Forging Zero

by Sara King

  Then a small, logical voice reminded him, Yes, but she’s the only one who wants to help you get out of here.

  Just that afternoon, Yuil had laid out her plan to get Joe off of Kophat. Three rotations from now, he had to rendezvous with Yuil’s companions in the abandoned ferlii. Yuil had said Joe could bring his groundteam, but Joe was still debating that. Maggie seemed to be enjoying her new life, especially now that Nebil was in charge. Scott was the type of person who could be happy whether he was living the high life in a fancy hotel ballroom or digging dirt out from under his thumbnails after a hunt.

  Libby was the real problem. He knew nothing in the world would get her to go with him, and he suspected that, despite their budding relationship, she would turn him over to Nebil the instant she caught a whiff of what he was really doing with Yuil.

  Prince Bagkhal was in a foul mood when Joe entered his den. Joe recognized the Dhasha’s body language and immediately felt a spasm of fear. This was what Knaaren had looked like right before he began eating slaves.

  “Come in,” Bagkhal barked. “Sit down.”

  Joe swallowed hard and obeyed. Then he stiffened, remembering. The prince had met with Representative Na’leen that morning. What had Na’leen told him about Kihgl? Did Bagkhal know about Joe’s relationship with Yuil? Bagkhal said nothing about it, and instead frothed and panted as he dictated his notes, digging his talons into the stone floor like it was made of wet clay. His fury was a palpable thickness in the air, one left Joe sick with terror as he sat there, trapped. Even in the biosuit, his hands were shaking.

  Prince Bagkhal stopped suddenly, leveling his cold emerald gaze on Joe. For the first time since meeting the Dhasha, Joe lowered his eyes.

  Bagkhal deflated suddenly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was frightening you.”

  Joe said nothing, wondering if it was a trick. The Dhasha’s anger still permeated the room and he didn’t dare glance up.

  Bagkhal gave him a long look, then let out an explosive sigh. His breath, unlike Knaaren’s, did not stink of rotting meat. When Joe had asked, beating around the bush for a full hour before he was able to delicately make his question clear, Bagkhal had simply laughed. “I eat nutrient cakes. Much less messy.” At the time, Joe had found himself unable to believe it. He could not conceive of a Dhasha eating anything other than living, breathing beings that could at least scream before they were bitten in half. Now, though…

  “The Training Committee put our regiment under observation despite our recent successes,” Bagkhal said, with a rumble of frustration. “Any more screw-ups and they’re commissioning a Jahul auction-house to sell the entire regiment.”

  As Joe stared, the Dhasha began to pace again.

  “Further, it seems that Ooreiki ashsoul I had deported somehow knew a Corps Director. He’s been installed as Prince Rethavn’s replacement.”

  “Prince Rethavn?” Joe asked. “Knaaren’s father?”

  Bagkhal grunted. “Kophati Peacemakers finally found their teeth and raided Rethavn’s den. They’re shipping him to Levren for questioning—they believe the furg was involved in an insurgent movement here on Kophat, and that the rebels are actively recruiting amongst our ranks.”

  Joe felt his face flush with guilt under his biosuit.

  Prince Bagkhal let out another massive sigh. “If I’d known Knaaren was the son of that slime, I would’ve killed him instead of wasting the time dragging him out of here for detainment. Traitors breed traitors. It’s in the blood.”

  Traitors breed traitors. Joe glanced down at his hands, remembering a swirl of smoke and darkness, the sound of rifle fire. Dad wasn’t a traitor.

  Once he’d calmed himself, Bagkhal resumed dictating progress reports to the Training Committee and the Human Overseer of Kophat, now the same Commander Tril that had once run Sixth Battalion. Bagkhal said nothing about his meeting with Na’leen and Joe began to suspect that the Representative had indeed told him something damning. It was a gnawing fear that ate at him until he finally had to ask how the meeting had gone.

  “Representative Na’leen?” Bagkhal asked, giving Joe an odd look. “Why would you care?”

  “Just curious,” Joe said quickly. “He seems like an asher.”

  Prince Bagkhal clicked his teeth in amusement. “He is. It went poorly.” The Dhasha made a grunting noise. “The furg tried to impress me with his pet Jreet and I had to show him I’m not Knaaren.” Bagkhal snorted. “He’s convinced the Training Committee to order a mandatory gathering of all Congressional personnel working with Humans so we can share our experiences and offer advice.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Joe said.

  Prince Bagkhal snorted. “It’s typical bureaucratic crap. They always feel they have to sink their claws in things, meddle where they don’t belong. The Congressional Army has been fully functioning for over two million turns now. There’s nothing some self-important politician is going to come up with that we haven’t already considered. Not only do I already correspond with the other commanders daily, but we share all Human training statistics and have a database on training methods versus end results. But the Kophati Training Committee is so starry-eyed that a Tribunal member has shown an interest that it’ll give him anything he wants.” Bagkhal snorted loudly. “He wants us to meet with each other? And do what? No one will be able to get a word in, there are so many of us. Where do we start? Will they sort us by species? If not, half the gathering is going to end up killing the other half. I hear a contingent of Jreet has been training one Human regiment, while the Huouyt have taken another. It’s going to be a huge bloodbath.”

  Joe finished taking his dictations with an increasing feeling of dread lumping in the pit of his stomach. He thought of the Trith’s prophecy. He knew, without a doubt, that Bagkhal would kill him if he ever discovered Joe was meant to end Congress.

  A Trith never gives the whole prophecy, Kihgl’s words returned to him. Maybe it was a ploy. Maybe it was a lie, a half-truth…

  No, Joe thought, once again thinking of Elf, of Monk, of the millions of children that had been kidnapped to become alien slaves…. He felt hot anger rising in his gut. He would end this. And Yuil was going to help him.

  Joe was lost in thought when Scott caught him on the way back to the barracks. “Hey, I was looking for you.”

  “You in trouble?” Joe asked, worried by the paleness of Scott’s face.

  “No, I…” Scott bit his lip and gave a nervous laugh. “This is gonna sound really stupid, Joe, but I think I had a Trith visit me.”

  Joe felt his blood run cold.

  “Yeah,” Scott said, running his hand over his bald head nervously. “Weird, I know. What he said was even weirder. At least I think he said it. Soot, it’s so crazy. Like I was floating in space—” He broke off, giving Joe an anxious look.

  “Tell me,” Joe said.

  Scott’s eyes were full of fear. “He said you’re gonna destroy Congress, Joe.”

  CHAPTER 35: It’s in the Blood

  The day before Joe was supposed to meet with Yuil, he found it hard to concentrate on anything. He fumbled his orders during drills and spaced out to the point that Battlemaster Aneeir sent him to medical to receive another dose of Bagkhal’s drug and take the rest of the day off.

  Joe spent the next three hours lying in bed, staring at the low ceiling. He was not tired in the least, and sometimes missed being able to close his eyes and fall asleep. Still, he was finding his time with Prince Bagkhal enjoyable, especially when the Dhasha told stories of his long life in the military.

  Bagkhal’s company was enough to make Joe begin to regret telling Yuil he would leave with her. He was learning so much—the Dhasha was opening up whole new worlds for him, discoursing for hours in politics, science, history, war, philosophy…

  And there was much to learn. Bagkhal had lived a full nine hundred and sixty turns, ancient for a Dhasha. Despite the fact that they could continue to grow indefinitely, like the Jreet, Bagkhal’s species t
ended to kill each other off long before they could meet that potential—also like the Jreet. That Bagkhal had lived almost a millennium was…amazing. Even more chilling was the fact he had declared ka-par with over five thousand worthy opponents, won them all, and every bested foe continued to serve him to this day, making him one of the most powerful Dhasha princes in Congress. Further, he had helped fight down six Dhasha rebellions and quelled further resistances in all corners of the known universe. Bagkhal’s war stories were as good as his father’s.

  It was the stories of Dhasha uprisings that left Joe with a wash of dread, though. From what Bagkhal described, they were terrifying things, all-out slaughters that decimated the numbers on each side, leaving enormous swaths of the galaxy annihilated, whole prosperous, high-tech planets thrown back into their dark ages for centuries to come. A Dhasha prince would have his Takki dig a deep den on a planet, and with that as his base, the prince and his sons would carve out all resistance from the planet in a matter of weeks.

  “There’s going to be another one soon,” Bagkhal said one evening, while Joe was busy copying notes.

  Joe looked up. “Another what, sir?”

  “Rebellion.” Bagkhal heaved a huge sigh. “The problem is a prophecy, Joe.”

  Joe felt his heart skip. Swallowing, he said, “Sir?”

  Bagkhal sighed. “There is a legend amongst the Dhasha, something that has been with our people for many hundreds of thousands of years.” He swung to give Joe a long look. “It is the prophecy of a great leader, one who will unite and liberate the Dhasha. The Vahlin.”

  Joe’s heart began to pound, but he managed to nod.

  “The Dhasha Vahlin is foretold to free the Dhasha of their mass servitude to a tyrannical, archaic system,” Bagkhal growled. “It is said He will be the greatest mind the Dhasha have ever seen, and that He will lead our people into the greatest war that the universe has ever endured, followed by giving us the greatest peace our world has ever imagined.”

  Joe’s heart hammered at the parallels between this and what the Trith had told him. Was he supposed to…lead the Dhasha? Wasn’t that like a rabbit leading a horde of wolves?

  Prince Bagkhal was pacing, now. “The problem is that the prophecy gives no clan name, no place of birth. It says He will be dark of color. And alone. And forgotten.”

  Joe didn’t need to glance down at his biosuit to know he was, at the moment, pretty damn dark. He swallowed, hard.

  Bagkhal, however, went on as if he didn’t even see Joe’s inky black biosuit. “The legend of the Vahlin has been tearing our society apart at the seams for eons. Rethavn is not the only Dhasha with aspirations. I can only pray the next rises up near the Outer Line. If Kophat had rebelled…” He swiped wicked black talons at empty air. “It contains over two thousand deep dens carved out for training sessions. Koliinaat would have been forced to destroy the entire planet. Thirty billion Ooreiki, nine billion Ueshi, two billion Jahul…dead because some Takki-fucking furg decided he wasn’t making enough off of his protection fees.”

  Bagkhal slumped to the floor with a clatter of metallic scales. “Sometimes I am ashamed of my kind. Truly ashamed.”

  “Would they really destroy the entire planet?” Joe asked.

  Bagkhal leveled his unreadable emerald stare on Joe, making his spine itch. “I don’t know if you have been told this yet, Zero, but Kophat is a storage center for weapons designed to work against every species known to Congress. It is one of six such planets, and if any one of these planets ever falls into enemy hands, protocol gives the Army three days to get it back under Congressional control or it will be destroyed, along with everyone on it.”

  Joe felt a cold chill crawl down his spine. “An entire planet?”

  “The alternative is worse. With the weapons Congress has stored in these depots, rebels could eradicate a thousand planets just like it. And they would, too. Most rebels are mindless zealots who simply want to do as much damage as they can before they are found and killed. They don’t realize that Congress is the glue holding the universe together. They just want to destroy.”

  Remembering his date with Yuil—and how Yuil had excitedly talked about doing exactly that—Joe stared at his hands.

  “It’s not too late to change your mind, Joe.”

  At the Dhasha’s calm, matter-of-fact statement, Joe’s head snapped up. “Change my…” Then, in that moment, looking into Bagkhal’s emerald eyes, Joe knew that Bagkhal knew about Yuil. His breath caught in his throat and his face flushed with panic. He found it impossible to deny it and a thousand excuses rose to his lips, but he just lowered his head and waited for the Dhasha to finish him.

  Instead of condemning him, Prince Bagkhal leaned forward and said, “You are one of the most gifted warriors I have ever met. You lead your recruits like you were born to do it, and, if one was to believe some of my comrades, you were.”

  Joe just shook his head.

  “It’s true. It’s why the rebels want you.”

  Joe’s chest tightened and he hunched further in on himself, the words hovering out in the open like a headsman’s axe.

  “I know it’s a difficult decision,” Bagkhal said. “When I was first Drafted, I hated Congress. If someone had given me a button to annihilate it all, I would have pushed it. It got easier, though. A few turns after graduation, I realized that ours is the most important job in the universe. The universe is highly unstable—a delicate ecosystem constantly teetering on the verge of collapse. The Army is the net that binds Congress together. Should we fail in our duties, everything in it will collide with such force that, once the dust clears, there will be nothing left.”

  Joe sank in on himself further, misery overwhelming him. “Sorry,” he whispered.

  Bagkhal huffed. “I must cater to the whims of politicians tomorrow. The Kophati Training Committee dances to Na’leen’s demands like an Aezi puppet. I’ll be gone for two days. If you’re still here when I return, I will ask you to help us dismantle the rebel hive that has been wooing you and about fifty other recruits from our regiment. If you are gone, I’ll add your name to the list of known traitors and send all of your friends to Levren for questioning. But Zero—” Bagkhal paused, waiting for him to look up.

  “You’ll be here when I get back.”

  Joe felt so ashamed to have betrayed Bagkhal that he could barely breathe. The Prince’s lack of anger made it worse.

  “Do you want to know why?” Bagkhal said.

  Joe couldn’t lift his eyes off of the ground.

  “You’ll stay because Knaaren was just one of trillions,” Bagkhal said. “Each one of those would love to own their own planets and populate them with slaves. When Peacemakers captured Rethavn, it took three thousand Ooreiki lives to roust one Dhasha prince and his three youngest children from a single tower, not even a deep den. Nine thousand more Ooreiki were badly injured in the fight.” The Dhasha paused, giving Joe a long look. “You’ll stay because a pathetic, ragtag group of Ooreiki teenagers might have grand plans for a universe without Congress, but they forget the Dhasha.”

  Joe swallowed, hard.

  “Only Dhasha can control Dhasha, Zero,” Bagkhal told him. “For that, we need Congress.”

  Joe just nodded.

  Bagkhal gave him a moment to digest that. Eventually, he went on, “I can always judge a soldier’s character. I look at Tril and see a misguided idealist, but one with good intentions. He will make a good leader in twenty or thirty turns, as soon as he realizes there’s a difference between life and a classroom. Nebil is too honorable to retake Prime, despite how much good he would do the Army if he did. He’s an excellent soldier, but due to his inability to bend, he is unsuited to anything beyond a battalion command. You know what I see when I look at you, Zero?”

  A traitor. Joe stared at his hands in shame.

  “I look at you and I see myself, eight hundred turns ago,” Bagkhal said. “You’re a Congie, Zero. I hope you realize that before they force you to decide.”
r />   Joe still couldn’t speak, so deep was his disgrace.

  Bagkhal got up and started walking towards the exit. At the base of the stairs, he stopped and turned back. “I have no doubts in my mind that there will be a Dhasha Vahlin,” Bagkhal said. “Until the true Vahlin makes Himself known to us, though, it is our duty to keep His usurpers from destroying the universe that rightfully belongs to Him.”

  Then, with a parting look at Joe, Bagkhal climbed the steps and left him sitting there, staring at his lap.

  #

  That afternoon, Bagkhal boarded the shuttle to take him to the mandatory training meeting, taking all of the ranking Ooreiki commanders and battlemasters with him. Out of all of Sixth Battalion, only Battlemaster Aneeir remained. Instead of battalion drills, Aneeir gave every platoon a different task to do, then assigned free time after that. Joe spent the first half of the day raking the plaza with his friends, then found a quiet place to sit and think.

  Yuil was expecting him that night.

  This was his chance. Bagkhal had said that the Trith couldn’t lie. If Joe helped the rebels, he could put an end to the Draft. He could go home.

  But Bagkhal’s words haunted him. What would they do about the Dhasha? Just the mere thought of fighting on the opposite side as Bagkhal made the hairs on Joe’s arms raise. He didn’t want to betray his friend. Were there really trillions of Dhasha out there? Had Yuil and her friends thought about that?

  The more Joe considered it, the more he realized Bagkhal was right. Yuil, despite her startlingly vast knowledge on military workings and tactics, was just an alien dropout. Against an organized force like the Congressional Army, they would be annihilated.

  Dad would want me to fight.

  That single thought made everything Joe knew come to a crashing halt. Even now, his father’s words came back to him as he stood over the ironing board, his arms moving in slow, deliberate motions as he ironed his sleeves. Sometimes you’ve gotta stand up for yourself, even when you know you ain’t got a chance.