Forging Zero (7 page)

Joe’s stomach recoiled when Tril
turned back to once again meet his eyes.
  He’s in my battalion? 
Instinctively,
he knew that wasn’t good.

Commander Kihgl went on,
heedless. 
“It is my job to inform you that you are now property of the
Congressional Army.  Any injuries you incur, any damage you cause, any expense
for your outfitting beyond standard costs, will be paid with extra service
added to your contract.  You all began with thirty-three Standard Turns of duty
to look forward to.  For all of you except one, that number is still in
effect.”

Joe’s
gut twisted in fear.  He knew which one.

“For the next three turns, until you graduate as a full
member of the Congressional Army,”
Commander Kihgl went on,
“you will be
referred to by numbers.  My battlemasters will be passing among you, handing
out temporary armbands with your recruit number on them.  As soon as you get
your number, strap it to your arm.  Memorize it, because that’s all you will be
allowed to use for the next three turns.” 

The aliens began passing out
armbands.  Joe held out his hand as the closest alien approached him, but it
ignored him, giving an armband to the kid beside, behind, and in front of Joe. 
Reddening, Joe lowered his arm and stared straight ahead, refusing to let them
bully him.

Commander Kihgl stopped in front
of Joe. 
“Why don’t you have a number?”

“You never gave me one,” Joe
said. 
Asshole.

“That’s unfortunate.”
 
Kihgl’s gaze was hard.
  “We seem to have run out, as the battalion was only
supposed to have room for nine hundred.  You can be Zero.”

Joe’s
flush deepened.  He knew some of the kids had died in travel.  He’d woken up to
missing faces.  He’d heard the aliens talking.  He knew they could give him a
number.

One of
the smallest kids in the room raised her hand.

“What?”
the alien asked,
eyes locked with Joe.

“Can I make him an armband?” she
asked.  “I know how to draw a zero.”

“No,”
Kihgl said. 
“Zero
doesn’t need an armband.”
  Kihgl cocked his head, looking up at him. 
“After
all, zeros don’t exist.  Do they, Zero?”

Joe
straightened over the alien, staring down at him.  His every fiber was telling
him to fight, to pound Kihgl’s smug face in.

The alien leaned closer, its
sticky, slitted eyes almost close enough to touch Joe’s chin. 
“Need another
lesson, Zero?  Didn’t learn the first time?”

Joe
leaned down, until they were face-to-face.  “Bring it on,” Joe replied.

The slits along the sides of
Kihgl’s neck started to flutter.  In an instant, a meaty, boneless arm lashed
out, catching Joe in the jaw hard enough to crack teeth.  Joe spun out of
formation, landing in a daze on the floor, his face on fire.

“
Do you need medical attention,
Zero?
” Kihgl demanded, walking up to him.  “
We both know how deeply it
would pain me to add another three turns to your service.
”

Three turns? What the hell does
that mean?  Weeks?  Months?  Years?  Joe pushed himself back to his feet, fists
clenched.  It took all his self-control not to swing at the snake-eyed
bastard. 

“So the ashy furg is smarter
than its father.  A shame.  It would’ve been interesting if you’d followed in
his footsteps.  Congressional soldiers can always use more target practice.”

In that
instant, a switch flipped in Joe’s head and all he saw was red.  In an instant
of madness, Joe tackled Kihgl and crawled on top of him as he fell, ramming his
fists into the sides of his soft skull.  Before he could open the pocketknife
and use the blade on him, however, Kihgl threw Joe twenty feet across the room
with one boneless arm.

Two
seconds later, the other Ooreiki were on him, over twelve of them at once, and
the beating that followed seared Joe’s memory like a branding iron.

When it was over, they left him
there in full view of the rest of the children, his arms and legs each
shattered in multiple places by the Ooreiki’s heavy arms.  Joe’s last thought
before surrendering to oblivion was of the little red Swiss Army knife he’d
found in Manny Hernandez’s fingers, surrounded by a pool of blood.

#

“Give me control of the
modification unit.”

Commander Kihgl was scowling at
the medical officers as they carted the Human away for repairs.  Without
looking at Tril, his secondary commander growled, “What for, Commander Tril?”

“He’s in my platoon, sir,” Tril
replied.  “He’s my responsibility.”

“We shouldn’t even be using the
modification unit,” Kihgl muttered.  “It’s for prisoners, not recruits.  It
stays with me.”  Despite his words, Kihgl’s sudah were fluttering in his neck,
betraying his frustration.  Tril understood—such a show of disobedience, in
front of a third of the battalion, would make it harder to control the rest of
the children. 

“Why didn’t you use it this
afternoon?  Why let the furg attack you like that?”

Commander Kihgl turned on him,
anger in his eyes.  “I didn’t
let
him do anything, Commander,” he
snapped, startling Tril.  “I deliberately provoked him.  I took a lesson from
the Jreet and used him as an example.  If you could not see that, you’re as
daft as he is.”

The disdain with which the
vkala
had spoken to him in front of other Ooreiki caste members made Tril tense.  He
glanced to the side and saw that several of his own subordinates were watching
the exchange with interest.  Struggling to regain composure, Tril said, “He’s
giving the other children ideas.”

“No,” Commander Kihgl said
bluntly.  “He’s showing them that disobedience has consequences.”

Tril decided to try a new tactic. 
“If I had the modification unit, I could—”

“No.”  Still watching the
departing physicians, Kihgl made an irritated gesture at the naked, whimpering
Humans.  “Go give your recruits their vid time, Commander.  I’ll deal with
Zero.”  At that, Tril’s commander turned and followed the path the medics had
taken.

#

When Joe woke up, he was
surprised that they had patched him up as good as new.  Every broken bone,
every bruise, every cut was healed.  A new anger rose in Joe’s throat as he
looked down at himself, flexing limbs that he had seen twisted back upon
themselves earlier that morning.  The evidence was unmistakable.  They hadn’t
needed to kill the sickly kids.  They could have healed them, just like they
had Joe, and they would have been good soldiers out of gratitude for it.  But
they had needed to make examples out of them, so they blew their heads off,
instead.

Spiritually and emotionally sick,
Joe was barely paying attention when the alien medic told him they’d tacked
another six turns onto his enlistment to pay for his medical treatment.  The
medic never mentioned finding a little red pocketknife, and Joe knew he wasn’t
getting it back.  Somehow, that knowledge was worse than the extra time he’d
have to serve.  It was the only thing he’d retained of home, the only thing he
had of Dad’s.  He wanted to grab the alien and shout at him, demand it back,
fight until he had it, but Joe knew that the medics had probably dumped it into
one of the trash holes as soon as they had found it.

Numbly, Joe put on the loose
white shorts and matching T-shirt the medic gave him and followed him to a line
of similarly-dressed kids standing in booths with little TVs inside them.  The
pictures were of people talking, and immediately Joe wondered if it was some
sort of brainwashing session disguised as free time.

Only when the alien pushed him
inside one of the booths did Joe realize the screen held his mother’s image. 
It looked…older.

Thinking it was some sort of
trick, Joe started to back out of the booth.

“Joe?”

Joe hesitated, staring down at
her.  Her hair was messy and her eyes were red from crying.  She looked so
real.  How could she be there?  Weren’t they traveling a billion miles an hour
through space?  Was this some weird mind-trick the aliens were playing on
them?  Subliminal messages? 

Joe turned to the alien outside
the booth.  “What’s going on?”

The alien gave him a
dispassionate look.  Through its translator, it said,
“Congressional law
states every recruit must have six tics to speak with its family before
training begins.”
  The alien glanced at a group of moving squiggles under
Joe’s mother and its face scrunched. 
“You have five left.”

Joe dove back into the booth. 
“Mom?”

“Joe!” 
She looked so
relieved.  So
happy
.  So different from the last time he’d seen her,
when she had thought it would be Sam leaving her, not Joe.  “Thank God.  Joe, I’ve
been waiting so long to talk to you!  Are you okay?  What’s happening there? 
Have they hurt you?”

Joe took a long look at his
mother’s face.  It was lined with worry.  She looked like she’d aged ten years
since that first day the aliens landed in Washington.  She was paler, almost
gaunt.  Her eye sockets were heavy and dark from lack of sleep.  He decided she
needed to hear good news.  As much as he wanted to tell her his problems, beg
her to find a way to help him, he said, “No, they haven’t hurt me.  I’m doing
fine.”

His mother’s face momentarily
slackened with relief.  Then a line formed in between her brows.  “That’s not
what the other parents are saying.  They’re saying the aliens are killing kids
and—”

“They’re not,” Joe said.  “They’re
just little crybabies.  They don’t understand.”

His mom smiled and looked like
she was crying.  “You’re so brave, Joe,” she said.  “You remind me so much of
your father.”

Joe had to look away from the
screen, digging his fingernails into his palms to keep the tears at bay.  “Has
Dad come back yet?”

On the screen, his mother’s face
contorted.  “You know he hasn’t.  Why do you keep asking?!  You’re not as young
as Sam.  You know he’s—”

“Where is Sam?” Joe interrupted.

His mother’s face softened. 
“Here,” she whispered.  “You saved him, Joe.  You actually
saved
him.” 
She sounded so stunned.  And happy.  Glad.

Glad that it was Joe on the ship,
not Sam.

Joe bit his lip and looked at the
wall beside the unit.  “They didn’t come back for him?”  He’d been
wondering
why he hadn’t caught sight of the know-it-all bastard in the panicked throng of
kids.

“It was the last sweep, Joe.” 
His mom sounded like she was close to sobbing.  “Sammy made it back home and
the aliens left.  They’ve been gone for two years, Joe.  Sammy’s okay, Joe. 
You saved him.”

Two…
years
.  Joe felt oddly
numb.  Sam got to stay…and Joe was with the aliens.

Because he ran like a pussy
and left me to die.

He must
have said it out loud, because his mother’s face hardened on the screen.  “He was
ten
, you insensitive bastard.”  Sammy always had been a Momma’s Boy.  “You
wanted him to fight
aliens
, Joe?  At
ten
?  Why, so he could get
his face blown off like your father?”  And her favorite.  Sammy had always been
her favorite.

“He
left his own brother to
die
,” Joe muttered.  “They had guns to my head,
Mom.  And he just left.”

“Seeing
how you got him caught in the first place, Joe,” his mother said, her voice cold
and utterly even, like ice, “I’d say it’s only fair you took his place.”  And
it was obvious Sam was her favorite, seeing the fury in her face, the outrage
at the idea that Sam should’ve risked his life to save Joe.  Joe had always
wondered, but had never worked up the balls to ask.

And
here, plain as day, was his answer.  Looking at him like she was disgusted he
was still breathing.  Joe, his father’s son, the football jock, the C-student,
the Marine wannabe who never really had any serious aspirations beyond retiring
a USMC staff sergeant…  Shoved aside for a skinny little math whiz who’d had a
college recruiter from MIT come over to watch Sam do Joe’s Trig homework for
him while Sam chewed gum, played two MMORPGs, listened to Bach, and watched a
pirated Star Trek re-run in the background.

Of
course she wants him more than me
, Joe thought. 
Sam’s
a genius
.  Joe was just…

Average.

Then
the alien monitoring his call terminated the connection so the kid behind Joe
could have a chance.  Joe left the booth feeling like someone had poured acid
over his insides.

CHAPTER
4
:  Joe’s Groundteam

That
night, after everyone had made their mandatory phone calls, Joe and the others
were lined up once more in the brightly-lit gymnasium.  This time, the aliens
arranged them in groups of six.  They put the tallest in front, the youngest in
back.

“You are now a member of Sixth
Battalion,”
Commander Kihgl told them once they were arranged. 
“It
contains roughly nine hundred recruits, monitored by a single secondary
commander—myself—two small commanders—Small Commander Tril and Small Commander
Linin—and ten battlemasters, whom you will acquaint yourselves with personally
as your training goes on.  Normally, a battalion is led by a tertiary
commander, but as one of the senior officers of this Takkiscrew, I was chosen
to lead the brigade, as well.  Likewise, Prime Commander Lagrah is in charge of
both Second Battalion and the regiment as a whole.”
  He stopped, letting
that sink in.