Forging Zero (51 page)

“Is
everybody here?” Joe asked quietly.  “Squad leaders, count up your grounders.”

They
did, and everyone was accounted for.

Suddenly,
Libby’s face went slack.  She tore at her belt, patting it wildly.  When she
looked up, she was pale.  “Joe.  The flag.  I lost it.”

Joe
jerked around.  “What?”

Libby
patted down her belt, swallowing.  “I don’t know what happened.”

Joe
stared at her.  “You can’t be serious.”  He hadn’t meant to be so harsh, but he
wasn’t feeling very charitable at the moment.  That flag was all that really
stood between them and enough manual labor to make them doing chores in their
sleep.  As it was, it already looked really bad that they were the only platoon
from their entire battalion that hadn’t been killed yet.

“I was
the last one out,” Libby said quickly.  “It’s in the tunnel somewhere, Joe. 
Don’t worry, I’ll go find it.”  Without another word, she ducked back into the
honeycombed tower and disappeared.

Half an
hour went by and Joe was thinking about sending Maggie in after her when Libby
returned empty-handed.

“I went
through it twice,” she said, coated with black dust and looking miserable.  “I
couldn’t find it, Joe.”

“Let me
look,” Maggie said quickly.  “I’ll find it.  Mommy said I was good at finding
stuff.”  She dove back in after Libby, but twenty minutes later, she, too, came
back empty handed.

“It’s a
tunnel,”
Sasha sneered, upon Maggie’s crestfallen return.  “How do you
lose something in a
tunnel?”
  She laughed, looking Libby lazily up and
down.  “I knew we couldn’t trust an ape like you.”

Libby
raised her rifle and shot Sasha in the face. 

“Damn
it, Libby!” Joe cried, dropping to cover Sasha’s mouth with her jacket as she
began to scream.  “She was one of our best shots!”

Libby
shrugged.  “She deserved it.”  She casually threw her gun over her shoulder. 
“Besides, I’m better.”

Joe gave
her an irritated look and got back to his feet.  “Okay, look, the damn thing
has to be back there somewhere.  Monk, you’re the smallest, can you go back and
take a look real quick?” 

Monk
grimaced, but did.  She came back dirty and shaking her head.  “Not back
there,” she muttered.  “Someone must’ve grabbed it after we came out.  They’re
never gonna believe we got it.”  Her pert chin was quivering with devastation.

And, as
Joe looked at his friends’ faces, he felt their disappointment like a knife to his
chest.  After all that, they were still going to fail.  It wasn’t
fair.

“Look,
if we can’t find the flag, we sure as hell better do our best to take out as
many of Second Battalion as we can before they get us.  We gotta finish this. 
Okay?” 

Maggie
frowned at him.  “But we got the flag, Joe.  We shouldn’t have to die, right?”

Hearing
her plaintive words, Joe felt another pang of guilt.  He almost went back
through the tunnel looking for the flag himself.  Almost.

“We’ve
gotta kill as many as we can,” Joe muttered, fisting his hand to keep his
fingers from shaking at the idea of again entering the tiny space.  “It’s the
only way they’ll let us get this over with.”

His
entire platoon grimaced.  Carl went back looking for the flag, and came back
another twenty minutes later, empty-handed.  “I don’t understand,” Libby
muttered.  “I
had
it, Joe.”  She frustratedly threw a chunk of diamond
aside and glared at the tunnel.

Joe
shook his head.  “Who knows what happened, Lib.  Look, we’re just wasting
daylight sitting here.  What do you guys say we go assault those dweebs over by
that pit?  Maybe get a few more kills under our belt before they put us down?”

“Ugh,”
Monk said, gripping her rifle.

“Well soot,”
Scott added.

“This
is
furgsoot
!” Libby cried.  “We
had
it.  We shouldn’t have to
die.”

“Yeah,
but Nebil’s gonna eat us alive if it looks like we were hiding here all day,”
Carl added.

That
was true enough.  Joe grimaced.  “Come on, guys.  Don’t shoot until I give the
signal.”  Taking one last look at his grounders’ solemn faces, he led them
across the pocked landscape to where the defenders sat around the rim of their
pit, their backs to them.  Before they were quite ready, Libby opened fire. 
She knocked two off their perches and hit two others before they began to fight
back.  With a shriek, Libby stood up and ran at them, firing ahead of her,
screaming Congie curses.

It was
the first time Libby went down before Joe.  Joe watched her fall, feeling
guilty.  If he hadn’t been such a Takki, he would have been the one to carry
the flag through the tunnel and losing it wouldn’t be on her head.  Grimly, he
settled down to take out as many defenders as he could before Second Battalion
overpowered them. 

In the
end, the defenders flanked them.  It was only minutes before Joe’s entire
platoon was having seizures in the dirt.  Joe took a shot to the arm, then, as
his convulsions began, he got shot again.  His heart struggled for a few more
seconds, then spasmed and gave up.

CHAPTER
23: 
Second Battalion

“You
failed.”

Joe
opened his eyes to see Battlemaster Nebil standing over him, sudah fluttering
angrily.

“You
had
the flag in your useless Human hands and you
failed.”
  Nebil looked
and sounded like he was on the verge of taking his switch to Joe for the
offense.

“You should
be happy we got it at all,” Joe muttered. 

“
Happy
?!”
Nebil roared.  “You had the tunnels to
yourself
and a whole platoon of
recruits to defend it and you lost the flag.  You’d beaten Second Battalion and
you
lost
it.”

“It was
an accident,” Joe said.  He sat up.  All around him, recruits in black were
laid out in rows, waiting to be revived.

Battlemaster
Nebil grabbed him by the jacket and yanked him closer, his gummy eyes almost
touching Joe’s face.  “An accident, Zero?  Or you having a mental breakdown?” 
At Joe’s flinch, Nebil’s eyes narrowed.  “I monitored your bio signs during the
whole hunt.  I saw what happened when you had to go in that tunnel.  Kihgl’s a
cursed furg.  By the ninety Jreet hells, you’re just a Takki coward!”

“But we
got the flag!” Joe shouted.

“You
lost
the flag.”  Nebil stood up suddenly.  “You made me the laughingstock of the
whole regiment.  My recruits are such Jreet-kissing furglings they can’t even
hold onto a flag.  I won’t be able to enter the chow hall without hearing about
it.  And Commander Tril—”  Nebil’s snakelike pupils narrowed.  “Best you avoid
Commander Tril.  He’d already made the call to Second Battalion to brag when he
found out you’d lost the flag.”

That…was
not good.  Nebil was already turning away in disgust.

“So
teach me how to use the PPU!” Joe cried, grabbing the Ooreiki’s arm.  “None of
that would’ve happened if I could’ve figured out where we were.”

Nebil
scoffed, though there was a flicker of interest in his wet, gummy eyes.

Joe
leaned forward.  “You teach me how to use that thing and I’ll get that flag
back next time we attack.”

Battlemaster
Nebil stared at him long and hard.  “You fail and I swear to Poen you’ll wish
you’d never been born.  Understand, Human?”

Joe
nodded, hope beginning to make his heart hammer.

The
Battlemaster took a deep breath through his sudah, still glaring at him.  “I’ve
signed you up for phobic conditioning.  Keep it quiet.  So far, Lagrah and I
are the only ones who know the truth of what happened to you down there, and I
want it to stay that way.  Tril would send you to the Dhasha in a second if he
knew you were afraid of tunnels.”  Nebil snorted.  “That’s like having a pilot
that’s afraid to fly.”

Joe
felt a chill.  “Lagrah knows?”

“He
figured it out, the fire-loving bastard.  Didn’t even have to see your
brainwaves.  Pray Tril’s not that smart.”

Gingerly,
Joe said, “What is phobic…conditioning?”

“Regulated
overexposure.  You’ll keep it between the two of us, though.  I’ll log your
absence as a broken bone you received in the tunnels.  Tril will not find out,
you understand?  Even with treatment, there’s a high chance of recurrence. 
He’s not going to want to take the chance.”

Joe
swallowed hard, having a pretty good idea what ‘regulated overexposure’ meant. 
“Can I skip it?”

Nebil
gave him an amused look.  “After Lagrah already made the arrangements?  No, I
don’t think so.  You’ll earn me back every credit I spent on you if I have to
butcher you and sell your parts to Knaaren.”

Joe’s
throat constricted as he thought again of Lagrah.  “And he’s not gonna tell
Tril?  Even after…what I did…back home?”

Nebil snorted. 
“The Takki turd owed me a favor.  A big one.  He’s even chipping in for your
conditioning.”

“You
could give me another rotation,” Joe said hastily.  “You don’t have to send me
in now.  I can work on it.  You know, like meditate or something.  Besides,
once you train me with the PPU, I can spend all my time learning it.  You can
tell Lagrah I’ll use it to—”

“No,”
the Battlemaster said immediately.  “Nobody’s gonna know about the PPU, either,
especially not Lagrah.  It’s against regulations to teach recruits how to use
sensitive Congressional equipment until they’ve completed two turns of
training.  They figure you’re indoctrinated enough by then to not find a way to
mail it back to your home planet with an instruction booklet.”

Joe
frowned.  “Then you’re gonna teach me how to use it?”

“Yes,”
Nebil muttered.  “Later.  Right
now
, I’ve gotta go deal with Tril and
finish cleaning up your mess.  Oh, and convince the Jreet-sucking lunatic not
to execute your whole platoon.  Lagrah will be here soon to take you to
medical.  The doctors want to get a head start because from those burned-up
brainwaves of yours back in the tunnel, you’re gonna be one tough piji shell to
crack.” 

With that,
Battlemaster Nebil turned on heel and departed with all the force of a freight
train.  Medics with small golden circles inside their silver borders got out of
the way to let him pass, then went back to injecting the red stuff into the
kids’ arms.  Reluctantly, Joe got to his feet and eyed the approaching haauk
.
 
Already, he felt his cold sweat returning.

This
was what he wanted, wasn’t it?  All his life, every time he broke down into a
sobbing wreck because a friend tried to show him his snow-cave or his uncle
tried to get him under a car to look at the oil pan, wasn’t that what he
wanted?  Back on Earth, with two kids and a mortgage, his parents hadn’t been
able to afford sending him to a shrink to figure out what the hell was wrong
with him.  Here, they would do it for free.

The
thought was not comforting.

The
pilot of the skimmer had the pale, drooping skin of an older Ooreiki.  When it
grew close enough, Joe could see the black scars criss-crossing its body.  He
tensed, wondering if Lagrah remembered him from the streets of San Diego, the
colorful explosions going off all around them.  Steeling himself, Joe moved
toward the haauk
.

Once he
landed, the Ooreiki Prime looked him over with an unreadable stare.  “You
Zero?”

“Yeah,”
Joe said, tensing.

“Get on.” 
Lagrah showed absolutely no recognition.

Joe did
as he was told, but the Ooreiki never took his eyes off him.  Joe’s skin
prickled under the stare. 
Oh please don’t let him remember me…

Lagrah
made no move to take the haauk off the ground, just looked Joe up and down in
obvious appraisal.  “You’re afraid of tunnels.”

Joe
felt his throat tighten and started to inch back towards to edge of the haauk. 
“Maybe a little.”

Lagrah
snorted.  “A little.”  He continued to stare, analyzing Joe with his pale brown
eyes.  Finally, once Joe was ready to leap over the railing and run, the old
Ooreiki said, “Nebil’s lost his mind.” 

Saying
nothing else, Lagrah turned back to the haauk
console and lifted them
off the ground.  Once they were in the air, Joe relaxed a little. 
He
doesn’t remember,
he thought, relief flooding through him as he thought of
how he had rescued Sam and the hundreds of other kids destined for the Ooreiki
ship. 
If he remembered, he’d kill me.

Prime
Commander Lagrah was silent as he guided them back into Alishai.  “Well done,
getting the flag.  My battalion will do laps for that.  Are you
military-trained, boy?”

Joe
glanced at the Prime nervously.  “My dad was in the military on Earth.”

Lagrah
glanced at him.  “Ah.  Makes sense.  A soldier begets a soldier.”  He turned
back to guiding the haauk between the massive ferlii trees.