Forging Zero by Sara King Page B

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,