Forging Zero (40 page)

Battlemaster
Nebil stopped, glaring at Joe.  “Tomorrow’s only going to be practice, Company-on-Company,
but we’ll be getting the real thing here soon.  That jenfurgling Tril’s made
sure of that.” 

Nebil
sighed and looked down at the switch he carried, then collapsed it in a
telescoping patty and stuffed it into his vest.  “Zero, you’re in charge until
Chins gets back.  Make sure they get some food and take them to Tril for
drills.”  Then Nebil simply turned and departed, leaving Joe standing there,
staring after him with his mouth hanging open.

Sasha
returned to Nebil’s platoon that evening and, upon seeing Joe standing in her
spot at the head of the platoon, she gave him a look that could have cut
through metal.  She reclaimed her position rudely, barking at him to return to
his groundteam.  Joe did, unable to stop staring at her.

Sasha’s
face and arms were a mass of puckered pink scars.  Half of her ear had been cut
off, giving her a wretched, lopsided look, and apparently the medics had seen
no need to replace it.  Joe felt sorry for her, despite himself.

The
next day, Battlemaster Nebil lined them up outside the barracks and handed
everyone a blue cartridge for their rifles.  Earlier that morning, Battlemaster
Nebil had singled Joe out for screwing up and had stood on his back with one
heavy, cylindrical boot while he made Joe do pushups until his arms gave out. 
Joe got a fleeting rush of excitement as Nebil handed him the cartridge,
thinking about how easy it would be to load it into his rifle and blow off the
Battlemaster’s foot.

Self-preservation,
however, kept Joe’s itchy fingers at his side.  Ooreiki were fast.  He’d only
get a toe, at best.

“Load
your cartridges!” Nebil shouted.

Ninety
recruits hurried to do as he asked.

“Now,”
Battlemaster Nebil said, “Chins, you’re leading them today.  You know how to
talk to the squad leaders on your headcom?”

Of
course she doesn’t,
Joe thought.

“Kkee,
Battlemaster,” Sasha said.

“Good.” 
Nebil swung around to face Joe.  “Squad leaders, get your groundteams cleaned
up and dressed in their full tunnel gear, then get them back down here in nine
tics.  The battalion’s going on a hunt.”

“You
heard him, let’s go!” Sasha said.  “Upstairs!  Get
up
there you useless
Takki worms!  Pushups for the last one to the top!” 

They climbed
up the stairs to the barracks, stripped out of their diamond-encrusted clothing,
and filed into the shower.  The noxious vats of liquid were big enough to fit
twenty at a time, though nobody stayed in them long enough for them to fill
up.  As Joe dunked himself, every scrape that he had endured in the last few
days burned like fire, making the experience akin to throwing himself into a
vat of needles.  Still, the endless laps around the base of the barracks that
Battlemaster Nebil dished out to recruits caught not bathing made the
alternative even less pleasant.

Once
he’d sluiced the diamond dust from his body, Joe hurried back into the hall,
still unable to see or breathe.  The fans on the wall activated at once,
chilling him to the core as the alcohol evaporated from his skin.  Once dry, he
threw on a new set of clothes, shouldered his gear, and stumbled back down the
stairs to where Battlemaster Nebil stood, waiting for them.

“You’re
late!” he barked, swatting Joe across the arm with his switch.  “You call
yourself a squad leader?!”  Joe flinched at the sting, but held his composure while
inwardly hating Sasha, who was giving him a smug look from the recruit battlemaster’s
position.  She had been the first one back down the stairs and Joe
knew
she hadn’t bathed.  She’d taken too much time to harass the kid who’d made it
up the stairs last.

Battlemaster
Nebil marched them to the plaza, where a flotilla of large haauks waited for
them.  Other platoons were already boarding, the plaza a milling mass of
confusion and shouting Ooreiki.  Nebil loaded them all onto a giant haauk and
pulled the gate up, locking out the other straggling platoons.  The platform
jerked as the Ooreiki pilot lifted off and began following the other haauk down
the black diamond road.

“Shut
up and listen,” Nebil shouted, though no one was talking.  “We’re about to start
an in-battalion hunt.  It’s a practice hunt for when they put us up against
another battalion.  Attackers wear black, defenders wear white.  Second Company
defends, First Company attacks.  Defenders will be at the bottom, trying to
keep us out.  Somewhere underneath you’ll find a Congressional flag, if you get
that far.  That’s your goal.  Reach that, and the hunt is over.”

Joe’s
hands grew sweaty where they gripped his rifle, his focus suddenly narrowing to
the battlemaster’s every word.  Somewhere…
underneath
?  Were they sending
them down
tunnels
?

“Any of
you janja pellets have questions?” Battlemaster Nebil demanded.

Joe
cleared his throat.  “Is this live ammunition?”

“Does
it
look
like it’s live ammunition, jenfurgling?”  Several kids
snickered.  A furg, as Linin’s eye-opening Species Recognition classes had
taught them the evening before, was a short, squat, very
hairy
alien
that was as ugly as it was stupid.  A furgling, a younger version of the same
primitive beast, was shorter, hairier, and stupider.  A
jen
furgling was
an evolutionary offshoot of the same species that had lost a few brain cells
along the way, and delighted in beating its hairy face against the ground and
playing with its own excrement.  The video clip of a group of them running in
circles around a boulder, shrieking and flinging excrement at each other, had
been the highlight of their capture.

Remembering
the gun Kihgl had shoved into his face, Joe said.  “Well…yeah.”

A look
of respect passed through Nebil’s sticky brown eyes before it was hidden again. 
“It’s not.  It’s full of marker shots.  Real plasma will twist the light until
it hurts to look at it.  Even a soot-eating furg knows that.”

“So
what happens if we get hit?” Libby asked, giving her gun a nervous look.

“Don’t
get hit,” Nebil growled.  “You will not like it if you do.  Any other
questions?”

“Where
are we going?” Libby asked.

“Practice
Flats Ninety-Five,” Nebil said, as if that answered her question.

Not to
be outdone, Sasha said, “So what do we do when we get there?”

“You
charge the tunnels.  If you survive, you fall back and try again.”

“That
doesn’t sound very smart.”  In horror, Joe realized the words had left his
mouth before he had a chance to stop them.

The
Ooreiki swiveled to face him.  “Say that again, Zero?”

Joe bit
his lip.  “Why can’t we just drop a bomb down there and blow them up?”

“Because,
if it were Dhasha trapped down there, their Takki would just dig them out
again,” Battlemaster Nebil retorted.  “Collapsing the tunnels is something they
do to
defend
themselves, you furg.”

“Oh.” 
Joe kept his mouth shut for the rest of the questions.

Then,
before they were ready, the haauk dropped down in the middle of what had once
been a city, broken only by a few odd remnants of buildings and deep pits
filled with white-clad recruits that were already firing at them.  A blob of
blue hit one of the attackers in the head and he collapsed with a scream,
twitching and convulsing like a dying thing.  Then he lay still.

Joe and
the others stared at the body, their confusion quickly turning to fear as more
blue shots whizzed over their heads like blue hail from the hundreds of
defenders firing at them.  Two more black-clad recruits went down in
convulsions, blue goop moving on their bodies like it was alive.  Everyone
ducked, trying to shield themselves with the scant protection of the railing
and their fellows’ bodies. 

The haauk
’s
gate clanged open and no one moved.

“Out!”
Nebil shouted.  “Get out and fight, you gutless cowards!”  Then Nebil was
whipping them all, forcing them off the haauk and into the blue-painted Hell.

Five
went down immediately, falling in a screaming, shaking heap.  The rest hunkered
down behind the bodies in a panic.  Then Nebil and the pilot were lifting off,
leaving them there, the sucking wet sound of gunfire coming from all around
them.

The
wall of bodies wasn’t enough to protect them.  One guy beside Joe had nothing
but his eyes showing when a shot hit the body in front of him, sprayed, and a
couple drops caught him in the face.  He fell just as quickly as the rest.  All
around him, recruits were falling, screaming like something was ripping open
their innards.

“Come
on!” Joe shouted, grabbing Libby by the arm.  He had no idea where the other
members of his group had gone. 

“Where?”
Libby shouted back.  “There’s nowhere to go!”

A
jagged block of diamond jutted from the ground a few dozen feet away.  Joe
ducked his head and ran.  He heard heavy footsteps pounding the crushed diamond
behind him, but he wasn’t sure if it was Libby or someone from another groundteam.

Joe’s
vision narrowed to only the battlefield in front of him.  He felt a few shots
whoosh over his head as he ran, all high.  He reached the block and fell into a
prone position behind it, gripping his rifle with white knuckles.

Libby
fell down beside him, as did two other kids Joe didn’t recognize.

Back at
the dropoff point, a few attackers were trying to make a stand, but the fire
from the tunnels was destroying them.  In minutes, they were all convulsing or
still.  A cheer went up from the defenders.

“That
was fast,” Libby said, eying the pile of bodies.

“You
think they’re dead?” a younger boy asked Joe.  “They looked dead.”  He was
shaking all over, but he looked excited nonetheless.

Joe
examined his three companions.  Of all of Nebil’s platoon, only the four of
them were still functioning. 

Further
away, on the other side of the city, they heard more sucking
burps
of
gunfire.  Apparently, another platoon was meeting the same end.

“You
think they forgot about us?” the other survivor, an older girl, asked. 
“They’re not shooting anymore.”

“They’re
probably circling around,” Libby said.  “I saw tunnel pits all over this place
when we landed.  They might be walking under us right now.”

“Then
let’s beat them to it!” the younger boy cried, hefting his rifle.  “Come on,
Zero!”

Joe
glanced at the pit closest them and swallowed down the fear in his gut.  The
last thing he wanted to do was go down there.  “It’s too open.  They’d shoot us
up before we even got there.”

Libby frowned
at him and edged her head around the block of diamond just enough to see the
other pits.  Immediately, one of the defenders fired a blast that bounced off
the stone only inches above her head.  She jerked back and took a deep breath,
staring at the blue goop crawling across the stone where her head had been. 
“Yeah, they know we’re here.”  Behind them, more defenders were firing at their
diamond block, keeping them pinned.

Joe
stared at the pit in front of them. 
Come on you big baby.  You’re gonna
have to do it sooner or later. 
“We’re gonna need a distraction,” Joe heard
himself say.  “We aren’t going anywhere until—”

“No,”
Libby said.

Joe
glanced at her.  “What?”

She
shrugged out of her pack.  “That’s not the way.  There’s another pit on the
other side that’s closer.”  She pointed.  “It’s just got little kids in it, and
they’re bad shots.  We can get to it before they shoot us.  Gotta leave our
gear behind, though.”

Joe
gave it a split-second thought, then said, “Okay, everybody get your packs off.
 When I say go, grab your rifles and run like hell after Libby and me.”  He
doubted the two kids with them would be able to keep up, but maybe they could
avoid getting shot.  Both of them looked older than Libby, but Libby was
getting tall—she was easily six inches taller than the boy and seven inches
taller than the girl.  She could almost keep up with Joe on the runs.  Almost.

“Okay,”
Joe said, pulling his pack from his shoulders.  “When I say go, I want
everybody to throw their packs in that direction.”  He pointed in the opposite
direction that Libby had done.  “I don’t care if you have to kick them or they
only roll a little ways.  As soon as they leave your hands, get up and run
after me and Libby.”

As they
waited for the two smaller kids to get out of their gear, Joe eyed the pit
directly across from them with increasing anxiety.  He could
feel
the
defenders creeping through the tunnels under them.  Looking over, he saw
Libby’s grim stare was fixed in the same direction.

“We
ready?  Count of three.  One, two,
three!”
  They heaved their packs away
from them and lunged up into a sprint toward three wide-eyed kids in the pit.  The
other defenders were already recovering and blue shots spattered the ground and
flew past them as they tried to catch Joe and Libby in their sights.  Behind
them, Joe heard a scream.