Forging Zero (66 page)

Joe
tucked the akarit into his vest.  “They won’t.  Not from me.”

Yuil’s
face bunched in an Ooreiki grin.  “Kihgl said we could trust you.”

#

“Hey Chipmunk.  Can you reach that
ratchet for me?”

“Okay Dad.  Which one’s the
ratchet?” 

Her dad laughed.  “The one with
the ratchet on it.”

Carol frowned at the set of tools,
then handed him the one that looked the best.

“That’s a screwdriver.”  Her
father sighed and slid out from under the car.  His big hands set the
screwdriver back in place and plucked one of the tools from the set.  “See this
here?  Listen.”  He twisted the knob, making a clicking sound.  “That’s a
ratchet.  You can change direction with this little lever here.  See?”

Carol nodded, though she really
didn’t see at all.  “How does it change direction?  It’s not going anywhere,
Dad.”

Her father laughed—a liquid, happy
sound that filled her chest with joy every time she heard it.  “Come under
here, my little Monk.  Lemme show you something.”

Carol eyed the greasy underbelly
of the car, then her new pink pants.  “Mommy told me not to.”

“Mommy wouldn’t let me buy you
coveralls, either.  Get under here.  I’ll deal with Mommy.”

Squirming with glee, Carol inched
her way under the car, staring up at the unidentifiable masses of dirt and
grease that seemed to make sense to her dad.

“Watch that nut right there,” her
dad ordered.  He put the open end of the ratchet over it and started yanking on
the handle.  The garage echoed with its quick, efficient clicking sounds.  Then
he pulled his hand away.  “See it now?”

“It’s coming off,” Carol said,
fascinated.

“Right,” her dad replied.  “Now
watch what happens when I set this baby in reverse.”  He flipped the lever, and
the clicking sounds returned.  When he lifted the ratchet away a second time,
the nut was back where it had started.

“Wow!” Carol exclaimed.  “Cool,
Dad.”

“One of the many marvels of modern
technology.  If we’ve got time tonight, I’ll show you that new air compressor I
bought at—”

“James.”

Both Carol and her father jerked
at her mother’s hard tone.  Carol quickly skidded out from under the car and
did her best to brush herself off.  Her hands, greasy from touching the
underside of the Toyota, left black smears across her pants.  She bit her lip
and watched her dad, hoping he wouldn’t get in trouble.  She liked it when he
let her work on cars with him.

“I need to talk to you, James. 
Our visitors.”

Carol frowned.  She hadn’t seen
any visitors, but her parents were constantly talking about them.  They
probably slept in the den, with the TV.  Neither of them had allowed her to
watch TV in days, and Carol was beginning to miss Sesame Street.

“Now, James.”

“All right, Kate.”  Her father’s
voice was soft, as it always was, though Carol could tell he was irritated.  He
picked up a greasy blue rag from the floor and began wiping his hands with it. 

“Stay here, Monk.”  Then, giving
Carol a wink, he followed their mother back inside the house.

#

Two
weeks later, while they were tending the plaza after drills, Maggie walked up
and yanked Joe’s rake from his hands.  “What’s the matter with you, Joe?”

Joe
stared at his rake.  He had been lost in thought, thinking on what Yuil and his
companions had taught him the night before about biosuits.  Yuil had introduced
him to other rebels, and as Joe was accepted deeper into their society, they
taught him things about fighting Congies that had never come up in Battlemaster
Nebil’s discussions—like how to get a Congie out of his biosuit for
questioning.  “What are you talking about?”

“That!”
Maggie cried.  “You’re not saying anything and you let Sasha bully you around. 
You haven’t led a raid in weeks.”

“I
don’t want to talk about it,” Joe said, taking his rake from her.

A few
feet away, Libby was watching him.  Though they had been neck-and-neck on their
growth spurts, she had finally stopped growing.  Now she stood at six-foot-three,
all leg and waist.  She could have been a model, back on Earth.  Here, she
never left the barracks without her black utility vest, heavy Congie boots, and
her rifle—yet somehow even with all her gear she looked as sexy as anything out
of Playboy.

Joe
ignored them both and continued to rake in silence.

Petite
as she was, when Maggie grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him around to
face her, it hurt.  “What’s
wrong
with you?!  Sasha’s been getting us
all killed on the hunts.  Pretty soon, they’re gonna pair us with some other
battalion because Second keeps kicking our ass.  Why won’t you
say
something?”

“Just
leave me alone, okay?”

“Is it
about Elf?”

Now
everyone in the platoon was looking at him.  Joe stared at the base of his
rake.  Even a
rake
looked alien here.  Only three prongs that looked
like fat fingers, slightly curved and black as coal.  It reminded him of the
instrument the rebels had shown him that was good for cracking open a Congie’s
biosuit for interrogation.

“It
is!” Maggie cried.  “It’s about Elf!”

“Mag,
leave me alone, okay?”

“I’m
the one who couldn’t stop him from killing those Ooreiki.  If I had, he’d still
be here.”

Joe
just shook his head.

“It’s
not your fault, Joe!” Maggie cried.  “Can’t you see that?!”

“It
is.
” 
Joe took a deep breath.  “He tried to take that ship because of me.  I told him
I’d fly him home if he could get me a ship.  I
said
that.  And now he’s
dead.  Because he trusted me.”

Libby
turned abruptly and stalked off toward the chow hall.  Joe felt an ache in his
chest as he watched her go.  She’d hate him if she knew what Yuil was.  She
loved everything about the Army.  If she found out Joe was meeting with rebels,
she’d probably kill him herself.

Maggie
wasn’t finished.  “Elf was crazy, Joe.  You didn’t do it.  Knaaren did.  It’s a
miracle you’re not crazy, too.”

“Maybe
I am,” Joe replied, thinking about his excursions with Yuil.  He started raking
again, but Maggie stepped on it.

“We
need you, Joe.  Sasha’s gonna get our flag captured, then we’ll all be
screwed.  We need you to
lead.”

Joe
snorted.  “Who gives an ash about Congress and their games?”

Maggie
made a disgusted noise and released his rake.  Glaring at him, she said to the
others, “Come on, guys.  Let’s go get lunch.”  She and Scott followed Libby
across the yard.

Monk
watched them go.  Once they were out of earshot, she turned to him and said, “You
know, you should stop being a Takki.”

Joe
rolled his eyes.  “Look, I don’t need this.  Maggie already—”

“It’s
not fair making Libby beg,” Monk went on.  “She already got in a fight over who
gets to pop your cherry.  Come on, Joe.  All you have to do is look at her and
you get a hard-on.”

Joe
sputtered, his face catching fire.  “Where did you—”  He stopped himself.  He
didn’t want to know where she was getting her information.  He still preferred
to think of the others as little kids because, even with their grown-up bodies,
that’s what they were.

What
did it matter if Monk knew about sex, anyway?  It wasn’t as if some sootwad could
knock her up and ruin her life.  Hell, a little good-natured nookie probably
did wonders for morale.  Too bad he was too much of a fumbling furg to get any.

“You
should just get it over with,” Monk continued.  “If sex would make her stop
being so moody, I’d pay you for every night.  Lately, she’s been such a bi—” 

She
broke off suddenly as a group of black-clad Ooreiki waddled past them.  English
was now forbidden to the recruits.  Any time they were caught using it by the battlemasters,
they were given new and heinous chores as penance.  The last kid had been given
the job of cleaning the eastern windows of one of the civilian towers—clinging
to a rope dangling a thousand feet above the ground.

Once
the Ooreiki had passed, Monk continued in Congie.

“Really,
Joe.  You need to get your priorities straight.  Elf’s dead and Libby’s horny
as hell.  She’d screw a light-post if it was wearing your clothes.”  Then she
turned and walked off, leaving him standing there, mouth agape.

Before
Joe could follow her, a horn blasted across Alishai, announcing an immediate
regiment formation.  Sighing, Joe put his rake aside and followed the others to
the plaza and got in line.

Several
minutes went by without any sound except the thick flapping of banners in a
heavy ferlii spore-wind.  All except for Sixth Battalion’s—Lord Knaaren still
hadn’t given Tril his banners.  To make up for it, every single recruit in
Sixth Battalion, even Libby and Sasha, wore their sleeves rolled above their
biceps.  To Joe, seeing the rolled sleeves looked even better than if they’d
had banners.  It gave him a sort of pride to be the only battalion allowed to
have them.

Then he
remembered what he was going to be fighting for and reminded himself that sleeves,
banners, hunts, and formations were all a way of the Congressional Army to
control them, to blind them to their real purpose.  They encouraged the
recruits to spend so much time squabbling and testing each other that they lost
sight of the truth of their situation.  Congies were the enemy, and the last
thing Joe was going to do was become one of them.

A flash
of color blazed across the courtyard in front of them, the Dhasha’s rainbow
body at a full charge, then was gone.     

Half an
hour later, after their Prime Commander still hadn’t reappeared, even the battlemasters
began to get impatient.  In the battalion beside his, Joe heard two commanders
discussing whether they should stay or go.

Almost
an hour after that, a lone Takki waddled out from the Dhasha’s tower and handed
an electronic note to the nearest tertiary commander before hurrying away.  The
Ooreiki stepped forward and activated it.

Immediately,
Prime Commander Knaaren’s voice boomed out over the plaza, but his tone was
hushed and calculating. 
“…seen them train. They can’t fool me.  They try to
hide him, but I see his taint.  I see everything.  They rot inside just like
Congress.  I
must
root out his evil.”

The
tertiary commander of First Battalion continued to hold the device above his
head for another two minutes, until it was obvious nothing else was
forthcoming.  He lowered it with a puzzled grimace.

“He’s
lost his mind,” Nebil muttered.

“Ghost
sickness,” Prime Commander Lagrah agreed.

Just
then, Knaaren came barreling from the base of his tower, sharkish mouth wide
and gasping, head swinging in all directions at once.  Without warning, he
leapt forward and bit down on one of Third Battalion’s battlemasters.  Brown
fluid gushed out from between the rainbow lips and spread in a pool in the
diamond dust.  Knaaren viciously shook the Ooreiki between his powerful jaws
until the lower half of his body went flying off into Third Battalion.  Then
Knaaren spat the rest of the carcass aside, half-eaten, and stared blindly
around the ranks.

“Who
else?!” Knaaren screamed in Congie.  “Who else holds the taint?!”

The
Dhasha’s eyes caught suddenly on one of the recruits in First Battalion and
stayed there, riveted.  He spent the next three minutes like that, absolutely
motionless.  Then he threw himself backwards, landing in a sprawl, howling like
a possessed thing.  The recruit he’d been staring at made a miserable, confused
whimper.

“I see
him!” Knaaren screamed, clawing his way back to his feet, casting chips of
diamond in all directions.  “I can see into your heads!  All of you!  He’s in
you!  I can see his corruption!  I know he’s…”  The Dhasha shuddered and backed
up three steps.  “You!”

He was
staring at the air above his head.

“Leave
me alone!” Knaaren screamed.  “No! 
No…”
  His last words degenerated
into an alien roar as he tore at the air with his talons then crumpled in a
panting, twitching heap on the plaza in front of them.  His Takki slaves calmly
knelt and began grooming him as if it were the most natural thing in the world
for their master to have thrown a tantrum and collapsed in front of his entire
regiment.

“Get
the recruits out of here,” Lagrah said, watching the Dhasha.  “It’s
oorei
sickness.  It’s only going to get worse from here.”

Nebil
and the other battlemasters were quick to comply.  Joe and the rest of the
recruits spent the next five hours doing weapons drills on the other side of
the city while Knaaren terrorized the plaza, stalking back and forth and
talking to thin air.  The battlemasters only allowed them to return to the barracks
to sleep when a black-clad Congie brought word that Lord Knaaren was once again
ensconced in his high tower.