Forging Zero (52 page)

Makes…
sense
?
  Joe frowned at Lagrah, wondering if the Prime was
giving him some sort of compliment, but Lagrah never clarified.

“We
still haven’t found the flag,” Lagrah said.  “And our Takki combed every inch
of the area you were in.  Any ideas?”

Joe
remembered the diamond dust in the crawlspaces and said, “Uh…probably got
buried?”

“No.” 
Lagrah gave him another odd look.  “You didn’t hide it?”

Joe
frowned.  “
Hide
it?  Are you cra—”  He caught himself quickly.  “No,
sir.”

Lagrah
gave him a snort of laughter and said nothing else until they entered the
manicured outer ring of Alishai.  “You’re supposed to be injured,” Lagrah
reminded him, as they neared the hospital.  “To get in the front doors without
suspicion.”

Taking
a hint, Joe slumped against the side of the haauk
,
favoring one leg.

Lagrah
brought them to a hover a hundred feet above the medical center, then left it
there.  “We’re here,” Lagrah said.  Joe glanced over the edge.  In the walkway
underneath, several medics were standing around, chatting, looking like
tentacled brown mice.  When Joe glanced back up, he froze at the look on his
Prime’s face.

The
Ooreiki’s eyes were cold and hard, reminding him of frozen clay.  “You can’t
fake injuries where you’re going.” 

Joe
paled.  “Oh, uh…”  He grimaced.  “What are you gonna break?”  He knew
all-too-well how much it hurt to break bones, and he was not looking forward to
the experience.

“Probably
most of them,” Lagrah said.

…
most
? 
As Joe’s startled mind was stumbling through that, Lagrah took him by the front
of his jacket and hefted him off his feet.  Into his face, Lagrah said, “This
is for robbing us of an extra battalion, you crafty Jreet prick.”  At that, the
Ooreiki hurled Joe over the railing, at the awaiting medics below.

#

Several
days later, Joe walked out of the hospital feeling numb.  His broken bones had
healed, but his mind was still ragged where they had ripped it apart.  He no
longer feared tunnels, but Joe wondered if he would ever be able to sleep
again.  ‘Regulated overexposure’ had turned out to be just that.  Locking him
in a coffin for hours on end while an Ooreiki shrink monitored his brainwaves in
a separate room and talked about his feelings over the intercom.  His throat
was still raw from screaming.

He
found his groundteam eating at a table in the chow hall with the rest of Fourth
Platoon.  As he approached, he saw that Maggie was no longer the only one with
her sleeves rolled—Libby was the only one of his groundteam that wasn’t.  Even
some of the other recruits in the Fourth had bared their arms, including a few
squad leaders.  Joe was stunned.  He had thought that, with him being gone for
almost a week, Maggie would have lost interest. 

He got
his food and sat down beside Maggie, who wasn’t lifting her gaze from her scum
soup.  “Tired, Mag?” Joe asked her.

Maggie jerked
and looked up at him with a gleeful expression.  “Joe!” she squealed.  She jumped
up and hugged him, wrapping her not-so-little arms around his neck and touching
his chest with what he was pretty sure were breasts. 

“What
happened while I was gone?” Joe asked in an attempt to get her to release her
hold.

Maggie
dropped back into her seat and began to pick at her scum soup again.

When no
one offered anything else, Scott sighed and said, “They didn’t count it.”

“Commander
Tril made it sound like we were running away the whole time,” Maggie sniffled. 
“But we weren’t.  We
had
the flag.  Libby just lost it.”

“It’s
not fair,” Monk agreed.  “They’re acting like we never even
had
it.”

“Nobody
would believe us,” Maggie continued.  “Even First Company hates us.  They blame
us for losing the flag.”

Joe did
not know what to say.  He cleared his throat and nodded at Maggie’s sleeves. 
“So Nebil stopped making you run?”

Maggie
frowned down at her sleeves, still tightly rolled from the night he’d done it
for her.  “No, he makes us run.”

“Us?”
Joe’s brow went up and he glanced at the others at the table with their sleeves
up.  “He’s making
all
of you run?”

“Eighteen
laps a night,” Scott said with a mock sigh.  Despite his sarcasm, his sleeves
were rolled as tight as the ones Joe had done for Maggie.  He must have helped
Monk, too, because hers looked just as good.

Joe’s
eyes caught Libby’s questioningly.  He didn’t want to
ask
her why she
was the only one who hadn’t put her sleeves up, but he was curious.  She
sniffed and looked away, picking at something under her thumbnail with her
military knife.

“Sasha
keeps saying you were scared, Joe,” Maggie said.  “She’s telling everybody
that’s why you were gone for a week.  She’s—”

“Shut
up, Maggie,” Libby said.  “We all know he was scared sooty.”

“He
wasn’t scared!” Maggie shouted.  “He was just…”  She hesitated, seeking the
right word.  “He was just tired.  He’ll be better next time.”

“Stop
defending him!” Libby said, slamming her empty bowl on the table and standing. 
“Joe doesn’t know everything.  He
was
scared back there, so scared he
was shaking, and that’s why he was at the hospital.  They were unscrewing his
head so he doesn’t get the rest of us killed in a real fight.”  She looked up. 
“Isn’t that right, Joe?”

Joe hung
his head staring at his soup.

“They
fix it or not?” Libby demanded.

“They
fixed it,” Joe whispered.

“They
better’ve fixed it.  If you ever do something like that again, I don’t want you
as my battlemaster.  You weren’t thinking back there.  You weren’t even
trying
for the flag.  It’s like you were all doped up just like my—”  Libby caught
herself suddenly.  Then, without explanation, she took her bowl and left the
table.

“Don’t
know why
she’s
mad,” Monk said.  “
She’s
the one who lost the
flag.”

“Yeah,”
Maggie said, “Don’t listen to her, Joe.  We still want you for our battlemaster,
even if you
were
scared.  I’m scared of gummi bears.  I got one stuck in
my ear and had to go to the hospital.  They had to pry around in there and it
hurt,
so I don’t eat gummi bears anymore.”

“Gee,”
Scott said, “You ever think maybe you shouldn’t shove them in your ear?”

“I
could sure go for some gummi bears,” Monk said.

Joe
suddenly remembered the delicate candy solar system that Yuil had given him. 
He had hidden it under his gear with the akarit and hadn’t thought about it in
days.  He decided to share it with them that night.

Joe
opened his mouth to tell them about it, then frowned.  “What is that?”  He
pointed to the new patch on Maggie’s shoulder, on the opposite side from her
names, just above the edges of her rolled sleeves.  They all carried them.  The
Congie symbol was bright blue on black, a blockish squiggle that almost looked
like a D with a dot following it.  Joe knew it meant the numeral 6.  He’d woken
up from his last screamfest wearing one as well.

“It
stands for Sixth Battalion,” Scott said.  “I think it’s a promotion.  Commander
Tril said if we continue to be good, we get to wear the symbol of Congress,
too.”

“I
didn’t see any other recruits wearing them on my walk over here,” Joe said.

“It’s
just Sixth and Second Battalions that get them,” Carl said.  “Nobody else has
come close to getting the flag.”

Joe
stared at them, surprised.

“Secondary
Commander Tril’s making us go on a hunt against Second Battalion again,” Monk
said, lowering her eyes.  “Battlemaster Nebil says they’re so much better than
us we don’t even deserve to be in the same regiment.”

“They’re
beginners, just like us,” Joe said.

“But
have you seen them
march?”
Carl asked.  “They look like machines.”

“We
look like machines, too,” Joe said, but he knew he was fooling himself.  Second
looked better than any other battalion in the regiment.  If they graduated them
all right now and made Second fight Sixth, Sixth would scatter like rabbits
just from the sound of Second’s boots on the march over.

Sherri,
another ground leader from Fourth Platoon, looked worried.  “The battlemaster
says it should be Fifth or Third Battalion going up against Second, not us.  He
says we couldn’t even find our own asses if we knew how to use our PPU’s.”

“He
always says that,” Joe said dismissively.

“What
scares me,” Scott said, “Is that Tril makes it sound like we’re way ahead of
everybody else because we had the flag.  But we’re not.  We really suck.  It
was an accident, you know?  What happens next time the Dhasha sees how bad we
are?”

“We
aren’t that bad,” Joe said.  The silent faces at the table, however, told him
they thought otherwise.  He scooped up a handful of goop and began eating in
silence. 

“We’re
really glad you’re here,” Maggie said.  “We need you.  The last hunt we went
on, Second Battalion really beat us up.”

Joe
knew the first time was a fluke and they were gonna get stomped, no matter who
was on their side.  He opened his mouth to say it, but Nebil’s shout
interrupted him from the front of the chow hall.

“Zero!”
Battlemaster Nebil called.  “Collect the platoon and bring them to the obstacle
course!  No rifles or gear, just what you’re wearing.  You have five tics!”

When
they got to the course, another platoon was already there, waiting for them on
one edge of a circular pit of fine black sand marked off with huge black chunks
of rock.  A female recruit stood sharply at their head, and none of them even
blinked as Joe led his platoon up to stand on the other side of the pit.  They
looked
good. 
Too good to be from Sixth Battalion. 

A
little knot of dread settled into Joe’s stomach as he brought his platoon to a
halt beside Battlemaster Nebil.

“All
right, you Takki bastards,” Battlemaster Nebil shouted, “Sixth got paired with
Second, so you are looking at your training cohort.  I’m Battlemaster Nebil and
that’s Battlemaster Gokli.  Fourth Platoon, meet Fourth Platoon.”

“We
will be working together from now on,” Battlemaster Gokli continued.  “You will
still conduct hunts with other Battalions, but for martial arts and platoon
drills, these are the recruits who will be challenging you for the rest of training.”

Joe
heard someone in the other platoon snicker and their battlemaster rounded on
them with a vengeance.  The kid who had laughed got laid out with one heavy
blow.  “You think it’s funny, recruit?!  Get up!  Nebil, pick your best
recruit.”

Joe stiffened
in anticipation, but when Nebil turned to his platoon, it was Libby he ordered
out of line.

The boy
laughed again when Libby stepped into the pit with him and Joe’s chest clenched
with worry.  Libby’s opponent was a big kid, probably an inch or two taller
than her and outweighing her by thirty pounds.

“Battlemaster
Nebil,” Joe said, “I can—”

“Shut
up, Zero,” Nebil said, even as Libby glanced back to give him an acid scowl. 
Unhappily, Joe went back into the ‘retain’ position.  He wasn’t sure, but he
thought several other recruits in the other platoon perked up at his name, and
he itched under their stares.

“Put
these on,” Battlemaster Gokli said, throwing padded gloves into the ring. 
Libby and her opponent did as they were told, cinching them tight before
settling back to eying each other.

“This,”
Battlemaster Nebil said, “is your first day of confined combat instruction.  As
you may have found during your experiences in the tunnels, sometimes you find
yourselves in situations where your own hands do you more good than your
rifles.  As much as we work your bodies in runs and drills, they will still be
weak in one-on-one combat unless you have a chance to practice.  Congressional
soldiers are never completely without weapons, so this is our chance to show
you how your short-range armaments work.  Recruits, hold up your hands.”

Libby
and her opponent obeyed, lifting their gloved fists into the air.

“These
gloves have been equipped with systems that mimic the effect of a recruit’s
biosuit on non-suited opponents in hand-to-hand combat,” Gokli said.  “But
before we give you ashy furgs your biosuits, you’re gonna learn how to use
them.  The effect will depend on the positioning of the fingers inside the
gloves.  Going through the different combinations will take too long and you
Takki furglings wouldn’t remember anyway, so you’ll just have to learn as you
go.  Recruits, begin the demonstration.”

The big
boy seemed to have been waiting for this.  He charged Libby, tackling her
before she had a chance to get her guard up.  His momentum threw her off her
feet and she landed on her back in the sand, the bigger recruit on top of her. 
As she struggled to get up, he slammed a fist into the side of her head.