Forging Zero

by Sara King

  “Now, recruit!” Nebil bellowed.

  “Everybody down the stairs!” the piranha-faced girl shouted. “That means you too, Zero!” Smug satisfaction oozed from her words, making them come out in a sneer.

  Joe struggled to his feet and managed to follow everyone down the stairs and into one of the ragged lines on the crushed black glassy material of the plaza. Every step was an act of desperation. His gut was roiling and his vision was a narrow strip by the time they finally came to a stop.

  Once they were together, Battlemaster Nebil led them across the plaza, their lines jerky and crooked. As they marched out across the obsidian gravel, Joe glanced up and his nausea returned. Overhead, the tall Ooreiki buildings seemed to close together in a cage above them, the buildings creating a dome of seemingly endless black poles against the violet sky.

  We’re never getting out of here, Joe thought. He had to fight the urge to run, to keep his steps short and fast to keep up with the kids around him. We’re on an alien planet and we’re going to die here. Never before had he felt so cut off from everything he had known, so utterly abandoned by humanity, than he did marching out between those enormous pillar buildings, surrounded on all sides by curious alien onlookers.

  On the other side of the field of crushed rock, eight other battalions already stood in formation, their lines straight and symmetrical. The Ooreiki in charge of each battalion were standing out in front, not even having to supervise their recruits, who stood straight and tall with their eyes forward and their hands clasped tightly in front of them.

  Marching up to their place three spaces from the end, Joe realized how sorry Sixth Battalion appeared compared to the rest of them. Not only were the others physically bigger, almost fully-grown, but they actually looked confident. How could we be this far behind? Joe wondered. The last time he had seen the kids from those battalions, huddled together in the gymnasium, they had been toddlers and little kids, like Monk and Maggie. Now, they looked like adults.

  We’re in trouble, Joe thought, with a pang of unease. The other recruits actually looked like soldiers, not scared little kids with bald heads.

  When Nebil’s platoon tried to join up with the nine other platoons in Sixth Battalion, there was confusion as to where they should stand and how, and soon all the lines were broken and kids began milling in little groups, panic in their eyes.

  The other Ooreiki noticed this and began converging on them, scattering amidst the ranks to help Kihgl rearrange his formation. Several Ooreiki’s eyes caught the bulge under Joe’s sleeve, but aside from giving him an odd look, they continued to usher kids into their assigned places. Joe began to sweat, not only because his platoon looked like garbage compared to the other battalions, but because the kasja caught the attention of every single Ooreiki that passed him, like they could see straight through his jacket.

  Maybe it’s glowing in another spectrum, Joe realized anxiously. It could be shining under there like somebody turned on a damned flashlight. Damn it. Kihgl’s going to kill me. Joe wondered if there was some way to get rid of it without causing a scene.

  A deep blast of a horn boomed out over the plaza, rattling the very air in his lungs. Kihgl’s battalion jerked nervously, but the recruits from the other nine battalions stood absolutely still, unfazed.

  After a few minutes, a commotion near the back of the formation made Joe turn. Of the three aliens walking along the back row, Joe only recognized one of them—the little blue-green Ueshi. It was even more rubbery in real life than it had looked in Commander Linin’s pictures, its skin a translucent, ocean color that looked more like a type of plastic than living flesh. It waddled along beside an enormous blue abomination that looked like a freak experiment between a Smurf and a boar. The shambling monster had beady red eyes and shaggy, bright blue fur that hung around stubby, circular feet. It walked with the lazy grace of an elephant, and was about as big. Its sharp black tusks stretched ten feet out in front of it, threatening to skewer anyone who got in the way. Joe stared—until an Ooreiki yanked his head back to the front.

  “That’s the First Citizen, asher. Keep your fire-loving eyes forward.” Commander Linin’s eyes fixed on the kasja and he froze. “Where did you get that?”

  “Kihgl wanted me to give it to Nebil, but Nebil made me wear it. Would you give it back to—” Joe reached under his sleeve to pull it off his arm, but Linin stopped him.

  “Give it back to Kihgl your own jenfurgling self. A kasja like that should be in a temple on Poen, not my dirty fingers.”

  Linin looked like he wanted to say more, but he glanced at the inspecting aliens and moved to harass another child who was also staring at the blue monster. Joe returned his attention to the trio marching behind them.

  Beside the shaggy blue alien, a slender creature with downy white fluff covering its body strode awkwardly on three tentacled legs. About its cylindrical torso flowed a paper-fine cloth-of-gold cape that glided over the ground as it walked. The creature had two enormous, electric-blue eyes that darted alertly from recruit to recruit inside a triangular, squid-like head that was indistinguishable from its neck. When its unnatural, ghostly gaze settled on Joe, his heart skipped and he quickly looked away, a flutter of fear in his gut. The First Citizen and the Ueshi were ugly, but something about this thing scared him.

  When the three aliens moved closer, Joe was stunned to hear a human voice—an adult human voice—coming from one of the three. He turned back.

  The creature with the golden cape was looking directly at him. Beside it, a full-grown human man had stopped and was frowning at Joe. He was balding and short of stature, with a sweaty, nervous aura about him. He was taking repeated puffs on the white cylinder he gripped in one hand. Joe’s hopes soared. An adult! Maybe he was here to bargain for their release!

  “No, your Excellency, none of them are above age.”

  The shaggy blue alien responded in a rough alien chatter and the glittering golden band around his left tusk translated it into English. “That is good, Mullich. For a moment I feared you Humans were foolish enough to install spies in our great army.”

  The downy white creature was still staring at Joe, its intelligent, lightning-bright eyes never moving from Joe’s face. “He has something around his arm,” the downy creature’s translator said.

  “I don’t see anything,” the sweating man replied, frowning at Joe.

  The downy creature stepped between the rows of children, toward Joe. Joe bit his lip and looked away, his back itching like it was on fire.

  “The boy is probably wearing the wrong gear, your Excellency,” the sweaty, balding guy replied. “This was the delayed shipment, after all.”

  “Perhaps.” The word came from above Joe’s shoulder. Joe flinched and turned.

  The electric-blue eyes of the down-covered alien hovered inches from his face. Joe gasped and took a step back. The alien’s arm snapped out, catching Joe’s wrist in a flattened, stingless tentacle, the grip tight enough to break bones. It was all Joe could do to keep from crying out.

  The alien pulled him back and held his gaze, the fishy, ostrich-sized eyes ethereal and penetrating, leaving him feeling like his brain was being scoured from the inside. It took Joe a moment to realize that the downy white hairs covering its body were writhing like filament-thin maggots, despite the fact that there was no breeze on the fetid planet. Watching the tiny white cilia twist and bend of their own accord made Joe’s skin crawl. With its other paddle-like tentacle, the alien yanked up Joe’s sleeve to reveal the armband.

  “Who gave this to you?” the alien said, though it made no move to take it.

  When Joe did not answer, it simply stared at him, waiting.

  “Commander Kihgl,” Joe whispered, wondering if the creature could bore into his mind with those strange electric eyes.

  “What? What did he say?” the sweating man asked, mopping his brow.

  “He said he found it,” the alien said, dropping Joe’s hand and allowing the sleeve to fall ba
ck into place.

  “Can we move on?” the shaggy blue elephantine First Citizen demanded. “This air is making me sick.”

  “Of course, your Excellency!” the chubby bald man said, taking another puff on the white air tube and then hurrying to the tusked creature. “As you can see, human children are extremely intelligent and easy to train. They understand the great part they are playing for Earth’s history and are pleased to serve the Congress. We haven’t had a single escape attempt. They are honored to be here.”

  The downy alien standing beside Joe snorted. “Honored? Who would want to escape on this disgusting planet? We spend much more time out here and I might require a respirator.” With one parting glance at Joe, the three-legged creature turned and threaded its way through the rows of children back to a spot beside the First Citizen.

  To Joe’s despair, the balding man followed the aliens further down the rows of children and none of them looked back.

  He’s leaving us. He’s not even going to try to help. Joe turned back to the front of the formation and caught Commander Kihgl staring at him. Kihgl’s sudah were fluttering, his eyes hard with fury. The armband felt like it was on fire where it touched his bicep under the cammi jacket. Joe swallowed down a lump of fear. He told me not to put it on, he thought, in agony.

  Further down the formation, the three aliens and their human guide had stopped again, eyeing Second Battalion. Joe recognized Commander Lagrah at the head of the battalion, his scarred, pale, droopy-skinned body as still as stone as the Representatives discussed his recruits. Then they moved on. When they did, one of the little kids in the back row fell out of formation and ran towards them.

  Before the child could reach the balding man, two enormous, serpentine aliens materialized out of nowhere, abruptly slamming the flat ends of their transparent, glassy spears into the child’s gut and pushing her backwards, shouting in a language of clicks and pops completely different from anything Joe had ever heard before. The translators ringing their powerful scarlet arms said, “Keep your distance from the First Citizen. Next time we take your head.”

  With that dire warning, the two serpentine aliens vanished again, their scaled ruby bodies shimmering and then disappearing completely. Seeing that, Joe suddenly understood what Nebil had meant, back in their Species Recognition class. He was pretty sure those two Jreet could have annihilated all nine of the gathered battalions in Prime Commander Lagrah’s regiment, Ooreiki and all, and nobody could have done a damn thing about it. They weren’t shadows or blurs like Hollywood had portrayed invisible creatures in the movies. To all appearances, they weren’t there. And they had to have been sixty feet long.

  As the three Tribunal members went on, heedless, two Ooreiki battlemasters rushed from Lagrah’s formation to pick the screaming child off the ground and spirit her off the plaza. The balding man wiped his brow and took another puff on his air tube, but then returned to his conversation with the enormous, shaggy blue beast.

  The formation lasted another hour, giving the four Representatives a chance to circle the entire regiment three times before retiring from the plaza.

  Once they were out of sight, Ooreiki barked orders and the eight other battalions began to move away from the plaza, their recruits moving as one. Joe and the rest of Sixth Battalion found themselves awed at the crisp movements, the sharp turns they made at the battlemasters’ commands. Thousands of them, moving in perfect unison. It was awe-inspiring to watch.

  Then Nebil grabbed Sasha by the collar and wrenched her violently out of formation. “I said take them back to the barracks, you slithering wad of Takki waste! Are you deaf as well as stupid?”

  Sasha just stared at him.

  “Now, janja scum!” Battlemaster Nebil bellowed. “We already look like we’ve got our tentacles tied in knots.”

  Sasha cleared her throat and did her best to imitate the Congie word for about-face. She was not loud enough, because only the kids nearest her complied. She tried again, a little louder. A full quarter of the platoon gave her a funny look.

  “You sound like a Takki-loving spacer!” Nebil screamed into Sasha’s ear. “Say it like a grounder, recruit! I wanna hear the diamond rumble at the sound of your Takki-loving voice! I want to hear the ferlii crumble! I want to hear a spacer shitting himself in his plush little reclining chair all the way out in orbit!”

  Sasha shouted again, and again Nebil shrieked into her ear that she wasn’t loud enough. “You sound like you’ve got a mouthful of Takki soot! Spit it out and try again! Zero, show this shabba turd how it’s done before I use both your hides to decorate my shitter!”

  And just that fast, Joe became responsible for yelling the loudest, responding the quickest to commands, and making sure everyone else in the battalion did what they were told. Several times, Joe caught Sasha giving him a dirty look, but Joe knew it was a punishment more than anything else. Nebil had Joe at the front of the battalion the rest of the night, cursing him and yelling in his ear and kicking him if he did anything wrong.

  And so it went on. All the lung-deep screaming left Joe dizzy and nauseous, but somehow he managed to keep from puking his guts out over the crushed black rock. Others were not so lucky. Nebil grabbed them and ruthlessly forced them back into formation. Then, while everyone was panting and struggling for breath, he made the battalion march endless laps around the enormous buildings, turning them at odd moments to head back in the other direction, forcing them to shout marching commands until Joe thought his lungs would burst.

  Only after their feet were numb and their minds blurred with all the different commands Nebil had given them did their battlemaster allow them to return to the barracks. A few kids ran up the six flights of stairs in their enthusiasm to get back to their beds, only to end up gasping upon the steps, the putrid air overwhelming them.

  It was then that Joe saw his second Takki. About a dozen of them crawled out of tiny side-tunnels that Joe had previously overlooked, gently scooping up those who had fallen.

  The little lizards were covered in small round scales that, when Joe got close to them, gave the illusion of depth, making their whole bodies appear to be a multi-faceted gem. Joe found himself standing still, his mouth agape in wonder. Maggie was right. They’re beautiful.

  In seconds, they were out of sight, the fallen children cradled in their jeweled arms.

  “Joe?” Scott called from several steps above. “You coming?”

  Joe shook off his amazement and hurried after his group, a sense of hope rejuvenating him. They’re only five feet tall. Too small for Nebil to make us go down their tunnels.

  At the top of the stairs, Battlemaster Nebil was waiting for him. When Joe nervously tried to pass, Nebil blocked his path, the small black ranking device gripped in one tentacle. Nebil gave Joe a long, irritated look, his sticky brown eyes scanning his face in silence. Finally, he just shook his head. “You’re gonna need this, you stupid furg,” he said, and grabbed Joe by the back of the neck in a stinging grasp. Holding him in place, Nebil snaked his arm under Joe’s jacket and jabbed the small black device into the muscle of Joe’s chest, in same place Kihgl had done when he tried to give him battlemaster.

  Before he could start struggling, Nebil withdrew his arm and released him. “Prove to me you can be a battlemaster. You’re not getting it until you deserve it.”

  Looking at his shirt, Joe realized that the silver bar of a ground leader was morphing into a triangle, though it still did not have the outside circle of a soldier. Nebil was already gone, stalking back down the stairs towards the plaza.

  Joe stared after him, stunned.

  Nebil had almost sounded…pleased with him.

  CHAPTER 12: Representative Na’leen

  Soft, downy hands touched Joe’s arm.

  “Go back to sleep, Maggie,” Joe mumbled. “It’s not time to get up yet.”

  “Of all the Humans, Ko-Na’leen had to choose a stupid one.”

  Joe jerked awake and found himself staring into imposs
ibly huge, electric-blue eyes. The tiny white hairs covering the creature’s face were writhing on their own, like millions of microscopic worms protruding from its skin. Shouting, Joe leapt out of the covers and landed on the far side of the bed, cutting his feet on the glassy floor. He was naked except for his underwear and the kasja.

  There were two of the three-legged, squid-like aliens watching him, one who had woken him and one waiting near the door. Both of them followed Joe impassively with their huge, white-blue eyes as he gingerly checked to see how badly he had injured himself. The cuts weren’t deep, but they were enough to slicken the floor beneath him with his own blood. Once he was sure he wasn’t going to bleed to death, Joe straightened and studied the aliens. They were easily six feet tall, dressed in glimmering shades of green trimmed with gold, not Congie black. Somehow that made Joe wary.

  The alien closest to the door cocked its triangular head at Joe, its electric-blue eyes utterly unreadable. Like mirrors. “Looks like it might be difficult. Use the tranquilizer.”

  The one near the bed pulled a pen-shaped object from the vest it wore, the vertical slit above and between its eyes puckering together rhythmically, like a heartbeat.

  Joe stiffened. Without boots to protect the soles of his feet from the glass, he wasn’t going anywhere fast. “I’ll come,” Joe said.

  “What did it say?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, be sure to use the low setting. We don’t want to kill it.”

  “I said I’ll come!” Joe said, holding up his hands. “Don’t you dare shoot me, you stupid squid bastards.”

  “Careful, that’s a sign of aggression.”

  Joe frowned at the guard near the door. “No it’s not.” But he lowered his hands anyway.

  Behind him, Elf whispered, “What do they want, Joe?”

  Joe never took his eyes off the alien with the pen-shaped tranquilizer. “They want to recruit me for some obscene alien fornication ritual,” he told him.