Forging Zero (8 page)

When none of the kids interrupted
him—and in fact stared at him in slack-jawed silence—Commander Kihgl gestured
around the room.
  “What you see here is your half of the battalion, called a
company.  You belong to First Company, Sixth Battalion of the Second Brigade,
Eighty-Seventh Regiment of the Fourteenth Human Ground Force.  But for the rest
of your training, all you really need to concern yourselves with are
battalion-level and below.  Brigades, regiments, and ground forces are only
brought together during ceremonies or times of war.  Understand so far?”

Nobody did, of course, but that
didn’t stop him from plowing onward. 
“A company has four hundred and fifty
members, arranged into seventy-five groundteams.  A groundteam has six
members.  Because half of you ignorant Takki can’t yet count, we’ve organized
you into groups of six.”
  Commander Kihgl gestured at the lines behind
them. 
“Take a good look behind you.  These are your groundmates for the
next three turns.” 

Joe glanced behind him.  The kid
in the back of his group was easily the smallest girl in the room—he had
trouble believing she was five.  It was the same little girl who had offered to
make him a zero when Kihgl ran out of armbands.  Remembering that, Joe
grinned.  She gave him a tentative smile around her thumb.

“
From now on, the six of you
will eat, sleep, bathe, and crap together.  The recruit in front will make sure
the rest of the group does this properly or he will be punished.  Further—
”
Commander Kihgl cut off as five new Ooreiki strode into the room, a very pale,
scarred alien at their lead.  “
Battlemaster Nebil, take it from here.  I’m
late for a vid meeting with Lagrah.
” 

The much paler newcomer nodded
and swiftly moved toward the front of the formation.

“Sir,”
Tril interrupted,
stepping toward Kihgl,
“I’m the small commander of the Company.  Perhaps I
would be better suited to—”

“Nebil, make sure they
understand their responsibilities,”
Kihgl said, then departed.  Commander
Tril shot a furious look at Kihgl’s back.

Battlemaster Nebil seemed to be
of the same mold as Kihgl, with pale skin and drooping folds of flesh.  His
neck, arms, and head—every exposed
inch
of his rough brown skin—were
likewise marred by horrible, gruesome claw-marks, mixing with the rumpled,
circular marks Joe guessed were gunshots, though nothing as intense as
Kihgl’s.  Still, compared to Tril’s dark, unblemished skin, Nebil looked as if
he’d been run through a meat grinder.

Nebil stood back to eye them,
saying nothing.  After several minutes of just staring at them, he twisted his
tentacles behind his back and began walking in front of their ranks, looking
them up and down like a warden in a Nazi concentration camp.

After several minutes of silence,
one of the big kids tentatively raised his hand.  At Nebil’s grunt, the kid
said, “How do we keep our groundmates in line?”

“
How do you keep them in line?
” 
Battlemaster Nebil snorted.  “
However you burning feel like it.
”  He
started pacing again, watching them.  His sticky brown eyes caught on Joe and
paused there.

“What he means is—”
Tril
began.

Still looking at Joe, Nebil spoke
over Tril with the unstoppable force of a locomotive running over a duck. 
“But
if they’ve gotta go to medical, it will be
you
who gets time added to
your enlistment.”

Joe actually got chills, getting
the specific idea that Battlemaster Nebil was talking to
him
.

“So we
can hit them?” a girl with a grotesquely large lower jaw insisted.  She looked
like some sort of piranha, with her chin jutting out past her nose.  The child
in the back of her group whimpered.

Nebil continued to hold Joe’s
gaze for a moment before he turned and looked her up and down, the silence
filling the room absolute.  “
You can do anything you want, as long as they
can fight at the end of the day.
”

Inwardly, Joe groaned.  Were they
trying
to turn everyone into bullies?

“But,”
Nebil said, looking
back at Joe,
“Keep in mind you’ll have to rely on them in battle.  They
might end up saving your life—or not.  It all boils down to trust, and if you squirming
Takki break that confidence, they’re not going to—”

Tril interrupted him. 
“We’re
running out of time.  Group leaders, take a moment to get to know your
teammates.  You have three tics.”

Nebil
turned and gave Tril a silent stare, but did not contradict him.

Joe
turned to face the five kids behind him.  “Everyone get over here,” he said,
squatting.  “Group huddle.”

Only
the youngest two moved.  The older three glared at him. 

Joe
sighed and positioned himself closer, so he could see them all.  “My name’s
Joe,” he said, surveying them.  “Look, we’re in some pretty heavy crap, but I’m
gonna do everything I can to get us out of here.”

This
got their attention.

The
sniffling five-year-old shuffled forward and said, “I want Mom.”

“We got
the smallest kid in the whole room!” the oldest boy complained.  He had a shock
of red hair bright enough to make a leprechaun jealous.

“You
also got the biggest,” Joe said.  He smiled at the little girl.  “What’s your
name?”

“Maggie,”
the girl whimpered.

“You
the one who wanted to draw me a Zero, Mag?”

She
nodded, wiping snot from her nose with her sleeve.

Joe
ruffled her hair.  “I’d like that.  Just as soon as we find something to write
with okay?”

Maggie
sniffled and nodded.

Joe
turned to the oldest boy.  The redhead was skinny—more Celtic than Nordic—and
didn’t even come up to Joe’s chest.  The kid looked like he had spent much of
his life laughing before the Draft.  Now his big, expressive face was strained
with worry and the dimples were almost unnoticeable.  He, like everybody else
in the room, was gaunt and hungry-looking.

“I’m
Scott,” the redheaded kid said, his body tense, blue eyes wary.

“How
old are you, Scott?” Joe said, looking him up and down.

“Ten.”

Joe
looked at the other groups in exasperation.  Some had three, even four kids ten
and older.  Some of
those
didn’t have anyone under eight.

“What
about you?” he asked a skinny, freckled girl with big eyelashes.

“I’m
Carol and I’m six.”

Joe
nodded and glanced at the older girl with a puff of curly African hair and
bright brown eyes.  “What about you?” he asked.

She
stared at the floor, twining her fingers shyly.  “Libby.  I’m eight.”

“That’s
some hair you got there, Libby.”

Libby
looked up and gave a tentative smile, displaying an unfortunate array of
twisted front teeth.  Feeling a pang of sympathy for her, Joe grinned back.

“And
you?” he asked the last kid, who was somewhere in size between Libby and Carol.

The hazel-eyed
boy grinned, making his big ears stick out even further.  “Eric.  But everybody
calls me Elf.”  He had curly black hair that, coupled with the ears, made Joe
immediately think of something he would’ve seen in Santa’s Workshop.

“I can
see why,” Joe said.  “How old are you, Elf?”

“Eight.”

Carol
held up her hand.

“You
don’t have to raise your hand,” Joe said.  “What is it?”

“If he
gets to be called Elf, I want to be Monk.”

“Why?”

“Because
that’s what my dad calls me.”

“He
calls you
Monk?
”

“Yeah,
it’s short for Chipmunk.”

“Huh. 
Okay.  Monk.  I’m Joe.”

Monk
gave him a long look, peering up at him like an entomologist studying a
funny-looking insect.  “Are you really twelve, Joe?”

Joe
blushed, feeling the others’ attention immediately sharpen.  “No,” he admitted. 
“I’m fourteen.”

Scott’s
eyes widened.  “Then how—”

“He’s
bad,” Monk interrupted.  “Dad told me bad kids get sent to the Congies.”

Immediately,
Maggie’s tiny chin began to quiver.  Joe shot Monk an irritated look, then
squatted and grabbed Maggie by the shoulders.  “Look Mag, you weren’t bad.  It
didn’t have anything to do with that.  They needed kids a certain age for their
army, that’s all.”

“So why
are you here?” Monk insisted.  “You’re too old.”

Oh
God, just shut up,
Joe wished her, watching Maggie
grow ever-closer to an all-out bawling session.  He certainly recognized the
look—he’d seen it on Sam enough times.  “I was stupid,” he muttered, hoping
Monk would leave it at that.

“You
mean you were bad?”

“No, I
was stupid,” Joe said, irritated.  “Just drop it, all right?”

“I saw
you try to beat up that alien,” Elf said.  “They kicked your butt.”  He
grinned, flexing his ears with the force of his smile.

“That
was
him?
”  Scott’s eyes widened.  “I thought they killed that kid.”

Joe
glanced at the glossy black ceiling, willing himself patience.  “Look, they’re
not gonna kill us.  They’ll just patch us up and put more time on our
enlistments.”

“What’s
an enlistment?” Maggie and Monk asked, at the same time, blinking up at him in
innocent curiosity.

Oh crap,
I can’t do this,
Joe thought, trying to figure out
how to tell five little kids that they were about to spend half their lives as
indentured servants to aliens who wanted to throw them into a meat grinder just
to see what came out the other end.  “Uh,” he began, wincing, “it means time
you owe to the army.  I just owe a little bit more time for that fight
earlier.  No biggie.”

“So
that
was
you?” Scott asked, in awe.

Before
Joe could answer, Commander Tril barked,
“Time’s up.  Get back in line!”

Joe
stood up and went back to the front of the group.  Tril had taken up the head
of the formation, with Battlemaster Nebil standing to one side, tentacles
twisted in front of him in a formal posture, his bleached brown eyes betraying
nothing of his thoughts. 

Scott
tugged on Joe’s sleeve.  “Maggie’s not in line.”

Joe
turned around and cursed under his breath.  Maggie was clutching Libby’s skinny
black leg, tears leaking down her cheeks.  Her thumb was back in her mouth. 
Joe got out of line and ushered Maggie to the back.  She refused to stay put.

He was
pleading with her when Commander Tril snapped,
“Zero!  Get up here!”

Joe
flinched and reluctantly turned to face Tril.  Swallowing hard, he straightened
and walked up to the squat orange-streaked alien, steeling himself.  As
expected, Tril slammed a heavy, boneless tentacle into Joe’s gut, doubling him
over. 

“That’s
for taking too long.  Now get back in line,”
Tril
said.  He waited, clearly wanting Joe to disobey.  And, for a moment, Joe
almost did.  Fighting the urge to dismantle the Ooreiki’s face, Joe
straightened and limped back to his group.  All five of the others were staring
at him, wide-eyed.  He winked at them. 

“There
are thirty-seven blue spheres behind me,”
Tril
said once Joe was back in place. 
“Approximately one for every two
groundteams.  Each groundteam that has a sphere in their possession nine tics
from now will eat lunch this afternoon.  Starting now.”

Joe
frowned. 
One for every two…
  He froze, realizing Tril’s intent.  “Stay
here!” Joe cried to his groundteam.  He bolted forward for a ball and snatched
it up as quickly as he could.  A few others of the bigger kids moved with him,
but most of the company just stared at the alien dumbly. 

“Did I
say stand there and
stare
?!” Tril demanded.  “I said
fight
, you
miserable Takki.  Go get a ball!”

By the
time Joe jogged back to his team, genuine panic was spreading throughout the
room and mini battles began breaking out over the balls. 

Joe
hefted Maggie onto his shoulders and hurriedly gathered the others around him
and backed them into a corner.  With Joe holding the ball, no one challenged
them, though others were not so lucky.  In the end, one of the groups with a
majority of twelve-year-olds had two balls and there were thirty-nine groups
with none. 

“Those
of you who turned in balls may go to the chow hall,”
Tril said. 
“The rest of you will run until they come back.”

He’s
going to starve them
, Joe realized, disgusted. 
That must have occurred to the other kids, too, because their hungry faces were
beginning to scrunch in sobs of loss and defeat.  Seeing some of the less
fortunate groups with a majority of toddlers, Joe almost felt sorry enough to
toss them a ball.

Then he
thought of Maggie, Monk, Scott, Elf, and Libby, and realized he had to worry
about
them
, now.  “Come on, guys,” Joe said tiredly.  “Let’s go eat.” 
He turned and led them after the flow of sphere-bearing teams, leaving the
losers behind with Tril.  An Ooreiki collected their balls as they exited, then
funneled them down a corridor like cattle through a slaughter-chute.