Forging Zero (33 page)

Still, Battlemaster Nebil gave
him an odd look when Joe struggled with every slide and pin, finishing only
third from the last when he and Libby were always first.  The next day, he did
the same.  It was on the third day that Libby confronted him about it.

“Why are you pretending you don’t
know anything?” Libby asked. 

Joe had taken off his
sweat-stained shirt, and now had it stretched out on his knee as he polished
his rank.  The rest of his groundteam was dead asleep, as they had been for the
last two hours, ever since the rest of the platoon got to retire while Joe had
to run laps because someone in his squad had screwed up the drills.

Joe gave her a tired look.  “I
don’t know what you’re talking about, Lib.”

She narrowed her pretty brown
eyes at him.  “Yes you do.  You’re like me—you can see all the pieces in your
head before you even touch them.”

Joe went on polishing the silver
triangle embedded into the fabric of his shirt.  One thing Battlemaster Nebil
required of him was that it held a perfect shine at all times, even after he’d
been crawling through the diamond dust. 

“Joe!”  Libby poked his bare
shoulder.

“Go back to bed,” Joe muttered.

“What’s wrong with you, Joe?”
Libby insisted.  “Are you sick?”

“I’m not gonna be a Congie,” Joe
said.  “I’m going back home.”

Libby’s young brow furrowed
instantly.  “No you’re not.”

“Just because you wanna stay here
doesn’t mean the rest of us do.”  Joe flipped his jacket off his knee and held
it up to inspect the silver triangle. 

It should be a star,
a
rebellious part of him thought before he squashed it.

Irritated with himself, he folded
his jacket neatly in his locker-niche and began unlacing his boots.  “As soon
as I get the chance, I’m out of here.  I’ve figured out some of their writing,
Lib.  I got the barracks door to open for me on duty last night.  Won’t be long
before I can do it every time.”

Libby scowled at him.  “You can’t
leave, Joe.”

“I’m not fighting for some friggin’
aliens, Lib,” he growled back at her.

She stared at him long and hard. 
“Tril already hates you.  You keep making Nebil mad and you’re never gonna get
battlemaster.”

“
You
be the battlemaster,”
Joe said.  “Nebil’s never gonna give it to me.  He hates me.  You see how he
treats Sasha.  She screws up all the time and he doesn’t find someone else. 
Then one recruit messes up in my squad and what does he do?  He drills me for
hours because I was responsible for him.  Does he do that to anybody else? 
No.  Does he make Sasha drill when
her
recruits screw up?  No.  It’s
just me.  Why the hell does he do that to me?”

“Because you’re better than them,
Joe,” Libby retorted.  “You’re gonna make the best soldier they’ve ever seen
and Nebil knows it.”

Joe laughed and slammed his boots
into his niche, startling several sleeping recruits.  “I’m getting out of
here.  Nebil can go screw himself.”  Without another word, he went to crawl in
bed with the rest of his groundteam and go to sleep.

The next day, when Battlemaster
Nebil had them check out their new weapons from the armory and disassemble
them, Joe stalled.  When Nebil had them reassemble them, Joe read the writing
inscribed on the armory wall instead.  He was going to need the writing to find
a way off the planet.  He’d never need the rifle.

Then, suddenly Libby’s loud voice
clearly rang out, “Battlemaster Nebil, Zero has put the barrel on backwards
three times now and he’s been playing with the trigger mechanism for twenty
tics.”

In the moment it took Joe to
shoot Libby a scathing glance, Battlemaster Nebil was standing in front of his
table.  For the first time, the Ooreiki really inspected the parts arrayed
before Joe.  Apparently, he didn’t like what he saw.

“Get up, Zero.”

Joe
did.

“Why are you not taking my
class seriously?”

Joe bit
his lip, promising himself he would get back at Libby later.

“Assemble your otwa, Zero.”

Joe bent down and slowly started
to fumble with the pieces.

“If it takes you more than a tic, I will take that
little pocketknife you’ve been hiding from us in your gear and throw it into
the waste system.”

Joe glanced
up sharply.  Libby dropped her gaze and would not meet his eyes.

You
little shit,
Joe thought, utterly furious.

“Now,
Zero,”
Nebil warned.

Furious,
Joe assembled his weapon, the silence in the room shattered by the pops and
clicks as he slammed the parts together.  When he finished, he threw the weapon
on the table in front of him, glaring at Battlemaster Nebil.

Instantly,
Battlemaster Nebil had him by the throat in a stinging python grasp.

“The
otwa is what we used to fight the first Jreet invasion, before we formed
Congress.  It comes of an era where our ancestors gave up their ideals to
survive, and it will be treated with respect.”

Joe
held Nebil’s brown gummi-bear eyes unflinchingly. 
Why should I care about
your ideals?  It’s not my history.

The
Ooreiki released him suddenly and peered down at the weapon.  When he raised
his eyes to Joe, his face resembled Kihgl’s after Joe ran from him after the
Choosing Ceremony.
“Am I making things too easy for you, Zero?  Is that why
you are insulting me like this?”

Joe did
not respond.

Battlemaster
Nebil spun and disappeared inside the armory and returned toting a big gun Joe
had never seen before.  He slammed it down on the table in front of him. 
“Disassemble
that.  You have one tic.”

Joe
stared at it.  It was like nothing he had ever seen before.  “I don’t—”

“Do
it, Zero, or I’ll find worse things to do to you than take a little trinket
you’re not supposed to have anyway.”
  Battlemaster
Nebil’s voice was utterly cool, utterly furious.  Joe had never seen him lose
his temper like this.  Swallowing, he picked up the weapon and turned it in his
fingers.

It was
completely foreign, the difference as great as that between the Congie guns and
those he had watched his father clean a billion years ago on Earth. 

Yet, somehow,
Joe’s fingers seemed to know what to do.  They slid along the barrel, found the
catch, and twisted it free.  The cartridge came next, followed by the trigger
mechanism and then the slide.  It was more complex than the ceremonial weapon,
much more.  As each sleek blue part came off in his hands, Joe felt his
confidence growing, until he had the entire weapon splayed out on the table in
front of him.  It had to be over a hundred pieces, some no larger than the tip
of his thumbnail.  Joe put it back together even quicker than he had taken it
apart.  He set it down in front of Battlemaster Nebil as one sleek, seamless
piece. 

Nebil
stood before him in silence for so long that Joe began to shift uneasily.

“If
you ever feign ignorance again, Zero, you will not eat for a week.”

After
the weapons class, Libby tried to apologize, but Joe ignored her.  He managed
to keep his cool through Tril’s miniature hell, but when Linin lined them all
up for an inspection and began berating them for arriving sweaty when Tril had
not allowed them to wash off, Joe ended up in a shouting match with him.  Afterwards,
several battlemasters took Joe aside and took turns exercising him until he was
too exhausted to move.  They returned him to his room well into the night.

Libby
was the only one still awake when the battlemasters shoved Joe into the
barracks, doused in sweat and coughing up red phlegm.

“Sorry
Joe,” Libby whispered, trying to touch his arm as he passed.

Joe
ignored her and stalked over to his gear to see if the aliens had taken his
knife.  They had.  Furious, he went to the far corner of the room and lay down
on the floor, his blanket wrapped around him.  He was still wet—they hadn’t
allowed him a shower—and stank.  The acne that had been bothering him had been
rubbed raw and was stinging from all of the salt, but Joe couldn’t sum up the
energy to take a shower.

He was
beginning to fall asleep when a cold hand touched his arm.  Reluctantly, he
looked over his shoulder.

Libby
was squatting behind him, her face a picture of misery.  She held out a fist. 
“They looked for it but couldn’t find it.”  She dropped his knife into his
palm.  “I tried to get it all off, but it might still have a little spit on
it—I had to hide it in my mouth.”

Seeing
his father’s knife again, Joe felt his anger fade in a wash of total gratitude. 
“Thanks.”

“I’m
sorry, Joe,” she said softly.  “I should’ve left you alone.”

“It’s
okay,” Joe said.  “No use worrying about it now.”

“It’s
not
okay,” she whimpered, drawing her knees up to her chin.  He could see tears
glistening at the edges of her eyes.

Joe sat
up and touched her shoulder.  “It’s okay.  Really.  All they did was run me
around a bit.”

She
shook her head, biting her lip.

“Come
here,” Joe said.  He dragged her into a hug.  Her skinny body shook as he held
her, but her tears were silent.  When she was through, he held her at arm’s
length and looked her in the eye.  “I’m not mad at you, okay?  You were right. 
I shouldn’t be blowing off my training.  If we’re—”  Joe took a deep breath and
let it out between his teeth.  Starting over reluctantly, he said, “If we’re
gonna be here awhile, I should be paying attention.  I don’t take it seriously,
I might miss something that will save my life later on.”

The
relief in her eyes as she looked up at him was immense.  “How’d you take that
gun apart, Joe?  It wasn’t in any of the pictures they showed us.”

“I
don’t know,” Joe said.  “It was like you said.  I just saw it in my head.”

“There
were too many parts.  I couldn’t have done that, Joe.”

Joe
ruffled her hair.  “You’re just eight, Libby.  You might be growing like a
beansprout, but you’re still just a kid.”

She
straightened, her face serious.  “I’ll get better, Joe.  I’ll get so good they
have to keep me here forever.  I’m not going back.”

Joe was
taken aback by her vehemence.  He wondered what her life had been like to make
her this adamant about staying.  He wished he knew if it were as bad as she
claimed, or if it were simply an eight-year-old who didn’t understand the
pressures her parents were under.  Not knowing quite what to say, he ventured, “Lib,
it’s not your mom and dad’s fault the aliens took you…”  When she didn’t
respond, he added, “They couldn’t have stopped the aliens from taking you, Lib. 
None of our parents could.  You shouldn’t blame them for that.”

“They never wanted me anyway,”
Libby said, obviously convinced of the fact.  “I was the first one on the
ship.  My mom dropped me off early so she could go to a photo shoot.  Why else
do you think they called me recruit One?”

Joe frowned.  “She did?  You’re
serious?”  He hadn’t even bothered to learn Libby’s number.  When he looked at
her armband, though, tiny numerals under the bold alien squiggle marked her as
One.  He lifted his eyes back to her sad face.  “Lib, I didn’t know—”

“It’s okay, Joe,” Libby
interrupted.  “I didn’t like them anyway.”  She stood up.  “I’ll get better. 
Watch me.  I’ll get better than you, Joe.  Then I’ll never have to go back.” 
Then she went back over to the bed and settled her head on Scott’s arm, tugging
a corner of a blanket over herself and closing her eyes. 

Joe watched her, feeling a stab of
pity.  What had her home been like?  His had been good, until the end.  He
flinched, remembering his mother’s last words to him before the aliens caught
him. 

Go to Hell, Joe.

Minutes went by, Joe lost in
thought.  He started when he realized Scott was watching him over Libby’s head.

“You gonna sit there all night,
Joe?” Scott asked softly, so as not to wake the others. 

“Thinking about it.”

Gently, Scott levered Libby’s head
off of his arm and stood up.  He came over to where Joe was sitting and
squatted beside him.  “She was really upset when they came looking for the
knife.”

Joe sighed.  “Yeah, I know.”

“You gonna forgive her?”

“I guess I have to, don’t I?”

Scott glanced at the knife in
Joe’s hand, then shrugged.  “You can do what you want.  You’re Zero.”

Joe snorted.

Scott slumped against the wall
beside him, sighing.

“You’re not gonna sleep?”

“With you sitting there watching
me?”

“I wasn’t watching you.  I was thinking.”

“About what?”

“About home.”

Scott absorbed that in silence. 
The minutes stretched out between them before he said, “Do you miss it?”

“Yeah.”  Joe felt his throat
tighten, his eyes sting.

“Me, too,” Scott said softly. 
This time, it was
he
who seemed to zone out, staring at the far wall in
thought.