Forging Zero (24 page)

Joe stood,
fighting to keep his breathing under control.  This was the first time
Battlemaster Nebil had singled him out, and before this, Joe felt as if he had
some sort of understanding with the Ooreiki.

At his
hesitation, Nebil hit him again, sending him back to the floor. 
“What makes
you think you should be here instead of Kihgl?  You don’t deserve it.  You
can’t even follow simple orders.  Look at you.  You’re just a frightened
Takki.  Get up.  Get
up!
  You ferlii-eating primate get your
Takki-loving ass off the floor before I puncture it with my foot.”

Joe sat
up, struggling for air.  The edges of his vision were fading again and Joe
gripped the bed nearest him to keep from passing out.  Nebil reached down and
wrapped a tentacle around his throat.  Into his face, Nebil said,
“Kihgl
thinks you’re battlemaster material, but you’re not.  You’re just ungrateful,
selfish Human slime.  You’re not worthy of his sacrifice.”
 

Looking
into Nebil’s furious brown eyes, Joe knew he spoke of Kihgl’s decision to let
Joe live, not the lack of a battlemaster’s star. 
Nebil blames me.  He
thinks I should have died.

Another
Ooreiki had appeared in the doorway and used that moment to make his presence
known.

“Did
Kihgl really choose Zero as a battlemaster?  Has he lost his Jreet-loving
mind?”

Battlemaster
Nebil wrenched around to glare at Small Commander Linin. 
“If Kihgl wants to
waste his recruit potential, that’s his prerogative.  It’s gonna come from
his
hand, though.  I’m not gonna attach my name to this sootbag.”

“Sometimes
I think that seventh point sucks all the rationality out of them.”

“Don’t
I know it.”
  Battlemaster Nebil reached down to
haul Joe off the floor.  Before Joe was quite balanced, Nebil shoved him across
the room, towards the others. 
“Until Zero proves he’s worth more than a wad
of Takki soot, Kihgl can kiss my ass.”

Commander
Linin gave an amused snort. 
“Regiment formation in thirty-six tics. 
Commander Lagrah says the Tribunal arrived this afternoon and wants to inspect
us. ”

Battlemaster
Nebil froze, his sudah fluttering suddenly. 
“Ghosts of Takki curse them! 
Don’t they know we’re two weeks behind?!”

“And
we haven’t even met our Prime yet.  Kkee, the fire-loving jenfurglings know. 
But they’ve already inspected twenty other cities and don’t want to delay, so
whose ghost is our Prime to tell them to wait?  Dhasha or no, they don’t give a
Takki soot.”

“They
didn’t make Lagrah Prime?”
Nebil demanded.
 
“He’s already got the rank.”

“The
planetary Overseer decided that every new Kophati regiment should be run by one
of his sons.  And apparently he’s got enough sons.  You ask me, the sooter’s
making a move to rebel.  In the Old Territory, the damned furg.”

The
little gill-like
sudah
were fluttering ever-faster in Nebil’s neck. 
“Rethavn? 
I thought they convicted him and sent him to Levren.”

“Overturned
the ruling,”
Linin said, with an Ooreiki grimace.
 
“When authorities went to pick him up, he’d gathered all of his sons together
in his palace and the Peacemakers wouldn’t touch the place.”

“The
gutless Takki cowards.”
  Battlemaster Nebil turned
to the rest of his platoon.
 
“You heard him!  Everyone outside.  Form
up at the base of the stairs.  Zero, you’d better get off your ass or you’ll be
puking up your liver after I’m through with you.  I’ll be damned if I’ll give a
Takki bastard like you battlemaster.  You’re lucky I’m gonna give your unworthy
ass squad leader.  You!  You look like you’d make a better battlemaster than
this lazy charhead.  Get up here and get them moving!”

Sasha
stepped forward like a startled deer, her jutting lower jaw hanging open in
shock.

“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 back 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.”