Forging Zero (76 page)

“Sounds
like a good idea,” Joe said.

Prince
Bagkhal snorted.  “It’s typical bureaucratic crap.  They always feel they have
to sink their claws in things, meddle where they don’t belong.  The
Congressional Army has been fully functioning for over two million turns now. 
There’s nothing some self-important politician is going to come up with that we
haven’t already considered.  Not only do I already correspond with the other
commanders daily, but we share all Human training statistics and have a
database on training methods versus end results.  But the Kophati Training
Committee is so starry-eyed that a Tribunal member has shown an interest that
it’ll give him anything he wants.”  Bagkhal snorted loudly.  “He wants us to
meet
with each other?  And do what?  No one will be able to get a word in, there are
so many of us.  Where do we start?  Will they sort us by species?  If not, half
the gathering is going to end up killing the other half.  I hear a contingent
of Jreet has been training one Human regiment, while the Huouyt have taken
another.  It’s going to be a huge bloodbath.”

Joe
finished taking his dictations with an increasing feeling of dread lumping in
the pit of his stomach.  He thought of the Trith’s prophecy.  He knew, without
a doubt, that Bagkhal would kill him if he ever discovered Joe was meant to end
Congress.

A
Trith never gives the whole prophecy,
Kihgl’s
words returned to him.  Maybe it was a ploy.  Maybe it was a lie, a half-truth…

No,
Joe thought, once again thinking of Elf, of Monk, of the millions
of children that had been kidnapped to become alien slaves….  He felt hot anger
rising in his gut.  He
would
end this.  And Yuil was going to help him.

Joe was
lost in thought when Scott caught him on the way back to the barracks.  “Hey, I
was looking for you.”

“You in
trouble?” Joe asked, worried by the paleness of Scott’s face.

“No,
I…”  Scott bit his lip and gave a nervous laugh.  “This is gonna sound really
stupid, Joe, but I think I had a Trith visit me.”

Joe
felt his blood run cold.

“Yeah,”
Scott said, running his hand over his bald head nervously.  “Weird, I know. 
What he said was even weirder.  At least I
think
he said it.  Soot, it’s
so crazy.  Like I was floating in space—”  He broke off, giving Joe an anxious
look.

“Tell
me,” Joe said.

Scott’s
eyes were full of fear.  “He said you’re gonna destroy Congress, Joe.”

CHAPTER
35: 
It’s in the Blood

The day
before Joe was supposed to meet with Yuil, he found it hard to concentrate on
anything.  He fumbled his orders during drills and spaced out to the point that
Battlemaster Aneeir sent him to medical to receive another dose of Bagkhal’s
drug and take the rest of the day off.

Joe
spent the next three hours lying in bed, staring at the low ceiling.    He was
not tired in the least, and sometimes missed being able to close his eyes and
fall asleep.  Still, he was finding his time with Prince Bagkhal enjoyable,
especially when the Dhasha told stories of his long life in the military. 

Bagkhal’s
company was enough to make Joe begin to regret telling Yuil he would leave with
her.  He was learning so much—the Dhasha was opening up whole new worlds for
him, discoursing for hours in politics, science, history, war, philosophy…

And
there was much to learn.  Bagkhal had lived a full nine hundred and sixty turns,
ancient for a Dhasha.  Despite the fact that they could continue to grow indefinitely,
like the Jreet, Bagkhal’s species tended to kill each other off long before
they could meet that potential—also like the Jreet.  That Bagkhal had lived
almost a millennium was…amazing.  Even more chilling was the fact he had
declared ka-par with over five thousand worthy opponents, won them all, and
every bested foe continued to serve him to this day, making him one of the most
powerful Dhasha princes in Congress.  Further, he had helped fight down six
Dhasha rebellions and quelled further resistances in all corners of the known
universe.  Bagkhal’s war stories were as good as his father’s. 

It was
the stories of Dhasha uprisings that left Joe with a wash of dread, though. 
From what Bagkhal described, they were terrifying things, all-out slaughters
that decimated the numbers on each side, leaving enormous swaths of the galaxy
annihilated, whole prosperous, high-tech planets thrown back into their dark
ages for centuries to come.  A Dhasha prince would have his Takki dig a deep
den on a planet, and with that as his base, the prince and his sons would carve
out all resistance from the planet in a matter of weeks.

“There’s
going to be another one soon,” Bagkhal said one evening, while Joe was busy
copying notes. 

Joe
looked up.  “Another what, sir?”

“Rebellion.” 
Bagkhal heaved a huge sigh.  “The problem is a prophecy, Joe.”

Joe felt
his heart skip.  Swallowing, he said, “Sir?”

Bagkhal
sighed.  “There is a legend amongst the Dhasha, something that has been with
our people for many hundreds of thousands of years.”  He swung to give Joe a
long look.  “It is the prophecy of a great leader, one who will unite and
liberate the Dhasha.  The Vahlin.”

Joe’s
heart began to pound, but he managed to nod.

“The
Dhasha Vahlin is foretold to free the Dhasha of their mass servitude to a
tyrannical, archaic system,” Bagkhal growled.  “It is said He will be the
greatest mind the Dhasha have ever seen, and that He will lead our people into
the greatest war that the universe has ever endured, followed by giving us the
greatest peace our world has ever imagined.”

Joe’s
heart hammered at the parallels between this and what the Trith had told him. 
Was he supposed to…lead the Dhasha?  Wasn’t that like a rabbit leading a horde
of wolves?

Prince
Bagkhal was pacing, now.  “The problem is that the prophecy gives no clan name,
no place of birth.  It says He will be dark of color.  And alone.  And
forgotten.”

Joe
didn’t
need
to glance down at his biosuit to know he was, at the moment,
pretty damn dark.  He swallowed, hard.

Bagkhal,
however, went on as if he didn’t even see Joe’s inky black biosuit.  “The
legend of the Vahlin has been tearing our society apart at the seams for eons. 
Rethavn is not the only Dhasha with aspirations.  I can only pray the next
rises up near the Outer Line.  If Kophat had rebelled…”  He swiped wicked black
talons at empty air.  “It contains over two thousand deep dens carved out for
training sessions.  Koliinaat would have been forced to destroy the entire
planet.  Thirty billion Ooreiki, nine billion Ueshi, two billion Jahul…dead
because some Takki-fucking furg decided he wasn’t making enough off of his
protection fees.”

Bagkhal
slumped to the floor with a clatter of metallic scales.  “Sometimes I am
ashamed of my kind.  Truly ashamed.”

“Would
they really destroy the entire planet?” Joe asked.

Bagkhal
leveled his unreadable emerald stare on Joe, making his spine itch.  “I don’t
know if you have been told this yet, Zero, but Kophat is a storage center for
weapons designed to work against every species known to Congress.  It is one of
six such planets, and if any one of these planets ever falls into enemy hands,
protocol gives the Army three days to get it back under Congressional control
or it will be destroyed, along with everyone on it.”

Joe
felt a cold chill crawl down his spine.  “An entire planet?”

“The
alternative is worse.  With the weapons Congress has stored in these depots,
rebels could eradicate a thousand planets just like it.  And they would, too. 
Most rebels are mindless zealots who simply want to do as much damage as they
can before they are found and killed.  They don’t realize that Congress is the
glue holding the universe together.  They just want to destroy.”

Remembering
his date with Yuil—and how Yuil had excitedly talked about doing exactly that—Joe
stared at his hands.

“It’s
not too late to change your mind, Joe.”

At the
Dhasha’s calm, matter-of-fact statement, Joe’s head snapped up.  “Change my…”  Then,
in that moment, looking into Bagkhal’s emerald eyes, Joe knew that Bagkhal knew
about Yuil.  His breath caught in his throat and his face flushed with panic. 
He found it impossible to deny it and a thousand excuses rose to his lips, but
he just lowered his head and waited for the Dhasha to finish him.

Instead
of condemning him, Prince Bagkhal leaned forward and said, “You are one of the
most gifted warriors I have ever met.  You lead your recruits like you were
born to do it, and, if one was to believe some of my comrades, you were.”

Joe
just shook his head.

“It’s
true.  It’s why the rebels want you.”

Joe’s
chest tightened and he hunched further in on himself, the words hovering out in
the open like a headsman’s axe.

“I know
it’s a difficult decision,” Bagkhal said.  “When I was first Drafted, I hated
Congress.  If someone had given me a button to annihilate it all, I would have
pushed it.  It got easier, though.  A few turns after graduation, I realized
that ours is the most important job in the universe.  The universe is highly
unstable—a delicate ecosystem constantly teetering on the verge of collapse. 
The Army is the net that binds Congress together.  Should we fail in our
duties, everything in it will collide with such force that, once the dust
clears, there will be nothing left.”

Joe
sank in on himself further, misery overwhelming him.  “Sorry,” he whispered.

Bagkhal
huffed.  “I must cater to the whims of politicians tomorrow.  The Kophati
Training Committee dances to Na’leen’s demands like an Aezi puppet.  I’ll be
gone for two days.  If you’re still here when I return, I will ask you to help
us dismantle the rebel hive that has been wooing you and about fifty other
recruits from our regiment.  If you are gone, I’ll add your name to the list of
known traitors and send all of your friends to Levren for questioning.  But
Zero—”  Bagkhal paused, waiting for him to look up.

“You’ll
be here when I get back.”

Joe
felt so ashamed to have betrayed Bagkhal that he could barely breathe.  The
Prince’s lack of anger made it worse.

“Do you
want to know why?” Bagkhal said.

Joe
couldn’t lift his eyes off of the ground.

“You’ll
stay because Knaaren was just one of trillions,” Bagkhal said.  “Each one of
those would love to own their own planets and populate them with slaves.  When
Peacemakers captured Rethavn, it took three thousand Ooreiki lives to roust one
Dhasha prince and his three youngest children from a single tower, not even a
deep den.  Nine thousand more Ooreiki were badly injured in the fight.”  The
Dhasha paused, giving Joe a long look.  “You’ll stay because a pathetic, ragtag
group of Ooreiki teenagers might have grand plans for a universe without
Congress, but they forget the Dhasha.”

Joe
swallowed, hard.

“Only Dhasha
can control Dhasha, Zero,” Bagkhal told him.  “For that, we need Congress.”

Joe
just nodded.

Bagkhal gave him a moment to
digest that.  Eventually, he went on, “I can always judge a soldier’s
character.  I look at Tril and see a misguided idealist, but one with good
intentions.  He will make a good leader in twenty or thirty turns, as soon as
he realizes there’s a difference between life and a classroom.  Nebil is too
honorable to retake Prime, despite how much good he would do the Army if he
did.  He’s an excellent soldier, but due to his inability to bend, he is
unsuited to anything beyond a battalion command.  You know what I see when I
look at you, Zero?”

A traitor.
  Joe stared at his hands in shame.

“I look at you and I see myself,
eight hundred turns ago,” Bagkhal said. “You’re a Congie, Zero.  I hope you
realize that before they force you to decide.”

Joe
still couldn’t speak, so deep was his disgrace.

Bagkhal
got up and started walking towards the exit.  At the base of the stairs, he
stopped and turned back.  “I have no doubts in my mind that there
will
be a Dhasha Vahlin,” Bagkhal said.  “Until the true Vahlin makes Himself known
to us, though, it is our duty to keep His usurpers from destroying the universe
that rightfully belongs to Him.”

Then,
with a parting look at Joe, Bagkhal climbed the steps and left him sitting
there, staring at his lap.

#

That
afternoon, Bagkhal boarded the shuttle to take him to the mandatory training meeting,
taking all of the ranking Ooreiki commanders and battlemasters with him.  Out
of all of Sixth Battalion, only Battlemaster Aneeir remained.  Instead of battalion
drills, Aneeir gave every platoon a different task to do, then assigned free
time after that.  Joe spent the first half of the day raking the plaza with his
friends, then found a quiet place to sit and think.

Yuil
was expecting him that night.