in bed, scowling at the little symbols on his reader. A Takki brought him food and water, and Joe ate it while he worked. He was so focused that his friends startled him when they returned.

  “We held it,” Monk said, jumping up into bed beside Joe, not noticing as he hurriedly tucked his reader out of sight. “They didn’t get our flag!”

  “See?” Joe said. “You guys were worried for nothing.”

  At that, everyone sobered.

  “They set up command posts,” Libby said. “They were organized. They attacked from one side, then, when we went to defend, they attacked on the other. They are good, Joe. Better than us. The only reason they didn’t make it to the flag was they didn’t know where it was. They invaded three of the five deep dens. It was just dumb luck they didn’t get the one with the flag in it.”

  Joe grimaced. “What time is it?”

  “Past bedtime,” Libby said. “We were fighting all day. We only ate once because it took so long to kill them all off.”

  “We’re tired,” Maggie added. “And hungry.”

  “They didn’t feed you?” Joe glanced at the other groundteams filing into the barracks, all of them looking like the walking dead.

  “Commander Tril was pissed,” Scott said. “He told us losers didn’t need to eat.”

  “You didn’t lose,” Joe said, his brow furrowing. “You kept your flag.”

  Libby shrugged and began getting out of her gear. Joe, who had been noticing her sleek, feminine curves more and more by the day, quickly decided he had a couple more hours to decipher the PPU. He hastily gathered up his de
vices and got out of bed. “I’m gonna go study the PPU. If you guys are hungry, there’s something you can eat in my locker.” Then, before Libby could unbutton her jacket, he left the barracks.

  Carefully descending the stairs outside, his abdomen still sensitive from the Ooreiki medics’ attentions, he passed two patch-wearing recruits. Unlike the blocky D of Sixth Battalion, the writing on these patches was diamond-shaped with a dot and half-circle inside. So far only Second and Sixth ranked patches.

  Apparently, the recruits realized the same thing.

  “Hey!” one of them shouted. “You’re one of those charhead pussies we wasted on the hunt today! How’s it feel to be a loser, sooter? You run home to mama and tell her all about it? How badly we spanked you sootbag furgs?”

  Joe hurried to hide the reader as he turned to face the two recruits. He recognized them immediately. The speaker was the same kid who’d paralyzed Libby, and the one standing beside him was Tank. The grinning, soft-faced five-year-old was now scowling at Joe through a mass of bruises, his ham-sized hands bunched in angry fists at his sides. Joe instantly felt bad. He’d never meant to get the kid hurt.

  “Well, look who it is,” the shorter of the two jeered. Joe realized it was the same kid Libby had dropped with a kick to the head. “You’re the one who got Tank beat up for whipping your ass.” The speaker stepped toward him, eyes dancing. “What’s the matter, Zero? Gotta get others to do your dirty work? Too much of a pussy to do it yourself?”

  “Bailey!” someone roared. For a startled moment, Joe thought it was one of the battlemasters, then he realized it was a recruit bearing a Second Battalion badge—as well as the four-pointed star of recruit battlemaster. I took him a moment to realize it was the same girl that Battlemaster Gokli had called Rat. Despite being fully grown, she was as flat-chested as an ironing board and had arms made for wrestling. Even her voice had sounded male.

  “Get your ass back to the barracks, Bailey! You’re already in enough soot with Gokli for spitting on that girl. You start getting Tank in trouble and I’ll make your life a Jreet hell.” She paused and held Joe’s gaze a moment, her gray eyes almost purple in the reddish light. “Stop screwing around. Zero’s got things to do and so do you.”

  The boy snorted. “They only thing I saw him doing was crying for his mama.”

  “Too bad she didn’t show up because she would’ve whipped your ass,” Rat retorted. The girl glanced at Bailey’s companion. “Tank, take Bailey back to the barracks. I don’t want to see him out here again before lockup. He tries to run off, you beat his jenfurgling face in. Get me?”

  Tank nodded and silently plodded back down the stairs, dragging the smaller recruit behind him.

  The girl gave Joe one last look, obviously summing him up—and finding him lacking—then turned and left him there.

  So, Joe thought, That’s the competition. The way the girl walked reminded him of Libby. That connection worried him.

  Once she was gone, Joe found a quiet corner on the stairway to sit down and research the symbols on his PPU. He was concentrating intently on trying to memorize the difference between Scroll, which looked like a box with wings, and Mode, which looked like a box with flexing arms, when he realized somebody was watching him.

  Joe hurriedly pushed the lesson pad aside and looked up.

  It was the old, pale-eyed commander of Second Battalion.

  Burn me.

  Joe felt himself freeze up just like the first time he’d been under that cool, unreadable gaze. Joe had been staring up at him from the ground, two Congies holding his face into the concrete, guns trained on his head, their owners waiting on Lagrah’s command to let him live or die.

  “Where did you get that, boy?” Lagrah asked. He was looking at where Joe had hidden Nebil’s lesson pad.

  “I stole it,” Joe said. “I’m gonna sell it for some food that doesn’t taste like soot.”

  “Really.” The Prime Commander held out a hand. “Give it to me. I’ll check the register to see who held it last.”

  Joe’s heart began to pound. He didn’t want to get Nebil in trouble. Nebil had taken the brunt of Tril’s fury after losing the flag to protect Joe. If everyone found out he had tried to cheat to help his battalion win…

  “No.” Joe pushed the lesson pad behind him, wedging it between a corner of the stair and the building.

  “No.” The droopy Ooreiki limb did not even twitch. “Do you realize what I could do to you for disobeying me, Human?”

  “Probably something pretty crummy,” Joe muttered. This was not going well. Not well at all.

  With the speed of a striking snake, Lagrah lashed a stinging tentacle around Joe’s neck. Despite Lagrah’s ancient appearance, his grip was just as powerful as any other Ooreiki Joe had managed to piss off. He held Joe to one side as he reached for the lesson pad.

  Then Joe remembered what Lagrah had said about checking the reader’s register. If Lagrah checked the register, Nebil could lose his command. If Nebil lost his command, that left no one with the balls to stand up to Tril, and Sixth Battalion would end up being sold to the Dhasha by the end of the year.

  I’ve got to stop him, Joe’s panicked mind shrieked.

  Joe let his legs go slack, choking himself as he slumped low enough to grab the lesson pad. As soon as he had it, he started bashing it against the side of the building as hard as he could. Even as his vision was darkening around the edges, Joe realized with dismay that the device wasn’t suffering even the slightest bit of damage under his assault.

  Just as he was about to pass out, Lagrah pulled his arm back. “Interesting. What’s your name, Human?”

  Joe stepped back, gasping. The underside of the Ooreiki’s arm had ripped his skin with its tiny suction cups, leaving a burning red streak around his throat. He touched his neck warily, surprised he wasn’t bleeding to death. “Zero.”

  “Your real name.”

  Joe froze. Was this some sort of trick?

  Lagrah waited.

  “Joe,” he said quietly. It was the first time any of his commanding officers had asked.

  “You’re the one from the alley.” It wasn’t a question. “The son of that rebel.”

  Joe bit his lip and nodded.

  Lagrah’s eyes caught on Joe’s chest and stayed there. “And you’re Recruit Battlemaster now.”

  Joe nodded.

  “Maybe Tril’s not as stupid as I thought.” At that, the old Ooreiki turned and left him gaping after him like an idiot, one foot still crushing the lesson pad into the staircase.

  Cautiously, Joe bent down and retrieved the lesson pad. Aside from a couple of cosmetic scratches, it was in the same exact condition it had been when Nebil had given it to him.

  Joe climbed the stairs to return to the barracks.

  He jumped when a voice above his head said, “Choe!”

  Joe glanced up. Yuil stood on her haauk, her sudah fluttering with worry.

  “Choe! Did he hurt you?”

  “No, I’m fine. How’s it going, Yuil?”

  The Ooreiki teenager scrunched her face disgustedly. “You make my name sound like something a Jreet would eat.” She glanced at the staircase above him. “Are you busy, Choe? You want to drive my haauk? I just got it upgraded. I found an employer here on Kophat, so I don’t have to go back to Poen to tend oorei.”

  Joe knew he had an obligation to his platoon to learn the PPU, but the thought of learning to drive the floating platforms was too tempting to resist. Joe climbed on board and, as Yuil croaked in amusement, he fumbled through the steps of flying a haauk.

  He was actually doing pretty well, skimming over the tangled red treetops that looked like masses of veiny muscle, when Yuil suddenly took the controls away from him and lowered them into the canopy. For the first time, Joe was standing amidst the monstrous branches, perched on a limb big enough to be a highway back on Earth.

  Yuil turned off the haauk and stepped onto one of the branches. “We must walk from here.”

>   Joe, suddenly realizing how vulnerable he was all the way out here, away from the city, frowned at her. “Why? Where are we?”

  “Nowhere,” Yuil said. “At least you won’t find it on any maps of Kophat.”

  “What do you mean?” Joe asked, his wariness increasing.

  Yuil’s eyes were alight with excitement. “It’s a secret storage facility. Everybody on Kophat knows it’s here, but the government pretends we don’t.”

  “Storage for what?” Joe remained on the haauk.

  “Weapons,” Yuil whispered, her pupils fully dilated. “Horrible weapons. Weapons that would mean the end of Congress if they were set off on Koliinaat.”

  Joe felt a prickle of nervousness itch at his spine. Yuil’s excitement seemed strange, a little off-pitch. Was this some sort of test? Was he supposed to tell her he didn’t want anything to do with the end of Congress and demand she take him home?