Forging Zero (35 page)

“Maggie,
stop!” he shouted, grabbing her around the waist.  “You know what they do to
kids that run off?!”  She kicked him again in his knee for the trouble.

He
twisted her around.  “Mag, I’m sorry I didn’t help you.  I couldn’t.  We gotta be
big kids now.  We’re soldiers.  We can’t cry anymore.  We gotta dig in and get
this over with, do what they tell us to do.  You were doing great today…I was
so proud of you.”

Maggie
wouldn’t look up.  “Sasha says I’m stupid because I can’t hold my rifle.”

Joe
felt his irritation rise, remembering it.  “I know.”  Sasha had also made Joe
do pushups for taking the vest even after Nebil had forgotten about it. 

“You
should tell Nebil she’s mean to us.”

“I
think he already knows,” Joe said.  “He doesn’t care.”

Maggie kicked
at the stairs.

“Mag,
I’m sorry I couldn’t help you today,” Joe said softly, squeezing her shoulder. 
“I won’t always be there to help you.  You gotta grow up and do things on your
own.”

“It was
heavy,” Maggie muttered, thumping her boot against the carved black stone.

“What?”

“The
gun,” she whined.  “It was heavy.  My arms hurt.  And I tripped.”

“I
know,” Joe said.  “That wasn’t your fault.  You’re small now, but you’re
getting bigger.  Soon you’ll be as big as the rest of us, and it won’t be so
hard for you.”

She
looked up at him, her tearful gray eyes seeking.  “Is Elf really gonna get
eaten?”

Joe
opened his mouth to lie.  Seeing her plaintive stare, however, his words died
on his lips.  “I don’t know,” he said honestly.

“I miss
my guppies.”  Maggie’s voice cracked, her eyes filling up with tears.  She had
the face and body of a teenager, but her mind…

Her
mind was still a child’s.

Joe
hugged her.  “I know you do, Mag.”

“I
can’t remember what I named them,” Maggie whispered.  “All I remember is their
spots.  It’s even getting hard to remember Mommy and Daddy.”

Joe
felt at a loss.  He’d thought he was the only one.  “I remember you called one
of them Jabber.”

Maggie’s
breath caught.  “Can you help me remember the rest, Joe?”

“I can
try,” Joe said. 
Oh yeah?
part of him demanded.
  How, you dumbshit? 
You don’t know anything about her.  She’s gonna grow up an alien because she’s
not gonna remember Earth.

“You
can tell me stories,” Maggie said, taking his hand.  “About Jabber and my
parents.”

“Okay. 
Sure, I can do that.” 
Oh, man, Joe, you idiot.  You couldn’t tell a story
to save your ass.

By the
time they returned to the barracks, the others were already done inspecting
their weapons and had turned out the lights.  The day had been so exhausting
that not even their own groundteam had waited up for them.  Joe and Maggie
finished with their rifles, folded their clothes, and Joe, hoping she had
forgotten his offer, went to bed.  Before he fell asleep, however, Maggie
jerked on his sleeve and demanded her story.

Blushing,
Joe made up a halting tale about a fish named Jabber and how her parents would
feed him one pinch of food morning and night.  It was hesitant at first, but as
he talked, the words grew easier.

“But
Jabber was getting lonely,” Joe said, getting into it.  “So he went out looking
for other guppies.”

“How
did he get out of his bowl?” Maggie asked, fascinated.

“He put
on a drysuit,” Joe said.  “You know, like a wetsuit, but one for fish.”

Maggie
listened, enraptured, as he put in all the details about Earth he could, trying
to fix it in her mind so she didn’t forget her home.

When he
finished, he realized the entire barracks was sitting up in bed, listening to
his tale.  Softly, a little girl on the next bed over said, “Can you tell me a
story tomorrow night?  About my cat?”

“And my
pet snake!” a boy cried, jumping up.  “His name was Jax.  Can you tell me about
Jax?”

Joe
scanned the hungry faces, feeling good for the first time in weeks.  “Yeah.” 
He grinned back at them self-consciously.  “I can do that.”

#

“Feed them as much as you want,
Maggie.  They deserve a treat.”

Maggie gave the little cylinder of
fish food a dubious glance.  Her parents had been acting strange today.  Maybe
it had been Grammy and Pops showing up.  They’d brought Maggie a lot of
presents but didn’t have any for Mommy and Daddy, so maybe they were mad she
got to open everything and they didn’t get any.

“Go ahead, Mag.”  Daddy smiled
down at her, holding Mommy’s hand.  Their eyes were wet but Mommy and Daddy had
gotten al-her-jic to the new sweater Grammy had given her and that’s why they
were crying.

“You feed them, Daddy,” Maggie
said, offering up the canister to her father.  “Jabber likes you to do it.”

“You should do it,” Daddy said,
making no move to take the fish food from her.  “You need to, baby.”

“As much as you want,” Mommy
added.

Maggie stared up at them, then
down at the multi-colored flakes.  She considered dumping the whole canister
into the tank, then dutifully reached inside and drew out one pinch.  This she
sprinkled atop the water.

She giggled as Jabber raced the
others to the top and sucked in three flakes before any of the others had one.

“You sure that’s all you want to
give them?” Mommy asked.  “You can give them as much as you want, honey.” 

“But you said it would make them
get sick,” Maggie accused.

“Once in a while is okay, honey.”

Maggie considered the surface of
the water, which had been picked clean of food, and quickly put in another
pinch.  Then, feeling naughty, she twisted the cap back onto the canister and
set it by the tank.  She gave her parents an anxious glance to see if this had
been some sort of test that she’d failed, but their faces held no disapproval. 
Her mother was being al-her-jic again.

“I don’t have to wear Grammy’s
sweater,” Maggie said, glancing down at the little yellow duck on the front. 
“I won’t wear it if it makes you cry.”

Mommy wiped her eyes.  “No, baby. 
You’re fine.  Keep Grammy’s sweater.  She made it for you.”

“But I don’t like to see you cry,
Mommy,” Maggie said.  “I’d rather you were happy.”

Her mother ran from the room,
leaving Maggie alone with Daddy.  Maggie stared after her, feeling something
wrench inside of her, but before she could start to cry herself, her father
knelt in front of her and pulled her into a big hug.

“You’ve gotta be a strong little
girl for Daddy, okay Mag?  Grammy and Pops are going to take you on a trip for
a while.  You like to go on trips, right?”

“Do I get to see birds?” Maggie
asked.

“You’ll see all sorts of birds,”
Daddy told her.  “Crows, blackbirds, seagulls—”

Maggie pushed her father at
arm’s-length so she could see his face.  “If I’m really good, can we catch a
little baby seagull so I can have it as a pet?  I’d rather have a seagull than
a parakeet.”

Her father looked at the floor. 
“I’m sorry we never got you a parakeet, Mag.  You like birds so much more than
fish.  We just thought—”  He broke off and when he looked up at her, this time
he was being al-her-jic.  “Maybe Grammy will stop so you can get a seagull. 
You’ve got to ask her, though.”

Maggie’s heart soared.  “Thank
you, Daddy!  I’ll get you a seagull, too!  It’ll be the littlest, littlest
seagull I ever saw and I’ll give it to you so our seagulls can be friends.”

“I’d love to have a seagull with
you, Mag.”  Somehow, however, her father’s smile didn’t seem very happy.  He
hugged her again.  “I love you, Mag.”

“I love you too, Daddy.”

CHAPTER
17: 
Kihgl’s Fall

The
morning of Kihgl’s trial, Battlemaster Nebil did not knock over lockers to wake
them up.  He used a pocket-sized device that broadcasted his voice like a
bullhorn.

“Get
your gear!  Get your gear you useless Takki dogs!  Ceremonial
otwa
and full regalia!  Get dressed, furgs!  Faster!  Faster! 
Move your bony Human asses
faster
!”

Joe
scrambled to get his stuff on, but before he could finish, Nebil stopped them
and made them take everything off again and start over.

“Today
is the
trial
!”
Nebil shouted.  
“You will
look
good
when Kihgl gets burned.  Now do it again!  Faster!  Faster! 
You soot-eating furglings, move
faster
!”
  All the while, he walked
down the halls, shoving the alien bullhorn into people’s faces and screaming at
them if they weren’t moving fast enough.

All of
their ears were ringing by the time they finally got themselves meeting Nebil’s
standards.  Then he had them spend an hour cleaning the
otwa
they had
been drilling with the last week.  Once they were pristine, he had them form up
by groundteam on the black roadway below the barracks and marched them to the
plaza, cursing at them all the way.  There, they met up with the nine other
platoons from Sixth Battalion and got into formation.

We
look better,
Joe thought with a bit of pride.  Everyone
was in step, and there was barely any jaggedness to their lines.  That, and the
painful process of taking off and putting on their gear had paid off—they
almost looked professional.  He even could see the other members of Sixth
Battalion stand up straighter upon seeing the improvement.

Then he
saw the other battalions marching up, every member adult-sized and utterly
rigid in spine and step.  As they took their places on either side of Sixth
Battalion, Joe’s heart sank.  Whereas he had been proud of Sixth Battalion’s
straighter rows and crisper uniforms, the other battalions marched with enough
force to shake the ground, their formations were confident and tight, and they
carried dozens of streaming black banners bearing the symbol of Congress—eight small
blue circles surrounding a large silver sphere—and the blocky squiggles of
Congie writing.

Once
again, they were going to look weak and unprepared.  Joe saw Battlemaster Nebil
eye the black banners and curse.  Even Linin looked unnerved.  He and the other
Ooreiki of Sixth Battalion conferred momentarily, then Tril stalked over to the
tertiary commander leading Fifth Battalion and spoke with him with increasing
intensity, loud enough to be heard over the commands of the battalions still
arranging themselves in the plaza.

Tril
returned to Sixth Battalion with his sudah fluttering harder than Joe had ever
seen before.  Sharply, he shouted in Congie, “Battlemasters, are your platoons
in order?”

“They
are, Commander!” the battlemasters returned in unison, their voices booming
over the plaza with an intensity that made Joe stare.

“Good. 
Retain them.”

“Retain!”
Nebil shouted at them.

That,
Joe had learned, meant to stand with his heels together, his toes pointed at a
forty-five degree angle, his arms held tightly down in front of him, one hand
grasping the butt of his rifle and the other grasping the barrel.  Sixth
Battalion managed to do it quickly enough, though the sound of their boots
slamming the ground were not as loud as the battalions on either side.

“Check
arms!”

Joe
quickly popped the rifle back, opening up the fist-sized bulbous chamber. 
Inside were a cluster of blue pellets inside a tight membrane resembling a sac
of fish eggs.  He snapped his rifle shut and winced at the way the snaps from
Sixth Battalion’s guns echoed unevenly, spread out between a ten-second
interval.  In the other battalions, the snaps roared as one, a crisp and even
sound that left his hair standing on end.

Joe
felt a rush of shame as they stood there, bannerless, feeling the other
battalions’ disdain like a hot poison in his chest.

It
wasn’t fair.

Sixth
Battalion’s battlemasters seemed to share his anger.  All of their sudah were
fluttering hotly as they stood beside their platoons. 

Down
the ranks, First Battalion’s commander called out a question and they responded
by lifting their rifles to their shoulders and, aiming over the heads of the
recruit in front of them, fired into the sky.  The
“Kkee Diinrok!”
that
blasted across the plaza from nine hundred mouths made Joe flinch.  He knew
Sixth Battalion didn’t sound that good.

Down
the lines, each battalion fired their rifles in time, the echoing
burp
signaling they were ready.  When it came time for Sixth Battalion’s turn,
Commander Tril lifted his voice over the plaza.  “Is Sixth Battalion ready to
serve?”

They
lifted their rifles and fired on queue and shouted a ragged
“Kkee Diinrok!”
that was garbled from everyone starting at different times.  Then a kid brought
his weapon up and fired late, probably thinking that being late was better than
not firing at all, and the sound of his gun cut off Tril’s ceremonial reply. 
Joe was close enough to Fifth Battalion to hear several of them snicker.