Forging Zero (29 page)

For a
moment, none of the others spoke.  Elf’s thin body shuddered and he coughed up
a glob of red mucus.  Joe went back to wiping the fingerprints from the walls.

“You
were gonna leave us?” Maggie whispered.  She was sitting apart from the rest,
her arms wrapped around her knees.

“Come
on,” Joe said, “Any of us would leave if we got the chance.”

“I
wouldn’t,” Libby said, stiffening.  “You’re my friends.”

“Well
you’re the only one,” Joe said, getting angry now.  “Hell, Elf can’t stop
talking about how he wants to go home.  Mag misses her guppies.  Monk misses
her Dad.  Scott looks like he hasn’t smiled since he got on that ship…and I’m
tired of babysitting five helpless little kids.”

Libby
looked away.

Joe let
out a frustrated breath.  “But none of us
can
leave, so it’s stupid to
even talk about it.  Go back to sleep.”

None of
them spoke.

Disgusted
with himself for hurting their feelings and disgusted with them for being naïve
enough to let their feelings be hurt, Joe went back to work in silence until a
soft touch on his arm made him turn.

Maggie
was looking up at him, her eyes wet.  “You wouldn’t really leave us, would you,
Joe?”

Joe
opened his mouth to tell her to grow up, but hesitated at the looks the other
recruits were giving him.  He glanced from Maggie to Scott, to Libby, to Monk
and Elf, each of whom were clinging to every word but desperately trying to pretend
they weren’t listening.  It wasn’t just his groundteam, either.  Kids in nearby
beds were watching, hanging on his answer.  Seeing that, Joe felt something
shift inside of him. 
They need me,
Joe thought, stunned, looking back
down at Maggie’s desperate face. 
They aren’t going to survive without me.
 
He was their rock.  Their strength.  Their shelter from the storm. 

If he
left, their spirits were going to break apart like…

…
like
dust in the wind,
Kihgl’s words whispered to him.

Overwhelmed,
Joe dropped to his knees and swept Maggie up in a hug.  “No,” he said against
her scalp, “I wouldn’t leave you guys.  Never, Mag.” 

And he
knew it was true.

CHAPTER
13: 
Trained to Kill

Pimples. 
I’m fourteen and I’ve got pimples.
  Joe stared at
his arms in disgust.  He’d never even
heard
of anybody getting pimples
on their arms before.  That made having pimples on his face and back that much
more humiliating, since he had no visible skin that wasn’t affected.  His face
was a battleground, with bombs going off every day.

He
sighed and went back to his task.  Battlemaster Nebil had decided that he had
done a pathetic job on the walls that morning and therefore Joe could spend the
whole night cleaning the rest of the barracks in nothing but his underwear and
the
kasja.

I
look like I’ve got the pox.  If this was three hundred years ago, they’d wrap
me in a blanket and catapult me into an enemy fort.  Say-o-nara Joe, nice to
know you, make sure to kiss a few girls before you succumb to your wounds.  Not
that you would know what it’s like to kiss a girl, you bashful bastard.  You
had fourteen years to figure it out and now you’re stuck with a bunch of
toddlers for the rest of your li—

“I
told you not to wear it!”
  Kihgl rammed Joe’s face
into the glassy stone, making his vision burst into dozens of bouncing stars.  Joe
gasped and dropped the rag he’d been using, the Ooreiki’s seven-pointed star
digging into his skin where Kihgl’s chest pressed him into the wall.  The day
had been so brutal that Joe had been cleaning in a haze, too tired to notice Commander
Kihgl’s approach.

No one
was there to witness as Kihgl wrapped a stinging tentacle around Joe’s neck and
pushed him deeper into the wall, choking off his air.

“Do
you realize what you’ve done, you fire-loving Jreet?!”

“Nebil…told
me…to,” Joe said in a choked whisper.

“Na’leen
knows
,”
Kihgl snarled into his face. 
“The
other Representatives have moved on, but he’s stayed in Alishai.  It’s only a
matter of time before he puts it together.”

“I…can’t…” 
Joe couldn’t form the words through the grip the secondary commander had on his
throat.  He could feel himself passing out.

“I
will not let you ruin things, you understand, Human?”
  He slammed Joe’s head back against the stone wall, breaking Joe’s
world into thousands of tiny stars.
 
“You will do what the Trith
foretold if I have to haunt you every step of the way.”

“Please…”
his lips mouthed, no air escaping his lungs.  Joe could not see, so quickly had
his vision dimmed from the Ooreiki’s vicious stranglehold.

Commander
Kihgl released him suddenly, but stayed only inches from his face, so close Joe
could feel the soft whispers of air moving from his sudah as he held him backed
against a wall. 

“Listen
to me very carefully, Zero.  A ghost without an oorei can haunt you for
eternity.  Even if you pathetic Humans have an afterlife, I can destroy it.  If
you reincarnate, I will be there.  If you fail, I will give you no peace.  I
will allow you no happiness.  I
will
bring you
into my hell, Zero.  I swear it with my very soul.”

Joe was
afraid to move, Kihgl’s seven-pointed star digging into his chest.

“Go
to bed,”
Kihgl said. 
“And keep the kasja. 
Tell Nebil I authorized it.”
  At that, he turned.

“Wait,”
Joe said.

Kihgl
paused, his gummy brown eyes hard.

“Why
don’t you run?” Joe asked.  “You were in Planetary Ops.  You could hide.”

It took
Kihgl a long time to respond.  Finally, his pale brown eyes fixed on Joe, he
said, “
I have hope that the Trith was right.
”  At that, he turned and
stalked off, leaving Joe in silence.

#

“Lights
are forbidden after dark on Ooreiki planets because they attract onen.”
  Commander Linin scanned the platoon with a look of irritation. 
Kihgl and Tril had not shown up to formation that morning.
  “So the ashers at medical finally decided to inform us that we
gotta dose you weak-eyed sooters with nightvision if we want you not to shit
yourselves when the sun goes down in twelve hours.”

Joe had
been wondering about that.  He’d seen nothing but bright, purple sky ever since
getting off the ship.  The sun hadn’t gone down in days.

Commander
Linin started to pace. 
“That puts Sixth Battalion even further behind. 
While the rest of the regiment is working on tactics in the tunnels this
afternoon, we’re gonna be standing around with our tentacles tangled while you
worthless Humans sleep it off.  Lagrah’s gonna have Second Battalion shooting
circles around us before we even get to our first hunt.”

It was
the first time the Ooreiki had mentioned tunnels since they’d been on the ship
and Joe could not stop his heart from hammering a startled staccato. 
They
plan to have us go down tunnels…
  His mind was screaming to ask about them,
desperate to know their exact dimensions, but Linin was in a foul mood and Joe
knew that he’d get pounded if he opened his mouth.

Instead
of retiring the battalion and letting the ten battlemasters march their
platoons to the medical center, Commander Linin took the whole battalion to the
courtyard outside the medical center.
 
If they want you, they can
come collect your bony Human asses themselves,
Commander Linin barked at
them as he formed them into squads. 
We have work to do.
  Then, as if
they were not in the middle of a busy civilian parking lot, he began drilling
his recruits outside the hospital.  The irritated medics came out every five
minutes to claim another set of recruits, their sudah fluttering hotly.

The
recruits under Linin’s control dwindled steadily, since the ones the medics
claimed did not return.  As a squad leader, Joe was one of the last ones
chosen.  While he waited for his turn, Joe’s world narrowed to the glassy
crunch of gravel and the sound of Commander Linin’s oaths as they fouled up the
complex drills he gave them.  When Joe was finally ushered into the dim red
lights of the hospital, even the foreign black machines and the brusque Ooreiki
medic were a relief from Linin’s rage.

“Damn
insane grounder,”
the medic muttered once they
were inside.  The Ooreiki was one of the higher-ranked medical officers, with
the golden circle on his chest so big it almost filled its silver border. 
“It’s
not our fault Kihgl got caught.”
  He shoved Joe into a small room and
touched the wall.  A black barrier dripped shut behind him, reminding Joe of
the ship.  With a prickle of goosebumps, he realized he had no way out.

“Drink
this,”
the irritated medic ordered, offering him a
clear vial.  Inside, a reddish liquid sloshed around, looking slightly
radioactive.

“What
is it?” Joe asked.

The
medic gave him a look that told Joe he would shove it down his throat, vial and
all, if he gave him the slightest resistance.

Swallowing
hard, Joe pulled the stopper off the vial and sniffed.  It smelled even more
rancid than the air.  He wrinkled his nose and pulled his head away.  “Man,
what’d you do, create distilled ass?  This
reeks
.”  The stench reminded
him of the constant itch in his lungs and he reflexively coughed up a red gob
of
ferlii
spores and phlegm.  When he turned to spit it out on the
floor, however, he caught the medic’s glare and swallowed it convulsively.

“We
can get a funnel and force-feed you if you aren’t interested in drinking it
willingly,”
the harried medic said pleasantly.

Realizing
the Ooreiki was utterly serious, imagining choking on a funnel, Joe held his
breath, tipped his head back, and emptied the vial of night-vision down his
throat as quickly as he could gulp it down.

It was
like swallowing sewage. 

“Keep
it down,”
the medic warned him. 
“Waste it and
we’ll be forced to add another turn to your enlistment to pay the difference.”

Already
knowing he had many more years of service than anyone else in his battalion,
Joe was desperate to keep from vomiting the disgusting stuff back up. 
Keep
it down,
he chanted to himself, stumbling to grip the medic’s desk in both
fists. 
Keep it down, keep it down…
  Joe stood there, panting, a
panicked moment, feeling the rancid potion work its way into his stomach and
then try to claw its way out again.  He swallowed hard to keep it where it
belonged. 

Then,
as he felt the odd hot-cold heat spread through his stomach and chest, Joe
began catching red, yellow, and blue flashes of color in the air all around
him, almost like a northern aurora.  He was frowning at that, squinting at the
weird swaths of color beginning to drip from the walls, when an electrical
spasm seemed to grab him by the back of his skull and dropped him to his
knees.  An instant later, he blacked out.

When he
woke, the world was in shades of color that Joe had never imagined possible. 
The armband Kihgl had given him was laced with glowing gold designs beautiful
enough to take his breath away.  When he traced the patterns, they almost
reminded him of Celtic knots…or crop circles.  When he looked up, he realized
the walls weren’t actually black, but gleaming iridescent waves of color that
reminded him of bird feathers.  He could see blocky squiggles marking the doors
and equipment like someone had taken a neon pink highlighter to the room.  He
got up and wove through the bodies of sleeping recruits to take a closer look.

Joe’s
excitement soared as he neared.  The blocky squiggles were foreign, but he could
recognize patterns—repeated symbols, common characters, rhythms to the words.  And,
as Coach Grimsley liked to say, recognizing your opponent’s patterns was the
first step to kicking his ass. 

Joe
peered harder, trying to locate exactly where the symbols began.  He noticed a
lot of numbers corresponding to the alien writing on the recruits’ uniforms,
but he couldn’t locate a line or column to which the symbols were aligned.  It
was almost as if they were simply thrown into a jumbled mess on the wall.  Joe
traced the symbols with his fingers, perplexed.  He could not conceive of an
intelligent species using such a disorganized system.

Still,
the alien writing was magic to Joe.  The Ooreiki had made a mistake. 
Seeing
the doors was the first step to stepping
through
them.  For the first
time since getting off the ship, Joe felt renewed hope that he could somehow
get himself home.

Himself
and
his friends home.  Joe glanced back, locating his groundteam amongst
the sleeping recruits.  Libby was the only one also awake.  The rest were
sprawled wherever the Ooreiki had left them, breathing peacefully.