Forging Zero

by Sara King

  “What did they want?”

  “Na’leen wanted me to tell him about Kihgl,” Joe muttered, staring out at the city after them.

  Nebil was silent so long that Joe turned to look at him. The Ooreiki was staring at Joe, his sudah deathly still.

  “You spoke with a member of the Tribunal?” There was something akin to…fear…in the hardened battlemaster’s rumpled brown face.

  “Yeah,” Joe said. “He was interested in Kihgl.”

  Nebil didn’t stop staring. “Congressional Representatives don’t waste their time with secondary commanders. It’s beneath them.”

  “Well, that’s what he wanted to talk about,” Joe said, feeling smug that, for once, Nebil looked awed by him. “You don’t want to believe me, you go ask him yourself. If they’ll even let you in the door.”

  Battlemaster Nebil gave him an unreadable stare. Then, without taking his eyes from Joe, he held up the bluish film of paper that the Huouyt had attached to his bed. “It says you’ve been claimed to serve out the rest of your enlistment at Representative Na’leen’s discretion. It’s signed by An’a Zol’jib, Na’leen’s head assassin.” Joe thrust it against Joe’s chest. “If I were you, Zero, I’d be very careful how I step.”

  Joe took the piece of film and stared down at it, feeling queasy. “He couldn’t claim me because I got Squad Leader.”

  Battlemaster Nebil snorted. “If Na’leen had wanted you, the Training Committee would’ve given you to him on a ruvmestin haauk. He just changed his mind.”

  As Joe began to feel ashamed and sick, Nebil said, “Get back inside. Since you’re already up and dressed, you can polish the walls until I return to wake the rest of the platoon. The rag is behind the door in the bathing chambers.” At that, Battlemaster Nebil shoved him inside the barracks and locked the door behind him. Joe heard a dull thumping on the other side as Battlemaster Nebil’s boots thudded against the stone staircase switchbacking down the side of the building.

  Feeling like he’d been hit with a truck, Joe went to his task. The glassy obsidian walls were already gleaming. A visitor had to lean in close to see the children’s fingerprints marring the glossy surface in the areas near the beds.

  Joe got the rag from the alcohol-stinking baths and went to the wall above his groundteam’s bed. Maggie’s tiny fingerprints were everywhere. Grimly, Joe began wiping them away.

  “What happened?” Scott asked, and Joe realized he’d stayed up waiting for him.

  “Go back to sleep,” Joe said. “You’ve still got some time.”

  “Joe!” Maggie squealed. She lunged from the covers and grabbed his arm, tugging it away from the wall. “Libby said you were gonna leave us.”

  Joe was still feeling the urge to run back to the Huouyt and tell him everything he knew about Kihgl at the chance Na’leen would be pleased with him. Guilt stabbed at him and he avoided looking at her.

  “They didn’t give him the chance to leave,” Libby said, glaring at him from the bed. “If they’d given him the chance, he wouldn’t be here.”

  Before Joe could respond, Monk said, “Shut up, Libby. He’s not gonna leave us. He said so. He’s gonna help us all get home.”

  “Yeah,” Maggie chimed. “You’re just a big stupidhead, Libby.”

  Libby lowered her eyes, accepting their judgment. Seeing it, Joe felt ashamed of himself all over again. He set down his rag and cleared his throat. “Libby was right,” he said softly. “I would’ve gone.”

  Libby’s head jerked up and she stared at him, her brown eyes hurt and confused. It was obvious she had wanted to be wrong. Joe looked back at the rag he was holding.

  For a moment, none of the others spoke. Elf’s thin body shuddered and he coughed up a glob of red mucus. Joe went back to wiping the fingerprints from the walls.

  “You were gonna leave us?” Maggie whispered. She was sitting apart from the rest, her arms wrapped around her knees.

  “Come on,” Joe said, “Any of us would leave if we got the chance.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Libby said, stiffening. “You’re my friends.”

  “Well you’re the only one,” Joe said, getting angry now. “Hell, Elf can’t stop talking about how he wants to go home. Mag misses her guppies. Monk misses her Dad. Scott looks like he hasn’t smiled since he got on that ship…and I’m tired of babysitting five helpless little kids.”

  Libby looked away.

  Joe let out a frustrated breath. “But none of us can leave, so it’s stupid to even talk about it. Go back to sleep.”

  None of them spoke.

  Disgusted with himself for hurting their feelings and disgusted with them for being naïve enough to let their feelings be hurt, Joe went back to work in silence until a soft touch on his arm made him turn.

  Maggie was looking up at him, her eyes wet. “You wouldn’t really leave us, would you, Joe?”

  Joe opened his mouth to tell her to grow up, but hesitated at the looks the other recruits were giving him. He glanced from Maggie to Scott, to Libby, to Monk and Elf, each of whom were clinging to every word but desperately trying to pretend they weren’t listening. It wasn’t just his groundteam, either. Kids in nearby beds were watching, hanging on his answer. Seeing that, Joe felt something shift inside of him. They need me, Joe thought, stunned, looking back down at Maggie’s desperate face. They aren’t going to survive without me. He was their rock. Their strength. Their shelter from the storm.

  If he left, their spirits were going to break apart like…

  …like dust in the wind, Kihgl’s words whispered to him.

  Overwhelmed, Joe dropped to his knees and swept Maggie up in a hug. “No,” he said against her scalp, “I wouldn’t leave you guys. Never, Mag.”

  And he knew it was true.

  CHAPTER 13: Trained to Kill

  Pimples. I’m fourteen and I’ve got pimples. Joe stared at his arms in disgust. He’d never even heard of anybody getting pimples on their arms before. That made having pimples on his face and back that much more humiliating, since he had no visible skin that wasn’t affected. His face was a battleground, with bombs going off every day.

  He sighed and went back to his task. Battlemaster Nebil had decided that he had done a pathetic job on the walls that morning and therefore Joe could spend the whole night cleaning the rest of the barracks in nothing but his underwear and the kasja.

  I look like I’ve got the pox. If this was three hundred years ago, they’d wrap me in a blanket and catapult me into an enemy fort. Say-o-nara Joe, nice to know you, make sure to kiss a few girls before you succumb to your wounds. Not that you would know what it’s like to kiss a girl, you bashful bastard. You had fourteen years to figure it out and now you’re stuck with a bunch of toddlers for the rest of your li—

  “I told you not to wear it!” Kihgl rammed Joe’s face into the glassy stone, making his vision burst into dozens of bouncing stars. Joe gasped and dropped the rag he’d been using, the Ooreiki’s seven-pointed star digging into his skin where Kihgl’s chest pressed him into the wall. The day had been so brutal that Joe had been cleaning in a haze, too tired to notice Commander Kihgl’s approach.

  No one was there to witness as Kihgl wrapped a stinging tentacle around Joe’s neck and pushed him deeper into the wall, choking off his air.

  “Do you realize what you’ve done, you fire-loving Jreet?!”

  “Nebil…told me…to,” Joe said in a choked whisper.

  “Na’leen knows,” Kihgl snarled into his face. “The other Representatives have moved on, but he’s stayed in Alishai. It’s only a matter of time before he puts it together.”

  “I…can’t…” Joe couldn’t form the words through the grip the secondary commander had on his throat. He could feel himself passing out.

  “I will not let you ruin things, you understand, Human?” He slammed Joe’s head back against the stone wall, breaking Joe’s world into thousands of tiny stars. “You will do what the Trith foretold if I have to haunt you every step of the way
.”

  “Please…” his lips mouthed, no air escaping his lungs. Joe could not see, so quickly had his vision dimmed from the Ooreiki’s vicious stranglehold.

  Commander Kihgl released him suddenly, but stayed only inches from his face, so close Joe could feel the soft whispers of air moving from his sudah as he held him backed against a wall.

  “Listen to me very carefully, Zero. A ghost without an oorei can haunt you for eternity. Even if you pathetic Humans have an afterlife, I can destroy it. If you reincarnate, I will be there. If you fail, I will give you no peace. I will allow you no happiness. I will bring you into my hell, Zero. I swear it with my very soul.”

  Joe was afraid to move, Kihgl’s seven-pointed star digging into his chest.

  “Go to bed,” Kihgl said. “And keep the kasja. Tell Nebil I authorized it.” At that, he turned.

  “Wait,” Joe said.

  Kihgl paused, his gummy brown eyes hard.

  “Why don’t you run?” Joe asked. “You were in Planetary Ops. You could hide.”

  It took Kihgl a long time to respond. Finally, his pale brown eyes fixed on Joe, he said, “I have hope that the Trith was right.” At that, he turned and stalked off, leaving Joe in silence.

  #

  “Lights are forbidden after dark on Ooreiki planets because they attract onen.” Commander Linin scanned the platoon with a look of irritation. Kihgl and Tril had not shown up to formation that morning. “So the ashers at medical finally decided to inform us that we gotta dose you weak-eyed sooters with nightvision if we want you not to shit yourselves when the sun goes down in twelve hours.”

  Joe had been wondering about that. He’d seen nothing but bright, purple sky ever since getting off the ship. The sun hadn’t gone down in days.

  Commander Linin started to pace. “That puts Sixth Battalion even further behind. While the rest of the regiment is working on tactics in the tunnels this afternoon, we’re gonna be standing around with our tentacles tangled while you worthless Humans sleep it off. Lagrah’s gonna have Second Battalion shooting circles around us before we even get to our first hunt.”

  It was the first time the Ooreiki had mentioned tunnels since they’d been on the ship and Joe could not stop his heart from hammering a startled staccato. They plan to have us go down tunnels… His mind was screaming to ask about them, desperate to know their exact dimensions, but Linin was in a foul mood and Joe knew that he’d get pounded if he opened his mouth.

  Instead of retiring the battalion and letting the ten battlemasters march their platoons to the medical center, Commander Linin took the whole battalion to the courtyard outside the medical center. If they want you, they can come collect your bony Human asses themselves, Commander Linin barked at them as he formed them into squads. We have work to do. Then, as if they were not in the middle of a busy civilian parking lot, he began drilling his recruits outside the hospital. The irritated medics came out every five minutes to claim another set of recruits, their sudah fluttering hotly.

  The recruits under Linin’s control dwindled steadily, since the ones the medics claimed did not return. As a squad leader, Joe was one of the last ones chosen. While he waited for his turn, Joe’s world narrowed to the glassy crunch of gravel and the sound of Commander Linin’s oaths as they fouled up the complex drills he gave them. When Joe was finally ushered into the dim red lights of the hospital, even the foreign black machines and the brusque Ooreiki medic were a relief from Linin’s rage.

  “Damn insane grounder,” the medic muttered once they were inside. The Ooreiki was one of the higher-ranked medical officers, with the golden circle on his chest so big it almost filled its silver border. “It’s not our fault Kihgl got caught.” He shoved Joe into a small room and touched the wall. A black barrier dripped shut behind him, reminding Joe of the ship. With a prickle of goosebumps, he realized he had no way out.

  “Drink this,” the irritated medic ordered, offering him a clear vial. Inside, a reddish liquid sloshed around, looking slightly radioactive.

  “What is it?” Joe asked.

  The medic gave him a look that told Joe he would shove it down his throat, vial and all, if he gave him the slightest resistance.

  Swallowing hard, Joe pulled the stopper off the vial and sniffed. It smelled even more rancid than the air. He wrinkled his nose and pulled his head away. “Man, what’d you do, create distilled ass? This reeks.” The stench reminded him of the constant itch in his lungs and he reflexively coughed up a red gob of ferlii spores and phlegm. When he turned to spit it out on the floor, however, he caught the medic’s glare and swallowed it convulsively.

  “We can get a funnel and force-feed you if you aren’t interested in drinking it willingly,” the harried medic said pleasantly.

  Realizing the Ooreiki was utterly serious, imagining choking on a funnel, Joe held his breath, tipped his head back, and emptied the vial of night-vision down his throat as quickly as he could gulp it down.

  It was like swallowing sewage.

  “Keep it down,” the medic warned him. “Waste it and we’ll be forced to add another turn to your enlistment to pay the difference.”

  Already knowing he had many more years of service than anyone else in his battalion, Joe was desperate to keep from vomiting the disgusting stuff back up. Keep it down, he chanted to himself, stumbling to grip the medic’s desk in both fists. Keep it down, keep it down… Joe stood there, panting, a panicked moment, feeling the rancid potion work its way into his stomach and then try to claw its way out again. He swallowed hard to keep it where it belonged.

  Then, as he felt the odd hot-cold heat spread through his stomach and chest, Joe began catching red, yellow, and blue flashes of color in the air all around him, almost like a northern aurora. He was frowning at that, squinting at the weird swaths of color beginning to drip from the walls, when an electrical spasm seemed to grab him by the back of his skull and dropped him to his knees. An instant later, he blacked out.

  When he woke, the world was in shades of color that Joe had never imagined possible. The armband Kihgl had given him was laced with glowing gold designs beautiful enough to take his breath away. When he traced the patterns, they almost reminded him of Celtic knots…or crop circles. When he looked up, he realized the walls weren’t actually black, but gleaming iridescent waves of color that reminded him of bird feathers. He could see blocky squiggles marking the doors and equipment like someone had taken a neon pink highlighter to the room. He got up and wove through the bodies of sleeping recruits to take a closer look.

  Joe’s excitement soared as he neared. The blocky squiggles were foreign, but he could recognize patterns—repeated symbols, common characters, rhythms to the words. And, as Coach Grimsley liked to say, recognizing your opponent’s patterns was the first step to kicking his ass.

  Joe peered harder, trying to locate exactly where the symbols began. He noticed a lot of numbers corresponding to the alien writing on the recruits’ uniforms, but he couldn’t locate a line or column to which the symbols were aligned. It was almost as if they were simply thrown into a jumbled mess on the wall. Joe traced the symbols with his fingers, perplexed. He could not conceive of an intelligent species using such a disorganized system.

  Still, the alien writing was magic to Joe. The Ooreiki had made a mistake. Seeing the doors was the first step to stepping through them. For the first time since getting off the ship, Joe felt renewed hope that he could somehow get himself home.

  Himself and his friends home. Joe glanced back, locating his groundteam amongst the sleeping recruits. Libby was the only one also awake. The rest were sprawled wherever the Ooreiki had left them, breathing peacefully.

  Maggie’s stubby toddler legs were already lengthening and losing their baby fat. She was probably about the size of a normal five-year-old now. Scott was approaching five and a half feet, and he was beginning to show signs of maturity—a widening jaw and more defined muscles. Libby, two years younger, was quickly catching up with Scott. Her lon
g legs were growing longer and her limbs were beginning to sport pronounced muscle. She looked like a natural athlete. Joe wondered if it was the aliens’ freakish drugs or good genetics from her parents, then decided it was probably a bit of both.

  Elf was catching up to Monk, though it was obvious his growth spurt wouldn’t last much longer. He had a small frame, the kind that lent itself to music or math. Sam had looked like that.

  Monk was the enigma. She hadn’t showed signs of growth like the others, not even a millimeter. Joe had panicked once he realized she wasn’t growing, thinking she wasn’t eating. Then she ate both her bowl and then his in front of him to prove she was, grinning all the while.

  Joe had pretty much stopped growing after the first week. As far as he could tell, he was about six-three or six-four, a little taller than his dad. He was taking after his mom in body-type, though. Where his dad’s family was filled with long-boned musicians and mathematicians, his mom’s whole family was populated with squat, trollish athletes that took pride in pummeling little kids in touch football.

  Joe eyed his arm. He would have given a front tooth to have access to a mirror. He was pretty sure he was gaining some muscle. He flexed a little to make the bicep stand out under Kihgl’s kasja, trying to gauge how it compared to his father’s. He was almost positive it was the same size, maybe even a little bigger.

  Joe realized Libby was watching him from the cluster of little kids that made up his groundteam. Blushing, Joe dropped his arm and went over to her, trying to pretend he hadn’t been flexing like a moron.

  “Why can I see their writing?” Libby asked when he approached. She was frowning at the beautiful Ooreiki markings on the walls. “Was that there before?” she demanded.

  “Beats the hell out of me,” Joe said, relieved she hadn’t noticed his preening. He followed her gaze back to the walls. “I don’t think so. But we can use it to get away from here.”

  Libby immediately frowned at him. “I don’t want to get away from here. I like it here.”