Forging Zero (55 page)

Joe
nodded.

“Maybe
Tril’s not as stupid as I thought.”  At that, the old Ooreiki turned and left
him gaping after him like an idiot, one foot still crushing the lesson pad into
the staircase.

Cautiously,
Joe bent down and retrieved the lesson pad.  Aside from a couple of cosmetic
scratches, it was in the same exact condition it had been when Nebil had given
it to him.

Joe
climbed the stairs to return to the barracks.

He
jumped when a voice above his head said, “Choe!”

Joe
glanced up.  Yuil stood on her haauk
,
her sudah fluttering with worry.

“Choe! 
Did he hurt you?”

“No,
I’m fine.  How’s it going, Yuil?”

The
Ooreiki teenager scrunched her face disgustedly.  “You make my name sound like
something a Jreet would eat.”  She glanced at the staircase above him.  “Are
you busy, Choe?  You want to drive my haauk?  I just got it upgraded.  I found
an employer here on Kophat, so I don’t have to go back to Poen to tend oorei.”

Joe
knew he had an obligation to his platoon to learn the PPU, but the thought of
learning to drive the floating platforms was too tempting to resist.  Joe climbed
on board and, as Yuil croaked in amusement, he fumbled through the steps of
flying a haauk
.

He was
actually doing pretty well, skimming over the tangled red treetops that looked
like masses of veiny muscle, when Yuil suddenly took the controls away from him
and lowered them into the canopy.  For the first time, Joe was standing amidst
the monstrous branches, perched on a limb big enough to be a highway back on
Earth.

Yuil
turned off the haauk and stepped onto one of the branches.  “We must walk from
here.”

Joe,
suddenly realizing how vulnerable he was all the way out here, away from the
city, frowned at her.  “Why?  Where are we?”

“Nowhere,”
Yuil said.  “At least you won’t find it on any maps of Kophat.”

“What
do you mean?” Joe asked, his wariness increasing.

Yuil’s
eyes were alight with excitement.  “It’s a secret storage facility.  Everybody
on Kophat knows it’s here, but the government pretends we don’t.”

“Storage
for what?”  Joe remained on the haauk
.

“Weapons,”
Yuil whispered, her pupils fully dilated.  “Horrible weapons.  Weapons that
would mean the end of Congress if they were set off on Koliinaat.”

Joe
felt a prickle of nervousness itch at his spine.  Yuil’s excitement seemed
strange, a little off-pitch.  Was this some sort of test?  Was he supposed to
tell her he didn’t want anything to do with the end of Congress and demand she
take him home?

“Come,”
Yuil insisted, gently wrapping her metal-encased fingers around his arm.  “I’ll
show you.”

“They
just leave it open for anybody to walk into?” Joe asked in disbelief.  Even if
Kophat was a training planet, he doubted Congress would leave a weapons stash
completely unguarded.

Yuil
tapped the little golden band she now wore on a finger, right above the metal
casings that looked like Celtic knots.  Another akarit
.
 

“Something
you learn in
yeeri
academy is that akarit aren’t just good for
privacy.”  Yuil leaned close conspiratorially.  “Congress has no creativity. 
All government buildings open with codes related to what they are used for.  It
only took my friend and me eighteen tics to figure out that the code was the
initials of Kophat’s Prime Overseer.  The akarit
kept the lock from
alerting Peacemakers of our attempts.”

Joe
felt a cold tingle tracing up his back.  If Congressional security was so lax that
an Ooreiki teenager could break into it, what was keeping rebels from storming
the compound and using the weapons against Congress?

Then
again, Yuil might not be any teenager.  Even on Earth, there were geeks who
could crash half a country with a click of their mouse.  Like Sam.  Who was to
say Yuil wasn’t some sort of Wunderkind who had discovered a glitch in the
system?

“Someday
you gotta show me how to do that,” Joe said.  Though, if it was anything close
to as complicated as some of the stuff Sam had shown him, back on Earth, he
knew it was out of his league.

But Yuil
just nodded.  “Follow me.”

Yuil
led him along the branch highways, hopping down and changing
ferlii
when
it pleased her.  Every once in a while, Joe caught a glimpse of the ground
through the branches and his muscles threatened to seize up at the dizziness
that followed. 

Eventually,
they came to a nondescript door set into the side of a
ferlii.
  Joe
stared at it, stunned by its simple appearance. 
This
held a
weapons-storage facility that could destroy Congress?

Yuil
stepped close to the door’s control pad and Joe glanced both ways, nervous.

Amazingly,
as soon as Yuil entered the code, the door dripped open.  No sirens, no alarms,
no bombs going off.  Just a gaping hole in the side of the
ferlii
and a
row of red lights leading them inside.

Joe
stared, his mouth ajar.  If this was how easy it was to break into top-secret
government installations, maybe he did still have a hope of getting back home. 
Excited, he followed Yuil inside and was only a little worried when the door
shut again behind them.

“So
what do you think?” Yuil asked inside, her eyes almost completely black from
her widened pupils. 

“It’s
really cool,” Joe said.  His voice echoed down the empty corridor.  He peered
down it nervously.  “You sure nobody’s here?”

“There’s
never anybody here,” Yuil said.  “Congress has got a tenth of its army hovering
around Kophat.  They don’t need to guard it.”

“I
don’t know…” Joe began.

“Don’t
worry.  We’re safe.”  Yuil motioned at the corridor.  “Where do you want to go
first?”

“What
do you mean?” Joe asked.

“They’ve
got rooms filled with bombs, rooms of guns, rooms of tanks, artillery…  There’s
even an
ekhta
in here.  The top of the ferlii
folds over so it
can deploy.”

“Ek-ta?”

“Planet-killer. 
Target a species giving you a problem and
boom.
  Problem eliminated.”

Joe bit
his lip, glancing at the rows of doors.  The place was making him nervous.  He
couldn’t believe Congress would just leave a stash of weapons and never come
back to check on it.  “I think I should be getting back.”

Yuil
gave him a sharp look.  “Why?”

“I
don’t think it’s a good idea to be here,” Joe said.  “I mean, who in their
right mind would just leave all these weapons here and not guard them?”

“Congress,”
Yuil said matter-of-factly.  “The politicians grow old and stupid.  The whole
Regency is too cocky.  Kophat is in the Old Territory, so they automatically
assume that nothing can touch them here.  Come on.”  Yuil pulled Joe further
down the corridor.  “I’ll show you the guns.”

Joe
followed her a little ways, then paused again, glancing at the floor.  Below
him, the surface was darker than that around it.  He touched it and his hand
came back slick with light brown fluid.  He quickly wiped it on his leg,
wondering if it had leaked from a canister of poison.  “What’s that?”

Yuil
frowned down at the splotch.  “Nothing.  A leak.”

“What
kind of leak?” Joe asked.  The corridor was beginning to remind him of the
Takki tunnels.  A few yards away from the smudge on the floor, an Ooreiki
military flashlight lay forgotten against one wall.  Joe rubbed at the
goosebumps in his arms, eying it.  “Look, I really think we should leave.  Back
home, we’d get in real deep soot for sneaking into a place like this.  Like we
wouldn’t see the light of day for fifty years, that kind of stuff.  I can only
imagine what the Peacemakers would do to us.”

“Peacemakers
wouldn’t care,” Yuil said, waving off his concern and continuing down the
corridor.  “We’re just kids.”

Still,
something about the place was setting Joe’s nerves on end, and refused to
follow.  “I’d just like to go home, okay?  I’ve got stuff I need to study for
the next hunt.”

Looking
extremely irritated, Yuil complied.  By the time they had gotten back to the haauk
,
however, she had cheered.  She even let him drive. 

Joe
pulled the haauk up through the scarlet ferlii branches and hovered above the
house-sized clusters of crimson spores, uncertain.  “How do we get home from
here?”

“The
city is due west,” Yuil said, pointing to a dial on the haauk
’s
controls.  “It’s nine
ferlii
-lengths out.  See those cuts in the canopy
on either side?  The highways converge on Alishai.  Just follow them back.”

Joe
followed her instructions and eventually they arrived at the barracks.

“Thanks,
Yuil,” Joe said.  He was flushed with adrenaline—on the way there, Yuil had
showed him how to do a roll, and how the gravity of the haauk kept their feet
on the floor even if they were hovering upside-down.

“Next
time I will show you how to activate your commanders’ haauk
s,”
Yuil
said, a huge Ooreiki smile bunching the skin of her face.  “It’s a lot like
opening doors.”

Joe
watched her fly away, though something was nagging at him.  He was sure Yuil had
been lying about something.  His gut was telling him that the government
compound had been too easy for them to access.  Further, he just simply could
not believe they would leave it unguarded all the time.  From what she told
him, an ekhta only a few minutes from Alishai was basically the same thing as
leaving a nuclear bomb unguarded in the middle of Washington DC.  Debating
this, he turned to go back inside.

He ran
into Libby, blocking the entryway.  She had been standing behind him, her arms
crossed.  She wore only her underwear.  She just scowled at him.

“Hi,”
Joe said, acutely uncomfortable.  Behind her, the door was unlocked.  Libby
must have opened it herself.

“They
said enemies of Congress might try to buy our loyalty.”

Joe
felt suddenly cold.  “Nobody’s tried to buy me.”

Her
flat stare told him he wasn’t fooling anybody.  “Where’d you get that candy,
Joe?”

Joe
swallowed hard.  “Good night, Lib.”

CHAPTER
25: 
Getting Ready for War

“How
did you get that rash, Zero?”

Joe
blinked, unsure what Battlemaster Nebil was talking about.  All morning, he had
been preoccupied with the fact that the little silver lesson pad—the pad he had
planned on using during the hunt tomorrow—was gone.  He realized Nebil was
looking at the mark on his neck from Lagrah’s tentacle.  He lifted a hand to
cover it reflexively.

“I had
a problem with an Ooreiki, sir.”

“Commander
Tril?”

“No, sir.” 
Joe tensed, dreading the battlemaster’s next question.

“Who?”

Joe
grimaced.  “Lagrah, sir.”

Battlemaster
Nebil grunted, then turned away from him to survey the rest of the recruits. 
He raised his voice and shouted, “The hunt’s tomorrow, and I’ll be damned if
Tril’s gonna starve you again.  Everyone get your canteens and fill them with
food at the chow hall.  I don’t care if you all die in the first tic, Fourth
Platoon
will
eat.”

Battlemaster
Nebil guarded the end of the food line as the entire battalion filled their
canteens with the green goop, scowling at any other Ooreiki who dared to give
his recruits a second glance.  Then he made them give double servings for that
morning’s meal and sat them down in the center of the chow hall as if they
owned the place, even though they were using Fifth Battalion’s time-slot.

As
Fifth Battalion crowded into the tables that were left, Nebil took a bowl for
himself and acquired his own serving of pond scum.  He then sat down at the
table with his platoon and wordlessly began to scoop the food into his mouth. 
It was one of the first times Joe had ever seen an Ooreiki eat, and it was not
a pleasant sight.  The alien’s face distorted and stretched until it surrounded
its tentacle like a balloon and sucked the pond scum free.  Then he repeated
the process.

Everyone
else in the chow hall stared with him, their eyes wide with fascination.  Even
Fifth Battalion was riveted with Nebil’s performance.  For several minutes, no
one said anything, listening to the odd sucking sounds the Ooreiki made as he
ate.

Finally,
Battlemaster Nebil shoved his half-eaten bowl aside and stood.  “You’re right,
Zero.  The food here tastes like Takki ashes.  You guys get the flag tomorrow
and I’ll find you some real food.”

Every
kid in the cafeteria sat up.

“Another
thing,” Nebil said, lowering his voice so that only his platoon could hear, “About
these ashsouls with the other battalions.  I’ve had three recruits kidnapped
and beaten in the past two days.  Until we wring the soot out of Second on a
hunt, it’s gonna get worse.  I don’t want any of you walking around the city
alone.  Everybody travels with partners.  I’m instigating the Rule of Three. 
Whenever you’re three yards away from the rest of the Battalion, I want there
to be three of you.  I don’t want any of you soot-eating furgs getting caught
alone again.  If you are, I’ll make you regret it.”