Forging Zero

by Sara King

Joe folded his jacket and was putting it away when the cause for the nagging wrongness that had plagued him since first trying the garment on finally dawned on him.

  It’s the sleeves.

  They were baggy and cumbersome, getting in the way when he was trying to move his arms.

  Joe tentatively took a cuff and folded it back on itself. It looked horrible. He winced and tried again, folding it carefully, smoothing the wrinkles out with his hands. He made five folds, smoothing it tightly each time, creasing the upper bicep area over itself to keep the roll skin-tight. Then he tugged the jacket over his head and pushed his arm down through the narrow opening he had created with the sleeve roll.

  The material fit around his bicep like Kihgl’s kasja. It felt good. Real good. Joe tugged his jacket off and laboriously did the other side. He was just putting it on again when Battlemaster Nebil unlocked the barracks and stepped inside. Instantly, the entire barracks came to life as kids jumped out of their beds, trained to wake at the sound of their battlemaster’s footsteps. Joe quickly buttoned his jacket back in place and turned to face the Ooreiki.

  Nebil stopped halfway down the rows of round, six-person groundteam bunks, peering at him like a wary cat.

  Joe glanced down at himself and immediately felt a rush of pride at how good he looked. Almost like his dad before he stepped out into the swirling chaos of the Draft.

  “Zero, what in the fire-loving hells do you think you’re doing?”

  The other recruits paused in the middle of dressing to stare at Joe’s sleeves.

  Seeing their confusion, Joe flushed and blinked down at his arms. What had he been doing? He’d known Nebil would only make him undo them. “I modified my uniform. See? It moves better with the sleeves rolled up like this.” He swung his arm for Nebil’s perusal, then held his breath, watching Nebil’s reaction.

  Battlemaster Nebil stared at him as if he had grown purple scales and big sapphire eyes. “Zero, you sooter, fix it.”

  “It is fixed,” Joe said stubbornly.

  Battlemaster Nebil glanced from Joe to his sleeves and back. “Now.”

  “No,” Joe said, even as he thought, What the hell are you doing? You just got Battlemaster and you’re about to blow it!

  Battlemaster Nebil walked up and cuffed him. “All right you stupid furg. You’ll run later. Eighteen laps a night for as long as you insist on looking like a sootbag. In the meantime, get your platoon together. We’ve got another hunt today.”

  Then their battlemaster turned and began striding down the length of the barracks, throwing fistfuls of white clothes at the bunks.

  “Get dressed! Get your gear! Not your blacks! You’re defending today, you soot-eating furglings! Get up! Don’t think I won’t march you till you bleed if you don’t move fast enough! Get dressed!”

  Everyone, of course, was already out of bed and trying to make sense of the piles of clothes he had thrown at them, but Nebil was running around the room and screaming as if they were still sleeping soundly, ignoring him.

  Joe shrugged into his new white garments and made it to attention faster than half the rest of the recruits. Unfortunately, they were the slower, dumber half. He was still tucking in his shirt when Nebil stalked by and saw him.

  “You’re not finished, Zero? And you think you’re fit to be a battlemaster? Get on the ground! Two hundred pushups. No, one arm. What do you think you are, a spacer?” Nebil started walking around him as Joe dropped and started doing his pushups. “Keep your back straight!” he ranted on. “This isn’t Second Battalion. Take some pride in yourself, you jenfurgling Human. Each time you fall on your face, you run a lap. And you! You think that’s funny? Get down there with him. Ah, burn it! All of you get down! Two hundred pushups! You females can use two hands, if you weaklings feel you have to. Now, recruits!”

  Everyone got to the ground, glaring at Joe as they did so. Libby and Maggie were two of the only girls who used only one hand. Maggie fell on her face more often than not, but Nebil did not seem to notice. Sasha, on the other hand, used both hands and still finished dead last. It didn’t earn her much respect, and she got as many nasty looks as Joe had for getting them into the mess in the first place.

  “That’s enough!” Nebil snapped. “Get your Jreet-loving rifles and get outside. Battlemaster, get up here to get your extra rounds.”

  Joe started forward, but Sasha brushed past him to take her usual place in front of Nebil. He hung back, waiting.

  “What are you doing?” Libby whispered, coming to stand beside him. She had her rifle against one shoulder. “He made you battlemaster, didn’t he?”

  Joe took a deep breath and walked up to where Sasha was waiting for Nebil to notice her. When Sasha looked up at him with a poisonous scowl, he calmly said, “I’m battlemaster now. Go get your groundteam together.”

  Sasha ignored him. Her face fell, though, when Battlemaster Nebil loaded the spare rounds into Joe’s arms and not hers. Sasha’s eyes fell on Joe’s burden and stayed there. The single line of a ground leader seemed pathetic on her chest.

  “Go, Sasha,” Joe said gently.

  Eyes brimming with hatred, she turned to leave. Libby caught her arm.

  “Told you,” Libby said.

  Sasha ripped her arm away. “My daddy said even Congo gorillas can play the stock market and be right a few times.”

  Libby stiffened, every muscle taut. Joe tensed, wondering if he was going to have to wipe Sasha’s brainless face off of Libby’s boot.

  Libby, however, shrugged and went to form up. In the ranks, a Takki was passing out prepackaged tubes of green slime, which the recruits were sucking down like ice-pops as they listened to the plan for the day. Then Nebil gave the order and Joe took a deep breath. In his best Congie, he shouted, “Fourth Platoon, follow on your left foot! March!” Then he counted, “Left, left, left-right-left, left, left…” When they reached the main plaza, the battlemaster took over and loaded them onto a huge haauk.

  As they lifted off, Commander Linin shouted, “All right you Takki pukes! Tril’s got us on another practice run. Same idea as last time, except this time you’re trying to keep the other half of our battalion from reaching your flag. You have an extra thirty-six tics to arrange yourselves before they drop off the attackers. Zero’s got command of this one. Third, Fourth, and Fifth platoons on surface duty. First and Second stay in the tunnels. Keep in mind that Second Company’s already been down those holes and they know them better than you do. You’re gonna have to be on your toes. Squad leaders and above, your headcom mics have been turned on. Speak loud—the sets weren’t made to pick up your gutless Takki whimpers.”

  Commander Linin scowled at the five recruit battlemasters. “And just so you know, Second Company put a bounty on battlemasters. Each one the attackers kill gets them an hour of free time.”

  “What about us?” Maggie asked.

  Linin scoffed. “Burn that. Each battlemaster you lose, you run for an hour.”

  Then they were landing, spilling from the skimmer like a flood of cottonballs.

  As the almost two hundred children in First and Second platoons descended into the tunnels, Joe tried to find a high point to survey the situation. He ended up climbing one of the ruined diamond mounds, feeling the jagged crystal try to cut him even through his thick Congie gloves.

  “This is a good spot,” Libby said, coming to stand beside him. “They’re gonna enter from that side and we’ll be able to shoot them before they make it to cover.”

  “Just like they did to us,” Joe muttered, jumping down. “All right.” He glanced at the three platoons waiting for his orders. “Split up,” he ordered. “I want three recruits to a hole. Squad leaders, make sure you stagger them so not all the youngest ones go to a single hole. Maggie, go with that team. Libby, you stay here. I’ll go over there, so we don’t have all our spare ammo in the same place.”

  No sooner had they taken their positions than Second Company was arriving—with armored skimmers.

&nbs
p; “What the Hell?” the recruit battlemaster of Second Platoon demanded in Joe’s headset. “They’ve got armored plating!”

  Not only that, Joe was seeing, but the skimmer was lowering them directly over an unguarded tunnel and they were exiting through a special door in the bottom of the skimmer.

  “They’re inside!” Joe said into his headset.

  “Which tunnel?” one of the battlemasters below asked.

  Joe grabbed his Planetary Positioning Unit. The symbols were in blockish Congie squiggles, not English. “Can anyone read the PPU?” Joe shouted back. He was clambering down his tunnel, seeing if there was a connection to the one that the enemy was using to infiltrate. There wasn’t. He would have to double back. “What does North look like?”

  “I don’t know, but I can hear them!” Joe’s onboard computer identified the speaker as Number 424, a squad leader from Fifth Platoon.

  “Everybody retreat to the flag!” Third Platoon’s battlemaster shouted. “They’re in. We’ve gotta fight them off inside!”

  Up on the surface, Joe could hear the skimmer lifting off. He stuck his head out of the hole to look. No enemies were in sight. The damage was done. Even now, their full force was descending to reach their flag. They hadn’t even left a guard.

  “Fourth Platoon, get out of your holes!” Joe shouted suddenly. “Meet me on the surface!”

  “What the hell are you doing?” the battlemaster of Fifth Platoon demanded. “They need us at the flag!”

  “Burn it, asher,” came Maggie’s hot response. “Zero can do what he wants.”

  Damn it, Maggie, Joe thought. But into his headcom, he said, “Hurry up!”

  “You’re going to the surface?!” Second Platoon’s battlemaster cried. “We need your help!”

  “You’re getting it!” Joe shouted, jumping out of his hole. Libby was already leading an assault on the enemy tunnel. The rest of Fourth Platoon fell in behind him, eyes wide with excitement and fear.

  “Just slow them down until we can reach them,” Joe said into his headset. He and Libby charged down the tunnel, with only a handful of the squad able to keep up. Ahead, he heard the wet, sucking sounds of gunfire. His stomach roiled, remembering the last time he had gotten shot, but adrenaline was coursing through his system, making the fear bearable. He barely even noticed the tunnel walls closing in around him.

  They found the enemy clumped together behind a wall of bodies, a mass of hundreds of black-clad recruits firing at the defenders. Black and white corpses littered the floor and the noise was so loud it was hard to think. The voices of the other four battlemasters were clamoring in his head, shouting for help or more ammo. One was screaming.

  Joe fell to one knee and started firing. Libby, Scott, Sasha, and the other big kids from Fourth Platoon did the same, spattering the attackers with blue bile from all sides.

  In three minutes, it was over. Pinned in place, caught in the crossfire from above and below, the attackers didn’t stand a chance. They collapsed in shrieks, their muscles spasming in agony. A couple that hadn’t been hit dropped their weapons, cold terror showing in their wide eyes as they surrendered.

  “Are we supposed to take prisoners?” the leader of Second Squad asked, standing beside Joe. She was a twiggy imitation of Libby, except she came from Mexican roots. In the headset, the other platoons still hadn’t realized they had won and were still calling wildly for backup. Joe ignored them, his gun sighted on one of the two captives. All the recruits around him were waiting for his answer.

  “Maybe Linin won’t make us run for losing a battlemaster if we have captives,” the Mexican girl suggested. He was pretty sure her name was Tina.

  “Take their headcoms,” Joe ordered. “So they can’t talk to anyone we missed.”

  “Put their headcoms on,” Libby said. “So we can talk to anyone they missed.”

  No sooner had one of Joe’s squad members pulled the helmet from another boy’s head and slipped it onto his own did he fall down in a dead faint. Everyone stared at him, confused.

  “Did he step on some goop?” Tina asked. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “What the hell is going on? Why’d the shooting stop? Where are you, Fourth?”

  “We’re standing over the bodies of all the bad guys, asher,” Maggie said.

  Joe scowled at her, but he couldn’t take the time to correct her. Something about the situation was bothering him. “Someone else get that helmet. This can’t be all of them. There’s more out there somewhere.”

  “What if they’re booby-trapped?” Monk asked.

  Joe frowned, watching someone from First Squad grab the helmet. Booby-trapped? If they could bring people back from the dead and mend bones in a few hours, they probably had the technology to incapacitate an enemy who was trying to use Congressional equipment.

  Before he could say anything, however, that girl slumped to the ground, the helmet still stuck to her head.

  The owner of the helmet was clearly as surprised as they were. His eyes were showing whites all around and he was obviously wondering whether or not he would be blamed for their companions’ mysterious unconsciousness.

  “Leave the helmets,” Joe ordered. “Monk says they’re booby-trapped.” He nodded at his groundmate, making her stand up straighter with pride. “First and Second Platoons, stay at the flag. There’s more coming.” He glanced at the eighty-some children standing in the tunnel with him. “The rest of you are gonna help me find the rest of Second Company.” He was only now beginning to feel the pressure of the earth above him, and it was making his hands sweat.

  I’ve got to get back to the surface, he thought, with growing anxiety.

  The rest of Third and Fourth Platoons were only now creeping around the corner, crawling over the pile of corpses with their guns raised. They hesitated when they saw the two prisoners. It took Joe a moment to realize they were all looking at him, waiting for something.

  “We should shoot the prisoners, Joe,” Libby prodded.

  Joe grimaced. “They surrendered.” He knew she was probably right. It would take at least four recruits just to guard these two. Still, they had surrendered. It didn’t seem like the honorable thing to do.

  “Hey!” Joe demanded of their ‘prisoners.’ “You two swear to stop fighting?”

  They both nodded vigorously, relief and gratitude flashing across their faces.

  “Okay,” Joe said, “Third Squad will keep watch on them. Libby, your groundteam will be in charge of guarding them. Everybody else reload. We’re going back to the surface.”

  The second wave of attackers fell in the same way. As soon as they were offloaded, Joe had Fourth Platoon attack their tunnel and follow them down. They took half the second wave prisoner, leaving them with over a hundred captives after all the attackers were either corpses or disarmed.

  They spent the next couple hours huddling in the pits, sucking on slime-sticks, the captors playing tic-tac-toe with the captives. When the Takki arrived to drag the corpses out, they paused to give the captives an odd look before retreating with their burdens. One even paused to whisper to Joe in Congie, “Shoot them. Do them a favor.”

  Joe ignored the lizard. Moments later, Commander Linin’s voice boomed in their helmets, “Everyone out of the tunnels for a battalion formation.”

  When they got to the surface, the prisoners’ battlemasters descended upon them in a flurry of wrath. As Joe and the other defenders were ushered into ranks, the survivors in black were led to a separate formation facing the main one. The black-clad ‘corpses’ that the Takki had dragged from the tunnels were now quickly being revived by an army of Ooreiki surgeons. Revival, this time, was practically instantaneous upon the feeding of the solution into the recruits’ veins, now that their commanders didn’t want to make the kids walk home in the dark. As soon as they woke, they were allowed to join Joe and the other defenders in the main formation.

  Once everyone was standing and accounted for, the battlemasters handed the Battalion ov
er to Secondary Commander Tril, who paced in front of the prisoners with a cold, merciless stare. The few days he’d been in charge of Sixth Battalion had lightened his eyes by several degrees. His skin was also beginning to lose its rich brown-orange color, dulling noticeably by the week.

  “Apparently, you are unaware of Congress’s policy on surrender,” Tril said. The tone he used was so icy that Joe got goosebumps. “The First Rule of a Congressional soldier is to obey any and all orders that his superiors give to him without question. Do you know what the Second Rule is?” His voice was ominously quiet, his snakelike gaze never leaving the fidgeting group of black-clad prisoners.

  “It’s never surrender.” He said, his voice a whisper of rage. “How dare you surrender?! This is just a game! We are not even in a real battle and you have the audacity to disgrace me and your battlemasters with surrender?!” He turned and retrieved a small black handheld device from his vest. It reminded Joe of the circular gadget the Ooreiki used to promote them, but this one was thicker, stockier.

  “I suppose I should be grateful this happened now, before you ashy furglings did it while Lord Knaaren was watching. For that, I’ll only give you the weakest punishment available to me.” He held up the small black gadget. “I’m sure you all remember the day back on the ship when the doctors lodged a small device into your chest. It has several purposes, but one of them is to give Congress an effective means of punishing its soldiers without causing lethal damage. It is the most absolute pain you will ever experience, because it releases small impulses upon command that allow you to feel nothing else.”

  Joe stiffened. Some of the prisoners in the front row were beginning to cry.

  “This,” Tril said, touching the black gadget, “is the controller that every battalion commander carries around with him. It’s indestructible, so don’t any of you furgs get any ideas. It has nine settings. The lowest—what you are about to experience—will leave you dazed for a few hours afterwards. It also makes you release your bowels, so it would be in your best interest to undress before I use it.”

  The children glanced at one another tearfully, unsure what to do.