Forging Zero (74 page)

Joe forced himself to smile. 
“He’ll be glad to hear it.”

He was shaking on his ascent back
to Bagkhal’s tower.  How much did Na’leen know?  Had he been here the whole
time, investigating?  Had he had one of his assassins follow Joe when he went
with Yuil?  Is that why he hadn’t had Joe killed yet?  Because he was leading
them deeper into the enemy’s ranks?

He was in a cold sweat by the time
he got back to Bagkhal.

“Well?  What did the
vaghi
Huouyt have to say?”

“He’ll
meet with you,” Joe said.  “He’ll send one of his assistants to discuss the
date tomorrow.”

“Assistants.” 
Bagkhal snorted.  “You have a lot to learn, Zero.”  He indicated the table with
his head.  “Now, grab the infopad and take a seat.  I have dictations.”

  Joe
spent the rest of the night aiding Bagkhal in reviewing information from the
regiment and taking notes on training expectations.  These he delivered to the
Battalion Commanders, who were as wide awake as he was in their apartments, writing
reports on little pads.  When Bagkhal was finished with him for the night, Joe wanted
to go to Yuil’s meeting-place and tell her to be careful, but knew, after the
day’s events, he’d only be putting her in more danger.

Joe’s
heart began to pound as he stared out toward the empty building on the edge of
Alishai.  If they found Yuil, they’d arrest Joe.  Unless they were using him to
get at someone bigger.  Who was Yuil working for?  As of yet, the Ooreiki
hadn’t said.

“I wish
I could help you,” Joe said to the empty sky.  If Yuil got caught, it would be
Joe’s fault.  Joe had led Na’leen to the Ooreiki.  Just like Elf.

With no
response except the eerie howl of ferlii-wind on the buildings around him, Joe
returned to the barracks.

#

It was
a stalemate.

With
Joe leading them, Sixth Battalion was finally holding its own.  But then, so
was Rat.  Neither battalion, when it was on offense, could get past the tunnel
entrances.

Everyone
was getting frustrated.

Joe was
sitting outside the barracks, picking at the inside of his headcom as he waited
for Battlemaster Aneeir to bring his groundteam down for breakfast, when Nebil
stopped beside him.

“What
are you doing, Zero?”

“Bagkhal’s
finished with me for tonight,” Joe said.  “I’m waiting for Aneeir to wake up
the platoon for today’s hunt.”

“I
meant with your headcom.”

Joe
glanced down at the thing in his hands and he winced.  As he’d been sitting
there, he’d absently pried up some of the padding.  He quickly mashed it back
down.  “Nothing, sir.”

Nebil
turned to go.

The
thought that had nagging at Joe for days broke to the surface and he cleared
his throat.  “Battlemaster?”

Nebil
turned back.  “What?”

“Is
there some way to make a headcom broadcast to someone not on my team?”

The
Ooreiki’s gummi eyes narrowed instantly.  “Like who?”

Joe bit
his lip.  “Like Second Battalion?”

Battlemaster
gave him a cold, hard look.  “Now why in the ashy hells would you want to talk
to the enemy, Zero?”

“I
don’t wanna talk to them,” Joe said.  “I want them to hear
me
talk.”

For a
long moment, Battlemaster Nebil simply stared at him and Joe knew he was about
to get clobbered.  Then, without another word, Nebil simply walked off.

In
formation that afternoon, Nebil surprised them by telling them that, starting
that afternoon, recruits would vote for their recruit battlemasters.  The
ceremony turned out to be relatively simple, except when the kids forgot who
was in their platoon.

“Anyone
says Zero again and I’m going to choke the living soot out of him!” Nebil
screamed.  “Pick someone in your
platoon,
you Takki bastards!”

Maggie
was grinning when Nebil stormed up to her.  “You!  Are you
amused
by
this, recruit?  Is there something
funny
about this situation that I
somehow missed?”

“No,
Battlemaster!”  Her words came out in a giggle.

“Really? 
Because I thought I saw you with a big, stupid grin on your face. 
Did
your groundmate have a big, stupid grin on her face, Zero?”

“I
didn’t see one, Battlemaster!”

“Then
that makes you a liar, doesn’t it, Zero?  Unless I misunderstood my lessons in Human
anatomy, a big, stupid grin means that she thought something was funny.”

“Must
have misunderstood your lessons, sir,” Joe said, deadpan.

Nebil’s
pupils narrowed to slits.  “You must enjoy emptying chamber pots.”

Joe
winced.  He was pretty sure Congressional technology had ways to disintegrate
bodily waste, but no.  The Ooreiki saved it to use as punishment.

Nebil
went back to haranguing the platoons into choosing their leaders.  When their
turn came, every single recruit in Joe’s platoon voted for him.  As he stood
there, stunned, he realized that Libby and all of his groundmates were
grinning.

When
the ceremony was over, Nebil returned to the front of the battalion.  “We’ve
got another hunt tomorrow!  Second Battalion’s defending, so you Takki have the
black.  Bagkhal will be watching again, so make it look good!  For the rest of
the day, I want all of you to rest up for the hunt.  Let’s show our new
commander what we can do, for once!  Dismissed.  Except you, Zero.  You stay.”

Grimacing,
Joe waited while rest of the battalion departed, wondering which set of chores
it would be tonight.

“Tomorrow,”
Nebil said, shoving a headcom at him, “you’re going to try something different
with that fire-loving Jreet Lagrah.  We’re upping the ante, boy.”  Nebil and
Lagrah, Joe had discovered, were both former long-term Planetary Ops veterans,
and the two of them had begun a gentlemen’s game of ‘Screw The Other Asher’ and
Second and Sixth battalions were quickly becoming pawns in a superior-officer
grudge-match.

“We…are?”
Joe asked, gingerly taking the headcom.

“Something
I learned in Planetary Ops,” Nebil said.  “All headcoms have the capacity to
transmit on all frequencies.  It’s an internal governor and battery limitations
that keep them in check.  Your PPU, on the other hand…”  Battlemaster Nebil
brought out an utterly demolished PPU and handed it to him, “…has a battery
that could power a cruise-ship.”

Staring
down at them, Joe realized that he was looking at
his
PPU and
his
headcom.  He felt a cold wave of dread.

“Lagrah
rigged the haauks to fail on our last hunt and we got dumped a mile off course,
so we didn’t have enough time to fully entrench ourselves before Second
arrived,” Nebil said.

Joe frowned. 
He had been
wondering
why the Ooreiki had made them all walk to the
tunnels.

“He
wants to use dirty tricks?” Nebil went on.  “Two can play at that game. 
Everything you say will now be heard by
both
Sixth and Second
Battalions.  If anyone asks, your PPU
accidentally
got smashed and
certain parts
accidentally
wound up on the internal workings of the
headcom.”  With that, he turned to go.

“Wait!”
Joe cried.  He stared at the headcom in his hands, suddenly feeling like it was
a poisonous, fire-breathing snake.  “They can
hear
me? 
Everything
? 
Isn’t that a
bad
thing?”  The
last
thing he wanted Second to do
was to hear him give all of his commands.  “I meant just something I could turn
on and off, you know?”

Nebil
gave him a long, flat stare.

“What
am I supposed to do with this?” Joe demanded.  “How am I supposed to lead the
battalion if they can
hear
me?”

“Figure
it out,” Nebil said.  “I’m supplying accidents.  Not a replacement for a small
simian brain.”  Then he turned and left Joe there, anxiously staring at his
dismantled gear.

That evening, after Aneeir locked
up the barracks, Joe brought out his headcom and showed it to his friends. 
“Nebil said Second would be able to hear me tomorrow,” Joe said, after they had
hissed at the damage done to it.  “Maybe we could use that.”

Libby gave his headcom a dubious
look.  “You
want
them to hear you giving commands on the hunt?”

“I dunno,” Joe said, still
perplexed by Nebil’s all-out ruining of his helmet.  “Maybe you could lead this
hunt, Libby.  I could be a decoy.  Give them all the wrong ideas.”

Libby snorted.  “Rat’s not
stupid.  She’ll see nobody’s listening to you.”

“You got a better idea?” Joe
demanded.  “I’d like to make it count, ‘cause I think they’re gonna take the
headcom from me as soon as they figure out what Nebil did to it, and Aneeir’s
gonna really thrash me for that PPU.  Take a look.  Nebil ripped it apart.”

Libby fell into a mournful silence
when Joe brought out the ruined PPU.  “Damn,” she muttered.  “So how the hell
do we fight like this?  We
need
you, Joe.”

It was Scott who said, “Well, soot,
I got an idea, Joe.”  He was still frowning at Joe’s headcom.  “Why don’t we
make the whole
battalion
a decoy?”

#

The plaza was alive with the roar
of bored recruits.  Sixth Battalion wore black and nearby, dressed in white,
Second was waiting for its pickup. 

“You ready, Joe?” Scott whispered.

Joe nodded.  He slipped his
headcom over his skull and said, “…well, sure, but girls don’t really know what
a guy wants in bed.  I’d take guy-on-guy action over a girl any day.”

The plaza suddenly went silent.

Joe blundered on, “Besides, guys
are just downright sexier.  That Tank guy, especially.  He’s a burning stud. 
Have you
seen
those pecs?  Who’d you rather be lookin’ up at, I mean
really?”

“I dunno,” Libby said.  “I kind of
like Rat.”

Joe froze, trying to figure out if
she was serious.  Libby winked.

Clearing his throat, Joe said,
“Yeah, I guess she’s okay.  We’re gonna kick her ass today, though.  I’ve got
it all planned out.  They’ll totally never--goddamn, this thing’s been giving
me a headache ever since Maggie threw it off the balcony.  Ash.  Thanks a lot,
Mag.”  He wrenched his headcom off and glared down at it.  Behind him, Second
Battalion was riveted in place, staring in his direction.  Rat was leaning
forward, waiting for him to say more.  Joe sat down and rested his headcom on a
knee.

“I think it’s working,” Scott
said, grinning as he sat down beside him.  “They’re all staring at you, Joe.”

“Yeah.”  Joe could feel them.  “My
back’s itching like hell.” 

The defenders left first to go
prepare the tunnels for invaders. 

When Aneeir came to get the
platoon with the attackers’ haauk, Joe and Libby held back, waiting to board
until very last.  Then Aneeir lifted off and they were skimming down the road,
toward the hunt.  Scott and Carl stood directly behind Aneeir, so when they got
into a shoving match, they almost bumped him off the haauk
.

“What in the Jreet hells?!” Aneeir
snapped, rounding on them.  “What are you sootbags doing?!”

Scott was amazingly red-faced,
considering they had planned it out the night before.  “I want a different
squad,” Scott said.  “I can’t stand being in the same one with this redneck asher
any longer.  I saw him screwing a Takki the other day, just like his dog back
when he lived in Alabama.”

Carl threw down his headcom and
the two of them got into an all-out brawl, assisted by half the platoon. 
Caught in the middle of it, Aneeir never saw Libby get on her stomach.  Then,
with a grin at Joe, she rolled under the gate and off the back of the
haauk
,
alone.  When the Ooreiki finally got the platform moving again, he was furious,
cursing them with a mastery of Congie that even Linin would have found
impressive.

“Main force is following at a
run,”
Libby said, once they were out of sight.

“All right,” Joe said.  “Everyone
stick to the plan.  The decoy will attempt to draw their attention while the
main force makes a tunnel incursion.  The decoy’s gotta make it look real,
though, so don’t do anything stupid.  Got it?”

Every kid standing on the haauk
nodded while Aneeir drove on, oblivious.

“Okay,” Joe said, seeing the
clearing ahead of them.  “We’re coming up on the dropoff.  Everyone get ready. 
Decoy, get ready to do your thing.”

When Aneeir set them down, they
all hurdled the railing of the haauk
,
having long ago learned that to
wait to file out the back was to get shot by Second Battalion snipers.  While
Joe and the rest of Sixth Battalion secured a corner of the battlefield, Scott,
Carl, Maggie, and four other members of their squad crept across the field,
keeping low to avoid being seen.  When they were in position, Scott said,
“Ready.”