Forging Zero

by Sara King

  “I can’t carry all this,” Elf whined, tugging on his sixty pounds of gear.

  “I can,” Monk said, sticking out her tongue. With Scott’s help, she shrugged herself into the shoulder straps of the pack, but within moments she had succumbed to the gear and was squatting on the floor, panting.

  Joe watched her, worried. “Scott, can you carry yours?”

  “Yep.” Scott threw his rifle over his shoulder, only staggering a little as it settled atop the back of his pack.

  “What about you, Libby?”

  Libby, who was bigger than Elf, managed to get the pack over her shoulders by herself, but despite the determined look on her face, couldn’t lift her gun along with it. She refused to let Joe have it, though, and held it by the shoulder-strap to drag it.

  “All right,” Joe said, glancing at Maggie. She was four or five inches taller than she had been when she left Earth, but she was still tiny. “I’ll carry Mag’s stuff. Scott, Libby, you think you can help Elf and Monk? We only have to get to the gymnasium.”

  Libby gave Elf’s pack a doubtful look, but shrugged. She and Scott began unloading pieces from the younger two’s gear and stuffing it into their own packs while Monk and Elf watched.

  That left Joe a hundred and fifty pounds, between his gun, Maggie’s gun, Elf’s gun, and two packs. He pulled a large piece of equipment—some kind of a camp stove, he was told, sans fuel—from his pack and gave it to Maggie to carry, lightening his load by six or seven pounds. Still, he staggered when he got to his feet.

  “Ready?” he managed.

  Libby and Scott were likewise weighed down, Scott carrying two rifles himself, and Elf and Monk looked even worse.

  “Let’s hurry,” Joe said. “Mag, lead the way. Make it fast.”

  Maggie, her eyes wide, rushed out the door, clutching the piece of gear to her chest. She led them to the gymnasium, where they gratefully dumped their equipment on the floor and lined up by group, waiting for Commander Kihgl. Those battlemasters who had gotten them from their rooms stood encircling the walls, gripping huge rings set in the metal ribbing with their long, boneless fingers.

  They had been standing for almost thirty minutes when the continuous humming suddenly shut off. The silence felt ominous, and it was followed with a sudden jolt that threw the children off of their feet. Several kids screamed, and even Joe wondered if the metal screeching was truly part of docking procedures, or really some rogue asteroid tearing a hole in their hull.

  The Ooreiki, however, did not seem to think anything was amiss. They began bellowing orders, hitting those kids who were not moving fast enough. “Hurry and grab your stuff,” Joe said, helping Elf shrug back into his pack. “Looks like we’re here.”

  The lines into the docking bay were endless. Like cattle going down a slaughter chute, Joe thought, looking over the untold thousands of bald, frightened kids in recruit white. Libby and Scott began to pant under their burdens, sweat trickling down their strained faces. The hall grew cramped and hot from all the bodies packed together, and tempers flared. Up ahead, two girls got into a shoving match, stopping up the meager flow of traffic completely. Eventually the battlemasters broke them up and shoved them back into the stream of kids to get the lines moving again. Following the flow, Joe and his groundmates filed out into an enormous, windowed room resembling an airport terminal. Beyond the windows above him, Joe saw space and moons and…

  His gut clenched when he realized he was standing on his head, the planet under him.

  “It’s purple,” Libby whispered.

  “And it’s big,” Scott said. “That’s bigger than Earth, right Joe?”

  Joe had no idea, and he said as much.

  “But they said we were weak because Earth’s got weak gravity,” Scott insisted. “My Science teacher told me that bigger planets have more gravity.”

  “Oh man,” Joe groaned, taking another look at the purple planet. “Guys, we’re not gonna be able to carry this stuff.”

  “I can carry it,” Maggie insisted.

  “You’re barely carrying anything as it is,” Scott said, peering through the domed ceiling at their destination. “Maaaaan…”

  Even in the terminal, the going was slow. More kids spilled out of other doors on either side of theirs and the terminal began to reek of sweat and fear.

  Alert Ooreiki battlemasters guided them towards the shuttles, cuffing children who stepped into the wrong lines. As time went on, Joe watched the shuttles fill up and depart, dropping down into the purple swirls of atmosphere before returning for more. Then Battlemaster Nebil was harrying them onto a shuttle—a constant, nerve-wracking barrage of, “Keep moving! Find a row and sit down! Stop gaping and move, you slack-jawed Takki nitwits!”

  Once they secured their gear, they sat down on the benches, hands in their lap as Battlemaster Nebil marched up and down the aisles, still shouting. When the deck was full, Nebil slammed the hatch shut and stood by the door, glaring at them.

  “What if I have to—” Maggie began.

  “Shhhh,” Joe said. “And sit up straight. Nebil’s watching.”

  Maggie set her jaw into a pout, crossed her arms, and slouched.

  Sighing, Joe glanced out the window. Filling the glass was a bird’s-eye view of the purple planet. Orangish clouds swirled above the purple haze like whipped cream atop hot chocolate in some brightly-colored circus drink. Beneath that, he could just make out a deep, blood-red landscape that remained static under the roiling orange clouds.

  Joe got a sick feeling in his stomach as he looked down on the alien planet. Was that air even breathable? What if Congress had transported them all this way to die gasping on some freak purple planet? They were, after all, the first humans to make the journey. What if Sam was right? What if there was something in the air? It looked thick, almost like cloudy purple water.

  The shuttle left the dock with a jolt, knocking a few kids from their benches. The Ooreiki wandering the aisles found them quickly and shoved them back into their seats, shouting in their guttural, clicking language.

  Joe’s eyes were fixed to the window as they descended through the orange clouds and into the purple haze. Far below, the red landscape began to break up into black, perfectly circular city blocks, with six black roads radiating outwards from each city like spokes from a wagon wheel, creating six triangles of wild red growth around each city’s circle.

  The roads were perfectly straight, despite the enormous mountains and twisting purple rivers. The only development on the planet’s surface was kept strictly inside the black city rings. It was obvious to even an idiot that the whole planet had been planned, and the mastery the Ooreiki had over their people to create such perfect symmetry left Joe in awe. On Earth, the woods would have been pocked with foresters’ camps, or weekend vacationers, or squatters. Instinctively, Joe knew that nobody on Earth had that much control over the people, to keep them all neatly contained like that. It was more than a little frightening.

  One thing was for certain—if the Ooreiki were going for sheer psychological intimidation, the perfect spoke-like cities certainly did the trick.

  As they descended, the scarlet foliage reached up to greet them. The trees—if they could be called trees, as massive as they were—spread their limbs thousands of feet above the planet’s surface. Their trunks were hundreds of feet in diameter, packed together like sardines. On the forest floor, mosses and shrubs the size of redwoods created a secondary mat of foliage that blotted out the light. As they lowered onto one of the landing pads on the outskirts of a city circle, Joe thought he saw one of the redwood-sized trees move, then snap back.

  He had just enough time to glimpse the enormous white guard towers posted every quarter mile around the city, with turrets facing outwards, before Nebil threw the door open and ordered them outside. The gravity on the ship suddenly increased, and Joe felt himself struggling to stay on his feet. Everything—even his organs—felt heavier. Like someone had injected him with lead.

 
“Leave your gear,” Nebil ordered. “Takki will bring it to you later.”

  Holding onto the chairs and walls for support, Joe and the others shuffled to the door of the shuttle.

  Immediately upon reaching the opening, Maggie wrinkled her nose and covered her mouth. “Ugh!”

  “We’ll be fine,” Joe said. “Just keep going, Mag. They wouldn’t take us somewhere we couldn’t breathe.”

  Still, at the first whiff of the putrid, almost rotten smell to the air, Joe held his breath and slapped his mouth against his sleeve. Despite the cloth protecting his face, when Joe breathed in, he gagged. The stench dribbled down into his chest and pooled there in disgusting rivulets.

  And the air…

  He began to feel lightheaded, the air thick in his lungs. It was almost like he was breathing water. Septic water.

  “I can’t breathe,” Elf cried. He grabbed at his throat and made a rush to get back on the shuttle.

  “Stop!” Joe called, grabbing at him. Elf slipped past his grip and tried to shove his way back onto the ship, but Nebil slammed a meaty limb into his chest, throwing him back down the stairs.

  Elf collapsed on the top of the ramp, mouth wide and gasping. Joe could hear his hyperventilating from the base of the steps, and could see his wide eyes as he stared at the enormous trees surrounding them, and the purple sky beyond.

  “Elf, get down here!” Joe shouted. “They’re about to take off!”

  The Ooreiki were hurling their gear out the door like they weighed no more than lunch sacks. Guns, blankets, packs—all fell into the same tangled mess.

  “Elf!”

  Elf ignored him. His breathing became worse, a rattling, gasping wheeze.

  He’s hyperventilating.

  Battlemaster Nebil emptied the last pack overboard and shouted at Elf to get off the stairs. When Elf ignored him, he made a disgusted sound and descended, leaving him there. The ship’s engines began to hum.

  Joe took off at a jog up the stairs. Immediately, he regretted it. He was only halfway up when he fell to his knees, his head swimming, his chest burning for air. The sudden jump in heart rate made his lungs reflexively drag huge breaths of the putrid atmosphere into his chest, yet even so, he wasn’t getting enough air. He felt himself sucking in the foul stuff faster and faster, his body panicking as it was denied the oxygen it needed.

  Joe forced himself to slow his breathing, pouring every ounce of willpower into striking a balance between the dizziness and the sick burning in his chest. He felt himself sucking in the putrid air, felt it coagulating in his lungs. Above him on the stairway, Elf was turning as purple as the sky.

  “Elf,” Joe said, “Close your eyes and count to three between each breath. You’ve gotta slow down.”

  “I can’t breathe,” Elf sobbed. Snot was leaking from his nose, tears streaming from his bulging eyes. If anything, he breathed faster.

  “Yes you can!” Joe snapped. He forced himself to stand. “Stop breathing so fast! You’re gonna pass out.”

  Too late. Elf’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and his body went limp.

  Joe struggled the rest of the way up the stairs and grabbed Elf’s arm. As he did, the shuttle began to rock and the engines started to hum, and it was all he could do to drag Elf off the ramp before the vessel took back to the sky.

  Gasping, Joe managed to drag Elf a few yards before his knees gave out underneath him and he collapsed to the ground. It was some sort of crushed black stone, like sparkling concrete, and it was all he could see through the band of red that was his narrowing vision.

  The air is bad.

  It was all he could think. The air is bad. They’ve dumped us on a planet where the air is bad. They couldn’t know how we’d handle it. We’re the guinea pigs and the air is bad.

  Joe felt his numb hands slide through glittering black stones. Behind him, the shuttle roared back into the sky.

  Joe could feel the thick sewage on his tongue, running down his throat, puddling in his lungs. And, despite the putridity of the air, he couldn’t breathe it fast enough. His eyes were open and he couldn’t see. He was staring at the ground between his numb hands, he knew, but he couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe.

  The air is bad.

  Joe whimpered for his dad. His lungs kept sucking the rotten stuff into his chest. He knew he was dying.

  The hand that touched his shoulder was neither an Ooreiki’s nor his dad’s. It was cold and scaly, with hard, blunted claws. They dug into his skin, trying to pull him to his feet, but Joe couldn’t move. Joe got a single glimpse of huge, pupil-less sapphire eyes as a violet lizard began hefting him over its shoulder.

  God, that’s a Takki, Joe thought, as his world narrowed. Immediately, he remembered the Takki tunnels that the Ooreiki kept talking about, and his heart began to slam in panic, hastening his descent into darkness.

  CHAPTER 10: Kihgl’s Choice

  Joe woke in an inky room with a low ceiling, only about seven foot clearance. The walls were glittering black rock, the glassy waves and edges reminding him of obsidian as they gleamed in the deep scarlet light of the glowing red globes suspended in a straight line between rows of circular bunks to the open door.

  Then the feel of the putrid air in his chest returned to Joe in full force, choking him. Joe sat up and dry-retched onto the rippled black floor. His lungs began to struggle again, his breaths coming in quick, ragged gasps.

  “Careful,” Libby said, grabbing his hand. “Breathe from this.” She held a white cylinder over Joe’s lips and Joe felt cool oxygen bathing his lungs.

  Then, too quickly, Libby pulled the cylinder back.

  “More,” Joe gasped.

  “No,” Libby said. “Battlemaster Nebil said we only get one. Some of the other groups already used theirs up. Just try to breathe slowly. See? The rest of us can do it.”

  Joe forced himself to breathe despite the urge to gag, taking several minutes to prove to himself he wasn’t drowning in his dad’s septic tank. Once he had his itching lungs under control, he surveyed the sullen faces peering up at him from the fifteen alien bunks inside the room with him. The beds were sitting on low shelves set into the ebony rock, and most of the kids in the place were watching him expectantly. Maggie looked like she had been crying. Monk’s lips were pressed together unhappily, her nose wrinkled. Scott looked almost green. Elf looked wide-eyed and scared, on the verge of hyperventilating again.

  After scanning his face a moment, Libby drew her black, scabbed knees up and wrapped her arms around her long legs, setting her chin on her knees to watch him.

  “Where are we?” Joe said, glancing around. The place appeared to be a cave, dug into a cliff-face.

  “The barracks,” Scott said, motioning to the other groups of kids in the room. They were all sitting on large circular beds, half-hidden by the niches of rock that cradled them. Chests made from the same icy blue metal as the shock collar sat at the end of each bed. Piled atop each chest were six stacks of black Congie uniforms. Beside the big round beds, tall, open niches had been dug into the rock. Their rifles hung inside, and their packs lay neatly on the floor beneath. Someone had even taken the time to fold their blankets.

  “The lizards did that,” Monk said, following his gaze.

  “Those were Takki, Monk,” Scott said. His voice almost carried the same disdain that Nebil and the other Ooreiki carried whenever they said the word, and Joe frowned.

  “What about the canned air?” Joe was feeling a strong urge to gag again as the rancid atmosphere dribbled down his bronchial tubes and pooled in his lungs. Trying to fight down his desperation, he added, “Any idea how much is in here?”

  “Not a lot,” Scott said. “Those guys ran out in ten minutes.” He pointed at the bed beside them, where all of its occupants were sprawled out, gasping piteously.

  Joe took the device from Libby and peered into the tube. It appeared to be just that—a tube. When he depressed the red button in the side, however, he could feel a rush of c
ool air against his face. He quickly released the trigger.

  “Battlemaster Nebil said they want us to adapt to this place,” Libby said. “That we’re gonna be living here for three turns.”

  Three…turns? “Why do these bastards do everything in threes?” Joe muttered.

  “Maybe they think it’s lucky,” Elf said.

  “Maybe that’s how they count,” Scott said. “We count by ten. Maybe they count by three.”

  “Maybe the first Congies only had three fingers,” Elf said.

  “Or six,” Scott said. “Three on each hand.”

  “Ooreiki have four,” Maggie said. “I can count to four, Joe.”

  “And that pretty purple lizard had six fingers on each hand,” Monk added.

  “That was a Takki, Monk,” Scott said.

  “At least I didn’t pass out, Scott.” Monk raised her chin proudly, “Joe, everybody but me and Maggie passed out, but Scott passed out first. The Takki had to carry him like a baby.” She stuck her tongue out at Scott, who sighed.

  But Monk went excitedly on. “Takki sorted us by number and stuffed us into this tower. Each battalion has a different level of the tower and there’s nine levels and there’s these circular stair thingies that go back and forth around each level like my mom’s front deck that she made Daddy build her and there’s a bunch of different doors, one for each platoon, and we got Fourth Platoon. I was listening to them and they said that only eight of the nine levels got filled and it’s all your fault and they should gut you for it. Why’s it your fault, Joe?” She paused, blinking at him expectantly.

  Joe reddened as Libby and several of the other kids glanced up at him with curious looks. “Uh…” He swallowed, hard.

  When he didn’t answer immediately, Monk heedlessly went on, “This is all of Fourth Platoon. They were carrying kids away from the landing pad for hours, and they’re still only now waking up. Battlemaster Nebil was mad. Said we’re already behind the rest of the regiment and we don’t need to sleep. Said we—”

  “Wait,” Joe said, “You’re sure they were Takki? Like Commander Linin’s pictures?”