by Sara King
He took my side?
Joe could still feel the alien’s malice towards him for what he had done back in the alley, every ounce of which Joe had earned. And yet, for some reason, the alien he had humiliated on the streets of San Diego had saved him on the ship.
Confused, Joe allowed Kihgl to push him into his group.
Lagrah moved to the front of the room to address them all. “I am Prime Commander Lagrah of the Ooreiki Ground Force. Humans, you are standing here today because an Ooreiki commander saw something redeemable in you, something he could transform into a soldier. From this point on, you are all recruits in the Congressional Army. Look at the Ooreiki around you. These are the commanders and battlemasters that will be guiding you through your next three turns of service. Battalion commanders, step forward.”
Kihgl stepped forward and faced Joe’s battalion.
“Do you accept these recruits?”
Joe felt Kihgl’s eyes flicker towards him before, in unison, they said, “In the name of Congress, we do.”
“Then you may take them to your pods and begin their training. We will break away in nine hundred tics. Dismissed.”
The cavern erupted in barked orders as the Ooreiki took control of their new battalions. Kids screamed and ran in all directions, and black-clad Ooreiki grabbed them and hurled them viciously back into the terrified mass, herding them toward the exit like terrified cattle.
Then Joe realized what Lagrah had said. We will break away in nine hundred tics. They were leaving Earth. The sharp sting of adrenaline began to trace Joe’s veins.
I’ve gotta get off this ship.
The thought kept pounding his brain as he stayed well in the center of the group while they were funneled awkwardly into a sleek black hall bathed in the eerie red glow. Every passing second felt like a knife in his chest.
I gotta get off now.
The aliens spread out around the perimeter of the group, herding them like squat, brown, tentacled sheepdogs. They took it for granted that everyone would cooperate, spreading themselves thin over hundreds of kids. Seeing that, Joe drifted to the back, his panicked mind listening for the sound of the ship’s engines.
When he saw his chance, he bolted.
The Ooreiki watching his section of kids gave a startled grunt of surprise, his see-through eyelids flicking startledly across his big, gummy eyeballs as he twisted to try and catch Joe. Joe, blessed with bones, was faster.
Joe quickly outdistanced his startled guard and barreled down the tube-shaped hallway, gaining more courage as the shock anklet failed to activate. Maybe he was out of range. The hall out of the domed cavern ended with suspicious abruptness and Joe slowed, scanning the surface for any indication of a door to the outside. Nothing. He kept going, choosing a smaller side-corridor. Nothing but gleaming black walls, no sign of a way out. Joe was anxiously turning a corner into another section of the ship when the anklet activated.
Joe cried out and tumbled to the floor, his momentum carrying him crashing into the wall. The aliens didn’t end the brutal agony after a couple seconds this time, but instead let it continue for what seemed like excruciating hours. To his shame, he heard himself bawling like a baby. Somewhere along the line, he peed himself again.
Joe was curled in fetal a ball when Kihgl found him.
“I save your life and you act like a spoiled Takki.” Kihgl kicked him. “I should’ve let you die, furg.”
“Kill me, then,” Joe moaned in a mixture of hatred and misery.
“Get up.”
“Screw you.”
A stinging tentacle wrapped around Joe’s arm and brutally tore him from the floor. With his other arm, Kihgl grabbed him by the skull and forced his head down until they were eye-to-eye. “You were supposed to die for what you did on Earth. You humiliated the Prime Commander himself. Robbed us of an entire battalion. Don’t make me regret saving your sooty life, asher. I can make you wish we’d sold you to the Dhasha.”
Joe swallowed hard and Kihgl released him.
“Stop running,” Kihgl commanded. “We’re three days out from Earth. You do it again and I’ll toss you into space.”
Where they had once shown a bit of kindness, even compassion, Kihgl’s sticky brown eyes were now hard with fury.
Cringing there, stared down by the only ally he had in this alien place, Joe realized he had made a mistake.
He wanted to apologize, but it was far too late. Kihgl shoved Joe and a few others inside a small room with triple-tiered shelves and left them there, the unnatural black doors oozing shut behind them. In the silence that followed, the kids clustered around Joe, waiting to see what he would do. The hazy red glow highlighted their faces, leaving their eyes looking huge and frightened.
“Where’d you run to?” a boy asked. “I thought we’re on a ship. How you gonna get off a ship?”
Smartass. “I’ll find a way out eventually,” Joe muttered.
“Are you sick, too?” a freckled little girl asked, tugging on his T-shirt. “Why’d they make you stand out there with those sick kids they shot?” Like it was completely natural to shoot the sick kids because they were sick.
His gut twisting, Joe ignored her.
“That alien stuck a gun in your face,” a little boy insisted. “Were you scared?”
“I don’t get scared,” Joe muttered, hoping it would shut them up. Even then, though, his bowels were still twisting with residual fear. He knew how close he had come to dying. Tril’s sticky brown eyes had wanted death. He wondered how many more seconds it would have taken for him to blow his head off. One? Two? He got goosebumps thinking about it. And then Kihgl…
The cool resentment in his gaze still made Joe’s throat hurt with regret. The one seemingly decent being on the ship and Joe had humiliated him just as thoroughly as he’d humiliated Lagrah. And Kihgl had just finished making it clear to Joe that he was going to make Joe pay for his transgressions with pain.
Of course Joe was afraid.
Apparently, though, the other kids didn’t catch his lie. They seemed to take it for granted that the big kid hadn’t gotten scared, and drew strength from it. Joe felt like shouting at them, Of course I was scared! We’re going to die here, can’t you see that?!
But they couldn’t see that. They clumped around him like he was the designated soccer dad, with three of the littlest ones even clinging to his stinky, piss-covered leg. It was when silence began to hum in their prison that Joe realized that all the little kids were waiting for him to do something, so they could follow.
Grimacing, Joe took a good look at the huge, three-tiered, round, bunk-like objects lining the walls. They each had six sheets of what looked like folded tinfoil laid out on their surface and were shaped almost like bowls. He was pretty sure they were beds. Or industrial-sized microwaves.
Eventually, though, he broke away from the clingy, frightened kids and went over to inspect the apparent shelves of bowls. When he gave a test-push on the surface, he found it depressed easily, almost as if it were made of foam.
Beds, then, Joe thought, running his hand under the crinkly metallic blanket. Even from that brief contact, he could tell that the flimsy metal blanket was going to be warmer than anything he’d had back on earth.
The kids, still clinging to the far wall, were watching him nervously.
“They’re just beds,” Joe said, crawling into one of the big bowls on the bottom and pulling the metallic blanket over himself pointedly. Still, no one moved.
“My daddy works in a morgue,” one of the older kids said, giving the beds a dubious look. “That looks like the incinerator.”
“Or a packet of popcorn,” another kid said. “Like you make on the stove.”
Joe groaned. “Everyone just get in bed, okay? It’s fine. See?” He stretched out over the bed, though the odd scooped slope felt strange on his back.
Most of the kids tentatively came over to check it out, but a few hunkered down by the wall and refused to get any closer. They just s
pent the rest of the night like that, huddled and whimpering by the door.
Joe lay staring at the bunk above him, stewing over his problems in exhausted, hungry silence. The other kids weren’t so discreet. One kid huddled along the wall spent the entire night whining. It was a low, primal sound that grated on Joe’s nerves until his every muscle was taut, his fists itching to plant themselves into the idiot’s face.
What does he know about being scared?
Images of the days before Joe’s capture returned to haunt him. Bodies had littered the streets like trash, their chests burned open or dripping purple glop. The constant whimpering reminded Joe of the sound Sam had made the night their father didn’t come back—
Joe got out of bed and went over to the boy. He opened his mouth to tell him to shut up, just shut the hell up and stop whining, that everyone there was dealing with the same crap and he wasn’t special, but the kid mistook his intentions and jumped up from the wall, wrapping his scrawny arms around Joe’s torso. In a flood of tears, the little boy cried for his Mom.
Joe held him, startled, before he felt his own eyes start stinging. Awkwardly, he tightened his arms around the little boy in a hug. “It’s okay,” he finally said, though he knew it was stupid, that it wasn’t okay, that they weren’t going to see their families again for many years…maybe never. But he said it anyway and the boy eventually relaxed in his arms and stopped crying. It was at least an hour before his breathing quieted and his grip loosened enough to allow Joe to carry him over and tuck him into a bunk.
The boy didn’t whimper again after that, but although Joe returned to his own bed to the perfect sound of silence, he couldn’t sleep. Lying there, remembering how the aliens had executed kids, Joe didn’t know if he would ever sleep again.
It was probably because of this that he was the only one who noticed the tiny tubes that emerged from the walls several hours later. One was a few inches from his head and Joe could hear the hissing of gas.
“Oh shit!” Joe cried, lunging away from the wall. “Everybody wake up! Wake up! They’re gassing us! Shit!” He threw his shirt over his mouth and backed to the center of the room, heart hammering painfully in his ears.
All around him, kids on the beds were sitting up in wild-eyed confusion…
…Only to have their eyes roll up into the backs of their heads and their little bodies slump limply back to the beds.
They’re gassing us, Joe thought on a surge of panic, watching the kids fall all around him like little lifeless puppets. The aliens are gassing us…
Though Joe tried to keep his mouth protected, he nonetheless caught an overpoweringly acrid tang that shot biting waves of acid through his lungs and up into his brain. He was dimly aware of the bitter tang turning to pounding waves of ice before his legs went limp beneath him and he surrendered to oblivion.
CHAPTER 3: The Origin of Zero
“Commander Tril?”
Kihgl’s voice at his door was soft, sympathetic.
“Not now, Commander,” Tril said, barely able to keep his voice under control. “I need some time alone, please.”
Tril’s Secondary Commander remained in his doorway for long moments in silence. “This was your first time, wasn’t it?” Kihgl finally asked.
Tril refused to look up. He was staring at his desk, where he had plucked his potted ferlii to pieces. It was a gift from Corps Director Niile from when he had left her service for the excitement of teaching a newly-discovered species to speak Congie. Somehow, in the last hour, he had snapped the stone-hard limbs into pebble-sized chunks without even knowing it. It confused him. Surely he would have heard himself doing it.
Kihgl came in, unbidden. “What you did today is unfortunate, but it must be done.”
Of course it was. Tril knew that. It was a leftover tradition from the formation of Congress, when the Jreet had to teach the first Ooreiki the art of war. The Ooreiki, artists and craftsmen all, had refused to fight. The Jreet, pitiless warriors that they were, began executing ten percent of every incoming class on principle, keeping only the strongest, killing the weak as an example.
Yet, in forcing the peace-loving Ooreiki to adapt the skills of war, the Jreet had hit upon such an overwhelmingly successful tactic that it would be passed down from generation to generation of the Congressional Army for almost two million years. Kill the rebels and the sickly as a warning to the others. Show them the consequences of failure. Prove to them that it wasn’t a game. Give them incentive to succeed.
As a former intelligence officer, Tril was well-versed in the psychology behind it, but he had still never thought it would be so hard. They were aliens. Why should it have bothered him to shoot aliens?
The answer was simple: The large Human. The one who almost scraped the low ceiling of the ship corridors with his head when he walked, and whose body should have been floating through space in their backwash, not protected by Congressional law as a recruit in his own unit. The Human’s condemnation still rang in his ears, his disgust and disdain like acid against his soul.
“We’ve all got to do it, one day or another,” Kihgl said softly.
Tril idly began to try and piece the ferlii back together. The fragments kept falling back to the desk with a stony clatter. As he stared at it, Kihgl moved forward and gently pushed the plant away. “It’s never easy. I’ve done it too many times myself.”
“That sooty Human didn’t make it any easier,” Tril managed. Abruptly, he picked up the remains of the ferlii and threw it against the wall, shattering what was left.
Kihgl watched the pieces settle on the floor. He looked apologetic. “I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have taken him.”
Tril said nothing, but he felt a pang of satisfaction at his secondary commander’s admission.
“He ran again,” Commander Kihgl offered. “Embarrassed me in front of the entire regiment.”
Tril picked at the crumbled black stone littering his desk.
“Now I’ve got to deal with him for the next three turns.”
Softly, Tril said, “There’s plenty on this ship willing to get rid of him for you. Especially after what he did on Earth.”
“I know.” Kihgl brushed a few pieces of the ferlii plant into his balled fist. “But I chose him. I’ll live with my decision.”
“Even if the rest of the regiment thinks it’s ridiculous?” Tril demanded.
“Especially then.” Kihgl dropped the fragments into the waste system. “You should prepare for stasis. Ship’s shutting the crew down for travel in an hour.” He walked to the door, then hesitated at the jamb to turn back. “I’m sorry it was your turn today. It’s never easy.” He turned and left.
In the silence that followed, Tril stared at his empty desk.
#
they’re gassing us…
Joe groaned as something lit up his brain on the inside, like a flashlight of God poking up against his eyeball.
“I think this one made it. Had a bit of a severe reaction to the forced metabolic stasis, but he’s still showing life signs.”
“This sooter’s dead. Wonder if the other regiments had similar reactions.
“Damn. We got another corpse over here.”
“These sooty things are so delicate.”
The searing light in Joe’s retina retreated and his eyelid slapped shut.
“These two are fine.”
“Yeah, this whole section is good.”
“That’s it. Fourteen total. Not bad, for the first time shipping Humans. Grab the bodies, we’ll let the sootbag furgs sleep while they can. They won’t be getting much of it for the next three turns.”
Joe groaned and felt himself slipping back into the deepest sleep he’d ever known.
A few hours later, he was woken in a disorienting rush of guttural alien shouting and sudden, blinding light. After Joe stumbled to his feet on strangely lethargic limbs, their Ooreiki captors bustled Joe and the other kids out of their room and into the same huge auditorium where they had shot H
arry.
They had, Joe noticed, cleaned up the shit stains in the center of the room.
As the aliens lined them up, Joe concentrated on learning as much as he could about them. After enduring the ubiquitous crimson haze on the rest of the spacecraft, the glaring white light of the gymnasium was a welcome change for his aching eyes, and he was able to see them clearly for the first time since yesterday’s slaughter. The aliens weren’t wearing their glossy black suits again today, leaving the elephant-like skin of their brown bodies exposed along their necks and a V down their chests where their robe-like uniforms tied like a karate gi at the front. Though initial pundits’ impressions suggested they were some sort of water-dwelling creatures by the gills and tentacles, Joe was beginning to think that Sam was right—they really looked like fat, squat monkeys with tentacles instead of arms.
Then, in front of three hundred other kids, the aliens made Joe strip.
Sure, they made everybody strip, but Joe felt his cheeks burn because he was one of the only kids with pubic hair, and he could feel a bunch of the little kids staring at it. He gritted his teeth and tried to ignore them. Didn’t anyone nowadays teach their kids not to stare? It was rude.
Joe was folding his jeans on the floor in front of him as the aliens instructed when something metallic fell from his pocket, hitting his toe. Joe bent to snatch it up.
His dad’s pocketknife. A cheap little Swiss Army deal that his dad had always carried with him, whether he was in the woods or at a business meeting. Joe had kept it in his pocket ever since he’d found Dad’s friend Manny, strung up in a parking meter, half his chest blown apart, the knife clasped in the guy’s dead fingers.
Joe glanced up to see if any of the aliens had seen the weapon. They hadn’t—they were too busy forcing the kids that wouldn’t strip out of their clothes. He straightened, one hand fisted around the knife, the other grasping his crotch, and he tried not to flinch when one of the Ooreiki took his clothes away.
After the kids who refused to strip had their clothes ripped off of them and discarded while the aliens taunted them and made them cry, the Ooreiki had them re-form into lines.