Forging Zero (12 page)

When
they reached the gymnasium, Joe hesitated.  Half of the kids that were milling
in nervous groups, he realized with a sick feeling, had still not gone through
the Hell behind the little blue door.  They stared at the bald ones as they
marched in, looking confused and smug.  Some were even stupid enough to point
and laugh.

The
aliens lined them up in neat rows by group.  When Joe released Maggie, she
crossed her arms and turned her back to him, refusing to get in line.  Joe had
to pull her into her proper place and twist her around so she was facing
forward.  She refused to look at him, lifting her chin and sticking out her
lower lip.

Sighing,
Joe straightened and returned to his place at the front of his team.  Once
there, he noticed a black-clad alien walking around the edges of the room,
placing blue spheres along the wall.  He tensed, remembering the balls from
last time.  Frustration began building like a knot in his chest, knowing how
many children were going to have to skip another meal.  Other kids began to
cry. 

When
Nebil strode into the room, the other battlemasters stomped their feet once in
unison, silencing the room.

“
Did
you backstabbing ashers sleep well?
” Nebil snapped.

No one
dared respond.

“
Good,”
Nebil said. 
“Tril isn’t here, so today we do it differently.  The recruit
at the rear of each group, step out of line.
”  When no one moved, Battlemaster
Nebil added, “
Group leaders, get them moving.
”

Joe
whirled and dragged Maggie out of the line, gritting his teeth when she smacked
her little fists into his bicep and kicked him repeatedly in the shin.  Once he
got her away from the group, he left her there and went back to his own spot. 
Maggie, alone, stopped pouting and began to cry.

Others
were bawling, having been hit by their leaders to get them to follow
instructions.  Joe overheard one leader threatening the youngest kid, telling
him he’d get another beating if he didn’t bring back a ball for their group.

“
Before
we start, there is one sphere for every group.  Still, I want you to run.  A
lazy Congie is a dead Congie.  Now, each group member that stepped out of line,
go claim a ball.
”

“Go,
Maggie!” Joe ordered.

Maggie
folded her arms over her chest and ignored him.

“Maggie,
go get a ball!” Scott cried.  “You have to run!”

Sniffing,
Maggie shuffled to the wall and picked up a hard blue ball in two stubby
fists.  She brought it back at a walk, but Battlemaster Nebil did not seem to
notice.

“
Now each child with a ball
will choose four other group members,”
Battlemaster Nebil growled.
  “The
five of you will be the only ones to eat today.
”

Inwardly,
Joe groaned.  He already knew who was going to starve.

“Scott, Libby, Elf, Monk.”  There
was no hesitation in Maggie’s voice—she hadn’t even had to think about it.

Every single group leader
received the same treatment.

Nebil grunted.  “
I’ve noted
their choices.  Those who weren’t chosen will be punished if they take food
from their own group members.
”

The
twelve-year-old piranha-faced girl who had asked about hitting their
groundmates raised her hand again.  “Does that mean we can take it from other
groups?”

“
You can unless they can stop you.
”  Battlemaster Nebil’s
slitted eyes fell on Joe, then moved on.  “
The other battlemasters and I are
now going to give the ground leaders their recruit ranks.  Hold still when your
turn comes—it won’t hurt.
”

Ooreiki
began circulating through the hundreds of recruits, making every ground leader
remove his or her shirt so they could touch a small black device to their
chests.  Those that still had their hair were overlooked, and could only watch
in confusion as the Ooreiki approached those around them. 

When it
was Joe’s turn, he flinched when the device touched his skin in approximately
the same place the Ooreiki doctor had shot him in the chest.  Nebil hadn’t been
lying when he said it wouldn’t hurt, however.  A moment later, the Ooreiki
removed the device and allowed Joe to put his shirt back on.  When he did, the
cottony material shifted over the left side of his chest, thickening and
hardening before his eyes.  In seconds, the cloth had shifted into a hard
whitish metal bar.  It stood out on his shirt parallel to the floor, gleaming
in the bright light. 

Joe
stared at it, mouth falling open.  Everything he’d learned in school told him
that it wasn’t possible.  Hesitantly, he touched the symbol.  It was cold, hard
metal.  He touched the cloth.  Stiff, pliable
cloth
.  He looked at the
symbol again and had the sudden realization that the single bar reminded him of
a cattle brand stamped into the shaved skin of a fresh steer.

They’re
claiming me.

Joe
wanted to tear his shirt off and throw it on the ground and stomp on it, but he
knew they’d only make him put it back on.  He forced himself to look away, but
could feel it burning against his skin like the enemy stamp it was.

“Group leaders, take your groundteams into the
cafeteria to eat.”

Remembering Maggie’s choice to
let him starve, Joe sighed and said, “Come on, guys.”  He led them at a
defeated walk back to the food line.  The alien passing out the ladles of green
goop looked up, but before Joe could indicate he should serve the other five,
Maggie shoved Joe aside with her tiny body and stuck her bowl out for the alien
to fill.  “Don’t give any
nuajan
to Joe,” she said.  “He doesn’t get to
eat today.”

Grimacing, Joe went to the same
table they ate at earlier and sat at one end.  Maggie and the rest picked
another table, pointedly ignoring him.  Joe closed his eyes and put his head in
his hands, trying to ignore the ache in his gut.  He’d gotten pretty good at it
since his capture, only having eaten once in…how many days had it been?  He
thought about home and what high school would have been like.  Had Sam gone
back to school yet?  Would they even
have
school, now that there
was nobody left?

Maggie’s shrill scream broke him
out of his thoughts, quickly followed by Elf’s and Monk’s.  Joe’s head snapped
up.

Two big twelve-year-olds who wore
their naked silver bars like badges of honor were arguing over three bowls of
food they had taken from Joe’s group.  Joe grinned to himself and would have
gone back to his thoughts when he saw that Libby, her fingers curled into
fists, was getting out of her seat.

Against two twelve-year-olds
twice her size, she would only succeed in getting brained.  Sighing, Joe stood
up and went to stop Libby from getting herself squished.  Just as the
eight-year-old was launching herself at the bullies, he grabbed her by the
shoulder and pulled her back while the two big kids, oblivious, split the third
bowl in half and threw the empty container on the ground as they walked away. 
Monk claimed it and started licking the sides.

“They’re eating our food!” Libby
cried, struggling desperately to get out of Joe’s grip.

“I know,” Joe said.  “Let me take
care of them, ok?”

Libby glared and tried to yank
herself free as she watched the bigger boys depart with an anger that surprised
him coming from a kid so young.  “I don’t need your help.  I know taekwondo.”

Joe grimaced, immediately
envisioning the slap-happy play-fighting that was taught to anybody under
twelve.  “Just let me handle this, okay?” 

Reluctantly, Libby looked up at
him, but she stopped struggling to get free.  “I do,” she insisted.  She looked
him up and down.  And, with complete, innocent contempt, she said, “I could
kick
your
ass if I wanted to.”

Joe inwardly rolled his eyes. 
Sure,
sweetie. 
“Yeah, okay,” Joe said.  “But you’re our secret weapon, okay? 
Which means you’ve gotta stay secret.  Let me deal with this.”

He thought he saw something move
in her pretty brown eyes, and in the next moment, Libby just gave a tight nod.

Once Joe was sure she wasn’t
going to try and follow, he took a deep breath and followed the two big kids
back to their table.  He saw with disgust that one of them now had two and a
half bowls of food in front of him.  He and the other boy were eating and
laughing, joking with the others about the group of babies.

Joe casually yanked one kid off
of his bench, sending him sprawling.  The other got up in a hurry and looked
up—and
up
—and his eyes widened when he saw Joe looming over him.  He
backed up hurriedly, babbling apologies.  Joe snatched up three bowls of food.

“There’s always someone bigger,”
Joe said.

“We thought they were alone…” the
kid babbled.  Like he was apologizing for messing with Joe’s kids, not
apologizing for messing with kids that were weaker than them.  The boy
swallowed hard, obviously thinking Joe was gonna beat the crap out of him on
principle.

Joe snorted and brushed past the
boy who was just starting to get up, knocking him back to the floor. 
Meanwhile, all conversation in the room had stopped.  He could feel all eyes in
the cafeteria on him…
again
.  Like he was a damn shark on the prowl in a
pool of goldfish.

Which, really, is what he was. 
He had eight inches and eighty pounds on the next biggest kid in the room. 
Hunching his shoulders against their stares, Joe strode back to where his
groundteam was sitting in a frightened cluster, watching him with eyes that
were as big around as the rest of the kids in the cafeteria’s.

“Here,” Joe said, dropping the
three bowls in front of his group.  He sat down at the end of their table, to
ward off any further attacks.

“Th-thanks J-Joe,” Maggie said.

“You’re welcome.”  Tiredly, he
leaned his head into his hand, wondering how much longer they’d keep them all
at lunch.  He was surprised when Maggie got off the bench and carried her bowl
of food over to him.

“You want some of mine, Joe?”

Joe gave the toddler a weak
smile.  “Sorry, Mag.  I can’t take any food from you.  It’s against the rules.”

“She’s
giving
it to you,”
Scott insisted, coming over with her.  “You can have some of mine, too.  Here. 
There’s a little left in the bottom.”  The ten-year-old proudly offered up what
remained of his meal.

Joe laughed, touched.  “I don’t
think that’ll fly.”

“We won’t tell anybody,” Libby
said, hurriedly scooping half of hers into Scott’s bowl.  “If you eat it real
fast they won’t know.”

Joe looked down at Scott’s bowl
as the others added their portions, leaving him with more than he would have
had if he had gotten his from the food line.  He swallowed and glanced at
Battlemaster Nebil, wondering if it was worth risking a beating to eat.

The Ooreiki was standing at one
end of the cafeteria, fingers tangled behind him, calmly watching the tables
with the acuity of a hawk.

Hunger eventually won out over
fear.  When Nebil’s head was turned, Joe gulped down their offerings.  When he
was done, he shoved the bowl back in front of Scott and waited, nervous.  He
spent the next ten minutes tense, waiting for some blow, some bellow from the
front of the room.  Apparently, the alien hadn’t seen.  Joe perked up when he
realized they had actually gotten away with it.

When everyone had finished
eating—or not—Battlemaster Nebil took them to another dark, amphitheater-style
classroom and made them sit down in the odd, scoop-shaped seats overlooking the
stage.  Commander Linin stood at the podium as they settled, looking bored.

“
This,
” Linin said,
pointing to a picture of a stocky, bobcat-shaped animal with glorious rainbow
scales dominating the screen behind him, “
Is a Dhasha.  They’re the
deadliest fighters in the universe and they delight in taking multi-fingered sooters
like you as slaves.
”  The Ooreiki eyed them, his eyes as sharp as the
five-pointed star set in a silver circle on his chest.  “
I am Small
Commander Linin.  This is your Species Recognition Class and
that
—
”
he jammed a boneless extremity at the screen, “
—is responsible for
ninety-eight percent of the soot we gotta go through as Congressional
soldiers.  Dhasha.  Males can withstand direct hits from laser and plasma
fire.  When we first found them on their sootwad planet, Dhasha warriors became
our greatest asset.  Congress sent them to colonize hundreds of planets,
boosting our strength a thousandfold in just a few short centuries.
”
 

The Ooreiki made a face and
turned to look back over the auditorium of students with depressing sobriety.  “
But
we made our own burning ashes.  We should have left them eating themselves,
digging holes in the dirt to survive.  Hell, we should’ve wiped out their whole
fire-loving solar system.  See, the Dhasha began to rebel, and every time they
do, Congress has gotta devote fifty percent of its fighting power to keeping
those fire-loving monsters from carving out a chunk of a galaxy.  As it is,
it’s been over a hundred turns since the last one, so the next Dhasha prince
will probably get cocky sometime within your lifetimes. When he does, and
Congress assigns you to fight him, you can all kiss your asses goodbye because
you’re not gonna survive it.”

The
Ooreiki changed the image and a wide swath of shredded meat appeared on the
screen.  Joe shifted uncomfortably, realizing that it was a field of dead
Ooreiki.