Forging Zero (34 page)

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“Oh yeah?  Well I bet I could hit
that beer can over there.”

Scott eyed the distance, then
shrugged.  Billy hefted the rock in his hand, then tossed it.  It sailed past
the can and landed in the dirt beyond.

“Want me to try?” Scott said.

Billy was still frowning after his
last throw.  He picked up another rock and tried again.  It flew even further
off course.  He threw two more, neither of them even coming close.

“Want me to try?” Scott asked
again.

Billy threw a pebble down in
frustration.  “We both know you can hit it.”

“What about with my eyes closed?”

A sly look crossed his friend’s
face.  “Eyes closed and I get to spin you around.”

Scott felt a smile itch his lips. 
“But that’s gonna be a lot harder than just throwing with my eyes closed.  I
should get your juice if I make it.”

Billy eyed his juice box.  “I
don’t know…”

“I’ll give you the rest of my gum
if I lose,” Scott offered.

“Deal!” Billy cried.  No one could
resist an almost-whole pack of Big Red gum. 

Scott tried to contain his grin as
he picked up a stone.  “Okay.  I’m closing my eyes.  Spin me.”

“Bull!” his friend cried.  “We
need a blindfold.”  He glanced around and, finding nothing but dust, trash, and
broken glass in the abandoned lot, he peeled off his shirt.  “Here.  Put this
on.”

Scott wrinkled his nose.  “It’s
all sweaty.”

“Well it’s
hot
out.  Now
put it on.  I’m not letting you cheat.”

Scott sighed and took the shirt
his friend offered.  He tried not to inhale as Billy tied it around his
forehead and checked to make sure it was secure.  “Okay,” his friend said. 
“Here we go.”  He spun Scott around several times, stopping him in the opposite
direction of the can.  “There you go.  Throw.  You’re facing the can.”

Scott laughed and turned to face
the can.  He threw.  Through the blindfold, he heard the tinny clatter as the
pebble knocked the can over.

“How do you
do
that?!”
Billy cried.

Scott left his blindfold on and
turned.  “Dunno.”  He grabbed Billy’s juice box and unerringly poked the straw
through the top, still blindfolded.  He took a sip.  Grape.  Scott wrinkled his
nose, but took another drink anyway.

“You don’t even like grape,” Billy
muttered.

“I do now,” Scott said.  He was
sipping through his straw, still showing off, when he felt something move
overhead.  He dropped the juice box and whipped the blindfold off.

“What?” Billy asked, following his
stare.  Nothing but perfect, blue sky.

Scott felt another presence follow
the first.  Just as he could point in a straight line to any place he’d ever
been, from his grandma’s home in Idaho to the gaming store downtown, he knew
something was up there, moving above them.

Seeing nothing there, Scott felt
waves of goosebumps electrify his arms and legs.  “We need to get back home,”
he said, staring at the sky.

Billy frowned at him, then at the
clouds.  “You going crazy or what?”

“Something’s happening,” Scott
said.  He felt another presence slide overhead.

Billy crossed his arms
stubbornly.  “So now you got ESP too or what?”

“Come on, Billy,” Scott said,
grabbing him by the arm.  The one above them had stopped, directly above the
playground.  “We need to go
now.
”

“What about my juice?”

“Take it,” Scott said, backing
away.  Whatever it was was sinking, getting closer.  “I don’t like grape anyway.” 
Feeling the impending presence descending from above, Scott turned and bolted.

Billy,
who knew Scott would never willingly give up the spoils of one of his bets,
left the juice where it was.

CHAPTER
16: 
Storytime

Battlemaster
Nebil jolted them out of bed the next morning by upending their lockers over
the floor. 

“Get
your gear!” he was screaming.  “Get your fire-loving gear on
now!
 
Faster, faster!  Do it
faster!”
  The Ooreiki battlemaster’s translator
was turned off, as it was most of the time now.

Joe’s
groundteam stumbled over each other as they tried to pull their clothes from
the jumble.  They weren’t doing it fast enough, however, and Battlemaster Nebil
started kicking their gear around the room in a fury.

“You
Takki sootbags would be dead by now!  When you’re fighting Dhasha, you have
only three seconds after the first man screams before you’re all dead!  Hurry! 
No!  The vest goes on the other way!  Useless Human Takki!  You’re dead!  All
dead!”

All the
while, the Ooreiki battlemaster was kicking clothes and boots around the room,
upending lockers and throwing gear in all directions.

Joe
managed to find a shirt big enough for him and put it on—it was tight around
the chest, but as long as he didn’t breathe too deeply, it would work.  He found
pants that pinched at the waist and, finding no better alternatives, forced his
legs into them.  He got a mismatched pair of boots, put them on, and struggled
to find a vest that would fit.  He finally had to coerce one of the smaller
kids in another groundteam to give up a vest that was obviously much too big,
getting into a fight with the kid’s ground leader when he saw what was
happening.

The battlemaster
zeroed in on the disturbance like a hawk.  “Zero, you Takki sootbag!”  He let
loose a string of Ooreiki curses, grabbed Joe by the neck of his shirt, and
dragged him to the front of the barracks.  “What were you doing, Zero?” he
demanded, once Joe was out where everybody could see. 
“Stand at attention
,
you miserable furgling!
”

Joe
straightened, acutely aware that everyone was staring at him.

“Tell
them your name and what you were doing!” Nebil shouted into his face, sudah
fluttering on his neck in fury.

“I’m
Joe and I…”

Battlemaster
Nebil cuffed him.  “You’re a recruit!  You have no name!  Only a number! 
Remember that!  What is your number, recruit?!”

“Zero,”
Joe said. 
But my name is Joe.

“Tell
them what you were doing, Zero.”

“I
don’t understand…” Joe began.

“Shut
up, sooter!” Nebil snapped.  “I don’t want to hear your furgling voice unless I
tell you to burning use it!”

“But
you just told me to—”

“Did I
tell you to tell us what you
understand? 
No, I told you to tell them
what you were
doing.
  Do you know what you were doing?  You were
stealing from a fellow grounder.  Stealing
gear
from another grounder. 
Do you know what the penalty is for stealing gear, Zero?”

“It was
just a—”

Battlemaster
Nebil cuffed him again.  “Just a what, Zero?  Just a vest?  Just a piece of
clothing?  Just something that provides camouflage, just something to carry
your gear, just something that keeps you warm when you’re cold and hungry? 
Tell me, Zero, just what is it?”

“A
vest,” Joe muttered.

“It’s
your
life,
you miserable Takki.  Every piece of gear you have can be
used to save your life.”  Battlemaster Nebil leaned in close, until his huge
gummi eyes were almost touching Joe’s chin.  “So why is your life worth more
than the recruit you stole that vest from, Zero?  Because you’re a Squad
Leader?  That can change in a heartbeat, you Takki sootbag.”

“I
know,” Joe said.  “Our clothes got mixed up because you—”

“You
took it from him and he didn’t want to give it to you.  You used brute force. 
You
stole
that vest, Zero.”

Joe
pressed his lips together, scowling down at the battlemaster.  He was a foot
taller than the Ooreiki, but the alien was a mass of muscle that could easily
break every bone in his body.  He waited.

“You
shame me.  You do not steal from other Congies.  A squad leader gives
everything he has to keep his grounders alive.  He
never
takes from his
own troops. 
Never.
”  Nebil broke into another string of Congie curses. 
Then, “Chins will deal with you later.  Say the Groundteam Prayer.”

Joe
did, to the best of his ability.

“No
good!  Again!”

Joe
did.

“Do it
again!  That sounded like Takki ashes!  You are wrong!”

“I
don’t know what I’m—” Joe began. 

Nebil
hit him.  “You do what I tell you!  Say the Prayer.  Again!”

Joe
tried.  Nebil told him he was wrong.  He tried again.  And got it wrong. 
Again.  And again.  Finally, the battlemaster recited it for him and made him
repeat it six more times before he was satisfied.

Then
Nebil shoved him out the door, vestless, rifleless, to march at the head of the
platoon.  He only tired of humiliating Joe when one kid started snickering at
him as they went through rifle drills, Joe holding empty air.  Nebil tore the
rifle out of the snickering kid’s hands and threw it to Joe, then proceeded to
hound the snickering kid, shouting in Congie they didn’t understand.  The kid
ended up wetting himself and running off to change through a hail of Congie
curses.  Then Nebil moved on to another unfortunate soul.  Everyone got a taste
of his wrath.

Their
two food breaks were treasured moments, a full half-hour of peace where all
they had to do was eat in silence.  Then Battlemaster Nebil herded them back
out to practice marching.  They marched with gear, without gear, with rifles,
without rifles, and one unfortunate boy got to march without boots when he
complained that they were too heavy for him. 

Not
even the youngest kids were spared Nebil’s attention.  Maggie tripped and Nebil
stood her up and shouted in her face until she was bawling.  Maggie looked to
Joe, who continued to stare straight ahead, knowing that Nebil was waiting for
him to show a lack of discipline so he could punish his whole groundteam. 
Though it hurt to ignore her, Joe knew she needed to understand he couldn’t
always come to her rescue when she was in trouble. 

In the
end, Maggie stopped crying and started shouting back.

Nebil
cuffed her, shoved her rifle back into her hands, and stalked away.  Maggie
scowled after him so long that Joe thought she would drop her rifle again.  But
she got back into formation and didn’t look at Joe the rest of the day. 

Later,
Joe wished he could talk to Maggie, make it up to her, but between Sasha using
his every spare minute to make him do pushups in front of everyone and the
complete monopoly Battlemaster Nebil had on their time during waking hours, Joe
didn’t find the opportunity until that night, when Nebil left them sitting on
the floor of the barracks cleaning their rifles before bed.

“What
happened to Elf?” Monk asked once they were alone.  It was the first time any
of them had mentioned Elf’s disappearance since Knaaren had taken him. 
“Where’d those lizards take him?”

No one
wanted to answer her.

“Knaaren
ate him,” Libby finally said.

Monk’s
fingers whitened on her rifle.  “He did not.  Don’t lie.”

“I’m
not lying,” Libby said, continuing to clean her rifle without looking up.

“You’re
stupid.  He
didn’t
eat Elf,” Monk said.  “They can’t because he’s a
soldier
now.”  Like it was the Holy Grail or something.   “Right, Joe?”

Before
Joe could respond, Maggie said, “Joe doesn’t know everything, you burning
ashsoul.”  The last two words were perfect Congie, proof that Nebil had been
teaching her something.

“Maggie!”
Joe cried, glancing at the door.  “Stop cussing!”  The Ooreiki, he knew,
considered ‘ashsoul’ to be an extreme insult, one of the worst verbal
invectives someone could say to another.

“I
don’t have to,” Maggie said.  “The Ooreiki cuss all the time.  I’ve got a gun. 
I’m a Congie now.  Congies can cuss when they want to.”

“Not in
my groundteam.”

“So
make me stop, asher.”  Again, perfect Congie.

Libby,
who was seated beside Maggie, swatted her in the back of the head.

Without
warning, Maggie threw her rifle down and lunged at Libby, taking the bigger
girl down with her tiny fingers gouging her eyes.  Joe and Scott had to drag
them apart to break them up.

“Let go
of me!” Maggie cried, struggling in Joe’s grip.  “Let go!  Let go, let go, let
go, let
go
!”

“Mag,
calm down!  Calm—”  Maggie kicked his thigh in a move that bumped his nuts just
hard enough to hurt and ran from the barracks as he recovered, jumping over
startled recruits still cleaning their weapons. 

Worried
Nebil might catch her in his rounds before lockup, Joe got up and ran after
her.  He caught her on the long, switchback stair to the ground.