Forging Zero

by Sara King

  “Not to my groundteam,” Joe said. “Not soot like that.” He wondered if something else had happened to her that day, something her assailant had cut out her tongue to keep secret. He felt a ball of disgust and rage building in the pit of his gut. Someday, I’ll find the bastard and kill him.

  Libby snorted. “We’re going to war, Joe. Get over it.” At that, she lifted the helmet off her head and left the room.

  “She say anything about it to you guys?” Joe asked, once she was gone.

  “No,” Maggie admitted.

  “I wonder why she won’t tell us,” Joe said, frowning after her.

  Elf suddenly threw his headcom on the bed and followed Libby out.

  “Elf!” Joe called. Elf ignored him.

  “He hasn’t said more than four words to anyone since Battlemaster Nebil brought him back from Knaaren,” Scott said, sounding irritated. “He came back a little crazy, Joe. A couple times, I caught him hiding in a corner, saying something about a ship over and over.”

  “He talks about ships in his dreams, too,” Monk said. “Did Knaaren put you on a ship, Joe?”

  “No,” Joe said, frowning. “I barely left the tower.”

  “Well, something happened,” Scott said. “He’s been acting really funny. I caught him hiding scum soup in the pockets of his vest three times now. Just shoving it in there, covering everything else in the pockets. Said he was saving it for later.”

  “Maybe he’s not getting enough to eat,” Maggie suggested.

  Joe remembered the nine women Knaaren had brought over from Earth and wondered if Elf had seen them come off the ship. Maybe Knaaren had even tried putting Elf in with them. Anything could have happened in those days before Joe and Elf switched places.

  Joe mulled over that as he and the others finished the bathing chambers in silence.

  Back in the barracks, Joe paused before undressing for bed. Sasha was gone, and she had taken several of the other groundteams with her. Joe just hoped she got caught before Nebil came to lock up.

  “We’ve got to get her to stop doing that,” Joe said. “It’s only going to make things worse.”

  “I hate her,” Monk muttered. “Let’s just hope someone catches her and screws her brains out so you can lead the platoon tomorrow.”

  “Hey!” Joe snapped, disgusted with Monk. “She’s your battlemaster! Show a little more respect.”

  “Why?” Monk asked, obviously puzzled. “You don’t.” The others were looking at him, clearly wondering the same thing.

  “She’s just a kid,” Joe said. “She doesn’t deserve anything like that.”

  “Yeah she does,” Monk said. “She’s asking for it every time she goes out at night.

  “She just needs a few years to grow up,” Joe said.

  “She needs to die,” Monk said. “That would help her.”

  Joe sighed. There was no arguing with a six-year-old. He tugged off his shirt and climbed into bed. He caught Libby staring at his scars again before he hid them with the blanket. He cleared his throat. “Don’t worry about it, right?” he said softly.

  Libby’s brown eyes flickered up from his chest. She was scowling.

  “Who cares?” Joe gave her a weak smile. “Soot happens.”

  The corner of Libby’s mouth twitched. She nodded.

  #

  “Look, it’s the Elf.”

  “Don’t call me Elf.”

  “Why not? Don’t like it? Too bad, because you look like you just stepped out of a mushroom. Where’s your fairy dust, Elf? Still don’t have it? Guess we’ll have to take your Fruit Roll-Up, instead.” Greg reached forward and yanked the paper bag out of Eric’s hand. He peeked inside. “Another peanut-butter sandwich? Doesn’t your mom love you, Elf?”

  “She does!” Eric cried, jumping for the bag. The other boys hooted and Greg lifted it out of reach.

  “Then what’s with the peanut-butter and bananas? You an elephant or something?”

  “Elephants eat hay,” Eric said. “Not peanut-butter.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Your mom works at the zoo, cleaning up animal crap. Guess she would know what to feed you, huh? What you figure he is, guys? A monkey? Monkeys eat bananas, right? Act like a monkey, Elf, and I’ll give you the rest of your lunch back.”

  Eric bit his lip, peering up at Greg. The older boy had freckles, but did not have the happy face Eric normally associated with freckles. From the first day he met Greg Riley, freckles would always be tainted in his mind, combined with cold blue eyes and a cruel sneer.

  “You won’t eat lunch today unless you do it,” Greg warned.

  Eric ignored him, turning away.

  “Fine,” Greg said. He threw the paper bag on the ground and stomped on it.

  “Leave him alone, you little dickweed.” It was a girl’s voice, someone a lot older. Eric looked up. She towered over both him and Greg, looking like she could drop-kick either one of them without even an effort. Eric stared up at her in awe.

  “We were just having fun,” Greg muttered, looking up at the girl. “Later, Elf.”

  “My name’s Eric!” he screamed after them. They laughed and kept walking. Limbs trembling, Eric bent and picked up his paper bag. It was damp where the banana had smashed on the inside. The sandwich was no better off. It had a big footprint in the center, where Greg’s shoe had flattened it.

  “You know, if you didn’t let it bother you, they’d stop.”

  Eric glanced up at the girl behind him. She was watching him with a mixture of pity and concern. He sniffed and stuffed his squished lunch back inside the bag.

  “I think Elf is a cool name. You ever thought about having a nickname?”

  Eric stared at her. “That’s what the bullies call me.”

  “So? In the stories, elves have magical powers. If you were a real elf, you could work a spell to give Greg a third leg.”

  “I’d put it right on his face, where his nose would be.”

  The girl smiled and ruffled his hair. “There you go. Think about that every time he calls you Elf. See, he’s actually giving you a compliment. He thinks you could have magic.”

  Eric felt his eyes widen. When she wasn’t working, his mom read him stories about magic towers and knights who rescued pretty princesses and dragons and witches and good wizards and enchanted kingdoms. He felt himself grow stronger, almost like he could lift twice as much as he could before. He glanced down at the mashed remains of his lunch and smiled anyway. Elf. I could be an elf. Like in Mom’s stories.

  Someday, when he was older, maybe he would see dragons.

  CHAPTER 29: Night Terrors

  The hunt the next day ended in humiliating defeat. Sixth Battalion was too exhausted from Tril’s drills the day before to mount much of an offense, and Second was bright-eyed and quick to pick off careless attackers, doubtlessly due to a good rest beforehand.

  Tril, as expected, called out a huge portion of recruits for real or imagined failures and punished them in front of the battalion. Then he sent them all to the barracks without that evening’s meal.

  That night, the mood in the barracks was sour.

  “We’re not gonna have the energy to run down the tunnels if he won’t even feed us!” Carl said. “What’s he expect us to do? Starve and win the hunts?”

  “Second Battalion had it easy,” Scott said. “All they had to do was hole up in the towers and pick us off. How were we supposed to know there were gonna be snipers?”

  “We weren’t,” Joe muttered. “Lagrah was planning on ambushing us all along.”

  “I hear Second gets double rations and two hours of liberty every time they beat us,” Carl said. “What do we get? More pushups.”

  “They’re eating our food?” Maggie whimpered. “That’s not fair.”

  Joe added his agreement to the others sitting around his bed. It had become a sort of rebel hotspot—over the last three hours, at least thirty recruits had voiced their disgust for their commander and for the Second Battalion pansies i
n general. Aside from Sasha, who was sulking in her own bed, the general consensus was that Sixth was the better battalion, but they were being worked too hard to prove it.

  “So why don’t we go show them?” Maggie demanded. “You can open the door, Joe. I’ve seen you do it.”

  “Yeah!” Scott cried. “Maybe some haven’t been locked up for the night. We could ambush them!”

  “Who says we can’t just invade their barracks?” Joe asked. “Do this right, instead of sneaking around half-assed?” When they just stared at him, he said, “Come on, guys, think about it. Why should we hunker down hoping to catch maybe one or two kids, when we could take out a whole platoon?”

  Every kid in the room went silent, staring at him, their mouths open.

  “Their battlemasters sleep on a separate level,” Joe went on. “I can get us in. We could have the whole barracks to ourselves.”

  “The barracks?” Maggie asked, wide-eyed. She was the first to regain her composure. “But if we get caught in the wrong barracks, they’d make us run…”

  “We already run,” Scott pointed out. “More than we should. I heard one of the medics tell Nebil that he should watch for heart failure.”

  Heart failure? Joe frowned at that. What kind of sane commander would put them on a routine that could produce heart failure? And none of them were over fifteen!

  “They call us the Sick Battalion from hacking up spores,” Scott continued. “They’d stop laughing at us if we captured one of their platoons.”

  “If we’re gonna do this,” Joe said, “Why stop at just one platoon? If we can sneak into one, why can’t we sneak into all of them?

  “So you want to get the rest of Sixth involved?” Scott asked, sounding excited.

  “No,” Joe said. “Let’s do it ourselves. Just Fourth Platoon. We’ll take them on one barracks room at a time. Tie them up in their sleep, draw a big X on their forehead, maybe take their clothes. Show them who they’re dealing with.”

  “Not an X,” Maggie cried, delighted. “It should be a Zero!”

  Joe immediately winced at the idea of putting ‘0s’ on faces, pretty sure he knew who would be doing the running, then. Then again, an X could mean anything…

  “The whole regiment?” Monk whispered.

  “No,” Joe said, deciding. “That would take too long. Just Second Battalion. They’re getting too proud of themselves.”

  “So you’ll go with us, Joe?” Maggie asked, gleeful.

  “After today? Hell yeah,” Joe said, still fuming that Tril had withheld their food. “Those pricks need to be taken down a few pegs.”

  “What about Commander Tril?” Monk asked. “He’ll be pissed.”

  “I’m tired, hungry, and Commander Tril can kiss my ass,” Joe replied.

  “I’ll tell him if you go anywhere,” Sasha said, her voice ringing out loud and clear. When they turned, she cast them a sweet smile from her bed. “We’re not supposed to leave the barracks, remember, Zero?”

  Libby and Joe glanced at each other.

  Joe cleared his throat. “But this could really work, Sasha.”

  Sasha sighed and began trimming her nails with her knife. “You know the rules, Joe. I’m your battlemaster. I say you stay, you stay.”

  Joe gave Scott and Libby a pointed look. “We could really use your help in this,” he told Sasha.

  “I said no,” Sasha said. “You keep begging and I’ll go right now and tell him. Tril will have you all running laps for days if he finds out you want to—” She let out a sudden squeak as Libby sprang forward and grabbed her knife wrist. In one swift motion, Libby disarmed Sasha and stuck the blade under her belt.

  “Well,” Joe said, amused by the startled look on Sasha’s face, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us. Maybe you can help us practice.”

  Sasha’s wide-eyed look flickered to him, then back to Libby. “Give it back.”

  Libby shrugged and turned away. Sasha tried to jump on her, but Joe got between them. Monk and Maggie were on her in an instant, and as Sasha struggled, they bound their recruit battlemaster hand and foot, gagged her, and tucked her beneath the covers. When they were finished, only her head was above the covers, her eyes filled with murder.

  “Hey,” Monk said, “Whaddaya know? She’s actually kind of cute when she’s not acting like a bitch.” She leaned forward and tweaked Sasha’s nose. Everyone laughed.

  “Leave her alone,” Joe said. “We’re in enough trouble as it is.”

  “Well,” Monk said, “If we’re already in trouble…” She pulled an indelible black marker from her vest and leaned forward long enough to draw a mustache on her disabled battlemaster. The entire barracks burst out in laughter at Sasha’s feeble struggles.

  “Quiet!” Joe ordered. “You want Nebil to hear us? Monk, stop it. Save your ink for Second Battalion.”

  Monk tucked the marker back in her vest and admired her handiwork, apparently oblivious to the smoldering look of hatred Sasha was giving her.

  “Let’s go,” Joe said. The way Sasha was staring at Monk was making Joe’s skin prickle. “We’ve only got another six hours before wakeup.”

  Joe opened the door for them and they quietly snuck from the barracks and down the stairs, walking lightly upon the stairwells to avoid waking the Takki sleeping inside the honeycombed hollows. They stopped at the second level of the barracks and circled around the huge balcony wrapping around the building to the sleeping chamber of Second Battalion’s First Platoon. The other kids waited nervously as Joe entered the code—1-1-2, or First Platoon, First Company, Second Battalion—then they stepped inside the first of Second Battalion’s ten platoon barracks rooms unimpeded. Everyone inside was sleeping. They hadn’t even bothered to post a guard.

  Not that we ever post a guard, either, Joe thought. They would have to consider that after their prank was over, in case Second Battalion thought to retaliate.

  Disabling them was almost too easy. With all of Second Battalion’s recruits sleeping, Joe’s platoon went bed by bed, stifling their victims’ shouts with hands over mouths as they gagged and bound them. Monk and Maggie did the honors of drawing a big ‘0’ on the forehead of each of the recruits they subdued. Looking at the bedfuls of ‘dead’ recruits, Joe knew his platoon was going to be in trouble in the morning. Right now, however, he didn’t care.

  He was having too much fun.

  Like wraiths, Fourth Platoon filed out of the room and padded out onto the balcony. There, they threw down all the boots and clothes they had collected from their victims, leaving a pile of black on the stone that a handful of their group spirited away.

  “Okay, the next one,” Joe whispered, once they’d completely ransacked their victims’ barracks.

  Second Platoon, too, went off completely without a hitch. And Third. And Fourth.

  By the time they got back to the barracks, they’d successfully visited all ten of Second Battalion’s platoons and it was only minutes before Battlemaster Nebil was due to wake them that morning. Joe led the other recruits back to their own barracks still riding the rush of excitement and adrenaline, feeling like he’d slept all night. He actually felt a rush of pride as the rest of Fourth Platoon deposited their last armloads of stolen clothes in the bottom of the baths and went to crawl into bed. Everyone was grinning and chatting with pent up enthusiasm, telling stories and giggling. Nobody, Joe knew, was going to do any sleeping. He stopped at Sasha’s bed.

  “I’m gonna untie you,” Joe said.

  Sasha’s eyes burned with malevolence.

  “But,” Joe said, “I want you to think long and hard about whether or not you’re gonna tell Battlemaster Nebil about this. Do you really want to admit to him that your entire platoon—even your own groundteam—tied you up and left you here while they went to fight Second Battalion?”

  Monk came to stand beside him and grinned down at Sasha. “In case you’re too stupid to get it, you don’t want that, because as soon as he finds out what a crappy leader you ar
e, he’ll put Joe back in charge.”

  Sasha flushed a deep red, then looked away. Joe cut her loose, then handed her knife back to her, handle-first. She took it slowly, and for a second, Joe thought she might try to use it on him, but she tucked it back under her pillow, instead. Then she gave them a cold sneer filled with hatred. “You’re all gonna be sorry.”

  “Nice mustache,” Monk said.

  “Get to bed, Monk,” Joe said. “She won’t tell.” He crawled under the covers and lay there, waiting for Nebil to arrive. Despite the sleepless night, he couldn’t lie still. He saw the other recruits were having the same problem. Everyone was grinning and laughing about the night’s adventure, the whole platoon in an entirely different mood than eight hours before. Lying there listening to it, Joe felt a swell of pride that he had been able to help restore their spirits so thoroughly.

  When Nebil arrived, everyone jumped out of their groundteam beds immediately, fully dressed and wide awake.

  The battlemaster hung back in the doorway, his eyes wary. “What’s going on? Why are you all awake?”

  “Just happy to see you,” Joe said, grinning, feeling like himself for the first time since stepping out of Knaaren’s den.

  Nebil eyed the other recruits, then his gaze fell back to Joe. “Furgsoot. What did you charheads do?”

  He found out soon enough. A frantic Battlemaster Gokli came up to them in the middle of marching drills, asking if Nebil had seen any extra cammies lying about.

  “Cammies?” Nebil asked, giving the other battlemaster a quizzical look.

  “Some thieves crept into the barracks last night and stole some of our gear,” Gokli said. “Just a minor inconvenience, that’s all.”

  “They crept into your barracks?” Nebil asked. “You didn’t lock up?”

  “They unlocked the door,” Gokli said briskly.

  “To steal gear?”

  “They tied up a few recruits, too,” Gokli said. “Graffitied on Congressional property… Nothing major.”