Forging Zero (41 page)

Then
they were in the pit, struggling with the defenders.  They were forced to wrest
the rifles out of the little kids’ hands before they had a chance to fire at
them.  Diamond dust tinkled and crunched underfoot, scattered by their stomping
boots.  Libby finally got a weapon free and fired point-blank at the nearest
defender.  His agonized scream made Joe cringe, but Libby fired again, taking
the second boy in the chest.  Joe yanked free the remaining enemy’s rifle and
held it trained on the wide-eyed girl on the other end, who stared back at him
in unconcealed terror.  Libby shot her, too.

Joe
lowered his gun and stared at her.

“They’re
the bad guys,” Libby said, shrugging.  “We’re supposed to kill them.”

“I
guess,” Joe said, feeling bad regardless.  Joe tore his eyes off the three convulsing
defenders and glanced over the edge of the pit at the two bodies lying out in
the open.  “Damn.  The others didn’t make it.”

“They
were too slow.”  Libby said it as if she couldn’t care less.  She began picking
up the defenders’ weapons and taking their charges to refill her own.

Joe
found himself staring at her, glad he’d never pissed her off.

After
looting the defenders, they fell back against the edge of the pit, staring down
into the dark, diamond-encrusted tunnel.  The opening was a full ten feet tall
by six feet wide, and Joe felt his heart rate increase just by being near it. 
He had to grip his rifle tightly to keep his hands from shaking.  “We’re not in
a very good position,” he said.

“No
flashlights,” Libby agreed.

“No, I
mean numbers,” Joe said.  “They’ve got us outnumbered.”

Libby
said nothing.  In the distance, down the tunnel, they heard voices.

“Well,”
Joe said, “Let’s get this over with.”  He took a deep breath.  Sweat stood out
on his face and his hands felt slick.  He felt like he was going to vomit.  Somehow,
he made himself stand and led them into the tunnel.

It’s
not so bad,
Joe tried to tell himself. 
I can
handle this. 
He was standing erect, the ceiling another foot above his
head.  Still, he wasn’t fooling anybody.  He had broken out in a cold sweat,
the damp earth sucking the warmth out of him on all sides.

It was
almost a relief when he got shot.  They were rounding a corner when a group of
white-clad defenders opened fire.  The bluish, gooey blast caught Joe full in
the face.  Joe’s world collapsed to a blinding white fire that roared down his
spine and tore through his limbs.  It was the worst pain he had ever
experienced.

Tortuous
seconds later, he felt his heart stop.

CHAPTER
19: 
A Battlemaster’s Folly

Joe
woke with an Ooreiki needle jammed in his arm.  All around him, spread out in
piles like fallen timber, hundreds of black-clad kids lay in silence.  Some
even had their eyes open, watching their Ooreiki caretakers.

Was he
dead?

Joe
tried to sit up, but couldn’t.  He tried to ask a question, but his mouth
wouldn’t work.  All he could do was lay there, helpless, as an Ooreiki worked
over him, his golden medic’s circle almost pressed up against Joe’s face.  He was
squeezing a bag of some sort of red liquid into his arm.

Joe’s
mind raced.  Blood?  Were they giving him blood?  He couldn’t remember losing
any blood.  For that matter, wasn’t this supposed to be practice?  Why did they
need medics?  And why couldn’t he
move?

The
Ooreiki medic that was treating him did not seem to understand or care about
Joe’s increasing panic.  He simply finished with what he was doing, removed the
needle from Joe’s arm, and moved on to the next person, bringing out a fresh
bag of red liquid and using the same needle he had used on Joe.

A whole
new wave of worry washed over him.  What if one of the kids before him had had
AIDS?  Or some other horrible disease?  Didn’t they know they had to sanitize
the needles before they used them?    What if he was going to die of a cold
like a drug addict, just because these Ooreiki bastards were too stupid to use
fresh needles on their human victims?

For
that matter, why was Joe even breathing?  He had
felt
his heart stop,
felt
his body shut down.  He had felt himself die.  If only he could sit up and ask
someone!

“Listen
up, you soot-eating jenfurglings!” Battlemaster Nebil roared.  “We lost!  Not
only did we lose, but we never even got inside their tunnels!  I’ve never seen
such a Takkiscrew in all of my time in the Army!  You are pathetic! 
Worthless!  We should send you worthless sooters home!”

Good,
Joe thought. 
You do that.

Nebil
continued to berate them disgustedly.  “You’re not warriors!  You are worms! 
Small, terrified worms! 
Niish
would eat you all alive, you fat-assed
primates!”

The
medics continued with their tasks, oblivious to Battlemaster Nebil’s tirade.  When
they finished working with the humans, they packed up their supplies and
boarded a haauk, leaving the kids behind.

Joe
listened as their battlemaster ranted on and on, alternating between cursing at
them, shouting at the ancestors for cursing
him
, and kicking up sprays
of diamond dust in a rage. 

Nebil
finally ran out of breath, though his sudah still beat in a fury.  “Grab your gear
and find your own way home,” he snarled.  “Ancestors save your worthless asses
if you don’t make it back to the barracks before I lock it down.”  Then Nebil
got on a haauk loaded with the nine other battlemasters, the medics, and a few
Takki assistants and departed.  Joe’s anger turned to worry as he watched their
skimmer slide out of sight, following the road back to the city. 

Joe and
the rest of the kids continued to lay there, helpless, as the light rapidly
faded from the purple planet.  Somewhere off in the distance, the
fingernail-on-chalkboard sound filled the silence.  Joe wondered whether or not
the creatures making that horrible noise could acquire a taste for soft,
helpless flesh, should they be given the opportunity.  Joe’s stomach churned at
the thought of walking back to the city in the dark.

Apparently,
some of the other recruits were having the same thoughts, because their eyes
were wide as they stared at the deepening purple of the sky.

It’s
just a walk through the woods,
Joe told himself. 
Nothing
to worry about.

Half an
hour later, after night had fallen completely, the paralysis wore off—for
everybody, all at the same time.

Those
bastards,
Joe thought. 
They waited until dark.

Libby
found him as soon as he stood up.  “They’re trying to scare us,” she said,
scanning the huge ferlii surrounding them.  Even with nightvision, the upper
canopy was too dark for them to see it.  Likewise, they could only see parts of
the forest around them—everything under the second canopy was obscured in
shadows that even sunlight could not touch.  With only meager amounts of
starlight filtering down through the spore-thickened atmosphere and then the
tight weave of the upper canopy, everything from the ground to the two hundred
foot mark was completely black.  They had to be really close just to make out
the shapes of the huge ferlii root systems.

“Let’s
find the others,” Joe said, once they’d found their gear amongst the recruit
belongings the Ooreiki had graciously dumped into an enormous pile.

“You
hear Nebil?” Libby said.  “He said none of us made it into the tunnels.”

“Maybe
two out of four hundred doesn’t count,” Joe said.

Libby’s
face twisted, but before she could reply, Scott jogged up, panting.  “Joe, you
gotta stop them.  They’re going the wrong way.  Monk, too.  She wouldn’t listen
when I told her it was a trick.”

“What’s
a trick?” Joe asked, glancing at the stream of people following the same road
the Ooreiki haauk had taken.  He thought he saw Monk’s slight form amongst the
walkers, but he couldn’t be sure from so far away.

“That
isn’t the
way,”
Scott said.  He turned a hundred and eighty degrees and
pointed at a road that looked abandoned and dark, all away across the
battlefield from where they stood.  “
That’s
where we need to go.”

Joe and
Libby peered doubtfully into the darkness, squinting.

“I saw
them go that way,” Libby said, pointing at the flood of humans.  More than one
platoon had already begun walking down the path after the Battlemasters.

“Me,
too,” Joe added.

“Look,”
Scott said, “Just trust me, okay?  I’m really good at this.  We’ve gotta go
that
way.”  He pointed at the empty road behind them.

“Why?”
Joe asked, still unconvinced.

“Because
that’s the way we came in,” Scott said.

“You
recognize something over there?” Joe asked dubiously.  Everything about the
planet looked pretty much the same to him.

“I
don’t need to,” Scott said.

“Why
not?” Libby demanded, frowning.

“I just
don’t
,” Scott insisted, looking desperate, now.  “You’ve gotta
stop
them, Joe.  They’re gonna get us in
trouble
.” 

Realizing
that Scott was verging on panic, Joe lowered his gear to the ground and took
the hyperventilating kid by the shoulder.  “Okay.  Dude.  Tell me what you
know, then we’ll see what I can do, okay?”

“I know
direction
,” Scott said.  “My dad said I musta been a homing pigeon in a
past life.  Back home, I never got lost anywhere, not even in the city.”  He
jabbed a finger at the departing group.  “And that is the
wrong
direction.  Home is
that
way.”  He yanked his thumb behind him.

Joe
glanced at Libby, who shrugged.  “So you want me to chase those other guys down
and tell them they’re all going the wrong way?  They won’t believe you.”

Scott’s
impish face stretched in a grin.  “They’ll believe me next time, after we get
home and they don’t.”

Joe
gave Scott a long look, inwardly feeling like Monk had a bit of sense when she
spoke of safety in numbers. 

“Either
way, we’re gonna look like morons,” Libby said, shrugging.  “Or we get lost and
eaten and never seen again.  Maybe a few years from now somebody’ll find a few
pieces of our gear scattered over the upper canopy, or shards of bone stuck
in—”

“You
don’t believe me,” Scott said, his grin sliding from his face.

Seeing
the kid’s anguish, Joe felt something twinge inside.  “I think I’m gonna give
you a chance to prove it to me,” Joe decided, to which Scott immediately
started beaming again.  “Let’s go get Monk.  Where’s Maggie?”

They
found the other two members of their team wandering amidst the exodus.  Maggie
was happy to be reunited with her group, but Monk stomped and screamed like a
banshee when they tried to take her.

“But
everybody’s going
that
way!”  Monk started walking again and Libby
caught her roughly by the arm, yanking her back.  Monk shrieked and tried
batting off her grip, but Libby held fast, glaring down at her with impassive
brown eyes.

Monk
let her legs go limp and began an all-out tantrum right there in the road.  Joe
lost his temper.  “We’re going,” he snapped.  “And you’re coming with us.  All
of Third Squad is.”

Something
in the tone of Joe’s voice quieted Monk.  She still held her chin in a pout,
but at least she closed her mouth and followed them as they went to collect as
many of their squad members as they could find.  The others followed Joe
willingly, gathering around him in an increasing knot until he had over a dozen
children with him.  He even saw a few faces that didn’t belong, but since none
of the other squad leaders were taking charge and forming up their own
groundteams, Joe let them stay.

“What
the hell are you doing, Zero?”  Sasha had seen the disturbance and had come to
investigate. 

His
back to her, Joe winced.  He’d hoped to collect everyone and be gone before she
noticed.

“Scott
thinks we came in on the other side of the clearing,” Maggie said, motioning
the road at the far end. 

“Nebil
and the medics went that way,” Sasha barked.  “Let’s go. 
Now
, recruits.” 

“That’s
not the right way,” Scott blurted.  “I can feel the city we came from over
there.”  He pointed.

Sasha
snorted.  “You
feel
it?”

“Yes,”
Scott said, dead serious.

Sasha
frowned at Scott, then at Joe.  “That’s soot.  Get moving, Zero.  The others
are getting ahead of us.”

“We’re
going this way,” Joe growled, shouldering his rifle where she could see it.  He
still had cartridges left.  “And you can stuff it.”

“Yeah,”
Monk said.  “Stuff it.”

Sasha
narrowed her eyes.  “It’s safer if we all stay together.  So you’re
coming
.”