Forging Zero (20 page)

“Ready?”
he managed.

Libby
and Scott were likewise weighed down, Scott carrying two rifles himself, and
Elf and Monk looked even worse. 

“Let’s
hurry,” Joe said.  “Mag, lead the way.  Make it fast.”

Maggie,
her eyes wide, rushed out the door, clutching the piece of gear to her chest. 
She led them to the gymnasium, where they gratefully dumped their equipment on the
floor and lined up by group, waiting for Commander Kihgl.  Those battlemasters
who had gotten them from their rooms stood encircling the walls, gripping huge
rings set in the metal ribbing with their long, boneless fingers.

They
had been standing for almost thirty minutes when the continuous humming
suddenly shut off.  The silence felt ominous, and it was followed with a sudden
jolt that threw the children off of their feet.  Several kids screamed, and
even Joe wondered if the metal screeching was truly part of docking procedures,
or really some rogue asteroid tearing a hole in their hull. 

The
Ooreiki, however, did not seem to think anything was amiss.  They began
bellowing orders, hitting those kids who were not moving fast enough.  “Hurry
and grab your stuff,” Joe said, helping Elf shrug back into his pack.  “Looks
like we’re here.”

The
lines into the docking bay were endless. 
Like cattle going down a slaughter
chute,
Joe thought, looking over the untold thousands of bald, frightened
kids in recruit white.  Libby and Scott began to pant under their burdens,
sweat trickling down their strained faces.  The hall grew cramped and hot from
all the bodies packed together, and tempers flared.  Up ahead, two girls got
into a shoving match, stopping up the meager flow of traffic completely. 
Eventually the battlemasters broke them up and shoved them back into the stream
of kids to get the lines moving again.  Following the flow, Joe and his
groundmates filed out into an enormous, windowed room resembling an airport terminal. 
Beyond the windows above him, Joe saw space and moons and…

His gut
clenched when he realized he was standing on his head, the planet under him.

“It’s
purple,”
Libby whispered.

“And
it’s
big,”
Scott said.  “That’s bigger than Earth, right Joe?”

Joe had
no idea, and he said as much.

“But
they said we were weak because Earth’s got weak gravity,” Scott insisted.  “My
Science teacher told me that bigger planets have more gravity.”

“Oh man,”
Joe groaned, taking another look at the purple planet.  “Guys, we’re not gonna
be able to carry this stuff.”

“I can
carry it,” Maggie insisted.

“You’re
barely carrying anything as it is,” Scott said, peering through the domed
ceiling at their destination.  “Maaaaan…”

Even in
the terminal, the going was slow.  More kids spilled out of other doors on
either side of theirs and the terminal began to reek of sweat and fear.

Alert
Ooreiki battlemasters guided them towards the shuttles, cuffing children who
stepped into the wrong lines.  As time went on, Joe watched the shuttles fill
up and depart, dropping down into the purple swirls of atmosphere before
returning for more.  Then Battlemaster Nebil was harrying them onto a shuttle—a
constant, nerve-wracking barrage of,
“Keep moving!  Find a row and sit
down!  Stop gaping and
move,
you slack-jawed Takki nitwits!”

Once
they secured their gear, they sat down on the benches, hands in their lap as
Battlemaster Nebil marched up and down the aisles, still shouting.  When the
deck was full, Nebil slammed the hatch shut and stood by the door, glaring at
them.

“What
if I have to—” Maggie began.

“Shhhh,”
Joe said.  “And sit up straight.  Nebil’s watching.”

Maggie
set her jaw into a pout, crossed her arms, and slouched.

Sighing,
Joe glanced out the window.  Filling the glass was a bird’s-eye view of the
purple planet.  Orangish clouds swirled above the purple haze like whipped
cream atop hot chocolate in some brightly-colored circus drink.  Beneath that,
he could just make out a deep, blood-red landscape that remained static under
the roiling orange clouds.

Joe got
a sick feeling in his stomach as he looked down on the alien planet.  Was that
air even
breathable
?  What if Congress had transported them all this way
to die gasping on some freak purple planet?  They were, after all, the first
humans to make the journey.  What if Sam was right?  What if there was
something in the air?  It looked thick, almost like cloudy purple water.

The
shuttle left the dock with a jolt, knocking a few kids from their benches.  The
Ooreiki wandering the aisles found them quickly and shoved them back into their
seats, shouting in their guttural, clicking language.

Joe’s
eyes were fixed to the window as they descended through the orange clouds and
into the purple haze.  Far below, the red landscape began to break up into
black, perfectly circular city blocks, with six black roads radiating outwards
from each city like spokes from a wagon wheel, creating six triangles of wild
red growth around each city’s circle.

The
roads were perfectly straight, despite the enormous mountains and twisting
purple rivers.  The only development on the planet’s surface was kept strictly
inside the black city rings.  It was obvious to even an idiot that the whole
planet had been planned, and the mastery the Ooreiki had over their people to
create such perfect symmetry left Joe in awe.  On Earth, the woods would have
been pocked with foresters’ camps, or weekend vacationers, or squatters. 
Instinctively, Joe knew that
nobody
on Earth had that much control over
the people, to keep them all neatly contained like that.  It was more than a
little frightening. 

One
thing was for certain—if the Ooreiki were going for sheer psychological
intimidation, the perfect spoke-like cities certainly did the trick.

As they
descended, the scarlet foliage reached up to greet them.  The trees—if they
could be called trees, as massive as they were—spread their limbs thousands of
feet above the planet’s surface.  Their trunks were hundreds of feet in
diameter, packed together like sardines.  On the forest floor, mosses and
shrubs the size of redwoods created a secondary mat of foliage that blotted out
the light.  As they lowered onto one of the landing pads on the outskirts of a
city circle, Joe thought he saw one of the redwood-sized trees move, then snap
back. 

He had
just enough time to glimpse the enormous white guard towers posted every
quarter mile around the city, with turrets facing outwards, before Nebil threw
the door open and ordered them outside.  The gravity on the ship suddenly
increased, and Joe felt himself struggling to stay on his feet. 
Everything—even his
organs
—felt heavier.  Like someone had injected him
with lead.

“Leave
your gear,”
Nebil ordered. 
“Takki will bring
it to you later.”

Holding
onto the chairs and walls for support, Joe and the others shuffled to the door
of the shuttle.

Immediately
upon reaching the opening, Maggie wrinkled her nose and covered her mouth. 
“Ugh!”

“We’ll
be fine,” Joe said.  “Just keep going, Mag.  They wouldn’t take us somewhere we
couldn’t breathe.”

Still, at
the first whiff of the putrid, almost rotten smell to the air, Joe held his
breath and slapped his mouth against his sleeve.  Despite the cloth protecting
his face, when Joe breathed in, he gagged.  The stench dribbled down into his
chest and pooled there in disgusting rivulets.

And the
air…

He
began to feel lightheaded, the air thick in his lungs.  It was almost like he
was breathing water. 
Septic
water.

“I
can’t breathe,” Elf cried.  He grabbed at his throat and made a rush to get
back on the shuttle.  

“Stop!”
Joe called, grabbing at him.  Elf slipped past his grip and tried to shove his
way back onto the ship, but Nebil slammed a meaty limb into his chest, throwing
him back down the stairs. 

Elf
collapsed on the top of the ramp, mouth wide and gasping.  Joe could hear his
hyperventilating from the base of the steps, and could see his wide eyes as he
stared at the enormous trees surrounding them, and the purple sky beyond.

“Elf,
get down here!” Joe shouted.  “They’re about to take off!”

The
Ooreiki were hurling their gear out the door like they weighed no more than
lunch sacks.  Guns, blankets, packs—all fell into the same tangled mess.

“Elf!”

Elf
ignored him.  His breathing became worse, a rattling, gasping wheeze. 

He’s
hyperventilating.

Battlemaster
Nebil emptied the last pack overboard and shouted at Elf to get off the
stairs.  When Elf ignored him, he made a disgusted sound and descended, leaving
him there.  The ship’s engines began to hum.

Joe
took off at a jog up the stairs.  Immediately, he regretted it.  He was only
halfway up when he fell to his knees, his head swimming, his chest burning for
air.  The sudden jump in heart rate made his lungs reflexively drag huge
breaths of the putrid atmosphere into his chest, yet even so, he wasn’t getting
enough air.  He felt himself sucking in the foul stuff faster and faster, his
body panicking as it was denied the oxygen it needed.

Joe
forced himself to slow his breathing, pouring every ounce of willpower into
striking a balance between the dizziness and the sick burning in his chest.  He
felt himself sucking in the putrid air, felt it coagulating in his lungs. 
Above him on the stairway, Elf was turning as purple as the sky.

“Elf,”
Joe said, “Close your eyes and count to three between each breath.  You’ve
gotta slow down.”

“I
can’t
breathe,
”
Elf sobbed.  Snot was leaking from his nose,
tears streaming from his bulging eyes.  If anything, he breathed faster.

“Yes
you
can!”
Joe snapped.  He forced himself to stand.  “Stop breathing so
fast!  You’re gonna pass out.”

Too
late.  Elf’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and his body went limp.

Joe
struggled the rest of the way up the stairs and grabbed Elf’s arm.  As he did,
the shuttle began to rock and the engines started to hum, and it was all he
could do to drag Elf off the ramp before the vessel took back to the sky.

Gasping,
Joe managed to drag Elf a few yards before his knees gave out underneath him
and he collapsed to the ground.  It was some sort of crushed black stone, like
sparkling concrete, and it was all he could see through the band of red that
was his narrowing vision.

The
air is bad.

It was
all he could think. 
The air is bad.  They’ve dumped us on a planet where
the air is bad.  They couldn’t know how we’d handle it.  We’re the guinea pigs
and the air is bad.

Joe
felt his numb hands slide through glittering black stones.  Behind him, the
shuttle roared back into the sky.

Joe
could feel the thick sewage on his tongue, running down his throat, puddling in
his lungs.  And, despite the putridity of the air, he couldn’t breathe it fast
enough.  His eyes were open and he couldn’t see.  He was staring at the ground
between his numb hands, he knew, but he couldn’t see.  He couldn’t
breathe.

The
air is bad.

Joe
whimpered for his dad.  His lungs kept sucking the rotten stuff into his chest. 
He knew he was dying.

The
hand that touched his shoulder was neither an Ooreiki’s nor his dad’s.  It was
cold and scaly, with hard, blunted claws.  They dug into his skin, trying to
pull him to his feet, but Joe couldn’t move.  Joe got a single glimpse of huge,
pupil-less sapphire eyes as a violet lizard began hefting him over its
shoulder.

God,
that’s a Takki,
Joe thought, as his world
narrowed.  Immediately, he remembered the Takki tunnels that the Ooreiki kept
talking about, and his heart began to slam in panic, hastening his descent into
darkness.

CHAPTER
10: 
Kihgl’s Choice

Joe
woke in an inky room with a low ceiling, only about seven foot clearance.  The
walls were glittering black rock, the glassy waves and edges reminding him of
obsidian as they gleamed in the deep scarlet light of the glowing red globes
suspended in a straight line between rows of circular bunks to the open door.

Then
the feel of the putrid air in his chest returned to Joe in full force, choking
him.  Joe sat up and dry-retched onto the rippled black floor.  His lungs began
to struggle again, his breaths coming in quick, ragged gasps.

“Careful,”
Libby said, grabbing his hand.  “Breathe from this.”  She held a white cylinder
over Joe’s lips and Joe felt cool oxygen bathing his lungs.

Then,
too quickly, Libby pulled the cylinder back.

“More,”
Joe gasped.

“No,”
Libby said.  “Battlemaster Nebil said we only get one.  Some of the other
groups already used theirs up.  Just try to breathe slowly.  See?  The rest of
us can do it.”