Forging Zero

by Sara King

  “Us?” Joe’s brow went up and he glanced at the others at the table with their sleeves up. “He’s making all of you run?”

  “Eighteen laps a night,” Scott said with a mock sigh. Despite his sarcasm, his sleeves were rolled as tight as the ones Joe had done for Maggie. He must have helped Monk, too, because hers looked just as good.

  Joe’s eyes caught Libby’s questioningly. He didn’t want to ask her why she was the only one who hadn’t put her sleeves up, but he was curious. She sniffed and looked away, picking at something under her thumbnail with her military knife.

  “Sasha keeps saying you were scared, Joe,” Maggie said. “She’s telling everybody that’s why you were gone for a week. She’s—”

  “Shut up, Maggie,” Libby said. “We all know he was scared sooty.”

  “He wasn’t scared!” Maggie shouted. “He was just…” She hesitated, seeking the right word. “He was just tired. He’ll be better next time.”

  “Stop defending him!” Libby said, slamming her empty bowl on the table and standing. “Joe doesn’t know everything. He was scared back there, so scared he was shaking, and that’s why he was at the hospital. They were unscrewing his head so he doesn’t get the rest of us killed in a real fight.” She looked up. “Isn’t that right, Joe?”

  Joe hung his head staring at his soup.

  “They fix it or not?” Libby demanded.

  “They fixed it,” Joe whispered.

  “They better’ve fixed it. If you ever do something like that again, I don’t want you as my battlemaster. You weren’t thinking back there. You weren’t even trying for the flag. It’s like you were all doped up just like my—” Libby caught herself suddenly. Then, without explanation, she took her bowl and left the table.

  “Don’t know why she’s mad,” Monk said. “She’s the one who lost the flag.”

  “Yeah,” Maggie said, “Don’t listen to her, Joe. We still want you for our battlemaster, even if you were scared. I’m scared of gummi bears. I got one stuck in my ear and had to go to the hospital. They had to pry around in there and it hurt, so I don’t eat gummi bears anymore.”

  “Gee,” Scott said, “You ever think maybe you shouldn’t shove them in your ear?”

  “I could sure go for some gummi bears,” Monk said.

  Joe suddenly remembered the delicate candy solar system that Yuil had given him. He had hidden it under his gear with the akarit and hadn’t thought about it in days. He decided to share it with them that night.

  Joe opened his mouth to tell them about it, then frowned. “What is that?” He pointed to the new patch on Maggie’s shoulder, on the opposite side from her names, just above the edges of her rolled sleeves. They all carried them. The Congie symbol was bright blue on black, a blockish squiggle that almost looked like a D with a dot following it. Joe knew it meant the numeral 6. He’d woken up from his last screamfest wearing one as well.

  “It stands for Sixth Battalion,” Scott said. “I think it’s a promotion. Commander Tril said if we continue to be good, we get to wear the symbol of Congress, too.”

  “I didn’t see any other recruits wearing them on my walk over here,” Joe said.

  “It’s just Sixth and Second Battalions that get them,” Carl said. “Nobody else has come close to getting the flag.”

  Joe stared at them, surprised.

  “Secondary Commander Tril’s making us go on a hunt against Second Battalion again,” Monk said, lowering her eyes. “Battlemaster Nebil says they’re so much better than us we don’t even deserve to be in the same regiment.”

  “They’re beginners, just like us,” Joe said.

  “But have you seen them march?” Carl asked. “They look like machines.”

  “We look like machines, too,” Joe said, but he knew he was fooling himself. Second looked better than any other battalion in the regiment. If they graduated them all right now and made Second fight Sixth, Sixth would scatter like rabbits just from the sound of Second’s boots on the march over.

  Sherri, another ground leader from Fourth Platoon, looked worried. “The battlemaster says it should be Fifth or Third Battalion going up against Second, not us. He says we couldn’t even find our own asses if we knew how to use our PPU’s.”

  “He always says that,” Joe said dismissively.

  “What scares me,” Scott said, “Is that Tril makes it sound like we’re way ahead of everybody else because we had the flag. But we’re not. We really suck. It was an accident, you know? What happens next time the Dhasha sees how bad we are?”

  “We aren’t that bad,” Joe said. The silent faces at the table, however, told him they thought otherwise. He scooped up a handful of goop and began eating in silence.

  “We’re really glad you’re here,” Maggie said. “We need you. The last hunt we went on, Second Battalion really beat us up.”

  Joe knew the first time was a fluke and they were gonna get stomped, no matter who was on their side. He opened his mouth to say it, but Nebil’s shout interrupted him from the front of the chow hall.

  “Zero!” Battlemaster Nebil called. “Collect the platoon and bring them to the obstacle course! No rifles or gear, just what you’re wearing. You have five tics!”

  When they got to the course, another platoon was already there, waiting for them on one edge of a circular pit of fine black sand marked off with huge black chunks of rock. A female recruit stood sharply at their head, and none of them even blinked as Joe led his platoon up to stand on the other side of the pit. They looked good. Too good to be from Sixth Battalion.

  A little knot of dread settled into Joe’s stomach as he brought his platoon to a halt beside Battlemaster Nebil.

  “All right, you Takki bastards,” Battlemaster Nebil shouted, “Sixth got paired with Second, so you are looking at your training cohort. I’m Battlemaster Nebil and that’s Battlemaster Gokli. Fourth Platoon, meet Fourth Platoon.”

  “We will be working together from now on,” Battlemaster Gokli continued. “You will still conduct hunts with other Battalions, but for martial arts and platoon drills, these are the recruits who will be challenging you for the rest of training.”

  Joe heard someone in the other platoon snicker and their battlemaster rounded on them with a vengeance. The kid who had laughed got laid out with one heavy blow. “You think it’s funny, recruit?! Get up! Nebil, pick your best recruit.”

  Joe stiffened in anticipation, but when Nebil turned to his platoon, it was Libby he ordered out of line.

  The boy laughed again when Libby stepped into the pit with him and Joe’s chest clenched with worry. Libby’s opponent was a big kid, probably an inch or two taller than her and outweighing her by thirty pounds.

  “Battlemaster Nebil,” Joe said, “I can—”

  “Shut up, Zero,” Nebil said, even as Libby glanced back to give him an acid scowl. Unhappily, Joe went back into the ‘retain’ position. He wasn’t sure, but he thought several other recruits in the other platoon perked up at his name, and he itched under their stares.

  “Put these on,” Battlemaster Gokli said, throwing padded gloves into the ring. Libby and her opponent did as they were told, cinching them tight before settling back to eying each other.

  “This,” Battlemaster Nebil said, “is your first day of confined combat instruction. As you may have found during your experiences in the tunnels, sometimes you find yourselves in situations where your own hands do you more good than your rifles. As much as we work your bodies in runs and drills, they will still be weak in one-on-one combat unless you have a chance to practice. Congressional soldiers are never completely without weapons, so this is our chance to show you how your short-range armaments work. Recruits, hold up your hands.”

  Libby and her opponent obeyed, lifting their gloved fists into the air.

  “These gloves have been equipped with systems that mimic the effect of a recruit’s biosuit on non-suited opponents in hand-to-hand combat,” Gokli said. “But before we give you ashy furgs yo
ur biosuits, you’re gonna learn how to use them. The effect will depend on the positioning of the fingers inside the gloves. Going through the different combinations will take too long and you Takki furglings wouldn’t remember anyway, so you’ll just have to learn as you go. Recruits, begin the demonstration.”

  The big boy seemed to have been waiting for this. He charged Libby, tackling her before she had a chance to get her guard up. His momentum threw her off her feet and she landed on her back in the sand, the bigger recruit on top of her. As she struggled to get up, he slammed a fist into the side of her head.

  Libby jerked like she’d been shot with blue goop. She lay there, paralyzed, and the bigger kid laughed and stood up. Then, as Joe watched in fury, the kid spat on her.

  “As you can see,” Nebil said, seemingly not noticing the boy’s behavior, “a fist produces a temporary stun, very useful if you are looking to take captives.”

  The boy turned his back to Libby and started to walk back to his platoon.

  Libby suddenly leapt to her feet, a deadly look in her eyes. She tore off her gloves and threw them in the sand. As her opponent turned to look, she took a running step, swiveled, and slammed the heel of her foot into the side of his head. Then, as he fell, she followed through and rammed the side of her naked hand into his neck and another underneath his ribs. The boy collapsed like a rag doll, utterly motionless. Then she calmly turned, gathered up the gloves she had discarded, and handed them to Battlemaster Nebil on her way back to her place in the platoon.

  “Unfortunately for many a furg,” Battlemaster Gokli said, “The paralysis is very short lived. Rat, get him out of here. Have the medics check for internal bleeding.”

  The girl in the recruit battlemaster’s place at the head of Gokli’s Fourth Platoon moved suddenly and directed two grounders to carry the unconscious recruit off to medical.

  Rat? Joe thought. They call her Rat? And I thought Sasha had it bad.

  One by one, they each got a chance to fight in the ring. The various effects of the practice gloves ranged from paralysis to actually slamming the unfortunate recruit backwards ten feet. The battlemasters thankfully tried to pair them by size, but Monk, still at only four and a half feet, had to fight someone almost twice her weight. She lost.

  The recruit battlemaster they called Rat got paired with Scott and, to Joe’s dismay, massacred him so badly that Joe suspected she’d practiced with the gloves long before this. She made no extra motions and, like Libby, simply left the ring once Scott had given up.

  Joe was one of the last ones to go, and he was paired with the strongest, most freakishly huge boy in the other platoon. Joe stared up at him when they got into the ring, wondering if the aliens had made some sort of mistake and drafted Bigfoot.

  “I’m Tank and I’m gonna kick your butt,” the boy taunted in a singsong voice. If it weren’t for the heavy rumble in his chest, he sounded like a five-year-old.

  “I’m Zero and I have the feeling I’m about to get my butt kicked,” Joe said, peering up at him. He had to be like seven feet tall.

  The boy grinned widely, a huge smile that filled his whole head.

  “Begin,” Nebil said.

  Tank swung at Joe with a fist—the favored mode of attack that day. Joe ducked easily and jumped back, eying the bigger kid. He had an advantage over the other children in the regiment because, unlike them, he had had time to grow into his size, which left him relatively agile, compared to the others. He still banged knees and elbows into things when he wasn’t paying attention, but at least he didn’t bang his head into things.

  Tank’s grin faded when he saw Joe dart out of the way. He rushed Joe again and Joe dodged, trying to decide how to approach this fight. He didn’t want to hurt the kid—he reminded him too much of Maggie. He decided to go with the flow and use a fist, even though while he’d been standing on the sidelines he’d been itching to try the technique that sent his opponent flying backwards like getting struck by a wrecking ball.

  Tank, however, did not seem to have the same reservations. When Joe continued to dance out of his way, he let out a frustrated roar and leapt forward, both hands flipped upwards in a shove. Joe couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. Instantly, he felt his entire midsection compress as the gloves’ pressure released. His breath rushed out of him in a whoosh and Joe flew backwards like his body no longer obeyed gravity.

  He landed in a heap about fifteen feet away, his chest and guts on fire.

  “And that,” Nebil said, “is what is called a compact force compression. Good against bigger foes, better-trained foes, or multiple opponents. Next!”

  Wincing, Joe started to struggle back to his feet, feeling weak and disoriented. He was stunned when Tank reached down and offered a big hand. The big kid actually looked remorseful.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know it would do that.”

  Despite the pain in his abdomen, Joe grinned at him, pleased to discover that Second Battalion wasn’t completely filled with ashers. After Lagrah tossing him off the haauk and the kid spitting on Libby once she was down, he’d had his doubts.

  “No problem, Tank,” he said, getting to his feet. He winced, feeling like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his insides.

  Tank gave Joe a long look, still holding his hand. “Are you really Zero?” he asked, peering down at him curiously.

  Joe frowned. “Uh, yeah. Last time I checked.”

  Tank continued to peer at him like an exotic bug. “Huh. Thought you’d be taller.” Then he turned and went back to Gokli’s platoon, leaving Joe staring after the seven-foot-tall monster, mouth hanging open.

  All he could think was,

  He thought I was…taller?

  #

  Tril seethed as he watched Fourth Platoon march by, Battlemaster Nebil at its head. Zero was leading, and his corruption was everywhere. Over half of the recruits in the Fourth wore their uniforms in Zero’s style, their soft flesh exposed to the air, mocking him.

  They love him.

  The thought infuriated Tril. He knew the recruits hated him. It was only fair—he had hated his own battalion commander in recruit training. But to have the battlemasters back Zero, against his direct orders… It was outright treason, and no one was doing anything about it. The one time he had mentioned it to Lagrah, the Prime had given him a long look and had said, “I’m sorry, are you making a formal complaint that you can’t control your own Battalion, Commander Tril?”

  And it had ended at that. Because Tril, despite what the bastards thought, was not that stupid. So now his underlings were rebelling, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it because of Kihgl’s demise. Tril had made several formal petitions to the Ooreiki Internal Affairs division claiming segregation and caste prejudice against him, but the OIA had responded by saying that the actions of his peers were ‘not unjust.’

  Damn Kihgl. That wasn’t his fault. It was Knaaren’s fault for eating him.

  Watching Fourth Platoon march past, Tril tightened his grip on his pen, snapping it in half. After he had tried so hard to bring Sixth Battalion to the forefront of the hunts, after he spent his every waking minute thinking about their training, worrying whether it was enough and agonizing how to keep them out of Knaaren’s claws, all Zero had to do to make them love him was put a few wrinkles in his uniform.

  Someday, Zero, they’re going to hate you.

  He would make sure of it. And, when it happened, he would laugh.

  #

  Joe, as it turned out, didn’t fare as well from Tank’s compression attack as he had thought. When he started vomiting blood two days later, Nebil sent him to medical, only to find that Tank’s glove-powered shove had caused massive internal damage that would require another turn added to his enlistment in order to patch up.

  Once the Ooreiki doctors finished with him, they had two Takki carry him back to the barracks. The purple lizards carried him in silence, eyes forward and bodies slack, apparently not thinking anything at all. Jo
e, still drugged and a little loopy, surveyed the scaly creatures from his position on the gurney, finding them remarkably beautiful to hold such a bad reputation amongst the Congies. Their eyes, especially. They were a deep, endless azure, like huge, egg-shaped sapphires that had been polished smooth and set into the sides of their heads. Like the Dhasha, they had no pupils that he could see.

  Joe was alone in his bed, waiting for his groundmates to return so he could share Yuil’s candy with them, when Battlemaster Nebil strode into the barracks. He stopped at the base of Joe’s bed and scowled at him so long that Joe thought he was about to be punished.

  “Here,” Nebil muttered finally, thrusting a silvery pad into Joe’s hands. “Lessons in writing basic Congie. It’s all automatic. It will pronounce the sound and then draw the symbol, which you must then repeat with the little pen on the side. Until then,” Nebil pulled out the PPU and pointed out a squarish symbol in the lower left. “Touch this to rotate through your options. Whenever you want to look something up, just draw the symbol on the lesson pad and it will tell you what it means.”

  “Okay,” Joe said, a little overwhelmed. “How long am I—”

  “You’ve got three days to study,” Nebil interrupted briskly. “The medics put you on light duty until we’ve got to take up black against Lagrah. You can spend the time working on learning to use your PPU.”

  Joe’s jaw dropped. “I’m out of the hunt tomorrow?”

  Nebil’s sudah gave a dangerous flutter. “They wanted to put you out of service for two entire weeks. He turned your insides to pudding, Zero. And you, you fire-loving Jreet, kept going for a day and a half. Two of the medics told me you should’ve died from that, you jenfurgling sooter. I’m going against their orders letting you fight at all.”

  “But my groundteam needs me!” Joe cried, starting to scramble out of bed. He’d thought they would take him off duty for an afternoon, tops.

  Nebil held up a tentacle, stopping him. “They need you to figure out how to get Lagrah’s burning flag. Right now, Tril’s made Sixth Battalion the laughingstock of the regiment. The only way Knaaren’s gonna leave the Sixth alone is if we hold our own against the best. It’s gonna be hard. Lagrah’s almost five hundred turns old—he should be a Corps Director by now. The only reason he isn’t is because he turns down his promotions so he can stay at the battalion level. He’s one of the few commanders out there who’s not in it for the titles. He’s got a long history of taking his recruits into battle when they graduate, and they love him for it. Beside him, Tril doesn’t stand a chance. He’s young and inexperienced and is pushing us too hard in the wrong directions. He’s a pampered yeeri ashsoul who doesn’t understand the Ooreiki military isn’t like the society on Poen. We’re like a pack of Jreet, Zero. We sense a weakness in one of our own and we tear it apart. A platoon can hold up against that kind of assault for only so long before its recruits start to fail their training. You get Lagrah’s flag again and the other battalions are gonna take us seriously. I don’t give a fire-loving pile of ashes what Tril regurgitates up at the front of formation, the only way we’re going to graduate Sixth Battalion is if we make the other battalions believe we’re better than them. We need to be more visible, more dangerous, more arrogant. That’s what we’re gonna need to survive, Zero. That’s what’s it’s gonna take to keep you out of Knaaren’s pens. And that is why you’re going to spend the next three days figuring out how to use that PPU.”