Forging Zero (13 page)

“This is what happens when you
go to war against the Dhasha.”
  He changed the picture again, giving them a
close-up of a grotesquely mauled alien body, internal organs weeping through
huge gashes along its chest. 
“Notice the soldier’s armor.  The hardest
material Congress can make and Dhasha talons slice through it like
nuajan.”

Joe
glanced around him.  The other children were staring with wide eyes, their jaws
hanging open.  Many of them looked like they were about to cry.

Linin grunted. 
“Lucky for you
furgs, Dhasha rebellions are almost always contained in-species, or, if things
get really ugly, they’re put down by Jreet.  Usually they don’t have to get
lesser fighters involved.”

Lesser fighter?
  Joe prickled,
despite himself.

“If they do send you, at least it will end this
charade.  Once a few Human battalions get ripped apart, those jenfurgling ashsouls
on Koliinaat will realize they shouldn’t have forced us to dress you Takki up
like soldiers.  You aren’t even good as beasts of burden.  Hell, you’ll
probably end up crawling the slave tunnels to get torn to pieces in the Dhasha
deep dens—you’d be good at that.”

Joe’s heart began to thud, his
pulse racing in his limbs. 
Tunnels? 
It was the second time one of the
Ooreiki had mentioned tunnels.  Maybe they were just trying to scare them. 
Maybe they’d end up jumping out of planes, instead.  Joe could handle that. 
He’d
love
to jump out of planes. 
Oh please God let it be planes.

The Ooreiki gave the room a disdainful
look. 
“Not that it’d be worth the trouble to fit you with a biosuit.  Suited
up, you charhead furgs couldn’t even match an Ooreiki naked.”

Joe
raised his hand.  “Are they really sending us down tunnels?”

Linin’s dark brown eyes came to
rest on Joe. 
“You were enlisted as part of the Ground Force.  Of course
they’ll send you down the tunnels.  Who else would do it?  The Space Force?”
 
He made a derisive snort, expelling a rush of air through the frills in his
neck. 
“Those cowards don’t even know what war is.”

Joe swallowed hard.  His hands
felt clammy.  “Commander Tril told us we’d probably become interpreters.”

“Commander Tril is a furg.”

“Can I change to the Space Force,
then?”

“
No.
”  The disgust in
Commander Linin’s eyes made Joe’s throat burn.  He looked at his fingers and
closed them into fists to stop the shaking.  Already, he could feel the
pressure of the earth closing in on him.  He felt queasy. 
How much space
will the tunnels have?  Dhasha are big, so ten feet?  I can handle it if it’s
ten feet.  But didn’t he say they were Takki slave tunnels?  If Takki are the
size of humans, that would only give me a couple inches
…  Thinking about
that, Joe fought to control impending panic.

“So
when do we get to see a Dhasha?” a girl asked excitedly.

“Pray you don’t,”
the
Ooreiki said. 
“Even friendly ones eat their own troops, and all the War
Commission does is slap ‘em with a fine and give them an extra couple of turns
before granting them another rank.  To Congress, if we all died feeding a
Dhasha warrior fighting under the Congressional banner, then our deaths would
have been worthwhile.  Here, let me show you furgs why.
”  Commander Linin
lifted a black, circular briefcase-like box onto the table and opened it. 
Inside, nestled in a black, velvety substance, was an elongated, six-inch-wide
metallic scale.  Even in the reddish light, it gleamed with unearthly
iridescence.  Beside it lay a wedge-shaped black talon twice the length of
Joe’s middle finger. 

Commander Linin used metal tongs
to lift the talon from its bed, taking great care not to touch it.  He held it
up so they could see.  It had a slight curve to it, like a scythe.

“
A Dhasha claw.
”  He
motioned at Nebil.  “
Battlemaster?
”

Nebil
came to stand before him and held out a tentacle, looking bored.

“
Dhasha claws are the perfect
cutting device, their edges a perfect mono-molecular surface able to cleave
into any substance at an atomic level.
”  Commander Linin held the tongs out
two inches above Battlemaster Nebil’s arm and released the talon.

Nebil grunted as the claw hit his
arm and burrowed in more than halfway down the ebony tip.  Thin, brown-tinted
liquid began to leak from the wound, pattering upon the glistening black floor
of the ship.

“
As you can see,
”
Commander Linin said, gently retrieving the claw from Nebil’s arm with the
tongs, “
Their own weight is enough to cleave flesh.  Imagine thousands of
pounds of muscle behind it and you are beginning to get an idea of how
dangerous these creatures are.
”

“
Don’t forget the scales,
”
Nebil muttered, rubbing the wound on his arm.  Already, it was healing.

Commander Linin returned the
talon to its case and retrieved a scale.  “
We will pass this around for you
to examine.  It’s an outer scale from a Dhasha male.  Utterly indestructible.
”

“
What he means is,
”
Battlemaster Nebil said, “
if every star in the universe suddenly decided to
explode at the same time, these things would still be around a million years
from now, after the dust settles.
”

Yeah,
right.

But when Joe finally got his
hands on the scale, he got goosebumps.  It felt unnatural in his hands, gliding
across his fingers like it was slick with water.  It had absolutely no give
whatsoever, and though it was only six inches across and nine inches tall, it
weighed more than a sack of potatoes.  It also stank like rotten fish.

Looking at the scale made Joe’s
eyes ache.  It was never a single color at any time—the rainbow iridescence
seeming to swirl across it unnaturally, pooling in yellows, reds, greens,
purples, blues, oranges.  Joe quickly passed it off to the next recruit and
wiped his sweaty palms on his shirt.

Once they were finished examining
the scale, Commander Linin went on.  “
Takki,
” he said, flipping on a
screen showing a short, bipedal purple lizard with pupiless, egg-shaped
sapphire eyes similar to the Dhasha and kreenit’s emerald.  “
The ancestral
Dhasha slaves, evolved on the same planet as the Dhasha and the kreenit.
” 
Linin’s voice held an unmistakable note of disgust. 
“Without them, the
Dhasha would never have developed their own technology and would still be
starving on Tenyuir where they belong.”
  Abruptly, he switched the screen
off. 
“That’s all you need to know about them.”

“How big are they?” Joe asked,
sweat slickening his palms and dampening his underarms.

Commander Linin eyed him
carefully. 
“Taller than Ooreiki.  About your size, actually.”

Oh shit,
Joe thought. 
Shit,
shit shit…

Commander Linin let that sink in,
then changed the image to another picture of a male Dhasha, this one sitting on
a pile of pillows like a smug cat.  “Now
to discuss how to keep from getting
killed when you’re around Dhasha…just keep in mind you’re Takki soot.  As Takki
soot, you must avoid eye contact.  Dhasha find a lesser creature’s gaze
repulsive and they will eat you for it.
”

 “Will
we see Dhasha where we’re going?” someone asked.

Linin grunted. 
“When we left,
Congress was still undecided.  Your body composition might be too…tempting.”
 
The Ooreiki glanced at the screen. 
“But if they do decide to put you under
a Dhasha commander, you’ll see one as soon as we land on Kophat. 

Something about the word Kophat
was familiar, as if he had heard it somewhere before.  Joe sat up, desperate to
drag his mind away from the thought of tunnels.  “Kophat?  That’s where we’re
going?” 

“Kophat is the training center
for the Congressional Army.  Of course that’s where you’re going, furgling.” 
It
sounded to Joe like the translator meant, ‘moron.’

Giving Joe an irritated look,
Linin went on,
“If you are given to a Dhasha Prime, this class will save
your life.  Never make eye contact, even in conversation.  Always bow your
heads when a Dhasha passes.  If a Dhasha requests something of you, do it
quickly, without question.  Never speak to a Dhasha unless asked a specific
question.
”  The Ooreiki’s snakelike eyes came to rest on Joe and stayed
there. 
  “And never show any insolence—you
will
be killed for it. 
Dhasha are not as merciful as certain Ooreiki Secondary Commanders.”
 

Joe flushed and suddenly found
his lap fascinating.

Linin’s scowl moved on.  
“But,
even if you follow all of these steps, many of you will get eaten anyway. 
Dhasha are prickly and unpredictable.”
  His face wrinkled in an Ooreiki
smile. 
“And each one of them is worth ten thousand of you, on a
bad
day.”

“Like Jreet,”
Nebil
grunted.

“Yes,”
Linin said. 
“Like
Jreet.”
  He flashed a new picture onto the screen, this one of what looked
like a crimson, scaly cross between a man, a bat, and an adder.  It had two
huge, muscular arms with bony, clawed fingers, and a long, twisted body like a
snake.  Most of its flat, diamond-shaped head was taken up with massive,
predatory jaws and two huge, concave, ribbed depressions where a man’s ears
would have been.  Though it didn’t have wings, it was carrying a wicked-looking
spear, tipped in what looked like milky glass, and was striking a tired pose,
covered in blood and gore.

Joe frowned, unable to see why
that
would be worth ten thousand of
him
. 

“They can render themselves
invisible at will, and just a scratch of the poison they carry in their chests
will kill anything in Congress,”
Nebil said, when he asked. 
“Instantly.”

Oh.

Linin glanced at Joe again. 
“But
there are very few Jreet, so they are only used as Sentinels.  They’ve only had
three planets, in all of history.  Their breeding habits are…less viral…and
their training customs ensures only about one in a hundred actually survive to
adulthood.  Thus, if too
many
Dhasha princes rebel at one time, that’s
where you weaklings will come in.”

Joe
swallowed, suddenly not feeling very well.

At
lunch, Nebil again let the youngest decide who ate.  Again, Joe’s team shared
while the others squabbled.  Again, they somehow evaded Ooreiki notice.  Afterward,
Joe watched the bullies move between the groups, taking whatever bowls of food
pleased them, punching or hitting anyone who tried to resist, and a little ball
of fury rose in his chest.  He stood up before he really even thought about it. 
“Scott, Libby, come with me.    Elf, Monk, you stay here and make sure Mag
doesn’t follow us.”  Then Joe was walking toward the last kid who’d had his
meal stolen.  Curious, Scott and Libby got off the bench and followed him.

“Hey,” Joe said, touching the
crying boy on the shoulder.  “You’re still hungry, right?”

Looking up with wide eyes, the
boy nodded.

“Then follow me,” Joe said, glaring
at the big kids who were still roaming the tables.  “We’re putting an end to
this.”

Joe found a dozen more children
that were too small to be bullies, but big enough to help him.  He took them to
the center of the room and got up on one of the tables.  Nebil immediately
noticed and started moving toward him at a run.  Joe ignored him and shouted to
the room, “Listen up, guys!  The next shithead to take food from anyone gets
his ass kicked.”

Then Battlemaster Nebil had a
stinging tentacle around his throat and was dragging him off the table. 
“What
in the Jreet hells do you think you’re doing, boy?!”
Nebil demanded,
shoving Joe away from the table.

“I’m stopping the bullies,” Joe
snapped.  “Something you
should
be doing, anyway.”  Already, adrenaline was
making his knees shake, and a good portion of him was screaming at him to bolt
before Nebil could crush more bones, but he met Nebil’s gaze stare-for-stare
and refused to back down.

Battlemaster Nebil blinked his
pale, sticky eyes up at him in obvious confusion.  He glanced at the kids
moving between tables, then back up at Joe, still looking stunned. 
“Say
that again?”
the alien asked.

“The bullies,” Joe repeated. 
“They’re taking kids’ food and I’m going to stop them.”

The Ooreiki stared at him so long
that Joe began to think he might have somehow fried his tentacle brain.  Then,
in a gruff grunt, the Ooreiki muttered,
“Let them take care of themselves,
Zero.”

Joe
fisted his hands and glared down at Nebil stubbornly.  “Some of them can’t,” he
insisted.

“They’ve got to learn.”

“They can’t learn if they starve
to death first,” Joe retorted.  He gestured at the roomful of kids.  “You
really think a
five year old
is going to be able to stand up to a gang
of middle-schoolers?”

Battlemaster Nebil gave him a long
look, his sticky, slitted pupils fixed on Joe’s face.  Then he warily turned
and glanced in the direction Joe had pointed, his sticky eyes scanning the cafeteria
with acute intelligence.  He gave the bullies a long look before his gaze
finally returned to settle on Joe.  To Joe’s surprise, Nebil twisted and barked
something to the other battlemasters in the room.  Immediately, all the Ooreiki
that had taken up stations along the wall began walking from the room, leaving
just Nebil to guard the kids in the cafeteria.  The scarred, pale-skinned
battlemaster leveled a long, calculating stare on Joe, then turned and followed
the other Ooreiki from the room.